William Tyrrell podcast: foster father was asked if he’d run over boy in driveway

Questions to William Tyrrell’s foster father reveal police lines of inquiry | LISTEN

William Tyrrell went missing in 2014. Picture: NSW Police

Police investigating the dis­appearance of William Tyrrell quizzed the boy’s foster father about whether he had accidentally run him over in the driveway after returning from making a business call.

The question was put to him by former homicide detective Gary Jubelin in an interview on September 1, 2016, nearly two years after William went missing.

Details are revealed in the latest episode of The Australian’s new podcast series, Nowhere Child.

MORE: Nowhere Child episodes | Bonus episodes

The foster father, who cannot be named, emphatically denied the suggestion.

Mr Jubelin, who was removed from the case in January, publicly cleared William’s foster parents at a press conference 11 days later. There is no suggestion they are involved in William’s disappearance, which is the subject of a coronial inquiry.

The transcript of the interview reveals that the foster father was also asked about whether he believed his wife’s story; whether there might have been some other kind of accident on the property where they were staying; and about his phones: how many he had, and why the one he’d given them had contacts listed under the names Tom Cruise, Britney Spears and Bruce Willis.

He replied that he had only one phone, and the names were nicknames for clients: Tom Cruise, for example, was a client who lived at Beverly Hills.

Mr Jubelin asked the foster ­father whether there was anything about the story that his wife and her mother were telling — that William had been playing in the garden, roaring around like a tiger, before suddenly disappearing — that didn’t add up, and he said no.

Mr Jubelin also asked him: “There’s been a number of theories … put forward to us … and one of those theories is that he (William) might have hurt himself accidentally when the female foster carer and her mother were looking after him and they’ve panicked and covered it up with the fear of losing Lindsay.”

Lindsay is the name the court has given to William’s sister, who was four years old at the time.

Former NSW detective Gary Jubelin. Picture: AAP

The foster father replied: “No way, never. They would never do it, even if he hurt himself. They would go straight to the appropriate authorities … ambulance.

“They’d never do anything like that.”

Mr Jubelin then said: “OK, another theory ... there’s a few of them, and as you understand, it’s got a lot of attention, a lot of ­people are providing information, different things … that’s when you came home in the car, William ran out to see you, and it’s a classic case of a driveway tragedy.”

The foster father replied: “What, ran him over? No.”

Mr Jubelin said: “OK. So these things we’re throwing up … you understand, we throw them up, these are things that people put to us … and your reaction is, this is outrageous, inconceivable?

The foster father replied: ­“Absolutely.”

The foster mother was also interviewed on September 1, 2016, in a separate room. The couple had been told to attend police headquarters at Parramatta in Sydney's west for a discussion about the decision to offer a $1 million reward when in fact Mr Jubelin wanted to interrogate them separately, under formal interview conditions.

He concluded they had no knowledge of William’s whereabouts.

Mr Jubelin resigned from the force this year after being accused of wrongdoing in the case. He will face court in September on a charge of making illegal recordings of a neighbour, Paul Savage.

Mr Savage has never been named as a person of interest.