Snowtown: The Bodies in the Barrels Murders *Re-Issue*

Meshel Laurie (0:00)

The following podcast contains accounts of child sexual assault. Listener discretion is advised.

This is Australian True Crime with Meshel Laurie. Big news in the world of Australian true crime this week with the release on parole of James Vlassakis, the youngest member of the Snowtown Bodies in the Barrels gang. In May 1999, South Australian police investigating the disappearance of Adelaide woman Elizabeth Hayden and acting on a tip-off entered a disused bank in the tiny hamlet of Snowtown, a couple of hours north of Adelaide. Upon entering the bank, they discovered the dismembered remains of eight people in barrels of acid. One of them was indeed Elizabeth Hayden. From there, the investigation moved quickly and within weeks, police had arrested John Bunting, Robert Wagner and Elizabeth Hayden's husband Mark Hayden. Days later, they arrested 19-year-old James Vlassakis. Bunting was the leader of the gang. He presented the killings to the others as a cleansing of society of pedophiles and homosexuals. There's an argument that James Vlassakis was another victim in this story. He was 14 when his mother started a relationship with Bunting. He'd been molested by his older brother, Troy Youd, who became one of the gang's victims. And Vlassakis confessed to his involvement in the crimes during his first interview with the police, before he was even suspected of taking part. As of his upcoming release, Vlassakis will have served 27 years in custody.

It's hard to do this story justice in summary, so we're reissuing a conversation from some years ago with journalist and author Jeremy Pudney, who wrote the definitive book on the subject, Snowtown, The Bodies in Barrels Murders.

This is Australian True Crime. We acknowledge the traditional owners of the land on which this podcast is created, the Wurundjeri Woi Wurrung people of the Kulin Nation.

Jeremy Pudney (1:56)

I was on the day the Snowtown story broke. Well, the second day really because it was secret for the first day. But I went there when the wave of media arrived, and so I was there for I think it was a couple of weeks.

Meshel Laurie (2:09)

I often look for books written by journalists when it comes to these big cases in Australia. Right now, there are a couple of cases where I'm waiting and hoping that a journal, a crime writer will be working away on something because I want that kind of eye. And I think that's because this book of yours is just one of my favorite true crime books. It's so detailed, but it also informed me about the context of the community that all of these people, the perpetrators and the victims came from. Otherwise, it's just like a case of, it seems like a case of crazy people.

Jeremy Pudney (2:49)

Yeah, look, I think it was, the context was important because in some of these cases, it would be easy to blame the victims in some way for what happened to them. And the reality is that that's unfair, obviously.

And you kind of have to understand where these people have come from and the kind of family lives they've endured and the upbringings they've had. And to apply a rational, normal mindset to their situation would be wrong because one of the reasons that these killers were able to go on for as long as they did in an undetected way or a semi undetected way towards the end was because victims weren't reported missing or they weren't reported missing for a long time. And that was because they came from fractured, unusual backgrounds. And so that was no fault of their own. But what happened to them went undetected. And then what happened to others went undetected as a result.

Meshel Laurie (3:36)

Yeah, but it also explained to me how the perpetrators came to be a group because that always fascinates me how these groups of people find each other. Sometimes it's even couples. How do these people find each other? We often ask ourselves, your book helped me to understand how in some of these cases, well, in all of these cases, how John Bunting, at least initially, was a person that they were so happy to have in their lives. How he represented a father figure to a number of them, how he represented for the first time in their lives somebody they could rely on, somebody who wasn't taking advantage of them sexually, somebody who was fighting for them. Can you explain that to us, please? Can you explain that context to us?

Jeremy Pudney (4:19)

Yeah, sure. I mean, the interesting thing about John Bunting is that his background wasn't that different in terms of trauma and troubles to some of the other people that he then coerced into his circle of killers, if you like. But he had this way of endearing himself to people, of making them think that he would help them, save them, protect them, and earn their trust. And then what he did, I think it would be fair to say, is got them to a point of no return where they were implicit in what had gone on, either by helping after the fact early on, or by taking part in murders, or luring people to their deaths. And so once he had you, he had you. And he was also a terrifying person. I mean, clearly he's a terrifying person.