“Witnesses” in William Tyrrell case turned away by police
<p dir="ltr">Several potential witnesses who claim to have spotted William Tyrrell after he went missing in 2014 allege that they were dismissed by police, with phone calls to Crime Stoppers also going unanswered.</p>
<p dir="ltr">One woman claims to have seen the child near Uluru one year after he was reported missing, with another four people claiming they had valuable information that was ignored by authorities. </p>
<p dir="ltr">As <em><a href="http://news.com.au/">news.com.au</a></em> continues their investigative podcast into Tyrrell’s disappearance, the podcast spoke to the witnesses who were allegedly ignored by police, as one woman said she “felt sick” after being dismissed when trying to report another possible sighting of William.</p>
<p dir="ltr">A third possible witness said he was “p***ed off with Crime Stoppers not taking me seriously”.</p>
<p dir="ltr">After the then three-year-old disappeared from Kendall on the mid North coast of New South Wales, NSW Police were inundated with information.</p>
<p dir="ltr">In the following two years, there were around 2,800 calls to Crime Stoppers, and more than 1,000 possible sightings of William, with many of these tips being followed up at the time.</p>
<p dir="ltr">While speaking with the podcast, one potential witness, Lois Barry, believed she saw William travelling with a group of four adults and several young children when she was on a trip to Australia’s red centre in 2015.</p>
<p dir="ltr">She said she had an encounter with a blonde woman at a petrol station in Marla, South Australia, who told Ms Barry she was from the east coast of NSW.</p>
<p dir="ltr">As soon as Ms Barry went into a free cubicle, she claimed the woman said: “You can come out now, Will.”</p>
<p dir="ltr">Ms Barry said she saw the group again at a campsite later that night, and recognised one of the group from media reports of William’s disappearance.</p>
<p dir="ltr">The boy was younger than the other children in the group and she felt he was being “hidden” by them, she said.</p>
<p dir="ltr">One of the adults with the group was the blonde woman, as Ms Barry took a photo of the woman and noted down the registration numbers of the vehicles in which the group were travelling.</p>
<p dir="ltr">Ms Barry told <em>news.com.au</em> she tried to report her potential sighting at the time by visiting a local police station, only to be cut off by an officer who said he was busy, and told her “don’t worry about it”.</p>
<p dir="ltr">She then called Crime Stoppers “two or three times” to report what she had seen, but she said, “Crime Stoppers rang me back and said it was nothing.”</p>
<p dir="ltr">Ms Barry said she has never heard directly from police.</p>
<p dir="ltr">“For all those years … that was just eating at me,” she said, breaking down as she described her fears of what might have happened to William.</p>
<p dir="ltr">Another potential witness, Richard Brindle, said he contacted Crime Stoppers shortly after police appealed for information about two cars “parked strangely with the driver windows down” outside the house where William was reported missing.</p>
<p dir="ltr">Despite multiple reports to Crime Stoppers, Mr Brindle said he never heard back.</p>
<p dir="ltr">“I had some fresh information at the time, and I rang Crime Stoppers twice. And they must have thought I was some nut job or whatever,” he said.</p>
<p dir="ltr">“I was a bit p***ed off with Crime Stoppers not taking me seriously. It’s very serious stuff, it’s a boy’s life. And they didn’t even bother to interview me. I thought, ‘What a joke. No one seems to care’.”</p>
<p dir="ltr"><em>Image credits: NSW Police</em></p>
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