Cleo Smith: Mum and stepdad reveal daughter’s kidnapping ‘ripped their lives apart’ as Terence Kelly jailed

Cleo Smith’s mother has broken her silence after her daughter’s kidnapper was jailed, saying: “The anger always will be there.” Terence Kelly was jailed for 13½ years on Wednesday for abducting the then four-year-old from her family’s tent at the Blowholes Campground in the middle of the night in October 2021. It was the moment Ellie Smith and her partner Jake Gliddon had been waiting for — and the final chapter in a harrowing ordeal. Speaking for the first time since Kelly, 37, was sentenced, Ms Smith said she will always feel anger towards Kelly but she is also relieved now she knows just how long he will remain locked up. “I think the anger always will be there,” she says in an interview with 60 Minutes. “But we do also feel contentment he is behind bars, he has been sentenced. “And 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?” Ms Smith and Mr Gliddon arrived at the District Court flanked by some of the detectives who helped bring Cleo home and were quickly ushered inside to hear what led Kelly to commit his brazen crime. Among the horrifying details to emerge in court were revelations he was high on meth when he snatched Cleo and that he had “roughed” her up because she was being noisy and “bossy” asking for chocolate. He also tried to tie her hands and feet to a chair using sticky tape but abandoned the plan because “she was a bit of a fighter”. And he burnt Cleo’s onesie, her underwear and her sleeping bag days after he kidnapped her. The court was also told the little girl angered Kelly because she kept asking for her mum, prompting him to put a radio on in the bathroom to cover up her pleas. “The young victim heard her name on the radio and she said they were saying her name,” Chief Judge Julie Wager said. In their victim impact statements, Cleo’s parents revealed Kelly’s callous actions “ripped their lives apart” and caused them immeasurable pain. They wrote about their desperation, shock and fear after Cleo went missing, and how that fear over that time was “immeasurable”. They also revealed they were too fearful to sleep during the first few days of her disappearance, watching the same space at the campsite each day in the hope Cleo would be found. When rain forced the search to be called off for a brief period, they wrote it devastated them because they feared their daughter would be placed at further risk. Now that Kelly has been jailed, Cleo’s parents have asked for privacy to allow their daughter “to do whatever it takes to be able to lead her best life in the future”. Kelly will have to serve at least 11½ years of his sentence before he will be eligible for parole.