Speaker 1: Hello, and welcome to Something to Talk About, the Stellar Podcast.
Speaker 1: I'm Sarah La Marquin, your host, and today I'm sitting
Speaker 1: down with the creators behind one of the country's biggest
Speaker 1: true crime podcasts. Dan Box and Nina Young have been
Speaker 1: covering the disappearance of William Tyrrel ever since the then
Speaker 1: three year old boy went missing from a dead end
Speaker 1: road in a sleepy New South Wales town. It was
Speaker 1: a case that shocked the nation, destroyed lives and ended careers.
Speaker 1: More than ten years later, we still don't have answers.
Speaker 1: Late last year, Dan and Nina released the investigative podcast
Speaker 1: Witness William Tyrrel, which went straight to the top of
Speaker 1: the charts and has since had millions of downloads. This week,
Speaker 1: after months of research, being back on the road and
Speaker 1: speaking to countless witnesses, four new episodes are about to
Speaker 1: be released, revealing shocking new in for Dan Box and
Speaker 1: Nina Young. Welcome to the Stellar Podcast.
Speaker 2: You.
Speaker 1: I know you're very familiar with how podcasts work, are
Speaker 1: pretty much more so than anyone else in Australia, but
Speaker 1: first time here and of course just full disclosure to
Speaker 1: our listeners right up front. We all work together yep.
Speaker 1: But before anyone thinks that they're about to watch or
Speaker 1: listen or read to an editorial meeting. Okay, that might
Speaker 1: be true, but an editorial meeting with two of the
Speaker 1: top investigative journalists in the country, the brilliant duo behind
Speaker 1: Witness William Tyrrel, which launched last year last October went
Speaker 1: straight to number one on the Australian podcast charts, millions
Speaker 1: and millions of downloads since, and is about to return
Speaker 1: with four new episodes that will reveal new information that
Speaker 1: could take the investigation in a whole new direction. So
Speaker 1: if that's an editorial meeting, let's get on with it.
Speaker 1: Let's call h are an invite Australia to come and
Speaker 1: join this. William Terrell, of course, being the three year
Speaker 1: old boy who disappeared from his grandmother's garden in twenty fourteen.
Speaker 1: He's never been found. The disappearance has been one of
Speaker 1: the most talked about cases in the country for months now.
Speaker 1: You have been working on these new episodes that will
Speaker 1: be dropping from tomorrow. You've spoken to everyone who's been
Speaker 1: involved in the case, including William's biological family, his cares
Speaker 1: and former homicide detective Gary Jubilan Dan. I'll start with you.
Speaker 1: You are a Walkley Award winning journalist who's broken hundreds
Speaker 1: of stories across the course of your career, both in
Speaker 1: the UK and here in Australia.
Speaker 3: Can you tell me.
Speaker 1: What first drew your attention to the William Yrell disappearance
Speaker 1: and your first involvement in investigating this case.
Speaker 2: I was one of the few reporters who covered the
Speaker 2: immedia after Martha William's disappearance, so that's going back ten
Speaker 2: years now. Wasn't there the day after, but I think
Speaker 2: I was there within days working on the story. And
Speaker 2: I remember I've covered a lot of murders and you
Speaker 2: get kind of hardened to it. They don't bother you anymore,
Speaker 2: but this one. I remember one occasion I was up
Speaker 2: on Benerroom Drive, which is the road that William was
Speaker 2: last seen on, and the detective who was leading the
Speaker 2: investigation at the time was talking me through their theory
Speaker 2: then that William may have run down this grass bank
Speaker 2: from the house to the road, and that maybe someone
Speaker 2: had been on that road and that person had taken William.
Speaker 2: And I had a three year old at home, so
Speaker 2: the same age as William. To within a couple of months,
Speaker 2: I think, and because of that, I could picture a
Speaker 2: three year old and how they move, you know, that
Speaker 2: slightly wonky, slightly funky way of moving. I could picture
Speaker 2: my three year old running down that slope to the
Speaker 2: person on the road, and it troubled me in a
Speaker 2: way I don't think any other case has troubled me.
Speaker 2: And I've stayed with it in different ways and in
Speaker 2: different forms reporting on it in the ten years since,
Speaker 2: and I think part of the reason to come back
Speaker 2: to it and look at it in the way we
Speaker 2: have done now, and Nina and I have been working
Speaker 2: on this for two and a bit years now. This
Speaker 2: is part of the reason I was grateful for the
Speaker 2: invitation to come and talk to you, because I know
Speaker 2: normally this podcast is about talking to celebrities and about
Speaker 2: with that world of celebrity. But of all the murders
Speaker 2: that I've covered, and I think maybe there are a
Speaker 2: few other murders in Australia that have that element of
Speaker 2: almost celebrity to it. Not the good things about celebrity,
Speaker 2: but the vast amount of media attention. I've literally seen
Speaker 2: a paparazzi car chases pursuing witnesses. I've actually been involved
Speaker 2: in one of them, the people trawling through the untold
Speaker 2: details of other people's lives, lives that are just kind
Speaker 2: of held up to the examination of the media gaze
Speaker 2: and kind of ripped apart all that element of celebrity.
Speaker 2: The William Toole case has and has been kind of
Speaker 2: distorted by it, And now I don't think, like maybe
Speaker 2: with a lot of celebrities, what people think is the
Speaker 2: truth and what actually is the truth of completely different things.
Speaker 2: So that that's why we came back to it.
Speaker 1: Nina, what about for you, because you have, over the
Speaker 1: course of your journalism career tell our audience a little
Speaker 1: bit about that idea and as Dan has explained, this
Speaker 1: story that has genuinely captivated an entire nation, and then
Speaker 1: from that moment bringing something like witness to fruition.
Speaker 3: Yeah. So, Dan, I think started at a company about
Speaker 3: two years ago. We met too and a bit.
Speaker 2: Yeah.
Speaker 1: Yeah.
Speaker 3: The day he came in, we had a meeting and
Speaker 3: I was like, Hi, Nina, I've heard you're doing a
Speaker 3: William terryl podcast and I would like to work on
Speaker 3: it because I don't do small talk. Sarah. No, Hello,
Speaker 3: I'm going to work with you. I don't think I
Speaker 3: anticipated at that point or could have the amount of
Speaker 3: work that we were actually going to be pouring into
Speaker 3: this thing, or that we'd be working on it two
Speaker 3: years later. But we did get straight to work. A
Speaker 3: lot of that work is sort of quiet background filing,
Speaker 3: the amount of filing this guy does.
Speaker 2: We've got a timeline, so a list of events like
Speaker 2: bullet points, this happened, then that happened, then that happened,
Speaker 2: then that happened. I think it's actually about quarter of
Speaker 2: a million words now, so it's the length of two
Speaker 2: and a bit books, and that's just our kind of
Speaker 2: main reference document. But you know, the amount of work
Speaker 2: that Nina's done, we wouldn't be here now talking about
Speaker 2: these new episodes because I thought we'd finish this series
Speaker 2: last year, and if I used to tell Nina that
Speaker 2: I was taking the whole of this year off. But
Speaker 2: at the end of the last year, Nina went off
Speaker 2: on this kind of side investigation, which I kind.
Speaker 3: Of just kept going, like, well, i'll talk to you
Speaker 3: about it.
Speaker 2: And then we finished the series last year. I thought
Speaker 2: that was the end of that. Nina said, right now,
Speaker 2: you have to sit down and I'll tell you what
Speaker 2: I've got, and I remember the feeling there's almost this
Speaker 2: sinking feeling of Okay, there's so much more to do.
Speaker 1: So that whole year off which, by the ways, first
Speaker 1: i've heard about.
Speaker 3: As a manager.
Speaker 1: But we'll talk about we'll talk about that offline that
Speaker 1: you knew then that that you had to go back
Speaker 1: coming into the first series. What were the biggest questions
Speaker 1: for each of you that you initially wanted to explore.
Speaker 1: What of all of the questions that people were asking,
Speaker 1: do you think that appetite for answers was the strongest
Speaker 1: for Nina.
Speaker 3: I think there was so much mystery surrounding this case,
Speaker 3: and despite what had been fed to the media, there
Speaker 3: weren't really any details to it. So we knew that
Speaker 3: the police were looking at Williams foster mother as a
Speaker 3: potential person of interest or a suspect, but they didn't
Speaker 3: really say why, and they didn't say why they were
Speaker 3: looking at her rather than looking at other persons of
Speaker 3: interest that had been raised previously in the investigation. I
Speaker 3: think that's the biggest focus that people had when we
Speaker 3: first started this investigation.
Speaker 2: Yeah, for me, it was that that kind of gulf
Speaker 2: between what people thought they knew because of what had
Speaker 2: been in the media and what actually the truth was.
Speaker 2: But there was another element to it for me, which
Speaker 2: was because I'd been reporting on this in different ways
Speaker 2: for newspapers. I did a couple of books that touched
Speaker 2: on this. I knew a lot of the people involved
Speaker 2: in this case and the investigation, and I had a
Speaker 2: sense of how many lives had been caught up and damaged,
Speaker 2: not just by William going missing, but by the police
Speaker 2: investigation that followed. So, you know, obviously you had the families,
Speaker 2: the biological and the Foster family, but you had different
Speaker 2: witnesses who'd been held up by the police to media
Speaker 2: and court scrutiny, and their lives had just crumbled. And
Speaker 2: then the police and the media had moved on to
Speaker 2: the next person, and then to each time. There was
Speaker 2: this kind of human wreckage left behind, and I I
Speaker 2: wanted to put the focus back a little bit on
Speaker 2: those lives as well, the lives that have been damaged
Speaker 2: because of this attempt to find this child, which still
Speaker 2: hasn't been successful.
Speaker 1: Let me ask you both a little bit about that,
Speaker 1: the motivation for doing the work that you do, because
Speaker 1: it's obviously this particular case, and then of course the
Speaker 1: other stories if you investigated over the course of your
Speaker 1: respective careers. The material is it's extremely dark, it's confronting.
Speaker 1: You are working through details that Obviously there are other
Speaker 1: people in other professions that we as a society think.
Speaker 1: I don't know how I could be exposed to all
Speaker 1: of that and then go home and live a quote
Speaker 1: unquote normal life. Is that what has motivated each of you,
Speaker 1: Nina is as Dan spoke, he had that human connection
Speaker 1: as a parent, which I think resonated with a lot
Speaker 1: of people. I know. For me, my son was the
Speaker 1: same age as William and I remember one day there
Speaker 1: was a copy of the Daily Telegraph on the living
Speaker 1: room table and Logan was in his Spider Man suit
Speaker 1: and he said to me, Mummy is that me? And
Speaker 1: I just sorry, I just wanted to share that moment
Speaker 1: down when you spoke about it. Obviously we know as
Speaker 1: journalists we don't need those personal connections to stories, but
Speaker 1: when they do happen, you know that's also tapping into
Speaker 1: something that other people are feeling. Nina, sorry, I of
Speaker 1: arson answered that question. How obknoxious off me. I really
Speaker 1: want to hear your answer.
Speaker 3: Yeah, obviously any parent in Australia can look at William's
Speaker 3: face and see that connection and sort of know instinctively
Speaker 3: how horrible that feeling would be a lot to lose
Speaker 3: your child. But I also kind of connected with the
Speaker 3: idea of there's all these potentially innocent people that have
Speaker 3: been held up as suspects that who have had their
Speaker 3: lives ruined. I mean that could happen to literally anyone.
Speaker 3: You could just be going about your day, you could
Speaker 3: be in the wrong place at the wrong time. And
Speaker 3: I kind of went really naively into this investigation, going
Speaker 3: if the police are pursuing this woman so strongly, this.
Speaker 2: Is William's foster them.
Speaker 3: Yeah, of course they have something.
Speaker 2: I thought that too when it was on the front page.
Speaker 3: And the fact that we've come through the inquest with
Speaker 3: no eyewitness evidence, no forensic evidence, no evidence that has
Speaker 3: really been presented, I'm not happy with that. And so
Speaker 3: I do feel like I'm driven by wanting to hold
Speaker 3: people accountable for.
Speaker 2: The damage done to those lives by the police decision
Speaker 2: to focus on those people. And it's not just the people.
Speaker 2: It goes back to children again, and so it's not
Speaker 2: just the people you see on the front pages or
Speaker 2: the TVs. It's their families and those ripples just spread out.
Speaker 1: It's so true, isn't. At every headline there's thousands of people,
Speaker 1: entire communities, entire families that are behind that, and then
Speaker 1: the story moves on, but their lives remain. And that's
Speaker 1: before we even get into the whole social media I
Speaker 1: think where everyone Obviously there's a lot of self appointed
Speaker 1: detectives out there of course with true crime as well,
Speaker 1: so people then becoming vigilantes and feeling that they can
Speaker 1: keep the case.
Speaker 2: Just on that. And sorry to interrupt, when we started
Speaker 2: this reporting, because we were reporting that maybe the police
Speaker 2: hadn't got it right, or we at least investigating the
Speaker 2: possibility the police might not have it right about Williams Foster.
Speaker 1: Mum.
Speaker 2: I knew there were whole communities out there online who
Speaker 2: very much thought the police were in the right, and
Speaker 2: I knew they weren't going to like this, and so
Speaker 2: talk to Nina about it, about the possibility for online abuse,
Speaker 2: social media abuse, and it came in, and it came
Speaker 2: in much quicker than I expect.
Speaker 3: He had the chat with me one day and just said, look,
Speaker 3: I'm only going to bring it. Don't look at this stuff,
Speaker 3: and I'm not going to look at the stuff, but
Speaker 3: I've told someone to flag if your name comes into it,
Speaker 3: and also if there are credible threats to come up.
Speaker 3: It was the next day already it happened.
Speaker 2: We had to talk to the company about it, just
Speaker 2: to let them know. It's not just me. It's everyone
Speaker 2: who's worked on this project, their names on it. So
Speaker 2: there's a potential for all of those people to be chased.
Speaker 2: And I didn't mind if they were just having a
Speaker 2: pop at me. I kind of expected it, but it
Speaker 2: wasn't okay for them to go after other people. And
Speaker 2: I have seen some of the stuff that's been said
Speaker 2: since and that element to it, that kind of modern
Speaker 2: element of media celebrity that's really ugly.
Speaker 3: Yeah, people have tried to message me on Instagram. There
Speaker 3: was at one stage somebody rang the company here and
Speaker 3: said that I'd tried to call them and they had
Speaker 3: forgotten my phone number and asked the reception to give
Speaker 3: them my phone number. And I know it was the
Speaker 3: same person because they'd come through your email and Instagram
Speaker 3: as well. So, yeah, it's a whole new world now
Speaker 3: that we have social media involved as.
Speaker 2: Well, and what people seem to be happy to do
Speaker 2: on social media is be worse towards women. I think
Speaker 2: the kind of things people have said about me, some
Speaker 2: of which is laughably it's actually quite funny, some of
Speaker 2: which is really nasty.
Speaker 1: There definitely is a toxicity I think that is reserved,
Speaker 1: particularly for women.
Speaker 3: Yeah, surprised by this, definitely not surprising.
Speaker 1: But even when you are prepared, and even when you have,
Speaker 1: as you say, somebody light down warning you, and then
Speaker 1: the next day it's happening. Yeah, you can be prepared,
Speaker 1: and then of course there's the reality. And you're talking,
Speaker 1: Nina about people trying to get hold of your phone number.
Speaker 1: Anyone that's been in that situation would understand that feeling
Speaker 1: that well, what else are they trying to fight? Are
Speaker 1: they trying to get my address? Are they going to
Speaker 1: be waiting for me in the office in the car
Speaker 1: park when I leave? In those moments, Nina? For you,
Speaker 1: how do you balance that up? Yeah?
Speaker 3: I mean I think for a story like this, when
Speaker 3: you know what you're doing is important, that it has
Speaker 3: you know it's worth telling, then yeah, it's worth it.
Speaker 2: Let me qualify that. I think it is worth it,
Speaker 2: and I think on this one it has been worth it.
Speaker 2: That said, it does take a toll. I don't know
Speaker 2: if I'll do crime reporting again after this, and I've
Speaker 2: done in almost twenty years on and off of doing it.
Speaker 2: But this case, this investigation, this has taken more out
Speaker 2: of me, and we have found things and darknesses that
Speaker 2: I never expected to and a lot of that is
Speaker 2: in the episodes that are coming out from Monday. The
Speaker 2: things we have seen and found have been utterly shocking.
Speaker 2: I actually don't know if I want to do this anymore.
Speaker 2: So I think it's worth doing, but I don't know
Speaker 2: if I can.
Speaker 1: If that makes sense, it does make sense, and you
Speaker 1: just said I think it's worth doing. And when I
Speaker 1: heard you say that, you don't think you will do
Speaker 1: I don't know.
Speaker 2: I've got I've never got this this far before.
Speaker 1: That would beg the question. Obviously, WILL want to talk
Speaker 1: to you both about what you can tell us about
Speaker 1: what's coming up and some of what you have uncovered.
Speaker 1: But without getting into that right now, is it worth it?
Speaker 1: Has it been worth it?
Speaker 2: Oh?
Speaker 3: Yeah, it's it's definitely worth it. Well, I don't think
Speaker 3: either of us are sleeping well at the moment we're
Speaker 3: not sleeping, Dan's had to deal with wild mood swings
Speaker 3: from me.
Speaker 2: That's not true.
Speaker 3: I think we could have anticipated. Yeah, I do think
Speaker 3: we could have anticipated where this was going to take us,
Speaker 3: and I think we both thought it was going to
Speaker 3: be quite a lot more simple than it was. I
Speaker 3: think the day I was calling up bowlers from a
Speaker 3: bowling alley thirty years ago, and maybe the day I
Speaker 3: was running around trying to find a microcassette tape, and
Speaker 3: there's just been so many weird wrong turns and right
Speaker 3: turns throughout this. I just don't think we could have
Speaker 3: anticipated how long, in depth, unusual and dark it was
Speaker 3: all going to be. But I think it's worth it.
Speaker 1: We know there was no small talk in your working relationship,
Speaker 1: as you're saying. I mean, you got straight straight to
Speaker 1: the point on your first meeting. This is obviously an
Speaker 1: extremely intense experience, and it has been the two of
Speaker 1: you working on it, and you have been doing a
Speaker 1: lot of traveling as well. You've been on the road
Speaker 1: a lot to small country towns. You're in the car
Speaker 1: together for hours every day. I mean, everyone who's ever
Speaker 1: done a road trip knows it's not all it's cracked
Speaker 1: up to be with the little Hollywood movies with their
Speaker 1: music montage. In fact, talking about montage, I've got a
Speaker 1: little bit of audio because I was going to ask
Speaker 1: if you argue, but don't answer that, because just a
Speaker 1: little bit of audio has made its way into my
Speaker 1: hands courtesy of our producer Emi Lee.
Speaker 3: We've just pulled up.
Speaker 2: No we haven't.
Speaker 3: Okay, Well, I was going to say, what's on the
Speaker 3: sign certainly helps you? Yeah, we are for the recording audience. No,
Speaker 3: I know that I'm not just telling you what's on
Speaker 3: the sign.
Speaker 2: I'm waiting for you to say, so done. Where are well?
Speaker 3: I was gonna, you know what for once, I was
Speaker 3: going to say where.
Speaker 2: We were, but we hadn't pulled up with should we
Speaker 2: not bicker anymore?
Speaker 1: All right? See, this is a danger when you're working
Speaker 1: audio that there's always audio to play back what that's
Speaker 1: actually pretty mild editorial.
Speaker 3: I think we also had a fight where because I
Speaker 3: was saying that Dan doesn't say yes and enough as
Speaker 3: a scene partner.
Speaker 1: Yes and enough.
Speaker 3: Yeah, she didn't know what I was.
Speaker 2: Talking about. That the role of a reporter is really
Speaker 2: to do what your producer tells you. And it's possible
Speaker 2: that that maybe he got blurred after. Like I meant,
Speaker 2: one point, we were doing like six hours in the
Speaker 2: car next day, six hours in the car next day,
Speaker 2: and then when you stop, it's to do these emotionally
Speaker 2: charged interviews, and then you're back in the car driving on.
Speaker 2: You're staying in these motel rooms. And at one point
Speaker 2: Nina was up in the middle of the night and
Speaker 2: the next more, you know, she's kind of feverishly looking
Speaker 2: at this thing that seemed really important. And then I
Speaker 2: get a text the next morning saying I need to
Speaker 2: talk to you. And the first thing we say is
Speaker 2: she's back in the car, the microphone's back on. But
Speaker 2: I wouldn't have wanted to do it with anyone else.
Speaker 2: And that's the thing that is true. Everything in these
Speaker 2: next four episodes is from Nina. Like I, she drove this.
Speaker 2: The stuff we found, I would never have expected she
Speaker 2: found it. I'm very much just walking around asking the
Speaker 2: questions on tape. This is where Nina took charge of
Speaker 2: the investigation without being asked, because it was mine, without asking,
Speaker 2: without asking, she took charge of the investigation and just
Speaker 2: dragged it into being something it was never going to
Speaker 2: be that good, but Nina made it.
Speaker 3: Dan is exaggerating that. Dan, there's worked a huge amount
Speaker 3: on this as well.
Speaker 1: Coming from that sort of confer emotionally draining, physically taxing,
Speaker 1: our duous investigative work. To move in between those different
Speaker 1: things presumably is going back to that skill.
Speaker 2: That you my wife will talk about this though. I
Speaker 2: really struggle with the transition from work out of work
Speaker 2: into family and I'm not very good at it, partly
Speaker 2: because our work is intense in terms of the subject
Speaker 2: because most of my work seems to be murder at
Speaker 2: the moment, but also the intensity which we bring to
Speaker 2: it because we're writing scripts, we're writing articles, and then
Speaker 2: particularly if you're working from home, to flip from that
Speaker 2: into dinner time. I've got three kids, one of them
Speaker 2: is three. It's up to my wife hates I want
Speaker 2: to say this. It's rolling chaos, and to flip from
Speaker 2: basically intense murder to oh, it's dinner time with a
Speaker 2: three year old. Cannot do it. I try so hard.
Speaker 2: I'm getting better, but I'm working on that.
Speaker 1: So yeah.
Speaker 2: It look, we're not perfect at it, but we're doing
Speaker 2: our best. It does affect your sleep, yeah, it has
Speaker 2: had dreams about William Tyrrel. I've got to the point
Speaker 2: where before I go to sleep, I tell myself, don't
Speaker 2: think about William toil, because I won't go to sleep otherwise.
Speaker 1: Will we ever find out what happened to William Tyrell?
Speaker 1: The answer to that when we come back.
Speaker 2: Let's talk a.
Speaker 1: Little bit then about the next four episodes of Witness, which,
Speaker 1: as you say, being released from tomorrow Monday, May nineteen.
Speaker 1: As I said at the start, you have uncovered an
Speaker 1: awful lot of information and that will obviously there'll be
Speaker 1: new information in each of the four episodes. What can
Speaker 1: you tell us our audience about what you have uncovered?
Speaker 3: First of all, Yeah, so we came to the end
Speaker 3: of the inquest. That's where we left our last episodes.
Speaker 2: That's the inquest into William's disappearance.
Speaker 3: Yeah, and that inquest it ended very abruptly. In fact,
Speaker 3: they canceled.
Speaker 2: The last week with a few days warning. They just
Speaker 2: said we're not going to have the next hearings.
Speaker 3: And I think, again, naively, I was sort of hoping, well,
Speaker 3: we'll go through the inquest and we'll get all the
Speaker 3: answers that we need. We won't have any questions left.
Speaker 3: We got to the end of the inquest, I had
Speaker 3: more questions than ever and that's when we started looking
Speaker 3: at some of those questions. For this next part of
Speaker 3: the series. What we decided to focus on was a
Speaker 3: particular person of interest in the case who we felt
Speaker 3: there were remaining questions about at the inquest, and so
Speaker 3: we've really gone deep on some of the evidence that
Speaker 3: was presented at the inquest about him. We've gone on
Speaker 3: and done our own investigation from there. We've found new witnesses,
Speaker 3: We've found some potential connections between this person of interest
Speaker 3: and some other unsolved case is on the mid North
Speaker 3: Coast that are not William Tyrrell.
Speaker 2: We found new allegations about an area that police haven't searched,
Speaker 2: but that maybe we certainly would have liked to see
Speaker 2: the police search. And what has struck me throughout is
Speaker 2: that the evidence we've uncovered, a lot of it was
Speaker 2: known to the police, or could have been known to
Speaker 2: the police if they weren't asking questions, and time and
Speaker 2: again it seems that they haven't.
Speaker 3: Again, that's the other thing. I feel like I've been
Speaker 3: naived the whole time. Every time I go into the
Speaker 3: next chapter, I'm like, I was really thinking, we're not
Speaker 3: going to get too far with what we're looking at here,
Speaker 3: because we're going to realize that the police are in
Speaker 3: the middle of an active investigation here and they're going
Speaker 3: to pop up and they're going to tell us to stop.
Speaker 3: Then it became really clear that that was not going
Speaker 3: to happen because the police hadn't spoken to any of
Speaker 3: these people that they would I've had to speak to
Speaker 3: if they were doing a full investigation.
Speaker 2: And people who've told us that they gave this evidence
Speaker 2: and asked that it be passed on to particular detectives
Speaker 2: and they've never had a call back. And we've spoken
Speaker 2: to families of victims who say they call up the
Speaker 2: police and ask them what's the latest, who's in charge
Speaker 2: of the investigation now, and they never get phoned back.
Speaker 2: They never get called back, And you think about the
Speaker 2: enormity of what's happened to the families involved for the
Speaker 2: police not to be responding. It just it just appaused me.
Speaker 2: And that's not every case. I've been a crime reporter
Speaker 2: and some of the most impressive people I've ever met
Speaker 2: are in the New South Wales Police Force. I mean
Speaker 2: that absolutely genuinely. But I used to have such a
Speaker 2: high opinion of the New South Wales Police Force. Over
Speaker 2: the course of these two years working on this investigation,
Speaker 2: that incredibly high opinion of the force. It's just been
Speaker 2: taken knock after knock after knock after knock, and there's
Speaker 2: still some incredibly impressive people there. But I can't say
Speaker 2: like I used to say that, I just think that
Speaker 2: force is just a force for good.
Speaker 3: Nina, what about for you?
Speaker 1: You keep saying that you feel a bit naive sometimes
Speaker 1: because you assume a certain outcome. Has your trust in
Speaker 1: the police investigation and authorities? Has that also been somewhat
Speaker 1: undermined with your experience in this story.
Speaker 3: It definitely has. But I think it's really important to
Speaker 3: say that this police aren't operating in a vacuum when
Speaker 3: they're doing these investigations. Everything's being okayed from the top,
Speaker 3: so they're aware of how these things are operating. So
Speaker 3: I think that some of that accountability has to go
Speaker 3: to the top as well. We can't just be saying, like,
Speaker 3: the police on the ground have done these investigations wrong.
Speaker 2: Yeah, and so Nina's right, and some of the accountability
Speaker 2: has to be kind of reflected back on us as
Speaker 2: the media, because a lot of what you've seen with
Speaker 2: the William Toole investigation is newspapers TV taking information from
Speaker 2: the police uncritically and publishing it. And I've had conversations
Speaker 2: with journalists who have said that almost word for word
Speaker 2: on the back of the most recent inquest, which showed
Speaker 2: no evidence against the foster mother, who have said to me,
Speaker 2: we took this information from the police in good faith
Speaker 2: and it turns out it wasn't fair, And maybe the
Speaker 2: mistake is we took it in good faith and just
Speaker 2: repeated what we were told. And you can say that
Speaker 2: about Bill Spedding, and you can say that about me
Speaker 2: because I reported on Bill Spedding when he was arrested.
Speaker 2: He was charged unrelated offenses, but he was charged and
Speaker 2: ultimately that case was thrown out and it was described
Speaker 2: as the worst case of malicious prosecution in the history
Speaker 2: of New South Wales. But I reported it all in
Speaker 2: good faith. So I'm not innocent here. But I do
Speaker 2: think when Nina talks about accountability, you've got to look
Speaker 2: at the cops in charge, and you do have to
Speaker 2: look at the media.
Speaker 1: Once all the information that's going to be revealed in
Speaker 1: these new four episodes, is out there in the public
Speaker 1: domain later in the week. What would you be anticipating
Speaker 1: or hoping? Maybe both of those you can answer. In
Speaker 1: terms of the police investigation.
Speaker 3: I would like to see the police investigate some of
Speaker 3: this new information that we've found, and if they don't,
Speaker 3: I would.
Speaker 2: Like to know why Nina's more hopeful than I am.
Speaker 3: Again, if you I'm going in a bit nicely, I'll
Speaker 3: come back to you.
Speaker 2: I would like to see. I would like to see
Speaker 2: a lot, if I'm honest. At this point, we know
Speaker 2: because the lead lawyer at the inquest just before Christmas
Speaker 2: of last year, said that there is no evidence, no
Speaker 2: forensic evidence, no eyewitness evidence about what happened to William
Speaker 2: in terms of how William was taken from that house
Speaker 2: where he was last known to be to wherever he
Speaker 2: is now. So we know there is no evidence. I
Speaker 2: would like to see the police and the coroner stop
Speaker 2: and say, well, that's not good enough. We're not just
Speaker 2: going to wrap up the investigation, which they're due to
Speaker 2: do later this year, when the coroner will hand down
Speaker 2: a report. I would like them to say, we're not
Speaker 2: accepting that we are going to throw everything at it
Speaker 2: again until we find William. I would also, and this
Speaker 2: is where it gets impossible. I would like to see
Speaker 2: them do that for do you know how many unsolved
Speaker 2: homicides there are in New South Wales? There are hundreds,
Speaker 2: hundreds and hundreds of families whose loved ones were murdered
Speaker 2: or went missing and have no answers. I would love
Speaker 2: to see them do that for all of those. And
Speaker 2: I would love for there to be a proper investigation,
Speaker 2: and I mean it's going to have to be special
Speaker 2: Commission or Royal Commission powers into firstly what went wrong
Speaker 2: with the William Tirell investigation, because ten years later we
Speaker 2: haven't found him. But also i'd love to see that
Speaker 2: investigation into what went wrong with all these other unsolved homicides,
Speaker 2: because the closer you look at them, you realize that
Speaker 2: things were done wrong in a lot of them. I
Speaker 2: would love to see all of that. I don't expect
Speaker 2: to see any of it, and that that really bothers me.
Speaker 1: Do you think we will ever find out what happened
Speaker 1: to William Tyrrel?
Speaker 3: I hope that we get answers. Am I hopeful that
Speaker 3: we will. It's looking less and less likely ten years on.
Speaker 3: Witnesses are getting older, dying, they're losing their memories. And
Speaker 3: you know, there are witnesses that we've spoken to in
Speaker 3: these new episodes that are coming out this week that
Speaker 3: the police haven't spoken to yet, but by this point
Speaker 3: their memories are already going. So we know that it's
Speaker 3: too late for the police really to speak to these people.
Speaker 3: It may be too late, but I really really hope
Speaker 3: we get answers.
Speaker 2: I think we might. I think we might, And it
Speaker 2: might well be something that comes up seemingly out of
Speaker 2: the blue. A new witness comes forward, a new piece
Speaker 2: of evidence, A detective picks up the file and goes, well,
Speaker 2: what about that? That happens in other cases. But I'm
Speaker 2: pretty sure that if it does happen, and we know
Speaker 2: this from talking to other detectives, that if that does happen,
Speaker 2: if we do get an answer, that answer will already
Speaker 2: be there in the files somewhere. The police have got
Speaker 2: so many tens of thousands of different documents and exhibits
Speaker 2: and reports and statements. The little detail that is the
Speaker 2: key to this will be in that file somewhere. They
Speaker 2: just haven't found it yet or realized what it is
Speaker 2: and if we do answer this case, I bet you
Speaker 2: are able to go back and say there that's the
Speaker 2: point it went wrong.
Speaker 1: What role also does public scrutiny play in this in
Speaker 1: terms of going back to accountability when it comes to police?
Speaker 1: We know that this new information will be picked up
Speaker 1: by all other media across Australia. What you have uncovered
Speaker 1: will there'll be huge public interest in it for the
Speaker 1: reasons that we've talked about, because William's disappearance has been
Speaker 1: a source of fascination for eleven years. Now, we know
Speaker 1: that that sort of public appetite, scrutiny renewed interest and
Speaker 1: demand for answers. Is this new information being investigated? Dan,
Speaker 1: you talked about investigators not returning phone calls from witnesses,
Speaker 1: not having their opportunity to speak being taken up. Are
Speaker 1: you optimistic, either of you, that that sort of interest
Speaker 1: that these new four episodess going to put it back
Speaker 1: on the front burner in a way that the inquests
Speaker 1: we thought would and didn't.
Speaker 3: Well, we know, I mean, we've spoken to homicide detectives
Speaker 3: about this, about the role that the media plays in
Speaker 3: the kind of resourcing that they get and the pressure
Speaker 3: that they get politically, Yeah, it can definitely push push
Speaker 3: resources onto a case and give them a more of
Speaker 3: a focus. I don't know whether we will see that
Speaker 3: in this case.
Speaker 2: It can happen, though, Yeah, it does happen. And that's
Speaker 2: when the job's really good. When you do see a
Speaker 2: case that has been forgotten or put to one side,
Speaker 2: or left unopened, and you do see it picked up
Speaker 2: where you pick it up, and then you see because
Speaker 2: what happens is it's on the front pages or on
Speaker 2: the websites or on the TV. The politicians pick up
Speaker 2: the phone and they ask the police commissioner what's going on.
Speaker 2: The police commissioner picks up the phone and asks they
Speaker 2: had a homicide, what's going on? And that filters down
Speaker 2: and suddenly you've got people looking for answers. So it
Speaker 2: can happen.
Speaker 1: It can happen, and when it does happen, it will
Speaker 1: happen because of the two of you.
Speaker 3: If it happens, yeah, I wouldn't say it's because of
Speaker 3: the two of us. That a lot of really brave
Speaker 3: people have come forward and spoken, and they're the ones
Speaker 3: who are really putting themselves on the line to do that.
Speaker 3: We're just staying at with the microphone. So it's definitely
Speaker 3: won't come down to us.
Speaker 1: But it is that pressure though, isn't it. And it
Speaker 1: is giving a platform for those people to be heard
Speaker 1: and then force some pressure to be brought to bear
Speaker 1: on authorities to act. My final question for you both
Speaker 1: and is about the people that are at the heart
Speaker 1: of this case, William's love to answer his families. Do
Speaker 1: you believe that this what might transpire this week in
Speaker 1: the public domain. Do you think that will bring them
Speaker 1: some sort of sense of relief. Obviously you've spoken to them,
Speaker 1: you know them. Are you able to talk a little
Speaker 1: bit about what you think this new information might mean
Speaker 1: for them, how they're feeling and again, with the case
Speaker 1: back in the headlines this week, what it might mean
Speaker 1: for them in terms of that elusive goal of closure.
Speaker 2: We've spoken to some of them. Some of them have
Speaker 2: chosen not to speak to us, and we had to
Speaker 2: respect that because what they're going through. We can't imagine
Speaker 2: to lose a child in those circumstances and never have
Speaker 2: an answer. So we have spoken to some of them,
Speaker 2: both biological family and foster family. I met with some
Speaker 2: of them just a few days ago, I'll be honest,
Speaker 2: I think the effect will be turbulence for them, emotional turbulence.
Speaker 2: But the sense that I get at the moment from
Speaker 2: talking to them is of anger. Anger everything that has
Speaker 2: played out since that moment that William was reported missing,
Speaker 2: Anger at the lack of a resolution, Anger that we're
Speaker 2: still here ten years ago, basically asking why hasn't this
Speaker 2: been fixed? And I think that anger is going to
Speaker 2: flare again as a result of what we're about to report.
Speaker 1: Well, congratulations on everything that you have achieved so far
Speaker 1: and in these upcoming new four episodes of Witness William Tyrrel,
Speaker 1: Nina Young, Dan Box, It's been an absolute pleasure to
Speaker 1: talk to you. Thank you everyone for joining our editorial meeting.
Speaker 1: I think you would agree.
Speaker 3: That's a way more glamorous, not your usual.
Speaker 1: Of course, there was audio, because, as we've just discovered
Speaker 1: thanks to Emily, we always have audio of all of
Speaker 1: our conversations. Not really hr that's not that's not legal.
Speaker 1: You can find out more about the Witness William Yrrel
Speaker 1: podcast via the link in our show notes, or search
Speaker 1: for Witness William Tyrrel wherever you get your podcasts. You
Speaker 1: can also watch this into view on YouTube by following
Speaker 1: the link in our show notes. Thank you for joining
Speaker 1: me today. If you've enjoyed this episode, let us know
Speaker 1: by leaving a review or sending it to a friend.
Speaker 1: And make sure you're following something to talk about, because
Speaker 1: we'll be back with another exclusive guest next week.