The family of Cleo Smith is still putting all the pieces together. Photo / 60 Minutes
The family of Cleo Smith is still putting all the pieces together. Photo / 60 Minutes
Heartbreaking new details have emerged about the way little Cleo Smith made it through her 18-day nightmare kidnapping ordeal.
Cleo, the 4-year-old whose disappearance sent shockwaves across the nation, was abducted from her family's tent in the early hours of October 16, 2021, at the Quobba Blowholes Campsite in Western Australia.
Her disappearance sparked a massive search and gained international attention.
She was eventually discovered by police on November 3 at a home in Carnarvon, just over 80km from where she was taken.
Three months on, her family is sharing new details about her disappearance.
Speaking to 60 Minutes, her mother and stepfather Ellie and Jake relived their trauma.
The family of Cleo Smith is still putting all the pieces together. Photo / 60 Minutes
They said the morning after police rescued the little girl and took her to hospital for observation, Cleo said: "Oh, I haven't had dinner for a very long time, mum."
"And I was just, like, 'You haven't fed my baby.' Like, uh, like, there's just weird things that go through your brain. And I was like, 'No one fed her'.
Terence Darrell Kelly, 36, was arrested the same day Cleo was found. Kelly has since pleaded guilty to forcibly taking a child aged under 16 and faced Carnarvon Magistrates Court in late January via video link from the maximum-security Casuarina Prison in Perth.
The matter was committed to the WA District Court for a sentence mention in March.
Ellie said she is still going through the difficult process of finding out exactly what happened to her little girl.
"She's still different and she always will be and that's just our life now," she said.
"As a parent, you want to … make sure that they stay as a child for as long as they can because you don't want them to be in this big, bad world, and she lost that, that was taken from her.
"We've got a long way to go and so does she, she's probably going to have to be dealing with this for the rest of her life and we're going to eventually have to find out everything that's happened and we're going to have to carry that as well."
Ellie revealed when police found Cleo it was about 1am and she was awake playing with cars.
"She told us that she could hear dogs barking and the police have confirmed that the house is basically how it has been posted on social media," she said.
Cleo's mum says the little girl told her she hadn't had dinner "for a very long time". Photo / 60 Minutes
"So, there is the dolls and everything like that."
She told 60 Minutes about the horrifying moment she realised "someone had my baby".
"I felt like my heart was … it told me, like, she's not here, she's not going to run into my arms today. She's not going to run down a sand dune," Ellie said.
"She was basically nowhere near me and that was the second I realised that someone had her and both my head and my heart connected to that. Someone has taken her and someone had my baby."
When they were finally reunited, Ellie said her daughter's first words were, "hi mummy".
"Cleo got onto the phone and she's like 'hi mummy', and I was like 'hi baby'," Smith said, adding: "It was such a beautiful moment."
