William Tyrrell case detective Gary Jubelin guilty on four charges of breaching NSW Surveillance Devices Act

The former detective has been found guilty of recording conversations illegally while investigating William Tyrrell’s disappearance.

Former NSW Detective Gary Jubelin leaves the Downing Centre Local Court in Sydney on February 14.

Former homicide detective Gary Jubelin has been found guilty on all four charges of breaching the NSW Surveillance Devices Act.

The verdict was delivered by Magistrate Ross Hudson in the largest courtroom at the Downing Centre complex in Sydney’s largely-deserted CBD on Monday afternoon.

In a three-hour address, Jubelin was described as a “self-serving” witness whose evidence was “untenable.”

The magistrate said he tended to give speeches, rather than answer questions, as he attempted to justify “illegal” behaviour.

The charges related to Jubelin’s decision to use his own mobile phone as a recording device, while investigating the disappearance of three-year-old foster child, William Tyrrell.

Jubelin admitted in evidence that he recorded four conversations with Paul Savage, 75, who lived opposite the house William disappeared from, on Benaroon Drive in the village of Kendall, NSW, on September 12, 2014.

The court heard that Jubelin had become “like a dog with a bone” when it came to Mr Savage, an elderly widower described in court as somebody so distraught by the death of his wife that he had taken to walking tearfully around the village of Kendall with an A4 picture of her around his neck.

He said Jubelin “moved the chess pieces” in the investigation.

“He determines the time, the date, of every conversation,” he said, and he had decided to make the illegal recordings.

Screen grabs from video interview of Paul Savage with Gary Jubelin and Detective Sergeant Laura Beacroft in August, 2017.

“He was aware of how to get body-worn devices. He had three months to obtain warrants (for body worn device, or else include his own mobile phone.)

He said the illegal recordings were “not part of the official strategy.”

“This was: “I’m going after Savage,” he said.

But, Mr Hudson said, Mr Savage “was a suspect at that stage, based on what?

“There’s no DNA, there’s no fingerprints, there’s nobody to say I saw him (Mr Savage) go into the backyard where William was, there’s no leads, there’s nothing.”

He said Jubelin had picked Mr Savage, and “he’s pursuing him at all costs.”

He acknowledged the enormous frustration of police, as they tried to solve the vexing case. William was a three-year-old foster child, who has now been missing six years.

He said Mr Savage was a vulnerable older man, traumatised by the death of his wife of forty years, who had been subjected to claims that William had drowned in his pool, or been run over by his car, or that he’d abducted and killed him.

He knew he was a suspect, and he willingly took part in several conversations with Jubelin, “but I don’t accept that he knew he was being listened to,” Magistrate Hudson said.

“His evidence was that he did not consent.”

Magistrate Hudson said there were listening devices in Mr Savage’s home, and on his mobile and landlines, but there were issues with “quantity and quality” of the recordings captured on those devices.

Paul Savage at his house in Kendall. Picture: Nathan Edwards

The batteries sometimes failed. Mr Savage often mumbled to himself in an incoherent way. Police were also struggling to keep up with a backlog of tapes that had never been listened to.

But Magistrate Hudson also noted that Jubelin had never asked for a warrant to use his own mobile phone as a surveillance device, to circumvent those problems.

He had simply decided which conversations to record, and recorded them.

He said the Surveillance Device Act was designed to safeguard one of the “important aspects of individual freedom” in Australia, which is the right to privacy.

He said Australian citizens should not fear “that every word that they speak may be repeated and recorded and later repeated to the entire world.”

He noted that Mr Savage “at no stage ever consented to being recorded.”

Jubelin was permitted to be in court for the verdict, as was his barrister, Ms Margaret Cunneen SC.

Prosecutor Phil Hogan was asked to sit in another room, to watch proceedings via video link.

Mr Savage became a person of interest after the investigation in 2017.

Detectives focused for several years on a local washing machine repairman, Bill Spedding, who is now suing NSW Police, saying his life was destroyed and his business ruined, when he became a suspect in the case.

The recordings with Mr Savage were made on 3 November 2017; on 2 and 3 May 2018; and on 28 December 2018.

Jubelin maintained that he made the recordings to protect his “lawful interests.”

“I wanted my side of the conversations recorded,” he said.

Magistrate Hudson said detectives often disagreed over whether Mr Savage was the right target.

He said some of the other detectives on the case were aware that the recordings were being made.

Magistrate Hudson said there were “pressures and tensions” among detectives, “and they weren’t necessarily getting anywhere” in the investigation, which is ongoing.

William has never been found.

Magistrate Hudson said “the primary purpose of the Surveillance Devices Act” was to provide a framework for the lawful invasion of a person’s privacy, by police, in the course of a criminal investigation.

Mr Savage has never been charged with the crime, and vehemently denies wrongdoing. While he was under surveillance for some time, he is no longer believed to be a “person of interest” in the case.

Mr Jubelin’s family members greeted him outside the court, but only at a distance. They could not embrace, because of COVID-19 concerns.

He wore his familiar black suit, white shirt and tie. In a remarkable display of self-control, he sat for almost two hours, without changing his neutral expression.

Mr Jubelin will be sentenced at 9am on Wednesday. He expressed his disappointment outside the court, but added: “Having brought people before the court for 34 years, I have to respect the process.”