Snowtown

by Jeremy Pudney

  Suzanne Allen: Payments also into an Australian Central Credit Union account. Card also found at Bunting’s house. In December 1998, at Bunting’s request, [Gail Sinclair] opened another account at the Savings and Loans Credit Union in Suzanne Allen’s name. Allen’s Centrelink benefits were subsequently paid into this account.

  In February 1999 a security camera recorded a person withdrawing money from Suzanne Allen’s bank account. The withdrawals were made from an ATM at a BP Express service station in the northern Adelaide suburb of Munno Para. The person shown in the video is John Bunting.

  Barry Lane: Welfare benefits paid into his Bank of South Australia account. Card for this account was discovered at Robert Wagner’s house. In July 1998 a surveillance camera was installed by police at an ATM at the BP Express service station at Elizabeth Grove, in Adelaide’s northern suburbs. It filmed Robert Wagner making withdrawals from Barry Lane’s account. Four months later Wagner was watched by undercover police as he made another withdrawal. Between November 1998 and February 1999 a security camera filmed Wagner making another four such withdrawals. Receipts for these transactions were retrieved by police from a nearby rubbish bin—two had Wagner’s fingerprints on them. In April and May 1999 a camera at the BP Express, Munno Para, filmed Wagner making another three withdrawals from Lane’s account.

  Gavin Porter: Commonwealth Bank account. His card was never found, but a photocopy of the back of this card was discovered in the ceiling of John Bunting’s house. Vlassakis confessed to police that Bunting had given him Porter’s card to use. Later, Vlassakis said, it was given to Mark Haydon to use. ATM receipts for transactions on this account (made in October 1998) were discovered by police in Haydon’s home. Documents relating to this account were found in a car parked at Haydon’s house.

  Troy Youde: Adelaide Bank account, the card for which was surrendered to police by James Vlassakis. Vlassakis told police Bunting had given him this card to use.

  Fred Brooks: Before his murder his welfare benefits were paid into a joint account with his mother, Gail Sinclair. Bunting and Vlassakis diverted the payments into Gavin Porter’s account, from which cash was already being stolen. In April 1999 a new account was opened in the name Fred Brooks. Vlassakis opened the account and John Bunting and Mark Haydon were with him. The address given to the bank was Robert Wagner’s. Bank documents were discovered with Vlassakis’s fingerprints. Vlassakis confessed to police that he had withdrawn cash from this account, and given the money to Mark Haydon, and that Haydon had also made withdrawals himself. Receipts for withdrawals from the Brooks account were found in Haydon’s car.

  Gary O’Dwyer: Commonwealth Bank account. Card surrendered to police by Vlassakis, who had found it in the home he shared with Bunting. Bunting arranged for the bank to issue a keycard for this account. A signature on the receipt form was matched to Bunting by a handwriting expert.

  David Johnson: Bank of South Australia account. Card surrendered to police by Vlassakis. Wagner and Vlassakis unsuccessfully attempted to withdraw cash on the night of Johnson’s murder. Vlassakis told police they were able to take out $390 ten days later.

  As Wendy Abraham QC stood before them, detailing the plethora of evidence, the jury must already have been forming the view that John Bunting and Robert Wagner were guilty of murder. Ms Abraham was still to address the complex issue of motive.

  ‘It’s alleged that John Bunting and Robert Wagner had a hatred for people they characterised as paedophiles. There’s evidence that the intensity of feelings on their part was extreme. What’s more, there’s evidence that can give rise to the inference that John Bunting and Robert Wagner did not distinguish between paedophiles and homosexuals.

  ‘The nature and intensity of their views will be demonstrated by the evidence that they regularly talked about paedophiles and how they should be treated. The intensity of the views is revealed not only in what was said but how it was said and the frequency with which they spoke about this topic.

  ‘It’s also demonstrated by the types of material police collected at John Bunting’s home and in a U-Store-It container he was renting at the time of his arrest.

  ‘Yellow Post-it notes with names written on them were found. When he was living at 203 Waterloo Corner Road, on the wall of one bedroom of his house he had an item which was referred to as a “spider wall”. This consisted of yellow Post-it notes with names written on them stuck to the wall. The individual pieces of paper were linked together by wool. These were the names of people considered to be paedophiles and the names were joined to show links or relationships between people. Parts of this were found in the U-Store-It and the ceiling of his home at Bundarra Court.

  ‘There were also names of people said to be associating with paedophiles and documents alleged to be profiles of particular people and diagrams of links with people and a name in the middle. There were specific references to Barry Lane and Ray Davies.

  ‘There was also a letter written as a poem the Crown alleges was written by Robert Wagner after his arrest. It has the date August 28, 2000 and is signed RJ Wagner. Handwriting analysis has been done and there is a fingerprint on the letter. The Crown alleges that the accused’s attitude to paedophiles amongst other things can be inferred from the letter and you will see that in due course.

  ‘The intensity of their attitude towards paedophiles was a common link between them. It was a motive towards committing these crimes.’

  The poem was as chilling as it was juvenile. It was sent in letter form to another killer serving his sentence at Yatala Prison. Wagner’s literary effort was error-ridden and one mistake stood out above all others: he had misspelled the word paedophile.

  I’m a CFS man—my uniform’s swank

  And I’ve never been to a Snowtown bank

  Yet bodies in barrels—hey I wonder who’s there?

  Peadophiles [sic] I’m told so who really cares

  See so many people are murdered each year

  Yet just how many answers can you find around here?

  Plus everyone’s listening to the media hype

  A psychotic killer—hey do I look like the type?

  Now in months to come it’s my judgement day

  You can be sure I’ll have my say

  And I will not ever be held in contempt

  For everyone knows my time was well spent

  See you know I only provided a service that’s needed

  For just like your gardens our street should be weeded

  So fuck off Judge Chester in your silly white wig

  I only make the streets safe for all of our kids

  Now can anyone say what’s really what?

  For I could be innocent then again maybe not

  So fuck all the media and fuck the police

  For I know where you live just in case I’m released

  Now my poem must end with thoughts of my life

  Where did this start—what caused all my strife?

  And if my life reads like a Steven [sic] King thriller

  You know I’m not a bad guy…

  For a serial killer.

  Wendy Abraham continued:

  ‘The Crown is not required to prove a motive for these murders. Evidence which gives rise to a motive by an accused is nevertheless relevant. The Crown says here the evidence will reveal there are a number of common themes underlying why the accused selected the victims they did. For example, their hatred of homosexuals and paedophiles.

  ‘There’s evidence from which you can infer that John Bunting and Robert Wagner used this hatred to justify murdering. In relation to some murders there will be no evidence to suggest they exhibited any such behaviour before they were murdered.

  ‘Regardless, it’s alleged they were accused during some of the murders of being a “dirty” or a paedophile by the accused.

  ‘Further, there’s evidence that at least three of the victims had knowledge of another murder before they were murdered. Those people posed a risk to the accused that
they might disclose that information, and so in those circumstances were got rid of. There was also financial gain. Eight victims’ benefits. In relation to eleven, they had their property.

  ‘It can be inferred that some of the victims were murdered for a combination of reasons and indeed there might be other reasons.

  ‘Over time, the frequency with which the accused committed these murders increased. The period between the murders got shorter and shorter. Whilst there’s a three-year gap between Clinton Trezise and Ray Davies, during the fifteen months thereafter there were eight murders committed. At times there were only weeks between the murders. Of course, with the murder of Elizabeth Haydon the police began making inquiries and there was then a gap of five to six months.

  ‘From the evidence of what the accused did and what they said, you can infer that John Bunting and Robert Wagner enjoyed torturing and murdering their victims. They would laugh, joke, boast and indeed brag about what they had done.’

  It took Wendy Abraham two days to outline the case against John Bunting and Robert Wagner. To detail the supporting evidence and hear testimony from 220 Crown witnesses took another 140 days. The testimony of James Vlassakis alone lasted thirty-two days, during which he recounted in sickening detail all he had seen and done, along with much of what he’d been told. The case was compelling; Bunting and Wagner’s guilt was proved, it appeared, beyond any shadow of a doubt.

  After all this it took the accused men’s defence teams a mere eighty minutes to contest the charges. Three witnesses were called by Bunting’s lawyers, only one in Wagner’s defence.

  As the jury was sent to consider its verdicts, Justice Martin directed the jurors to find Robert Wagner not guilty on the charge of assisting to dispose of Clinton Trezise’s body. There was, he explained, simply not enough evidence.

  For seven days the jurors were locked away from the rest of the world. Father’s Day and a round of the AFL football finals passed them by. This group of strangers, called together through no choice of their own, pored once more over the horrific case which had been put to them. Torture, death and deception. For this group of ordinary men and women, the ordeal ended on Monday, 8 September 2003, when a member of the jury knocked on the courtroom door. It was a signal to the court sheriff standing guard outside. They had reached their verdicts.

  As anxious legal teams, police and victims’ relatives filed back into the courtroom, Bunting and Wagner walked casually in as though the outcome meant little. If they did care, if they were nervous, neither was showing it.

  The jury deliberations, however, had not gone smoothly. The jury forewoman stood and explained to Justice Martin that on one of the murder counts they had not been able to reach a verdict. As to the murder of Suzanne Allen, it was a hung jury. During the trial Bunting and Wagner had claimed Allen died of natural causes, and they had cut her up and disposed of her body. Not all of the jurors had been convinced there was enough evidence to prove otherwise.

  As the forewoman read aloud the remaining verdicts, a sense of relief fell over the courtroom. Guilty on all other counts.

  Justice Martin thanked the jury with a few telling words: ‘With respect to your verdicts, for what it’s worth, I agree with you entirely. It’s been a long road, hasn’t it…I must say I have nothing but the highest praise for the way each of you have carried out your duties.’

  The judge then ordered Bunting and Wagner to stand. One of Bunting’s final acts of defiance was to stay seated, but he did have something to say: ‘I would have preferred the jury be told the truth about James Vlassakis and the deals he made.’

  Justice Martin ordered both men be imprisoned for life—the mandatory sentence for murder in South Australia.

  The following month, Bunting and Wagner were again before the court, for Justice Martin to decide if either should have a non-parole period—a time after which they would be eligible for conditional release—set for their sentence. Bunting had ordered his lawyers to say nothing, while Wagner chose to speak for himself. His few sentences gave an insight into the warped mind of a serial killer:

  ‘Paedophiles do terrible things to children and innocent children have been damaged for life. The authorities do nothing about it, I don’t know why. I was certainly angry. Somebody had to do something about it. I decided to take action and I took action. Thank you.’

  It was as though Wagner still believed all his victims—most of them innocent and unsuspecting—had deserved to die. There was no hint of remorse, no glimmer of understanding. No trace of reality.

  In another pitiful show of contempt, John Bunting sat and read a book as Justice Martin completed the sentencing process. He remarked that the pair had derived pleasure from death and had been in the ‘business of killing for pleasure’.

  ‘The evidence given at trial has driven me to the conclusion that both of you are incapable of true rehabilitation.

  ‘The sentence of life with no parole is a dreadful sentence of the utmost severity; however, dreadful crimes may require dreadful punishments.

  ‘I cannot make an order that you can never be released. However, I make it plain that I cannot envisage any circumstance which would justify the setting of a non-parole period. If I had the power to make an order that you were never to be released, I would unhesitatingly make that order.’

  Justice had been done for all but the family of Suzanne Allen, who immediately called for the killers to again stand trial for her murder. They wanted closure, and the hung jury meant they were ineligible for victims’ compensation.

  Outside the court some family members spoke to the media, and it was a grief-stricken woman named Maureen Fox whose words were most telling. A foster carer, she had raised Gary O’Dwyer from when he was a baby.

  ‘I have anger, contempt and hatred for two men who had no respect for another human being…shame upon your souls.’

  TWENTY-FIVE

  By August 2004 the Snowtown serial killings had faded in the memory of most South Australians, but not of those closest to the case. For police and prosecutors the job was not finished. For victims’ families, still enduring the grief and horror inflicted upon them, justice was still one step away. It was time for the last of the suspected killers to stand trial.

  Legal argument in the Mark Haydon trial began in May 2004, with the trial itself beginning three months later, on 2 August. Haydon had pleaded not guilty to the murders of Troy Youde, and his wife, Elizabeth. He had also pleaded not guilty to six counts of assisting offenders—helping Bunting, Wagner and Vlassakis hide the bodies of the six other victims found in barrels in the old Snowtown bank vault.

  Again it was Wendy Abraham QC who would lead the prosecution case. It was her duty to show the jury how Haydon had played a role in two killings, and helped conceal six others—aiding and abetting the killers, allowing them to continue on their murderous venture. Her opening statement was skewed towards the role the prosecution alleged Haydon had played; it detailed every link between him and the worst case of serial killing in Australia’s history.

  ‘On 20 May 1999 the police discovered the disused bank at Snowtown, and stored in that bank six barrels containing eight bodies; the bodies of Michael Gardiner, Barry Lane, Gavin Porter, Troy Youde, Fred Brooks, Gary O’Dwyer, Elizabeth Haydon and David Johnson. Each of those victims had been murdered. At that time, the bank was being rented by John Bunting and the accused, Mark Haydon.

  ‘After the bodies were stored in the vault, only four people actually entered the vault: John Bunting, Robert Wagner, James Vlassakis and the accused, Mark Haydon.

  ‘Mark Haydon was seen in the bank, he was seen going in and out of the vault. His fingerprints were located in the bank, and his DNA located on items from within the bank. Eyewitness and forensic evidence…links Mark Haydon, Bunting, Wagner and Vlassakis to the bank, to the vault and to the bodies.

  ‘It is the Crown case that all four—Bunting, Wagner, Haydon and Vlassakis—had a role to play in either the commission of each of those
murders, or in concealing the bodies of the victims. It’s the Crown case that Bunting and Wagner committed each and every one of these murders, and that Vlassakis was involved with Bunting and Wagner in committing four of them. It is the Crown case that Mark Haydon was involved with them in committing the murders of two of those victims: Troy Youde, and his wife, Elizabeth Haydon; and that he assisted in concealing their bodies, and the bodies of six other victims; victims of Bunting, Wagner or Vlassakis.

  ‘Ladies and gentlemen, it is alleged that Mark Haydon’s involvement commenced with the murder of Troy Youde in August 1998. He was present and participated in that murder. The Crown says he committed that murder with Bunting, Wagner and Vlassakis. After his involvement in that murder, it is alleged Mark Haydon, together with Bunting, Wagner and Vlassakis, was actively involved in hiding the victims’ bodies, concealing them to ensure the authorities did not become aware of the murders. This included Mark Haydon storing Troy Youde’s body, and storing bodies of Bunting and Wagner’s earlier victims Michael Gardiner, Barry Lane and Gavin Porter, and eventually, as time passed, their later victims Fred Brooks and Gary O’Dwyer.

  ‘For a time Mark Haydon stored these bodies in the shed in the rear yard of his home. After his involvement in the murder of Troy Youde, and when he was already storing the bodies of other murder victims, it is alleged he was involved in the second murder with which he is charged, that is his own wife, Elizabeth Haydon. Again, it is alleged he committed this murder with Bunting and Wagner. Thereafter he was involved in storing her body, along with the others, initially in his shed, then in one of his vehicles, a Land Cruiser, and ultimately in the bank at Snowtown which he was jointly renting with John Bunting.

  ‘After the bodies were stored in the bank, a further murder occurred: the murder of David Johnson. This murder was committed in the bank by Bunting, Wagner and Vlassakis, and the victim’s body was stored in one of the barrels. Again Mark Haydon, a lessee of the bank, allowed the body to be stored there.