Ernie Percy retired from the SEC at the end of 1966 and bought a service station at Wallsend, a suburb of Newcastle in New South Wales. Once again the family packed up and left town, this time heading north. For the first two months, they lived with Elaine's mother at The Entrance while Ernie and Lachlan completed service station training at Pyrmont, near Glebe in Sydney. Derek occasionally came down to the city to visit them, materialising at smoko or lunchtime, but when the family moved to Wallsend to live, he stayed behind with his grandmother at The Entrance for a couple of months. Elaine's mother was a dressmaker and half-stitched women's clothes hung on dressmaker's dummies around the house. Patterns of women's and children's clothing lay in bundled piles. There were bolts of material – velvet, chiffon and satin – leaning against the wall. Derek slyly caressed the material's rich folds as he walked past, being careful his grandmother didn't notice.
With his Leaving Certificate finally attained, Derek made the decision to continue to matriculation level at Gosford High School. Lachlan was no longer there to overshadow him but he found the New South Wales curriculum too difficult to absorb. Fed up with moving schools, fed up with different students, distracted, bored and listless, he dropped out permanently and floated aimlessly around Newcastle. His dream was to become an architect, to use his drawing skills and high intelligence for creative purposes. The family moved into a flat at Jesmond and Derek reluctantly worked at his father's service station for half of 1967, his hopes for a start in a draftsman's office dashed because of his lack of qualifications. When he was not needed at the service station, he headed to nearby beaches or went sailing on Lake Macquarie. He was always alone and always took with him a small writing pad, in which he doodled drawings and fantasies.
The tide of public opinion was starting to turn against the Vietnam War, leaving the military actively seeking recruits aged between eighteen and twenty-four; young men who would become a target for the anti-war movement. Derek's paternal grandfather had been at Gallipoli and Derek had been around boats all his life. He needed a job. The navy needed him. And Ernie, disgusted and embarrassed by his oldest son's odd sexual behaviour, was fed up with him mooching around Newcastle with too much time on his hands.
But first Derek, then nineteen, needed to get his driver's licence. Lachlan, to Derek's chagrin, had gained his licence at seventeen, the minimum legal age. Elaine taught Derek to drive in her light-blue Datsun sedan and when he gained his licence, she and Ernie guaranteed a loan for Derek, and put $65 toward his $300 grey station wagon, registration EUU 786. The car was perfect for his needs: plenty of room on the roof for a small boat and plenty of room in the back to lie down. As a final touch, Ernie put a 'Go Well! Go Shell!' sticker on the side window of the car.
Derek sat the preliminary tests for competence at the Naval Recruitment Centre in George Street, Sydney, to assess his suitability for military service. He passed all the tests – education, psychological, medical – and within a week heard that he had been accepted. Told to return with what he stood up in, he was issued with a blue kit bag of toiletries and with other new, nervous recruits, he caught the Spirit of Progress overnight to Melbourne, disembarking at Spencer Street Station where he joined a naval bus bound for HMAS Cerberus. Percy sat near the rear of the bus, speaking little and staring shyly out the window at the passing landscape.
As he got closer, the area became more familiar: Chelsea, an hour north of Melbourne, was his childhood home for a time in the third quarter of the 1950s. The bus was full of jittery, excited young men; for many it was their first time away from home, leaving behind their families to join the military, signing their young lives away for nine years. They were entering a whole new world: a short back and sides at a time when long hair was fashionable; naval-issued kit bags containing all their worldly possessions; swapping their youthful freedom for a regimented, institutionalised lifestyle that promised mateship, travel and opportunity. But with the anti-Vietnam chorus swelling, military personnel were increasingly unpopular and verbal abuse from the general public was commonplace. From then on, in or out of uniform, they would be encouraged to stick together.
The Flinders naval depot came into sight. Only patrol boats can fit through the slim channel at Westernport Bay: set on the edge of swamp and scrubby land, the depot comprised a huge expanse of buildings, parade ground, playing fields and churches. The recruit school was an uninviting, drab, grey-brick affair, with an accommodation block adjoining. The bus stopped at the gangway, where a regulating Petty Officer took a headcount of recruits and where, according to tradition, they were sitting targets for a ribbing from more senior naval personnel. 'You'll be so-ree!' they yelled at the recruits. 'You'll be so-ree!'
Identifications were checked. Name: Percy, Derek Ernest. Date of birth: 15.9.1948. Place of birth: Strathfield, New South Wales. Service number: R66951. Date of entry: November 25, 1967.
The bus passed the checkpoint and the recruits filed off, after being given eight pounds for meals, their first haircut and a clothing issue. Allocated to cabins that slept four men, they would not be allowed weekend leave for the first two months.
From the outset, Derek was proud to be seen in uniform. Military rules dictated that clothing was ironed just so and that shoes were shined to a high buff. He took particular care with his uniform and physical appearance, as neat and tidy as he had been at school.
During recruit training, naval personnel were asked to nominate the area where they would be most interested in working; the requests were then measured against IQ tests. Percy's IQ of 122 – a score achieved by only 15 per cent of the population – was noted as commendable and he was earmarked as a possibility for officer training. The navy needed young men like him; highly intelligent, well spoken and keen to achieve. But a Commission Warrant was never raised for him. Percy, it was soon recognised, had neither presence nor power of command. His leadership skills were non-existent.
Accepted into the Electrical Mechanic area, regarded as the cream of naval positions, Percy trained in weapons radar. First, he had to undergo a comprehensive security clearance, which he easily passed. But he did not pass muster with his dormitory or class mates. It was then that he gained the unflattering nickname 'The Ghost'.
Apart from leave from Christmas until 7 January 1968, when he returned to visit his family at Newcastle, he remained at Cerberus until 9 March when he joined the aircraft carrier HMAS Melbourne, based at HMAS Kuttabul, Sydney.
Nine weeks later, in the nearby Sydney suburb of Glebe, three-year-old Simon Brook was murdered.
19
An only child, Simon was playing in the garden of his parents' house while they chatted to friends from interstate who had called in for a quick lunch on Saturday, 18 May 1968. Simon's father, 41-year-old Donald Brook, was a senior lecturer at the newly opened Power Institute of Fine Arts at Sydney University, a bright intellectual committed to the university concept of bringing the best in fine arts to all Australians. He boasted a PhD in Philosophy and had recently become the Sydney Morning Herald's art critic. His wife, Phyllis, was also involved in the artistic world, having worked in modern dance in London before their move to Australia in 1962.
In 1967, the family had moved to Sydney from Canberra, where Simon was born on 10 November 1964 at the Community hospital. They had no relatives in Australia and were a closely-knit family. Money was tight but the Federation house named Volta in Alexander Lane, Glebe – an inner city suburb an easy stroll to the harbour – was within their means with an asking price of $15,000, and perfect for Simon.
But nearby harbourside Jubilee Park had a darker side, well known to police. Paedophiles regularly stalked its perimeters, leering at the children who frequented the child-minding centre on its eastern side or those who came here to play after school or on weekends. It was a known haunt, too, for homosexuals and male prostitutes who trawled at night for some rough trade with strangers. Royleston Boys' Home, where Wards of the State stayed until they were moved elsewhere, was al
so nearby. That morning, at the park, hockey teams from the Under 10s to Under 14s were playing, starting after 8 a.m. and finishing before midday. The teams were a perfect magnet for perverts interested in preying on children.
It had been cool and overcast in the morning, and Phyllis had dressed Simon for the weather in brightly-coloured, eclectic clothing: a blue tartan sweater and white T-shirt; blue socks and long orange trousers and his brand new red desert boots. Stockily-built and a lively, friendly little tacker, Simon, who sported a wide grin and a mop of sandy hair cut into a fringe and short at the back, could be shy but he readily responded to overtures from strangers. On this winter's day, as a weak sun tried to struggle through the clouds, neither Donald nor Phyllis felt the need to warn him of stranger danger. Simon never left the small front and back gardens except to cross the narrow lane to the neighbours' house to play with their children. The Brooks' small, charming house in this corner of Sydney seemed very safe.
At 12.30, when the visitors left, Phyllis and Donald called for Simon to come inside. When he did not respond, Phyllis crossed the lane to get him. He was not there. They searched a small stable with a loft on their property and an underground space below the house. Empty. Panic started to gnaw as they walked through the garden to Jubilee Park. Perhaps he had crawled through the small fence in the front yard. A cry caught in Phyllis' throat. 'Simon? Simon. Where are you? Simon, answer me!'
They searched the surrounding streets but Simon was nowhere to be seen. By 1 p.m., Donald was at Glebe police station, reporting his three-year-old son missing. An all-points bulletin was circulated to patrol cars and Sydney police stations to keep watch for the little boy dressed in brightly coloured clothing. By mid-afternoon blankets of rain briefly shrouded the city and a small army of police officers was dispatched to check Jubilee Park and surrounding areas while water police cruised the nearby Blackwattle Bay. Donald's close friend Dr Bert Flugelman was already there, helping to look for Simon. That evening news outlets across Sydney appealed to the public to help with information on the lost little boy. One newspaper ran the story under the headline 'Fears For Safety', reporting that 'Arrangements are being made for an experienced constable to stay at the home in the event of the child being abducted and the offender ringing the home.'
Throughout the cold, windy night, police knocked on doors and shone flashlights into gardens and drains. Dawn's dappled light made the search easier, but as each hour passed it became agonisingly obvious to his distraught parents that Simon had not met with an accident. Police briefly entertained the idea that Simon might have been kidnapped; perhaps Donald's work as an art critic had offended someone or suggested an opportunity to extort ransom money? Donald did not agree, thinking it an absurd notion. The possibility of murder did not enter the family's minds. It was 1968, and while there were twelve unsolved murders in New South Wales, the mysterious disappearance of the Beaumont children from an Adelaide beach two years before was regarded as a tragic aberration. Murder was a rare occurrence in Sydney and though Sydney police at the time did not enjoy a reputation for being corruption-free, the officers who embarked on the search for Simon were beyond reproach, many giving up their free time to help when they heard about the small boy.
Italian builder Felici Lampasona was working with his brother constructing a block of units at 268 Glebe Point Road, next door to the Royleston Boys' Home on the busy main street. They had been at work since dawn and Lampasona needed to relieve himself. He checked his watch – 7.20 a.m. – and walked down the back of the units to a vacant and overgrown block of land behind. After, as he tucked himself back into his overalls and returned towards the construction site, his attention was vaguely diverted by what appeared to be a large doll lying on the ground under a piece of rotten canvas. He walked toward it, bending down to remove the piece of cloth covering it. But this was not a doll but a small boy, lying on his back under an overhanging tree, naked from the waist down, his little body bloodied and savagely mutilated, his penis and scrotum removed, his eyes wide open in terror and arms and legs splayed. Small red desert boots and blue socks were on the ground and between his legs, casually discarded, was a steel razor blade with its wrapper nearby.
Staggering back, drunk with shock, Lampasona doubled over, retching as he shrieked in Italian for his brother to help him. 'Aiuto! Venire! Venire! Subito!'
Detective Sergeant Arthur Smailles, in charge of the investigation, asked that Donald Brook and Bert Flugelman accompany him outside. He offered them no reason, wordlessly leading them around three streets and guiding them to a corner of the derelict and overgrown vacant block. There, under low-hanging scrub lying on the damp earth, Donald identified his son.
He was only 400 metres from home.
The rhythmic cycle of police and medical examinations began, each careful not to disturb any possible evidence at the scene. Detective Sergeant Norman Merchant from CIB Scientific Bureau took notes about the body in situ. Severed penis and scrotum. Cut throat. A cut on Simon's inner leg, possibly accidental slippage from the razor blade being caught in his underpants. Post-mortem mutilation, judging by the lack of blood at the scene. Lividity around his neck, consistent with being strangled, and wads of newspaper jammed down his throat with some force, rendering him mute and suffocating him. Hairs, blood and newspaper found at the scene were sent away for testing.
By 11.30, Government Medical Officer Edward La'Brooy had also made a cursory examination of the child before allowing Smailles to remove the body. The earth where Simon lay was covered in leaves, rendering footprint identification almost impossible but he picked the boy up gently, as he would a sleeping child, careful to disturb as little evidence as possible, and escorted Simon to Sydney Hospital, where his life was pronounced extinct.
Through an interpreter, Lampasona, gibbering and distressed, poured out to police the horror of what he saw. 'Holy mother of God, I was frightened,' he told them. 'I reeled back and I was sick. Such a dreadful, horrible sight. Only a raving maniac could have inflicted such cuts.' Dr La'Brooy agreed, stunned despite his professional training at the savagery of the genital injuries. He was convinced that there was no penetration of Simon but with zero room for error, he sent a rectal swab for examination. Simon Brook, he concluded, died from asphyxiation caused by suffocation as the result of a person or persons inserting wads of newspaper down his throat. He had died around 2 p.m. the day before, and the razor blade injuries were inflicted post-mortem.
Over the next twenty-four hours, police investigations revealed that Simon had been seen in the hour after he went missing. Barbara Lrbec, who lived in Alexandra Road, said she saw him standing alone on the footpath outside her fence at around 1.30 p.m. on Saturday, and told him to go on inside, as it was cold. He did as he was told, running away from her house. It was definitely that time, she told police, because she had just closed her sandwich shop. And it was definitely Simon: she knew the boy and remembered his very bright clothing.
Even from this distance of time, even given it was 1968 when children alone on the street were regarded as safer than they are today, her statement strikes me as particularly poignant. Did it not occur to Barbara Lrbec to walk the small child home to his parents who, by then, had been frantically searching for him for an hour? Lrbec was the last person to see Simon alive: half an hour later, he was murdered. How heavily this must have weighed on her conscience, that small, seemingly inconsequential decision made on a normal Saturday afternoon when, tired from work she stood inside her gate and told the boy to go on inside, now, go home, it's cold.
Truck driver Eric Barnier told police he was driving through the Glebe area when he saw a boy in bright clothing holding hands with a young man as they walked through Jubilee Park. Barnier estimated the time at around 12.35; just five minutes after his parents noticed Simon missing. Police could only surmise that the little boy was lured away from his front garden through the small hole in the wire fence. At some point, he separated from his killer and they reunited short
ly after, when he was taken via a short cut to the lonely block where he met his death.
When police showed him a photograph, Eric Barnier confirmed Simon was the boy he saw and he helped them put together an identikit of the man he saw in Jubilee Park. Between twenty and twenty-four years old. Five foot seven to eight inches tall. Deep-set eyes, a high and wide forehead. Bushy brown hair, brushed back. A straight though long nose with a narrow bridge. Slightly angular chin. Wide mouth.
20
A photograph of a child mannequin, dressed in orange trousers and red desert boots, was circulated throughout the press in Sydney, along with an identikit picture of the man seen by Eric Barnier. Three hundred suspects were eliminated from the original inquiry. Some were picked up and detained for a short time but none, to Donald Brook's knowledge, was regarded as serious. Bizarrely, Donald recalls today, he was invited to speak to one of these suspects. 'Perhaps the police thought that confronted by a parent who could be relied upon not to attack him, this pathetic man might confess,' he says with a shrug. 'Who knows what the thinking was?'
Police identified five possible suspects, each of whom was proved to be not responsible. One confessed to Simon's murder and Barnier appeared to support his confession when he picked him out of an identification parade as the man he saw in Jubilee Park. But while police went through the motions, checking the confessor's story, they quickly concluded that he was not responsible, simply mentally ill.
How did the killer escape from the scene without being noticed? By car? On foot? By train? Or did he flee along an underground railway tunnel from Jubilee Park? The lack of blood at the scene, noted by Detective Sergeant Merchant, supported the theory that the genital mutilation occurred postmortem. With no arterial spurting, the killer would not have been covered in blood.
Lambs to the Slaughter Page 11
