Cleo Smith: Kidnapper Terence Kelly’s troubled mind and warped history laid bare in court as he’s jailed

A little fighter, stolen by a fantasist. A man who created his own children in his mind — and then stole someone else’s while out of his mind on drugs. That child was Cleo Smith. That man was Terence Kelly. And yesterday, the tortured path which led him to the Blowholes campsite on October 16, 2021 — where he snatched the four-year old from beside her sleeping parents — was laid bare in public for the first time. The extraordinary story of an innocent child taken, hidden, held and then miraculously rescued was given its final chapter, when Kelly was jailed for more than 13 years for the crime that stunned Australia. He could be eligible for release for that crime in 2033. But even then, specialists who have examined him since his dramatic arrest in November 2021 said he is a high risk of damaging another victim. The little victim he has already damaged — the one he held captive in his Carnarvon home for 18 days — was nowhere near the courtroom where her ordeal was outlined. But her parents Jake and Ellie were, bravely listening as their nightmare was retold by WA’s Director of Public Prosecutions Robert Owen, and then by District Court chief judge Julie Wager. On that October day, the Smith family, including baby Isla, were ensconced in their idyllic little camp 75km north of Carnarvon by 7pm. By 8pm the kids had been fed. By 9pm they were in bed. And then sometime between 2.40am and 4.40am the next morning, Kelly was also in camp — looking for things to steal. “When you were inside the tent and saw the child, you decided to steal her,” Judge Wager said. Kelly immediately began to cover his tracks. He drove along a dirt track. He turned off his phone, already paranoid. But then, when he got back to his lonely Brockman home, he had the child he had always wanted. “I wasn’t planning to keep her forever,” he later told police. “I wanted to hold on to her but I knew it was wrong.” But not wrong enough to do anything about giving her back. In fact, Kelly went out of his way to hide Cleo from the unprecedented search launched to find the beautiful, blonde little girl. He locked her in a room, with a lock he had put on himself. He changed his phone. He burned Cleo’s onesie and underwear, and the sleeping bag he took along with her. And he turned up the radio so neighbours would not hear Cleo when she called out for her mother. Even when Cleo recognised her own name on that radio, and told her captor she could hear it, he held on to his fantasy. “She cried a fair bit. She called out a few times,” he told police. “I tried to tie her to the chair and that with her hands, feet and mouth. I tried to do that. She was a bit of a fighter. “She was mad at me when I left her alone.” Kelly did that repeatedly. Giving relatives lifts, attending arts and crafts classes. All the while leaving Cleo in that locked room, with a mattress on the floor. And, while in public, Kelly spoke to others about the little girl that had gone missing. He also friended Cleo’s mother Ellie on Facebook. “Being separated without any explanation is distressing for a four-year-old child,” Judge Wager said. “But 18 days without contact or explanation, and with hours totally on her own and no access to the outside world would have been very traumatic for the child. “In the world of a four-year-old, a day is a long time. In the world of a four-year-old, 18 days is a very, very, very long time indeed.” The Smith family was torn apart. The court heard that despite the pain of staying in the place their daughter went missing, they didn’t want to leave in case she came back. And while Cleo’s parents went out of their minds with worry, the court was told Kelly was altering his with meth. Witnesses who were with him on the night before Cleo vanished said Kelly looked drug affected then. He was offering to sell gear as well. And after driving to and from parties until the early hours, he then told a cousin he was too busy to pick her up at 5.30am. By then, Cleo was already in his house. And Kelly would keep taking drugs as he kept her. “Not every day, but most every day I was off my chops. I just had methylamphetamine just to help me cope with stuff, with everything that goes on in my head,” he told police. What was in Kelly’s head — from when he was younger than Cleo was when he took her — was layer upon layer of trauma and disadvantage. Probably before birth, Kelly was exposed to alcohol. As an infant, booze was in his baby bottles. As a toddler, drink and drugs and abuse were all around him. Then, at 2½ years old, his parents suddenly weren’t — abandoning him to be raised by his maternal aunt Penny Walker. At six, came a diagnosis of ADHD. Hearing loss compounded the isolation. At 12, sharp objects were found under the bed. At 13, a month in hospital. The suicide of a friend. Expulsion from school. More diagnoses — oppositional defiance disorder, PTSD, amongst others. And then came crime. Burglaries, dishonesty, driving and drugs. “You cannot put your childhood trauma behind you just because you’re now a mature man,” Judge Wager said. “In fact, your isolation and grief following the relatively recent death of your grandmother may have added to your trauma and fuelled your choices, including your choice to take drugs.” A detailed analysis of Kelly by Dr Rajan Darjee — a consultant forensic psychiatrist — led him to conclude that the 37-year-old used fantasy to help him deal with his horrid reality. “He withdraws into an idealised fantasy world — for example, he has numerous children by different relationships,” Dr Darjee wrote. Those children were make believe. But they were real to Kelly. He’d opened Facebook pages for them. He communicated with them. “And you also had a significant interest in Bratz dolls and owned many of them, and this hobby is consistent with your fantasy family life,” Judge Wager said. A fantasy that Kelly turned into a reality on October 16, 2021, when he took Cleo Smith and held on to her for 18 days — while the State, and the world, held its breath that she might be found alive. On November 3 she was. Upon his capture, Kelly told police he would take them to her. But by then she was already free from that locked room. Kelly will now have one of his own for at least the next 11½ years. “He has also gone from the euphoria of fulfilling his idealised fantasy of having a little girl who he can dress up, play with and be with to a new harsh reality,” Dr Darjee said. Police Commissioner Col Blanch — the man who delivered the news to the world that Cleo had been found — said he hoped that from here, it could be the little girl’s fantasies that are fulfilled. “We owe you your privacy, we owe you to grow up and have your dreams come true. So from all of us, it’s time we give you the space to do so,” he said.