Karmein Chan

The murder of Karmein Chan is an Australian child murder case in which a 13-year-old Chinese-Australian girl was abducted at knifepoint from her home in Templestowe, Victoria, during the night of 13 April 1991. Karmein's body was discovered at Edgars Creek in the suburb of Thomastown on 9 April 1992; the prime suspect for her abduction and murder is an unidentified serial child rapist known as "Mr Cruel", who had abducted and sexually assaulted a minimum of three prepubescent and adolescent girls in circumstances markedly similar to Karmein in the years prior to her abduction.

Investigators believe Karmein may have been killed by Mr Cruel because she had either seen her abductor's face, or because he feared the child could identify him.

The manhunt to identify and locate Karmein's abductor and murderer remains one of the largest in Victoria's history. Despite intense publicity and repeated efforts to identify and locate her killer, her murder remains unsolved.

Background Childhood Karmein Chan (Chinese: 陳嘉敏 ) was born on 5 November 1977 in Melbourne, to parents who had separately migrated from Hong Kong to Australia the year prior to her birth. Her parents, John and Phyllis Chan, had become engaged shortly after their arrival in Australia when both were in their early twenties. Both parents held strong work ethics, and by the time Karmein entered her teenage years, the Chan family owned and operated a lucrative Chinese restaurant and a Chinese takeaway, with both parents regularly working up to eighteen hours per day.

Karmein was the eldest of three daughters born to the couple, with sisters Karly (b. 1981) and Karen (b. 1983) completing the family. She spent her early years living in the suburb of Bulleen before the family relocated to Serpells Road in the suburb of Templestowe. All three sisters received a private education at the prestigious Presbyterian Ladies' College. Their parents ensured all three of their daughters were fluent in both Chinese and English, with Chinese being the language predominantly — though not exclusively — used within the household.

By 1991, Karmein was a year-eight student at Presbyterian Ladies' College, where she was known as a bright and diligent student with ambitions to become a barrister.

13 April 1991 On the morning of 13 April 1991, Chan attended her regular Saturday tennis lessons at the Camberwell Tennis Centre in Balwyn North, where she had begun lessons the previous year. Her mother later drove her daughter to the Bulleen Plaza shopping centre, where the two ate breakfast. That afternoon, friends of the family drove Karmein and her sisters to the Lower Plenty Chinese restaurant their parents operated, where the sisters ate an afternoon meal with their mother before an employee drove the sisters home at approximately 6:30 p.m.

According to Karly and Karen, their sister then read stories to them before all three sisters watched a "television special" about Marilyn Monroe in Karmein's bedroom.

Kidnapping At approximately 8:40 p.m., Karmein and Karly encountered a man dressed in a green tracksuit and wearing either a dark blue or dark green balaclava wielding a large knife in the family hallway; this individual asked the girls: "See this knife? Where's your mum and dad?" Both were forced into the bedroom at knifepoint, where the intruder discovered Karen hunched and whimpering behind the bedroom door. All three sisters were threatened with the knife before the intruder bound and gagged the two younger girls and forced them into a wardrobe as he held Karmein by her hair, saying to the younger sisters, "I won't hurt you." He then barricaded the wardrobe with a bed

Investigators later determined Karmein was led across the family garden and tennis court, through a security gate and onto Serpells Road, where she was almost certainly forced into an unknown vehicle parked close to the family home.

Investigation The Victoria Police launched an intense search to locate Karmein. All available resources were devoted to the manhunt, with numerous officers assigned full-time to locate the child. The search involved 160 police officers conducting house-to-house inquiries across eastern Melbourne in the hope of obtaining eyewitnesses, the search of nearby properties and locations of interest, and the questioning of all known sex offenders within Victoria and New South Wales by detectives trained to investigate sexual crimes against minors. This link was released to the media twenty-four hours after the commission of the abduction, with investigators also rapidly determining the graffiti left by the abductor upon one of the family vehicles had likely been an attempt to distract police attention from this true motive for kidnapping Karmein. an offender who invariably struck on school holidays and who subjected his victims to repeated sexual assaults throughout their captivity but who had released each of his victims after their abuse. This individual is believed to have been aged between 30 and 50 years old, between and , of medium build, with fair or sandy hair and with a "small pot belly".

The degree of planning this perpetrator evidently devoted to the commission of his crimes suggested to investigators he had observed the movements and habits of his victim and her family for days or weeks prior to committing his abduction. This theory was corroborated by police reports received from several of the Chans' neighbours of a man in a parked sedan they had observed watching the bus stop close to the Chan household which Karmein used to travel to and from her private school on successive mornings in the weeks prior to her abduction. The investigation to identify and apprehend this individual by Victoria Police was given the name Operation Challenge, although the day before Karmein's abduction, police had begun scaling down their investigation.

As prior to the abduction, Mr Cruel had always released his victims after up to fifty hours of captivity, detectives initially remained optimistic that Karmein would be released. Forty investigators were assigned full-time to the task force, and a reward of A$100,000 was also offered for information leading to her safe recovery and the apprehension of the offender. More than 10,000 public tips were received, 30,000 homes searched and 27,000 people — including doctors, teachers, journalists and policemen — interviewed. All leads of inquiry failed to bear fruition and by June 1991 — the reward sum by this stage having increased to A$300,000 for the apprehension of Mr Cruel — Karmein's mother had begun practicing a Chinese custom of standing at her front gate every midnight and ringing bells as she called her daughter's name in the hope her eldest child would return home.

Discovery On 9 April 1992, Karmein's body was found in a section of wasteland close to the intersection of Mahoneys Road and High Street at Edgars Creek in the suburb of Thomastown by a man walking his dog, after he spotted a human skull buried in the landfill. A search by police uncovered several vertebrae and a jawbone.

Shortly after Karmein's identity was confirmed, her mother and sisters conducted a Buddhist ceremony at the site where her body was found. and the task force ultimately investigated over 10,000 public tips and searched over 30,000 properties. Seventy-three individuals were also arrested on suspicion of Karmein's murder, although all were ultimately cleared of involvement.

Aftermath Karmein Chan was laid to rest on 16 May 1992 following a service at the Bulleen Baptist Church officiated by the Reverend Bill McFarlane. Her funeral was attended by over eight hundred mourners, including pupils and teachers from the Presbyterian Ladies' College and all members of the Spectrum Task Force assigned to capture her murderer.

A 1997 inquest into Karmein's death ruled that the child met her death through foul play but was unable to identify the person or persons responsible for her death. At the conclusion of the inquest, Karmein's mother publicly appealed for her daughter's murderer to give himself up, stating her primary concern is the safety of young girls "wherever [they] may be, and especially in their homes."

The offender was never brought to justice and is not known to have kidnapped or assaulted any further victims. A small number of detectives hold doubts as to whether Karmein was actually a victim of Mr Cruel—referencing the execution-style method of her murder as being indicative of a crime of retribution as opposed to a sexually motivated murder. On the 25th anniversary of Karmein's abduction and murder, a spokesman for the Victoria Police announced that the reward for information leading to the identity and conviction of her murderer had increased from the original sum of A$100,000 to A$1,000,000. A separate A$200,000 reward relating to the abductions and non-fatal assaults committed by Mr Cruel also remains in existence.