Underbelly 11 Page 4

  ‘Both Ernie and myself dismissed the matter and nothing more was done,’ his mother later said. But Percy began writing of his bizarre and violent sexual fantasies in 1965 – around the time his school marks collapsed.

  He continued the self-incriminating habit for years. Much later police would allege the writings were plans for the crime she was to commit and directly linked him to the series of unsolved child murders.

  At the end of 1966, having finally completed his leaving certificate, Percy was ready to leave Corryong High.

  Ernest Percy also decided to leave the mountains and move into private enterprise. He invested his payout in a Shell service station in Newcastle.

  Derek tried matriculation (Year 12) in a NSW school, dropped out, worked at the service station, then in November 1967, joined the navy, graduating the following February at the top of his class.

  Nearly four decades after that, detectives from Operation Heats began the massive task of trying to piece together his movements around Australia over the crucial four-year period of the 1960s.

  They knew the Percys often took their caravan to holiday near beaches during yachting regattas. They also could prove Percy was harbouring thoughts of molesting and killing children at the same time as the series of shocking abductions were carried out in four states and territories.

  But was it simply a series of coincidences? How could a bright teenager living in country Victoria grab children hundreds of kilometres away? And how could a young sailor murder and return to his base undetected?

  To begin, police had to go back to the start. They headed to the archives to review the files of missing and murdered children. Detectives turned into historians as they tracked down details of events that began when Sir Robert Menzies was still Prime Minister. Some witnesses were dead and exhibits had been destroyed. It was never going to be easy.

  At first they expected to find information that would discount Percy but the further they looked the stronger the link became.

  ON a windy Monday – January 11, 1965 – teenage neighbours Marianne Schmidt and Christine Sharrock left Brush Road to catch a train at the nearby West Ryde railway station to Sydney’s popular Cronulla Beach area.

  The two girls took Marianne’s four younger brothers and sisters with them for the day out. They arrived at the beach about 11am and set up a picnic. Later they went for a walk but the younger children began to complain about the wind whipping up the sand, stinging their legs.

  The fifteen-year-old girls decided to push on, sending the youngsters back to a sheltered area near Wanda Beach.

  When Peter Schmidt, ten, saw his sister and her friend heading in the wrong direction to pick up their possessions, he yelled out to them but they kept walking away. He then noticed they were with a blond teenage boy. His brother, Wolfgang, seven, said he saw them talking to the teenager earlier and heard him ask their names. He also said the youth had a knife in a scabbard and carried a spear.

  The girls’ mutilated bodies were found next day partially buried behind a sand dune.

  There were several obvious similarities between the Yvonne Tuohy case and the Wanda beach killings.

  In both cases, the victims were taken from the beach and dumped nearby. In Wanda Beach the offender took two victims and in the Melbourne case Percy tried to abduct two but Shane Spiller had escaped from him. (Spiller never recovered from the trauma and disappeared in unexplained circumstances in 2002.) In both cases the killer asked his victims their names before abducting them.

  The crotch area of one of the Wanda Beach girls’ bathers had been cut. Percy was seen slashing female underwear at Mount Beauty in late 1964 – just weeks earlier.

  However, that was in Victoria – not in Sydney.

  But witnesses told police they remember the Percys went to Sydney that year for their summer break. The mother of one of Percy’s closest friends in Mount Beauty told detectives: ‘I can recall reading about the murders of young girls at Wanda Beach, Sydney. I can remember saying to my son Peter that Derek was in Sydney at the time of the murders. Peter told me not to be silly. I have always felt that Derek may be a suspect in that case.’

  Ernie Percy, a champion Moth class sailer, tried to arrange his holidays to coincide with yacht races around Australia. During December 1964 and January 1965 a national yachting regatta was held at the Botany Bay Yachting Club – the Australian Moth Class Championship. The club was a short distance from Wanda Beach.

  At the time Percy’s grandparents lived in Ryde, just 1.7 kilometres from the West Ryde Railway station where the two girls caught the train on the day they were murdered.

  The police theory is that Percy saw the girls with the younger children at the station and followed them to the beach, where he struck up a conversation.

  When Percy abducted Tuohy he had a knife in a scabbard tied to his waist in the same manner as the blond teenage suspect at Wanda Beach.

  Victorian police inspector Tim Attrill was a young sailor who served with Percy on the training ship HMAS Queensborough. He says Percy was a cold person, that he loved small yachts and seemed to be able to disappear when off duty.

  Sailors would carry knives on a leather ‘gun belt’ when carrying out duties such as cutting ropes. But Attrill remembers that Percy kept his strapped to his side at all times – even when there was no need. ‘He seemed to love it.’

  After police arrested Percy at Cerberus they found a green-covered diary with Percy’s hand-written notes, describing in detail his urges to sexually abuse, torture, murder and mutilate children.

  They also found drawings of naked children and adult women along with pictures of nude women at the beach.

  In one excerpt Percy wrote he would force one of his victims to drink beer. Autopsy results showed that Christine Sharrock had a blood alcohol reading equivalent to drinking about 300mls of beer.

  In his murder blueprint he wrote about abducting and killing ‘two girls at Barnsley’ – a beach in northern NSW. Police claim it was a simple code for Wanda Beach.

  Years later jail authorities seized more writings that included coded references to the graphic sexual assault and murder of children. It shows that Percy used codes to conceal his actions and thoughts.

  Back in 1965 some in the Mount Beauty area saw the resemblance to Percy – who at the time had light-coloured hair – in the photofit issued of the blond suspect. But it would be more than a year before someone would raise it with Percy himself.

  It was 1966 and Percy had moved to Corryong High when classmate Wayne Gordes decided to tease the new student after he saw the obvious resemblance to the photofit. ‘I jokingly thought to myself, “That’s Derek”, because of the description and I knew that they went to a beach in Sydney.

  ‘A group of us were standing in the quadrangle when Derek Percy walked past. I said, “We know it was you that killed those girls in Sydney. You have the same haircut and we know you were there.”

  ‘With that Derek went berserk. He said, “Don’t you say that.” Derek was at the stage where I think he wanted to fight me for what I had said. I had never seen Derek behave like that before and it was quite out of character. I thought to myself, “Relax, Derek, it’s just a joke”. Derek then walked off.’

  ON Wednesday January 26, 1966 the Beaumont children, nine-year-old Jane, seven-year-old Arnna, and four-year-old Grant, caught the bus from their Somerton Park home to Glenelg Beach. They left about 9.45am for the five-minute trip. Their mother, Nancy, expected them home about midday.

  They were spotted on the bus and a friend of Jane’s later saw them sitting on the lawn of the Holdfast Bay Sailing Club about 11am. Later, a man was seen talking to them and at 11.45 the children bought a pie and two pasties from Wenzel’s Bakery in Jetty Road.

  Almost certainly the man gave them cash for the food as the children paid with a one-pound note – more money than their mother had given them. They were never seen again.

  The description of the suspect was a man in his 30s wi
th light brown short swept-back hair parted on the left side, a thin face and clean-shaven. He had a suntanned complexion and was wearing blue bathers with a white stripe down the side.’

  So could it have been Percy? He was only seventeen at the time but was sometimes mistaken for being older.

  His writings showed his plan was to give food to the children before kidnapping and killing them. The Beaumonts were in the age group of the victims Percy wanted to abduct and they went missing from the beach, as did Yvonne Tuohy, Marianne Schmidt, Christine Sharrock and Linda Stilwell. They were also taken from the front of the local yacht club. Percy was fascinated by sailing boats.

  Certainly there are some elements of the general description that fitted but just as many that didn’t. The original sketch of the suspect was done by a non-police artist and is not considered reliable.

  Then was Percy there? He told police he had been to Adelaide on holiday but couldn’t remember the date. His brother confirmed they had been there with his family. One of Percy’s friend’s mother told police: ‘I can also recall that Derek travelled to Adelaide on holidays by plane on one occasion.’

  When asked by detectives from Operation Heats detectives in 2005 if he was in Adelaide when the Beaumonts went missing he answered: ‘I don’t know.’

  They then asked if he were blocking out thoughts ‘because something horrible happened in Adelaide and you don’t want to remember it?’

  He eventually acknowledged: ‘It’s possible.’

  Five days after the Tuohy murder Percy was interviewed by prison psychiatrist Doctor Allen Bartholomew, who found the young man had the capacity to repress memories of crimes he’d committed. He said that if Percy had been arrested a week after the murder he would no longer have been able to recall what he had done.

  Now Percy says he can’t remember when he was in Adelaide, but back in 1969 when he was talking to his old school friend in the Russell Street cells, he admitted he had been in Adelaide when the Beaumonts went missing: ‘I was in Adelaide at the time.’

  Percy was asked: ‘Whereabouts were you, when they disappeared?’

  ‘Near the beach. But nothing else.’

  Without bodies or a confession Percy will remain on a short list of suspects for the Beaumont children. There is simply insufficient evidence to prove or disprove his involvement.

  Detective Sergeant Brian Swan from Adelaide’s major crime investigation branch said Percy ‘remains a person of interest in the disappearance of the Beaumont children’.

  Police from Operation Heats have been able to independently corroborate much of what Percy said to his policeman friend in the Russell Street watch-house.

  So the question remains, why would he have lied about being on an Adelaide beach at the precise time the Beaumonts disappeared?

  As Dr Bartholomew observed after interviewing Percy: ‘It is not beyond the bounds of possibility that there is some other great harm been done in the past and there is no way of knowing it.’

  ON September 27, 1966, Allen Geoffrey Redston, 6, left his home in the Canberra suburb of Curtin to go to the nearby milk bar to buy an ice-cream.

  The following day his body was discovered concealed in reeds beside a local creek, wrapped in a floral housecoat and mushroom-coloured carpet. The little boy had been hogtied and there was plastic wrapped around his throat.

  A police investigation found that in the days leading up to the murder a blond-haired teenager had been forcing boys to the ground, tying them up and placing plastic over their heads in an apparent attempt to asphyxiate them.

  The identikit image is remarkably similar to Percy and the suspect was reported to be riding a distinctive red bike with ‘ram’s horn’ handlebars – the type Percy rode at Mount Beauty and took with him on caravan holidays.

  When Dick Knight questioned Percy back in 1969 the suspect said he had been on a family holiday in Canberra in 1966 but he was vague about details.

  Police have established Percy had a relative who lived in the ACT but have found no records to pinpoint the exact date of the holiday. In the era before credit cards, automatic cash machines and closed circuit security cameras, people left far fewer signs behind them, making investigation years after the trail had gone cold particularly difficult.

  But there were some clues pointing to a connection between the killer and the Canberra child’s murder. Percy’s writings, seized at Cerberus, detail the use of plastic and his plans to tie up and asphyxiate victims.

  The bodies of both little Allen Redston and Yvonne Tuohy were tied and gagged when their bodies were found.

  No-one will ever know why Percy became a child killer. He had an apparently normal childhood and was the product of an otherwise stable family. So what was the key that unlocked the hidden evil?

  The family secret was that when Derek Percy was young and being cared for by his grandmother she would use a bizarre form of punishment. If she thought he had been naughty she would lock him in a room by himself. But first she would hogtie him – just like someone did to Allen Redston.

  There was one other item found at the Canberra crime scene that puzzled the original investigators. Along with plastic, rope and cloth used to bind the victim, was a tattered green and gold diagonally-striped tie.

  It had a similar colour and pattern to the ties worn by students at Mount Beauty High School but it was a little different to the school tie – it was made of rough hessian fabric, just like the one Percy had worn to school. No-one knows what happened to the school tie after he transferred to Corryong High earlier that year and didn’t need it any more. No-one except Derek Percy, and if he remembers, he’s not talking.

  Federal police now say Percy ‘cannot be completely eliminated as a person of interest in relation to the death’. It seems a conservative conclusion.

  AFTER three months in the navy, Percy was posted to the aircraft carrier HMAS Melbourne on March 9, 1968 – but the flagship was in Cockatoo Dry Dock in Sydney Harbour for a year-long refit and the junior sailor was assigned simple fire sentry duty.

  He lived at the naval base, Kuttabul, at nearby Garden Island and commuted through the suburb of Glebe to the dock. He knew the area well, as the previous year he had visited his father who was completing a Shell training course in Glebe before taking over a NSW service station.

  On Saturday May 18, 1968, Simon Brook, 3, went missing from his family home in Alexandra Road, Glebe. His parents last saw him playing in the front yard. When they went outside after having coffee with friends he was gone. The house was next to Jubilee Park on Sydney Harbour – close to the beach and yachts.

  A truck driver later came forward to say he had seen a boy matching Simon Brook’s description holding the hand of a young man near Jubilee Park. He described the man as well groomed with a neat haircut.

  Police say the identikit has a striking resemblance to a photo of Percy taken from his school year book.

  Simon Brook’s body was found at the rear of a block of flats being constructed at Glebe Point Road, Glebe – about 350 metres from the Brooks’ family home.

  There were several signature similarities to the fatal injuries inflicted on Yvonne Tuohy. When police examined the scene they found two Gillette Super Stainless brand razor blades they believed were used in the attack. The same brand was issued to sailors at navy bases.

  Again the most damning evidence comes from Percy’s own hand. In his green diary, seized by police at Cerberus, he wrote of abducting and killing a three-year-old ‘baby’. He also described in sickening detail the exact injuries inflicted on Simon Brook. Operation Heats detectives say it is tantamount to a confession.

  When Victorian detective Dick Knight interviewed Percy back in 1969 he asked: ‘Did you kill Simon Brook?’ The suspect responded: ‘I could have.’

  And when Percy talked to the old school friend policeman, just days after he was arrested for the Tuohy murder, he admitted he was in the area at the time ‘turning off at the railway cutting where the body was
found’.

  Only someone with a detailed knowledge of the area would know that Simon Brook lived near a railway cutting and if Percy ‘turned off at the railway cutting’ he would have driven straight past the Brooks’ small street – and was quite possibly able to see the child playing in the front yard.

  Another witness who lived in the area came forward at the time, claiming she saw Simon Brook on his own in the street next to his home that day.

  She told police she told him to ‘go inside because it was cold’. She said the boy ran up Alexandra Road to Victoria Street.

  If Percy had turned off at the railway cutting as he said he would have had to drive along Victoria Street on the day of the abduction.

  There can be no doubt by the time Percy had joined the navy he had graduated to being a serial predator.

  Shortly after joining the navy Percy returned to Mount Beauty to visit friends. During the visit his car broke down and he took the younger brother of a mate for the fifteen-minute walk to the service station. During the walk he began to ask the six-year-old inappropriate questions about his two sisters but the boy was too young to understand the danger.

  When police seized Percy’s diary they found he was planning to abduct the two sisters – again near water – at the Mount Beauty pondage.

  After examining the evidence crime profiler Detective Senior Sergeant Debra Bennett concluded: ‘It is my opinion there is all likelihood that the offender for Simon Brook’s murder and the offender for Yvonne Tuohy’s murder is one and the same.’

  And NSW Coroner John Abernethy agreed. A new inquest into Simon Brook’s death was held in 2005 and after just two days he found the evidence so compelling he closed the hearing and referred the case to the Director of Public Prosecutions. Percy was flown to the inquest but chose not to give evidence on the grounds of self-incrimination.

  Mr Abernethy said he believed there was a ‘reasonable prospect … that a jury would convict a known person in relation to the offence’.