THE brother of a missing Brit toddler believes bungling cops missed key clues that could have cracked the case.
Cheryl Grimmer, 3, disappeared in January 1970 from Fairy Meadow Beach just outside Wollongong in New South Wales, Australia.
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Among many mistakes, 62-year-old Ricki Nash said cops first took a statement from him in 2017 - despite the fact he was the last person to see his youngest sibling.
Cheryl and her family - including Ricki, their brothers Steve and Paul, and their parents - emigrated to Australia from Bristol, England in late 1968 in search of a better life.
It was a warm day when Cheryl vanished from the beach only a few hundred metres from the hostel where they were living.
Ricki told The Sun: "Just after lunch... our mum asked me to take them (Ricki’s siblings) up to the shower block and get the sand washed off and she'd pack up and meet us up there very quickly.
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"Cheryl wouldn’t come out of the ladies' toilet block. I was trying my hardest to get her out. She wouldn’t come out.
"So I made the fatal decision to go down and get my mother."
By the time Ricki, then seven, and his mum returned to the shower block, Cheryl was gone.
He said: "And obviously we haven't seen Cheryl since that day."
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Their final moments together are "tattooed inside my head", Ricki said, and yet police interviewed him for the first time in 2017.
He added: "It's in my nightmares. It's everywhere I go, with me."
Madeleine McCann’s parents share heartbreaking message to mark her 20th birthday and say ‘we’re waiting for you’
The traumatised brother remembers seeing a "big kid", a child much bigger than he was at the time, with a "big nose".
And three days after Cheryl went missing, Bulli Police Station received an anonymous "ransom note" requesting $10,000 and a complete pardon in exchange for the tot.
Footage aired at the time by Win Television showed a superintendent speaking with a news reporter about the letter.
Supt Lynch, as the cop was named by the reporter, said: "There are two possibilities in regard to this letter.
"One, that it is a hoax. The other one is, of course, that it may be genuine.
"While we don't rule out the possibility of it being a hoax, I am causing police to treat it as being a genuine ransom note and should anyone recognise the handwriting, we are most anxious for them to contact Wollongong detectives."
The superintendent said a handwriting expert believed the note was written by "a young person, around the 14, 15 age group".
Police aired details of the ransom note on national TV and revealed when and where the "collection" would take place, Ricki said.
He added: "So all the ice cream vans were lined up selling ice creams.
"There was hundreds and hundreds of people there waiting to see if this person would show up and collect the ransom.
"On national television. Mistake number one."
He claimed the media circus scuppered any chance of catching the author of the ransom note - and of finding Cheryl.
Echoes of Maddie's disappearance
By Jessica Baker
NEARLY 40 years after Brit toddler Cheryl Grimmer disappeared from a beach in Australia, Brit tot Madeleine McCann vanished from a holiday apartment in Portugal.
Both girls were aged just three when they were allegedly abducted and murdered.
No one has been convicted of crimes in either case.
Cheryl Grimmer had been in the shower block at Fairy Meadow Beach in Wollongong, New South Wales when she was kidnapped in January 1970.
Witnesses have claimed a man took her and ran off.
The tot had only emigrated to Australia from Bristol, England with her family about a year earlier, when she was two years old.
Cheryl had three older brothers: Ricki, Stephen, and Paul.
Despite a major police operation and much publicity, her body was never found and the case never solved.
Likewise in the case of Madeleine McCann, the girl's whereabouts remain unknown - although German prosecutors believe she is dead.
Madeleine was on holiday with her parents Kate and Gerry McCann and her two-year-old twin siblings when she vanished.
Her parents had been dining with friends in a restaurant 180ft from the ground-floor apartment where their kids were sleeping.
They checked on their children throughout the evening of May 3, 2007 and discovered Madeleine was missing about 10pm.
A suspect in the tragic case was arrested and charged with Cheryl’s murder in 2017, having confessed to the crime in 1971 - 18 months after the tot disappeared.
Then aged 17, the suspect was said to have admitted to abducting and killing Cheryl, and even took police to where the young girl’s body was supposedly buried.
But cops determined "it would not be desirable to take any action against him in respect to this matter at this time" and dismissed the confession due to inconsistencies.
The case went cold before a man was arrested in Melbourne, Victoria in March 2017 and charged with Cheryl's abduction and murder.
It was revealed in May 2017 that the suspect arrested in March was the same person who had confessed to both crimes in 1971.
The man was not named as he was a minor at the time of the alleged offences.
Ricki said it was his understanding the suspect's confession sat in a box gathering dust for 40 years, until an inquest in 2011, but he was not personally made aware of it until 2016 or 2017.
You know he's done it, yet you do nothing. Why?
Ricki NashCheryl Grimmer's brother
The delay meant Ricki and Cheryl's family were not able to corroborate details within the confession, he said.
Cheryl's father died without knowing anyone confessed to his daughter’s abduction and murder.
The man accused of the toddler's murder pleaded not guilty at the Supreme Court of New South Wales in September 2018 and a trial was set to take place in May 2019.
But a judge later declared the confession inadmissible as it was not obtained in the presence of a parent or guardian.
It was not a requirement that an adult be present in 1971, but the judge ruled that a new law be applied retroactively.
The charge was dropped against the suspect in February 2019.
Police said the details surrounding Cheryl's abduction were "horrific" - and she likely died within an hour of being taken.
In 2020, they offered a $1million reward in a fresh bid to solve the case.
Ricki believes the man accused of Cheryl's murder is responsible for his sister's disappearance.
A senior cop and a prosecutor had privately confirmed as much, he claimed.
How much more pain has our family got to get through to get some truth?
Ricki NashCheryl Grimmer's brother
Ricki said: "It made us sick as a family. You know he's done it, yet you do nothing. Why?
"Why are you sitting on your hands? If there’s something bigger, if there’s an item that is bigger in this picture, tell us.
"Don't leave us in the dark because I'm not going to give up. Never.
"Stop the lies. Let’s hear what went wrong, let's challenge this retrospective law."
Ricki has spent 50 years being angry.
And if justice is not achieved in his lifetime, he expects his own four children will continue the fight.
He said: "How much more pain has our family got to get through to get some truth?
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"Stop protecting the perpetrators, protect the innocent. Especially kids. Protect our kids.
"It is frustrating beyond belief. To say the word frustrating doesn’t even touch how I feel, let alone how my brothers feel as well."
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