MacDonald was born in Liverpool, England in 1924. Between 1961 and 1962, MacDonald terrorised Sydney with a string of gruesome murders before being apprehended while working as a porter at Melbourne's Spencer Street railway station on 13 May 1963. His modus operandi was to select his male victims at random (mostly derelicts), lure them into a dark place, violently punch and stab them with a long bladed knife dozens of times about the head and neck, and finally sever their genitals. Due to his gruesome style of murdering victims, he was given the nickname "the Mutilator" by the media.