True Crime Collection

Wanda Beach Murders

Marianne Schmidt had arrived in Melbourne with her family from West Germany in September 1958. At the time, the Schmidt family consisted of parents Helmut and Elisabeth 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 Syndey after contracting Hodgkin's disease and they found a home in West Ryde. In June the next year, Mr Schmidt died. 

Marianne's next door neighbour was Christine Sharrock, who lived with her grandparents Jim and Jeanette Taig. Christine's father died in 1953 and her mother Beryl remarried and was living in the north western Sydney suburb of Seven Hills. Christine moved in with her grandparents by choice and when the Schmidts arrived next door, she developed a strong friendship with Marianne, who was the same age. It has never been revealed as to why Christine decided it was best for her to live with her grandparents and not her mother and stepfather. 

On 1st January 1965, Christine and Marianne 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 this day. The following day, the Schmidt children visited the beach there again without Christine. Meanwhile, Mrs Schmidt had been admitted to a hospital for a major operation, leaving Helmut Jr. and Marianne in charge of the household. On Saturday 9th January, Marianne and Christine asked Mrs Schmidt if they could take the younger children to Cronulla the next day and were given permission; however, rain prevented the trip. 

On Monday 11th January, accompanied by Marianne's 4 youngest siblings, the girls again set off by train for Cronulla railway station after transferring at Redfern. They arrived at about 11:00am, but it was very windy and the beach was closed. The group then walked down to the southern end of the beach and sheltered among the rocks. 8 year old Wolfgang still wanted to swim, so Marianne 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, Christine left the others and went off by herself. 

When Christine returned to the group, they decided to go for a walk into the sand hills behind Wanda Beach. Around 1:00pm, the group had reached a point around 400 metres beyond the Wanda Surf Club, and they stopped to take shelter behind a sand hill as the younger children were complaining about the conditions. Marianne told her younger siblings that she and Christine would return to the rocky area at the sound 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 sand hills. When Peter told them they were going the wrong way, they laughed at him and walked on. The Schmidt children remained waiting behind the sand hill until 5:00pm, at which time they returned to collect their bags and went home on the last train, arriving home around 8:00pm. The girls were reported missing at 8:30pm by Christine's grandmother. 

The next morning, on Tuesday 12th January, Peter Smith was taking 3 young nephews for a walk through the Wanda Beach sand hills. Some distance north of the 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 nearby surf club. At this point, Peter believed he had only found 1 young woman. 

When the scene was examined, Marianne was found lying on her right side with her left leg bent. Christine was face down, her head against the sole of Marianne's left foot. Both had scratch marks on their faces. From a 34 metre long drag mark leading to the scene, police determined that Christine had fled, possibly while Marianne 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. 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. 

The autopsy for Christine found a BAC of 0.015, but alcohol was not found in Marianne's autopsy. It was also discovered that Christine had consumed food that was different from the rest of the party; it is suspected this occurred while she was alone. Christine's skull had been fractured by a blow to the back of the head and she had been stabbed 14 times. Marianne's throat had been deeply slashed and she had been stabbed 6 times. Their underwear had been cut, and attempts had been made to rape both girls. Semen was found on both girls but the autopsy showed that their hymens were intact. Marianne's brother Hans had viewed photos of her body and said, "She'd been stabbed 25 to 30 times. She'd almost been decapitated because her throat had been cut so viciously."

It was also during Christine'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 Christine and again sometime much later walking alone. 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. The last official sighting of Marianne and Christine 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 north of the surf club. He told police that they seemed to be hurrying, and one of the girls often looked behind her as if they were being followed. Dennis did not see anybody else. There has been a number of people seen in the area who were never identified and never came forward. 

The funerals were held on 20th January, and an £10,000 reward was posted in February, which stood unchanged as of August 2002. 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. Despite this, the crime quickly became a cold case, and none of the 3 main suspects fit the description of the surfer youth who has never been identified. The case was reopened in 2000, and in February 2012, the NSW Police's Cold Case Unit announced that a weak male DNA sample had been extracted from a pair of white shorts worn by Christine. While admitting that current technology was unable to provide more information, police were confident that future advances would give more assistance. In July 2014, police said that a semen sample taken from Marianne's body had been lost and could not be located despite an extensive search. 

Cec Johnson, a former detective who had investigated the murders, was given a painting in 1975 by Alan Bassett. Alan had been jailed for murdering Carolyn Orphin, a 19 year old woman, in June 1966, who was attacked, raped, strangled, then had her skull crushed with a rock. Sent to prison for life, he served 29 years before being released in 1995. The painting, titled "A Bloody Awful Thing" showed an abstract landscape. Cec believed the painting showed blood trails, a broken knife blade and the body of a victim, and became convinced that Alan was the Wanda Beach killer. Cec also became convinced that it showed a scene from the murders that only the killer would know, as well as clues to the also unsolved murders of Kruger and Dowlingkoa. Despite the scepticism of other detectives, Cec wrote a book about the case. Before it could be published, however, he was killed in an accident. Other detectives, while retaining professional respect for Cec, concluded that he was wrong in his belief. 

A second suspect is Christopher Wilder. 2 years prior to the Wanda Beach murders, he had been convicted of a gang rape on a Sydney beach which led police to include him as a suspect. Christopher emigrated to the United States in 1969, where he embarked on a series of serial killings in the early 1980s. While visiting his parents in Australia in 1982, Christopher was charged with sexual offences against two 15 year old girls whom he had forced to pose nude. Christopher fled back to the US, and in the first half of 1984, he committed 8 murders and attempted several more. He accidentally killed himself during a struggle with the police in New Hampshire on 13th April 1984. 

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. Derek was considered too dangerous to be released and is the prime suspect for a number of other murders of children in Melbourne and Sydney, and died in 2013 from cancer. He was considered a leading suspect for the Wanda Beach murders by the police. While Derek can be linked to the location on the date of the murders, there was no other links found. It was hoped he would make confessions on his deathbed, but these never came.