Family of British toddler speaks as Australian inquiry into cold case murders begins
The brother of a British toddler who disappeared from an Australian beach has told an inquiry the family has lived with the consequences of police failure for more than 50 years."If [the police] had done their job in 1971, we would have known the truth years ago," Ricki Nash told a New South Wales (NSW) parliamentary inquiry looking into cases of unsolved murders and long-term missing people.Cheryl Grimmer, 3, disappeared from Fairy Meadow beach in Wollongong, south of Sydney, in January 1970. Despite extensive searches, there were no leads.A suspect was charged with her abduction and murder in 2017, but his trial collapsed after his teenage confession was ruled inadmissible.The man, known as "Mercury", denies any wrongdoing and prosecutors dropped the case.Cheryl's disappearance happened almost two years after her emigration from Bristol to Australia with her parents and three brothers."Cheryl was not a case file, she was an amazing funny little girl," her elder brother Ricki Nash, told the inquiry on its first day of public hearings. The twin brother of Kay Docherty who went missing near Wollongong in 1979 at the age of 15, also spoke at the hearing."Both my parents went to an early grave without answers or knowing what happened to their only daughter," said Kevin Docherty. "They virtually died of a broken heart eight years apart."Kevin Docherty was one of several families detailing the failures of police in handling the disappearances of their loved ones."As mum always said, when she went to that police station that night, there was one good cop, there was one bad cop," he said, telling the inquiry that the police wrote her off as a runaway and as a result, little was done to try and find her.
