In a letter sent on September 22, the family accused the state's Director of Public Prosecutions, Sally Dowling, of a "catastrophic failure of public accountability" after she upheld the decision to discontinue a murder prosecution against the man known by the pseudonym "Mercury". The family said it refused to "roll over or accept bureaucratic brush-offs".
Cheryl Grimmer was abducted from outside a shower block at Fairy Meadow Beach in January 1970. Her body has never been found. In 1971, a 17-year-old boy confessed to police that he had taken and killed her, but investigators did not believe they had enough evidence to charge him at the time.
Detectives revisited the confession decades later, and Mercury was charged with murder in 2017. He pleaded not guilty. The prosecution was discontinued in 2019 after a judge ruled the 1971 police interview could not be used as evidence, citing a child protection law introduced in 1987 and the vulnerability of the suspect at the time of questioning. Prosecutors said the case could not proceed without the interview.
Earlier this year, the family secured a review by the Office of the Director of Public Prosecutions and provided 54 submissions. On September 16, Ms Dowling upheld the discontinuation, finding it was not reasonably open to challenge the court's exclusion of the interview.
The family says the review failed to address its legal arguments and information about potential witnesses, and did not explain how the public interest in prosecuting the case was weighed. The Office of the DPP said in a statement that the review considered the evidence, the law, the trial judge's reasons and the family's submissions, and concluded the decision to discontinue was correct. The office acknowledged the outcome was "deeply disappointing" for the family.