WA Police Commissioner confirms a 36-year-old man with no connection to the family is in custody after Police found Cleo Smith in locked house in Carnarvon

 “We left no stone unturned” WA Police Commissioner said on local radio.

WA Police Commissioner Chris Dawson said this is one of the most remarkable days in policing in WA.

Commissioner Dawson said he had seen the video of the rescue and Cleo was as good as can be expected.

“This is why Police come to work everyday, we never gave up hope” He said live on ABC radio Perth.

How was Cleo Found?

Cleo went missing from her family tent on October 16th. Police covered hundreds of Kilometres in their search.

“We put everything we had at it. So obviously, our homicide squad trained, experienced investigators/detectives, our analysts, our technical people, drone pilots, air-wing, the whole lot,” Commissioner Dawson said on ABC.

“We mounted our general duties police who did a tremendous job within minutes of arriving, the first officers in the scene, within minutes, declared it a forensic scene and sealed it off which was just really, really good policing. From that moment on, it’s just been a really dedicated team of well over 100 on the scene itself and we were prepared for a long haul but we’re so, so pleased.”

They used drones to forensically map every area, inch-by-inch looking for clues, whether it is sand disturbances, tyre tracks.

 It was a huge operation going through forensic items, thousands of lines of phone data, using satellite imagery, CCTV. 

The feel was that Cleo would be the next William Tyrrell and next Madeleine McCann.

Cleo’s case has been raised in federal parliament, with Home Affairs Minister Karen Andrews saying the government was strengthening laws to give agencies greater scope to act in the case of crimes against children.