Going West: True Crime - Mr. Cruel // 249

Episode Date: November 2, 2022

In the late 1980s and early 1990s, a masked man began snatching children from their homes in Melbourne, Australia. With crimes similar to that of a fictional boogeyman, the area was petrified with fear, and to this day, police have never identified him. This is the story of Mr. Cruel. BONUS EPISODES patreon.com/goingwestpodcast CASE SOURCES 1. Real Crime: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ArIl4189jDw 2. Unresolved: https://unresolved.me/mr-cruel 3. Daily Mail: https://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-10569225/Masked-child-killer-Mr-Cruel-terrified-city-abducting-young-girls-homes-three-decades-ago-raped-elderly-nun-years-earlier-loose.html 4. The Age: https://www.newspapers.com/image/122998873/?terms=mr%20cruel&match=1 5. Australian Missing Persons Register: http://www.australianmissingpersonsregister.com/Worledge.htm 6. Melbin Marvels: https://melbinmarvels.com/2022/01/20/the-abduction-of-nicola-lynas/ 7. Herald Sun: https://www.heraldsun.com.au/news/law-order/victoria-police-set-to-increase-reward-for-child-killer-mr-cruel/news-story/a65fb33fa370d04d740a68b9f6410d2e 8. News.com: https://www.news.com.au/national/victoria/crime/forensic-technology-links-mr-cruel-suspect-to-melbourne-electrical-industry/news-story/318bc9381837cde0682077c84be75ca0 9. Melbin Marvels: https://melbinmarvels.com/2021/01/26/mr-cruel-serial-rapist-and-murderer-overview-of-case/ Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices

What is going on to crime fans? I'm your host Teef. And I'm your host Daphne. And you're listening to Going West. Hope everybody had a very fun and very safe Halloween. Heath and I had a party where recording this in advance. So I don't know how the party went but it was probably really fun. It probably kicked ass. I'm dressing up as Naja from what we do in the shadows or I did and Heath is Rock and Roll Frankenstein. Yeah, Rock and Roll Frankenstein. So we're gonna have a party, we have like a vintage photo booth that we rented and it's gonna be super fun, so I'm really excited about that. Again, it was super fun. It was super fun, it was awesome.

So yeah, thank you guys for tuning in to Going West. You may be nursing a hangover today, not sure. Yeah, but that'll just give you time to listen to Going West, right? Yeah, today we actually have an Australian case and this is only the second international case that we have covered on going west we covered one Canadian case if you can really call that Technically international and I don't know I just we were gonna do this as a patreon episode But I decided that I thought it would be a good going west episode. So here we are. Yeah, here we are the second international case

Well guys if you're looking for more going west episodes second international case. Well guys if you're looking for more going west episodes you can head on over to our Patreon which is patreon.com slash going west podcast we've got a ton of ad free episodes for you guys to binge but for now let's get into today's case. All right guys this is episode 249 of going west so let's get into it. In the late 1980s and early 1990s, a masked man began snatching children from their homes in Melbourne, Australia. With crimes similar to that of a fictional boogie man, the area was petrified with fear. And to this day, police have never identified him. This is the story of Mr. Cruel.

Melbourne, Australia, or Melbourne, Australia, is the largest city in the southeastern state of Victoria, situated on the coast of the Tasman Sea. Now according to its tourism website, Melbourne is known for its eclectic nightlife, tantalizing food and wine, and dynamic art scene, and it's home to about five million people. It was nicknamed by locals as the most livable place in the world, but the illusion of this otherwise safe haven

for families was shattered in 1987 when a brutal home invasion and the resulting assault of a young girl set off a disturbing chain of events in the area, culminating in a devastating murder. Early on the morning of Saturday, August 22, 1987, in an eastern suburb of the city called Lower Plenty, a family was asleep late one night when a masked man slinked into the house through the living room window. No one in the family heard a thing as he walked upstairs with a knife and woke the parents, threatening that he would stab them if they screamed, ran, or tried to call the police.

To ensure that they couldn't, he cut every phone line in the house, and he instructed them to lie side by side down on the bed as he tied both of their hands and feet, using a sailor's not to secure them, and then blindfolded them and gag them with tape. The perpetrator then led them to their closet, and left them in there to carry out the rest of his plan. He proceeded to the next room, waking up the couple's four-year-old son, to give him the same treatment. The little boy was tied to the bed and then gagged and blindfolded with the same kind of

tape as his parents. Then the man landed on his target, the 11-year-old girl who lived there. He tied up and assaulted the girl for two hours. She remembers him saying to her quote, �My liberty, my freedom, is more important than your life. Afterward, the man ate the family's food, drank their alcohol, and left with cash, clothing, jewelry, and a few vinyl records. The identity of the victim has never been released in order to protect her, but for the generally safe and quiet neighborhood, the news of the attack was a shock.

And somehow this man left so little evidence that he wasn't able to be identified or even described as he had covered the eyes of his victims and was covered from head to toe himself. Thus began the four-year reign of terror of Mr. Cruel. He was dubbed Mr. Cruel after a local Melbourne tabloid publicized this incident, calling him super cool and super cruel. Police had so little to work with that they couldn't ascertain a suspect or even a description of one. They did, however, draw a potential connection to the 1985 rape of a woman in the same

area, and then later, in 1987, after the home invasion and assault of the 11-year-old girl, the rape of another woman in the area. But these were never proven to be linked to Mr. Cruel. Then, 16 months later, he struck again, just two days after Christmas, in 1988, in the Eastern Melbourne suburb of Ringwood, less than a half hours drive from Lower Plenty, where he was last seen. Mr. Cruel entered a home on Hillcrest Avenue and again started in the parents room.

So, I mean, this goes to show you, he kinda knows, maybe it doesn't know exactly where everybody's rooms are, but he's not just going into random rooms. He's plotting which particular rooms to go into first. Which would lead us to believe that he probably scoped out the house prior to entering. He may have. So around 5.45 AM that morning,

John Will's awoke to feel the barrel of a gun being pressed against his temple and remembers Mr. Kruel saying, quote, you're not gonna be stupid, are you? you're not going to be stupid, are you? You're not going to be a hero, are you? So John and his wife Julie complied. And just like in the first break-in, Mr. Kruel ordered them to roll onto their stomachs

and secured both their wrists and ankles with copper wire, tied with a sailor's knot. John remembers him holding a knife in addition to the gun and wearing dark blue overalls and a matching ski mask. Mr. Cruel bound and gagged both Julie and John with surgical tape and assured them he only wanted their money. So he stole cash off their bedside table and cut every phone line in the house before making his way to their daughter's room. Julian John had four young daughters, all of whom shared bunk beds in the same room, which is so terrifying for this case that they're all in the same room and we know this

guy's going to target the little girls. Yeah, every single one of them. So it took the parents about 15 minutes to break free because of course they were trying to get out of these restraints and when they did, they were horrified to find their oldest daughter, Tanyroll Sharon, gone. Because the phone lines had been cut, John had to run to a neighbor's house to get help. And as soon as help arrived, police began a ground search immediately, and John also searched the neighborhood by car, but nothing turned up.

Sharon had vanished. Families and especially parents in the area, of course, were gripped with fear. One mom remembered not allowing her daughter out of her sight except to go to school and said she didn't even feel comfortable leaving her daughter at home with babysitters. And another mom said her son was having nightmares and kept asking her if he was going to be taken. So this is so terrifying, especially, you know, for all these parents knowing that these were home invasions that, oh, when we go to bed tonight, are we gonna be next while we're sleeping, but you gotta sleep, you gotta live.

Yeah, and it's almost like, you know, obviously the parents are the protectors, but they can't even do anything because Mr. Kruel knows how to get them into restraints first. So I'm sure that, you know, not only these children being scared, but also the parents of these children being scared. Absolutely.

Because what's gonna happen to them? And I just wanna say too, let's pull up a picture of Mr. Cruel because he is terrifying. And I, you know, would point everybody to our Instagrams or even to Google to look at photos of him because he is so scary. I mean, this is the sketch of him.

Yeah, that's what I'm going to discuss. Is horrifying. I mean, it's really just a ski mask, but it looks like there's stitching that just makes it so much more terrifying. So definitely go look at a photo. Yeah, I don't know who made that ski mask, but they made it very horribly terrifying.

And it just makes the whole idea of this even more terrifying that this is the guy that's coming into people's houses. Yeah. And one detective remembers Mr. Kruehl as the most wanted man in Australia at the time of the abduction. So it's important to remember that this was before most homes and stores had surveillance footage and security cameras. So police had to launch a grassroots guerrilla campaign of going door-to-door around the suburbs

and asking questions. Thank God for a $70 ring-doorbell camera now, huh? Yeah, no doubt. So they also searched via helicopter, police car, and on foot, but they found no sign of Sharon or her captor. Then, 18 excruciating hours later, as mysteriously as she had disappeared, she resurfaced. Shortly after midnight, the following morning, which was December 28th, Sharon was found walking alongside the road in a men's oversized white button-down shirt near Bayeswater Secondary College in Bayeswater, just minutes down the road from Ringwood. A female motor spotted her in contact to police right away, and Sharon explained

that she had been dumped there from a car just minutes earlier. She was taken to the hospital, and while there was certainly emotional trauma from the ordeal, physically Sharon was okay, and she was eventually returned to her relieved parents. Sharon had been gagged and blindfolded the entire time that she was gone. She explained that after Mr. Kruel had taken her, he had driven for a long time. But whether they had actually traveled a far distance or he was just trying to throw her off so that she couldn't trace a path back to him is pretty unclear. When they arrived at his home, Sharon was tied up in his bedroom and assaulted for hours. Investigators described Sharon as incredibly brave and said that she did everything that she could to aid police in the search for Mr. Cruel, in hopes of preventing him from ever doing this again.

So of course, Sharon relayed as much as she could about him given that she had been blindfolded. But she also explained that, while she had been instructed not to do so, when the man left her alone in his bedroom, she pulled her blindfold off and snuck a look at her surroundings. Very smart young gal. The description she gave was horrifying. At the end of the bed, there was a video camera that had been recording the entire encounter. Her eyewitness account is the reason that we have the infamous and terrifying police sketch of Mr. Cruel. So she described his mask, which she saw hanging up in the room

in which she was being held, as a dark green knit balaclava or ski mask, with cutouts for the eyes and mouth and crude white stitching around each of the three holes, you know, like his mouth and his two eyes. And this is what I was describing earlier. It was almost like this like homemade horror mask, if you will. So Sharon remembered that when he wasn't actively assaulting her, he was kind, courteous, and soft-spoken, and even made sure that she was fed and hydrated. Based on her description,

police were able to draw up a layout of the bedroom where she was being held, and they then released these sketches in hopes that someone would recognize the home, like maybe a landlord or a fellow renter, or even a friend or family member of his. But somehow, Mr. Kruel was able to ensure that every shred of DNA was cleaned off of her, so as not to be traced back to him. And he seemed so calculated and prepared that detectives wondered if he may have even had a forensic background.

And eerily, Sharon told police that when Mr. Kruel had awoken her to kidnapper from her own home, he had addressed her by name, meaning he knew who she was. He then tied her up in a green garbage bag which he duct taped around her shoulders and then another green garbage bag was placed over her head. And police believed that Sharon had been targeted for months before she was actually taken.

And that's what Heath was saying earlier that, you know, if he knows her name, he knows where the bedrooms are, he had to have been sticking the place out. Oh, yeah, he was definitely scoping these places out for many, many months. I don't know if he did that for every crime, but it's very clear that he did this for this crime.

Yeah, I mean, to go to the parents room first and then to go to the room where all four of the girls are and to take Sharon and to know her name. So scary. Yeah, definitely. So six months before Sharon was abducted, a house fire broke out at the Will's house, and it was reported in the local newspaper. The article explained that the four sisters slept in bunk beds in the same room. So could this be how he may be found out that there were four young girls, bunk beds in the same room, so could this be how he may be found out that there were four young girls, you know, in one room?

So after discovering this, investigators believed that he targeted the Will's family based on the easy access to the sister's room after reading this particular article. Sharon's father, John, told News Outlets that he felt like he had failed as a father and as a husband for not keeping his family safe. The Will's family were relieved and elated to have Sharon back, but police were no closer to uncovering the identity of Mr. Cruel. Then, on July 3, 1990, over a year later, he struck again. It's a pretty big break there. Yeah, he took a bit of a break.

I mean, at least as far as we know. Right. But this time, in the Melbourne suburb of Canterbury, about 20 minutes closer to downtown than Sharon's hometown of Ringwood. Rosemary and Brian Linus were at dinner with friends while their teenage daughters Fiona aged 15 and Nicola or Nikki aged 13 were home asleep. Just before midnight, on the evening of July 3rd, which also happened to be the night before Nikki's 14th birthday, the girls awoke to commands from a masked man. Once again, wielding a knife and a gun, telling Nikki to collect her school uniform for the private school that she attended,

the Presbyterian Ladies College, a disturbing detail that likely meant that he had been observing her for a while. And so scary that he's asking her to grab her uniform. Yeah, obviously, I mean, we kind of can assume that we know what that means. But that he wants her to wear it. Yeah, obviously. I mean, we kind of can assume that we know what that means. But that he wants her to wear it. Yeah, of course. Right, which is just so it was just fucking creepy. Yeah, absolutely. So like the other family members of his victims, Mr.

Kruehl instructed Nikki's sister to lie face down in her bed so that he could tie her up. He packed Nikki some of her own clothes, which he had also done for Sharon. He cut the phone lines, which she had done in both of his previous attacks as well. He asked the girls what their father did for a living, and when they responded that he was a partner at an accounting firm, Mr. Kruel decided to leave a note, demanding a ransom of $25,000 for Nikki's safe return. And it really does seem like much of his motive. Obviously a lot of his motive is sexually assaulting young girls.

Oh, yeah. On top of the money. Yeah, I mean, that's definitely correct because we know that in all of his crimes, he's stolen jewelry or clothes or money. Right. So it seems like, you know, he's seeing this as a win-win. He's robbing these people, but also sexually assaulting these young girls.

Right. So Nikki's dad, Brian, was a partner at Price Waterhouse, and that's a firm based in London where the lineuses had moved from, meaning they are not from Australia, they are from England. And Price Waterhouse had amassed over $45 billion in revenue last year, so easy for Mr. Cruel to extort. He then escorted Nikki outside and escaped in the family's own car, which had been parked in the driveway. Police again launched a fervent search for Nikki, hoping that she would

fare as Sharon did and return home unharmed hours later. But when the 18-hour mark came and went, police were growing less and less hopeful, and her family more and more despondent. However, after being missing for about 50 hours, Nikki was found safe, and like Sharon had also been discarded from a car on the side of the road. She had been wrapped in a blanket and left just a short distance away from her home, and Mr. Cruel had instructed her to keep her blindfold on as well until he drove away, which she did. When she knew she was safe, Nikki removed it and walked into a nearby house to ask for help, phoning her father first before even notifying police, which makes sense she's 14

years old. Absolutely. So Brian said that he hadn't slept since she went missing and she was missing for just over two days. Like Sharon, Nikki did what she could to aid police in their investigation, and she explained to them that Mr. Kruel had driven them a short distance from the Linus' house before he transferred them to another car that he had stowed in waiting and abandoned the Linus' vehicle.

And this just proves that he probably walked up to their house, put their car maybe up the street or something, a short distance away, like she said, and then walked to their house, knowing exactly where he was going. Yeah, exactly. And this also makes sense because he probably didn't want his car seen outside of their home. Oh, hell no.

So he parked it down the street where nobody would identify it. Right. Very smart. And then after transferring cars, he then drove he and Nikki to his home or at least the house that he used to commit his crimes. Rosemary and Brian returned home from their dinner party just 20 minutes after Mr. Kruel had fled with Nikki. Only to find their oldest daughter tied up in her bed and a ransom note with no instructions as to how to remit payment left in Nikki's place. So can you imagine like just 20 minutes before you get home, that happens to your daughter?

And then how stupid that he's not even gonna say, he just says, give me $25,000 and I'll give Nikki back, but not here's how I would collect such an amount. So Nikki's parents had been attending a farewell dinner thrown by friends as the family was due to move back to England just five days later. They had been in Melbourne for the last four years, but were ready to move back home. Now Brian actually said that what had originally attracted them to Australia in the first place

was how safe it seemed to be for children. When Nikki had been missing for 36 hours, Brian Lyonis conducted a press conference in which he pleaded for his daughter's safe return. Nikki's abductor had actually watched it and even talked to Nikki about it. In the same manner as the first two victims, Nikki had been sexually assaulted repeatedly and never allowed to remove her blindfold. She was tied up and held in his bedroom and she was not able to offer a description as to what he looked like. Like Sharon, Nikki shared

that he had been quiet and gentle with her when he was not actively assaulting her, and had made sure that she had food and water. Nikki also explained that before she was returned, she had been instructed to brush her teeth and thoroughly wash herself, probably to get rid of a lot of DNA. Fifty hours after her abduction, Mr. Kru cruel dropped her off still blindfolded and wrapped in a blanket at a power substation in nearby queue. Just 10 minutes down the road from Cantor Berry. It's really interesting to know that Mr. cruel did watch what her father was saying to the public on TV because so many

times we see the parents and the family pleading for the attacker or the kidnapper to give up their child and most of the time they don't. So the fact that they actually got their daughter back is so amazing. And that's what's so weird and so unique about this story is that this guy is doing all this stuff and taking these kids and then giving them back, it's so weird. Yeah, and also... You never see that.

Right, and also taking these huge risks. But at this point in time, DNA was not very advanced, so maybe he just thought that, hey, you know, I can get away with this. Maybe so, he must have. And he did. So police were now catching on to his patterns and attempting to build a profile on whom he might be. Especially because of the school uniform, they believed that Mr. Cruell would stake out

the layout and set up of the home and the intricacies of the family choosing his victim weeks or even months prior to the actual abduction. One psychologist assisting the investigation mues that he believed Mr. Kruel to be a burglar, turned rapist and kidnapper only when the opportunity presented itself. He was clearly choosing homes that were easy to gain access to, homes with no dogs on the streets that were not heavily trafficked or patrolled. But most argued that the crimes seemed so premeditated and plotted out, like that there was no way the kidnappings and rapes could simply be crimes of opportunity. Nikki was able to pass along to detectives the noises that she heard while she was being

detained at the house, and she remembered hearing airplanes. They were able to identify one airplane whose flight paths consistently flew over the area in which she was taken at the time she was taken, but in encompassed thousands of houses. She also remembered him talking to someone, although this mystery person never talked back, which is weird, leading investigators to believe that Mr. Cruel was simply doing this to throw her off. Or maybe he was on the phone? I mean, yeah, but if this person wasn't like talking back, I guess I'm kind of confused by this, because maybe she didn't hear the person

on the other end of the phone. Or maybe, I don't know. I mean, this to me, it just sounds like it's a, it must be a phone conversation because why would he try to throw her off and pretend like somebody else was in the house anyway? Like, how is that gonna serve you? Yeah, unless she picked up on certain characteristics

like she thought that maybe he was acting on the phone or something. Or maybe he said, oh, come in here. Or something, there was something that made it seem like the person was in person. Yeah. I'm not sure. But anyway, so one key piece of information

that Nikki was able to surmise was her tacker's height. She said that he didn't stand much taller than she did as he escorted her out of the house, putting him at about 5 feet to 8 inches tall, and she guessed, based on the glimpses that she caught of him, that he had reddish brown hair. But even with three victims, and as many physical traits and clues as the girls accounts could offer, police had no suspects, no evidence, and no leads. And things were about to get even worse. Less than a year later, it happened again.

On Saturday, April 13, 1991, Mr. Kruel entered the home of a local family in Temple Stowe, about 15 minutes northeast of where Nikki was taken from. Phyllis and John Chan immigrated to Australia from China and owned two restaurants in the area, Mingchu Chinese and Lower Plenty, and a takeaway outlet in Boulin, which is next door to their suburb of Temple Sto. Enjoying the success and payoff of their endeavors,

the Chan's owned a large, beautiful house in Tempelstow where they lived with their three daughters, Carmen, Carly, and Karen. On that Saturday night, the girls were home alone with the oldest 13-year-old Carmen left in charge with their parents working a busy dinner shift at the family restaurant. Now, the girls had been watching TV together in Carmen's room and took a break to make something to eat. But on the way to the kitchen, around 8.40 pm, the girls ran into Mr. Cruel in their hallway, wearing his traditional balaclava and a track suit. That is terrifying. Oh my god, yeah, I can't even imagine him just standing in the hallway. Oh my god. So initially, he assured them that he only wanted money. He led

Carmen's two younger sisters to a cupboard or closet in Carmen's bedroom at knife point, securing the doors closed with her bed, and asking Carmen to show him where her parents kept their money. But instead, he escorted her out of the house and into the car waiting in the driveway. Carmen's sisters were able to break free from the closet and within minutes, they called their dad John to tell him what had happened. So at this point, police knew who they were dealing with.

They noted that the manicured home had no obvious signs of young children living there, making it likely that Mr. Kruel had again stalked his victim in the weeks and months leading up to her abduction. Police tracked his movements from a vacant lot near the home up through their garden where he had gained access to the screen door that led into the kitchen. garden where he had gained access to the screen door that led into the kitchen. But this case had some strange new details. So like Nikki, Carmen also attended the Presbyterian Ladies College. The chances red Toyota had been parked in the driveway at the front of the house at the time, and Mr. Krull had actually spray painted it in white with the message payback Asian drug dealer

and more to come. In situating maybe that Mr. Krull was owed maybe like debts tied up in the family business or perhaps that the chance had been involved in some sort of illegal drug trade operation. But this seems like, this honestly seems like something that he's doing to maybe throw him off.

Yeah, yeah, because we know that he's good at that. Well, yeah, so actually that's what the police thought too. Like this was a completely baseless claim and completely in Mr. Kruel's MO to like you say, like sprinkle red herrings while committing his crimes in order to throw police office trail so it seemed like that's exactly what he was doing here now in his first home invasion and sexual assault he had pretended to make a phone call but police later determined that he had cut the phone lines prior to placing it

wow so i can't believe they figured that out but i know but yeah i mean this just adds to it. Exactly. And in Nikki's case, he demanded that ransom remember, but he never left instructions as to how he could obtain it, and therefore he never did. So investigators were just kind of starting to catch on to his tactics, which would hopefully make it easier to put together a profile of the type of person he was.

Meanwhile, one detective remembers that the Cham family was crumbling. A massive manhunt was underway immediately, but as usual, Mr. Cruel had left no trace, except for the haunting message painted on the car. But after three full days of Carmen being missing, Hermann Phyllis gave a heartbreaking speech at a press conference, begging for him to release her daughter. She said, quote, Carmen, this is your favorite dress. You have to come back home and wear it. She then broke down and wailed, please release my daughter and don't spoil my family, please.

She was sobbing so hard that she had to be escorted offstage by her husband. Victoria Police circulated missing posters with Carmen's picture alongside Sharon's and Nikki's offering $300,000 in reward money for information leading to the arrest of Mr. Cruel. Now Phyllis and John themselves ran an advertisement in the paper. A message that they claim only Carmen could have deciphered. Carmen's sisters penned heartfelt letters to her that were also printed, hoping that she'd be able to see it,

or that it would tug at the heartstrings of Mr. Cruehl and convince him to release their sister. But nothing happened. A special police task force called Operation Spectrum was established specifically to hunt Mr. Cruel. And leads poured in from people who suspected their coworker, acquaintance, neighbor, or someone else, and the task force received between 10 and 11,000 leads. Like, where do you even begin with that many?

I don't even know. I mean, you just have to start crossing them off. So, they physically searched 30,000 houses at this time, and they talked to every doctor in the state of Victoria to see if any clients that they had matched the physical description of Mr. Cruel. Phyllis and John's relationship couldn't survive the loss of their child, and the two wound up filing for divorce. Now, many still suspected John of being partially responsible for his daughter's kidnapping due to this alleged involvement in illegal drug activity, but he protested, quote,

I swear, I do nothing wrong. I have been here for 15 years, always in business. I start 7 o'clock, 8 o'clock, and finish it midnight. I work hard and I know it's a good opportunity here in Australia. One police man working Carmen's case remembered knowing the family before the abduction and dining at their restaurant many times. And he said he absolutely does not believe that Phyllis had anything to do with illicit drug activities or Carmen's disappearance. But some investigators in the task force believe the possible drug connection was not investigated

deeply enough, and therefore, revenge was never officially ruled out as a motive. Almost a year to the day after Carmen's disappearance on April 9th, 1992, a man walking his dog in a field found part of a human skull. When investigators inspected the area, they found the rest of the remains and felt fairly confident, even before testing,

was concluded in all, that they were the remains and felt fairly confident, even before testing was concluded in all, that they were the remains of Carmen Chan. And they were. Carmen had been buried in a desolate field next to a landfill in Thomas Town, which is about 20 minutes away from where she lived in Temple Sto. She had been shot three times in the head. Phyllis and her daughters held a traditional Buddhist ceremony where they discovered Carmen's remains, laying out food and flowers as an offering, lighting incense, and sang prayers

for her. One burning question plagued them. Why had he murdered Carmen when he had let the other two girls go? Which really does not make sense. Phyllis remembers Carmen as strong-willed and feisty, and thinks that she fought back. Phyllis guessed that Carmen had pulled Mr. Kruel's mask off maybe, or her own blind fold-off, and that he murdered her, fearing that she could identify him. It was one last act of strength and defiance from a very brave 13-year-old girl.

Although the hope of finding Carmen alive was now extinct, her death could lead them to Mr. Cruel and end his reign of terror on suburban Melbourne. As some of you probably know from the television show Mindhunter, the FBI's criminal profiling measures were so state of the art at the time that Australian police sought the help of the FBI in building a criminal profile for Mr. Cruel, hoping to zero in on suspects in the area. We also covered the first case of FBI criminal profiling in episode 210 of Going West, with serial killer David Meyerhoffer, and the FBI compiled the following assumptions about Mr. Cruel.

Quote, he is a functional individual, one who has steady employment and is generally regarded as a good neighbor. Plythe, quiet, somewhat introverted, but may be involved in certain community-minded projects, too. He would typically live in a single-family residence, one with a garage or a car port, and he may or may not live with someone. If he does live with someone, they were absent from the residence during the critical time spans of these offenses.

If involved in a relationship, the partner would be aware of sexual disfunctions on the part of the offender. The offender's sexual arousal and gratification would be dependent upon the partner acting out a certain role, dressing in a specific manner such as a schoolgirl in uniform, etc. Now the physical description that they put together assumed that he was white, Australian, and about 5'5'5'6' tall, with a thin to average build, and a slight pot belly. Between mid-twenties and early fifties, and this was unfortunately a pretty generic character, and could most likely be anybody.

He was probably your average low profile citizen, which makes the gravity of his crimes even more terrifying. Yeah, watching the patient on Hulu has really made me feel so icky lately thinking about the fact that there are people like this who are leading these seemingly normal lives, who go to work, who have co-workers, and these people have no idea what this person is doing behind the scenes. I know. It makes you question the people that you meet and the company that you keep. And like your neighbors. Absolutely.

Especially if you already have a weird neighbor, wink wink. Yeah. Like it's, I don't know, it's just very unsettling to know that these things are kept secret in a lot of cases. So there have been several persons of interest who seemed to have the propensity to commit crimes of this nature and had committed similar offenses in the past. One highly publicized suspect was a professor named Brian Enkler. He served ten years in jail in the 1970s after tying up and assaulting six different girls at knife point.

After Carmen's abduction, the spectrum task force obtained a warrant and searched this guy's home, Brian Enkler, and they found a ski mask and a knife in his attic. But because there was no DNA or direct evidence tying him to the crimes, police were unable to detain him. Then in 2019, a reporter attempted to speak with him regarding the case, approaching him in his driveway, and they said, quote, just a few questions about the Mr. Cruel investigation. And Brian said to this, no, I don't want to talk to you. Referring to the six girls at least whom he had assaulted, the reporter said to this, no, I don't want to talk to you. Referring to the six girls at least whom he had assaulted, the reporter said, quote,

you destroyed their lives. To which Brian responded, so you say. Some who worked the case have been convinced throughout the course of the investigation that Brian was Mr. Cruel. But because there is no forensic evidence, Brian Enkler remains free. And some think the actual offender is now dead because he would likely have continued

to offend. Yeah, I mean, we see that with a lot of serial killers. It doesn't appear that they just stop. Yeah, you don't just like get over it one day. But so many investigators and reporters believe that in fact, Mr. Cruel so scared by carman attempting to reveal his identity that he felt he was forced to kill her and was so rattled by this that he actually ended his life of crime all together

so it is i mean it's possible that happened but i don't know to me it feels less likely well i mean i think mister cruel'sel's mo was specifically to sexually assault young girls uh... and maybe not to murder them so it is possible that he murdered carman and then was like i fucked up this is not the way this was supposed to go

and then either ended his life or just stopped committing crime well also at that point if he even were to continue kidnapping girls and assaulting them, and he got caught, then he could go down for murder, which is way more serious than kidnapping and sexual assault, although that's also a very serious crime. Sure. Murder he could go away for his entire life. Right, right.

So some locals were critical of how the investigation was carried out. There were oversights that may have complicated the process of identifying Mr. Cruel. In one of the assaults, the victim had been tied up with a rope, but the rope was lost after it was surrendered to evidence. So this is... Yeah, I wonder how they lost this evidence. So many people think that Mr. Cruel was a current or former police officer who had access to evidence and could dispose of

it and also knew how to clean up after himself. And I mean, obviously this is possible, but I feel like we have seen this in a lot of other cases where evidence gets lost. I think it's just negligence. I think so too. So he may have even bribed somebody to keep them quiet or profited off the corruption within Melbourne police. Now aren't chair detectives have drawn similarities to the Golden State Killer, who, if you're

unfamiliar, was a stereotypical killer active in Southern California in the 1970s and 1980s. Responsible for 13 murders and over 50 rapes. We haven't covered this case, but it is a truly devastating case. So he was able to evade apprehension for 44 years after the beginning of his crime spree, likely due to the fact that he was a police officer and knew how to properly clean up after himself into spows of his victims. It's also been speculated that Mr. Kool may have been an electrician or an employee at a power plant because all three girls were

left in the vicinity of a nearby power plant. But you know, this case actually caused a lot of reform in Victoria. So at the time, owning child pornography was actually not illegal. A sex offender loitering in a vicinity of a school was not illegal either, but both are now considered illegal. So the Spectrum Task Force created to apprehend Mr. Kruel wound up arresting 75 local offenders. In 2016, the 25-year anniversary of the abduction of Carmen Chan, Victoria Police announced a reward of $1 million for information leading to the arrest of Mr.

Cruel, and now, six years later, that reward sits at $1.2 million. That's the biggest reward I have seen in any case we've covered. Yeah, yeah definitely. So Spectrum has conducted over 27,000 interviews. 37 men are still considered persons of interest, and tips still come into this day. In addition to his four confirmed victims, Mr. Cruel is believed to have as many as eight other victims,

accounting for other unsolved rapes in the area. If you have any information regarding the case of Mr. Cruel, you can submit a tip 24 hours a day at www.police.vic.gov.au Thank you so much everybody for listening to this episode of Going West. Yes, thank you guys so much for listening to this episode, and on Friday we'll have an all new case for you guys to dive into. I just thought, you know, we would switch it up this time and cover an Australian case,

but we do mostly cover international cases on our Patreon, so if you're looking for more international cases, head on over to patren dot com slash going west podcast. And you can listen to over 76 bonus episodes. They're full length, ad free of cases that we have not and will not cover on going west. Yeah, I think it was important to cover this case because yes, it still is unsolved, but also just because, I mean, it's truly terrifying. Oh, it's horrifying.

I mean, just his mask, how confident he was, how he staked out these houses, these families, to plan these attacks, and then release some and murder others, while others at least one, we'll say. Yeah, and, you know, to this day, we still don't know who this guy is. So please share this case with friends and family, and if anybody

does have any information we will put the link for tips in the description of this episode. Yes indeed and if you're looking for other free content you can check out the dark parts which is Heathen Eyes other podcasts we cover. Different spooky stories we just came out with my favorite episode yet last Thursday it's called Weegee and it's episode 22. That was such a fun episode. We actually got to talk about his sisters, a kind of Weegee board experience in their childhood home

and our creepy experience in his parent's house just a couple of years ago. Yeah, yeah, definitely some real life stories there. We like to have fun with that show. It's super light-hearted, so please go and subscribe. Alright guys, so for everybody out there in the world, don't be a stranger. Thank you. you