Cleo Smith search: Ellie Smith and Jake Gliddon make heart-wrenching plea for their little girl’s return

Shannon HamptonThe West Australian
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VideoThe parents of Cleo Smith - Ellie Smith and Jake Gliddon - have given a heart-wrenching interview on the disappearance of their little girl.

After nine sleepless nights without her daughter, Ellie Smith made a heart-wrenching plea with the person who snatched her little girl.

“Just bring our girl home safe — give her back to us,” she said.

Speaking to 7NEWS’ Flashpoint on Monday night, Ms Smith said the past 10 days without little Cleo had felt “like an eternity already”.

In a tearful interview, the heartbroken mother also spoke of her final moments with the four-year-old before the “heartbreaking, heart-wrenching, completely scary” moment she realised she was gone from their tent at Blowholes campsite.

Camera IconMissing Girl Cleo Smith Case. Signage posted on a speed sign on the road into the Blowholes. Picture Jackson Flindell The West Australian Credit: The West Australian
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“I put her to bed, I tucked her in, I made sure her sleeping bag was completely tucked under her mattress,” she said.

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“I made sure she was warm, it was quite a windy night, it was overcast, we just tried to make sure she was safe.”

The mother said about 1.30am, she asked Cleo to “get back into bed” after she had a sip of water.

“I put my head through to check on (baby sister) Isla and that was it,” she said.

“That was the last time.”

Ms Smith said her mother’s instinct told her “straight away” that Cleo had not just wandered off — someone had snatched her from their shared tent. It was an act, she described as being “absolutely disgusting”.

“I remember thinking, how did someone come into that tent and take Cleo?” she said.

“How, how could someone feel that they could do that to someone, how could someone take my child? My gut just felt sick.

“She was taken, she’s gone. She’s been taken from our family, from somewhere she’s meant to feel safe and she’s been taken.”

Asked what was going through her mind when she made the awful discovery, Ms Smith replied: “I mean, where could your head be?

“It was everywhere,” she said. “No one I know has been through that, and I would never wish anyone to wake up and feel that feeling that went though me. I couldn’t explain that to you.”

She said it was then that the frantic search for the four-year-old began.

It was supposed to be Cleo’s first camping trip with her baby sister.

She was excited to “say the least”, Ms Smith said.

Ms Smith had grown up in the area, as had her partner Jake Gliddon, who was by her side during the interview, and said they searched everywhere they could think of.

Camera IconMissing girl Cleo Smith, 4. Credit: Facebook / Ellie Smith/Facebook / Ellie Smith

“I stayed on the phone to the police,” she said.

“We had to keep doing check-ins until they got there and the whole time you’re trying to look through tears. I had other mums helping. Nothing that I would ever wish upon anyone.”

Ms Smith said the family had planned to wake up to a day filled with bike rides — Cleo had just had her training wheels taken off — and swimming.

The couple did not leave Blowholes campsite until Friday — after seven days of searching at the site — at which point they had the horrendous realisation that Cleo was not there.

“We’d held hope, but the hope of her being there was slowly slipping away,” Ms Smith said.

At the weekend, police forensics began scouring Cleo’s family home for clues.

Asked how she processed that, Ms Smith said: “I guess we just hold hope that there’s something there that they can find that will help.

“Anything — I mean if it’s someone who has been watching for who knows how long, hopefully they pick something up that will help,” she said.

Ms Smith said the family had hardly been home — and they struggle to face the prospect of having to return there without her daughter.

Asked to address rumours and innuendo from “amateur detectives” who had pointed the finger at them, the couple both categorically denied having any involvement in their daughter’s disappearance.

“No, nothing,” Mr Gliddon said when asked if there was something he was not revealing.

VideoPart two of Flashpoint's interview with Ellie Smith and Jake Gliddon, the parent's of Cleo Smith.

“No way — we love our daughter and want her home,” Ms Smith said, when asked if she played a role in her vanishing.

“I can’t imagine what it feels like for someone, if they’ve got kids, they know what it feels like to be a parent, and there is no way that either myself or Jake could’ve done anything to hurt our daughter,” she said.

Detectives have revealed they are desperately searching for the driver of a car seen in the vicinity of the camp site in the early hours of the morning Cleo was abducted.

Lead investigator, Det-Supt Rod Wilde, said “credible sources” had seen a car turn right off Blowholes Road on to North West Coastal Highway between 3am and 3.30am.

Camera IconEllie Smith. Credit: FLASHPOINT/FLASHPOINT

Cleo was last seen in the tent about 1.30am when her mum got her a drink of water.

When the parents woke up about 6am, the tent was unzipped to a height Cleo could not have reached and she was gone. Police said the car was a passenger vehicle, like a sedan.

Asked about the recent development, Ms Smith said she was trying not to hold “too much hope and get too excited, because like you said, we’re going into day 10 and we’ve got nothing”. Police have said the occupants of the mystery car were not necessarily involved in Cleo’s abduction but the new information was “certainly of interest” to investigators.

Ms Smith said she still has hope that her girl was “out there somewhere” but “we don’t have any leads, as much as you”.

The mother urged anyone with information to call police because “we want our daughter back and she wants us”.

“Our daughter Isla needs her big sister, we need her home,” she said.

And if Cleo was watching, Ms Smith had something she wanted her to know.

“I love you. We miss you. And we want you home,” she said.

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