Miracle in dead of night after days of despair: ‘My name is Cleo’

‘My name is Cleo.’ With those four words, a little girl lost united the nation in an unexpected moment of jubilation and relief.

The moment police rescue Cleo Smith from a Carnarvon home. Picture: WA Police

“My name is Cleo.” With those four words, a little girl lost united the nation in an unexpected -moment of jubilation and relief that brought even seasoned detectives to tears.

Eighteen days of wondering what happened to four-year-old Cleo Smith, who was snatched in the middle of the night from her parents’ tent as they camped in Western Australia’s northwest, came to an end when police burst through the door of a modest Carnarvon home at 1am on Wednesday and found her alive and well.

A 36-year-old man was in police custody on Wednesday night, but had not been charged. However, police sources said he was likely to be charged with kidnapping.

Police have so far been tight-lipped about what triggered them to raid the home in the early hours of Wednesday. A $1m reward had been offered early in the case in the hope of flushing out information, but police do not expect that it will be paid.

The man who was taken into custody had only emerged as a suspect late on Tuesday, with police then moving swiftly.

The house in Carnarvon where Cleo was found.

In the days since Cleo disappeared, the statistical likelihood of finding her alive had worsened.

The terrifying reality of child abductions is that most children snatched by strangers are dead within hours. Those terrible odds were reflected in the fact it was a homicide squad detective who burst through the door of that Carnarvon house, only a few kilometres from the home where Cleo had lived with her family.

Yet there, in a bedroom and in fine physical health, sat the girl homicide squad detective Cameron Blaine and his colleagues had been searching night and day for.

“It certainly looked like Cleo, but I wanted to be absolutely sure it was her. So I asked ‘what’s your name?’ She didn’t answer again so I asked her a third time,” Mr Blaine said.

“And then she looked at me and she said, ‘My name is Cleo’.”

He said he felt shock and then elation when he realised that the girl he, his colleagues and the country had been desperate to find was safe.

“To see her sitting there in the way that she was, was incredible,” he said.

That a girl could simply disappear in such sinister circumstances from a family tent while her mother, stepfather and sister slept nearby preyed on the worst fears of every parent. And with each day that passed, the less likely it seemed that Cleo would ever be seen again.

So the photograph of a smiling Cleo in a hospital bed, waving to the camera with one hand and holding an icy pole with the other, sparked an outpouring of elation across the country.

 

Similarly, it was impossible not to feel emotion when viewing the brief snippet of body-camera footage released by WA police late on Wednesday, showing Cleo in the arms of an officer as Mr Blaine tells her they are taking her to see her mummy and daddy.

Mr Blaine told how he and the three other officers who had raided the home then took Cleo back to a police car, where the family liaison officer assigned to the case called Cleo’s mother, Ellie Smith, and stepfather Jake Gliddon to give them the news.

“[He] called Cleo’s parents and said ‘we’ve got someone here that wants to speak to you’. It was a wonderful feeling to be making that call,” Mr Blaine said.

“To be able to give them that news and then say ‘please start making your way to the hospital, we’ll meet you there’, it was fantastic.”

He said there were “big hugs, kisses and lots of tears” when the family was reunited at the Carnarvon hospital.

It was not just the family who was crying either. Every one of the detectives and officers on the case, from the man leading the investigation, Rod Wilde, and Police Commissioner Chris Dawson down, shed tears of joy and relief.

Mr Wilde said his team had worked with little sleep since Cleo’s disappearance was first ¬reported.

“It was very emotional to see that,” he said.

“It was something we had hoped for, but we obviously had real concerns for Cleo’s welfare and as time passed by they grew worse. So to see that was just amazing.”

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Cleo Smith recovering in a hospital.

Cleo’s biological father, Daniel Staines, said he was “overjoyed” his daughter had been found, and that he was happy she had been reunited with her mother and stepfather.

While the relief of Cleo’s discovery was felt across the country, attention will now turn to just how and why the abduction took place

A 36-year-old man was taken into custody soon after Cleo was found, but he was taken from the Carnarvon police station to hospital with a head injury just after midday.

The house where Cleo was found is in an area of Carnarvon dubbed by some in the town as The Bronx.

The man in police custody on Wednesday was a familiar sight to neighbours approached by The Australian, though they said he hardly talked. They recalled frequently seeing him walking around the neighbourhood until he recently got a car. He had done some work in Carnarvon with Real Futures, a local work-for-the-dole program.

Some residents claimed they had seen him buying nappies at the local supermarket even though he did not have children.

Police with the suspect linked to Cleo’s disappearance. Picture: Simon Hydzik/7NEWS

He is from a large Aboriginal family. Amid serious concerns of community tensions in coming days, extra police were flown in to Carnarvon on Wednesday.

Mr Dawson held a crisis meeting with about 20 Aboriginal elders, asking them to ignore hurtful or inflammatory comments on social media. Mr Dawson also asked the elders to encourage younger people not to respond to any goading or racism in the wake of the arrest. A senior Aboriginal woman, Gillian Snowball, was moved to tears when she told the meeting she had known the man in custody since he was a toddler.

“It’s a disgrace today, I feel ashamed,” she said. “I don’t want to walk down the street or go to the shops now.”

During the investigation, locals came to believe police had a footprint from the family’s campsite that they considered highly significant.

Police contacted people whose mobile phones had been detected in the area on October 15 and 16 and questioned them about their shoes.

One woman questioned twice told The Australian: “They said it was a random questionnaire but it was an interrogation because my phone was in the area and I didn’t mind because they have to be thorough. They wanted to know what size my shoes are and what kind of shoes I have.”

WA Premier Mark McGowan drew particular attention to the ¬efforts of data analysts, who had worked through mountains of information, looking for clues, while Police Minister Paul Papalia said Cleo’s discovery was the product of professional detective work.

“Cleo’s rescue wasn’t the result of an accidental sighting or a suspicious event, it was the result of hard police grind,” he said.

Mr Blaine said police had not flagged the impending raid with Cleo’s parents beforehand, conscious of the dangers of creating false hope for them.

“Things develop so quickly, we didn’t really have time to prepare them and we certainly didn’t want to give them false expectations about what might happen as we didn’t know ourselves.,” he said. “So it’s always a delicate process.”

Cleo, meanwhile, was relishing being back in the arms of her family. Her mother Ellie posted a photograph of Cleo to her Instagram account, noting “Our family is whole again.”

Mr Blaine said he had been struck by Cleo’s energy.

Mother Ellie Smith and stepfather Jake Gliddon have been reunited with Cleo. Picture: James Carmody