A former senior detective involved in the investigation of a British girl who disappeared in Australia more than 50 years ago is calling on the individual who confessed to her murder to come forward and speak the truth to the police. The renewed search for the remains of three-year-old Cheryl Grimmer is currently underway.
Cheryl went missing after leaving Fairy Meadow Beach in Wollongong in January 1970, initiating one of Australia’s enduring missing children cases. Recently, a search has begun in Wollongong on a piece of land linked to a confession made in 1971 by an individual identified by the police as “Mercury.”
The person behind the confession, known as “Mercury,” was 17 years old at the time of the alleged incident. Despite providing detailed information about the location where the body was left, such as fence lines and tree types, the confession was disregarded as unreliable, and no search was conducted by the police.
Detective Senior Constable Frank Sanvitale, who is revisiting the case, has appealed to “Mercury” to come clean and provide closure to Cheryl’s family and himself. Although the man was charged with Cheryl’s murder in 2017 based on the confession, the case collapsed in 2018 due to the exclusion of the confession by the Supreme Court.
The search area, once farmland but now surrounded by residential buildings, is being explored with the assistance of volunteer search teams using cadaver dogs known for their ability to locate human remains dating back more than five decades. Cheryl’s brother, Ricki Nash, has expressed disappointment that the search was not conducted earlier by the authorities.
Community members continue to honor Cheryl’s memory by leaving tributes at a plaque dedicated to her. There is a growing push to reveal the identity of “Mercury” through parliamentary privilege, a step that may be taken in the near future.
Chris D’Arcy, president of Search Dogs Sydney, highlighted that this is the first systematic search of the location described in Mercury’s confession. The use of drones and cadaver dogs trained to find long-term missing persons has significantly enhanced the search efforts.