Police have found an old hessian bag buried about one metre under the ground on the sixth day of the search for the remains of missing three-year-old William Tyrrell.
Detectives are focusing on three potential covert burial sites within 700m of William’s late foster grandmother’s home in Kendall, on the NSW mid north coast.
The boy was last photographed on the balcony of the property in 2014.
The frayed green nylon bag was found in a deep hole police have dug at Area 1 of the Tyrrell dig and was inspected, mapped with evidence marker ‘F’ and placed into an evidence bag.
The spot where it was found is near a tree trunk which has interested specialists on site, in particular anthropologist Dr Penny McArdle.
It is the sixth piece of evidence police have found since beginning the search for the missing toddler’s body on Monday.
The find came as police have confirmed that the dig could now take months and will cover an area up to one square kilometre.
Forensic experts believe if they remove surface dirt down to 15-30cms over the entire one kilometre square dig site, and analyse everything they find in the collected earth looking for traces of William that ‘he’ll be in there’.
‘Between half a foot and a foot down and once they get down through the top soil into the orangey clay they know that’s well into seven years down,’ a police spokesman said.
‘They are scraping back seven years (of dirt).’
The major development comes after police dug up and raked through dirt and drained a shallow creek in an area of bush a kilometre from the property on Friday.
A piece of fabric was collected from the creek-bed and placed in an evidence bag.
The discovery created immediate interest, with a police officer taking a camera, evidence bag and gloves to meet forensic specialist Professor Olley.
