“We need to able to satisfy a court—whether that be coronial or criminal—that William’s disappearance was not through misadventure,” he says. The officer hopes the $1 million reward offered by the NSW government will provide motivation for someone who knows what happened to William to come forward.
“Someone knows what happened; they might not be the one who took him, but know who did, and they’re potentially concealing a criminal offence.”
In the meantime, renewed efforts to find evidence in William’s 2014 disappearance—he was playing with his sister in his grandmother’s front
yard, just metres from the house where she and his foster mother were making a cup of tea when he vanished—have prompted his biological grandmother Natalie Collins to call for a halt to the search. “This is just opening old wounds for us ... they’re never going to find William,” she told News Corp. “You’re wasting your time—he’s dead.”
For more see this week's issue of WHO.