Okay.

I call David Laedlaw.

Thank you.

David Laedlaw is the detective leading the investigation into William Thuill's disappearance.

How would you take an oath or an affirmation? Third.

Certainly.

He's tall and heavy set, with white hair and a thick white moustache.

And your occupation?

I'm a Detective Chief Inspector.

And you're with the Homicide Squad?

That's Thank you.

David's what you might call a veteran policeman.

You've been with the force since the late '70s?

That's correct.

Meaning he's been a cop for longer than I have been alive.

You've been a detective since 1988?

That's correct.

He's been a detective investigating serious crimes since I was in primary school and Still getting pocket money.

And you joined the Unsolved Homicide Team in 2017, is that right? That's correct.

His job today is as Investigation Coordinator of the New South Wales Police Unsolved Homicide Team. Roughly 40 detectives whose job it is to go back over cases that others couldn't solve and solve them. Every one of those cases represents a grieving family who might have waited decades for an answer. New South Wales Police has around 800 unsolved cases on its books, although the numbers are a bit uncertain.

You say that as of the date of your statement, there were 829 of those cases?

Yes, that's correct.

The figures provided by New South Wales Police as at yesterday for that period is 790.

Yes, I can't assist now.

Do you know what's happened to those Have you known the files?

No, I don't know.

He should know. That's why David's being questioned by this Special Commission of Enquiry held last year to investigate the police response to specific hate crimes. Because it's his job to oversee the review of those unsolved cases. The way it works is another cop takes a first look at the file called a triage. They then report to David, who decides if the case will be formally reviewed. Only then can it be re-investigated. And all of this can take weeks or months or years.

213 have not yet been triaged.

Now, with that, that figure, it should be 125.

I see.

So the 200-That's 125 possible unsolved murders the Unsolved Homicide Team have never looked at.

Some of those cases may be decades They could be, yes.

The Unsolved Homicide Team was established back in 2004, but the triage is just the first stage of their work.

Now, according to these figures, there are 291 cases where it appears, at least, that no review has been completed.

That's correct.

A hundred and twenty-five cases plus 291 cases equals quite a backlog. That's hundreds of possible murders, grieving families. David says it's a resource issue.

You have to understand the resource implications. We don't have enough people to do them. And enough people, I mean by people who are qualified At this point, the head of the inquiry interrupts him.

And if more resource has been requested? No.

So David hasn't asked for any help?

That's correct. I know there's 19 in triages ready for me to vet, and I haven't had the opportunity to vet yet. For how long? Since June, I would say last year.

Those 19 where somebody has completed a review and sent it to you to assess, they've been sitting on your desk for over twelve months.

That's correct, yes.

When do you expect to get to them?

I don't know.

Just to stress, that's 19 families waiting maybe decades for an answer to what happened, not knowing the file detailing their loved one's possible murder has been triaged by a detective, then sat unopened on David's desk for the past year.

Have you drawn this to the commission's attention that you need more resources one way or the other?

No, I haven't, sir.

Why not? If the work is that important, or does it not require urgent attention?

It does require urgent attention.

Well, then why hasn't somebody said something to the Commissioner instead of sitting quietly leaving files collecting dust on the desk?

If I can reiterate what I said before is that we're going from a backlog of we've still got triage forms that have been completed that we cannot get out to even to review because there's so many of them.

Do I work on the basis that the present Commissioner is entirely highly unaware of the resources issues that you currently face? Is that right?

That's correct, sir.

Well, that is remarkable, if I may say so. Yes, that's true.

The inquiry's final report said it is difficult to see how these resource issues could provide a justification for Detective Chief Inspector Laedlaw to fail to perform his own function in relation to these 19 cases. David said part of the reason was he was busy investigating the disappearance of William Tyrell. He's still investigating William's disappearance. I'm Dan Box, and from news. Com. Au, this is Witness, William Tyrell. Episode 4, The Police Theory. Those 19 files David Laidlaw has not had time to open and the 19 grieving families they represent, I can't help but see them as part of the fallout from the investigation into William's disappearance. And there are others, like William's biological family, where his grandmother says she lost her son over the past 10 years when they haven't had any answers, and she lost herself as well. David is still working to solve the case, though, and the police have now set their sights on William's foster mother.

Where are we?

This is the house where William went missing. So Nina, who's the producer on this podcast, and I have come to the house where William was reported missing to try walking through the police's theory of what happened to him. So This is what the police now think happened to William. We've pieced this together from the cross-examination of their new suspects in the New South Wales Crime Commission and the cross-examination of one of the detectives investigating William's disappearance in court. In court, that detective confirmed that this is one of their theories. He said the police believe they know where William's body was disposed of and that he's formed the view that William's foster mother knows where William, too, is. The house where William was reported missing is a big two-storey building at the top of a dead-end road called Benaroon Drive. The neighbours' houses are all set back from the road, and each house is surrounded by a wide garden. It looks like a nice place to live. Blue sky, green grass, the quiet. But behind the houses on either side is forest. The last known photograph of William Thurill was taken at 9:37 on the morning he went missing, and he's wearing his Spider-Man suit on this veranda of the house.

The photo is taken by his foster mother, and you can see William's happy. His mouth is open like he's laughing or he's excited or he's roaring. And we know the foster mother's there because she took the photograph, and we know that her mum is there. But the foster father, her husband, he's He left the home earlier that morning. He's gone to make a work call. He needs internet reception to do that.

And just to say we do have a point in time for when he left because there was CCTV, right?

Yeah. So all of that's been confirmed. But the uncertainty is over the time of the photograph. It could be out by 2 hours. So that would make it 7:37, not 9:37. The foster mum told police when she was asked about this that she didn't know how to set the camera. But the police and later the inquest have looked at this. There's been forensic examination, and both accept that 9:37 is accurate.

And I look at that picture and I just think, Minutes, and our world has changed.

This is William's foster mother from an interview with both foster parents recorded by New South Wales police, months after he was reported missing. So 9:37 Let's start the Timer now. After the photograph's taken, the foster mother tells police that William Tyrell did more drawing on the veranda, and she remembers playing with dice with him. She was teaching the kids how to count. And William's sister came over and she wanted to join in, and William withdrawn. So that's all his foster mum's account. She's told police that William then got bored and he tried different activities, including a game that they called Daddy Tiger. So William was roaring at the grownups. But the foster mother tells police that at some point, William Teerle jumped down off the deck on his own.

He's got a really good sense of adventure. But he's got a really good understanding of his limitations. He's not a wanderer, not a child to run away. Always had us in ear shot or eyesight.

She says she told him to put his shoes on, but he's barefoot in the photograph. But the thing is, there's been a whole bunch of controversy about this photo. There's been headlines in the newspaper about did he have shoes on? Didn't he have shoes on? And does that mean somebody is lying? The foster mother says she told him to put his shoes on because there might be bindies in the grass. Yeah, that's a bindie right there. There's a bindie? Yeah.

So that was the argument that was made, that there weren't bindies.

There was a whole bunch of controversy online in the newspapers about whether or not it was bindie season.

We're at the house.

And there's a bindie.

And it's that time of year.

Look, the long and the short of that is I think it's all irrelevant. William could put his own shoes on, and his shoes had Velcro straps. So whatever the foster mother said, he could have put shoes on at the time. William is said by his foster mother to have jumped down off this veranda and run off around the corner of the house. He's running up and roaring and running away. And she says she asked William, Can you see Daddy's car? Because his foster father was due to come back at any moment.

He's not a kid that would just run into something. He would stop and think. He would consider what he would do before he would do anything else. Yeah, just smut a little boy.

Yeah. And he'd stay within distance knowing how far away he was from us.

And the foster mum remembers that her tea was hot, and she remembers drinking some it. And she remembers hearing William roar. And then she told police, I hear nothing.

I can't hear him. Why? Why? Why can't I hear him? And I walked around. Seriously, it was just two metres, three metres away from where we were sitting. And I've just walked out and I just see nothing.

And she goes around the corner of the house. I don't know if she's on the veranda or if she's on the garden next to it, but she's moved around the corner of the house so she can see down the slope from the back of the property.

And I'm yelling out, William, where are you? You need to talk to mommy. Tell me where you are. I can't see you. I can't hear you. Where are you?

And she says she remembers standing there just staring into space thinking, why can't I hear him? Why can't I see him? Why can't I see the red through the bushes down there? So the red is the Spider-Man suit that we know he was wearing because it was in that photograph. And she says she goes back to her mum and she says, He's not here. William's not here. Now, this is where we start to lose the timing. She tells the police that the gap between the photograph being taken of William and her going to look for William was maybe 5, 10 minutes. But she's on this at different times by the police, and she's inconsistent on exactly how long it was. At one point, the police actually ask her. They say, Sometimes five minutes doesn't always feel like five minutes, which is fair. She accepts that. So let's say five minutes for playing the dice, for William getting bored, for running off and back, for playing Daddy Tiger, being told, Can you see Daddy's car? And the foster mother realising she can't hear him. So the minimum estimate that she gives. So five minutes. If the photo was at 9:37, it's now 9:42.

And on our Timer, we've been six and a bit minutes. But the police theory is that William went around the other side of the house and fell off the veranda here. And that at this point, the foster mother found William's body in these ferns and the the foliage around under the veranda, that he was dead. But she makes a snap decision to hide his body. Now, for that to happen, for the police theory to be right, a lot has to happen very quickly. The foster mum has to walk down here, find William's body.

And react quietly enough that no one in the neighbourhood hears it or reports it.

Because we know it's a quiet street. You can hear it's a quiet street. So there's no audible reaction that either her mum or William's sister notice. She has to decide not call for help. So that's a very quick decision. There's no triple zero call at that point. And she has to decide to hide William's body rather than seeking any medical attention. And William's sister is also in the house, so she's four. The foster mum has to decide whether to bring her mum and William's sister into the conspiracy and get them to lie with her about what's happened to William.

Or avoid them finding out that anything has happened.

William's sister, who's Four, is interviewed more than once by specialist detectives, and she gives the same version, which is that William is playing Daddy Tiger. If It is a conspiracy. William's foster mother then has to pretend to look for William herself. She has to convince her own mother what happened. The foster mother later tells police that she runs around this garden, and the foster mom's calling out, I can't hear you. I need to see I need to hear your voice because I can't see you.

I can't hear you. Where are you? And it was nowhere.

And at some point, according to the police theory, she walked up to the carport just here around the house. And when she got there, she loaded William's body into her mum's grey Mazda 3, according to the police. So far, we are about 11 minutes since the time when William is last known to be alive. Okay, William's foster mother has always denied any involvement in his disappearance. So at this point, it's worth stepping back and asking, who are the police coming up with this theory? William's disappearance is currently being investigated by detectives from the New South Wales Police Unsolved Homicide Team. It's part of the bigger Homicide Squad, and it exists to go back to those old cases that weren't solved the first time, to see if anything was missed, if any mistakes were made, or if new technology, particularly DNA, could lead to a breakthrough. And these are serious cases, possible murders. So the detectives working for unsolved are expected to be good, but their work is not perfect. In 2013, the year before William went missing, New South Wales police discovered evidence relating to 22 unsolved homicide cases sitting in a basement. No one seemed to know it was there.

That led to the then senior officer on the unsolved homicide team to write a damning internal report on just how much evidence was missing, scattered, misfiled, or lost. The report was confidential at the time. It's marked through official use only. It said one search recovered eight entire pallets of evidence that had been, improperly stored. Many of these items may relate to unsolved homicide cases. Many of these poorly secured items included homicide victims clothing, postmortem, and crime scene specimen swaps, meaning detectives today didn't know what was missing, and DNA analysis had not been carried out.

One of the reasons to write this document was to let command know what the The issue was and the problems was that we faced.

This is the former officer who wrote that report, giving evidence at the same inquiry you heard at the start of the episode.

All of the investigators in the office were aware of the problems regarding retention and proper exhibit handling procedures.

That officer didn't get to see if those problems were ever fixed. He ended up leaving the police for medical reasons shortly after submitting his report. The current boss of the New South Wales Police Homicide Squad told the inquiry those problems still existed when he took over in 2019.

Yes, but we're talking about certain cases. We're not talking about every case, but yes, it was known.

Detective Superintendent Daniel Doherty is a stout, stolid, greybearded policeman. He looks like a safe pair of hands. But when questioned, he didn't know how many unsolved homicide cases were affected.

Was it well known that these problems may have existed in relation to a large number of unsolved homicides? I wouldn't say a large number. Was it well known that these problems arose in a number of cases, and nobody knew how many cases the problems arose in. I think that now with the work of the Unsold Homicide Team, there'd be a small number of cases. What's the basis on which you tell the Commissioner that the number of cases that suffer from this problem is a small number rather than an unknown number? Well, it is an unknown number.

So there's an unknown number of cases where the unsolved homicide team don't know what evidence they're missing. And that was still the case last year. That's 10 years after that discovery of evidence relating to those 22 unsolved homicides in a police basement that first brought this issue to light.

Are you aware of those problems having been addressed? Well, it's been an ongoing issue. I know that there's been some reviews of record services, and I know there's reviews in relation to exhibits, and that's been an ongoing issue. The problems were well known as problems within the Unsolved Homicides team when you started in December 2019? Yes, they brought it to my attention. It's well known that there's still problems within the Unsolved Homicides team? In terms of those issues that have been raised, yes.

The Unsolved Homicide team is not perfect. There's problems with record keeping, missing exhibits, and an inability to fix those problems over a whole decade. But that itself doesn't mean that the investigation into William's disappearance has has faced the same problems. Back to the police theory that William's foster mother drove his body away from the house in her mother's grey Mazda 3.

She describes driving very slowly.

Yeah, William's foster mother doesn't mention this drive in her initial statement to police on the day that William goes missing. But she does describe it in a video walkthrough of what happened. The police recorded with her about six days later. And there's been different reports about whether this drive was made before William's foster father came home or after. But if you look at William's foster father's witness statements, he doesn't mention the drive. So you got to think it's more likely that the foster mum makes this drive before he gets home. So she drives down here.

She describes with her head out the window.

She's looking out the window. She's calling for William. So she's driven down and she turns right here. Now, on the drive, William's foster mum tells police that on this road, so it's almost a single lane road. It's narrow. There's no road markings. There's trees on either side. She describes this semi-trailer coming down really fast.

He thought I pulled over because he acknowledged me by saying, Thanks for pulling over. But I pulled over because I've just got my head out the window looking for William.

Yeah, she said she wasn't pulled over. She was just driving.

Just driving so slowly.

No, doing this, driving It does make sense to me that this is how you might look. You're covering a lot of ground here.

And you can imagine that if you are looking for a kid, you've got thick bush on either side of the road. You're desperately looking for that red or that blue of the Spider-Man suit. You're shouting his name as you go. And it's a panicked response. You're not in your rational mind if you're looking for a kid. But equally, you're not in your rational mind if you're trying to cover something up. But she gets here. And according to the foster mother, she stops.

And I get to the riding school and I just think, he's not here.

So this is the corner of Bittar Creek Road and this dirt track that's called Cob and Co Road.

So this is where the police are alleging the body Could have been left. But they've specifically called out this.

Specifically in court, they have suggested the body of William Thieba was left here. But if you get out, have a look.

Very open.

It is very open, isn't it? So just testing the police theory, if you were trying to hide a body, when you get here, there's the old riding school. So there's several buildings, maybe 100 metres away, overlooking where we are now. There's another house there on the other side of the road, a second house there, and a third one there, all within iShot. When if you hadn't turned right at the bottom of Banaroon Drive and you'd turned left, or if you'd continued down this road another few hundred metres, you'd just be in forest on either side. There would be no houses looking at you. So this spot here is probably the worst place to try and hide anything if you wanted to commit a criminal act. Cocaine is a global industry where the profits are counted up in millions and the losses measured out in murders. Because it's only business. Right now, business is good. I'm like, To what you sell? What are you talking about? I don't think we can rest our way out of this. Listen to Cocaine Inc, wherever you get your podcast or visit cocaineinc.

Com. Au. If we're working on the theory that this drive occurs before the husband comes home.

Yeah, which seems It does seem most likely.

It does seem most likely. If we're working on that theory, we don't have much time to bury a body.

And also, to be blunt, burying a body is quite hard work. And there's no suggestion that there's any digging tools in the car. So the best you're going to do at this point, if you are hiding a child's body, the best you're going to do is carry it. Also, she's panicking. And maybe panicking explains why you'd pick this spot, which is in sight of several houses. But if you had stopped here and you tried to hide something, you could walk, what's that, 50 metres and leave the body behind one of these piles of leaves and sticks, but it's not going to be very well hidden. So if you wanted to hide it properly, and I know this is mawish, but...

So it's good. It gets very unwalkable very quickly. Yeah.

If you wanted to hide something as obvious as a child's bodyIn a bright red outfit.in a bright red outfit, you'd have to go another 10 metres maybe into the bush, and that's hard walking. And you're carrying a body. You're carrying something that's heavy. But maybe you do it. It's not impossible. No. But either way.

You notice It's the flowers?

Yeah, I'll show you what this is, actually. This rake is a memorial left by the police when they did the big forensic search just a few years ago. And it did have this message on it, We will never forget him. It's hard to read now, and there's a date. But it's There's a memorial left by police who, when they came down here, did search this area. They ripped the bush apart. They dug up tonnes of soil. They were using tools like this to just scrape through everything. If they found anything, they've never made it public. And the detectives are adamant when questioned in court about this location. So one of the detectives on the strike force says that the police do believe William's body was disposed in this area on the corner of those two roads. And he's asked in court if he's lying about whether the police know the location, and he says he's not. And then he says, I formed the view that the foster mother knows where William Tyrell is. Which does lead you to the question, well, if you believe that, then why have you not been able to find him?

But we don't know. So the foster mum then drives back into Benaroon Drive. Okay. So She says she drives up here. She tells police, she brings the car back up and she just runs out and she looks for him again and she's running around. How long have we been? We've been 26 minutes. So if William was last seen at 9:37, that's about 10:00 now.

Yeah, but you're discounting there all the time, playing. Yeah. Having a cup of tea.

We know that at about 10:30, William's foster father sends a text to his foster mother saying, I'll be home in five.

Yeah, and he is home.

And he is home.

Within five minutes.

But the foster mother deletes that message. So at the time when she's on her evidence running around looking for William, she deletes the message from William's foster father. Now, she tells police that that's habit. She just deletes messages as they come in. And it is true that other messages messages on her phone are deleted. And there's a part of me that gets that. I delete emails as quickly as I can. And she is, from personal experience of it, she's a really organised, a really efficient person. Does it mean anything that she deleted that message? If the police theory is right, and she's at this point involved in a conspiracy to dispose of William's body, what does she gain by deleting that message?

Hard to tell. And I think also hard to read too much into the actions of someone under extreme stress.Either.

Way.yeah. Because on the police theory, she has to decide in that moment whether or not to bring him into the conspiracy, either if the police are right and she is trying to hide the fact of William's death, she has to decide very, very quickly whether she's going to lie to him that William has just disappeared or tell him the truth and convince him very quickly to lie with her. The husband gets home about 10:33 or soon after. He arrives home where we are now, and he pulls into this driveway here, and the foster mother walks towards him from the veranda area, so that of the house there, and she asks him, Have you seen William? And the foster father's response on his evidence and her evidence is that he says, What are you talking about? Why would I have William? The foster mother tells her husband that William's missing, and he takes off.

I then said, Where is he? Where's he gone? She said, He He was here five minutes ago. Here five minutes ago. Yeah. I can't find him. I was calling his name. William. William. Come on, William. Where are you? She said that he was last seen around here. Yeah. But I thought, okay, well, if he was down at the road, you possibly would have seen him. You've checked that doll house over there? Yeah, absolutely. Went through there, went through there, went underneath their house, went around their house, went in there because they weren't home. I went in their carport.

So he's running all around there. And then he's running in wider and wider circles, up and down the street here. And he says he kept coming back to the house to check for any updates. So has William come back?

They've got a Caravan in there. It's all locked away. I went in there, I checked underneath. That was locked? Caravan was locked, yeah, absolutely. And I was looking in everything I possibly could. I then couldn't find him. I then found there's a walking trail or a trail that leads to the cemetery. I followed that. I was still looking for things on the ground. If there's something, I might have lost a shoe or something like that. You were yelling all the time? All the time, yelling for him all the time.

I remember when I've lost, even for a moment, one of our kids, it's like the whole world is shaking. It's that much emotion. It's that much adrenaline and panic. So I can imagine him running literally up and down this street looking for William. But then about 10:40, so just over an hour after that photograph was taken, the foster mum, she runs down the road here to a neighbor's house asking if the neighbour has seen a little boy in a Spider-Man outfit. But the significance of that is from that moment on, the foster mother is with someone from outside her family, someone who has no reason to lie to protect her. So we know that from that moment on, she's not hiding a body.

Yeah.

So having walked it through, what do you think about the police theory?

Yeah, it's doable. It is doable. It's tight.

It's doable, but I don't think it makes a lot of sense. And the thing that got me was driving down to the corner of those two roads that the police say they believe William's foster mother hid his body. You're right in front of the riding school. You're in view of one, two, three other houses. When if you wanted to hide something and you'd driven another 200 metres, there'd be nothing. There'd just be forest. So why pick that point?

But it's entirely possible that we're looking at a puzzle that's missing a lot of pieces and that the place could have pieces.

But if they have pieces, why haven't they done anything about it? Why has she not been charged? The one person who does know what other puzzle pieces the police hold is the man leading the investigation, Detective Chief Inspector David Laidlaw. He took over more than five years ago, so back in 2019, which was months after the public announcement of a separate plan to overhaul the way the Unsolved Homicide Team deals with its backlog of cold cases. It was announced in an exclusive story in Sydney's Daily Telegraph newspaper that promised that every murder mystery to have baffled New South Wales police in the past 40 years will be revisited in one of the biggest ever shakeups of cold case homicides in the state. The paper said that cases that could be solved would be prioritised, and Another internal police report, also marked for official use only, said the officer in charge of the process would be David Laedlaw.

There was a time frame given of three months for the review to be undertaken. However, we identified that some matters had been out there for three years.

In the last five years since the 2018 system was introduced, there are still 125 that have not been triaged and 291 that have not been reviewed. That number of cases that have been neither triaged nor reviewed, they may include cases from the '70s and '80s?

That could be, yes.

At the moment, is this the case, the review committee receives 5-10 reviews every 3-6 months?

Approximately, yes.

So that's fewer than 20 in a year, is that right? Yes. So of the 442 undetected protected cases, it'll take 22 years to review all of them on that average.

Yes, it could do.

When you joined the Unsold Homicide Team in 2017, were you already aware of difficulties in locating exhibits that were appreciated within that team? Yes. Was that notorious within the Unsold Homicide Team?

It's a rather strong word, notorious. I would say it was known. Well known? Yes. Therefore, the reconciliation plan was to get all exhibits for forensic analysis to be back into one place, which is the Metropolitan Exhibit and Property Centre.

That project was underway, was it, when you joined the team? Yes. Has that project been completed?

I'm unable to tell the Commission that.

Have you received written updates as to the progress of that project?

No, I haven't.

You haven't received any written update as to the progress of that project since you commenced?

That's correct, yes.

Have you asked for any- Are you the person who would be expected to receive the updates?

Yes, sir, I would be.

Have you asked for them?

No, sir.

Why not?

I can't give the Commission a reason why not.

The second voice, the one who's just started asking questions, is the inquiry's head, a Supreme Court judge.

These are all people's lives and people's family's lives.

I appreciate that.

And has anyone, as far as you know, ever put to the Commission that some specially-funded project is urgently needed to get a grip on all of these unsolved cases?

I'm on the way.

David says he does know requests for missing exhibits from unsolved cases were sent out to different parts of the police force. That happened in 2017, so seven years ago now.

Where are the replies kept?

I don't know. Is somebody-I can find... They were on what we call our record management system.

Is there someone responsible for collating the replies and reviewing them?

Well, I suppose the responsibility now rests with me.

But you haven't conducted that exercise? No. Have you taken any steps towards reviewing the responses that have been received? No, I haven't. The physical exhibits are, of course, critically important to unsolved homicides.

Of course, they are, yes.

Thank you. Give me a second. All right. I'll agenda it. Thank you.

To be honest, I struggled to get my head around what David's saying. Unsolved homicides are real people, real grieving families. But New South Wales police is missing exhibits, missing documents by the pallet load. And the detective in charge of going back through all these cases says he doesn't know basic things, like where they keep replies to requests for information, or what's in those replies, or how big the problem really is. I get David Laedlaw's busy. Among other things, he's running the investigation into William's disappearance. But the record of the New South Wales police isn't actually perfect there, too. If the current police theory of what happened is William's foster mother drove his body away in her mum's grey Mazda 3, then surely it's a problem The police at the time didn't examine that car until the 20th of September, 2014, five days after William was reported missing. I'd like to ask David about all of this, but I've been told no. Instead, New South Wales police have given us a short written statement saying police are, quote, unable to provide comment or interviews as the matter is before the coroner, meaning the inquest into William's disappearance, which is due to start again next week.

So if anyone out there is thinking, I might have gotten away with this, what's your message?

They haven't.

Though that didn't stop David giving this interview to Sky News in 2021, when the inquest was also ongoing.

We'll continue with this investigation as long as it takes.

Do you believe you know who the person is?

We believe we can identify who it may be or the circumstances of him going missing, yes.

You know what happened, don't you?

You know who it is, don't you?

We have thoughts about what occurred to William, yes. And there's a range of thoughts of what happened to him, yes.

And who was responsible. Yes.

We started this episode talking talking about the lives that have been damaged so far by the police investigation, the families of those 19 cases where reports have sat on David Laidlaw's desk for a year unopened. Right now, other lives are at risk of harm also. Because today, only one of two things can be right. Either the police theory is correct, and William's foster mother disposed of his body and has deceived everyone over the past 10 when she has been publicly campaigning for more attention, not less on this case. Or the police are wrong, and William's foster mother has been wrongly and tragically described as a suspected criminal in front of her friends and family and the entire country. That's the reality of unsolved homicide investigations. The stakes are very, very high. And which of those two theories has evidence to support it, might become clear next week when the inquest into William's disappearance resumes its public hearings. And we will be there reporting on what happens in the next episode. Because one thing walking through the police theory with Nina has made obvious to me is you don't know what you don't know. What do you feel about the foster parents now?

In that timeline, for the police theory to be true, you'd think you'd have to be a psychopath to be able to react that quickly.

Because at the very least, you are seeing a child's body deciding not to seek help, picking that child's body up, hiding it, and then driving away to hide it further with the intention, almost certainly, of coming back to move it again because it wasn't found.

Breaking down, sobbing in front of other people.

Including the people who know you best, your mum, your husband, William's sister. The other alternative is that William's foster mother sits her mum down and says, This is what's happened. William has died, and we need to hide that fact. And she deals with her mom's grief, shock, horror, and turns that into a willing conspirator. Then she does that again with William's four-year-old sister and turns a four-year-old child into someone who will convincingly lie to police more than once for several years. And then she either lies to her own husband and has done for the past 10 years because he's defended her when examined by police, or she also convinces him.

And at that point, you've got four people hiding a secret without cracking for a decade under extreme pressure. Yeah.

But you know what here in this car has made me think? It's so obvious when a car drives up here because there's no other traffic, that... The other option is that someone takes William and drives off with him. And listening to that, you just... Would somebody not have heard? That's next time on Witness: William Tyrell. If you know anything about William's disappearance, please contact Crime Stoppers. There's a number in the show notes for this series. But if there's anything you want to tell us, you can email, witness@news. Com. Au or I'm on social media, and it can be completely confidential. A lot of different people have been involved in making this series. Among them, the executive producer is Nina Young. The sound design was by Tiffany Dimack. The producers have been Emily Pigeon, Nicolas Adams Jazzbar, Phoebe Zakowski-Wallace, and Tabi Wilson. Research by Aidan Patrick. Original music by Rory O'Connor. Our lawyer is Stephen Cooms. The Editor at news. Com. Au is Kerry Warren. I'm Dan Box.

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