William Tyrrell case: Police say foster mother should be charged over death

One of Australia’s longest-running missing persons cases may be closer to finally being closed after the New South Wales Police sensationally recommended that William Tyrrell’s foster mother be charged over his disappearance nine years ago.

The Daily Telegraph reports police have recommended she face charges of interfering with a corpse and perverting the course of justice.

The recommendation to the Director of Public Prosecutions comes after the case turned in 2021 when police began to search the home of Tyrrell’s foster grandmother.

The preschooler was last seen there on September 11, 2014, playing in his favourite Spiderman outfit.

William Tyrrell was last seen wearing a Spider-Man suit outside his foster grandmother's home on September 19, 2014.

It emerged that police had identified a new person of interest and were investigating the theory that Tyrrell had fallen to his death from a second-floor balcony at the address in the town of Kendall on NSW’s Mid North Coast.

Tyrrell’s 5-year-old sister was also there that day but has never been able to provide police with information about what happened to her little brother.

Police have now said they believe Tyrrell’s foster mother, who cannot be named, used her mother’s car to bury the child’s body.

It has never been found and the grandmother has since died.

No other evidence has turned up in the nine-year investigation and the foster mother has not previously been publicly named as a suspect.

William Tyrrell.

Tyrrell would have celebrated his 12th birthday on June 26 and NSW Police used the occasion to reinforce their dedication to solving the case, writing that the “determination of strike force detectives has never wavered as they continue to meticulously explore and exhaust every line of inquiry”.

“As another of William Tyrrell’s birthdays comes and goes - on what should be a happy occasion - the NSW Police Force continues to actively and vigorously search for answers into his disappearance,” the statement said.