When the news emerged about a young boy who disappeared from his South Australian home, with details about his family shrouded in mystery, it felt eerily reminiscent of a past case.

Separated by eleven years, both William Tyrrell and Gus Lamont disappeared while visiting their grandmothers’ homes.

Right from the start, the similarities to the Tyrrell case were unmistakable.

As the days passed without the boy being named or photographed, and with no emotional plea from his parents in the media, the comparisons continued to grow.

1. ENLISTING A FAMILY FRIEND

Australians are no strangers to tragic events: a loved one goes missing—often a child with no apparent reason to vanish—and heartbroken parents appeal to the public for help.

But that’s not what happened when William Tyrrell vanished. Instead of a tearful couple, we got family friend Nicole, who released photos of him.

Nicole, who went on Nine’s Today show four days after the toddler’s disappearance, said that William’s family was ‘completely distressed’ but couldn’t say who they were.

She said William ‘did not have a tendency to wander off’ but added cryptically that the boy ‘didn’t live here [in Kendall] so he wasn’t in the bush but he was definitely outdoorsy’.

‘He loved being outside but he knew the limits, he knew the perimeters, he knew where to go and where not to go. He was taught really well about the places that he could play,’ Nicole said.

In the case of Gus Lamont, it was again four days afterwards that a family friend  appeared before the media. 

Bill Harbison said the boy’s family was ‘devastated’, adding that they were still coming to terms with what had happened.

‘It has come as a shock to our family and friends and we’re struggling to comprehend what has happened,’ he said.

‘Gus’s absence is felt by all of us and we miss him more than words can express.

‘Our hearts are aching and we are holding on to hope that he will be found safe and well,’ Mr Harbison, an equine veterinarian, said.

A photo of the missing boy was, however, yet to be released by his family.

2. GRANDMA’S HOUSE AND WEALTHY FOLK

WILLIAM TYRRELL

William vanished from his foster grandmother’s house on Benaroon Drive, Kendall, on the NSW Mid North Coast, on the morning of September 12, 2014.

According to information released via Nicole by William’s foster parents and police after he vanished, his grandmother was ‘an active and well-liked member of the tight-knit Kendall community and had recently been in hospital.

‘His grandfather died earlier this year and his grandmother needed someone to care for her in the house, so William’s family had travelled from their home in Sydney to stay with her.’

This sparked a tsunami of conspiracy theories that were only partly extinguished when some facts were finally revealed: his foster parents were rich Sydney North Shore professionals, unlike his formerly drug-affected birth parents.

GUS LAMONT

Gus vanished from his grandmothers’ 60-square-kilometre rural property in Far North South Australia on the evening of September 27, 2025.

Gus was staying with Shannon and Josie Murray – his grandmother and trans grandmother, respectively – at Oak Park, a remote sheep station inherited from Shannon’s parents.

Josie used to be Robert Murray, but began identifying as a woman later in life. Robert and Shannon had married and welcomed a daughter, Jess, Gus’ mother. It’s unclear if their marriage is still intact after Josie’s transition, but they do still live together. 

Citizens of Yunta speak highly of the Murrays. Shannon’s late father, Vincent Pfeiffer, who ran the farm until his death in the 2010s, was a famously tough man who survived three years in a Japanese prisoner-of-war camp during World War II.

After returning to Australia, he married Shannon’s mother, Clair Jones, and began working on the farm. A pillar of the community, he was an active member of the town’s rifle shooting club.

In more recent times, the family has been involved in the Yunta Race Club, which stages amateur ‘gymkhanas’ at which competitors race everything from horses to motorbikes.

3. A BLACK EYE?

The last time William Tyrrell’s birth mother saw her son alive was on an access visit – and she had been warned beforehand that the three-year-old had a black eye, which he had sustained ‘from an accidental fall’ at his foster parents’ home.

It was not the first time William had fallen over, and detectives would later theorise the little boy had died after accidentally falling from his grandmother’s verandah.

In the case of Gus Lamont, there have been no statements from his family about the young boy’s life on the station, or about any incidents that might have caused the black eye seemingly visible in the only publicly available photograph of him.

That image, released by his family six days after he vanished, is of publicly unknown vintage, but would seem to depict a boy of about four. 

The area below Gus’s right eye looks to be swollen and slightly darker than the corresponding area under his left eye. Daily Mail makes no suggestion the black eye – if indeed it is one – is the result of anything besides an innocent accident.

4. ICONIC PHOTO

The iconic photo of William Tyrrell roaring in his Spider-Man suit is said to be one of the last images of him ever taken before he mysteriously vanished from his foster grandmother’s verandah.

The last photos – taken on a camera the foster mother had bought in Bali just weeks before William went missing – were considered the final ‘proof of life’ for William.

They hold time stamps that themselves have become the subject of dispute over when the boy vanished.

The picture of Gus Lamont with his long, wavy blond hair is the sole photo of the missing four-year-old released since he disappeared, and has become a similarly defining image of the case.

5. THE MISSING HOURS  

The iconic photo of William emitting a playful roar was used as crucial ‘proof of life’ evidence by investigators to establish a time frame for his disappearance.

The ‘proof of life’ timeframe was based on when the image was taken (9.37am) and when his foster mother called the police (10.57am).

However, that timeline was thrown into doubt by the photo’s digital metadata that suggested the picture may have been taken earlier.

The image has a ‘created time’ of 7.39am and a ‘corrected time’ of 9.37am, a document from the 2000-page evidence brief showed in 2021.

Gus was last seen outside by his grandmother at 5pm, then was absent when she went to call him in for dinner around 5:30pm.

With the sun starting to sink, concern quickly turned to panic. 

Sunset on September 27 was officially 6.11pm and for the next three hours, family members told police, they frantically explored the rambling homestead, shouting Gus’s name into the twilight. 

An hour after twilight gave way to darkness – at 8.30pm – they called the police.

It is not suggested that any members of Gus’ family had any involvement in his disappearance. 

6. FAMILY TIES

William, born on his mother’s 23rd birthday, was removed from his biological parents, who both have drug convictions, aged just seven months, in early 2012.

The birth mother was preparing to fight a move by William’s foster parents to adopt him when he disappeared.

When William vanished, police and welfare authorities turned up immediately at the birth parents’ Sydney home and found nothing.  

Gus’ parents, Jess and Josh Lamont, have remained largely a mystery in the wake of their son’s disappearance.

The couple also have a second son, one-year-old Ronnie, but have lived apart recently after a family dispute, with Josh keeping a home two hours’ drive away. 

Josh was the frontman of country rock ‘n’ roll band The Cut Snakes, which performed in rural South Australian bars and pubs in 2019, winning a local music award.

Late on September 27 – the night Gus disappeared – police found Josh asleep at his home. It’s believed he’s since been ruled out as having any involvement in the case. 

7. TRAMPLING THE CRIME SCENE & NEW SEARCHES    

It’s the classic dilemma which later can be considered a bungle.

When there’s a lost boy in the bush, get the boots on the ground to find him before sunset on the same day – or, in the case of Gus Lamont, on the second day after a shivering night in the open. 

When police fail to find any trace of the child, they will mount a wider search and, when that fails, doubt will set in – but by that time, the scene of the disappearance is a trampled mess.

The initial search for Gus was similar to that for William 11 years previously – in a relatively small radius of 2km and involving helicopters, drones, infrared cameras, trail bikes, and teams of divers who explored the farm’s water tanks, ponds and reservoirs.

With William, police dogs were deployed on the properties up and down Benaroon Drive, the street where he disappeared which had been overrun by authorities and volunteers scouring it for the boy.

When sniffer and cadaver dogs failed to pick up the three-year-old’s scent, Superintendent Paul Fehon admitted: ‘We do have grave concerns. To disappear that quickly absolutely bewilders us.’ 

Police contacted known local sex offenders and widened the already massive search.

Within six days, it shifted from bushland around his grandmother’s street to the Middle Brother State Forest 5km away.

In the years since, second, third and further searches – the last major one was in 2021 – have failed to find any trace of little William.

With hindsight, failing to secure Benaroon Drive has been described as a police failure. It is not suggested that any members of William Tyrrell’s family had any involvement in his disappearance.

Following Gus’s disappearance, for a week, investigators scoured the enormous Oak Park Station, which covers an astonishing 6,000 hectares of scrubland and desert.

Every morning, convoys of trucks negotiated the 29km dirt drive, bringing teams from the outskirts of the local town, Yunta, which has a population of 60.

They scoured rocky landscape covered with salt bushes and other shrubs, making it all too easy for a child to disappear; however, after a week it was scaled back and then halted.

Then on Tuesday, October 14, the search resumed.

South Australian Police Commissioner Grant Stevens said: ‘The search area that was originally canvassed was established on the basis of expert advice regarding just how far a four-year-old child was likely to travel, the implications of being alone and unprotected in the environment, survivability factors and medical advice as well.

‘The location we’re now searching is outside of the original… location.’

By Wednesday, police said the renewed search had so far yielded ‘no new evidence’ but continued in hot windy conditions as temperatures were tipped to soar to 36°C.

‘More than 100 search team members, including SA Police, ADF members and SES volunteers, have each been walking between 20 and 25km each day in hot, harsh conditions,’ SA Police said in a statement on Wednesday.

8. ABDUCTION?

When William Tyrrell disappeared, many people’s minds turned to a possible abduction.

This was fuelled early on by his foster mother saying she believed he had been ‘taken’, followed by her later descriptions of two ‘dirty old’ cars – an element that police could not corroborate and residents of the quiet street disputed.

Detectives interviewed several known child sex offenders in the region, but eventually discounted them and pursued alleged sightings of William in a fleeing car.

None of the clues came to anything, and no one has been charged with William’s disappearance.

The situation for Gus Lamont was different in that he vanished from a remote station onto which no known strangers had driven that afternoon.

Rescue workers are said to have discounted several theories that might explain the four-year-old’s disappearance.

While dingoes have been known to abduct small children, there are precious few in the land around Yunta as the local sheep farmers tend to shoot them on sight.

The region is also protected by a 2000km dog fence designed to safeguard livestock. Crocodiles, which inhabit more tropical northern regions of Australia, are not found in the south.

Gus is too big to be taken by an eagle, and if he had been attacked by a wild pig, searchers would almost certainly have discovered evidence of a struggle.

9. SEARCH ERRORS & AN ENDURING MYSTERY

The William Tyrrell investigation was flawed by police mistakes, meaning the mystery of what happened to him may never be solved.

Key Tyrrell figure Allanna Smith claimed that defensive police, operational errors and keeping family details from the public may have obstructed the hunt for the child.

She described the Gus Lamont case as ‘in some ways a carbon copy of William’.

She said that in contrast to Tyrrell, for whom there has never been any trace, a child-sized footprint had been found in the search for Gus – although it has since been dismissed by police – but as far as she is concerned: ‘I’m not buying it.’

‘That property is covered with fine dust – you can see it blowing around in footage of the search,’ she said.

‘I don’t care if you are four, or a mouse or a rat, you leave some impression in that  powdery red dust.

‘So the cops went on the property and basically destroyed the scene.’

The Daily Mail is not suggesting that any member of Gus or William’s family or their spokespeople obstructed the search for the missing boys.