By Heather McNeill
Cleo Smith’s family have appeared in a tell-all interview on 60 Minutes.Credit:60 Minutes
The parents of Cleo Smith say their four-year-old daughter is “happy, bubbly, sad and angry” in the aftermath of her extraordinary abduction, with the family revealing new details of how the little girl was snatched from their tent as they camped.
During an interview with 60 Minutes on Sunday, Ellie Smith and Jake Gliddon said Cleo was still coming to terms with being held captive by a stranger for 18 days.
Cleo’s mother Ellie Smith and stepfather Jake Gliddon during their interview with 60 Minutes on Sunday night. Credit:60 Minutes
Ms Smith, 24, said the abductor, Terence Kelly found the family at the Quobba Blowholes campsite in Western Australia’s north because they had a bike outside their camp site. Ms Smith said when she awoke on the morning of Cleo’s disappearance on October 16 she found both sides of the tent had been unzipped and her girl’s sleeping bag was gone.
“Every day is a new day, every day and night is different, but she’s OK,” Ms Smith said.
“She’s happy, she’s bubbly, she’s sad, she’s angry, but she’s getting there.”
Cleo was rescued from inside a locked house 2½ weeks after being taken from the tent while she was sleeping.
Ms Smith, 24, said Kelly drove into the remote campgrounds sometime after they had arrived that Friday evening.
“Apparently we weren’t a target, it was just the time and the place that he could do it,” she said in the paid interview with Nine – which owns this masthead – reportedly worth $2 million.
Cleo Smith at home with her stepfather Jake Gliddon.Credit:60 Minutes
“Cleo had a bike at the front which indicated we had a child in that tent and that was all he needed to know.”
Ms Smith said when she woke at 6am and realised Cleo was missing, she discovered both sides of the tent had been unzipped and her girl’s sleeping bag was gone.
“He obviously didn’t know what side of the tent she was in. He must have looked in ours … might have put his head through and realised, ‘Yep, she’s not on this side’, and gone on the other side and that’s where she was,” she said.
“He’s taken a step in there, grabbed our child and we were sleeping right next to it all … we were a metre away from them and it was just so gut-wrenching that someone could step into a tent and take our child.”
Within moments of realising Cleo was missing, her parents knew their girl had been taken, with police later discovering a large, unidentified footprint in the tent beside where Cleo had been sleeping, and someone else’s DNA.
The abduction sparked one of the largest missing person searches in Australian history.
Cloe’s bike outside the family camp site on a remote beach north of Carnarvon in Western Australia.Credit:60 Minutes
After being barred from assisting in the search, Ms Smith and Mr Gliddon refused to leave without Cleo, and waited helplessly inside one of the beach shacks for her return.
Mr Gliddon, Cleo’s stepfather, said they were told early on of the grim reality that children who were abducted in similar circumstances were usually killed within the first three to six hours.
“[Police] were explaining it to us pretty much every day how the odds were dropping … they didn’t want to give any false hope to us,” he said.
On day six, the search was called off and the couple, inconsolable, were forced to return to their home town of Carnarvon, 70 kilometres south.
“It was a long drive home, one of the hardest things I’ve ever had to do,” Mr Gliddon said.
Less than two weeks later detectives made a breakthrough, bringing together mobile phone data, CCTV footage and number plate recognition to home in on a suspect, 36-year-old Carnarvon man, Terence Kelly.
In the early hours of November 3, police raided his home and discovered Cleo locked inside a bedroom filled with dolls.
“That’s what he wanted, he wanted a little doll. It’s just so sickening and disgusting,” Ms Smith said.
Cleo Smith reunited with stepfather Jake Gliddon and mother Ellie Smith.Credit:Getty
Kelly has since pleaded guilty to kidnapping Cleo but is still facing other charges.
During the 18 days Ms Smith was without her daughter, Kelly was following the mother-of-two on Facebook.
“It’s so heartless, I was begging for my daughter and someone had her and was reading me begging for her back,” she said.
“[Cleo] told us that she was scared, she was locked in a room … and she didn’t know where we were.”
Cleo Smith is getting back to a normal life at home. Credit:60 Minutes
Ms Smith said Kelly lied to Cleo and told her she had been taken away from her family because her baby sister, Isla, was sick and her parents needed to help her.
But the parents have not pushed Cleo to relive any more of her ordeal than she is willing to share.
“We don’t know the full story, but it’s just minor things she would say, her necklace was taken off her, and she’d turn and say, ‘But mum, my necklace is still at that place’,” Ms Smith said.
“Her emotions are very up and down … she’s blocked out a lot as to what’s happened, she kind of went into survivor mode and pushed it very far away.
“We’ve got a long way to go and so does she, she’s probably going to have to be dealing with this for the rest of her life and we’re going to eventually have to find out everything that’s happened and we’re going to have to carry that as well.”
In the wake of living through every parent’s worst nightmare, the family have decided to leave Carnarvon for a fresh start in a new town.
“Hopefully we find somewhere that is pretty similar to what we love and what we do because we don’t want to let go of everything that we are and who we are, we want to still build our girls’ childhoods the way we wanted to with fishing and camping, we’re just going to do it on the road for a little bit and then find somewhere to settle down,” Ms Smith said.
“[The girls] are going to have such an amazing life and we’re going to stay positive about that.”
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