Speaker 1: I'm standing in front of the New South Wales Coroner's
Speaker 1: Court in Lidcomb in Western Sydney, where in just a
Speaker 1: few minutes now the inquest into William's disappearance is about
Speaker 1: to start. It's a gray day. You can hear the
Speaker 1: traffic roaring past. But for those involved today, all that
Speaker 1: movement is going to stop. I can only imagine their
Speaker 1: whole world is going to stop, and all that will
Speaker 1: matter is what happens in that courtroom inside the building
Speaker 1: in front of me. Now, it's four years now since
Speaker 1: the last public hearing in this inquest, and in that
Speaker 1: time the police focus has shifted completely onto William's foster mother.
Speaker 1: They've launched an enormous search, literally dug up tons of
Speaker 1: soil from around ben Rooin Drive while William went missing,
Speaker 1: and her name has been in the newspapers. She has
Speaker 1: been described in court as having had something to do
Speaker 1: with William's disappearance.
Speaker 2: Today, I'm in the media that we're going to be
Speaker 2: doing some operational activity in the Kendle area over the
Speaker 2: coming weeks. This activity is in response to evidence we've
Speaker 2: obtained in the course of the investigation. It's not speculative
Speaker 2: in any way. We're acting on behalf of the coroner.
Speaker 2: At any conjunction with coronnial orders, she will be kept up.
Speaker 1: David, and we do today expect to hear what evidence
Speaker 1: the police have or haven't got to justify that level
Speaker 1: of suspicion. Strangely though, we won't be hearing from the
Speaker 1: lead detective David Laidl, or the man who's running the
Speaker 1: strikeforce into William's disappearance, because and this is this is
Speaker 1: actually extraordinary, the coroner has refused to call him. The
Speaker 1: Police Commissioner specifically asked that David Laidlor will be called.
Speaker 1: The coroner has refused to do that, but she hasn't
Speaker 1: released her reasons why David Laidlaw's decision to target William's
Speaker 1: foster mother has been very public. The Police Commissioner, Mick
Speaker 1: Fuller said this about the strikeforce.
Speaker 3: I brought a new team on board under Detective Chief Inspector.
Speaker 3: They've laid Law through probably the state's most experienced homicide investigator,
Speaker 3: and he pulled together probably one of the best teams
Speaker 3: we've seen and spend an active investigation. And you know,
Speaker 3: they had been working through a number of different pieces
Speaker 3: of information and they inherited what was a bit of
Speaker 3: a mess and have really cleaned up that investigation and
Speaker 3: they've got a clear strategy, and.
Speaker 1: The detectives in that strike force have said in court
Speaker 1: they believe she knows what happened to William. So the
Speaker 1: question that's in my mind right now is I'm about
Speaker 1: to walk into this inquest, is how can the police
Speaker 1: say all that with that kind of confidence? And yet
Speaker 1: today in this hearing we're not going to hear from
Speaker 1: the lead detective himself. Are we going to get the
Speaker 1: answers that really, after all these years everyone is hoping
Speaker 1: to receive. I don't know. The only way we're going
Speaker 1: to know is by going inside.
Speaker 4: Okay, Daniel, Okay.
Speaker 1: So one of the things about courts is you're not
Speaker 1: allowed to record inside them. So the only way we
Speaker 1: can actually tell anyone what happened in the inquest today
Speaker 1: is just like this, we come out and then you
Speaker 1: and I have this conversation, Nina, because you weren't in court,
Speaker 1: so you don't know what happened. The big thing is
Speaker 1: what we haven't got. So there hasn't been a moment
Speaker 1: where anyone has said this is the evidence. The police
Speaker 1: have got to justify what they've been looking at and
Speaker 1: the theory they've been following for the past four or
Speaker 1: five years now. In fact, it's quite the opposite. The
Speaker 1: senior lawyer working with the coroner said, it's beyond any
Speaker 1: argument now that we'll material has not been found, and
Speaker 1: it's beyond argument that no forensic evidence has been located
Speaker 1: anywhere that provides a clue to his disappearance, So no
Speaker 1: forensic evidence. And also it's beyond argument that there is
Speaker 1: no eyewitness who's provided an account of how William left
Speaker 1: the area where he was last seen, meaning the police
Speaker 1: have no direct evidence of what happened to him. Okay,
Speaker 1: it means the police can only have a circumstantial case,
Speaker 1: which that can still work. You can still prove someone
Speaker 1: has done something with a circumstantial case, but it's harder
Speaker 1: and to do it you also have to prove that
Speaker 1: the other people who might have been involved definitely didn't
Speaker 1: do it. And what's been interesting is that the lead
Speaker 1: lawyer working with the inquest has cited a couple of
Speaker 1: the other moments in the long history of this investigation
Speaker 1: where the police have directly accused other people of being
Speaker 1: involved in William's disappearance, and the lawyer said that media
Speaker 1: reports show the police now believe the foster mothers involved,
Speaker 1: and he says it cannot be overstated that the coroner
Speaker 1: has to act on the basis of reliable evidence. He said,
Speaker 1: guesses are not rational. Suspicions form no rational basis for
Speaker 1: making findings of fact. So you're kind of reading between
Speaker 1: the lines because the way he talks, this guy, Gerard Craddock,
Speaker 1: is very loyally. It's kind of scholarly. He kind of
Speaker 1: goes around the houses, but listening to what he's saying,
Speaker 1: he's saying, there's no evidence and you shouldn't be guessing.
Speaker 1: You shouldn't be using your suspicions to make findings, which
Speaker 1: is what the inquest now has to do.
Speaker 4: So you reported earlier this morning that David Laidlaw was
Speaker 4: not going to be called as a witness. No, did
Speaker 4: they give any indication as to why.
Speaker 1: No, nothing, it's been I said that Craddock's kind of
Speaker 1: loyally and scholarly. He spent a lot of this morning
Speaker 1: talking about all the evidence that has been heard in
Speaker 1: the inquest before now years ago and emphasizing who was
Speaker 1: where and when and detail timings of that morning, and
Speaker 1: how we can be certain of what we know on
Speaker 1: the morning when William went missing, So the time the
Speaker 1: last photo of William was taken, the time a text
Speaker 1: message was sent by William's foster father, at the time
Speaker 1: of the Triple zero Corps, the time of the first
Speaker 1: police officer arriving, how different people's Facebook posts can show
Speaker 1: that certain things were happening at certain times and certain
Speaker 1: people were where they said they were, and talking about
Speaker 1: the search that was done that morning. And the more
Speaker 1: he went over this, the more I'm starting to think,
Speaker 1: why are we going over this? And then I started
Speaker 1: to think, because he's building a case about what we
Speaker 1: can know and what we know we can't no if
Speaker 1: that makes sense. So he talks about the initial search
Speaker 1: for William in the first few days, and he says
Speaker 1: that was thorough. He's got no question about whether or
Speaker 1: not that did its very best to find where William was.
Speaker 1: And he talks about the second search in twenty eighteen,
Speaker 1: which he says was intense, and then he talks about
Speaker 1: this third search he mentioned in twenty twenty one, which
Speaker 1: the police launched, and he describes that as another level
Speaker 1: of intensity. The police went in with excavators and rakes,
Speaker 1: and they stripped out of vegetation, they used divers. And
Speaker 1: the conclusion that the lawyer Gerard Craddock says is no
Speaker 1: evidence was found that relates to William Tyrrell's disappearance. He
Speaker 1: says the court may consider and perhaps conclude. And that's
Speaker 1: the loyally talking that William under his own stem cannot
Speaker 1: have traveled beyond the area searched. And the point he's
Speaker 1: making is therefore someone else must have been involved. One
Speaker 1: thing that among all that kind of long and detailed
Speaker 1: raking over of the evidence we've heard is he talked
Speaker 1: about how the neighbors heard a car that morning. They
Speaker 1: heard a car on the gravel at the top end
Speaker 1: of Benuin Drive, which is just outside the house where
Speaker 1: William was staying. And he says, you can't prove that
Speaker 1: there was a car, but there's definitely evidence of a
Speaker 1: car being there, and no one knows. No one's been
Speaker 1: able to prove who drove that car.
Speaker 4: Yeah, Peter and Sharrell crab So I went back and
Speaker 4: looked into that. And so they got home about nine
Speaker 4: point thirty in the morning that day, and they both
Speaker 4: testified in twenty nineteen that they heard a car doing
Speaker 4: a U turn in the street. They both thought it
Speaker 4: sounded like the postman at the time. Yeah, and Charrell
Speaker 4: testified that the car was moving quite fast. But I
Speaker 4: did wonder, because there's been a lot of people testifying
Speaker 4: about cars. I did wonder the significance of the crabs
Speaker 4: in particular. Did he mention why he brought them up.
Speaker 1: He's confident about the cabs evidence because he says one
Speaker 1: of the detectives is sitting with Sharrell Krab asking her
Speaker 1: about this, when Sharrell Crab says, oh, can you hear
Speaker 1: that car driving up the road, and then a few
Speaker 1: seconds later the detective hears it. So he says, despite
Speaker 1: the fact that Charrell's quite elderly at that point, she's
Speaker 1: obviously very capable. She is able to hear a car.
Speaker 1: So he's got quite a lot of confidence in that.
Speaker 1: So I think all he's doing is establishing there's no
Speaker 1: evidence of what happened to William, but there's a possibility
Speaker 1: that this car was involved in whatever did happen. He
Speaker 1: hasn't gone any further than that.
Speaker 4: It sounds like he was just making a big focus
Speaker 4: on hard facts that he thinks can be proved versus
Speaker 4: theories that can't be.
Speaker 1: Is that the theme, yes, And he talked about how
Speaker 1: the inquest came to an end in twenty twenty and
Speaker 1: he said the reason it restarted this week this morning,
Speaker 1: he said, is because the police decided to follow up
Speaker 1: a theory. And that's the theory we looked at episode
Speaker 1: four that the police believe William may have fallen off
Speaker 1: the balcony, that his foster mother decided not to seek
Speaker 1: help but to dispose of his remains, and she drove
Speaker 1: down the road to the corner of Batar Creek Road
Speaker 1: and Cobb and Co Road and disposed of his body there.
Speaker 1: But what's really strange is the inquest seems to have
Speaker 1: gone out of its way not to call any of
Speaker 1: the detectives, so no one's been asked to explain why
Speaker 1: the police pursued this theory or why they did the
Speaker 1: twenty twenty one search, the enormous search a few years ago.
Speaker 1: What Craddock the lawyer did say is that the detective
Speaker 1: leading that inquiry the one who's not been called to
Speaker 1: give evidence, Detective Chief Inspector David Laidlaw. He says he's
Speaker 1: given a number of statements the most recent one is
Speaker 1: heavily redacted, meaning he's not going to be called to
Speaker 1: give evidence, and his statement has been censored, so we
Speaker 1: can't know what he says. Craddock, the lawyer explained that
Speaker 1: saying so simple reason for that is what we wanted
Speaker 1: was a straightforward recitation of the investigative steps taken since
Speaker 1: twenty twenty, and the statement we've been given deals with
Speaker 1: evidence in the form of one person's opinions about what
Speaker 1: the evidence shows. So what he's saying is the coroner
Speaker 1: asked the lead detective to give us the facts of
Speaker 1: what the police have done, and what the lead detective
Speaker 1: has given them is opinions about the evidence. He says,
Speaker 1: it's fine for the lawyers to make submissions so long
Speaker 1: as they take into account all of the evidence, not
Speaker 1: of opinions, but a proper fact finding processes. So again,
Speaker 1: it's loyally, it's scholarly, it's kind of going around the houses.
Speaker 1: But it is a criticism.
Speaker 4: That a sounds like a loyally disc.
Speaker 1: It is a loyally it's a loyally dis and detective
Speaker 1: Chief Inspector laid Law sitting in the inquest listening to
Speaker 1: this but not responding saying nothing publicly. We heard one witness,
Speaker 1: a hydrologist who was involved in planning the police search,
Speaker 1: and you get a sense of the scale of the search.
Speaker 1: Vegetation was stripped, then they sent in a cadaver dog.
Speaker 1: Then they dug out the soil with rakes or hose
Speaker 1: or use an excavator and they drained the creek. Or
Speaker 1: divers are sent in to do a hand search, and
Speaker 1: they dug out tons of soil and searched each bucket
Speaker 1: full by hand. And this is all around that crossroads
Speaker 1: that you and me went to where the police are
Speaker 1: working on the theory that Williams fostermotherd disposed of his body.
Speaker 1: And by establishing the search is so thorough, it underscores
Speaker 1: the fact no evidence was found, potentially because there was
Speaker 1: no evidence there to find.
Speaker 4: When I saw that John Ollie, the hydrologist, had worked
Speaker 4: on the Daniel Markham case in twenty eleven, I thought
Speaker 4: that was quite interesting because it's quite a similar sort
Speaker 4: of search that he did nine years since Daniel went missing.
Speaker 4: And I was reading more about how they did that
Speaker 4: search there to excavate five hundred cubic meters of sand
Speaker 4: and remove a huge layer of sediment up to a
Speaker 4: meter deep to find Daniel's body. And you've got to
Speaker 4: think that is a case where they actually knew where
Speaker 4: the body was. So I can't imagine how much harder
Speaker 4: it will be for the place in this case when
Speaker 4: they're kind of just working on a hypothesis and they
Speaker 4: don't know really how big the area they have to
Speaker 4: look at is.
Speaker 1: It was vast. We saw a video of the search
Speaker 1: in operation and it is, honestly, it's a lunar landscape.
Speaker 1: They've stripped all the vegetation back and then dug the
Speaker 1: earth down to five ten fifteen centimeters. Some place has
Speaker 1: gone deeper, and then they've just dragged that earth out
Speaker 1: and searched through it or sieved through it. But what
Speaker 1: we've not heard, because no one's been asked, is why
Speaker 1: did the police launch that search? What evidence did they
Speaker 1: have to support the theory they were pursuing? And I
Speaker 1: guess we don't have to have those answers yet. It's
Speaker 1: only day one of the inquest.
Speaker 4: Do we have an indication of who else is being
Speaker 4: called this week? Are we going to stay on the
Speaker 4: twenty twenty one search.
Speaker 1: Yeah, most of the evidence this week is on the
Speaker 1: twenty twenty one search. We're going to hear from some
Speaker 1: of the constables who are involved, another expert talking about remains,
Speaker 1: how they can be preserved or they can be lost.
Speaker 1: And one witness who was a truck driver who was
Speaker 1: driving a long Bitar Creek Road. And we know because
Speaker 1: it's been in the media, so it's been leaked to
Speaker 1: the media that that truck driver saw William's foster mother
Speaker 1: at that time. We don't know what he says she
Speaker 1: was doing.
Speaker 4: In the foster Mother's walk through describing that drive, she
Speaker 4: talks about passing a truck as she drove down to
Speaker 4: Patar Creek Road.
Speaker 5: Yeah, he thought I pulled over because he acknowledged me
Speaker 5: by saying thanks for pulling over. But I pulled over
Speaker 5: because I've just got my head out the window looking
Speaker 5: for William.
Speaker 4: Do we know if it's that truck driver or is
Speaker 4: it We don't know.
Speaker 1: We have to assume it's that truck driver. So at
Speaker 1: the moment, we've got no evidence, no explanation of why
Speaker 1: police launched this search, and yet it's only day one.
Speaker 1: But there is something that struck me right at the end,
Speaker 1: and this might give you an indication of how these
Speaker 1: things play out not just in court, but in the
Speaker 1: media and in the politics of this. Right at the end,
Speaker 1: after you know, we've heard all day that the police
Speaker 1: have found nothing, this professor John Ollie is on the stand.
Speaker 1: He's a hydrologist. The police barrister stands up and says,
Speaker 1: after you've finished your work on this, did you consider
Speaker 1: that there might be any other explanation for what happened
Speaker 1: to William? And he says yes. He wrote to another
Speaker 1: scientist who was an expert on invasive species of pigs
Speaker 1: or fox to ask him if it was possible one
Speaker 1: of those animals had done something to William, And of
Speaker 1: course the counselor assistant the coroner, and the coroner shut
Speaker 1: that down and they say, look, we've already established basically
Speaker 1: when not going to hear that evidence, and that also
Speaker 1: you're asking a hydrologist about an ecologist's explanation of what happened.
Speaker 1: But by then it's too late. That theory is out there.
Speaker 1: And when I left the media room where the journalists
Speaker 1: have all been working today, everyone is talking about this
Speaker 1: idea that William Tierrell may have been taken by a
Speaker 1: fox or a pig. And I bet that the headlines
Speaker 1: tomorrow or even later today. The headlines say William Tierrell
Speaker 1: could have been taken by a fox and there's no
Speaker 1: evidence for that, but the theory is now out there
Speaker 1: in the wild. So that's day one. Okay. So I
Speaker 1: told you the media would report on the possibility of
Speaker 1: wild animals, didn't I?
Speaker 4: He did?
Speaker 1: I did, and they did so the Guardian and the
Speaker 1: Daily Mail, particularly the Guardian headline is William Tyrell inquest
Speaker 1: Police suspect foster mother Berry Toddler after accidental death. And
Speaker 1: then the stand first wild dogs may have taken any
Speaker 1: remains of the three year old. Now it does say
Speaker 1: no bones or clothing belonging to William were located, but
Speaker 1: it doesn't mention that the senior lawyer at the inquest
Speaker 1: has specifically said it's beyond argument no forensic evidence was found,
Speaker 1: which I think is a difference in terms of how
Speaker 1: strongly he's put there. And then the Daily Mail headline
Speaker 1: is expert combed through a rubbish dump in the hunt
Speaker 1: for William Tibble's body as detectives reveal shocking theory they
Speaker 1: believe solves the mystery. I mean that's strong language. And
Speaker 1: the article beneath it it says this expert didn't find
Speaker 1: William's remains, but admitted animals could have removed them like
Speaker 1: they do with kangaroo carcasses. And again it does say
Speaker 1: police did not believe any trace of William was left there.
Speaker 1: But that's actually quite different to what the lawyer said,
Speaker 1: which is it's beyond argument no forensic evidence was found.
Speaker 1: So I asked to speak to both of those reporters
Speaker 1: and asked to interview them both about why they wrote
Speaker 1: it the way they did, just out of interest because
Speaker 1: I would have done it differently, And neither of them
Speaker 1: took me up on the offer of an interview. But
Speaker 1: I did speak to the Daily Mail reporter and we
Speaker 1: had actually a really nice players and interesting conversation, and
Speaker 1: she was talking about different things. So she's not actually
Speaker 1: the one who kind of does the final bulk together
Speaker 1: of her article. It gets updated over the day, so
Speaker 1: she doesn't have final control of things, particularly like headlines.
Speaker 1: She's also said she wasn't convinced that what I thought
Speaker 1: was important about the lawyer saying it's beyond argument there's
Speaker 1: no forensic evidence. She didn't think that was as important
Speaker 1: as I did, As she said in terms of their audience.
Speaker 1: This question about could animals have moved William's remains was
Speaker 1: more interesting because this idea about wild animals has not
Speaker 1: been heard before, so it's new, so it's news. I
Speaker 1: said to her, Look, I would have written that article
Speaker 1: pretty much the opposite way around, so the top line
Speaker 1: is no forensic evidence, no eyewitnesses, and I might not
Speaker 1: even have put in the reference to the wild animals.
Speaker 1: And also, you know, the coroner challenged it when it
Speaker 1: was mentioned in court and said, look, you're not the
Speaker 1: right person to even give this as evidence because you're
Speaker 1: an expert in hydrology, to which the response was that
Speaker 1: that's because I've spent a lot of time criticizing the
Speaker 1: police theory and that the podcast we're making right now
Speaker 1: is all about criticizing the police, which is fair that
Speaker 1: there has. It's been a fair bit of criticism of
Speaker 1: the police in this podcast. But today in court, the
Speaker 1: police barrister's back on his feet, so the lawyer representing
Speaker 1: the police asking questions again about the effects of wild
Speaker 1: animals on human remains. So it is something the police
Speaker 1: are interested in.
Speaker 4: It's interesting, isn't it. It just shows you how the
Speaker 4: media shapes the story.
Speaker 1: Absolutely, And we're.
Speaker 4: Relying on the media. You know, there's no cameras in court,
Speaker 4: there's no recording, there's a transcript the public have access to.
Speaker 4: We're relying on the media to give us those reports.
Speaker 1: Yes, so it's the media who allow the Oh I know,
Speaker 1: this isn't rocket science. Everyone knows this, But it's the
Speaker 1: media who shaped the how the public understand the story.
Speaker 1: So right across the country, this is how people understand
Speaker 1: not just what happened, but who these people are. And
Speaker 1: you suddenly realize just how powerful it's shifting emphasis can be,
Speaker 1: and how potentially damaging a shift of emphasis can be.
Speaker 4: I did catch a new story this morning that kind
Speaker 4: of highlights that the court opened today with the coroner
Speaker 4: telling people off for abusing the foster mother outside the
Speaker 4: court yesterday.
Speaker 1: That's a really good point because it's the first thing
Speaker 1: we hear is that there was a woman outside the
Speaker 1: court yesterday as people were coming out. As William's foster
Speaker 1: mother walks out, this woman outside the court starts yelling
Speaker 1: abuse at her style oh wi, but also starts yelling
Speaker 1: her name in public, which is obviously protected by these
Speaker 1: non publication orders which haven't been put in place to
Speaker 1: protect William's foster mother. They've been put in place to
Speaker 1: protect other children who are associated with or have some
Speaker 1: connection to her. So she started using her name. She
Speaker 1: abuses her. The TV cameras are rolling because they're all
Speaker 1: there to get that footage of William's foster mother leaving court.
Speaker 1: But then the coroner says this morning, how she's disappointed
Speaker 1: and this must not occur. But it struck me this
Speaker 1: is one of the problems with courts is they haven't
Speaker 1: kept up with the technology. You've got all this technology
Speaker 1: in now with social media where people are spreading facts
Speaker 1: and lies as well outside of the court, including all
Speaker 1: this stuff that people think or suspect or speculating about
Speaker 1: the people involved in this case. It's all getting spread,
Speaker 1: but it's trickling into the real world. It's having real
Speaker 1: world effects on the real people involved. But what we
Speaker 1: did see today was ours more evidence about the search.
Speaker 1: You know the search. It was big, it was thorough,
Speaker 1: and there's no evidence has been found to support the
Speaker 1: police theories. But the problem is that a lack of
Speaker 1: evidence doesn't prove that William's body wasn't there, which is
Speaker 1: where these wild animals come in. If the wild animals
Speaker 1: could have taken William's body, then it might still be
Speaker 1: that the police theory is possible that this kind of
Speaker 1: hypothetical situation where William falls off the balcony, his foster
Speaker 1: mother discovers him, doesn't call for help, and decides to
Speaker 1: dispose of his body, is still possible because possibly a
Speaker 1: wild animal took his corpse, and that's why there's no
Speaker 1: forensic evidence despite years and years of searching. The coroner
Speaker 1: did talk about that evidence today and she said that
Speaker 1: the actual expert who gave that evidence, she looked at
Speaker 1: the way he'd conducted his experiments and said that his
Speaker 1: report could not help the inquest because there were problems
Speaker 1: with the experiments. The police had asked him to assume
Speaker 1: William's body was placed in one particular place, and she says,
Speaker 1: you know, I pause to say, there's actually no evidence
Speaker 1: that anyone was seen placing a body here or anywhere else.
Speaker 1: And anyway, she said, the place, which I think is
Speaker 1: that crossroads had changed over the time. So his reports
Speaker 1: and his suggestion that a wild animal was involved was
Speaker 1: actually flawed. So she decided not to include his report
Speaker 1: in evidence and was not going to call him as
Speaker 1: a witness. But now that whole idea has got out.
Speaker 4: Was that area searched previously in previous search?
Speaker 1: Yeah, well that's one of the things that did come
Speaker 1: out today was we heard evidence from some of the
Speaker 1: dog handlers and at least one of them, they put
Speaker 1: their maps up on the screen in the court of
Speaker 1: where they were searching. He couldn't see one that clearly,
Speaker 1: but the other quite clearly showed that they did go
Speaker 1: down to that particular crossroads the day after William went
Speaker 1: missing and obviously didn't hear anything and obviously didn't find anything.
Speaker 1: Although one of the things that's really frustrated me with
Speaker 1: this inquest is we're hearing a lot of detail from
Speaker 1: these different people. So a guy who mapped the searches,
Speaker 1: two different dog handlers, other people, and we know a
Speaker 1: lot about them, but nobody is asking them what did
Speaker 1: you find? No one in court has actually asked anyone
Speaker 1: what was found in that search. All we know is
Speaker 1: from what one of the lawyers has said, which is
Speaker 1: that no forensic evidence was found. But it's not that
Speaker 1: hasn't really been emphasized.
Speaker 4: Yeah, because I know that, I mean a time of
Speaker 4: the twenty twenty one search. There was so much media there,
Speaker 4: and there was lots of moments where they were holding
Speaker 4: up bits of material very dramatically and bagging.
Speaker 1: Oh it was breaking news. It was breaking news. Yeah,
Speaker 1: we've found a bit of red cloth, or we found
Speaker 1: a thread.
Speaker 4: But none of that. They haven't said what that was.
Speaker 1: I haven't mentioned it at all. Inside the court. There's
Speaker 1: still quite a lot of secrecy. There's a lot of
Speaker 1: non publication orders. There were a lot of suppression orders
Speaker 1: we're dealing with. Just before coming here, we've had to
Speaker 1: email the court to say this thing you were talking
Speaker 1: about this afternoon, we think it's covered by a suppression order,
Speaker 1: but you've been talking about it. So is it suppressed?
Speaker 1: Isn't it suppressed? Can we talk about it? That's how
Speaker 1: difficult it is to cover this inquest at times, because
Speaker 1: so much of it is under wraps. That said, I
Speaker 1: think we can talk about it. Do you want to
Speaker 1: hear about it?
Speaker 3: Yeah?
Speaker 1: Okay, now, okay, this was interesting. This was the last
Speaker 1: witness today. A police analyst comes in and starts talking
Speaker 1: about the number of what the police called persons of
Speaker 1: interest and long in the short of it is there's
Speaker 1: a lot of them, a lot of potential persons of interest.
Speaker 1: I can't tell you how many, because that's where I
Speaker 1: think this suppression order kicks in. So there's bits I
Speaker 1: can't tell you, but what I think we can say,
Speaker 1: and if I'm wrong, then we'll obviously not publish. This
Speaker 1: part of the podcast is that by the August of
Speaker 1: this year, there's still a lot of those persons of interest,
Speaker 1: and the persons of interest we heard in the court
Speaker 1: are people who might be suspects in this investigation, except
Speaker 1: in August of this year, the lead detective, David Laidlaw,
Speaker 1: asks this analyst to change the name from persons of
Speaker 1: interest to persons named to police, and she said it
Speaker 1: was changed to persons named because they were named on
Speaker 1: investigations reports, but they weren't actually investigated, and that struck
Speaker 1: me as being interesting.
Speaker 4: That is interesting.
Speaker 1: And then we started to hear in the cross examination
Speaker 1: of her that the detectives on the strike force told
Speaker 1: the analyst to take some of those names off her list.
Speaker 1: And again I can't tell you how many because of
Speaker 1: this court order, but she believes that was because those
Speaker 1: people had been eliminated by the inquiry, but she doesn't
Speaker 1: know why or on what grounds. They eliminated, and then
Speaker 1: apparently they worked out some of the names had doubled up,
Speaker 1: so they took more names off the list, and there
Speaker 1: was some uncertainty about those numbers, but it still left
Speaker 1: a lot of names. So then she was saying, she
Speaker 1: went through and she starts looking at these names and
Speaker 1: cross referencing them against things like RMS data, so driver's
Speaker 1: license records, and under cross examination they basically established that
Speaker 1: you can't eliminate someone who doesn't have a driver's license
Speaker 1: because they could still be driving a car just illegally.
Speaker 1: But those names had been eliminated on that basis, So
Speaker 1: more of the names were taken off the list, so
Speaker 1: the list keeps getting smaller.
Speaker 4: Sorry that sorry, you're saying as of August, yes, there
Speaker 4: were moving people based on whether they had.
Speaker 1: A license or yeah, RMS data, yeah, and whether or
Speaker 1: not they'd passed one of three point to point cameras
Speaker 1: on the Pacific Highway. Despite the fact that the analyst
Speaker 1: was saying, whether there were are the roads in and
Speaker 1: out of Kendle. So she's asked by one of the barristers,
Speaker 1: what I'm suggesting to you is that the examination of
Speaker 1: the RMS records couldn't exclude anyone from being a person
Speaker 1: of interest? Would you agree? And she says, I agree
Speaker 1: with that. And yet it was used to take people
Speaker 1: off this list, and the list got smaller. And we
Speaker 1: don't know how small that list got. It started off
Speaker 1: with lots of people, and we don't know how small
Speaker 1: it got, except the police Commissioner Mick Fuller back in
Speaker 1: I think twenty twenty one, suggested that list got very small. Indeed,
Speaker 1: how many suspects have you narrowed the investigation down to?
Speaker 3: You know? My understanding is from the investigators is that
Speaker 3: there is certainly one person in particular that we are
Speaker 3: looking closely at.
Speaker 4: Do we know if any previously publicly identified persons of
Speaker 4: interest were removed in this process?
Speaker 1: We don't, And I think even if we did know that,
Speaker 1: I couldn't tell you because of this suppression order. I think.
Speaker 1: But the one thing we have heard more than anything else,
Speaker 1: and we've heard it more than once at this inquest,
Speaker 1: is that however many people or person is left on
Speaker 1: this list of potential persons of interest or people named
Speaker 1: to police. The one thing we've heard is that the
Speaker 1: police have no forensic and no eyewitness evidence to say
Speaker 1: that that person did anything to do with William. Wow.
Speaker 1: So that's where we are at the end of day two. Okay,
Speaker 1: day three, and I can now tell you the thing
Speaker 1: that I didn't think I could tell you last night.
Speaker 1: So I got an email at about twenty to ten
Speaker 1: last night from the Coroner's Court saying that the information
Speaker 1: on the persons of interest list we were talking about
Speaker 1: yesterday is not suppressed after all. And what this does
Speaker 1: is it shows you the challenges of the secrecy surround
Speaker 1: in this case. Because I was going off a suppression
Speaker 1: order put in place in twenty nineteen by the coroner
Speaker 1: on quote information from the persons of interest list, and
Speaker 1: given we spent in court a good chunk of yesterday
Speaker 1: talking about information from the persons of interest list, I
Speaker 1: thought that might be covered by that suppression order, but
Speaker 1: it's not. Either way, I can now tell you what
Speaker 1: I thought I couldn't tell you, which is that in
Speaker 1: August of this year, there were one thousand, seven hundred
Speaker 1: and nine people on the police persons of interest list
Speaker 1: for the investigation into William Till's disappearance. One thy seven
Speaker 1: hundred and nine. Those are people that the police had
Speaker 1: a reason to potentially suspect or want to investigate. But
Speaker 1: that's before the cops changed the name of that list
Speaker 1: from persons of interest to persons named to police and
Speaker 1: then started cutting that list. So we heard in the
Speaker 1: inquest that the detectives told the police analyst to take
Speaker 1: three one hundred and forty five people off the list
Speaker 1: earlier this year. She didn't know why, and we won't
Speaker 1: know why because the detectives have not been called to
Speaker 1: answer questions at the inquest.
Speaker 4: It's completely maddening. I think at this point I would
Speaker 4: pay money to just have any lead investigator on this
Speaker 4: case from any point just stand up and outline how
Speaker 4: they have investigated the case, how they've ruled people in,
Speaker 4: how they've ruled people out.
Speaker 1: And the other thing the police are not going to
Speaker 1: explain is why they launched the investigation they're currently doing
Speaker 1: into William's foster mother. So we don't know why they
Speaker 1: decided to do that. Yeah, the other thing we don't
Speaker 1: know because the court is closed and I'm currently speaking
Speaker 1: to you because the court being closed means we've been
Speaker 1: shut out of the room. Well, actually I can't tell
Speaker 1: you why that's happened, because there's a non publication order
Speaker 1: on the existence of the thing the court is now
Speaker 1: hearing evidence about. So all I can say is we're
Speaker 1: not in there. We're not able to know what it is.
Speaker 1: And I can't tell you what it is that we're
Speaker 1: not able to know about. And at this point there
Speaker 1: was quite a bit of laughter in the media room
Speaker 1: among the journalists. But I can tell you what the
Speaker 1: big news from today was.
Speaker 4: Yes, is it the truck driver.
Speaker 1: It is the truck driver.
Speaker 4: Everyone's excited about the truck driver. What did he or
Speaker 4: is she say?
Speaker 1: Okay? So the truck driver is a he okay. The
Speaker 1: truck driver drove down Bitar Creek Road at around the
Speaker 1: time William's foster mother has said she came out of
Speaker 1: Benirun Drive which turns onto Bitar Creek Road and drove
Speaker 1: down there looking for William. And the police have been
Speaker 1: quite clear, in fact said in court on oath that
Speaker 1: they believe she disposed of William's body on that road.
Speaker 1: So we've been expecting big things from the truck driver.
Speaker 1: I went back and I looked at some of the articles,
Speaker 1: or actually you found them for me, and then I
Speaker 1: read them. November twenty twenty one, The Daily Mail says
Speaker 1: a New South Wales police source said officers believe an
Speaker 1: object may have been thrown from the vehicle. That's Williams
Speaker 1: foster mum's car as it was driven along Bitar Creek Road.
Speaker 1: So there's this suggestion which is left hanging, that something
Speaker 1: is thrown out of her car and that that's what
Speaker 1: the police are looking for and talking to the journos.
Speaker 1: The police were briefing journos at the time that this
Speaker 1: was seen by another driver on that road. And then
Speaker 1: November twenty twenty one, the Daily Telegraph talks about an
Speaker 1: elderly man who told investigators he saw something dumped from
Speaker 1: a vehicle on the morning when William went missing, and
Speaker 1: the reporter says they showed this man a photo of
Speaker 1: the car William's foster mother was driving and the man said,
Speaker 1: I'm pretty sure that's the car I saw. Now, interest,
Speaker 1: we've not heard anything about that man.
Speaker 4: Well, yeah, because I think the public assumed that the
Speaker 4: person who saw somebody throwing something from the car was
Speaker 4: the truck driver.
Speaker 1: Yes, and I did, and all the other journalists did.
Speaker 1: So we were expecting this truck driver to be the
Speaker 1: key witness because we know Williams foster mum says when
Speaker 1: she was driving down that road, she saw a truck
Speaker 1: driver coming the other way. And we know because it's
Speaker 1: been in the papers that police are saying a witness
Speaker 1: saw something being thrown from the car she's driving. So
Speaker 1: maybe we've put two and two together and come up
Speaker 1: with five, but we're all expecting the witness, the truck driver,
Speaker 1: to say he saw William's foster mother throw something and
Speaker 1: he was there at the time, because when he gives
Speaker 1: evidence in court today, he says he was driving along
Speaker 1: that road at about just after ten past ten on
Speaker 1: that morning and was driving back around ten to eleven,
Speaker 1: and that just before William's foster mother caused the police.
Speaker 1: So just after she's driven down the road, on her
Speaker 1: evidence says she's looking for William, and on the police
Speaker 1: or their version of events, said she's disposing of William's body.
Speaker 1: Now here's what that truck driver said. He saw he
Speaker 1: saw two cars coming the other way, a black BMW
Speaker 1: or maybe burgundy and a gray duel cab ute and
Speaker 1: he didn't think either of those were coming out of
Speaker 1: benuuin drive. And neither of those are the car that
Speaker 1: William's foster mother drove and the driver didn't see anyone else.
Speaker 4: Sorry, this isn't the truck driver that the foster mother
Speaker 4: saw while driving.
Speaker 1: Well, actually, that's a good point. It is a truck
Speaker 1: driver who was driving down that road at that time.
Speaker 1: She does say she saw a truck driver.
Speaker 5: She did. He thought I pulled over because he acknowledged
Speaker 5: me by saying thanks for pulling over. But I pulled
Speaker 5: over because I've just got my head out the window
Speaker 5: looking for William.
Speaker 1: He in his evidence, doesn't describe the car that she
Speaker 1: was in, and also doesn't describe seeing her or anyone
Speaker 1: else throwing anything out of a car or disposing of
Speaker 1: William's body at the crossroads where police have suggested she did.
Speaker 1: So that's it.
Speaker 4: Okay, So we've got a truck driver who saw some cars,
Speaker 4: not that car.
Speaker 1: We've got a truck driver who was definitely there because
Speaker 1: the CCTV and his evidence and the evidence i'm assuming
Speaker 1: of the person he was picking his load up from,
Speaker 1: So he was there. The significance is what he's not said.
Speaker 1: He's not said that he saw anything a bit like
Speaker 1: the police search of that area, which went on for
Speaker 1: four weeks, found nothing, and we know they have no
Speaker 1: eyewitness evidence of William being taken, and we know no
Speaker 1: one saw William's body being disposed of anywhere, and we
Speaker 1: now know that this witness drove along that road and
Speaker 1: didn't see anything either. This truck driver said in his
Speaker 1: evidence at the inquest today that he actually called crime
Speaker 1: stoppers shortly after William went missing to tell them where
Speaker 1: he was and what he'd seen. And he also called
Speaker 1: the radio station two GB and spoke to Ray Hadley.
Speaker 1: This is what he said at the time, Peter Good,
Speaker 1: I good.
Speaker 3: How are you ready?
Speaker 6: Well Pete, thank you mate. I just don't going to
Speaker 6: hear this kid being either abjactor or disappeared. I wasn't
Speaker 6: condewn that time of the morning. I actually stayed overnight
Speaker 6: in Clive Barker the coffee or Bobby called Air BP. Yes,
Speaker 6: I had the big A machine up out of a
Speaker 6: Kendal Silverdale on Friday and by the time I got
Speaker 6: up and got down to Chew area would have been
Speaker 6: about nine o'clock. So I was in the area for
Speaker 6: nine o'clock onward. And as I came off the Streic
Speaker 6: Highway and I had to go over the top of
Speaker 6: the highway into Q and as I came into the
Speaker 6: queue shopping here, there was a black Camray sitting on
Speaker 6: the left down side, now that it was a no
Speaker 6: parking area.
Speaker 1: The truck driver also said he saw the car acting suspiciously.
Speaker 1: There was a black Camray driven by a blond woman,
Speaker 1: But while he said it was acting suspiciously, he didn't
Speaker 1: really seem to have a lot of grounds for that suspicion.
Speaker 1: He said the car was in q which is a
Speaker 1: town a short drive from where William went missing, and
Speaker 1: then he later saw it in Kendall, which is the
Speaker 1: town just near where William went missing.
Speaker 6: I sort of went around this person and I started
Speaker 6: heading into Kendall about interesting miss letter. That particular car
Speaker 6: came into Kendell and parked up because I was almost
Speaker 6: like a car park is a nursery there or something.
Speaker 6: When you come over the bridge and then you go
Speaker 6: over the railway line and there's a few little shops there,
Speaker 6: and I was parked up on the left hand side
Speaker 6: in the opening there where other cars were sort of
Speaker 6: parked for a ninely degree, and.
Speaker 1: It kind of got in his way. It was parked
Speaker 1: where he'd wanted to park, and that added up in
Speaker 1: his mind to being suspicious.
Speaker 6: It was puck along Simon, but there was nothing room
Speaker 6: for them to get out. So that particular car came
Speaker 6: and parked, and there was a lady, a well built lady,
Speaker 6: black shorts, blacktop, blonde walked into that shop. Now, I
Speaker 6: was still there for a while, but then I had
Speaker 6: to move on and I came back out a kendall
Speaker 6: around eleven thirty twelve o'clock right, So this.
Speaker 1: Play, but the key thing was that black can we
Speaker 1: with That blonde driver wasn't seen near benuuin drive, which
Speaker 1: is where William disappeared.
Speaker 6: Okay, Peter, just stay there, stay there down hanging up
Speaker 6: at a noisy line. We'll get your details on past them.
Speaker 6: Two the investigators were poor filing.
Speaker 1: What's odd is why are we hearing from this truck
Speaker 1: driver now. He said in his evidence today that he
Speaker 1: called crime Stoppers in the days after William went missing,
Speaker 1: and when he was interviewed on two GB Ray Hadley
Speaker 1: said he was going to pass his details to the police,
Speaker 1: and we know from his evidence today that he did
Speaker 1: give a statement to police before twenty twenty one, when
Speaker 1: he gave another statement to the current strike Force who
Speaker 1: are investigating William's foster mother, So why are we only
Speaker 1: hearing from him today, particularly when it doesn't seem that
Speaker 1: he saw anything that really proves anything at all. The
Speaker 1: foster mother has lived for four years under public suspicion,
Speaker 1: ever since that front page story in a newspaper where
Speaker 1: police said they had a new suspect and are now
Speaker 1: confident they will solve the missay of William's disappearance.
Speaker 4: Yeah, and something that comes up every time people talk about,
Speaker 4: you know, whether the foster mother is suspicious or not,
Speaker 4: people bring up the objects thrown from the car.
Speaker 1: Yeah, but there's no actual evidence that we've heard at
Speaker 1: the inquest that there was any object thrown at the car,
Speaker 1: and the only truck driver they've been able to find
Speaker 1: didn't see anything. So for those four years when the
Speaker 1: police have been working on this theory, prosecuting it in public,
Speaker 1: in court and through the media, and also by trying
Speaker 1: to send a brief of evidence to the Director of
Speaker 1: Public Prosecutions, that's four years when we seem to know
Speaker 1: now that they actually haven't got any direct evidence. And honestly,
Speaker 1: there were people here at the court today who are
Speaker 1: in tears about this. The whole inquest is talking around
Speaker 1: the police investigation and looking at the facts of what
Speaker 1: they found, but not talking about the investigation itself. And
Speaker 1: the problem with this is police have no evidence, isn't
Speaker 1: going to make the front pages, whereas police suspect William's
Speaker 1: foster mother made pretty much every front page. There are
Speaker 1: journalists here who are not finding stories today for that reason.
Speaker 1: There's some that have already gone home, but there's others
Speaker 1: who are angry. I've just spoken to one who's He
Speaker 1: turned around to me and said, you know, for years now,
Speaker 1: we have dutifully reported what the police told us in
Speaker 1: good faith and started talking about the damage done to
Speaker 1: the people involved. And I think that's fair, and I
Speaker 1: think we have to look at ourselves for reporting these things.
Speaker 1: But also we're not the ones who've been saying this
Speaker 1: in the first instance. And it goes back to that
Speaker 1: thing that if we now have four years on no evidence,
Speaker 1: then what evidence might have been found if the police
Speaker 1: were looking elsewhere. So day four and the last day
Speaker 1: of the inquest, at least for now, I'll be honest,
Speaker 1: it's been a painful week. So sitting in the courtroom,
Speaker 1: I'm only really on the edge of the hurting but
Speaker 1: even so, I feel like every night I go to
Speaker 1: sleep and I wake up without getting any rest. How
Speaker 1: are you doing?
Speaker 4: It's been frustrating to watch it from the outside. I
Speaker 4: kind of meagine how frustrating it's been sitting in there.
Speaker 1: Look not frustrating to be there, because we've learned so
Speaker 1: much in the past week. Honestly, today he was probably
Speaker 1: the most grueling of the days to witness. So today
Speaker 1: we watched a video recording of an interview, no not
Speaker 1: even an interview, of the examination of William's foster mother
Speaker 1: before the New South Wales Crime Commission. So she was
Speaker 1: examined for two days and it's the first time anyone
Speaker 1: publicly has seen her questioned. She's now the woman at
Speaker 1: the center of the police investigation, and she's been questioned
Speaker 1: before by police more than once, and she's done a
Speaker 1: very few interviews, either released by the police or with
Speaker 1: the media. But this is the first time she's been
Speaker 1: sent in public under sustained examination by law enforcement. And
Speaker 1: they played it with both Williams's biological parents and his
Speaker 1: foster parents sitting in the room watching this.
Speaker 4: Was in front of the Crime Commission. Yeah, can you
Speaker 4: tell me what that is?
Speaker 3: Was.
Speaker 4: You've had to explain it to me before, and I'm
Speaker 4: sure a lot of the members of the public don't
Speaker 4: really know what that is.
Speaker 1: The Crime Commission is fascinating. It is a body specifically
Speaker 1: set up to fight organized crime and it doesn't often
Speaker 1: or ever maybe get involved in this kind of case.
Speaker 1: It's there for gangsters, drug gangs, and it has incredible powers. Firstly,
Speaker 1: it's a secret body, so no one watches its examinations.
Speaker 1: If you're called to give evidence to the Crime Commission,
Speaker 1: you're not allowed to tell people that you've been there.
Speaker 1: When you walk into that room to give evidence, you
Speaker 1: have no right to silence. You are not allowed to
Speaker 1: not answer the questions. Your answers can't be used in
Speaker 1: criminal proceedings, but they can be past to the police
Speaker 1: for their investigations. And lying to the Crime Commission is
Speaker 1: punishable with a prison sentence. So it goes way beyond
Speaker 1: the powers of any normal court or any normal police investigation.
Speaker 1: And we saw Williams fostermother sitting there on her own
Speaker 1: in the dock, facing this exactation, and she was told
Speaker 1: that the police had reviewed the investigation into William's disappearance,
Speaker 1: that that involved them going right back to the very
Speaker 1: beginning and looking again at every person and possibility to
Speaker 1: try to find out what had happened to William. And
Speaker 1: we heard that that was what delayed the inquest. So
Speaker 1: there's been this four year delay in the inquest and
Speaker 1: in her examination at the Crime Commission, they said that's
Speaker 1: what the inquest is waiting on. And she looked very
Speaker 1: lonely in that. You could call it the witness box,
Speaker 1: you could call it the doc She looked very lonely,
Speaker 1: and she was told the police have reached a point
Speaker 1: of excluding a number of other people and possibilities and
Speaker 1: there is a focus on you. I can't imagine what
Speaker 1: it would be like to sit in that box on
Speaker 1: your own, unable to tell anyone that you were even
Speaker 1: in there, and face that kind of examination.
Speaker 4: Yeah, it must be such a surreal feeling as well,
Speaker 4: because most people, like I said, they wouldn't have heard
Speaker 4: of the Crime Commission. So suddenly you're sort of just
Speaker 4: brought into this weird, shadowy place.
Speaker 1: Yeah. Yeah, yeah, it's the stuff of dystopian fiction. The
Speaker 1: Crime Commission, probably there's a law against me saying that
Speaker 1: we'll find out. Okay, So if there isn't an episode six.
Speaker 1: That's because there is a law against saying that.
Speaker 4: So it was a four hour video you guys have played, right.
Speaker 1: Yeah, we watched excerpts of her evidence. So she was
Speaker 1: questioned over two days and we watched chunks of that
Speaker 1: and in keeping with the rest of this week at
Speaker 1: the inquest, there was nothing in that examination that was
Speaker 1: evidence against her, nothing that you could say, well, because
Speaker 1: of that, we can say she did anything to William.
Speaker 1: There were uncertainties, you know, she was asked about when
Speaker 1: she made tea and when she took it out of
Speaker 1: the house where William was reported missing. She was asked
Speaker 1: exactly when she made the tea, how long was she
Speaker 1: playing with the kids, and William's foster mother was saying,
Speaker 1: she can't remember. There's timings and she can't remember other details,
Speaker 1: other timings, you know, and her answers she was saying,
Speaker 1: I don't know. I can't say definitively, I just don't know.
Speaker 1: She was saying she wasn't thinking clearly at the time,
Speaker 1: and she'd raise her hands to either side of her
Speaker 1: head and to kind of give that sense of just
Speaker 1: so much going through her mind at the time. You know,
Speaker 1: she was talking about panic and hope, and all I
Speaker 1: could think was I don't know where he is. And
Speaker 1: she was close to tears at times. And yeah, there
Speaker 1: are inconsistencies in what she said. You know, she has
Speaker 1: been questioned a couple of days after William was reported missing,
Speaker 1: interrogated again by police in twenty sixteen. This is the
Speaker 1: third time she's had a kind of a major police interview,
Speaker 1: and they challenged her. They said, nine other witnesses say
Speaker 1: that you told them you were inside making the tea
Speaker 1: when William went missing. But she was now saying she
Speaker 1: might have been outside drinking the tea when she noticed
Speaker 1: William went missing. And she accepted, you know, possibly she
Speaker 1: did say that, and possibly she was inside when William disappeared.
Speaker 1: But I'll be honest, that was the level of the inconsistency.
Speaker 1: So there they are there. But also think back to
Speaker 1: what you were doing. This would have been eight years ago.
Speaker 1: She was questioned. Particularly a moment of stress, a moment
Speaker 1: of fear, a moment of whatever happened, of high emotion.
Speaker 1: It would your recall be exactly right?
Speaker 4: No, And there's been plenty of research on the way
Speaker 4: that trauma affects your memory and your brain as well,
Speaker 4: so that has to be taken into consideration.
Speaker 1: Yeah, but they kept, they kept looking for these inconsistencies,
Speaker 1: and that's fine, that's their job.
Speaker 3: You know.
Speaker 1: They asked her about that drive when she said she
Speaker 1: was looking for William down Benner and Drive and out
Speaker 1: to Bitar Creep, the drive that you and I did,
Speaker 1: down to that crossroads where the police have said they
Speaker 1: believe she disposed of William's body. And they asked, you know,
Speaker 1: when did you make that drive? Where did you stop?
Speaker 1: Where did you turn around the car? Why was there
Speaker 1: twenty minutes between that drive and you calling Triple zero?
Speaker 1: And she says, I don't know. She doesn't claim to
Speaker 1: be able to answer. She says, look, I think I
Speaker 1: was so focused on I don't know what I was thinking.
Speaker 1: All I was thinking was I've got to find him.
Speaker 1: I can't give you an answer for that. I don't know.
Speaker 1: And look to me, she seemed honest. She seemed fallible.
Speaker 1: You know, she didn't have an explanation for everything. She
Speaker 1: didn't have a reason for anything. And over the two
Speaker 1: days you could see her getting exhausted by those constant questions.
Speaker 1: What did she know when? What did she think?
Speaker 5: When?
Speaker 1: How did she know that? When did she know that?
Speaker 1: And her voice got faint and at times she was
Speaker 1: fighting back tears.
Speaker 4: Just on the timing of the triple zero call gered.
Speaker 4: Praddick made a point at the first part of the
Speaker 4: inquest that the average time it takes for a parent
Speaker 4: called triple zero is two hours.
Speaker 1: I didn't know that, yeah.
Speaker 4: So he made a point at the first inquest of saying,
Speaker 4: she actually called triple zero faster than average?
Speaker 1: Is that right? That's interesting? But you know, again, the
Speaker 1: Crime Commission is doing its job's prizing for those weaknesses
Speaker 1: in her evidence, and it's trying to kind of get
Speaker 1: in and exploit them and see what if it can
Speaker 1: widen those cracks. And the examination eventually got aggressive, genuinely aggressive.
Speaker 1: So Williams foster mother is being examined by this barrister,
Speaker 1: Sophie Callan, who is very good. I've seen her in court,
Speaker 1: and she starts asking her, you know, do you accept
Speaker 1: that when you took that drive to the riding school
Speaker 1: you could have dumped William's body there. And at that
Speaker 1: point Williams foster mother does break down in tears and
Speaker 1: there's a very emotional reaction. You think I did that. No,
Speaker 1: absolutely not, And the barrister hammers it did you do that?
Speaker 1: Did you take his body to the riding school? And
Speaker 1: responses no, No, And there are tears in the video,
Speaker 1: and there are tears here in the courtroom as well,
Speaker 1: because William's foster mother is physically in the courtroom watching
Speaker 1: herself answer these questions, and she's crying and her husband
Speaker 1: has got his arm around her, but the questions continue.
Speaker 1: Did you find his body under the ferns and the
Speaker 1: verandah that day? Again? No, she's absolutely insistent. Did you
Speaker 1: find his body, realize he died and there was no
Speaker 1: point calling emergency services?
Speaker 3: No?
Speaker 1: Did you decide to take charge of that situation that
Speaker 1: was beyond remedy and hide his body?
Speaker 3: No?
Speaker 1: Did you decide to take charge of the situation and
Speaker 1: hide his body rather than let your mother feel a
Speaker 1: sense of responsibility.
Speaker 3: No?
Speaker 1: And then the barrister, Sophie Callon, spells out the police theory.
Speaker 1: I want to suggest to you that what happened that
Speaker 1: day was William went around the verandah and toppled over
Speaker 1: and it was nobody's fault but an accident. No, And
Speaker 1: I'm finding him and William's mother interrupts, but I didn't
Speaker 1: find him. The barrister says, I want to suggest you
Speaker 1: put his body in the car and that's why you
Speaker 1: took the drive that day, and the foster mother just responds, no,
Speaker 1: I didn't. So she's insistent. She looked drawn and she
Speaker 1: looked white.
Speaker 4: By the end of it, was your sense that her
Speaker 4: answers were truthful.
Speaker 1: Yeah, I'll be honest with you. And look, I've seen
Speaker 1: a lot of people give evidence in court and sometimes
Speaker 1: you can tell they're lying, and sometimes, well, I guess
Speaker 1: you never know what you don't know. But in this case,
Speaker 1: there's nothing to make you think she wasn't telling the
Speaker 1: truth or she wasn't saying something that was wrong, arguably
Speaker 1: unlike the bit we heard next. So the next thing
Speaker 1: we heard was this tape of two of the detectives
Speaker 1: who went to the foster mother's house to serve the
Speaker 1: summons on her, which is the bit of paper saying
Speaker 1: you have to go to the crime commission. And one
Speaker 1: of them was this detective, Sergeant Andrew Lonegan, who told
Speaker 1: her we're not saying you hurt him, so we're not
Speaker 1: saying you hurt William. And the other detective a detective
Speaker 1: Sergeant Scott Jamerson, who told her, we're saying we know
Speaker 1: how it happened, and we know why it happened, and
Speaker 1: we know where he is. Now today at the end
Speaker 1: of this week's hearings, we know they didn't know that.
Speaker 1: They didn't know how it happened, or why it happened,
Speaker 1: or where he is, because we heard today that at
Speaker 1: that time when they're saying those things, the huge forensic
Speaker 1: search of Benneruin Drive had not been done. Neither had
Speaker 1: the forensic search of the car that hadn't been undertaken,
Speaker 1: and the forensic search of that crossroads where they're suggesting
Speaker 1: she left William's body that had not been done, so
Speaker 1: they couldn't have had any evidence from those and we
Speaker 1: now know those searches didn't produce any forensic evidence. And
Speaker 1: this goes back to what you said about how surreal
Speaker 1: the crime Commission is. Is Williams foster mother had a
Speaker 1: phone call with one of her friends which was covertly recorded,
Speaker 1: and they played that in court today and she said
Speaker 1: at one point, I feel like I'm living in somebody
Speaker 1: else's body. I feel like I'm living in a dream.
Speaker 1: Because she now knows the police are targeting her, and
Speaker 1: that friend says, do you feel like they're any closer?
Speaker 1: And Williams foster mother says no, And that's what makes
Speaker 1: me angry. She says, you know, you've got zero, You've
Speaker 1: wasted millions and millions of dollars and you've got nothing.
Speaker 1: And that devastates me, she says. And she imagines this
Speaker 1: time in the future where you know, years from now,
Speaker 1: maybe William's body will be found and people will say, oh,
Speaker 1: that was the little boy that went missing. What was
Speaker 1: his name again? And she says that hurts me, that
Speaker 1: he'll be forgotten. And in this phone call with her friend,
Speaker 1: she says, I won't let people forget him. And of
Speaker 1: course she doesn't know that anyone's listening to that phone
Speaker 1: call at the time. So that was the end of
Speaker 1: the evidence today, except right at the end, the police
Speaker 1: barrister stood up and said, we are going to come back.
Speaker 1: There'll be another week of hearings in December. He said
Speaker 1: he wants to call that expert on feral animals that
Speaker 1: we heard about way back at the beginning of the week.
Speaker 4: We're still on the animals.
Speaker 1: We're still on the animals, and the theoretical possibility that
Speaker 1: William's body could have been removed by an animal and
Speaker 1: that might explain why there's no actual evidence at the scene.
Speaker 1: And the coroner says she's already refused to call that
Speaker 1: expert and has said that she's looked at the way
Speaker 1: his experiments were done and she doesn't think they're credible.
Speaker 1: But the police said they're going to press it. They
Speaker 1: really want to call that witness to arguably say that.
Speaker 1: And the police also said they want to call William's
Speaker 1: foster mother to face questions in person. The coroner said
Speaker 1: she's already ruled that that's not going to happen, but
Speaker 1: the police barrister said he's going to ask again. So
Speaker 1: I don't know if it will happen, but we are
Speaker 1: coming back in December, and that was it. That was
Speaker 1: the end of the week.
Speaker 4: So back in November twenty twenty one, when they announced
Speaker 4: the search, Detective Chief Superintendent Darren Bennett he addressed the media, YEP,
Speaker 4: and he did a press conference where he announced that
Speaker 4: they were about to do this search. And I'm just
Speaker 4: reading off so this is a story from The Australian.
Speaker 4: The Australian says that he was pribed about new information
Speaker 4: the force reportedly received in September of twenty twenty one,
Speaker 4: which pointed to a previous suspect being questioned again, and
Speaker 4: he replied, this is in relation to information we have received,
Speaker 4: no doubt about that. There is an investigative review that
Speaker 4: has been undertaken as an ongoing process, but there is
Speaker 4: also new evidence. I will not go into specifics. Have
Speaker 4: you heard anything this week that suggests new evidence?
Speaker 1: No? No, In fact the opposite, which is what leads
Speaker 1: you to question, what was the purpose of this week?
Speaker 1: If we've spent four entire days in court to show
Speaker 1: that the police have no evidence, it makes you wonder if,
Speaker 1: in fact that was the purpose of this hearing, And
Speaker 1: what's missing is then why did the police pursue this?
Speaker 1: How did they make the decision to launch this investigation
Speaker 1: of William's foster mother. All we've heard is the fact
Speaker 1: that they've not found anything. And I guess that's okay
Speaker 1: if you trust the police and you trust that they
Speaker 1: always make good decisions. But in this case, they haven't
Speaker 1: always made good decisions, or we wouldn't be here. Ten
Speaker 1: years on from when William went missing with no evidence
Speaker 1: and two families who are hurting, and we don't know
Speaker 1: what they would have found if the police had spent
Speaker 1: the past four years looking at and one else. So
Speaker 1: for the inquest to just gather the facts of what's
Speaker 1: been found and not been found and not ask how
Speaker 1: that happened, what the police are thinking, I think that's important,
Speaker 1: and that job asking if the police did the right
Speaker 1: thing that's been left to others, which is where we
Speaker 1: come in. You know, what did the police do right
Speaker 1: and wrong? Right from the beginning, and that is what
Speaker 1: we're going to do in the next episode. This is
Speaker 1: Witness William Tyrrell. A lot of different people have been
Speaker 1: involved in making this series. Among them, the executive producer
Speaker 1: is Nina Young. The sound design was by Tiffany Dimack.
Speaker 1: The producers have been Emily Pigeon, Nicholas Adams, Jazz, phoebe
Speaker 1: Zakowski Wallace and Tabby Wilson. Research by Adan Patrick, original
Speaker 1: music by Rory O'Connor. Our lawyer is Stephen Coombs. The
Speaker 1: editor at news dot com dot Au is Kerry Warren.
Speaker 1: I'm Dan Box