How Channel 9’s Under Investigation episode on Mr Cruel plagiarised from Melbourne Marvels

How the Nine Network’s Under Investigation program on Mr Cruel presented material that was copied from the Melbourne Marvels Mr Cruel Map and falsely claimed that it was the work of ESRI Australia’s mapping tool.

In early March 2022 the Nine Network aired a special on the Mr Cruel case for the Under Investigation Australia program.  The program made the claim that by using new  “GIS mapping technology” they were able to establish a previously unknown theory about the Mr Cruel case – that there was a strong correlation between electricity substations and most of the known crime scenes in the Mr Cruel case.  This “new” theory they claimed was a significant lead that would be a breakthrough in the case.  Only, this “breakthrough” was not a new lead in the case at all.  It had been extensively written about by a number of people previously – most notably the researcher who goes by the pseudonym Clinton Bailey in his Mr Cruel manuscript as early as 2014 – a manuscript that the Nine Network had full access to before the creation of their UIA episode.  Furthermore, a number of anonymous commenters on the Reddit forum r/MrCruel had brought the theory up in discussion as early as 2019.  

However, perhaps the most blatant point of plagiarism was that the program had relied almost completely on the Melbourne Marvels Mr Cruel Map which had mapped all of the electricity terminal and substations outlined in the program in a Google Map MM had created in January 2020.  

This blog post will show how the Nine Network knowingly ascribed the mapping of the electricity substation sites to mapmaking company ESRI, claiming that it was a new technology. However, it was not ESRI and their fancy GIS technology that mapped these sites out.  Rather it was an “armchair detective” at Melbourne Marvels using nothing more than a laptop with access to online copies of the Melway street directory who discovered them.  

What is the Electrical Connections theory?

Melbourne Marvels was not the originator of this theory – that is, that the unknown offender who committed the Mr Cruel crimes may have been involved in a work capacity with electricity or may have worked for the SECV.  In fact, the first time the author of the Melbourne Marvels website was exposed to the theory was in early 2019 when reading a post by the Reddit user Cam41eron.  In the post titled “electrical substation locations in Melbourne” the user pointed out a number of key points.

1. Both Karmein Chan and Nicola Lynas were dumped right next to electrical substations (Kew substation in the case of Nicola Lynas and Thomastown Terminal Station in the case of Karmein Chan whose body was found in a landfill site one year after her disappearance).  
2. Three of the victims, Sharon , Nicki and Karmein, lived “within 6 minutes” of an electrical substation.  
3. The author speculated as to whether an electricity substation could have been used as the site of the detention premises of the offender where the offender took his two abduction victims, Sharon and Nicki.

In reply to this post, user “dulcineadoll” left a comment which pointed out that Sharon’s family home was located right next to a large pylon carrying overhead transmission lines, which seemed to add evidence to the theory that perhaps the offender was a linesman who had worked in the area.  

Fascinated by the Mr Cruel case, I began in 2019 to research it by visiting the State Library of Victoria and by trawling through old copies of newspapers on the case.  However, this only served to highlight to the author a number of major contradictions in the case that didn’t add up.  I then made it my mission to begin writing blog posts which found all of the original sources on the case in order to try to make some sense of all of the confusion.  

As part of this process, in January 2020, I created a Google Map which was to map all of the sites in some way connected with the Mr Cruel case and uploaded it to the Melbourne Marvels blog.  Among other things the map included the crime scenes where the attacks had occurred, highlighted the geographic location of where the crimes had occurred, highlighted the flight path corridors of Tullamarine Airport and started mapping the locations of electrical terminal stations, substations and transmission lines.  In addition, the approximate locations of where the seven main suspects lived (according to a 2016 Herald Sun article by Keith Moor) were also included.  Other sites of interest were also included, including the approximate location of a series of attacks that had occurred in the 1980s. Police were unsure as to whether it was the same offender who had committed these attacks.  The map also included the approximate locations of the attacks committed by suspect Brian Elkner between 1972 and 1974 and the approximate location of this individual’s houses in both Hampton (from 1972-1974) and Thornbury (from 1985 onwards).  The Map was, and still is, the most comprehensive map on the Mr Cruel case and has been updated with new information as it has come to hand.  This Google Map was published on the Melbourne Marvels website on 26 January 2020 at the bottom of the post about the Lower Plenty Attack.

From 26 January 2020 Melbourne Marvels also started producing a series of blog posts and podcasts about the Mr Cruel case.  This continues to the present day.  One of the main goals with this work is to attempt to clarify some of the seeming contradictions associated with this case and to correct quite a lot of misinformation associated with it.  To this end, Melbourne Marvels has had great success in a number of areas.  An example of this is the fact that it was Melbourne Marvels that was able to correct the record in the case of the 1987 Moonee Ponds attack of a 48 year old woman.  A 2019 book by author Xanthe Mallet had wrongly attributed this attack as being the work of Mr Cruel.  By trawling through old copies of newspapers, Melbourne Marvels was able to confirm that, in fact, serial rapist Christopher Clarence Hall had been convicted of this attack in 1994, and that Mr Cruel had been ruled out of committing the crime.

Then, in February 2021 Melbourne Marvels was contacted by researcher Clinton Bailey, another “armchair detective” researcher on the case.  Clinton Bailey is actually a pseudonym for a man who has written a manuscript about the Mr Cruel case.  In the manuscript Bailey writes about a number of possible investigative avenues for police to pursue.  Bailey provided Melbourne Marvels with a copy of this manuscript. 

In one chapter of this document Clinton Bailey put forward the case “for the offender known as Mr Cruel being involved in the electrical trade, possibly as a linesman, based on geographical evidence”.  The chapter was a highly detailed work on this theory, and included an explanation of how electricity is transferred from the high voltage transmission lines to the lower voltage suburban lines through terminal and substations.  The chapter also included some crude maps detailing how different terminal and substations were connected through transmission lines.  Included in the map were the following Terminal stations: Thomastown, Templestowe, Ringwood, Clifton Hill and Richmond.  The substations that were included were Lower Plenty (SEC site), Kew, Deepdene and Bayswater.   

I was fascinated with the document and this initiated much back and forth email and telephone discussion about the case with Clinton Bailey.  In these discussions, it became apparent that Bailey did not have access to many copies of the Melway. I soon realised that I could greatly help with this research by trawling through old copies of the Melway street directory online and marking the locations of electrical infrastructure on the Melbourne Marvels Mr Cruel Map.  

I began this work in February 2021 and this same month I mapped the locations of several other sites that I felt may be significant to the case, including the Keilor Terminal Stations, the Electrical Zone Substation in Coolaroo, the Watsonia Electrical Substation, the Burwood substation and the Box Hill Electricity Service Centre (both located across the road from Presbyterian Ladies’ College where two of the victims went to school), the East Camberwell Substation (a railway substation), and the Heatherton Substation.  In addition the author mapped much of the transmission line network throughout the eastern and south eastern suburbs of Melbourne.  All this electricity infrastructure was marked on the Melbourne Marvels Mr Cruel Map in February and March 2021.  Melbourne Marvels also released a Youtube video showing how to use this map in March 2021, where all of the aforementioned electrical substations are clearly marked.  It was necessary to use old copies of the Melway street directory for this work as Google Maps usually does not have this type of infrastructure marked, and if it is marked, it does not necessarily mean that it was in the same location 30 years previously. 

In addition to this work, Melbourne Marvels began publishing chapters from Clinton Bailey’s manuscript from March 2021, including the chapter titled  “The offender and electrical connections” on 31 March 2021. 

In April 2021, Mike King released a podcast about the Mr Cruel case for his podcast titled Mapping Evil.  Included with the podcast was a website posting on the Esri Australia website which gave information about the case and included a “story map” of it as well.  The information described in this post was largely a rehash of what journalist Keith Moor had written about the case in a series of newspaper articles for the Herald Sun in 2016.  It also included a number of mistakes about the case that are often repeated by the media, such as saying that the offender wore the same black ski mask for each of the attacks (in fact, he always wore a different balaclava), and saying that all four attacks had occurred during school holidays (Clinton Bailey had established years previously that only two of the four attacks had occurred on school holidays).  Furthermore, the maps identified the wrong location for where Karmein Chan’s house was, putting it 2km east of where the real location was.    

The Esri Australia article on the case included an analysis of the geography of the 4 sites where the 4 victims had been attacked. It used the Story Maps software tool for this analysis.  There were closeups of the four sites which mapped a number of sites because “examining potential initial contact sites in close proximity to each abduction – such as schools, local transport stops, shopping centres, parks and playgrounds – can help authorities identify where the victim and predator came into contact, and narrow the field of suspects by uncovering important links.”  Except, this analysis did not include as part of its analysis any electricity related infrastructure, such as electricity substations, terminal stations or transmission lines.  In fact, the analysis seemed to rely on data that had been gleaned from a modern map, so was 30 years out of date. It also failed to make note of other sites of interest such as the tennis court in Lower Plenty, or the Chan restaurants located in Eltham and Bulleen.  I was thus unimpressed with the work. 

In September 2021 Melbourne Marvels was contacted by email by a researcher named Danielle Collis who works for the Nine Network and was ultimately the producer of the March 2022 Under Investigation episode on Mr Cruel.  This researcher complimented me on my research and requested the contact details of Clinton Bailey.  I provided them with Bailey’s email address.  

Also in September 2021, Clinton Bailey initiated email contact with Mike King to inform him of the high number of mistakes on the Esri Australia website posting “The case of Mr Cruel” and that were in his podcast on the Mr Cruel case, Mapping Evil.  During this back and forth email exchange Clinton Bailey was also put into contact with the Nine Network researcher that had contacted Melbourne Marvels looking for Clinton Bailey’s contact details.  Clinton Bailey has informed me that it was at this time that he recommended to Mike King the Melbourne Marvels website as the best source of truth on the Mr Cruel case on the internet.  However, he also informed Mike King that it was of utmost importance to correct the record about the false information the Victoria Police provided to the FBI about all of the four canonical cases having occurred on school holidays.  He therefore, introduced Mike King to the Nine Network researcher hoping that Mike King would appear on the upcoming special 9 had planned to do about the case in the hopes that Mike King would bring this fact to the table.  

Mike King then went into negotiations with the Nine Network to appear on the Under Investigation program.  Nothing more was heard by either Clinton Bailey or Melbourne Marvels from Mike King or the Nine Network about the program until March 2022 when the Nine Network aired its special on Mr Cruel.  It was therefore with great shock that Melbourne Marvels discovered that the Nine Network claimed in the program that the electrical connections theory was a new lead in the case that had been discovered through ESRI Australia’s application of GIS mapping technology to locate a number of electrical substations next to many of the crime scenes.  What’s more, the program had clearly plagiarised directly from the Melbourne Marvels Mr Cruel Map as it had mapped the Watsonia Electrical Substation, the Burwood Substation, and the Heatherton substation.  All of these sites had only previously been mapped on the Melbourne Marvels Mr Cruel map.  

Figure 1 (Under Investigation Map of Melbourne eastern suburbs)

The above screenshot from the Under Investigation special on Mr Cruel (see figure 1) depicts many of the same sites depicted in the Melbourne Marvels Mr Cruel map and falsely claims to have discovered this association through the employment of GIS mapping technology.  Pictured here are the Thomastown Terminal Station next to the site where Karmein Chan’s remains were found; the Watsonia Electrical Substation “near”  the site of the Lower Plenty attack, the Chan household “near” the Templestowe Terminal Station, the Bayswater Zone Substation “near” the Sharon Wills dumping site; the Ringwood Terminal Station next to the Wills household, the Burwood Substation; the Lynas household next to the East Camberwell Substation, the Nicola Lynas dump site next to the Kew Substation.  All of these sites were published on the Melbourne Marvels Mr Cruel Map one year prior to the airing of the Under Investigation program which claimed it had discovered this link using GIS mapping. 

Figure 2 (Melbourne Marvels Mr Cruel Map of Lower Plenty region)

The Melbourne Marvels Mr Cruel Map (see figure 2) showing the Lower Plenty attack location (bottom right white gun with red background – not the actual location to protect the identity of the unnamed victim) and the Watsonia Electrical Substation (top left, lightning bolt with purple background).  However, despite the Under Investigation Australia episode claiming the victim’s house was close to the Watsonia Electricity Substation, it was in fact very far away from it at over 5km as the crow flies.  There is a much closer SECV site (bottom centre, lightning bolt in purple background) located to the south west of the attack location, but this was no longer in use even in 1987 and is still 1 km from the crime scene.  The red line running between the Watsonia Electrical Substation and the other SECV site in Lower Plenty is a transmission line running on tall electricity pylons. This too is located approximately 1km from the crime scene, not particularly close. Therefore, despite the program claiming that the crime scene was located right next to a substation, there is absolutely no significance of the crime scene in relation to any electricity infrastructure.  

Figure 3 (Lower Plenty region, with detail on the Lower Plenty attack)

Clicking on any particular icon on the Melbourne Marvels Mr Cruel Map brings up more information about that particular marker.  For example, in figure 3 I have selected the white gun marker which indicates an attack and it has brought up the details of the Lower Plenty attack.

Figure 4 Melbourne Marvels Mr Cruel Map showing the Ringwood region.

The Melbourne Marvels Mr Cruel Map (see figure 4) showing the Ringwood abduction location (top centre, white gun with red background) and the Ringwood Terminal Station (bottom centre, lightning bolt with purple background), Antonio Park Primary School (top left). Also shown as a red line is the transmission line which runs on tall pylons right behind the house where the abduction took place.   Once again all icons are clickable for more information, as can be seen in Figure 5 in which the Ringwood Terminal Station has been selected.

Figure 5: Melbourne Marvels Mr Cruel Map showing the Ringwood region.  The Ringwood Terminal Station has been selected.

Figure 6: Melbourne Marvels Mr Cruel Map of Bayswater region.

The Melbourne Marvels Mr Cruel Map (see figure 6) showing the Bayswater crime scene where Sharon was dumped (green marker on left) and the Bayswater Zone Substation (top centre, lightning bolt with purple background), Food Plus convenience store (bottom  left, purple), Baywsater High School tennis courts (top left, purple), a possible witness sighting of the offender’s vehicle (right centre, green). Once again all icons are clickable for more information, as can be seen in Figure 7 in which the dumping site has been selected.

Figure 7.  From the Melbourne Marvels Mr Cruel Map showing the Bayswater region.  Dump site of Sharon has been selected.

Figure 8: Melbourne Marvels Mr Cruel Map showing the Canterbury region

The Melbourne Marvels Mr Cruel Map (see figure 8) showing the Canterbury house where Nicola Lynas was abducted from (red marker top left), the East Camberwell Substation (purple marker, bottom left), the crime scene where it is believed the offender dumped the Lynas family vehicle (bottom right, car with red background), the crime scene from where it is believed the offender forced Nicola into his own vehicle (roughly centre, car with red background). Once again all icons are clickable for more information, as can be seen in Figure 9 in which the crime scene from where it is believed the offender forced Nicola into his own vehicle has been selected.

Figure 9: Melbourne Marvels Map of Canterbury region.  Location offender switched cars with Nicola Lynas has been selected.

Figure 10: Melbourne Marvels Mr Cruel Map showing Kew region.  

The Melbourne Marvels Mr Cruel Map (see figure 10) showing Kew substation where Nicola Lynas was dumped (green marker top left) and Eglinton Reserve where the offender may have fled through (red marker, centre right). Once again all icons are clickable for more information, as can be seen in Figure 11 in which Eglinton Reserve has been selected.

Figure 11: Melbourne Marvels Mr Cruel Map of Kew region (with Eglinton Reserve selected).

Figure 12: Melbourne Marvels Map of the Templestowe region.  

The Melbourne Marvels Mr Cruel Map (see figure 12) showing the Chan household where Karmein was abducted (gun in red marker top left), the location of the offender’s getaway vehicle (car red marker, top right).  To the east of the Chan household a red line running from between the north east and south west signifies a transmission line running along tall electricity pylons.  This is located  455 metres as the crow flies from the Chan household at its closest point on The Grange. Once again all icons are clickable for more information, as can be seen in Figure 13 in which the marker indicating the location of the offender’s getaway vehicle is selected..

Figure 13: Melbourne Marvels Mr Cruel Map of Templestowe region (with offender’s getaway vehicle selected).

It should be noted here that the Channel 9 Under Investigation Australia program made the false claim that the Chan household was located “near” to the Templestowe Terminal Station.  This is not the case as can be seen Figure 14, a zoomed out image of the same region.  Here the Templestowe Terminal Station is located in the top right in purple.  It is over 3 kilometres from the 1991 Chan household.  Given that substations or terminal stations feature in most Melbourne suburbs, this is not close at all.  

Figure 14

Figure 14: Melbourne Marvels Mr Cruel map of wide view of the Templestowe region showing Templestowe Terminal Station 3km distant with transmission line travelling along tall pylons towards Serpells Road.

Figure 15: Melbourne Marvels Mr Cruel Map showing Burwood region.

The Melbourne Marvels Mr Cruel Map (see figure 15) showing Presbyterian Ladies’ College where both Nicola Lynas and Karmein Chan went to school (schoolchildren in purple marker centre), the Burwood Substation (lightning bolt in purple marker centre) and the Box Hill Electricity Service Centre (lightning bolt in purple marker, bottom right).  Once again Channel 9 made the association between a significant location and a substation.  Except Melbourne Marvels had this mapped on this Google Map one year  before they claimed to have uncovered the connection using GIS technology.  Figure 16 shows the same map with the Burwood Substation selected.

Figure 16: Melbourne Marvels Map showing the Burwood Region with the Burwood Substation selected.

Figure 17: Melbourne Marvels Mr Cruel Map showing Hampton region.

The Melbourne Marvels Mr Cruel Map (see figure 17) showing the approximate locations in Hampton of two attacks that police speculated may have been earlier attacks by the offender known as Mr Cruel (top left, handgun symbol in purple background), one on a 14 year old girl in February 1985 and one on a 14 year old boy in July 1985; the approximate location of the home of suspect Brian Elkner between 1972 and 1974 (top left, house symbol in grey background); the site where the 14 year old girl victim was dumped in February 1985 (green marker); and the Heatherton Substation (right centre, grey background with lightning bolt symbol).  Once again the Channel 9 Under Investigation program falsely claimed that a crime scene was located “near”  a substation, but in this case the substation is more than 5km distant from where the victim was dumped.  Once again, this is not close at all.  Figure 18 shows the same area with the site where the 14 year old female victim was dumped selected.

Figure 18: Melbourne Marvels Mr Cruel Map showing the Hampton region with the site the 14 year old female victim of an offender who may have been “Mr Cruel” selected.  

Thus far we have seen how Melbourne Marvels had mapped all of the substations named in the Under Investigation Australia special on Mr Cruel 1 to 2 years prior to it airing in March 2022, despite the program making the false claim that these sites were discovered first by researcher Mike King employing GIS technology to find them.  Rather, Melbourne Marvels discovered the sites by trawling through old copies of the Melway street directory dating from 1985 to 1991.  

However, this is not where it stops.  After the airing of the UIA special on Mr Cruel some newspapers picked up the story, falsely reporting that Mike King had discovered the electrical connection theory using GIS technology.  An example of this was an article by Rhiannon Tuffield in The Australian  on 17 March 2022 titled Forensic Technology links Mr Cruel to Melbourne electrical industry.  The first paragraph in the article reads: ”A major breakthrough has been made in one of Melbourne’s most notorious abduction mysteries more than 30 years after an unknown masked offender kidnapped young girls.”  In fact, it was neither forensic technology employed that discovered the link, nor a major breakthrough.  Rather, the link was first written about by researcher Clinton Bailey as early as 2014 by observing the crime scenes in question.  The manuscript containing this theory was sent to both the researcher working for the Channel 9 program Under Investigation Australia and the American researcher Mike King in September 2021.  The theory was expanded upon by Melbourne Marvels who began mapping the locations of the electrical infrastructure in January 2020, completing this mapping in March 2021.  Furthermore, the program exaggerated the electrical connections link by making false claims, such as by stating that Watsonia Electrical Substation was “near” the Lower Plenty victims house when it was more than 5km away, stating that Karmein Chan’s house was next to the Templestowe Terminal Station when it was more than 3km away, stating that the Bayswater Zone Substation was close to the dumping spot of Sharon Wills when it was more than 1km away, and stating that the 14 year old Hampton victim was dumped near a substation when the location was more than 5km away from it. 

Furthermore, I discovered in April 2021 that Victoria Police themselves were aware of the electrical connections evidence as early as the early 90s.  I have spoken myself to a number of linesmen who informed me that detectives entered their work premises to interview linesmen at Watsonia Electrical Substation, the Electrical Zone Substation in Coolaroo and the Thomastown Terminal Station during Operation Spectrum.  Furthermore, I have spoken to a former detective who worked on the Spectrum Taskforce who also informed me that an entire team was dedicated to investigating this angle because of the unusual associations, but that no good suspects were discoverved by investigating this lead. Therefore the claim that this is a “new” breakthrough is something that is probably being laughed at by police who worked on the case back in the day. 

The Under Investigation program has displayed a shocking lack of journalistic integrity by knowingly copying the theory off other researchers, claiming it was the work of “forensic technology” and knowingly deceiving the public as to the veracity of the theory.  It is extremely shocking to me that a mainstream news organisation would display such recklessness in attempting to make a profit off the map created by Melbourne Marvels and put in the public forum for free.  Furthermore, by knowingly putting false information about the case in the public, they are potentially preventing justice from being served in this case as such false information could well serve to cause confusion in the general public.   

Further evidence of copying.
On 14 March 2022 Mike King published a video on his Youtube Channel titled “Mr Cruel’s Rabbit Hole” in which he talks about the Mr Cruel case once again.  He links to clips from the discredited Under Investigation program, but he also shows a different map (see figure 19) of the Mr Cruel case from the one that was shown on Under Investigation.  This one seems to be from a software tool he uses for his website Profiling Evil.  As if it couldn’t be any clearer that he had blatantly copied the mapping of the substations from the Mr Cruel Map, this map included the mapping of substations not mentioned on the Under Investigation program – and they were all the remaining ones that had been mapped on the MM Mr Cruel Map between one and two years previously. 

Figure 19: Profiling Evil map of Melbourne showing markers that have clearly been copied from the Melbourne Marvels Mr Cruel Map.

In Mike King’s Profiling Evil map, every single marker is also included in the Melbourne Marvels Mr Cruel map, including two electrical stations not included in the Under Investigation Australia program.  The electrical substations or terminal stations are marked by an exclamation marked inside a triangle in an orange background.  The map includes the Keilor Terminal Station and the Electrical Zone Substation in Coolaroo.  This means that Mike King’s Profiling Evil map contains the exact same electrical stations that are marked on the Melbourne Marvels Mr Cruel map.  The chances of this being a coincidence are astronomical as there are many other electrical terminal and substations in the Melbourne area that are not marked on either map.  

What is more, every other marker on the Mike King Profiling Evil map is taken from the Melbourne Marvels Mr Cruel map.  For example, he has marked (white humanoid figure) the approximate residential locations of three of the Sierra 7 suspects, this includes the current and former houses of Brian Elkner in Thornbury and Hampton respectively, and two other suspects residences in Balwyn and Glen Iris.  He has also marked the location of the attack of a 48 year old former nun who was attacked in her home in Moonee Ponds in November 1987.  This attack, while initially linked to the offender known as Mr Cruel, was actually the work of serial rapist Christopher Clarence Hall, who was convicted of the rape in 1994.  Despite the fact Hall was convicted of the crime Xanthe Mallet mistakenly claimed it was the work of Mr Cruel, based on a conversation she had with criminal psychologist Tim Watson-Munro, in her 2019 book Cold Case Investigations.  Melbourne Marvels discovered the mistake in June 2021.  

Other Shocking Inaccuracies aired on the Under Investigation Australia special on Mr Cruel.

I have already spoken in detail about some inaccuracies that were aired on the UIA Mr Cruel episode, namely, that the program falsely claimed that a number of substations and terminal electrical stations were close to the crime scenes from the case.  Now, I will detail a host of other shockingly inaccurate details aired on the program which have also done more damage than good if it is our hope for a breakthrough in the case.  I will now deal with these in detail.

Perhaps the most shocking mistake aired on the program was that the program was advertised by Channel 9’s marketing division as a program about “Australia’s worst serial killer”.  Even now the 60 Minutes Youtube Channel still contains this shocking error as the video for the UIA episode on Mr Cruel is titled: “Hunting Mr Cruel: Where is Australia’s worst serial killer?”.  This is shocking misinformation as anyone who knows the case knows full well the offender is only deemed to be responsible for one murder. Liz Hayes even states at the beginning of the program: “But there were four involving the assault, kidnap and murder of young girls that police beleive was undoubtedly the work of this depraved predator who has never been caught.” Again, this kind of misinformation in the public forum harms the chances of the case ever being solved.  

Second, the host of the program, Liz Hayes, repeatedly states throughout the program “We can narrow down the location of Mr Cruel’s lair to the north eastern suburbs of Melbourne.”  This while showing a map which clearly shows the flight paths in the north western suburbs of Melbourne, where the “lair” was believed by police to have been located..  

Third, the program incorrectly states that the offender’s detention premises had a driveway on the left hand side of the residence.  Anybody who knows the case well, knows that police have repeatedly stated in press releases that, in fact, the driveway of the detention premises was on the right hand side of the residence.  Once again, this puts false information out in the public forum which damages the chances of the case being solved.  

Fourth, the program repeated an oft-repeated mistake in the Mr Cruel mythos when it stated that the first abduction victim was released wearing nothing but garbage bags.  In fact, it was established in an article by Keith Moor for the Herald Sun in 2016 titled Victoria Police and FBI dossier on shocking Mr Cruel child abductions that the offender took the bags off before releasing the girl at Bayswater High School and the victim was found wearing a man’s shirt.  The Melbourne Marvels blog post on the abduction of Sharon details how the mistake began when a police detective was misquoted by newspaper journalists in 1988 and the mistake was repeated ad infinitum afterwards.  

Fifth, the program showed archival footage of a restaurant named Ming Chu in Main Street, Lower Plenty whilst a newsreader stated: “Karmein Chan’s parents Phyllis and John were working at one of the restaurants they own.” However, the restaurant Ming Chu was not owned by the Chan family.  In fact, they owned the restaurants named “Mings” located  in Main Street, Eltham and the Bulleen Plaza and it was the former they were at on the night of their daughter’s abduction.  This is another feature of the misinformation that Channel 9 has been regularly putting in the public forum regarding this case for decades.  I thank the Reddit user pwurg, whose excellent research discovered this fact.

There were a number of other mistakes aired in the program that I won’t even bother listing here as to do so would border on the pedantic.  However, the five listed above are proof enough that the Nine Network’s so-called investigative journalism should be avoided at all costs when it comes to cold cases.

Request to the Nine Network and Mike King of Profiling Evil.

I request that both the Nine Network and Mike King acknowledge the fact that they did not discover the fact that many of the crime scenes have electrical connections. Not only did police themselves make the link to electrical infrastructure in the early 90s, but the pseudonymous Clinton Bailey wrote about the link as early as 2014.   I also want them to acknowledge that they relied on the Melbourne Marvels Mr Cruel map and not GIS or any other forensic technology to discover the locations of these substations or terminal stations.  Lastly, they should  acknowledge that they have knowingly exaggerated the electrical connections theory by incorrectly claiming that many of the substations/terminal stations were “near” a crime scene.  Specifically, the latter is true for the Watsonia Electrical Substation, the Templestowe Terminal Station, the Bayswater Zone Substation and the Heatherton Substation.  By falsely claiming these sites were “near” crime scenes, both the Nine Network and Mike King have exhibited a shocking lack of responsibility to the victims of the crimes who are still waiting for justice in this cold case.

Note.  On 1 April 2022 True Crime News Weekly published an article for True Crime News Weekly detailing the nature of the plagiarism described above.

Melbourne Marvels March 2022