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Cleo Smith investigators to 'retrace steps' that led to Carnarvon house where girl rescued

Police at the house where Cleo was rescued 18 days after being reported missing. (ABC News: Evelyn Manfield)

Collecting evidence to show four-year-old Cleo Smith was held against her will in a Carnarvon home is only part of the ongoing work for police investigators.

They also continue to gather evidence to help prosecutors try to prove beyond reasonable doubt that Cleo was taken from her family's tent at the Blowholes campsite, 70 kilometres north of Carnarvon, on October 16.

Members of the 140-strong WA Police team that painstakingly pieced together where she was and freed her on Wednesday morning will be there for weeks to come.

Terence Darrell Kelly, 36, was not required to enter a plea when appeared in the Carnarvon Magistrates Court yesterday charged with forcibly taking a child under 16, and one other charge.

The media presence outside Carnarvon Court where Cleo Smith's alleged kidnapper Terence Kelly faced court yesterday.  (ABC News: James Carmody.)

For police, that is not the end of the matter.

Dozens of police officers, including homicide detectives, forensic officers and drone pilots, remain in Carnarvon to find out what happened in the 18 days that she was missing. 

"Importantly for the police now the focus is no longer on Cleo," Acting Police Commissioner Col Blanch told ABC Radio Perth shortly before the court appearance.

Acting Police commissioner Col Blanch says the investigation will now retrace the steps that led Cleo being found in the house. (ABC News: Rebecca Trigger)

"The focus is on doing an investigation into who did this," he said. 

"From the police perspective, we're backing away from the conversations around Cleo and really focusing on how did this happen, who was involved, what happened in those 18 days and what evidence do we have from each and every one of those 18 days forensically.

"There's a real huge investigation going on with the same taskforce members and that is to retrace those steps that led to that house and where we found Cleo."

The investigation will also including gaining an insight into what happened from Cleo Smith. (Supplied)

That investigation involves interviews with Cleo herself by specialist child interviewers, and interviews with Mr Kelly, which began yesterday.

But it also involves continuing to work with the Carnarvon community, in particular with neighbours who may have observed something.

Police will again trawl through footage captured from the Blowholes area, as well as witness statements from people who were there that night.  (ABC News: Evelyn Manfield)

Police have also renewed their call for CCTV footage from businesses, homes or anywhere else, broadening the appeal to between Friday, October 15 and Tuesday, November 2.  

They will also continue to analyse hundreds of calls to Crime Stoppers, witness statements from more than 100 people at the campsite, and information from existing data seized from CCTV footage and phones.

A timeline of events leading to Cleo Smith's rescue.

"We're going to have to put together a very comprehensive timeline of what we say we have evidence to prove has occurred over those days," Mr Blanch said.

"If we're looking for something that's occurred at the Blowholes, it's information that would be relevant to that," Mr Blanch said. 

"So if we can track, if we can put people in certain locations at certain times that's what we look to identify and obviously from that we can build a picture of who was there, who shouldn't have been there and led to us identifying this person."

The maximum sentence for forcibly taking a child under 16 is 20 years imprisonment.

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