Coalition frontbencher Senator Jacinta Nampijinpa Price has confirmed she is the aunt of a five-year-old girl in the Northern Territory who was found ᴅᴇᴀᴅ days after her suspected abduction.

Police had been searching for the girl, whose family asked for her to be referred to as Kumanjayi Little Baby, since she vanished on Saturday night, when she was put to bed some time before 11pm at a house in the Old Timers Camp where she and her mother had been visiting.

She was last seen nearby holding hands with Jefferson Lewis at 11.30pm with police yesterday confirming they believe he led the little girl away from the camp.

Kumanjayi Little Baby. (Supplied)

Price told Sky News earlier today that Kumanjayi Little Baby’s family and the local community were shattered.

“That’s incredibly frightening and very disturbing for the family as well,” she said.

“You know, I’m holding on to hope that she is still alive and I’m very grateful for the volunteers, the police, the Aboriginal trackers, everyone that’s been involved in the search for (her).”

Price said Kumanjayi Little Baby was her niece.

The Liberal politician also said she was helping police with their investigations to find the girl and Lewis, and appealed for anyone who knows their whereabouts to contact authorities.

“There is concern that there are people that do know the whereabouts of Jefferson Lewis,” she said.

Liberal Senator Jacinta Nampijinpa. (Alex Ellinghausen)

“Someone like that can’t just disappear into thin air and finding him, I believe, is the clue to being able to find (her) and I would urge people to come forward.

Price was speaking after the girl’s family made a heartfelt appeal to her suspected abductor for her safe return.

Grandfather Robin told The Sydney Morning Herald the family had been praying for the girl’s safe return, and appealed for Australians to keep their missing child in their hearts.

“There was nothing I could do – just cry,” he said.

“She was a really nice, little, good, quiet girl.”

Robin said he discovered his granddaughter was missing while watching the Anzac Day memorial nearby.

“I heard it was my granddaughter who was being snatched up and [had been] taken off by a man from prison,” he said.

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Jefferson Lewis. (NT Police)

Lewis had been released from jail just six days before the girl went missing, charged for violent offences including ᴀssault and domestic violence.

Police found the items of clothing on the riverbank at the back of the Old Timers Camp where the girl was last seen on Sunday, but have only just revealed their findings.

Northern Territory ᴀssistant Police Commissioner Peter Malley said the shirt found by police is Lewis’ “distinctive” yellow and black shirt captured on police bodycam footage when officers visited the Old Timers Camp earlier on Saturday for an unrelated mental health call out.

A doona cover was also found alongside the shirt and children’s underwear.

Police scour the house where the little girl was staying in Old Timers camp just outside of Alice Springs when she was allegedly abducted by Jefferson Lewis. (9News)

Robin appealed through the media for Lewis to “listen” to him.

“I want you to send that baby back. She is our baby. It’s our kid … she is just too small. Please, can you bring her back? We want to be back safe.”

He appealed for anyone who spotted the pair to contact him or police as soon as possible.

Robin also said the girl had trouble communicating at times.

“She didn’t have really have a voice … she’s just been using a hand signal,” he said.

Local MP and Northern Territory Legislative ᴀssembly Speaker Robyn Lambley told Today this morning the whole community had been mobilised in the search.

“We have all been out there looking for her … the whole town is all about finding her.”

She said the small community of Old Timers Camp was a “notoriously hard place to live”.

The widening manhunt has also reached interstate, with Western Australian police contacting Lewis’ wife and children in Bolga, who police say are cooperating with authorities.

The distance of a mere five kilometers is a hauntingly small span, a stretch of road that Sharon Granites’ mother likely traveled hundreds of times without a second thought, now forever transformed into the boundary between a life of hope and a reality of profound loss. During a heart-wrenching public statement, she recounted the agonizing moment investigators sat her down to map out the final known location of her daughter, revealing that the site was practically on the doorstep of their community. The proximity added a layer of cruel irony to the tragedy, as it meant Sharon was almost home, nearly within the reach of those who loved her, when her journey was violently interrupted. It was at this specific coordinate that the forensic narrative solidified, with DNA evidence providing a genetic fingerprint that placed Jefferson Lewis directly within that five-kilometer radius, tethering him to the site in a way that left little room for ambiguity.

While the confirmation of Lewis’s presence provided a target for the family’s grief and the state’s prosecution, a growing sense of unease has emerged regarding a specific forensic detail that was reportedly withheld or glossed over during those initial briefings. The family has voiced a distressing realization that the complete picture of the forensic results was not immediately shared, leading to speculation about a secondary finding that might complicate the current understanding of the crime. This missing detail is whispered to be a piece of “trace evidence” that does not fit the profile of Jefferson Lewis or Sharon Granites, suggesting the presence of an unidentified third party or a biological marker that indicates the scene was far more complex than a two-person encounter. If this hypothesis holds, the “detail they hadn’t been fully told” could be the existence of a mystery contributor whose role remains the investigation’s most guarded secret.

Another prevailing theory regarding this undisclosed information involves the timing of the DNA deposition rather than just the idenтιтy. If the forensic results indicated that the biological material was deposited at different intervals, it would suggest a timeline that contradicts the prosecution’s current theory of a single, localized event. The family’s frustration stems from the possibility that the evidence suggests Sharon was at that location for a much longer duration than they were led to believe, or perhaps that the site was revisited in a manner that the authorities were not yet ready to explain. This lack of transparency has created a rift of trust, as the family wonders if the full truth of Sharon’s final hours is being filtered to ensure a smoother path to a conviction, rather than providing the raw, unfiltered reality of what occurred just five kilometers from safety.

For Sharon’s mother, the pain of the proximity is compounded by this forensic “black box.” The realization that her daughter was so close to home, coupled with the feeling that the authorities are holding back a crucial piece of the story, has turned her mourning into a crusade for total transparency. She remains haunted by the idea that there is more to the “match” than she was told—a secret held in a lab report that might change the way the world views Jefferson Lewis’s culpability or the events of that night. Until the full forensic file is laid bare in a courtroom, that five-kilometer stretch of land remains a place of unanswered questions, where the science of DNA has provided a name but perhaps not the entire, devastating truth.