Wanda Beach Murders
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The Wanda Beach Murders is the collective term by which the murders of Marianne Schmidt and Christine Sharrock are known. Murdered at Sydney's Wanda Beach on 11 January 1965, their partially buried bodies were discovered the next day. The identity of the murderer remains unknown.
The double murder attracted widespread publicity. The victims, both aged 15, were best friends and neighbours. The brutal nature of the murders, and the fact that the murders occurred on a deserted, windswept beach, meant that the murders attracted widespread publicity. It remains one of the most infamous unsolved Australian murder cases of the 1960s, perhaps second in notoriety only to the disappearance of the Beaumont children.
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[edit] Marianne Schmidt and Christine Sharrock
Marianne Schmidt and Christine Sharrock were best friends and next door neighbours, living in the Sydney suburb of West Ryde. Sharrock lived with her grandparents, her father had died in 1954 and her mother later remarried. Schmidt lived with her family, which included six siblings, but her father had died in the previous year.
The Cronulla area, of which Wanda Beach is a part, is not particularly close to West Ryde. Other beaches are much closer and more convenient. However, Marianne’s father had often taken his children to Cronulla Beach so it held special meaning for them. They had travelled to the area only the week before.
[edit] Movements at the beach
On 11 January, accompanied by Marianne’s youngest four siblings, they again set off for Cronulla Beach. They arrived at about 11am, but it was very windy and the beach was closed. The group therefore walked down to the southern end of the beach and sheltered among the rocks. Marianne’s younger brother, Wolfgang, wanted to swim, so she went with him to a shallow part of the surf away from the rocks. They then came back and rejoined the group.
The group had a picnic, then Marianne suggested that they walk through the sandhills past Wanda Beach. They therefore hid their bags among the rocks, then walked along the promenade to North Cronulla Beach. Here they stepped into the sand and began walking north through the sandhills.
[edit] Last Sighting
When the group had reached a point around 400 metres beyond the Wanda Surf Club, they stopped to shelter behind a sandhill. By this stage the younger children were complaining; it was an overcast and windy day, and the sand was hurting their legs. Marianne told her younger brothers and sisters that she and Christine would return to the rocky area at the south end of the beach, collect the bags, then return to fetch the children. They would then return home.
She and Christine left a transistor radio with the younger siblings to keep them company. She and Christine then set off over the sandhills. However, while the bags had been left in the rocky area that was south of their current position, Marianne and Christine started walking north, which was the opposite direction. Marianne’s brother Peter called out that they were walking in the wrong direction, but the girls laughed and kept walking.
A local man named Peter Dostine was walking in the area and saw the girls walking about 800 yards north of the surf club. They seemed to be hurrying, and one of the girls was looking behind her as if she expected to be followed. Dostine did not see anybody following them. Dostine was the last known person to have seen the girls alive and was questioned closely by police, but was quickly cleared of any involvement.
Marianne’s younger siblings remained waiting behind the sandhill until 5pm. They returned to collect their bags and then went home. The girls were reported missing at 8:30pm.
[edit] Bodies discovered
12 January was a bright, sunny day, and a local man named Peter Smith was taking his three young nephews for a walk, through the sandhills behind Wanda Beach. As they were walking, they saw what he thought was a department store mannequin, mostly buried in the sand. Feet were sticking out of the sand and he could also see part of a head. He brushed away sand from the hand and realised that it was a body. He went to the Wanda Surf Club to call the police.
When police arrived they began uncovering the body and soon realised that there were two bodies, not one. It was Christine Sharrock’s feet that Smith had seen, and Marianne Schmidt’s head.
With the light fading and no police photographer on the scene, a news photographer named Geoff Jessop was asked to take photographs of the scene. Floodlights were brought and the investigation continued through the night.
[edit] Unsolved
A large police investigation failed to identify the murderer. There had been a number of people seen in the area who were never identified; Sydney in 1965 was a conservative place and the area around Wanda Beach attracted a a range of people, who did not necessarily want to identify themselves to police. This frustrated the police investigation.
[edit] Linked cases
Two murders occurred during early 1966 which, police speculated, might have been the work of the Wanda Beach murderer.
- On 29 January 1966, a cleaning lady named Wilhelmina Kruger was murdered in the Piccadilly Arcade in Wollongong. Her body was discovered by a local butcher when he arrived to open his shop. Police believed that the murder might have been the work of the Wanda Beach murderer, but would not say why they believed this.
- On 17 February 1966, a prostitute named Annya Dowlingkoa went missing after leaving a nightclub in Kings Cross. Ten days later, her body was found at the side of a road in Menai. Police immediately linked her murder with that of Wilhelmina Kruger. Again, they believed that the murder might have been the work of the Wanda Beach murderer, but would not say why they believed this. The murders of Wilhelmina Kruger and Annya Dowlingkoa are far less well known now than the Wanda Beach murders.
[edit] The Suspects
Cec Johnson, a former detective who had investigated the Wanda Beach murders, was given a painting in 1975 by Alan Bassett. Bassett had been jailed for murdering Carolyn Orphin, a 19 year old woman, in June 1966. Sent to prison for life, he served 29 years before being released in 1995.
The painting that Bassett gave Johnson showed an abstract landscape. Looking at the picture, however, Johnson became convinced that it showed a scene from the Wanda Beach murders that only the murderer would know, as well as clues to the murders of Kruger and Dowlingkoa. He became convinced that Bassett was the Wanda Beach murderer.
Other detectives were far less convinced, but Johnson wrote a book about the case. Before it could be published, however, he was knocked down and killed in an accident. The book was never published. Other detectives, while retaining professional respect for Johnson, concluded that he was wrong in his belief that Bassett was the murderer.
One person he convinced, however, was crime reporter Bill Jenkings. Jenkings repeated Johnson’s claims in his ghostwritten memoirs, As Crime Goes By. (1993), devoting a whole chapter to the Wanda Beach murders. Most of the chapter was essentially a repeat of what he’d written in his earlier book Crime Reporter but he mentioned Johnson, Bassett and the painting as well.
Bassett threatened legal action but Jenkings died shortly afterwards and Bassett did not go through with his threat. Since his release, Bassett has offered to give DNA to clear his name, but whether or not he has been eliminated as a suspect by DNA has never been publicised.
Another suspect, not well publicised until 1998, is Derek Percy. Percy has been imprisoned since 1969 for the murder of a child on a beach in Victoria. He is considered too dangerous to be released and is the prime suspect for a number of other murders of children in Melbourne and Sydney.
A third suspect is Christopher Wilder. Wilder was known to police in Sydney but did not become infamous until he became a serial killer in America in the early 1980s. In the first half of 1984 he committed eight murders and attempted several more. He was finally shot dead by police in New Hampshire on 13 April 1984.
[edit] References
- Jenkings, Bill, As Crime Goes By...
- Jenkings, Bill, Crime Reporter
- Whiticker, Alan J., Wanda: The untold story of the Wanda Beach Murders
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