Many people who have studied the Mr Cruel case cannot help but notice the seeming correlation between significant events and electricity transmission lines, electricity substations or electricity terminal stations. I first came across this theory on the Mr Cruel subreddit on Reddit in 2019. I then researched it a bit more and strongly felt that it was a lead worth investigating. In Ferbruary of 2021 I was contacted by a researcher who had independently investigated the same theory in 2014. This person wishes to remain anonymous, but I will refer to him in this post as Clinton Bailey. Bailey has written a manuscript about Mr Cruel and has passed on a copy to me. Over the coming weeks I intend to publish certain chapters from this manscript, the first of which I am publishing today.
It should be pointed out that Bailey is not an electrician and is by no means an expert in this field. However, he did research the topic extensively over the course of a year for his manscript.
NB: I have had to scan the document and upload as image files because the original formatting of the diagrams contained on the file is not compatiable with this blog.
There is new information revealed about the Mr Cruel case! The big scoops from the interview are the following.
1. Iddles revealed that the offender’s lair “in the lounge room had a chunky pine lounge suite”. This is significant as previously no information about the lounge room of Mr Cruel’s lair had been revealed by police or journalists.
2. He stated that, in the bathroom of the lair, “the basin was very close to the toilet”. This contradicts previous information from published accounts of Mr Cruel’s bathroom as they all stated the bathroom did not contain a toilet, but that the toilet was located in a different room next to the bathroom (it is unclear what the reason for this contradiction is).
3. In relation to his Eltham suspect, who he talked about on the Australian True Crime podcast in July 2020, he stated that the person who told him about his Eltham suspect was a “well-known criminal” and “well-known to police” who told Iddles this information when he was dying of cancer in “about 2000 or 2001” (ie not Chopper Read as some had speculated as the latter died in 2013). The year he received this tipoff was not revealed in the ATC interview.
4. He stated that the Eltham suspect died in 1992, (this was not revealed in the ATC interview).
5. He described the Eltham suspect as “someone who from time to time crossdressed”, (this was not revealed in the ATC interview).
6. The photo of the Eltham suspect “was shown to Karmein Chan’s mum and the father, but they couldn’t identify him”, (this was not revealed in the ATC interview).
7. The suspect “ran his own business which he was very successful in”, (this was not revealed in the ATC interview).
8. He mentions other attacks that were atrributed to Mr Cruel in “southern Melbourne, down around Sandringam, Brighton”. He said there were 12 attacks in total and that in these other 8 attacks the perpetrator was “always wearing a black balaclava”. “So, there were probably 12 that you might attribute to him, but definitely the last 4”, (these attacks have been written about previously by journalists such as Keith Moor and John Silvester, but the suburb of Sandringham wasn’t mentioned – of course he doesn’t actually state that an attack occurred in Sandringham).
9. He stated about one of these earlier attacks that “it’s a vacant house that’s up for sale. There was no forced entry so how did he get access? And there were questions about could he be a real estate agent, but the way in which he cleaned up, the MO was nearly identical, so that is why all of those cases were put in…a basket. He might have started in 1985 and you’re looking at about every 6 or 8 months for an attack…they were very, very similar”. (This may refer to the Hampton sexual assault of a 14 year old girl which has been written about previously by Keith Moor and John Silvester. However, the information about the house being a vacant house up for sale is new. It is probably the same attack as what Keith Moor describes in his 13 April 2013 article for the Herald Sun in which he stated: “”One of these suspected attacks was on a 14-year-old girl who was abducted from her Hampton home in Melbourne’s southern suburbs in 1985. She was tied, gagged and blindfolded before being driven to a vacant building site and assaulted. The scared and scarred schoolgirl was dumped at the nearby Moorabbin Bowl on the Nepean Highway at 2:10am, nearly five hours after being kidnapped.”
Thank you to Matt Dunlop of Matt Dunlop Media for providing me with the video.
If you have any information about the Mr Cruel cold case please contact me on melbinmarvels@gmail.com or Crime Stoppers on 1800 333 000. Alternatively, please leave a public comment on this blog post.
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