My daughters don’t know his name, but they quietly carry my fears of Mr Cruel

October 5, 2026 — 6:00pm

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There is a macabre kinship among women who grew up in Melbourne in the late ’80s and early ’90s. Alongside the usual rituals of early adolescence – finishing primary school, submitting to first bra measurements at the hands of grizzled Myer matrons – we obsessively war-gamed our own kidnappings, preparing for what seemed a terrifying inevitability.

This was not the result of overly elastic imaginations: the daily papers and nightly news bulletins were dominated by stories of girls our age, taken from their homes by a balaclava-clad man wielding a knife and gun. A journalist dubbed the perpetrator Mr Cruel, though police later said Mr Cool was a more accurate descriptor, given his steely confidence and meticulously planned attacks.

For my generation, the Mr Cruel crimes unfolded in two chapters: first as frightened children, and now as frightened parents. The ongoing mystery of his identity means we can’t consign him to history. My children have quietly absorbed the fact that I’ve never felt I can protect them, or that home is always a safe haven.

Mr Cruel didn’t target insolent teens with spidery Maybelline lashes, but girls in late primary and early high school who occupied the........

© Brisbane Times