THE FIGHT FOR JUSTICE
FIFTY YEARS ON, A CRIME JOURNALIST UNEARTHS NEW CLUES IN ADELAIDE’S EVIL FAMILY MURDERS
People ask why I dredge up the past, why I don’t just leave it alone,” says crime author Debi Marshall. “But some stories must be written, and this is one of them.” Digging deep into the dark world of paedophiles and sordid sex rings, Marshall has produced Banquet: The Untold Story of Adelaide’s Family Murders. The ninth book by the Walkley Award-winning journalist, it’s billed as the “definitive expose” into one of Australia’s most notorious cold cases
– the drugging, rape and torture of young men and boys by a suspected network of high-profile sexual predators trawling Adelaide in the late ’70s and ’80s.
Despite five brutal murders, only one man has ever been convicted – Bevan Spencer von Einem, sentenced to life for killing Richard Kelvin, 15. Abducted, drugged, sexually abused and tortured for five weeks, the teenager’s body was discovered in July 1983 dumped in the Adelaide Hills. Like police, Marshall believes von Einem didn’t act alone. “Von Einem may think he’s a hero in his own story. He’s not. He’s a coward of the highest order, and cowards need someone else to affirm them,” she says.
Banquet gives new details about the author’s meeting with von Einem in Port Augusta Prison in 2018, when the 75-year-old killer put on a charm offensive. “He’s a pure psychopath who turns on the charm like a hot water tap. He said, ‘If I knew you were coming, I would have worn aftershave.’ But on my second visit, I upset him with a question, and out of the blue came this presence of evil,” says Marshall. Banquet follows on from the journalist’s gripping Foxtel podcast and TV series Frozen Lies, which saw decades-old suppression orders lifted on five associates of von Einem. Among them, Lewis Turtur, who admits to letting von Einem bring drugged-up boys back to his home and allowing several men “to take turns”. Marshall now wants more suppression orders lifted against other persons of interest including a “wealthy businessman” from Adelaide’s eastern suburbs. “This is a campaign, not a story. Anyone possibly involved in crimes this heinous shouldn’t be protected by suppression orders, particularly when only one person has been made accountable,” states Marshall.
With claims there could be as many as 150 victims, Banquet unearths disturbing new cases from men who have reached out following Frozen Lies. Among them is “Nicholas” who was drugged at a gay club in 1980, only to wake up three days later
“She has never accepted his death” MARSHALL
in a strange bedroom and told to leave by a man who said, “Count yourself lucky.”
Another, Graeme Shipp, says he was chased in 1982 when he was 12 by three men in a car with a loud exhaust – a similar sound to what witnesses reported when Kelvin was abducted. And Jade, who was living on the streets in the ’80s and well aware of von Einem’s coterie, says he was picked up and taken to a house above a shop. In the bedroom were just a grandfather clock and mattress. “Jade had an inkling the clock hid a video. I strongly believe these boys were photographed, probably videoed. It wasn’t just the act of killing them. It was a nice little enterprise. We’re talking about days before the dark web … before mobile phones,” says Marshall.
The 62-year-old author also shares a heartbreaking exclusive interview with Lydia Stogneff, the mother of victim Peter Stogneff, 14. The teen disappeared after skipping school in August 1981. His charred, dissected remains were found 10 months later on a farming property north of Adelaide. “Lydia believes someone known to the Family lured Peter into a car. The saddest thing is she has never accepted his death. [Peter had a distinctive chipped front tooth, which has never been found.] She’s already exhumed him once, and wants to do it again to extract DNA,” says Marshall, who wants a Royal Commission into the Family Murders and the paedophilia and sexual sadism subculture that existed in Adelaide decades ago, “before the batons of grief are passed to yet another generation”.
After all, she knows firsthand what it’s like to get justice. In 1992, her partner Ron Jarvis was shot dead over a drug debt. It took 22 years before his killer Stephen Roy Standage was finally caught, partly due to the journalist’s determined efforts to find him. “Don’t ever let anyone tell you justice isn’t sweet. It really is sweet to get a victory and in Ron’s case, a 48-year sentence,” says the soon-to-be grandmother (daughter Louise Houbaer is a TV newsreader in Hobart).
But does she honestly think Adelaide’s Family Murders can be solved after all this time? “Yes, I do. It’s that old saying ‘Someone somewhere knows something’. Sooner or later everyone sits down to a banquet of consequences.”