Arrest of suspect and court proceedings
On 23 March 2017, it was announced that a man had been arrested in the Melbourne suburb of Frankston at 1pm the previous day and was being extradited from Victoria; he was charged with Cheryl's abduction and murder at Wollongong Police Station and was incarcerated at the Silverwater Correctional Complex. Police stated that it is unlikely that Cheryl's body will ever be found as there has been substantial development of the once-rural area in the 47 years since the abduction.
In April 2017, New South Wales police announced that they were trying to trace a family who gave a witness statement on the day of the abduction. Soon after Cheryl's disappearance, the family moved to Papua New Guinea and then back to their native Nottinghamshire in England. Interpol assisted in tracing efforts, eventually finding them; their testimonies were expected to be crucial in the court case.
In May 2017, it was revealed that the suspect who was arrested in March was the same person that had confessed to Cheryl's abduction and murder in 1971 and had been dismissed due to inconsistencies.
The accused is a 63-year-old man who was born in Britain and has been in Australia since the late 1960s.
He has not been named, as he was around 15 years old at the time of the alleged offence and therefore a minor.
Further details of the crime have continued to emerge as the court case proceeds. In his original 1971 statement, the man—who allegedly told doctors in 1970 that he had "urges to kill himself and kill other people"—said that, after the abduction, he had hid with the toddler in a nearby drain for about 35 minutes, gagging her with a handkerchief and tying her hands behind her back with a shoelace.
After emerging from the drain, he took her three kilometres by foot to the suburb of Balgownie, where, according to prosecutor Emilija Beljic, he intended to have sexual intercourse with her. The accused denied the latter claim, calling it "bullshit". In the man's original confession he told police that after he took the gag off of her and she started to scream, he put his hands around her neck and told her to "shut up", eventually strangling her to death. He apparently panicked, took off her clothing, and placed "bushes and dirt" over the body before heading back to Fairy Meadow Beach.
The confession also included information which, the prosecution claims, the man could not know without being present at the beach when the abduction occurred. Such details include a description of the royal blue bathing suit she was wearing and of the white towel she was carrying, as well as mention of the fact that somebody had picked up Cheryl so that she could drink from a water fountain, which her brother Ricki confirms he did.
The defence will argue that the accused was significantly mentally unwell at the time of the confession and it is thus inadmissible in court. They claim that he also made another confession, to the murder of a prison guard, which was determined to be false.
The defendant appeared via video link at the Supreme Court of New South Wales on 7 September 2018 and spoke only to confirm his name and enter a not guilty plea. His trial was due to occur in the same court in May 2019 however, the judge at the Supreme Court of New South Wales, declared some of the evidence inadmissible in the case and so the charge against the suspect were dropped in February 2019.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Disappearance_of_Cheryl_Grimmer