William Tyrrell’s foster sobbed in court as she was repeatedly hammered with questions about allegedly about covering up the boy’s death and dumping his body.
The inquest into the toddler’s 2014 disappearance also heard a secretly recorded phone call in which it was claimed she talked to a friend about ‘a skeleton’ in a clearing’ that would be eventually discovered.
‘That’s what I’m saying, he’ll be found in 30 or 40 or 50 or 200 years time when they are doing a clearing and they find the skeleton,’ the foster mother said during along phone call to a friend on the night of October 15, 2021.
‘I don’t believe that if I had done anything to William that I would have tried to cover it up, I would own up to it. I just can’t see it in me.
‘I mean how much time did I have, It’s just impossible, no evidence. Apparently there were smells of bodies in ditches and pathways.’
The foster mother told her friend that she was furious at the police officers investigating William’s disappearance: ‘
‘That’s what makes me so angry. They spend so much on staff, you’ve got zero, you’ve wasted millions and millions and you have nothing, absolutely nothing, after seven years,’ she said.
The foster mother of William Tyrrell has been grilled about covering up his death falling from a verandah and disposing of his body – which she has tearily denied.
William Tyrrell’s foster mother (centre) sobbed as she was interrogated closely in a court hammering by counsel in the secretive NSW Crime Commission
The phone call, played a month later during an interrogation of the foster mother by the NSW Crime Commission, was heard during a broadcast of the commission’s interview.
In a further bombshell development on Thursday, NSW Police asked for the foster mother to be recalled for questioning before the inquest for the first time since she testified in 2019.
In the video played at the William Tyrrell inquest in Sydney on Thursday, Crime Commission Counsel Assisting Sophie Callan seized on the foster mother’s word about finding a skeleton in ‘a clearing’ as evidence she dumped William’s body.
William vanished on September 12, 2014, from her mother’s home in Kendall on the the NSW mid north coast.
Ms Callan asked the foster mother why she hadn’t revealed to police until five days after the disappearance that on that morning she had driven her mother’s car to the local driving school on Batar Creek Road in Kendall, before she had even dialled Triple-0 to report him missing.
‘Do you accept when you took the drive to the riding school you could have dumped William’s body. Did you take his body to the riding school?’
When the foster mother tearily replied, ‘No’ twice, her lawyer raised an objection, to which the Crimes Commissioner Michael Barnes told Ms Callan, ‘okay, put it it her, did she do it.’
The secrtive Crimes Commission grilled the foster mother over two days, eventually accusing her point blank of covering up William’s death and dumping his body
Ms Callan (SC) then grilled the foster mother with repeated questions about covering up William’s death and disposing of the body.
‘He had gone onto the verandah and fallen down into the ferns. Do you recall finding his body in the ferns under the verandah that day?’ she asked.
The foster mother (FM): ‘No, no.’
SC: ‘Did you find the body and realise he had died.’ Fm: ‘No, No!.’
SC: ‘Did you find his body and realise he had died and there was no point calling emergency services?’ FM: ‘No’.
SC: ‘Did you decide to take charge of the situation that was beyond remedy and hide his body rather that risk (another foster child) being taken away?’ FM: ‘No’.
SC: ‘Did you decide to hide his body rather than let your mother feel a sense of responsibility for that?’ FM: ‘No’.
SC: ‘I want to suggest that William went around that verandah and he toppled over and that he fell down off that verandah’. FM: ‘No, I have found him and I didn’t find him.’
SC: ‘I want to suggest you did find him and put his body in your mother’s car.’ FM: I didn’t.’
SC: ‘There is no suggestion you harmed him and caused his death but that you found him and moved his body. FM: ‘I didn’t.’
Asked what she meant in the phone conversation when talking about his remains being found in a clearing, the foster mother replied, ‘I’m saying he’ll never be found in 200 years time and if they do any clearing and they’ll find his bones.’
SC: ‘Do you think he wandered off at the house?’
FM: ‘He could have wandered off , I thought he had been taken.’
William Tyrrell (pictured) vanished from his foster grandmother’s NSW north coast home on September 12, 2014
Police prepare to search the home where William vanished with ground penetrating radar in 2021 when they resumed looking for the boy who no trace of has been seen since 2014
SC: ‘If he had been taken, it’s unlikely he would be found in any clearing?’ FM: ‘I said the bush is so unbelievably thick, it’s state forest.’
SC: ‘You described the state forest in that area being that thick?’ FM: ‘It could be anywhere’. SC: ‘Anywhere in NSW. Anywhere in Victoria?’ FM: ‘Anywhere.’
SC: ‘If he’d been taken there’s nothing about a clearing that would find his body?’ Fm: ‘ I don’t know.’
Ms Callan then asked the foster mother about the search of the area on Batar Creek Road for William’s remains.
‘Did you have any expectation of William being found’. The foster mother replied, ‘No’.
When Ms Callan asked her ‘Why Not?’, the foster mother replied, ‘Because I didn’t take him there.’
Ms Callan: ‘Where did you take him.’
Foster mother: ‘I didn’t take him anywhere.’
Before her grilling over two days at the Crime Commission, the foster mother was told by its Commissioner, Michael Barnes at the commencement of the hearing that: ‘You have no right to silence.
He told her she had no right to refuse to answer questions, and if she gave a false answer she could go to jail for up to five years.
‘Our primary objective is to recover William’s body and to allow it to be respectfully interred, to accept he is gone and won’t be coming back,’ the Commissioner said to her.
‘We all accept you loved William and would not have intentionally done him harm.
‘We all accept accidents can happen and even the most organised persons .. can be forced to make snap decisions.
‘If that is what happened on the day William went missing, this is your chance to safely and privately explain that.’
NSW Police asked on Thursday for the foster mother to be recalled for questioning before the inquest for the first time since she testified in 2019.
The inquest into William Tyrrell’s disappearance is currently probing the police case that William died by falling from the verandah of the Kendall house and that his foster mother disposed of his remains.
The foster mother and foster father have both repeatedly denied having any knowledge or involvement in the disappearance of William.
The inquest will resume for a final week before Christmas and NSW Deputy State Coroner Harriet Grahame is due to hand down her findings in 2025, around six years since she began the investigation.
***
Read more at DailyMail.co.uk