The family of Cheryl Grimmer has said “what we want now is the truth” after a New South Wales MP used parliamentary privilege to reveal the identity of a man who police previously alleged murdered the UK-born toddler 55 years ago.

Cheryl vanished from outside a shower block while with her mother and three older brothers at Fairy Meadow beach in the Illawarra region of NSW on 12 January 1970.

The man, known by the pseudonym “Mercury”, faced a trial in 2018 after he pleaded not guilty. But it collapsed after a judge ruled that a 1971 police interview in which he confessed to the murder was not admissible.

Mercury made the alleged confession, which was the cornerstone of the crown’s case, when he was 17 and still a child under NSW law, and less than 18 months after Cheryl disappeared.

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