Speaker 1: I've got my photos kind of here, thinking one day
Speaker 1: I'll put them on the wall.
Speaker 2: But Ivette Elliott is showing me some photos in her home.
Speaker 3: It was just a moment in time where it kind
Speaker 3: of captured.
Speaker 2: I've just arrived, we haven't set up for a proper
Speaker 2: interview yet, and Yvette's dog starts bouncing around us in
Speaker 2: excitement before So this.
Speaker 1: Is brilliant after bite.
Speaker 3: The day.
Speaker 2: Vette's house is neat and nice, white walls, the afternoon
Speaker 2: sun coming through the windows, and Avette herself is lovely.
Speaker 2: She's welcoming but also worried. The photos make her think
Speaker 2: back to a different time years ago now in lan Cove.
Speaker 1: So we were all lane Cove Ladies, and we've all
Speaker 1: lived in and around lane Cove.
Speaker 2: Lane Cove is a suburb in Sydney. It's a bit posh,
Speaker 2: and the lane Cove Ladies were just that, a group
Speaker 2: of women who'd meet up once a month and talk
Speaker 2: about their lives and their careers and their children.
Speaker 4: So we used to go to a music festival.
Speaker 1: When the music festivals were they were like a wine
Speaker 1: and food festivals, and the kids had just dance at
Speaker 1: the front.
Speaker 2: One of those kids was William tyrrel that was the
Speaker 2: happy days.
Speaker 5: Yeah, looks I just wonder what would we all be
Speaker 5: doing now if it wasn't for.
Speaker 2: What happened, and suggesting that what happened to William may
Speaker 2: fractured that group.
Speaker 6: Oh, absolutely everything regarding our relationship changed.
Speaker 2: Years after William was reported missing, detectives turned up at
Speaker 2: a Vett's door without warning. She and I sit down
Speaker 2: together for the proper interview, and Ivett tells me what
Speaker 2: the police asked her.
Speaker 1: It was incredibly targeted. It was very, very targeted, and
Speaker 1: they were trying to find something. And I ask them
Speaker 1: whether they had any suspects, and they said definitively yes
Speaker 1: that they did. And there was a lot of questions,
Speaker 1: and I guess, thinking back now, they were probably cleverly
Speaker 1: put together. Majority of it seemed to be very focused
Speaker 1: on William's mum.
Speaker 2: After a couple of hours, Ivette tells me the police
Speaker 2: left finishing our interview, I turn off the microphone and
Speaker 2: then Ivette tells me how, after saying goodbye to the detectives,
Speaker 2: she phoned her old friend William's foster mother, saying, I've
Speaker 2: just been interviewed by the police. And it was the
Speaker 2: weirdest thing, and William's foster mother told her another of
Speaker 2: the Lane Cove ladies had just called, saying detectives had
Speaker 2: also been asking her questions. William's foster mother told Yvette
Speaker 2: the police were trying to throw her under the bus.
Speaker 2: I'm Dan Box and from news to dot com dot Au.
Speaker 2: This is Witness William Tyrrell. Episode three, The Foster Parents.
Speaker 7: Hello, La La Tokyo, Mike one, do your close slide on?
Speaker 2: Okay, so this is unscripted ye, So, Nina, you're the
Speaker 2: producer on this podcast. You've seen more than most people.
Speaker 2: You've been through documents, interview statements, seen or listened to
Speaker 2: hours of interviews that we've done so far. So at
Speaker 2: this stage months in, what do you think of the
Speaker 2: foster parents?
Speaker 7: I think I'd like to say up front that I
Speaker 7: currently do not have any inkling theory predisposition on what
Speaker 7: happened to William. And the reason for that is if
Speaker 7: you read through everything, I think you could make a
Speaker 7: flimsy case for almost any person of interest, and that
Speaker 7: includes to me, the foster parents.
Speaker 2: It feels like everyone has an opinion on them. We
Speaker 2: can't name them for legal reasons, but their lives have
Speaker 2: been made public on front pages and newspapers and online
Speaker 2: in excruciating detail. Have a look at this, That is
Speaker 2: incoming passenger cards dug out of the National.
Speaker 7: Archives, so that the date on this document is nineteen
Speaker 7: sixty eight.
Speaker 2: Yeah, there's passenger cards from nineteen sixty eight in nineteen
Speaker 2: seventy showing the entry of a family into Australia from
Speaker 2: Papua New Guinea.
Speaker 7: Okay, what's a passenger card.
Speaker 2: Passenger card is when you fly into Australia if you
Speaker 2: catch a ship in you have to fill in your
Speaker 2: details saying who you are, where you're going to be staying,
Speaker 2: who your parents are. If you're a child, and one
Speaker 2: of these passengers is a child born a few years earlier.
Speaker 2: It's William's foster mother, and you can see her father's
Speaker 2: an engineer, her mother's listed as a housewife. The reason
Speaker 2: for their journey is a holiday. They're going to stay
Speaker 2: a month. You've got the flight number, you've got the
Speaker 2: address in Queensland where they're going to be staying. Someone's
Speaker 2: gone into the National Archives and dug these out then
Speaker 2: shared them online. Yeah, they've been poured over and commented
Speaker 2: on probably seen by I'm guessing hundreds, maybe thousands, these
Speaker 2: have been sent to journalists, so I've been sent them.
Speaker 7: Is what's supposed to be the significance of it.
Speaker 2: I don't know. The person who sent those to me
Speaker 2: told me you could do a whole podcast episode on
Speaker 2: those passenger cars.
Speaker 7: Okay, and I can say that's not interesting.
Speaker 2: But that's the level of Attentionilliam's foster mother and her husband.
Speaker 7: I think that's terrible. And I couldn't imagine living like that.
Speaker 7: Just having every element of your life under the microscope
Speaker 7: must have been it must be horrifying for them.
Speaker 2: Okay, let's jump forward to nineteen ninety six.
Speaker 8: So in nineteen ninety six, I started working at a
Speaker 8: new company and she was already there.
Speaker 2: This is another of the foster mother's close friends. She
Speaker 2: doesn't want to be identified, so these are her words,
Speaker 2: but not her voice.
Speaker 8: So we kind of bonded and bonded at work and
Speaker 8: then bonded out of work and became a friendship outside of.
Speaker 2: Work as well. And what was your impression of her?
Speaker 8: Smart? She was smart. She was fun though, like it
Speaker 8: was just you know, we'd go out shopping at lunchtime
Speaker 8: sometimes just try on dresses. It was just fun. We
Speaker 8: were both sort of thirty thirty ish. Yeah, I think
Speaker 8: I just turned thirty after I started there.
Speaker 2: A few years later, this friend was a bridesmaid at
Speaker 2: the foster mother's wedding.
Speaker 8: We went up the night before because we had They
Speaker 8: put on like welcome drinks for everybody on the Friday night,
Speaker 8: and then on the day we had hair and makeup done.
Speaker 8: It was just a happy day, you know. We went
Speaker 8: in an old car, and the groom and his groomsmen
Speaker 8: showed up in a helicopter, which I'm not sure if
Speaker 8: the bride even knew about. She probably did, but I
Speaker 8: didn't know. It was hilarious. The red helicopter came in.
Speaker 8: It was just fun. It was really, really nice.
Speaker 2: She says. The couple wanted to have a family, but
Speaker 2: they couldn't, and the reasons for that are personal and
Speaker 2: they're deeply painful. They did have IVF for years. William's
Speaker 2: Fosterman would later tell detectives she wanted to have five
Speaker 2: or six children. She'd tell police that she also always
Speaker 2: wanted to foster and adopt. She'd say she'd always grown
Speaker 2: up wanting to help others and it's weird, you'd tell police.
Speaker 2: That's a direct quote. But I always knew I would
Speaker 2: end up having children that weren't mine.
Speaker 8: When they first started fostering, I was taken by how
Speaker 8: naturally they took to parenting.
Speaker 2: This is from a written reference her friend would later
Speaker 2: provide for William's foster parents.
Speaker 8: They were not foster parents, they were parents. None of
Speaker 8: our friendship group considered the children to be foster children.
Speaker 8: They were simply their children. They did what lots of
Speaker 8: other families with young children do. They had a toy room,
Speaker 8: they ate dinner together as a family, went on holidays
Speaker 8: to the park, bike riding adventures, and as the children
Speaker 8: grew up, they were a normal, close family.
Speaker 2: I also spoke to another of the foster mother's close friends, Sarah.
Speaker 9: I thought she was a wonderful parent. I mean, I
Speaker 9: thought she was very thoughtful and considered, very loving, and
Speaker 9: the children loved her.
Speaker 2: Did you get any sense that there were difficulties within
Speaker 2: that household at that time?
Speaker 9: Oh no, none at all.
Speaker 10: I mean I would say nothing other than what a
Speaker 10: normal parenting children family life is. You know, like nothing's perfect,
Speaker 10: nothing's all roses and unicorns and rainbows.
Speaker 11: But no.
Speaker 9: I think her and her husband both unbelievably good parents.
Speaker 10: And you know, I'm William in particular if the foster
Speaker 10: father was away and then would come home and he'd
Speaker 10: be running towards him to greet him. But the just
Speaker 10: the absolute love was was amazing. And I think even
Speaker 10: you know, in the videos that they've had in the media,
Speaker 10: the home videos, like, I think it's very evident.
Speaker 5: William, you're doing really well.
Speaker 2: A third friend, Avet Elliott, showed me that photograph of
Speaker 2: their families together and talked about the Lane Cove Ladies.
Speaker 1: I remember just coming up to Christmas and you know,
Speaker 1: it was the gathering again of Lane Cove Ladies, and
Speaker 1: our kids were all of the same age. William being
Speaker 1: a couple of years younger, you know, was my son's shadow.
Speaker 7: Because he was the bigger boy.
Speaker 1: They were fun times, you know, we were just living life.
Speaker 7: I guess there was.
Speaker 1: Without thinking it was just a it was just you know,
Speaker 1: a magical time. There was no evil, you know, there
Speaker 1: was no evilness that was to come.
Speaker 2: William was nine months old when he came to live
Speaker 2: with his foster parents. That was March twenty twelve. So Nina,
Speaker 2: this is the point when you start to have questions.
Speaker 7: We don't necessarily have questions about the relationship between them
Speaker 7: and William, because I think it's fairly documented, and the
Speaker 7: picture that's painted, I think it paints the picture of
Speaker 7: a mother who is really struggling. She says at one
Speaker 7: stage that by eight am in the morning, she's already
Speaker 7: incredibly frustrated and can't believe that she could be feeling
Speaker 7: that way by eight am in the morning, and it
Speaker 7: isn't going to be sunshine and rainbows all the time.
Speaker 7: Totally understandable. Where I start to have questions is how
Speaker 7: the foster mother described the relationship with William to the police.
Speaker 7: It just there seems like there's a disconnect between what
Speaker 7: I'm seeing in the foster care documents and what has
Speaker 7: been painted as quite a happy relationship in police statements.
Speaker 2: Well, let's unpack that. So the foster parents are very
Speaker 2: rarely spoken. This is them describing William is the.
Speaker 12: The cheeky, vibrant little little boy, full of energy, loves
Speaker 12: interacting with his sister, he loved interacting with us.
Speaker 2: It's from an interview released by police less than a
Speaker 2: year after William was reported missing.
Speaker 12: I mean, he's my little boy, just bringing me to tears.
Speaker 12: Pretty cheeky, very chey, but also they've got that, they've
Speaker 12: got that love, you know, and the father and boy
Speaker 12: love that you know he had.
Speaker 5: It was just.
Speaker 11: He adored, he adored, he adored his dad.
Speaker 13: Just absolutely his eyes and there was a smile like
Speaker 13: I look at some of the back at some of
Speaker 13: the pictures, and I look at pictures when William was
Speaker 13: swineing smiling for me, and I look at pictures where
Speaker 13: William was smiling for.
Speaker 4: His dad, and it's different. Oh, completely.
Speaker 11: They adored each other, absolutely adored each.
Speaker 4: Other, and it's heartbreaking.
Speaker 2: And a few months later, on the first anniversary of
Speaker 2: William's disappearance, William's foster parents recorded an interview with the
Speaker 2: journalist Leah Harris from the Sunday Telegraph. The audio is
Speaker 2: not great, but you can hear them saying the same thing.
Speaker 2: One of their friends told me how William would always
Speaker 2: be waiting for his foster father to arrive home from work.
Speaker 14: Who would always wait at a frondom with his sisters
Speaker 14: driving the driveway. That would be just leaping, running and jumping.
Speaker 14: That was the highla of my day.
Speaker 15: Every day, really and I'm sure the high out of
Speaker 15: these turks, you know, I'm come him and hogs and
Speaker 15: puddles and kisses and go and start and start to
Speaker 15: do the routine of about time and dinner and all
Speaker 15: those sorts of things.
Speaker 2: Eight years later, in twenty twenty two, the foster parents
Speaker 2: recorded another interview with Leah Harris, who by now was
Speaker 2: working as a TV reporter for Network ten. She asked
Speaker 2: them to describe their family life.
Speaker 5: Just.
Speaker 11: Life was an adventure, and it was to be enjoyed,
Speaker 11: and it was all about learning, discovery and just being
Speaker 11: so innocent and just it's that join us of just
Speaker 11: being so innocent and loving life that I remember most
Speaker 11: about William.
Speaker 4: How did him coming into your lives change your lives?
Speaker 3: Changed it forever, but in a really positive way.
Speaker 2: Nina, What you were saying was that we've got more
Speaker 2: than one account of that family's life together. There's what
Speaker 2: we know from the foster care records, is what we
Speaker 2: know from court hearings. In April twenty twelve, a month
Speaker 2: after William came to stay with his foster parents, an
Speaker 2: official from the state government team that was supporting the
Speaker 2: foster care visits the home and he'd later say in court,
Speaker 2: and I was there that the foster parents disciplined William's
Speaker 2: sister using time out, but for them, time out meant
Speaker 2: time outside and the sister was two at the time.
Speaker 7: See there's that's judgment. But yeah, I would agree that's
Speaker 7: not appropriate for a two year old, which isn't w
Speaker 7: ashume what the foster care person was saying.
Speaker 2: Yeah, yeah, And the foster mum also told this official
Speaker 2: that she'd threatened to smack William's sister but had never
Speaker 2: done it. And we've got other documents. So eleventh of
Speaker 2: October twenty thirteen, William shows a strong preference for his
Speaker 2: foster dad but rejects interaction with his foster mum, and
Speaker 2: this is what you were talking about. Twenty ninth of
Speaker 2: October twenty thirteen, the foster mum emailed their caseworker about
Speaker 2: William's behavioral issues and she says it's like he's operating
Speaker 2: at warp speed. He's recorded as being defiant and sullen
Speaker 2: at daycare, but both of those are after a contact
Speaker 2: visit with his biological parents, and that's a pattern. So
Speaker 2: the worst of it that I can find is William
Speaker 2: cutting the hair with other kids at childcare and deliberately
Speaker 2: urinating on the floor, which are pretty bad behaviors, and
Speaker 2: more than once, the foster mum emailed their caseworker saying
Speaker 2: she was struggling to understand why those contact visits couldn't
Speaker 2: be less frequent, and she says she was quote very
Speaker 2: tired physically and emotionally. Do you read anything into that?
Speaker 7: Yeah, I mean, like I said, that all sounds relatively
Speaker 7: what I would expect for a child as in foster care.
Speaker 7: He's quite a young child. I can imagine that it
Speaker 7: would be really confusing for a kid to have these
Speaker 7: regular visits with one set of parents, go home to
Speaker 7: another set of parents and struggle to understand that. So
Speaker 7: that all sounds I think okay, And I can imagine
Speaker 7: that she would be feeling tired and frustrated, and look.
Speaker 2: Being a parent isn't easy. Nice you're a parent. I'm
Speaker 2: a parent. I've got three year old, ten year old
Speaker 2: and a thirteen year old, and I get tired and
Speaker 2: at times I might have thrown things just to deal
Speaker 2: with I mean, there's frustration. There's been times when the
Speaker 2: three year old and I are both shouting at each other.
Speaker 2: But the difference is my life isn't documented.
Speaker 7: It's not documented.
Speaker 2: Yeah, so there is evidence in these documents that William's
Speaker 2: foster care placement was working, and you can hear it
Speaker 2: in those home videos and in the documents. His foster
Speaker 2: care placement is described as being very stable. When William
Speaker 2: had his third birthday, his foster mum made him a
Speaker 2: cake in the shape of a fire engine.
Speaker 3: Happy birthday, William.
Speaker 2: They are good, dear, have you finished now?
Speaker 4: Our dear dear lucky fingers, look your hair.
Speaker 2: And William told his caseworker that he really loved his party,
Speaker 2: which was held in the family's backyard. There was friends
Speaker 2: from daycare and neighbors. This is mid twenty fourteen, a
Speaker 2: few months before he went missing, and at times the
Speaker 2: records of his foster care show his behavior seeming to
Speaker 2: get better. It might take only twenty or thirty minutes
Speaker 2: to settle him in bed at night, rather than hours
Speaker 2: at other times, though his behavior is harder to manage.
Speaker 2: There's hyperactivity he described as slapping and punching his care
Speaker 2: as his defiant oppositional behavior. It's not the simple, happy
Speaker 2: family that the foster care parents have described in public,
Speaker 2: and William's foster mum is quite a private person, and
Speaker 2: she's quite controlled and maybe be controlling. This is her
Speaker 2: talking to Leah Harris again.
Speaker 5: It's just so personal for us. I feel like I
Speaker 5: want to keep a lot of those really special memories
Speaker 5: for us personal. There are family memories, and I know
Speaker 5: people want to know more, but I just I've just
Speaker 5: got to keep something's private and special. It's just really
Speaker 5: hard now to keep talking about what happened on that morning.
Speaker 2: William's foster care worker went to the family's house on
Speaker 2: the fifth of September twenty fourteen, so that's nine days
Speaker 2: before William goes missing, and the records say that William
Speaker 2: ran up and hugged his caseworker around his legs. William
Speaker 2: was wearing his Spider Man costume, which was his favorite,
Speaker 2: and the foster mum said William's behavior had been a
Speaker 2: struggle since the last contact visit with his parents, and
Speaker 2: for a while there'd been this back and forth where
Speaker 2: William's foster mother wanted to have fewer contact visits and
Speaker 2: William's birth mother wanted more. The foster parents wanted to
Speaker 2: formally adopt William, but they feared his birth mother would
Speaker 2: fight that in court. One thing that does strike me
Speaker 2: about this case is a lot of it comes down
Speaker 2: to judgments on motherhood. Do you.
Speaker 7: Well, you mentioned the birthday party. Yeah, I was looking
Speaker 7: at a photo from that birthday party on social media.
Speaker 7: There's so one person says, the candles aren't even lit.
Speaker 7: How is this really a birthday party? The candles aren't
Speaker 7: even lit. Then someone else comes in and goes, this
Speaker 7: is incredibly dangerous because William is sitting at the corner
Speaker 7: of the table and it's pointed right at his neck.
Speaker 7: Any slip from any person could knock him onto the table.
Speaker 7: And it's just there's like twenty thirty comments of people
Speaker 7: picking apart this photo, literally a photo of a little
Speaker 7: boy smiling in front of a birthday cake.
Speaker 2: So making judgments on the foster mother's parenting. Yeah, you
Speaker 2: do see that. The trolls online compare the two mothers.
Speaker 2: So I've seen posts describing Krly as William's natural mother
Speaker 2: and saying that her family needs reunification, saying William belongs
Speaker 2: to his natural mother and the thoughts of foster parents
Speaker 2: are irrelevant. And I've seen another where that says William's
Speaker 2: mummy pleads don't hurt him. While the fosters still hide
Speaker 2: their faces. But you can't help but compare the two
Speaker 2: sets of parents, and you can't help but compare the
Speaker 2: life William had with his foster parents to the life
Speaker 2: he had before. So William's foster parents take him and
Speaker 2: his sister on expensive holidays months apart, to the Gold Coast,
Speaker 2: to Cairn's, to Barley. When his birth mum is told
Speaker 2: about the Barley trip, she says they went again lucky then,
Speaker 2: and there were other trips, including to Kendall on the
Speaker 2: mid North coast of New South Wales. William's foster mother's
Speaker 2: parents lived there.
Speaker 3: It was not really a long weekend like a Friday
Speaker 3: Settle a Sunday or a Saturlly Sunday Monday or something
Speaker 3: like that. Might be once every three or four months,
Speaker 3: especially Nana's birthday, or it might be the bit Debbie
Speaker 3: an occasion but also a good time.
Speaker 4: To catch up.
Speaker 2: Kendall's about a four or five hour drive north from Sydney,
Speaker 2: which is not an easy thing to do with young children.
Speaker 3: The trip included, you know, at the halfway point, stopping
Speaker 3: at their favorite little snack that they'd get, you know,
Speaker 3: which would be McDonald's I mean, that's really the only
Speaker 3: time that they would actually get it well. On the
Speaker 3: way up and on the way back. I think it
Speaker 3: was because that's the halfway point they get their happy
Speaker 3: meal type thing, and they got but they're still excited
Speaker 3: about the overall journey, which was to Banna's, so that
Speaker 3: was that was what they were looking for.
Speaker 2: To Williams foster nana lived in a big house at
Speaker 2: the top of a wide, dead end road called Benerine Drive.
Speaker 11: That location it's quiet. The only people who go up
Speaker 11: that road typically the people who live there.
Speaker 4: It's a colder cirque at Mum and Dad's place. They
Speaker 4: knew it.
Speaker 9: He knew it is incredibly comfortable there. So you have
Speaker 9: to assume that children are.
Speaker 11: Safe in their own backyards and in their own homes,
Speaker 11: and they've been up there.
Speaker 4: More than enough.
Speaker 2: But the lead up to that last visit was unsettled.
Speaker 2: William's foster grandfather had recently died, his foster nana was
Speaker 2: about to sell the house, and there are emails from
Speaker 2: the time between William's foster mother and his caseworker talking
Speaker 2: again about those contact visits the biological parents, and on
Speaker 2: the ninth of September Williams. Foster mum sends his caseworker
Speaker 2: an email saying I am close to giving up or in,
Speaker 2: and that phrase close to giving up or in would
Speaker 2: get repeated over and over in the years since, both
Speaker 2: online and in the newspapers. One newspaper said the phrase
Speaker 2: appears to explain at least some of the dramatic developments
Speaker 2: in the police investigation that followed, and it's used to
Speaker 2: almost imply that there's something darker about the foster mum,
Speaker 2: and it does contrast with what the foster mum later
Speaker 2: told police. Have a look at this. So this is
Speaker 2: a copy of the foster mum's interview with police, or
Speaker 2: one of her interviews with police.
Speaker 7: Yeah, so this is a place report from twenty sixteen,
Speaker 7: twenty sixteen, So this is not the initial statement that.
Speaker 2: She left to place a couple of years later.
Speaker 7: Okay, So it says, and this is the thing that
Speaker 7: kills me about this is that he and I were
Speaker 7: just reaching that absolute, one hundred percent open true mum's
Speaker 7: son relationship and he was just beautiful.
Speaker 2: Which does seem to directly contrast this idea that she's
Speaker 2: close to giving up or giving in. But when you
Speaker 2: actually read the full email chain. I think it's been misreported.
Speaker 2: I don't think in the context of that email chain
Speaker 2: that the foster mum is talking about giving up or
Speaker 2: giving in about William's behavior. The sentence is I'm close
Speaker 2: to giving up or in. I don't have the energy
Speaker 2: to argue against this.
Speaker 7: That's a good point.
Speaker 2: I think giving up or giving in is about the
Speaker 2: back and forth on the number of contact visits with
Speaker 2: the biological parents. The email chain shows that they're not
Speaker 2: going to reduce the number of visits like the foster
Speaker 2: mum has asked, and the foster mum is reacting against
Speaker 2: this back and forth, but she's close to giving in.
Speaker 2: She's not giving up or giving in about being a
Speaker 2: foster mum or about dealing with William's behavior, which is
Speaker 2: how it's been presented in the years that have followed.
Speaker 7: Is that one interpretation should I read the whole sentence.
Speaker 7: So she's replying to an email I haven't censored my
Speaker 7: initial thoughts because they are still there. But I am
Speaker 7: close to giving up or in. I don't have the
Speaker 7: energy to argue against this, And this is what you're saying,
Speaker 7: arguing against the visits. I'm feeling pretty ragged. At the moment,
Speaker 7: William has not settled one bit and is still over
Speaker 7: the emotional but managing it better with help. It's possible.
Speaker 7: I get your interpretation of it. I still think reading
Speaker 7: through the whole chain, that she was a woman who
Speaker 7: was struggling.
Speaker 2: Yeah. In that same email, the foster mums says the
Speaker 2: family are going up to her mum's house in Kendall
Speaker 2: that weekend. So the plan is to go up on
Speaker 2: the Friday, which is the twelfth of September twenty fourteen,
Speaker 2: but the day before, so Thursday, the eleventh of September,
Speaker 2: they make a snap decision to go up a day early,
Speaker 2: so they book their cats in for boarding at short notice,
Speaker 2: and they drive up, stopping at McDonald's and they recorded
Speaker 2: ordering at the counter on CCTV. So all of that
Speaker 2: has been confirmed by police, and the foster mother's phone
Speaker 2: records from that day have been published online, so you
Speaker 2: can see that apart from William's caseworker and Williams foster
Speaker 2: nana who she calls, and maybe the staff at McDonald's
Speaker 2: and maybe the people looking after their cats because they
Speaker 2: go up early, no one knows that William is going
Speaker 2: to be in Kendall the next morning, so they got
Speaker 2: there late in the evening of the eleventh, about eight
Speaker 2: thirty or nine o'clock. The kids went to bed. William
Speaker 2: is sharing a room with his foster dad, and William's
Speaker 2: sister is sharing with their mum, and the grown ups
Speaker 2: sat at talking. The foster dad was tired, he went
Speaker 2: to bed next. William was not scared of the dark,
Speaker 2: and at home he slept with the door shut. William
Speaker 2: was the first to wake up on the twelfth of September,
Speaker 2: according to his foster parents. In one of their conversations
Speaker 2: with Leah Harris, William's foster father said they watched TV together.
Speaker 3: William and I were in one room, but William wanted
Speaker 3: to watch I think it was Bananas and Pajamas or
Speaker 3: something like that off Fim and Sam and so we're
Speaker 3: watching there in the morning. And so that was it
Speaker 3: was good fun because he was giggling and laughing and
Speaker 3: enjoying himself.
Speaker 6: And that was the sound that you worked to that morning.
Speaker 6: He is a laugh The laughter was infectious. Yeah, people
Speaker 6: would hear that, and Nat, you couldn't help but smile.
Speaker 2: William's foster mother told police that she got him dressed
Speaker 2: that morning.
Speaker 13: I remember the discussion I had with William about putting
Speaker 13: on his Spider Man clothes because I wanted him to
Speaker 13: wear a singlet.
Speaker 8: He didn't want to wear a singlet.
Speaker 11: So the compromise was he'd wear a.
Speaker 13: Spider Man T shirt underneath his Spider Man clothes, so
Speaker 13: he was Spider maned out completely.
Speaker 4: All these little things that I just remember.
Speaker 13: It was just a normal family doing normal.
Speaker 2: Family things, except one thing wasn't normal. In another of
Speaker 2: their conversations with the journalist Leah Harris, William's foster mother
Speaker 2: described seeing two cars parked on the dead and Road
Speaker 2: opposite her mum's house.
Speaker 5: When we woke up, I always open up the sliding
Speaker 5: door that's on the veranda looking out back down and
Speaker 5: drive from Thumb's case.
Speaker 9: And as I.
Speaker 5: Opened it, I walked out because there's normally cook a
Speaker 5: barrow that comes up on to the balcony of the verandah,
Speaker 5: and was sort of just say hello to the cook borough.
Speaker 5: But I'm looking out over the verandah.
Speaker 14: And I see two cars.
Speaker 5: And I see these two cars just sitting there in
Speaker 5: the road, and my first thought was, oh, that's odd.
Speaker 5: I looked at these cars, thinking why would two cars
Speaker 5: be parked on Benner Room Drive? And I looked again,
Speaker 5: and both these cars had their driver's side windows down,
Speaker 5: and I just looked again, and I thought, oh, that's
Speaker 5: weird because they were parked in the middle of two driveways,
Speaker 5: you know, and I had direct view of them, they
Speaker 5: would have had direct view of me, and I just
Speaker 5: I thought it's odd and went back inside and didn't
Speaker 5: think another thing of it.
Speaker 2: It's odd because you don't a lot of cars parked
Speaker 2: on Beneerin Drive. There's few houses there, and each of
Speaker 2: them has got a long drive with space for a
Speaker 2: few cars. So you don't park on the road if
Speaker 2: you live there or if you're visiting, and you don't
Speaker 2: go there unless you do live there, or you've got
Speaker 2: a good reason to do so. And something else is
Speaker 2: odd too. William's foster mother told Leah Harris she forgot
Speaker 2: about seeing the two cars, then remembered seeing them the
Speaker 2: same night.
Speaker 5: I realized that night that William me seeing that I
Speaker 5: had actually seen two cars, but she.
Speaker 2: Told police she didn't remember this until a few days later.
Speaker 7: I remember reporting the other cars to the guys in
Speaker 7: the place rescue van that was parked here when we
Speaker 7: picked up my sister from the airport. Was on the
Speaker 7: way home from the airport. I'm driving the car and
Speaker 7: I just went there were cars there, and my sister goes,
Speaker 7: what cars. I've gone, Oh my god. So that's when
Speaker 7: I've talked about the two cars.
Speaker 2: So maybe that's a mistake. One time she says she
Speaker 2: remembered seeing the cars that night, and another time she
Speaker 2: says she remembered seeing the cars a few days later,
Speaker 2: but there are other confusions. On one occasion, William's foster
Speaker 2: mother seems to say one of the cars was on
Speaker 2: the road the morning she reported William missing when the
Speaker 2: first police officer arrived, his name was Chris Rowley.
Speaker 5: Because when Chris Rowley came up, he was a responding
Speaker 5: policeman from when I called for below, I actually walked
Speaker 5: across where that white station wagon was because I met
Speaker 5: him on the road, and as Chris Rowley's coming up
Speaker 5: in a room drive, I'm on the left hand side
Speaker 5: standing near with that white car. That white station wagon was,
Speaker 5: I've walked past it.
Speaker 2: So it's not obvious there. If William's foster mother is
Speaker 2: saying she walked past the whites station wagon when Chris
Speaker 2: Rowley arrived, or if she's saying she walked past where
Speaker 2: the station wagon had been. But in her interview with police,
Speaker 2: she seems more certain. She says the cars weren't there
Speaker 2: when Chris Rowley arrived.
Speaker 7: I'm not making this up. Those cars were there, and
Speaker 7: they were outside that house, and when Chris Rowley came up,
Speaker 7: those cars weren't there.
Speaker 2: So listening to the different interviews, you might not be
Speaker 2: sure if William's foster mother is consistent on whether the
Speaker 2: station wagon was there or it wasn't.
Speaker 7: I mean, I found that the description of the cars.
Speaker 7: I definitely noticed this as well, that she's been a
Speaker 7: bit inconsistent about the timings of the cars. It seems
Speaker 7: to me that the police that the police haven't been
Speaker 7: able to verify at any point over the years that
Speaker 7: the cars were there, right.
Speaker 12: Yeah.
Speaker 2: In his witness statement, Chris Rowney, the police officer, doesn't
Speaker 2: mention the cars being there, and the police have asked
Speaker 2: neighbors and nobody says they saw them. So why might
Speaker 2: the cars be important?
Speaker 7: Well, the cars are important if we're looking at the
Speaker 7: theory that William was abducted, right, So, if we're looking
Speaker 7: at the aduction theory, which is already statistically the least
Speaker 7: likely thing yeah to have happened. Those cars being there
Speaker 7: and the time that they were there is really really
Speaker 7: important to nail down. If the cars in fact weren't there,
Speaker 7: and they can verify that they weren't there, then that
Speaker 7: makes a case in a completely different direction. So that's
Speaker 7: just as important.
Speaker 2: And in different interviews, it's William's foster mum who keeps
Speaker 2: coming back to the importance of her seeing those cars.
Speaker 5: So either they're involved or they've seen what happened, and
Speaker 5: we just need them to come forward to say this.
Speaker 14: Is what we thought.
Speaker 4: So from your memory, were they gone when you realize
Speaker 4: that William had gone missing? Were they not there anymore?
Speaker 5: I realized that they weren't there that night when I
Speaker 5: remembered walking across the road to see Chris Rowley.
Speaker 2: So there William's foster mother is again talking about remembering
Speaker 2: seeing those cars that night. And to make it all
Speaker 2: more confusing, there was a witness who was interviewed by
Speaker 2: police only years later who described seeing a white Holden
Speaker 2: driving near where William was reported missing on the day
Speaker 2: he disappeared. Only that witness described seeing a holden sedan,
Speaker 2: not a station wagon, which William's foster mother described, and
Speaker 2: any inconsistency in someone's evidence, it can attracts suspicion.
Speaker 9: They took our laptops.
Speaker 2: We're grilled.
Speaker 3: We were completely grilled, separately in isolations in back of
Speaker 3: detectives vehicles. Every time they took my vehicle away, they
Speaker 3: completely searched to check it, you know, I mean they did.
Speaker 12: They did everything.
Speaker 11: And we had multiple conversations with multiple police people, and
Speaker 11: you know, detectives and all sorts of other police always
Speaker 11: just checking in, just looking at you know, corroborating things,
Speaker 11: checking with us, all sorts of things.
Speaker 9: And I remember saying to you that we.
Speaker 16: Would have had to have been their prime suspects because
Speaker 16: we were the last people to see him, and if
Speaker 16: they didn't completely investigate us, I would be absolutely.
Speaker 6: Gobsmacked, because you've got.
Speaker 4: To rule us out.
Speaker 2: I remember at the time, I was newspaper reporter speaking
Speaker 2: to a senior detective days after William disappeared, and he
Speaker 2: told me, we've ruled out both sets of parents. And
Speaker 2: then the years passed and the Department of Family and
Speaker 2: Community Services, so the state government body that manages foster
Speaker 2: care continued to give William's foster parents other children to
Speaker 2: look after, and that feels like a judgment on them
Speaker 2: as parents as well, saying these guys are safe, we
Speaker 2: can give them other children to look after. William's foster
Speaker 2: parents kept calling for more public attention on William's disappearance for.
Speaker 10: Some wonderful kids.
Speaker 17: Ladies and gentlemen, would like to introduce you to the
Speaker 17: Kendall Public School choir who were going to sing bring
Speaker 17: Him Home, The official Where's William campaign theme song was
Speaker 17: chosen by William's mummy and dad either we'd be riand.
Speaker 14: Of appoint.
Speaker 18: We're coming up to a very important week, Where's William Week?
Speaker 18: The search for Little William checking.
Speaker 17: Up to one thousand people to pack into the Kendall
Speaker 17: Showgrounds and so if they're important not only to William
Speaker 17: Tyrell's family, but.
Speaker 18: What he's called a walk for William Now, these will
Speaker 18: be held across New South Wales as well as flowers.
Speaker 18: They're asking for everyone to get involved, get on board.
Speaker 18: If you know something, please say something.
Speaker 9: We can't let people forget William.
Speaker 4: We can't.
Speaker 11: It's a three year old boy that was abducted. How
Speaker 11: can we public police say that's okay and let it go.
Speaker 2: They also called for more police attention on William's disappearance,
Speaker 2: including in this interview with Leah Harris.
Speaker 4: Will you ever give up fighting for him? Never?
Speaker 3: Never till my last breath?
Speaker 4: Absolutely? Absolutely.
Speaker 9: If police think they've seen the last.
Speaker 4: Of us, big mistake, you won't be going quietly.
Speaker 9: We will not give up on William, and we will
Speaker 9: not let other people give up on you. He's too
Speaker 9: important to give up on. Never going to happen.
Speaker 2: Ever, William's foster parents have declined to be interviewed for
Speaker 2: this series on advice from their lawyers. I have met them.
Speaker 2: We meet in safe houses at different hotels, and when
Speaker 2: we meet we turn off our phones, which might sound paranoid,
Speaker 2: but they have reason to be paranoid. Williams foster parents
Speaker 2: know in recent years that the police have been intercepting
Speaker 2: their calls. They know they've had listening devices in their
Speaker 2: homes and surveillance cameras outside it, and we'll get into
Speaker 2: all of that later in this series. William's foster mother
Speaker 2: has given us a written statement, and it's the first
Speaker 2: time she said anything in public about William's disappearance in
Speaker 2: the years since she was publicly identified in the media
Speaker 2: and by the police as a suspect. These are her words.
Speaker 2: Just over ten years ago, my little boy, William Tyrrell,
Speaker 2: disappeared from my mother's yard at her house at Kendall.
Speaker 2: I believe that William was taken. I have no idea
Speaker 2: who took William or what happened to him. If he
Speaker 2: is in fact dead, I have no idea where his
Speaker 2: little body is. I have no knowledge of or involvement
Speaker 2: in his disappearance. Even though William was not my child
Speaker 2: by birth, I loved William as much as any mother
Speaker 2: could love her child. I loved him as if he
Speaker 2: was my child by birth, if not more. It did
Speaker 2: not matter one bits that he was not connected to
Speaker 2: us biologically. William made my life complete. I loved him fiercely.
Speaker 2: I just loved being his mummy. My life with William
Speaker 2: was happy, fun and an adventure. Every day was different.
Speaker 2: Never ever, for a moment did I regret becoming a
Speaker 2: foster mother. We were a family, not the traditional version
Speaker 2: of a family. It didn't matter. We were and still
Speaker 2: are a family, and we connected as one. For the
Speaker 2: past five years, the police have done nothing to try
Speaker 2: to discover who took William and what has happened to him. Instead,
Speaker 2: they have concentrated all their efforts on trying to build
Speaker 2: a case that I was in some way to blame
Speaker 2: for his death and the disposal of his precious little body.
Speaker 2: They have gone to great lengths to blacken my character
Speaker 2: in the media. I believe that if the police had
Speaker 2: properly investigated this case instead of persecuting me, they may
Speaker 2: well have found the person responsible for William's disappearance. It's
Speaker 2: challenging to have hope and build plans for the future
Speaker 2: when our hearts remain shattered and in pieces. All I
Speaker 2: can hope for is that some person who knows something
Speaker 2: comes forward. Working on this podcast, I drove up to
Speaker 2: the house of Vett Elliot, the old friend of William's
Speaker 2: foster parents, who told me about the Lane Cove Ladies.
Speaker 2: We talked about how for years after William went missing,
Speaker 2: different police seemed to agree the foster parents had nothing
Speaker 2: to do with his disappearance, but something must have made
Speaker 2: them suspicious, because Ivette told me how detectives turned up
Speaker 2: at her house asking questions in October twenty twenty one.
Speaker 1: It was incredibly targeted. It was very very targeted, and
Speaker 1: they were trying to find something, and I, you know,
Speaker 1: I had nothing to give them.
Speaker 2: They told you they had a suspect, they didn't tell
Speaker 2: you who it was at that stage.
Speaker 1: No, they didn't necessarily categorically mention William's mum. But when
Speaker 1: you look back at the pointed questions and how much
Speaker 1: time was spent on her personality, on her relationships, on
Speaker 1: who she was as a person, then you know.
Speaker 4: It was very much.
Speaker 1: I became very much aware of who they were focused on.
Speaker 2: Looking back now at that interview with the police and
Speaker 2: everything that's happened before after William went missing, what's your
Speaker 2: perspective of the police now and has that changed?
Speaker 7: Before?
Speaker 1: I had the absolute respect for police, and when I
Speaker 1: was eighteen, I wanted to join the police, so I
Speaker 1: absolutely held the police in the highest regard. I don't
Speaker 1: feel that way anymore. I'm nervous for William's mum and
Speaker 1: dad because it feels like a very targeted campaign and
Speaker 1: now their attention has only turned to one person, and
Speaker 1: that terrifies me.
Speaker 2: After leaving events, I also spoke to two other friends
Speaker 2: of William's foster parents. They both described how the police
Speaker 2: came asking questions.
Speaker 8: I found the questioning quite. I didn't understand why they
Speaker 8: wanted to know about her past boyfriends, and like, what's
Speaker 8: the relevance asking me things like what sort of family
Speaker 8: were they? And I just said, they're just a normal family.
Speaker 8: Well do they sit down and have dinner together? And
Speaker 8: I'm like, yeah, I don't know. They just felt like
Speaker 8: they were trying. It felt like they knew what they
Speaker 8: wanted to know and they were trying to find evidence
Speaker 8: to support that. And I was like, wrong person, I'm
Speaker 8: the wrong person.
Speaker 2: Why were you the wrong person?
Speaker 8: Well, because I don't believe they had anything to do
Speaker 8: with William's disappearance. So, and I've known his foster mother
Speaker 8: since nineteen ninety six, right, and I know her well.
Speaker 8: I've been on holidays with her, I've been her bridesmaid, Like,
Speaker 8: I know her well.
Speaker 2: There's also something else, another reason I wanted to talk
Speaker 2: to this woman in particular. That's because her name came
Speaker 2: up in court last year. One of the detectives investigating
Speaker 2: William's disappearance, Sean Ogilvie, was giving evidence about all the
Speaker 2: evidence they've gathered, including quote, a substantial number of witness statements,
Speaker 2: Sean Oglevie said four people had declined to give a
Speaker 2: witness statement, and he named them. This woman is one
Speaker 2: of those four people, and you're one of those four names.
Speaker 2: What did you think when you heard that?
Speaker 8: Huh?
Speaker 11: I was.
Speaker 8: Just super angry, super angry that my friends had to
Speaker 8: sit in a court room and hear that I refused
Speaker 8: to support them because I was never asked. I did
Speaker 8: not decline. I was never asked. I was never even
Speaker 8: asked to provide a statement or that reference or whatever
Speaker 8: it was. I have provided other references in the past.
Speaker 8: I've recently been asked to provide one for my friend's lawyer.
Speaker 8: I did it that day. I was never ever asked
Speaker 8: to provide that, and it made me very angry that
Speaker 8: my name was read out and that they had to
Speaker 8: sit there and listen to that.
Speaker 2: If you had been asked to give a statement, what
Speaker 2: would you have said?
Speaker 8: Well, I don't know. I don't know anything about what
Speaker 8: they were asking. I don't know what they were asking
Speaker 8: for because I was never asked.
Speaker 2: If they were asking you, if you'd ever seen any
Speaker 2: evidence that William's foster mum or foster dad could intimidate
Speaker 2: a child, what would you have.
Speaker 8: Said, Yeah, I've seen the dad be a bit cranky,
Speaker 8: but nothing outside the ordinary bounds of parenting. Parenting kids
Speaker 8: is hard, Not everyone's an angel. You lose your temper sometimes,
Speaker 8: but that's what I would have said, not physical though.
Speaker 2: Do you think they were good parents?
Speaker 8: I do, I really do. They really made a family
Speaker 8: for those children. They really They got into bike riding
Speaker 8: and you know the back room at their house before
Speaker 8: they renovated, the whole back room was just for the
Speaker 8: kids play area with childboards, bags of toys, and there
Speaker 8: was always laughter in that house. They were a fun family.
Speaker 2: And that's what you would have told the police if
Speaker 2: you had given that statement. Yeah, So did the police
Speaker 2: get confused? Were they mistaken to say this woman declined
Speaker 2: to give a witness statement? Why are the police targeting
Speaker 2: Williams foster parents? And who's in charge of their investigation?
Speaker 2: That's next time on Witness. If you know anything about
Speaker 2: William's disappearance, please contact Crimestoppers. There's a number in the
Speaker 2: show notes for this series, but if there's anything you
Speaker 2: want to tell us, you can email Witness at News
Speaker 2: dot com dot au or I'm on social media and
Speaker 2: it can be completely confidential. A lot of different people
Speaker 2: have been involved in making this series. Among them, the
Speaker 2: executive producer is Nina Young. The sound design was by
Speaker 2: Tiffany Dimack. The producers have been Emily Pigeon, Nicholas Adams, Jazzbar,
Speaker 2: Phoebe Zakowski, Wallace and Tabby Wilson. Voice acting on this
Speaker 2: episode by Bridget Bush, Research by Adan Patrick, original music
Speaker 2: by Rory O'Connor. Our lawyer is Stephen Coombs. The editor
Speaker 2: at news dot com dot a U is Kerry Warren.
Speaker 2: I'm Dan Vox