Derek Percy's web of evil transcript
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Professor Donald Brook: It's more than (CLEARS THROAT) 40 years now since Simon was killed. And I still can't turn my mind to thinking about the last half hour of his life. And that's, that's why I think that it's extremely important that the person who killed him should be brought to trial.
GRAHAM ARCHER: Donald Brook now.....and then, with his son Simon not long before his 3-year-old boy was murdered.
Professor Donald Brook: The person who killed Simon is very, very disturbed, a very sick person indeed and may well do this again.
GRAHAM ARCHER: All those years ago Donald Brook might well have been right to fear the killer of his little boy would strike again and again. There is new evidence about some of Australia's most baffling and horrific cold cases - the Wanda Beach murders of Marianne Schmidt and Christine Sharrock, the three Beaumont children, Jane, Arnna and Grant and others...
Geoff Johnson: I knew what I'd seen and I knew I'd seen him.
GRAHAM ARCHER:..all pointing to one man. Do you believe he abducted the Beaumont children.
Ron Anderson Most definitely.
GRAHAM ARCHER: His name is Derek Ernest Percy.
Debi Marshall: I've never come across a character, a creature like this.
He's an utter monster. The question is, of course, what has he done to other children and how many other children? Is he Australia's worst serial child killer.
GRAHAM ARCHER: Growing up, Derek Percy's family moved a lot. His father was distant and domineering. His mother, controlling. He went to five different schools, spending his teenage years in Mount Beauty
in the Victorian highlands.
Ron Anderson: He lived in the next street and I went to school with him for a while and we became really good friends in the last couple of years before he left school.
GRAHAM ARCHER: Ron Anderson was Percy's mate at school. They played cricket together. As a mate, you'd think you'd know him pretty well?
Ron Anderson: Well, I thought I did, yes.
GRAHAM ARCHER: But Ron was soon to learn that Percy was different. When he was 16, he was caught 'snow dropping' - stealing women's underwear and slashing it with a knife. Then there was a sexual assault on two 6-year-old girls. No charges were laid but Percy was expelled from school and his family moved again. So this was all hush-hush?
Ron Anderson: Yes.
GRAHAM ARCHER: You believe they knew that he was a troubled boy?
Ron Anderson: I - yes.
GRAHAM ARCHER: No-one would learn just how troubled Percy was until far too late. At 19 Percy joined the navy, other sailors said he was secretive and private, his nickname was 'The Spook'.
Debi Marshall: He has no empathy, he is a pure and utter psychopath in the true sense of the word.
GRAHAM ARCHER: Investigative journalist Debi Marshall has spent five years
tracking Percy's whereabouts at the time of Australia's most infamous child crimes. What emerges is a disturbing pattern of opportunities.
Debi Marshall: When he was on leave from the navy, and indeed before he joined the navy, he took every opportunity to hunt children. That was his pastime.
GRAHAM ARCHER: Debi believes Percy's first crime happened before he joined the navy. It was January 1965 - Marianne Schmidt and Christine Sharrock
were assaulted, mutilated and killed in the now infamous Wanda Beach murders in Sydney. Percy was in Sydney at the time almost certainly staying with his grandmother.
Debi Marshall: His grandmother lived at Ryde. The Wanda Beach victim, two friends, 15-year-old girls, lived at Ryde. One of the victim's sisters told me and told police at the time that when they were on the train
on the way to the beach, a thin-faced young man started chatting to the girls.
NEWSREEL: The two girls observed in the company of a youth about 16 years of age. They were seen to disappear with that youth into the sand dunes
and were not seen after that incident - that time.
GRAHAM ARCHER: Percy was 16 years old. Witnesses at the beach that day
helped police create this mannequin of the teenage suspect.
Ruth Marden also recognises the suspect — she'd seen him in Ryde near
where the murdered girls lived.
Ruth Marden: And this young man used to stand at the doorway flicking his thumb on the open blade of a cut-throat razor. I'll never forget seeing that.
GRAHAM ARCHER: Ruth Marden - who has never spoken publicly before — told police about the teenager. Some years later she saw a photo of Derek Percy.
Ruth Marden: I thought it's definitely him but he's older. I feel that if the police had listened to me and done something about it when I went there - this is what I keep thinking - some subsequent murders which he may have done, wouldn't have happened.
GRAHAM ARCHER: A year after the Wanda Beach murders Derek Percy is on a family holiday in Adelaide.
NEWSREEL: There were three children seen here and we're just checking to see whether there's any possibility that they're in here.
GRAHAM ARCHER: On January 26, 1966, the Beaumont children - Jane,
who was 9, Arnna 7, and Grant, 4 disappear at Glenelg Beach near Adelaide.
A sketch of the prime suspect is strikingly similar to this photo of Percy who was at the beach at the time.
Debi Marshall: What I know is that he had the opportunity, he certainly had the motive.
GRAHAM ARCHER: The Beaumont children have never been found. Also that year, Percy took a family holiday to Canberra where 6-year-old Allen Redston was murdered. Allen left his home to buy an ice-cream and never returned. The prime suspect rode a red pushbike — Percy also owned a red bike which he took on holidays. Since the three Beaumont children disappeared from Glenelg Beach here in South Australia, since the horrific child murders at Wanda Beach in Sydney, the same question has recurred year after year - who could do such terrible things?
Professor Donald Brook: The person who killed Simon is very, very disturbed, a very sick person indeed.
GRAHAM ARCHER: On 18 May 1968, 3-year-old Simon Brook was playing in the front yard of his home in Glebe in Sydney. He was last seen walking away with a thin-faced man. At the time of the murder Percy was based at Garden Island naval dockyard three kilometres away.
Professor Donald Brook: Imagine a boy as I saw him on Sunday morning two weeks ago, a dirty place under the bushes with old newspapers, and this child dead and mutilated with blood on his face.
Debi Marshall: I've never been so affected by anything as I was in meeting the parents of Simon Brook - educated, urbane, a professor, a former dancer absolutely utterly, utterly broken by the murder of a 3-year-old boy.
GRAHAM ARCHER: Debi Marshall's book on Percy called 'Lambs to the Slaughter' has given new hope to Simon's family. Now, a new witness has come forward, one who has never spoken publicly before.
Geoff Johnson: I didn't want to remember it. I just didn't - I just couldn't - I just didn't want to remember it. I was just trying to forget it.
GRAHAM ARCHER: Geoff was 10 and living at this orphanage next door to where Simon's body was found, 400 metres from Simon's home. The day before the murder, Geoff saw a man looking into the orphanage.
Geoff Johnson: We could all see him, see him, he was sort of weaving backwards and forwards...
GRAHAM ARCHER: Trying to catch a glimpse of the boys?
Geoff Johnson: Yeah, yeah.
GRAHAM ARCHER: But that wasn't the last time you saw this bloke, was it?
Geoff Johnson: No, no.
GRAHAM ARCHER: The next day - the day of Simon's murder - Geoff says he saw the same man walking past the orphanage hand in hand with a young boy.
How old was the boy, do you think?
Geoff Johnson: Oh, he was only young, he was only a small toddler. I thought that was his son. I thought it was his son and he was going home.
GRAHAM ARCHER: Do you now think that little boy was Simon Brook?
Geoff Johnson: Without a doubt, without a doubt, yeah, for sure.
The day after, Simon's body was found on a building site next door.
GRAHAM ARCHER: Did the police speak to you and the other boys?
Geoff Johnson: Two detectives came through with them and they basically asked us if we'd seen anything. But I was way too scared to talk to them.
I didn't want to get in trouble for looking through the holes in the fence
or talking about what I'd seen.
GRAHAM ARCHER: Are you certain that you saw Derek Percy.
Geoff Johnson: I seen Derek Percy. I know it was him that I'd seen. I'd seen him in the weaving between the gates and I'd seen him walk by with the young boy who I know today is Simon.
Part 2
Debi Marshall: I had to follow the dark heart of Derek Percy. And the more I went in to it, the more I realised that I was actually following
the life and crimes of our own Hannibal Lecter.
GRAHAM ARCHER: In the 1960s, terrible crimes were happening one after another - two girls killed at Wanda Beach near Sydney. A year later, the Beaumont children vanish at Glenelg Beach. Allen Redston is murdered
in Canberra. Then, Simon Brook is killed in Sydney. Derek Percy
was in all of these places. And there were more crimes to come.
Jean Priest: She loved people. She was just such a happy child and she loved to talk to everybody.
GRAHAM ARCHER: So would you say it's conceivable that she would quite happily wander off with somebody?
Jean Priest: Yes, yes.
GRAHAM ARCHER: August 1968 at St Kilda's Luna Park and 7-year-old Linda Stilwell is with her brother, Gary, who was 9, in a penny arcade.
Gary Stilwell: I was looking in the machine and kaleidoscopes would change shape and my sister, I'm quite sure, was standing next to me at that point
and from that point, I looked up and she was gone. And that's the last I remember seeing Linda.
GRAHAM ARCHER: A witness saw a little girl walking away from the arcade
with a thin-faced man.
Gary Stilwell newsreel: I'd just like to appeal to everybody if they've got a paddock or a garage or anything, just to go out and have a look.
GRAHAM ARCHER: At the time Linda Stilwell vanished Percy was on leave from the navy and in St Kilda.
Gary Stilwell newsreel: And she's always up to mischief but she's mine
and I love her very much.
GRAHAM ARCHER: Linda was never found.
Shane Spiller newsreel: This man appeared from nowhere and he had his arm around Linda's neck and he had a knife in the other hand.
GRAHAM ARCHER: Less than a year later in the sleepy seaside village of Warneet in Victoria, a thin-faced man abducts 12-year-old Yvonne Tuohy.
Her friend, Shane Spiller, bravely tries to fight him off.
Shane Spiller newsreel: I had a tomahawk in my belt and I got that out with my right hand and held it up in the air as if I was going to throw it at him. And the man said to me, "Put that down or else I'll hurt the girl" and I ran for the bush. Yvonne yelling, "Shane, help, help. He's going to cut my throat." I didn't answer and I kept running till I got to the main road. Then I stood on the road for half a minute and this car came along and I stopped them and told the man what happened.
GRAHAM ARCHER: Yvonne was murdered — her body mutilated with the knife.
But 11-year-old Shane remembers a crucial detail from the attacker's car.
Debi Marshall: He noticed, very clever for an 11-year-old, he noticed a navy sticker on the back of the car. Cerberus navy base, where Percy was stationed, was very close to where Yvonne was murdered so they went to the base and there was Percy, washing the blood from his clothes. He denied all knowledge until finally said, "Oh, yes. Well, I was on the beach" and so, that was that.
GRAHAM ARCHER: Derek Ernest Percy was arrested for murder and would soon be reunited with an old schoolmate. Ron Anderson had not seen Percy for five years. He was now a probationary constable with Victorian police
and homicide detectives asked him to speak to Percy. Ron has never been interviewed on camera about what happened next.
Ron Anderson: Derek was sitting on a bed in the cell. He was leaned over sobbing and I said, "Hello, Derek" and he looked up and said, "Hello, Ron". And then he said, "Looks like I've really f---ed up this time." And I said, "Certainly looks that way, Derek."
GRAHAM ARCHER: He said 'this time?'. What did that suggest?
Ron Anderson: Suggested it wasn't his first time.
GRAHAM ARCHER: What did he say you mentioned the Beaumont children?
Ron Anderson: He said he was in Adelaide at the time and I asked him
what he could remember about it and he said, "The beach, that's all."
GRAHAM ARCHER: But he was there on that day?
Ron Anderson: Yes.
GRAHAM ARCHER: And what did he say when you mentioned Linda Stilwell?
Ron Anderson: That he drove from Portsea through St Kilda to the White Ensign Club for a couple of drinks on that day at that time.
GRAHAM ARCHER: Again he was there at that time?
Ron Anderson: That's correct.
GRAHAM ARCHER: Do you believe Derek Percy abducted the Beaumont children?
Ron Anderson: Most definitely.
GRAHAM ARCHER: And do you believe Derek Percy murdered Simon Brook?
Ron Anderson: I do, definitely.
GRAHAM ARCHER: And do you think Derek Percy abducted Linda Stilwell?
Ron Anderson: Oh, most definitely.
GRAHAM ARCHER: And that's your firm belief?
Ron Anderson: Yes.
GRAHAM ARCHER: Ron Anderson took notes of what Percy was telling him
and gave them to detectives — but no action was taken on the other cases.
What do you feel about the families of these children?
Ron Anderson: Well, I never allowed myself think about the families of the children. I think if I had of, I would've... Sorry.
GRAHAM ARCHER: In Percy's naval locker, police found handwritten notes detailing his plans to abduct, torture and kill children.
Debi Marshall: He's told us in his filthy writings that this is what he wanted to do - lure the children away, take them to a place and then do these things to them.
GRAHAM ARCHER: His writings are too gruesome to broadcast but the mutilation he planned is exactly what happened to Simon Brook, the Wanda Beach victims and later on, Yvonne Tuohy, whose murder he was charged with.
Debi Marshall: The jury, however, when confronted with the photographs of what he did to that poor terrified little girl, were so confronted that they reasoned that no sane man could've done what Derek Percy did. And so therefore they saved him that short trip through the gallows - in those days there was the death penalty. And they found him not guilty by reason of insanity.
GRAHAM ARCHER: Derek Percy has been in custody for the past 42 years. But last year, the Supreme Court of Victoria re-examined his sanity and found, "he suffers from no identifiable psychiatric disorder". That could make it easier for Percy to seek release from prison.
Professor Donald Brook: The problem.....at the moment is that he's not been convicted of any crime. And this means that at any time he could succeed in getting parole. And we believe it's most important that he should be convicted so that there is no prospect that he will ever do anything of the sort to another child.
Jean Priest: To my darling Linda. It's been 43 years since you went out happily to play and didn't return. How I've wished time and time again that I could've protected you from the evil that took you that Saturday.
GRAHAM ARCHER: Last weekend, Linda Stilwell's family held a farewell for the beautiful daughter who was snatched from Luna Park.
Jean Priest: I am told, children.....go to another place and I hope that's what you did.
GRAHAM ARCHER: A balloon for every year she's been missing.
Jean Priest: We say goodbye with love, my darling - your family. We need a grave, we need somewhere that we can say, "This was Linda. "This was my daughter."
Debi Marshall: All these families, they've lost their children and somebody has to be brought to justice for this. There is now enough evidence to convict and we need to get Derek Percy to court.
