Mr Cruel a list of intruder suspects who murder JonBenet Ramsey

Keith Moor, Herald Sun wrote:
A FORMER Melbourne University lecturer has admitted he is the prime suspect in the unsolved Mr Cruel child abduction and murder cases.

The convicted sex offender is one of seven suspects the Victoria Police Spectrum taskforce was unable to rule out as being Mr Cruel.

A sophisticated secret profile of the seven men — prepared with the help of FBI experts — revealed each of them had the capacity and willingness to commit the horrendous attacks attributed to Mr Cruel.

The Herald Sun has been given the names of all seven Mr Cruel suspects, and previously confidential details about them.

But it has agreed to a formal request by Victoria Police not to identify them.
Karmein Chan on the front page of the Herald Sun on April 15, 1991.

The former lecturer who admits he is the prime Mr Cruel suspect, who the Herald Sun is calling Bill, claims police have wrongly accused him of murdering Karmein Chan, abducting Sharon Wills and Nicola Lynas and committing offences against other children more than 25 years ago.

Bill, 75, last week told the Herald Sun he knows former Spectrum taskforce head David Sprague considers him more likely to be Mr Cruel than any other suspect.

RELATED: RETIRING DETECTIVE SAYS MR CRUEL CASE STILL HAUNTS HIM

He revealed Spectrum detectives grilled him for 12 hours about the Mr Cruel crimes.

The Victoria Police Spectrum taskforce was formed a few weeks after the abduction of Karmein, 13, in April 1991 and spent almost three years chasing Mr Cruel.

When it was disbanded — without Mr Cruel having being charged — it produced dossiers on the seven suspects it couldn’t eliminate, known as the Sierra Files.

Instructions were issued to Victoria Police detectives in 1994 that if another child was abducted then the seven men named in the Sierra Files were to be immediately arrested and questioned.

The Herald Sun recently tracked down and spoke to three of the men identified as Mr Cruel suspects in the Sierra Files, including Bill.

A fourth suspect died in 2015, another married a Canadian woman and moved to Canada in 2014 and neighbours of a sixth suspect said he rarely visited his Harcourt home as he spent a lot of time in Melbourne, but that he was still alive.

No trace could be found of the seventh Mr Cruel suspect, who lived in Glen Iris at the time of the murder of Karmein 25 years ago. He would now be 67 if he is alive.

Bill, as well as admitting he was aware he remains the prime Mr Cruel suspect, last week also told the Herald Sun his Thornbury home was raided by police following the disappearance of Siriyakorn “Bung” Siriboon, 13, in 2011.

She was last seen in her uniform heading to school from her home in Elsie St, Boronia, on the morning of June 2 that year.

Bill said he was questioned over the Boronia disappearance, but was able to convince police he wasn’t involved.

He also denied being responsible for any of the crimes attributed to Mr Cruel.

“I’m not sure why they got onto me in the way they did,” Bill said last week.

“The police have called several times when there’s been a sex crime of some kind and they go through their list of previous offenders.

“They throw the net out when something happens. I’ve had interviews and all of them have been fine.

“That little girl that disappeared up in Boronia, they sort of came to see me.

“Luckily I was giving a seminar in Melbourne at the time and gave them all the minutes of the meeting to show where I was.”

Bill claimed he was at his brother’s wedding at the time of one of the Mr Cruel attacks, but told the Herald Sun he couldn’t remember which attack.

He was jailed for 10 years in the 1970s after pleading guilty to attacks at knifepoint on six girls and young women in their homes over a 25-month period from April 1972.

Bill was a senior lecturer in Melbourne University’s arts faculty at the time and was married with three children.

His lawyer told the Victorian County Court that all of his client’s victims were tied up, threatened with a knife and assaulted.
A poster appealing to the public for help of the abductions os Sharon Wills, Nicola Lynas, and Karmein Chan.

He said one — a 15-year-old girl — had her clothes cut off with scissors before she was indecently assaulted.

Bill’s barrister said a Melbourne University arts student, 18, was raped by Bill after he entered her home “by subterfuge” and bound and gagged her.

The County Court was told Bill, then of Hampton, had a sexual fantasy about tying up women and raping them.

One of the incidents police believe may have been one of the first Mr Cruel attacks involved a 14-year-old girl who was abducted from her Hampton home in 1985.

She was tied, gagged and blindfolded before being driven to a vacant building site and assaulted.

The scared and scarred schoolgirl was dumped at the nearby Moorabbin Bowl on Nepean Highway at 2.10am, nearly five hours after being kidnapped.

A psychiatrist who spoke to Bill after his arrest over the series of attacks in the 1970s said Bill admitted having disturbing sexual fantasies.

“He has had this sexual fantasy about tying up women and raping them since his late teens, but only in the last couple of years has he carried them out,” the psychiatrist told the court.

Bill pleaded guilty to three counts of indecent assault, one of common assault, one of assault with intent to rape and one of rape.

He last week told the Herald Sun he had rehabilitated himself since getting out of jail.

“I did my time and I have recovered my life pretty well. I’ve got a new family,” Bill said.

“I’ve rejuvenated myself as a writer and a construction designer and ran a business I’ve just retired from.”
THE SIERRA FILES: SEVEN SUSPECTS WHO CAN’T BE ELIMINATED

VICTORIA Police formed the Spectrum taskforce four weeks after the April 13, 1991, abduction of Karmein Chan.
David Sprague, head of Operation Spectrum, holding poster of supposed Mr Cruel victims Sharon Wills, Nicola Lynas and Karmein Chan.

They did so because they believed the Chan case was the latest in a series of attacks committed by an unidentified man who the media dubbed Mr Cruel.

The 40-strong taskforce spent almost three years and $3.8 million chasing him.

It was disbanded in January 1994, without Mr Cruel being charged over what is still a shocking series of unsolved child abductions.

Spectrum detectives interviewed more than 27,000 people and examined 30,000 houses suspected of being used by Mr Cruel to hide his victims.

They ended up with seven Mr Cruel suspects they were unable to eliminate.

The Spectrum detectives created dossiers on each of the seven men, calling them the Sierra Files.

A small number of senior police in elite squads were then given access to the Sierra Files, with the instruction that if another child was abducted all seven should be arrested and questioned.

One of the seven was the prime suspect.

He was the man Spectrum detectives considered to be more likely than the others to be Mr Cruel — although their research suggested any of the seven could be Mr Cruel and all of them had the sick traits necessary to commit the type of horrendous crimes Mr Cruel was responsible for.

No details were ever made public about the seven Mr Cruel suspects — until today.

The Herald Sun recently obtained their names.

While, at the request of Victoria Police, it is not identifying them, it is revealing previously secret information about all seven.

A Victoria Police document written after the Spectrum taskforce was disbanded in 1994 carried details of the Sierra Files and instructions to a select few members of elite squads on what to do if another child was abducted.

Following the scrapping of Spectrum, those squads had taken responsibility for investigating Mr Cruel’s previous unsolved crimes as well as any future attacks bearing his trademarks.

“During the term of Operation Spectrum, a number of suspects were identified and subsequently interviewed in regards to that investigation,” the 1994 document said.

“Some of those suspects, for a myriad of reasons, could not be totally eliminated from the inquiry.

“Those suspects, after profiling, are deemed to have the propensity to commit similar type offences.

“The Spectrum taskforce compiled dossiers on each of these people and codenamed them ‘Sierra Files’.

“There are seven such files in existence.”

The document listed who should do what in the event of a Mr Cruel-type attack occurring at any time in the future.

It said each of the seven Mr Cruel suspects named in the Sierra Files should be arrested as soon as possible to enable them to be questioned about the latest incident.

“Each Sierra File elimination crew will consist of four crime squad detectives,” the document said.

“These members are to be armed, wearing police tabards and are to communicate situation reports to the officer in charge of the Special Response Squad for the information of the field commander hourly.”
NEW EVIDENCE BRINGS MR CRUEL CASE TO THE FOREFRONT

NEW evidence about the crimes of murdering child abductor Mr Cruel has emerged 25 years after he kidnapped his last known victim.

The Herald Sun is today revealing previously secret information about Mr Cruel’s sickening attacks.

It has been provided with fresh details about his assaults on an 11-year-old girl in 1987, Sharon Wills, 10, in 1988 and Nicola Lynas, 13, in 1990.

Those details are from what the three girls and their family members told police in their witness statements when being interviewed after the attacks.

Police know less about what he did to his last known victim, Karmein Chan, because her being murdered meant they never got to speak to her.

The Herald Sun has pieced together the new and previously released information to paint the most accurate and comprehensive picture yet of Mr Cruel and his crimes — which ended with the abduction of Karmein, 13, on April 13, 1991, and her subsequent murder.

Some details have been left out at the request of Victoria Police.

Mr Cruel is suspected of at least 12 attacks on children over a 10-year-period.

The four which police are most convinced were the work of Mr Cruel are the attacks on the 11-year-old girl in 1987, Sharon Wills in 1988, Nicola Lynas in 1990 and Karmein Chan in 1991.

jameson wrote:
I don't see how you can put him up as a suspect in the4 Ramsey case. He is in Austrlia, you can't put him in the states, nevermind in Boulder, CO on the night of the murder. He apparently wasn't into leaving notes, nothing I saw on your page. He used surgical tape, not black duct tape which may (or may not) be part of his fantasy. Your guy bound the parents so they would be tortured knowing what was happening to their daughter. If not, he took the child somewhere else. Sorry, I don't think your guy is our guy.

Does Australia put their DNA evidence into CODIS?

A fourth suspect died in 2015, another married a Canadian woman and moved to Canada

One of the incidents police believe may have been one of the first Mr Cruel attacks involved a 14-year-old girl who was abducted from her Hampton home in 1985.

She was tied, gagged and blindfolded before being driven to a vacant building site and assaulted.

The scared and scarred schoolgirl was dumped at the nearby Moorabbin Bowl on Nepean Highway at 2.10am, nearly five hours after being kidnapped.

The four which police are most convinced were the work of Mr Cruel are the attacks on the 11-year-old girl in 1987, Sharon Wills in 1988, Nicola Lynas in 1990 and Karmein Chan in 1991.

Mr Cruel is suspected of at least 12 attacks on children over a 10-year-period.