The BBC has been informed by a possible fresh eyewitness that on the day the three-year-old disappeared 53 years ago, he witnessed a teenage teenager take away a young child from an Australian beach.

Credit: BBC

Disappearance of Cheryl Grimmer 53 years ago

In January 1970 (53 years ago), Cheryl Gene Grimmer, a three-year-old toddler, was abducted from Fairy Meadow Beach in Wollongong, Illawarra, New South Wales. She vanished on January 12, 1970, and was pronounced legally dead in 2011. Witnesses said a man abducted her and fled as she was in the beach shower block. 

In the spring of 1968, when Cheryl was two years old, the Grimmer family left Knowle, a suburb of Bristol, England, to immigrate to Australia. She vanished while they were residing next to the beach at the Fairy Meadow Migrant Hostel. Mother Carole (age 26), father Vince (age 24), and boys Ricki, Stephen, and Paul made up the family. The lone child of the Grimmers was Cheryl.

With the exception of Vince, who was abroad serving as an Australian Army sapper, the Grimmer family headed to the beach at Fairy Meadow in Illawarra early on January 12, 1970 ( 53 years ago). Carole determined it was time to head home at 1:30 pm when the weather changed. While Carole packed their bags, the kids all went to the shower block together. After ten minutes, Ricki returned to Carole and reported that Cheryl was not coming out of the shower block. Upon following Ricki back to the shower block, she discovered that Cheryl had vanished. Since there was nowhere to find a phone, Carole drove to a house on Elliotts Road and begged the occupants to contact the police.

Witnesses at the scene reported at the time that they saw a man raising Cheryl up to drink from a water fountain before he fled with her covered in a towel. These statements are currently thought to be improbable. Ricki, Cheryl’s brother, remembered carrying his sister to the fountain to get her to drink, thus it’s likely that witnesses confused the two incidents. Additionally, it was stated that Cheryl was seen driving a white vehicle.

Cheryl Grimmer’s Investigation that started 53 years ago

An extensive search was launched 53 years ago when Cheryl vanished. The New South Wales Police revealed their four theories about Cheryl’s whereabouts a day after the investigations started: either she was hiding and had fallen asleep, or she had wandered into the ocean and been swept away by currents, or she had fallen into a waterway, or she had been abducted. Following a day of searching, all except the last possibility was discarded, and police started looking into pertinent clues, like the sighting of a blue Volkswagen Type 2 van close to the crime scene. A note indicating that the youngster was unharmed and requesting $10,000 was delivered to the police on the third day. 

Police thought the note was genuine, so they staged a drop for the money in Bulli, but the supposed kidnapper never shown up. For the ransom drop, officers posed as council employees. At first, they thought this had scared off the kidnapper and that the copious police presence might have discouraged them from coming forward. But the note’s author never got in touch with the police again, so it was thought to be a fake. After the case gained attention in Australia, the Grimmer family spent ten years returning to England in order to avoid the spotlight.

The case status in 2023 that started 53 years ago

The possible new witness provided a thorough account of witnessing a teenage boy leave the female restrooms at the beach near the Wollongong suburbs, which is located about 50 miles (80 km) south of Sydney. 

The potential eyewitness, who wished to remain anonymous 53 years ago, claimed that as he looked back at the lavatory building, he saw the man’s profile walking type of full stride with the infant in his arm and just sort of yelling and screaming at his hip, low on his hip. He described the teenage male as having ordinary build, short back and sides, and medium-dark hair. 

The witness stated that he thinks he can date this memory to January 12, 1970, in the afternoon since he remembers that the wind suddenly picked up more power and changed direction, sending people running from the beach. He claimed that because he was unaware that a child had been abducted, he did not report what he had witnessed to the authorities at the time. The man claimed that because his family had only recently migrated to Australia from eastern Europe in 1970, neither he nor his family spoke English.

The man went on to say that he was unaware of the widespread public search for Cheryl in the days after her disappearance because his family lived a few miles away from Fairy Meadow.  A friend of his who had listened to the Fairy Meadow podcast emailed the BBC with the specifics of his story, which she said he had been telling for a number of years. It’s the first time that anyone has reported witnessing a teenage lad dragging a youngster from the beach, according to former Det Sgt Damian Loone.

A juvenile boy’s confession to police, made a year after the child vanished, led to the charging of a man in his sixties with Cheryl Grimmer’s murder in 2016.