Police allege William Tyrrell’s foster mum covered up death, seek charges
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Police have recommended prosecutors criminally charge William Tyrell’s foster mother, alleging she covered up his accidental death almost a decade ago.
However, her lawyer was not even aware of the development on Tuesday night, which comes just one day after what would have been William’s 12th birthday.
The foster mother of William Tyrrell (who cannot be identified) outside court.Credit: Nikki Short
William was just three-years-old when he vanished from the home of his foster grandmother in the tiny town of Kendall, on the NSW Mid North Coast, in September 2014. He is presumed dead.
Strike Force Rosann, set up to investigate his disappearance, now suspects the boy fell from the balcony and died in a tragic accident, Nine News reported on Tuesday.
The detectives leading Rosann also suspect William’s foster mother, who cannot be identified, covered up the boy’s death and dumped his body in bushland near the home.
Detectives from Rosann this month handed a brief of evidence to the NSW Director of Public Prosecutions (DPP), which recommends William’s foster mother should be charged with perverting the course of justice and interfering with a corpse.
William Tyrrell vanished in 2014 dressed in his Spider-Man suit. He would have turned 12 on Monday.
The foster mother has never been charged for William’s death and there is no suggestion of her guilt.
Her lawyer, Sharon Ramsden, told the Herald she had not been advised that police had recommended charges. She will write to police on Wednesday seeking confirmation.
The DPP will be asked to decide whether detectives have unearthed sufficient evidence to justify charging the foster mother.
Prosecutors will need to be satisfied there is a reasonable prospect of conviction on the evidence and the prosecution is in the public interest.
William’s birthday was on Monday, and “the boy in the Spider-Man suit” would have been 12 years old.
In late 2021, Rosann’s detectives spent more than four weeks combing muddy bushland and creeks down the road from his grandmother’s home, where he was last seen alive. They also dug into the garden beneath the balcony.
The detectives believed the foster mother had dumped William’s body in the bush, on the side of the quiet country road, and returned to the home on Benaroon Drive.
“We know why, we know how, we know where he is,” Sergeant Scott Jamieson told the foster mother shortly before the 2021 search.
“We aren’t guessing, we aren’t bluffing.
“We are saying we know what happened and why it happened and where [his body] is.”
The courts would hear the woman responded: “What? Why haven’t you got him?”
The exchange emerged after the 57-year-old was charged with lying to the NSW Crime Commission, a secretive investigative body that looked into William’s disappearance.
The foster mother was cleared of that charge in November 2022 when a magistrate concluded she may have been mistaken, but not lying, when she denied hitting a child with a wooden spoon to the commission.
That child was not William.
The DPP refused to comment about the brief of evidence.
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