Free Crime Time: Australians Behaving Badly by Sue Bursztynski Page A

the blood from his clothes. They found the diary in his locker. Shane identified his car in the car park. Later, he identified Percy at a line-up. They had enough evidence to arrest him.
    After the trial, at which Shane spoke as a witness, he never really recovered. In those days, nobody had thought of counselling. Poor Shane was told to get over it and get on with his life. He never did. He drank and suffered from depression. In 2005, he disappeared.
    While Percy had certainly committed this murder, the question was what to do with him. In those days, the death sentence was still a part of law, but no one had been executed in Australia since Ronald Ryan in 1967. If he were given a life sentence, he would be out in twenty years, free to commit more murders.
    Nobody sane, it was decided, could possibly have done what Percy had done. Declaring him insane and making his sentence ‘at the Governor’s pleasure’ was the only way to keep him behind bars indefinitely.
    In jail, he collected stamps and played carpet bowls. When personal computers arrived, he bought one and learned how to program it. He got a pension from the navy and saved $30,000.
    And he kept materials in his cell that told police he hadn’t felt at all sorry for what he had done. Psychiatrists checked him over the years. They offered him the chance to join groups for therapy. He wasn’t interested.
    In the end, they concluded that Derek Percy had no mental condition they could treat. He wasn’t insane – just evil.
    His case was reviewed in 1998, along with a number of other killers who were being held at the Governor’s pleasure. He was the only one still considered too dangerous to release.
    In 2005, police interviewed him about a number of other murders committed in the 1960s, but he simply said he didn’t remember. They couldn’t take his DNA to check, because they only have the right to do that for convicted prisoners and he isn’t convicted. If he had been convicted, he would have to be released at some stage. The murders may remain mysteries forever.
    And Percy will probably die in jail.

    DID YOU KNOW…?

    In 2005, two Australians who’d robbed a bank in the US state of Colorado were caught the very next day. Anthony Prince and Luke Carroll grinned at the cameras, waving their stolen money around. They wore masks for the robbery, but didn’t bother to take off the badges they usually wore in the nearby ski shop where they worked. Their Australian accents also gave them away. Instead of a getaway car, they used their work passes to catch a handy ski lift. Australian newspapers called them ‘Dumb and Dumber’.

JOHN STUART AND JAMES FINCH

    FIREBOMBERS

    W hen John Stuart, a Brisbane criminal, decided to firebomb the Whiskey Au Go Go nightclub in 1973, he sent all the way to England for help. James Finch had been in prison with him, serving a fourteen-year sentence before being deported back to Britain.
    The Whiskey Au Go Go was one of forty nightclubs in Brisbane in the 1970s. Nightclubs were easy places to threaten in those days. They were crowded. It would be hard to get out if there was an emergency.
    Due to poor planning, the windows were sealed, replaced with air conditioners. Some of the exit doors were locked. The carpets had rubber underlay, so that when they burned, they would release poisonous carbon monoxide gas.
    Extortion gangs in Brisbane threatened to firebomb nightclubs if they weren’t paid regular ‘protection’ money. The Whiskey Au Go Go management refused. Firebombing this place would be a warning to the others. The gang standing over the Whiskey paid Stuart to organise an attack.
    Stuart made his plans carefully. Finch and a man called Hamilton would do the job. They had black balaclavas and petrol drums. There was another man to drive the getaway car.
    As a criminal known to police, Stuart might be suspected, so he took care to cover his tracks. He contacted Brian Bolton, a journalist he knew. Two Sydney men, he