Snowtown

by Jeremy Pudney

  James Vlassakis was fixing the gearbox in his car when John Bunting called out to him; he had some ‘goodies’ down the road and needed a hand. Vlassakis assumed the ‘goodies’ were stolen property, and followed Bunting down the street to the Murray Bridge house they had just moved out of. The place was mostly empty.

  At the front door, Bunting paused. He told Vlassakis that Fred Brooks was inside, having been tricked into coming to Murray Bridge. Vlassakis was told to play along.

  Brooks was standing with Robert Wagner in the same bedroom where Troy Youde had been taken prisoner. The pair was playing a ‘game’ with a set of handcuffs, taking it in turns to put them on, then use the key to take them off. Bunting and Vlassakis joined in and a pair of thumbcuffs—which hold a person’s hands together by the thumbs—were brought out.

  Vlassakis sensed what would happen next:

  The handcuffs were placed on Fred once again, and then the thumbcuffs were placed on him as well, and Robert just grabbed Fred around the neck with his arm. He held him for a while and then John said, ‘Let him go, otherwise you’ll kill him.’ Fred started changing colour in the face, and Robert was squeezing pretty hard.

  John was telling Fred to be good, basically, like not to scream, not to yell, not to punch.

  James Vlassakis had met Fred Brooks a few times before, always during visits to the Haydon house. Bunting had referred to Fred as a paedophile, a ‘dirty’, who needed to ‘go to the clinic’. Vlassakis suspected that Fred Brooks was not a paedophile—the teenager seemed all right to him. A little slow, but harmless.

  John Bunting, however, had made up his mind.

  Fred was then walked or pushed by Robert and John, shuffled into the bathroom. He was told to get into the bath in the same—same way as Troy [Youde] was.

  Bunting told Fred Brooks he would be asked ‘a few questions’. He was ordered to address Bunting as ‘Lord Sir’ and Wagner as ‘God’. As he lay in the bathtub, restrained by handcuffs and thumbcuffs, the seventeen year old was stripped of his jeans and shirt, and then savagely bashed. There were repeated blows to his groin.

  I’m not sure if John grabbed my cigarette or Robert’s cigarette, but he stuck a cigarette…a whole butt up his nose. He also put a cigarette butt, or probably a bit more of a cigarette, into the ear, his right ear. As it was there, John was blowing into the ear to keep the flame hot.

  Bunting grabbed a tape recorder and, as he had done during the torture of Troy Youde, forced his victim to recite statements directed at his mother and other family and friends. Again Bunting planned to play them to people on the telephone, to give the impression that Fred had vanished of his own free will.

  As Bunting delivered a line, it was repeated by Fred:

  Hi Mum, it’s me, Fred. I’m on me way to Perth. I’ve met a pretty nice chick. I will be back some time after Christmas.

  Yeah Mum, you’re just a user, you just want my money. I don’t want to see you again. I’m going to Perth. Bye.

  I’m fine. I don’t know why you’re fucking ringing me. Fuck off and leave me the fuck alone.

  Bunting quizzed him about banking details and wrote down his answers.

  As Wagner crushed one of the victim’s toes with pliers, John Bunting set up his latest torture device. The ‘Variac’ was an electrical apparatus, designed for use in metallic electroplating. Once it is plugged into mains power, a current flows along the Variac’s cable, then out through two metal alligator clips. A circular dial controls the amount of electricity released—anything between 0 and 260 volts.

  As Bunting explained the workings of the Variac to a terrified Fred Brooks, the alligator clips were attached to his body—one to his penis, the other to one of his testicles. The first shock was at about 20 volts.

  Fred started to shake in the bathtub, clenched—the pain—he didn’t actually scream or anything but you could tell…

  As he was tortured with repeated electric shocks, Fred was questioned about a girl Bunting believed he had molested. The molestation was almost certainly a figment of Bunting’s imagination—justification for his latest kill.

  John Bunting was asking him questions about being a dirty—Did he touch the girl? What did he do?—Fred was denying it. He said it never happened, it’s not true…and that’s when John did torture on him.

  Eventually, John asked him after a while and he said to John that he did. To me it just looked like—Fred was just saying that it happened to stop [the torture].

  John often listened to the cassette afterwards and you could—as it played you could hear John asking Fred something and you could hear a punch from Robert into Fred, because Robert punched Fred while the cassette was being made, and after that John loved playing it.

  Fred’s ordeal was far from over. He suffered cigarette lighter burns at the hands of Robert Wagner, who then produced party-style sparklers. Wagner pulled one of the wire sparklers from its packet, driving it down the eye of the victim’s exposed penis, and then igniting the top. It burned down into Fred’s flesh and the horrific act was repeated once more.

  Further electric shocks were administered by Bunting. Fred was told not to scream, and complied until it was no longer possible, at which point a stocking was stuffed into his mouth and tape wrapped around his head.

  The final act of barbarity perpetrated on Fred Brooks was having water injected into various parts of his groin and legs. Like everything else they had done to the helpless teenager, Bunting and Wagner delighted in this.

  It’s unclear how long the abuse lasted before the end finally came for Fred Brooks. It’s also unclear exactly how he died, although the medical evidence suggests he asphyxiated on his gag. For his part, James Vlassakis can’t recall:

  I remember seeing Fred on the floor, wrapped up in garbage bags with his knees in the air. I remember cleaning up the bathroom with John…the sparklers, I think there were gloves…His clothes that he was wearing were put into garbage bags.

  Bunting kept Fred Brooks’s identification, bankcard and mobile telephone. His body was carried to the boot of an old car in the back yard. The car was eventually towed away by Mark Haydon and Fred’s body dumped on the floor of Haydon’s garage until another barrel was bought.

  In the days after Fred Brooks’s murder, a series of events orchestrated by John Bunting created the impression that Fred had run away. The first was when Bunting and Mark Haydon returned from a trucking job, telling the boy’s concerned mother they had seen him at a local service station. They claimed Fred had been in a car with a woman, and that he’d been aggressive, and ‘off his face’ on speed.

  Gail had also called her son’s mobile telephone, only to be greeted with a strange, abusive message. It was his voice but it seemed out of character.

  Three days after Fred vanished, there was a telephone call to the Haydon household. Elizabeth answered the phone; she recognised Fred’s voice as she listened to the barrage of abuse.

  After consulting Fred’s mum, Elizabeth called the local police station, telling an officer the teenager was no longer missing. It appeared he’d left home of his own free will. Having been opened only nine days before, the police missing persons file for Fred Brooks was marked ‘no longer active’.

  EIGHTEEN

  John Bunting’s urge to kill had become overwhelming. It had been only weeks since the last murder and he was again searching for prey. He was cruising the streets of Murray Bridge when he spotted the next victim. James Vlassakis was with him:

  Myself and John Bunting, we’d be driving around Murray Bridge, either up to Woolworths [supermarket] or to the main street to do other things. We would see Gary O’Dwyer walking down the road all the time. He was always walking everywhere, and John would make comments about Gary—how he looked like Troy [Youde].

  He would say to me…‘Look at that fag—you know he looks so much like Troy.’

  I didn’t really want to have a bar of it, but when you’re in that situation with John, you had to play his game. We never ac
tually met [Gary] or anything like that. This went on for…I think all the time I was up at Murray Bridge.

  Gary O’Dwyer lived next door to friends of Vlassakis, which is how they came to finally meet:

  I think I was coming out to my car and going, and he started talking to me over the fence, and asked me my name and how I was and things like that. He came across as very slow to me…that’s what I would say because of the way he spoke.

  John asked me to introduce myself to Gary, and get to know him a little and—and see what he was on, like a pension, and see if he had a family or anything like that. If John asked me to do something, I would.

  Gary O’Dwyer was eighteen months old, holding his own bottle and sitting on the counter at the child welfare office when Maureen Fox first laid eyes on him. In 1971 this abandoned baby boy became the ninth foster child taken in by Maureen and her husband, Dalmain. Others had not wanted Gary because he was epileptic and small for his age. This kind couple not only gave Gary a home but intended to adopt him. However, when Maureen’s husband died suddenly in 1974 it was no longer possible.

  Despite the setback, Maureen considered Gary to be her son and raised him at the same time as one other foster son and five foster daughters. Gary was closest to Debbie and Denise. The family lived in the Adelaide Hills, initially on a farm.

  As one of his foster sisters would later describe him, Gary was a ‘lost soul’—a loner. Despite the love of his family, he began to lead a nomadic existence from the age of fifteen, sometimes living on the streets and becoming embroiled in petty crime. Once caught, he was always honest with police; Gary had never been much of a liar.

  On Christmas Day 1994, Gary O’Dwyer was struck by a hit-and-run driver as he walked along a main road south of Adelaide. Left for dead, he lay on the side of the road until noticed by a truck driver the following morning. Unconscious for a week, Gary had steel plates inserted into his shattered skull and left leg. After six months of rehabilitation, it was clear that he would never make a full recovery. Brain damage resulted in memory loss and an inability to perform basic functions such as arithmetic. He walked with a permanent limp.

  By 1997 Gary had moved into a rented house in the town of Murray Bridge. His only income was a disability pension paid by the government, although he received a compensation payout as a result of the accident. In part due to the lasting effects of his injuries, Gary became a heavy drinker and drug user. His petty crime continued—often out of need rather than greed—and he struggled to control his temper. More than once an angry outburst landed him in further trouble with the law.

  Another of Gary’s weaknesses was his trusting nature. Loneliness made him quick to befriend others, sometimes strangers, and just as quick to trust them. There were occasions when Gary would give a new ‘friend’ the key to his home, then return to find he’d been robbed.

  It was 26 October 1998 when Maureen Fox last saw her foster son. He was twenty-nine years old:

  He was walking down Swanport Road [Murray Bridge]. He was dressed in black pants and a black jumper, he had been shopping and was carrying it over his right shoulder…walking back towards his home.

  I couldn’t stop to speak to him. I never saw or heard from him after that date.

  Within weeks of that final sighting Maureen Fox spent time in hospital, too unwell to check on Gary. At one point there was a call from Gary’s lawyer asking where he was, although he didn’t say why.

  Maureen was worried about her troubled foster son, but it never occurred to her to report him missing:

  I didn’t want to be seen as the interfering mother and considered that Gary was capable of looking after himself and would contact me in his own due time. I never thought anything sinister had happened to Gary.

  James Vlassakis was driving along a Murray Bridge street as he saw John Bunting’s car approaching. The lights flashed, so he stopped. As Bunting wound down his window, Vlassakis could see Robert Wagner in the passenger seat.

  Bunting quizzed Vlassakis on his plans for the night, and then told him to ‘put off’ the party to which he was headed.

  He said something like, ‘What about Gary [O’Dwyer], can we do Gary? Tell him you’ve got a couple of friends that want to come for a drink. We’ll go up to the pub now and grab some drinks and we’ll meet you…’

  Vlassakis had no trouble selling the idea to Gary O’Dwyer when he called him:

  I said to John, ‘That’s fine, you can go around there, and I’m going…I’m going to this party now.’ John turned around and said, ‘No, no. You get in this car and you can go after.’

  It was nightfall as the trio walked into Gary O’Dwyer’s home. Vlassakis introduced Gary to John Bunting and Robert Wagner:

  I was just sitting there, pretty quiet, because I knew what was going to happen. Gary got up, got a few glasses and that. John turned around to me and said, ‘Well I’ve got to get him a bit pissed’…and asked me if I could skol a few drinks with Gary.

  There was a Mississippi Moonshine, bottle of that. John poured the two glasses—mine and Gary’s—pretty much full to the top.

  I think we were talking for about ten, maybe fifteen, maybe twenty minutes. It wasn’t that long really at all. Gary got up to show Robert something and John also stood up, and then Robert just grabbed Gary around the throat.

  A small man, Gary O’Dwyer was no match for the height and strength of Robert Wagner.

  John said to Robert to like, ‘Ease off a bit. Let him go, otherwise you’ll kill him’, because Gary…went into some sort of fit as soon as Robert grabbed him…and then Robert released him and he sort of half fell down and then started to get back up. He was, like, getting in breaths of air, looking, trying to work out what’s going on—asking, ‘What’s going on? What are you doing? What’s this for?’

  John was telling him to shut up—‘Speak when I speak to you.’

  Robert or John put handcuffs on, I can’t remember who did it now. He [O’Dwyer] was taken into the kitchen where a mattress was standing up against the wall. He was made to sit down on the mattress.

  He wasn’t resisting them. He was in shock, like he was panicking, you know, shaking in his hands and that…when he was sitting on the mattress his legs were shaking.

  They started talking to him, asking him if he was a dirty—things like that—and saying he was a dirty. He said no, he wasn’t, and Robert clobbered him one in the head, just with a fist. He started screaming.

  Like others before him, Gary was told to address Bunting as ‘Lord Sir’ and Wagner as ‘God’. When he got the names wrong, he was beaten.

  Vlassakis was sent to Bunting’s car, returning with the Variac machine and a plastic bag packed with other items:

  Robert Wagner started pulling things out of the bag and there was the sparklers…lighters…there was tape and things like that.

  John grabbed the Variac and then said—‘you didn’t grab the leads’—I went back to the car to grab those leads. All the leads for the Variac—the clamps, the leads.

  Wagner was next to Gary as Bunting sat at the kitchen table asking their victim a series of questions about his banking details, pension and family background. If Gary was slow to answer, he would be hit by Wagner.

  John Bunting used the Variac. He sat down—kneeled down in front of Gary—so he was like, looking at Gary at head height, and then he was explaining to Gary how the Variac worked. And I think that’s when Robert pulled off Gary’s jeans…and then it was connected up.

  John Bunting attached two clamps to Gary—I remember one being on his testicles—and I can’t remember what number [voltage] he went up to but Gary was violently jumping around on the mattress.

  It was a sickening routine James Vlassakis had witnessed—and taken part in—twice before. This time he could not stand to stay. He used his friend’s party as his excuse:

  I think that’s when I said to John that I had to go…people would come looking for me and I had to go.

  I’d seen enough before; I
didn’t want to be there.

  John accepted that, so again to make my position better, I walked over to Gary and I started hitting him in the—in the chest, I think about four or five times.

  As best Vlassakis can recall, it was somewhere around nine o’clock at night when he walked out the door, leaving Gary O’Dwyer to die at the hands of Bunting and Wagner.

  The day after Gary O’Dwyer’s murder, John Bunting again enlisted the help of James Vlassakis. The pair returned to loot the victim’s house.

  It was a risky visit, because Gary’s neighbours, Kim and Steven, also knew Vlassakis. They would surely be suspicious if they saw what was happening. However, John Bunting had already come up with a plan. Kim recalls the knock at her door:

  Steven and I were at home…when John Bunting and James Vlassakis pulled into Gary’s driveway. There was a trailer attached to the rear of the car.

  John and Jamie came to our front door…both told us Gary had moved to Sydney because [people] had bashed him up.

  They told us they had bought all the furniture from Gary for $200. John told us that he had the keys and they were going in to get the furniture; whilst he was telling us this, I saw the keys in his hand.

  They told Steven and I to come into the house and have a look around, because if there was any furniture they didn’t want…we could have it.

  In the kitchen I could smell a bad smell coming from the laundry. I didn’t go into the laundry, but when I mentioned something about the smell, John or Jamie told me that Gary had taken the meat out of the freezer and put it into the laundry sink, and it was that meat that was smelling as though it was rotting.