On Tuesday afternoon,Anna Baker told the court she was at her home in Herons Creek,about 10 minutes north of Kendall,on the afternoon of September 13 and was tending to her veggie patch about 4pm when she heard"a child scream out,like a child hurt".
"I had no reason to think it was William,"Ms Baker said."It didn’t go for very long,it sounded like maybe he was hurt. It was a scream and it was silence pretty quickly."
Ms Baker said she has children and grandchildren and is"100 per cent"confident that it was a child's scream she heard.
"Straight away I thought[it was] a male boy,"she said."I stood up straight away and looked in the direction of the cry and listened … it was in pretty thick bush where the noise came from,or the cry came from."
Ms Baker's friend,Janice Tissisiz,said she was later told about the"horror scream".
The court heard a series of methodical searches have been carried out in bushland near Kendall between 2018 and 2020,including line searches involving police and other emergency services,and the use of cadaver dogs.