Networked Knowledge – Media Report

[This edited version of the report has been prepared by Dr Robert N Moles]

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On 30 August 2007 NineMSN / AAP reported “Possible lead in Beaumont children case”

They said a cache of documents appears to link a convicted child killer to a string of unsolved cases from the 1960s, including Sydney's Wanda beach murders and the disappearance of the Beaumont children. Detectives will on Thursday seek a court order to question a long-serving prisoner, Derek Ernest Percy, after police found thousands of documents he concealed in a South Melbourne self-storage unit, Fairfax reports.

Police obtained a warrant to seize 35 boxes of files, clippings and handwritten diaries that Percy hid in the unit, which he has rented for 20 years. The material - packed in tea chests and cardboard boxes - includes newspaper articles on sex crimes, pictures of children, a video with a rape theme and handwritten stories on fresh sex offences involving abduction and torture. Percy, 58, is currently in Victoria's Port Philip Prison and is considered one of Australia's most violent sex criminals.

He was ordered to remain in custody indefinitely after he was found unfit to plead on the grounds of insanity to the murder of 12-year-old Yvonne Tuohy at Warneet beach, south-west of Melbourne, in 1969. He is also a suspect in the murders of Christine Sharrock and Marianne Schmidt on Sydney's Wanda Beach in January 1965; the disappearance of the Beaumont children, Jane, 9, Arnna, 7, and Grant, 4, in Adelaide in January 1966; the murder of Allen Redston, a six-year-old grabbed in Canberra in September 1966; Simon Brook, 3, killed in Sydney in May 1968; and Linda Stilwell, 7, abducted from the St Kilda foreshore in August 1968.

Police are expected to apply on Thursday under section 464 (B) of the Crimes Act to remove Percy from prison for questioning, Fairfax reports. It is understood he will be questioned over unsolved murders by detectives from Victoria and NSW. Police said Percy has moved material from prison since the early 1970s, first to a rented lock-up at Pascoe Vale then to the South Melbourne unit.

The documents include material that police believe may implicate Percy in the murders of Linda Stilwell and Christine Sharrock and Marianne Schmidt. They have found a 1978 street directory with a line drawn through the St Kilda Pier where Linda Stilwell was abducted and a pornographic lesbian cartoon on which Percy wrote the word "Wanda" across the top. When he was arrested in 1969, police found Percy had maps of the areas where Linda Stilwell, Christine Sharrock, Marianne Schmidt and Simon Brook lived or were murdered.

Source: 30 August 2007 NineMSN / AAP “Possible lead in Beaumont children case”

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