THE BODIES IN THE BARRELS
IT’S BEEN 20 YEARS SINCE EIGHT DISMEMBERED BODIES WERE FOUND IN SNOWTOWN...
The scene must have been horrifying as police opened barrel after barrel, finding more and more parts of dismembered bodied at various different stages of decomposition.
The sickening discovery, in May 1999, of eight bodies quickly became known as the Snowtown – or Bodies in the Barrels – Murders.
A further four bodies were later tied to the same killers and it became the crime that shocked Australia and stigmatised the small South Australian farming borough of Snowtown, where the bodies were found.
The male and female victims had been tortured and horrifically murdered and, as the police closed in on the killers, the case grew even more repulsive with the realisation that the perpetrators had known, or even been related to, their victims.
The man at the heart of the murders was John Bunting a then 32-year-old former abattoir worker who had most likely suffered abuse as a child.
As a result he was staunchly anti-homosexual and hated anyone he suspected of being a paedophile with a vehement passion. In December 1991 he moved to Salisbury North where he met a new friend, Robert Wagner. The pair started spending a lot of time together
“JOHN... SAID HE COULD DO THIS ALL DAY,” VLASSAKIS TOLD COURT
and Wagner ate up Bunting’s anti-gay and paedophile ideologies.
Bunting also met 14-year old James Vlassakis and started feeding him the same beliefs. The son of a single mother, Vlassakis told the South Australian Supreme Court: “He was like a father figure … I never had.
“When I first met John he was so polite, so well-spoken, so wellmannered. He did not seem to have a nasty bone in his body.”
Aged 15, Vlassakis moved in with Bunting and from there it all began. Bunting showed his young charge his “spider wall” which was a wall covered in Post-it notes naming possible local paedophiles. By 1995 the pair were vandalising these men’s homes.
About a year later Bunting admitted to Vlassakis he and Wagner had killed one of these suspected paedophiles, Ray Davies, detailing the torture they had put him through.
“They sat him in the bathtub, they used a pole … hit Ray Davies around the groin area,” Vlassakis told the court. “[Bunting] said that his balls enlarged – doubled their size.”
Davies was buried in the backyard of Bunting’s home and the body of his friend, Suzanne Allen, joined him soon after. Cross-dressing gay man Michael Gardiner came next, then alleged paedophile Barry Lane. Schizophrenic teenager Thomas Trevilyan’s murder was made to look like a hanging suicide and then a friend of Vlassakis, Gavin Porter, was strangled.
Bunting showed Vlassakis his
body next to a barrel, inside which were the mangled bodies of Gardiner and Lane.
“John said, ‘That’s Barry. That’s Barry’s arse. He also said Michael Gardiner was inside that same barrel. It was just a mess – just ugly,” Vlassakis remembered.
Years earlier, Bunting had beaten a 20-year-old man, Clinton Trezise, to death and buried his body but was not tied to the seemingly random crime at the time.
In 1998 Vlassakis was coerced into killing his half brother Troy Youde. The 21-year-old was bashed, tortured with pliers and eventually strangled to death.
“John turned around and said he could do this all day to Troy, that it was fun,” Vlassakis said in court. “Robert was laughing. John was laughing.”
Fred Brooks, another man Bunting suspected of being a paedophile, was next, followed by Gary O’dwyer, 29, a mentally impaired man who walked the streets.
As with other victims, the gang, which by now also included a new recruit Mark Haydon, cashed in O’dwyer’s welfare payments. In total they racked up $95,000 but greed wasn’t their ultimate trigger.
Bunting called the cash they got the “icing on the cake”. The real reward for the murderers was the act of killing.
Bunting described it as “playing” and he and Wagner even had their own killing song, “Selling the Drama”, by Live, which they would play when they began.
The list of victims continued with Haydon’s wife, Elizabeth Haydon, adding to the tally in November 1998. Her sister reported her missing and this time police interviewed Bunting and Wagner.
Their final killing was done when they were under surveillance in May 1999. Vlassakis’ stepbrother David Johnson was tortured and killed but Wagner was disappointed he hadn’t been able to “play” enough. Instead, when they dismembered Johnson, the court heard they took parts of his flesh, fried them and ate them together.
The remains of Johnson’s body was stuffed into a barrel of acid and was one of those uncovered by police. They also found handcuffs, knives, gloves and items used in the torture as well as DNA evidence which they used to charge Bunting, Wagner, Vlassakis and Haydon.
Bunting, who’s never shown remorse, was found guilty of 11 counts of murder, making him Australia’s worst serial killer. Wagner was found guilty of 10 murders, but admitted to just three. The pair were sentenced to life without parole in 2003.
Vlassakis and Haydon were also jailed: Vlassakis for life with 26 years’ non-parole for killing four victims; Haydon for 25 years with 18 years’ non-parole for disposing of the bodies.
“I know that nothing I can ever say will justify the terrible way these people were viciously murdered and no one could ever deserve what happened to them.
“I hate myself for the fact I have done these degraded crimes,” Vlassakis said.
Nearly two decades later the crimes are still referenced with horror and the name of Snowtown has sadly become synonymous with some of the worst murders in Australian history.