On January 11th, 1965, two fifteen-year-old girls told four younger children they were going to collect their bags and would be right back. They walked into the sand dunes behind Wanda Beach and were never seen alive again. The investigation that followed became the largest in Australian history at the time. Sixty years later it is still open. Two girls. One afternoon. No answer.
THE TWO GIRLS
Marianne Schmidt and Christine Sharrock had grown up side by side in the Sydney suburb of West Ryde — neighbours first, then the kind of best friends that suburban proximity and shared age produce when everything aligns correctly. Marianne had arrived in Australia from West Germany in 1958 with her parents and five siblings, part of the postwar migration that brought thousands of European families to Australia throughout the 1950s. She had been ten years old when they arrived, and by fifteen she had become as Australian as the suburb she lived in.
Christine lived next door with her maternal grandparents. Her father had died when she was young, her mother had remarried and moved away, and Christine had made the choice — unusual for a teenager but apparently settled in her own mind — to remain with her grandparents rather than join the new household. The Schmidts had moved in next door not long after she made that choice, and she and Marianne had found each other across the fence with the ease of two people who were always going to be friends.
Both were fifteen years old on January 11th, 1965. The trip to Wanda Beach that day was a responsible outing — Marianne had asked her hospitalized mother's permission to take the four younger Schmidt children to the beach, and permission had been granted. It was a teenager rising to the occasion of managing a household while the adults were occupied. It was an ordinary summer day.
The younger children were Peter, Trixie, Wolfgang, and Norbert. They arrived at Cronulla station around eleven in the morning and found the beach closed — a fierce southerly gale had made the surf dangerous. The group walked to the southern end and sheltered among the rocks. They had a picnic. Around one o'clock, the two girls told the younger children they were going to walk back to the rocky area to collect the bags they had left there.
They walked into the sandhills instead.
Peter called after them that they were going the wrong way. They laughed at him and kept walking.
He never saw them again.
THE LONG WAIT AND THE DISCOVERY
The four younger children waited behind the sandhill for hours. One o'clock became two. Two became three. Three became four. At five o'clock, with patience exhausted and trust run out of time, they collected the bags — including Marianne and Christine's purses — and caught the last train home to West Ryde. They arrived at approximately eight in the evening. Christine's grandmother raised the alarm at eight-thirty.
A search was initiated in the darkness and the waning gale. Nothing was found that night.
The following morning, January 12th, searchers found them in the sand dunes behind Wanda Beach, approximately four hundred metres beyond the Wanda Surf Club. Both had been stabbed and beaten. Both had been sexually assaulted. Their bodies had been partially buried in what appeared to be an attempt at concealment.
The drag marks in the sand told investigators something about the sequence of events: a mark thirty-four metres long indicated that Christine had fled — possibly while Marianne was still alive — and had been pursued, caught, and dragged back. The weapons — a long knife and a blunt instrument — were never found. Tonnes of sand were sifted at and around the crime scene. The crime scene gave investigators what it chose to give and withheld the rest.
The drag marks in the sand were thirty-four metres long. Christine had run. She had been pursued, caught, and dragged back. Tonnes of sand were sifted around the scene. The weapons were never found. The case has been open for sixty years.
THE INVESTIGATION THAT SET A RECORD
The New South Wales Police response to the Wanda Beach murders was extraordinary by any measure. Within eighteen months of the discovery, investigators had interviewed approximately seven thousand people — at the time the largest criminal investigation in Australian history. By 1981 the figure had grown further, with reports indicating more than sixteen thousand people interviewed and roughly five thousand suspects examined.
None of it produced a charge.
The investigation was hampered from the beginning by the weather. The southerly gale that had made the beach inhospitable on the afternoon of January 11th had also cleared it of potential witnesses at precisely the moment the girls walked into the sandhills. Those who remained reported seeing a young man in the vicinity of the dunes in the early afternoon. The descriptions were consistent enough to generate composite images but insufficiently specific to produce an identification.
The laundromat lead is among the most discussed missed opportunities in the case's history. In the days following the murders, a worker at a laundromat near the beach area reported that a young man had brought in clothing — trousers and a shirt — heavily stained with what appeared to be blood. He had been nervous and insistent, demanding the items be cleaned immediately. By the time police were informed and arrived, the man had collected his clothes and left. He was never identified. He has remained unidentified for sixty years.
THE SUSPECTS
The Wanda Beach case has accumulated, across six decades, a roster of suspects whose names have been examined and re-examined by police, researchers, and journalists.
Derek Ernest Percy was a serial killer convicted in 1969 of the murder of a twelve-year-old girl in Victoria. He was seventeen years old in January 1965, lived in New South Wales, and had a documented history of violent ideation involving children that predated the Wanda murders. His psychology was considered by investigators to be consistent with the Wanda crime scene. Percy died in custody in 2013, never having confessed to Wanda, and never having been charged. Police were unable to place him at the beach on January 11th with sufficient certainty to pursue the case.
Christopher Bernard Wilder is the suspect who attracted renewed attention most recently in media coverage. Wilder was an Australian-born man who emigrated to the United States and became one of America's most prolific serial killers, known as the Beauty Queen Killer, before dying in a confrontation with police in 1984. In 1965, he was eighteen years old and living in Sydney. His documented methods were considered by some investigators to bear similarities to the Wanda case. He was never officially ruled out.
In 2018, a third suspect emerged through a different avenue entirely. A man convicted of sexually abusing family members became a person of interest when his former girlfriend disclosed to police that he had once told her — while she was watching a television programme about the Wanda murders — that he had done it. He immediately retracted the statement, passing it off as a joke. She did not find it funny. She told police years later, when his other crimes brought him to their attention. Investigators established that he had attended the same school as Marianne Schmidt, lived locally, was an enthusiastic surfer, and was the right age. He cannot be named publicly. No charges have been filed in connection with Wanda.
His former girlfriend was watching a television programme about the Wanda murders when he said: I did that. He immediately retracted it. Called it a joke. She did not find it funny. She told police years later. He was the right age. He knew the beach. No charges have been filed.
WHAT THE CASE CHANGED
The Wanda Beach murders did something to Australia that the country had not been prepared for. They ended a particular understanding of childhood safety — the assumption, common across suburban Australia in the early 1960s, that children and teenagers could move freely through public spaces without being subject to the kind of violence that existed in the imagination of parents but not in the practical reality of daily life.
Before January 11th, 1965, it was entirely normal for children to travel by train without adult supervision, to spend days at the beach unsupervised, to operate with the autonomy that the era's understanding of childhood permitted. The concept of stranger danger, which would become a cornerstone of child safety education across the English-speaking world, did not yet have wide currency in Australia.
The discovery of Marianne Schmidt and Christine Sharrock in the sand dunes at Wanda changed that trust in a way that did not reverse. It was followed, in February 1966, by the Beaumont children disappearance in Adelaide — three children who vanished from a beach in broad daylight and were never found. Together the two cases produced a shift in Australian attitudes toward childhood freedom that is still visible today. The beach, which had been the symbol of Australian summer freedom, became also the place where something terrible could be waiting in the dunes.
SIXTY YEARS
The Wanda Beach murders are New South Wales' oldest unsolved homicide case. The file is technically open. Cold case investigators have reviewed it multiple times as forensic technology has advanced, each time hoping that preserved evidence will produce the identification that sixty years of conventional investigation has not.
As of this writing, no charge has been laid. No suspect has been confirmed. The killer — or killers — have not been identified with sufficient legal certainty to bring a prosecution.
Marianne Schmidt's brother Hans, who was one of the younger children waiting behind the sandhill on January 11th, 1965, has spent decades advocating for renewed investigation. His sister was fifteen years old. She laughed at him when he called after her that she was going the wrong way. She kept walking.
Christine Sharrock's grandmother, who raised her and reported her missing at eight-thirty on the evening of January 11th, did not live to see the case resolved. Neither has anyone else who loved them.
The sand dunes behind Wanda Beach are still there. The southerly gale still clears the beach when it comes in hard from the south. The surf club still stands at the edge of the dunes where the drag marks were found in the early morning of January 12th, 1965.
Two girls told four younger children they would be right back.
They laughed when told they were going the wrong way.
They have not come back yet.
- Sources & Further Reading: The Wanda Beach murders are documented in New South Wales Police records spanning six decades. Contemporary coverage is preserved in Australian newspaper archives and in the National Film and Sound Archive. The Casefile True Crime podcast's Case 01 is among the most thorough audio accounts of the case in English. The Derek Percy connection was formally examined by NSW Police and reported extensively in Australian media. The Christopher Wilder connection was examined and reported by Australian media in 2018. The 2018 person of interest disclosure is documented in reporting by The Australian. Hans Schmidt has given multiple media interviews across the decades, most recently around the case's sixtieth anniversary. The case remains officially open with the New South Wales Police Force Unsolved Homicide Team.