Tag: Karmein

Karmein Chan 7 Mr Cruel 14

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Episode 7 of our collaboration with Whoismrcruel.com on the story of the Karmein Chan abduction.

NB:- this podcast deals with topics of a serious nature. Sexual assault and murder are discussed.

This episode includes the following:-

  • Victoria Police send 1.4 million posters to every household in the state seeking information on the abductions of Sharon Wills, Nicola Lynas and Karmein Chan.
  • A man in Victoria abducts and rapes a 7 year old girl two days after receiving one of the aforementioned posters.
  • A senior police officer working on the case tells journalists he believes Karmein is dead.
  • Sheree Beasley is abducted, raped and murdered in Rosebud leading to comparisons in the media between this offence and the abduction of Karmein.
  • Phyllis Chan sends a message to Mr Cruel with a secret code that only Karmein can solve.
  • Cop killer Peter Reid attempts to extort John Chan of $15,000, telling him from a Pentridge Prison telephone that he will release Karmein if he’s paid the money.
  • The Chan household receives other unusual phone calls to their unlisted number on the birthdays of Phyllis and Karly, Karmein’s sister. Eerily, these calls are silent, but a crying child is heard in the background.
  • The Spectrum Taskforce is embarrassed by the revelation they’ve published 1.4 million posters of Karmein using a photograph from when she was 8 years old.
  • New photos of Karmein are published which show what she looked like just before her abduction. These photos lead to new leads in the case.
  • Phyllis once again pleads to the offender to release her daughter on Karmein’s birthday, 5 November.
  • VIC Police reinterview many of the previous victims, including Nicola in the UK.
  • Two more prank callers get in trouble for making obscene calls to the Chan family.
  • A home invader attempts to tie up and abduct a 12 year old Vietnamese girl in St Albans on a rare night off for the Spectrum Taskforce.

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

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’.

If you like to leave a comment to Melbourne Marvels, please fill out the form below.

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Karmein Chan 2 – Mr Cruel 7

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Karmein Chan 2 – Warning, this episode contains details about the sexual assault of children and the murder of a child. Please use discretion before listening.

In Karmein Chan 2, the second episode of the podcast series on the story of Karmein Chan, https://melbinmarvels.wordpress.com/ and Whoismrcruel.com continue their analysis of the media fallout in the wake of Karmein’s abduction.

New Information


– For the first time, we reveal new information from a detective who worked on the Spectrum taskforce which serves to strengthen the argument for why police believed the same offender was responsible for all four attacks.

What’s included in this episode?

  • Continuing coverage of the contemporary media coverage of the case and the how they continued to get things wrong.
  • How David Sprague appealed with the offender to release Karmein by attempting to appeal to his sympathetic side.
  • More about about Sierra suspect #2 and his connection to the case.
  • A discussion on the startling case of Paul Wilson, a prominent criminologist the Herald Sun were paying to provide commentary on Karmein’s abduction, and his own conviction for the indecent treatment of a child in the 1970s.
  • The interesting case of a suspect seen curb crawling near PLC in the weeks before the attack.

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

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

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

If you like to leave a comment to Melbourne Marvels, please fill out the form below.

Production by Elocra

If you would like to make a contribution to help offsets the costs incurred as part of Melbourne Marvels’ research, please fill out the below form.

Karmein Chan in the year before her abduction.

Karmein Chan – Mr Cruel 6

Melbourne MarvelsLeave a comment

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

What’s this episode about?

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

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

How the investiation got off to an unfortunate start

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

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

Other items looked at

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

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

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

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

Karmein Chan in the year before her abduction.