MICHAEL USHER: ‘Smear campaign’ against William Tyrrell’s foster mother has only derailed efforts to find him

There has been another embarrassing backdown by the detectives investigating the foster mother of the missing toddler William Tyrrell.

They’ve failed to supply evidence to the NSW Director of Public Prosecutions to have William’s foster mother charged over the toddler’s disappearance.

This has been their sole focus for at least the past two years, and maybe longer. With all the resources available to them in a very well-funded NSW police unit, they stopped looking for little William and focused entirely it would seem, on pinning it all on his foster mother.

To now, that hasn’t worked. William remains missing, with not a single forensic clue as to how he disappeared or where his body might be found. Not a hair, not a fibre, not a stain, not a single clue.

It’s a terrible misjustice for William and a terrible way to handle a major crime. One day, a brave police commissioner should investigate how this case went so far off the rails.

It would appear those close to the Tyrrell case have used dirty tricks by leaking details, without substance, to the media to run a smear campaign against the foster mother. For example, every year since Willian disappeared aged just three years old, a passionate team of his supporters who founded the Where’s William campaign have used the anniversary of his disappearance to prompt awareness of his plight. Last year on the eve of that anniversary, someone in the case leaked “news” that William’s foster mother was to be charged over his disappearance.

The leak at that point had no supporting evidence and action. No police turned up to arrest the mother, there was no brief for the DPP. In short, there was nothing. Trust me, when police know they have a case, they make a surprise arrest and the first media know about it is when the suspect is already in custody.

But this leak, a nod and wink to police reporters, torpedoed the anniversary campaign which should have received widespread exposure. It should have put William’s name back out there and appealed for any witnesses. It’s almost as if the investigators didn’t want the public to remember William was missing. That attention might raise legitimate questions for the detectives about why they had no leads and no evidence, despite nine years of searching with extensive resources.

It might also have raised legitimate questions about an increasingly impatient NSW coroner who’d suspended inquiries into William’s presumed death, to give detectives more time to find hard evidence about who may be responsible or have knowledge.

So, approaching the 10-year anniversary of William’s disappearance on the NSW mid-north coast, what do we have? The NSW detectives quietly requested that a review of possible charges and evidence against the foster mother by the NSW DPP, be suspended.

A dead end.

Investigators have used careful language here, mind you. “Suspended”, not dropped. Hinting — not confirming — that charges may be revived after the coroner continues the inquiry later this year. The coroner had been hoping this would all be cleared up before then, but not to be.

The coroner, with quite broad powers, may be able to call witnesses and examine evidence more astutely than the NSW detectives tasked with solving William’s disappearance. The process could expose new evidence.

And questioning the foster mother is entirely legitimate. She and her mother are the last people to see William alive, so far as anyone knows.

But she’s also ruffled feathers along the way. She and her husband had been loyal to the original detective Gary Jubelin, who spectacularly fell out of favour and discipline with the NSW Police hierarchy. She also made complaints about the police and their handling of the case. Now long out of NSW Police, Jubelin had extensively investigated the foster parents and even bugged them. He’d ruled them out.

Ruling them back in is a justified prerogative of any new detective assigned to the case, I don’t argue against that. A fresh look at all the circumstances is and was completely warranted. The new team turning over the case has reportedly settled on the theory that William was injured fatally falling from the deck or balcony of his foster grandmother’s home, in or near the presence of both her and the foster mother, somewhere around 10.30am on September 14, 2014.

They’d say that in his Spiderman suit, little William died there or shortly after. Continue that theory, and these investigators would extend their case to say the foster mother, with her mother’s apparent knowledge, then concealed the limp body of William swiftly and in a manner that meant he’d never be found, all in about 25 minutes, which is when she called 000 to report him missing. Adding here also that the foster father had arrived back at the house only a few minutes after William had disappeared.

Three present adults. A short timeline. Multiple sweeps of the area. A tragic accident. Concealed so perfectly that police would never find a forensic clue.

That’s the current position of the investigating detectives. And without a shred of hard evidence, they’ve employed a lot of public pressure and a string of non-related charges against the foster parents to break them into admissions, it would seem. It hasn’t worked, and I’d argue a couple withholding knowledge of a dead child might well have snapped by now. But they haven’t, and slowly the other charges against them are being fought, won, partially conceded or dismissed. And now the big threat of charges that should have mattered as far as the police are concerned, the ones that relate to William’s disappearance, have been put on ice.

In just four months it will be 10 years since William disappeared. That poor boy had a rotten start to life and was taken away by the agencies to begin a new life with a new family.

His little soul should be resting in peace, his memory truly honoured.

I’ve seen hard-working, passionate detectives crack the hardest of cases, delivering justice to victims and their families.

William needs some of them on the case.