Cheryl Grimmer murder trial dropped
A man accused of murdering missing toddler Cheryl Grimmer almost 50 years ago has succeeded in having a crucial piece of evidence against him ruled inadmissable.
The trial of a man accused of murdering missing toddler Cheryl Grimmer almost 50 years ago will not go ahead after a judge ruled that his 1971 police interview was not admissible.
The man, who cannot be named as he was underage at the time, pleaded not guilty in September 2018 to murdering the three-year-old.
Cheryl vanished from outside a shower block while with her mother and three older brothers at Fairy Meadow Beach in NSW’s Illawarra region on January 12 in 1970.
Justice Robert Allan Hulme in the NSW Supreme Court on Friday ruled that a police interview with the accused in 1971 — when he was 17 — could not be used as evidence at his trial which was listed for May.
“The Crown accepts that its case cannot succeed without it,” he noted.
In a later statement, a media spokesperson said the NSW Director of Public Prosecutions had directed that no further proceedings take place following the judge’s ruling about the record of interview.
In the absence of that interview there was insufficient evidence for the case to proceed, she said.
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