Month: July 2024

This is the first in a new series of podcasts about the enduring mystery that is the unsolved abduction and murder of Karmein Chan in 1991.

What’s this episode about?

In this series, https://melbinmarvels.wordpress.com/ and Whoismrcruel.com will discuss the fallout from this event by analysing contemporary media reports on it. We hope this will give us a different perspective on what Melbourne Marvels have labelled the ‘Mr Cruel mythos’. In episode 1 of this series, we dissect the very first media conference Victoria Police held on the crime, the day after Karmein Chan was abducted and also what was reported in The Age and the Herald-Sun on 14-15 April 1991.

This discussion focuses on some of the main themes that emerge from the investigation in those first 48 hours.

How the investiation got off to an unfortunate start

• Firstly, the media were circulating a photograph of Karmein Chan provided to them by Victoria Police. There was one major problem with this photograph – it was not a recent photograph. It was actually from from five years previously, when Karmein was in Grade 3 at 8 years of age. This fact cannot have helped the investigation because if anyone had seen her during that time they might have dismissed the sighting.
• The media, particularly the Herald Sun, were spreading the narrative that Karmein had been abducted by the offender known as Mr Cruel, i.e., the same offender who had abducted Nicola Lynas and Sharon Wills. This may or may not be true. What is clear is that David Sprague clearly stated he was not sure about this, but some media were pushing it anyway.
• The media were spreading false information that all the attacks by Mr Cruel had occurred on school holidays. While only linking the Karmein Chan abduction to The abduction of Sharon Wills and The abduction of Nicola Lynas, all the media were repeating the false claim that these had all occurred on school holidays – The abduction of Nicola Lynas hadn’t, nor had the Lower Plenty Attack in 1987, which police later ‘confirmed’ was the same offender.

These last two points in particular may well have led many to assume that the offender was a teacher who was working at Presbyterian Ladies’ College, or another school. This belief was a widely held assumption by many who were following the story at the time.

Other items looked at

We also look at the media reports in more granular detail to help us understand more about the early investigation. We’re doing this series to try to keep attention on the case in the hope that it will be one day be solved and the offender/offenders caught, and we hope to get podcasts out on a fairly regular basis.

To learn more about the Mr Cruel case, look up some of Melbourne Marvels’ other blogposts and podcasts about this case. These blogposts contain more information about these cases than you will find anywhere else on the internet. They are your go to for learning about the case. Click the following links to learn about the other unsolved crimes in this case:

Lower Plenty Attack
The abduction of Sharon Wills
The abduction of Nicola Lynas

NB: The use of copyright material in this podcast is for fair dealing for research purposes, for criticism and for reporting news. Melbourne Marvels is a non-profit blog/podcast that is researching the unsolved crimes of ‘Mr Cruel’.