Disappearance of Cheryl Grimmer

Cheryl Gene Grimmer, born 30 October 1966 in Knowle, a suburb of Bristol, England, disappeared on 12 January 1970 at the age of three. Her family had emigrated to Australia in 1968 and were living at the Fairy Meadow Migrant Hostel near Wollongong, New South Wales. On the day of her disappearance, Cheryl's mother, Carole Grimmer, took the children to Fairy Meadow Beach while her father, Vince, was away working. When the family prepared to leave, Cheryl's brother Ricki reported that she would not come out of the shower block; when Carole went to check, Cheryl had vanished. Witnesses initially claimed a man had been seen holding Cheryl at a water fountain and running off with her, though this account is now considered to have conflated an earlier, innocuous moment when her brother Ricki had lifted her to drink.

The disappearance triggered a large search and multiple police theories, including that she had wandered off, entered the ocean, or been abducted. A ransom note demanding $10,000 was received on the third day, and police staged a money drop in Bulli, but no one appeared to collect it, and the note was later presumed a hoax. In 1971, a then-17-year-old local resident confessed to abducting and killing Cheryl, describing details of the crime scene, but inconsistencies in his account—including a disputed cattle guard and gate—led police at the time, per a report from Detective Sergeant Phillip Findlay, to conclude there was insufficient evidence to act on the confession. The case went cold for decades despite public appeals and a reward.

The investigation was reopened in 2011 after a coroner ruled Cheryl had died shortly after her disappearance from an undetermined cause. A new task force, Strike Force Wessell, was formed, and both of Cheryl's parents died before the case was resolved. A 2016 evidence review renewed focus on the 1971 confession, with a witness offering a different account of the property in question. In March 2017, a suspect—the same individual who had confessed in 1971—was arrested in Frankston, Victoria, extradited to New South Wales, and charged with Cheryl's abduction and murder. He pleaded not guilty at a September 2018 court appearance. His trial, scheduled for May 2019 in the Supreme Court of New South Wales, did not proceed after a judge ruled his 1971 confession inadmissible because it had not been obtained in the presence of a parent or guardian, a requirement applied retroactively. The prosecution subsequently dropped the charge in February 2019.

In October 2025, a New South Wales parliamentary inquiry into unsolved murders and long-term missing persons cases named Cheryl Grimmer's case in its terms of reference. Later that month, the previously charged suspect was named under parliamentary privilege in the New South Wales Legislative Council. In February 2026, the state's Director of Public Prosecutions announced a special review of the case.