Snowtown

by Jeremy Pudney

  SIXTEEN

  John Bunting’s pattern had become clear: he would draw others into his murderous circle, select a victim and kill.

  Clinton Trezise had been first, murdered in 1992. Robert Wagner and Barry Lane had helped dispose of the body. From then on, it was Wagner who became Bunting’s most willing accomplice—the pair murdering Ray Davies in 1995 and Suzanne Allen a year later.

  In late 1997 the killings began to gain momentum. It was late August or early September when Michael Gardiner was killed. Within a month Barry Lane was tortured and murdered, and a few weeks later Thomas Trevilyan was hanged from a tree.

  It was Bunting who selected the victims, motivated at first by his hatred of people he deemed were paedophiles. Both he and Wagner had been abused as children, and the rage remained. So warped, however, was their view of those around them that only two of their five victims were actually convicted paedophiles: Ray Davies and Barry Lane.

  It’s likely Trezise and Gardiner were targeted because of their homosexuality—reason enough in the depraved minds of Bunting and Wagner.

  Suzanne Allen was killed because her knowledge of Davies’s disappearance—combined with her unrequited love for Bunting—made her a risk. Given his erratic behaviour and mental state, Trevilyan too could not be trusted with all that he knew.

  By early 1998, any single motive for murder had made way for Bunting and Wagner’s greed and blood lust. And the killers had discovered an unexpected fringe benefit: stealing money from their victims’ bank accounts. All the victims had been paid government pensions direct into their accounts, so the cash kept flowing. Bunting—with the help of others—would forge documents, alter bank details, even pose as victims, to ensure the welfare payments were not cut off.

  Profit aside, it was the thrill of the kill which Bunting and Wagner craved the most. They loved the power and wanted to feel it again and again. They would label someone a paedophile—in their words, a ‘dirty’—not because it was true, but as some kind of justification for killing. It was Bunting who would choose the victims, and his choices were getting much closer to home.

  Gavin Porter’s life was derailed by his drug addictions. From the age of twenty-three, when his father took him to a health clinic, he had tried to rid himself of the burden. It was a battle he was destined to lose.

  Gavin was born in Victoria in 1967 to parents Carol and Trevor. His mother suffered severe depression after the birth and his parents divorced when he was young. It was Gavin’s doting grandmother who virtually raised him. He was twenty-four when his mother died of cancer.

  A gifted tradesman, Gavin worked as a telephone technician, even spending time working in the Philippines before returning to Australia in 1992. Over the next few years his drug addiction worsened as he travelled to different parts of Australia, drifting from one odd job to the next. By 1994 he was living in South Australia.

  Medical records show that, from December 1994, a doctor in Adelaide’s western suburbs was prescribing Gavin Porter with methadone. A long-time heroin addict, Porter had been admitted to the methadone program, which meant that, upon visiting a registered pharmacy, he was issued with regular doses of the alternative drug. Health department records list Gavin Porter’s last known address, which he gave in early 1998, as 3 Burdekin Avenue, Murray Bridge.

  Burdekin Avenue is a nondescript street lined with government-owned housing. It looks like many others in that part of Murray Bridge, a large country centre about an hour and a half’s drive east of Adelaide.

  By early 1998, 3 Burdekin Ave was home to John Bunting, his de facto wife Elizabeth Harvey, and her four sons—Troy Youde, and James, Adrian and Kristoffer Vlassakis.

  Gavin Porter was a friend of Jamie’s, and was also living at the house. The pair were both drug addicts on the methadone program and had shared various homes in Adelaide in the past two years. The friends, who had moved in with Jamie’s family because they were broke, would spend their days working on Gavin’s car and sleeping off the effects of the various drugs they were taking.

  John Bunting seemed to pay little attention to the pair, but resented their drug-taking, referring to them as ‘waste’.

  James Vlassakis can’t remember the exact date of Gavin Porter’s murder, but it was sometime in the five days after 3 April 1998—the last day Porter visited his methadone doctor.

  In his tell-all interview with police, Vlassakis explained that on the evening of the killing he had taken his younger brothers to the local drive-in cinema. Vlassakis saw Porter out the front, working on his car, as he left. When he returned home, he was surprised to see that Robert Wagner had come to visit:

  I walked inside, said hello to Mum and that. I remember Robert and John sitting in the lounge and there was Chinese on the table there—on the coffee table…I spun out that Robert was up there.

  After a brief conversation, Bunting told Vlassakis to come with him to the garage. Wagner followed.

  I can’t remember the conversation in the shed, but basically I think we were in there a little bit and John lifted up all these things and showed me Gavin.

  Under the old lounge cushions and sheets was the body of Gavin Porter. His knees still raised, he had obvious bruising around his neck where he’d been strangled to death.

  James Vlassakis stood terrified as Bunting and Wagner showed them the body of his murdered friend. Bunting had always talked of killing people, incessant ravings which had seen Vlassakis grow fearful of the man he had once seen as a father figure, but never before had Vlassakis been sure that Bunting was capable of murder, that the stories he told were true.

  At this moment, Vlassakis knew Bunting was a killer; Wagner too. Vlassakis feared he was to be their next victim—perhaps this was why he’d been brought to the shed and shown his best friend dead on the floor:

  I remember I was pretty scared at the time of seeing this, and I remember I looked that he [Bunting] was looking —the way he was looking at me. But I can’t remember any words now. I know he was talking to me.

  Later Bunting told Vlassakis the story of Gavin Porter’s murder. How Porter had been asleep in his car when Bunting and Wagner made their move. How Wagner looped a rope around Porter’s neck and began to strangle him, Porter fighting back, stabbing Bunting in the hand with a screwdriver before Bunting leaned on the victim’s chest to squeeze out his final breath.

  A few days after the murder Bunting arrived home with a large, black plastic drum. Again he summoned James Vlassakis:

  I just remember getting the barrel out of the car and going into the shed with it. John uncovered Gavin Porter…moved things around in the shed to make a bit of room. There was talking. I can’t remember exactly what the talk was.

  The barrel was laid on the ground…he was placed in there head first. Gavin Porter was put in the barrel and the lid was put on.

  Bunting then manoeuvred the plastic barrel into a position alongside another drum. It was almost identical. As he lifted the lid, Bunting peered inside. ‘They’re rotting very nicely,’ he said.

  The other barrel contained the bodies of Michael Gardiner and Barry Lane.

  True to form, John Bunting had procured another accomplice: James Vlassakis was now being enlisted into a bizarre group of killers, some of whom had then been killed themselves. He was too scared, perhaps too weak, to do anything but play along.

  Vlassakis helped shift Gavin Porter’s car to Robert Wagner’s house. He accepted Porter’s bankcard from Bunting and began stealing his murdered friend’s money. Vlassakis—on Bunting’s orders—told Porter’s friends false stories to explain his disappearance; most were told Porter had moved back to Victoria.

  Back in the times when James Vlassakis had trusted, even loved, John Bunting, he had confided in him about the sexual abuse he had endured as a child. One of the people James said had molested him was his older half-brother, Troy Youde.

  Youde, also a regular drug user, had never been liked by Bunting. He was now an obvious target. At the tim
e of his murder, between 25 August and 8 September 1998, he was still living in Murray Bridge with his mother, brothers and Bunting.

  Youde’s was the first of the murders in which James Vlassakis took part. It is also the first for which he later gave police an eyewitness account:

  I was—I sleep in the lounge room. I was woken up and handed a club…Robert Wagner was there and John Bunting was there. I was given the handcuffs, I was given a club, which was a piece off a lounge, and I was taken down to the bedroom where Troy was. As soon as John said ‘now’, they all started hitting.

  Troy stood up, got up, was screaming out…‘Jamie, what are you doing?’ because he seen me there. He jumped on the bed…jumped on the bed into the wall, backed into the wall. Robert and John just flew in. Troy put his hands up to stop—stop the bats and that. John just kept hitting him, telling him to get down on the floor or something.

  John told me ‘put the handcuffs on’—not just ‘put the handcuffs on’ but yelling at me…

  Overwhelmed, Jamie left the room:

  As I came back down the hallway, John and Robert were shuffling Troy into the bathroom, which was next door to the bedroom, and they sat him down in the bathtub.

  To my understanding he wasn’t going to be murdered, he was just going to be bashed and have a bit of a talk-to. John said he wanted to have a talk to him. Then there was—they were in the bathroom and they were talking to him. I think there were a few hits.

  John asked him [Troy] to call him ‘Lord Sir’. John asked him to call Robert ‘God’…Then he was asked to give me a name. I think Troy said something along the lines of ‘Moses’ or something. I think it was John or Robert that said that was a Jew’s name and then smacked him in the head…and then he said ‘Master’.

  Mum was down in Adelaide that day…Adrian and Kristoffer were with Mum.

  John said to Troy—to be good and that he’d let him go, and not to go to the police. He said that he would take him for a drive and drop him off somewhere.

  I remember walking down the hallway again sometime…I couldn’t handle it…

  His head bloodied from the repeated blows, Troy Youde was tortured as he sat handcuffed in the bathtub. John Bunting then Robert Wagner punched him again and again in the testicles; he was told to ‘shut up’ as he screamed in pain. Wagner crushed one of Troy’s toes with pliers—first on the joint, then on the toenail.

  Next Bunting produced a small tape recorder, forcing his victim to recite statements into the hand-held device:

  Mum, I can’t handle it in this house no more. It’s all around me. I’m going to see the earth before there’s none left. Wish me luck.

  Leave me the fuck alone. I’ve had enough. Just leave me alone. Everyone just leave me alone.

  You’re going to stay the fuck out of my life.

  Troy was forced to repeat more than twenty sentences, some in an angry, abusive tone directed at his mother and younger brothers. Once his victim was dead Bunting planned to play the recordings, via telephone, to family and friends. This would give the impression that Troy was still alive and had merely run away.

  As James Vlassakis watched the tape recordings being made, he realised Bunting wasn’t going to let Troy go. His brother would be murdered like all the others. James fled the bathroom, but Bunting called for him to return. It was time, Bunting said, for Troy to apologise.

  So I went in there and kneeled—kneeled down to Troy. I started saying to Troy, ‘What you done to me’—the look on Troy’s face was, like, fear. Troy said to me that he did say sorry before and he meant it, and he was sorry.

  Troy Youde had a sock stuffed in his mouth and silver duct tape wrapped around his face and head. The bashing continued. As he worked himself into a frenzy, Bunting played music in the background—his favourite album, Live’s Throwing Copper.

  The final act would be Troy’s strangulation. Wagner tied blue nylon rope around the victim’s neck, leaving a loop at the back. He slid a jack handle into the loop and began twisting. The rope gradually tightened.

  I was looking through the crack of the door and I could see Robert in there doing that with Troy, and then John pulled me into the bathroom. He said, ‘No, come in, come in. No, you’ve got to be here for it.’

  During the earlier bashing, however, Wagner had injured his hand and the twisting required too much force.

  …it seemed to me that it was taking too long and it was—it was hurting and that. So I grabbed the bar and the rope broke. He started to slouch over towards us, losing consciousness but still conscious. John turned around and said to Troy that this was fun and we could do this all day. Troy sort of looked at John with a—a—a look. I can’t explain the look.

  Robert Wagner retied the rope and strangled Troy Youde to death as John Bunting kneeled and stared his victim in the eyes.

  Once Troy Youde was dead, his body was wrapped in garbage bags and carried to the outside garage. Youde’s body was placed in almost the same position Gavin Porter had laid in only a few months before.

  Later, Vlassakis listened as his mother and brothers were told false stories to account for Troy’s sudden absence:

  Mum returned home that day…John told Mum that there was a big fight with Troy and that he went and took off; said there was a massive fight between myself, Troy and him.

  The following day Bunting and Vlassakis travelled to Adelaide, driving to a northern suburbs scrap yard named Paramount Browns. Bunting purchased a black plastic barrel, similar to the others, for $25.

  John told me I had to help him. Troy was placed into the barrel in a similar way to Gavin Porter, and then John said that the barrel was shorter than the rest—the other two which contained Barry, Michael and Gavin—and he couldn’t put both of Troy’s feet into the barrel.

  John Bunting laughed, even explained his technique, as he used a knife to slice one of the feet from Youde’s body.

  Afterwards he [Bunting] said it was my first [murder] and everything like that; asked me how I felt about it—things like that, you know—and I just agreed with him; said to him I enjoyed it. I didn’t. Kept the lie going for him because, you know, I thought, well, if he can do that to my brother, he could do it to me.

  SEVENTEEN

  There was a time when the friendship between John Bunting and Mark Haydon had become strained. Haydon had drifted out of Bunting’s posse as Robert Wagner stormed in.

  By late 1998, however, Haydon had resumed his place in the group.

  Mark Haydon was living in a house in the northern Adelaide suburb of Smithfield Plains which he shared with his wife, Elizabeth, and her two sons. Elizabeth Haydon’s sister, Gail Sinclair, and Gail’s teenage son, Fred Brooks, were staying in a rumpus room out the back.

  John Bunting and Robert Wagner were frequent visitors to the Haydon household. The men would spend hours together, playing computer games, talking and watching TV. Bunting also had another reason to visit: he was having an affair with Gail Sinclair. He would explain his long absences from Murray Bridge by telling his de facto, Elizabeth Harvey, that he’d taken work as a truck driver.

  Now back in the fold, Mark Haydon was given an important task. John Bunting, Elizabeth Harvey and her sons were moving out of their Murray Bridge house. They were shifting only a few doors down, but there was nowhere for the bodies in the barrels to be stored.

  It was late at night when Bunting and Wagner shifted the macabre load into a furniture truck and drove to Mark Haydon’s house. The remains of Barry Lane, Michael Gardiner, Gavin Porter and Troy Youde, sealed inside three black plastic barrels, were carried into Haydon’s garage.

  From the day he was born—7 March 1981—Fred Brooks was destined to lead a disadvantaged life. Perhaps symbolic of this was the fact that his parents had met in a government welfare office. They had separated while Fred was still a toddler and he spent much of his childhood in foster care.

  At fifteen Fred went to live with his father, Fred Brooks senior. Welfare authorities had tracked him down a
nd asked him to give his son a home. Soon afterwards Fred’s mother, Gail Sinclair, was back on the scene and the couple reunited. Their son in tow, they travelled through various parts of Australia.

  Some two years after it rekindled, the relationship again soured. Fred and his mother set off for Adelaide, moving into a ramshackle rumpus room at the back of a house owned by Gail’s sister, Elizabeth Haydon.

  Fred’s mum found a new boyfriend too: John Bunting.

  Fred Brooks dreamed of joining the Air Force, so the seventeen year old enrolled in a local school in the hope of finishing Year 10. He even found a girl he liked, buying her flowers and a necklace for her birthday. They were just friends, though. Later she spoke to police:

  Fred was always friendly, he would never hurt anyone. I do know he had a lot of problems. I know he had problems with his mum and the guy that was living there with his mum [Bunting]. He told me that his mother treated him like shit; they didn’t cook for him or anything like that. He told me that the guy was trying to be like a father to him, but he was not Fred’s father and he didn’t like him because of that. He was always saying that he wanted to move…

  On the night of Thursday, 17 September 1998, Fred Brooks vanished. He’d returned from a school careers day, excited at his prospects of joining the Air Force, and told his mum he was off to celebrate with his friends.

  By the following night, Gail Sinclair began to worry something had happened to her son:

  When he hadn’t returned by Friday night, I reported him missing. He hadn’t used his bank account or anything like that…

  I didn’t have a contact number for him. I rang around his friends that I thought he was out with and they said they hadn’t seen him, and he hadn’t gone out to a party with them, so I panicked and reported him missing.