Was The Golden State Killer Also Australia's 'Mr. Cruel'?

MELBOURNE, AUSTRALIA — With the arrest of “Golden State Killer” suspect Joseph James DeAngelo, attention has focused on “Mr. Cruel,” a sadistic criminal who terrorized Australia between 1987 and 1991 and was never caught.

It’s being reported that U.S. investigators recently reached out to Australian authorities to compare the two cases — including the possibility that DeAngelo may have perpetrated both sets of atrocities.

“Mr. Cruel” is the nickname given to an unknown assailant in the Melbourne area who perpetrated a series of home invasions, child abductions, and rapes, one of which ended with the murder of a 13-year-old girl.

As with the Golden State Killer, police say Mr. Cruel was highly intelligent and meticulously methodical in the planning and execution of his transgressions, as well as in how he has eluded capture.

In addition, both the Golden State Killer and Mr. Cruel wore masks, told victims they only wanted to rob them and took long breaks in the course of tormenting their targets — sometimes pausing to eat food in the victims’ kitchens.

The Mr. Cruel crimes occurred within a year of the last murder attributed to the Golden State Killer, leading some observers to think that the GSK relocated to Australia, at least temporarily.

The specific crimes authorities attribute to Mr. Cruel include:

• The home invasion of a family on August 22, 1987, in which Mr. Cruel bound the hands and feet of the mother and father and locked them in a closet, tied the young son to a bed, and raped the 11-year-old daughter.

• A similar invasion on December 27, 1988, wherein Mr. Cruel tied up a married couple and kidnapped Sharon Wills, their 10-year-old daughter. The perpetrator held the girl with tape over her eyes and a ball gag in her mouth. He raped Sharon repeatedly for 18 hours before releasing her in a schoolyard.

• The July 3, 1990, abduction of 13-year-old Nicola Lynas, in which Mr. Cruel took the child to another location and raped her for 50 hours before letting her go.

• The fatal abduction of Karmein Chan, 13, a classmate of Nicola Lynas, on April 13, 1991. Karmein was missing for more than a year before searched found her dead body in a landfill with three gunshot wounds to the head.

CrimeFeed will keep you posted on breaking developments in the Golden State Killer case.

Watch the full series of Investigation Discovery’s The Golden State Killer: It’s Not Over on ID GO now!

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Read more: The Australian, News.com.au, San Francisco Examiner, Unresolved, Herald Sun