Lambs to the Slaughter

by Debi Marshall

  'I know. I just can't remember.'

  Anderson plugs on. 'Well look, Derek, I'll ask you about some of the ones that I know about. You don't have to say anything. If you remember I will jot it down and it could be used in court. I will try and get it heard all at the same time.'

  Percy nods, staring at Anderson with bleary eyes. 'I simply cannot remember.'

  Anderson draws his notebook out of the hat and takes up a pen. 'What about Linda Stilwell, she went missing in St Kilda?'

  'Yes, I drove through St Kilda that day,' he blurts. 'I had been at Cerberus in the afternoon and was driving along the Esplanade on the way to the White Ensign Club for some drinks.'

  Anderson's mind is racing. 'Did you kill Linda Stilwell?'

  'Possibly. But I don't remember a thing about it.'

  The White Ensign Club. Based at South Melbourne and known to sailors as 'Screamers', it has earned its well-deserved nickname because people who drink there are always screaming drunk. Frequented by people sailors describe as 'wharf rats and navy molls', it is a dive, a rat-hole where a bed costs 50 cents a night and a brawl is even cheaper. Percy drinks very little and doesn't enjoy the company of sailors. Why would he stay at the Ensign Club unless he was in the vicinity of St Kilda and needed a bed, or needed an alibi for his movements? Anderson draws a breath. 'What about Simon Brook in Sydney?'

  Percy nods recognition. 'I was driving my brother Lachlan to work that day. We turned off the railway cutting where he was found. I came back home that way.'

  'So you drove past the same spot in Sydney on the day that Simon Brook was killed?'

  'Yes.'

  Anderson recalls the newspaper reports – who could forget? – about this tiny child whose mutilated body was found on 19 May the year before in a deserted, derelict block not far from his home in the Sydney suburb of Glebe. 'Do you remember if you killed him?' His heart is beating faster than he would like and he hopes Percy can't tell.

  'I wish I could,' Percy mumbles, staring again at the floor. 'I might have. I don't remember.' It seems impossible. How could he not remember such a thing? Police training has taught Anderson to stay calm, to return to ask questions another way. He stays on the subject. 'But clearly you remember being in the area at the time?'

  'Yes.'

  And now Anderson turns to the biggest mystery in Australian criminal history: the abduction of the Beaumonts. The missing children who haunt the nation; the children who never came home.

  'What do you know about the Beaumont children in South Australia?'

  'I was in Adelaide at the time.'

  Anderson can no longer hide his shock, reeling at Percy's admission. 'You were what? You remember being in Adelaide when they went missing?'

  'Yes.'

  'Whereabouts were you when they disappeared?'

  'Near the beach. But nothing more.'

  Anderson wants to talk further, to elicit details about these children, but the ruddy-faced watchhouse-keeper is throwing his weight around, interrupting Anderson with a curt warning that he has no business being in Percy's cell and that he needs to get out. Anderson tries to stand his ground, to explain that he is on Homicide Squad business, but the keeper stands sour-faced in the cell doorway, arms crossed, adamant he must leave. Later the detectives confirm his authority to talk to Percy, but when he returns to the cell the momentum is gone. The conversation between the former old friends is now stilted, awkward, as if a curtain had come down.

  Anderson tries hard to return to the subject. 'Just tell me one thing, Derek. Did you kill the Beaumont children?'

  And still Percy stares at the floor. 'I could have but I don't remember a single thing, Ron.'

  'But you admit that you remember being at three separate locations at the times and days that children were killed?'

  'Yes. But I cannot remember what happened.'

  There is no more to say. 'Look, Derek, I have to go for now. If you do remember anything further, give me a call. I think it is in your best interests, rather than police finding out after your release.'

  'Yes, Ron, I understand,' Percy says, bleakly. 'I just wish I could remember.'

  Anderson walks out of the cell, shaken and stunned. 'I think,' he says to Bill Hutton and Kim White, two former school acquaintances also waiting to speak to detectives about Percy, 'they will hang the bastard.'

  No official statement is taken after Anderson's interview, and no audio recording equipment is used. All that is noted of the exchange is a hurried scribble in the notebook that Anderson has in his police hat, tossed in amongst the reams of other material on the Tuohy case. Documentation reporting the original interview records and running sheets of Percy are kept but there is no record at all of Anderson's conversation with Percy. His recommendation to detectives that they speak with Hutton and White about Percy's behaviour at school is also dismissed out of hand. No one thinks it necessary, either, to do anything formal with the notes Anderson has taken, outlining the most difficult thirty minutes of his life.

  Senior government pathologist James McNamara, in the presence of Detective Robertson, carries out the post-mortem, detailing the injuries inflicted on Yvonne in the clinical language required of the coroner. Body stained with faeces. Rope tied so firmly around her wrist that the imprint is visible long after it is removed. Jaw flexible and mouth gapes when gag removed. He notes the smaller injuries, the indignities that make up the grim tapestry of her death: cuts, bruising and abrasions, ante- and post-mortem, to the cheek, shoulder, inner thigh and leg. Peritoneal cavity opened and loops of bowel protruding, jagged cuts inflicted by a knife or sharp instrument. Tissue severed to the cervical spine. A five-inch cut to the throat. Complete severing of the trachea, partial severing of the oesophagus. Hymen intact with well-defined bruise in lower right quadrant. Cause of death: asphyxiation and lacerations. Body: 4 feet, 10 inches. Weight: 75 pounds. Age: 12 years.

  McNamara shakes his head. In all his years as a medical practitioner and pathologist, he has never seen the likes of the injuries inflicted on this petite girl, who, at any stage following her abduction but particularly once her hands were tied behind her back, was powerless to defend herself against a grown man determined to kill her.

  9

  In clear, sloping handwriting, Shane Spiller outlines in a witness statement for police what he remembers of Yvonne's abduction. 'There was a couple of rugs in the very back of the car. I noticed a round shaped sticker on the car. It had NAVY written on it and there was an anchor on it and there was rope or chain attached to the anchor.' Two days after Yvonne's murder, he is standing in the auditorium at Russell Street police station, dwarfed by his father and Inspector Ford. There is a line of ten men in front of him, all of them similar in appearance and age. Percy stands fourth from the south end of the line.

  'About half past twelve last Sunday,' Inspector Ford says, 'you saw a man in a car near the beach at Warneet. You saw this man with the girl Tuohy. Will you have a look at these men and see if you can see that man you saw on Sunday?'

  'I can see him already,' Shane boasts.

  'Would you walk over closer and point to him?'

  Percy, pale and edgy, does not glance up as Shane marches towards him and points him out. No partitions separate them; the boy just walks right in front of him, levelling an accusatory finger.

  'That's the man.'

  'You mean the man in the blue coat?'

  'Yes.'

  Shane leaves the room while Ford offers Percy the opportunity to change his place in the line. He declines.

  Shane is proud of himself, puffing out his skinny chest and later bragging to Delaney that he was able to recognise Percy easily. 'I picked him out before the man who was in charge even talked to me,' he says. 'I was able to walk up and point him out.' He adds thoughtfully, 'I don't think that I will ever forget him.'

  Police recognise that without Shane Spiller's presence of mind in identifying Percy's car and the man himself, they might not have been able to make such a spee
dy arrest, if they made one at all. They reward him for his efforts with a bag of gifts and a sketched picture of him drawn by the police artist. Shane receives no counselling and returns to school the next day, trying to put the abduction and murder of his close friend and the face of Derek Percy – the man who had tried to capture him as well – out of his mind.

  Stunned by the savagery of Percy's writings, on 22 July – a day after his arrest – Porter, Delaney and Knight decide to speak to him about the shocking murder of Sydney toddler Simon Brook. One of the notes found in his naval locker describes in nauseating detail what he would do if he found a young boy. 'If it is a boy (under 3),' he has written, 'the penis is cut off.' Though the Brook murder was in the New South Wales Police jurisdiction, the Victorian detectives know only too well that this was exactly what had happened to that poor little boy. 'Let's talk to him,' Knight instructs. 'See what the sick bastard can tell us.'

  Percy sits desultorily on the plastic chair as they recommence the interview.

  'Do you know anything about the murder of Simon Brook, who was murdered at Glebe, Sydney?' Knight asks.

  He blinks slowly. 'I remember the name Simon Brook. There is a Shell training garage at Glebe. That's how I remember the suburb . . . I could have read about it in the paper.'

  'Did you kill Simon Brook?'

  'I could have.'

  I could have. Knight tries another tack, referencing the terrible grief that Simon's parents are experiencing. Percy is crying now but he doesn't change his position.

  They have heard enough. 'Get on to Homicide, New South Wales,' Knight instructs his detectives. 'They need to talk to this mongrel.'

  Police surgeon John Birrell takes blood from Percy at the Forensic Science Laboratory on 23 July. Percy strikes Birrell as nondescript: thin but fit, with signs of an early beard. He settles him in a chair and takes down perfunctory notes – childhood illnesses, his naval electrical course – before they move, casually, to talk of the murder.

  'Why do you do these things?' Birrell enquires.

  'Something comes over me.'

  'Do you get an erection while you are doing or writing these things?' 'Yes. Sometimes.' 'Do you know you're doing it and enjoy it?' 'I know I'm doing it and I suppose I probably do enjoy it.'

  Birrell charts Percy's physiological reactions as he speaks. Pupils: normal reaction to light. Reflexes: equal and active. Pulse rate: 70.

  'Why did you pick up the girl?' Birrell asks, as he loads his equipment back into its trays.

  'Because I just happened to be there,' Percy says. 'The idea just came over me.'

  'Where did you get the knife?'

  'It's part of my sailing gear.'

  'So when did you decide to kill the girl?'

  'Dunno,' he shrugs. 'Maybe the girl started struggling.'

  Pupils: normal. Reflexes: equal. Pulse rate: still 70.

  The Percy family comes under fire as soon as news reaches the press about the Tuohy murder. Few people know who they are, but those who do question Derek's mother, Elaine. 'Is that your son in the news?' they ask, and she reluctantly has to admit it. 'Yes,' she says. 'That's Derek.'

  Three months after Percy's arrest, police locate two sheets of plastic and five pairs of soiled underpants, each inside the other, at Devon Meadows, tossed aside in the bush. A pair of frilly ladies' knickers is on the outside of the bundle of underpants and the genital region has been slashed. The new evidence is carefully collected and handed over to the Forensic Science Laboratory chemist, Alan Jackson. He has already examined other items from the case and found Percy's blood group A on the Tuohy parka, and Tuohy's blood group O on the bag, the jacket, the face washer and the knife. Now he turns his attention to Item 37: the underpants, panties and plastic, all stained, he notes, with a quantity of brown, malodorous pasty matter.

  In early October, Delaney and Knight re-interview Percy at the Homicide Squad office. 'I have some fresh evidence which I must put before you,' Knight starts. 'We have here a number of men's underpants and ladies' panties. Have you seen these before?'

  Percy squints. Yes, he tells them. He recognises most of them in the photographs as his old underpants.

  Knight continues. 'This pair has been identified by the father of the deceased, Tuohy, as similar to the pair worn by her on the day she was killed. What do you say to that?'

  'I still say I didn't put hers on,' he answers, defensively. 'I hadn't taken hers off at that stage.'

  'When the pants were found, they were all worn together as shown in the photograph. How did they get like that?'

  'I put them on one pair over the other.'

  'Why did you do that?'

  With not a hint of embarrassment, not an insinuation of shame, Percy answers the question. 'It's just a feeling I get now and again to shit myself.'

  The inquest into the death of Yvonne Tuohy is heard before Coroner Harry Pascoe in mid-November. Alcohol in Yvonne's body? Nil. Who is arranging burial? Relatives. Pascoe's findings are a foregone conclusion: 'I say that on the 20th July 1969 at Devon Meadows, Yvonne Elizabeth Tuohy died from asphyxia from strangulation and lacerations then and there feloniously unlawfully and maliciously inflicted by Derek Ernest Percy, who I find did in the manner aforesaid murder the said deceased. I further order that Derek Ernest Percy be directed to stand trial for murder at the Supreme Court of Melbourne commencing on the first day of December, 1969.'

  In court, Francis Tuohy sits alone, staring resolutely at the coroner, the slight twitch of his cheek muscles the only outward sign of his inconsolable grief. Yvonne's funeral at Springvale cemetery is a dismal affair attended only by her father and a handful of other people. Nancy cannot face it and Yvonne's sisters are not allowed to go. After she is cremated, only a small plaque in a wall with Yvonne's name and age records the rebellious tomboy who had loved her carefree life. And for decades after, Yvonne's shattered family will remember the date, the small detail endlessly and inescapably replayed: that Yvonne's body was found on the day man first walked on the moon.

  10

  Derek Percy's birth on 15 September 1948 at a public hospital in Strathfield, Sydney, was uneventful. His parents, Ernest and Elaine, had barely had time to enjoy any wedded bliss following their marriage two days before Christmas, nine months earlier. King George VI was on the throne, Ben Chifley was the Australian Prime Minister and the population has not yet reached eight million when they set up house using war ration coupons saved by her father, a gentle man Elaine called Pa. An only child, Elaine did not enjoy a close relationship with her mother, an emotionally frigid woman who never once paid her a compliment. A prudish and conservative disciplinarian, her mother was deeply resentful that she was stuck in a marriage with a man more than twenty years her senior, taking out her unhappiness on young Elaine in terse words and occasional seething acts of spite, including tying her hands behind her back when she does something wrong. But despite their differences and the clash of personalities in their obstinate natures, Elaine spent the third trimester of her first pregnancy – and each that followed – at her mother's home. She didn't like going out in public at that time, though she flailed when asked to explain exactly why. Conscious of her body, perhaps, she would shrug; just as she would be if she had a broken arm.

  Staring down at her first-born son, Elaine was struck by what a pretty baby he was: curly light brown hair, creamy skin, pink lips. Way too pretty to be a boy, she thought, as he lay gurgling in his cot, placid and contented.

  Twenty months after Derek's birth, his brother, Lachlan, was born and Derek was no longer the centre of attention. Quieter and more withdrawn than his younger brother, as the boys grew older Derek struggled to engage with people in the same way Lachlan did. Derek's report card from Grade 2 at Milsons Point Primary School is faded with age but shows he was a bright, intelligent little tacker. 'Oral reading: good. 70. Composition: very good. 80. Spelling: excellent. 95. Writing: good. 70. Arithmetic: excellent. 100. Derek is a very slow worker but he gets good res
ults,' his teacher wrote. 'He is Vice-Captain of the Blue Group and is a very willing helper in every way.'

  Derek's earliest memory was sailing with his father on Sydney Harbour. The Milsons Point ferry was at the end of their street and the Royal Sydney Yacht Squadron, from where the Sydney to Hobart yacht race starts, virtually opposite. He would come to know this area, these waterways, like the back of his hand.

  Ernie, a railway electrician, was a diligent, hard worker who by 1956 – the year their third son, Brett, was born – had been in the same job for twenty-five years. Clever with his hands, he built a catamaran with cold-moulded veneer hulls over its frame, put together with glue and staples. Ernie could nut things out. So could Derek.

  Derek celebrated his seventh birthday in a park in North Sydney with friends and Lachlan. Elaine and ten-month-old Brett sought the shade of a cooler part of the park. Elaine packed afternoon tea for the kids and they had a marvellous time, playing on the swings and tearing around the oval. But the next day Brett was off-colour and a doctor's diagnosis confirmed the worst: diphtheria. A highly contagious upper-respiratory tract infection caused by bacteria, diphtheria was rampant in 1950s Australia, then witnessing a huge influx of migrants whose native countries had been decimated by war. Prior to vaccine, it was an illness that caused more deaths than any other; the infection swiftly travelled to the heart or nervous system causing unconsciousness and then death.

  A week after Brett was hospitalised, Elaine was at home with her other children when she received word that he had died. The weather was hot and humid: the only thing she could recall after grief erased all her other memories of that time.

  A year later, the family moved to Chelsea, a south-western Melbourne suburb on Port Phillip Bay where Ernie was offered a job with the State Electricity Commission. By 1958, when Derek was ten, they were on the move again, this time for a position at Warrnambool on Victoria's south-eastern coast, where the boys played cowboys and Indians and built forts. Living near the ocean suited the family: while Elaine only sailed on ladies' days, Ernie – 1954 state champion on a 12-foot skiff, who had developed a passion for sailing at Manly in Sydney when he was just a lad – used to take his small crew around the beautiful little bays. They would set up tarpaulins on the beaches and Ernie and the boys would cook snags on a makeshift barbecue. The family attended as many sailing regattas as possible along Victoria's west coast, travelling in their caravan on short trips so Ernie could compete in one-man 'moth class' sailing.