The Wanda Beach Killer

By Jillian Bavin-Mizzi

The brutal rape and murder of two fifteen-year-old friends in the Wanda Beach sand dunes in 1965 is undoubtedly one of Australia’s most famous cold cases. For many years now, there have been three prime suspects in the murders of Christine Sharrock and Marianne Schmidt. These are:
Alan Raymond Bassett – convicted in 1966 for the murder of Carolyn Orphin
Derek Ernest Percy – one of Australia’s most notorious child killers and
Christopher Bernard Wilder – aka America’s ‘Beauty Queen Killer’
The Wanda Beach Killer meticulously presents and examines the evidence against each of these suspects, leaving little, if any, doubt as to the murderer’s identity.

• Language: English
• Publisher: Austin Macauley Publishers
• Release date: Oct 29, 2021
• ISBN: 9781528965729

Jillian Bavin-Mizzi

Jillian Bavin-Mizzi holds a doctorate in the history of sexual assault. While she has published a number of academic texts, this book is her first in true crime genre. Jillian previously worked as a lecturer in Murdoch University’s History Department but now writes from her home in Perth, Western Australia. She has four children.

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About the Author

Jillian Bavin-Mizzi holds a doctorate in the history of sexual assault. While she has published a number of academic texts, this book is her first in true crime genre. Jillian previously worked as a lecturer in Murdoch University’s History Department but now writes from her home in Perth, Western Australia. She has four children.

Dedication

For Christine Sharrock, Marianne Schmidt and their families.

Copyright Information ©

Jillian Bavin-Mizzi 2021

The right of Jillian Bavin-Mizzi to be identified as author of this work has been asserted by the author in accordance with section 77 and 78 of the Copyright, Designs and Patents Act 1988.

All rights reserved. No part of this publication may be reproduced, stored in a retrieval system, or transmitted in any form or by any means, electronic, mechanical, photocopying, recording, or otherwise, without the prior permission of the publishers.

Any person who commits any unauthorized act in relation to this publication may be liable to criminal prosecution and civil claims for damages.

A CIP catalogue record for this title is available from the British Library.

ISBN 9781528929059 (Paperback)

ISBN 9781528929066 (Hardback)

ISBN 9781528965729 (ePub e-book)

www.austinmacauley.com

First Published 2021

Austin Macauley Publishers Ltd

Level 37, Office 37.15, 1 Canada Square

Canary Wharf

London

E14 5AA

Acknowledgement

I would like to thank my husband, Tony, and my four children, Louise, Kayla, Hannah and Antony, for their unwavering support throughout my many years of research and writing.

Chapter 1

The Girls

Christine Sharrock was only four years old when her father passed away. Five years later her mother, Beryl Jean Taig, remarried and moved to the north-western Sydney suburb of Seven Hills. Christine spent all of her school holidays with her grandparents, Isaac and Janet Taig. Eventually, she chose to live with them in their home on Brush Road, in the working-class suburb of Ryde. Christine tried hard to maintain her childhood friendships. From Monday through Friday, she took the bus from her grandparents’ home to Ryde Station and, from there, she took the train to Lakemba. That was the only way she could continue to attend St Therese’s Convent School.

When Marianne Schmidt was eight years old, her family left West Germany as part of Australia’s post-war assisted resettlement scheme. The Schmidt family arrived in Australia aboard the Castel Felice in September 1958. They initially went to the Bonegilla Migrant Camp and then moved between various hostels in New South Wales, eventually settling in Temora in the Riverina district. Before long, Marianne’s father, Helmut Schmidt, was diagnosed with Hodgkin’s disease. Helmut’s friend, Walter Krueger, recalled: ‘The doctors told him he only had a few years to live.’ In March 1963, the Schmidt family moved into a Housing Commission home on Brush Road—next door to the Taigs. Like the Taigs, the Schmidts were ‘regular churchgoers’. They attended St Paul’s Lutheran Church. Marianne settled into the local Marsden High School, but she ‘rarely went out socially’, except to ‘take her brothers and sister to nearby Ryde swimming pool’. Helmut Schmidt passed away on the 15th of June 1964, leaving his wife Elisabeth to care for their seven children.

Almost as soon as the Schmidts moved into Brush Road, Christine Sharrock and Marianne Schmidt became close friends, ‘inseparable’ by all accounts. Marianne’s mother later recalled: ‘They did everything together. Marianne was more outgoing than Christine, but I could not say who would be the leader.’ One of their neighbours, Mrs J Todd, also spoke of how close the girls were, ‘They went everywhere together. Everything one did automatically included her friend.’ Mrs Todd described the two fifteen-year-olds as ‘very quiet girls’, ‘two of the most respectable girls I have ever known’. She added that they ‘always seemed to be doing the right thing’. In another neighbour’s words, Christine and Marianne were ‘little angels to their mothers and family’.

In November 1964, the girls sat for their Intermediate Certificate and, according to neighbours, ‘both were anxiously awaiting the results of their exams’. Christine planned to enrol in a secretarial course. Marianne had been top in her class that year and she was hoping to attend Sydney Technical College to qualify as an air hostess. In the meantime, the girls were enjoying their summer holidays.

On Tuesday, the 5th of January, Marianne’s mother was admitted to King George V Hospital for a major operation. Marianne recorded in her diary that she underwent surgery two days later. On Sunday, the 10th of January, the girls visited Marianne’s mother in hospital. Elisabeth Schmidt gave them permission to take the young children to Cronulla Beach the following day. She said, ‘Watch out for the small ones. If you are careful you can go.’ Marianne’s older brother, Helmut Schmidt jnr., intended to go to the beach with the group. But on Sunday night he decided that, instead, he would complete some kitchen renovations he was working on. Thirteen-year-old Hans Schmidt then offered to accompany the girls, but Marianne told him, ‘No, Hans. We’ll be all right.’

*****

Monday the 11th January 1965:

The weather forecast for Monday was fine, with a maximum of 85 degrees, before a ‘squally change’. Early that morning, as Christine was packing for the beach, she spoke with her Nan. Christine was excited about the prospect of walking through the Wanda Beach sand dunes. ‘Won’t it be fun to walk over the sand hills today?’ she said. Nan Taig was happy for Christine to go to the beach, but she asked her not to go into the sand dunes: ‘Don’t go today, love…you have got the four little ones with you…it’s too far.’ She told Christine not to leave Marianne’s younger siblings on their own.

Christine packed a thermos of lime cordial to share with the Schmidts but she didn’t pack any lunch. She told her Nan that she’d buy some hot chips with the £1 note she had given her. She could add these to the lunch that Marianne was preparing next door—marmite sandwiches, tomato and cucumber sandwiches and some fruit. Christine put her thermos and money into her beach-bag, along with a pair of sunglasses, her transistor radio and a towel. She didn’t pack her bathers because she was menstruating at the time and so she didn’t intend to swim.

The girls left the Schmidt’s house soon after 8am that morning with Peter (aged 10), Beatrix (Trixie, aged 9), Wolfgang (aged 7) and Norbert (aged 6). Helmut was still asleep but, as the party left, Hans heard Marianne call: ‘We’re going, see you later.’ The girls caught the 8.55am train from their local West Ryde Station, changing trains at Redfern. At around 11am, they arrived at Cronulla, only to find the beach ‘closed to surfers’ because of the dangerous conditions. The squally change had arrived early. Nevertheless, there were still people on the beach walking, playing and sunbathing. In fact, the Chief of the Central Intelligence Bureau (C.I.B.), Ron Walden, later said that there were ‘dozens of people…on the beach that day’.

The girls led the young children down to the southern end of Cronulla Beach and put their belongings on the rocks. Marianne took Wolfgang for a swim in the shallow water. Wolfgang later recalled playing games in the shallows and said that he and Marianne didn’t speak to anyone else while they were swimming. The group was still at the southern end of Cronulla Beach when the girls handed out the sandwiches and fruit for lunch. Wolfgang later told police that, while the group was eating lunch, he saw a youth hunting for crabs on the rocks nearby. The youth was fossicking among the rocks with a knife. He then put the knife in a pouch which was strapped to his waist while he poked in the narrower rock holes with a homemade spear.

Wolfgang said that Christine and Marianne spoke with the youth and ‘that it was a little after this that they decided to walk to Wanda Beach’. According to Wolfgang’s older brother, Peter, it was Marianne who suggested the walk to Wanda. This walk would take them to the area of Wanda Beach known as Greenhills; a stretch of tall sand dunes with sparse patches of grass.

The girls hid their beach bags under some rocks, leaving behind Christine’s purse and the group’s return train tickets. Then they left the southern end of Cronulla Beach for Wanda. They walked for a while along the promenade before dropping back onto the beach. There was a strong southerly wind blowing, whipping up the dry top sand. Soon after 12.45pm, when the group had walked about 200 yards past the Wanda Beach Surf Club, the young Schmidt children complained that the sand was stinging their legs. Christine and Marianne settled the children into a sheltered gully between two sand dunes and covered them with their towels. They gave them Christine’s transistor radio and told them to stay put. Peter heard the girls say that they were going back to fetch the beach bags and would be gone for about twenty minutes. But Trixie later told police a very different story. She said that, when she asked the girls where they were going, they giggled and they both responded, ‘We’re going mad.’

*****

Christine and Marianne hurried off in the same direction that the group had been travelling; northwards, while their beach bags lay on the rocks at Cronulla Beach to the south. Peter called after them, ‘You’re going in the wrong direction,’ but they laughed, waved and kept going. Wolfgang later reiterated, to the Coronial Inquest, that the girls ‘were laughing as they walked away’. Indeed, some two decades later, the youngest sibling, Norbert Schmidt, said: ‘I can still hear them laughing when we called out that they were heading in the wrong direction.’

A fire fighter, named Dennis Dostine, was walking along Wanda Beach with his young son that day. Shortly before 1pm he saw two girls, whom he believed were Christine and Marianne, travelling in what he described as a ‘fast walk’ northwards, along the sand dunes, about 200 yards from the water’s edge. In an interview for Who magazine, Dostine later said that ‘there was nothing remarkable about them…only the fact that the taller girl [Marianne] kept looking backwards over her shoulder as if someone was following them.’ But he did not see anyone behind them. Dostine lost sight of the girls as they went behind a sand dune.

Minutes after the girls had left the Schmidt children in the gully, Peter sent Wolfgang to look for them. In a statement he made to police on the 12th of January, Peter said that Wolfgang came back about five minutes later. He asked Wolfgang if he had seen the girls, but he told police he couldn’t remember Wolfgang’s reply. By his own account, Wolfgang had indeed seen the girls. They were in the company of a youth. When police asked Wolfgang to demonstrate how far away from him the youth had been, Wolfgang indicated a distance of about 10 yards (or 30 feet). Wolfgang had tried to run to the trio as they turned away from the water’s edge, but he tripped and fell in the soft sand. By the time Wolfgang picked himself up, Christine, Marianne and the youth had gone into the dunes. The young boy then returned to the other children.

When Wolfgang was interviewed by police in the days that followed, he said that the youth was very friendly with the girls. He saw him walking between them, with his arms around both girls’ shoulders, and he thought he heard the youth say ‘What’s your names?’ Wolfgang described the youth as being around sixteen years old; ‘like he was going to high school’. He said he was a surfie, with long blond hair and white zinc cream on his nose. He wore light-grey, full-length trousers and had a royal blue towel hanging around his neck. The youth was not wearing a top or shoes and it was clear that he was heavily suntanned. In Wolfgang’s view the youth was ‘fat’, ‘a big boy’, and he ‘had hair down each side of his face and on his chin’. He was, Wolfgang believed, the same youth he had seen earlier in the day catching crabs on the rocks at South Cronulla Beach. Wolfgang said he was certain it was the same youth because he recognised the knife in its holster. But as the youth walked into the sand dunes with the girls, Wolfgang said, he no longer had his homemade spear with him.

*****

Sometime between 1.30 and 2pm, Christine Sharrock and Marianne Schmidt sat with their attacker, behind the second row of sand dunes. Christine ate something similar to a dim sim or a chiko roll and drank some alcohol—most likely shared with the killer. Marianne neither ate nor drank. For whatever reason, the girls’ attacker pulled out a knife and launched a frenzied assault on Marianne, stabbing her multiple times. Police theorised that, as Marianne fell, Christine tried to escape. She ran towards the sea, probably screaming in terror. But with the wind blowing, the waves crashing and the sand dunes deadening her cries, no one heard her.

Christine managed to run only 30 yards before her killer caught up and struck her in the head with a blunt object. He repeatedly slashed at her from behind with his knife and, ultimately, subdued her with a blow to the chin. The killer dragged Christine back to where Marianne lay, pulled off her shorts, her underwear and her sanitary napkin and attempted to rape her. He then shoved Christine’s shorts into her crotch and turned his attention to Marianne. As she lay dead or dying from her wounds, the killer slashed Marianne’s one-piece bathers and attempted to rape her too. He then piled sand over the girls, as they lay almost end to end, leaving them concealed in the dunes; in ‘a mound resembling a child’s sand castle’.

That afternoon another pair of teenaged girls, Louise Coffey and Juleen Williams, were riding along Wanda Beach on horseback. They saw a man standing in the sand dunes, some 400 yards south of the murder site (800 yards north of the surf club), at about 3.45pm. He was wearing long baggy grey trousers and holding a towel, ‘that was folded into a bundle’.

Unaware of what had happened about half a mile up the beach, the Schmidt children waited for the girls to return. They took it in turns to go out occasionally to search for them. Trixie remembered Peter saying, ‘You go and see if they are coming.’ Trixie walked up the side of the sand dune and returned when she couldn’t see them. She remembered waiting ‘a little longer’ before hearing Peter ask Wolfgang to go. Wolfgang climbed the dune and headed back in the direction he had last seen the girls. Again, he saw the surfie with the blue towel. It was draped around his neck. According to Wolfgang, the youth came out of the sand dunes alone. Wolfgang called out to him, ‘Where are the girls?’ but the youth had his back to him and didn’t respond. He just kept on walking. Wolfgang said that the youth’s knife was now missing from its holster. When prompted, he said he hadn’t noticed whether there was anything unusual about the youth’s clothes. He ‘made no reference to any blood on the youth’.

The Schmidt children continued to wait between the dunes at Wanda Beach, until about 5.30pm. Eventually, they made their way back to the southern end of Cronulla Beach. The girls’ beach bags were still hidden under the rocks, where they had left them. The group’s return train tickets were inside one of the bags as was Christine’s purse—containing 5s/4d. At 6pm the children caught the last train back to West Ryde and from there they walked home. When they returned without Christine or Marianne, Mrs Taig contacted the police. Late that night, at about 11.40pm, two police officers arrived at the Schmidt’s home. They asked Helmut (who was in charge of the family while his mother was in hospital), if they could speak to his siblings. Helmut said the children were too tired, so any questions would have to wait until the morning. He then accompanied the officers next door where he and Nan Taig gave a description of the missing girls.

Chapter 2

Finding Christine and Marianne

On Tuesday the 12th of January, the day after the murders, a seventeen-year-old youth, named Peter Smith, was taking his young nephews for an afternoon walk along Wanda Beach. They were walking behind the first row of sand dunes when, at about 2.30pm, Smith saw bloodstains in the sand. He followed the ‘blood trail and drag marks’ for about 30 yards and came across the girls’ bodies, partially visible from their mound of sand. The Sydney Morning Herald reported that ‘wind had blown away part of the sand covering them, exposing one girl’s head and feet and the other girl’s head and buttocks’. The scene was reported in the Sydney Morning Herald:

Their heads were to the sea and their faces turned to the north. One was lying with her head at about the waist of the other. The one nearest the beach was in a side-on position as if she had fallen asleep peacefully. The other was lying face down.

Years later, the murder scene was described a little differently, although it was still recognisable. When cold case investigators, Ian Waterson and Steve Horn, addressed the Australian and New Zealand Forensic Society in 2011, they explained that