Not a book that you could say you were "looking forward to" - this is nonetheless a book I have been interested to read. Derek Ernest Percy isn't really a well known name in Australia, yet he's been "at the Govenor's pleasure" in various jails in Victoria since 1969. Despite a number of subsequent inquests, and much speculation - he remains a suspect in many notorious Australian child murders from around the same time - yet he has only ever been charged with one murder.
From the Blurb:
July, 1969. Police discover the mutilated body of 12-year-old Yvonne Tuohy off a lonely bush track at Victoria's Westernport Bay.
Within hours, they have charged Derek Ernest Percy, a highly intelligent 20-year-old Royal Australian Navy seaman, with the heinous crime.
In this definitive, graphically chilling account of Percy's life, a man dubbed by a prison officer as "Australia's answer to Hannibal Lecter," award-winning true-crime author Debi Marshall applies her investigative journalism skills to a forensic examination of the crimes, the man and his modus operandi.
Informed by exclusive material never before seen — poignant and insightful interviews with Percy's mother, victims’ families, psychiatrists, police officers and former colleagues — Marshall also takes us on her personal journey as she seeks to unravel the truth about the monster whose lonely, idiosyncratic character has deceived the best psychiatric minds for 40 years.
Is Derek Percy responsible for Australia's worst unsolved child abductions and murders? Is he mad — or just bad?