Here's an excerpt from a -very- long article reprinted in the link below. It gives a picture of Derek Percy's early life that 100% gels with my own ideas about the Wanda Beach killer as well as many given here. Really, very spooky...
All bold parts are bolded by me, and bolded comments in parentheses are also mine.
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When police from Operation Heats approached the friend, he told them: "One thing that stood out about Derek was that
he was very intelligent. Most or nearly all of us at school had to work and study very hard but not Derek." He also noted that
Percy was shy and never had a girlfriend.
(Bingo and bingo again - smart kid, could have planned -organised- ad then lost control -disorganised- and why does a smart kid with not bad looks never have a girlfriend..)
Banned by his
worried parents from playing football, Percy would sometimes borrow a friend's gear for the occasional game, convincing his mate's mother to wash the clothes so he would not be caught.
-- (Worried, or totally controlling.. clothes are a big deal in many aspects of Percy's early life.. )
If the Percys were over protective, it was understandable. Their third-born, Brett, died from diphtheria when aged only 10 months. They were to have three surviving sons.
Derek earned his pocket-money working in the tobacco fields with friends — buying a second-hand red bike with racing "ram's horn" handlebars.
He carried his sharp knife everywhere, but in country Victoria that did not make him unusual. In the 1960s a pocket-knife was more a tool than a weapon, used to solve a problem rather than create one.
But when Percy used his to help a mate make running repairs to the sole of a shoe during a handball game, he showed a glimpse into his future.
"I remember Derek getting his pocket-knife out and telling me that he would cut (the sole) off … Derek began to cut the sole off my shoe and all of a sudden the blade went into Derek's left thigh about three quarters of an inch (about two centimetres). The blade went deeply into his thigh and I recoiled back in surprise.
"I was amazed that Derek just looked fascinated with what had happened. He didn't scream, cry or really show any sort of emotion that you would expect from someone with a knife in their leg.
"I thought his reaction was extremely odd," the friend said. "He seemed happy about it."
-- (Desensitised.. already psychotic or maybe a show of bravado/ego. Scary little booger, anyway.)
Kiewa Valley's hydro-electric plant was no Snowy Mountains Scheme but it gave tradesmen the chance to raise families in one of Victoria's prettiest spots.
There was little violent crime in the town of fewer than 2000 people, no need to lock houses or cars.
But in late 1964, a small crime wave began: women's underwear began to disappear from clothes lines — and Derek Percy was rumoured to be the thief. Until then he had been a model student and a school prefect, but in 1965 his grades plummeted.
Ernie Percy threatened to sack any hydro worker who suggested his son was the phantom "snowdropper", but by late 1964 at least two locals knew that Derek was the culprit and that he was much worse than just a petty thief. He was dangerously disturbed and, they believed, a potential killer.
On a warm Sunday, two teenagers, Kim White and Bill Hutton, walked to a local swimming hole. There they saw what they thought was a girl in a petticoat.
Then they realised it was Percy in a pink negligee.
"Well, at least it fits," one joked to his mate. But any humour was lost when Percy began to
slash wildly at the clothing, then cut and stabbed at the crotch of a pair of knickers.
Hutton could see Percy's face. "I would describe Derek's eyes as being full of excitement, a glazed look, but I recall there was something very cold and sinister in the look," he told police much later.
The boys told a teacher the next day and were accused of making up stories. They confronted Percy but he denied everything. Most fellow students thought their story was fabricated. After all, Percy was the obedient student and his accusers loved a little mischief.
The following year Ernie Percy took a job with the Snowy Mountain Scheme and moved his family to Khancoban in NSW, but to allow Derek to finish school at Mount Beauty the teenager boarded with another family.
The woman who lived next door remembers how the new boarder would
watch her hang out washing. One Saturday she took her daughters, then aged seven and nine, to visit a relative. When they returned they found
the girls' wardrobes had been rifled through and their underwear and dresses stolen.
The mother reported the theft to the police, who asked her if she suspected anyone. She suspected Percy but did not want to say so, she admitted years later.
A few weeks later a local found some of the dresses in a bundle hidden under some bushes.
With it was a girl's doll, with the eyes "blinded" and newspaper clippings of women in bikinis. The women's eyes were pencilled out and the bodies mutilated with razor blades. The slashes would match some of the wounds inflicted on the children murdered around Australia in the 1960s.
The blinded doll belonged to the girl next door to where Percy was living.
-- (Bingo, many times over. Cruelty, violent fantasies. Now I'm wondering if there's sexual deformity in Percy, or a gender issue exacerbated by social environment -and- mental illness of some kind, maybe even sexual abuse.. In my mind, this sure fits with the Wanda killer's masturbatory behaviour, the positioning of the clothes. Playing sex-barbies with real 'dolls'? Transferring his own sex fetishes onto a dead (compliant) victim?)
Percy moved from Mount Beauty to join his family in Khancoban after he
failed his exams in 1965, a strange result for a student with an IQ of 122.
-- (Not so strange for high-IQ killers, who are generally profound underachievers. )
In his entry in the Mount Beauty school magazine he revealed a little of his concealed thoughts. His favourite saying was: "It depends."
Perpetual occupation: "Isolating himself." Ambition: "Playboy." Probable fate: "Bachelor." Pet aversion: "Girls."
When Percy left Mount Beauty the "snowdropping" stopped, only to begin near his new home in Khancoban.
There were also reports of a Peeping Tom.
-- (Bingo.)
While at Khancoban a neighbour found that Percy had lured her six-year-old daughter into the family caravan to sexually assault her. The girl's father decided to deal directly with Ernie Percy, who promised it wouldn't happen again. And it didn't. At least not there.
While both parents said they thought their eldest son was shy but normal, deep down they had growing fears.
One Mount Beauty local said that while Mrs Percy allowed her middle son freedom, the elder brother was kept on a tighter rein.
"Derek had to get permission to go anywhere with us outside of school hours and she would question his intentions."
-- (Funny I should raise Kemper earlier, this sounds a lot like Ed's relationship with his own mother..)
Ernie Percy would later tell NSW police he had once found Derek dressed in woman's clothing. T
he parents also found some disturbing sexual writings by their son and immediately burnt them. Later Percy's grandmother found letters filled with "rude" thoughts. Percy denied they were his. Again they were burnt.
Percy began writing down bizarre and violent sexual fantasies in 1965 — around the time his school grades collapsed. He continued the self-incriminating habit for years.
--(Bingo, rich fantasy life, mind of a planner..)
Much later police would allege the writings were plans for the crimes he was to commit and directly linked him to the series of unsolved child murders.
At the end of 1966, having repeated year 11, Percy was ready to leave school. His father also decided to leave the mountains to move into private enterprise. He invested his payout on a Shell service station in Newcastle.
Derek tried year 12 in a NSW school, dropped out, worked at the service station, and in November 1967 joined the navy, graduating top of his class a few months later.
Nearly four decades later, detectives started trying to piece together his movements around Australia over the crucial four-year period in the 1960s.
They knew the Percys often took their caravan to holiday near beaches during yachting regattas. They also could prove Percy was harbouring thoughts of molesting and killing children at the same time as the series of shocking abductions were carried out in four states and territories — and
with one exception — all near beaches.
....
After police arrested Percy at Cerberus, they found a diary in which he described his urges to sexually abuse, torture, murder and mutilate children. They also found drawings of naked children and women.
In one excerpt,
Percy wrote he would force one of his victims to drink beer. Autopsy results showed that Mary Sharrock had a blood alcohol reading equivalent to drinking about 300 millilitres of beer.
In his murder blueprint he wrote about abducting and killing "Two girls at Barnsley", a NSW beach in northern NSW. Police believe it was code for Wanda Beach.
http://murderpedia.org/male.P/p/percy-derek.htm
http://www.theage.com.au/news/in-depth/one-man-so-many-faces-of-evil/2007/04/21/1176697147754.html
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Okay.. so Percy moves to suspect #1 in my mind..