Documents reveal how police are investigating a dying man’s startling alleged confession about ‘picking up’ Australia’s most famous missing child, William Tyrrell, and driving him north.
The coroner examining the toddler’s 2014 abduction from his foster grandma’s home on the NSW mid north coast this week released previously unseen evidence files.
The sensitive police documents show for the first time how detectives have worked to corroborate or disprove stunning claims that nursing home patient Ray Porter allegedly made about Tyrrell last year.
Months ago, a court hearing was rocked by testimony from an aged care nurse that Porter had rested his head on her shoulder during a medication run in April 2019 and hinted he knew something.
‘I didn’t do anything wrong,’ he told the nurse, Kirston Okpegbue.
‘All I did was give my best mate and the boy a lift.’
Police have worked to corroborate or disprove an extraordinary claim William Tyrrell may have been abducted by an elderly paedophile and driven away by his friend Ray Porter. Above, is a photograph of Porter’s white stationwagon from roadside cameras the day before William disappeared
Ray Porter – pictured for the first time – was a close friend of William Tyrrell person-of-interest Frank Abbott. He allegedly made an extraordinary confession to aged care nurse Kirston Okpegbue (right), prior to his death
Another police image showing Ray Porter’s stationwagon near Port Macquarie on September 11, 2014, the day before William disappeared
‘Who?’ Ms Okpegbue asked.
‘The boy that went missing down in Kendall?’ Porter replied, before confirming he was speaking about Tyrrell, who has not been seen since September 12, 2014.
Porter allegedly claimed he picked up William and his mate from behind the Kendall School and then drove the pair north 300 kilometres.
William Tyrrell vanished from his foster grandmother’s home on September 12, 2014. The three-year-old has never been seen since
Porter had only ever spoken of two of his friends, one of them being his ‘fishing buddy’ Frank Abbott, the court heard.
Abbott is a 79-year-old paedophile prisoner who has attracted increasing attention from Tyrrell investigators in the past year.
Abbott has denied any involvement in Tyrrell’s disappearance or death.
The question for police and the coroner is whether Porter’s statement s a tantalising clue about what happened to the toddler – or just a nonsense statement.
Porter can no longer explain himself as he has since died from a kidney infection.
The new coronial documents detail how investigators have had to cobble together records of Porter’s alleged travels on the mid north coast in September 2014, the month William vanished.
Data and photographs from Roads and Maritime Services cameras indicate that Porter’s white stationwagon traveled around the region over several days that month.
A recent document says in the two days after William vanished, Porter’s car was recorded passing the Kew southbound camera on the morning of September 13, 2014, and the north- and south-bound cameras at Port Macquarie, the next day.
Significantly, investigators have also obtained evidence placing Porter at Port Macquarie Hospital the day William was last seen in the foster nanna’s yard.
Porter was a close friend of paedophile prisoner Frank Abbott who has increasingly found himself the subject of investigators’ scrutiny in recent months
A new photograph of William Tyrrell was released to the public following a media application on Tuesday
An undated police note signed by Detective Senior Constable Ari Barr said: ‘Hospital records show that on the 12th September 2014, Porter was at dialysis at Port Macquarie Hospital between 9am and 3pm.
MOMENT TYRRELL NEIGHBOUR FINDS HIDDEN CAMERA
Pictures show the moment Paul Savage plucked a hidden camera from bushland near his house
Police documents also reveal the moment a former person-of-interest in the case, Paul Savage, allegedly removed a police camera tracking his movements in the bush near his house.
The camera continued to take photographs of Mr Savage as he plucked the hidden spy device from scrub near his home in Kendall.
Mr Savage was once a person-of-interest in the Tyrrell case but has always denied any role in the boy’s disappearance.
Porter’s car wasn’t picked up by highway cameras between his Wauchope home and the hospital that critical day.
But detectives suggested Porter had likely just used an alternative route, the Oxley Highway, to attend his clinic.
In his conversation with Ms Okpegbue last year, Porter complained about being hassled by police over the Tyrrell case.
‘I don’t want to talk anymore,’ he allegedly fumed.
‘I have had enough of these people coming up to talk to me’.
Ms Okpegbue said his eyes were ‘watery’ at the time of his alleged hallway confession.
The inquest heard Porter still had his mental faculties at the time of his comments.
Other evidence before the inquest described Porter as an ‘unsociable’ friend of Abbott’s.
A statement described how Porter would sometimes pop by his mate’s caravan, which at the time was located near a sawmill at Herons Creek.
Just last month, police dug up bushland near Abbott’s home in a four day search to assist the coroner’s investigations.
The coroner this week also released detailed transcripts of phone conversations Abbott had with his priest friend Martin Parish while in custody last year.
In the conversations, Abbott claims that investigators last year told him ‘garbage’ about finding a Spiderman suit in an apparent bid to get him to confess.
Abbott claimed a relative had told him police believed ‘I’d borrowed somebody’s car and went down and enticed him out of the yard’, possibly with ‘ice cream and lollies’.
William, who was three when he disappeared, was last heard by his foster mother ‘roaring’ like a lion around his grandmother’s yard on Benaroon Drive.
Abbott denies abducting William, saying in one conversation that he’d never been to the dead-end road where the boy’s family lived before.
‘I didn’t even know there was anybody, like any kid in that street, and I’ve never been in that street in me life,’ he said.
The inquest resumes next month.