I'm standing in front of the New South Wales Coroner's Court in Lidcomb in Western Sydney, where in just a few minutes now the inquest into William's disappearance is about to start. It's a gray day. You can hear the traffic roaring past. But for those involved today, all that movement is going to stop. I can only imagine their whole world is going to stop, and all that will matter is what happens in that courtroom inside the building
in front of me. Now, it's four years now since the last public hearing in this inquest, and in that time the police focus has shifted completely onto William's foster mother. They've launched an enormous search, literally dug up tons of soil from around ben Rooin Drive while William went missing, and her name has been in the newspapers. She has been described in court as having had something to do with William's disappearance.
Today, I'm in the media that we're going to be doing some operational activity in the Kendle area over the coming weeks. This activity is in response to evidence we've obtained in the course of the investigation. It's not speculative in any way. We're acting on behalf of the coroner. At any conjunction with coronnial orders, she will be kept up.
David, and we do today expect to hear what evidence the police have or haven't got to justify that level of suspicion. Strangely though, we won't be hearing from the lead detective David Laidl, or the man who's running the strikeforce into William's disappearance, because and this is this is actually extraordinary, the coroner has refused to call him. The Police Commissioner specifically asked that David Laidlor will be called.
The coroner has refused to do that, but she hasn't released her reasons why David Laidlaw's decision to target William's foster mother has been very public. The Police Commissioner, Mick Fuller said this about the strikeforce.
I brought a new team on board under Detective Chief Inspector. They've laid Law through probably the state's most experienced homicide investigator, and he pulled together probably one of the best teams we've seen and spend an active investigation. And you know, they had been working through a number of different pieces of information and they inherited what was a bit of a mess and have really cleaned up that investigation and they've got a clear strategy, and.
The detectives in that strike force have said in court they believe she knows what happened to William. So the question that's in my mind right now is I'm about to walk into this inquest, is how can the police say all that with that kind of confidence? And yet today in this hearing we're not going to hear from the lead detective himself. Are we going to get the answers that really, after all these years everyone is hoping
to receive. I don't know. The only way we're going to know is by going inside.
Okay, Daniel, Okay.
So one of the things about courts is you're not allowed to record inside them. So the only way we can actually tell anyone what happened in the inquest today is just like this, we come out and then you and I have this conversation, Nina, because you weren't in court, so you don't know what happened. The big thing is what we haven't got. So there hasn't been a moment
where anyone has said this is the evidence. The police have got to justify what they've been looking at and the theory they've been following for the past four or five years now. In fact, it's quite the opposite. The senior lawyer working with the coroner said, it's beyond any argument now that we'll material has not been found, and it's beyond argument that no forensic evidence has been located anywhere that provides a clue to his disappearance, So no
forensic evidence. And also it's beyond argument that there is no eyewitness who's provided an account of how William left the area where he was last seen, meaning the police have no direct evidence of what happened to him. Okay, it means the police can only have a circumstantial case,
which that can still work. You can still prove someone has done something with a circumstantial case, but it's harder and to do it you also have to prove that the other people who might have been involved definitely didn't
do it. And what's been interesting is that the lead lawyer working with the inquest has cited a couple of the other moments in the long history of this investigation where the police have directly accused other people of being involved in William's disappearance, and the lawyer said that media reports show the police now believe the foster mothers involved, and he says it cannot be overstated that the coroner has to act on the basis of reliable evidence. He said,
guesses are not rational. Suspicions form no rational basis for making findings of fact. So you're kind of reading between the lines because the way he talks, this guy, Gerard Craddock, is very loyally. It's kind of scholarly. He kind of goes around the houses, but listening to what he's saying, he's saying, there's no evidence and you shouldn't be guessing. You shouldn't be using your suspicions to make findings, which is what the inquest now has to do.
So you reported earlier this morning that David Laidlaw was not going to be called as a witness. No, did they give any indication as to why.
No, nothing, it's been I said that Craddock's kind of
loyally and scholarly. He spent a lot of this morning talking about all the evidence that has been heard in the inquest before now years ago and emphasizing who was where and when and detail timings of that morning, and how we can be certain of what we know on the morning when William went missing, So the time the last photo of William was taken, the time a text message was sent by William's foster father, at the time of the Triple zero Corps, the time of the first
police officer arriving, how different people's Facebook posts can show that certain things were happening at certain times and certain people were where they said they were, and talking about the search that was done that morning. And the more he went over this, the more I'm starting to think, why are we going over this? And then I started to think, because he's building a case about what we can know and what we know we can't no if
that makes sense. So he talks about the initial search for William in the first few days, and he says that was thorough. He's got no question about whether or not that did its very best to find where William was. And he talks about the second search in twenty eighteen, which he says was intense, and then he talks about this third search he mentioned in twenty twenty one, which the police launched, and he describes that as another level of intensity. The police went in with excavators and rakes,
and they stripped out of vegetation, they used divers. And the conclusion that the lawyer Gerard Craddock says is no evidence was found that relates to William Tyrrell's disappearance. He says the court may consider and perhaps conclude. And that's the loyally talking that William under his own stem cannot have traveled beyond the area searched. And the point he's
making is therefore someone else must have been involved. One thing that among all that kind of long and detailed raking over of the evidence we've heard is he talked about how the neighbors heard a car that morning. They heard a car on the gravel at the top end of Benuin Drive, which is just outside the house where William was staying. And he says, you can't prove that there was a car, but there's definitely evidence of a
car being there, and no one knows. No one's been able to prove who drove that car.
Yeah, Peter and Sharrell crab So I went back and looked into that. And so they got home about nine point thirty in the morning that day, and they both testified in twenty nineteen that they heard a car doing a U turn in the street. They both thought it sounded like the postman at the time. Yeah, and Charrell testified that the car was moving quite fast. But I did wonder, because there's been a lot of people testifying about cars. I did wonder the significance of the crabs
in particular. Did he mention why he brought them up.
He's confident about the cabs evidence because he says one of the detectives is sitting with Sharrell Krab asking her about this, when Sharrell Crab says, oh, can you hear that car driving up the road, and then a few seconds later the detective hears it. So he says, despite the fact that Charrell's quite elderly at that point, she's obviously very capable. She is able to hear a car. So he's got quite a lot of confidence in that.
So I think all he's doing is establishing there's no evidence of what happened to William, but there's a possibility that this car was involved in whatever did happen. He hasn't gone any further than that.
It sounds like he was just making a big focus on hard facts that he thinks can be proved versus theories that can't be.
Is that the theme, yes, And he talked about how the inquest came to an end in twenty twenty and he said the reason it restarted this week this morning, he said, is because the police decided to follow up
a theory. And that's the theory we looked at episode four that the police believe William may have fallen off the balcony, that his foster mother decided not to seek help but to dispose of his remains, and she drove down the road to the corner of Batar Creek Road and Cobb and Co Road and disposed of his body there.
But what's really strange is the inquest seems to have gone out of its way not to call any of the detectives, so no one's been asked to explain why the police pursued this theory or why they did the twenty twenty one search, the enormous search a few years ago. What Craddock the lawyer did say is that the detective leading that inquiry the one who's not been called to
give evidence, Detective Chief Inspector David Laidlaw. He says he's given a number of statements the most recent one is heavily redacted, meaning he's not going to be called to give evidence, and his statement has been censored, so we
can't know what he says. Craddock, the lawyer explained that saying so simple reason for that is what we wanted was a straightforward recitation of the investigative steps taken since twenty twenty, and the statement we've been given deals with evidence in the form of one person's opinions about what the evidence shows. So what he's saying is the coroner asked the lead detective to give us the facts of what the police have done, and what the lead detective
has given them is opinions about the evidence. He says, it's fine for the lawyers to make submissions so long as they take into account all of the evidence, not of opinions, but a proper fact finding processes. So again, it's loyally, it's scholarly, it's kind of going around the houses. But it is a criticism.
That a sounds like a loyally disc.
It is a loyally it's a loyally dis and detective Chief Inspector laid Law sitting in the inquest listening to this but not responding saying nothing publicly. We heard one witness, a hydrologist who was involved in planning the police search, and you get a sense of the scale of the search. Vegetation was stripped, then they sent in a cadaver dog. Then they dug out the soil with rakes or hose
or use an excavator and they drained the creek. Or divers are sent in to do a hand search, and they dug out tons of soil and searched each bucket full by hand. And this is all around that crossroads that you and me went to where the police are working on the theory that Williams fostermotherd disposed of his body. And by establishing the search is so thorough, it underscores the fact no evidence was found, potentially because there was no evidence there to find.
When I saw that John Ollie, the hydrologist, had worked on the Daniel Markham case in twenty eleven, I thought that was quite interesting because it's quite a similar sort of search that he did nine years since Daniel went missing. And I was reading more about how they did that search there to excavate five hundred cubic meters of sand and remove a huge layer of sediment up to a meter deep to find Daniel's body. And you've got to think that is a case where they actually knew where
the body was. So I can't imagine how much harder it will be for the place in this case when they're kind of just working on a hypothesis and they don't know really how big the area they have to look at is.
It was vast. We saw a video of the search in operation and it is, honestly, it's a lunar landscape. They've stripped all the vegetation back and then dug the earth down to five ten fifteen centimeters. Some place has gone deeper, and then they've just dragged that earth out and searched through it or sieved through it. But what we've not heard, because no one's been asked, is why did the police launch that search? What evidence did they have to support the theory they were pursuing? And I
guess we don't have to have those answers yet. It's only day one of the inquest.
Do we have an indication of who else is being called this week? Are we going to stay on the twenty twenty one search.
Yeah, most of the evidence this week is on the twenty twenty one search. We're going to hear from some of the constables who are involved, another expert talking about remains, how they can be preserved or they can be lost. And one witness who was a truck driver who was driving a long Bitar Creek Road. And we know because it's been in the media, so it's been leaked to the media that that truck driver saw William's foster mother at that time. We don't know what he says she was doing.
In the foster Mother's walk through describing that drive, she talks about passing a truck as she drove down to Patar Creek Road.
Yeah, he thought I pulled over because he acknowledged me by saying thanks for pulling over. But I pulled over because I've just got my head out the window looking for William.
Do we know if it's that truck driver or is it We don't know.
We have to assume it's that truck driver. So at the moment, we've got no evidence, no explanation of why police launched this search, and yet it's only day one. But there is something that struck me right at the end, and this might give you an indication of how these things play out not just in court, but in the media and in the politics of this. Right at the end, after you know, we've heard all day that the police have found nothing, this professor John Ollie is on the stand.
He's a hydrologist. The police barrister stands up and says, after you've finished your work on this, did you consider that there might be any other explanation for what happened
to William? And he says yes. He wrote to another scientist who was an expert on invasive species of pigs or fox to ask him if it was possible one of those animals had done something to William, And of course the counselor assistant the coroner, and the coroner shut that down and they say, look, we've already established basically when not going to hear that evidence, and that also you're asking a hydrologist about an ecologist's explanation of what happened.
But by then it's too late. That theory is out there. And when I left the media room where the journalists have all been working today, everyone is talking about this idea that William Tierrell may have been taken by a fox or a pig. And I bet that the headlines tomorrow or even later today. The headlines say William Tierrell could have been taken by a fox and there's no evidence for that, but the theory is now out there
in the wild. So that's day one. Okay. So I told you the media would report on the possibility of wild animals, didn't I?
He did?
I did, and they did so the Guardian and the Daily Mail, particularly the Guardian headline is William Tyrell inquest Police suspect foster mother Berry Toddler after accidental death. And then the stand first wild dogs may have taken any
remains of the three year old. Now it does say no bones or clothing belonging to William were located, but it doesn't mention that the senior lawyer at the inquest has specifically said it's beyond argument no forensic evidence was found, which I think is a difference in terms of how strongly he's put there. And then the Daily Mail headline is expert combed through a rubbish dump in the hunt for William Tibble's body as detectives reveal shocking theory they
believe solves the mystery. I mean that's strong language. And the article beneath it it says this expert didn't find William's remains, but admitted animals could have removed them like they do with kangaroo carcasses. And again it does say police did not believe any trace of William was left there. But that's actually quite different to what the lawyer said, which is it's beyond argument no forensic evidence was found.
So I asked to speak to both of those reporters and asked to interview them both about why they wrote it the way they did, just out of interest because I would have done it differently, And neither of them took me up on the offer of an interview. But I did speak to the Daily Mail reporter and we had actually a really nice players and interesting conversation, and she was talking about different things. So she's not actually the one who kind of does the final bulk together
of her article. It gets updated over the day, so she doesn't have final control of things, particularly like headlines. She's also said she wasn't convinced that what I thought was important about the lawyer saying it's beyond argument there's no forensic evidence. She didn't think that was as important as I did, As she said in terms of their audience. This question about could animals have moved William's remains was more interesting because this idea about wild animals has not
been heard before, so it's new, so it's news. I said to her, Look, I would have written that article pretty much the opposite way around, so the top line is no forensic evidence, no eyewitnesses, and I might not even have put in the reference to the wild animals.
And also, you know, the coroner challenged it when it was mentioned in court and said, look, you're not the right person to even give this as evidence because you're an expert in hydrology, to which the response was that that's because I've spent a lot of time criticizing the police theory and that the podcast we're making right now is all about criticizing the police, which is fair that there has. It's been a fair bit of criticism of
the police in this podcast. But today in court, the police barrister's back on his feet, so the lawyer representing the police asking questions again about the effects of wild animals on human remains. So it is something the police are interested in.
It's interesting, isn't it. It just shows you how the media shapes the story.
Absolutely, And we're.
Relying on the media. You know, there's no cameras in court, there's no recording, there's a transcript the public have access to. We're relying on the media to give us those reports.
Yes, so it's the media who allow the Oh I know, this isn't rocket science. Everyone knows this, But it's the media who shaped the how the public understand the story. So right across the country, this is how people understand not just what happened, but who these people are. And you suddenly realize just how powerful it's shifting emphasis can be, and how potentially damaging a shift of emphasis can be.
I did catch a new story this morning that kind of highlights that the court opened today with the coroner telling people off for abusing the foster mother outside the court yesterday.
That's a really good point because it's the first thing we hear is that there was a woman outside the court yesterday as people were coming out. As William's foster mother walks out, this woman outside the court starts yelling abuse at her style oh wi, but also starts yelling her name in public, which is obviously protected by these non publication orders which haven't been put in place to
protect William's foster mother. They've been put in place to protect other children who are associated with or have some connection to her. So she started using her name. She abuses her. The TV cameras are rolling because they're all there to get that footage of William's foster mother leaving court. But then the coroner says this morning, how she's disappointed and this must not occur. But it struck me this is one of the problems with courts is they haven't
kept up with the technology. You've got all this technology in now with social media where people are spreading facts and lies as well outside of the court, including all this stuff that people think or suspect or speculating about the people involved in this case. It's all getting spread, but it's trickling into the real world. It's having real world effects on the real people involved. But what we did see today was ours more evidence about the search.
You know the search. It was big, it was thorough, and there's no evidence has been found to support the police theories. But the problem is that a lack of evidence doesn't prove that William's body wasn't there, which is
where these wild animals come in. If the wild animals could have taken William's body, then it might still be that the police theory is possible that this kind of hypothetical situation where William falls off the balcony, his foster mother discovers him, doesn't call for help, and decides to dispose of his body, is still possible because possibly a wild animal took his corpse, and that's why there's no
forensic evidence despite years and years of searching. The coroner did talk about that evidence today and she said that the actual expert who gave that evidence, she looked at the way he'd conducted his experiments and said that his report could not help the inquest because there were problems
with the experiments. The police had asked him to assume William's body was placed in one particular place, and she says, you know, I pause to say, there's actually no evidence that anyone was seen placing a body here or anywhere else. And anyway, she said, the place, which I think is that crossroads had changed over the time. So his reports and his suggestion that a wild animal was involved was
actually flawed. So she decided not to include his report in evidence and was not going to call him as a witness. But now that whole idea has got out.
Was that area searched previously in previous search?
Yeah, well that's one of the things that did come out today was we heard evidence from some of the dog handlers and at least one of them, they put their maps up on the screen in the court of where they were searching. He couldn't see one that clearly, but the other quite clearly showed that they did go down to that particular crossroads the day after William went missing and obviously didn't hear anything and obviously didn't find anything.
Although one of the things that's really frustrated me with this inquest is we're hearing a lot of detail from these different people. So a guy who mapped the searches, two different dog handlers, other people, and we know a lot about them, but nobody is asking them what did you find? No one in court has actually asked anyone what was found in that search. All we know is from what one of the lawyers has said, which is
that no forensic evidence was found. But it's not that hasn't really been emphasized.
Yeah, because I know that, I mean a time of the twenty twenty one search. There was so much media there, and there was lots of moments where they were holding up bits of material very dramatically and bagging.
Oh it was breaking news. It was breaking news. Yeah, we've found a bit of red cloth, or we found a thread.
But none of that. They haven't said what that was.
I haven't mentioned it at all. Inside the court. There's still quite a lot of secrecy. There's a lot of non publication orders. There were a lot of suppression orders we're dealing with. Just before coming here, we've had to email the court to say this thing you were talking about this afternoon, we think it's covered by a suppression order, but you've been talking about it. So is it suppressed?
Isn't it suppressed? Can we talk about it? That's how difficult it is to cover this inquest at times, because so much of it is under wraps. That said, I think we can talk about it. Do you want to hear about it?
Yeah?
Okay, now, okay, this was interesting. This was the last witness today. A police analyst comes in and starts talking about the number of what the police called persons of interest and long in the short of it is there's a lot of them, a lot of potential persons of interest. I can't tell you how many, because that's where I think this suppression order kicks in. So there's bits I can't tell you, but what I think we can say,
and if I'm wrong, then we'll obviously not publish. This part of the podcast is that by the August of this year, there's still a lot of those persons of interest, and the persons of interest we heard in the court are people who might be suspects in this investigation, except in August of this year, the lead detective, David Laidlaw, asks this analyst to change the name from persons of interest to persons named to police, and she said it was changed to persons named because they were named on
investigations reports, but they weren't actually investigated, and that struck me as being interesting.
That is interesting.
And then we started to hear in the cross examination of her that the detectives on the strike force told the analyst to take some of those names off her list. And again I can't tell you how many because of this court order, but she believes that was because those people had been eliminated by the inquiry, but she doesn't
know why or on what grounds. They eliminated, and then apparently they worked out some of the names had doubled up, so they took more names off the list, and there was some uncertainty about those numbers, but it still left
a lot of names. So then she was saying, she went through and she starts looking at these names and cross referencing them against things like RMS data, so driver's license records, and under cross examination they basically established that you can't eliminate someone who doesn't have a driver's license because they could still be driving a car just illegally. But those names had been eliminated on that basis, So more of the names were taken off the list, so the list keeps getting smaller.
Sorry that sorry, you're saying as of August, yes, there were moving people based on whether they had.
A license or yeah, RMS data, yeah, and whether or not they'd passed one of three point to point cameras on the Pacific Highway. Despite the fact that the analyst was saying, whether there were are the roads in and out of Kendle. So she's asked by one of the barristers, what I'm suggesting to you is that the examination of the RMS records couldn't exclude anyone from being a person of interest? Would you agree? And she says, I agree with that. And yet it was used to take people
off this list, and the list got smaller. And we don't know how small that list got. It started off with lots of people, and we don't know how small it got, except the police Commissioner Mick Fuller back in I think twenty twenty one, suggested that list got very small. Indeed, how many suspects have you narrowed the investigation down to?
You know? My understanding is from the investigators is that there is certainly one person in particular that we are looking closely at.
Do we know if any previously publicly identified persons of interest were removed in this process?
We don't, And I think even if we did know that, I couldn't tell you because of this suppression order. I think. But the one thing we have heard more than anything else, and we've heard it more than once at this inquest, is that however many people or person is left on this list of potential persons of interest or people named to police. The one thing we've heard is that the police have no forensic and no eyewitness evidence to say that that person did anything to do with William. Wow.
So that's where we are at the end of day two. Okay, day three, and I can now tell you the thing that I didn't think I could tell you last night. So I got an email at about twenty to ten last night from the Coroner's Court saying that the information on the persons of interest list we were talking about yesterday is not suppressed after all. And what this does is it shows you the challenges of the secrecy surround
in this case. Because I was going off a suppression order put in place in twenty nineteen by the coroner on quote information from the persons of interest list, and given we spent in court a good chunk of yesterday talking about information from the persons of interest list, I thought that might be covered by that suppression order, but
it's not. Either way, I can now tell you what I thought I couldn't tell you, which is that in August of this year, there were one thousand, seven hundred and nine people on the police persons of interest list for the investigation into William Till's disappearance. One thy seven hundred and nine. Those are people that the police had
a reason to potentially suspect or want to investigate. But that's before the cops changed the name of that list from persons of interest to persons named to police and then started cutting that list. So we heard in the inquest that the detectives told the police analyst to take three one hundred and forty five people off the list earlier this year. She didn't know why, and we won't know why because the detectives have not been called to answer questions at the inquest.
It's completely maddening. I think at this point I would pay money to just have any lead investigator on this case from any point just stand up and outline how they have investigated the case, how they've ruled people in, how they've ruled people out.
And the other thing the police are not going to explain is why they launched the investigation they're currently doing into William's foster mother. So we don't know why they decided to do that. Yeah, the other thing we don't know because the court is closed and I'm currently speaking to you because the court being closed means we've been
shut out of the room. Well, actually I can't tell you why that's happened, because there's a non publication order on the existence of the thing the court is now hearing evidence about. So all I can say is we're not in there. We're not able to know what it is. And I can't tell you what it is that we're not able to know about. And at this point there was quite a bit of laughter in the media room among the journalists. But I can tell you what the big news from today was.
Yes, is it the truck driver.
It is the truck driver.
Everyone's excited about the truck driver. What did he or is she say?
Okay? So the truck driver is a he okay. The truck driver drove down Bitar Creek Road at around the time William's foster mother has said she came out of Benirun Drive which turns onto Bitar Creek Road and drove down there looking for William. And the police have been quite clear, in fact said in court on oath that they believe she disposed of William's body on that road. So we've been expecting big things from the truck driver.
I went back and I looked at some of the articles, or actually you found them for me, and then I read them. November twenty twenty one, The Daily Mail says a New South Wales police source said officers believe an object may have been thrown from the vehicle. That's Williams foster mum's car as it was driven along Bitar Creek Road. So there's this suggestion which is left hanging, that something is thrown out of her car and that that's what the police are looking for and talking to the journos.
The police were briefing journos at the time that this was seen by another driver on that road. And then November twenty twenty one, the Daily Telegraph talks about an elderly man who told investigators he saw something dumped from a vehicle on the morning when William went missing, and the reporter says they showed this man a photo of the car William's foster mother was driving and the man said, I'm pretty sure that's the car I saw. Now, interest, we've not heard anything about that man.
Well, yeah, because I think the public assumed that the person who saw somebody throwing something from the car was the truck driver.
Yes, and I did, and all the other journalists did. So we were expecting this truck driver to be the key witness because we know Williams foster mum says when she was driving down that road, she saw a truck driver coming the other way. And we know because it's been in the papers that police are saying a witness
saw something being thrown from the car she's driving. So maybe we've put two and two together and come up with five, but we're all expecting the witness, the truck driver, to say he saw William's foster mother throw something and he was there at the time, because when he gives evidence in court today, he says he was driving along that road at about just after ten past ten on that morning and was driving back around ten to eleven, and that just before William's foster mother caused the police.
So just after she's driven down the road, on her evidence says she's looking for William, and on the police or their version of events, said she's disposing of William's body. Now here's what that truck driver said. He saw he saw two cars coming the other way, a black BMW or maybe burgundy and a gray duel cab ute and he didn't think either of those were coming out of benuuin drive. And neither of those are the car that William's foster mother drove and the driver didn't see anyone else.
Sorry, this isn't the truck driver that the foster mother saw while driving.
Well, actually, that's a good point. It is a truck driver who was driving down that road at that time. She does say she saw a truck driver.
She did. He thought I pulled over because he acknowledged me by saying thanks for pulling over. But I pulled over because I've just got my head out the window looking for William.
He in his evidence, doesn't describe the car that she was in, and also doesn't describe seeing her or anyone else throwing anything out of a car or disposing of William's body at the crossroads where police have suggested she did. So that's it.
Okay, So we've got a truck driver who saw some cars, not that car.
We've got a truck driver who was definitely there because the CCTV and his evidence and the evidence i'm assuming of the person he was picking his load up from, So he was there. The significance is what he's not said.
He's not said that he saw anything a bit like the police search of that area, which went on for four weeks, found nothing, and we know they have no eyewitness evidence of William being taken, and we know no one saw William's body being disposed of anywhere, and we now know that this witness drove along that road and didn't see anything either. This truck driver said in his evidence at the inquest today that he actually called crime stoppers shortly after William went missing to tell them where
he was and what he'd seen. And he also called the radio station two GB and spoke to Ray Hadley. This is what he said at the time, Peter Good, I good.
How are you ready?
Well Pete, thank you mate. I just don't going to hear this kid being either abjactor or disappeared. I wasn't condewn that time of the morning. I actually stayed overnight in Clive Barker the coffee or Bobby called Air BP. Yes, I had the big A machine up out of a Kendal Silverdale on Friday and by the time I got up and got down to Chew area would have been about nine o'clock. So I was in the area for
nine o'clock onward. And as I came off the Streic Highway and I had to go over the top of the highway into Q and as I came into the queue shopping here, there was a black Camray sitting on the left down side, now that it was a no parking area.
The truck driver also said he saw the car acting suspiciously. There was a black Camray driven by a blond woman, But while he said it was acting suspiciously, he didn't really seem to have a lot of grounds for that suspicion. He said the car was in q which is a town a short drive from where William went missing, and then he later saw it in Kendall, which is the town just near where William went missing.
I sort of went around this person and I started heading into Kendall about interesting miss letter. That particular car came into Kendell and parked up because I was almost like a car park is a nursery there or something. When you come over the bridge and then you go over the railway line and there's a few little shops there, and I was parked up on the left hand side in the opening there where other cars were sort of parked for a ninely degree, and.
It kind of got in his way. It was parked where he'd wanted to park, and that added up in his mind to being suspicious.
It was puck along Simon, but there was nothing room for them to get out. So that particular car came and parked, and there was a lady, a well built lady, black shorts, blacktop, blonde walked into that shop. Now, I was still there for a while, but then I had to move on and I came back out a kendall around eleven thirty twelve o'clock right, So this.
Play, but the key thing was that black can we with That blonde driver wasn't seen near benuuin drive, which is where William disappeared.
Okay, Peter, just stay there, stay there down hanging up at a noisy line. We'll get your details on past them. Two the investigators were poor filing.
What's odd is why are we hearing from this truck driver now. He said in his evidence today that he called crime Stoppers in the days after William went missing, and when he was interviewed on two GB Ray Hadley said he was going to pass his details to the police, and we know from his evidence today that he did give a statement to police before twenty twenty one, when he gave another statement to the current strike Force who are investigating William's foster mother, So why are we only
hearing from him today, particularly when it doesn't seem that he saw anything that really proves anything at all. The foster mother has lived for four years under public suspicion, ever since that front page story in a newspaper where police said they had a new suspect and are now confident they will solve the missay of William's disappearance.
Yeah, and something that comes up every time people talk about, you know, whether the foster mother is suspicious or not, people bring up the objects thrown from the car.
Yeah, but there's no actual evidence that we've heard at the inquest that there was any object thrown at the car, and the only truck driver they've been able to find didn't see anything. So for those four years when the police have been working on this theory, prosecuting it in public, in court and through the media, and also by trying to send a brief of evidence to the Director of Public Prosecutions, that's four years when we seem to know
now that they actually haven't got any direct evidence. And honestly, there were people here at the court today who are in tears about this. The whole inquest is talking around the police investigation and looking at the facts of what they found, but not talking about the investigation itself. And the problem with this is police have no evidence, isn't going to make the front pages, whereas police suspect William's
foster mother made pretty much every front page. There are journalists here who are not finding stories today for that reason. There's some that have already gone home, but there's others who are angry. I've just spoken to one who's He turned around to me and said, you know, for years now, we have dutifully reported what the police told us in good faith and started talking about the damage done to
the people involved. And I think that's fair, and I think we have to look at ourselves for reporting these things. But also we're not the ones who've been saying this in the first instance. And it goes back to that thing that if we now have four years on no evidence, then what evidence might have been found if the police were looking elsewhere. So day four and the last day of the inquest, at least for now, I'll be honest,
it's been a painful week. So sitting in the courtroom, I'm only really on the edge of the hurting but even so, I feel like every night I go to sleep and I wake up without getting any rest. How are you doing?
It's been frustrating to watch it from the outside. I kind of meagine how frustrating it's been sitting in there.
Look not frustrating to be there, because we've learned so much in the past week. Honestly, today he was probably the most grueling of the days to witness. So today we watched a video recording of an interview, no not even an interview, of the examination of William's foster mother before the New South Wales Crime Commission. So she was examined for two days and it's the first time anyone
publicly has seen her questioned. She's now the woman at the center of the police investigation, and she's been questioned before by police more than once, and she's done a very few interviews, either released by the police or with the media. But this is the first time she's been sent in public under sustained examination by law enforcement. And they played it with both Williams's biological parents and his foster parents sitting in the room watching this.
Was in front of the Crime Commission. Yeah, can you tell me what that is?
Was.
You've had to explain it to me before, and I'm sure a lot of the members of the public don't really know what that is.
The Crime Commission is fascinating. It is a body specifically set up to fight organized crime and it doesn't often or ever maybe get involved in this kind of case. It's there for gangsters, drug gangs, and it has incredible powers. Firstly, it's a secret body, so no one watches its examinations. If you're called to give evidence to the Crime Commission, you're not allowed to tell people that you've been there. When you walk into that room to give evidence, you
have no right to silence. You are not allowed to not answer the questions. Your answers can't be used in criminal proceedings, but they can be past to the police for their investigations. And lying to the Crime Commission is punishable with a prison sentence. So it goes way beyond the powers of any normal court or any normal police investigation.
And we saw Williams fostermother sitting there on her own in the dock, facing this exactation, and she was told that the police had reviewed the investigation into William's disappearance, that that involved them going right back to the very beginning and looking again at every person and possibility to try to find out what had happened to William. And
we heard that that was what delayed the inquest. So there's been this four year delay in the inquest and in her examination at the Crime Commission, they said that's what the inquest is waiting on. And she looked very lonely in that. You could call it the witness box, you could call it the doc She looked very lonely, and she was told the police have reached a point of excluding a number of other people and possibilities and
there is a focus on you. I can't imagine what it would be like to sit in that box on your own, unable to tell anyone that you were even in there, and face that kind of examination.
Yeah, it must be such a surreal feeling as well, because most people, like I said, they wouldn't have heard of the Crime Commission. So suddenly you're sort of just brought into this weird, shadowy place.
Yeah. Yeah, yeah, it's the stuff of dystopian fiction. The Crime Commission, probably there's a law against me saying that we'll find out. Okay, So if there isn't an episode six. That's because there is a law against saying that.
So it was a four hour video you guys have played, right.
Yeah, we watched excerpts of her evidence. So she was questioned over two days and we watched chunks of that and in keeping with the rest of this week at the inquest, there was nothing in that examination that was evidence against her, nothing that you could say, well, because of that, we can say she did anything to William. There were uncertainties, you know, she was asked about when she made tea and when she took it out of
the house where William was reported missing. She was asked exactly when she made the tea, how long was she playing with the kids, and William's foster mother was saying, she can't remember. There's timings and she can't remember other details, other timings, you know, and her answers she was saying, I don't know. I can't say definitively, I just don't know.
She was saying she wasn't thinking clearly at the time, and she'd raise her hands to either side of her head and to kind of give that sense of just so much going through her mind at the time. You know, she was talking about panic and hope, and all I could think was I don't know where he is. And she was close to tears at times. And yeah, there are inconsistencies in what she said. You know, she has been questioned a couple of days after William was reported missing,
interrogated again by police in twenty sixteen. This is the third time she's had a kind of a major police interview, and they challenged her. They said, nine other witnesses say that you told them you were inside making the tea when William went missing. But she was now saying she might have been outside drinking the tea when she noticed William went missing. And she accepted, you know, possibly she did say that, and possibly she was inside when William disappeared.
But I'll be honest, that was the level of the inconsistency. So there they are there. But also think back to what you were doing. This would have been eight years ago. She was questioned. Particularly a moment of stress, a moment of fear, a moment of whatever happened, of high emotion. It would your recall be exactly right?
No, And there's been plenty of research on the way that trauma affects your memory and your brain as well, so that has to be taken into consideration.
Yeah, but they kept, they kept looking for these inconsistencies, and that's fine, that's their job.
You know.
They asked her about that drive when she said she was looking for William down Benner and Drive and out to Bitar Creep, the drive that you and I did, down to that crossroads where the police have said they believe she disposed of William's body. And they asked, you know, when did you make that drive? Where did you stop? Where did you turn around the car? Why was there twenty minutes between that drive and you calling Triple zero? And she says, I don't know. She doesn't claim to
be able to answer. She says, look, I think I was so focused on I don't know what I was thinking. All I was thinking was I've got to find him. I can't give you an answer for that. I don't know. And look to me, she seemed honest. She seemed fallible. You know, she didn't have an explanation for everything. She didn't have a reason for anything. And over the two days you could see her getting exhausted by those constant questions. What did she know when? What did she think?
When?
How did she know that? When did she know that? And her voice got faint and at times she was fighting back tears.
Just on the timing of the triple zero call gered. Praddick made a point at the first part of the inquest that the average time it takes for a parent called triple zero is two hours.
I didn't know that, yeah.
So he made a point at the first inquest of saying, she actually called triple zero faster than average?
Is that right? That's interesting? But you know, again, the Crime Commission is doing its job's prizing for those weaknesses in her evidence, and it's trying to kind of get in and exploit them and see what if it can widen those cracks. And the examination eventually got aggressive, genuinely aggressive. So Williams foster mother is being examined by this barrister,
Sophie Callan, who is very good. I've seen her in court, and she starts asking her, you know, do you accept that when you took that drive to the riding school you could have dumped William's body there. And at that point Williams foster mother does break down in tears and there's a very emotional reaction. You think I did that. No, absolutely not, And the barrister hammers it did you do that?
Did you take his body to the riding school? And responses no, No, And there are tears in the video, and there are tears here in the courtroom as well, because William's foster mother is physically in the courtroom watching herself answer these questions, and she's crying and her husband has got his arm around her, but the questions continue. Did you find his body under the ferns and the
verandah that day? Again? No, she's absolutely insistent. Did you find his body, realize he died and there was no point calling emergency services?
No?
Did you decide to take charge of that situation that was beyond remedy and hide his body?
No?
Did you decide to take charge of the situation and hide his body rather than let your mother feel a sense of responsibility.
No?
And then the barrister, Sophie Callon, spells out the police theory. I want to suggest to you that what happened that day was William went around the verandah and toppled over and it was nobody's fault but an accident. No, And I'm finding him and William's mother interrupts, but I didn't find him. The barrister says, I want to suggest you put his body in the car and that's why you took the drive that day, and the foster mother just responds, no,
I didn't. So she's insistent. She looked drawn and she looked white.
By the end of it, was your sense that her answers were truthful.
Yeah, I'll be honest with you. And look, I've seen a lot of people give evidence in court and sometimes you can tell they're lying, and sometimes, well, I guess you never know what you don't know. But in this case, there's nothing to make you think she wasn't telling the truth or she wasn't saying something that was wrong, arguably
unlike the bit we heard next. So the next thing we heard was this tape of two of the detectives who went to the foster mother's house to serve the summons on her, which is the bit of paper saying you have to go to the crime commission. And one of them was this detective, Sergeant Andrew Lonegan, who told her we're not saying you hurt him, so we're not
saying you hurt William. And the other detective a detective Sergeant Scott Jamerson, who told her, we're saying we know how it happened, and we know why it happened, and we know where he is. Now today at the end of this week's hearings, we know they didn't know that. They didn't know how it happened, or why it happened, or where he is, because we heard today that at that time when they're saying those things, the huge forensic
search of Benneruin Drive had not been done. Neither had the forensic search of the car that hadn't been undertaken, and the forensic search of that crossroads where they're suggesting she left William's body that had not been done, so they couldn't have had any evidence from those and we now know those searches didn't produce any forensic evidence. And this goes back to what you said about how surreal
the crime Commission is. Is Williams foster mother had a phone call with one of her friends which was covertly recorded, and they played that in court today and she said at one point, I feel like I'm living in somebody else's body. I feel like I'm living in a dream. Because she now knows the police are targeting her, and that friend says, do you feel like they're any closer? And Williams foster mother says no, And that's what makes
me angry. She says, you know, you've got zero, You've wasted millions and millions of dollars and you've got nothing. And that devastates me, she says. And she imagines this time in the future where you know, years from now, maybe William's body will be found and people will say, oh, that was the little boy that went missing. What was his name again? And she says that hurts me, that he'll be forgotten. And in this phone call with her friend,
she says, I won't let people forget him. And of course she doesn't know that anyone's listening to that phone call at the time. So that was the end of the evidence today, except right at the end, the police barrister stood up and said, we are going to come back. There'll be another week of hearings in December. He said he wants to call that expert on feral animals that we heard about way back at the beginning of the week.
We're still on the animals.
We're still on the animals, and the theoretical possibility that William's body could have been removed by an animal and that might explain why there's no actual evidence at the scene. And the coroner says she's already refused to call that expert and has said that she's looked at the way his experiments were done and she doesn't think they're credible. But the police said they're going to press it. They really want to call that witness to arguably say that.
And the police also said they want to call William's foster mother to face questions in person. The coroner said she's already ruled that that's not going to happen, but the police barrister said he's going to ask again. So I don't know if it will happen, but we are coming back in December, and that was it. That was the end of the week.
So back in November twenty twenty one, when they announced the search, Detective Chief Superintendent Darren Bennett he addressed the media, YEP, and he did a press conference where he announced that they were about to do this search. And I'm just reading off so this is a story from The Australian.
The Australian says that he was pribed about new information the force reportedly received in September of twenty twenty one, which pointed to a previous suspect being questioned again, and he replied, this is in relation to information we have received, no doubt about that. There is an investigative review that has been undertaken as an ongoing process, but there is also new evidence. I will not go into specifics. Have you heard anything this week that suggests new evidence?
No? No, In fact the opposite, which is what leads you to question, what was the purpose of this week? If we've spent four entire days in court to show that the police have no evidence, it makes you wonder if, in fact that was the purpose of this hearing, And what's missing is then why did the police pursue this? How did they make the decision to launch this investigation of William's foster mother. All we've heard is the fact
that they've not found anything. And I guess that's okay if you trust the police and you trust that they always make good decisions. But in this case, they haven't always made good decisions, or we wouldn't be here. Ten years on from when William went missing with no evidence and two families who are hurting, and we don't know what they would have found if the police had spent
the past four years looking at and one else. So for the inquest to just gather the facts of what's been found and not been found and not ask how that happened, what the police are thinking, I think that's important, and that job asking if the police did the right thing that's been left to others, which is where we come in. You know, what did the police do right and wrong? Right from the beginning, and that is what we're going to do in the next episode. This is
Witness William Tyrrell. A lot of different people have been involved in making this series. Among them, the executive producer is Nina Young. The sound design was by Tiffany Dimack. The producers have been Emily Pigeon, Nicholas Adams, Jazz, phoebe Zakowski Wallace and Tabby Wilson. Research by Adan Patrick, original music by Rory O'Connor. Our lawyer is Stephen Coombs. The editor at news dot com dot Au is Kerry Warren. I'm Dan Box