Hunt for killer of ‘Oz Maddie’ 47 years after Cheryl Grimmer, 3, was snatched from beach as Australian cops hint at breakthrough and victim’s brother pleads for killer to come forward
Tot declared 'dead but missing' as brother Ricki, now 54, says he still lives with heartache of leaving sister unattended in Sydney
JANUARY 12, 1970, was a scorcher Down Under.
For the Grimmers, a British family who had recently emigrated to Australia, it was a perfect day to visit the seaside.
But for Carole and her four children, that carefree afternoon on the golden sands of Fairy Meadow beach had devastating consequences that darkened their lives for ever.
In mid-afternoon the weather took a turn for the worse. In the scramble to pack up and leave, Carole’s only daughter Cheryl, who was three, disappeared.
She has not been seen since.
RELATED STORIES
Now, almost 47 years on, Aussie cops believe they may finally have a breakthrough in one of the country’s most baffling cases.
The case has echoes of missing British toddler Madeleine McCann, who was three when she went missing in Portugal in 2007.
The new lead emerged following a reenactment last month of Cheryl’s last known movements — five years after she was officially declared dead by a coroner.
Three witnesses, who were aged nine, ten and 12 when Cheryl went missing, described seeing a teenaged boy loitering in the area.
The sightings did not feature in the original investigation — and police believe the teen could still be alive.
Detective Inspector Brad Ainsworth, of New South Wales police, said: “He was about 17 or 18 at the time so he’d be in his early sixties now.
“It’s a big burden to carry around for nearly 50 years.”
Cheryl’s brother Stephen begged the mystery teen to get in touch.
He said: “Come forward, please. Let us know. We really want to know what happened.”
The Grimmers moved to Australia from a council house in Bristol in 1968.
Like thousands of Brits flocking to Oz in the late Sixties, they were searching for a better life.
We think a sex offender grabbed her on impulse
They settled in a hostel for British expats at Fairy Meadow, near Wollongong, south of Sydney, on the country’s eastern coast.
Cheryl’s father, John, was a sapper in the Australian army and worked away in Penrith, a suburb of Sydney. He came home at weekends, Carole raising the children during the week.
Their hostel was a 15-minute walk from Fairy Meadow beach, surrounded by sandhills and a swamp.
Carole and the four children — including Ricki, who was eight when Cheryl disappeared, Stephen, then six, and Paul, then five — spent their spare time at the beach.
Cheryl went missing at the height of summer during school half-term.
She had spent a few happy hours playing with her brothers in the surf.
But around 1.30pm, the weather worsened dramatically and winds battered the coast.
Carole gathered her belongings while the three boys took Cheryl to change with them in a men’s shower block. The brothers came back ten minutes later saying Cheryl, who was wearing a royal-blue swimsuit, was still in the shower.
Carole sent Ricki to collect her. But Cheryl flashed him a cheeky grin and refused to come, so Ricki went to fetch his mother.
That smile has been etched in his memory ever since. It was the last time Ricki saw his sister.
When he returned with Carole, Cheryl had vanished.
Carole gathered her sons and headed for the hostel, hoping Cheryl was there. She then tried the beach again, now thinking she had simply wandered off.
At 4pm, prompted by a lifeguard, Carole called the police.
She thought others on the beach would have heard screaming if something truly awful had happened.
The police were more concerned. Sexual assaults in the area had risen in the previous few years. A huge hunt by police and volunteers turned up few leads.
Witnesses reported seeing Cheryl being carried off, wrapped in a towel. They could say only that her abductor was male.
Police rounded up 150 known sex offenders, while a senior detective said: “We think a sex offender saw a small, naked child and grabbed her on impulse.”
Some cops feared Cheryl could have fallen victim to a serial killer who has evaded capture to this day.
Her disappearance came almost five years to the day after the so-called Wanda Beach Murders.
In 1965, neighbours Marianne Schmidt and Christine Sharrock — who were both 15 — were brutally slain just up the coast from Wollongong. Their killer was never identified. Police also probed links to another unsolved case — the disappearance in January 1966 of Jane, Arnna and Grant Beaumont, aged nine, seven and four.
The siblings vanished from Glenelg Beach, near Adelaide, and have never been found.
The Grimmers received sick phone calls from a man describing how he had murdered and raped a girl called Vicki Barton a year earlier — and claiming he had done the same to Cheryl. Vicki’s actual killer, Alfred Jessop, 15 when he struck, was never linked to Cheryl’s case.
The Grimmers were also sent a lock of blonde hair in the post.
And four days after Cheryl went missing, a ransom note was sent to a house with no connection to the Grimmer family. The note read: “Your daughter Cheryl is OK but I’m not so sure about another kid who will be knocked off if you don’t do as I say. I want $10,000 and a complete pardon in exchange for Cheryl.”
The note specified a location for an exchange the following day.
Police took it seriously but no one showed up for the swap.
A handwriting expert said he believed the letter was from a young person and the note appeared to have been written on paper used in school exams.
What do you do? It's affected me all my life
In light of the latest evidence, some now believe it might have been genuine. If so, Cheryl could have been alive for at least four days after she disappeared.
The Grimmers returned to the UK to grieve but, still desperate for answers years later, moved back to Australia permanently in 1980.
In 2011 Cheryl was officially declared “dead but missing” and the investigation reopened as a homicide case.
Carole died three years ago and John also went to his grave without knowing what happened to Cheryl.
But they never gave up hope and refused to believe she had been murdered, for years keeping her bedroom just as it had been on the day she disappeared.
In an interview, Carole once said she still looked for her daughter every day, scanning the faces of women who would have been her age and imagining their reunion.
The tragedy continues to haunt Cheryl’s brothers Ricki, now 54, Stephen, 52, and Paul, 51.
At a press conference this week, Ricki said he still lived with the heartache of leaving his sister unattended.
He said: “Decisions I made on the day were wrong. I shouldn’t have left. What do you say? What do you do?
“It’s affected me all my life. Everybody says, ‘It wasn’t your fault’. Come and stand where I’m standing. See what it feels like.”
He begged: “Just let us know where she is. Give us something so we can mourn. It’s cost me and my family everything.”