At about 4am, Saturday 22 August, 1987, a family of four were fast asleep in their Lower Plenty home when an unknown man broke in through a lounge room window at the front of the premises by quietly breaking the glass.

The offender was wearing an open-faced navy blue balaclava, yellow surgical or dishwashing gloves and a blue waterproof zip-up jacket beneath a second brown tweed jacket. His close-fitting blue jeans and blue runners were in good condition, but dandruffy greyish brown hair protruded from beneath his balaclava and his oval face was unshaven. Some kind of material was covering his eyes and greyish bushy eyebrows. According to different sources, he was around 178cm to 183cm tall and slim to medium build.

The man was well prepared, with a small black handgun, a 20 cm long kitchen knife with a black handle, at least four sets of handcuffs, red and white nylon cord, a small grey material bag similar to a child’s library bag, three rolls of red, green and blue adhesive electrical tape and a roll of Elastoplast surgical tape.

He went straight to the parents’ bedroom, forced them onto their stomachs and handcuffed their hands and ankles to immobilise them. “Be quiet and don’t move or I’ll hurt someone,” he said.

Mr Cruel then roused the frightened 7-year-old son and 11-year-old daughter from their bedrooms and herded them into their parents’ bedroom. He replaced the parents’ handcuffs with nylon cord, tied the son to the bed and tied up the daughter’s hands. He gagged all the victims with electrical tape and blindfolded the children with the surgical tape.

With his victims under his control, he told them he was going to rob them, demanding cash, a first aid kit, clothes, a shower, food and a shave. “All I want is money, food and clothes. How much money is in the house?” The man asked the father’s clothes size, saying he was about the same size. His voice was gruff, deepish, nervous. He sounded uneducated.

“Get into the wardrobe and sit down. Get into the closet and kneel down.” Mr Cruel forced both parents inside the cupboard and covered them with a blanket. He then seemed to use the bedroom phone to make a call to someone he called ‘bozo’, threatening their children. However, it is unclear whether the call connected.

After shutting and securing the wardrobe with a shoe rack, he went to fetch a radio and turned it loudly to 3KZ. He then led the 11-year-old girl to another room where he assaulted her. “What’s your name? How old are you?” She told him, but he mistakenly called her ‘Kate’.

After making her clean her teeth and bathe, the offender led his victim into the kitchen and ate some cold lamb, biscuits, milk and orange juice. He then took the girl to the lounge room where he assaulted her again, before dumping her in a lounge chair. His breath smelt musty and his hands felt soft.

The offender left the child there while he checked on her parents and brother in the master bedroom. When he returned, he led the girl to another room where he tied her ankles together with nylon cord and made her sit in a seat. “I’m going out now so count to 100 slowly then you can free your parents.” Before he left he picked up the broken glass from the lounge room floor and ripped the telephone from the wall.

When she heard the front door close the victim freed herself and her family. It was about 6am, so the offender had been in the house for two full hours.


On Monday, December 26, 1988, the Wills family had returned to their home at 11 Hillcrest Ave, Ringwood at 10pm. John and Julie Wills put their four daughters to bed, with 10-year-old Sharon in the top bunk. But it wasn’t until 4.50am – an hour before sunrise – that John finally turned out the lights and went to bed. If Mr Cruel had been outside watching since the family returned home at 10pm, he had now been waiting for seven hours. Even then Mr Cruel didn’t rush. Around 30 minutes later, he pushed the key from the inside of the lock onto a piece of newspaper he had pushed through under the door and gained entry via the back door.

He noisily burst into John and Julie Wills’ bedroom and turned the light on.

He was wearing dark blue full-length overalls, like those worn by painters, mechanics, factory workers, gloves and a black balaclava with white and possibly red stitching around the eye and mouth holes. The Wills family estimated his height between 173cm to 180cms, his build as thin to medium and his age as mid-20s to 30s. Contemporary newspaper reports put his age even younger – late teens to early 20s based on the sound of his voice.

He was carrying a bag and a torch and was armed with a knife and dark coloured hand gun with a square grip, a squarish barrel with a silver bit at the end, possibly a pistol.

When Julie Wills started to scream for her kids to get out of the house, Mr Cruel told her to stop and held the gun against John Wills’ head: “You’re not going to be a hero are you?”

Mr Cruel forced the parents onto their stomachs and bound their feet and hands with copper electrical wire, demanding money.

He took $35 from John’s wallet, then demanded to know where the telephone was and left to cut the phone cord with pliers he found in the house. To the working-class Wills he sounded well-spoken, with no discernable accent.

Sharon had woken up when she heard her mother screaming and heard a man’s voice. She lay frozen in bed. She heard the bedroom door open and saw a man with a torch. ‘Sharon’ he called her by name*, turned her over and shone the torch in her eyes, asking if she was awake. When she pretended to be asleep, he left the room, but soon returned and made her get up: “Wake up, get up.”

Mr Cruel went through Sharon’s wardrobe, selecting items of clothing. Then he led Sharon out.

In the hallway he stopped to take John Wills’ brown and black checked lumber jacket from the hat stand and told Sharon to put it on over her nightie. He picked up a shirt from the washing basket and wrapped the other clothes inside. He had been in the house around eight minutes.

He carried Sharon outside to the back porch where she bravely started to scream. He shoved a red ball in her mouth, but took it out when she agreed not to scream again. He told her he wasn’t going to hurt her and would return her in the morning as soon as he got his ransom. He blindfolded her, then picked her up again, put her down and changed direction before putting her into the floor of the passenger seat of a car.

The vehicle smelt clean but sounded old. It had bucket seats, a low glove box and a hump in the middle of the floor with a gear stick. The floor carpet, front door, arm rest and press down lock were all cream coloured.

By this time it have been getting light. When Mr Cruel realised Sharon could see he stopped and taped the blindfold to her head and put a blanket over her.

After travelling for some time the car stopped in a driveway. Mr Cruel carried Sharon into a house and placed her on a bed, replacing her blindfold with eye pads secured to her head with adhesive tape. A radio in the bedroom was tuned to 3TT.

She was carried to the bathroom and made to clean her teeth and bathe. “Brush your teeth.”

Mr Cruel then carried Sharon back to the bedroom where he assaulted her; she heard the 7am news and two planes flying low overhead. Although she was blindfolded, Sharon sensed he had a hairy chest, either moustache or whiskers, possibly an early beard growth.

When he was finished he gave her a glass of milk and a stale vegemite sandwich, leashed her to the bed by her neck then told he was going out. While he was gone, she lifted her blindfold and observed the layout of the room and noticed a wooden tripod and camera at the end of the bed set up for filming.