Criminology - Mr Cruel

Episode Date: May 2, 2020

In the late 1980s and early 1990s, a predator operated in and around Melbourne, Australia. The pressed dubbed this man "Mr. Cruel." Mr. Cruel preyed on younger females around the area and eventually turned murderous. He was very cunning, left few clues, and stalked his victims to know when they would be home alone. Join Mike and Morf as they discuss the crimes of the brutal predator known as Mr. Cruel. This was a predator who wore a scary mask, or balaclava, that was stitched around the eyes and mouth to give it a scary doll-like appearance. Despite a number of task forces and thousands of tips and suspects, the man known as Mr. Cruel has never been caught. You can help support the show at patreon.com/criminology An Emash Digital Production Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices

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is a true crime podcast that may contain discussion about violent or disturbing topics. Listener discretion is advised. Hello everyone and welcome to episode 110 of the criminology podcast. I'm Mike Ferguson. And this is Mike Morford. Morp, what is going on with you right now? You doing good? I'm doing pretty good as well as can be expected.

I'm having one of those days today where I'm just like, I just got a little bit of angst that I want to do something or get out or just whatever it is. break it up a little bit, but I think everyone's going through that. How about you? Yeah. Yeah, same here. I mean, for the most part, I'm doing well. I'm getting to spend a lot of time with my family, but I'm like you. You know, there's every now and then I get this, and I don't even know how to describe the feeling. Angst is probably a good word. I just want to do something. I want to go somewhere. I want to sit and have a beer with a buddy. I want to eat a steak at a restaurant. I mean, these are just things that we have taken for granted. And right now we just can't do it. Yeah. Hopefully that it'll be sooner rather than later that we're able to do all that stuff again.

Yeah, I do think it will be for sure. I do want to give a huge shout out. Morph, and I know you and I have talked about this, you know, to the frontline people. I mean, the people that are really helping the rest of us continue with our day to day. I mean, you know, the nurses, my wife's a teacher, she's teaching from home. You know, the people that are stocking the grocery shelves, these are the folks that are allowing us to continue to function. Yeah, absolutely. The delivery people, whether they're delivering a pizza or a package, I mean, just getting something from the outside world and getting it in your hands. And it just gives you some sense of normalness. Yeah, it does.

been using DoorDash quite a bit lately, much more than we ever used to. But I wanted to throw that out there. I know we have a lot of nurses that listen to the show. I get emails from them. I know you get messages from time to time. You know, obviously they are essential. And without them, I don't know where we'd be. We've had some amazing new Patreon support. Let's give some shout outs. We had Brandon Abraham, Christy Adcock, Blake Owen, Mary Feltz, Dianney Dyson, Carlotta Barbieri, Caterina Appalinova. And I hope I'm saying that right. And then last but not least, Callie Engel. So that's a lot of new support, Morph, and we really appreciate it.

Yeah, we're very grateful for that. And every week when you say some of those names, I recognize a lot of. of them from social media. So they're also some of our big social media supporters. So we thank you for that. And anyone that's considering supporting criminology on Patreon can do so by going to patreon.com slash criminology. Don't forget about Stitcher Premium. You can find all of our older episodes. All of our episodes older than six months are out there on Stitcher Premium. And there's a lot of great content, you know, even outside of criminology, a lot of shows. a lot of episodes. Check it out. All right. So in this episode, we are headed back to Australia,

Melbourne, to be exact. It was there that between 1987 and 1990, three school age girls were abducted and sexually assaulted by an unidentified predator who was dubbed Mr. Cruel. It's also believe that this assailant went on to become a killer. He is suspected of abducting and murdering 13-year-old Carmen Chan in 1991, as well as numerous attacks on other children in the 1980s. Residents in Melbourne were terrified for a decade that Mr. Cruel would strike again, and police were desperate to learn Mr. Cruel's identity, even going as far as to consider suspects from outside of Australia, including the Golden State Killer. But despite a massive investigation

that spanned over three decades, Mr. Kruill has never been found. Police actually believe that Mr. Kruill's first attack occurred in Don Vale on December 6, 1985. That's when he broke into the home of a 30-year-old woman and her 17-year-old sister. When the sisters arrived home at 10.30 p.m., he confronted the older sister in the lounge at the back of the home. He had broken in through the back door, and he was carrying a long-barreled pistol. He took her to a bedroom where he had heard the younger sister talking. Using panty hose, he tied the younger sister up and locked her inside a bedroom wardrobe and secured the door handle so that she couldn't get out. After she was secured, the attacker took the older sister to another bedroom, tied her up, and raped her. During the sexual assault,

The man said, quote, my liberty, my freedom is worth more than your life. Also during the attack, the man called out to the victim's younger sister to check on her. He spent more than 90 minutes in the home and ultimately stole a small amount of money. He also ripped the telephone from the wall. Nearly two years later, the first confirmed Mr. Cruel attack happened. It was in an area called Lower Barrow. Plenty, a suburb of Melbourne, Victoria, Australia, 16 kilometers northeast from Melbourne's Central Business District. At around 4 a.m. on August 22nd, 1987, a man carrying a knife and a handgun

broke into a lower plenty home by smashing a lounge window with a brick. He first went to the parent's bedroom, bound and gagged them, and shut them in a wardrobe, securing the door handles with a shoe rack. He tied their seven-year-old son to his bed and tied and raped their 11-year-old daughter in the lounge. Before he raped her, he made her brush her teeth. The man spent about two hours in the home and he even fixed himself a meal and made a few phone calls. Before he left the house, he picked up glass from the broken window and ripped the telephone from the wall. He stole a dark blue parka with the label Ecuadorian shirt company and a black box of rare classical records called Classic Gold.

written in gold on the box and recorded by the London Philharmonic Orchestra. The family's attacker was described as between 25 and 35 years old, 5-5 to 6-foot tall with a slim bill. He wore a balaclava or a ski mask or a knitted cap during the attack and did not allow his victims to look at him. But Morph, I think the mask that Mr. Cruel wore was, beyond a regular balaclava, a regular ski mask. It was like something out of a horror movie, modified to instill fear in people that saw it. You know, it was kind of reminiscent of something like a lifeless doll.

It had this white stitching around the eyes and the mouth that made it look very doll-like. Although this was Mr. Krull's first confirmed attack, police linked him to possibly being involved in as many of the same. 20 previous incidents in the Melbourne area. Across the northern and eastern suburbs, these were incidents that included home break-ins and burglaries and attempted attacks on female victims. Police described this man as cool and calculating.

They said he meticulously planned his attacks. He always attacked at night and stole small amounts of money or relatively cheap items from his victims. The next attack occurred on November 10, 1987, in the Mooney Ponds area. an inner suburb in Melbourne. He broke into a house around 9.30 p.m.

and threatened a 48-year-old woman with a knife. The woman lived alone and was sleeping when she was attacked. He did not turn on the lights and tied her up with a nylon cord. The man then raped her and stole her ATM card. Police were certain. The man had planned the attack because he walked about a kilometer to a bank. to a bank with an ATM machine and withdrew $300 from the woman's account. The man then walked back to the woman's house, about 45 minutes after he first left.

While he was gone, the woman freed herself from the gag and called for help. When the attacker returned, he raped the victim again. This time he ripped out the telephone before fleeing, narrowly missing police. The ordeal lasted more than four hours in total. Investigators found a valuable clue in this attack. It was the nylon rope used by the rapist. It turns out that that specific type of nylon rope wasn't available in Australia at the time. That led some detectives to wonder if perhaps Mr. Cruel was from outside of Australia.

Over a year later, another girl was attacked. Ten-year-old Sharon Wills was a quiet, well-behaved girl who played a variety of musical instruments. she was a member of the Victorian children's choir and had even appeared on a TV show. Around 5.30 a.m. on Tuesday, December 27th, 1988, a man wearing a balaclava and armed with a handgun broke into the back door of the Will's family home on Hillcrest Avenue in Ringwood, Australia, a suburb of Melbourne. Sharon's mother, Julie, saw the intruder, and scream for her children to get out of the house. The masked intruder forced Sharon's parents onto their stomachs

and tied their hands with copper wire. He disabled the phone and demanded money. Sharon was awoken by her mother's screams. She got out of her double bunk bed and was confronted by the man in the lounge room when she went to investigate. He grabbed Sharon, covered her eyes with masking tape, and put a ball gag in her mouth.

He then fled the home with her. Sharon was held captive for 18 hours. before her captor released her near Bayswater High School. On Orchard Road, she was dressed only in plastic garbage bags. She was blindfolded the entire time she was as prisoner. This told police that he went to great lengths to conceal his identity. Perhaps worried Sharon would recognize him. Melbourne Police offered a $100,000 reward for information leading to the conviction of Sharon's rapist,

who they now knew was responsible for this series of, brutal attacks. Detectives from the major crime squad collated information about Sharon's abduction on a computer system. And they compared aspects of the crime with previous Mr. cruel offenses. A few days after Sharon's release, police received a tip that the driver of a white Commodore vacationer sedan was acting suspiciously in Bayswater shortly before Sharon was let go. The man's car almost collided with the Red Ford as it turned from Jersey Road in Bayswater onto Mountain Highway, around 11, 15 p.m. on the night Sharon was released. When the driver of the Red Ford pulled up next to the other car to set of stoplights,

the driver in the white Commodore appeared to be nervous about the other driver seeing his face. The man turned his head away from the witness and edged forward as the angry driver, upset at the near collision, looked into the man's car. The suspect's car then turned right and went about 1.5 kilometers along the road on the Church Street towards Baywater High School. This is where Sharon was released 45 minutes after this incident. The witness didn't see anyone else in the car, but Sharon may have been either lying down in the back seat or in the trunk.

As the investigation continued, police tried to identify this driver, but they had no luck. no arrest was made in Sharon's abduction, then Mr. Cruelstruck again. 13-year-old Nicola Linus was originally from England. She and her family moved to Australia in 1986 for a four-year stay. Her father, Brian, had been transferred to work at Pricewaterhouse headquarters in Melbourne. He was a partner in the accounting firm's London office. His assignment was about to end, and the family had started. packing their things,

Nicola was reluctant to move back to England because she had made a lot of friends during her time in Melbourne. The Linus family lived on Monomith Avenue in the Melbourne eastern suburb of Canterbury. On the evening of July 3rd, 1990, Brian and his wife, Rosemary, went out

for the evening, leaving Nicola and her 15-year-old sister, Fiona, home alone. At 11.30 p.m., Fiona and Nicola were sleeping their beds when a man wearing a black balaclava, an arm with a knife and gun, broke into the Linus home through a window. The intruder awoke the girls and tied Fiona in the bedroom. He told her, quote, Tell your father I want $25,000.

He forced Nicola under her stomach before tying and gagging her. He placed tape over her eyes and then took her into another bedroom to get her school uniform. He then fled the home when Nicola and the Linus's least blew hold in Berliner car. He later dumped the car a quarter mile away in Shostar Crescent, Canterbury. When Nicola's parents returned home at 1230 a.m. They found Fiona tied up in a bedroom. She told them what happened. She told them about the ransom money request and that this man had taken Nicola with him.

The parents called police. 30 detectives were assigned to the case. Monomith Avenue is a quiet street and then after. neighborhood. Many of the properties were worth about $1 million at that time. This was an area where many prominent people live. But neighbors told police they didn't hear anything out of the ordinary at the time of the abduction. And Morph, obviously, this is extremely scary, right? The parents come home. They find one daughter tied up. They find out that their other daughter has been abducted. The thing that really jumps out at me is the fact that this person had to have been casing this house,

had to have been. A predator of this type is not just going to stumble upon a house where the two girls are there alone. Perhaps he was casing it or even there's a different explanation. Maybe he knew this family and knew they would be out. And that's an even more frightening scenario possibly that this was someone that they knew. Yeah, I mean, that's a good point. I just think the chances of this guy happening upon a house that turns out to have two young girls in at home alone, that's pretty far-fetched, right? So there had to have been some way that he knew. Either he knew the habits of this family, he knew them intimately or somewhat intimately, or he had been casing the house. and he saw them leave, it had to have been something like that.

Whatever the explanation, this wouldn't be the last time that Mr. Cruel managed to attack victims when they were home alone. The fact this guy was able to move so stealthily through the neighborhood without being seen or heard by any of the neighbors, maybe proves that he was very skilled at the kind of prowling that he did. At around 2 a.m. on July 6th, a little over two days after she was taken, Nicola Linus was found alive. Nicola told police that her kidnapper drove her to the eastern suburb of Q, about five and a half kilometers from her home. He wrapped her in a blanket and walked with her for about five minutes before he told her to kneel.

He removed the tape from her eyes and told her to keep her head between her knees. She later went to a nearby home and called her father, who in turn called police. Nicola was taken to Austin Hospital. The attack and abduction made the local news, but to protect the identities of the victim and her family. Their names and addresses weren't reported at that time. A couple of days after Nicola returned home, an anonymous caller phone police. And this caller knew details of the kidnapping that had not been made public.

The caller spoke of a house and gave hints about the street where the attack and abduction occurred. The caller described at least one specific detail about Nicola's time with Mr. Cruel that was not released to the public. And whatever this detail was, police have still not shared it. The caller said that he would make contact again, but never did. Police believed the call was possibly a hoax or that maybe the caller knew the kidnapper, but wasn't the kidnapper himself. One thing they were confident in was that Mr. Cruel would strike again. And it was just a matter of time until he did. But police had no idea that the next

attack would turn deadly. John and Phyllis Chan met and married after arriving in Australia from Hong Kong in 1976. By 1991, they had three children, Carmen, Carly, and Karen. In 1991, the chans worked at a couple of restaurants in the lower planning area. John, who was 40, and Phyllis who was 38, worked 18 hours a day at their restaurants, saving their money, and investing in various business ventures, all in an effort to provide their kids with the best lives that they could. Their hard work paid off, and the family was living in a $1 million home on Tripples Road and Temple's Toe. All three of the Chan daughters attended a private school called Presbyterian Ladies College at Burwood,

where the annual fees exceeded $6,500 a student. Carmen was the oldest at 13. She took tennis lessons at the Camberwell Tennis Center every Saturday, despite the fact that she had asthma. She, along with her sisters, also took Chinese lessons once a week, and they spoke both English and Chinese at home. Carmen was in the eighth grade and was known for her hard work and politeness. Her dream was to become an attorney.

When she finished school, the headmaster at her school described her as charming, polite, enthusiastic, and lively. In the suburbs of D.C., a woman fails to show up for work and is found brutally murdered. I wonder what's emergency. We just walked in the door and there's blood in the foyer. For the next two decades, the case remained unsolved until new technology allowed investigators to do what had once been impossible. A new series from ABC Audio in 2020.

Blood and Water. Listen now, wherever you get your podcasts. If you love chilling mysteries, unsolved cases, and a touch of mom-style humor, moms and mysteries is the podcast you've been searching for. Hey guys, I'm Mandy. And I'm Melissa. Join us every Tuesday for moms and mysteries,

your gateway to gripping, well-researched true crime stories. Each week, we deep dive into a variety of mind-boggling cases as we shed light on everything from heist to whodontets. We're your go-to podcast for Mysteries with a Motherly Touch. Subscribe now to Moms and Mysteries wherever you get your podcast. The Chan girls were excited for the first day of school holiday, which started April 13th. Carly, who was nine, and seven-year-old Karen,

were excited to spend time with their oldest sister. Carmen planned to fill the first day of vacation with sports and studies. Unfortunately, that day would change the lives of the Chan's forever. On April 13th, John Chan drove Carmen to her tennis lesson at around 9 a.m. An hour later, Phyllis picked her up in one of their Mercedes and took Carmen to breakfast in the Bollean Plaza shopping center. Afterwards, Phyllis took her oldest daughter to Baleen Library, where Carmen spent an hour researching a school project.

A couple who was friends with the chance, picked up Carmen from the library, picked up her sisters at their Chinese lessons, and then took all of them to the Chan's restaurant. Once there, the girls had a meal. Carmen and her sisters regularly ate their meals in the restaurant's kitchen, and then later on, the girls played outside the restaurant. Around 6.30 p.m., Phyllis Chan said goodbye to her daughters.

It was the last time she would ever see Carmen a lot. One of the male employees took to girls home. Being the oldest sibling in a Chinese family, Carmen was required to take on some responsibilities. Much of that included taking care of her younger sisters. The three sisters spent an hour at home with her father before he returned to the lower plenty of restaurant. After their father left, Carmen gave her sisters baths and read them bedtime stories

before the three watched a documentary on Marilyn Monroe in one of the bedrooms. At around 9 p.m., a man wearing a blue or green balaclava tampered with the Chan's high brick fence and the metal electronically operated the security gate and made his way towards the Chan home. The man was carrying white spray paint and painted a message in large letters on the family's work car parked on the front lawn. The message read, payback, more to come, an Asian drug deal. He signed off his message with Anon. He then cut through a wire screen to an open window and entered the Chan home. Once inside, the intruder forced Carmen and Carly into the bedroom where they had been watching TV at knife point.

He then started searching for Karen. He found her hunched and whimpering behind the door. The man let the girls know. He was in charge and he showed them his large black-handled knife. He threatened the girls verbally, but it's not known what he said. The assailant who was wearing a green track suit tied up Carly and Karen and forced them into a wardrobe, securing the doors by pushing a bed up against it. The man then abducted Carmen. Carly and Karen managed to free themselves, and Carly called their father at around 9.45 p.m.

Just 15 minutes after Carmen was abducted, Carly said to her dad, Daddy come home, a man with a knife, he took Carmen. John left the restaurant immediately and dashed home. He found the girls in the laundry room, both shaking and crying. He then ran through the house searching for Carmen and when he couldn't find her, he called the police to a reporter missing and said, quote, my daughter is gone. A man with a knife took her from our home. A radio message immediately was sent out to a police car in the area that directed them to the Chan home. Officers were told of an abduction of a 13-year-old girl from her house. The offender was believed to be a masked man with a knife. Authorities knew right away.

Carmen's abduction might be connected to the other attacks, and a police operation began soon after. Police also knew the spray-painted words on the car were nothing but a diversion. The intruder had planned the attack well and knew that an Asian family lived inside that home. According to the Age News magazine, a confidential police report stated there, quote, no outward signs that children reside at the premises, no outside play equipment, no bicycles. But the intruder knew the children were there and home alone. Sent dogs picked up the kidnapper's scent

and followed it to the front of a house on Church Road, just north of Serples Road. They lost the scent there, and police believed the kidnapper and Carmen got into a car at that spot. By 10.30 p.m., 14 more police cars arrived at the chance, home, uniformed officers sealed off the house until detectives and forensic experts arrived a few minutes later, Detective Inspector David Sprigg, the head of the Victoria Police Rape Squad, was one of the first detectives to arrive at the scene. Carly and Karen gave him a description

of the man who took Carmen, and Sprague was confident that the man was Mr. Cruel. It's been reported that the cries of John and Phyllis Chan over their daughter's abduction could be heard above the noise of the police helicopter patrolling the area. Detective Spray also interviewed the parents at the scene and asked John Chan if he had any known enemies who might kidnap Carmen. But John said he knew of no one who would take his daughter. Hundreds of police knocked on 2,500 doors near the Chan home and distributed leaflets appealing for help in finding Carmen Chan.

The police search and rescue squad thoroughly searched the Chan home for evidence, but found nothing. About a week after Carmen's abduction, her sisters wrote letters pleading for the safe return of their beloved sister. Karen wrote, Dear Carmen, I miss you a lot of time. I am very scared in the dark. And mom and dad miss you very much. Mimi is sick because she misses you very much, love from Karen. Mimi was the family dog. Carly wrote,

Whoever has my sister. I would like her back because then she can help me with my homework and also take good care of my little sister and me. Carmen, I wake up all the time. I need you, Carmen. Please bring Carmen back. Carmen, mom, dad, Karen and I are waiting for you. We all miss you very much with our hearts. Love Carly.

And more of how can your heart not break? Just hearing these words as these two little girls wrote them in letters to their sister, I mean, if that doesn't get to you, you don't have a heart. Yeah, I think it really demonstrates how close-knit this family was and how devastating that loss was for them. Phyllis Chan even publicly offered to exchange herself to the kidnapper for the safe return of her daughter. days, weeks, and months went by without any sign of Carmen Chan.

Then almost one year to the day of Carmen's abduction, a man walking his dog at Edgar's Creek in Thomastown, found a skull with three bullet holes in it. The skull was later identified as belonging to Carmen Chan. She had been shot to death, execution style. When police began investigating Carmen's case as a murder as opposed to an abduction, They went back and looked at all of Mr. Cruel's attacks and abductions. They saw that there were a few differences between Carmen's abduction and the others.

For one, she had been murdered. The others were released. Also, the intruder didn't linger in the Chan home for an extended period of time, as he had done in some of the other attacks. He arrived around 9 p.m. and was gone with Carmen by 930. Carmen's murder called into question whether Mr. Cruel was actually responsible. If so, she was his first known murder victim.

Police think that he may have pulled his mask off, revealing his identity, and that he killed Carmen to silence her. But shooting her three times seems a bit excessive for that. A task force called Spectrum, consisting of 40 detectives, was created to identify Mr. Cruel. The team knew that he methodically planned every attack. The attacks occurred around school holidays, which suggested that he might be a teacher or someone who worked in a school. According to a 1991 FBI profile, the offender has an intense interest in children, especially children in the age group he's assaulting.

He will spend a great deal of time with these children and what appears to be a selfless dedication to students. It seems that Mr. Cruel also had knowledge of forensics. He wiped clean all of the crime scenes and left no trace whatsoever that he had even been in the victim's homes. He also bathed his victims carefully. One victim said it was like a mother washing a baby. With another victim, Mr. Cruel took a second set of the girl's clothes to dress her before he freed her. And he went to great lengths to make sure that no one could identify him. These facts led some people, even a few in law enforcement, to believe that he was possibly a current or even a former police officer,

or that he had some type of background in law enforcement. Based on one of the victim's statements, authorities believed Mr. Cruele videotaped or took still photographs of his attacks and kept them as souvenirs. The victim reported she saw a tripod set up at the end of the bed where she was imprisoned. If Mr. Kruill is alive today, he may have those photographs or videos hidden away somewhere. Two victims provided to police details of the house Mr. Kruel kept them in, and sketches of a bedroom and bathroom were released to the public, in the hope someone would recognize the house. Both girls had been shackled to a bed with a neck brace.

One said she had planes landing nearby, leading police to believe the house was closed to Melbourne Airport in the northwest part of the city. Task Force Spectrum ran for 29 months at a cost of nearly $4 million. The task forces analysts identified 27,000 suspects and they received 10,000 tips. 30,000 houses were checked and 73 people were arrested for various crimes, but none were identified as Mr. Cruel. The task force also found a secret list of 150 men who subscribed to male order child pornography. All of the men were questioned and eventually cleared of being Mr. Cruel.

In 2010, a new task force called Apollo was formed. It reviewed both the Spectrum Task Force investigation as well as some new leads that came in, including more than one suspect not identified in the original investigation. Investigators also cross-referenced new leads with more than 12,000 pieces of information gathered by spectrum. One suspect who showed up early in the investigation was a man named Mark Anthony Jewell. At the end of January 1989, police arrested Jewell, who at the time was 25 years old as he was in the process of making telephone calls to the wills' family. It was said that he had made about 40 calls before his arrest. The magistrate Sally Brown remanded Jule into custody on 65 charges, including seven rapes, two aggravated rapes, aggravated

burglary, aggravated indecent assault and theft on April 6, 1989. Detective said the rapes had occurred over a five-year period, but most of them in the past 10th, months in the Malvern area. The attacks were usually committed between 8.30 p.m. and 5 a.m. And while some had been random, he stalked some of his victims for up to 10 days. Jules served 10 years in prison for those crimes and was released on parole. In 1999, he was once again arrested and received an 18-month prison term for stalking. He was later charged with sexual assault on an 8-year-old girl and sentenced to a measly six years in prison, even though he was likely to offend again. Despite Joel fitting the profile of Mr. Cruel, he was never charged in

connection with the crimes. Man, I don't know about you, Morph, but six years in prison for the sexual assault of an eight-year-old girl, that doesn't seem like much. It doesn't seem right to me, especially when you factor in that this guy already had a pretty lengthy and a pretty serious prison record. It seems like we talk about this in so many episodes of these offenders that you look at their history and you say, why is this guy on the street? And this isn't the 60s or the 70s here we're talking about. We're into the 1990s now. And they were still handing out these kind of sentences to these kinds of criminals with these checkered past. Of course, a lot of the times we're talking about these crimes and sentences in the United States. Obviously, now we're talking about Australia. And we know from

going out to some different countries and you and I researching a lot of different cases, sentences vary by country to a great degree. I mean, I think by and large, United States is pretty rough with their sentencing compared to many other countries. The other thing that kind of jumps out at me is, so this guy really does seem to fit them profile of Mr. Cruel. what I don't know is what steps police went through to make sure that he wasn't. I mean, how did they do that? Or was it that, you know, he could possibly be Mr. Cruel?

They just couldn't put anything together. I think it's frustrating when you see really strong persons of interest or suspects. And we've heard from police time and again that they thought they had their guy, but for whatever reason, they just couldn't make a case stick against them. Well, and the problem is all of those details don't come out, right? If a person is charged and they go to court, yeah, all the details come out of how they figured out that or why they thought this guy was the perpetrator. But a person of interest who they just never charge, we don't always get the details of

everything they did to, you know, go through that process. It's frustrating, but it's just not out there. Another man police looked at briefly was a pedophile named Robert Keith Knight. He was sentenced to more than 15 years in jail in the 1990s for kidnapping and sexually abusing two girls. Investigators could never link him to the Mr. Cruel assaults or to Carmen's murder. But they were also unable to eliminate him as a suspect, he remained a person of interest. But Knight died in 2013 after he took his own life while awaiting trial on child pornography charges. One possible suspect that authorities began considering was California's unentified Golden State Killer. In 2016, retired Los Angeles Sheriff's Department Detective David Gates

reached out to Victoria Police. This was after a renewed appeal by Golden State Killer investigators to get more information about the Unsolved California murders and rapes. Gates thought the descriptions of Mr. Cruel matched in many ways the Golden State Killer. Gates said the descriptions given of the Golden State Killer resembled a man wanted for burglars in California during the mid-1980s. California authorities found out the man later moved to Australia. Gates wanted to know if the men,

Mr. Cruel attacks might be related to the Golden State Killer attacks. And investigators were exploring that possibility right up until the theory proved incorrect when DNA identified Joseph James DeAngel as being the Golden State Killer in April 2018. So first of all, I can't believe it's been two years since that bombshell came out. But I do think we have to talk a little bit about the similarities, especially when you get into the M.O. Between the Golden State Killer and Mr. Cruel, they're pretty similar in a lot of ways, more.

So it's not surprising that detectives would want to check out that angle, right? You've got the taking of souvenirs, eating inside the homes, using a knife and a gun. I mean, there are quite a few similarities. Yeah, plus you have the extensive. of prowling and casing of the victims in their home prior to the attacks. But some of the differences are, were pretty key as well. For instance, the Golden State Killer targeted, usually, women who were in their

20s or 30s, although he did attack some victims as young as 12 or 13, as well as some in their 40s. But his average victim age range was in their 20s or 30s. In Mr. Cruel's case, it seems like he was concentrating on children. And we did talk about the nylon rope that police determined not to be from Australia or available in Australia. So, you know, given all of that, it's no wonder that, you know, detectives were checking some of these things out.

The one thing that we haven't talked about is that all of the victims said, that Mr. Cruel's accent sounded like an authentic Australian accent. In April 2016, right before the 25th anniversary of Carmen Chan's murder, police increased the reward to $1 million. They also released a 1994 dossier named the Sierra Files that was prepared with the assistance of the FBI. The dossier contained details on seven possible. suspects, including one prime suspect named Brian Allen Elkner.

Elkner was a serial violent sex offender and a retired French literature lecturer at the University of New South Wales in Sydney. Elkner once penned a philosophical essay on what he called the sublime criminal, which suggested that people attempt to do evil to gain the status of a hero. Elkner's criminal history dates back to October 1974 when he was convicted of the sexual assaults of multiple victims and sentenced to 10 years in prison. Details revealed at his trial included breaking into his victim's homes armed with a knife and gun. And it just so happened that Elkner was released from prison before Mr. Krull's attacks were. thought to have begun. In April 2016, Melburn's The Age reported police investigated a suspect

known only as John, whose partner gave a shocking statement to police in 2011. The statement was regarding the murder of Carmen Chan. John is not the real name of the suspect. According to his partner, John had links to another unsolved killing and was also a violent serial rapist. The partner told police the suspect had homemade pornography. access to a residence near the Melbourne airport, but lived in the eastern suburbs. John also sexually abused girls. These facts aligned with the FBI's analysis of Mr. Cruel. They also aligned with the statements of witnesses.

But the residents didn't match the layout reported by one of the victims. John's partner also stated that he often spoke about Carmen. during sex. And he became upset when her killer was dubbed Mr. Cruel. John was self-employed and his work allowed him to travel around Melbourne on a regular basis. But the Spectrum Task Force was unable to find any evidence linking John or any other suspects, for that matter, to Mr. Cruehl's crimes, and they found no new evidence despite investigating several new persons of interest. Police believe that if Mr. Cruell is alive today, he may be one of the 27,000 people police interviewed during the investigation. There were many similar attacks in Australia that

authorities have considered possibly being connected to Mr. Cruell. Between December 1979 and October 1980, a killer dubbed the Balaclava killer roamed Australia's Gold Coast, attacking couples and raping the females. In one case, he killed the man and in another broke into a woman's apartment and raped her at gunpoint. The killer was never caught. The prime suspect in that case has convicted killer, Ashley Colston, an Australian sailor. He murdered 22-year-olds, Karen Hensridge and Anne Smerden, and 27-year-old Peter Dempsey, the brother-in-law of one of the women. These murders happened in Victoria on July 29, 1992. The Balaclava killing stopped in 1980. The same year Colston moved to

Sydney. It's believed he committed crimes there as well, but it's unclear if Colston was ever considered as a suspect in the Mr. Cruel attacks. In July 1987, one month before Sharon Will's was abducted, a 26-year-old Cameret woman arrived home at 1.20 a.m. Cameret is a suburb of Sydney. 40 minutes later, the woman was awoken by a man lying across her and holding a large kitchen knife. The man was wearing a balaclava in gloves and threatened to hurt her if she screamed. The man raped her before stealing a radio cassette player and fleeing her residence. Mr. Cruel was never caught, but police believe he may still be alive in living in the Melbourne area. The loss of their daughter took its toll on John and Phyllis Chan's marriage,

and the two divorced within five years of Carmen's abduction and murder. Proof that Mr. Cruel's evil deeds and actions had far-reaching effects. Yeah, I don't think there's any doubt about that, Morth. This guy was and possibly still is a monster. You know, as we were telling some of the details of his attacks, it was hard not to think back on the crimes committed by the Golden State killer. The fear that this man instilled in people. And as you said, I mean, he wrecked people's lives, his victims' lives, the families of his victims, devastating. And I think as with the Golden State killer as frightened as he made Californians during his reign of terror,

I think we could safely say that Mr. Cruel was the equivalent of that in Melbourne, where he was prowling and attacking. Yeah, I definitely think that's safe to say. And I'll link the two in another way. A lot of people thought they would never catch the Golden State killer. So there's hope that someday Australian authorities will identify through some means this man that has been dubbed Mr. Cruel. As hopeful as that is, the big difference between Mr. Cruel and the Golden State Killer was that Mr. Cruel didn't leave any DNA, whereas the East Area Rapist Golden State Killer left plenty of that and that wound up being his undoing. It remains to be seen if Mr. Cruel is identified, what will his downfall be?

Yeah, it'll have to be different. He won't be caught the same way that Joseph J. DeAngelo was caught. This would most likely be somebody that knows what this person has done, decides it's time to come forward. It would probably have to be something like that. Thanks goes out to Debbie Buck at Truecrime,da.com, for writing and research assistants in this episode. If you love the show and you haven't done so, go out, give us a five-star rating. Keep telling your friends about criminology. All of that goes a long way towards helping new people find the podcast.

If you want to find us on social media, we're on Twitter with the handle at Criminology Pod. We're also on Facebook. Just search for Criminology Podcast. You can also join our Facebook discussion group, which is Criminology Podcast Discussion and Fans. So that's it for another episode. of criminology, but Morph and I will be back with all of you next Saturday night with a brand new episode. So until then, from Mike and Morph. We'll talk to you next week. Take care,