Disappearance of William Tyrrell

William Tyrrell (born 26 June 2011) was a three-year-old Australian boy who disappeared on 12 September 2014 while visiting his foster grandmother's home on Benaroon Drive in Kendall, New South Wales, located across a bush road from the Kendall State Forest. He had travelled there the previous day from Sydney with his foster parents and five-year-old sister, and was wearing a Spider-Man suit at the time he was last seen. Between roughly 10:00 and 10:25 am, Tyrrell and his sister were playing hide-and-seek in the yard while his foster mother and foster grandmother watched. His foster mother went inside briefly to make tea and, after not hearing him for several minutes, began searching. His foster father, who had returned from a nearby errand, joined the search of the street. Emergency services were called at 10:57 am, and police arrived shortly after.

A large-scale search followed, involving police, the State Emergency Service, the Rural Fire Service, helicopters, motorcycles, detection dogs and hundreds of community volunteers. A specialist unit, Strike Force Rosann, was established to lead the investigation, later supported by a second strike force drawing on other specialist squads. Police pursued a number of investigative threads, including two unidentified vehicles seen near the property around the time of the disappearance, and the possibility of involvement by a paedophile ring, given that a number of registered sex offenders lived in the surrounding area. Two convicted child sex offenders were investigated as persons of interest, though they denied any involvement. A separate man, who had once repaired a washing machine at the property and faced unrelated historical child sex charges in Victoria, was later confirmed to have been elsewhere at the time of the disappearance; those charges were dropped, and in December 2022 the NSW Supreme Court awarded him $1.48 million in damages, finding that the lead detective's pursuit of him had been malicious.

Over the following years, police received more than 1,000 reported sightings, none of which were confirmed to be Tyrrell. In September 2016, the NSW government offered a $1 million reward for information leading to his recovery, not contingent on any arrest or conviction. By mid-2018, police conducted further large-scale forensic searches of bushland around Kendall.

The investigation's focus shifted substantially in November 2021, when police announced they had received new evidence and were searching for what they described as likely to be human remains rather than a living child. Around this time, Tyrrell's foster mother and his now-deceased foster grandmother were reported to be treated as persons of interest, with police investigating the possibility that Tyrrell had fallen from a balcony on the property. In April 2022, the foster mother was charged with giving false or misleading information to a NSW Crime Commission hearing but was found not guilty in November 2022. On 27 June 2023, police recommended charges against her for perverting the course of justice and interfering with a corpse, alleging she concealed his accidental death and disposed of his body. As of that date, William Tyrrell's whereabouts remained unresolved.