Australia
Weeks after mysterious disappearance: the police hands over four-year-old Cleo safely to her parents
According to the parents’ statement, Cleo and the sleeping bag had disappeared from the family tent at the campsite in Western Australia (symbol picture)
© Jens Hogenkamp / Picture Alliance
It should have been a sigh of relief: two and a half weeks after the four-year-old Cleo Smith mysteriously disappeared from an Australian campsite, the police found the girl and handed her over to her parents in good health.
Great joy in Australia: around two and a half weeks after the mysterious disappearance of little Cleo Smith from a campsite in the west of the country, the police have found the four-year-old safe and sound. The child was freed by the police from a locked house in Carnarvon, 75 kilometers from the campsite, as Deputy Commissioner Col Blanch said early Wednesday morning (local time). Cleo was safe and sound – and immediately brought to her parents. A 36-year-old suspect from the town is in custody and is being questioned.
The police broke into the house early Wednesday morning shortly before 1 a.m. (local time), said Blanch. This result was achieved thanks to an incredible amount of police work. “We looked for the needle in the haystack and we found it,” Blanch told local radio station 6PR. “When she said,” My name is Cleo, “the house wasn’t dry.” Experienced investigators burst into tears with relief.
The girl’s mother, Ellie Smith, wrote on Instagram: “Our family is complete again.” According to the authorities, Cleo was first taken to a hospital, where he was looked after and examined.
Government had set aside a million dollars for clues
The family lives in the place where Cleo was found. With her mother, her partner and her little sister, the girl was camping on October 16 at the Blowholes on the coast, around 900 kilometers north of the regional capital Perth. According to the mother’s statement, she noticed around 6 a.m. that the blonde girl and her sleeping bag had disappeared from one of the two rooms of the family tent. Her daughter slept there next to her little sister.
The tent zipper was opened to a height that the four-year-old could not have reached herself. Since then there has been no trace of the child. The Blowholes – sea caves from which the surf splashes – are a popular destination on the Indian Ocean. The government of the state of Western Australia offered a reward of one million Australian dollars (around 650,000 euros) for clues leading to the girl’s being found.
“This was persistent, methodical policing,” said Police Commissioner Chris Dawson. Investigators have collected thousands upon thousands of forensic exhibits, data, and information from the community and carefully examined each clue. “Then this one came along and they informed me and said,” Look, we think we hit something here, “said Dawson, adding that news of the child’s rescue was shortly afterwards.
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Australian Prime Minister Scott Morrison thanked the police via Twitter. “What wonderful, relieving news. Cleo Smith has been found home safe and sound,” he wrote. Parliamentarian Tanya Plibersek said on Twitter: “What this family has been through is the worst nightmare of all parents.”
The sympathy was huge after the girl’s disappearance – not only in Australia. On Instagram, people from Scotland, the USA and Germany, among others, tried to encourage the family. “Please do not give up! Our fingers are crossed that she will be found healthy. All the best from Germany!”, Wrote one user.
The desperate parents had repeatedly addressed the public with dramatic appeals – in the hope of convincing the perpetrator or perpetrators to release the girl. According to the evidence, there was only one plausible explanation: Little Cleo was kidnapped.
Neither the mother, the significant other, nor the birth father of the girl, who lives near Perth, are considered suspects. The police had suspected that she had been kidnapped by an “opportunist” perpetrator, as the Australian news agency AAP reported. There were around 100 officials in the special commission.
Cleo’s disappearance had awakened dark memories of the case of the then three-year-old British Maddie McCann, who disappeared from an apartment complex in Portugal on May 3, 2007 without a trace. The girl’s unexplained fate continues to make headlines today. When investigators surprisingly announced last year that a German was suspected of murder, at least hope for late certainty germinated. So far, however, there has been no breakthrough in the investigation.