The mother of the “Australian Madeleine McCann” has opened up about the fact that even though her daughter's sick kidnapper has been handed a prison sentence of over a decade, “the anger will always be there.”
Creepy kidnapper Terence Kelly was slapped with a 13-and-a-half-year jail term on Wednesday, April 5 at the District Court of Western Australia after he admitted to having abducted Cleo Smith for a period of 18 days - who was only four years old at the time.
Kelly will have to serve a minimum of 11 years of his sentence before he is eligible for parole for holding the child captive for the terrifying two-and-a-half-week period.
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Back in January 2022, Kelly pleaded guilty to the heinous crime admitting that he took her from her family's tent the previous year while they were out camping.
However, the sicko did not open his mouth during the sentencing, only nodding in acknowledgement of his name and putting forward his guilty plea, news.com.au reports.
Speaking to the Australian current affairs programme 60 Minutes, Cleo’s mum, Ellie explained that she and her partner Jake Gliddon, “feel contentment he is behind bars.
“We do have a number to hold with us of how long he is away. But there is always going to be anger, always — how could there not be."
Cleo and her family were on a camping trip at the Quobba Blowholes campsite, located around an hour from their hometown of Carnarvon in west Australia.
At some point in the early hours of the morning on October 15, 2021, Kelly snuck into the tent with the young girl while the family slept.
After an 18-day-long massive manhunt was launched and the incident made headlines worldwide, she was eventually found at Kelly’s home - in the town she grew up in.
In a victim statement read in court today, mum Ellie said that the creepy kidnapper “ripped their lives apart” when he took the young girl, adding that the pain she felt was “immeasurable”.
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