Somehow this case just got creepier.
The 36-year-old man charged in the kidnapping 4-year-old Cleo Smith in Western Australia was an avid Bratz doll collector, frequently posting his favorite toys on Facebook.
Terence Darrell Kelly was charged with forcibly and fraudulently taking a child this week, 18 days after he allegedly snatched Smith from a tent where she was sleeping with her family. He will appear in court on Dec. 5 to give his plea.
Cleo was found in a back room Kelly’s house at 1 a.m. on Wednesday after police followed up on a tip. She was wide awake and playing with toys, police said, but did not confirm if she was allowed to touch his collection of Bratz dolls.
“The lights were on and she was playing with toys, I think that’s about all I want to say,” Superintendent Rod Wilde told reporters. “This is still a matter that needs to go before the courts. There’s certain aspects about what we saw that is going to be evidence.”
Kelly posted photos of his substantial collection of Bratz dolls, many still in their cases, on Facebook collector sites in Australia. He also posted glam selfies of himself, often flanked by his prized dolls. In April 2020, he posted a photo of one of his dolls in his car, captioning it that he liked to drive “her” around.in ta “He’s been a feature on Facebook for a long long time, and on other social media, taking his dolls for drives, doing their hair and taking selfies,” police told local reports.
Source: The Daily Beast