William Tyrrell’s foster mother breaks down in court after hearing secret phone call about a ‘skeleton’ – while being questioned about alleged cover-up

William Tyrrell’s foster mother wept in court as she was repeatedly bombarded with questions about the alleged cover-up of the boy’s death and the dumping of his body.

The inquest into the toddler’s disappearance in 2014 also heard a secretly recorded telephone conversation in which it was claimed she spoke to a friend about “a skeleton ‘in a clearing’ that would eventually be discovered.”

“That’s what I’m saying, he’ll be found in thirty, forty, fifty, two hundred years when they’re out in a clearing and find the skeleton,” the foster mother said during a phone call with a friend that night. from October 15, 2021.

‘I don’t think if I had done something to William and tried to cover it up, I would admit it. I just can’t see it in me.

“I mean how much time I had. It’s just impossible, no proof. Apparently there was a corpse smell in the ditches and paths.’

The foster mother told her friend that she was furious with the police officers investigating William’s disappearance: ‘

‘That makes me so angry. They spend so much on staff, you have zero, you have wasted millions and millions and you have nothing, absolutely nothing, after seven years,” she said.

William Tyrrell’s foster mother has been questioned about covering up his death when he fell from a veranda and disposing of his body – which she has tearfully denied.

William Tyrrell’s foster mother (centre) cried as she was closely questioned in a court besieged by counsel from the secretive NSW Crime Commission

The call, which was played a month later during an interrogation of the foster mother by the NSW Crime Commission, was heard during a broadcast of the commission’s interview.

In a further bombshell development on Thursday, NSW Police asked for the foster mother to be recalled for questioning before the inquest for the first time since she testified in 2019.

In the video played at William Tyrrell’s inquest in Sydney on Thursday, Crime Commission Counseling Sophie Callan seized on foster mother’s word about finding a skeleton in ‘a clearing’ as evidence she had dumped William’s body .

William disappeared from her mother’s home in Kendall on the NSW north coast on September 12, 2014.

Ms Callan asked the foster mother why she had only revealed to police five days after the disappearance that she had driven her mother’s car to the local driving school on Batar Creek Road in Kendall that morning, before calling Triple-0. to report him missing.

‘Do you accept that you could have dumped William’s body when you drove to the riding school? Did you take his body to the riding school?’

When the foster mother tearfully replied, “No,” twice, her lawyer objected, prompting Crime Commissioner Michael Barnes to tell Ms Callan, “OK, tell her, she did it.”

The secret Crime Commission grilled the foster mother for two days, eventually accusing her outright of covering up William’s death and dumping his body.

Ms Callan (SC) then repeatedly asked the foster mother questions about covering up William’s death and disposing of the body.

‘He had gone onto the veranda and fallen into the ferns. Do you remember finding his body that day among the ferns under the porch?’ she asked.

The foster mother (FM): ‘No, no.’

SC: “Did you find the body and realize he had died?” FM: ‘No, no!.’

SC: ‘Did you find his body and realize that he had died and there was no point in calling the emergency services?’ FM: ‘No’.

SC: “Did you decide to take charge of the situation that was beyond repair and hide his body rather than risk having (another foster child) taken away?” FM: ‘No’.

SC: “Did you decide to hide his body instead of making your mother feel responsible for it?” FM: ‘No’.

SC: “I want to suggest that William went around that porch, fell and fell off that porch.” FM: ‘No, I found it and I didn’t find it.’

SC: “I’m suggesting that you did find him and put his body in your mother’s car.” FM: I didn’t do that.’

SC: ‘There is no suggestion that you harmed him and caused his death, but that you found him and moved his body. FM: ‘I didn’t do that.’

When asked what she meant in the phone conversation when she talked about his remains being found in a clearing, the foster mother replied, “I’m saying in two hundred years he will never be found again and if they do a cleanup and they will find his bones.’

SC: “Do you think he ran away from the house?”

FM: ‘He could have run away, I thought he was taken.’

William Tyrrell (pictured) disappeared from his foster grandmother’s home on the NSW north coast on September 12, 2014

Police are preparing to search the house where William disappeared with ground-penetrating radar in 2021 as they continued their search for the boy who has not been seen since 2014.

SC: ‘If he had been taken, is it unlikely he would be found in a clearing?’ FM: ‘I said the bush is so incredibly thick, it’s a national forest.’

SC: “You described the state forest in that area as being so dense?” FM: ‘It could be anywhere’. SC: ‘All over NSW. Somewhere in Victoria?’ FM: ‘Everywhere.’

SC: ‘If he had been taken, is there anything wrong that an open place would find his body?’ FM: ‘I don’t know.’

Ms Callan then asked the foster mother about the search of the area on Batar Creek Road for William’s remains.

“Did you have any expectations that William would be found?” The foster mother replied, “No.”

When Mrs. Callan asked her, “Why not?”, the foster mother replied, “Because I didn’t take him there.”

Mrs Callan: ‘Where did you take him?’

Foster mother: “I didn’t take him anywhere.”

Before spending two days brooding at the Crime Commission, the foster mother was told at the start of the hearing by her commissioner, Michael Barnes, that: ‘You have no right to remain silent.

He told her that she had no right to refuse to answer questions, and that if she gave a false answer she could be jailed for up to five years.

“Our main goal is to find William’s body and have it buried respectfully, to accept that he is gone and will not come back,” the commissioner told her.

“We all accept that you loved William and would not have deliberately harmed him.

‘We all accept that accidents can happen and that even the most organized people… can be forced to make quick decisions.

“If that’s what happened the day William went missing, then this is your chance to explain it safely and privately.”

NSW Police on Thursday asked for the foster mother to be recalled for questioning before the inquest, for the first time since she testified in 2019.

The inquest into the disappearance of William Tyrrell is currently investigating the police case that William died by falling from the verandah of the Kendall home and that his foster mother disposed of his remains.

The foster mother and foster father have both repeatedly denied any knowledge or involvement in William’s disappearance.

The inquest will resume in the last week before Christmas and NSW Deputy State Coroner Harriet Grahame will release her findings in 2025, about six years since she began the investigation.