The day little William vanished into thin air …

‘Hi, my son is missing’. After William’s foster mother made a call to triple-0 at 10.57am, police started their search for a little boy lost. In 2021, they are searching for remains.

William woke early on the morning of September 12, 2014.

NSW police have for three days been digging up flower beds outside the last known resting place of William Tyrrell, at 48 Benaroon Drive, Kendall.

The little boy spent the night of September 11, 2014, there. On September 12, he went missing.

What happened to him? The question has consumed police for seven years. At first, they thought he was lost. The village is bushy and William didn’t live there, so he wouldn’t have been able to find his way around. Besides which, he was only three. Now they seem to think something happened to him at the house.

Maybe he fell from a second-storey balcony. That’s one theory going around, because why else would they be digging beneath it?

As stories go, the balcony ­theory could not be more different from the one William’s foster parents have been telling for seven years.

They say William woke early on the morning of September 12. It was just 6C outside but he was wearing pyjamas and Pull-Ups.

He had spent the night in the same bedroom as his foster father.

They were visiting the house, on the NSW mid-north coast, owned by his foster mother’s mother. It was, as far as he was concerned, opa and nana’s house. But opa had died and nana was preparing to sell up and move.

His foster mother spent the night in a different room.

William sat with his foster ­father watching Fireman Sam on an iPhone. When it was time to get dressed, he insisted on putting on a Spider-Man suit, purchased a few weeks earlier from a shop in Bali. He had a Spider-Man singlet underneath.

“He liked that idea, being all Spider-Manned out,” his foster mother told the coronial inquiry into his disappearance, in 2019.

William Tyrrell in his Spider-Man costume.

About 9.30am, William’s foster father left the house. We know this is true because his phone has been tracked. He made a Skype call from an area with better internet connection, then picked up a paper and dropped by the chemist to fill a script.

We know William was still alive when he left the house because there’s that famous photograph of him, playing on the deck in his bright red suit.

It was taken at 9.37am. That has likewise been verified.

Shortly after 10am, William’s foster mother – now named as a person of interest – says she made cups of tea for herself and her mother. She says she sat with William on the small timber deck on the back of the house, not on the tall balcony at the front.

The back deck is very low to the ground, just two timber steps down to the lawn. The boy played with dice and pencils. The adults sipped their tea.

William got bored and decided to play a new game called Daddy Tiger. “He (was) pretending to be Daddy Tiger. He crawled around on the ground for a bit, playing (being a) tiger,” the foster mother told the inquiry.

“He jumped off the deck, ran around the side of the house and roared,” his foster mother said.

“It sounded like he was just around the corner. And then I heard … nothing. And Mum and I were still talking and I could still hear nothing and I think that’s ­really weird … it’s too quiet.”

She got up and walked around the side of the house, but could not see William. “And I’m just standing there, thinking why can’t I see him?” she said.

“I just stop and I go: William where are you? I can’t see you. I’m looking and thinking where is the red, because in all this green I’ve got to be able to see some red, and I couldn’t see anything.

“And I couldn’t hear anything. It was silent. There was no wind. No birds, nothing. And at Mum’s, sound carries so well, I mean, unbelievably. You can hear everything and I could hear nothing.”

She went back and told her mother: “I can’t see William.”

NSW Police search for possible evidence in bush about 1km from the former home of William Tyrrell. Picture: AAP

Her mother said “Oh, the little devil” because she was thinking: he would be hiding.

William’s foster mother looked around again, saying; “William, where are you? I can’t see you.” She went into the space underneath the house, and there was no William.

She went inside the house, frantically opening all the doors and cupboards, saying: ‘William, where are you? You have to come out. You have to talk to me.’ And he was just nowhere.”

She says she ran from her mother’s garden towards the house across the road. She had just spotted a neighbour, Anne-Maree Sharpley, having a quiet smoke under the car port. Sharpley agreed to help her look.

The foster mother says she jumped into her mother’s car — the same one now seized by police for forensic testing — and took off down Benaroon Drive. “I had my head out the window,” she said. “I was driving and a big truck was coming and I was thinking … no, this is crazy, he isn’t out here, he couldn’t have got this far.”

She drove back to the house.

If police are saying — and to be clear, they are not publicly saying anything — that this car was used to dispose of William’s body after he fell from the balcony, this is when it must have happened.

The foster mother says she ran inside and reached for her mobile phone. There was a message from her husband: “Home in five.”

She ran outside to greet him, saying: “Have you got William?”

“No,” he said, confused. “Why would I have William?”

“I can’t find him,” she said, and William’s foster father says he then took off, running, shouting: ‘William? Come out, William. William, where are you?’

NSW Police search bush outside Kendall on Wednesday. Picture: AAP

A short time later — at 10:57am — William’s foster mother made a call to triple-0.

“Police, go ahead.”

“Hello?”

“Yes, police emergency. This is Simone.”

“Yeah, hi, my son is missing. He’s 3½ …”

So begins the transcript.

“How long has he been missing?” the operator asked.

“Well, I think … we’ve been looking for him now for about 15 or 20 minutes,” his foster mother replied.

“I thought it could be five … it could be longer because he was playing around here, we heard him, then we heard nothing.”

The operator sent the job out. It was answered by Senior Constable Christopher Rowley, a police officer attached to the station at Laurieton. He lives in Kendall and has three children and by chance was just nine minutes away from Benaroon Drive, behind the wheel of a police Mitsubishi Pajero. He arrived on the scene at 11:06am.

So began the search, which continues to this day. Except it isn’t the same kind of search.

Police went looking in 2014 for a little boy lost. In 2021, they are searching for remains.