Third murder victim linked to William Tyrrell person of interest Frank Abbott, according to inquest evidence

This Australian teenager went missing decades ago. Police losing her remains was just the tip of the iceberg as their investigation errors have been laid bare.

Tony Masters wants people to know his sister Cherylee was someone who used to play hopscotch and skip, and who loved horses, cats and dogs – she wasn’t only the teenager who went missing.

If more people knew her story, Tony said, maybe Cherylee wouldn’t have ended up the victim of an unsolved murder. Her body was found buried in a shallow grave on the NSW Mid North Coast.

“I just feel like every possible system really let her down,” said Tony.

Today, news.com.au’s podcast Witness: William Tyrrell can reveal just how badly Cherylee was let down – and it is shocking.

After Cherylee’s remains were recovered in 2006 they were lost again by the authorities for years, meaning Cherylee’s father died before the family could hold a funeral. The police did not attend a memorial service for her, despite being invited, Tony said.

The records of an inquest into Cherylee’s death also seem to have been misplaced, with the Coroner’s Court of NSW now saying “archives have not had any luck finding this file after numerous searches”.

The podcast also reveals new evidence linking Cherylee to a convicted child abuser came to light at the William Tyrrell inquest almost six years ago – but was not followed up with her family by the police.

“I feel annoyed that people knew this,” Tony said. “I just feel like she surely is now just another number on someone’s desk. Or locked away in a room that nobody bothers to go into anymore.”

Tony said he has not heard from the NSW Police Force for years, but called them after speaking to us about these revelations, to ask who is handling his sister’s case. Months later, he has still not heard back.

Earlier this week we revealed other evidence tendered to the inquest into three-year-old William Tyrrell’s disappearance allegedly links two other unsolved murder victims to the same convicted child offender, Frank Abbott.

Abbott, who is in prison for assaulting two girls and a boy, was named a “person of interest” by police investigating William’s likely death but was not questioned at the inquest.

He has privately denied any role in what happened to William and was found not guilty of one of those murders, of 17-year-old Helen Harrison.

We are not suggesting the alleged links are true, or that Abbott was in any way involved in either case, just that they are contained in evidence before the inquest and have not been fully investigated.

Cherylee Masters was last seen in 2000 when she was 17.

Cherylee’s remains were recovered in 2006 but authorities then lost them.

Seventeen-year-old Cherylee spent much of her life in and out of foster care, said Tony, and had developmental challenges that meant she was mentally closer to a 13- or 14-year-old.

She was last seen in 2000, telling friends she planned to hitchhike from the city of Taree down the coast to Maitland. She never arrived.

She was reported missing, but a former police officer who oversaw the work of the Taree detectives at this time told us he did not remember Cherylee’s case being passed on for investigation.

Six years later, her body was discovered in a shallow grave near what is now the Brimbin Reserve Picnic Area, just north of Taree.

Police “couldn’t tell us anything – not how they believed she died, not any leads,” said Tony, and it was left to a funeral director to show the family that Cherylee had suffered a blow to the head.

The findings of a 2009 inquest into her death make depressing reading, appearing to misspell Cherylee’s surname and seeming not to acknowledge evidence she was seen alive in 2000.

“The deceased Cherylee Master (sic), between October 1995 and October 2005, at an unknown place in the state of New South Wales, died of an undeterminable cause in circumstances that I have also not been able to determine,” the coroner wrote.

The coronial inquest essentially concluded she died somehow, somewhere, sometime.

Cherylee was found buried in a shallow grave six years after she went missing.

Ten years after this inconclusive inquiry, a woman called Iris Northam gave a written witness statement to the inquest investigating William’s unrelated disappearance.

That statement describes a teenage girl who went missing from Taree a few years after the disappearance and murder of another local woman, Margaret Cox, and whose body was found “in Brimbin Road”.

“I don’t remember the girl’s name but her father was Rex Nolan,” Mrs Northam said in her statement. Rex Nolan was Cherylee’s father.

Mrs Northam told us that Abbott also used to work at a local market where Cherylee’s father had a stall: “ He helped at the markets out there, where Rex and (Cherylee’s stepmother) Karen used to sell stuff.”

Her statement alleges that Frank Abbott used to describe how he drove a particular back road north of Taree, close to the site where Cherylee’s body was discovered.

It also alleges a number of potential links between Abbott and Margaret Cox, whose body was recovered from the Manning River outside Taree in 1996.

The detective who took this statement, and who worked on the strike force investigating William’s disappearance, said this information would be provided to the force’s Unsolved Homicide Team, Mrs Northam told us.

Years later, she has not heard back from the police. Another potential witness named in her statement has also not been contacted.

Cherylee and Margaret are two of 67 women and children murdered or reported missing between 1977 and 2009 on the NSW North Coast whose cases remain unsolved.

Inquest files from some of these cases describe failures in the police investigations.

Frank Abbott, then 79, in June of 2014. Abbott is a person of interest in the disappearance of William Tyrrell and has been linked to three other murders including that of Cherylee Masters, according to new evidence tendered at the inquest.

Frank Abbott as a younger man in 1994. Picture: Dean Sewell/SMH

The Witness: William Tyrrell podcast has also revealed major flaws within the Unsolved Homicide Team, including missing evidence, huge backlogs of cases and files sitting unopened on one senior officer’s desk unopened for a year.

Mrs Northam said it weighed heavily on her that she had given that evidence to the William Tyrrell inquest and “ even though I did say something to someone … nothing’s been done or I haven’t heard anything”.

Tony Masters now wants to see the police investigate these latest allegations, saying “ you think you would at least inquire and ask around and do a little bit of digging.”

Abbott and the Coroner’s Court of NSW both declined to answer questions.

The NSW Police Force also declined to answer questions, except to release a statement, saying, “The Margaret Cox and Cherylee Masters matters are with the Unsolved Homicide Team, who are also aware of the Helen Harrison matter.

“Any information that is identified relating to a homicide is assessed and relevant inquiries conducted,” the statement continued. Tony Masters is still waiting for the police to get in touch.

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Originally published as Third murder victim linked to William Tyrrell person of interest Frank Abbott, according to inquest evidence