Child killer Percy takes secrets to grave
The brother of missing Victorian girl Linda Stilwell says it is disappointing her suspected killer Derek Percy has taken his secrets to the grave.
Percy, Victoria’s longest-serving prisoner, died in a secure Melbourne hospital ward overnight after a battle with cancer.
He was the prime suspect in seven-year-old Linda’s disappearance and suspected death after she vanished from the St Kilda beach foreshore in 1968. He was also suspected in a number of other unsolved cases, including the disappearance of the three Beaumont children in Adelaide in 1966.
Percy had admitted being in the area at the time Linda Stilwell went missing, but on the weekend told investigators he knew nothing about her disappearance.
Linda’s brother Gary Stilwell, 54, said it is disappointing he had taken his secrets to the grave.
“I would’ve thought at the end of his life he could’ve found it in his heart to actually give relief to us and to my mother in regards to Linda,” Mr Stilwell told AAP today.
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“I don’t think anybody believes that he didn’t do it.”
Mr Stilwell said news of Percy’s death brought some relief.
“It does give me a form of peace knowing that he’s dead, to be honest,” he said.
“The spectre of Derek Percy’s been hanging over our family like a black cloud for a long time.”
Corrections Victoria said a 64-year-old prisoner who was being treated for a terminal illness died overnight in hospital.
His death will be examined by the coroner, as is the case with all inmate deaths, it says.
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Percy on Saturday gave coronial evidence from his hospital bedside, denying involvement in Linda’s disappearance.
He previously said he could not remember if he was responsible.
Coroner Iain West made an interim finding in 2009 that Percy was in the area on the day Linda disappeared.
But the inquest into Linda’s death was adjourned after Mr West decided not to compel Percy to give evidence, amid concerns it would be unreliable given Percy’s mental state at the time of the abduction.
Victoria’s highest court overturned the decision and ordered the inquest be reconvened.
Percy was found not guilty on insanity grounds of the 1969 murder of Yvonne Tuohy, 12, who was snatched from Warneet Beach, southeast of Melbourne.
He was diagnosed as having an exceedingly rare “serious sadistic sexual paraphilia” and was Victoria’s longest-serving prisoner.
Percy was also the suspect in several other unsolved child murders – Christine Sharrock and Marianne Schmidt, both 15, on Sydney’s Wanda Beach in 1965; six-year-old Alan Redston in Canberra in 1966 and three-year-old Simon Brook in Sydney in 1968 – and in the disappearance of the Beaumont children at Glenelg beach in South Australia on Australia Day 1966.
Percy admits he was in Adelaide at the time the Beaumont children disappeared and was asked during a 1969 police interview if he killed them.
He told police: “I could have killed them, I don’t remember a thing.”
Percy said during the same interview that he had driven past the spot where three-year-old Simon Brook was murdered in Glebe in Sydney in 1968, on the day he died.
