Six witnesses, one 'dirty old man' and a NEW person of interest: Twist in William Tyrrell case as all eyes turn to a caravan-dwelling paedophile at the centre of claims 'we drove the boy 300km north'

When the inquest into Australia's best known missing child, William Tyrrell, resumes on Tuesday, questions are expected to fly about Frank Abbott.

The 79-year-old convicted paedophile, candidly described by one witness as a 'dirty old man', was living in a caravan just 10km from Kendall on September 12, 2014. 

That day, William, three, was pretending to be a tiger when he wandered around the corner of his foster grandmother's house yard, went quiet and simply vanished.

Abbott, since jailed for 16 years for unrelated child sex crimes, was poised to be the next witness to testify at hearings in March.

The elderly pervert had been linked to a dying man's extraordinary claims William had been 'driven 300km north', with the court hearing Abbott also made 'strange' comments about the boy to 'everyone' in the town of Kew. 

But COVID-19 brought the inquest's public hearings to a sudden halt earlier this year. And though questions linger, for reasons yet to be explained Abbott isn't on the witness list for the coming hearings.

The Coroner's Court has instead announced six others will be called to give evidence.

Jailed paedophile Frank Abbott, 78, is expected to be the subject of questions at the inquest into William Tyrrell's disappearance next week 

Ray Porter told an aged care nurse 'all I did was give my best mate and the boy a lift' (his white stationwagon is on right). The inquest has heard Porter was friends with Abbott

They include two police officers - the Force's most senior homicide detective David Laidlaw plus Senior Constable Daniel Dring.

Three women will also give evidence, including a mid-north coast local and forensic psychologist Dr Helen Paterson.

Also listed to appear is 'person of interest' Geoff Owen, an acquaintance of Abbott's. That term does not mean he is a suspect and has been commonly used throughout the investigation.

Witnesses can still be added or removed from the list, a court spokesman said in statement on Friday.

So where was the Tyrrell probe up to when it was forced to pause? And why the recent interest in Abbott?  

Before he died of a kidney infection, Abbott's 'fishing buddy' Ray Porter allegedly told a nurse he had allegedly driven William and his best mate some 300km north.   

Uniting Care nurse Kirston Okpegbue told the inquest earlier this year that Porter had rested his head on her shoulder in August 2019.

'I didn't do anything wrong,' she recalled Porter saying, in her statement to the court. 'All I did was give my best mate and the boy a lift.'   

'Who?' Ms Okpegbue asked. Porter replied: 'The boy that went missing down in Kendall?' 

Aged care nurse Kirston Okpegbue made the shocking claims at the inquest in March - before the coronavirus derailed the inquest

Ms Okpegbue told the inquest in March: 'Ray said he had picked up his best mate at Kendall School. 

'Behind the school was a shed. From there they drove 300km.' 

While it wasn't explicitly said at the inquest that Abbott was the friend he was speaking of, the court had already been told the pair were close mates. 

The inquest was also told that Porter only ever spoke of two friends - one of whom was 'Frank', the other 'Phil'.

An acquaintance of Abbott and Porter's, Iris Northam, told the inquest that Porter had previously lived at the Kendall showground.

'Ray would often take Frank into Kew for a coffee,' she said.  

'Sometimes Ray would drive Frank in from Heron's Creek and other times he would just meet him there.' 

The day William vanished, hospital records place Porter on a dialysis machine at Port Macquarie Hospital from 9am and 3pm.

In the days that followed, highway cameras captured Porter's vehicle near the southbound Pacific Motorway camera at Kew on September 13, and on the north and south bound cameras at Port Macquarie the following day. 

The inquest separately heard that a worker at a takeaway shop where Abbott used to do repairs reported the elderly man making a 'strange' comment about William's whereabouts.

'Frank made a comment he thought they were searching in the wrong spot for William Tyrrell, which seemed like a very strange comment to make,' Dean Anderson told the court.  

Abbott also once spoke of smelling something 'dead' in bushland by a road in nearby Logans Crossing, Mr Anderson said. 

This is a caravan Abbott lived at on the mid-north coast of New South Wales following William's disappearance

Mr Anderson said he suggested the smell was probably a dead kangaroo, to which Abbott replied: 'No, I know the difference between a dead kangaroo and a dead human smell.'  

A former neighbour of Abbott's reported to the inquest that he had approached the family home to talk Tyrrell, unprompted, late one evening. 

Abbott was living in Logans Crossing when he knocked on Jodie Huntley's door about 10 or 11pm one evening.

Ms Huntley recalled: 'He said 'have you heard the news? Geoff is a suspect in the William case and the police have come to see him.'

'My husband and I thought it was really strange. We just wanted him to go away so we just said 'OK then'.' 

The inquest heard that Abbott told another neighbour, Danny Parish - whose property he once lived on - that he 'knew where William Tyrrell is'. 

'Did Frank Abbott say 'I know where William Tyrrell is, why don't you check Geoff Owen's place?', counsel assisting the Coroner Gerard Craddock SC asked Mr Parish.

'Yes, he was telling everyone in Kew,' Mr Parish reportedly replied.

Geoff Owen will give evidence this week. Meanwhile, detectives took Abbott in for questioning last November. 

In recorded phone conversations, Abbott said police had tried to 'frighten or make me confess to something I didn't do' during the interview late last year. 

Documents tendered at the inquest show Abbott telling his Baptist minister friend Martin Parish, Danny Parish's brother, that he had a 'pretty traumatic day'. 

'They talked to me for 10 minutes asking me questions, like if you plead guilty and that now we can help you and all this and that and Martin will forgive you now,' Abbott recalled. 'I said, what, for something I didn't do?' 

'What?' Parish asked. 'Did they say that... So they, do they think that you're lying to me?

Priest Martin Parish (on right) has given evidence at the inquest into William Tyrrell's disappearance. He runs a small church in the area where Frank Abbott lived

Abbott: 'Yeah that's what they said, oh Martin will forgive you.... anyway they said they found a umm ... Spiderman suit and kids clothes or something. 

Parish fumed: 'So it's okay for them to lie to you, and tell you lies?' 

Parish, who operates a small church in the area, himself addressed the inquest in its final week in March. 

Parish said Abbott had claimed to him there were 'mitigating circumstances' to the offending that landed Abbott behind bars for more than a decade.

Abbott has years of experience dealing with law enforcement, having been accused, and acquitted at trial, of the 1968 murder of a teenage girl, Helen Mary Harrison.  

The William Tyrrell inquest's fourth tranche will run from Tuesday until October 9, with a further hearing held on October 16. 

Where is the inquest at with the other famous persons of interest? 

William Tyrrell was abducted from his foster grandma's home - that much is clear after six years of police investigation and a years-long inquest.

But investigators are yet to smoke out who did it and it's without doubt that innocent names have been dragged through the mud as a result. 

Washing machine repairman Bill Spedding was unfairly publicly named as a major person of interest in the investigation from the get-go.

Mr Spedding had stridently denied any involvement and evidence at the inquest indicated he had a sturdy alibi.

The tradesman and his wife, Margaret, were attending a school assembly the morning William vanished from his foster grandmother's home.

At least one other parent told the inquest they could independently recall Mr Spedding being in attendance that day.

Further, the couple have a receipt from a nearby cafe, from earlier that morning, where they had ordered coffee.  

Neighbour Paul Savage - who lived down the road from where William vanished - gave to authorities what one journalist described as a 'confusing and contradictory account' of his activities on September 12, 2014.

But the widower has always denied playing any role in the abduction. 

And despite well-documented, legal and illegal police surveillance, there has been no proof to link him to the crime.