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  • Sun. Oct 19th, 2025

‘I want him in the ground’: Why family will name ‘Cheryl’s killer’

‘I want him in the ground’: Why family will name ‘Cheryl’s killer’

Five decades after a toddler vanished from a Wollongong beach, and five years after her murder trial collapsed, the family of Cheryl Grimmer will unmask her alleged killer in the coming days – unless he meets them in person.

This week they fired a warning shot, releasing a dossier about the alleged killer and vowing his “lost confession”, name and face would be next.

Three-year-old Cheryl Grimmer vanished from a beach in 1970. A man was charged with murder in 2017, but his confession was thrown out and the case collapsed two years later. Credit:

Cheryl was just three years old when she disappeared from a shower block at Fairy Meadow Beach after swimming with her family, who had recently emigrated from Britain, in 1970.

Her body was never found and the case went cold. But for Cheryl’s family, her loss became an albatross they could never escape.

“I’m her big brother and I left her on the beach,” Ricki Nash told the Herald on Friday.

“She’s forgiven me, but she has been pushing me for 55 years.”

Cheryl’s brothers Ricki, Paul and Stephen appeal for help in December 2016 at the scene of the abduction. Credit: Robert Peet

An hour earlier, Nash and his brother, Paul Grimmer, had convened a press conference at the spot their sister vanished in 1970 and released a dossier 19
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