The “area of interest” flagged in a volunteer-led search for the body of a British girl who vanished in Australia 55 years ago has turned out to be a false alarm, New South Wales Police said.
A volunteer team who used cadaver detection dogs in search of Cheryl Grimmer had hoped their finding would be a breakthrough in the case which has remained a mystery since she disappeared in 1970, when she was three.
But bones that were found in the area belong to an animal, police said in response to the BBC’s queries, adding that the search had “concluded”.
Authorities suspect Cheryl, who had emigrated from Bristol with her family, was abducted from Fairy Meadow beach in Wollongong in January 1970.
Thursday’s search happened in Balgownie, on a small pocket of woodland mentioned in a confession made by a teenage boy.
In 2019, a trial of the suspect, known only by a codename, Mercury, who’d been charged with Cheryl’s abduction and murder, collapsed. The man, in his 60s then, had denied any wrongdoing.
Prosecutors later dropped charges against him as a judge disallowed the confession he made as a minor.
Authorities have conducted numerous searches in the decades since Cheryl disappeared, but have found few clues as to what happened to her.
NSW authorities have offered a A$1m ($660,000; £491,000) reward for information on Cheryl’s abduction and suspected murder.
Cheryl’s brother Ricki Nash, 62, has publicly highlighted what he believes are errors in the police investigation dating back to the day she went missing.
Mr Nash was seven then. He last saw his sister in the changing rooms at Fairy Meadow on the day she disappeared.
A petition asking the state parliament to set up an inquiry into missing persons investigations overseen by NSW Police, such as Cheryl’s, gathered more than 10,000 signatures this summer.
It was debated in parliament, but in a letter responding to petitioners, state authorities made no commitment to holding an inquiry.
With reporting by Tiffanie Turnbull in Sydney
