Frank Abbott's interactions with people near the mid-north coast township of Kendall, from where three-year-old William went missing in 2014, was examined at the toddler's inquest in Taree on Wednesday.

Abbott lived in a caravan in Logans Crossing near Kendall, and knocked on a neighbour's door about 10 or 11 o'clock one night to share information.

"He said 'have you heard the news? Geoff is a suspect in the William case and the police have come to see him','' former neighbour Julie Huntley told the Coroners Court on Wednesday.

"My husband and I thought it was really strange. We just wanted him to go away so we just said 'OK then'."

No one has ever been charged over the disappearance of William who vanished while playing at his foster grandmother's Kendall home on the morning of September 12, 2014.

Hundreds of people have been dubbed "persons of interest" during the investigation and a case detective admitted during the inquest there's "a very low standard to meet in order to become a person of interest".

Ms Huntley and her husband Peter Huntley said they had no idea why he wanted to discuss the Tyrrell investigation at that time, having never spoken about it before.

Ms Huntley preferred having no interaction with Abbott at all, even avoiding giving him lifts home when she passed him in town.

"I didn't want him in my car ... I didn't want him around my children," she said.

"I had a funny feeling about him, I didn't want any part of him."

After Abbott began using bones to entice the family's chocolate labrador Buddy to his caravan, Ms Huntley went to the van and saw her dog on the bed with his legs in the air.

"He had him on the end of the bed," she told the court.

Asked if she actually saw anything happen between Abbott and Buddy, Ms Huntley said she didn't look after that but reported the matter to police.

Johns River shopkeeper Patrick Teeling told of a time when Abbott approached him shortly after Tyrrell investigators seized a car associated with another person of interest, Tony Jones.

"Frank was saying 'I knew they'd get him, I knew they'd get him'," Mr Teeling said on Wednesday.

"I said 'Who?' and he said 'That Jones chap' and I wondered what that was all about."

Mr Teeling had also not previously discussed the Tyrrell investigation with Abbott.

"So he decided he just had to tell you?" counsel assisting the coroner, Gerard Craddock SC, asked Mr Teeling.

"Yeah, for some unknown reasons," the shopkeeper replied.

"I did (see media coverage of Jones that night) ... it worried me why he is telling me that."

Abbott, who was questioned by police in late 2019, is representing himself at the inquest via video link from a Cessnock jail on an unrelated conviciton.

The inquest heard Mr Jones and Abbott met in Grafton prison in 2019 and had a falling out over what Abbott was saying about the Tyrrell investigation.

"You were talking s***," Mr Jones said, under questioning by Abbott, on Wednesday.

"I said 'I didn't give you up' and I was locked in my room for a number of weeks because the officer said I was going to be shivved," Abbott replied.

Mr Jones has told the inquest he has no recollection of the day William went missing, before claiming he might have been having extramarital sex with his next-door neighbour.

The inquest resumes on Thursday.

Australian Associated Press