A playful three-year-old boy disappears from a quiet street in broad daylight. The investigation leads authorities to search local pedophile rings. Despite a dizzying number of developments, Australia’s most high-profile disappearance has yet to be solved.


Welcome to Without a Trace. I’m your host Gelynn. Every file holds a mystery, every story deserves to be heard, this is William Tyrrell’s story. 
 
William Tyrrell, born on June 26, 2011, was a funny, playful and active three-year-old boy. He had an incredible sense of humor and was always laughing and smiling. William was very sociable and had three best friends at daycare. He was big into firetrucks and had a newfound love for Spider Man. He could often be seen in his spider-man boots, gloves, and costume. William is described as being in generally good health, but he suffered from asthma, particularly during nights with colder weather, which he used an inhaler for.
 
William’s biological mother had a rough upbringing. She had become violent and quickly grew a criminal history from the time she was 18. She met William’s father in 2009, and the couple began having a turbulent relationship. William’s sister was born in 2010, and William followed in June 2011. William’s mother had frequent run-ins with police and a string of petty crimes to her name. The pair were ordered to participate in a domestic violence course and were told not to associate with one another. When William was just 11 months old, the couple was seen together on CCTV footage, resulting in the order to remove William and his sister from their care.
 
William and his sister were placed in foster care with a wealthy couple on the north shore. The transition seemed difficult for William and was described as being “furious” toward his foster mom, often hitting and biting her. Despite this, the couple welcomed William and his sister with open arms. The wealthy couple had everything, except children so when William and his sister entered their lives, they had plans to adopt them. He was encouraged to call his foster parents “mommy and daddy”. 


On September 12, 2014, William’s foster mom drove William and his sister four hours from Sydney to their foster grandmother’s house in Kendall. The foster grandmother lived in a two story three-bedroom home on an acre of land on a quiet dead-end street. The children spent the morning playing outside with the foster mom and grandma sitting outside watching. Between 10:00 and 10:25 am William and his sister were playing hide-and-seek in the front and back yard. William’s foster mom went inside to make a cup of tea, but became worried after she failed to hear William playing for five minutes. Her last memory was of William imitating a tiger’s roar while running toward the house, then there was silence and he had disappeared. The foster mom searched the house and yard for him, with no avail. 


Shortly after, William’s foster father returned from a business trip in Lakewood and joined in the search. He began searching the street and knocked on the doors of neighbors. At 10:57 am the foster mom alerted authorities of Wiliam’s disappearance and the New South Wales Police Force arrived at the residence at 11:06 that morning. 


Hundreds of authorities and community members searched into the night for William, with two hundred volunteers continuing the search overnight. Hundreds combed the rugged terrain surrounding the home while police divers searched waterways and dams. Motorcycles and helicopters joined the search, trying to cover as much ground as possible. Police searched every house in the surrounding area several times. Detection dogs managed to detect William’s scent but only within the boundaries of the backyard. Despite the intense search, William could not be found. 


At 4:30 pm police searched the residence of William’s biological parents. Police threatened to take the parents into custody until the mom produced ATM receipts showing she was shopping in Blacktown at the time of the disappearance. William’s biological family was cleared of any involvement in his disappearance. Due to Wiliam being in foster care at the time of his disappearance, Williams’ biological parents were prevented from being named for legal reasons. However, they were allowed to speak during a 60 Minutes interview on the condition they didn’t show their faces. Police were criticized for not allowing the parents to speak publicly with community members fearing the decision would hinder the investigation. Police publicly responded quote their “key priority is to always act in the interests of the safety and wellbeing of children and not in any way to jeopardize ongoing police investigations”. 


Authorities then moved their suspicions away from William’s biological family and took up a new theory that he was abducted by an opportunistic stranger who had a connection with a pedophile ring. Specialists soon joined the investigation including a sex crimes squad and a team of specially trained investigators who were experienced in the unexplained disappearance of young children. They interviewed dozens of people including a number of registered sex offenders living in the surrounding area of Kendall, where William went missing. 


Authorities believed two persons of interest in the case, both convicted child sex offenders, may have met up on the day William vanished. Both were members of a group called Grandparents as Parents Again, a known link with a local pedophile ring. The family of one of the persons of interest, who had 90 convictions to his name, said he was going to visit another child sex offender on that day and returned home drunk. The pair were questioned by police and denied being friends or having any involvement in William’s disappearance. 


From there, police began questioning Bill Spedding, a man who happened to repair the residence’s washing machine days before the disappearance. Bill claimed to have been at his grandchild’s school at the time of William’s disappearance. Police pinned Bill with prior unrelated child sex charges. Bill was placed in jail while he waited for his court date on July 4, 2016. Police planted surveillance equipment in Bill’s home and jail cell, hoping for an utterance of guilt. But no utterance ever came, Bill’s alibi was airtight. It was eventually confirmed that Bill was not involved in the disappearance and all charges related to the historical offenses were dropped or dismissed. 


Bill went on to sue the New South Wales Police Force for damages in relation to abuse of process and malicious prosecution. The Supreme Court of New South Wales found that Lead Detective Gary Jubelin’s pursuit of Bill was “malicious”. The historical sex crimes had been fabricated with the sole purpose of pressuring Bill into a confession. It was found that the charges stemmed from a messy divorce in the 1980s and the children involved were coerced into providing false confessions. In December of 2022 Bill was awarded $1.4 million in damages plus interest. 


Twelve months into the investigation, police publicly shared their investigations into finding the drivers of two vehicles that were seen parked outside the foster grandmother’s residence the morning William vanished. One vehicle is described as a white station wagon and the other an older-style gray sedan. Both vehicles were unknown to the neighborhood and there was no logical reason they would be parked on the dead end street. Reportedly at 9:00 am on the morning of William’s disappearance a gray or green sedan drove past the residence while William and his sister were riding their bikes in the driveway. The sedan made a u-turn in the neighbor’s driveway and drove out of the street. Another four wheel drive vehicle was sighted driving out of the no through street around 10:30 am - the time of Wiliam’s disappearance. The same vehicle was later seen speeding down another street. Police stated they knew about these vehicles since the investigation started but did not release this information to the public as part of an investigation strategy. 


In the first two years after William disappeared, police received more than 1000 suspected sightings. One sighting included a photo of a man with a young boy who looked strikingly familiar to William, however, within 24 hours police received another call confirming the boy was not William. A second sighting showed a photo of a young boy and a woman at a McDonald’s in Queensland. The boy looked similar to William and the woman looked like his foster grandmother but police later confirmed the mother and boy were not them. In Early 2015, two passengers and a member of a New Zealand bound flight crew thought they saw William on the flight. Police met the aircraft and soon discovered it was not him. 


On June 12, 2018, police announced a large-scale forensic search in the bushland around Kendall, where William went missing. Despite authorities efforts, the month-long search did not provide any new leads. On the second anniversary of William’s disappearance, authorities ramped up their investigation efforts in response to a public plea from William’s parents. The investigation became the state’s largest, involving dozens of analysts and investigators. This led to a record number of calls to New South Wales’s Crime Stoppers with more than 1000 people having been interviewed and 690 persons of interest being identified. The New South Wales government announced a $1 million reward for information on William’s whereabouts. Rewards are usually paid out as a condition of the arrest and conviction of individuals involved; however, in this case the recovery of William had been added as a condition to the reward. 


For the first seven years of the investigation, police presumed William to have been abducted. However, on November 15, 2021, police received new evidence that led to the assumption they would find his remains. A woman testified that two brothers she babysat revealed to her that they had been threatened by a local man who they had seen burying a suitcase, which the man claimed contained William’s body. This led police to renew their search for William’s remains. 


A few days later on November 17, 2021 media reported that William’s foster mother and now-deceased foster grandmother were being treated as persons of interest in his disappearance as police began investigating a fall from a balcony at the grandmother’s house. A few months later, in April 2022, William’s foster mother was charged with giving false or misleading information, however, she was found not guilty in November 2022.


 On June 27, 2023, police recommended charges against William’s foster mother for perverting the course of justice and interfering with a corpse because they believed she may have concealed his accidental death and then disposed of his body. Police began monitoring William’s foster parents as part of the investigation into his disappearance. Authorities placed surveillance devices in the foster parents home and cars and their phone calls were intercepted. The foster mom was heard on a phone call saying, “I kicked the child this morning. I kicked her hard”. Recording from these devices in the home heard the woman kicking a child and smacking them with a wooden spoon. Other devices heard the woman threatening to slap the child in the face and throw them around. One recording inside the home captured a loud bang before the child could be heard crying out in pain. The foster mother pled guilty to two counts of assaulting a child by smacking them with a wooden spoon and kicking them in the thigh. She also pled guilty to two counts of intimidation against the same young child. In March 2024, both parents were found guilty of intimidation charges in relation to another child who was previously in their care. 


Despite decade-long search efforts and forensic testing, no trace of William has been found and officials are still not certain what happened to him. Prosecutors expect to know in January if William’s foster mother will be charged in his disappearance. She maintains she had nothing to do with the case. 


So, what do you think? Was William abducted by individuals involved in a local pedophile ring or is his foster family involved in covering up his accidental death?


Thank you for listening to Without a Trace with your host, Gelynn. I hope you enjoyed our deep dive into William Tyrrell’s disappearance. If you enjoyed today’s podcast please subscribe and follow us on Instagram. Join me next week as I dive into another case.