Inside the depraved mind of child killer, Derek Ernest Percy. Young. White. High IQ. Middle-class family. Naval rating. A portrait of a yuppie success story? No. A portrait of child killer, Derek Ernest Percy. In this definitive, graphically chilling account of Percy's life, a man dubbed by a prison officer as 'Australia's answer to Hannibal Lecter', award-winning true-crime author Debi Marshall applies her investigative journalism skills to a forensic examination of the crimes, the man and his modus operandi. Informed by exclusive material never before seen - poignant and insightful interviews with Percy's mother, victims? families, psychiatrists, police officers and former colleagues - Marshall also takes us on her personal journey as she seeks to unravel the truth about the monster whose lonely, idiosyncratic character has deceived the best psychiatric minds for 40 years. Is Derek Percy responsible for Australia's worst unsolved child abductions and murders? Is he mad...

As her parent's slept on Friday April 13, 1973 17-month old Deidre Kennedy was snatched from her cot. Tossed like trash on top of a toilet block in a nearby park, dawn revealed the obscenity of her murder. Dressed in women's underwear, her chubby thigh showed bruising inflicted by bite marks. She had been bashed, sexually assaulted and strangled. There was no eyewitness. No motive. No confession. No closure for Deidre's family. Three decades on, they are still waiting. In 1985 - eleven years after her death - former RAAF technician Raymond John Carroll was found guilty of her murder and later acquitted on appeal. In 2000, he was found guilty of perjury on the grounds that he lied when he said he did not kill the baby. Acquitted for the second time - this time on double jeopardy - the case went all the way to the Australian High Court, which dismissed the Crown's appeal. He could never be re-tried again. A bewildered Australian public, at a loss to understand the technicalities...

The State of Western Australia was in shock. Claremont is a salubrious suburb of Perth. Three lovely young women disappearing from relatively safe streets without a trace was very disturbing. The investigation has continued full-time over ten years, the biggest in the history of the WA Police. And it is now Australia's longest-running and most expensive murder investigation. Controversy surrounding the Claremont killings has not faded with time. There are a number of suspects. Bodies of two of the three missing women have been found. But what about all those other young women in Western Australia who have not been seen for years. Are they also victims of the Claremont serial killer? Debi Marshall looks critically at the police investigations and 16 other disappearances in Western Australia. She talks to everyone involved from forensic investigators, criminologists, the police, the media and the victims' parents. The results of her investigations should not be ignored.