Years after he was outed — and then cleared — as a suspect in the disappearance of William Tyrrell, a court has heard the investigation still haunts Bill Spedding.
Mr Spedding lost 20 kilograms, avoids being out in public and says mentally he is not the same man he once was.
He was one of the first persons of interest publicly named in the feverish media coverage surrounding how William had vanished on the NSW north coast in September 2014.
Mr Spedding was thrust into the spotlight six months later when he was led into a police car before a pack of waiting reporters.
The arrest wasn't in relation to William, but because he was about to be charged with historical child sex offences dating back to 1987.
Police investigating the Tyrrell case had found out the claims through a tip to Crime Stoppers, soon after William was last seen at his foster grandmother's home in Kendall.
Despite the claims being dismissed in the 1980s, police this time decided there was enough evidence to charge Mr Spedding on April 22, 2015.
Then, in 2018, Mr Spedding was acquitted at a trial which heard the allegations had been falsified during an old legal battle.
This week the Supreme Court heard his case for suing the State of NSW for malicious prosecution.
Mr Spedding, 70, claims police used the charges as a ploy to intimidate and "crack him open" in the Tyrrell investigation.
He said it was an abuse of process to prosecute him with a "hopeless" case when authorities had access to documents raising serious doubts right from the start.
The court heard he was wrongly painted as a paedophile, illustrated by a string of harrowing phone calls he received from anonymous men threatening to kill him.
When they were grilled on the stand, the key investigators — including former detective Gary Jubelin — said they had acted professionally and stood by their actions.
They all denied Mr Spedding was intimidated during questioning, with Mr Jubelin accused of threatening to "ruin" him in an unrecorded interview.
"I know the parameters in which I can work within an interview room, and I made no threats," Mr Jubelin told the court.
Justice Ian Harrison has now retired to consider his judgement, with Mr Spedding again waiting for an outcome.
To be successful in a malicious prosecution case, it must be proven on the balance of probabilities that authorities acted with malice in wrongfully bringing and maintaining a charge.
That can be difficult a threshold to meet, as shown in another high-profile case heard before the Supreme Court in 2017.
Gordon Wood, the former driver for Sydney businessman Rene Rivkin, was found guilty in 2008 of murdering his model girlfriend Caroline Byrne.
Mr Wood was charged in 2006 after a decade of public scrutiny over Byrne's death, whose body was found at notorious suicide spot The Gap in 1995.
He had always maintained his innocence and said Byrne died by suicide.
Mr Wood was convicted at trial and spent three years in prison before being acquitted on an appeal which focused on a flawed prosecution case.
He then sued the state for millions but was unsuccessful, despite Justice Elizabeth Fullerton heavily criticising the prosecution.
Justice Fullerton found the prosecutor, Mark Tedeschi QC, had "an absence of reasonable and probable cause" in initiating the proceedings against Mr Wood.
Mr Tedeschi was accused by Mr Wood's lawyers of misleading the jury and failing to introduce evidence Byrne could have killed herself.
Justice Fullerton also ruled the evidence of an expert witness who testified Byrne must have been thrown from the cliff was "fundamentally flawed".
In the end, however, Justice Fullerton cleared Mr Tedeschi of malicious prosecution and ordered Mr Wood to pay the state's costs.
Mr Spedding, a tradesman, had fixed a washing machine at William's foster grandmother's home three days before he vanished there on September 12, 2014.
His lawyers said police had targeted him as the prime suspect and saw the sexual assault allegations as a tool to bring him down.
"The criminal proceedings were used as a vehicle to further the investigation of the plaintiff in the disappearance of William Tyrrell and punish him for that," his barrister Adrian Canceri said.
Mr Canceri said that after Mr Spedding was questioned about William's disappearance in January 2015, one officer told him: "We know you did it. We're going to get you."
Former homicide cop Mr Jubelin led Strike Force Rosann, the team investigating the Tyrrell case, from February 2015.
Mr Spedding claims after being charged with the historical offences, Mr Jubelin allegedly leaned close to his face and said: "Mr nice washing machine man, I'm going to ruin you."
Mr Jubelin denies that, saying he was "professional and forthright" during a "frank" discussion about William with Mr Spedding.
Justice Harrison asked Mr Jubelin point-blank what he would say to the suggestion the charges were laid to put "extra pressure" on Mr Spedding.
"Strongly deny it," Mr Jubelin said.
He agreed it was "fair comment" to say Mr Spedding was labelled a paedophile but said charging him was the right thing to do.
