When William Tyrrell’s foster mother will learn her fate: Bombshell twist in the mystery of Australia’s most missing person’s case

Prosecutors will decide in late January whether to charge William Tyrrell’s foster mother with interference with the missing toddler’s corpse and perverting the course of justice, a court has heard.

An inquest into the disappearance of Australia’s most famous missing boy – who vanished from his foster grandmother’s home on September 12, 2014 at the age of three – held a brief public hearing on Friday morning.

The court heard the NSW Director of Public Prosecutions informed the state coroner they had a deadline for their decision on whether to charge the 58-year-old foster mother.

The DPP will complete the brief before two weeks of hearings into William’s disappearance in March with witnesses yet to be named.

In June this year it was revealed that Strike Force Rosann detectives had handed a letter to the DPP recommending that the foster mother be charged with two offenses in connection with William’s disappearance.

The foster mother has always maintained that she had nothing to do with William’s disappearance.

Counsel assisting Gerard Craddock told Deputy State Coroner Harriet Graham that lawyers assisting the inquest had become aware of a matter sent to the DPP by NSW Police for advice on Friday.

‘We make it clear that the request for advice has nothing to do with the judicial investigation. (It is) not a coronary referral, it did not come from the team assisting counsel,” he said.

Coroner Graham said the case must be concluded before the next inquest date, February 23, 2024, well before the final series of hearings, between March 4 and 15 next year.

Outside court, a lawyer representing the foster parents, Rylie Hahn of Marsdens Lawyers, read out a statement saying they were “calling for the disclosure of evidence that police suggest is the basis of criminal proceedings.”

‘The foster mother insists she had nothing to do with his disappearance and is asking police to find him and continue searching for the answers to what happened to him.’

William Tyrrell’s foster parents appeared at the inquest on Friday.

William Tyrrell disappeared in September 2014 and an inquest into his disappearance began in 2019

Convicted pedophile Frank Abbott, who had previously been a witness at the inquest, watched the hearing from Long Bay prison. The 80-year-old’s walker sat in the back of his prison’s video booth.

The inquest, which initially began in March 2019, has held several hearings in both Sydney and country NSW led by counsel assisting the coroner, Gerard Craddock SC.

On Friday, the head of the task force investigating the William Tyrrell case, Strike Force Rosann Commander Detective Chief Inspector David Laidlaw and two of his team, Detectives Andrew Lonergan and John Marsh, arrived early at the coroner’s complex in Lidcombe.

Shortly afterwards, the foster parents arrived and quickly slipped into the building.

Convicted pedophile Frank Abbott (above) watched the hearing from Long Bay prison

The inquest resumed in early 2020 and then again in October 2020, hearing evidence from witnesses at hearings in Taree, on the NSW Mid North Coast.

The investigation was believed to have concluded in October 2021, but then police named William’s foster mother as a ‘person of interest’ after she and the foster father were called to a secret hearing of the NSW Crime Commission to give evidence about William’s case .

The inquest is investigating how three-year-old William disappeared from his foster grandmother’s home in Kendall on the NSW Mid North Coast in September 2014.

William had traveled from Sydney with his foster parents, SD and JS, to stay at the house and went missing the next morning, with no trace of him ever found.

The inquest into the disappearance of William Tyrrell was briefly resumed on Friday

Above, the house where William Tyrrell inexplicably disappeared in Kendall in 2014

Since late 2021, William’s foster parents have been accused of a number of alleged crimes against a child who is not William.

An abuse, stalking and harassment hearing against the couple will conclude early next year after the foster mother pleaded guilty to two charges of common abuse of a child.

Both parents have pleaded not guilty to stalking and intimidation and the foster father has pleaded not guilty to common assault.

The foster mother was found not guilty of lying to the NSW Crime Commission last year and the foster father will face a two-day court hearing on similar charges in November.