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From The Desk - Connection or Coincidence? Karmein Chan and Bung Siriboon. · Real Crime with Adam Shand

• 0:05
  Speaker 1: Approche Production. Welcome to Real Crime with Adam Shann. I'm
• 0:12
  Speaker 1: your host Adam Shand and this is my Friday feature
• 0:15
  Speaker 1: from the desk. One of the fascinating things about true
• 0:19
  Speaker 1: crime is how easily an assumption can become accepted as fact.
• 0:23
  Speaker 1: And secondly, when faced with a coincidence, it's always wise
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  Speaker 1: to accept it until there are solid facts to support
• 0:30
  Speaker 1: a more sinister connection. To connect crimes that have only
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  Speaker 1: a passing similarity would be to potentially dismiss evidence that
• 0:38
  Speaker 1: doesn't fit. A good detective will always assess each crime
• 0:43
  Speaker 1: on the merits of the evidence, rather than working backwards
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  Speaker 1: from a theory or worse, a hunch. Take the disappearance
• 0:50
  Speaker 1: of schoolgirl Boom Sira Boon in Melbourne in twenty eleven.
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  Speaker 1: How can a young girl just vanish on her way
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  Speaker 1: to school and no one sees a thing. For the
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  Speaker 1: last fourteen years, Bung Sirah Boon's family has wandered just that.
• 1:04
  Speaker 1: I've umerous people ask me whether mister Krule was responsible
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  Speaker 1: or whether Boom's disappearance is connected to the abduction and
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  Speaker 1: murder of Carmen Chan. Thirteen year old hasn't been seen
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  Speaker 1: since she was last sighted at Baroni's have confirmed there
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  Speaker 1: has been one sighting since she's.
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  Speaker 2: Finding their teenage girl are dwindling with a thirteen year
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  Speaker 2: old now missing for four days. How was she being abducted?
• 1:27
  Speaker 2: Why was she abducted?
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  Speaker 1: They said that my investigation will open a Pandora's box
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  Speaker 1: and asking me who's put me up to this? At
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  Speaker 1: first glance, it's easy to see why. Both girls were
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  Speaker 1: thirteen years of age, both were of Asian background, and
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  Speaker 1: both disappeared in Melbourne. But once you move beyond those
• 1:47
  Speaker 1: superficial similarities, the evidence begins to point in very different directions.
• 1:53
  Speaker 1: Carmen Chan was abducted in nineteen ninety one from inside
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  Speaker 1: her family home during a violent, organized home invasion. Her
• 2:01
  Speaker 1: younger sisters were tied up and Carmen was taken away
• 2:05
  Speaker 1: before later being found murdered. Boong Sireboun disappeared while walking
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  Speaker 1: to school. There's no evidence of a home invasion, no
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  Speaker 1: known offender entering a house, no body, and no established
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  Speaker 1: sequence of events that resembles the Carmen Chan case. In fact,
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  Speaker 1: there's no way of being totally sure that Boong is
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  Speaker 1: in fact deceased. That doesn't prove the cases aren't connected,
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  Speaker 1: but it also doesn't prove evidence that they are. I've
• 2:35
  Speaker 1: been reminded of this repeatedly while researching my Creating Mister
• 2:39
  Speaker 1: Kruele series. I put the link to that series in
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  Speaker 1: the show notes. Over the years, around ten cases have
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  Speaker 1: been attributed to Mister Krule in books, documentaries, and thousands
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  Speaker 1: of media reports. Yet when I examined the original investigations,
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  Speaker 1: I found the evidence linking several of those cases to
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  Speaker 1: mister Krule is actually less certain than many people believe.
• 3:01
  Speaker 1: In fact, there is little hard evidence linking Carmen's case
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  Speaker 1: to the others in the Mister Cruele spree. As you'll
• 3:08
  Speaker 1: see in Creating Mister Krule, there are other theories that
• 3:11
  Speaker 1: have never been fully eliminated, and yet Carmen is always
• 3:15
  Speaker 1: listed as a victim of mister Krule. In other words,
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  Speaker 1: a theory can gradually become accepted wisdom simply because it's
• 3:23
  Speaker 1: repeated often enough. It doesn't make it true. It's like
• 3:28
  Speaker 1: the Hunt for Mister Krule. Investigators from the Spectrum Task
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  Speaker 1: Force pursued a theory that one individual was responsible for
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  Speaker 1: all the crimes with similar facts from nineteen eighty five
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  Speaker 1: to nineteen ninety one. That is, those that involved the
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  Speaker 1: abduction and sexual assault of young girls. They created a
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  Speaker 1: profile of an offender who would be likely to have
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  Speaker 1: committed all those crimes. Not only did they fail to
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  Speaker 1: link them to one offender, but they've never sold any
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  Speaker 1: of the crimes. Now, veterans of the task force concede
• 4:00
  Speaker 1: there were strong evidentiary links between only two or three
• 4:04
  Speaker 1: of the cases they looked. Yet the image of mister
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  Speaker 1: Krule still persists in the public imagination, as if he
• 4:10
  Speaker 1: were a real person, which I argue he never was.
• 4:14
  Speaker 1: When I say this, people look at me as if
• 4:16
  Speaker 1: I'm mad, and I stand to be corrected, but I
• 4:19
  Speaker 1: don't think it's going to happen anytime soon. Don't get
• 4:22
  Speaker 1: me wrong. Investigators should always examine possible links between serious crimes.
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  Speaker 1: In fact, they'd be criticized if they didn't. But examining
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  Speaker 1: a possibility is very different from proving one. As journalists
• 4:36
  Speaker 1: and as consumers of true crime, we have to be
• 4:39
  Speaker 1: careful not to confuse coincidence with evidence or repetition with proof.
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  Speaker 1: That's why I remain cautious about linking Bungsira Booon with
• 4:48
  Speaker 1: Carmen Chan, just as I'm cautious about attributing every unsolved
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  Speaker 1: child abduction to mister Krule. Sometimes crimes are connected, sometimes
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  Speaker 1: they're not. The challenge is resisting the temptation to fill
• 5:01
  Speaker 1: the gaps with assumptions simply because they make for a
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  Speaker 1: neat Still, each case must be looked at individually. In
• 5:08
  Speaker 1: true crime, evidence must always lead the narrative, not the
• 5:12
  Speaker 1: other way around. Make sure you check out Creating Mister
• 5:15
  Speaker 1: Crule in my Adam shann collection podcast, and also please
• 5:19
  Speaker 1: follow me on Facebook and subscribe so I can continue
• 5:22
  Speaker 1: this independent crime journalism. The links are of the show notes.
• 5:26
  Speaker 1: This has been Adam Shanned from the Desk for Real Crime.
• 5:29
  Speaker 1: Thanks for listening. He's the predator who changed how Melbourne
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  Speaker 1: families lived. A shadow we intruder who abducted young girls
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  Speaker 1: from their homes in a terrifying crime spree.
• 5:41
  Speaker 3: Blindfolded, gagged and wrapped in plastic garbage bags, she was
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  Speaker 3: taken from her Ringwood home and assaulted. Detective said the man,
• 5:49
  Speaker 3: armed with a pistol at weading a dark colored balaclava,
• 5:52
  Speaker 3: was intent on capturing the child. Polis are convinced the
• 5:56
  Speaker 3: man has offended before. He went to great lengths to
• 5:58
  Speaker 3: conceal his identity and maybe prepared to kill to avoid detection.
• 6:04
  Speaker 1: He released them after hours in captivity. Later it became days, Carmen,
• 6:11
  Speaker 1: this of Feverit Jess, you had to come.
• 6:14
  Speaker 3: Home and married.
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  Speaker 1: And then one child Carmen Chan never came home. Please
• 6:23
  Speaker 1: this is my daughter, Oh my lover, Gods for my family.
• 6:33
  Speaker 1: It was the biggest manhunt in Victoria's history. A monster
• 6:37
  Speaker 1: was on the loose. The only certainty was the man
• 6:40
  Speaker 1: dubbed Mister Krule would strike again.
• 6:43
  Speaker 3: Yes, what concerns is as the lifelihood of this offender
• 6:46
  Speaker 3: will start again.
• 6:48
  Speaker 1: And then the attacks suddenly stopped. In a new podcast
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  Speaker 1: Creating Mister Krule, we uncover the secret forensic evidence that
• 6:56
  Speaker 1: overturned all the assumptions in the investigation.
• 6:59
  Speaker 2: Someone had the mouse to at loost hang on to
• 7:02
  Speaker 2: those sort of bodily through It's knowing that you're not
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  Speaker 2: sure there will be processes, there will be a science
• 7:08
  Speaker 2: involved to get to the bottom of this. But they
• 7:10
  Speaker 2: didn't know that.
• 7:11
  Speaker 1: The Mister Cruel investigation remains one of Australia's most baffling
• 7:15
  Speaker 1: cold cases. No one has ever been held accountable for
• 7:19
  Speaker 1: a string of child abductions and a murder. We've always
• 7:23
  Speaker 1: got in the back of the mind that this person
• 7:25
  Speaker 1: may strike again, and that's a constant burden and it's
• 7:28
  Speaker 1: extremely disappointing that we haven't solved it at this stage.
• 8:06
  Speaker 1: Thanks for listening to this episode and supporting this story.
• 8:09
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• 8:12
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