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 One hot day in January, three-year-old Cheryl Grimmer walked back into a change room at Fairy Meadow Surf Club – and disappeared. On Monday January 12, 1970, Cheryl and her family – mother Carole and brothers Stephen, Paul and Ricki (father Vince was away on army duty) – headed to Fairy Meadow Beach. Shortly before 2pm Carole sent the children to the change rooms to get ready to leave. Ricki saw his sister come out of the sheds and then back inside. He went to tell his mother she wouldn’t come out. But Cheryl wasn’t there. Cheryl was gone. A search of the area by bystanders uncovered nothing. There was no phone at the surf club so Carole had to walk to a house on Elliotts Road and ask them to call the police. The day after her disappearance, police announced they had four theories as to what had happened. Perhaps she was hiding and had fallen asleep, she had wandered off into the surf or fallen into one of nearby waterways. The final option was the one everyone dreaded – that she had been enticed into a car and taken away. READ MORE: Cheryl Grimmer died an hour after being taken Two days later, that horrible possibility was the only police were left with. Police chased up plenty of leads – from a blue Kombi seen near the sheds to a ransom note saying Cheryl was unharmed but the writer would kidnap another child if he wasn’t paid $10,000. The letter was treated seriously but the writer never showed at a meeting and never contacted police again. Slowly but surely, the case began to go cold. But no one in Wollongong ever forgot about little Cheryl Grimmer. In 2011, attention was refocused on the girl’s disappearance, when a coroner formally ruled Cheryl was dead and recommended the NSW Police Force’s cold case squad look into it. READ MORE: “I shouldn’t have left” – brother haunted by disappearance A year later, a $100,000 reward was offered to help find out what happened to Cheryl but the money didn’t help to shake free any information in people’s heads. In late 2016, that information was at long last brought to police. Three people at the beach that day remembered a teenage man loitering around the sheds. Investigators’ attention in January turned to Mt Penang reformatory school near Gosford, believing former staff and residents could help in their inquiries. The now-accused man was in the boys home in the early 1970s and allegedly spoke about Cheryl’s disappearance – but he was not charged at the time. But in 2017 the man – now living in Melbourne – was charged. And the heartbreaking story of Cheryl Grimmer entered another chapter. 
 
 https://nnimgt-a.akamaihd.net/transform/v1/crop/frm/fdcx/doc6smzkynfn55ydvnvh20.jpg/r20_390_5096_3258_w1200_h678_fmax.jpg ||||| Stephen Grimmer plans to be there when the man accused of taking his sister, Cheryl, from Fairy Meadow beach and killing her in 1970 fronts court on Friday. 
 
 "I won't be saying anything, I'll just stand there and watch," the 53-year-old said. 
 
 Mr Grimmer and his two brothers, Paul and Ricki, have been lifted by a police breakthrough on Wednesday, which saw a 63-year-old man arrested over the abduction and murder of their then three-year-old sister. 
 
 "It's unreal after all these years, 47 years, it's great," Mr Grimmer, who lives at Mount St Thomas, said. 
 
 "Between the three of us, it's really emotional at the moment for us. 
 
 "I'm a big boy, but I get emotional. I've been listening to the radio and I watch it on TV and I get tears in my eyes. 
 
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 "I think it's been leading up [to a breakthrough] and now they've finally got this guy it's sort of hit my two brothers and myself in a big way [that] it's really happening." 
 
 While it offered the family some closure, Mr Grimmer said the development after almost five decades was tinged with sadness. 
 
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 Link "I won't be saying anything, I'll just stand there and watch": Stephen Grimmer. 
 
 "Mum and dad all their life since Cheryl went missing have been hoping and praying [for] some outcome of it and they don't get to see it now," he said. 
 
 "That's in the back of your mind and to me that's sad." 
 
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 Link Ricki (left), Paul and Stephen Grimmer at the Fairy Meadow Surf Club in December. Photo: Robert Peet 
 
 Mr Grimmer told how his mum, Carole, never gave up hope that her daughter was alive – even in the moments before she died. 
 
 "I knew it was time for her to go, but she just wouldn't go. She wouldn't go until I said 'looks it's time to go, we'll keep looking for Cheryl'," he said. 
 
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 Link Stephen Grimmer, Carole Grimmer, Melanie Grimmer after an inquest ruled Cheryl was dead 
 
 "As soon as I said that … she went. We said that to her and everything's come around our way now." 
 
 Mr Grimmer was just five years old when Cheryl disappeared from the beach on a hot January day in 1970. 
 
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 Link Police and witnesses return to Fairy Meadow Beach in an attempt to uncover more details on the disappearance of Cheryl Grimmer in December. Photo: NSW Police 
 
 Since that day, he has wondered what his sister might look like today and questioned what happened to her all those years ago. 
 
 In December, police were convinced they were closing in on Cheryl's killer, prompting investigators to re-appeal for information. 
 
 Mr Grimmer admitted not knowing if Thursday, the day some of the family's questions were finally answered, would ever arrive. 
 
 "It's in the back of your mind 'is it going to happen?' or is it [the case] just something that's there and they're just chasing it up?," he said. 
 
 "It's great it's happened. We've got a lot of relatives over in England that have been listening to it over there on social media and [in] the paper over there, people asking what's happening. 
 
 Mr Grimmer said while he was content with letting the investigators do their job, Ricki had made contact with them on a weekly basis, in the hope of a development. 
 
 "He just wanted to keep doing that, to keep in touch," he said, adding Ricki lived "not far from" where the accused was spoken to by Victorian police on Thursday. 
 
 Mr Grimmer preferred not to speak about the court case, saying "I don't want to compromise anything", but praised the Wollongong detectives who worked tirelessly to make the breakthrough. 
 
 Illawarra Mercury ||||| Image copyright NSW Police Image caption Cheryl Grimmer disappeared when she was three years old 
 
 A man has been arrested over one of Australia's longest-running mysteries - the suspected murder of a UK-born toddler nearly 50 years ago. 
 
 Three-year-old Cheryl Grimmer went missing from a shower block at a New South Wales beach in 1970. 
 
 A 63-year-old man, originally from Britain, was arrested in Melbourne on Wednesday. Detectives said he would be charged with abduction and murder. 
 
 Despite the breakthrough, police doubt Cheryl's body will ever be found. 
 
 When was she last seen? 
 
 Cheryl disappeared from Fairy Meadow beach in Wollongong, a city south of Sydney, on the afternoon of 12 January 1970. 
 
 She was there with her mother, Carole, and her brothers Ricki, seven, Stephen, five, and Paul, four. 
 
 The family had only recently emigrated to Melbourne from Bristol, in south-west England. 
 
 When the weather worsened, Mrs Grimmer sent the children to shower at the public block about 100m (328ft) away. 
 
 Image copyright NSW Police Image caption Fairy Meadow surf club in the 1970s 
 
 Image copyright NSW Police Image caption Cheryl with her late father, Vince Grimmer 
 
 Moments later, Ricki ran back and reported Cheryl would not emerge from the girls' change room. She was never seen again. 
 
 "She was gone in just a minute or two," Ricki Grimmer said last year. 
 
 "It's something I still live with every day." 
 
 Cheryl's parents have since died, never knowing what happened. 
 
 How did police make the arrest? 
 
 Cheryl's disappearance sparked a massive search at the time, but it failed to provide a breakthrough. 
 
 Last year, detectives re-examined the case and revealed they had a new clue. Three witnesses had said they saw a teenager "loitering" near the scene. 
 
 On Wednesday, detectives held a man in custody after he went to a police station in Frankston, in outer Melbourne, for questioning. 
 
 Image copyright NSW Police Image caption Cheryl's brother, Stephen Grimmer, returned to Fairy Meadow Beach with witnesses 
 
 Originally from the UK, the man would have been 16 in 1970. 
 
 Det Insp Brad Ainsworth, from Wollongong police, confirmed the man "was a person of interest" in the initial investigation almost 50 years ago. 
 
 The detective said he doubted Cheryl's body would ever be found. 
 
 "I'm not going to get into the specifics, of the actual details of the offences but I can say that they are quite horrific," he said. 
 
 The man in custody is expected to appear in a Wollongong court on Friday.
– Nearly 50 years after a 3-year-old girl disappeared from an Australian beach, police may have finally cracked the case. In January 1970, Cheryl Grimmer visited Fairy Meadow beach in Wollongong with her mother and three young brothers, the BBC reports. As the visit wound down, the children went to shower off. Cheryl never returned from the girls' changing room. Her brother, Ricki Grimmer, says she was only gone for a few minutes. "It's something I still live with every day," he says. A massive search for Cheryl proved fruitless, and her body has never been found. Her parents both died without knowing what happened to her, and her brothers didn't want the same thing to happen to them, according to ABC. Then, on Wednesday, police made an arrest. The unnamed 63-year-old suspect was a "person of interest" during the original investigation. Police, who revisited the case last year, say new clues—including three witnesses who saw a teen "loitering" in the area of Cheryl's disappearance—allowed them to confirm some details of the original investigation and make the arrest. The suspect was a 16-year-old student at a reform school in 1970, the Illawarra Mercury reports. Police say he spoke about Cheryl's disappearance at the time. He's now charged with her abduction and murder. "I'm not going to get into the specifics ... but I can say that they are quite horrific," one detective tells the BBC. Cheryl's brother, Stephen Grimmer, tells the Sydney Morning Herald the arrest has been "unreal" and "really emotional." (A 1984 newspaper clip led police to missing sisters.)