Australian Crime Stories: Apr 14

Australian Crime Stories this Sunday Adam Shand explores a case which terrified Melburnians in the late 1980s, the story of the notorious child predator dubbed “Mr Cruel”.

He was Australia’s bogeyman who terrified children and parents throughout the 1980s and 90s. Police believe this masked assailant may be responsible for around a dozen attacks on children, including the murder of Karmein Chan.

Thirteen-year-old schoolgirl Karmein Chan was taken by a man in a balaclava from her Templestowe home in Melbourne in 1991 after he forced her two sisters into a wardrobe. Her body was found a year later at Edgars Creek in Thomastown. She had been shot three times, with police believing “Mr Cruel” to be the prime suspect.

In 2016, on the 25th anniversary of Karmein’s abduction, police offered a $1 million reward for information about her unsolved murder.

On Sunday, April 14, at 9.00pm on Nine, Australian Crime Stories’ investigative journalist, researcher and co-writer, Adam Shand, follows the trail of the Mr Cruel cases with assistance from the police, journalists, forensic experts and others who were on the frontline of Victoria’s largest investigation of its time.

Shand discovers a cold and calculating criminal who managed to stay one step ahead of the police and may still be at large today.

Australian Crime Stories is produced by The Full Box for the Nine Network.

9pm Sunday on Nine.