William Tyrrell’s adoptive mother sobbed in court as she was repeatedly bombarded with questions about allegedly covering up the boy’s death and disposing of his body.
The inquest into the girl’s disappearance in 2014 also heard a secretly recorded phone call in which it was claimed she spoke to a friend about “a skeleton” in a clearing that would eventually be discovered.
“That’s what I’m saying, they’ll find it in 30, 40, 50, 200 years, when they’re clearing and they find the skeleton,” the foster mother said during a phone call to a friend that night. from October 15, 2021.
“I don’t think if he had done something to William that was trying to cover it up, he would recognize it.” I just can’t see it in myself.
‘I mean, how much time did I have? It’s simply impossible, there is no proof. Apparently there was the smell of corpses in ditches and roads.
The adoptive mother told her friend that she was furious with the police officers investigating William’s disappearance: ‘
‘That’s what makes me so angry. “They spend so much on personnel, you have nothing, you have wasted millions and millions and you have nothing, absolutely nothing, after seven years,” he said.
William Tyrrell’s adoptive mother has been questioned for covering up his death by falling from a terrace and disposing of his body, which she has tearfully denied.
William Tyrrell’s adoptive mother (centre) sobbed as she was questioned closely in court by the lawyer for the secretive New South Wales Crime Commission.
The phone call, played a month later during an interrogation of the adoptive mother by the New South Wales Crime Commission, was heard during the commission’s broadcast of the interview.
In another explosive development on Thursday, New South Wales police asked for the adoptive mother to be called in for questioning ahead of the investigation for the first time since she testified in 2019.
In video played at the William Tyrrell inquest in Sydney on Thursday, the Crime Commission lawyer helping Sophie Callan seized on the adoptive mother’s word about finding a skeleton in “a clearing” as evidence that dumped William’s body.
William disappeared on September 12, 2014 from his mother’s home in Kendall, on the New South Wales mid north coast.
Ms Callan asked the adoptive mother why she had not revealed to police until five days after the disappearance that she had driven her mother’s car to the local driving school on Batar Creek Road in Kendall that morning, before even scoring Triple-0. to report his disappearance.
Do you accept that when you took the road to the riding school you could have disposed of William’s body? Did you take his body to the riding school?
When the foster mother tearfully answered “No” twice, her lawyer raised an objection, to which Crime Commissioner Michael Barnes told Ms Callan: “Okay, tell her, she did it.”
The Secret Crimes Commission questioned the adoptive mother for two days, eventually charging her directly with covering up William’s death and disposing of his body.
Ms Callan (SC) then questioned the foster mother with repeated questions about covering up William’s death and disposing of the body.
‘He had gone out onto the terrace and fallen among the ferns. Do you remember finding his body that day in the ferns under the porch? she asked.
The adoptive mother (FM): ‘No, no.’
SC: ‘Did you find the body and realize he had died?’ Fm: ‘No, no!.’
SC: ‘Did you find his body and realize he had died and there was no point in calling the emergency services?’ FM: “No.”
SC: ‘Did you decide to take charge of the hopeless situation and hide his body rather than risk having him (another foster child) taken?’ FM: “No.”
SC: ‘Did you decide to hide his body instead of letting your mother feel responsible for it?’ FM: “No.”
SC: ‘I want to suggest that William went around that verandah and fell and fell off that verandah.’ FM: ‘No, I found it and I didn’t find it.’
SC: “I want to suggest that you found him and put his body in your mother’s car.” FM: I didn’t.
SC: ‘There is no suggestion that you harmed him and caused his death, but rather that you found him and moved his body. FM: “I didn’t.”
When asked what she meant in the phone conversation when she talked about his remains being found in a clearing, the adoptive mother responded: “I’m saying they will never find him in 200 years and if they make a clearing they will find him.” his bones.’
SC: ‘Do you think he went home?’
FM: ‘It could have been lost, I thought they had taken it.’
William Tyrrell (pictured) disappeared from his adoptive grandmother’s home on the New South Wales north coast on September 12, 2014.
Police are preparing to search the house where William disappeared with ground-penetrating radar in 2021 as they resume the search for the boy who has not been seen since 2014.
SC: ‘If they had taken him, is it unlikely that they would find him in some clearing?’ FM: “I said the bush is incredibly thick, it’s a state forest.”
SC: ‘Did you describe the state forest in that area as being so thick?’ FM: ‘It could be anywhere.’ SC: ‘Anywhere in New South Wales. Somewhere in Victoria? FM: ‘Anywhere’.
SC: ‘If they had taken him, isn’t there anything about a clearing where they would find his body?’ Fm: ‘I don’t know.’
Ms Callan then asked the foster mother about the search for William’s remains in the Batar Creek Road area.
“Did you have any expectations that William would be found?” The foster mother responded, “No.”
When Mrs Callan asked: “Why not?” the foster mother replied: “Because I didn’t take him there.”
Mrs. Callan: “Where did you take him?”
Adoptive mother: “I didn’t take him anywhere.”
Before her questioning over two days at the Crime Commission, the foster mother’s commissioner, Michael Barnes, told her at the start of the hearing that: ‘You have no right to remain silent.
He told her 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.”
New South Wales Police on Thursday asked for the adoptive mother to be called in for questioning ahead of the investigation for the first time since she testified in 2019.
The investigation into the disappearance of William Tyrrell is currently investigating the police case that William died after falling from the porch of Kendall’s home and that his adoptive mother disposed of his remains.
Both the adoptive mother and adoptive father have repeatedly denied any knowledge of or involvement in William’s disappearance.
The inquest will resume during the final week before Christmas, with New South Wales deputy state coroner Harriet Grahame due to deliver her findings in 2025, some six years since the inquest began.