A police interview with William Tyrrell’s foster mother shows she gave confused and varying accounts of what happened on the toddler’s last morning alive, and suggested innocent neighbours as suspects.
In the interview at a Sydney police station, the foster mother was asked about different ‘theories’ – including whether William was injured in an accident and she and the foster grandmother ‘panicked’ and ‘covered it up’.
Police also asked her whether William could have been run over in the driveway by the foster father, and they covered it up for fear of losing custody of William’s sister who lived with them.
There is no suggestion any of these theories are true and the foster family vehemently denies any involvement in William’s disappearance. The detective leading the interview subsequently ruled out the foster parents as potential suspects.
The foster mother, known as SD, was grilled about deleting text messages from the foster father on the day William disappeared, and about seeing two mysterious cars that no one else living in the street canvassed by police could remember.
Police also seemed puzzled about the foster mother’s timeline of events, and the gap between the last-known photo taken of William, at 9.37am, and what happened before the Triple-0 call at 10.56am.
Over a two-hour, 18-minute interview, SD was challenged about her account of William’s last morning and why she and her husband’s movements differed from what neighbours in the street and police on the scene said they saw.
William Tyrrell’s foster mother was grilled by detectives two years after he went missing
In the interview with then-detective Gary Jubelin, the foster mother referenced one neighbour of her mother’s on Benaroon Drive, in Kendall, calling him ‘really odd’ and saying her mother found him ‘odd’.
The neighbour, Paul Savage, was later hotly pursued as a suspect by Jubelin, who was later taken off the Tyrrell strike force and convicted and fined for illegally recording interviews with him.
Mr Savage has since been completely exonerated of having any connection with William’s disappearance.
William, three, vanished from his foster grandmother’s home in Kendall on the NSW Mid North Coast on September 12, 2014, and no trace of him has ever been found.
William, three, vanished from his foster grandmother’s home on that street on the NSW Mid North Coast on September 12, 2014
The interview, conducted almost exactly two years after William vanished, took place at Parramatta police station in western Sydney.
Daily Mail has obtained a transcript of the ERISP (Electronically Recorded Interview with Suspected Person) with SD on September 1, 2016.
This and the foster father’s interview on the same day was what Gary Jubelin later described as having ‘ambushed and interrogated’ the foster parents before ruling them out as persons of interest.
Then aged 51, SD was asked to go to Parramatta so she and William’s foster father could be questioned by Strike Force Rosann, and asked if they or the foster grandmother were responsible for William vanishing.
Jubelin explained to her ‘you understand why the accusing finger gets pointed back this way… the last people, our research and our evidence… invariably it’s the people that had care or custody of the child.’
Insisting ‘no, no, never’, SD then said: ‘if I for a single moment thought [the foster father] had something to do with it, I’d absolutely say it.’
The foster mother responded to a number of possible scenarios, of accidents and cover-ups, put to her by Jubelin, as well as to personal questions, saying the foster father was neither violent, nor had he had affairs with other women or a gambling problem.
She described herself and the foster father – a wealthy, well-educated couple who are known to live in a $4 million home on Sydney’s exclusive north shore – as ‘just Mr and Mrs Average’.
During her police interview, the foster mother circled the area in black where she and William were playing among the blackbutt trees shortly before he disappeared
Gary Jubelin conducted the interview with the foster mother in 2016, two years after William disappeared and put to her that she could have covered up the toddler’s accidental death
The foster parents are seen with the foster grandmother on the verandah of the Kendall house after William Tyrrell went missing
Although it is not suggested that SD is suspected of, or guilty of the disappearance of William Tyrrell, several years after the 2016 interview, SD was named as a person of interest in William’s disappearance.
The NSW Director of Public Prosecutions is due to give advice by January 2024 on the viability of laying charges against the foster mother, after police submitted a brief of evidence in June.
Along with Jubelin, Detective Senior Constable Louise Currey attended the 2016 interview with SD.
It began at 10.49am and concluded at 1.29pm, with breaks in between.
The foster mother signed the police exhibit of what William was wearing – from his underwear to his shoes – on what was probably his last morning alive
SD was walked through her relationship with the foster father, which was preceded by an eight-year romance with another man, and lasted 18 months before they married in 2010.
She described him as ‘normal’ but also ’emotional’ and ‘depressed’ since William’s disappearance with ‘swings every now and then’.
About fostering William, she said the boy had initially been ‘very nervous around me’ and ‘it took a really long time for William to trust me’, but had become ‘completely comfortable’ with her by the time he disappeared.
‘This is the thing that kills me about this, is that he and I were just reaching that absolute one hundred percent open true mum-son relationship,’ SD said.
The foster mother was taken through the sequence of events on the morning before William disappeared, which she had said was about or soon after 10.30am.
This was the same time she received a text from the foster father saying he was en route, and five minutes before he arrived.
The foster mother (above with the foster father at court last year) described herself and her husband as ‘Mr and Mrs Average’
TIMELINE
The foster mother called triple-0 at 10.56am on September 12, 2014 to report William missing, telling the operator she had been looking for her son for between 15 and 20 minutes.
The time of William’s disappearance had always been cited as about 10.30am, but in the interview Jubelin challenged this, in particular the foster mother’s assertion that William vanished soon after she took the final photograph of him.
The iconic image of William, barefoot in his Spider-Man suit and ‘roaring’ at the camera on his grandmother’s verandah, was time-stamped 9.37am.
The foster mother said William rode his bicycle in the driveway about 9am after the foster father had left to make a conference call in town.
She said he then climbed a blackbutt tree below the side of her mother’s house which has the high verandah which he said was ‘too high, mummy’.
Police showed the foster mother these images which she took on William’s last morning, the final image (bottom) time-stamped 9.37am
She had then photographed William, shoeless, in his Spider-Man suit on the back verandah while he played ‘daddy tiger’, roaring at the camera.
SD said her mother had made tea which she was drinking before she took that photograph, putting down her cup operate the camera.
‘I remember having the tea thinking it’s too hot for me to drink,’ she said.
Jubelin told her in the interview that the 9.37am photo was ‘the last confirmed sighting of William’.
The foster mother said it was after this that William had become bored playing with dice on the verandah and had put his shoes back on and ‘jumped down off this deck’.
‘He was running around in front of us and I remember [the foster grandmother] saying, “Do you think he’s got ADD?” and I’m like, “No, he’s just excited,”‘ SD said.
It was after this that William vanished; however, Jubelin quizzed her about her previous account of events.
In particular, he wanted to know when precisely the foster mother realised William was gone. He insisted his questions were ‘not a criticism’ of her, and suggested the possibility that her memory of ‘five minutes’ could have been ‘ten minutes’.
Foster mother: ‘Yep. No I hear what you’re saying. It’s been running through my head as well… in hindsight I think what feels like five minutes may not be five minutes at all.
‘I just wish, I wish I knew the exact time.’
Police search the side of the foster grandmother’s house where William had played in the time leading up to his disappearance
WHAT THE NEIGHBOUR SAID
The foster mother said she had searched for William in the yard, the house and partly down the street before speaking to neighbour Anne Maree Sharpley, then going down to talk with another resident, Lydene Heslop, to search in the bus stop.
The foster mother said that all happened prior to the foster father texting her and then arriving home from making a conference call at a nearby town with better internet reception.
Police logged his text at 10.30am and his arrival home at 10.33am.
Jubelin told the foster mother she was wrong, and that she hadn’t gone searching for William with Ms Sharpley until after the foster father had arrived home.
Neighbour Anne Maree Sharpley (pictured at the William Tyrrell inquest in 2019) helped the foster mother search for William, but gave a police a different time frame for the search
‘I can tell you I think fairly well that it’s after,’ Jubelin said, ‘and it’s around 10.40 or 10.45 that you first speak with Anne Maree.
‘Anne Maree said when she speaks with you there, she sees and hears a male that is [the foster father].’
Quizzed further about when she went down the road to search for William, the foster mother conceded ‘it must have been by myself’, adding: ‘And I got in mum’s…’
This could be a reference to the fact that, as police later claimed, SD drove her mother’s car on the morning William disappeared down to Batar Creek Road, which became the site of a massive search for the boy’s remains in late 2021.
DELETED TEXT MESSAGES
Jubelin asked the foster mother why she had deleted all the text messages sent to her from the foster father over a certain period, including the day William disappeared.
In particular, he wanted to know why she had deleted the text message JS had sent saying he was on his way home at a time when William had just disappeared.
The foster mother said it was not unusual for her to delete messages she deemed unimportant – such as a text from her husband saying he was coming home. There is no suggestion her deleting texts had anything to do with William’s disappearance.
‘I keep messages. I’m keeping messages that remind me to do things,’ SD said.
‘But a message that [the foster father] sends me to say I’m home in five minutes, I’m not going to keep that.
‘I mean even though William was missing, it didn’t strike me as being a milestone message or any important message that I needed to keep. I mean how many messages had I deleted?’
THE ACCIDENT SCENARIOS
Jubelin proposed various scenarios of accident and cover-up that could have explained why William disappeared and has never been found.
None of these scenarios has ever been proven, and the foster parents have always denied any wrongdoing.
He put to SD that ‘perhaps William… fell from the balcony, fell from a tree, injured and you’ve panicked and [the foster grandmother] has panicked and you’ve covered it up for fear of losing [William’s sister].’
The foster mother replied: ‘No, no, never, never. The only way he would have fallen from the balcony… he wouldn’t have climbed it. We wouldn’t have dropped him.
‘My mum wouldn’t cover that up. If I’d have done something to them, my mother would not cover it up.’
Jubelin speculated: ‘Another suggestion… is that your mother became angry at William because of, you know, young kids and something might have happened and you’re protecting your mother?’
Gary Jubelin quizzed the foster mother over several scenarios of accident and cover-up, asking if William could have died falling off the balcony, being run over or hit by his foster grandmother
SD responded: ‘No, no way. My mother was never violent towards us growing up. I’ve never seen her be violent.’
William’s foster grandmother died in March 2021.
Jubelin then put to SD: ‘Another suggestion. William’s waiting for [the foster father] to come home… and he’s run out on the driveway and it’s one of those tragic driveway, young child incidents.
‘And there’s been discussion and panic that if this happens, even though it’s an accident, that we’re going to lose [William’s sister], but there’s nothing we can do for William now.’
No evidence has emerged to support this car accident theory.
The foster mother replied: ‘Mmm, mmm. Never, no. Judging from his reaction to me… when I said William’s missing… he was pure.’