A judge has ruled that the trial of a man accused of murdering a British-born toddler in Australia cannot proceed.
Three-year-old Cheryl Grimmer, from Bristol, vanished from a beach in New South Wales in 1970.
A year later, a 17-year-old boy claimed in a police interview to have murdered her however investigators did not have enough evidence to support his confession.
He was not charged.
Cheryl went missing shortly after her family relocated to Australia from Bristol.
Her body has never been found.
The case was reopened in 2016 and the suspect, who cannot be named due to his age at the time of the alleged killing, was arrested and charged in 2017.
Now aged in his 60s, the British-born suspect pleaded not guilty and a trial was arranged for May.
The alleged killer then mounted a challenge against the admissibility of the police interview in the New South Wales Supreme Court.
On Friday, Justice Robert Hulme ruled the interview was inadmissible as evidence.
"The Crown accepts that its case cannot succeed without it," he said in his judgment.
Mr Justice Hulme said that the interview should not be admitted in evidence due to the "particular circumstances of the case".
"These circumstances primarily relate to the manner in which the interview was conducted and the particular vulnerability of the accused at the time," he said.
Cheryl Grimmer's brother Ricki Nash said: "We're just a bit numb, a bit shocked. No words can describe how I feel at the moment."
Another of her brothers, Stephen Grimmer told the BBC in 2016: "My mum and dad have passed on now not knowing, and we want to know too before we pass on."
Additional reporting by PA.
