Four Corners: Feb 24

This week on Four Corners “Little Boy Lost” reported by Geoff Thompson looks at a family’s search for answers and asks how did the police get the investigation so wrong?

He was an eight-year-old boy, with a loving family and a bright future.

But his life was cut short in October 2007. He went missing, while the people from the town he lived in attended a funeral. Two days later his shirtless body was found in a muddy creek less than a kilometre from where he’d lived.

Police rapidly concluded he’d wandered off alone, fallen down a steep creek-bank, hit his head and drowned. How they reached this conclusion is still not entirely clear.

This week Four Corners reporter Geoff Thompson examines the police investigation with startling results.

Why did the police apparently ignore evidence of footprints showing a child walking with an adult in the direction of the creek?

Why did they fail to recover and photograph a cap he may have been wearing on the day?

Why did they fail to show his family a shirt found near the crime scene?

But most importantly, why did the police ignore evidence the boy’s body had been weighed down in the water, so that it would not be discovered?

The authorities also threw out potentially crucial evidence gathered when the body was recovered, without forensically testing it.

The boy’s family still hope they will find out what really happened that day in 2007. But do authorities consider this case important enough to make that happen?

Monday 24th February at 8.30pm on ABC1.