The True Crime Vault

The Disappearance of Cheryl Grimmer (1970)

Although the police had three main suspects, none could be positively identified as the man witnesses had seen. In 1971, just under 18 months after Cheryl's disappearance, a local teenager, then 17, confessed to abducting and killing her. The man gave an overview of what occurred that day, describing a tubular steel gate, a cattle guard, a track, and a small creek near the scene of the murder. He took police to the corner of Brokers and Balgownie roads and claimed the body was buried there, but noted that the area had undergone residential development and so he couldn't be sure. Police interviewed the owner of the property, who contradicted the suspect's description and stated that there was no cattle guard in place at the time of the murder and that there had never been a tubular gate of any kind. The inconsistencies eventually led to police to conclude that the confession was false. A police report at the time, written by Detective Sergeant Phillip Findlay, stated:

"On the whole it is considered without some material evidence to directly connect him with the missing child it would not be desirable to take any action against him in respect to this matter at this time."

In spite of numerous appeals, and a $5000 reward offered by the New South Wales government, there was no breakthrough in the inquiry and the case went cold.

• LATER DEVELOPMENTS •

In the 2000s, New South Wales Police Minister, Mike Gallacher, stated that it was entirely possible that both Cheryl and her kidnapper were dead but expressed the hope that someone might know the truth. He also theorised that Cheryl might be alive and free, and encouraged anybody who believed they might be her to come forward. One of Cheryl's characteristics that was cited as a possible identifier was a belly button which protruded one centimetre, due to a medical condition, which may or may not have been corrected by surgery. In 2008, a woman came forward, believing that she might be Cheryl, but a swab taken from her inside cheek proved not to match Cheryl's DNA.

In May 2011, a coroner formally ruled that Cheryl had died shortly after going missing, due to an undetermined cause, and recommended that police reopen the investigation. Carole Grimmer said that she believed her daughter was still alive. In response, police posted a $100,000 reward for information regarding Cheryl's disappearance, and Wollongong detectives and the Homicide Squad's Unsolved Homicide Team combined into a new task force called "Strike Force Wessell". Shortly after the investigation was reopened, both Carole and Vince Grimmer died without knowing what happened to Cheryl.

In 2016, a review of the evidence was carried out and all of it, including witness statements, was computerised for the first time. The review uncovered many leads and brought to light information that appeared not to have been pursued thoroughly enough in the original investigation, particularly the 1971 confession. Police returned to the property where the teenager alleged that he had committed the murder and questioned the owner's son, who, contradicting his father, said that the cattle guard was "certainly" in place at the time and that he recalled a tubular gate, as well as a track leading over a creek into the property.

In late 2016, police announced that three witnesses had come forward who recalled a male teenager loitering around the shower block, and said that they had a credible lead on a man who was seen carrying a fair-haired child at the time of Cheryl's disappearance. Police noted that the man would be in his 60s by then and appealed for him to come forward.

In January 2017, police turned their attention to the Mount Penang Training School for Boys, a reformatory school which it was believed the suspect attended in the early 1970s. They implied that they had been provided with information by somebody who alleged that former staff or residents of the school would be able to help with the inquiry.

• NEW UPDATE IN THE CASE •

In November 2023 a potential new eyewitness has told the BBC he saw a teenage boy carrying away a small child from an Australian beach on the day a three-year-old vanished.