The Chilling Case of Derek Percy: Australia's Most Notorious Child Killer

Derek Percy is an Australian criminal vilified by everyone who knows his name. Police have spent the day questioning the man they believe is responsible for some of Australia's

most

notorious

child

murders. We talk about some of the

most

mysterious crimes of the last century. Percy is a person who made a lot of headlines over 40 years ago for a crime that changed the very fabric of Australian society, his actions and the way he treated the young girl were horrific, perhaps for the first time that people began to look at strangers in a different way. It was certainly the moment when Australia lost its naivety.

The graphic murder of 12-year-old Ivon Tui was just the beginning as more heena crimes were unraveled which turned suspicion to Percy. Percy is also a suspect in The Disappearance of Adelaide. Bowmont Children There can be nothing worse than the random kidnapping and murder of

child

ren of which Per is suspected in not one but several

case

s and which would culminate sensationally with the interrogation of detectives on his deathbed and the notoriety that surrounds one of the most evil murderers in the country. and the mystery that surrounds him to this day makes this a crime that shook Australia Derek Ernest Percy of Mount Beauty Victoria is a man who has baffled officials for decades Derek Ern his Percy is one of the most peculiar criminals that we have in St. a criminal who has slipped into the Shadows since a day that changed history in 1969, the day of course being a Sunday, it so happened that, on that particular day, we discovered during the afternoon that a girl had disappeared near Frankston, the girl reported.

Missing is Ivon Tuille, 12 years old. Ion Tuille had gone with a friend named Shane Spiller to a beach. The two young children are in the picturesque seaside town of Warnet. Western Port Bay, 55 km southeast of Melbourne, near the water, they decide to play. on one of the many beaches around them, just a few meters from aon's house, there is a bushland and beach front area on the outskirts of frankston, it is not a very popular area and in the middle of winter, july, It's an area that people don't visit much, they drive. They passed it but don't stop there very often, but today the young Friends Are Not Alone on the beach while playing innocently.

Everything changes in seconds. Shane was with little Evon when he walked up to them, grabbed Ion and insisted that Shane come. He rescues her from him and threatens that if he doesn't come, Ivon will be hurt while the children are terrified. The stranger also tries to grab Shane, but the little boy grabs a small ax he brought with him, he was St. enough to pull a small Tomahawk out of his backpack and run away, Shane Spiller runs away to get help while his friend is dragged and inside from a nearby car flagged down a passing motorist in order to provide a lot of detail, which is pretty clever.

For a child in those circumstances, the search for the vulnerable girl is now. Paramount officials are relying on Shane and any other witnesses to have a chance to move forward. He was able to describe the guy. He was able to describe the car when Shane. They asked him about the car, the most important thing he could tell us was that there was a Navy decal on the back of the car. He was able to tell us what color it was. He was able to tell us that it was a small truck. and uh, with the help of others, the other passes were able to give us a color and it was described, I think as a Hillman, someone else was able to provide us that it had New South Wales plates and it was in the state of Victoria of Of course, that It made it much more meaningful.

Other Witnesses were in the same area, so the car had attracted some attention and one witness in particular provides information indicating that the kidnapper plans to take Ivón to a secluded location. He came forward and described seeing a car being hit. driven erratically on a dirt road in that area the officers expand their search for the sighted vehicle since every minute that passes they fear for Ivonne's life I guess it doesn't get much more pressurized than when they are told that a 12 year old girl has Ha been kidnapped on the beach, no one knows where she has gone.

The last time she saw her was as a child who saw a man holding a knife to his throat, so in terms of pressure, in terms of doing what he does as a police officer, that's it. Significant in that as an extensive search begins, Ivonne's friend Shane and other members of the public provide crucial information and one clue in particular proves invaluable; there are many people who did many right things that day, among them being the child the passersby did the right thing the first police officer to attend did the right thing the first police officer to attend went to cus because of the sticker on the back of the car Cerberus is a naval base 35 km south of Warnet The boy was able to tell the police that he saw a small Navy insignia on the back, so the police went to the nearby naval base.

The sticker that Shane described on the kidnapping vehicle could be an essential clue to finding the perpetrator who took his loved ones. Friendly officers rush to the location 30 minutes away. Ivonne has not been seen for hours when they arrive at the base, they discover something that will alter the entire investigation when the police first arrived because they quickly, with the help of the naval police, found the car. that had been described, but officers need to be sure it is the same car they are looking for. People, including little Shan, were able to go to the naval depot and select the car from the many cars parked in the marina parking lot.

Depot, it was not at all difficult for capable people to identify the owner of the car they had, the records well compiled. The owner of the orange family car is Derek Ernest Percy as officials try to locate him at the base where his vehicle is wanted. any possible clue that he was a 20-year-old naval apprentice, he was an electrical fitter. I believe that the Naval Base is an important naval adjunct, it is where young naval officers go to receive training to take up their role in the Navy and pery was a naval officer cadet, now it is vital that the officers reach this cadet immediately to find Any information on Ivonne's whereabouts.

They tried to take Percy to the office, talking to him, I think it was the expression, and he didn't respond, so he went to his barracks and his barracks mate told the police that he was downstairs washing his clothes when the police came to the office. laundry they made a very alarming discovery that's where he was when they stopped him he was washing his clothes they came in uh a senior officer tried to stop them but they burst in and found Percy cleaning his blood soaked clothes. 1969 and a 12-year-old schoolgirl, Ivon Tui, was kidnapped by a ferocious predator from a beach in wartime Victoria after her friend memorized the kidnapper's vehicle.

Officers in the kidnapper's vehicle raided a nearby naval base and caught the owner in a very dangerous situation. compromising He was washing his clothes. They probably had blood on them, but he had clothes in a washing machine, so we don't have a photo of anyone standing next to one. bathtub scrubbing blood wasn't that graphic but he was certainly washing his clothes, of course the police took possession of his clothes, asked him preliminary questions obviously about whether he knew anything or not and he steadfastly denied that he had done anything or that he knew. anything or whatever, but the naval police detained him and isolated him until the time we got there.

Ivon Tui has been missing for over 5 hours, possible blood on clothing is a very worrying sign and Percy needs to provide answers quickly, make sure you have the correct facts as best you can, make sure you have the evidence available at that time, the best I can, so with all that in place, that's when we started talking to Percy. and worryingly, along with blood-stained clothing, more incriminating evidence was found while searching his car and his private belongings. We had his clothes, of course, but the most significant exhibit was a blood-stained knife that had been found in his car.

Other knives were found in his car. In the car there were also sketches of naked children that we had found on top of his locker, so there were those kinds of things that initially pointed towards him. Detectives are now in a unique position with extremely damning evidence. They must make Percy reveal what these elements are connected without anything that directly points to Ivon's disappearance. What would reveal the young naval cadet had every reason to believe that, at worst, she was dead, or fatally injured, and she was the only person in the world at that time who could take us. there was Percy and here we were talking to him and trying to get him to tell us, trying to get this information out of him and it was very difficult when we started talking to him he was in denial but in terms of his demeanor he was very calm he spoke in monosyllables he didn't look us in the eye he was almost disconnected if you will he insisted that he might have done something wrong but I couldn't remember it I can remember Dick Knight and Percy they were very quiet and very slowly it was like watching two people trying to hypnotize each other almost as an idiot Knight was a very skilled interrogator, he had the ability to tune into a suspect and find him at the right level, he chose Percy, he knew what would work with Percy and he worked after hours of trying to get information from the suspect.

Percy utters these terrifying words, he kept saying "I could have done it and I don't remember" and finally he said yes, I killed her and I can take you to her she would be dead despite the advance Bernie Delaney was stunned by Percy's next comment, he agreed to take us there and, as a mark of the man, when we said, will you take us and show us?, he said yes, do I need a coat? They will call me? On a winter's night Victoria Police rushed to Ivonne, who has been missing for more than 10 hours and her family is anxiously awaiting any news.

We had little idea what she had done at the time, so we went to the scene with the paric people's photographers with a Navy officer with our own inspector when we got there. The Knights insisted that only a couple of us go to where the body was because we didn't want to disturb the scene. Percy simply took us to where the body was under the car headlights and showed us the poor girl's body lying on the wet ground, she was tied with her hands behind her back and a gag had been put on her. in her mouth, who was tied with a rope, her throat had been cut from one side to the other and she had been dismembered, he was quite a natural at all that.

I was close to him during that time and during the days that followed and his behavior never changed, the details of this incredibly sadistic crime are difficult to take in. Two innocent children playing on a beach have now resulted in the death of a little girl and the evil perpetrator appears to have no remorse after an extensive interview with Percy. In the coming days, officers will discover that they are dealing with a criminal whose depraved mind goes beyond comprehension. The police came back to cus and they found in his possession certain handwritten documents which then of course we had to tell him that maybe he had done some of these things that he had to deal with and he admitted that yes, not only does this young man have the ability to murder in cold blood, but also to act out his extremely dark fantasies.

Could there have been any warning signs from his past about this terrifying behavior? a fairly normal kid, probably a nerd, as you'd call him in today's parlance, he collected stamps and was the best in school until a vicarious puberty when he started acting strangely. Percy was very, very close to his mother. There is some suggestion that his family began to notice Percy's strange behavior at a young age, but it involved things like um Percy dressing in um women's clothing um violently stabbing um uh women's clothing this sort of thing at Mount Beauty and Rural Victoria where the family lived while he was a teenager, eh, he was known as the local snowplow, someone who would know how to jump fences and take underwear from lines and things like that, so it was all quite strange, and especially in the Australia of In the 60s, Mrs.

Percy let Derek's little brother do what he liked, but with Derek she always said where are you going and asked her friends to take care of him. She went to the local doctor and the doctor told her, "Um, he's going through a peculiar stage, he'll be fine." he didn't do it, he killed paor voni Derek Percy agrees to murder and torture the innocent girl, but the legal process that follows is one that most people would not have anticipated. He was presented before a jury of 12 peers and the trial began. accused of murder, pleaded not guilty by reason of insanity, the only defense that could be presented for Derek Percy was the defense of insanity, that is, that at the time of the murder he was insane within the legal concept of insanity and at the time When I came to this, it was pretty clear that there were a number ofpsychiatric opinions that confirmed the fact that, in his opinion, he was insane at the time, so I made the judgment based on how it would be carried out.

Percy is evaluated by a number of psychiatrists to determine his mental state, there was an enormous amount of material available to them due to his past history and his behavior and the diaries he kept, it was all horrible material, but it was very important that the psychiatrist I would examine all of that. so there was a lot of psychiatric material, all the Diaries and all these descriptions were displayed and read to the jury and it was quite horrible, in fact, my recollection is that I think one of the jurors fainted during the opening speech of the prosecutor. shocking

case

at least from memory two or even three psychiatrists expressed The View independently of each.

In addition to him being insane within the meaning of the law, the disturbing contents of Percy's private possessions discovered after Ion's murder reveal an extremely alarming view of his macabre mind that officials now know has stretched beyond their imagination. I remember telling someone one day that a person who would write something like that has a problem, but when he lets you know he's capable of pulling it off. Society has a problem. The content of the fantasies Percy has written are too graphic to detail, but an Obsession shows the extent of his depraved mind. He had a fascination with his own feces and what made it even more unique was the fact that he involved his victim.

Fascination and several psychiatrists have said that, in global terms, it is very unusual for a coprophilic person to involve his victims in that predilection shows how unique he is in global terms. This is just one aspect of Percy's psyche that leads experts to believe that he is not in his right mind. In this case there was no rebuttal evidence and no psychiatrist was prepared to In other words, Percy could have fully admitted to murdering Ivon, but the outcome of this unprecedented trial marks a unique point in Australian criminal history. The jury deliberated for quite a considerable time but finally returned a verdict of not guilty.

The Reason for the Madness Derek Ernest Percy, a 20-year-old naval cadet, has just been found not guilty of brutally murdering 12-year-old Ivon Tui, despite confessing to the murder and leading detectives to the crime scene, has declared insane and the jury. They have agreed that he will now be remanded under a different legal system, in those days the result was that he would be detained at the discretion of the governor, which is not a life sentence, it can be reviewed and there have been a number of cases where those who have committed horrible crimes due to mental incapacity or psychotic episodes.

I have been effectively cured. No minimum fee has been set for Percy's detention. He is sent to Her Majesty's Pentridge Prison, but more than 20 years later, his name comes back to haunt the people of Australia once again. Percy is in jail and that's where it would all end except for a young cop named Wayne Newman who was assigned the task of fixing an old investigative report for a girl named Linda Steak who had disappeared from Sinila Beach at the end of 60's and Wayne began to look at the case slowly and methodically, he was able to backtrack and realized that Percy was a suspect in the Linda Ste case and several other cases in Australia.

Several brutal murders and child abductions remain unsolved from the 1960s. Could Derek Percy too? be responsible for these In January 1965, during the school holidays, two Nextdoor neighbors, Christine Shark and Maryanne Schmidt, took Mariann's four younger siblings to the beach where they lived in western Sydney and the only way they The only way they could get to the beach was on the train they got off. on the train at Konala and walked to walk along the beach, a very popular beach, so the boys played in the shallow water, but shortly after noon the girls decided they would go for a walk on the sand.

Junes, the younger children complained that they were tired. So the older girls made the decision to leave the younger children resting behind a sand, they never returned a couple of hours later, the younger children decided that they would take the train home and report the children's disappearance to their parents, tragedy unfolded. the next day, when the girls' bodies were found buried in the June sand by a young man, a passer-by and uh, the two girls had been seriously assaulted, sexually assaulted, the New South Wales police questioned more than 10,000 people in one of their largest investigations yet.

To this day no one has been found guilty of the girls' murders. It seemed to be a completely random attack, but why did the girls go to Sandunes? They had been on that beach the week before, so the police thought maybe they had met someone and agreed. to meet later that afternoon they were seen with a 16 year old boy, whether this boy was involved or not, he has never come forward, he has never been identified as a suspect, but he is still the person most likely to have been involved in that crime officers compiled an identical image of the Witnesses at the time and compared it to a photograph of Percy who was 16 years old and also had a connection to the area.

Would Percy be a suspect in that matter? In fact, he will discover that he had a relative who lived very close to the station where the Wonder Beach girls got on to go to the beach. It emerged that his grandmother lived in the girls' next-door suburb in Deniston, western Sydney, which was an incredible coincidence, but whether or not Percy was there that summer, my research, from speaking to family members , does not confirm that, however, decades later, in 2007, Victoria Police discover a stash of Percy's belongings hidden in a storage unit in Melbourne, it is a body of material around videos. um other documents um handwritten notes a complete set of material that we have realized has in fact been at that location for 20 years within this substantial amount of material including graphic drawings and notes, officers discover a map in the one Percy has written showing an area close to where the attack occurred, but has never offered an explanation for this, but other inconsistencies cast doubt on his involvement.

Interestingly, a key piece of evidence in the case could have caught the culprit many years ago. The tragedy of this crime is that there was a DNA sample there was a sperm sample located on the clothing of one of the girls over time and this was years before the advent of DNA technology the sperm sample was mishandled and disappeared Christine and Maranne were murdered in broad daylight, more than 40 years ago, both were only 15 years old. Their gruesome deaths remain a mystery to this day. Just a year after the murders, Australia would be shaken by the disappearance of three siblings, the Bowmont children.

The disappearance of the Bourmont children in 1966 from a South Australian beach changed Australia changed the way Australians were parents from now on it was the end of innocence parents now kept a very close eye on their children Jane Anna and Grant Bowmont took a short bus ride to the beach one summer day but never returned home several witnesses claim to have seen the brothers on the beach with a man the fact that there were thousands of people on a public beach it was over 100° On the old Fahrenheit scale the children appeared to be playing with a man between 35 and 45 years old 6 feet tall, thin but athletic and tanned.

The children played with him as if they knew him. He gained his trust very, very quickly. However, despite this detailed information, the children disappeared without a trace and no one has been held responsible for their disappearance. Several people have become suspects over the years. Could Derek Percy have been the kidnapper when Derek Percy was interviewed about the murder of Ivon Tui? He spoke to a school friend who was a police officer at the time when Derek Percy's childhood best friend, Ronald Anderson, joined the group. police officer just months before Percy was arrested for murder in 1969, Ron Anderson asked him about a series of other unsolved crimes when asked about the Burmont children.

Percy was evasive and said that I was there at the time, whether I was or not, or yes or no, he was just saying that to throw Anderson off, you don't know, during the course of that summer, the children had been in the beach several times with his father, his father had gone to work the day before and left them. go to the beach, so it wasn't unusual that even though the kids were only 9, 7, and four, they were alone on the beach and took the bus home alone, so this person who drove them from the beach public had gained their trust within an hour or two or perhaps over the course of several visits to that beach during that summer, but the man described by the Witnesses was Derek Percy, middle-aged, 17 at the time despite several tracks over the years.

The fate of the three brothers remains a mystery all these years as South Australian police still keep the case open just 9 months after the disappearance of the Bowmont children Alan Redston was brutally murdered in Cambra Allan had been tied up with rope and strangled and his body dumped in a local Creek, when the police tried to rule Percy out of that crime, it was discovered that he lived 400 kilometers away, in Mount Beauty, they thought he might have been in Cbera visiting an aunt, so which they couldn't rule out as well. One of the restraints the boy had on his body was a school tie and because Percy was a school boy, that was also a red flag, but as the investigations continued, the chances of Percy The perpetrator seemed less likely, it appears that there were a number of bullying incidents over several weeks in which children had been tied up, the Australian Federal Police are very confident that they interviewed the person responsible for Allen's death in the first days of that investigation and that these incidents of harassment were related to his body, not affected post mortem like Percy's other victim.

The Australian Federal Police continues that stance to this day. The violent murder and mutilation of Simon Brooke two years later, however, has some characteristics of a crime Percy might have committed. Simon Brooke was a shocking case three years ago. An old boy playing in the front yard of his family's house on a winter Saturday disappears. His body is found the next day in an adjacent field. He had been strangled and mutilated postmortem with a razor blade. Wayne Newman was able to work. learned that Percy had been in the Navy, had been a sailor and was stationed in Sydney and his journey to the naval depot from his accommodation took him practically past Simon Brook's house, he said he was driving with his brother on Simon's day. kidnapping and murder on that same line, near the same railway cut.

Australia's most famous child

killer

, Derek Percy, may have been jailed since 1970 after the death of Ivon Tui, but officials fear he may be responsible for many other unsolved kidnappings and murders across the country and The Horrific Murder by Simon Brooke in Sydney points to Percy in more ways than one. I discovered that there was a boy's house several blocks away from where Simon Brook disappeared. It is very possible that the person responsible was looking for victims among the children. When he found little Simon Brook playing in his front yard, the reason why Derek Percy has been associated with this crime is because he was stationed in Sydney at the time.

Wayne Newman and his Victoria Police colleagues spent years reviewing Simon's tragic case. and built a convincing bond with Percy, a very detailed inquest report was presented to the coroner. The coroner recommended that report to the New South Wales Director of Public Prosecutions, the Public Prosecution Service, and a decision was made not to proceed because there was insufficient evidence. bring criminal charges in relation to that matter, so it was certainly a case where we thought that Mr. Percy was strongly linked to Percy was a guy considered unfit to plead, no matter what you find out about him, he won't be charged , Simon.

Brook's family has had to endure the rest of their lives with uncertainty. In a recent statement, his father Donald expressed his opinion just 3 months after the murder of Simon Brooke. Linda Stillwell, 7 years old, is kidnapped just meters from our home in St. Kilder. connects Derek Percy with this crime, we are talking about a very naive place in the 1960s children were allowed to go out to play and return at dusk and the independent little girl went to the beach to play like many children did, but she didn't return after playing with her brothers. Linda decided to stay near the beach while her brother and sister went home.When they returned to find her she had disappeared.

Linda St looks a lot like the Bemont children. We do not have a crime scene. We do not have forensic analysis, we have one or two witnesses, we have no suspicion that Linda disappeared the year before Ivón was killed. One of the ideas was that Linda had potentially drowned, so the investigators actually looked at the tides and currents, hired the appropriate experts. In relation to that, an online search was carried out to Brighton, they had the army involved, they probed the ground, in the sand, just to see if a little girl had been swept away.

The detectives went to Todo's door. Really just to see if she had escaped or not, if she got into some kind of confined space that she couldn't get out of and died there, they went to an extraordinary length to address. All ships supplied in uh. St Kild was in the bay at the time to see if Linda had been taken aboard any of those ships, despite all this the police officers at the time drew a blank. Derek Percy was not even known to Victoria Police or any other law enforcement. law enforcement organization at that stage, then, she certainly would not have been a person of interest at any time when Linda originally disappeared, but years later, when Wayne and his colleagues opened the files once again, they detected alarming factors that could make Percy a suspect, what concerned the investigating detectives regarding him was that he was on leave at the time he was in the area in which he was active.

He committed the crime against Ion Tuille only 8 months later so he had a high propensity to be involved in that case a couple of witnesses said they saw a dark skinned man who could have been Percy, we are not sure, it certainly matches Percy's height. He had that haggard face when he was initially asked about Linda after she killed Ivon Tui. Percy alludes to being in the area at the time Ron Anerson L Percy made comments like "He drove through Sin Kilda the day Linda"disappeared um and Ron followed that up and said, well you know, you killed her and he said possibly , but I can't remember it and I subsequently interviewed him and he certainly hasn't made that admission, however, among Derek Percy's belongings discovered in the Melbourne maps that the police locked up are the ones you used to use.

Yes, certain areas in particular in St Kilda, where Linda was last seen, appear to have been drawn, but when asked, Percy didn't shed any light on why you remember. By making the marks on the map, the case will only be closed if the person responsible is charged in court or if we find some of Linda's remains, the girl's family has fought for Percy to be forced to testify for many. years at one point, resulting in a surprising story that made headlines. Percy was pursuing costs against Jan Priest for the court action and in the end fact is stranger than fiction sometimes and we wonder if we have a system of justice but the courts found that we do.

Hee priest, this grieving mother owed Derek Percy, an imprisoned man, a murderer, around $80,000 in legal costs and, fortunately, the Attorney General of the State of Victoria, Robert Clark, intervened in the incredible action that never stopped the family struggle, but this attempt to claim that money is not the only thing about Percy's imprisonment that will anger the public because he was charged with the murder of Ion Twoe, but was not convicted and then, under Commonwealth law, can continue to receive a naval pension. to be paid something on the order of $300,000 more in taxpayer-funded retirement. He's been using this money to invest in U-shares, coins, stamp collections, this sort of thing over the years.

Percy has tried several appeals to be granted a minimum. Tariff, all of which has failed. Linda Stillwell's family continued to work with Victoria Police to push for an investigation in 2009. Relentless determination to force him to provide information they feel he has known forever in recent times. Percy had tried to be removed from the criminal justice system. from Port Philip Prison to Thomas Emling Psychiatric Hospital and I'm sure Percy sees his way out of jail because he can argue that he has been convicted of insanity and that he should be confined in a mental institution, not a Current Gile.

Since his original conviction, there has been much debate about whether Derek Percy suffers from a psychiatric illness or not. I don't think he's crazy. Yes I think he is. He has almost all the memories. I'm sure there are murderers who. suppressing facts and memories to mentally survive life themselves for murderers like Derek Percy there may be an ability to suppress memories in order to live with themselves and surprisingly when recently tested once again the findings were

chilling

, the courts here have discovered that in modern psychiatry evidence that you do not have an identifiable psychiatric illness in a single step.

Percy was issued a certificate in connection with the investigation into the death of Linda Stillwell. If he revealed something, it would not be used against him, he decided to remain silent and thus the Enigma. Around this brutal murderer of children continues. I don't think he's necessarily hiding those issues, maybe he just refuses to let them, but there are telling things in his diaries that indicate there's still a glimmer that he was a coward who prayed for as many children as he could. It should not be forgotten because we need to learn from people like this to make our society safer.

It is much better to be proactive and preventative. We can only hope that there is only one person like Derek and that there are no others like him. He is a murderer, we already know how many times we still don't want to make any more comments, Mr. Py, no.