Thinking Sideways: Mr. Cruel

So this actually was a suggestion by j W and July of two thousand tune two years ago, and so hopefully j W still listens, and so thank you or relationship. And actually we're going to talk about the mystery of Mr Cruel now as cruel as in cruel ye, fair warning. As the name implies, this case involves some really horrible crimes against young girls, girls, actual girls. Yeah, and we are going to be going into details. So this is our standards, small ears warning you, I'm out of here.

We should have a sound effect for that or something. I'll tell you right on that. Okay, can it be like that earthquake noise by standard go to is always a cat meal. So the idea of like the to get this sounded like a bunch of kids yelling and terror and the stampeding noise as they answered the room. Is it like the Charlie Brown stampede when they all

run through. Yeah, I get right on that edge. General overview of this case is Mr Cruel still one hundred percent unknown officially, officially one unidentified man and general owner of one of the absolutely most terrifying police sketches of all times ever. M abducted, abducted, and raped three girls and possibly killed a fourth. He left literally no forensic evidence behind and was incredibly meticulous. Uh. And the police have identified seven suspects that they have literally no reason

to confirm or to rule out. I think this was a case of just kind of rounding up the usual suspects. Well, we'll talk about this when we get to it. But they interviewed a lot of people. Yeah, the police actually think that, um, Mr Cruel is linked to another dozen or so attacks on children in the area. And um, all of these attacks are from the northern suburbs of Melbourne. Melbourne, right, gonna get angry emails? Yeah, come on, it's Melbourne. Yeah. So we're gonna just dive right in and um talk

about this. And I'm gonna just go ahead and say, the reading you're going to do about this stuff online is about like four paragraphs long. It's like a paragraph per victim, victim, thank you. But we have more than that. And actually, frankly, I thought this was going to be a breathe of a topic for me because when I first started doing my research, that's all I could find.

And then I found this one kind of treasure trove in that the police in Australia have very recently within i think it was the last year, even released all of their documents to certain media outlets in Australia. We spent this many years. It's been like three decades. So we have a lot of details about these and we are going to go into it. So again, small years or you know whatever, let's go chronologically, Okay, Okay, it's

a good way to go. Yeah, it's also the way that everybody on the internet goes, and the other way confuses me. At about four am on August seven, in Lower Plenty, which is again a suburb of Melbourne, Melbourne, Melbourne, Melbourne, I've mentioned before, a man wearing a terrifying lady tailored bala clava. I'm gonna say he mask the rest of the time broke into a family's home. The identities of

this family is officially withheld. And I'm sure that somewhere I saw it, and somewhere you can find it if you dig enough. But let's just be respectful in these families. Man, that sounds fair. But their name, her name is okay. Police have dubbed this victim Jill. That is not her real name. The masked man gained access by quote removing a pane of glass unquote from a window in the living room, though I'm not totally clear how he did that.

I actually think I know how that It wasn't great. No, I'm guessing that this is an older, single gold pane window, and the putty on windows like that, it's pretty easy to cut with a razor. So you cut the putty and just peel it away and then the pane just falls out. I replaced window panes. It kind of depends on how old the petty is. I tried it at my house, which is like ninety years old, and that stuff sets up hard as a rock, right, Well, it

depends on what people use. I mean, I know people who have used silicone cocking to seal in windows and that stuff that doesn't hard enough. So it really depends on what they're using. But that's that's how I presumed this is also Australia. They might use silly petty down there. We don't know, that would be silly. Yeah, but this guy reminds me of the the acxim out of New Orleans, because that's how he was getting on trade his his

victim's homes. Well, no, actually he wants your doors. But there were framing panel doors, and so he was and it's ready to take one of the panels of the panels, and then and then we shot an unlocking door from the inside. Yeah. Well, the reason and the reason I say it wasn't broken is because the parents didn't wake up. This is a family home. It was the parents and

then two girls. They had two daughters, and the parents were woken up by the masked man brandishing a large knife and a gun in the face of the basically while they were asleep in bed. Yeah. Yeah, I had a thing for that. I mean, I know he tapped somebody on the head with a knife ones to wake them up on the forehead and the next one. Yeah, And before we go much further, I'm just going to go ahead and like cite my source on this, because

it it does totally of pure legit. I have found stuff to back up the fact that this was one of the sources that the police gave the information to. However, I also know it's a tabloid. Just fair warning. The Harold Son in Australia, in Melbourne is the primary source for this information. Wait, I thought it was The Sun in Britain. Was the tabloid the Harold's Son? When I did some googling on it, it said it was It's a morning tabloid. Like I said, I can't keep them straight, right.

But but as Joe said when we were having this kind of discussion earlier this week, when I said, can I actually use this as a source of Joe said, sometimes sometimes tabloids are right, and I think this is one of the instances of that. And so I just wanted to go ahead and clearly say this could all be total fabrication, but I believe it. So, this unnamed family says that Mr Cruel had a knife and a gun, handcuffs and nylon cord as well as a small bag

wrapped around his waist. When he woke the parents up, he handcuffed them. He told them to roll on their back. He kind of represented represented himself as a thief, had them roll on their back or on their stomach, sorry, and handcuffed their hands behind their backs. And then oh, I'm sorry, I got this family confused with a different one. There's a daughter and a son in this family. So Mr Cruel then goes into the boy's room, who this article says is eight, but I've seen other sources say

the boy was six. I've also said other sources say that they were in the same room, So I'm not totally sure what I think. This is an issue with a lot of these kind of stories where there's um mixing of characters accidentally. Yes, either way, he goes and wakes both of the children up and brings brings them also into the master bedroom where the parents are laying handcuffed.

He unhandcuffs the parents one at a time and then basically like hog ties them with what's always described as an unusual sailors not or not that somebody who's used to quote unquote tying large loads would use. I think that just means that that's a person who knows how to tie notts something. Yeah, I don't know, but that nobody ever says what nobody ever says what the not is? No, he hog ties them. Then he blindfolds the parents and gags them with tape which is either electrical or surgical,

again depending on the source of the story. Mr Cruel then ties the boy to the bed with nylon cord, blindfolds and gags him with the same tape. And then the girl was blindfolded and maybe gagged but maybe not as well. And this is you know, surgical tape straight on the eyes, so like not comfortable for any anybody involved. He says he's a robber. He says he wants cash

and also a first aid kit. He also said he was going to take a shower and take some of the father's clothes because he was a similar size to the father, and he also wanted to shave, and he wanted some food. Mr Cruel took some clothes out of the wardrobe that was in the parents bedroom and then told the parents to get into the wardrobe. He covered them with a blanket. He then apparently tried to use the phone in the bedroom, but it didn't connect, although

again I'm not I'm not totally clear on how. I mean, they were blindfolded and covered with a blanket, so I'm not really sure how. I feel like there was a not a lot of narration by perpetrator going on. All right, I've got a call hello click back in the back in the day too, that when people actually had phones that had handsets that went into the receiver, so everybody

knew what the sound of a phone being. Yeah, I just wasn't sure how well you would be able to hear that necessary if you had a hard time with it with your dial tone. Don't know if you guys remember the buttons a few times, so maybe that's what he was doing, was hitting the button so it didn't connect. And then Mr Cruel went to check all of the other rooms in the house. And then he came back and actually placed a call, this time which apparently connected.

During this connected connected. Yeah, during this call, he called someone a bozo and threatened the person on the other line, telling them that they'd have to move their own kids or something of that nature. After he hung up, he closed the wardrobe door and locked the parents in. Then he turned on a radio in the master bedroom very very loudly to a station that is identified, and then took the girl into the bathroom. And this is where they're not nice stuff begins. Yes, it actually turned out

that this was his real motive. He was not there to be a thief, though he did take a few items from the house, but his real motive was to rape an assault the eleven year old girl who He did this over the course of two hours. He carried out his attack on the girl kind of over this course of two hours, mostly in the bathroom, but also in the lounge room. He took breaks to rummage through the family's belongings. He took a break to eat some

cold Lamb biscuits, milk, and orange juice. He made the girl floss and brush her teeth and bathe twice once after the first assault and then once right before he left the house, which basically obliterated all forensic evidence that would have existed of his attack on her. Yeah. Yeah, General Hospital then took her to a spare bedroom after two hours, loosely tied her up on the bed and told her that she could count to one hundred and

then free herself and her family. She told the police that she waited to hear the door close and then rand free her parents and as I said, they her name is not Jill. She's identified as Jill. That's not her actual name. But there are reports that Mr Cruel called her Kate a number of times, which is also not her name, nor is it represented that that's close to her name. So he was calling her the wrong name. What do it mean? I bet the police thought about

that a lot, and I think they did. Yeah, he actually had asked her name when the whole family was tied up in the master bedroom, so he was given her actual real name, But he was calling her Kate, which probably means something, but we don't know what. Yeah. Obviously the police were called immediately. They found, as I

bet you can guess, almost zero evidence or clues. When the family said that Mr Rule had placed a phone call, they actually thought, you know, of course this phone number dialed could at least lead us to a person who had a conversation with Mr Cruel, But it turned out that a call had never actually been placed, that Mr Cruel had faked it, which is why he had you know, blindfolded everyone before he placed this call, he picked up the receiver and maybe dial like he there was no

number that connected. He must have picked up the receiver and you know, pushed the the things back down what are those things called the receiver button backed down so that it didn't actually place a call, and then dial the call and totally fabricated a half of a conversation just to throw everybody off the trail, which is which it does end up. The whole kit thing was probably deliberate.

I would guess that as well, that it was deliberate. Yeah, And I also have the impression that Mr Cruel was intentionally trying to give the impression that the rape of the eleven year old girl was actually a cry of opportunity instead of a meticulously planned crime, which it actually was. You know, that he was trying to give the impression that he just broke in and then happened to see an eleven year old girl and rape her because she was well, since I'm here, right, and then you know,

leave with stuff. But he didn't steal enough stuff for that to make sense. There was like very little value in what he stole, well plus two hours, you know, even for a crime of opportunity. Seems like a lot of times a girl. Yeah, yeah, I actually think that a lot of that time was spent in cleaning her.

Could have been Yeah, if he's as meticulous as he seems to be, and based on things that happened later on, I have a feeling that a knowing a man's biology and be knowing how long it probably takes to clean somebody thoroughly to your satisfaction. For a guy that goes to these lengths, he probably spent a lot of time scrubbing this girl down. Yeah, and that I think that's accurate. The other really interest same thing here is that despite the mask, the family was able to give kind of

a description. They described the man as about five eight to five eleven, about Steve's hite. Yeah, slim build with brownish grayish whitish hair not like me, and uh, bushy gray eyebrows. I'm not totally sure how that was. I guess it maybe was sticking through the mask. They're kind

of knit. Well, No, the eyeholes. That's why that drawing is so scary is because he had actually tailored it, so the eye holes were literally just there, maybe quarter size holes that he had sewn together with white there it was a navy blue mask that he used white material on, and then he had actually sown yeah sorry, white thread on and then so you can see the stitch marks that kind of looks like a coralined all almost, and then he'd actually sewn basically like netting or something

behind the eyes and the mouth so they would further protect him from leaving any kind of hair. Was like Spider Man's mask, yeah, but way scarier. The mouth hoole was also just a quarters I mean, it was just three quarter size holes in this mask. It was it's super super creepy, super creepy. So but I would assume that maybe there was some hair sticking out through his mask somewhere, which he could have actually like you know, placed in there as another red herring. He could have.

It's true, absolutely could have, despite the grayish whitish hair and bushy gray eyebrows. They said that they thought that Mr Cruel was actually in his mid twenties. He apparently had musty smelling breath. He did eat lamb biscuits, milk, and orange juice. Well he had musty breath before then, well he might have had lamb. And then he apparently also had a deep gruff voice that sounded uneducated, and they said he had no accent, which of course means

he had an Australian accent. He had an accent appropriate for the area. With almost nothing to go on, this case went cold quickly and it seemed to have been a one, one time attack. There was some speculation again that Mr Cruel had actually seen the family in a newspaper because they had been featured a couple of weeks before. Was that article about I don't know we're hearing about I suspect they don't talk about it because yeah, yeah, well this is not the only time that somebody is

supposedly in the paper ahead of time. No it's not, it's not. Let's talk about that, because despite the you know, apparent one time nature of this attack, it turns out, no, that's not the case. Unfortunately happen. Yeah, a year and a few months later, in December. On December, the police found out that Mr Cruel was actually a serial offender. The previous night on the six the Will's family was comprised, which is comprised of John and Julie and their four daughters.

We're on their way home. They lived in Ringwood, which is another suburb of Melbourne, and they apparently arrived home at PM. The girls, of course, went promptly to bed. The oldest one was ten. Her name is Sharon, so they were young. That was late. That's late to be up. The girls all slept in one room on two sets of bunk beds, and then John and Julie say that they stayed up and tell about one am. And then John tried to go to sleep, but he couldn't, so he got up and did a puzzle and tell about

four fifty am. He says, it's so weird. I'll put your right to sleep. That's a weird thing to do. I mean, I guess this is before the internet, so dinking around on Facebook or whatever is in an option. But I wouldn't think to just sit up in the middle of the night and put together a puzzle. I would because it's boring. You might go to sleep, you know. I mean to be kind of some people are into people, Okay, okay, anyway, almost exactly thirty minutes later, so at Mr Cruel came

bursting in to John and Julie's bedroom. He just threw the light on and brandished a gun. He was still wearing that same navy blue mask. Julie screamed, but Mr Cruel said that he was going to shoot John if she didn't stop, so she stopped because she loves her husband. He then had them, just like the last couple, lie on their stomachs and bound their wrists. This time he didn't put them in handcuffs first. He just immediately hog

tied them. I guess there's not hog tying because there's no there was no connection between the arms and legs. But he found their arms and legs with copper electrical wire with the same unique knot. Again, he claimed to be a thief. He then entered the girl's room. Sharon was the oldest of the four girls. She was ten.

She was taken from her bed and I heard I read her account and she said she was awoken by her mom's scream but just kind of laid in her bed, and then she heard Mr Cruel come into her room and she pretended to be asleep still, which is smart, right, And he left and she heard him walk around the house and then come back and say, Sharon, get up. So he knew her name, and so at that point she was like, Okay, I have to get up, So she got up, and he did not ask the parents

what the kid's names were, not reportedly. Mr Cruel selected some of her clothes to take with him, then took Sharon out into the living room, grabbed one of John's coats and had her put it on over her nighty, and then carried her outside and put her down. When he put her down, she started to scream again. So he actually shoved a ball into her mouth, which is yeah, well, it was just a ball. It was like a rubber ball, but you'll see people describe it as a ball gag,

which is a different thing these days. Yeah, he's depending on the community you frequent. Yes, he said, if you promise not scream, I'll take that ball out, and she said yeah. So he took the ball out, and then he blindfolded her, maybe with tape, maybe with something else, and then placed some material she thought was like tied or glued together over her head over the blindfold that we that she thinks was tape. He tried to confuse her by sometimes carrying her and sometimes making her walk

until they got to a car. So this one is already different in that the last attack took place in the home this time, he's actually abducting Sharon, taking her somewhere else, taking her somewhere else. He put Sharon in the passenger side of the car and had her get

on the floor of the passenger side. Sharon said that she thought it was an old car, and he drove for a little bit and then paused and said, Sharon, can you see And she said yes because she could, And so he reinforced her blindfold um by like taping it tighter, and then put a blanket over her. To keep shaking my head. It's mostly because I just I know, I know, I know. He He continued to reassure her that he wasn't going to hurt her again. Kind of

this weird. I don't know why you're telling her this, but I think he didn't want her to be scared. I guess. I'm not sure what a guy. He's trying to encourage complacence. So it's interesting and we'll talk about this at the end when we talked about how Sharon described him. But there's some interesting stuff going on here. But he just said he was going to ransom her for money, basically, So don't worry, I'm not gonna hurt you. I'm not gonna hurt you. I just kidnapped you. I

just want money. Well, that's always reassuring. This, of course, turned out to be not true. He unloaded her from the car and carried her into the house and laid her on the bed. She was able to describe the house in detail. I'm not going to go too far, but she counted how many steps it took for her to get from the car two stairs, and then counted how many steps up it was to the house, and what side of the house the driveway was on. I meant he was very, very aware. Yeah, well, I think

you would remember this sort of thing. Well, I don't know, because a lot of people those details disappear because the brain, Your brain just blocks that crap out. It's the saying of the word, but it just shuts down. She was sick, and I want to bring the Peelis police back here to bust it. I think, yeah, And I think probably the these memories are the things she was thinking about instead of the other things that happened to her later as you try to get through. Very good point. Yeah.

So he got her into the house and replaced her tape glue whatever blindfold with like iPads, like medical iPads, you know those kind of the metal in the gauze iPads, But I mean iPads this in your eye, in your head because something else. No, No, I think actually I think they're just like cotton. They make these little cotton pads that go over your eye and they don't have the metal or Okay, they're just basically the same thing though, it's the cotton underside of what I'm Yeah, it's just

a little cotton. It's basically just a cotton swab for your your eyes. It's a cotton pirate iPad. And then he gently taped that so it was more comfortable for her, turned the radio on, and ran a bath. He had Sharon floss and brush her teeth and Bathe then returned her to the bedroom. She heard the radio on the radio that it was seven am at that point, and was able to identify the radio station, not that that really helps anything. She also said that she heard some

airplanes fly overhead. Mr Cruel then raped and assaulted her and then made her a vegemmite sandwich with a glass of milk. And that's why he's called Mr Cruel the vegeom. Yeah, he said he was going to leave. By the way, you buy a vegeomine anywhere in the States. I've been hearing about it for years. I've never actually go to the Australian grocery. Okay, he so he said he was leaving, so he leashed her to the bed with some sort of harness around her neck. Lash. I've heard leash. I've

heard it. I've heard it described as a very crude harness of some kind. I mean, you know, think of a dog caller, but something that some weirdo just makes in his basement on his own as well, although granted nobody ever saw it right, they just felt it right.

But I mean, you know, if some guy is trying to figure out how to attach fabric to material or to metal to then be able to lock it and chaine it, like that would be why he's described his crude and felt probably that would probably was not very comfortable. He left the radio and while he was gone to that same channel and now here again is one of those instances where you think got These girls are just especially Sharon, like this is incredible. She is really gutsy.

She while he's gone, manages to lift her blindfold, so she conceived the inside of the room, so she is actually able to describe for the police, like in great detail everything about the room, including most disturbingly, a wooden tripod with a camera setup that was filming the bed that she was leashed to, or was set up to film. It wasn't filming. Well, I was going to say, I don't know that this was necessarily a video camera. It might have just been a still camera. I think it

was a video camera. I mean, this is the time where you could tell very distinctly between a video camera, and I am not in a disagreement of that, but I've never seen it explicitly said what kind of camera she saw. That's why I say that. Okay, that's fair. Yes, it's probably a good thing if you if you filmed all this stuff, because if they already catch up with him, he'll probably still have videos. And again we'll talk about the great way to lock his ass up for a

long long time. Yeah, for real. Mr Cruel returned. He bathed and clean Sharon again, and then raped her again, and then bathed her again, then leashed her to the bed, but he checked on her often. He fed her and took her to the bathroom as needed. He asked her if she was comfortable. I mean, yeah, I know, of course I'm comfortable. Yeah, yeah, yeah, I don't think so. Finally, after eighteen hours, he instructed of her to take a

shower instead of a bath. He washed her hair and her body very well, clipped her fingernails and toenails, then flost and brushed her teeth again. Then he dressed her in a garbage bag. I think more than one. He had her stand on a garbage bag and then step into a garbage bag that had holes cut for legs, and then he put another garbage bag over her head, then cut holes so she could breathe because safety. Third,

I guess it is. He then put her in the car again, you know, on the floor in the passenger side, and apparently he had trouble starting it, telling Shannon that stolen car sometimes won't start, Which is I think this is a red herring. Well, it's it's a little logical in that, you know, if you've hot wired a car and you don't have the key for it, it's not probably not going to start as easily as just turning the key. I'm not so sure. I don't I think

it's a red herring. Just that's just me. He drove for quote a long time, sometimes fast and sometimes slow unquote per Shannon, Sharon Shannon, we've been saying, Sharon. I think we've been saying Sharon Shannon. Okay, this is probably obviously to confuse her. He parked, picked her up, and ran with her for some distance, stopping often to take breaks. He's out of shape, yes. Finally he put her down and told her how to get to a store nearby. He removed the blindfold, which was the trash bag that

he had cut holes into. He removed it and said, you know, don't turn around or else I'll and ran away. That must have been a really weird scene for anybody to watch. You didn't know what was going on. It was a midnight a full grown man running away from a small figure in plastic bags. No, it was exactly eighteen hours after she had taken all She had actually been dropped off at the Bayswater High School, which is

about three miles from her house. And like I said, it was just after midnight and Shannon approached a woman who was at a bus stop, and she reportedly, very calmly walked up to this woman in trash bags and said my name is Shannon Wills, and I was taken from my home earlier this morning. A man left me here and told me to go ring home. Yet again, police were unable to find any clues or forensic evidence. The Will's family description of Mr Cruel is pretty in

line with the previous family's description. Other than the voice, Shannon said that Mr Cruel seemed to display some level of care and did not describe him gruff at all, and like the unidentified girl first one. Yet, Shannon had been in the newspaper just a few weeks prior to her abduction. You know, I wonder if the gruff. I mean, we're already talking about the red Herrings a little bit, but it makes me wonder if in that first instance

it was kind of like what Christian Bale playing Batman. Yeah, yeah, I absolutely think it was. I think it also was to kind of play into that role of I'm a thief. Yeah I'm a bad guy. Well he is a bad guy, but you know, I'm a different kind of bad guy than he is, which I don't think he identifies himself as a bad guy. Yeah, really creepy bad guy. Next up, Brian and Rosemary Lioness were set to move out of their rented house on July four, which is not a

holiday in Australia. Why not because they did not patriotic Not that's true. Yes, they're not patriotic Americans. They along with their two daughters, were a month away from moving back to England and had planned to rent an apartment in Melbourne for the last month inland in Australia. Yeah, July three, at about eleven fifteen pm, Mr Cruel forced his way into Brian and Rosemary's bedroom via the window. Brian Rosemary, however, we're out at a farewell gathering, a

fact that Mr Cruel was likely very aware of. At eleven twenty pm, he woke Nicola up by tapping her on the head with his knife. This is the one that you were thinking of, Steve. The parents were not home, so yeah, but Nicola was home with her sister Fiona.

Once again he claimed to be a common thief. He actually did hog tie Fiona up, this time on the parents bed, and then told Nicola to get her school uniform, that he had her dress in something other than her school uniform and she kept her pajama bottoms on as well and then Mr Cruel asked to Nicola and Fiona about their father's employment, then told Fiona that he wanted

dollars ransom for Nicola. He went around the house and cut all of the phone lines with a knife, then told Fiona that he called in the morning with instructions on how to pay, So obviously he wasn't actually intending to call in the morning. Yeah, they better call me once they get the repair man out here. Well, I'm going to call them when he didn't even leave, you know, and he that I'm gonna call. Yeah, it might be quicker in Australia. I now here in America back in

those days, took the phone company a while. You get aft to your house back in the good old days. Fiona said that she looked at the bedside clock and remembered that Mr Cruel left with Nicola at eleven forty seven pm exactly. He also stole the family's car. Well, they had two cars because mom and Dad were in Yes. Yeah, he had Nicola again kneel on the passenger side floor just like Shannon, and he pulled her base cap baseball cap low over her eyes. She was apparently wearing a

baseball cap. He drove for a short distance and then they got out of the family car and into a different car, where he blindfolded Nicola with tape and then put a sche mask over that one or a balacava lava. Yeah, once again, Mr Cruel took Nicola to a house she heard the radio playing. Once again, he removed the tape from her eyes and gently put iPads over her eyes

as a blindfold. He took it to the bathroom flost and brushed her teeth baits, then calling her nikki raped an assault at her, maybe he's something again, leashed her to the bed around the neck, just like he had done with Shannon, and then he fell asleep next to her.

That guy is pretty sure of himself. Yeah, I was gonna say all of the things that this guy has done so far, that is yeah, for some reason, yes, Yeah, because he's gonna he's spooning this poor, chained up a little girl as if there's some actual intimacy between them. That's that's what just turns my gut so much on there she was too, I mean, doesn't matter still terms, but yeah, he had actually turned the radio off while he went to sleep, so there was no noise and

of course, Nicola did not sleep that night. Yeah, she didn't hear any noise until she heard really loud airplanes flying overhead. So she estimated there were about seven or nine of them that flew overhead in a relatively short span of time. Basically, what she was describing was like the landing pattern of planes, like an airport or an army base or exactly something like that. That's actually a good information, Yeah it is. Mr Cruel slept and tell about ten am when he turned the radio back on.

She heard, you know, the radio said the time. He raped her again at eleven am, then fell asleep again next to her. Then at about twelve thirty pm, so noon thirty, he took her into the bathroom where he raped her again, then bathed her again. Then he told her that he had a schoolgirl fantasy and that he had followed her home from school, which I think is also a red herring. This guy just says whatever random

bs pops into his head. He does. He dressed her in her uniform and then raped her in the kitchen. Then he gave her a glass of water and then leased her to the bed. She fell asleep for a few hours because like of course you would. And then she said she woke up again to the sound of airplanes prior to ten am. Again after ten am, you know, when she woke up and the radio was turned back on. He then dressed her in a tennis skirt that he

had brought. He actually told her the night before he was going to address her in the tennis skirt and is but so he told her that the night before, and then the next morning he dressed her in the tennis skirt and raped her and then he started calling her missy. At about two pm that day, he finally released her to the bed and said he wasn't going to quote unquote assault her anymore. He tied her legs together with wire, gave her some food and water, and then told her a friend and he were going to

go look for places to drop her off. He had a newspaper with him and he said it was the Sun, which the Harold Harold Sun, which is where this was reported conveniently immediately enough, at about ten pm, Mr cruel Nicola if she was hungry, and said that he was going to pack all the food away, meaning that this was not a usual place of living that he packed food in, and he was going to pack it out, it would make sense not to bring her to his house. Yep,

absolutely what. He had Nicola stand on a sheet and then showered her and cleaned her body like he had Shannon's. He reportedly again said something to his friend that was also there with him, But investigators agree that this is just one of those attempts to derail the investigation again, because Nicola was pretty sure that there was no one

else there. She didn't hear. You know, it was a small house where she was being kept, and she didn't hear anybody else come in or And additional to that, only one did he say anything to his friend, and his friend didn't say anything at all, So I don't

think there was actually another person there with him. So one thing you said here that you said about her and the prior victim that we didn't bring up in the very first one is her standing on a sheet in the bathroom, if I remember correct, the very first girl, he trying to think of delicately how to say this when he was with her in the bathroom and he

assaulted her. I seemed to remember there was something about the fact that he had laid down a shower curtain or sheet or a towel or something, so that I'm guessing for the idea that his footprints or shoeprints or whatever wouldn't be liftable or retained in any way. So this is He's like, there there are things that seemed to be happening every single time. Yeah, I mean things like flossing, things like cutting their finger and toenails like that.

You know, forensic evidence and especially public knowledge of forensic evidence was not that great in the early nineties. So for him to know he was time traveler, that he I mean maybe honestly the worst use for time travel ever could have worked for a police department. Maybe fantic kind of specialist guy. So he was gonna pack it away. He he's going to pack all the food away. He cleaned Shannon again or sorry Nicola again, said something to his friend which is wrong. Then he replaces her iPads

with tape. You know, he takes the iPads off and tapes her eyes shut, blindfolds her with tape. Then he puts her clothes on her. But I guess it was a different set of clothes that he hadn't had any contact with, because he did take a number of sets of clothes from her house when he first took her from her home. Yes, and then again you know, put her on the floor of the passenger side, and then again had car trouble again, saying stolen cars often don't

turn on, which okay. They drove for a while and then yeah, they stopped for gas. Well, she thought they stopped for gas. She wasn't sure because less it was a self serve or or something like, I'm sure it was self serve. Oregan is one of the only places where it's not self serve. So he stopped for gas apparently maybe maybe not. And he had actually wrapped her in a blanket when they were at the house, so they stopped finally after they got guess they stopped for gas,

and then they drove around a little bit. Then he removed the sheet after they got out of the car and took the sheet away from her, and then they walked about five minutes, I guess, she thought, And then Mr Cruel had her change her clothes again standing on that sheet, and then took all the clothes away that it would have maybe had evidence from his house on it, And then they walked for about three more minutes and

he i guess. He looked around like he was going to stop, and then he said, no, this location isn't good for some reason. And then they walked for another three or four minutes and then he said, okay, now count to a it. He took her blindfold off, said count a hundred and then you know, go call the police. She had been again left about three miles away from her house. It was two am on the morning of her four birthday. She had been held by Mr Cruel

for exactly fifty hours. She knocked on the door of a man like they were in kind of a neighborhood where she was dropped. So she walked up to a door and knocked and a man answered it, and she said, can I call my dad? And obviously her picture had been everywhere, and he was like, um, yes, of course you can. And they called the police and then six days later Nicolas's family left Australia forever. Yeah. Nicola and Fiona described Mr Cruel to have a beer belly, which

is different from the other descriptions. The other descriptions had him very slim. I gotta tell you that beer Billy's come on pretty easily. Yeah, And it had been a year or so since the last attack, it's easy the fake of beer belly to true true story. And uh he was, but he was again described as having the gruff, uneducated voice, and apparently he also tended to add use to the end of sentences like lay down on the bed, use the word you, not the letter you. Yeah, yeah,

which is why I gave you an example. Yeah, that's Those are really the only discrepancies between the other three descriptions of Mr. Cruel because he didn't use a lot what's the other one? But again, I I'm I don't think it's beyond the realm of possibility that he was just putting on voices. So yeah, all right. Next up is Carmen. It's not spelled like you think Karmen is spelled. It's k r. It's k A R M I E N.

But um. From the news coverage of this case that I watched, it sounded like her mom was pronouncing it Carmen or something dang close. So her name is Carmen. And I'm gonna preface this one by saying it's a little different. And then there is speculation that's actually copycat um, but we'll talk about that later. Officially, it is the last known attack by Mr Cruel. On April thirty feet, nineteen, thirteen year old Carmen was babysitting her two younger sisters, Carly,

who was nine and Karen, who was seven. Lots of K, lots of K alliteration here. Yeah, that is a really terrible thing to do your children. You know why because if you ever get mail at the house with first initial, last name, you don't know whose mail it is. That's a good point. I thought about that. I've known people who have done that. Oh yeah, no, I have it. Mr Cruel broke into the house at eight forty pm. Their parents owned three Chinese restaurants in town and they

actually ran them. They didn't just you know own them. Um. They were fairly wealthy family in the community. Uh. And the parents were both working at the restaurant at the time. Again the operators, yes, and Mr Cruel very likely knew that. Again, maybe he ate there, he did a lot of research.

Mr Cruel instructed the two younger girls to get into the cupboard that was in the room that they were all sleeping in and pushed a bed against the doors, which you know, locked them in, and then dragged Carmen by the hair out of the house, and I know that they and I guess I am speculating a bit there, but um, she was being held by the hair when the girls got into the cupboard, so I presumed that

he continued to drive at a departure. Tracker dogs were unable to track past a nearby road where it's speculated that Mr Cruel likely parked his car. Carly and Karen managed to escape about ten minutes after and called their father, and he of course called the police and the search began. Mr Cruel, per his m O left a red herring. He had spray painted payback Asian drug deal ler on the front of the family's car that was left in

the in the parking or in the driveway. I am going to quickly note here that Carmen, she did attend the same all girls school that Nicola attended. Nicola was our second victim, write third. Nicola is the most recent victim we just talked about. And I read somewhere though I don't remember where, that Mr Cool took Carmen's school uniform with them when they left, like he did in with Nicola. Makes sense. The m O changes here drastically, Carmen was not released after eighteen hours, she was not

released after fifty hours or seventy hours. In fact, she was not released at all. Well, she wasn't released a lie tactically, I suppose that's true. Two years after she disappeared, a man walking his dog saw what he thought was a human skull in a landfill, and it ended up being Harman's remains. She had been shot at least three times in the back of the head and then dumped in this landfill. Carly and Karen described Mr Cruel in

much the same way that Nicola and Fiona had. They didn't mention a gruff voice at all, but they did say that his scheme mask was brown, which depending on different well it's different than the navy blue one that had been described in all of the other crimes. Now maybe that means that, you know, it was worn out

or it set in the sun for a year. Well yeah, I mean, I don't think it would have faded into brown, but it was, you know, anyway, it was different, and so that's another reason that people think that this may have been a copycat. And of course they the police did actually investigate the drug dealers paint. They actually for like three years they did an investigation into the family and there was no correction, nothing, nothing whatsoever. He was

just a legitimate business owner. And the lead investigator makes a really really good point here with this case as well, and that is that the family's house was not preserved as a crime scene. In this instance, a ton of people came through and you know, basically they were it

was it was a man hunt. It wasn't a crime scene, so people carried away anything that might have been DNA well just I mean, like just by like walking over it or not by physically picking up I have a feeling that the fact that the daughters called dad, and Dad called the cops probably after calling somebody else he knew to go over to the house, who then called

somebody they knew. So there's a whole swarm of non investigative type right, and there's also probably people showing up, yeah, to help take care of the girls because they've just had something very traumatic happened to them. And overall, you know, there could have been clues left, though given the Mr cruel m O, I doubt it that there were any kind of clues. Yeah, if it's him in this instance

then probably wouldn't have mattered. And Carmen's mother has a theory about why Carmen was killed when the other girls were not, and it is that, by all accounts, Carmen was very stubborn. Defiant is a really good word. And Mr Cruel had actually told one of his other victims

that his freedom was more important than her life. And Carmen's mother thinks that it's very likely that Carmen fought back and may have pulled the mask off or otherwise been able to identify him, so he just angered him enough, or maybe if she actually recognized his voice and said, hey, Mr Smith, that's you. Isn't it absolutely possible? What are you doing? Smithers yea, And actually there's that's a great little segue, because we're done talking about the victims and

now we're going to talk about series and suspects. It's here there are actually, Yeah, But the thing we're gonna talk about first is that there was this task force called Spectrum that included several FBI investigators as well as police and other high profile investigators from around the world. But that that came together to be a part of this task force. Basically do the one of the most

comprehensive investigations like that has ever taken place. They interviewed literally twenty seven thousand, not seven thousand men in the area in conjunction with this case as suspects. This is a lot like the Naked murders where they just locked down a section of the city. Every man is drug in front of the cops and questioned till till he's exhausted,

and then they move on to the next one. Yes. Yeah, so from extensive interviews of the victims of the families, uh, just general kind of stuff they put to other this really comprehensive profile of what the kind of person that Mr Cruel would have been or or maybe still is in his real life. By the way, they shouldn't have called him Mr Cruel. That's that's just too dignified. That's the newspaper's faults. I should have called a Mr Purvy Pants.

Well they actually called him Spider. Yeah, he had seven or eight different occurs that he was referred to by, and Mr Cruel is just the latest one that has actually taken Something Rapist. It was like the North Something rapist was one of the more common names until Mr Cruel really, I think Mr Cruel is a great name for him. I think Mr pervy Pass is better, though

that would have made him angry. So since I don't think we want to do that, Joe, well, let's just talk about that a little bit because it actually does pertain to a theory. So can one of you guys read this profile that they put together so it's not just an episode of me talking for like twelve Okay, I gotta put on my FBI. Oh, I didn't know if you wanted paper rock scissors sport. Okay, boom boom boom. Uh Wait does that mean I have to Oh I

didn't realize winning. Maybe I had to read it. That's fine, you got your FBI voice. Okay, in my best FBI voice, This is gonna be my Batman voice. Mr Cruel was probably in steady employment, possibly in a management job or self employed with freedom of movement. It said those who knew him would not regard him as a monster. He would probably be considered a good neighbor and might be

involved in community projects. He would have an obsessive, compulsive character, the type who would immediately wipe his hands if soiled. He would have taken a great deal of interest in media coverage, though he probably tried to disguise it. He would likely go for unexplained drives or walks. He would

have expressed sexual fantasies or shown sexually dysfunctional behavior. His sexual arousal and gratification would probably be dependent on his partner playing specific roles, such as dressing in a schoolgirl uniform. He used terms like bozo, worry ward, and missy when saying things to some of his victims a k A. Kitty talk. He could be married or living with a woman who goes away around school holidays when some of the attacks occurred, or he could be a teacher himself.

He would be intelligent, well organized. He would seem genuinely interested in and dedicated to children. He would have displayed children, yes, unfortunately terrible observation. He would have displayed behavioral changes around the time of the offenses and on anniversaries or when publicity was renewed. Those changes would indicate such things as sleeping disorders, reluctances to go to work, distract distraction, or different eating and drinking habits. He would disguise his dress

with abnormally rigid behavior. Yeah, thanks, Mr FBI you're welcome. One thing to note before we start talking about suspects, We're not going to talk about thousand suspects. This could have been a really long episode, could have it already kind of is. But one thing just to note is

that Mr Cruel is a serial offender. And we've talked about serial offenders before on this show, and basically what that means is it's unlikely that he would have stopped these attacks unless he was forced by either death or moving or some kind of incarceration, or he accomplished what he wanted, whatever that might be. I guess, yeah, I think what he wanted was to get his rocks off, So I don't think I could continue to accomplish that and their perpetuity by just watching his videos. But there's

also a significant amount of escalation that happens. We can see even just over the course of even just the first three, but really with the four there's a there's a fair amount of escalation. Um The investigator said that they thought the reason that he stopped was because he got scared, because he was one of the twenty seven thousand people that was interviewed, which like if he lived in the area, of course he was so, yeah, he

and every other guy in the bar. We're like, oh, you remember that time I got interviewed if I was Mr Mr Cruel. So there are officially seven men on a list that is being held by the it's you know, distributed to all police uh in this area that basically says, if any attack similar to the Mr. Cruel one happens, these seven suspects should be arrested immediately or brought into custody immediately for questioning. But they're apparently thirty two suspects

that cannot officially be eliminated. But they don't have any evidence to prove that any of them did it either, So they're not good enough to just immediately go out and arrest exactly. In fact, none of them. Yeah, and there's no suspect that is good enough to go out and arrest. Before we get into theory or these I guess, not theories, but these particular suspects that you have here, there are some general things that I'm wondering about that would probably get to now. Yeah, let's do it. Okay,

let's just talk about that's great. There's the question of the airplanes. Is it one or two of the girls that were taken and it was released it was too yeah. So Nicola Shannon was the one who, like right off the bat said oh, and also I heard airplanes of Alane. Yeah. And then Nicola was interviewed after she had returned to England and she said, I heard these are the airplanes

and these are when I heard the airplanes. Because she was the one who was able to give she actually counted I don't know how she I guess she must have been aware of the news. She was thirteen, you know,

she might have been aware of the news. So she actually went so far as to when she realized that she was being abducted by Mr Cruel, she counted how long she was in the car from her house, right, she's the one in Canada's well she no, I mean, Shannon did that, but she went even further than that, where she was able to basically give an entire way

out of the house. She said, I counted to this number until we got to the car, and I think we were headed in this direction, and then I counted to this number from the car to the how I mean, she was like incredibly detailed, but she eventually recalled. So both of the people, both of the girls who were held in the house, did recall the airplane? Oh, go ahead, I'm sorry, I was gonna say, and a lot of airplanes or well, it's a seven seems to be a number that I've heard in a number of places. But

my question is there's two kinds of planes. There's jets and propeller planes. And what I'm trying to understand was it a jet airplane or was it a propeller driven plane, maybe a small airport versus a large international type. Well, the reason I say that is that if you've ever heard airplanes at a distance and there's some other background noise, and and you've heard motorcycles in the distance, if depending on what they are, they can sound similar, not the same.

I understand they're identical, but do a girl who's not on the motorcycle scene, it could sound like an airplane. So that's the reason I'm asking. It's a good question. Nicola seems to think that they were on the landing path of airplanes, so it was so it's less jets landing well or less of the noise of just the

airplane and actual you can there's sounds of descent. Yes, that's she seemed to think they were lower than they should have been, maybe not like right next to the airport right, but on the flight path into the airport, and that would also be I guess you know, it's the northern part of Melbourne if I remember correctly. Yeah.

But but in addition to that, I mean, it would make sense that she would hear planes during sometimes and not others, because you know, they have flight paths based on time of day and wind pattern and all of that stuff. So you know, if she heard it just kind of in this distinct time in the morning, that's when they were getting those planes landed. Shannon, I don't think, was able to provide a whole lot of detail. But she was also only held for eighteen hours versus Nicola,

who was there for fifty. So Nicola had two full days to observe the patterns of things, whereas Nicola, I mean, Shannon um just she said she heard some airplanes, but it wasn't She wasn't held really in the more. I mean, she just heard the couple in the morning when she

was first there, and she was still disoriented. Okay, So the next question that I have is probably asking for more details than you have or any of us want to know my but it is based around the fact of the frequency of the assaults that these girls reported that they got. I am presuming that they are not simply all acts of penetration. Um. The the best description, the best description, and the most descriptive that anybody gets

is they say raped and assaulted. And I suspect that that means that there was a varying degree of assault that was happening. I don't think it was always necessarily one body penetrating the other. It may have been, well, it may have been penetrave in that it was an object or hand, but it wasn't. I don't think it

was always necessary. That's the reason I asked because some of the what really really schemed me out with some of the early articles that I read made it sound like this guy was on viagra the whole time, and I was like, it was doing it quite a lot. Pretty. But I will just go ahead and say that physiology in general is a fickle thing. And I know because you're talking about a refractory period of some sort. I presume, yes, that doesn't always happen, not all. Like I'm sorry to

be most meaning to you a fractory period. But in my experience, there are some men out there who don't, and especially under the right circumstances, that are extra exciting. Sometimes men don't have that period of time and they can get right back into it. Yeah, it does happen. And maybe he wasn't. And obviously this was this guy's big, big but I mean even you don't know, maybe he was taking vibrate because he was so yeah in the yeah, it was in the well know, in the big nineties became,

but there was other things. There are other things that can have the same effect. But okay, so then my my last question here is so they say that he couldn't have stopped on his own, and I just well, they say he had, you know, he was scared away, But that doesn't match up with behavior that we've talked about in the past. And I mean, I have a theory as to why Harmon was the last one, and

it's probably the most disturbing of all the theories out there. Well, I guess my theory about why Carmen is the last one is that his murder of Carmen, in conjunction with the extensive nature of the investigation in which he may have even been interviewed by the police. Just scared him off entirely. Where he it just became you know, like he said, his freedom was more important than anything, and it just became too risky for him to continue to

do this. So he found it by you know, reviewing the tapes or slides or pictures and you know, being able to carry out role plays with consenting partners. And that's where that's probably the most disturbing part. That the most disturbing idea that I've come to is the why this guy stopped is he met somebody. And at first I was like, well, you know, for every kink there's

somebody who's happy to fulfill that kink. But for this guy, I don't think it's an adult woman dressing up like a schoolgirl and letting him play act to do whatever he wants. What really, know, what really disturbs me is that he met a woman who was down with his kink, who had a daughter and said, here is your smart board, and he suddenly was off of the market. Does but I mean, kids age pretty quick, so his thing was an eleven year I mean, you know the ten to

thirteen range pre puberty. Listen, we've talked about guys who started assaulting young girls at the age of five and didn't stop until they were thirty. Yeah, that's true. I mean, there there are stories like that. So it doesn't mean that just because she was no longer twelve, she was no longer useful in that manner the nicest I can't. I mean, let's just hop in. We're only going to talk about three suspects, and none of them are named. Don't work, but yeah, we have, we have our own

names for them. But um, one of them is just called John A K. John Doe. And I'm just gonna because it's a good transition into this. John was brought to the attention of the police because he had a partner, um, a consenting adult female partner. I yeah, girlfriend's sexual partner. I'm not quite sure which. Uh that said that John started talking about Carmen during sex while they were role playing schoolgirl stuff, and then was apparently really upset when

the media dubbed the killer Mr Cruel, Mr prvy pants. Yeah. Um,

and then John. John was apparently self employed and traveled a lot, so he had a reason to disappear on the job, and while police took this claim seriously, the X had a lot of discrepancies in her story and they kind of thought, well, we're obviously going to investigate this person, but it kind of seems like this person is just trying to get and John, John, this is the same thing that we've talked about with x Is before last week, when we talked about Able and the

fact that Abel only came to the police's attention after he is soon to be third X. Yeah, you know spilled the quote unquote spilled the beans on him, which really was just to bring down hell on it totally. Yeah, she succeeded. Yeah, yeah, Um, so our next and I apologize. I think sometimes we do these stories and our listeners are like, you guys just told the story and then like haphazardly through like three sentences on each theory and

like that's it. But that's literally you can do the research. I hope you will do the research and follow some of the links to some of the stuff that we found. And there's no, there's nothing. There's really nothing. So we're going to talk about two other suspects. Well, I will just say, I why is it the show always puts me in the weird position of potentially defending a creep ozoid.

But I'm gonna do it a little bit. You're going to defend this guy just to any bit from if his partner is saying he started talking about this while we were role playing, it is entirely possible that this guy had a thing for Asian school girls and this girl happened to be in the news, so he started talking about her. Oh. I think John is absolutely not an actual What I'm saying is that he may have started saying this stuff. He might have been seeing some

other chick named Carmen. Yeah, and his and his partner is just like, what the dude, that is not okay? And you know, she gets mad, she spills a beer on and she runs away and that's the end of that. And he's thinking, okay, so the big deal, except then she turns heround and tell the cops. No, I don't think I mean, I don't think that John is I think the police did their due diligence, But I think overall John is not a good suspect. But he's on the top seven, isn't he. No. Oh, okay, so I

thought John was in the top seven. That's why the other thirty two he's in the other thirty two. He's not in the seven where they're like, get this person in me. Okay, okay. He's just one of the ones that's widely reported on it because I don't know they gave a name to him. I guess I don't know. The next suspect we're going to talk about is we're going to call him Prime a k A. The Lecturer, a k A. No name McGhee. He is the prime suspect. He is. He is Mr pervy Pants. He is the

prime suspect for this case. Though again they can't there's no evidence, like there's no evidence at all. But um the Lecturer is a seventy four year old former university lecturer and director of a construction design firm in the seventies. He spent ten years in jail for for rapes and attacks at knife point on young women and girls, and a source said that he has slides. You guys remember slides. He has slides of the girls that were abducted. It on his on a bed. But the police did an

extensive investigation, they were unable to find it. And in fact, the Sun reached out to this person because they have named Yeah, the tabloid. They have the name they again, I mean, I think that it's fair to not release the names of these people because you don't know which hunt to happen. But they reached out to this person and he said, um, oh yeah, I know. I know they think I did it. I didn't, but I know that I'm their prime suspect. Well there's at least one

other guy who also said, oh yeah, I know. I knew they were They followed me for years. They weren't They weren't clever about it at all. Yeah. Yeah, so he's the strongest suspect and that is literally all we know about him. Congratulations. Yeah, not even a first name. No. Uh. And then the final suspect is Arans. This is not an episode about Urons, by the way, tell people who don't know who that is is the original night Stalker again, may even not be the same person, but at least

don't send us see angry emails about that statement. It's another episode for another time that we will maybe eventually sometimes do. But I saw this speculation on a couple of forums and I thought it was kind of interesting and compelling. It's I don't think it actually is, but there's some speculation that Urons traveled to Australia after his

prolific attacks in California in the seventies. His last official attack in California was eighty six, and then the first Mr Cruel attack was eighty seven, so the timeline could match up. You could also explain the weird accents and voices. But although the ms were different, the emmos were very different. Well, I will say, when you look at the confirmed Urons cases,

his victims do get progressively younger as he evolves. As evolves, I hate that term for these as he progresses on his spiral of horrible I like that, but that's a pretty big leap. He's you know, Urons attacked an eighteen year old and then to move directly on too like an eleven year old is a pretty big leap. And again, one of the big things that draws people to the Aran cases is all the documents and the letters that are attached to that case. That there's none of that here.

So I don't think it's a solid theory, but I thought it was an interesting thought experiment. I guess in it. Frankly, I think I think the police know who it is. They just don't have enough evidence, which is really a huge bummer. There's all kinds of speculation that this guy in some way is connected to the school system in the area. You talked about this before. It is the fact that they happen over typically around school holiday. They

happened around school holidays. You actually mentioned that when you were reading the profile. Oh, I don't remember school holidays. And they also, you know, two of the girls went to the same school, so it's possible that it was a teacher from that school. You know, I don't know. I there again in the profile that the Mr Cruel would have shown an interest in children, So there were there was a lot of speculation that he was a teacher of some kind or in the school system in

some way. And again that's why that prime suspect. He was a university lecturer, so people thought maybe that would be the connection. But I don't know. I find this case so unsatisfying. I mean, but but I think that if we're gonna I mean, if there's the he worked in the school system, I don't buy that. I buy what Joe said earlier, which is yeah, because he had so much apparent knowledge of how the investigation process worked on the other hand, the argument could be made that

he was just obsessive, compulsive and needed them to be clean. Um, I mean he cleaned them before and after every single attack. Yeah, but I mean the all of the false leads that he creates. Yeah, that's that's something that makes me wonder. Well, there's some Again we're kind of running into speculation here, but that's got left I know. But for me, you know, they are young girls. I presume that one of the turn ons for the young girl is the purity of it.

So he would want them to be clean before and then he would view them as soiled until he could clean them again afterwards. I mean, I think there's some I'm sure psychologists could get like really deep into this, but I don't I agree. I think that there is some forensic knowledge there, but maybe he was a forensic teacher read about stuff like that. When you think about guys like morticians that have a connection to police departments, they would know that they would glean that kind of

information from if nothing else, they're encounters. I mean, there's there's a whole That's why I always feel let down by this because everybody says he must be involved in the school system. Where there's this whole other realms of ways that he could have been connected and known the things that he seems to have known. I think people think school system because that allows for the time for

the meticulous planning. I mean, he he stalked these families for at least weeks at a time before he carried out the attacks. He learned their their schedules, he knew when they were there and when they weren't there, and timed and planned his attacks so meticulously so that they would just be perfect. I mean, he was obviously watching

the house. He was obviously watching Shannon's house because the parents went to sleep, and then John immediately was like, I can't go to sleep, and stayed up for four and a half more hours obviously, and then a half an hour later he, you know, Mr Cruel, busts in. He sat and waited and watched this house for the majority of the night. I mean, these are like insanely

meticulously planned things. And so I think one of the reasons that people think maybe a teacher is that on that break, he would have had time to actually devote that amount of time. Breaks are early for days and not some I'm talking about nuts. Something well, I guess it is. Also there was a summer break and Christmas break are pretty much the two times that these attacks happen. Does Australia at a time Does Australia have a summer,

summer recess, summer break like we have. They do in Okay, but it would be winter right, well, but they do it in that time, but it's not always in the same time frame we're used to. But that's why, I mean, I I don't think that because he's a teacher, he had all this spare time. He could be a part time janitor for all we freaking know, and he has nothing to do but every week go park next to this house and eat a sandwich and watch and memorize

their actions. I mean, that's that's a random example. But I know a guy who's just had from a wealthy family. He doesn't have to work. There's also other people out there that have jobs that are flexible, they're self employed and they can so I don't. I don't buy the school system thing myself. Yeah, that's where forensics My entire complaint comes from. But I want to I kind of suspect that he must be on the list of the

seven because obviously he stopped. He must have stopped for a reason, he know that, I mean, or he moved, or you know, you could have just been having like a lunchtime conversation with a coworker and just sort of said, yeah, you know, I kind of had these fantasies about about you know, schoolgirls, and the guy says, yeah, too bad, that's the illegal, Fred. But you know you can't go to Thailand friends, Like Thailand's true. It's a hot skipped boyfriend.

I mean, you haven't heard about you haven't heard about pervs going to Thailand. Yeah, maybe he discovered that it's true. Yeah, um, so I'm ready to be done with this. Yeah. Well, I mean, you know, hopefully he didn't discover title and hopefully he just got cancer and died, you know, the worst kind of hopefully that happened. Yeah, but in agony for years. Yeah, I would, I would. I hope that

that will be good. So appropriately, Yeah, we will post some links to some research on our website where you can also download and listen to the show, as well as find links to our merchandise stores. That website is Thinking Sideways podcast dot com. Uh. You can obviously stream us pretty much anywhere. You probably know where you're finding your podcasts. If you have the option to rate and review and subscribe on whatever service you provide or you

get your podcast from, UM, please do so. It was a good rating. You can find us on social media. We've got a Facebook group in a page, so like the page and joined the group. Lots of great discussion happens there. We have a Twitter it's Thinking Sideways podcast. Nope, it's just Thinking Sideways yep. Um. And then we also have a sub audit which their episode discussions and things like that that happened there. Um, and that's Thinking Sideways.

If you have suggestions like this one or anything, you know, general accolades, whatever. Um. We read and respond to every single one of our emails if they take us a couple of days. But you can drop us an email at Thinking Sideways podcast at gmail dot com. And I think that takes care of all of the housekeeping. So all of that having been said, we're going to get out of here and cry for the next four days something like that. Yeah yeah, I got no, I got

no clever puns for this one. What ever? Doing? Bye everybody? Yeah bye guys. Next week