Family fights back after cold case collapses

Cheryl Grimmer’s family has lodged complaints with the Australian Human Rights Commission after a collapse in her cold case.

Ricki Nash is the brother of Cheryl Grimmer who was abducted from Fairy Meadow beach in Wollongong in 1970. Picture: Heath Holden

Suspected murder victim Cheryl Grimmer’s family has lodged complaints with the Australian Human Rights Commission and the Judicial Commission of NSW after the collapse of a prosecution in the cold case.

Cheryl’s brother Ricki Nash said the family hoped to pressure authorities to re-examine a court ruling that had led to a murder charge being dropped and the accuse­d being freed from custody earlier this year.

Three-year-old Cheryl vanished on a day out with her mother and brothers at Wollongong’s Fairy Meadow Beach in January 1970 and has never been found.

After renewed police investig­ations, a Melbourne man was charged in 2017 with her murder and extradited to NSW. It was the country’s oldest cold-case arrest.

But in February, just months before he was to face trial, a judge ruled that the man’s 1971 confession was inadmissable and the charge was withdrawn. The Grimmer family’s nine-page human rights complaint says the court hearing and judgment “were imbalanced in favour of the accused and were not procedurally fair”.

Cheryl Grimmer with her brother Ricki.

“There was no recognition of the interests of the victims and the community,” the complaint says.

“The victims, Cheryl and her family, were not heard.

“Cheryl and her brothers were young children at the time of her disappearance, yet there was no special consideration of their rights and interests as children or of how children and families in general might be indirectly affect­ed. This case represents a clear contravention of fair trial rights and a failure to protect children as victims of crime.”

Mr Nash also called on NSW police to renew investigations, saying recent discussions with detectives indicated it was dormant.

“It’s never closed until they get a result but no one’s investigating at the moment,” he said.

“Until they get new evidence, it’s highly unlikely they would. It just seems like everybody is sitting on their hands.”

The Australian has previously reveale­d the family was investig­ating suing the NSW government over alleged failures in the initial investigation.

Retired detective Frank Sanvitale, who arrested the accused, told on the weekend of his shock and bewilderment at the court ruling­. “It’s my last murder case and it’s the hardest one for me to deal with — the injustice. I’m upset. I’m disillusioned,” he told The Weekend Australian.

The accused, who was then 17, told a manager at his juvenile justice­ facility in 1971 that he had killed Cheryl.

In a subsequent typed record of interview with two detectives at the facility that year, he said he snatched Cheryl to sexually assau­lt her, and strangled her when she cried out.

Police at the time decided they did not have enough evidence to charge him.

Laws were later introduced requirin­g a parent, other adult or lawyer to be present for child confessio­ns to be admissible.

In the NSW Supreme Court, judge Robert Allan Hulme said detectives had had a valid reason for not having another adult presen­t, in that it was not required by law at the time.

But he said that in all the circumstance­s, including the “particular­ vulnerability” of the accused youth, the interview could not be used at trial.

NSW Director of Public Prosecutions Lloyd Babb declined to appeal­. NSW Attorney-General Mark Speakman ordered a review but said last month that any appea­l would be doomed to fail.