In the days and weeks after the boy was reported missing, police conducted extensive searches, covering about 470 sq km – an area roughly twice the size of Edinburgh – around his home, the Oak Park station homestead.<\/p>\n
In late October, police wound down efforts and appointed a 12-member taskforce to continue the investigation.<\/p>\n
That taskforce sifted through previous statements given by family members which “identified a number of inconsistencies and discrepancies” of the timeline around the boy’s disappearance.<\/p>\n
“As a result of these inconsistencies, and investigations into them, a person who resides at Oak Park station has withdrawn their support for the police and is no longer cooperating with us,” Detective Superintendent Darren Fielke said.<\/p>\n
“I do want to stress, however, that Gus’ parents are not suspects in his disappearance.”<\/p>\n
Police conducted a search of the property in January and seized a number of items including a vehicle, motorcycle and some electronic devices. <\/p>\n
Investigators said they had initially considered three possible scenarios – the boy walked off, he was abducted, or someone known to Gus was involved in his disappearance and suspected death.<\/p>\n
Given the remote location of the property, police ruled out abduction and there was no evidence to suggest Gus had “merely wandered off”. <\/p>\n
“What I can say, however, is that we’ll continue to thoroughly and meticulously investigate the disappearance of Gus until we get an outcome,” Fielke said.<\/p>\n
“We’re all focused and determined to locate Gus and return him to his parents. Nothing is off the table as we work towards that outcome.”<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"In the days and weeks after the boy was reported missing, police conducted extensive searches, covering about 470…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":408918,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[2],"tags":[49,50,51,47,52,48],"class_list":{"0":"post-408917","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","5":"has-post-thumbnail","7":"category-headlines","8":"tag-headlines","9":"tag-news","10":"tag-top-news","11":"tag-top-stories","12":"tag-topnews","13":"tag-topstories"},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/408917","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=408917"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/408917\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/408918"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=408917"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=408917"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=408917"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}