Australian prosecutors have dropped their case against a man who had been accused of murdering a UK-born toddler almost 50 years ago.
The disappearance of three-year-old Cheryl Grimmer from a New South Wales beach in 1970 is one of Australia’s longest-running mysteries. A man was arrested in 2017 and pleaded not guilty to murder.
This week a judge ruled that a key part of the prosecution case could not be used as evidence in trial. It concerned statements made by the man during a police interview in 1971, when he was aged 17. The Supreme Court of New South Wales found that the evidence could not be heard because the man was a teenager had not had an adult representative present during the interview.
NSW POLICE
Justice Robert Allan Hulme said: “The Crown accepts that its case cannot succeed without it.
Cheryl Grimmer disappeared on January 12th, 1970. She was three-years-old at the time of her disappearance, she was kidnapped from a shower block on Fairy Meadow Beach in Wollongong. Her family had just recently moved to Australia from Bristol. A witness claimed a man had took Cheryl and ran off, it is then believed she was strangled to death after an hour after her abduction.
Cheryls disappearance sparked a massive search, there was many different theories by police, these were: she was hiding and had fallen asleep, that she had wandered into the ocean and was carried away by currents, that she had fallen into a waterway, or that she had been kidnapped. On the third day, police received a note demanding $10,000 and stating she was unharmed.
In 2011 Cheryl was officially declared “dead but missing” and it was reopened as a homicide case. in 2012 there was a $100,000 reward for any new information. No trace of her has ever been found.
The man who was accused of killing Cheryl had intended to have “sexual intercourse” with the girl before allegedly killing her, he said he had watched her drink from a bubbler outside the changing rooms at Fairy Meadow beach before he “grabbed” her. The court heard that the man allegedly told doctors in 1970 that he had “urges to kill himself and kill other people”, he told police at the time of the disappearance he had hid with the toddler in a nearby drain for about 35 minutes, gagging her with a handkerchief and tying her hands behind her back with a shoelace before taking her to the spot where he allegedly murdered her. Due to him being underage none of the evidence can be used.
The man was from the UK and was arrested in 2017 in a police station in Frankston, in outer Melbourne, for questioning.
One of Cheryl’s brothers, Stephen Grimmer, said in 2016: “My mum and dad have passed on now not knowing, and we want to know too before we pass on.”
Justice Hulme ruled that the man’s police interview “should be excluded on the basis of unfairness”.
The man’s trial had been due to begin in May.
