A senior detective has dropped a bombshell in a Sydney court claiming he believes William Tyrrell’s adoptive mother knows where the missing boy’s body is.
“I have formed the opinion (the foster mother) knows where William Tyrrell is,” Detective Sergeant Andrew Lonergan told Downing Center Local Court on Thursday afternoon.
Sgt Lonergan made the comments under questioning from the adoptive mother’s lawyer, John Stratton.
William disappeared from his adoptive grandmother’s home in Kendall on the NSW North Coast on September 12, 2014 and has not been seen since.
His adoptive mother, a 57-year-old from the city’s north who cannot be named for legal reasons, faces a two-day court hearing accused of giving false or misleading evidence to the NSW Crime Commission. She has pleaded not guilty.
The foster mother of William Tyrrell (above in June) will spend two days in a hearing into allegations she lied to the NSW Crime Commission, just days before a high-intensity dig for her missing adopted son .
Police at Crime Commission hearings alleged adoptive mother lied just days before investigators launched high-intensity surprise dig in Kendall to search for William Tyrrell’s remains (above)
When Mr. Stratton asked Sgt Lonergan if he was pursuing the foster mother with charges of “breaking her spirit”, the police officer said the purpose of his appearance before the Crime Commission was “to find the location of William Tyrrell.”
It comes as the court heard police had bugged foster parents’ homes with nine listening devices and eight hidden cameras.
Dramatic audio was also played in court of a ten-year-old boy, who is not William, crying and shouting “no no nooooo” as she was allegedly disciplined with a wooden spoon in January 2021.
The court heard that the foster mother had denied hitting the girl – who cannot be identified – to the Crime Commission last November.
Police prosecutor Sergeant Major Amin Asaad told the court that “allegations relating to the boy … were brought to the attention of the accused” at the Crime Commission.
Senator Sgt Asaad said the foster mother had “denied these propositions” and then “seconds or minutes after the event contacted her husband and added certain things that revealed the offending … and certain observations about the event”.
The audio begins with a female voice, possibly the girl’s, saying, “I’m calling the police,” and then a boy yelling “no” and crying, gasping, and crying.
The adoptive mother has never been charged in connection with William’s disappearance, nor has anyone else.
William Tyrrell’s foster mother faces a two-day hearing on a charge of lying to the Crime Commission. The foster father will go to court next year for allegedly making a false statement to the top secret crime-fighting force
Then there is the sound of a possible slap and the foster mother ordering the child: ‘Get up. Get up’.
The boy said “no please no Nooooooo” and was told to “Sit”. to sit’.
A subsequent conversation between the foster mother and the foster father was played on the track in which she said, ‘Oh, that’s not right. We have a problem. We have a big problem.
In questioning Sgt Lonergan about the detectives’ purpose in pursuing the adoptive mother with charges, John Stratton SC accused the detective of lying, which he repeatedly denied.
The officer agreed when Sgt Lonergan asked if William Tyrrell’s body had ever been located and that the foster mother had “made complaints about the lack of police progress in the investigation”.
But when asked if it was his hope to break the adoptive mother’s “spirit”, Det Sgt Lonergan told the court the woman had “committed a crime”.
“She was given the opportunity to give her statement to the Crime Commission where she could tell the truth and she would not be punished, like the charges.”
Detective Constable Andrew Lonergan (second right) with Professor Jon Olley, who found the remains of murdered Queensland schoolboy Daniel Morecombe in 2011, at the William Tyrrell dig in Kendall late last year.
The adoptive mother arrived in court on Thursday in black trousers and a black and white checked jacket and was accompanied by two marketing consultants, Clare and Alice Collins, who run the Where is William PR campaign.
Former detective Gary Jubelin, the former head of the task force investigating William’s disappearance, also listened to the hearing. The hearing continues.