More than seven years after Cheryl Ardler disappeared from a bus stop in Cranebrook in Sydney's north-west, her boyfriend Dennis French has been charged with murdering her.
Mr French faced Penrith Local Court on Friday on unrelated charges, when detectives from the State Crime Command's unsolved homicide squad charged him with murdering Ms Ardler at Cranebrook on December 12, 2012. She was 41.Ms Ardler's sisters - Josephine, Margaret and Tracey - as well as her mother, Irene, attended court.that the arrest came after witnesses came forward.
Ms Ardler's disappearance was handed to the unsolved homicide squad following a coronial inquest into her disapperance in 2016. In May last year, a teenage boy found bones, later identified as belonging to Ms Ardler, in bushland in Laycock Street, Cranebrook. Her family had long suspected she was dead."Today's news is a very bittersweet moment for our family," Ms Ardler's mother said in a statement issued after the court proceedings.
"It’s very hard to know that our beautiful Cheryl will never be coming home and that she was so cruelly taken from us."She is so loved by all of us and without her here, our family just won’t be the same."