Linda Stilwell one of nine child murders sex monster Derek Percy is suspected of committing
DEPRAVED sex monster Derek Percy is suspected of murdering as many as nine children. And his crimes continue to torment the innocent years after his death.
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MURDER victim Linda Stilwell’s sister Karen has absolutely no reason to blame herself for the death of her younger sibling — but 50 years on and she still does.
Linda didn’t arrive home on the afternoon of August 10, 1968, so her mother sent Karen, then aged 11, out to look for her.
Presuming seven-year-old Linda was just playing with friends and had forgotten how late it was getting; something she had done in the past, Karen didn’t actually search for her sister and just went for a walk before coming home to say she couldn’t find her.
Even if Karen had done as her mother told her she wouldn’t have found Linda as, tragically, she was long gone by that time.
DRUG LORD’S INCREDIBLE PROPERTY EMPIRE
Linda never came home and her body has never been found.
It wasn’t until 36 years later that the Stilwell family got confirmation that evil child abducting murder Derek Ernest Percy had snatched Linda and killed her.
There is a plaque marking the spot on the St Kilda foreshore where Linda was taken.
With no grave to visit, Stilwell family members yesterday gathered at the plaque to commemorate the 50th anniversary of the loss of their loved one.
The Leave A Light On organisation, set up to help relatives of missing persons, used the anniversary to appeal to its supporters around Australia to light a candle in Linda’s memory and to post messages of support for the Stilwell family on its Facebook page.
Also to mark yesterday’s anniversary, the Herald Sun spoke to Linda’s mother, Jean Priest, Linda’s sister, Karen Stilwell, and Wayne Newman, the dogged Victoria Police detective whose cold case investigation led to an inquest finding in 2014 that Percy did it.
Killer’s secrets taken to the grave
Percy, who joined the Navy in 1967, died of natural causes on July 24, 2013, at the age of 64 without admitting he murdered Linda or revealing where he disposed of her body — despite Detective Inspector Newman’s repeated and determined efforts to get a confession from the terminally ill paedophile.
One of those final attempts was during a video taped interview Det-Insp Newman and Deputy State Coroner Iain West did by Percy’s hospital bedside just a few days before Percy died.
Det-Insp Newman believes that until the day he died Percy continued to have a glimmer of hope of one day being declared fit to be released — and that hope kept him from admitting to anything that might keep him incarcerated.
Karen Stilwell yesterday said not knowing exactly what happened to Linda was bad enough, but never having found her body was far worse.
She and her mother and siblings were praying that Percy on his deathbed would finally have the common decency to say what he had done with Linda’s body.
Insp Newman had the same hope, which is why he repeatedly visited Percy to put that question to him right up until the day Percy died.
“We were so angry when Percy died without making any admissions or saying anything about Linda’s body,” Karen Stilwell said.
“We weren’t upset that he was dead, far from it, but upset that he was the link to finding out what happened to Linda and where her body is. That link died with Percy.
“All we wanted by that stage were for Linda’s remains to be found.
“We have to go to a plaque to lay flowers because we’ve got nowhere else to go.
“I have always felt like Linda is not at rest. I just feel that she’s where he put her and not where she needs to be. She needs to be where her family want her to be and we fear that will never happen now Percy is dead.”
‘The inner me … still feels guilty’
Asked yesterday to cast her mind back to the last time she saw Linda, tears welled up in Karen Stilwell’s eyes.
She explained that she and Linda and their brother Gary, who was 10 at the time, had left their Middle Park home to play near St Kilda’s Luna Park.
“We watched some boys fishing and then after a few hours I said it was time to go home,” Karen Stilwell said.
“They didn’t want to go so I said I wasn’t getting into trouble so I went home and later Gary came back and said he got separated from Linda.
“Mum sent me to go looking for Linda, but I only went halfway, thinking she would come back home because she used to stay with friends and in the past we had had to call police out. She was a quite adventurous little girl.
“Mum sent Gary out as well; he also came back and said he couldn’t find her.
“The inner me, the child part, still feels guilty that I didn’t search properly because I have grown up with that. It’s just a part of me now.
“But the adult part of me can see that no it wasn’t mum’s fault, it wasn’t my fault and it wasn’t Gary’s fault. It was the fault of the person who took her.”
Linda’s mother, Jean Priest, also scoured the streets looking for Linda after she failed to come home on the afternoon of August 10, 1968.
“I saw an ambulance taking somebody and I ran to it because I thought it was Linda, but it wasn’t,” she said yesterday.
“It would have been better if it had been because finding her injured then would have been far better than still not having found her 50 years later.
“I have accepted it was Derek Percy who took Linda because of the evidence gathered by detective Wayne Newman, who did a superb job. He was like a dog with a bone, he just never gave up.
“I can’t say I hate Percy because hating is not in my nature, but with Percy it’s very close to that.
“Linda was so bright; she was always getting into trouble because she would go off with her friends.
“That’s why we weren’t too concerned initially when she didn’t come home, but as it got past dark we knew something was wrong and called police.
“Linda would talk to anybody. There was a seat we used to walk past and she would sit on it and chat to whoever passed. It would have been very easy for Derek Percy to persuade her to go with him.”
Derek Percy’s other suspected victims
Det-Insp Newman has no doubt Percy murdered Linda Stilwell and that he is a legitimate suspect in seven other child murders.
Yvonne Tuohy
Percy himself has admitted the 1969 abduction and murder of Yvonne Tuohy, a 12-year-old girl he snatched at knifepoint when he was just a few weeks away from his 21st birthday, 11 months after he took Linda.
Following being found not guilty on the grounds of insanity and ordered to be detained indefinitely at the Governor’s Pleasure, Percy became Victoria’s longest serving prisoner not convicted of a crime.
He remained incarcerated from the day he was arrested over Yvonne Tuohy’s 1969 murder until the day he died of lung cancer 44 years and four days later.
The other seven child murders Percy is a suspect in are:
Marianne Schmidt and Christine Sharrock
Both aged 15, their mutilated bodies were found at Wanda Beach in New South Wales on January 12, 1965. Det-Insp Newman identified multiple similarities between the injuries inflicted on the two girls and the circumstances of their deaths and those relating to Yvonne Tuohy’s murder.
The Beaumont children
Jane, 9, Arnna, 7 and Grant, 4, left the Beaumont family home in Adelaide on January 26, 1966, and caught a bus to Glenelg Beach and disappeared.
Their bodies have never been found. Percy told a school friend he was at a beach in Adelaide the day the Beaumont children were snatched.
Allen Redston
Allen, 6, was found on September 28, 1966, in a creek bed in the Canberra suburb of Curtin. Police were told a teenage boy had been seen in the area and had been trying to tie up boys and asphyxiate them with a plastic bag.
One of the boys described his attacker’s push bike as having handlebars turned up like rams horns. Percy owned such a bike at the time and a green and gold neck tie found at the murder scene was the same colour and appearance as Percy’s school tie at the time. A police Identikit image of the offender who had been attacking boys had a striking resemblance to a photo of Percy from his 1966 school year book.
Simon Brook
Simon, 3, disappeared from his home in Glebe, NSW, on May 18, 1968. His mutilated body was found the next day. A witness saw a man holding hands with Simon and walking away with him. The Identikit image of that man strongly resembles how Percy looked at the time.
Writings and drawings done by Percy, and later seized by police after his 1969 arrest over the Yvonne Tuohy murder, accurately described the horrific injuries suffered by Simon. Percy later told a friend he had twice driven through Glebe on the day of the murder and that each time he turned off at the railway cutting where Simon’s body was found. Percy also told police he could have killed Simon but couldn’t remember.
Did Derek Percy kill the Beaumont children?
Having spent the best part of a decade working on the Linda Stilwell case and investigating Percy, Det-Insp Newman is as sure as he can be, with the evidence he has, that as well as murdering Linda, Percy is also responsible for the murder of Simon Brook.
He considers Percy is a strong suspect for the two Wanda Beach murders and the abduction and killing of Allen Redston.
While he can’t discount Percy as being responsible for taking the three Beaumont children, and he remains on the list of suspects for it, his gut is telling him Percy wasn’t responsible for that notorious crime.
Percy has a history of either denying he was involved in the many child abductions he has been questioned about, or using the old “I can’t remember” line.
How the killer was caught
He only confessed to Yvonne Tuohy’s 1969 murder because he was caught literally red-handed washing her blood off his clothes just hours after butchering the schoolgirl.
That Percy was caught so quickly is down to the bravery of Yvonne’s friend Shane Spiller, also 12 at the time Percy tried to abduct he and Yvonne from Ski Beach in Warneet.
Shane had a small tomahawk that he’d brought with him to chop wood and when Percy grabbed the screaming Yvonne he ran at Percy brandishing the tomahawk in the hope Percy would let to go of his playmate.
Faced with the knife-wielding Percy advancing towards him, Shane realised his tiny weapon was no match so he fled to get help, taking note of the car Percy bundled Yvonne into as he did so.
His description to police of Percy and his car, particularly his memory that the car had Navy stickers on it, led police to HMAS Cerberus, the closest Naval base to Warneet and where Percy was stationed.
Shane pointed out the cream Datsun in the Cerberus car park, which led them to Percy’s billet, where they found him trying to wash blood off his clothes.
A search of his car found the bloodied knife he had used to kill Yvonne and Percy later led police to where he had concealed her body and re-enacted for them how he hid the murder weapon in his car seat.
What made Derek Percy a monster?
You would have to think something traumatic happened to Percy as a child to turn him into the sexually perverted murderous mutilating monster he became.
One clue is information police received that Percy’s grandmother would sometimes lock a young Percy in a room and hog-tie his feet and hands behind him to punish him.
When the body of suspected Percy victim Allen Redston was found it was bound in the same way Percy’s grandmother had hogtied her troublesome grandson.
There were other early warning signs that all was not right with the young Percy.
“When Percy was suspected of interfering with some girls up near Mt Beauty in Victoria and Khancoban in NSW that was brought to his parents’ attention,” Det-Insp Newman said.
“So they took him to the local doctor and just dropped him off and said ‘go and see the doctor’, he was still a teenager then.
“We couldn’t find any other intervention or support for Percy whatsoever.”
Det-Insp Newman said Mt Beauty and Khancoban residents were interviewed during his probe into Percy’s background and they reported a number of disturbing incidents involving a young Percy, including the stealing of women’s underwear from clothes lines.
“That was the start and then there were burglaries. One family had all their young girl’s dresses stolen,” he said.
“They were later found in a suitcase with dolls and images of women that had been mutilated with razor blades.
“He would have been about 15 at this stage.”
Det-Insp Newman said without the luxury of a crystal ball it was impossible to know if the later child abductions and murders would have been prevented if Percy had received the professional help he obviously needed from a young age.
“But potentially, absolutely that is the case,” he said.
“We had that pattern of disturbing behaviour. One of the most disturbing and significant incidents was in late December of 1964 at a gorge.
“A couple of his school friends observed his behaviour. He was wearing a women’s nightie and he started to slash that nightie off his own body with a knife.
“Only six weeks later and you have the Wanda Beach murders and there are a lot of similarities there.
“When we searched Percy’s storage locker in South Melbourne in 2007 we found a drawing done by him showing a male standing over two females being stabbed and sexually abused in a way which is consistent with the Wanda Beach murders.
“The similarities were striking.”
Prominent forensic psychologist Professor James Ogloff assessed Percy on three occasions at Ararat prison in 2002 and 2003.
Rejecting Percy’s constant argument that he couldn’t remember whether or not he had committed various murders, Professor Ogloff said Percy had no difficulty with either his short or long term memory.
“His reliance on having no memory of events is a mechanism he uses to attempt to avoid admitting events or discussing them,” he said.
Professor Ogloff gave evidence in the Supreme Court during a hearing to assess Percy’s suitability for release that Percy suffered from a very rare and serious form of sadistic sexual paraphilia and that Percy had the propensity to commit acts of torture, sexual assault and killing of young children from about 1965 until his arrest for the murder of Yvonne Tuohy in 1969.
Sadistic sexual paraphilia is a condition in which a person’s sexual gratification is dependent on engaging in deviant sexual behaviour that causes pain and humiliation and is unusual and extreme.
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