INFAMOUS: Mr. Cruel

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Hi, crime junkies.

I'm your host, Ashley Flowers.

And I'm Brett.

And our story today begins with a little girl alone in a closet counting to 100.

I'm going to call her Eliza because her identity has never been revealed, but in 1987,

a masked man broke into her home while her whole family slept.

And what happened to her over the next two or so hours was unthinkable, especially in

the place that she was supposed to feel safest.

But at least he left her there, told her to count to 100 before she moved, or went looking

for her parents.

So she did one, two, three, four.

Other girls wouldn't be so lucky, but little Eliza wouldn't have called herself lucky

as she sat in that closet counting, because she had no idea that the man who attacked her

would go on to earn the name Mr. Cruel, assumed to be murderer that would pray on young girls

in Melbourne, Australia for years to come.

And someone that would elude police for even longer.

She probably couldn't even comprehend that.

She just had to keep counting.

Thirty-one, thirty-two, thirty-three, thirty-four, thirty-five, twenty-six.

Ninety-seven, ninety-eight, ninety-nine.

When Eliza reaches a hundred, she unties her restraints and runs into her parents bedroom,

praying every step of the way that her parents and her little brother are okay.

And by some miracle, they are.

Her brother is blindfolded, gagged and tied to part of the bed while her parents are found

the same way but locked in a closet together, much like she had been.

But the man who put them there didn't do the same things to them as he did to Eliza,

things that she didn't even utter until the police showed up.

They came as soon as they got the call from her dad at 6am.

By then, the intruder was long gone after spending roughly two hours in their home.

And dad told police that he was woken up at 4am to a man in a balaclava standing over

him and his wife in bed.

The guy had a knife and a gun and forced them to turn over so he could restrain them.

And then he went and got the two kids.

Sources conflict a little but Eliza is either eleven or twelve years old at the time and

her brothers between six and eight.

But the intruder took measures to ensure that everyone couldn't see or scream or run.

Like I said, he locked the parents in the closet, tied the little boy to the bed, and then

he took Eliza with him out of the room.

And Eliza is the only one who can say what happened next.

The most detailed account of this is published by Keith Moore with the Harold son many years

later.

Eliza said the man covered her mouth and eyes with tape, took her into the bathroom, and

switched on the radio to station 3kZ, and he turned the volume way up to drown out

the noise of him assaulting her.

When he finished, he made her take a bath and brush her teeth.

So she cleans herself up, then he drags Eliza to the kitchen so he can get a snack and

eat from the fridge.

And when he's finished with that, he brings her to a room that they call the lounge and

assaults her again.

After this second assault, he leaves to go check on her parents and her brother, presumably

to make sure that they hadn't gotten free.

And then he moved Eliza to another room and bound her feet with nylon rope.

He said the attack was over, that he was going to leave, but he wanted her to count to

a hundred before she untied the ties on her feet and freed her parents.

So that's when she began counting.

Now a crime like this could not have been more shocking to this family.

They live in a nice little town on a nice little street in the area of lower plenty,

which is known for its big houses and leafy sidewalks.

The people who live here are largely affluent families just raising kids.

Basically, this is the kind of neighborhood where very little crime happens.

And this family was presumably as unassuming as they come.

Like I said, their identities have never been revealed, but based on the ensuing investigation,

this is a family that doesn't have enemies or any reason to have a target on their back.

And clearly not for something like this.

I mean, while the guy made off with a few things from the house, it seems clear that he

was there for Eliza.

And they couldn't think of a single person who would target their young daughter.

So you said some things were taken, what all did he take?

He took some of her dad's clothes, like a shirt, parka, pants, even a razor of his.

And he also took an engagement ring, this one that was gold with a single diamond that

had the numbers 4132 stamped inside.

I mean, and that was worth, you know, a good chunk to about $2,500 back in 1987.

And he also snagged about $250 in cash.

And as far as I know, none of those things have ever been recovered.

And that ring in particular, I mean, I wonder if someone might recognize it.

I wish I knew more about the diamond shape or the size.

I just know that the diamond was held on the band with like four gold prongs.

Now, what he took doesn't tell them much, but what he did might.

Because the family shares some of the strange things that he did while he was in the house

for those two hours.

Like at some point, before he took Eliza into the bathroom, the man apparently made a

phone call from the landline in her parent's room.

It sounded like this intruder was threatening someone on the phone, but this is the really

strange part.

When police tried to look into this, because this would be an amazing clue to try and track

who he was or who he knows, who he was calling, yeah, there was no call.

He was faking it.

So what's the point of that?

Like, is it just a red herring just to throw people off?

I don't know, either that or he's like messing with the family, trying to seem more threatening,

which like mission accomplished.

I don't know.

The other clue that they give, I think, is much more telling.

Even though this man made a point to blindfold everyone in the family, they were able to get

a good look at him before or rather his disguise.

The composite sketch that's released of him a week later in an article by Greg Birchell

shows a white guy.

They say maybe five, nine average build wearing a balaclava with his eyes in the picture.

They look scratched out because apparently even though he had this, which like will leave

part of his face open, he had some kind of fabric that actually covered his eyes.

I mean, clearly you could see, but they couldn't see his eyes.

Now, in the black and white newspaper photo, you can also see a small tuft of dark hair

like sticking out the top.

But in later reporting by Keith Moore, he says that this hair was described as grayish

white with white spots, maybe dandruff, and that this guy had grayish white eyebrows to

match.

But, before you go thinking this is maybe like an older man, they were clear that this

guy was actually younger, maybe in his 20s.

Now, nothing was super stand out about his clothes, but they say that his breath smelled

bad.

Musty was the word that they used.

His gloves were rubber and he came with his own materials, handcuffs, tape, blindfold,

rope, weapons, all of it.

So police took this sketch out pretty quickly, asking for the public's help to locate this

guy.

And from the jump, they began wondering if this man could possibly be connected to other

attacks because as Jim Tennyson reported, police were describing him as quote, super cool

and super cruel.

And it's here, like this seems like from then on, that name sticks, Mr. Cruel.

Even when they rule out connections to some of the other cases, but just because like

he has a name and just because they're talking about this case, Mr. Cruel wasn't a household

name yet.

So, nearly a year and a half later, just after Christmas, when a man breaks into a ring

wood home and goes looking for another young girl, it is unlikely that she or her family

knew that they were dealing with Mr. Cruel.

In that case, his target is a ten-year-old girl named Sharon Willes.

Mr. Cruel, whoever he is, was clearly watching and stalking her family's home because the

family didn't get home to late that night.

And by the time mom and dad got the kids in bed, laid down themselves, it was like one

a.m.

But dad couldn't sleep, so he gets up again, he was like doing a puzzle, didn't come

back to bed till like 4.50 in the morning.

And thirty minutes after the lights went out, he's when he's woken up by the sound of

his bedroom door just bursting open.

So he was like clearly watching, waiting for that moment.

And even how this guy got into the house, it's like he knew because there was apparently

a key that they would leave in the lock, like on the inside of one of the doors.

So what this guy did is he put a newspaper under the door, stuck something in the lock

to like push the key out, and then when it fell onto the paper, he just slid it under

the door and unlocked it, which is terrifying.

But like again, how would he know that it was there unless he'd been watching them

is the thinking?

Now he got the parents to initially comply by holding a gun to dad's head and telling

him he just wanted money, saying you're not going to be a hero, are you?

And then he tied them up with copper wire and take something like 35 bucks.

But again, obviously that is not all he wants because he quickly moves on to the next bedroom

where four girls are all sleeping in bunk beds.

Now it only takes Sharon's dad about 15 minutes to free himself and his wife from the restraints

at which point he runs into their daughter's room, only to find three girls, not four.

Sharon and some of her clothing are missing.

Now you know this, when a kid goes missing, the prospect of them returning is grim.

So police start mobilizing to do whatever they can to find her.

They actually don't have to do much because against all odds, 18 hours later, Sharon reappears

wondering around near a high school not too far away from her home.

And our return is more than just good news for her and her family.

If this case is connected to Eliza's, Sharon might be their best chance at getting this

guy.

And she spent the most time with him, went somewhere with him, what did she see and

smell and hear like any little detail could be critical.

And the first detail that she can give them is a crucial one.

It was what she heard when the man woke her up from sleep.

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Sharon tells police that she pretended to be asleep when she heard her parents scream

and when a dark figure came into her room and put a flashlight in her face.

She kept pretending to sleep when he left and then came back, calling for her by name.

So he was targeting and targeting Sharon specifically.

And there is a theory about how he might have known her or her name.

So just six months earlier, Sharon's house had caught fire and there was a newspaper article

where her mom was interviewed talking about how she was able to rescue her four girls.

Then she called the fire department.

They were able to put it out.

No one got hurt.

Like, great piece, but that article was accompanied by a photograph of the mom and her daughters

with the captions of their names.

And they're Sharon.

This adorable 10 year old girl wearing big glasses and a polka dot skirt.

And in fact, there is a theory that the first girl Ali is at who we're calling her from

lower plenty.

They think she might have been targeted from a newspaper article as well because apparently

she too had her photo in the paper a few days before the attack happened on her.

So this guy clearly targeted Sharon.

What does she remember about where he took her?

So she remembers the decent amount.

And as she was taking her out of the house, apparently he grabbed some of her clothes from

her room and wrapped them in this big t-shirt that he found in another room.

And then on the way out of the house, he grabbed one of her dad's coats to put over her because

she was just wearing her pajamas like a night gown.

Now she said she tried screaming, but he put a rubber ball in her mouth and only took

it out when she promised that she wouldn't make any more noise.

That's when he blindfolded her and carried her out of the house and a ways away to like

a car that he had waiting.

And she actually remembers a ton of detail about the car that he put her in.

She was on the floor of the passenger side and she could tell that there were bucket seats

in the front and some kind of like hump in the middle where like the gear shift was.

And she said it seemed like kind of an old car, I think based on like the sound of it

or whatever.

And when she was able to see around her blindfold, she said that the floor was all

cream colored carpet.

Now she knows that this man drove her for a bit before they arrived somewhere.

It seemed like a house maybe because there was a driveway and it was quiet.

But she says Mr. Cruel then carried her inside.

Now she couldn't see anything by the time he's carrying her because at some point during

the car ride he realized that she could like see out of it and so he had put like more

blindfolds or tape or pads or whatever that changed it so she couldn't see anything.

But after being brought in and after she was assaulted at some point, she did get a peak

of the bedroom where for most of the time she was kept leashed to a bed.

Apparently Mr. Cruel had left her alone at one point and so she moved the coverings

on her eyes to get a look at where she was.

And she saw that she was being held in this small bedroom with I would say little furniture.

There was the double bed that she was on that had a peach colored headboard or bed head

as it was called in Australia.

There were two nightstands.

One of them had a lamp on it, the lamp had a peach base and then a yellow lamp shade

that had like white stripes on it.

And the only window in the room was covered with like floor length peach curtains and there

was also some kind of like dresser cabinet bookcase thing that was like on the other side

like a cross from the bed, but there was this big dark blanket that was over it.

So she didn't know exactly what it was.

It was just like the general shape of like that dresser kind of thing.

Yeah.

And like when furniture is covered, I think of like moving or storage or painting, but

like that doesn't seem like the case here.

I know.

I read somewhere that one of the things they theorized it that maybe it had something

really distinctive, like something on it that everything was really recognizable, identifiable.

Right.

Something that you would want to cover that if someone saw could like bring them back

to you really easily.

Again, I don't know if it's, I wouldn't think it's something on top of it because you can

just like clear that off.

Like if it's on the front panel or something or it'll or the shape.

Yeah, but it also might have to do with something else that she mentioned.

So she said that she caught a glimpse of a tripod that was possibly for filming.

That's a terrifying thought.

Yeah.

So maybe I don't know this for a fact.

It's it sounds like the tripod would have been set up on the floor, but I doesn't say

that specifically.

So maybe like that area has to do with that or something because like in the picture

that ends up getting drawn of this room, the tripod isn't anywhere.

So I don't know.

But here's the thing knowing that this tripod or whatever is in her statement, that could

mean that there is proof out there if they can find this guy or maybe the other way around.

If there is the video, maybe that video could lead to him.

And did he keep his mask on during the entire attack?

She doesn't know that.

So she got that one quick glimpse at the room when he was gone.

But he had warned her that if she took her covering off over her eyes and saw his face

that he would have to recapture her.

So she hadn't even tried.

Not even as he fed her a snack, milk in a Vegemite sandwich or when he made her bathe

and brush her teeth.

Is all of this like cleansing, cleaning up thing?

Is it like a DNA thing or is it something else?

This is a thing.

Everyone talks about this like it was him being super aware and removing DNA or trace

evidence.

And I think that's part of it.

But I think it's part of the ritual for him.

Because Sharon, what she describes as being made to bathe like three separate times.

And then towards the end of this ordeal, this 18-hour ordeal, before releasing her, he

made her take a shower instead of a bat, telling her to wash really well.

So maybe the baths are like part of the ritual or like-

And the shower is more to clear out evidence or like make sure there's nothing left behind.

That's what I'm thinking.

But like the interesting thing to me is there's no mention anywhere in past reporting that

he made the first victim shower.

We know that he made her take a bath, brush her teeth.

But then he assaults her again after that.

And then all we know is that after the second assault, he leaves the house.

So this makes me wonder a couple of things.

Like maybe he did make her take a shower and for some reason like that was never reported.

We're not told that, right?

Or maybe like he didn't because he's like in her house and he ran out of time.

Which could be why he took Sharon out of her house with him to like a second location

the next time.

Exactly.

But like was that the plan and he knew he needed them to shower at the end.

And like he couldn't carry out that plan or the other possibilities that maybe he got

word somehow that afteralizes attack, he had to like escalate his process.

Right.

Maybe he heard that they got some kind of evidence off of her.

And again, we've never heard about any evidence.

So it's not something that's that's known.

I don't know.

Like you know me.

I can spiral.

So let's go.

I just want to go back to like what else she told them.

Because she had one more important detail to give police.

And I have to say Sharon is probably one of the most aware, intelligent, ten year olds

I have ever come across because according to Moore's reporting, she identified the time

that she was in his house using the radio that he left on.

And so she was able to tell them that during a certain window of time, she was hearing

planes overhead.

That is incredible.

I don't even know if I would like literally she's like, do that.

She talks about being like, okay, they announced that it's like seven a.m.

So she like knows when she's specifically like hearing these things.

Now when he's finally done with her, right?

And she has showered.

He dressed her in a shirt that he had taken from her house and then basically placed her

in a garbage bag like drew it up to her neck, fastened it, and then put one over her head

so she couldn't move or see, but he like gave her obviously like a hole to breathe.

And he put her in the back of his car, drives for what Sharon described as a long time.

And then he finally stopped, got out, carried her to the area where she was eventually released

near this like high school and neighborhood.

Now at this point, both the major crime squad and the rape task force at the Victoria

Police are working to find out who did this to Sharon.

And reporting at the time indicates that they're definitely connecting this case to the

lower plenty attack targeting the girl that we called Eliza.

And even though there are like, you know, a couple of newspaper articles talking about

how there could be a connection between this and maybe some other cases, but there was

nothing specifically saying that like, like Mr. Cruel was out there targeting young girls

in the community.

Well, I don't think there was this like giant public fear at the time until there is

another attack in 1990.

And with the next girl, Mr. Cruel gets even bolder.

Mr. Cruel's next target is a 13 year old girl named Nicola Linus who goes by Nikki.

Now, she lives in a very fancy part of Melbourne called Canterbury.

This is where the high net worth business people and politicians live.

And on July 3rd, 1990, Mr. Cruel sneaks into her home with his signature covered face,

a kitchen knife and a handgun.

And with the tap of a knife, he wakes Nikki up.

Now whether he knows this beforehand or not, I don't know.

But Nikki's parents are out that night.

It's just her and her 15 year old sister Fiona at home.

And so he wakes Fiona up too, ties Fiona up with a wire.

And after cutting the phone line, Mr. Cruel grabs a set of car keys on a hook in the kitchen

and then he tells Nikki to get dressed.

She puts on her school uniform blazer over her pajamas.

And while she's getting that on, he starts going through her closet and drawers and

taking more items of her clothing and stuffing them into a bag.

And then he forces Nikki into her parents car and drives out through the driveway.

Now not even 15 minutes later, Nikki's parents arrive home to find Fiona tied up.

And she had a message.

She tells them that the kidnapper says he wants $25,000 for Nikki's return and they should

expect his call in the morning.

Now their dad immediately calls police who arrive at the scene that night.

And they wait up until daybreak for the kidnappers call.

But that's a call that never comes.

Is there anything in the papers about her, like the other girls, like the other girls

had like articles with not their pictures and stuff?

No, not that I'm aware of.

And actually, like this family, they weren't even permanent fixtures in the community.

They were from England and their dad was there on a job assignment for the last like

four years or so.

But they were like just about to move back.

Literally, like all their stuff in the house was packed up, that was going to be their

last night in the house before they went to an apartment for a month and then back to

England.

Now that doesn't mean Mr. Cruel still couldn't have targeted her, though, like in some way.

Now over the next 48 hours, police and media are swarming all over this house.

So it doesn't take long for them to spot the family car.

It's parked just a few blocks away.

Now there's nothing like a crime scene or anything in it, which is good news.

So the head of the major crime squad goes to the media and makes this public plea to the

kidnapper to contact them, but it's just radio silence in return.

Then 50 hours after she was taken, Nikki suddenly appears.

Fifty hours is so much longer, like he's keeping them longer and the time that he releases

her, it's around two o'clock in the morning on what was Nikki's 14th birthday.

Now she was dropped near this like electrical substation near a suburb called Q.

So the ransom was all a ruse, not real at all, right?

And Nikki tells investigators how on the night of her kidnapping, she was blindfolded and

then driven to a different car that she was then transferred into.

And this was probably like him driving her parents car to one that he had waiting.

And when she's in that one, the man drove about 45 minutes to where she was eventually

kept.

Now much of her experience was identical to Sharon's being leashed to the bed, the multiple

assaults and being forced to bathe and brush her teeth.

According to Keith Moore's reporting, he had her bathe as soon as she arrived and insisted

that it was so there would be no physical evidence left.

But he did this even before assaulting her, so like that part makes no sense to me.

Unless he's so savagate, he doesn't want anything from her being left in that room,

like in addition to something of him being left on her.

That's an interesting thought, like like she could leave like hair or horse.

Yeah.

And honestly, it makes me wonder if he felt like they might come looking for him or like

for that room in particular, like that would have to be the case.

You know that Sharon saw and gave a description of, but did he know that she saw?

I don't know.

I can't be 100% sure.

It doesn't seem like he knew that Sharon saw because the report from that time just

say that she was blindfolded the entire time.

So like publicly, they are not saying that she saw the bedroom.

Like that doesn't come out for years.

Now after 50 hours with Mr. Cruel, Nikki was forced to take a shower just like Sharon

was before being dropped off.

Did she get her clothes back or was she in a trash bag or trash bags like Sharon was?

She was wearing the same clothes that she was abducted in, but I'm assuming that he

kept some of the clothes that he took because like reporting at the time starts talking

about how Mr. Cruel had a thing for stealing girls clothes.

And it seems like the uniform jacket in particular, the one that he made her put on was of particular

interest to him because Mr. Cruel actually told Nikki that he had a school girl fantasy

and that he followed her home from school.

Did Nikki see anything like his car or the room that she was in like Sharon did?

It seems like she did because she describes this house that or wherever she was as having

like four rooms or at least four separate areas that she knew about or that maybe she had

been in and in her 50 hours with him.

So she describes a bedroom, a kitchen, a room with a toilet and then a separate bathroom.

But it's only this separate bathroom that I've ever seen described in detail from Nikki's

account.

There's actually a sketch that they end up making of this.

And do we think that this is the same place?

So here's the thing, I don't know everything police have but the way that they talk about

this is like they talk about the bedroom that Sharon saw and that they draw a sketch of

and then the bathroom that Nikki saw that they take a sketch of as like one unit.

But I see how they're like connecting the dots because when you look at like the totality

of what we know, Nikki ends up describing almost the exact same car that Sharon described

being in.

They both kind of describe the same general area, same quiet neighborhood, both describe

a driveway and most importantly, they both end up describing planes flying overhead.

Now because Nikki was there longer, she ends up describing hearing between seven and

nine of them while she was kept there.

And the number of planes in this timeline that she has is even more specific than the details

they had before.

So police take this and they're able to start mapping out the areas in Melbourne that correspond

with airports and flight paths and to like fast forward to the details and get you the

goods.

Basically they narrow it down and figure out that what Nikki had to have been hearing

were planes coming in or out of telemarine airport.

This airport is about a 35-45 minute drive depending on traffic from the suburb where

she was taken.

So those 45 minutes or so that Nikki spent in the car would add up and they even pinpoint

it down to two specific flight paths of planes that were landing at this airport.

But these two flight paths cover a huge area.

So yes, they narrowed it down, but like it doesn't actually narrow it down all that much.

So are they sharing all of this information publicly at this point?

Like what area they're looking at, what the room, the bathroom look like?

No, not right away.

I mean, they do finally tell the public that there is a serial predator targeting young

girls and that's when they encourage people to take extra safety measures to protect their

own families, but they do not share the descriptions of the rooms, which I'm sure they're looking

at as like hold back information to protect the investigation.

Well, yeah, and like I think like once this gets out, someone's going to be doing some

redecorating.

Well, yeah, like like on one hand, you've got this guy, you don't want him moving or

redecorating or realizing like that you're narrowing in, but at the same time, the public

could be your biggest resource.

Like do you recognize this house?

Do you recognize this furniture?

Especially with all that like peach, matchy, matchy furniture, like, I don't know, I don't

know how differently things would have gone if they would have like approached this differently,

taken a different tactic, but they chose to keep that to themselves at the time.

Though I wonder if they came to regret that decision, because I don't think

anyone was under the illusion that this maniac was going to stop.

They assumed that he would strike again.

They just didn't know when or where.

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The rest of 1990 passed without another case being linked to Mr. Cruel.

So it wouldn't be surprising if some people had begun to let their guards down.

Maybe he was in prison for something else, maybe he died or moved away.

But just when Melburn might have been feeling safe again.

On April 13, 1991, the attack on 13 year old Carmen Chen happened and everyone knew that

Mr. Cruel was still out there and he was more dangerous than ever.

When the attacker broke into her house wearing a mask and wielding a knife, she was babysitting

her two little sisters while her parents worked at the restaurant that they owned nearby.

The attacker forced Carmen's two younger sisters into a cupboard and took Carmen, but as

soon as he left one of the girls called their parents and their dad rushed back to the

house and called police.

And I have to imagine that even before they arrive on the scene, investigators are already

making assumptions about who they're dealing with and how they're going to get Carmen back.

Any kind of ransom is most certainly out of the question.

I mean, the ransom demand that Mr. Cruel left with Nikki's sister was totally fake.

But the message he left here doesn't even have an ask.

Spray painted in graffiti on the family's car are the words payback, more to come and Asian

drug deal.

Now they have to look into this, but they have to almost run that in parallel with an investigation

that assumes this is just another form of Mr. Cruel trying to like throw them off his

tracks, which in hindsight seems to be the case because the family insists they have

no idea what this message means.

And when police dig into them, they are squeaky clean.

And interestingly in this like Mr. Cruel path, what police realize is that Carmen actually

went to the same school as Nikki Linus, a place called Presbyterian Ladies College.

It was a private school for girls.

So people are speculating like did Mr. Cruel follow these girls home from school?

Which is what Mr. Cruel told Nikki right or even scarier is this thought like is he

someone who works at the school.

So everyone is hoping and waiting for Carmen's return while police are like working in the

background.

I would think looking closely at their school, but the details of their investigation are

scant.

He was 18 hours for Sharon to come back, 50 hours for Nikki.

They don't know what they're in for, but they will do anything to bring Carmen back.

So her parents actually do a TV interview where her mother Phyllis is sobbing on camera pleading

for their daughter to come back.

It is absolutely heartbreaking, but I need you guys to hear her please.

Please bring my daughter Carmen back to home because all my family love her really much.

And the two sisters couldn't sleep and really upset.

Your favorite dress here Carmen, come back and dress it.

Please, please my daughter.

Carmen's little sisters even write public letters to the kidnapper begging for her return.

And over the course of weeks, the family starts writing even more open letters to Mr.

Cruel begging him to bring Carmen home.

And every single letter I'm telling you but they are heartbreaking and some they tried

to reason with this guy like you released the others.

Please just release our girl.

They tried to appeal to some kind of him that might be good telling him how her sisters

are sleepwalking at night, calling out her name and waking up at all hours of the night

looking out the window hoping that she's going to come walking toward the house like the

other girls did.

And some of these letters that her sisters write just like show you their age and like how

much they're like hoping their sister is going to come home.

I actually have one right here from her sister Karen.

It says, 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.

Mimi is their dog.

Mimi is sick because she misses you too.

Love from Karen.

In other letters, they try to bargain.

They like even at one point give him instructions to appeal box.

And this is like in apparently code that they say only Carmen would know.

But as time goes on, the letters just become desperate please.

And in one Carmen's mom offers to exchange her own life for her daughters.

And I would imagine that all along police are trying to reassure this family that Mr.

Cruel is going to return their daughter like he always does, right?

But privately, I suspect that they're worried that this time might be different.

So they're going to have to do something different to find this guy and hopefully to find

Carmen.

So a little more than two weeks after Carmen's disappearance, police create a task force

dubbing it operation spectrum.

Others are created featuring the face of Carmen and Nikki and Sharon and they're distributed

at every police station in Victoria where Melbourne is located.

And they make mass appeals to the public for tips and they also do this huge letter dropping

campaign mobilizing 5,000 volunteers to distribute brochures all around the area.

And I want you to just like pause for a second to visualize that.

Like this is an army of people going all around the metro area all the way to New

South Wales and South Australia dropping more than a million pamphlets talking to neighbors

doing everything they can to raise awareness about this girl.

And by this point, the media is in an absolute frenzy and this case is making newspaper headlines

all over the country and to put it into perspective, like this is in the 90s before nonstop

coverage of missing women on cable news was kind of the norm.

And now decades later, people remember that this time was so scary to live in Melbourne.

I was looking at like Reddit threads about this and one person posted about how their

gym class was canceled and for four weeks the police taught them self defense lessons

instead.

Another person said that you couldn't even leave the house without seeing Carmen's face

plastered everywhere, trains, billboards, bus stations.

And a third commenter remembers how suddenly everyone was getting picked up from school

by their parents instead of walking home.

And when they were home, I'm sure it wasn't unusual to get a knock at their door from

a volunteer or to see sniffer dogs and helicopters patrolling because police were estimated to

have knocked on 30,000 doors.

But at this point, they're still not telling people that they have a description of what

the house looks like inside.

But they were focusing their door knocking heavily on that part of Melbourne near the airport

that they had honed in on where they think that this guy lives or where he's keeping the

girls.

And it's almost like now they're especially not going to release the interior stuff.

Like it would be extra dangerous to do that.

Or at least that seems to be the line of advice that they were getting from the FBI early

on because they actually consulted them for a profile which came back right before this

canvas.

And even in the profile, the FBI's like, look, you don't want to go out with this profile

unless you have to because your goal is to get him to release Carmen.

So if he feels like he's backed into a corner and he can't release her, he might do something

drastic.

So hold the beat.

And if in a couple of days, she's still not back, then you should use a more proactive

approach and go out with this.

And they say the same for the house.

They don't want this guy to move, right, or to your point like redecorate or whatever.

But the thing is for some reason, they don't go out with anything for a long while.

It seems like they just use this profile and like the pictures and stuff internally to

hone their potential list of suspects.

And I want to go over the profile because I think it's really interesting.

Now in the profile that I saw, it was dated April 24, 1991.

And they say that they believe the offender lives in the same area where the first attack

occurred.

It's the suburb of Lower Plenty.

And they think this because where Carmen's family lived is I guess close to that area too.

And they think that this guy was quote unquote returning.

And when they see that, they call it clustering.

And it usually indicates that that area holds some kind of significance for this offender.

Like I said, he either lives there or they say there's a potential that he is employed

near there.

Now, the other thing they point out is they think there is a high probability that the offender

is involved with a school, which makes sense.

Three of the attacks occurred either during school holidays or just around the time that

school was supposed to end, which I didn't mention.

Sharon was right around Christmas.

Nikki was right at the beginning of winter break.

And Carmen was abducted right after a school break began.

And there also seems to be this preoccupation with school uniforms and both Nikki and Carmen

went to the same school.

We know that as well.

Now another thing that they say is that this offender is someone who would probably have

an intense interest in children, especially within the age range that he's assaulting.

Now they say that like when people notice him or like interact with him, this may come

off as just like a dedication that has maybe even won him award or recognition, coach

of the year, teacher of the year, something like that.

They also say that he will have filmed or photographed his assault and still has the proof

of that.

Likely, we'll keep that stuff unless he thinks law enforcement knows about them.

So they specifically recommend not saying this part out loud because this would be highly

valuable evidence if they ever catch this guy and they don't want to like prompt him

to destroy it.

Now they say that they think this offender is highly functional, most likely polite.

This guy's a good neighbor.

He's probably got a steady job.

And he's someone that's going to appear normal and above suspicion to those around him.

Then they go on to list some of the specifics that you would expect, right?

Like people close to him may have noticed a change in behavior right after these incidents.

Like he may have missed work right after.

So looking at these profile points, like who does that fit, right?

Like with this level of resource being thrown at these cases, like they had to turn

up something right now.

I mean, yeah, they're fielding like literally thousands of tips from the public.

And at some point we learn from the media that operation spectrum has led to the

arrest of like 73 people, but a local paper calls these ancillary arrests, like they're

being charged with things like child sexual abuse material, blackmail extortion.

But importantly, not for kidnapping and assault.

In other words, of these 73 people they arrested, Mr. Cruel is not one of them or they can't

prove that Mr. Cruel is one of them.

And according to media reports at the time, they still have about 30 different suspects

that can't be ruled out.

He'd inspect her David Sprog, relayed to the media that quote in 25 years with the

Victoria Police, he had never tried to track a cooler, more calculating criminal with

such an extensive knowledge of forensic science.

End quote.

Meaning they haven't gotten any physical evidence?

Well, I mean, I know all these years later that they did process some physical evidence

from the car that Mr. Cruel briefly stole from the Linus family, right?

We know they were in there for just a little bit.

According to this guy, David Wells, who was a forensic physician with the Victoria Police

back then, he just recently came out and said this, he says he found some forensic evidence.

Now I don't know what that is or how long they've had it, but I know that they weren't

saying anything about this at the time.

I mean, and really we're talking about like late 80s, early 90s, there wasn't much you

could do with something that you had any, I mean, aside from like direct comparison.

So that's what they're focused on.

Their focus remains on finding Mr. Cruel and looking for Carmen.

But it turns out that she would end up being found just by complete accident.

Just days before the first anniversary of her disappearance, a local alerts authorities

to this human school that he found while walking his dog near an electrical substation.

That's a second time you've mentioned electrical substation.

I guess I don't really know what that is.

Oh, so those are those areas where you see a bunch of electric equipment, like transformers

and power lines surrounded, usually they're surrounded by a fence or whatever.

Oh, yeah.

And this isn't like a office building or they're not manned by any.

But they're like gated and fenced and like, yeah.

And they're the thing you never really, like honestly, I don't pay attention to them.

Like for most of us, electricity just shows up at our house.

We don't ask questions.

Yeah.

She's found near this area.

And when police come out and do a search, they find even more remains beyond just the

skull.

And after some comparisons, it is determined that police have finally located Carmen,

Chen.

And I mean, she had to have been out there for a while if the remains they found were just

skeletal.

Yeah.

And this is the heartbreaking thing.

The forensic physician believes that she had been there for up to a year.

So basically, like the entire time everyone was looking for her, yeah.

And they tell it all how she died.

Yeah.

She was shot in the head three times execution style.

I saw your face like I was shocked as well.

This is a huge, I feel like surprised to me because like, at least like when I'm looking

at this case and like what I know of other cases, this doesn't seem to be in line with

what we know about Mr. Cruel and how he treated his alleged victims like this is new.

Well, and I also feel like we don't see this in a lot of child abduction cases that

in this way, like I don't have any stats to back this up, but I feel like when this happens

to a child, it's a lot closer, like blunt force trauma or stimulation, like execution style

shooting.

Right.

Like I, what you're talking about, I think you see that when the murder wasn't intentional,

but they were killed like during another act or because things spun out of control.

This definitely seemed planned, like maybe not planned when he abducted her, but like

this was intentional, right?

And the leading theory when, when people talk about this is that maybe Carmen saw something

she wasn't supposed to, like Mr. Cruel's face, maybe she fought back, maybe she removed

the blindfold or his mask, maybe she recognized him.

That is what would make sense to me.

And I assume they had to have looked at people at her school.

I mean, it was the profile that they were kind of going with, right?

They had to, but again, I don't know the specifics of the investigation or

who they looked at or what schools, but also maybe the profile was wrong.

Because here's the thing, even though they end up finding Carmen, even though they think

they know the type of person that they're looking for, it does not change the state of

the case ever.

I mean, they keep working it, of course.

And in 1992, they do end up releasing some information from the FBI profile to Bruce

Tobin at the age.

It's like daily paper.

And I don't know if the FBI profile was updated or what, but this article includes even

more information than the official report from the year prior.

And in this one, they say that they think Mr. Cruel would be obsessed with cleanliness,

that he had a steady job, and that he is, quote, creative and visually oriented.

But when that doesn't lead to their man, that's when they finally released the illustrations

of Mr. Cruel's bedroom and bathroom in 1993.

And they say within a day, they get over 400 calls, which result in even more interviews

and even more checks, but still no arrests.

And without that or any more kidnappings, over time, the costs and resources eventually

just get too high to justify the task force anymore.

So it ends up getting disbanded.

And the identity of Mr. Cruel has remained a mystery ever since.

He never attacked again?

Nope, or at least not with the mo of Mr. Cruel.

I mean, do you think he got scared after Carmen and stopped?

I don't know what to think.

I mean, that's the reason that people are still so obsessed with this case, I think.

Like some say, yeah, having to kill Carmen spooked him and he stopped, some people say that

this guy's probably dead or some say he moved away from Melbourne.

And all of those who think he's still alive wonder if he's out there, somewhere plotting

his next attack, but no one knows who to look out for because they know almost nothing

about this bogeyman or the investigation into him.

Everything has still been so tight lit, though I will say, there was a leak in the system

come 2016, 25 years after Carmen Chen's disappearance, we get a peek behind the curtain

when journalist Keith Moore publishes an investigation in the Harold Sun revealing brand

new information from the task force operation spectrum, the stuff that had never been published

before.

And you've probably caught on by an eye reference Keith reporting a lot because he did

a ton to shed new light on this case.

Well his work revealed the existence of this dossier called the Sierra Files, which is

a list of seven suspects that more than two decades after operation spectrum disbanded

still could not be ruled out by law enforcement.

Now even though the Harold Sun got their hands on this list, the Victoria police asked

them not to name the suspects publicly, which Moore agreed to, but he knew the names of

the suspects and so he went and tracked at least one of these people down and lo and behold,

this guy ends up admitting to him that he was grilled for 12 hours about the case and

that he knows the former task force lead thinks that out of everyone they've looked into,

he was their number one suspect.

Now even though Moore doesn't give this guy's name in the article, he does say that this

guy was a former Melbourne University lecturer and per report by psychology lecturer Dr.

J. H. Court.

There was one former Melbourne University lecturer who he does name that is also a convicted

sex offender.

So let me tell you a little bit about this guy who some people are like drawing like links

to.

Between 1972 to 1974, this guy attacked six different young women and girls.

He was known for tying his victims up, threatening them with a knife before assaulting them.

He pled guilty to at least one rape charge and was sentenced to 10 years for his crimes.

So he was out by the time that the Mr. Cruel attack started happening, but he was never

charged in connection with the crimes of Mr. Cruel and the unnamed man interviewed by Keith

Moore should he be the same man or a different one, I don't know, that guy denies any involvement

in the cases.

Well, I assume if it were him or even whoever this unnamed guy is, we would know.

If they have DNA, like you mentioned, they had to have compared it by now, right?

So this is the part that is so confusing to me.

So when I said it came out recently, it wasn't until August 2025 that we ever even heard

there was potentially forensic evidence in these cases or one of the cases.

So like I said, this comes from David Wells, who was a forensic physician with Victoria

police back when the attacks were happening.

And he just went on crime insiders podcast and told the Hose that he had personally collected

crucial genetic evidence, but they needed someone to compare it to.

Now to me, it seems like those seven people who haven't been ruled out, so I don't get

it.

Unless the one of the only things I can think of is like God forbid they lost it, which

would explain a lot of the hush, hush silence around this, but like praying that's not

the case.

The other option I was thinking about was like, they could have maybe gotten some kind

of profile from whatever was collected and maybe they tested that against people.

But maybe this profile is just from like one case, right?

And the people don't match that one profile and they're like keeping their options open

that like there, there is more than one offender or like just because you're ruled out in this

one doesn't mean you're ruled out in all of them.

I don't know.

This is, this is something that I've like just gone around around like thought a ton since

I've been deep in this.

When you say it might not be the same person, that's like multiple people, but the M.O.s

are exactly the same.

I mean, when you say exactly, they're exactly the same, I think for Sharon and Nikki, but

I mean, hear me out.

So in 2016, Keith Moore published that Eliza's case are very first victim.

She and her family describe Mr. Cruel as having a slim to medium build.

And they say that the way that he spoke made him sound, they say, uneducated.

In Sharon's case, our second victim, they describe a guy who has a thin to medium build,

well spoken.

Now, in Nikki's case, they said this guy had a beer belly and he sounded, quote, not

really educated.

So here's what I started like, come down the rabbit hole with me, are you ready?

So what if these are like two to three different guys sharing notes?

Like it is all connected, but it is not just one Mr. Cruel.

I mean, that seems so far fetched.

You mean a world where pedophiles have one coordinated network and that ripples through

like all echelons of society?

I mean, like what?

I mean, stand corrected.

And listen, I'm not just reaching because we're in like a post Epstein files world.

I want you to see this article that I found on the front page of the age data June 7,

1992.

This is just a couple of months out from when Carmen's remains were discovered.

Oh, this is a front page.

This is the front page.

The biggest headline here is quote, child porn's secret society.

Dude, I went like, I can't, okay, so let me just tell you about it.

Yeah.

Like how did we get here?

Journalist Caroline Wilson, I was going to say she infiltrated this group, but it's like

not even that deep.

This one just shows up to this basically pedophile club to report on it.

She found that this group met every Friday in Melbourne.

And they had this sort of uniform.

They all show up wearing all the cloths.

No.

You know, and listen, the guests are all men, though they hide their faces, even though

they say that what they're doing is totally normal and okay.

And they're like open about the rules and positions that they hold all within like

polite society.

Like Wilson writes quote, on this particular night, they include a psychologist, a publicist,

a telecom technician, and two car factory workers recently retrenched, which we would

refer to in the US as like laid off.

At least three others are former scout leaders.

End quote.

And then she goes on to mention others throughout the piece, like a charity official.

And she says that the group has more than a hundred members.

Now not every person is there for the same reason.

Some of these people she says are there looking for same sex encounters with other adults.

But quote, among tonight's guests are a number of pedophiles and child sex offenders.

One male couple are facing police charges for kidnapping an eight year old girl and filming

her blindfolded.

End quote.

And at this party, they're apparently exchanging notes and names of minors and child sexual

abuse material.

I mean, if this is front page news, clearly the police had to have been aware of it.

They were.

But Wilson said that their operations to stop this were just like scratching the surface

of what this surprise surprise that this is like a this goes deep, right?

And that's because it was so prevalent in her words, quote, wherever there are groups

of children, there are pedophiles.

And where there are pedophiles, there is likely to be child, I would call it sexual abuse

material.

And she clarifies that even though most people would want to believe that people were

like making it for themselves, most of the time, they were making this abuse material

to sell, distribute, share, trade, and listen, this article is so long, it is so informative.

But here are my big takeaways like that relate to this episode.

I've got like a ton of broader thoughts about the prevalence of this and like where they

target children and how like truly the foundation of the systems that we thought were in place

to help kids are actually used to traffic them.

So stay tuned and stay informed people here in the US.

Most of us are begging for the child abusers listed in the Epstein files to be arrested.

And those who aren't are probably abusers themselves, right?

Like it feels pretty black and white to me, but what do I know?

I just talk about crime all day, every day, and I grew up being told that sexually based

offenses are considered, especially heinous, like whatever, back to the takeaways for this

episode.

Number one, the balaclavas are interesting to me, knowing that that plays such a prominent

part in this case.

Now sometimes you see in reports that like in some of the cases there was a ski mask, not

a balaclava, and like any person doing this is probably going to hide their face, right?

But like still interesting coincidence.

Number two, something I didn't get like deep into was that in Eliza's case, something

that stood out to me was that the family said this guy was wearing a tweed sports jacket,

which like, I don't know, I thought was so weird even before I knew about this like social

club.

It feels very like buttoned up.

Yeah, he had like, he had like, and I'm like, that's not to me when you're like going

undercover of night and you're going to like go and take into someone's house.

It, yeah.

You're a sports coat.

Doesn't like, I feel super bizarre.

It's so, it's so odd to me.

So like in my mind, like that attack, I'm like, you could almost be either in this girl's

home or you could be at this like social club.

Yeah.

The other thing that I noticed was that there is one account in the article about a girl

who was filmed in what she called or they called a safety house, which got me wondering

if that's what the room and like bathroom, if that's what we've been looking for, right?

Like, this would make even more sense why this guy wouldn't want any trace evidence

from the girls left behind, not just them taking evidence.

Like, maybe this isn't a place that he lives and gets to watch over day in and day out.

Now listen.

We know that police looked into the world of a child sexual abuse because a March 1992

article in the age said that more than 50 quote-unquote ancillary arrests spun out of their

investigation.

And by May, they confirmed to reporters Paul Daly and Caroline Wilson that they're investigating

these rings specifically in relation to Carmen's case because they learned that offenders

are known to trade information on future victims.

And here they even speculate that more than one person was linked to her death.

But the literal next day that that article was published, there's this tiny little blurb

that ran on page 3 of the age that said the head of the spectrum task force denied pretty

much everything that was previously reported.

But the editor of the Sunday age stood by the accuracy of the report.

And then it's like the end.

Like, that's when we stop talking about it.

Granted, that's when they stop talking about it in relation to Mr. Cruel, that headline

that I just showed you ran in June after that.

Now, in later years, I feel like this theory gets the least amount of attention, but it

is the one that makes the most sense to me.

Though to be fair when people talk about specific people, they don't necessarily rule out the

idea that they might have been involved in something sinister like this, but most of

the prevailing theories.

Even the way the police talk, it's like they all know it was just one guy, but I don't

know how they know that or how they could all these years later.

Well, and who else has been named over the years?

You're not going to believe this, but actually one of the most recent suspects that got named

was Joseph DiAngelo, the Golden State Killer.

That's the one.

Golden State as in the US.

In California.

Yeah.

Apparently, after his arrest, the US authorities realized that the year after the Golden

State Killer attacks stopped in California, that's when Mr. Cruel emerged in Australia.

Okay.

And after looking into it, the US authorities found that Joseph actually had spent some

time in Australia, like on a tour of duty during the Vietnam War, which, yeah, I know

you're going to say, this is not, which was not in the 1980s, I know, but they're kind of

thinking, well, you know, he has some connection to this place.

Maybe he could have gone back returned at some point.

They kind of have similar MOs, like the breaking and entering, wearing a mask, claiming to

rob their victims before committing sexual assault, and like the idea that they're like

meticulous planners, and not even at like both of them at one point pause during their

attacks to like eat food out of the victim's fridge.

But as like incredible of an ending as that would be to this story, I have to break it

to you that like pretty quickly, Victoria Police rule him out as a suspect.

I don't know, I have the details on how they rule him out, but we do know that Victoria

Police investigated this theory, decided there is not much to it.

But if we're looking to the Victoria Police for a name, maybe we should trust the guy

who worked for them for ages, who's been telling the public about a suspect that was brought

to him years ago.

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In 2022, a pretty well-known Australian homicide detective named Ron Idles starts becoming

vocal about a potential theory of who Mr. Cruel could be.

He says that the man's identity was shared with him by a career criminal that he helped

put behind bars.

Ron went on a podcast called Life and Crimes with Andrew Rool, where he tells the story

of his conversation with a notorious armed robber named Alfred Gay, also known as Alfie.

And why is he talking to a podcaster and not other police like No Shade?

No, I assume he did.

This is coming out like I said in 2022, but he heard the story back in 2004 when he was

still working with the agency.

So just a quick backstory, Alfie Gay was this pretty infamous crook.

He was involved in several big heists in Australia in the 70s, including the notorious MSS robbery,

where he and his gang posed as fake security officers, stole the entire weekly payroll

for workers at a Ford Motor Company in Melbourne, like a 250K big at the time, and then he was

involved in the great bookie robbery, where a heavily armed gang stole anywhere from

one to 15 million dollars from a sports betting club.

So long story short, Alfie comes to Ron and he's like, there's this guy who was involved

in some criminal stuff with me, and he admitted to me that he killed Carmen Chen.

The name he gives Ron is Norman Lung Lee.

He went by Normie.

And when you look at the circumstances surrounding Normie, there are some really compelling reasons

why this very well could be true.

So for one, Alfie says that Normie had a fetish for school girls, and specifically school uniforms,

which like, check.

Second, Alfie tells the detective that Normie had a house close to Lower Plenty, where Eliza's

attack took place, and he apparently owns a dim sum factory in the Northwest suburbs,

which is out in the direction of telemarine airport.

So he would have been very familiar with that area.

And the shallow grave where Carmen was eventually found, apparently that's like right in between

his factory and where he lived.

Now over the years, some have speculated that Mr. Cruel might be someone in law enforcement,

because he's just so good at covering his tracks and getting away with crimes, but you

know what other class of individual is really good at covering their tracks?

Career criminals.

Exactly.

Also, one of the biggest mysteries of all in this case is why Mr. Cruel suddenly stopped

attacking girls after Carmen.

Well, in July of 1992, just over one year after the disappearance of Carmen, Normie Lee was

involved in another big heist and he was killed by police as they chased him.

Now just to reiterate, the story I've just told you while a cinematic as hell is purely

circumstantial.

Normie Lee was never charged with any of the crimes associated with Mr. Cruel and police

never named him as a suspect.

And the other thing I'll say is he doesn't really fit at all with the FBI profile, but I

do have one more theory to run down with you.

As you can imagine, this case becomes an obsession for many online sleuths.

Right.

You know, someone's got to keep these cases alive and a couple of them have landed on a

completely new theory that has really taken hold online.

At some point, people started mapping out all the different locations of Mr. Cruel's

attacks and the places where his victims were released.

And they realized that all of his victims were either kidnapped or let go near electricity

infrastructure.

Not just like power lines, like you see everywhere, specifically the substations, yet

terminal stations and substations, like the ones I mentioned earlier, and they're almost

all ones that power the areas relevant to this case, suggesting to some that maybe this

man had deep knowledge of electrical infrastructure, maybe he spent time in the areas which could

have exposed him to the girls.

Now, interestingly, in 2022, 60 minutes Australia's under investigation program interviewed

a girl who lived on the same street as Sharon Willes.

And for the first time publicly, she shared a story her family gave police back when Sharon

first went missing.

Apparently, about six weeks before Sharon was taken, this girl's brother was out in this

big grassy area behind Sharon's house playing with his friend.

When they spotted some dude creeping around the power lines near Sharon's fence, she

said quote, the area the houses are around is specifically for the power lines.

No kids would play up there apart from my brothers.

There's no reason for anyone else to be up there.

It's dangerous.

End quote.

Now this guy wasn't just standing around either.

He held a JVC camera and was filming into Sharon's yard over the fence.

But as soon as he realized that the boys spotted him, he like took off.

But the devastating part is that even though they reported this pretty soon after Sharon

was taken, police didn't come knocking to interview them until years later.

And even then, they got like a very quick statement from them and just left.

But even now, they remember this guy vividly.

They said he was unkempt, balding on the top with a beard.

And they're sure that if they could just get everyone's attention to look at the sketch

that was made up of him, someone would have to recognize this guy.

But it's four years out from that release and that man who was filming her backyard

has never been identified and neither has Mr. Cruel.

In 2024, the age published yet another update profile in an article by John Sylvester.

In this new profile, they doubled down on the earlier theory that this guy is obsessed

with cleanliness and hygiene.

And they say they think he's a chameleon and a planner.

He might also be into photography and could be known to carry around his equipment.

And though it's not emphasized in this article, old reports zeroed in on specific words that

he would use during the attacks, bozo, and missy.

But I kind of wonder if maybe that was something he used to try and throw people off?

Most of the profiles say that he's of above average intelligence, including this new one.

Sylvester's article also lists these attributes.

His primary intake sense is visual, however he has an extremely strong auditory sense as well.

He has a history of breaking and entering, along with theft, long before he attacked and

abducted young girls from their homes. His criminal past would also include sexual assault

and stalking the victims. He may be extremely angry with the parents of the victims for personal

reasons. He carries a personal anger towards his parents, possibly for a lack of parenting and neglect.

He misdirects his anger onto his primary victim's parents.

He has a problem with being social and intimate with women in his age group.

Sylvester writes, quote,

Detectives speculate he may have killed himself, died of natural causes, or moved overseas to a

country that is lax on child exploitation. End quote. So though Mr. Cruel may have been

Australia's boogeyman for many years, the truth is he could be anywhere.

So crime junkies across the globe, if you have any information surrounding the crimes of Mr.

Cruel, you can submit a tip anonymously through Crime Stoppers in Australia.

Crimestoppers.com.au. And if you want to reach out to us about anything mentioned in today's

episode, email tips at audiochuck.com You can find all the source material for this episode on

our website, crimejunkie.com. And you can follow us on Instagram at crimejunkie podcast. We'll

be back next week with a brand new episode.

Crimejunkie is an audio chuck production. I think Chuck would approve.

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