Prisoner’s mother tells how ‘loner’ Terry Kelly, 36, was ‘given a real hiding’ by her ‘furious’ son

The suspected abductor of four-year-old Cleo Smith who sustained a heady injury in custody after his arrest was beaten ‘black and blue’ by another prisoner inside a police holding cell, the inmate’s mother has claimed. 

Terry Kelly, 36, was arrested by police over the disappearance of Cleo, dubbed ‘Australia’s Madeleine McCann‘, before officers rescued the little girl from a house in Carnarvon, Western Australia, 18 days after she went missing from a remote campsite.

The suspect had only been at Carnarvon police station for a few hours on Wednesday when he was allegedly set upon by a prisoner. 

Today, the prisoner’s mother said her ‘furious’ son ‘blew up’ and beat Kelly ‘black and blue’ when he discovered that he had been arrested over the four-year-old’s abduction.  

She said: ‘As soon as he heard this bloke was arrested over that little Cleo, he blew up, beat him black and blue.

‘I tell you what, he (Kelly) got a real hiding…my son had to be taken out in shackles, and he (Kelly) was taken for treatment…he was in a bad way. He is a big bloke but he really copped it’.

A spokesman for Western Australia Police said they would not be commenting on the woman’s claims.

Earlier today Kelly was seen being loaded into an ambulance outside the police station and taken to hospital for treatment with a large white bandage wrapped around his head. 

Officers had pulled over the alleged kidnapper and bundled him out of a car just after midnight before police executed a search warrant at the nearby home and found Cleo inside a locked property.

Neighbours earlier described the suspect as ‘a loner’ who had been behaving ‘weirdly’, including one who saw him buying nappies in a nearby supermarket despite not having children. Another reported hearing a girl crying at night in recent days, but said she thought nothing of it at the time. 

Cops said the 36-year-old, who has undergone a psychiatric assessment after being deemed mentally unstable, was only identified as a suspect on Tuesday, and is now being questioned over a suspected abduction. They are not looking for anybody else. 

Cleo was discovered by detectives at around 1am on Wednesday alone and playing with toys inside the bedroom of a rundown and locked house in Carnarvon – a rural town 47 miles from the campsite where she vanished on October 16, and just two miles from her family home. 

Detectives had used crowbars and battering rams to kick in the door and free the little girl at about 12.46am local time on Wednesday. 

The suspect was not at the house when Cleo was found, officers added, but was arrested a ‘short’ distance away. Detective Wilde said he is not known to Cleo’s family and is not a registered sex offender, but is ‘known to police’. ‘I have to be very careful about that,’ he added.

Detectives allege Kelly was behaving suspiciously in the 18 days since Cleo vanished, doing laps of his street at all hours of the day and buying toddler nappies from his grocery store despite not being known to have children.

Dogs that he usually kept on the backyard of his home were also suddenly moved to the front of the home.

Following the arrest, locals described their bizarre run-ins with Kelly, with a baker telling of the moment he waved at him just a day before the raid and a woman detailing a strange interaction at Bunnings where the suspect ‘stared at her’. 

Carnarvon baker Donald said he waved to the accused kidnapper in a polite exchange on the street a day before Cleo was found.

Donald told 6PR Radio he ‘couldn’t have imagined anything like this.’

A neighbour who has lived across the street from Kelly for years recalled how she also had her own bizarre interaction with the man.

Pricilla Milly-Milly said she saw him at the hardware store Bunnings just last week, Perth Now reported.

‘He was in the car and he just kept staring at me,’ she said.

Ms Milly-Milly remarked that Kelly ‘never let anyone into his house’ even though they had been neighbours for a long time.

Another neighbour told Nine he had spotted the suspect behaving bizarrely in recent days, hooning through the streets with his dogs in the front seat of his car.

‘He’s been acting a bit strange lately,’ Henry Dodd told Nine News. ‘He will get in his car, drive that fast.

‘He doesn’t have his dogs at the front [normally], he has his dogs out the back, but through this week he had his dogs out the front and he has been acting weird.’

Mr Dodd added: ‘I just can’t believe it and get over the fact that she is just the house down from us and locked up here for a couple of weeks.

‘Going on three weeks, she is straight across from us. I’ve got little sisters there.’

Locals described how they would often see Kelly walking to and from the local grocery store, ‘keeping his head down and talking to nobody’. 

Another neighbour said Kelly was a loner who ‘kept to himself’ and was not the type of person anyone else in the street would ‘have a yarn with’ despite being a long term resident. 

The suspect spent the morning being interrogated by detectives before being rushed to Carnarvon Hospital where he is now being guarded by three police officers. 

The suspect has undergone a psychiatric assessment after being declared not mentally stable, The West Australian reported.

Charges are expected to be laid on Thursday with investigators saying there are ‘no other persons of interest’. 

Stunned neighbours told Daily Mail Australia they were first alerted the girl was being held on their street when police flood lights lit up their cul-de-sac in the early hours of Wednesday morning.

‘My nephews went up to see what was going on and then they saw cops leading out the little white girl,’ a neighbour who has known the man for more than a decade said.   

Yesterday incredible video footage showed the moment that Cleo was found by officers in a rundown home 18 days after she vanished from a campsite where she was staying with her family. 

In the clip, police can be seen carrying the tired-eyed girl into the garden of the house before a detective asks whether she is OK. When Cleo smiles and nods, he tells her: ‘We’re going to take you to see your mummy and daddy, OK?’

The tender moment brings to an end a desperate investigation that began when Ellie Smith – Cleo’s mother – reported her missing from a tent the family was sharing on the Blowholes Campsite, and which had been overshadowed from day one by fears of a tragic ending for the little girl.

But Cleo is now safe and recovering in the company of her parents – having been pictured smiling from a hospital bed while eating an ice lolly, waving to the camera as her mother’s hand rests on her leg. Rod Wilde, the detective who led the investigation, said Cleo is ‘physically OK’ after being checked by doctors.  

Following the rescue operation, Western Australia Police Deputy Commissioner Col Blanch said: ‘Four fathers walked into that room… they might have been wearing guns and detective suits but they were four fathers.’

Cleo was first reported missing at 6.23am on October 16 by Ellie, who said she had last seen her daughter asleep alongside stepfather Jake and sister Isla in the family’s tent at 1.30am, but awoke to find her gone. The tent zipper was undone and the sleeping bag that Cleo was using had also disappeared.

Police quickly launched a search and rescue operation, using helicopters, drones, dogs and officers to scour the sparse countryside around the campsite and nearby coastline amid fears Cleo had wandered off. But after no sign of her was uncovered, police quickly pivoted to the theory that she had been taken. 

Officers trawled through hours of CCTV footage, combed satellite images, interviewed other campers and even dug through rubbish heaps for any sign of the missing girl before a ‘tip off’ led them to the Carnarvon house. 

Police have not yet outlined how or why they believe Cleo was taken from the campsite, or how she came to be inside the locked house, just a two minute drive from their own headquarters. 

Investigators have also not disclosed exactly what led them to the house, saying only that a report of a car in the area was crucial to tracking the girl down.

Officers had previously spoken of trying to trace a car seen leaving the Blowholes campsite around 3am the day Cleo vanished. 

Detective Blaine, who has been working the case since Cleo vanished, said the first thing he did upon finding the little girl was to ask her for her name. After three attempts she finally replied: ‘My name is Cleo.’

Once he realised they had found the missing girl, Blaine said detectives were ‘openly crying with relief’ before calling Cleo’s parents to tell them the good news.

‘We’ve got someone here that wants to speak to you,’ Blaine recalled telling Ellie as he put Cleo on the phone, before adding: ‘Please start making your way to the hospital, we’ll meet you there.’

The family were then reunited as doctors gave Cleo a check-up, with Blaine saying the little girl shouted ‘mummy’ before the pair shared a hug and kisses.

‘It was really an honour to be able to witness that reunion,’ he said. Asked whether that moment counts as the highlight of his career, he added: ‘Without a doubt.’

Mother Ellie then took to social media to express her relief, posting a picture of her daughter with the caption underneath: ‘Our family is whole again.’ 

Speaking about the moment Cleo was found, Blaine said: ‘It was a shock to start with, quickly followed by elation. That could have been any one of the team, but it turned out I was one of four guys that were fortunate enough to go through that door and make that rescue.

‘We had always hoped for that outcome, but were not prepared for it. It was absolutely fantastic to see her sitting there in the way that she was. It was incredible.’

‘I wanted to be sure it was her. I said, “What is your name?” She didn’t answer, I asked three times, and then she looked at me and said, “My name is Cleo.”

‘And that was it. Then we turned around and walked out of the house. Not long after that we got into the car and the officer called Cleo’s parents. It was a wonderful feeling to make that call.’

Police used battering rams and crowbars to break their way into the Carnarvon house, located on the outskirts of town in a suburb called Brockman, with neighbours telling Daily Mail Australia they were first alerted to the commotion when flood lights lit up their cul-de-sac in the middle of Tuesday night. 

‘My nephews went up to see what was going on and then they saw cops leading out the little white girl,’ a neighbour said. 

He added that he has known the owner of the property for more than a decade, describing him as ‘a loner’ who ‘kept to himself’ and was not the type to stop and talk to others who lived on the street.

He last saw the man just three days after Cleo disappeared. ‘His grandmother raised him… but after she died a year or so ago, nobody went over to [speak] to him,’ the man said.

‘He got a new car after… he used to park it in the driveway and then close the gate, every day, always went and put the car in the same spot and closed the gate.’

Former friends added that the suspect had not long been released from jail, though did not say what he was in prison for. Police said only that he was ‘known’ to them and was not a registered sex offender.

While a handful of people witnessed the moment Cleo was rescued, others in Carnarvon woke to the news that she was safe – with the streets of the usually-quiet town, population 4,500, filled with pink balloons and ‘welcome back’ signs.  

Superintendent Wilde said Cleo was in good spirits and communicating well with officers after being found, though added that there are more interviews to do in coming days.

‘Having seen her a couple times this morning, she is a little Energiser bunny. How she has that much energy, I wish I did, I am about ready to go to sleep,’ he said.

‘Very sweet, energetic girl. Very trusting and very open with us. We all wanted to take turns holding her. It was a really good experience.’ 

Police said the man arrested only became a suspect in the case on Tuesday, the same day that Wilde revealed officers were trawling the ‘Dark Web’ for images of the girl.

Hours before Cleo was found, Wilde also said he believes her disappearance was an ‘opportunistic’ kidnapping by someone who had only been aware of Cleo for a ‘short time’. Police have not yet elaborated on whether any of that information turned out to be accurate.

The early-hours raid came after officers received a tip-off Tuesday night with ‘really important information about a car’, which they confirmed with phone data and ‘a lot of forensic leads’.

Neighbours interviewed after the raid also recalled other signs that a child was being kept at the property, but said they only realised the connection to Cleo in hindsight. 

Sahntayah McKenzie recalled hearing a little girl crying one night, but did not think anything of it at the time.

‘Not last night, the night before it… I heard a little girl crying but I wouldn’t expect it to be Cleo,’ she told the West Australian. ‘I didn’t expect it would happen in this little neighbourhood, a lot of people know each other.’ 

It’s reported that police were tipped off to the address after neighbours spotted the suspect buying nappies.

One of them told Seven News she became suspicious after seeing the suspect buying Kimbies nappies from a supermarket. 

‘The other day, I think it was Monday, we saw him in Woolworths buying nappies but we didn’t click on who it was or what he was buying them for,’ she said. ‘Until now.’

Another neighbour told Nine he had spotted the arrested man behaving bizarrely in recent days, driving at speed through the streets with his dogs in the front seat of his car.

‘He’s been acting a bit strange lately,’ Henry Dodd told Nine News. ‘He will get in his car, drive that fast. 

‘He doesn’t have his dogs at the front [normally], he has his dogs out the back, but through this week he had his dogs out the front and he has been acting weird.’

Henry Dodd said police spent several hours driving up and down the street before breaking into the home.

Neighbours described the man as ‘quiet’ and said they wouldn’t expect him to be involved.

‘Everyone that knows the person that stays in that house, wouldn’t think that it would be him,’ he said. ‘We got a shock ourselves that it was him.’

Another neighbour told the Today show: ‘S**t, she’s been that close.’

Another local described the man in custody as an ‘oddball’.

‘He is a very quiet guy, bit of an oddball… definitely wouldn’t have picked him… it has completely derailed me,’ Rennee Turner said.

‘I’d heard whispers… I kind of figured the police might have had an idea of what was going on, because I have never seen such a massive amount of cops here for so long.’ 

Others said he in recent weeks bought food he didn’t usually buy, and that he moved his dog that usually stayed in the backyard to the front yard.

Neighbours who witnessed the dramatic police raid, after which officers were seen carrying a crow bar and a battering ram out of the house, described how Cleo was carried to safety.

‘We stood back and waited but after that, we saw someone, on the detective shoulder. We thought it might be the little girl, which it was,’ Henry Dodd told Seven News.

‘I went closer to the detectives car and I saw her in the back of the car with the detective, he was holding her. They put her in the back and I came over, rushed over here and seen her there. She looked at me, a bit scared.’ 

Mr Dodd said he was shocked he had been just metres away from her while the nationwide hunt was going on.

‘I just can’t believe it and get over the fact that she is just the house down from us and locked up here for a couple of weeks,’ he added.

‘Going on three weeks, she is straight across from us. I’ve got little sisters there…’  

Deputy WA Police Commissioner Col Blanch said Tuesday night’s tip was the final piece of the puzzle that allowed detectives to finally track down Cleo.

‘We’ve collected phone data, witness statements, DNA, fingerprints, rubbish along the highways, CCTV – we’ve collected everything,’ he said.

‘The million dollar reward helped us with collecting even more from the members of the public. Everyone came forward to helping us.

‘There were car movements, there were phone movements, there were antecedents of people, the jigsaw fit the puzzle. We had to find that needle. Last night the needle in the haystack came out and they acted in a heartbeat.’ 

The vital tip-off was the last piece of the puzzle in a case that until then frustrated and eluded detectives and had Australians fearing Cleo would never be found, let alone alive.

Police said Cleo was smiling when she was rescued at the house, with the moment captured on police bodycam footage that brought a tear to his eye.

‘I’ve seen it. It’s burned into my memory for life. You cannot look at that and not feel it in your heart. Unbelievable moment,’ he said.

‘I saw detectives that have worked for 18 days straight, 24/7 see little Cleo in a room, and just the look on their faces. 

‘The care that was expressed immediately, the cuddling, the asking of her name, her little voice.’

A close family friend revealed the emotional message Ms Smith earlier wrote to her loved ones to let them know her ‘beautiful girl is home’.

‘To be woken at 4.50am with my phone going crazy and see the words Cleo is home alive and safe,’ she wrote on Facebook.

‘Seeing Ellie saying her ‘beautiful girl is home’ is nothing short of a miracle.’ 

In a local Facebook group, a concerned local suggested people in the small town remove ‘missing’ posters and stickers to prevent the family from suffering any more trauma.

But the youngster’s mother Ellie Smith commented on the post to let people know it was unnecessary.

‘Cleo has seen her photo. She thought it was beautiful,’ Ms Smith wrote.

Cleo’s biological father Daniel Staines, who lives with his parents about 1,000km south of Carnarvon in Halls Head, said he is ‘overjoyed’ that the little girl was found alive.

‘We are all absolutely overjoyed at the good news this morning and so happy that Cleo has been reunited with her mum and dad,’ the Staines family said in a statement to The West Australian.

‘Thank you to everyone who helped look for her and bring her home, particularly the WA Police, SES and the Carnarvon community.’ They sent Cleo, her step-father Jake and Ellie their ‘best wishes’. 

What happened to Cleo in the house where she was held captive for more than two weeks, without her family, is not yet clear – but psychologists said she will have a long road to recovery.

Police Air Wing PC12 picked up the suspect, who has no relation to Cleo’s family, from Carnarvon and landed at Perth’s Jandakot Airport late on Wednesday morning. 

Police Commissioner Chris Dawson was on board the plane and will spend the day meeting with police involved in the rescue and checking in with Cleo’s family.

The police chief broke down in tears upon learning the heartwarming news. He said Cleo was as good as can be expected.

‘I saw the vision, Cleo is a beautiful little four-year-old girl,’ he said. ‘She’s as well as we could expect in the circumstances. She’s alive, well, smiling, so it is a wonderful, wonderful result.’

He said Cleo’s parents were emotional but doing well. ‘They’re strong people, they are really strong people. They have good support around them,’ Commissioner Dawson said. 

‘It’s a wonderful result today but it’ll be a tough journey for them.’

How phone data and a ‘needle in a haystack’ piece of evidence led police to Cleo Smith – and the unanswered questions detectives are not shedding any light on 

Australian police tracked down missing Cleo Smith thanks to a tip-off and forensic clues after finding her just two miles from her family home where she was hidden right under the noses of investigators.

Police said a ‘needle in the haystack’ clue late on Tuesday night led to Cleo’s discovery and a 36-year-old man who has not been named and charged was taken into custody.

While the force has not yet revealed the exact details that led to Cleo’s discovery, they said phone data and a car in the area played a crucial role. 

Officers have also remained tight-lipped about the suspect, why he was not in the house in the time and the circumstances in which Cleo was found.

Cleo disappeared from her family’s tent between 1.30am and 6.30am as her mother Ellie Smith, step father Jake Gliddon and baby sister Isla were sleeping nearby. The tent zipper was undone, and the sleeping bag that Cleo was using had also disappeared.

Western Australia Deputy Police Commissioner Col Blanch said the mammoth search involved a task force of 100 officers and ‘thousands of pieces of evidence’.

Helicopters, drones, dogs and officers were deployed in the countryside and nearby coastline in case she had wandered off but police soon pivoted to the theory that she had been taken.

Officers had previously spoken of trying to trace a car seen leaving the Blowholes campsite around 3am the day Cleo vanished. 

Officers trawled through hours of CCTV footage, combed satellite images, interviewed other campers and even dug through rubbish heaps for any sign of the missing girl before a ‘tip off’ led them to the Carnarvon house.  

‘[Officers] have collected thousands of pieces of evidence, intelligence, data, witness statements,’ lead detective Ron Wilde told Sunrise on Wednesday morning.  ‘That has a been a hard, hard slog. 

‘Everything contributed. Certainly phone data helped us. It will become apparent that when we put the puzzle together it all led us to one place.’

Police Commissioner Chris Dawson said a tip-off led officers to the Carnarvon house and ‘a lot of forensic leads’ had pointed in the same direction.

‘There was some information we followed up on,’ he told ABC Radio.

‘We had been following a lot of the forensic leads and it led us to a particular house.

‘We mounted our general duties police who did a tremendous job within minutes of arriving [at the house]… declared it a forensic scene and sealed it off which was just really, really good policing.’

Hours before Cleo was found, Wilde said he believed her disappearance was an ‘opportunistic’ kidnapping by someone who had only been aware of Cleo for a ‘short time’. Police have not yet elaborated on whether any of that information turned out to be accurate.

The early-hours raid came after officers received a tip-off Tuesday night with ‘really important information about a car’, which they confirmed with phone data and ‘a lot of forensic leads’.

Blanch said Tuesday night’s tip was the final piece of the puzzle that allowed detectives to finally track down Cleo.

‘We’ve collected phone data, witness statements, DNA, fingerprints, rubbish along the highways, CCTV – we’ve collected everything,’ he said.

‘The million dollar reward helped us with collecting even more from the members of the public. Everyone came forward to helping us.

‘There were car movements, there were phone movements, there were antecedents of people, the jigsaw fit the puzzle. We had to find that needle. Last night the needle in the haystack came out and they acted in a heartbeat.’