FED: Police hope tourist influx will help toddler search

AAP General News (Australia)
02-12-1999
FED: Police hope tourist influx will help toddler search

MELBOURNE, Feb 12 AAP - Police have appealed to thousands of tourists attending a
water-skiing festival this weekend to help in the increasingly desperate search for a
Victorian toddler, missing since last Sunday.

"We're appealing to people to keep their eyes open. Certainly having many more people in
the area could help the search," said a spokeswoman for New South Wales police, who are
coordinating the as yet fruitless search in southern NSW, south of Deniliquin.

James has been missing since last Sunday when his natural mother, Julie Jean Sette, 31,
allegedly took him from Daylesford in central Victoria during an arranged visit and drove him
to an unknown location, believed to be northern Victoria or southern NSW.

The toddler had been in the care of adoptive parents, known only as Jack and Fiona, who
were just six weeks away from formally adopting James.

Sette has been in police custody since her arrest on Monday, when she appeared in Echuca
Magistrates' Court in northern Victoria charged with false imprisonment.

She has exercised her legal right to decline to be interviewed by police.

Organisers of the Southern 80 water-skiing festival, held along the Murray River near
Echuca this weekend, estimate that up to 30,000 people will attend the event.

The police spokeswoman said four NSW police divers spent today searching dams and rivers
between Deniliquin and Mathoura, but found nothing to help with the search.

The divers wanted to search the waterways before the throngs of water-skiers arrived, and
churned up the water, she said.

Detective Chief Inspector Rod Collins of Victoria's Homicide Squad said yesterday the
search for James was being concentrated in southern NSW because of the number of reported
sightings of Sette's car in that area.

Adoptive parents Jack and Fiona made a desperate plea to the public yesterday to contact
police with relevant information, even if it seemed trivial.

Jack said the couple believed Sette might know where James was "or what's happened to him
at the worst".

"Whatever the situation, we need to know," he told reporters at Melbourne police
headquarters.

AAP gf/jlw/cjh

KEYWORD: CHILD NIGHTLEAD

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