"Not acceptable": William Tyrell's foster mother breaks silence

The foster mother of missing toddler William Tyrrell has broken her long silence, calling on police to investigate new evidence allegedly linking a convicted child abuser to the victims of three unsolved murders.

The plea follows revelations from news.com.au’s Witness: William Tyrrell podcast, which reported that key evidence presented during the inquest into William’s disappearance has not been pursued by investigators.

“In the middle of William’s inquest we find three more families who don’t have answers,” the foster mother said. “That’s not acceptable. How can they be forgotten?”

When asked whether police should act on this new evidence – much of which was tendered during the coronial inquest into William’s suspected death – she responded simply: “Yes.”

This marks the first time William’s foster mother has spoken publicly since being identified as a suspect by police in a leaked front-page story in September 2021. The report claimed officers were “now confident they will solve the mystery of the disappearance of the three-year-old boy”, who vanished from a property on the NSW Mid North Coast in 2014.

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Nearly four years later, she has not been charged and continues to deny any involvement in William’s disappearance.

Last November, the barrister assisting the coronial inquest stated it was “beyond argument” that no forensic or eyewitness evidence had been found to explain what happened to William.

Despite this, in June 2023, NSW Police submitted a brief of evidence to the Office of the Director of Public Prosecutions (ODPP), reportedly seeking to charge the foster mother. No public statement has been issued regarding the ODPP’s advice, and both the ODPP and police declined to comment on the matter.

While the foster mother remains under scrutiny, both she and her partner were charged with unrelated offences, including assaulting and intimidating another child – who is not William. She earlier pleaded guilty to two counts of assault after striking the child with a wooden spoon and kicking them on the thigh, however her conviction over these incidents was overturned on Friday May 23 at Sydney’s Downing Centre District Court.

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The new allegations emerging from the podcast involve Frank Abbott, a convicted child sex offender currently serving time for abusing two girls and a boy. Abbott has previously been named as a “person of interest” in the Tyrrell case but was never summoned to give evidence at the inquest.

Abbott has consistently denied any involvement in William’s disappearance.

As the inquest continues and new leads emerge, William Tyrrell’s case remains one of Australia’s most haunting and unresolved mysteries.

Images: NSW Police / Facebook