What is going on to crime fans? I'm your host Teef. And I'm your host Daphne. And you're listening to Going West. Hope everybody had a very fun and very safe Halloween.

Heathen I had a party where recording this in advance. So I don't know how the party went, but it was probably really fun.

It probably kicked ass. I'm dressing up as Naja from what we do in the shadows or I did. And he is Rock and Roll Frankenstein.

Yeah, Rock and Roll Frankenstein. So we're gonna have a party. We have like a vintage photo booth that we rented. And it's gonna be super fun.

So I'm really excited about that. And again, no, it was super fun. It was super fun. You're, it was awesome.

So yeah, thank you guys for tuning in to Going West. You may be nursing a hangover today. Not sure.

Yeah, but that'll just give you time to listen to Going West, right?

Yeah, today we actually have an Australian case. And this is only the second international case that we have covered on Going West.

We covered one Canadian case. If you can really call that technically international. And I don't know, I just, we were gonna do this as a Patreon episode,

but I decided that I thought it would be a good Going West episode. So here we are. Yeah, here we are, the second international case.

Well, guys, if you're looking for more Going West episodes, you can head on over to our Patreon, which is patreon.com slash Going West podcast.

We've got a ton of ad free episodes for you guys to binge. But for now, let's get into today's case.

Alright, guys, this is episode 249 of Going West. So let's get into it.

In the late 1980s and early 1990s, a masked man began snatching children from their homes in Melbourne, Australia.

With crime similar to that of a fictional boogie man, the area was petrified with fear. And to this day, police have never identified him.

This is the story of Mr. Cruel.

Melbourne, Australia, or Melbourne, Australia, is the largest city in the southeastern state of Victoria, situated on the coast of the Tasman Sea.

Now, according to its tourism website, Melbourne is known for its eclectic nightlife, tantalizing food and wine, and dynamic art scene. And it's home to about 5 million people.

It was nicknamed by locals as the most livable place in the world. But the illusion of this otherwise safe haven for families was shattered in 1987, when a brutal home invasion and the resulting assault of a young girl set off a disturbing chain of events in the area, culminating in a devastating murder.

Early on the morning of Saturday, August 22, 1987, in an eastern suburb of the city called Lower Plenty, a family was asleep late one night when a masked man slinked into the house through the living room window.

No one in the family heard a thing as he walked upstairs with a knife and woke the parents, threatening that he would stab them if they screamed, ran, or tried to call the police.

To ensure that they couldn't, he cut every phone line in the house, and he instructed them to lie side by side down on the bed as he tied both of their hands and feet, using a sailors not to secure them, and then blindfolded them and gagged them with tape.

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