According to a BBC investigation, a man confessed to the murder of Cheryl Grimmer a year after the girl’s disappearance. The man, known only by the police codename Mercury Mercury for legal reasons, told investigators that he’d murdered the child, disposed of her body, and burned her clothes (via the Daily Mail). He was 16 years old at the time of the incident.
However, when investigators returned to Mercury Mercury’s file in 2017, he changed his statement, claiming he’d invented the original story. In the meantime, a coroner had pronounced Cheryl officially dead, and the government of New South Wales had offered several thousand Australian dollars for any information related to the case. In 2017, this sum was raised to $1 million (AUD). The Grimmer family, particularly brother Ricki, have lived with the guilt and distress of their sister’s presumed kidnapping and murder for half a century.
“I will never forgive myself” for leaving Cheryl out of his sight, Ricki told the BBC. He has admitted to problems with alcohol over the decades related to his guilt. But whether Ricki and his family will find closure, or whether, like the family of Madeleine McCann, they will have to content themselves with theories, remains an open question.
