Eerie graffiti spotted near where toddler vanished while playing hide and seek
Eerie graffiti was spotted close to where a toddler vanished 11 years ago while playing hide and seek.
A man noticed four red words sprayed on a tree stump two years after William Tyrell went missing, and says he alerted police but never heard anything more about it. Bob Carnes said he came across the graffiti about just over half a mile from Bird Tree, a landmark in Kendal, New South Wales, about 230 miles northeast of Sydney, where three-year-old William was last seen. Mr Carnes added his "stomach churned" when he learned the area close to the site became subject to renewed search calls.
Mr Carnes told news.com.au that he found the stump with the words "Jesus Saves William Tyrrell" in 2016, two years after the boy went missing. He had been on a family trip before coming across the "eerie" graffiti.
"We reported it to the police, they went out and looked at it, called me for directions and we never heard another thing about it again," he told the outlet. "Then today I read this and think 'just imagine if this stump was somehow connected?' What an oversight it may have been.
"It sent chills through me when we came across it all those years ago and still does when I think about it today. Who writes something like that on a stump in the middle of the bush? We still don't know what happened to the young fella but whoever sprayed this stump obviously had formed an opinion."
Little William vanished from the garden of his foster grandmother's home in Kendall on September 12, 2014, with a huge search operation being mounted to find him. Over 10 days locals and officials searched the rural area, looking in forests and creeks.
But no trace of the toddler - who had been wearing a Spider-Man outfit while playing hide and seek with his sister - have been found, despite the efforts of emergency services over the years. Many theories have been shared over the circumstances around his disappearance as well as what happened to him.
An inquest into his death at the New South Wales Coroners Court, held between 2019 and 2024, heard allegations the foster mother - who cannot be named - hid his body away after he "died from a fall," amid concerns she would be unable to access more children through the care system.
According to CrimeStoppers Australia, some 38,000 missing persons reports are made each year across the country. While the overwhelming majority of these people are found within a short period of time there are about 2,600 who remain missing for more than three months.
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