Disturbing details about Cleo Smith’s time spent held captive by a stranger who snatched her from a tent while on a family camping trip have been revealed.
Terence Kelly, 37, appeared in Western Australia’s District Court on Wednesday where he was sentenced over a charge of stealing a child, towhich he’d pleaded guilty in January last year.
He was sentenced to 13 years and six months behind bars. He will be eligible for parole after serving 11 and a half years, backdated to his arrest on November 3, 2021.
That means he could potentially be released in about 10 years.
Kelly, who appeared before Judge Julie Wagner in person, shuffled into the dock wearing a dull green, short-sleeved button-down shirt and dark shorts, with his long hair tied in a bun low-down on the back of his head, and was flanked by two bailiffs.
The 4-year-old had been on a camping trip with her mother Smith, stepfather Jake Gliddon and little sister Isla, when they decided to stay at the Quobba Blowholes campsite, about a 50-minute drive north of their hometown of Carnarvon, on the night of October 15.
Sometime early the following morning, as the family slept, Kelly crept into their tent and made off with the young girl.
What happened next was a massive manhunt, lasting more than two weeks, as police scrambled to track down the missing girl.
Terence Darrell Kelly.
Kelly kept Cleo at his Tonkin Cres address in Carnarvon the entire 18 days until she was found.
During that time no one else visited the property, and Kelly went about his usual business; attending face-to-face employment meetings as required, seeing relatives, and giving them lifts.
During these outings, Cleo was locked in a room in his house, the door to which had been modified so it could only be locked from the hallway side.
Kelly changed her clothes and played with the girl, although he also became angry with her and “smacked her a little bit”, according to one of his two four-hour police interviews.
Cleo would cry and plead with Kelly to see her parents, prompting her captor to turn up the radio to mask her sounds from the neighbours. Sometimes Cleo would hear her own name on the radio, exclaiming: “They’re saying my name!”
It was also revealed that during the 18-day search for the girl that Kelly added Cleo’s mother Ellie as a friend on Facebook.
It was at no point suggested Kelly engaged in any inappropriate or sexual conduct with the girl. Rather, Judge Wagner acknowledged kidnapping Cleo formed part of Kelly’s “fantasy of having a little girl he could dress up and play with”.
Social media photos of his home that emerged following his arrest showed boxes of Bratz dolls stacked high against walls, a collection Judge Wagner said was “consistent with your anxiety”.
Investigations eventually led officers to Kelly’s home on November 3, after a terrifying 18 days for Cleo, when she was rescued in a dramatic early morning raid.
In handing down her sentence, Judge Wagner remarked there were “no truly comparable cases” to this one.
The maximum sentence available to Judge Wagner was 25 years. However, Kelly received a discount due to his early guilty plea, and a diagnosis of “complex personality dysfunction” due to a myriad of mental health problems stemming from a troubled childhood.
Cleo Smith's parents Ellie Smith and Jake Gliddon.
“No child in Western Australia... should have suffered what you did as a child,” said Judge Wagner in her sentencing remarks, detailing the trauma Kelly suffered growing up with a violent father, and both parents abusing substances.
He ended up in prison in 2014 for three years on burglary offences, and began using methamphetamine upon release.
The evening following Kelly’s arrest, November 4, 2021, he barged into a room at Carnarvon Police Station, armed himself with a riot shield, and hit officers on the hands before he was restrained.
He pleaded guilty to that incident in January this year, and was fined $1000.
Early in March, Kelly’s “brother” Ashley Bropho died while awaiting sentencing in Hakea Prison.
Kelly and Bropho aren’t biological brothers - they happened to grow up together in the same house, raised by Bropho’s grandmother, renowned Aboriginal elder Penny Walker.
Bropho, 40, was found unresponsive in his cell on the morning of March 9. A 42-year-old man was charged with murder over his death on Thursday, and was due to appear in Armadale Magistrates Court on Friday.
