Read the full confession of Cheryl Grimmer’s alleged killer

It was 1971 when a 17-year-old confessed to murdering Cheryl Grimmer, who vanished more than a year earlier from a beach near Wollongong.

His confession sat in a box for decades until NSW Police charged him in 2017 with the three year-old’s murder, and the courts dubbed him “Mercury” because of his young age at the time of the alleged crime.

Two years later, a court ruled the confession was inadmissable as evidence and the murder trial collapsed.

On Thursday it was read in full by NSW MP Jeremy Buckingham, who used parliamentary privilege to name Mercury in a bid to force fresh information from the public and seek justice for Cheryl.

Warning: this document contains graphic content.