A young girl was abducted and police named a suspect fast. Too fast for some

Karmein Chan, 13, went missing from her family home on April 13, 1991.

On a cool Melbourne evening, a D24 call of a possible abduction went out on police radio. When no one answered, Sergeant Rod Phillips decided to head to the Templestowe house for a look. “I didn’t know it was going to be the crime of the century,” he said.

“The call said it was 10 minutes old and was the abduction of a child.”

Before Karmein’s abduction, police had been investigating a series of similar sexual assaults that may have been committed by an offender dubbed “Mr Cruel”. There was 10-year-old Sharon Wills in 1988 and 13-year-old Nicola Lynas in 1990.

Now Karmein had gone missing, and police believed Mr Cruel was their suspect.

As the first police officer at the scene, Phillips couldn’t understand why.

In this special two-part Naked City episode on the notorious child snatcher who terrorised Melbourne streets, John Silvester speaks to Phillips, a former sergeant who was on the scene at Karmein’s abduction.

Phillips still wonders whether detectives were too quick to believe Karmein was taken by Mr Cruel and whether they should have been looking in another direction, far closer to home.

John Silvester is a columnist for The Age. He has covered Melbourne’s crime beat and justice system since the 1970s, winning numerous accolades including three Walkley Awards and six Melbourne Press Club Quill Awards. He has written or co-authored more than 30 books including the Underbelly series, which was made into a TV series.

John Silvester lifts the lid on Australia’s criminal underworld. Subscribers can sign up to receive his Naked City newsletter every Thursday.