William "The Mutilator" Macdonald

Vanishes Without a Clue

On Monday morning MacDonald went back to his job of sorting letters under his alias of Alan Brennan as if nothing had happened. Meanwhile, the headlines in the newspapers blazed MUTILATOR STRIKES AGAIN. The police had received a phone call at 5:30 a.m. and a hoarse man's voice had said, "There's a murdered man in the toilet in Moore Park opposite the Bat and Ball Hotel", and hung up, never to be identified.

The horror that the police confronted was unimaginable. Ernest Cobbin had been stabbed about fifty times. His private parts were missing. They had been sliced off as if by a surgeon. The toilet was awash with blood. In the minds of Sydney's toughest detectives there was no doubt that if anyone had walked in on the Mutilator as he went about his business, he too would have been stabbed to death. A madman was on the loose. No one was safe.

Again, the police couldn't find a clue. There were no fingerprints, not even on the beer bottle. The Mutilator had wiped it clean. No one had seen a thing. The victim was married with two children and had been living in the inner Sydney suburb of Redfern but was living apart from his family at the time of the killing and had apparently taken to the bottle. Outside of his mysterious assailant, Ernie Cobbin didn't have an enemy in the world.

Police staked out public toilets and known derelict haunts. Undercover police disguised as vagrants mixed with the down-and-outs of the many wine bars and hotels that catered for that type of clientele. It all proved fruitless.

Police issued this warning in the hope that it would flush out the mysterious Mutilator: "We believe police pressure is forcing this murderer into the open and he could now strike anywhere at any time. We feel that any man who is alone in a lonely street or park for more than ten minutes could be murdered and mutilated by this maniac. We believe he is a psychopathic homosexual who is killing to satisfy some twisted urge."

As the months passed police had to concede that they were no closer to catching the Mutilator than they were when Alfred Greenfield's body was discovered near the Domain Baths. But where and when would he strike again? They could only wait and see.

After he murdered Ernest Cobbin, William MacDonald's rage had subsided and he went about his life as usual. He read every newspaper story about his exploits but had great difficulty in understanding that he was reading about himself. It was as if another person was doing these dreadful things and MacDonald was merely an onlooker. It frightened him.

He joined in with his work mates in discussions about the mysterious Mutilator and listened to their theories of what type of person he may be. MacDonald would secretly get upset when they referred to the mystery murderer as a queer and a sexual deviate.

For a time, MacDonald thought his workmates suspected him of being the Mutilator, but it was only his own paranoia. The thought of giving himself up to police also crossed his mind, but he had to admit to himself that he enjoyed the killing too much to do anything like that.