Free Crime Time: Australians Behaving Badly by Sue Bursztynski

would get him more votes in the next election.
    In February 1967, Ronald Ryan went to the gallows. Some of the journalists who had to watch the hanging threw up in the toilets.
    Outside the prison, 3000 protesters gathered and at the exact time he was executed, many people around Australia observed a three-minute silence.
    That was the end of capital punishment in Australia. It was now clear that death sentences weren’t popular any more. One by one the states changed their laws. In 1985, Australia scrapped it altogether. During that time, nobody else was actually executed.
    For sure, Ronald Ryan would have preferred capital punishment to end in a better way, but still, this petty crook made a very big difference.

    DID YOU KNOW…?

    It’s possible to go from national hero to national villain. Millionaire businessman Alan Bond has been both. In 1978, he was named Australian of the Year. After he won the America’s Cup yacht race in 1983, he was a national hero. A TV mini-series was made about his victory. By 1997, his business empire was crumbling and he had been declared bankrupt. He had taken a large sum of money from a company called Bell Resources, which he controlled, to prop up his own company, the Bond Corporation. Many people lost their money because of this. It got him a seven-year jail term, but he served only four, and his family paid back only a tiny amount of the $1.8 billion he owed. In 2008, Bond was back on the ‘Rich 200 List’, almost as rich as he was before.

DEREK ERNEST PERCY

    CHILD KILLER

    D erek Percy has been in jail since July 1969, Victoria’s longest-serving prisoner. When he went to prison, the Apollo 11 astronauts had just walked on the moon. Television in Australia was black and white. You could buy four lollies for a cent. Computers filled whole rooms and had about the power of your pocket calculator. There was no Internet.
    He was in jail for the torture and murder of twelve-year-old Yvonne Tuohy on 20 July 1969. Police suspect that he committed several other child murders, because he was near all those places at the time.
    The trouble is, he can’t be DNA tested because, strictly speaking, he hasn’t been convicted. He was found not guilty due to insanity and put in jail ‘at the Governor’s pleasure’. That meant that every now and then his case would be reviewed and if it was felt that he was no longer a danger, he might be released.
    So far, he hasn’t been.
    Derek Percy’s family moved around a lot during his childhood. He had to keep changing schools. Because of that, he never had much chance to make friends and didn’t really try.
    His diary was his only friend. One day his parents happened to look at it and were horrified by what they read. He had fantasies about torturing and killing children. The local doctor told them it was just a stage he was going through. Nothing was done.
    Derek joined the navy when he was nineteen and did well. He was even considered for officer training. But he was still keeping that diary.
    On Sunday, 20 July, Yvonne Tuohy, who lived in the Victorian coastal town of Warneet, suggested to her friend Shane Stiller that they go for a walk on the beach. They had sandwiches and Shane took along a small axe to chop wood for a billy tea.

    On the beach, they stopped for a moment, deciding in which direction to go. Shane saw a man watching them from a car nearby. They had walked in different directions and were turning back when the man grabbed Yvonne. He demanded that Shane come to him as well, but Shane held up his axe, defending himself. He turned and ran for help. Unfortunately, the picnicking family Shane found thought he was just playing. By then, it was too late. Percy had driven off with Yvonne.
    He did help police by describing the man and the car. He described a sticker on the car, which was a navy insignia.
    Yvonne’s body was soon found, tied and gagged.
    The homicide squad went to the Cerberus Navy Base nearby. They found Percy washing