EXCLUSIVE
The man once considered the prime suspect in William Tyrrell’s disappearance has described how the three-year-old boy’s foster grandmother harassed him over the case.
Paul Savage – who was targeted by Tyrrell task force commander Gary Jubelin before he was sacked from the role – described the strange behaviour of the woman whose home was the last place where William was last seen alive.
Mr Savage remembers going to the foster grandmother’s home after the alarm was raised on September 12, 2014, when neighbours helped in the desperate search.
He still lives opposite the house on Benaroon Drive, Kendall, on the NSW mid north coast where William went missing while wearing his blue and red Spider-Man suit.
Mr Savage told Daily Mail Australia that when he and other residents arrived at the house, the foster grandmother ‘kept on saying how William had been there on the verandah, then he was gone,’ he recalled.
He said William’s foster father was there at the house but the foster mother was not. None of the foster family can be identified for legal reasons.
Mr Savage, now 80 but still fit, said he quickly went to the bushy fringes beyond the top of street, which he knew from his daily walks, to search for William.
William’s foster grandmother, above with a police officer during a crime scene walk through at the house from where the boy vanished, was never called to testify at the inquest into the toddler’s disappearance
Paul Savage said that on the morning William vanished, neighbours were called to the grandma’s house to help in the search for the three-year-old who is still missing
Police search the foster grandmother’s house in late 2021, when the task force rejuvenated investigations into what has become Australia’s most high profile missing child case
He said some neighbours remembered William from a previous stay at the foster grandmother’s house, when the child had attended a street party held for the 90th birthday of a local resident.
‘The little boy just wouldn’t let his foster father out of his sight, followed him round as if he was stuck to him like glue,’ Mr Savage said.
He said it wasn’t apparent that first weekend that William was anything but a lost boy, until more sinister theories emerged, such as abduction by a paedophile, or a cover-up after a death by misadventure.
Mr Savage later endured the glare of suspicion upon him, when it was leaked to the media that he was a ‘person of interest’ in the case.
Detective Chief Inspector Jubelin eyed off Mr Savage as a likely offender and illegally taped a phone conversation with him from police headquarters in November 2017, then three in-person conversations at Benaroon Drive between May and December 2018.
No evidence has ever been presented to suggest Mr Savage was involved and he was exonerated by the Strike Force Rosann investigators who took over the case from now former cop Jubelin.
William’s foster grandmother (left) points out to a policewoman during a crime scene walk through where William might have gone. Paul Savage (right) says the lady pointedly questioned him even before he was wrongly outed as a suspect
But Mr Savage said that in the months after William’s disappearance, while she was still living in the house in question, the foster mother would come over and ask him questions which suggested she suspected him.
Referred to at the William Tyrrell inquest as ‘nanna’ who was having ‘cups of tea’ with the foster mother around the time William vanished from her verandah, the woman was never called to testify at the coroner’s inquiry into William’s disappearance and suspected death.
‘I don’t know who might have said to her, oh he could have done it, but she’d come over and get in my face and say pointedly “how are you Paul”, “what’s wrong?”, “do you want to talk about anything”, “what’s going on”, and look at me in a sort of way,’ said Mr Savage.
‘I’d try and brush her off, but she kept on doing it.’
The foster grandmother sold the house just weeks after William vanished, and moved away, later dying in 2021.
Eight months later, police dropped the bombshell that they now considered the foster grandmother’s daughter – William’s foster mother – as a suspect in William’s case.
Detectives recommended the 59-year-old woman be charged with perverting the course of justice and interfering with a corpse, and a brief of evidence was given to prosecutors.
At a subsequent local court hearing on a different matter, a detective from the Tyrrell task force alleged police told the foster mother ‘we know why, we know how’ William disappeared and his body was disposed of.
‘I’ve formed the view (the foster mother) knows where William Tyrrell is’, Detective Sergeant Andrew Lonergan told Downing Centre Local Court in 2022.
The foster mother has strenuously denied any involvement, and the inquest is due to resume next month.
SF Rosann detectives have asked the NSW Office of the Director of Public Prosecutions to suspend its review of alleged evidence against William Tyrrell’s foster mother until after the next inquest hearings.
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