Lambs to the Slaughter

July, 1969. Police discover the mutilated body of 12-year-old Yvonne Tuohy off a lonely bush track at Victoria's Westernport Bay.Within hours, they have charged Derek Ernest Percy, a highly intelligent 20-year-old Royal Australian Navy seaman, with the heinous crime.During the ensuing investigation, police link Percy's name to another eight unsolved child abductions and murders in different Australian states, including the three Beaumont children, the Wanda Beach murders and the abduction of Linda Stilwell. Is Percy, they ask, Australia's most prolific child serial killer?In this definitive, chilling and utterly compelling account of Derek Ernest Percy, a man dubbed by one prison officer as 'Australia's answer to Hannibal Lecter', award-winning true-crime author Debi Marshall applies her blowtorch investigative journalism skills to a forensic examination of the crimes, the man and his modus operandi.Informed by exclusive material never before seen - insightful and poignant interviews with Percy's mother, victims’ families, psychiatrists, police officers and former colleagues - Marshall also takes us on her own harrowing personal journey as she seeks to unravel the truth about the monster whose disturbing, idiosyncratic character has confounded the best psychiatric minds for 40 years.