Kevin Docherty feared bad news when his phone buzzed with many messages all at once on Wednesday night.
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He delayed looking at the texts until he finished work and returned to his Warilla home.
“Turn the news on,” one of the messages advised.
“Man arrested … extradited someone from Victoria.”
It was not the arrest Mr Docherty had spent more than three decades dreaming of. No one had solved the mystery of his twin sister Kay’s disappearance, from a Warilla bus stop, in 1979.
It was another Illawarra family – the Grimmers – that was to enjoy the gift of answers, 47 years after three-year-old Cheryl Grimmer vanished from Fairy Meadow Beach.
With the news, the tiny group of people who shared Mr Docherty’s torturous experience – the plight of not knowing the fate of a loved one – had grown that much smaller.
But the breakthrough had lifted him, he realised.
“I just thought it was absolutely amazing,” Mr Docherty told the Mercury.
“I felt relief for the family. A little bit of ecstasy. A little bit of hope.
“The main thing I thought of was, there’s still hope. There’s still hope after all them years!”
Mr Docherty spent all of Thursday glued to social media and the television, hungry for any information he could find. At one point he shared his thoughts to a public page.
“So happy for this family to finally get answers,” he wrote. “Fifty years takes its toll on family members not knowing ...”
Kay Docherty, 15, and fellow Lake Illawarra High School student Toni Cavanagh, 16, were last seen near a bus stop outside Warilla Grove shopping centre on July 27, 1979. Police believe the girls were trying to make their way to a Wollongong disco when they met with foul play.
Like Cheryl Grimmer, Kay Docherty’s disappearance continued, unexplained, until after the death of her parents, Jean and Jim.
Jean Docherty didn’t like the word ‘closure’, but her son is a firm believer in it. He feels like there is another part of his life he could unlock, if only there were remains to mourn and a funeral to organise.
“Every day, every night, this is on my mind,” he said. “It never goes away. People don’t really realise. People have said it the past to let it go. That nothing’s going to come of it.
“I just think back to the people that said that years ago, and I think, 47 years later and they've caught someone for the Grimmer case.”
“I’ve never given up hope … this has just given me a little bit more hope.”
Mr Docherty wanted to go to court on Friday; was disappointed when he learnt the man accused of Cheryl’s murder had opted not to face the magistrate.
He wanted to be there to support the Grimmers, in his own way. He imagines time must be moving slowly for them now. Mostly he wanted to look into the accused man’s face, in case there are answers there.
“I just wanted to look into his face, look into his eyes - even though it's not related to me,” he said.
“I just wanted to see what type of person he was.”