Aussie Cops Seek Family Who Saw Girl's 1970 Abduction

They provided statements to police at the time
By Evann Gastaldo,  Newser Staff
Posted Apr 13, 2017 11:52 AM CDT
Aussie Cops Seek Family Who Saw Girl's 1970 Abduction
Cheryl Grimmer   (New South Wales Police)

Nearly 50 years after a 3-year-old girl was abducted from a changing room on an Australian beach—her body never found—police made an arrest in her murder. Now, police are asking for a family that witnessed Cheryl Grimmer's abduction to come forward. Peter William Aubrey Goodyear, who was 37 at the time, made statements to police on the day the toddler disappeared in 1970, along with wife Mavis and their two daughters, 6-year-old Karen and 5-year-old Jannette. Police are trying to track them down again now, and are asking for the public's help, the Guardian reports.

According to the Illawarra Mercury, Goodyear told reporters at the time, "I saw a little, dark man carrying a limp, blond-haired girl to the car. My daughter said to me, ‘Daddy, why is that man carrying that little girl?'" Per Australia's ABC, a detective says that at the time, Goodyear was standing outside the girls' changing room from which Cheryl disappeared. "His wife and daughters were having a shower, [and] he was waiting outside the changing pavilion." The family is since believed to have moved to the UK. (Police are still getting tips in one of Australia's most high-profile child abduction cases, which rocked the country in 1966.)

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