Wanda Beach Murders

Last updated

Wanda Beach murders
Date11 January 1965 (1965-01-11)
Location Wanda Beach near Cronulla, in Sydney, New South Wales, Australia
Type Murder x 2
Cause
  1. Throat slashed and multiple stab wounds
  2. Blow to the back of the head and multiple stab wounds
OutcomeUnsolved cold case
Deaths
  1. Marianne Schmidt
    (aged 15 years)
  2. Christine Sharrock
    (aged 15 years)

The Wanda Beach Murders, also known simply as "Wanda", [1] were the unsolved murders of Marianne Schmidt and Christine Sharrock at Wanda Beach near Cronulla in Sydney, New South Wales, Australia, on 11 January 1965. The victims, both aged 15, were best friends and neighbours from the suburb of West Ryde, and their partially buried bodies were discovered the next day. The brutal nature of the slayings and the fact that they occurred on a deserted, windswept beach brought massive publicity to the case. [2] By April 1966, police had interviewed some 7,000 people, making it the largest investigation in Australian history. [1] It remains one of the most infamous unsolved Australian murder cases of the 1960s, [3] [4] and New South Wales' oldest unsolved homicide case. [5]

Contents

The victims

Marianne Schmidt had arrived in Melbourne, Victoria, with her family from West Germany in September 1958. At the time, the Schmidt family consisted of parents Helmut and Elisabeth; and Marianne and her siblings: Helmut Jr., Hans, Peter, Trixie, and Wolfgang. Another child, Norbert, was born the following year. After arriving in Australia, the Schmidt family lived in a migrant hostel in Unanderra, New South Wales, before settling in Temora. In 1963, Helmut Schmidt moved the family to the Sydney area after being diagnosed with Hodgkin's disease, residing in a home in West Ryde. Helmut passed away the following year. [6] [7]

Schmidt's next-door neighbour was Christine Sharrock, [6] who lived with her grandparents Jim and Jeanette Taig. Sharrock's father had died in 1953; her mother Beryl Sharrock remarried and was living in the north-western Sydney suburb of Seven Hills. Sharrock moved in with her grandparents by choice and when the Schmidts arrived next door, she developed a strong friendship with Marianne, who was of the same age. [7] It is not known why Sharrock preferred to live with her grandparents and not her mother and stepfather.

Disappearance

Wanda Beach area (2012) Wanda Beach - panoramio (2).jpg
Wanda Beach area (2012)

On 1 January 1965, at the height of the surf music era, Sharrock and Schmidt visited the beach at Cronulla, which had been a popular picnic spot for the Schmidt family. Diary entries, read after the murders, indicated that the girls had kissed some boys at the beach that day. [8] The following day, the Schmidt children visited Cronulla again without Sharrock. Meanwhile, Schmidt's mother had been admitted to a hospital for a major operation, leaving Helmut Jr. and Marianne in charge of the household. [6] On Saturday 9 January, Schmidt and Sharrock asked Schmidt's mother (who was still hospitalised) if they could take the younger children to Cronulla the next day and were given permission; however, rain prevented the trip. [7]

On Monday 11 January, accompanied by Schmidt's four youngest siblings, the girls again set off by train for Cronulla railway station after transferring at Redfern. They arrived at about 11:00 am, but it was very windy and the beach was closed. [6] The group then walked down to the southern end of the beach and sheltered among the rocks. Eight-year-old Wolfgang still wanted to swim, so Schmidt went with him to a shallow part of the surf away from the rocks. After they returned to the group, they had a picnic. At some point during this time, Sharrock left the others and went off by herself. [6]

When Sharrock returned to the group, they decided to go for a walk into the sandhills behind Wanda Beach. Around 1:00 pm, the group had reached a point around 400 metres (430 yards) beyond the Wanda Surf Club. They stopped to take shelter behind a sandhill as the younger children were complaining about the conditions. [2] Schmidt told her younger siblings that she and Sharrock would return to the rocky area at the south end of the beach where they had hidden their bags, then return to fetch the children and head home. Instead, however, the girls continued into the sandhills. When Peter told them they were going the wrong way, they laughed at him and walked on. [1] [7] [9] [10]

The Schmidt children remained waiting behind the sandhill until 5:00 pm, at which time they returned to collect their bags (including Schmidt and Sharrock's purses) and went home on the last train, [1] arriving home around 8:00 pm. Schmidt and Sharrock were reported missing at 8:30 pm by Sharrock's grandmother. [6]

The next morning, on Tuesday 12 January, Peter Smith was taking three young nephews for a walk through the Wanda Beach sandhills. [11] Some distance north of the Wanda Surf Club, he discovered what appeared to be a store mannequin buried face-down in the sand. He brushed away sand from the head and realised that it was a body, and the police were called from the surf club. At this point, Smith believed he had found only one body. [1]

Investigation

The Wanda sand hills 2007 0806klklk0048.JPG
The Wanda sand hills

When the murder scene was examined, Schmidt was found lying on her right side with her left leg bent. Sharrock was face down, her head against the sole of Schmidt's left foot. Both had scratch marks on their faces. From a 34 metre (37 yard) long drag mark leading to the scene, police determined that Sharrock had fled, possibly while Schmidt was dying, only to have been caught, incapacitated and dragged back to the body of her friend. An intensive search was undertaken to find the murder weapons, a long knife and some sort of blunt instrument, but they were never found. [4] Tonnes of sand from around the murder scene were sifted through and various items were found, including a blood-stained knife blade, but police were unable to link it to the murders. [1]

The autopsy for Sharrock found a BAC of 0.015, but alcohol was not found in Schmidt's autopsy. [1] It was also discovered that Sharrock had consumed food (cabbage and celery – i.e., possibly a Chiko Roll) that was different from the rest of the party; it is suspected this occurred while she was alone. [9] Sharrock's skull had been fractured by a blow to the back of the head and she had been stabbed fourteen times. Schmidt's throat had been deeply slashed and she had been stabbed six times. Their underwear had been cut, and attempts had been made to rape both girls. [1] Semen was found on both girls but the autopsy showed that their hymens were intact. [1] Schmidt's brother Hans had viewed photos of her body and said, "She'd been stabbed twenty-five to thirty times. She'd almost been decapitated because her throat had been cut so viciously." [6]

It was also during Sharrock's absence that Wolfgang noticed a teenage boy hunting crabs. Later, he claimed to have seen the same boy twice more, once in the company of his sister and Sharrock and again sometime much later walking alone. [1] There has been doubt about his description of this person, as Wolfgang's testimony over time variously suggested he had a homemade speargun, a fishing knife or both. [7] [9] The last official sighting of the girls was around 12:45 by local fireman Dennis Dostine, who was walking in the area with his son and saw the girls walking about 730 metres (800 yards) north of the surf club. Dostine told police that they seemed to be hurrying, and one of the girls often looked behind her as if they were being followed. He did not see anybody else. [1] There had been a number of people seen in the area who were never identified and never came forward.

The funerals for Schmidt and Sharrock were held on 20 January, and an A£10,000 reward was posted in February [12] (later converted to A$20,000 in 1966), which stood unchanged as of August 2002. [13] In April 1966 the coroner handed down his report, by which time police had interviewed some 7,000 people, making it the largest investigation in Australian history. [1] Despite this, the murders quickly became a cold case and none of the three main suspects fit the description of the surfer youth who has never been identified. The case was reopened in 2000, [14] and in February 2012, the New South Wales Police Force's Cold Case Unit announced that a weak male DNA sample had been extracted from a pair of white shorts worn by Sharrock. [15] While admitting that current technology was unable to provide more information, police were confident that future advances would give more assistance. [14] In July 2014, police said that a semen sample taken from Schmidt's body had been lost and could not be located despite an extensive search. [16]

Suspects

Cec Johnson, a former detective who had investigated the murders, was given a painting in 1975 by Alan Bassett, who had been jailed for the brutal rape and murder of Carolyn Orphin in Wollongong on 11 June 1966. [1] [17] Bassett's painting, titled "A Bloody Awful Thing", showed an abstract landscape. Johnson believed the painting showed blood trails, a broken knife blade and the body of a victim, and became convinced that Bassett was the Wanda Beach killer. He also became convinced that the painting showed a scene from the murders that only the killer would know, as well as clues to the also-unsolved murders of Wilhelmina Kruger and Anna Toskayoa Dowlingkoa. [17] Despite the scepticism of other detectives, Johnson wrote a book about the case. However, before it could be published, he was killed in an accident. Other detectives, while retaining professional respect for Johnson, concluded that he was wrong in his belief.

One person Johnson convinced, however, was Daily Mirror crime reporter Bill Jenkings, who repeated Johnson's claims in his ghostwritten memoirs, As Crime Goes By. In a chapter devoted to the Wanda Beach murders, most of which is essentially a repeat of what he had written in his earlier book Crime Reporter, Jenkings mentions Bassett and his painting. Bassett, who had been released from prison in 1995, commenced proceedings for defamation in the Supreme Court of New South Wales; the publisher pleaded defences of justification (Bassett being a convicted murderer) and the proceedings never went further. Since his release, Bassett has voluntarily given a DNA sample to clear his name, but whether or not he has been eliminated as a suspect in the Wanda Beach murders has yet to be publicised.

A second suspect is serial killer Christopher Wilder. [1] [18] Two years prior to the murders, Wilder had been convicted of a gang-rape on a Sydney beach which led police to include him as a suspect. Wilder had emigrated to the United States in 1969; while visiting his parents in Australia in 1982, he was charged with sexual offences against two 15-year-old girls whom he had forced to pose nude. Wilder fled back to the US, and in the first half of 1984, he committed eight murders and attempted several more. [16] He accidentally killed himself during a struggle with police in New Hampshire on 13 April 1984. [19]

A third suspect, not well publicised until 1998, is Derek Percy, who had been imprisoned since 1969 for the murder of a child on a beach in Victoria. [1] Percy, considered too dangerous to be released and the prime suspect for a number of other murders of children in Melbourne and Sydney, died in 2013 from cancer. He was considered a leading suspect in the Wanda Beach murders by police. [20] [21] While Percy can be linked to Cronulla on the date of the murders, no other links have been found. It was hoped he would make confessions on his deathbed, but these never came. [22]

Possible linked cases

Two far less well-known murders also occurred during early 1966 (in the days following the nationally publicised disappearance of the Beaumont children) which, police at the time speculated, might have been connected to the Wanda Beach murders. [23]

In both the murders of Kruger and Dowlingkoa, police believed that the killer was taunting them. [17] In the Kruger murder, a witness calling himself "Gary" gave a statement that he and a girlfriend were sitting in his car parked in Railway Square, directly behind the Piccadilly Centre, when he saw the utility pulling into the square sometime between 2:30 a.m. and 3:00 a.m. on the morning of the murder. [17] "Gary" also stated that the vehicle circled Railway Square three times before turning back onto Gladstone Avenue and parking opposite the Piccadilly Centre. [17] Police checks revealed that no such person existed on any record and the address that "Gary" gave detectives was false. [17]

Media

The murders were the focus of an episode of Crime Investigation Australia entitled "The Wanda Beach Murders/Beaumont Children Mystery". [1] A book, Wanda: The Untold Story of the Wanda Beach Murders by Alan J. Whiticker, was published in January 2003. [33] [34] It was also the topic of the premiere January 2016 episode of Casefile True Crime Podcast , [2] with the linked cases receiving a stand-alone episode in January 2018. [17]

See also

Related Research Articles

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Black Dahlia</span> American murder victim (1924–1947)

Elizabeth Short, known as the Black Dahlia, was an American woman found murdered in the Leimert Park neighborhood of Los Angeles, California, on January 15, 1947. Her case became highly publicized owing to the gruesome nature of the crime, which included the mutilation of her corpse, which was bisected at the waist.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Disappearance of the Beaumont children</span> 1966 disappearance in Australia

Jane Nartare Beaumont, Arnna Kathleen Beaumont and Grant Ellis Beaumont, collectively referred to as the Beaumont children, were three Australian siblings who disappeared from Glenelg Beach near Adelaide, South Australia, on 26 January 1966 in a suspected abduction and murder.

The backpacker murders were a spate of serial killings that took place in New South Wales, Australia, between 1989 and 1993, committed by Ivan Milat. The bodies of seven missing young people aged 19 to 22 were discovered partially buried in the Belanglo State Forest, 15 kilometres (9.3 mi) south-west of the New South Wales town of Berrima. Five of the victims were foreign backpackers and two were Australians from Melbourne. Milat was convicted of the murders on 27 July 1996 and was sentenced to seven consecutive life sentences, as well as 18 years without parole. He died in prison on 27 October 2019, having never confessed to the murders for which he was convicted.

This is a timeline of major crimes in Australia.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Christopher Wilder</span> Australian serial killer (1945–1984)

Christopher Bernard Wilder, also known as the Beauty Queen Killer and the Snapshot Killer, was an Australian-American serial killer who abducted at least twelve young women and girls, killing eight of them during a six-week, cross-country crime spree in the United States in early 1984. Wilder's series of murders began in Florida on February 26, 1984, and continued across the country through Texas, Oklahoma, Colorado, Nevada and California, with attempted abductions in Washington and New York. Wilder victimized attractive young women, most of whom he would entice by promising to take their pictures. After subduing them, he would torture and rape them before shooting, stabbing with a knife, or strangling them to death. Two or more of his victims were electrocuted using a makeshift electrical cord.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Alphabet murders</span> Unsolved serial murders

The Alphabet murders are an unsolved series of child murders which occurred between 1971 and 1973 in Rochester, New York.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Cronulla sand dunes</span> Sand dunes in Sydney, New South Wales, Australia

The Cronulla sand dunes, also known officially as the Cronulla Sand Dune and Wanda Beach Coastal Landscape, are an open space, heritage-listed nature conservation, and visitor attraction located south of Sydney on the Kurnell Peninsula at Lindum Road, Kurnell, New South Wales. Formerly, it was a site for sand mining, film making, and had use as pastoral property. It is also known as part of Kurnell Peninsula Headland and Cronulla Sand Hill. It was added to the New South Wales State Heritage Register on 26 September 2003.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Crawford family murder</span> 1970 murder of the Crawford family in Australia

The Crawford family murder was the killing of pregnant mother Therese Crawford and her three children at their home in Glenroy, Victoria, Australia, in July 1970. The family car was located at the bottom of a cliff at Loch Ard Gorge in Port Campbell on 2 July with the bodies of the four victims still inside. The husband and father of the decedents, Elmer Kyle Crawford, is the prime suspect in the murders and has not been seen since.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Doodler</span> 1970s serial killer in San Francisco

The Doodler is an unidentified serial killer believed responsible for between six and sixteen murders and three assaults of men in San Francisco, California, between January 1974 and September 1975. The nickname was given due to the perpetrator's habit of sketching his victims prior to stabbing them to death. The perpetrator met his victims at gay nightclubs, bars and restaurants.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Murder of Lindsay Rimer</span> 1994 British unsolved murder

Lindsay Jo Rimer was a 13-year-old British girl from Hebden Bridge, West Yorkshire who disappeared on the evening of 7 November 1994. The following year, her body was found in the Rochdale Canal outside the town; she had been strangled.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Peter Tobin</span> Scottish serial killer (1946–2022)

Peter Britton Tobin was a Scottish convicted serial killer and sex offender who served a whole life order at HM Prison Edinburgh for three murders committed between 1991 and 2006. Police also investigated Tobin over the deaths and disappearances of other young women and girls.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Ivan Milat</span> Australian serial killer (1944–2019)

Ivan Robert Marko Milat, commonly referred to in media as the Backpacker Murderer, was an Australian serial killer who abducted, assaulted, robbed and murdered two men and five women in New South Wales between 1989 and 1992. His modus operandi was to approach backpackers along the Hume Highway under the guise of providing them transport to areas of southern New South Wales, then take his victims into the Belanglo State Forest where he would incapacitate and murder them. Milat is also suspected of having committed many other similar offences around Australia.

The Flat-Tire murders were a series of unsolved murders in Broward and Dade County, Florida, occurring between February 1975 and January 1976. The name originated from the investigators' belief that, when the offender committed two of the murders, he had deflated the tires of the victims' cars. The list of suspected victims ultimately included twelve girls and women whose bodies were discovered in or near South Florida canals.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Murder of Margaret Martin</span> American homicide victim

Margaret Martin was a resident of Kingston, Pennsylvania, United States, who went missing on December 17, 1938, and was found dead in Wyoming County, Pennsylvania, several days later. Martin was a recent graduate of the Wilkes-Barre Business College. On December 17, 1938, she met an unknown man who claimed to be offering her a secretarial job, and was never seen alive again. Her body was discovered in the wilderness 25 miles (40 km) away by a hunter four days later. Martin's death resulted in a lengthy manhunt. Numerous suspects were examined, but no one was ever convicted of the crime. As of 2024, it remains an unsolved case.

Derek Ernest Percy was an Australian serial killer and convicted child killer who was also a person of interest linked to the mysterious deaths and disappearances of multiple children in the 1960s, including the Beaumont disappearances and the Wanda Beach murders.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Joseph Kappen</span> Welsh serial killer (1941–1990)

Joseph William Kappen, also known as the Saturday Night Strangler, was a Welsh serial killer who committed the rape and murder of three teenage girls in Llandarcy and Tonmawr, near his home town of Port Talbot, in 1973. Kappen is also suspected of committing a fourth murder in February 1976.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Murder of Patsy Morris</span> 1980 child murder in London, England

On 16 June 1980, Patricia "Patsy" Morris, a 14-year-old schoolgirl from Feltham, London, was murdered by strangulation. She disappeared after leaving her school during her lunch break, and was found dead in undergrowth on Hounslow Heath near her home two days later. Despite repeated appeals for information by police, her murder remains unsolved.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Death of Winnifred Teo</span> Unsolved rape and murder case of a female jogger in Singapore (1985)

On the evening of 22 May 1985, 18-year-old Winnifred Teo Suan Lie, then a student of Catholic Junior College, went out for an evening jog as usual, but never came back. The next morning, Teo's naked body was found lying in the undergrowth off Old Holland Road, Singapore. She had several stab wounds on her body and was sexually assaulted prior to her death. Autopsy reports showed that Teo was restrained and put up a fierce struggle against her killer(s) before her death from excessive blood loss.

References

  1. 1 2 3 4 5 6 7 8 9 10 11 12 13 14 15 16 "The Wanda Beach Murders/Beaumont Children Mystery". Crime Investigation Australia. Series 1. Episode 11. 2007. Crime & Investigation Network.
  2. 1 2 3 "Case 1: The Wanda Beach Murders". Casefile (Podcast). Retrieved 14 January 2018.
  3. ↑ Smith, Hayden (16 October 2015). "FNQ photographer Hans Schmidt accepts his sister's murder might never be solved". Cairns Post . Retrieved 2 January 2017.
  4. 1 2 "New Wanda clue". The Sun-Herald . 4 June 1988. Retrieved 3 January 2017.[ permanent dead link ]
  5. ↑ Benny-Morrison, Ava (7 October 2017). "Missing: 50 unsolved NSW homicides have evidence that's missing or discarded". The Daily Telegraph. Retrieved 14 January 2018.
  6. 1 2 3 4 5 6 7 Brown, Anne-Louise (6 July 2014). "Call to release Wanda Beach murder pictures". The Sydney Morning Herald . Retrieved 1 January 2017.
  7. 1 2 3 4 5 Whiticker, Alan J. (2005). Twelve Crimes that Shocked the Nation. New Holland. pp. 101–107. ISBN   1741101107.
  8. ↑ "Episode Twenty-One: The Murders at Wanda Beach". IN SIGHT podcast. Retrieved 9 January 2019.
  9. 1 2 3 Sharpe, Alan (1994). The Giant Book of Crimes that Shocked Australia. The Book Company. pp. 338–339. ISBN   978-1863090186.
  10. ↑ "Movements of girls killed on beach puzzled brothers". The Canberra Times. 22 April 1966. p. 10. Retrieved 2 January 2017.
  11. ↑ "Bodies on beach: Two Sydney girls found murdered". The Canberra Times. 13 January 1965. p. 1. Retrieved 2 January 2017.
  12. ↑ Watt, Bruce (2014). The Shire : A journey through time. China: Everbest. p. 209. ISBN   978-0646920191.
  13. ↑ Munro, Peter (23 August 2002). "Rewards in NSW". The Sydney Morning Herald. Retrieved 14 January 2018.
  14. 1 2 Nightingale, Tom (27 February 2012). "DNA advances may solve brutal murders". ABC News . Retrieved 10 April 2016.
  15. ↑ "Archived copy" (PDF). Archived from the original (PDF) on 26 February 2021. Retrieved 11 March 2019.{{cite web}}: CS1 maint: archived copy as title (link)
  16. 1 2 Brown, Anne-Louise (6 July 2014). "Double killing DNA sample lost". The Sydney Morning Herald. Retrieved 1 January 2017.
  17. 1 2 3 4 5 6 7 8 9 10 11 12 13 14 15 "Case 72: Wilhelmina Kruger and Anna Dowlingkoa". Casefile: True Crime Podcast. 14 January 2018. Retrieved 30 July 2018.
  18. ↑ Wanda Beach Murders | The growing evidence that serial killer Chris Wilder killed two girls in 1965 , retrieved 21 January 2020
  19. ↑ Morcombe, John (11 September 2015). "When a killer prowled the northern beaches". The Daily Telegraph . Retrieved 1 January 2017.
  20. ↑ Sutton, Candace (3 April 2017). "How a secret cache in a storage facility led police to unsolved murders of child mutilator Derek Percy". News.com.au . Retrieved 13 January 2018.
  21. ↑ Morri, Mark (27 February 2012). "DNA clue could solve 47-year-old Wanda Beach murders". The Daily Telegraph. Retrieved 1 January 2017.
  22. ↑ Olding, Rachel (24 July 2013). "Child killer stays silent on death bed". The Sydney Morning Herald. Retrieved 1 January 2017.
  23. ↑ Pinto, Susan; Wilson, Paul R. (September 1990). "Serial Murder" (PDF). Trends & Issues in Crime and Criminal Justice (25). Australian Institute of Criminology: 3. Retrieved 3 January 2017.
  24. ↑ "Woman's body in sandhills grave". The Sun-Herald . 6 February 1966. p. 3. Retrieved 16 July 2018– via Newspapers.com. Lock-green.svg
  25. ↑ "The Piccadilly Murder". Forgotten Illawarra. 1 June 2013. Retrieved 30 July 2018.
  26. ↑ "1966: Wilhelmina Kruger – one of Wollongong's most brutal unsolved murders". Australian True Crimes. 1 October 2017. Retrieved 30 July 2018.
  27. ↑ "Piccadilly Murder". www.sutori.com. Retrieved 30 July 2018.
  28. ↑ HUMPHRIES, GLEN (21 March 2017). "Unsolved Wollongong murder to feature in film". Illawarra Mercury. Retrieved 30 July 2018.
  29. ↑ "The last dance". Forgotten Illawarra. 19 January 2017. Retrieved 30 July 2018.
  30. ↑ "Fresh murder theory". The Canberra Times . 2 February 1966. p. 8. Retrieved 2 January 2017.
  31. 1 2 "Sydney murder 'like Jack the Ripper'". The Canberra Times. 19 January 1967. p. 26. Retrieved 2 January 2017.
  32. ↑ "Help call in killer hunt". Canberra Times (ACT : 1926 - 1995). 2 March 1966. p. 14. Retrieved 30 July 2018.
  33. ↑ "Wanda". www.goodreads.com. Retrieved 10 March 2019.
  34. ↑ Whiticker, Alan (2003). Wanda : The Untold Story of the Wanda Beach Murders. New Holland Publishers. ISBN   1864368144.

Further reading

This page is based on this Wikipedia article
Text is available under the CC BY-SA 4.0 license; additional terms may apply.
Images, videos and audio are available under their respective licenses.