It is the case that has haunted Australia for more than 50 years.
Cheryl Grimmer, three, disappeared from a shower block at Fairy Meadow Beach, south of Sydney, in 1970, shortly after moving to New South Wales from Bristol with her family.
The young girl was never found but her family was given hope on Thursday when an Australian MP used parliamentary privilege to identify someone who confessed to her murder.
The now 69-year-old man, who cannot be named by The Telegraph for legal reasons, previously admitted to abducting and murdering Cheryl the year after her disappearance.
Jeremy Buckingham, an upper house MP in the New South Wales Parliament, quoted the suspect’s words that he spoke to police when confessing all those years ago.
“The family of Cheryl Grimmer have been through so much anguish over such a long period of time,” he said.
“[Mercury] is a free man living with his identity suppressed from his neighbours and no one has been punished for Cheryl Grimmer’s abduction and murder.”
Jeremy Buckingham, the Australian MP who used parliamentary privilege to name the suspect in the murder of Cheryl Grimmer – ABC
Quoting the suspect’s own police interview, Mr Buckingham said in parliament: “She started to scream…she would not be quiet. So I put my arms around her throat and strangled her.
“I left her lying on the ground at the side of a tree. I covered her up with bushes and leaves and threw some dirt on top.”
The man, who was 16 when Cheryl went missing, has been living in Melbourne under the police pseudonym “Mercury”. He was charged with murder when police reopened the case in 2017.
He then mounted a legal challenge in the Supreme Court of New South Wales, claiming his police interview in 1971 could not be used as evidence.
Justice Robert Hulme supported his claim, claiming his age at the time and the absence of a legal guardian or lawyer made the evidence from his police interview unsuitable.
On the day that Cheryl disappeared, her older brothers, Ricki, seven, Stephen, five, and Paul, four, took her to the shower block after a storm hit the beach.
Detectives suspect she was taken while alone in the changing room.
In his police interview, Mercury claimed that he put his hand over Cheryl’s mouth to keep her quiet as he grabbed her and took her away.
“I took her by the hand and put one hand around her mouth and carried her around to the sand hills,” he said in the interview, as quoted by Mr Buckingham in Parliament.
The man known as ‘Mercury’ has argued that his police interview in 1971 should not be used as evidence – AAP/Paul Miller
A coroner in 2011 found Cheryl had died – but her cause and manner of death remained undetermined, NSW Police said
On the 50th anniversary of her disappearance, NSW authorities upped the reward on the cold case to one million Australian dollars (£528,000) for information leading to arrest and conviction.
Cheryl’s parents have since died but her brothers have never given up hope of finding out what happened to their sister, and were in the public gallery on Thursday when Mr Buckingham read out the statement.
Paul, her brother, broke down when using her name in an address to the media after the Parliamentary session concluded.
“Mercury has been given the opportunity to declare his innocence or guilt, yet he has chosen to remain silent,” the family said in a statement.
“The details of Mercury’s confession have caused our family immense heartache; however, we are not seeking to harm Mercury or his family. What we want now is the truth.”
While Cheryl’s mother and father have both died, her brothers want ‘the truth’ – PA
The family hopes by bringing the case back into public focus, new evidence will arise, which could see Mercury put on trial once again.
On Thursday, Mr Buckingham, of the Legalise Cannabis Party, told reporters that Cheryl was the victim of a “heinous crime, a victim of an inexplicable failure of police and ultimately denied justice”.
Local media did not publish the suspect’s name, as revealed by Mr Buckingham, because of laws that protect the identities of suspected child offenders.
