Child killer seeks $80,000 from dead girl’s mum Case revives horror of Cerberus rating who killed Warneet girl
The face of a “The Spook”: Derek Percy last year at age 62.
By Mike Hast COMMUNITY anger is mounting over child killer Derek Percy winning Supreme Court approval for 72-yearold pensioner and grandmother Jean Priest to pay for his legal costs for a failed court case. Last week Ms Priest lost her bid to force Percy, a former naval rating based at HMAS Cerberus in Crib Point, to give evidence about her daughter Linda Stilwell, 7, who was abducted from St Kilda in August 1968. Her body has never been found. Police have long suspected Percy, known as “The Spook”, was involved in her disappearance and he admitted to one officer that he was in St Kilda on the day she went missing. In a police interview in 1969, when asked if he killed Linda Stilwell, Percy said “possibly, I don’t remember a thing about it”. Last week the court ordered that Ms Priest must pay Percy’s legal costs of $32,247 for the first stage of the failed court case. The day after, in an affidavit filed in the Court of Appeal, Percy argued through his lawyer that Ms Priest should pay another $48,700 as security in her final appeal to make him answer questions under oath. Ms Priest faces possibly bankruptcy over the two claims. Percy remains in jail indefinitely for the 1969 killing of Yvonne Tuohy, 12, of Warneet, for which he was found not guilty by reason of insanity. He is the only Victorian prisoner held at the “Governor’s pleasure”, now at Port Phillip Prison in Laverton North, and has never been charged with any other crime. Percy was based at Cerberus when he was arrested just hours after Yvonne Tuohy’s kidnapping. Her mutilated body was found in bushland at Devon Meadows, a short drive from Warneet. Police acted on information from Shane Spiller, a 12-year-old boy with Yvonne at Warneet’s Ski Beach in the coastal reserve between Blind Bight and Warneet on an isolated part of Rutherford Inlet, which flows into Western Port near Tooradin. The boy escaped from the kidnapper’s clutches by brandishing his tomahawk. Leading calls for the state govern-
ment to help Jean Priest is Opposition Leader Daniel Andrews, Steve Medcraft of People Against Lenient Sentencing and prominent Crime Victims’ Support Association spokesman Noel McNamara, who also says Percy should pay his own bills. Percy has amassed more than $300,000 during his 41 years behind bars. Although he was with the Navy for only 20 months, he continues to collect ComSuper payments of up to $20,000 a year, based on 60 per cent of a recruit’s annual salary. In 2007, police found 35 cardboard boxes and tea chests filled with material from Percy in a South Melbourne storage depot. They alleged the material included clippings on sex crimes, stories Percy had written on how to commit child abductions and items that appeared to implicate him in unsolved murders. There was also a valuable stamp collection. Police discovered Percy had leased storage units since 1970, had $300,000 in the bank and had successfully invested in gold. He had used part of his income to rent the storage unit. The murder of Yvonne Tuohy became Warneet’s dark secret. It was only discussed in whispers behind closed doors. Residents who remember the event have died, moved away or refuse to talk about it. The murder brought shame on the Navy and HMAS Cerberus, and changed forever the life of the boy who was with Yvonne, the daughter of the owners of Warneet’s one general store. On that fateful day, the day US astronaut Neil Armstrong walked on the moon, the two 12-year-olds had headed off on an adventure, walking about two kilometres from the village through the bush reserve that separates Warneet Rd from the upper reaches of Rutherford Inlet. In Australia it was still a time when parents allowed their children to go adventuring on their own, a time when child stealing was virtually unknown, although the 1960 kidnapping and murder of eight-year-old Sydney boy Graeme Thorne, whose parents had won 100,000 pounds ($5 million in today’s value) in a Sydney Opera House lottery, was still remembered. It was a crime that caused massive
shock around the nation and overseas, and was the first known kidnapping for ransom in Australian history. It became world famous as one of the first times a crime had been solved by forensic investigation. The convicted killer, Stephen Leslie Bradley, died of a heart attack while playing tennis in Goulburn jail on 6 October 1968, aged 42. Victoria’s famous Faraday State School $1 million kidnapping, where a 20-year-old female teacher, Mary Gibbs, and her six girl pupils were taken at gunpoint from their tiny schoolhouse north-west of Melbourne, was still three years away. The kidnapping, dubbed “Australia’s crime of the century”, had a happy ending as Ms Gibbs and her pupils escaped from a van and police arrested Edwin John Eastwood and Robert Clyde Boland, who were sentenced to long terms in jail (although Eastwood later escaped and committed a second bush school kidnapping in 1977). Shane Spiller and Yvonne Tuohy were playing on Ski Beach when a strange man approached them and seized the girl. When Percy attempted to grab Spiller, the boy threatened him with his tomahawk. Spiller ran for his life through the bush and raised the alarm when he arrived breathless in the coastal village. Police were called and raced to Warneet. Spiller told them Percy had taken the girl away in an orange station wagon. He gave detectives a drawing of a sticker he’d seen on its rear window, a Royal Australian Navy insignia. Police drove to Cerberus and found Percy in the laundry, trying to wash Yvonne’s blood from his clothes. Shane Spiller was haunted by the incident for the rest of his life and disappeared from Wyndham, a small town on the NSW south coast near Merimbula, in 2002 at the age of 44. He had started drinking at age 14, his school results deteriorated, he fell out with his parents, left school and went walkabout from the family home in Armadale. A neighbour in Wyndham years later described him as “the most paranoid person I’ve ever met. Shane suffered all his life with post-traumatic stress disorder. There was this overwhelming dark cloud over his life and he was basically self-medicating with drugs and alcohol”. Police claim Percy ruined Spiller’s life. Percy has since been linked to the disappearances and deaths of eight other children in Victoria, NSW, ACT and South Australia, including the three Beaumont children, who were abducted from an Adelaide beach in 1966 and never found. Detectives from four police forces have been investigating cold case child murders for four years in an operation codenamed Heats. Percy has been questioned about: The murders of 15-year-olds Christine Sharrock and Marianne Schmidt on Sydney’s Wanda Beach in January 1965, while Percy, then 17, was holidaying nearby with his parents. The disappearance of the Beaumont children (Jane, 9, Arnna, 7, and Grant, 4), abducted from Glenelg Beach near Adelaide on Australia Day in 1966, which spawned books, documentaries and the visit of a Dutch clairvoyant, Gerard Croiset, who said their bodies were buried under an Adelaide warehouse. The site was dug up but nothing was found. The case burned a hole in
the national psyche and is discussed to this day. Percy admitted to police he was in Adelaide at the time. The murder of Allen Redston, 6, in Canberra in September 1966. The boy left his home to go to a nearby milk bar for ice-cream. The following day his body was discovered concealed in reeds by a creek. He had been hog-tied and had plastic wrapped around his throat. When Percy was questioned in 1969, he confirmed taking a family holiday in Canberra that year. The death of Simon Brook, 3, in Sydney in May 1968, taken from the yard of his home in Glebe. By this time Percy had left school and joined the Navy. He lived at the naval base at Garden Island and commuted through Glebe to the dock. The disappearance of Linda Stilwell. Percy was subpoenaed to appear in court in late 2009 to give evidence about Linda Stilwell, who was last seen playing on St Kilda foreshore on 10 August 1968. Percy had admitted to police he drove through St Kilda that day but, as with all of his interviews with the law, says he cannot remember killing anyone. He has maintained this line through 40 years of interviews. Linda Stilwell’s brother Gary has reportedly said he truly believes Percy murdered his sister and Stilwell wants to eyeball Percy in court. The cold case homicide unit first reviewed the Stilwell file seven years ago to prepare the inquest brief. In April 2007, Howard government veterans affairs minister Bruce Bill-
son, the Dunkley MP based in Frankston, promised to investigate the payments to Percy. But the Coalition lost power later that year and the money has continued to flow. Last week, Linda’s mother fought back tears after Supreme Court Justice Iain Ross ruled that Percy, 62, did not have to give evidence to answer questions on his alleged involvement in Linda’s abduction. Percy instructed his lawyers to pursue the Stilwell family for money he spent on barristers defending his fight against self-incrimination in the Stilwell mystery. Deputy State Coroner Iain West last year ruled Percy should not give evidence to an inquest on Linda as his apparent psychosis in the late 1960s meant he would be unreliable. An appeal to Justice Ross had sought a judicial review to overturn Mr West’s decision and force Percy to give evidence and for evidence of five other child abductions and murders to be considered. Ms Priest has one more attempt to force Percy to talk. Then she and her family have to face the harsh reality of the child killer’s $80,000 legal bill claim. Members of the public have offered her financial support, but the real issue is a legal system that has allowed this awful case and a state government that so far has remained mute. Premier Ted Baillieu and AttorneyGeneral Robert Clark have refused to discuss the case, despite their “tough on crime” stance prior to the November election.
Faces of a child killer: (Top): Derek Percy (inset) after his arrest in 1969 for the murder of Yvonne Tuohy and the boy, Shane Spiller with his tomahawk, who helped police find the Royal Australian Navy recruit at HMAS Cerberus. (Bottom): Derek Percy when he appeared in court in the early 2000s.
Western Port News 1 February 2011
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