A senior detective has made a damning public admission on the suspected whereabouts of missing boy William Tyrrell whose body has never been found.
Detective Sergeant Andrew Lonergan told a local court he believes Tyrrell’s former foster mother knows where the child’s body is buried.
The sensational revelation comes after a high-profile search around his foster grandmother’s home in November last year failed to make a breakthrough.
The woman, who cannot be named for legal reasons, appeared in Sydney’s Downing Centre Local Court on Thursday on unrelated charges.
She is accused of lying to the NSW Crime Commission about whether she had ever struck another child in her care with a wooden spoon.
However, her lawyers argue the charges are being used to pressure her into revealing and giving police information about William’s mysterious disappearance.
Detective Sergeant Andrew Lonergan told Downing Centre Local Court the police’s main objective is to find out where the child is.
“I have formed the view [she] knows where William Tyrrell is,” he said.
The woman’s defence, Barrister John Stratton SC, said that was a false belief.
“You are hoping to break her spirit,” Mr Stratton said.
William was aged three when he went missing from a home at Kendall on the NSW mid-north coast in 2014.
Foster mother’s charges
Audio recording from listening devices placed in the home of William Tyrell’s former foster mother recorded what police allege is the woman hitting a child, who is not the missing boy, with a wooden spoon.
The child can be heard threatening to call the police beforehand.
A woman is then heard telling the child to “stand up” three times.
“Where’d you put the wooden spoon?” the court heard a woman on the recording say.
The child then pleads, screams and cries, and is told to turn around and move her hands before smacking sounds are heard.
“She’s still going on about it,” the woman is heard telling her husband in a later phone call intercepted by police.
The hearing is ongoing.
No answers eight years on
September marked eight years since three-year-old William went missing at his foster grandmother’s home in Kendall.
A search by residents and emergency service workers of scrub, creeks and paddocks in the Kendall area began within hours of William going missing, but where unable to uncover the boy or knowledge of his whereabouts.
His 11th birthday passed in June.
In the years since his disappearance, no definite answers behind the disappearance of William, who was last seen wearing a Spiderman costume, have been found despite hundreds of people being labelled as ‘persons of interest’ during the investigation.
No one has yet been charged.
In November 2021, police launched a high-profile search for William’s remains in the area around his foster grandmother’s home, including a concrete slab at the home that was laid after he disappeared.
The search concluded in December without any obvious breakthroughs, but investigations are ongoing and a $1 million reward for information on the case still stands.
