Ellie Smith’s world came to a halt when her daughter was kidnapped while her family slept in their tent at the remote Blowholes camp in Western Australia in 2021.
The four-year-old girl disappeared along with her sleeping bag and was held prisoner in a Carnarvon house for 18 days.
Her kidnapper, Terence Kelly, 36, was sentenced to 13½ years in prison.
“She still has her sad nights, her nightmare nights,” her mother said, speaking to 60 Minutes as well as Cleo’s stepfather, Jake Gliddon.
“Some things you just can’t explain.”
During Kelly’s sentencing, it was revealed that Cleo was locked in a room with a radio blaring to hide her screams.
Sometimes he recognized his own name from the broadcasts.
“It obviously hurts to know that she was screaming for help and we weren’t there,” her mother said.
“It hurts me to know that she was crying out for help and was ignored.”
Kelly admitted he was high on methamphetamine at the time, living in an idealized fantasy world to escape his traumatic past that included a tangled web of social media profiles for a family that didn’t exist.
Eighteen days of hell finally ended when detectives forced their way into his locked house.
The work of the WA Police is now being scrutinized by international agencies.
Police Minister Paul Papalia said it started “as a broad and massive spectrum of investigation” before it “got narrower and narrower”.
“Just before his arrest, they focused more on him,” she said.
This week, Kelly began challenging her sentence.
His legal team filed documents in the appeals court arguing that his disadvantaged childhood was not given proper weight.