In, The Edgar’s Creek Suspect Sighting, a special edition of the Melbourne Marvels and Who is Mr Cruel podcast collaboration, we take time out from telling the Karmein Chan story to discuss a recent meeting and interview Eamonn from Melbourne Marvels had with the witness David.
David had a staggering encounter with a suspicious man on the night of 13 April 1991, about 90 minutes after Karmein Chan was abducted from her Templestowe home by an unknown assailant.
That night David saw this suspect fire a gunshot at Edgar’s Creek in Reservoir, the same creek where Karmein’s remains were found on 9 April, 1992.
David has previously told this story on his Youtube channel, @australianews, in 2012. However, in this episode, Eamonn visits the site in question with David where we retrace his steps that night, and he reveals a few more intriguing details about his experience that day.
A jacket just like the one worn by the Edgar’s Creek suspect.
NB:- this podcast deals with topics of a serious nature. Sexual assault and murder are discussed.
For more information on Mr Cruel attacks please click on the following links.
Please also read up on Jay’s website www.whoismrcruel.com for more information about this case.
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’.
Warning, this episode contains details about the sexual assault of children and the murder of a child. Please use discretion before listening.
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In late 2022, Melbourne Marvels discovered what appears to be a photograph of Sharon Wills from 1985, which shook us to our cores. It was a photograph of Mr Cruel abduction, Sharon, wearing black garbage bags! Those who know the Mr Cruel story well will understand the significance of this find.
Likely Photograph of Sharon Wills (2nd from left) at Antonio Park Primary School in 1985.
How we found the photograph
We discovered the photograph on a Facebook Page for Antonio Park Primary School, the school that Sharon attended in the 1980s. This is the only photograph of Sharon Wills that we know of that appeared in the public sphere between 1985 to when she appeared in a photograph taken by Karl Jahn in the The Sun News Pictorial in July 1988.
The photograph of Sharon Wills wearing black garbage bags we found was from 1985, when Sharon was six or seven-years-old, and appears to show her participating in some celebratory activities as part of the 25th anniversary of the school that year. The photograph depicts a room at the school within which are six children (two boys, four girls) and an adult female. It’s unclear whether the adult female is a teacher who worked at the school in 1985, but this woman looks to be aged approximately in her 40s.
The photograph depicts, perhaps, what was then some sort of home economics room of the school as there is an oven in the background. In the foreground of the photograph there are two large tables upon which is a large cake with the number 25 written on it in what appears to be ‘hundreds of thousands’ confetti. The children in the room appear to be helping the adult woman in decorating the cake.
Some of the children appear to have been participating in some sort of activities that involved the creation of artistic clothing designs using tin foil. In the background, a boy can be seen looking at a table on top of which, most of this tin foil-based art and craft, is. A girl on the very left of the photograph, about 11-years-old, has some of the tin foil adorning her hair. Sharon appears to be the child second from the left. She also has tin foil adorning her hair and has some of the tin foil acting as a kind of collar.
Wearing black garbage bag
What is most startling about this photograph though is that it quite clearly shows the girl, who appears to be Sharon, wearing a black garbage bag. Her arms have been placed through holes in the bag so that she can adorn it. Anyone who knows the ‘Mr Cruel’ case well knows that the offender dressed Sharon in black garbage bags before releasing her at Bayswater High School. It was believed by police that he dressed her in the bags in order to conceal her identity as he carried her from his vehicle to the location where he dumped her at Bayswater High School. The following quote is from the Melbourne Marvels post on the abduction of Sharon and specifically on the 2016 Keith Moor article for the Herald-Sun about this specific abduction:
“The offender finally told Sharon that she was to have a shower rather than a bath where he “made her wash her hair and body really well”. When she was dry the offender dressed Sharon in the shirt he had taken from the basket in the Wills family lounge room and put her inside two garbage bags. He pulled the bottom garbage bag up to her neck and taped it to her shoulders, while he put the other one over her head and taped it to her waist. Then he made a hole so that she could breathe before carrying her to a car and placing her on the floor in front of the front passenger seat. After some time he stopped the vehicle, got out and lifted Sharon out of the car with the garbage bags still on her. He began jogging while carrying Sharon “stopping now and then to put her down while he rested”.After an unstated period of time the man put Sharon down and “told her how to get to a nearby Food Plus store”. Moor states that the offender then removed the garbage bags and blindfold and told Sharon not to look at him as he left.”
What are the odds therefore, that the only known photograph of Sharon, pre-July 1988 is an obscure photograph that shows her donning black garbage bags!
How do we know this really is Sharon? It certainly looks like her. The similarities between it and the image of Sharon from when she participated in the Victorian Children’s Choir on The Early Bird Show in December 1988 are striking. The girls in both images are wearing identical ‘see-through’ framed spectacles and identical pearl earrings and both images depict a girl with the same colour of hair. In fact, the girls in both images are so similar it’s hard to believe three years have passed between when they were taken. I thought I better confirm it though in order to be sure, so I sent it to Sharon herself. Sharon had initiated contact with me previously online and we have been in touch several times, but I generally don’t like to bother her if I can avoid it. I did think it was a good idea that she was given the opporunity to be made aware of the existence of this photo though, so I sent it to her. When asked if it was her Sharon simply stated that she thought it was, but that she wasn’t 100% sure.
What are the implications of this photograph? While we can’t be certain there is any link between this photograph and the offender, it certainly raises a number of very relevant questions. For example, is it possible the offender saw this photograph of Sharon and this in some way inspired him to commit the crime in which he abducted the girl in December 1988? Was the offender offering a clue to his identity as he had seen the photograph of Sharon? Is this just some bizarre coincidence?
Who is the person who took the photograph? I contacted Antonio Park Primary School, and they were unable to answer this question. They simply said it was one of a number of photographs the school had in their possession and they posted it as part of the 60th anniversary celebrations in 2020 and it was displayed on their Facebook Page that year.
Did police investigate teachers or other employees of the school as part of the investigation into Sharon’s abduction? It’s unclear to what extent employees of Antonio Park Primary School staff were investigated by police, but we do know that an individual named Ewen Gracie, who worked at the school as a physical education teacher in the 1980s, was questioned by police after a tip-off. Gracie inadvertently publicly identified himself as being a suspect in the ‘Mr Cruel’ investigation when he was exposed by www.whoismrcruel.com in a blog post in April 2022. Shockingly, www.whoismrcruel.com also exposed the former Antonio Park Primary School staff member claiming he was ‘a rapist who’d never been caught’. All of this former teacher’s claims were made publicly, online, with anonymous accounts, so it is unclear if these claims were the truth or just attention-seeking.
Gracie claimed he had been cleared by police after proving he had been overseas for one of the four canonical Mr Cruel cases, but it is unclear if this really is the reason why police cleared him. Melbourne Marvels has no evidence Gracie, or any other staff member was involved in the abduction of Sharon. Nevertheless, now that this photograph has surfaced we do think it’s important that police look into the origin of the photo, who took it and who had access to it between 1985 and 1988. In fact, we did provide it to Crimestoppers in early 2023 as a, possibly, significant lead in the case, but have heard nothing back from detectives.
Having waited one year since contacting Victoria Police about this photograph, we are now releasing this image publicly to raise further interest in this lead.
Closeup of what appears to be Sharon donning black garbage bags at an anniversary event at Antonio Park Primary School in 1985.
How the Mr Cruel moniker is actually a misnomer that was originally used to describe a different man, one Christopher Clarence Hall, – the curious mix-up of Mr Cruel and Mr Careful.
The following blogpost contains details about the sexual assault of women and girls. Please use discretion when reading.
In 2019 Criminologist Xanthe Mallett published the book Cold Case Investigations1 which featured a chapter on the “Mr Cruel” crimes. The work was the author’s professional evaluation of a variety of Australian cold case crimes where she analysed the behaviour of the offenders in question in an attempt to provide the reader with an insight into the type of person they might be. However, Mallett made a significant error in the chapter on “Mr Cruel” by asserting that the offender had also been responsible for the rape of “an elderly nun”.
In fact, serial rapist Christopher Clarence Hall – known by the media as the Ascot Vale Rapist until he was caught in June 1993 – was responsible for this rape and was convicted of it in April 1994. Not only this, but the victim in question was only 48 years old, not “elderly” and was in fact a former nun when she was raped by Hall on the night of 10-11 November 1987. Unfortunately, Mallett’s error has only resulted in misinformation about the crimes of the, yet to be identified, unknown offender (who Melbourne Marvels hopes will be one day be arrested for his crimes) who police believe raped an 11-year-old girl in Lower Plenty in 1987, abducted and assaulted 10-year-old Sharon Wills in 1988, abducted and assaulted 13-year-old Nicola Lynas in 1990 and abducted, and police believe most likely murdered, 13-year-old Karmein Chan in 1991.
At around the same time as Mallett’s mistake was published in her 2019 book, a concomitant Daily Mail article by Stephen Gibbs was also published making the same false statement under the title Masked child killer ‘Mr Cruel’ who terrified a city by abducting young girls from their homes three decades ago raped an elderly nun years earlier – and he could still be on the loose2. This article continues to provide people with false information about the case as it is one of the first articles that comes up when one searches for “Mr Cruel” in a Google search. Unfortunately, this is just one of many falsities that have been published about this unsolved case, all of which create a distorted picture of the truth of this offender’s actions and thus, serve to decrease the likelihood the case will ever be solved.
To be fair to Mallett, the majority of her chapter on our unknown offender is quite insightful as she draws on her expertise as a criminologist to analyse his behaviour, describing him as “the careful predator3“. She states that she was told the information that Mr Cruel had raped the “elderly nun”4 by psychologist Tim Watson-Munro who had worked on the case and provided a profile of the offender for police back when it was believed the same offender had been responsible for it. Mr Watson-Munro however, had clearly not learnt of Christopher Clarence Hall’s subsequent conviction for the attack in April 19945, 34.
Let us backtrack for a moment here though so we can understand the origin behind the term Mr Cruel. As reported in previous posts by Melbourne Marvels, the term Mr Cruel was first used in the headline of an article by Jim Tennison for the Sun News Pictorial on 19 November 1987 titled Police hunt for ‘Mr Cruel’6. This article was published after a police press conference to inform the public about a man police believed was a serial rapist operating in the suburbs of Melbourne. The police had held the press conference just one week after a rape of a 48-year-old woman that had occurred on the 11 November 1987 in Moonee Ponds.
The article detailed how a police taskforce had been set up to find the offender who had committed this rape and two others – that of an 11-year-old girl on 22 August 1987 in Lower Plenty, and that of a 30 year-old woman in Donvale in December 1985. During the press conference the police were quoted as describing the offender as “super cool, and super cruel”. It is therefore understandable why Tennison’s article includes the term “Mr Cruel”, especially considering it was common practice for the media in the 1980s to give unknown serial rapists “Mr” monikers, such as the infamous Mr Baldy and Mr Stinky. But, there was just one problem. The man who raped the 48 year-old former nun, would later be ruled out by police as being the man who had committed the two other rapes7.
As mentioned earlier, Christopher Clarence Hall was convicted of the rape of the Moonee Ponds woman, as well as the rapes of numerous other women aged 22 to 82, in April 1994. He was initially sentenced to 34 years in prison in May of that year, the longest ever sentence for rape in Victoria, but in October of that year had his sentence reduced to 27 years8 on appeal.
Hall was convicted based on his confession and DNA evidence9 as he had left semen at many of his rapes. You can read about the police operation to catch him in Liz Porter’s excellent book Written on the Skin: An Australian forensic casebook.The majority of his rapes had occurred between January and May 1993, but police were also able to link him to the 1987 Moonee Ponds rape. His rapes occurred in the suburbs of Essendon, Flemington, Airport West, Carlton North, Ascot Vale and Fitzroy North10.
During the first half of 1993 the northern and north-western suburbs of Melbourne were terrorised as this man repeated rape after rape without being caught, much like the East Area Rapist terrorised Sacramento in the mid 1970s. Just like in that case, the local news media in Melbourne were transfixed with the story of the Ascot Vale Rapist, and many women living in the area were living in fear that they would be his next victim as he continued to carry out his attacks with impunity11.
Another feature Hall had in common with Sacramento’s East Area Rapist was that he had previously been a prolific house burglar before graduating to rape. His first court appearance was as a 17-year-old all the way back in June 197012. He was sentenced to six years in prison in June 1979 for committing 31 burglaries and four car thefts between December 1977 and May 1978 that had occurred in the suburbs of Gisborne, Woodend, Airport West, Broadmeadows, Tullamarine, Preston, Sunbury and Bacchus Marsh. Hall was living in Arthur Street, Preston at this time13.
He escaped from custody in Wangaratta after a basketball game between Beechworth prisoners and a local team14 before being recaptured in May of that year in Penong, on the Nullabor Plain in South Australia15 (perhaps he was attempting to flee to Western Australia), and extradited to Victoria. I’m not sure when he was ultimately released from prison, but what is clear is that by 1987 he had become a rapist, and would eventually become a serial rapist.
If Hall was the offender in the Moonee Ponds rape, is it also not then possible he was the offender in the canonical Mr Cruel attacks such as the 1987 Lower Plenty rape, and the 1988, 1990 and 1991 abductions? Hall could not have been our unknown offender as he was in prison again, this time in South Australia, between mid October 1989 and 12 August 199216 (for what crime I do not know) so could not have abducted Nicola Lynas or Karmein Chan. There are however, a number of common features between the 1987 Lower Plenty rape and his modus operandi. For example, in both the Lower Plenty rape and the Moonee Ponds rape the offender wore something that covered his face and broke into the victim’s homes when it was dark.
Additionally, both offenders wore jeans, made their victims count to 100 when17 he left their homes, gagged and blindfolded their victims with elastoplast or surgical tape18, stole cash from their victims, wore athletic sneakers, and tied up their victims using a type of cord not sold in Australia19. In fact the police operation to capture the Ascot Vale Rapist, was named Operation Century after the offender’s penchant for telling his victims to count to 100 before seeking help. It is for these reasons that you can see why the 1987 police taskforce thought these attacks were linked.
However, for whatever reason, the police later decided the Lower Plenty attack was not Hall. Perhaps these are some of the reasons they concluded this: Hall’s 19 known victims were all adults, and were raped in their homes mostly in the north and north-western suburbs of Melbourne (in 1997 Hall was convicted of five more rapes of four more women in Thornbury, Glenroy and Glen Iris, the latter of which is in the eastern suburbs)20.
Unlike in the Lower Plenty attack, Hall never attacked his victims when men were present and his victims were often extremely vulnerable women as many were elderly and his victims included a blind woman, a woman with schizophrenia and a woman who was eight months pregnant, and he twice raped one victim who was intellectually disabled, with an interval of five years (meaning she was likely first raped as early as 1988). These women were also alone in every instance bar one, when one victim was at home only with her young child. In this case, Hall threatened the woman that he would harm the child if she did not accede to his requests21.
Hall also often left DNA evidence in the form of his semen whereas our unknown offender did not22. Lastly, Hall never used a gun in any of his attacks, but the offender in the Lower Plenty attack, and the abductions of Sharon Wills and Nicola Lynas had a gun.
Therefore, while I cannot conclusively say that Hall did not commit the 1987 Lower Plenty rape, there may be other reasons the police know that I don’t as to why they ultimately ruled it out as being him. What is clear is police certainly suspected him of committing more rapes and worked hard to link him to unsolved rapes. He was eventually convicted in 1997 for committing four more rapes, some of which occurred between 1988-1989.
An article in The Age from 1997 claimed this occurred after Hall contacted police from his prison cell and admitted raping four more women than he was originally sentenced for23, however, Liz Porter in her chapter on how police caught Hall from her book Written on the Skin: An Australian Forensic Casebook states this only occurred when Detective Jacqueline Curran pored through old files of unsolved rapes and managed to link his DNA to two of them24. Then, when confronted with this information, Hall inadvertently admitted to two more rapes when he became confused as to which crimes she and her fellow detective Steve Waddell were referring to.
As a result his sentence was increased to 32.5 years with a minimum of 27 years after it had been reduced to 29 with a minimum of 27 years on appeal in 1994. In 2006 Hall made a legal challenge in the Supreme Court for leave to appeal against his sentence. However, it is unclear if he took up the opportunity to appeal, nor whether, if he did (likely), he was successful. As a result of his legal challenge a new non-parole period of 24 years and 8 months was granted from April 1997, meaning he would not have been eligible for parole until 2021. If he hadn’t made his legal challenge he would have been eligible for parole in December 2011 and released by June 2015 (assuming that is, that he was still alive).
A high degree of violence, humiliation and cruelty on vulnerable women. When Hall was released on parole from his prison stint in South Australia on 12 August 1992, it took him little over a week before he raped his next victim and he would go on to be convicted of this rape and that of another 18 women in the nine months until he was caught in June 1993, with the majority occurring between January and May of 1993. Hall’s attacks always involved a high degree of violence, humiliation and cruelty. Cruelty being the operative word here. Reading The Queen V. Christopher Clarence Hall (1994) and understanding the degree of cruelty Hall displayed is an exercise of engaging with the darkest side of humanity, so I urge the reader to do so with caution25.
An analysis of the rape of the 48 year-old former nun makes it plain why police described the man they were looking for as “cruel”, even if they had mistakenly linked him with two crimes he probably hadn’t committed. The details of the Moonee Ponds rape, and those of Hall’s other rapes make for harrowing reading. Among the horribly cruel things Hall did to this victim were the following:
The victim told Hall she was a virgin as she was a former nun. Hall raped her anyway, causing her excruciating pain and ignored her screams that she was in pain.
Hall taunted the victim, by asking her why God had not prevented her from being raped.
After the first rape he hogtied the woman, leaving her prone on the bed.
He stole the victim’s ATM card, asked her for the PIN and threatened her with the words “If you give me the wrong one, I’ll come back and I’ll…”, not finishing the sentence to leave the woman to speculate as to what it might involve.
When he returned from withdrawing $300 from the ATM, he raped her several more times.
During the final rape of the woman, she lost control of her bowels and asked to go to the toilet. Hall subjected her to further indignity by insisting on watching her as she went. He watched her throughout this act, handing her toilet paper as she went.
After the rapes he asked the victim if she were still a nun.
He suggested the rapes were because God was punishing her for having resigned from being a nun26.
It is clear to see that Hall’s actions in this rape are the very definition of cruel. Of course, that is not to say that the offender who committed the unsolved crimes by our unknown offender wasn’t cruel himself. No doubt, he caused a great deal of suffering and trauma to his victims. However, in his own twisted mind he seemed to believe he was “nice” to his victims. Despite the horrible things he did, it was reported by the ABC television news on 6 July 1990 that he generally spoke softly to his victims. One victim described him as playing a kind of role where he was imagining being married to her27.
This offender released Nicola Lynas on the day of her 14th birthday, which police thought may have indicated a measure of compassion28. He brought his victims food and drink29. He also told Nicola Lynas that she was prettier than the photograph of her that had been circulated in the media30. Of course, none of these actions would have been in any way reassuring to the frightened and traumatised victims, but there is a clear contrast between this type of behaviour and the misogynistic humiliation that Hall displayed in the rapes of the 19 women for which he was convicted.
Indeed, Hall seemed to relish in the very act of humiliating his victims. Therefore, while cruelty was certainly involved in the Mr Cruel canonical crimes, it would be unlikely that those people who know him well would describe him in this way. Rather, as has been reported by this author and many others over the years, the defining trait that sums up our unknown offender, more than any other, is carefulness in avoiding being apprehended, despite the risky behaviour he was carrying out.
The real Mr Cruel was captured in May 1993. It seems then that police were almost certainly thinking of “cruel” when referring to Christopher Clarence Hall’s attack of the 48 year-old former nun in November 1987. As mentioned though, police later reassessed and decided Hall was not responsible for the August 1987 rape of an 11-year-old girl in Lower Plenty nor the 1985 rape of a 30 year-old woman in Donvale.
Eventually, the police would reassess again and decided the unknown offender who abducted Karmein Chan in April 1991, Nicola Lynas in July 1990 and Sharon Wills in December 1988 was the same offender who committed the rape of the 11-year-old girl in Lower Plenty in 1987. After the millions of dollars spent on the Spectrum Taskforce between 1991 and 1994, they were confident the unknown offender was responsible for these four attacks (and possibly a series of other rapes and abductions in the Bayside suburbs of Melbourne between 1985 and 1987). But, since the real Mr Cruel had been arrested in 1993 and sentenced in 1994 who is the unknown offender who has never been brought to justice for his crimes?
So, if the real Mr Cruel was captured in 1994, who is our unknown offender? As I mentioned above, the defining feature which characterised our unknown offender was “carefulness”. Xanthe Mallett referred to him as “the careful predator” in her 2019 book31. This was because of how meticulous he was in avoiding leaving any fingerprints or DNA evidence in any of the four canonical attacks. Val Simpson, the lead detective of the taskforce which investigated the Lower Plenty rape told me he had never seen a crime scene like it – in other words, one in which the offender was so good at cleaning up any evidence.
He had made his victim clean her teeth carefully and bathe after assaulting her to ensure he left no evidence of himself on her. He did the same with his 1988 and 1990 abduction victims32. This was at a time when DNA fingerprinting technology was in its infancy, but it was something he was clearly knowledgeable about. He also rigorously ensured his victims never saw his face. Clearly whoever this man was, he went to great pains to ensure he would not be identified, and he knew how to avoid leaving clues for police detectives to make their job that much harder.
In a word, he was careful. Mr Careful. The real Mr Cruel, Christopher Clarence Hall, was not as careful as Mr Careful and was caught by police in 1993 before spending decades in prison. Mr Careful on the other hand, has never been identified and is possibly still out there hiding amongst us.
In the past it has been reported by journalists Keith Moor and John Silvester that police were never happy with the moniker Mr Cruel for our unknown offender. This was because they felt it might have given the public a false image of who this man was. He was likely to have been a very ordinary man they said, and possibly, outwardly very neighbourly and community-minded33. Perhaps then it is time to shed this misnomer and refer to our unknown offender as Mr Careful.
Gibbs, S. (2019) “Masked child killer ‘Mr Cruel’ who terrified a city by abduction young girls from their homes three decades ago raped an elderly nun years earlier – and he could still be on the loose,” Daily Mail Australia, 2 September.
Tennison, J. (1987) “Police hunt for ‘Mr Cruel,’” The Sun News Pictorial, 18 November.
Catalano, A. (1991) “Brutal abductor breeds fear with cruelty,” The Age, 4 May.
The Queen V. Christopher Clarence Hall (1994).
Porter, L. (2007) “Reading the blood,” in Written on the skin: An Australian forensic casebook. Sydney, NSW: Pan Macmillan, pp. 34–35.
Tippett, G. (1993) “Crime fear stalks a generation,” The Age, 30 May.
Tippett, G. (1993) “Crime fear stalks a generation,” The Age, 30 May.
The Queen V. Christopher Clarence Hall (1994).
The Age (1979) “Jailed for burglary,” 22 June.
The Age (1980) “Prisoner missing after basketball,” 17 April.
The Age (1980) “Jail Escaper Recaptured”, 2 May.
The Queen V. Christopher Clarence Hall (1994).
Moor, K. (2016) “Victoria Police and FBI Dossier on shocking Mr Cruel child attacks,” The Herald Sun, 8 April.
The Queen V. Christopher Clarence Hall (1994).
Willox, I. (1988) “Police seek a new ‘Mr Stinky’ rapist,” The Age, 12 May.
The Queen V. Christopher Clarence Hall (1994).
The Queen V. Christopher Clarence Hall (1994).
Porter, L. (2007) “Reading the blood,” in Written on the skin: An australian forensic casebook. Sydney, NSW: Pan Macmillan, pp. 34–35.
Gurvich, V. (1997) “Convicted rapist gets another three years,” The Age, 3 April.
Porter, L. (2007) “Reading the blood,” in Written on the skin: An australian forensic casebook. Sydney, NSW: Pan Macmillan.
The Queen V. Christopher Clarence Hall (1994).
The Queen V. Christopher Clarence Hall (1994).
Silvester, J. and Rule, A. (2006) Rats: Crooks who got away with it: Tails of true crime and mystery from the underbelly archives. Camberwell, Vic.: Floradale/Sly Ink.
Edmonds, M., Armstrong, P. and Talbot, L. (1990) “Nikki’s safe,” The Herald, 6 July.
Silvester, J. and Rule, A. (2006) Rats: Crooks who got away with it: Tails of true crime and mystery from the underbelly archives. Camberwell, Vic.: Floradale/Sly Ink.
Moor, K. (8 April 2016) “Victoira Police and FBI Dossier on shocking Mr Cruel child attacks,” The Herald Sun.
Silvester, J. and Rule, A. (2006) Rats: Crooks who got away with it: Tails of true crime and mystery from the underbelly archives. Camberwell, Vic.: Floradale/Sly Ink.
Johnson, P. (1994) “Rapist gets 25 years for reign of terror”, The Age, 13 May 1994.
Kearns, L. (1993) “Man faces sex charges”, The Age, 12 Jun 1993.
Johnson, P. (1993) “Sentence cut for Ascot Vale Rapist”, The Age, 13 Dec 1994.
Trioli, V. (1993) “In Ascot Vale the mood is anger”, The Age, 25 May 1993.
Milburn, C. and Plunkett, R. (1993) “Rape fear mobilises neighbourhood”, The Age, 28 May 1993.
Channel 9 plagiarism – How Channel 9’s Under Investigation episode on Mr Cruel plagiarised from Melbourne Marvels
Channel 9 plagiarism – 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 Channel 9 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.
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).
Three of the victims, Sharon , Nicki and Karmein, lived “within 6 minutes” of an electrical substation.
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 substationand 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.
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.
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 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.
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.
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 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.
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.
This is a Zoom interview of Keith Moor by Ethan Cardinal from November 2020. Matt Dunlop of Matt Dunlop Media gave me permission to publish this interview.
Topics mentioned in the interview include: Some detectives don’t think Mr Cruel murdered Karmein Chan, but they had to treat it as Mr Cruel case as so many similarities. Karmein was a feisty 13 year old, her mum says she would have ripped off his mask. The offender may have reluctantly killed Karmein Chan. Some detectives think offender might have got such a shock he stopped offending. Says it’s possible offender flies to Bali, Cambodia or Philippines three times a year and hires someone to dress up as a schoolgirl. Police hated the title of Mr Cruel. Sharon Wills and Nicola Lynas were spoken to for hours and hours and both were incredible witnesses.
Both heard aeroplanes probably landing. Police first of all released FBI profile, that was a big story. Then they released the stuff about the bathroom, then the flight paths. In 2016 for the 25th anniversary Moor obtained a lot of information that had never been made public before including the names and identities of the 7 main suspects. They had a shortlist of 20 people of whom, 7 were more likely than the others. All of them had the propensity to kidnap girls from their bedrooms. One of those 7 was the self-confessed main suspect. Moor spoke to him. David Sprague believes he’s the prime suspect. Other detectives put him alongside the other six. There are no fingerprints, no DNA evidence in this case. Moor had no qualms with abiding by the stipulations of Victoria Police in relation to the information contained in the Sierra files because he’s got a good rapport with Victoria Police and would never jeopardise an ongoing investigation. He didn’t get the files officially, he got them from a source, but he then went to a senior serving member of the Victoria Police and still is and he said, “look, I’ve got this stuff, surely it’s time to bring out some new stuff as it’s been 25 years”. He struck up a deal with him that he would write his long article, but he let him read it and if there was anything in there he thought they should keep out as it might jeopardise the investigation that was fine. There were a couple of things he left out. He had originally named the Melbourne Uni lecturer, but he left that out at the request of the Victoria Police as they are concerned with vigilantism. Not that he has sympathy for somebody who’s already done nasty things to six other girls. But, he did agree to that, nor did he go into the details of the attacks on the girls. He reminded the interviewer to remember it’s illegal in Victoria to identify sexual assault victims, and he’s not saying whether Sharon Wills and Nicola Lynas were sexually assaulted, but they’ve never been referred to as such in any respectable media (this is untrue as numerous media organisations including the ABC reported the police as stating that both girls were sexually assaulted). He never has, they’re referred to as being kidnapped, and abducted and assaulted. Neither of those girls have given their permission to be identified. John Wills spoke to Keith Moor for support. He felt he failed in his duty as a protector. David Sprague was horrified when evidence of a rope used to tie up a rape victim in 1985 was lost. It had been thrown in a bag and put in a policeman’s locker, and then the policeman moved somewhere else and then someone cleaned his locker out and chucked it out. A lot of evidence that might have caught Cruel out…if that happened now. Rehash about new rules coming in to preserve evidence. Keith Moor would be surprised if the offender’s not one of the 7 in the Sierra Files or the longer list of the twenty odd suspects. However, he says a lot points toward the uni lecturer.
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:
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’.
Please see more Whoismrcruel.com for more information on Mr Cruel.
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Was paedophile Christopher Crowther Mr Cruel Suspect 7? On 8 April 2016 Keith Moor wrote an article for the Herald Sun to mark the 25th anniversary of the disappearance of Karmein Chan. In the article, Moor claimed to have recently received previously secret information about seven suspects that police had been unable to eliminate from their investigation into the identity of Mr Cruel. According to Moor, when Operation Spectrum had wrapped up without identifying Mr Cruel in 1994, the detectives had provided a dossier on the seven suspects named the Sierra Files. In the case that another child was abducted, Victoria Police were to arrest all seven suspects and interrogate them.
None of the Mr Cruel suspects in the Herald Sun article were named, but Moor did give some details about each of them, such as their age and the suburb they lived in at the time of the Karmein Chan abduction and suggested that all seven had the propensity to commit the types of crimes Mr Cruel was accused of. Nevertheless, within 5 days the Nine Network had named suspect #1 on the list, albeit incorrectly.
On 13 April 2016 A Current Affair ran a story by Reid Butler in which they claimed “Brian Enkler” was among the Mr Cruel suspects that could not be ruled out by detectives. Only, they had named the man incorrectly, his real name is Brian “Elkner”. The program included a typical ACA scene in which Elkner is assailed leaving a residence and getting into a vehicle. It has been suggested by commentators that the scene in question is located at Elkner’s Thornbury residence, but this is not the case. While this ACA video is no longer accessible online, to this day, the written account of this article is still accessible on the ninenews.com.au website, still with the misspelling of Elkner’s name.
Elkner had been a strong Mr Cruel suspect because of a series of sex attacks he had committed on teenage girls in the 1970s. In the years since Nine News revealed his identity, a number of online writers and sleuths have revealed more about these crimes. But, what of the six other suspects mentioned in the 8 April 2016 Herald Sun article? Until recently, Melbourne Marvels has been unsuccessful in attempting to uncover some of the identities of these other men.
Was paedophile Christopher Michael Crowther Mr Cruel Suspect 7 of the Sierra Files?
According to Keith Moor, Suspect 7 of the Sierra Files was living in Glen Iris at the time of the Karmein Chan abduction. Moor’s article further stated that it was unclear if this suspect was still alive in 2016, but if so, he would have been 67 years old, suggesting this suspect was born in either 1948 or 1949. According to Moor, Mr Cruel suspect 7 wasn’t on social media, on the electoral roll or in the telephone directory in 2016. Was this information referring to convicted paedophile Christopher Michael Crowther? Melbourne Marvels does not claim it was, nor do we claim Crowther was a Mr Cruel suspect, but let us take a look at his criminal history to see what type of offender he was.
“Paedophile jailed for 16 years”
On 5 September 1992, The Age published an article titled Paedophile jailed for 16 years. Christopher Michael Crowther had “stalked and attacked six children aged four to seven”. He had been jailed by Judge Barnett in the Country Court. The article stated that Crowther was 44 years old and had lived in High Street, Glen Iris before his arrest. He had earlier been “found guilty of five counts of child stealing, four of indecent assault and two of penetration of a child under 10”. The article also reported that he had, just the day before, pleaded guilty to another count each of child stealing and indecent assault.
‘Paedophile jailed for 16 years’, The Age, 5 September 1992.
Immediately we can see that at 44 years of age in 1992, Crowther’s age matches that of Suspect 7 and so does his place of residence (Glen Iris) at the time of the Karmein Chan abduction. But, we should tread carefully here before declaring we know the identity of Suspect 7.
“The judge set a minimum of 13 years for Crowther”.
An article about Crowther’s conviction was also published in The Hearld Sun the same day titled Pedophile ‘relished publicity’, written by Christine Giles. It stated that Crowther was to serve a minimum term of 13 years and gave more details about the court case. It stated Crowther had been in police custody since January 1991, meaning it would have been impossible for him to have committed the abduction and murder of Karmein Chan. This is significant as, if Crowther was Suspect 7 in the Sierra Files, it would seem to indicate that the police were considering the possiblility that the murderer of Karmein Chan was not the same person who had abducted Sharon Wills and Nicola Lynas and who had attacked the girl in Lower Plenty.
The article also referred to the fact that Crowther had volunteered to appear on an episode of 60 Minutes in 1983 as a “reformed pedophile”. The judge in the trial, “Judge Barnett”, had stated that the appearance on the TV show in 1983, and a later appearance on Day by Day in 1986 seemed to reflect the fact that Crowther had relished in the publicity of his crimes. See Crowther’s appearance on this 60 Minutes episode here.
‘Pedophile “relished publicity”‘, Christine Giles, The Herald Sun, 5 September 1992.
A long history of ‘child stealing’
An article for The Age by Antony Catalano titled Man faces 71 sex charges was published on 15 January 1991, just 3 months before Karmein Chan’s abduction. The article stated that Crowther was charged with rape, child stealing, abduction, gross indecency and indecent assault against 14 girls “as young as three”. This means that he must not have been convicted of the majority of the charges he faced, as we know from the later article he was only found guilty of attacks on six children aged between four and seven.
‘Man faces 71 sex charges’, Antony Catalano, The Age, 15 January 1991.
The article went on to describe Crowther’s long history of offending dating back to 1972 “when he was convicted on charges of willful and obscene exposure” and was convicted of child stealing in 1974 and abduction in 1981.
“A very twisted and dangerous personality”.
‘Man who attacked two girls twisted, dangerous, say police’, The Age, 1 January 1983.
On 1 January 1983 an article was published in The Age titled Man who attacked two girls, twisted, dangerous, say police. The article included a photofit of a bearded man and described an attack on two girls in Box Hill in which a six year-old girl had been raped and a seven year-old had been molested. While we haven’t seen it stated that Crowther was ever convicted of this crime, the modus operandi and photofit are extremely similar to some of the crimes that he was later convicted of. The striking similarity being that the perpetrator first stopped his car to ask the young girls for directions and then invited them into his vehicle before he sexually assaulted them.
“A man lured the little girl into a lavatory block”.
On 3 April 1985 an article was published in the local newspaper The Advertiser titled Police seek information. It described the indecent assault of a six year-old girl in Dendy Park, Brighton. “The incident happened at 3:30pm when the man lured the little girl into a lavatory block and indecently assaulted the little girl.” We cannot confirm that this crime was committed by Crowther, but the MO is extremely similar, the victim is of a similar age to later victims, the offender took her into a public toilet as was alleged Crowther did in a later crime, and we know he was later convicted of this type of crime in this area from attacks in 1985 and 1986.
‘Police seek information’, The Advertiser, 3 April 1985.
“The seven year-old was abducted from Black Rock and taken to a park”
In November 1986 there was a media frenzy as a bearded man in a car was abducting girls in Bayside suburbs before sexually assaulting them. On 7 November an article for The Age by Michael Cave titled 14 child sex attacks by same man, say police. The article included a map showing the locations where the 14 attacks had occurred. The most recent attack concerned that of a seven year-old girl who had been abducted by a bearded man on 5 November in Black Rock.
The girl had been walking along Iona Street with a friend when the man drove up to the pair in a Ford Cortina station wagon before asking for directions. The girl got into the car because she “thought he was a nice man”. She was then driven to Riviera Park in Seaford where she was “indecently assaulted and raped”. The article also stated that the 14 girls in total who had been attacked were aged between 3 and 14 years old, but it is possible that the 14 year old included here was actually the Hampton Mr Cruel victim in February 1985 discussed elsewhere in this blog as Crowther was later convicted of attacks on children no older than seven years of age.
’14 child sex attacks by same man, say police’, Michael Cave, The Age, 7 November 1986.
“She was crying and yelling and came running up to me with herarms in the air”
A similar article by Mark Davies was published in The Sun the same day. The article went into even more detail about some of the attacks, including an interview with Paul Cowan, the 16-year-old boy who had found the 7-year-old victim in Seaford before contacting the police. One slight contradiction with that of The Age article was that it stated the oldest of the 14 victims was 11-years-old, while The Age article had said the oldest was 14-years-old. The Sun article included more details about some of the other attacks in Caulfield, Sandringham and Mentone.
‘Girl, 7, rapist victim number 14’, Mark Davies, The Sun, 7 November 1986.
“A 16 year-old boy found the girl screaming”
Then on 12 November The Advertiser published an article about the same attack and some similar ones titled Abductions bring police warnings. The article stated that “3 girls aged between five and seven years have been lured into station wagons over the past five weeks”. It went on: “another attempt was foiled when two girls in Sandringham were approached but ran off”. It gave additional details about the attack in which the seven year-old girl was taken to Seaford stating “a 16 year-old boy found the girl screaming”.
‘Abductions bring police warnings’, The Advertiser, 12 November 1986.
“Certain matters led police to believe that Mr Crowther had been involved”
Understandably these attacks created a great deal of panic in the community and when an article in The Hampton Bugle was published on 13 November titled Child builds picture of suspect in sex attacks case with a photofit of the same bearded man, there was plenty of discussion in society about who the perpetrator was. It seems that in the same week, a current affairs television program named Day by Day was aired which discussed the attacks.
Years later it would be revealed that Christopher Michael Crowther telephoned a producer of the program that week and “had discussed certain matters that led police to believe that Mr Crowther had been involved” (TV call led to 81 child sex charges, Johnson, Philip, The Age, 17 July 1991).
“Child builds picture of suspect in sex attacks case’, The Hampton Bugle, 13 November 1986.‘Have you seen this man?’, The Advertiser, 19 November 1986.‘TV call led to 81 child sex charges’, The Age, 17 July 1991.
“Displayed a knowledge of the rape of a 7-year-old girl at Seaford that only somebody close to the case would know”.
An article on the same day in The Herald Sun titled Caller gave rape details, court told gave a few more details on Crowther’s 1986 telephone call to the producer of Day by Day that had marked him as a person of interest. It stated that 3 people who knew Crowther had identified his voice from a tape recording of the telephone call
‘Caller gave rape details, court told’, The Herald Sun, 17 July 1991
“Goody, goody, goody, because he’s on the prowl again tonight”
In fact, years later when Crowther was convicted, it was also revealed that he had telephoned police after the attack on the Black Rock girl in November 1986. When the police told him they had not got far in their investigations he had replied “goody, goody, goody, because he’s on the prowl again tonight” (The Canberra Times, 5 September 1992). “The transcript of the recording made chilling reading Judge Barnett said, commenting that Crowther appeared to be basking in a state of sexual excitement during the call”.
‘Judge: taunts of paedophile to police chilling’, The Canberra Times, 5 September 1992.
“Hampton police questioned a 38 year-old South Yarra man”
It appears the police did question Crowther over the rapes in December 1986 soon after his telephone call to the television producer had identified him as a person of interest. However, he was released and was not to be rearrested for over 4 years.
‘Man questioned on child rape’, The Age, 6 December 1986.
“He had a beard, huge muscular arms and scruffy shirt and jeans”
On 22 December 2013 an article by Chris Johnston titled Melbourne mother Tracey Levey on finding peace after childhood abuse, was published in The Age. It detailed the story of a victim, now an adult woman, who had been picked up by a man in a car in 1979 in Glen Huntly before being assaulted by him. This victim’s memory of this event, which occurred when she was just 5 years old, had recently resurfaced after reading an article about the suicide of sex offender Robert Keith Knight. She had wondered whether Knight had been the man responsible for her own attack.
The police had revealed however, that they believed the man responsible for her attack was another man an “even more notorious Melbourne paedophile who would later face 80 charges of sex offences against children over a period of 12 years. When this man was arrested in 1991 a rocking horse and photographs were seized from his home. He was jailed, and then died of a heart attack upon release”. The police had refused to name the offender because his involvement in this attack had not been “conclusively proved”. “But he is almost certainly responsible” Johnston’s article went on.
The article continued: “photographs taken by The Age when this man was finally arrested show him to be bigger and taller than the policeman arresting him. He had a beard, huge muscular arms and scruffy shirt and jeans. The man had an occupation where he had access to a number of vehicles, so at any given stage he may have been driving a vehicle he was not the owner of”.
It should be noted that Crowther was arrested in January 1991 and charged for crimes committed between 1979 and 1987. This arrest occurred 3 months before Karmein Chan’s abduction in 1991. Melbourne Marvels has been informed by a source who claims that he was in custody on remand at the time of the abduction and therefore could not have been reponsible for it.
Update: Melbourne Marvels has recently been informed by a source that Crowther was released from prison not long after his conviction in 1992. This person claimed that he only spent a couple of years in jail after he was convicted, but that he had appealed the sentence and it was significantly reduced.This person believes he was released from prison in 1993. Melbourne Marvels has not been able to confirm whether this is true.
We have reason to understand that Christopher Michael Crowther died in 2003 at the age of 55. In his article on the Sierra Files, Keith Moor noted that he was unsure whether Mr Cruel Suspect 7 had already died, but that there was no record of him on the electoral roll, and his death could have been a reason for this.
In conclusion, we cannot say conclusively that Crowther is Mr Cruel Suspect 7 from the Sierra Files, but we do know that he had been living in Glen Iris a few months before the Karmein Chan abduction, his age is extremely close to the age profile given for suspect 7 as he was born in 1948 (although he would have been 67 at the time of the abduction), and was dead when the existence of the Sierra Files was revealed by The Herald Sun in 2016. Therefore, he seems to be a very close match with Mr Cruel Suspect 7, but it is not conclusive.
However, even if he is Mr Cruel Suspect 7, all this really means is that he could not be ruled out as being Mr Cruel by the Spectrum Taskforce. It is another thing completely to seriously consider him as being Mr Cruel. There are major differences between his MO and that of Mr Cruel’s considering he didn’t wear a balaclava during his attacks, abducted children off the street, and all his victims seem to have been aged between four and seven years of age.
Melbourne Marvels June 2021
I recently came across the legal cases for Crowther on Austlii. Here is a timelne of the outcome of his legal cases between 1991 and 1993 that ChatGPT has helped me summarise.
Procedural Timeline – The Queen v Christopher Michael Crowther
1. Incident & Initial Investigation
Date of Alleged Offences:
5 October 1985, 20 October 1986, 5 November 1986
Offences involved allegations of child stealing, indecent assault, and sexual penetration involving children under the age of 10.
Key Event:
In November 1986, a man identifying himself as “Peter Harvey” made a series of phone calls to a journalist and the police, claiming responsibility for the attacks.
Police used voice recordings and a telephone trace to link Crowther to the calls.
Forensic testing of evidence (blood, semen) initially excluded Crowther as the source of seminal fluid on a victim’s underwear.
2. Pre-Trial Legal Proceedings
Crowther v Cotterell & Buchorn [1991] (Practice Court, Supreme Court of Victoria)
Date of Hearing: 30 April 1991
Judge: Marks J
Summary:
Crowther challenged the legality of a second police application under s.464U of the Crimes (Blood Samples) Act 1989 to obtain a new blood sample from him.
He argued it was res judicata—that the Magistrate had already dismissed the first application and it couldn’t be re-litigated.
Outcome:
The Court found the first application had been struck out, not determined on the merits.
Res judicata did not apply, and a second application was permitted.
Motion dismissed.
3. Conviction & Sentencing (County Court)
Date of Conviction: Mid-1992 (after four aborted trials)
Convictions:
Crowther was convicted by a jury on 11 counts, including child stealing, indecent assault, and sexual penetration with a child under 10.
He also pleaded guilty to two further counts (child stealing and indecent assault).
Sentence:
16 years and 2 months’ imprisonment, with a non-parole period of 13 years.
The Queen v Crowther [1993] (Procedural Order Only)
Date of Order: 1 September 1993
Judges: Crockett ACJ, Hampel J, Smith J
Summary:
Procedural follow-up to the June 1993 judgment.
Likely related to the implementation of sentencing orders or cost recovery, though no further judicial reasoning was published.
Final Legal Position
Most of the serious convictions (counts 1–11) were quashed due to evidentiary flaws.
Only two lesser counts (to which Crowther pleaded guilty) were upheld, and sentences confirmed.
No retrial was ordered on the quashed counts.
Crowther served a shorter custodial term based on the revised sentence (20 months with credit for time already served).
In addition to the above timeline it seems Crowther was convicted again in 1999. This time though, it wasn’t for sexual offences but for harrassing men who he became convinced were the real culprits in a murder for which a friend of his, who he shared a cell with, was serving time for.
Crowther, by this time aged 51, became obsessed with a murder case after sharing a prison cell with Ronald Victor Lucas, a man convicted for the murder and dismemberment of James Pinakos (killed with a crossbow). Lucas convinced Crowther he was innocent and framed by others — including Peter and Harry Triferi (former business associates) and Bill Pinakos, the victim’s brother.
Crowther took it upon himself to seek “justice” on Lucas’s behalf, developing an intense fixation with the case:
He harassed the three men he believed guilty by phoning them and threatening their families.
He forged a police file containing fake confessions using photocopied signatures.
He sent this fabricated file and a map to police, falsely identifying where dismembered body parts were buried.
He accused Bill Pinakos of the murder, claiming he had the tools for dismemberment due to being a butcher’s son.
Police found no supporting evidence, and no body parts were discovered.
Crowther’s lawyer explained that he suffers from a delusional disorder and was trying to “right what he saw as a wrong.”
The magistrate, Mr. Bill O’Day, stated that Crowther caused maximum stress to his victims and sentenced him to eight months’ jail, all suspended. He was granted bail pending appeal of the sentence.
Christopher Crowther withe fake grey hair admitting to being a paedophile on A Current Affair in 1983
Whilst driving the A Current Affair film crew around in his light coloured Ford Cortina Stationwagon, Cristopher Crowther forgot to don the fake grey hair disguise he wore for his formal interview, as can be seen in this still from the 1983 episode.
Mr Cruel – Interview with Ron Iddles – This is a November 2020 interview with retired homicide detective Ron Iddles. The interview is by Matt Dunlop of Matt Dunlop Media.
Mr Cruel – Interview with Ron Iddles. There is new information revealed about the Mr Cruel case! The big scoops from the interview are the following.
Mr Cruel – Interview with Ron Iddles
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.
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).
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.
He stated that the Eltham suspect died in 1992, (this was not revealed in the ATC interview).
He described the Eltham suspect as “someone who from time to time crossdressed”, (this was not revealed in the ATC interview).
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).
The suspect “ran his own business which he was very successful in”, (this was not revealed in the ATC interview).
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).
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.”
Melbourne Marvels receives tip, passes on information to journalist Andrew Rule
NB:- It was pointed out by Reddit user u/pwurg in January 2021 that the suspect described in the Matt Dunlop interview by Ron Iddles was none other than Norman Lee, who was shot dead by Victoria police while conducting a robbery in 1992. Melbourne Marvels then informed Andrew Rule of this fact in January 2021. Rule then wrote an article detailing this information in May 2021.
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.
For more information on Mr Cruel attacks please click on the following links.
Please also read up on Jay’s website www.whoismrcruel.com for more information about this case.
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’.
Warning, this episode contains details about the sexual assault of children and the murder of a child. Please use discretion before listening.
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