As the search dragged on, and with leads dwindling, many experts believed the girl was dead.<\/p>\n
However, Cleo was found alive 18 days later inside the home of Terence Darrell Kelly, who lived 3km from her family\u2019s house.<\/p>\n
Terence Kelly in a social media post before Cleo Smith’s abduction. Photo \/ Facebook<\/p>\n
Viewers around the world watched footage of the emotional moment a police officer asked a young girl for her name<\/a>.<\/p>\n \u201cMy name is Cleo,\u201d she responded.<\/p>\n Kelly pleaded guilty to kidnapping Cleo<\/a> and holding her in his home and was sentenced to 13 years in prison.<\/p>\n Police investigations revealed he had an obsession with Bratz dolls, filling a room in his house with the figurines.<\/p>\n Gliddon and Smith sat down for an interview with Nine Network in 2022, for a reported A$2 million<\/a>.<\/p>\n They told 60 Minutes journalist Tara Brown they were disgusted by a psychologist report that detailed Kelly\u2019s motives behind the kidnapping \u2013 it found he snatched Cleo to fulfil an idealised fantasy of having a girl to dress up and play with.<\/p>\n \u201cShe still has her sad nights, her nightmare nights,\u201d Smith said.<\/p>\n \u201cShe doesn\u2019t have the words to explain what she\u2019s sad about, she just knows that\u2019s how she feels, so they\u2019re just sad nights.<\/p>\n \u201cObviously, we\u2019re still sad, hurt, scared, angry, terrified, but we try not to let it rule our life.\u201d<\/p>\n In 2024, Kelly lost an appeal to have his sentence reduced<\/a>.<\/p>\n Sign up to Herald Premium Editor\u2019s Picks<\/a>, delivered straight to your inbox every Friday. Editor-in-Chief Murray Kirkness picks the week\u2019s best features, interviews and investigations. Sign up for Herald Premium here<\/a>.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"The family had been camping at the remote Point Quobba when Cleo was taken from her tent in…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":310733,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[3],"tags":[169244,74,1135,41071,14032,2837,2109,71,1437,305,42,1345,296,20925,1357,43,2833,3766,95425,13311,465,13172,165,8229,169243,40,38,41,39,540,1530],"class_list":{"0":"post-310732","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","5":"has-post-thumbnail","7":"category-headlines","8":"tag-abducted","9":"tag-after","10":"tag-australian","11":"tag-cleo","12":"tag-daughter","13":"tag-during","14":"tag-family","15":"tag-from","16":"tag-global","17":"tag-have","18":"tag-headlines","19":"tag-home","20":"tag-into","21":"tag-kidnapping","22":"tag-lived","23":"tag-news","24":"tag-ordeal","25":"tag-parents","26":"tag-relocated","27":"tag-sell","28":"tag-smiths","29":"tag-spotlight","30":"tag-their","31":"tag-they","32":"tag-thrust","33":"tag-top-news","34":"tag-top-stories","35":"tag-topnews","36":"tag-topstories","37":"tag-where","38":"tag-years"},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/310732","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=310732"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/310732\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/310733"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=310732"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=310732"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=310732"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}Cleo Smith pictured with mum Ellie Smith, her sister, and stepdad Jake Gliddon. Photo \/ Facebook<\/p>\n