William Tyrrell’s foster mother has issued tearful denials she dumped the toddler’s body after he allegedly toppled off a balcony.
The woman faced a secret NSW Crime Commission hearing over two days in November 2021 when she was offered a chance to “safely and privately explain” if the toddler suffered a fatal accident in her care.
At the time, counsel assisting Sophie Callan SC suggested the woman had loaded the boy’s body into her mother’s car, driving it down to a nearby riding school and concealing it before calling triple zero.
The woman denied that she dumped the body to avoid another child in her care from being taken away or to let her mother feel a sense of responsibility over her role in the alleged accident.
“Where is William’s body?” Ms Callan pressed.
“I don’t know,” the foster mother said through tears.
Ms Callan suggested that if the woman gave the location of the toddler’s body, they could retrieve it in a way not connected with her.
“I’ve not touched him, I don’t know where he is,” the foster mother said, crying.
“God, I can’t believe you guys are saying that I did that.”
Footage of the interview was played on Thursday to an inquest investigating the three-year-old’s disappearance.
As the beginning of the two-day hearing, commissioner Michael Barnes told her the purpose of the private hearings was to recover William’s body and to allow it to be respectfully interred, allowing loved ones to move on.
“We all accept that you love William and would not have intentionally done him any harm – we also understand that accidents can happen,” he told the foster mother.
“If that’s what occurred on the day William went missing, this is your chance to safely and privately explain that.”
The three-year-old – who was last seen wearing a Spider-Man costume – went missing while playing on the verandah at his foster grandmother’s home in Kendall, on the NSW mid-north coast, on September 12, 2014.
In a recorded phone call with a friend on October 15, 2021, the foster mother said if she had disposed of William’s body that she would not have covered it up.
“I would have owned up to it,” she said.
She questioned when she would have had time to dispose of the body and criticised police for wasting millions of dollars and coming up with “absolutely zero” in their search.
Ms Callan asked if the woman had an expectation of William’s body being found in the garden beds around the house or the roadside corner near the riding school.
“Do you have any expectation of William being found in those locations?” the barrister asked.
“No,” the foster mother replied.
“Why not?” Ms Callan pressed.
“Because I didn’t take him there,” the woman replied.
“Where did you take him?” Ms Callan continued.
“I didn’t take him anywhere,’ the foster mother shot back flustered.
The woman explained why she had decided to take her grandmother’s car to the riding school to look for William before calling triple zero.
She said she had just made a guess about the direction he was going in a frame of mind where she “wasn’t making sense”.
“I don’t remember sitting back and being logical,” she said.
The foster mother claims William vanished after she went inside the Kendall home to make tea for her mother.
The toddler roared while playing “daddy tiger” outside when suddenly there was silence, she told the commission.
William’s foster parents and his biological mother were present at Lidcombe Coroners Court when the footage was played on Thursday.
No one has been charged over William’s disappearance and a $1 million reward for information stands.
A decade-long investigation has involved hundreds of persons of interest and dozens of searches.
