Derek Percy

Derek Ernest Percy (15 September 1948 – 23 July 2013) was an Australian serial killer and convicted child killer who was also a person of interest linked to the mysterious deaths and disappearances of multiple children in the 1960s, including the Beaumont disappearances and the Wanda Beach murders.

Early life Derek Percy was born on 15 September 1948 in Strathfield, New South Wales, the eldest of four sons of parents Ernest and Elaine Percy. Percy's father, a sailing enthusiast, had been a New South Wales railway electrician before taking a job with the State Electricity Commission in Victoria, and moving to Chelsea in 1954, then to Warrnambool in 1957, and to Mount Beauty, near Bright, in 1961.

Percy began to attract the attention of authorities in late 1964, when he started stealing and wearing female underwear and dresses and mutilating dolls with knives and razor blades. In 1965, the family relocated to Khancoban in New South Wales (their sixth move in twelve years) where Percy began writing down bizarre and violent sexual fantasies. Spiller, however, was able to describe to police the abductor and his vehicle, an orange Datsun station wagon with a navy sticker on the back window and bumper. In 1970, he was found not guilty, by reason of insanity, of the murder and remanded indefinitely.

Percy repeatedly stated that he could not remember whether or not he had committed any further crimes.

Wanda Beach case (11 January 1965) – Percy was known to be visiting his friend's grandparents in Ryde at the time, Based on identikits, witnesses recalled seeing a young man resembling Percy talking with the two girls on a train and at Wanda Beach, and he was considered a leading suspect for the murders by the police. Beaumont case (26 January 1966) – Percy admitted to being at Glenelg Beach in Adelaide on a family trip on the day of the Beaumont children's disappearance, but denied any involvement. who disappeared while playing at the St Kilda foreshore in Melbourne. At the time, Percy had been transferred to Sydney, was on leave,

Media Alan Whiticker (2008) Derek Percy: Australian Psycho Debi Marshall (2013) Lambs to the Slaughter Crimes That Shook Australia (2014) Derek Percy Radford University - Derek Ernest Percy “The Ghost, Spook, Phantom” (PDF)