MARION Dalton regularly enjoys a midmorning coffee with her daughter while sitting on the veranda of her Benaroon Dr, Kendall, home — giving her a perfect view of the street where young William Tyrrell happily played.
Iona Bligh often jogs down that same stretch of bitumen and past the nondescript brick home owned by little William’s grandparents.
After a busy morning running her kids to school, Anne-Maree Sharpley was desperate for some quiet time and sat down with a book.
Lydene Heslop also had a hectic morning grocery shopping and was unloading bags from her car before taking them inside.
On that fateful morning of September 12 last year, chance and life conspired to ensure people who would normally have a bird’s-eye view as William and his sister played in the sunshine weren’t there.
Shortly after 10.30am, three-year-old William vanished.
It’s these sliding-doors moments that haunt the residents of semi-rural Kendall, who next week will mark a year since the much-loved little boy was abducted.
“My daughter lives around the corner and she comes around here and we sit on this veranda having a cup of coffee nearly every morning in the sunshine … that morning she phoned me and said she’d decided to go to my son’s place, so we weren’t out here, so we saw nothing,” Mrs Dalton said.
“That was the one day we weren’t sitting here. Of course it’s on our mind every day … of course it is. It’s changed the whole village.
“I’ve got grandchildren and I can’t allow them to go anywhere without me watching because you just don’t know what’s happened to William.”
The one question that plagues the residents of Kendall is: How did the culprit or culprits get away with it?
Almost tragically, they believe a cruel set of circumstances conspired to give someone the opportunity to snatch William without being seen by a single witness.
At 10.35am on September 12, a number of people could have been expected to be there to stop William being taken.
Except on that day, at that time, they weren’t.
Mother Anne-Maree Sharpley, who lives across the road from William’s grandmother’s house, was sitting inside reading a book before deciding to go outside her house to “get some sun”.
“I didn’t hear anything, so if the person who took him came down Benaroon Dr, they did it without panicking or driving fast or taking off like an idiot, because I would’ve heard.”
But by the time she did go outside, William had already been taken.
“I’d taken the kids to school and came home and cleaned up and sat down in the quiet with no TV and was just reading my book,” Ms Sharpley said.
“No cars, no cries, no nothing, it was just quiet.
“I’d actually just got a drink and was walking outside to sit in the sun and (William’s mother) was outside the gate.”
Judy Wilson, whose fence sits just 10m from where William was taken, heard him and his sister playing earlier that morning before she headed into town to run some errands.
When she returned, the street was in chaos.
“I wasn’t home and my husband wasn’t home. The only thing I was able to tell police was that I heard the children playing but didn’t see them … I just heard kids laughing and you could tell they were little children,” Mrs Wilson said.
“I don’t think it was an opportunistic grab from someone who just happened to be here because we don’t get strangers wandering around.”
Another Benaroon Dr resident, Lydene Heslop, who lives further down the street, had been grocery shopping and returned home minutes before William vanished.
She saw nothing out of the ordinary when she drove into the street and pulled into her driveway.
She said she was unloading groceries from her car when William was snatched sometime after 10.30am, just metres away from her home where her youngest child was inside.
She said at 11.30am there was a knock on the door and it was Anne-Maree from up the road and William’s mother.
“I didn’t hear anything, so if the person who took him came down Benaroon Dr, they did it without panicking or driving fast or taking off like an idiot, because I would’ve heard,” Ms Heslop said.
“That’s pretty good luck. Especially at 10.30am on a Friday when there should only be one kid on the street, which is mine.”
Another mum, Iona Bligh, who lives in the next town and drives her kids to Kendall’s school every day, regularly ran up Benaroon Dr as part of her daily exercise routine.
But on that day, she decided at the last minute she had enough time to drive to a popular mountain track in the township instead, before meeting friends for coffee at the local cafe.
“I’d drop my kids at school and run down Benaroon Dr. I was going to run it that morning before I met some girlfriends for coffee at Miss Nellie’s ... the only reason
I didn’t is because I dropped my son at school five minutes early,” Ms Bligh said.
“I kick myself every day.”
The mystery surrounding William’s abduction has not only baffled those closest to the scene, but also the state’s homicide squad, with its detectives revisiting the street just last month to go over the neighbours’ testimony once again.
Questions relating to any cars in the area dominated the conversations, as did questions around anyone seen visiting the street in the months before the abduction, including electricians, couriers and garbage collectors.
William’s grandmother has since moved out of the street, having sold the house to a mature couple just before William’s abduction.
While the town still waits for answers as to what happened to the little boy, parents and grandparents now fear leaving their children unsupervised for even a minute.
PODCAST: How William disappeared
https://soundcloud.com/daily-telegraph/william-tyrell-how-the-three-year-old-vanished-in-a-perfect-storm-of-bad-luck
http://www.dailytelegraph.com.au/news/nsw/toddler-william-tyrrells-disappearance-still-haunts-kendall-residents-almost-a-year-later/story-fni0cx12-1227513994803?sv=31e326748245567ed9f7f9bb556568bf
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