William Tyrrell’s adoptive mother was asked directly if she had found the boy under the house where he disappeared “under the terrace among the ferns” on the morning he disappeared.
The adoptive mother was asked direct questions about “what she did with William’s body” during an interrogation by the New South Wales Crime Commission, a secretive government body, in 2021.
A video of the adoptive mother’s secret testimony was shown for the first time in open court Thursday, as part of an investigation into the boy’s disappearance and presumed death.
The adoptive mother, who can only be legally identified by the nickname SD, was also asked in the video why she did not call Triple-0, or the adoptive father, when she first realized that the child, who was three years old at the time, was disappeared on September 12, 2014.
“I thought maybe William was gone and maybe (the foster father) had seen him on the road and killed him,” she said.
During the first half of the interrogation in the star chamber, the adoptive mother repeatedly said (more than 50 times) “I don’t know” or “I don’t remember.”
William Tyrrell’s adoptive mother (right) was asked directly if she found him lying under the house on the day he disappeared. She is seen wearing a ribbon that says ‘Where is William?’
In an interview by the New South Wales Crime Commission the adoptive mother was asked if she had found William lying in the tree ferns under the porch of his mother’s house.
In the video, Sophie Callan, a lawyer assisting the New South Wales Crime Commission, is heard asking the adoptive mother why she did not check the terrace of Kendall’s home on the New South Wales mid north coast. South when William disappeared.
She replies: “It never occurred to me to look at the terrace.”
Mrs Callan then asks: ‘In different statements about that, the clearest account is on the tour of the crime scene, (when you said you were) looking for William outside the house, you looked under the terrace, among the ferns .
—Did you find it there? she asked.
The foster mother responded, “No.”
The adoptive mother was also asked about discrepancies in one of her accounts that she was outside on the terrace when William disappeared, and the account that nine people, including his brothers, said she had been inside making tea when he disappeared.
Mrs Callan asked: “Do you accept that you may have been inside making tea when William disappeared?”
Adoptive mother: ‘I don’t know… yes, it’s a possibility.’
Police search Kendall’s home in 2021, around the time the adoptive parents were being questioned at the New South Wales Crime Commission.
At the start of the hearing, NSW Crime Commissioner Michael Barnes told him: “You have no right to remain silent.
”He told her that she had no right to refuse to answer questions and that if she gave a false answer she could go to prison for up to five years.
“Our main objective is to recover William’s body and allow him to be buried respectfully, accepting that he is gone and will not return,” the commissioner told him.
‘We all accept that you loved William and would not have intentionally hurt him.
‘We all accept that accidents can happen and even the most organized people… can be forced to make rash decisions.
“If that’s what happened the day William disappeared, this is your chance to explain it safely and privately.”
Both the mother and adoptive father were later charged with lying to the New South Wales Crime Commission and were both acquitted.
The adoptive mother was also asked: “Did you find his body and realized that he had died and there was no point in calling emergency services?”
Another question asked of SD was: “I want to suggest to you what happened that day: William rolled around on that terrace and fell and it was no one’s fault.”
The inquest into William’s disappearance found that everyone wants to be able to “accept that he’s gone and he’s not coming back.”
Each of the questions was accompanied by the adoptive mother’s firm denials of having any knowledge of Tyrrell’s disappearance, injury, disappearance and death.
William Tyrrell disappeared when he was three years old and has not been seen since September 12, 2014, making it Australia’s most high-profile missing persons case.
At the Crime Commission hearing it was suggested to the foster mother that she “may have dumped William’s body near a riding school”.
Mrs Callan asked the foster mother: ‘Did you take his body (to the riding school in Kendall, on the New South Wales mid-north coast)?’
SD replied: ‘No.’
SD was then asked: ‘Did you decide to deal with the situation that was already hopeless?’ and “did you decide to take charge of the situation and hide his body instead of letting your (SD) mother take…responsibility?”
SD denied both propositions. They were related to William Tyrrell’s adoptive grandmother, who owned the house from which he disappeared and who has since died.
Mrs Callan then told the foster mother that SD found William’s body “and you put his body in your mother’s car, and that’s why you drove (to nearby Kendall Riding School) that day.”
Ms Callan then said: “To be clear, there is no suggestion that you hurt him or caused his death, just that you moved his body.”
The adoptive mother denied Mrs. Callen’s accusations: “No, I didn’t.”
William Tyrrell was last seen playing at his grandmother’s house in Kendall (above) on the New South Wales mid north coast in 2014 and has not been seen since.
One of the last photographs of William Tyrrell taken on the porch of Kendall’s house the morning he disappeared without a trace.
The Crime Commission’s 2021 questioning of both adoptive parents about William’s case came just before police renewed their efforts to find the missing boy’s remains.
The inquest is currently investigating the police theory that William Tyrell’s adoptive mother buried his body in bushland after he fell from a balcony to his death on the morning he disappeared.
Counsel assisting the investigation, Gerard Craddock SC, told the inquest upon reopening on Monday that the police theory was that ‘William must have died at (his adoptive grandmother’s home at) 48 Benaroon Drive (in Kendall).
“The theory… police say, is that she must have quickly resolved that if William’s accidental death was discovered, she might lose ‘Lindsay.'”
Lindsay (not her real name, which cannot be revealed for legal reasons) was another foster child in the care of the foster mother at the time, who also cannot be identified.
“Police claim that in that state of mind, (the foster mother) placed William in his mother’s car,” Craddock said.
“After alerting (a neighbor) about William’s disappearance, (she) drove her mother’s car to Batar Creek Road and placed William’s body somewhere in the brush.”
Craddock has said police had extensively searched the area around Batar Creek Road and did not believe there was any trace of William there.
He also said the search for William after he went missing – with police, firefighters, cadaver dogs, chainsaws and hydraulic equipment – meant the boy had not simply gotten lost in the search area.
“William was unable to travel beyond the intensive search area under his own power,” he said.
‘The conclusion must have been human intervention.
“It is indisputable that no eyewitness can provide an account of how he left the confines of 48 Benaroon Drive.”
The inquiry, which began in 2019 but has been hit by lengthy delays, has now entered its final block of hearings and will take place this week and in the week before Christmas.
William’s disappearance has become one of Australia’s most notorious missing persons cases.
The inquest before Deputy State Coroner Harriet Grahame, examining William’s disappearance and presumed death, was delayed last year as prosecutors weighed charges against the boy’s adoptive mother.
The police handed a brief of evidence to the Director of Public Prosecutions recommending that William’s adoptive mother be charged with perverting the course of justice and interfering with a dead body.
William’s adoptive father was also cleared of five charges of lying to the New South Wales Crime Commission.
The couple has denied any wrongdoing or disposal of his body.
