Much of the public discourse surrounding Victoria's cold cases suffers from a form of analytical siloing. Commentators typically look for Mr Cruel's identity strictly among known sex offenders, while a different group of people search for the Tynong North serial killer among other known murderers or suspects previously identified by police. People have ended up locked in different lanes and relying entirely on established, legacy data.
However, as these cases cross the 40-to-50-year mark, those original files and police comments that are relied on must be viewed for what they are: meticulous records of what has not helped to find the offenders.
To break this deadlock, my methodology shifts the focus away from old case notes and onto the physical infrastructure surrounding the crime scenes - an environmental factor contemporary investigators never addressed. Through this lens, I have identified a clear, common denominator that has gone entirely unnoticed in fifty years of analysis.
Seeking these hidden intersections is a standard historical and investigative technique, not a fringe theory. After all, one of the primary ways investigators link crimes to a common offender is by comparing recurring patterns. The more unusual and unique a repeating behavior is, the more certain we can be that those crimes were committed by the exact same hand.
Ted Bundy posed his victims' bodies in sexually provocative ways. Gary Ridgway, the Green River Killer, left strange items on their bodies, like fish, and wine bottles. Then there was Joseph DeAngelo, the Golden State Killer, the man the FBI once thought might have been Mr Cruel. He would turn on the TV in his victims' homes and drape a towel over the screen to create subtle mood lighting.
Mr Cruel’s vice was high-voltage electricity. He liked things that hummed. Nearly every one of his attack locations, and all of his victim release and disposal sites, were associated with high-voltage power. But he wasn’t the only serial offender with this strange attraction.
