A renewed search for the remains of missing Wollongong girl Cheryl Grimmer has ended without a breakthrough, leaving her family facing another painful setback.

For the first time, police have scoured a Wollongong bushland site identified in a confession more than 50 years ago , but the search has been unsuccessful.

Three-year-old Cheryl vanished from Fairy Meadow Beach in 1970, sparking one of Australia's longest-running missing child cases.

The site was first described in a 1971 confession by a man known under the police codename Mercury.

His identity was suppressed because he was 17 at the time of the alleged crime.

The shelved confession included details about fence lines, cattle grids, and the type of tree he claimed to have left her body near.

The statement was dismissed at th

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