Josie Murray, the grandmother of missing four-year-old Gus Lamont, has revealed she believes the child was abducted from a remote South Australian sheep station.
Four-year-old Gus was last seen playing near the remote homestead at Oak Park Station on September 27. The pastoral property is located 40km south of Yunta, a small outback settlement in South Australia situated along the Barrier Highway.
Despite extensive land and air searches conducted across the remote terrain, the young boy has not been seen since the afternoon he disappeared.
Speaking to 7News on Monday, Murray stated that she now believes her grandson was abducted by a stranger, saying that no other explanation accounts for his disappearance.
"I think he has to have been taken. Nothing else makes sense," she said.
Murray explained that she still wants to know the answer to what happened to him. She then directed television cameras to the exact area where Gus was playing on the afternoon he vanished.
"It brings me to tears that he's not here," Murray said. "Just down here. And then that was the last he was seen, and after that he just disappeared."
Police investigation and suspects
In February, South Australia Police revealed they believed someone known to Gus may have killed him, either deliberately or accidentally, before he was reported missing.
Investigators stated that the suspect lived at Oak Park Station, located 300km north of the state capital of Adelaide, and was known to the child.
Police confirmed that the suspect was not the child's mother, Jessica Murray, or his father, Joshua Lamont. Both parents live at Belalie North, a rural locality roughly a two-hour drive from the sheep station.
Oak Park Station is owned by Gus's grandparents, Shannon and Josie Murray, who both live at and operate the remote homestead.
Josie Murray later confirmed that police had informed her that she is the main suspect in the investigation. She has consistently maintained her innocence throughout the inquiry. No charges have been laid and no arrests have been made.
Police officers have searched Oak Park Station 11 times since Gus vanished last September.
Search operation and case status
Following the boy's disappearance, an extensive land, air and dam search was launched across the property. The operation ran for several weeks and involved police officers, personnel from the Australian Army, volunteers from the State Emergency Service (SES), an Aboriginal tracker, and local community volunteers. The multi-agency search failed to find any sign of the missing four-year-old.
Initially, police fiercely defended the family's request for privacy as relatives navigated the child's disappearance and the fading hopes that he would be found alive or dead.
However, in January, the working relationship between Josie and Shannon Murray and Task Force Horizon investigators suddenly soured. Police subsequently confirmed that the case had turned into a major crime investigation.
Murray's recent comments come weeks after South Australian police refused to confirm whether they still have a person of interest in the disappearance of Gus. Police also refused to confirm whether they have identified any other suspects in the case.
At the time of the police refusal, Murray's lawyer, Andrew Ey, told the Daily Mail that his client had always remained steadfast in her denial of being involved in the disappearance of her grandson.
