According to reports, the family of a British child who vanished off a New South Wales beach has asked the state’s attorney general to look into the issue.
According to the BBC, their letter to NSW’s top prosecutor is the most recent step in a long-running quest for the truth.
Cheryl Grimmer, age 3, vanished in January 1970 from a beach near Wollongong, which is south of Sydney.
Despite extensive searching and a groundswell of public support, she has never been located, but a 2011 inquest determined she had already away.
A 17-year-old confessed to kidnapping and strangling Cheryl in 1971, but the prosecution’s case against him was dismissed in 2019.
According to a Supreme Court judge, the purported confession he reportedly gave as a teenager came during an improper police interview.
In 2019, the former NSW attorney-general Mark Speakman made the decision that the case will not be pursued further by the government.
The “end of the road” in this case, he claimed.
However, the Grimmer family has written to Attorney-General Michael Daley requesting him to reevaluate the judge’s ruling in light of the election of a new state government, according to the BBC.
The Grimmer family, who had just moved to the Illawarra region from the United Kingdom, was spending a dreamy summer day at Fairy Meadow Beach on January 12, 1970.
Cheryl was at the Wollongong beach that day with her mother and three older brothers when she vanished from outside a shower block.
There has been no sign of Cheryl since she vanished, according to witnesses who saw an unidentified man walking the young child towards the parking lot.
NSW Police made a $1 million state government reward announcement in 2020 for information that results in the suspects’ capture and conviction.
