Hi, crime junkies. I'm your host, Ashley Flowers. And I'm Britt.

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 a hundred 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, a soon-to-be murderer

that would prey 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. 31, 32, 33, 34, 35, 36. 97. 97, 98, 99.

When Eliza reaches 100, 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 6 a.m.

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 4 a.m. to a man in a balaclava standing over him

...