In the past three weeks, if you want to say which case Australians are most concerned about,
It must have been cleo smith's disappearance.
In order to find the mysteriously missing little Cleo, the whole of Australia enters an anxious and excited national search mode.
Fortunately, the ending was not bad...
Cleo, 4, lives in The Seaside Town of Canaven in Western Australia.
Her mother is Ellie Smith, her stepfather is Jake Gliddon, and she has a 7-month-old little sister.
The life of a family can be said to be simple and happy.
Their home is close to the famous Coral Coast, and whenever they have time, the whole family goes to the beach to blow the sea breeze, play in the sand, and camp.
In the humid sea breeze, Cleo kept laughing, making noise, full of vitality,
The beach is her playground and so is her parents.
On October 16, on a normal Saturday, the parents took Cleo and her sister to the beach camping as usual.
Throughout the afternoon, they were fishing, piling sand, and teaching Cleo how to ride a bike without relying on auxiliary wheels.
Everyone had a great time.
By around 8 p.m., the parents set up a tent and let Cleo sleep with his little sister.
Here's an important point:
The tent, which Ellie and Jack had bought, was divided into many compartments and had several exits.
In the past, children slept with their parents, but to try out the functionality of this new tent, they let the children sleep alone in one compartment and sleep in another.
At 1:30 a.m., Cleo got up and asked his parents for water in a daze.
Ellie poured her water and went to sleep, the last time they saw her that night.
The next day, at 6 a.m., Ellie got up to wake up the kids.
She opened the children's compartments, and the sight in front of her made her blood instantly coagulate: Cleo was gone!
The little sister slept quietly next to her, but the eldest daughter was gone, along with her sleeping bag.
Nearby, the zipper at the exit of the cubicle was pulled open, as if Cleo had gone out, or maybe... Someone came in.
Ellie excitedly wakes her husband up, and the two run out to look around, but there is no sign of Cleo anywhere.
After 20 minutes, they chose to call the police.
Police soon arrived, sealed off the camp on the coast, and searched around with flashlights and alarms.
Local helicopter pilots and maritime search and rescue volunteers also arrived, and together with the police, launched a comprehensive search of land, sea and air.
The coastal terrain is simple and vegetation is sparse, so it should be easy to find people, but rescuers searched for hours and could not find Cleo.
By the afternoon of the same day, the police had sent homicide investigators from perth city, and based on past experience, they believed that the girl was more murderous than jiji.
Police told her parents that it was almost impossible for the girl to run out on her own, that she was more like someone had kidnapped her.
First, the girl's sleeping bag disappeared, and with her strength, it was difficult to drag the sleeping bag out, let alone run out of the police search range.
Secondly, the zipper at the exit of the compartment is high, and with the girl's height, she is unlikely to pull the zipper down.
When questioned about other campers on the coast, several people told police that it felt unusual to hear harsh tire rubbing and noise in the early hours of the morning.
Based on the above points, the police believe that someone should have opened the zipper outside and took Cleo away.
Soon, the "seaside camping kidnapping case" became the national headline in Australia, and all the media were reporting on the latest developments.
Police sent 100 police officers and military reconnaissance planes to conduct a search, they investigated all those who were at the beach that night, questioned Cleo's biological father, and checked hundreds of bags of roadside garbage along the 600-kilometer road in Western Australia to see if there were sleeping bags.
The 20 registered sex offenders in the seaside town of Kanawe were also investigated one by one, and in the most horrific predictions of the police, they feared cleo had been kidnapped by pedophiles.
The days passed, but the girl was still unaccounted for.
The government offers a reward of $1 million to find someone, and bounty ads can be seen everywhere.
Ellie and Jack beg the kidnapper on TV to release the child.
Cleo's best friend was also found by the media, and the little girl said she hoped Cleo would come back soon.
By the time Cleo had been missing for more than a week, almost everyone was desperate.
About 25,000 young people go missing in Australia each year, and the vast majority of missing children are recorded to be virtually unlikely to survive after being taken away by strangers for several days.
Cleo has been gone for more than ten days, can she still live?
Unlikely, but... Miracles chose to happen to her.
On the 18th day of his disappearance, on Tuesday, Cleo was found 5 kilometers from home!
They did not tell the media about the specific search process because the information collected was too large and complex.
Simply put, they used surveillance footage, cell phone signals and confessions from hundreds of people to find a "person who can take a person to a specific location at a specific time, but according to other information, should not be there."
Those who meet these conditions are kidnappers.
In the early hours of November 2, police confirmed the kidnapper was Terry Kelly, a 36-year-old man from the small town of Caerne.
They arrested him in his car and then smashed the door of his house with a hammer to find Cleo.
Unexpectedly, Cleo looked in good shape, playing with toys in the backyard and not being afraid when she saw the police come in.
"What's your name?" In the video, the policeman asks nervously.
"My name is Cleo!" The little girl said sweetly.
After hearing this, everyone relaxed, hugged her one by one, and made her laugh.
Cleo was admitted to the hospital, where doctors checked she was not injured. In the latest photo released by the police, Cleo sat on a hospital bed eating a popsicle and looking very happy.
After learning that their daughter was still alive, her parents were very excited and thanked all those who helped rescue them.
Wa'ao's police chief said it was "a miracle that everyone was looking forward to", and xanthe Mallett, a crime professor at Newcastle University, said the good results were indeed rare.
"The likelihood that she will be alive is very low, and the longer the child is missing, the less likely it is."
The child was found alive 18 days after he was abducted, and I must say that I have never seen such a case. ”
No one knows why Terry Kelly kidnapped Cleo.
After being arrested, Terry Kelly tried to harm himself, but was stopped by the police and sent to a detention center for interrogation. But not long after the trial, during the detention, because some of the inmates heard the reason why he came in, they were furious and beat Terry Kelly into the hospital.
Terry Kelly's neighbors said he was a very silent and out-of-place man with the community.
Although everyone in the community knew him, he had few friends, and he didn't have any social connections after his grandmother died a year ago.
However, because his life is very regular, the neighbors noticed many strange places.
For example, Terry Kelly has a dog in his backyard and, somehow, recently put the dog in the front yard.
In the 18 days of Cleo's disappearance, people often saw him driving in and out of the street, not knowing what he was busy with.
Terry Kelly was also seen buying baby diapers in department stores, but he clearly had no children.
When Terry Kelly was arrested by the police, the neighbors pieced together the information and suddenly realized.
"I can't believe it, it turns out that the whole country is looking for little girls, right next to us."
Police believe Terry Kelly is more like a random perpetrator and that he is not a registered sex offender.
The girl was found, which is indeed a good thing, but there are many other troubles behind it.
After the police released the name of suspect Terry Kelly, the media 7news found a person with a similar name, thought he was a criminal, and made his photo public.
This unfortunate passerby was holding his child in the hospital at the time, and when he found that his photos were all over the Internet, he was frightened and panicked.
Many gave him death threats and said they would pierce his leg in the traditional punishment of indigenous communities.
In the end, the doctor had to give him a tranquilizer and put him in the hospital for a day.
Cleo's parents have also been attacked by netizens, and in the past 18 days, many people on the Internet believe that they killed the child.
This is an old Australian tradition, I don't know why, from the "wild dog eating baby case" in the 80s of the last century, the first reaction of Australians to see children missing is that parents killed their children.
After Cleo's parents went on TV, countless netizens took a magnifying glass to see their body language, expressions and subtle words, trying to prove that there must be a conspiracy behind them.
"It doesn't feel right, the parents are too calm and don't look desperate at all!"
"Doesn't anyone think this picture is weird?" Who took the photo? ”
"They said after the child went missing, they drove around within 23 minutes to find everything. Is this possible? Doesn't even count the time spent dressing and feeding? ”
"I just wanted to ask, why is the child alone in the tent?"
Some of these cyber detectives are overthinking, some are not careful to read the news, and in the Facebook comment section of Cleo's parents, there are questions and attacks everywhere.
In the end, the media had to get a body language expert and tell people that the parents weren't lying.
The police also said that professional things are left to professional people to do, and parents are never the first suspects.
After Cleo was found, his parents finally passively proved their innocence.
"I hope that all those who judge Cleo's parents through their body language, demeanor and emotional state will take a good look at the truth."
"Everyone who has scolded Cleo's parents online, it's time to apologize."
Cleo's parents did not respond to comments online, but their friends told the media that the two were stressed and miserable.
Fortunately, now that the children are back, their families are once again intact and living happily together.
Cleo's mother said her daughter had always been strong, a brave girl, who had experienced it and proved to be so.
I hope that the little girl can grow up safely in the future...