The Wanda Beach Killings | Australia
On the 12th of January 1965, two detectives stood in the windswept sand dunes of Wanda Beach, near Cronulla in Sydney's south. What they had just discovered would haunt them for the rest of their careers. Partially buried in the sand lay the bodies of two fifteen-year-old girls, best friends who had been missing since the previous afternoon.
Marianne Schmidt and Christine Sharrock had been brutally murdered. The crime scene told a terrible story of violence and a desperate attempt to escape. One girl had been caught while trying to flee, dragged back to where her friend lay dying.
By April 1966, police had interviewed thousands of people, making it the largest investigation in Australian history. But despite their efforts, the killer vanished.
Sixty years later, the Wanda Beach murders remain one of Australia's most infamous cold cases. Three suspects have emerged over the decades, each with disturbing connections to the crime. Yet no one has ever been charged.
This is the story of a day at the beach that became a nightmare, and an investigation that has spanned six decades...
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Marianne Schmidt had arrived in Melbourne with her family from West Germany in September 1958. The Schmidts had come seeking a new life in Australia, like so many European migrants in the post-war years. They eventually settled in West Ryde, a quiet suburb in Sydney's northwest. By 1965, fifteen-year-old Marianne was a bright, happy teenager who had embraced her new Australian life. She loved the beach, particularly Cronulla, where her family often went for picnics.
Her next-door neighbour was Christine Sharrock, who lived with her grandparents Jim and Jeanette Taig. Christine's father had died in 1953 and her mother had remarried. Christine had chosen to live with her grandparents, finding comfort and stability in their home. When the Schmidt family moved in next door, Christine quickly became close friends with Marianne. They were the same age, attended the same school, and became inseparable.
The two girls were typical teenagers of their era. They loved music, fashion, and going to the beach. On the 1st of January 1965, the girls visited the beach at Cronulla. Diary entries revealed they'd spent time with some boys at the beach, typical teenage flirtation during a summer holiday.
On Saturday the 9th of January, the girls asked Marianne's mother, who was hospitalised for a major operation, if they could take the younger children to Cronulla the next day. They were given permission, but rain prevented the trip. With Marianne's mother in hospital, the older children were looking after the household.
On Monday the 11th of January, accompanied by Marianne's four youngest siblings, the girls set off by train for Cronulla. They arrived at about 11 a.m., but it was very windy and the beach was closed. The group walked down to the southern end of the beach and sheltered among the rocks. Eight-year-old Wolfgang still wanted to swim, so Marianne took him to a shallow part of the surf away from the rocks. After they returned to the group, they had a picnic.
Around 1pm, the group had reached a point around 400 metres beyond the Wanda Surf Club. They stopped to take shelter behind a sandhill as the younger children were complaining about the conditions. Marianne and Christine told the children they would walk back to the rocky area at the south end of the beach where they had left their bags, then return to fetch the children and head home.
But instead, the girls continued walking into the sandhills. When Peter called out that they were going the wrong way, the girls just laughed at him and walked on. It was the last time the Schmidt children would see their sister alive.
The younger children waited behind the sandhill until five o'clock that evening. When the girls didn't return, they collected all the bags and caught the last train home, arriving around eight o'clock. Marianne and Christine were reported missing at 8:30pm by Christine's grandmother. Given the late hour and the possibility that the girls had simply been delayed or decided to stay with friends, there was no immediate indication of foul play. But by the next morning, when there was still no word from either girl, police and volunteers began combing the beach and surrounding sand dunes.
Local man, Peter Smith, was walking through the Wanda Beach sandhills with his three young nephews that morning. They were some distance north of the Wanda Surf Club when Smith noticed what looked like a mannequin partially buried in the sand. Curious, he brushed away the sand from what appeared to be the head – only to realise, with a sickening jolt, that it was a human body.
He immediately ran to the surf club to call police. At first, he believed he had discovered just one body.
When the murder 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 be caught, incapacitated and dragged back to her friend's body.
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. A blood-stained knife blade was found, but police were unable to link it to the murders.
The autopsy found that Christine's skull had been fractured by a blow to the back of the head and she had been stabbed fourteen times. Marianne's throat had been deeply slashed and she had been stabbed six times. There were also signs of a possible sexual assault. Christine had a blood alcohol content of 0.015, but alcohol was not found in Marianne's system. It was also discovered that Christine had consumed food that was different from the rest of the party. This raised the possibility that Christine may have briefly separated from the group – perhaps to buy a snack – during which time she may have encountered someone.
Wolfgang reported that, during Christine's absence, he noticed a teenage boy hunting crabs. This detail would become crucial to the investigation.
The funerals for the girls were held on the 20th of January, and a reward was posted in February. The nation mourned two girls who had their whole lives ahead of them.
The investigation revealed some troubling details. Witnesses reported seeing a young man, described as a teenage surfer type, near the beach that day. He was said to be around sixteen years old with blonde hair, slender but muscular build, about five feet seven inches tall. This description would become the basis for a police sketch that was widely circulated. But identifying him proved impossible.
In April 1966 the coroner handed down his report. Despite interviewing some 7,000 people, the murders quickly became a cold case. Years passed, then decades. The families of Marianne and Christine were left with no answers, no justice, no closure.
The case was reopened in 2000, 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 Christine. While admitting that current technology was unable to provide more information, police were confident that future advances would give more assistance. By 1981, the number of people interviewed in this case was 16,000, including roughly 5,000 suspects.
However, over the decades, this was narrowed down to three main suspects. Each had connections to the crime, each had a history of violence, and each fits aspects of what investigators believe about the killer. Yet none has ever been charged.
A former detective named Cec Johnson 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 the 11th of June 1966. 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 even wrote a book about his theory. But this theory was not widely supported within the force. Before the book was published, however, Johnson was killed in an accident.
Since his release in 1995, Bassett has voluntarily given a DNA sample to clear his name, but whether or not he has been eliminated as a suspect has yet to be publicised.
Derek Ernest Percy was an Australian serial killer and convicted child killer. In 1969, he was arrested for the murder of 12-year-old Yvonne Tuohy and was found not guilty by reason of insanity and detained indefinitely.
Percy was known to be visiting his friend's grandparents in Ryde at the time of the Wanda Beach murders, at a house near to the victims' homes. Based on identikits, witnesses recalled seeing a young man resembling Percy talking with the two girls on a train and at Wanda Beach, and he was considered a leading suspect.
In 2007, a hoard of 35 boxes of Percy's diaries, drawings, maps, and newspaper clippings was found in a storage unit. The contents were chilling: detailed fantasies about harming children, drawings of bound victims, newspaper clippings about unsolved murders. Percy became a suspect in multiple child murders across Australia in the 1960s, including the disappearance of the Beaumont children in Adelaide.
Percy died from lung cancer on the 23rd of July 2013, aged 64, without admitting to any further crimes. At the time, he was the longest serving prison inmate in Australia, some 44 years. Before his death, police tried repeatedly to get him to confess to other murders. He never did. When asked about specific cases, he would claim he couldn't remember.
The third suspect has perhaps the most compelling circumstantial evidence. Christopher Wilder was born on the 13th of March 1945 in Sydney. Two 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.
Retired Detective Inspector Ian Waterson was in charge of the Wanda Beach cold case, and he believes Wilder is the number one suspect. He said that there are so many signs pointing to Wilder's sexual deviancy, his propensity for violence and he was around in Sydney at the time and hung around the beaches. Wilder is one of three suspects because of his similarity to a suspect sketch.
Wilder met twenty-year-old Christine Paluch at Sydney's Palm Beach in 1967, and thirteen months later they married. The marriage was marked by abuse. On Valentine's Day, 1969, the couple were approached by two detectives investigating Wilder after an alleged sexual assault of a teenage girl.
Five days after Wilder's confession, Christine and her mother walked into a Sydney police station claiming to have information to support Wilder being the Wanda Beach killer. A detective forwarded details to the investigation team. Despite striking similarities between Wilder and the believed perpetrator, it took detectives a further nine months to pay a visit to Wilder's family home. By then they learned he'd started a new life in the USA.
Marianne's younger brother Bert said the family were never told about the Wilder lead. When shown the police document on the Sunday Night program, he was upset and couldn't believe the cops did nothing for eight months after the wife went to them.
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. He accidentally killed himself during a struggle with police in New Hampshire on the 13th of April 1984.
In the US, Wilder became known as the Beauty Queen Killer. His victims were young women and girls, often approached with the promise of modelling opportunities. He would photograph them, assault them, torture them, and kill them. At the time of the Wanda Beach Murders, he would have been 21, and could possibly have disarmed the girls with his charm.
Around the 60th anniversary of the murders, in January 2025, a jawbone was found on Wanda Beach. Police established a crime scene and conducted forensic examinations, though it is not yet known whether the jawbone has any connection to the case. The discovery sparked renewed media interest.
There has also been speculation about other potential suspects. In late 2025, NSW Legislative Council Member Jeremy Buckingham presented Premier Chris Minns with an identikit picture from the Wanda Beach murders alongside a photograph of a young Ivan Milat. While no direct evidence has linked Milat to Wanda Beach, the resemblance to the identikit and the timeline have prompted renewed calls for an inquiry
Milat was Australia's most notorious serial killer, convicted of murdering seven backpackers in the Belanglo State Forest. The Wanda Beach suspect was described as five feet seven inches, fair hair, slender but muscular, exactly like Milat, and 22 years old, exactly his age. Premier Minns conceded that Milat bears an uncanny resemblance to the suspect sketch and said an inquiry may be the necessary next step. Milat died in prison in 2019, maintaining his innocence of any crimes other than those for which he was convicted. If you’d like to explore Ivan Milat’s case in greater detail, we covered his crimes in a dedicated two-part series here on Evidence Locker. The link is available in the show notes.
For the families of Marianne Schmidt and Christine Sharrock, the past sixty years have been marked by grief and unanswered questions. Marianne's brother Hans viewed photos of her body and said she'd been stabbed twenty-five to thirty times and that her throat had been cut so viciously she'd almost been decapitated. The Schmidt family, who had come to Australia seeking a better life, found only tragedy. Christine's grandparents, who had taken her in and given her a stable home, lost the granddaughter they loved.
These families have watched as suspect after suspect has been investigated, as promising leads have gone nowhere, as decades have passed without justice.
Sixty years have passed since Marianne Schmidt and Christine Sharrock walked into the sand dunes at Wanda Beach. Their killer has never been identified. Three main suspects have emerged over the decades: Alan Bassett, Derek Percy, and Christopher Wilder. Two of them are now dead. The third has given DNA samples but has never been charged.
The case represents both the failures and the persistence of criminal investigation. Wilder's own wife told police he might be the killer, but it took nine months for detectives to follow up, by which time he had left the country. A massive oversight by NSW Police. Percy was near the area and matched witness descriptions, but police could never gather enough evidence to charge him.
Yet investigators have never given up. The case has been reopened multiple times. New technologies have been applied. DNA evidence has been preserved. In 2025, when a jawbone was discovered on the beach, police immediately responded, still hoping for a breakthrough.
Perhaps one day someone will come forward with information that finally solves this case. Until then, the Wanda Beach murders remain what they have been for sixty years: one of Australia's most infamous unsolved cases.
Marianne Schmidt and Christine Sharrock were real girls with hopes and dreams, who loved the beach and each other, who laughed as they walked into those sand dunes on a windy January day in 1965. We remember them not just as victims, but as the people they were and the lives they should have lived.
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