A new profile of Mr Cruel, who may have been a burglar before he was a killer

Melbourne’s notorious Mr Cruel, the man who abducted young girls from their homes and allegedly killed Templestowe schoolgirl Karmein Chan, was likely to be a serial burglar who became addicted to kidnapping children, a team of US crime profilers have found.

They believe the offender has links to Edgars Creek in Thomastown, where Karmein’s body was eventually found, and may have been a volunteer in community beautification projects of the area.

On the night of April 13, 1991 Karmein Chan, 13, was abducted from her family’s sprawling 18-room home, which was protected by a two-metre fence and electric gates.

Her parents, John and Phyllis Chan, were not there that night; they were at the family business, a Chinese restaurant in Main Road, Lower Plenty.

Karmein read to her sisters, aged seven and nine, before they watched a documentary about Marilyn Monroe in Karmein’s bedroom. About 9pm, the two eldest girls headed for the kitchen to make a snack. In the hallway was a man wearing a green-grey tracksuit and a dark balaclava, and holding a silver knife. He kidnapped Karmein, leaving the younger sisters unharmed.

That was the last time she was seen.

Her body was found a year later by a man walking his dog at Edgars Creek. She had been shot three times in the head, execution-style, and buried in a shallow grave.

Crime profiler John Kelly has examined the case of Mr Cruel.

Police believe the killer was Mr Cruel, who was responsible for at least three other attacks from 1987 to 1991.

In the three previous cases the victims had been released.

A team of profiler John Kelly, former American homicide investigator Frank Adamson, psychiatrist Dr Ed Merski and long-time probation officer Pamela Bogart from STALK Inc (System To Apprehend Lethal Killers) has reviewed the case and provided a new profile of the killer.

Kelly says Mr Cruel was a burglar who escalated to abducting girls. “It is an addiction. You build a tolerance and have to up the game to get the thrill.”

In his first case, he tied up the parents but did not remove his victim from the family home; in the second, he abducted his victim and kept her for 18 hours; and the third time it was for 50 hours.

“He is a serial thief who stole these children from their families and then returned them,” says Kelly.

The abduction and murder of 13-year-old Karmein Chan in 1991 changed Melbourne forever.

John Kelly is a recovering cocaine addict who became a substance abuse counsellor (advising the US President’s Committee) and then a crime profiler. He says serial killers are often addicted to crimes. He first studied Canadian Commander Russell Williams, who began by committing burglaries, moved to rapes and abductions, before killing two women. “He said he couldn’t stop,” says Kelly.

He interviewed Texas triple killer Henry Lee Lucas and corresponded with John Wayne Gacy, who murdered 33 boys and young men in the 1970s.

Having learnt from the men who showed no remorse and no guilt, he wanted to do more than learn from them – he wanted to catch them.

His first case was the Green River Killer in Washington, where he teamed up with taskforce chief Frank Adamson, King County sheriff’s commander.

They had begun with more than 1000 suspects that had been whittled down to five. “We were able to reduce that to two men,” says Kelly. One was the killer, Gary Leon Ridgeway.

“I actually liked the other guy more.”

Ridgeway was eventually convicted after a breakthrough DNA analysis of 48 murders committed over nearly 20 years.

Kelly says Mr Cruel “reminds me of the Golden State Killer”.

Joseph James DeAngelo was a sacked US police officer who was convicted of 120 burglaries, 51 rapes and 13 murders.

One theory on Mr Cruel was that he was someone with police or criminal justice experience because of his obsession with cleaning the crime scene.

He bathed two of his victims to avoid physical identification, and wiped sinks and benchtops to remove fingerprints. Before releasing another victim, he scrubbed the bathroom and laid a sheet on the lino-covered floor to avoid leaving footprints. In one case, he took a second set of clothes from the girl’s home to dress her before she was freed. In another, he dumped the girl clad only in garbage bags so police could not test her original clothes.

The STALK profile says he will be “extremely neat and clean, maybe obsessive, over cleanliness and hygiene. Maybe obsessive-compulsive.”

Kelly says the offender would have a high IQ, began by burgling empty houses, would probably not have a substance abuse problem, was terrified of being caught, and was “a real chameleon”.

Serial offenders who abuse substances can’t control their urges and are impulsive. Those who don’t, want to remain in control, Kelly says.

Certainly, police say he planned each crime in advance, knew the houses he was going to enter and knew young girls would be home. They say in the Chan case he went as far as daubing graffiti on a car to leave a false trail. When she went missing, there was blanket publicity identifying Mr Cruel as the suspect, which means he may have panicked.

Two of the 160-odd police conducting a door knock of the Templestowe area in 1991.Credit: Neil Newitt

Karmein was shot three times in the head, leading some experts to say it was execution-style. Kelly has another theory. The killer was a novice. “Shooting three times shows inexperience,” he says.

An FBI profile of Mr Cruel says: “He will have his home-made pornography, as well as commercial pornography. He will have photographed and/or videotaped his sexual assault victims. These items will have great personal significance to him.”

Kelly agrees: “He may be into photography, which could be one of his hobbies. He could be known for carrying photography equipment.”

The FBI says: “The offender has gone to extraordinary lengths to disguise his identity, and to date no victim has seen his face.” Kelly says Mr Cruel may have turned from child molester to killer because Karmein was the only victim who saw his face.

“He was obsessed with staying in control, and was very concerned about being seen.”

A police taskforce codenamed Spectrum was set up to identify Mr Cruel. It ran for 29 months and cost nearly $4 million. The taskforce of 40 investigators and analysts identified 27,000 suspects and received 10,000 tips. They checked 30,000 houses and arrested 73 people, but none was identified as Mr Cruel.

Police mass at Templestowe before dispersing to door knock the area to gain clues into the abduction of Karmein Chan.Credit: Neil Newitt

“I have never seen such an investment in money and manpower in one case. To canvas 30,000 houses is unprecedented,” Kelly says.

The FBI says: “He is a functional individual, one with steady employment, is generally regarded as a good neighbour, polite, quiet, somewhat introverted, but may be involved in certain community-minded projects.”

STALK says: “Mr Cruel could possibly be known from Edgars Creek. There was a lot of clean up going on there in the ’90s. I think some people might have seen him being over attentive to younger girls helping with the cleaning up of the creek. He might also be known for his obsessive photography of the area.”

Police offered a $1million reward to find the killer of Karmein Chan.Credit: The Age

After he killed Karmein it is possible he stopped. Police believe the killing destroyed Mr Cruel’s fantasy world in which he treated his victims as pretend girlfriends, even giving them pet names.

Detectives speculate he may have killed himself, died of natural causes or moved overseas to a country that is lax on child exploitation.

Kelly uses a convicted double murderer (“He has done a hell of a lot more”) he calls “13” as a sounding board on cases. The prisoner says Mr Cruel stopped “because he couldn’t stomach the killing”.

Kelly says Mr Cruel “has found other ways to get his kicks”. He suggests it will be from internet child pornography.

Serial killers, Kelly says, usually want to put distance between them and the crime. “They are on a high when they are committing the murder, but when they are coming down, they are at their most vulnerable.

“Most of the time, killers want to get away from the body as quickly as possible so they can’t be connected to the victim. The more miles they put between them and the victim means the more people they put between them and the victim, and the more people equals more possible suspects for police to sort through.

“So the question is: why did Mr Cruel pick a burial site where he felt he could spend the time necessary to dig a grave and bury Karmein? It’s a place he was very familiar with and a place he believed he would have the safe, ample time to bury Karmein. How could Mr Cruel be so familiar with the area, and what’s the attraction for him there?”

Part of the STALK Inc. profile.

• An organised offender with above-average intelligence.
• His primary intake sense is visual. However, he has an extremely strong auditory sense as well.
• Has a history of breaking and entry, 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 victims for personal reasons. He carries a personal anger towards his parents, possibly for a lack of parenting and neglect. He misdirects this anger onto his primary victim’s parents.
• Has a problem with being social and intimate with women in his age group.

John Silvester lifts the lid on Australia’s criminal underworld. Subscribers can sign up to receive his Naked City newsletter every Thursday.