Cheryl Gene Grimmer (30 October 1966 – disappeared 12 January 1970; declared legally dead 2011) was a three-year-old Australian toddler who was kidnapped from Fairy Meadow Beach in Wollongong, New South Wales, in January 1970. She had been in the shower block at the beach when witnesses claim a man took her and ran off.

Cheryl's disappearance had been without explanation for over forty-five years, until a suspect was arrested and charged in March 2017. The suspect, who had previously made a false confession about an unrelated murder, claimed that he, then aged 16, had strangled Cheryl to death in the nearby suburb of Balgownie about an hour after her abduction. At a court appearance, the man pleaded not guilty. His trial was expected to take place at the Supreme Court of New South Wales in May 2019, but a judge declared that a key piece of evidence was inadmissible, leading to the prosecution dropping the charges against the suspect in February 2019.^[3]

Cheryl Grimmer's family emigrated to Australia from Knowle, a suburb of Bristol, England, in the spring of 1968; Cheryl was two years old at the time of the relocation.^[4][5] The Grimmers were living in Fairy Meadow Migrant Hostel near the beach where she disappeared.^[5][6] The family consisted of mother Carole (26), father Vince (24), and sons Ricki (7), Stephen (5), and Paul (4). Cheryl was the Grimmers' only daughter.^[7]

On the morning of 12 January 1970, the Grimmer family went to the beach at Fairy Meadow in Illawarra, except for Vince, who was away working as a sapper for the Australian Army.^[8] When the weather turned at 1:30 pm, Carole decided it was time to go home.^[6] The children all went to the shower block together while Carole packed up their belongings. Ricki went back to Carole ten minutes later saying that Cheryl was refusing to come out of the shower block.^[9] She immediately followed Ricki back to the shower block to find that Cheryl had disappeared. There was no phone nearby, so Carole made her way to a house on nearby Elliotts Road and asked the residents to call the police.^[10]

At the time, witnesses claimed that a man was seen holding Cheryl up to drink from a water fountain and then ran off with her wrapped up in a towel. Those claims are now seen as unlikely. Cheryl's brother, Ricki, recalled picking up his sister so that she could drink from the fountain and so it is believed that witnesses had conflated the two occurrences.^[11] It was also claimed that Cheryl was spotted in a white car.^[6]

Cheryl's disappearance sparked a massive search. A day after investigations began, the New South Wales Police announced that they had four theories as to Cheryl's whereabouts: that she was hiding and had fallen asleep, that she had wandered into the ocean and was carried away by currents, that she had fallen into a waterway, or that she had been kidnapped. After a day of searching, all but the latter theory were dismissed and police began pursuing relevant leads, such as the sighting of a blue Volkswagen Type 2 van near the scene of the crime.^[10] On the third day, police received a note demanding $10,000 and stating that the child was unharmed. They staged a drop for the money in Bulli, but the purported kidnapper never showed up, despite police believing that the note was credible.^[8] Officers disguised themselves as council workers for the ransom drop^[4] and originally feared that had led to the kidnapper being spooked, and that the large police operation may have deterred the person from coming forward.^[12] However, the writer of the note never contacted police again and it was assumed the note was a hoax. The case became famous in Australia and, to escape the notoriety, the Grimmer family returned to England for ten years afterwards.^[13]

Although the police had three main suspects, none could be positively identified as the man witnesses had seen. In 1971, just under 18 months after Cheryl's disappearance, a local teenager, then 17,^[14] confessed to abducting and killing her. The man gave an overview of what occurred that day, describing a tubular steel gate, a cattle guard, a track, and a small creek near the scene of the murder.^[15] He took police to the corner of Brokers and Balgownie roads and claimed the body was buried there, but noted that the area had undergone residential development and so he couldn't be sure.^[16] Police interviewed the owner of the property, who contradicted the suspect's description and stated that there was no cattle guard in place at the time of the murder and that there had never been a tubular gate of any kind.^[11][17] The inconsistencies eventually led to police to conclude that the confession was false. A police report at the time, written by Detective Sergeant Phillip Findlay, stated:^[18]

On the whole it is considered without some material evidence to directly connect him with the missing child it would not be desirable to take any action against him in respect to this matter at this time.

In spite of numerous appeals, and a $5000 reward offered by the New South Wales government, there was no breakthrough in the inquiry and the case went cold.^[17]

In January 2022, the BBC released an 8-part documentary podcast series called Fairy Meadow covering the details of the case.^[14][29][30]

• List of people who disappeared