Cleo Smith was missing for 18 days. Photo / Supplied
An unsettling lie was allegedly used to lure little Cleo Smith out of her family's tent at a Western Australia campground, with her disappearance sparking an almost three-week long search.
In a $2 million tell-all interview with 60 Minutes on Sunday night, Cleo's mum and stepdad, Ellie Smith and Jake Gliddon, gave fresh insight into how the horror kidnapping unfolded.
In the early hours of October 16, 2021, four-year-old Cleo was abducted from her family's tent at the Quobba Blowholes Campsite, 75 kilometres from their hometown of Carnarvon.
She was missing for 18 days before being discovered by police at a home in Carnarvon, just minutes away from her own house.
Terence Darrell Kelly, 36, was arrested the same day Cleo was found and has since pled guilty to forcibly taking a child aged under 16.
The matter was committed to the WA District Court for a sentence mention in March.
Smith told Nine reporter Tara Brown her daughter had blocked out a lot of the ordeal, but she remembered "why she was taken".
"She tells us that we she was taken because her baby sister was sick," she said.
"And so she needed to be taken away from us so that we could help her baby sister."
Smith said she and her partner were angry after finding out the lie Cleo had been told, but they wanted to focus on helping Cleo heal instead of "having our hearts full of hate".
During the interview, it was revealed that two pieces of key evidence had been found inside the tent: a footprint and DNA.
Smith said investigators didn't provide a lot of information about the discoveries and they still didn't know the full details.
She also revealed that her and Gliddon's side of the tent had been unzipped at some point in the night.
"Obviously he didn't know where he was. He didn't know what side of the tent she was in," Smith told Brown.
"He must have looked at ours and realised she's not in this side … and then gone to the other side and that's where she was."
Innocent item that allegedly drew kidnapper's attention
The interview also uncovered a new detail about an unassuming item that may have led Cleo's kidnapper to their tent that night.
Cleo's mum said from what they know they weren't a target and it appeared to be an opportunistic crime.
"Cleo had a bike at the front which indicated we had a child in that tent and that was all he needed to know," Smith said, with Gliddon adding it was a "little pink bike".
"How are we meant to know putting a little girl's bike out the front of our tent indicated for someone to get her?" Smith continued.
She also revealed that in the almost three weeks Cleo was missing, her hair had been cut and dyed.
Brown noted that in the first images released of Cleo after her rescue, many people were amazed at how healthy she looked, despite being held captive for 18 days.
"She looked healthy. She didn't look traumatised. Were you struck by that yourselves?" the Nine reporter asked.
Smith said she and Gliddon immediately noticed a difference in her appearance.
"We had seen that her hair was cut and her hair was dyed. I guess we kind of saw the little things other people didn't," she said.
Smith said Cleo had told her that pink dye had been put in her hair but it had then washed out.
"She said it didn't work," the mum explained, adding that they had to get Cleo's hair cut again because it had been "cut into chunks".
"I was just angry that someone tried changing her to kind of fit what they wanted," she said.
Ms Smith said Cleo hadn't told them much about what happened, but had said that she was scared.
"She was locked in a room and she was scared and she didn't know where we were," she said.
"She's blocked out a lot as to what's happened. She kind of went into survivor mode and pushed it very far away."
The 60 Minutes interview with Tara Brown was conducted via video call as a result of WA's strict Covid lockdowns.
It reportedly netted the family $2 million, setting a new Australian TV record.
The deal is also understood to include miniseries or documentary as well as stories across Channel 9's website and papers.
Cleo's parents will also appear on Nine's Today show and speak with 2GB's Ben Fordham on Monday.