Bring William Home

“I couldn’t see him and couldn’t hear him..It’s like the world just came to a screaming halt.”

For us he’s the three-year-old in the Spiderman suit whose happy face was all over the news, but for a mother and father he’s their little boy who they haven’t seen in a year.

The little boy is William Tyrrell, and this week marks a year since he disappeared from the yard of a sleepy home in Suburb on the New South Wales coast.

Last night William’s parents opened up for the first time on 60 Minutes; the heartache, the questions, and the plea that somebody, somewhere must know what happened to William.

The day was September 12, last year. The Sydney family of four made an impromptu trip to visit William’s grandmother in Kendall. After a morning of playing with his mother outside the house, William’s mother and grandmother sat in the back yard watching William before he wandered around the side of the house and out of sight. William’s mother could still hear him “roaring” and then nothing.

“There was no wind, there were no birds, there was no movement, there was nothing. And I’m looking out around this garden, I’m thinking, ‘Where are you?’ And there was nothing,” William’s mother told 60 Minutes.

Imagining her son, dressed in his Spiderman suit, might have wandered down to the front of the house to check if his father had returned home, she called out  “Can you can you see Daddy’s car?”

But there was no answer.

After fifteen minutes of frantically searching the house and the yard, the desperate mother called the police.

“I said right from the start- someone has taken William. It was absolutely screaming at me.”

“He was stolen, abducted”¦whatever word you want to use. Somebody decided to take him.”

When Detective Vanessa Partridge arrived at the house later to investigate she immediately knew something was wrong.

“I just had this feeling that things weren’t right. There’s”¦ There’s something wrong. William’s not missing,” she told 60 Minutes. 

By the end of the day 200 police officers, SES workers and locals were searching for William.
The search grew and grew, but after a week police told William’s family to return to their Sydney home.

“We had to go back to our house, to our family without him. It was heart-wrenching,” William’s mother said. “When I go into his room and I’d say goodnight to him, and I’d lie in his bed”¦ and I’d just pray that he wasn’t scared, that somebody was loving him. Because it’s just, you can’t take him.”

After a gut-wrenching year for William’s family, they are still no closer to the truth of what happened to their little boy with the cheeky grin.

Detective Inspector Gary Jubelin told 60 Minutes more than 1000 people have been interviewed in the case of William’s disappearance and there have been more than 1400 information reports from the public. While William has a “complicated family history”, with unconfirmed media reports he is a foster child, the detective confirmed that all associated family have been ruled out as suspects.

The circumstances point to William being snatched at the front of the house; close to the road, rather than closer to the house, just metres from his mother and grandmother.

Jubelin said it is more likely the excitable boy ran down the driveway expecting to greet his father.

“Then if someone who has the propensity to commit an evil act like this decides, ‘This is a situation I’m gonna take advantage of,’ and that’s why we call it an opportunistic situation, opportunistic crime.”

The detective also believes William’s Spiderman suit may have made it easier for a would-be predator to momentarily earn the boy’s trust.

“I think the Spider-Man suit plays a part in this, in that”¦ any stranger could come up and you could get a rapport happening with William straight away by calling him Spider-Man,” he said.

Local washing machine repairman Bill Spedding was identified as a person of interest earlier in the investigation. In January police seized a number of items from his Bonny Hills home and Laurieton office, on the basis he was due to fix a washing machine at William’s grandmother’s house close to the time the toddler went missing. But police have repeatedly said he was not a suspect but “a person on interest”.
New information surrounding the case was revealed to the public on last night’s segment. On the morning William went missing, his mother saw two cars parked next to each other in the street with their driver side window down.
Detective Jubelin said the cars were suspicious because the cars were not parked in drive ways, but rather, between driveways, which were about 100 meters apart due to the spread out acreage lots on the street.

“There’s no logical explanation as to why they would park in the location they were,” Jubelin said given it was a dead end street with no call for through traffic.

While Dubelin remains in contact with William’s parents daily and says the police will do everything humanly possible to find out what happened to William, his heartbroken parents beg for anyone that knows anything to come forward.

They desperately want their boy with “the most amazing smile” home.

“There’s nothing to suggest he’s not alive. He’s got nowhere else to be but home and that’s where he needs to be. For all of us. For him.”

If you or anyone you know has or may have information relating to William Tyrrell’s disappearance, police are encouraging you to come forward by calling Crime Stoppers on 1800 333 000.