At the end of his first year in custody, Dr Bartholomew appraised him again, providing opinions that he would echo for decades and that illustrated just how confounding he found this prisoner. 'He is,' he wrote, 'rather retiring, having little to do with other prisoners and only superficial relationships with the staff. I am quite unable, at this stage, to offer any prognosis regarding the prisoner, but clearly he is a potential danger to the youthful community.'
Percy, a model prisoner, appeared to show no signs of the grossly disturbed individual who had butchered Yvonne Tuohy. But on 28 September 1971, prison officers undertaking a routine search of his cell found pornographic writings about children that shattered the illusion that his fantasies had abated. Tucked in secret places, behind the toilet and bed, hidden from view, were reams of paper that Percy had either written or drawn on, along with a few printed pictures of adults in bikinis and many more pictures of children; a sordid catalogue of paedophilic pornography. Amongst the names of people in his fantasies were the Couch children, with whom he had stayed in Mount Beauty just weeks prior to Tuohy's murder. Challenged on the diary's grisly contents, Percy, stony-faced, responded that a psychiatrist had asked him to record his sexual fantasies to try and find out why he had ever started writing them in the first place. But the psychiatrist was now dead. There was no one to confirm or deny Percy's story.
Bartholomew recorded the results of the cell search. 'Thus at about September 1971 the prisoner was behaving in a manner very similar to the year or more prior to the killing with which he was charged: apparently normal behaviour to the ordinary onlooker, but a grossly disturbed sexual fantasy life.'
27
As the calendar years ticked over, little changed in Derek Percy's world. While he and Lachlan occasionally played chess by mail, neither of Derek's brothers visited. Ernie and Elaine travelled from New South Wales every two years to see him: the only visitors he ever had. He seemed pleased to see them, though they never discussed anything serious; never touched on unpleasant subjects like those other children who were missing or murdered, whose names consistently appeared in the press next to his own. It was just a friendly visit. Needing a fortnight to travel by road, they incorporated the visits into their holidays, spending the regulation one hour with Derek.
After a year, Elaine noticed that Derek had become very pally with the head governor, making his morning tea and drinking it with him in his office. The governor kept Derek under his wing but, two years later, he retired. From that time on, Derek was even more withdrawn. He wrote home frequently, detailing his daily life in his small, precise handwriting and he didn't complain about life inside prison.
Social workers at Pentridge urged Elaine and Ernie to encourage Derek to go into therapy, but he refused. It upset Elaine that prison officers got nasty with Derek over that, just as the constant media reports suggesting his involvement in other crimes incurred her ire. As far as she was concerned, reporters and police officers did nothing but make things worse.
Barbara Hosking last saw Elaine in the early 1970s when she and Ernie dropped in for an unexpected visit in Melbourne on their way back from seeing Derek in prison. He had just had an assessment hearing on his long-term management and Barbara was aware that it was a touchy subject. While Ernie barely got a word in, Elaine, Barbara remembered, was visibly upset about a female psychologist involved in the assessment process. 'That woman has spoilt his chances of getting out,' she huffed, her face set in an angry scowl.
'What woman?' Barbara asked.
'The psychologist. She asked him questions and annoyed him and he got angry. So that went against him.' Barbara listened, aghast, as Elaine detailed Derek's life in prison and his open access to books. She never once alluded to his crime and ignored anything that ventured near it. Then she dropped a bombshell. 'When Derek gets out,' she announced to Barbara, 'he plans to buy a catamaran and spend a year on his own sailing around North Queensland.' Barbara gulped her tea and tried not to register her alarm. He wants to spend a year on his own, where no one can watch him? What about any children in the area? Who can ensure their safety? she thought in horror.
'I couldn't believe Elaine's attitude,' Barbara tells me today. 'There wasn't one mention of Derek's victim, nor of how sorry she was about what he had done. I was upset when they left but Elaine must have got an inkling of that because we didn't keep in touch again.'
In May 1975, the head of O Division at Pentridge penned a report about Percy for an assessment report. In part, it read: 'He continues to be employed as a writer in G Division [a task he had for several years] and is obviously highly regarded by staff for his efficiency and the role that he fulfils in assisting the division function. The chief prison officer believes that Derek would be a difficult man to replace. In general he is a "model" prisoner and consistently receives excellent reports for conduct and industry.' Percy, he added, kept fit with tennis and table tennis, had learned guitar and chess and made high quality miniature sailing ships.
Dr Bartholomew regarded the opportunity to observe Percy at close range as a professional challenge, but even after five years in prison, he continued to confound him. 'He is efficient, undemonstrative, quiet and never forms a relationship with anybody,' he noted. 'I have to say that I can think of no valuable indices for release, and tend to wonder whether any really exist other than old age and/or gross physical disability.' A year later, he still struggled to dismantle the mental curtain that Percy brought down every time a subject touching on the murder was raised. 'At present,' Bartholomew wrote, 'one can only wait and observe and later attempt to further investigate the prisoner. I hope that he may be allowed to remain in G Division for the next few years. He is a rare and interesting case.'
In 1975, Dr Bartholomew, with barristers Kerry Milte and Frank Galbally, co-authored a paper that examined the failure of psychiatrists and the criminal justice system to use psychiatric resources to prevent and treat crime. They considered six cases of murder and sexual deviancy, including the case of a necrophiliac homosexual who shot and killed his friend so he could experience sex with a nude, dead body. Another of their cases is Derek Percy.
They quoted the writings of psychiatrist R. Brittain, who wrote about the false stereotypes of the sadistic murderer. A preconception, Brittain noted, might be to think of him as a large, hulking brute of low intelligence, with recongisable elements of aggression. He may be outgoing, loud, insensitive or crude; rough, vulgar and over-sexed with a history of mental illness and a record of major aggressive sexual offences. But, he cautioned, while some sadistic sexual offenders have certain of these elements, the majority may appear to be much like other people.
Brittain wrote a modified model of the types of behaviour likely to be exhibited by such offenders. Of the thirty-two he notated, Percy was positive for twenty-five of them: Doesn't drink or smoke. Introspective, withdrawn. Prefers solitary pursuits. Has obsessional traits. Is vain, narcissistic and eccentric. Has engaged in previous homosexual activity. (Percy had fantasised about boys.) Is a daydreamer with a strong fantasy life and under thirty-five years. Has a high intelligence but is emotionally flat. Keeps diaries. Is not virile or married. Has no previous criminal history and no personal mental history. No family mental history. Has an interest in weapons and photography. Is a polypervert (a profusely perverse individual) and engages in fantasies of torture. Studies pornography and erotica. Has thoughts about power and is calm in court. Is a mother's boy. Mother is odd.
Percy is now a heavy smoker but he did not smoke at the time of the Tuohy offence. He tested negative for the other criteria: Hypochondriac. Poor physique. Church attendee. Poor work record. Cruelty to animals. Masochistic. Breath holding.
Brittain also wrote that while psychiatrists debated whether or not a prisoner was suffering a 'disease of the mind', it was more relevant to recognise whether that individual was dangerous to society and whether such a person should be released from high security. The greater number, he noted, are very well behaved
whether in prison or in hospital. But herein lay another pitfall; years of such good behaviour as a 'model' prisoner or patient can lead the unwary at a later date to use this as a principal criterion when considering transfer to a less secure institution or discharge. Much more solid evidence of a fundamental change is required, he warned, than good conduct, even over a long period, in an environment where there is neither temptation nor opportunity to commit the kind of acts that brought them to the institution in the first place.
The authors of the paper put it more bluntly: 'Case 1 [Percy] shortly after being found not guilty on the grounds of insanity was found writing further diaries regarding his fantasies but claimed that he was "trying himself out". He is most unlikely to demonstrate his probably persisting pathology so clearly again. The standard interview is far from satisfactory in that the prisoner/patient, who is more often than not of at least average intelligence, quickly learns to say nothing which might be construed to his detriment. Even testing by the psychologists is not so very difficult for the intellectually able person to recognise the type of answer that should not be given if an early release is hoped for. Quite apart from the very great need for further research, this whole area in terms of our present knowledge would seem demanding of considerable and serious debate by both correctional workers and mental health clinical and administrative staff.'
Other psychiatrists fared no better than Bartholomew in drawing Percy out of his shell. Dr Richard Ball, an expert witness at Percy's trial, came away exasperated after re-interviewing him in 1977. 'He volunteered nothing and extracting information was like pulling teeth,' he wrote of the meeting. 'I doubt that he is entirely without sadistic fantasies.' Derek Percy was confounding the best psychiatric minds in the country, shutting down, saying nothing while they tried to elicit meaningful responses from him.
By October 1982, in another annual report on Percy, there were indications that he was beginning to express vague feelings for his victim. 'Regarding his offence,' the report read, 'Percy admitted that he does occasionally think about it and when he does, he feels anger at his parents and at himself and even sorrow for the victim, according to him.' Anger at his parents. Why would he feel anger toward them? Was it because they did not try to seriously help him with his sick aberrations? He would not say.
On one point, privately, many psychiatrists who dealt with Percy were in agreement. Despite his insistence that his fantasies had abated and the Tuohy murder – which he did not care to discuss – was a transient aberration, they thought it not just possible, but highly probable, that he had committed more child murders.
Bartholomew remained wary of this model prisoner who, he suspected but could not prove, still had a rich and morbid sexual fantasy life but who understood it was to his own advantage to hide it. 'He is not certifiable and neither is he psychiatrically treatable and he is totally unsuited to a mental institution,' he wrote. 'Should Percy ever be so transferred he will in all probability earn some degree of freedom as the result of reasonable and conforming behaviour. The consequences of such freedom could well prove tragic.' Bartholomew's prognosis was a clear warning to other professionals who might see fit to relax the reins on Percy's incarceration.
Dr Thomas Stephens, the Pentridge coordinator of psychiatric services, writing in 1983, agreed. 'He has a dangerously abnormal personality, but he is not mentally sick in the accepted sense.' Stephens tried to draw Percy out on how he might have changed during his incarceration, to try to get him to recognise the enormity of what he had done. It did not work. Frustrated, he watched as Percy's mental curtain came down and shut the doctor out, a tactic he used every time a subject was raised that he wished to avoid. No one, it seemed, could touch him. No one could make any progress in finding out if he was responsible for other child crimes. Even in prison, he was the Spook, the Phantom, the Ghost.
Bartholomew's diagnosis of Percy was consistent with those of other psychiatrists and health professionals – seventeen in all – who examined him between the 1970s and 1990s. The reports read like academic exercises, a flexing of the medical experts' intellectual muscle. But recurring themes ran through them: that because Percy failed to give an open and free account of himself a recommendation for release could not be made; and that he failed to give such an account because he believed that if he did so he must admit to ongoing sexual fantasies of a paedophilic and sadistic nature, admissions that would be to the detriment of his release prospects.
After sixteen years in Pentridge, the only place Percy would be going was to another prison. Beechworth.
Two hundred and seventy kilometres north-east of Melbourne, Beechworth was the furthest gaol from the metropolitan centre. It housed long-term, low–disturbance prisoners in medium security and was, unlike Pentridge, a far more pleasant environment for detainees who did not pose a risk of violence to staff or fellow prisoners. Percy, a model prisoner, fit the criteria perfectly, arriving there on 1 August 1986. Nestled at the foot of the Victorian Alps and famous as the gaol where Ned Kelly was twice incarcerated, Derek preferred Beechworth to Pentridge. He made a friend, another prisoner there, who encouraged him to talk to psychologists to help improve his long-term chances of release. But in conversations with Elaine on her visits, Derek whinged that his mate was promised the earth if he went to psychological sessions to try and find out what made him tick, but was never given anything. 'I'm not falling for that,' he griped. 'I'm not interested.'
*
In 1992, Percy was taken from Beechworth Prison to the forensic ward at St Vincent's general hospital, where Professor Ball was Director of Psychiatry, for another review. Transported in a new prison vehicle which afforded him a view of the outside world, he sat handcuffed in the back staring in wonderment at the passing scenery: pedestrians on their way to work, tree-lined streets and cars. For the first time in many years, he later told Professor Ball, he felt a sense of joy at seeing open countryside beyond the prison walls. Ball invited him to write out his fantasies and to take a truth drug, used often controversially by police, military or intelligence agencies to elicit information from unwilling subjects. It is, as one psychiatrist described, akin to 'taking the brakes off and hitting the accelerator'. Percy refused on two occasions, agreeing on the third, only to withdraw consent within half an hour. 'But, like some of my colleagues,' Ball noted after seeing Percy, 'I wonder whether or not we should consider that this man may require indefinite retention at least until Anno Domini [advancing age] produces its effects.' In a formal sense, he added, Percy could be regarded as being without psychiatric illness. 'I think this man has always been very secretive about his fantasies and his actions. It is very clear of course that for many years prior to his apprehension he had successfully hidden these from public scrutiny, even when living in a communal setting such as the navy.'
Ball's resulting report to psychiatrist Dr Blair Currie outlined the psychological tests that he undertook, showing that Percy admitted to homoerotic feelings and his score, on a gender scale, suggested a homosexual orientation.
Comfortable at Beechworth, where he enjoyed many privileges including access to model boat building, he took the news badly when, less than a year later, he was told he had to move again. He didn't want to leave, he told authorities, petulantly. Incarcerated for seventeen years, Percy was by then totally institutionalised. He slunk about, expressionless apart from occasionally articulating rare feelings of hopelessness that because of consistent negative reports about his release prospects, he would never enjoy a normal life in the outside world.
Percy's requests to remain at Beechworth fell on deaf ears. In the first week of spring, 9 September 1987, he arrive at Castlemaine prison, between the historic gold-mining towns of Bendigo and Ballarat. But spring's warmth belied the freezing chill of the following winter. Built in 1861, it was so cold that frost snapped underfoot and Derek had to buy extra blankets to keep warm, a fact noted indignantly by his mother. I think of the moment when he was preparing to show police where he
had hidden Yvonne Tuohy's body, and the tremulous query he had made before leaving the station: I won't be cold, will I? I wonder what Elaine would have thought if she had heard that.
Percy stayed at Castlemaine for three years until its closure in June 1990. Relieved to leave the old gaol to its mid-winter freeze, he returned to Beechworth where he quickly settled into his old routines. But this, too, was not going to last. In June 1993 he was told he was on the move again. This time he was going to Ararat.
Ararat prison, 200 kilometres west of Melbourne at the foot of the Grampians, was Percy's home for the next decade, where he did his time behind its high bluestone walls with other protected prisoners and sex offenders. In this new cell, using the privilege afforded model prisoners, he acquired a personal computer that he secured with his pension money. On it, he recorded the history of first class cricket scores, converting all the information to numbers and painstakingly typing the scores into his computer. When the prison officers asked what he was doing he told them, showed them a bank of numbers he had arranged, using his skill for mathematics and his organised mind. That's commendable, Derek. Very good, they said. They thought he was weird, the way he crept about and didn't interact with people, and they knew why he was in gaol but at least he was no trouble, not like some other prisoners who kicked up a racket at the slightest provocation.
Informed that he would be shifted from one section of that prison to another, he unravelled. In all the years he had been incarcerated, in all the years that prison psychiatrists and parole board officers had tried to get him to emote about Yvonne Tuohy's murder, to show any sign of remorse, they had met a brick wall. But that day, faced with a move he did not wish to make, he verged on tears. 'Percy, whose face was inscrutable, the eyes cold and mesmeric, suddenly displayed emotion,' a prison report stated. 'His lips trembled convulsively as he emotionally stated that he did not want to move from the Division he was in because he "had his computers there".'
Lambs to the Slaughter Page 17