William was 3-years-old when he disappeared from his grandmother’s home in Australia 2014.
Photo from whereswilliam.org
On September 11th, 2014 William Tyrrell, his sister and parents travelled to Kendall, Australia to visit their grandmother. Kendall is a small town, mostly surrounded by woodland and has a population of just over 800 people. Williams Grandmother lived on Benaroon drive which was opposite Kendall state forest. The area was very quiet with no cars or people going through unless they were visiting or lived there.
On September 12th, 2014 William’s dad went to the local town to go to an internet café for a skype business call and would be stopping at the local chemist on the way back. Whilst he was gone at around 9.45am William and his mother played their version of hide and seek; they would ‘raww’ whenever they were found, his mother had taken a photo on the day showing William mid raww in a Spiderman costume. His mother would then return to make tea in the kitchen, then around 10.30am she realised she could no longer hear William shouting ‘raww’. His mother then continued to the garden where he was nowhere in sight, she asked his sister where he was, and she said he ran around the back of the house; when they went to look, he was still nowhere to be found. By this time everyone was looking for him but there was no trace anywhere, neighbours came a light of the situation, but no one could find him. After realising he is no where close they called the police (000) to report him missing.
Police were on the scene within an hour and started searching in bigger areas with police dogs, but the dogs could only find a scent around the boundaries grandmother’s house. Volunteers, search teams and a helicopter joined the search, they searched every house on the Benaroon drive but there were no leads. Police did an intense search of the area, woodlands and routes were being searched for any evidence William had taken the route. Divers were set for all the water in case he had fell in or if there was any of his personal belongings. Police were also telling to search for any of his clothes or anything he had on him to help them find a lead on his disappearance. A task force was set up to help focus on finding William, the force was made up of specialist investigators that were trained for unexplained young children disappearances.
On September 16th, four days missing the search force found a small patch of blood 2km from Benaroon drive but after testing they found it was not human blood. They also found a knife and small footprints, but police dismissed them.
After two weeks of searching they had not found a single lead or trace of William. In the investigation they interviewed over a thousand people and over 700 of these were people of interests but only had a handful of suspects at the time.
William’s grandmother and mother recall at 9am two cars parked across the road from their house and were both parked very close to each other. This became suspicious as both drivers’ windows were down, they were at a dead-end road, had no reason to be there and nobody on the street recognised the cars. A few other neighbours did confirm they had seen the cars on the road that day, but they did not know the cars. A few minutes after the cars were spotted across the road William and his sister were riding their bikes in the drive away when their grandmother saw another car coming down the road and did a U-turn on someone’s drive way and then left. Neighbours also said they had seen a car exit Benaroon drive around the time William would have disappeared and was seen speeding around Kendall. Police kept this information private from the public whilst they investigated.
William’s parents did not show their faces throughout the searches and when interviewed by TV etc they would have their faces blurred or, so they could not be seen. This then was seen as weird by the public as they never helped with the search for their son. It was not until 2017 when a judge ruled that the identity of the parents could be released, and it was discovered that William was a foster child and the family he was with at the time of his disappearance was not his parents but his foster family. William was put into foster care when we were a baby due to family domestics. William had been with the foster family since he was 9 months old therefore his foster family was devastated when they lost him and treated him as their son all his life.
In September 2018 police had a suspect called Tony Jones and not long after they made him a suspect a burnt-out car was found in a short distance to wear William went missing, the car was described as Tony Jones’. When police had first received the call, the car was not burnt out and was the right way up but when they arrived at the scene someone had set fire to the car and it was flipped. Tony Jones is a convicted paedophile and did not have a confirmed alibi on the day of William’s disappearance.
William is still missing to this day. On December 19th 2018 It was concluded that William would not be ruled as dead.
William has his own ‘Where’s William’ page to view click here.
