Transcript
Host or Narrator (0:03)
Okay, we are coming back with more episodes of Witness William Tyrrell. And thank you to everyone, and I mean everyone who's got in touch to ask when or even if we're going to do this. And the answer is, yes, we are. And the first episode will be out next week. But it has taken us a lot longer to get here than we expected. It's taken months longer. And the reason for that is that what we thought might be simple got complicated. It was like every time we pulled on a thread in this investigation, it's led us deep into a maze and we've had to follow all of those tunnels, the right turns and the wrong turns, and what we found there has genuinely shocked us. I never expected this investigation to get so dark or that we'd end up investigating other murders beyond William Tyrrell's disappearance, but that's what's happened. And doing this kind of work, finding people, talking to them, digging out old documents, flying across the country, all of that takes time. This is easily the most complicated, the most demanding and the most long running investigation I've ever worked on. And the truth of it is that we also would not have got to where we are today, about to release these four new episodes without you, the listeners who've got in touch by email or by social media, the people who we hadn't managed to track down when we published those first episodes last year, who've come forward and spoken to us either anonymously or on the record, or the people who've come forward with more tips, who've helped fill in the blanks and have really. You've helped shape this investigation ever since it started. Some of you have already influenced the podcast, others have been the sources for other written stories about William's disappearance, which have been published by news.comau and several of your tips have also been passed on to the authorities, who I hope. I really hope are also doing their own investigating. Particularly, I want to mention the sheer number of people who've got in touch with us to talk about other suspected or convicted paedophiles who lived in the area around where William was reported missing, beyond the several people who we've mentioned in this series so far, that has genuinely shocked me. Or the other people who've come forward to help put us in touch with other witnesses or with sightings of William, some of which were reported to the police, and not all of them, it seems, were followed up. I want to say thank you to everyone who's contacted us about Crime Stoppers. I now have a much better understanding of how that organization works and what the police did or didn't do with the countless, literally countless reports Crime Stoppers received about William. And thank you to those who got in touch to talk about police search dogs. They're not as reliable as you see in the movies or sometimes as you hear about in other podcasts. And finally, a special mention to the one member of the public who attended the inquest and doesn't want to be publicly identified. You know who you are and from our conversations, you have a better idea than most about what's coming up in the next four episodes. For the rest of you, those episodes will be out in a week, but here's a clip of what to expect.