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Stolen Bus Blacks Out 11 Towns

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On This Day – September 2, 1954
A stolen, 23-passenger bus ploughed into a 22,000-volt power line in the outer suburb of Bundoora at 9.30 p.m. today, blacking out three mental hospitals and plunging 11 towns over 400 square miles into darkness.
The driver narrowly escaped electrocution as power lines fell around the bus after it had capsized.  The impact was so great that the front wheels were ripped off, the engine hurled from the bus and the top four feet of the heavy power pole snapped off.
The thief scrambled from the glass-littered cabin and fled. Doctors and nurses at the Bundoora, Larundel and Mont Park mental hospitals worked by lantern light, candles and torches to sooth and tend frightened patients during the night State Electricity Commission gangs do not expect to restore power until 6 pm tomorrow.
An SEC spokesman said the thief chose the worst possible pole to crash into. The pole carried the main feeder from the Thomastown power station.
Poultry farmers fear heavy losses due to the failure of lights and incubators.
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Murder of Karmein Chan

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ON THIS DAY ……. 13th of April 1991

25 years

Karmein Chan was born on the 5th of November 1977, and was murdered in Templestowe on this day in 1991. Chan was abducted on 13 April 1991 and subsequently murdered. While both her parents worked at their Chinese restaurant in Eltham, an individual abducted Karmein from the family home in Templestowe. Before leaving, he spray painted “Pay up Asian Drug Dealer, More and More to Come” on a vehicle in their front yard. Police suspect this was a ruse to distract them from the killer’s real motive. Karmein’s mother made an emotional plea on television for Karmein’s return. The investigation was hampered by the use of an old school photo of Karmein, which may not have represented her true appearance at the time of her abduction. Her badly decomposed body was found a year later in Melbourne’s northern outskirts in Edgars Creek, Thomastown. This crime is believed to have been committed by a man aptly known only as Mr. Cruel, who despite much effort on the part of Victoria Police, has never been brought to justice. On 14 December 2010 Victoria Police announced that a new taskforce had been established about eight months earlier following substantial new intelligence. The new Taskforce has been reviewing both the Spectrum Taskforce investigation and some new leads that have come in the last year or so.

 

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Fear of Talk Led to Tragedy

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ON THIS DAY ……. 18th March 1953

Florence O’Gorman aged 34, of Thomastown, was committed for trial for the murder of her son on this day in 1953. The body was found wrapped in a newspaper on a vacant allotment at Thomastown. In an alleged statement to police, O’Gorman said she struck the child three or four times with a brick and left him in a paddock, because she feared people would talk about her, a single woman with a newly born son.

 

 

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Stolen Bus Blacks Out 11 Towns

, ,
On This Day – September 2, 1954
A stolen, 23-passenger bus ploughed into a 22,000-volt power line in the outer suburb of Bundoora at 9.30 p.m. today, blacking out three mental hospitals and plunging 11 towns over 400 square miles into darkness.
The driver narrowly escaped electrocution as power lines fell around the bus after it had capsized.  The impact was so great that the front wheels were ripped off, the engine hurled from the bus and the top four feet of the heavy power pole snapped off.
The thief scrambled from the glass-littered cabin and fled. Doctors and nurses at the Bundoora, Larundel and Mont Park mental hospitals worked by lantern light, candles and torches to sooth and tend frightened patients during the night State Electricity Commission gangs do not expect to restore power until 6 pm tomorrow.
An SEC spokesman said the thief chose the worst possible pole to crash into. The pole carried the main feeder from the Thomastown power station.
Poultry farmers fear heavy losses due to the failure of lights and incubators.
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Murder of Karmein Chan

, ,

ON THIS DAY ……. 13th of April 1991

25 years

Karmein Chan was born on the 5th of November 1977, and was murdered in Templestowe on this day in 1991. Chan was abducted on 13 April 1991 and subsequently murdered. While both her parents worked at their Chinese restaurant in Eltham, an individual abducted Karmein from the family home in Templestowe. Before leaving, he spray painted “Pay up Asian Drug Dealer, More and More to Come” on a vehicle in their front yard. Police suspect this was a ruse to distract them from the killer’s real motive. Karmein’s mother made an emotional plea on television for Karmein’s return. The investigation was hampered by the use of an old school photo of Karmein, which may not have represented her true appearance at the time of her abduction. Her badly decomposed body was found a year later in Melbourne’s northern outskirts in Edgars Creek, Thomastown. This crime is believed to have been committed by a man aptly known only as Mr. Cruel, who despite much effort on the part of Victoria Police, has never been brought to justice. On 14 December 2010 Victoria Police announced that a new taskforce had been established about eight months earlier following substantial new intelligence. The new Taskforce has been reviewing both the Spectrum Taskforce investigation and some new leads that have come in the last year or so.

 

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Fear of Talk Led to Tragedy

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ON THIS DAY ……. 18th March 1953

Florence O’Gorman aged 34, of Thomastown, was committed for trial for the murder of her son on this day in 1953. The body was found wrapped in a newspaper on a vacant allotment at Thomastown. In an alleged statement to police, O’Gorman said she struck the child three or four times with a brick and left him in a paddock, because she feared people would talk about her, a single woman with a newly born son.

 

 

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Chopper Read

Mark Brandon “Chopper” Read was born on the 17th November 1954. Read was one of Victoria’s more colourful former criminals who wrote a series of semi autobiographical and fictional crime novels. Read was born to a former army father and a mother who was a devout Seventh-day Adventist. He was placed in a children’s home for the first five years of his life. He grew up in the Melbourne suburbs of Collingwood, Thomastown, Fitzroy and Preston. He was bullied at school, claiming that by the age of 15, he had been on the “losing end of several hundred fights” and that his father, usually on his mother’s recommendation, beat him often as a child. Read was made a ward of the state by the age of 14 and was placed in several mental institutions as a teenager, where, he later claimed, he was subjected to electroshock therapy. Read was described variously as witty, charismatic, sadistic and frightening. Read has claimed to be involved in the killing of 19 people and the attempted murder of 11 others. However, many of his associates in the underworld say he is prone to making up numbers to increase his own notoriety and the sales of his books, and Read himself has stated several times he would “never let the truth get in the way of a good yarn”. In an April 2013 interview with the New York Times, Read claimed “Look, honestly, I haven’t killed that many people, probably about four or seven, depending on how you look at it.” Read has stated on many times that the Geelong Gaol was the one Goal he did not want to go back to. Reads cell was on the third level no. 101

 

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