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Serial Killer Documentary - The Bodies in the Barrels · The Evolution of Evil - True Crime Stories

0:00
Speaker 1: A horrific discovery in a disused bank, officers opened six
0:05
Speaker 1: barrels full of decomposing human remains.
0:09
Speaker 2: It wasn't just the number of people who were killed,
0:12
Speaker 2: it's the way they were killed.
0:13
Speaker 1: It's the world of minness. But this serial killing is
0:17
Speaker 1: unique for one chilling reason.
0:19
Speaker 3: They believed thou were on a cruiside, and they believed
0:23
Speaker 3: that cruiside was the right thing to do.
0:27
Speaker 1: Over seven years, not one, but four men would mercilessly
0:30
Speaker 1: torture and kill all friends, spouses and neighbors.
0:34
Speaker 4: They discussed murdering people like we wouldn't talk about what
0:38
Speaker 4: the weather is like.
0:40
Speaker 2: They need to be punished.
0:43
Speaker 1: They were led by a dominant and sadistic psychopath.
0:46
Speaker 5: Now I remember thinking, if ever there was the devil,
0:50
Speaker 5: he's sitting just notice from me here.
0:52
Speaker 1: This is the story of how these men killed for
0:55
Speaker 1: pleasure and how their unrelenting frenzy was brought to an end.
1:16
Speaker 1: Adelaide the upright and conservative capital of South Australia, with
1:21
Speaker 1: a population of one million. It's known as the city
1:24
Speaker 1: of Churches, but to the north of the city lie
1:27
Speaker 1: many neglected and impoverished suburbs that house much of Adelaide's
1:31
Speaker 1: under class. In November nineteen ninety eight, married mother of
1:36
Speaker 1: seven Elizabeth Hayden disappears from her home in Salisbury North,
1:41
Speaker 1: one of the most deprived areas of the city. Elizabeth
1:46
Speaker 1: Hayden's husband, Mark is asked to come to the local
1:49
Speaker 1: police station to give a statement and answer some questions
1:52
Speaker 1: from Detective Gregg Stone.
1:56
Speaker 6: What's the what's.
1:58
Speaker 7: Puzzling me is yours? If Elizabeth goes missing? For the
2:02
Speaker 7: only reason we know he's missing. This is a brother
2:05
Speaker 7: reported a disappearance to us. But I wanna know, is well,
2:10
Speaker 7: you didn't report it missing.
2:15
Speaker 8: Look a waky guy like John Bulding, so that my
2:20
Speaker 8: wife Elizabeth might have passed.
2:21
Speaker 9: At him and he knocked it back the next day.
2:28
Speaker 9: Is it gone?
2:30
Speaker 1: Mark Haydon's statement does not convince investigating officers, and they
2:34
Speaker 1: check out his version of events. John Bunting, a thirty
2:38
Speaker 1: two year old abatar worker, corroborates Hayden's story. Chief Superintendent
2:43
Speaker 1: Dennis Edmonds remembers why his detectives were so suspicious.
2:47
Speaker 10: Her husband didn't seem to be all that concerned about
2:50
Speaker 10: where she was or where she might have gone. You
2:55
Speaker 10: get a gut feeling that something's not quite right. You're
2:58
Speaker 10: not sure what it is, but a job to find
3:01
Speaker 10: out what was going on.
3:03
Speaker 1: Officers are immediately alerted to a second name in Hayden's statement,
3:07
Speaker 1: So she.
3:08
Speaker 9: Left next day, I'm going to starve with my waggon.
3:14
Speaker 1: Robert Wagoner, twenty seven years old and unemployed, is already
3:19
Speaker 1: known to the police. In nineteen ninety seven, his homosexual partner,
3:23
Speaker 1: Barry Lane, was reported missing. Whilst checking Lane's bank accounts,
3:28
Speaker 1: please come across something suspicious. Jeremy Putney was a crime
3:33
Speaker 1: reporter working in Adelaide at the time.
3:35
Speaker 3: Police where I would to ask the time that Barry Lyme,
3:38
Speaker 3: who was missing but not necessarily dead in their eyes,
3:42
Speaker 3: was regularly accessing his bank account, or if not him,
3:46
Speaker 3: someone else was. Police set up a surveillance camera and
3:53
Speaker 3: over the course of the next few months were able
3:55
Speaker 3: to obtain vision of someone making withdrawals from Barry Lyne's
3:59
Speaker 3: bank acot cap.
4:01
Speaker 9: That person wasn't Barry Line, it was Robert Wagner.
4:06
Speaker 1: Detectives Greg Stone and Steve McCoy urgently review every missing
4:10
Speaker 1: person's case on file, would make a startling discovery.
4:14
Speaker 10: At least five of these disappearances were linked Bunting and
4:20
Speaker 10: Wagner worthy common denominators.
4:23
Speaker 1: Police can now closely connect three men to an astonishing
4:27
Speaker 1: list of missing persons in and around the north of Adelaide,
4:31
Speaker 1: Mark Haydon's wife Elizabeth missing, Robert Wagner's former partner Barry
4:35
Speaker 1: Lane missing. Clinton Tressi is also a former partner of
4:39
Speaker 1: Barry Lane missing, and John Bunting's near neighbors Susanne Allen
4:44
Speaker 1: and Ray Davis missing.
4:47
Speaker 3: There's more and more missing persons cases were linked together.
4:51
Speaker 3: Police started to apply significant amounts of pressure to the
4:55
Speaker 3: group that are under surviolence very much under the police.
4:59
Speaker 9: Marcus got very much.
5:03
Speaker 10: We felt that we had enough information to go before
5:08
Speaker 10: a judge of the Supreme Court to apply for telephone interceptions.
5:15
Speaker 11: I've got my eye on that one around the corner.
5:18
Speaker 12: It's Debbie Marshall is a crime reporter who listened to
5:27
Speaker 12: the suspect's use of coded language.
5:30
Speaker 5: They're picking up these phone taps and they're hearing Bunting
5:34
Speaker 5: and Wagner use the most strange terms, things like they
5:39
Speaker 5: need to go to the clinic, they need to be
5:41
Speaker 5: made good. It's time to play.
5:46
Speaker 1: As officers monitor the suspects calls other members of the
5:50
Speaker 1: twenty strong team hunt down an important piece of evidence
5:53
Speaker 1: in the case of Elizabeth Hayden.
5:56
Speaker 10: We were looking for a lancers A four drive that
6:00
Speaker 10: she eyed, and that car had gone missing.
6:04
Speaker 1: On the eighteenth of May, investigators follow Bunting and Wagner
6:08
Speaker 1: as they drive one hundred miles north of Adelaide to
6:11
Speaker 1: a remote settlement called Snowtown. The two men unintentionally lead
6:18
Speaker 1: police straight to the piece of evidence that has proved elusive,
6:22
Speaker 1: Elizabeth Hayden's vehicle. It's a major breakthrough. A team of
6:27
Speaker 1: investigators is dispatched to Snowtown to examine the vehicle. Among
6:31
Speaker 1: them is experienced crime scene officer Gordon Drage.
6:36
Speaker 8: The idea was to seize the car, forensically examine car
6:39
Speaker 8: and see if there was any connection we could draw
6:41
Speaker 8: to the car and these missing people.
6:45
Speaker 1: It's empty, but the owner of the house tells detectives
6:47
Speaker 1: that the vehicle's contents have been moved across the street
6:50
Speaker 1: to a disused bank.
6:53
Speaker 8: God Rather detective called me aside and said, you're not
6:56
Speaker 8: going to believe this, he said, but we've got to
6:59
Speaker 8: go across to the old State bank.
7:07
Speaker 1: The bank is a makeshift store for computers and electrical equipment,
7:11
Speaker 1: but officers are more interested in getting inside the vault.
7:17
Speaker 8: When we opened the door, we were confronted with a
7:19
Speaker 8: wall of black plastic that have been stuck with clear
7:23
Speaker 8: tape around the sides and a slit straight down the center.
7:34
Speaker 8: Once we got in, the smell then was just overpowering.
7:38
Speaker 8: We were dealing with some something dead.
7:43
Speaker 6: We've got six boers in here, a few knives.
7:45
Speaker 13: I think that's looks like a saw over here, hydrochloric acid.
7:54
Speaker 8: There was that moment of I've got to look, but
7:58
Speaker 8: I don't want to look.
8:06
Speaker 1: The first barrel contains human remains, I could say.
8:12
Speaker 6: The hand and a foot.
8:14
Speaker 8: I would open each barrel in turn, and some just
8:16
Speaker 8: had soil in body parts, and others were almost full
8:19
Speaker 8: to the brim with a thick sort of gouey liquid.
8:24
Speaker 1: Police will have to keep the sickening discovery from the
8:26
Speaker 1: world's press as they prepare to swoop on their prime suspects.
8:38
Speaker 1: The Major Crime Unit of South Australia Police is investigating
8:42
Speaker 1: the disappearance of five missing persons in Adelaide. Following a
8:46
Speaker 1: trail of evidence over five months, officers have entered a
8:50
Speaker 1: disused bank vault to discover six barrels full of decomposing
8:55
Speaker 1: human remains. The bank is immediately declared a major crime scene.
9:01
Speaker 1: Chief Superintendent Dennis Edmonds has arrived in Snowtown.
9:05
Speaker 10: We took a taim of detectives and forensic investigators up
9:11
Speaker 10: to Snowtown, set up a command base at the police station.
9:17
Speaker 1: It is now a race against time. Investigators have to
9:20
Speaker 1: make sure the press don't get wind of the story.
9:24
Speaker 8: The last thing we wanted was the media to run
9:27
Speaker 8: a story that we were investigating something at Snowtown, which
9:30
Speaker 8: would tip off these guys before we had a chance
9:32
Speaker 8: to grab them.
9:34
Speaker 1: On the twenty first of May nineteen ninety nine, the
9:36
Speaker 1: police move on their three prime suspects who have been
9:39
Speaker 1: under surveillance in five missing persons cases. In a dawn raid,
9:44
Speaker 1: officers arrest thirty two year old former abbatwar worker John
9:48
Speaker 1: Bunting at his home. Twenty seven year old unemployed man
9:53
Speaker 1: Robert Wagner is also arrested. Forty one year old Mark
9:57
Speaker 1: Hayden is the third suspect arrested. It was his wife,
10:01
Speaker 1: Elizabeth's disappearance five months previously which triggered the whole investigation.
10:06
Speaker 1: Police have also established that the diffused bank is leased
10:10
Speaker 1: in Haydon's name. Whilst in custody, the man remained tight lipped.
10:16
Speaker 14: To night, Horrific details emerge of a massacre and the
10:19
Speaker 14: neat Mid.
10:19
Speaker 1: North, Australia wakes up to breaking news of the sickening
10:23
Speaker 1: find in Snowtown, capably boiling.
10:26
Speaker 10: The door was closed and I just opened the door.
10:31
Speaker 1: This morning.
10:31
Speaker 15: The doors were opened to the media. Cameras quickly focused
10:34
Speaker 15: on the bank's fault, where six large barrels containing decomposed
10:39
Speaker 15: human remains were discovered by major crime investigators on Thursday
10:43
Speaker 15: nights By.
10:44
Speaker 3: Been a crime reporter for some time, but just like
10:46
Speaker 3: the police and the Australian Society of Australian Public, we
10:50
Speaker 3: were confronted by what lable were cable of.
10:54
Speaker 1: Later that evening news crews are desperate to get a
10:58
Speaker 1: glimpse of the three accused. The charge.
11:00
Speaker 2: She diliges that the man murdered an unknown person that's
11:03
Speaker 2: understood to be a holding charge.
11:05
Speaker 9: While investigations continue.
11:07
Speaker 1: As Bunting walked from the dock to the holding cells,
11:10
Speaker 1: a large smile acrossed his vase. Forensic scientists now examine
11:18
Speaker 1: the decomposing remains within each barrel. With some of the
11:23
Speaker 1: remains soaked in acid, identification could be difficult and hazardous,
11:29
Speaker 1: but remarkably, this crude attempt to destroy evidence could assist
11:34
Speaker 1: the investigation. According to forensic anthropologist Matchie Henneberg.
11:42
Speaker 11: These bodies were put into hydrochloric acid hygrochloric acid.
11:49
Speaker 1: Besides the dissolving.
11:50
Speaker 9: The mineral from the bud does preserve.
11:53
Speaker 1: Does the dissolve them? So they actually preserve those bodies
11:58
Speaker 1: for us to study. As they decant and piece together
12:02
Speaker 1: the dismembered body parts, scientists quickly establish that the six
12:07
Speaker 1: barrels contain the remains of eight bodies. The forensic process
12:16
Speaker 1: has barely begun when the investigation takes another devastating turn.
12:20
Speaker 1: On the twenty second of May, one day after the arrests,
12:24
Speaker 1: police receive an anonymous call.
12:27
Speaker 10: We got certain information that there may be two victims
12:33
Speaker 10: buried in the back out of a house at Saulisbury.
12:36
Speaker 10: That house had previously been rented by John Lunton.
12:41
Speaker 1: Two bodies are discovered, bringing the victim count to ten.
12:45
Speaker 1: Police are no clearer of their motive, as the three
12:48
Speaker 1: men in custody are saying nothing the police are under
12:53
Speaker 1: pressure to provide answers. They focus their attention on a
12:57
Speaker 1: nineteen year old man called James Vlassa. He is the
13:01
Speaker 1: son of John Bunting's partner and lived at the same
13:04
Speaker 1: address at Waterloo Corner Road.
13:07
Speaker 3: Forlasarkus's behavior, combined with things people around him said to police,
13:13
Speaker 3: basically led police to the conclusion that he had some
13:17
Speaker 3: sort of involvement.
13:19
Speaker 1: Taken into custody. VLAs Sarkis talks, but he is terrified.
13:24
Speaker 6: I haven't told anyone this because I didn't want to
13:27
Speaker 6: get killed.
13:31
Speaker 1: Lasarkis tells about how Bunting had bragged about killing a
13:34
Speaker 1: young man in the early nineties.
13:37
Speaker 9: Might just down the land of Yeah, sure, might be
13:42
Speaker 9: my kissed.
13:45
Speaker 1: But Vlasarkis cannot provide a name for what police believe
13:49
Speaker 1: is Bunting's first victim.
13:51
Speaker 3: John Bunting started off as any one off killer might do.
13:56
Speaker 3: But he basically loaded the remains into a car, drive
14:00
Speaker 3: out to a paddock in the middle and iware and
14:02
Speaker 3: dumb them.
14:03
Speaker 1: Matching crucial details of the killing against post mortem reports
14:06
Speaker 1: on remains found on a farm near a lower light
14:09
Speaker 1: in nineteen ninety six. Three years earlier, police identify the
14:13
Speaker 1: victim as a twenty two year old drifter, Clinton precise.
14:18
Speaker 9: Clinton Rossis was a disillusioned young man.
14:23
Speaker 3: He had very few friends, if any, he had irregular
14:27
Speaker 3: contact with his family, and was a very lonely young man,
14:31
Speaker 3: and it made him the perfect target for John Bunting.
14:36
Speaker 1: For police, it's crucial evidence, but they also begin to
14:40
Speaker 1: piece together the dark world on the margins of Respectable Adelaide.
14:47
Speaker 1: Jamievlasarkis had been sexually abused throughout his childhood by his
14:50
Speaker 1: half brother Troy and by a neighbor, Jeffrey Payne. When
14:54
Speaker 1: Vlasarkis was fourteen, John Bunting began a relationship with his mother, Elizabeth.
15:00
Speaker 1: Whilst in custody, Fleasarkis is assessed by psychiatrist Paul Mullen.
15:05
Speaker 2: Bunting began a relationship with Fleasarcus's mother, and he really
15:12
Speaker 2: moved into the role for this young adolescent of a father,
15:17
Speaker 2: a father that he had never known. The young Lasarkus
15:21
Speaker 2: became enthralled through Vlasarkis.
15:25
Speaker 1: Investigators gained their first insight into the character of John
15:28
Speaker 1: Bunting and how he boasted of his violent acts, including murder.
15:35
Speaker 6: John told me what they did I believe that if
15:40
Speaker 6: I told someone, John would kill me.
15:44
Speaker 1: Someone who knew Bunting well is Fleasarkus's stepfather, Marcus Johnson.
15:50
Speaker 9: He was the most.
15:54
Speaker 4: Unusual man I'd ever met. He was very intelligent, and
15:58
Speaker 4: he had.
15:58
Speaker 9: A tremendous manuel and.
16:02
Speaker 1: The home he shared with his partner, Elizabeth Harvey, had
16:05
Speaker 1: two hundred and three Waterloo Corner Road. Bunting would hold
16:09
Speaker 1: court with his inner circle of Robert Wagner, Mark Hayden
16:12
Speaker 1: Plice and Jamie Bakis and Pedophox.
16:16
Speaker 9: On every single street corner.
16:18
Speaker 4: The plus is crawling with them everywhere.
16:21
Speaker 1: He didn't drink very much.
16:23
Speaker 5: He had the wherewithal, however, to get people to sit
16:26
Speaker 5: around him.
16:27
Speaker 1: And to listen to his every word.
16:29
Speaker 2: That he was described the circus as charismatic, as just
16:33
Speaker 2: someone who evoked admiration.
16:39
Speaker 6: Should have sayen this fag on vest.
16:43
Speaker 9: So I might he'd be a fagot, wouldn't you?
16:47
Speaker 6: So? Guys me flinched two lights sunshine. I just dropped
16:56
Speaker 6: like a sauce that Oh yeah, he deserved, of course
17:06
Speaker 6: I orders it.
17:09
Speaker 9: Yeah, he was frightening.
17:16
Speaker 3: He was intimidating paper or either with him or against him.
17:20
Speaker 3: And if thy were against him, thou frightened for their lives.
17:24
Speaker 1: Vlasakis reveals to investigators that five years after Bunting committed
17:28
Speaker 1: his first killing in nineteen ninety two, he was ready
17:31
Speaker 1: to kill again, and this time he had a willing
17:34
Speaker 1: partner in crime.
17:36
Speaker 4: Robert Wagner is not a very articulate, not a very strong,
17:42
Speaker 4: forceful personality, yet he had a very dark side to him.
17:48
Speaker 1: Both men moved on their next target, twenty secure old
17:52
Speaker 1: Ray Davis, a disturbed and intellectually impaired man and a
17:56
Speaker 1: near neighbor of Bunting.
18:09
Speaker 9: You love the person a Horsey.
18:12
Speaker 3: When Ray Davies was abducted, he was taken back to
18:14
Speaker 3: the home that John Buntings shared with a list of Harvey,
18:20
Speaker 3: and it was there that he was finally murdered strangled
18:23
Speaker 3: to death.
18:29
Speaker 1: The body of Ray Davis is dumped in a hole
18:31
Speaker 1: in Bunting's backyard and is later excavated by police. A
18:36
Speaker 1: female victim buried alongside him is Suzanne Allott, a former
18:40
Speaker 1: fiancee of Davis. Police are still trying to find a
18:44
Speaker 1: motive for the killings, but they discover that a week
18:47
Speaker 1: after his death, Ray Davis's caravan is sold and evidence
18:52
Speaker 1: seized at Bunting's home proves that he accessed the bank
18:55
Speaker 1: accounts of both victims.
18:57
Speaker 3: They would often demand from victim their personal security numbers
19:02
Speaker 3: and access their bank accounts and so conceal the crime afterwards,
19:06
Speaker 3: so he keep killing and he could keep hunting within
19:09
Speaker 3: his own circle.
19:11
Speaker 1: Almost a year after the killing of Ray Davis, Bunting
19:14
Speaker 1: and Wagner choose their next victim from their neighborhood, nineteen
19:18
Speaker 1: year old Michael Gardiner. Please speak to mother of two,
19:22
Speaker 1: Nichol Zurita, a close friend of Gardiner.
19:25
Speaker 13: The last time I saw Michael, I was heading to
19:28
Speaker 13: New South Wales for a short holiday and he was
19:32
Speaker 13: going to stay in my house until I got back.
19:36
Speaker 13: When I came home, Michael was gone, and so am I.
19:40
Speaker 1: Belongings police and are beginning to gather evidence of a
19:46
Speaker 1: more sinister motive behind these killings.
19:51
Speaker 3: Bunting would keep this Wall of Spiders, as he referred
19:54
Speaker 3: to it, which was a series of posted nights linked
19:57
Speaker 3: by strings of war with names of people and addresses
20:04
Speaker 3: of people that Bunting belief should be punished.
20:07
Speaker 1: Those who needed to be punished were pedophiles and homosexuals.
20:11
Speaker 1: Hunting made no distinction between them.
20:14
Speaker 4: He found pedophiles hiding under everything, and his speech pattern
20:20
Speaker 4: was always in a violent context, and it was always
20:24
Speaker 4: always about pedophiles.
20:28
Speaker 2: Dirty you dirty, you are disgusting.
20:36
Speaker 5: What do we know about Bunting's background is he grew
20:38
Speaker 5: up in an impoverished area in Queensland with a very
20:42
Speaker 5: conservative mother and a very uptight father. He then moved
20:46
Speaker 5: to Adelaide when he was eighteen, and he moved to
20:50
Speaker 5: the same down and out areas that.
20:51
Speaker 6: He was used to in his childhood.
20:54
Speaker 3: There's some evidence that suggests that he was raped as
20:57
Speaker 3: a boy, but he hardly spoke of it and certainly
21:01
Speaker 3: didn't use it in his rantings, probably because of his shame.
21:08
Speaker 2: He was obviously driven by some very perverse and dreadful desires.
21:16
Speaker 1: Investigators know that Bunting influenced Robert Wagner that firm evidence
21:21
Speaker 1: is needed to establish the extent of Wagner's involvement. Dr
21:25
Speaker 1: Jack White worked with Wagner whilst he was in custody.
21:29
Speaker 14: He saw Bunting as a leader like character, somebody he
21:35
Speaker 14: would respect and somebody he would be a soldier for.
21:41
Speaker 1: Wagner would join Bunting's crusade, but when he first met him,
21:45
Speaker 1: he was in a homosexual relationship.
21:47
Speaker 5: Robert Wagner had been picked up by pedophile and transvestor
21:52
Speaker 5: Barry Lane when Robert Wagner was fourteen years old.
21:57
Speaker 3: He basically took him and spirited him away, kept him
22:00
Speaker 3: into adulthood. He's confused and deranged in his own mind,
22:06
Speaker 3: but there was no confusion in John Bunting's mind. He
22:09
Speaker 3: believed that Wagner was a victim and it was his
22:11
Speaker 3: job to get him away from Lane, and that's exactly
22:14
Speaker 3: what he did.
22:17
Speaker 1: When Lane started talking about what he suspected Bunting and
22:20
Speaker 1: Wagner were doing, he sealed his own fate.
22:28
Speaker 5: Robert Wagner loved the thriller of the torture, but he
22:32
Speaker 5: was also the one who was strong enough to come
22:33
Speaker 5: up behind the victim and put his massive arms around
22:37
Speaker 5: the victim's neck and start to strangle him just enough.
22:44
Speaker 5: They often brought their victims back just at the point
22:46
Speaker 5: of unconsciousness for John Bunting to move in and look
22:50
Speaker 5: into their eyes, which is what he loved to do most,
22:52
Speaker 5: and impose his power.
23:00
Speaker 1: Shortly after the death of Barry Lane in late nineteen
23:02
Speaker 1: ninety seven, a young man was found hanged from a
23:06
Speaker 1: tree at Kurzbrook, north of Adelaide. The body was that
23:10
Speaker 1: of eighteen year old schizophrenic Thomas Trevillian, a former partner
23:14
Speaker 1: of Lane.
23:16
Speaker 10: The death of mister Trevillian wasn't investigated by Magicron to
23:21
Speaker 10: start with because it appeared to be a suicide by hanging.
23:27
Speaker 1: Lasarkis now reveals that the death was no suicide, but
23:31
Speaker 1: the result of the killer's growing bloodlust.
23:35
Speaker 3: The mighty here was John Bunting's wark hadred for these people,
23:39
Speaker 3: and it became a lust for murder. He wanted to
23:43
Speaker 3: kill people. He was eventually just looking for the right
23:45
Speaker 3: sort of person to cull.
23:48
Speaker 1: Further revelations from Blasakis will reveal how the murders accelerate
23:52
Speaker 1: and how he was lured by Bunting into a deadly
23:55
Speaker 1: circle of killers. Following the discovery of eight bodies in
24:04
Speaker 1: barrels in a disused bank on the twentieth of May
24:06
Speaker 1: nineteen ninety nine, three men have been charged with murder
24:10
Speaker 1: John Bunting, Robert Wagner and Mark Hayden.
24:15
Speaker 8: I guess we all sence then that this was likely
24:17
Speaker 8: to be certainly one of the biggest, highest profile crabs
24:22
Speaker 8: in Australia and possibly the world.
24:24
Speaker 1: Another man, nineteen year old Jamie Losarkis, is in police custody,
24:29
Speaker 1: providing details of the killing crucial evidence for the prosecution.
24:35
Speaker 6: The only reason I kept us like going is because
24:39
Speaker 6: he could put to me.
24:41
Speaker 3: The confessions of James Vlasakis became quite crucial in terms
24:45
Speaker 3: of understanding what had happened, why it had happened, who'd
24:49
Speaker 3: done what, and how to gather the evidence that was
24:51
Speaker 3: required to bring Bunting, Wagner and Hayden in some form
24:56
Speaker 3: to trial.
24:57
Speaker 1: With the help of Lasakis, police have identified it's six victims,
25:01
Speaker 1: Clinton Tresise, Ray Davis, Susanne Allen, Michael Gardiner, Barry Lane
25:07
Speaker 1: and Thomas Trevillian. The motives behind the killings are becoming clearer.
25:13
Speaker 13: John Bunting targeted Michael Gardner because he was gay, and
25:18
Speaker 13: purely and simply for that reason only, they associated gay
25:22
Speaker 13: with pedophilia.
25:24
Speaker 9: This place is full of poofters and pedophiles.
25:29
Speaker 6: They are every single street corner.
25:31
Speaker 9: The place is crawling with them.
25:33
Speaker 5: Got rock spiders sticking pedophiles everywhere.
25:39
Speaker 9: Must have been their little visit to the clinic.
25:42
Speaker 6: They need to be punished.
25:46
Speaker 1: As Vlasarkis continues his statement to police. He also gradually
25:51
Speaker 1: reveals how he was further lured into the dark circle
25:54
Speaker 1: of killing James.
25:56
Speaker 9: Losarkus says he went out one evening and came back.
25:59
Speaker 3: Bunting and Wagner were there and showed him the body
26:02
Speaker 3: of Gavin Porter on the ground in the.
26:05
Speaker 9: Shared out the bag, and they told him that they'd
26:08
Speaker 9: murdered him.
26:10
Speaker 1: Gavin Porter was a close friend of Lasarkis and like him,
26:14
Speaker 1: a heroin addict. Bunting hated drug addicts and regarded them
26:18
Speaker 1: as waste.
26:20
Speaker 9: Loosarcus was obviously shot, stunned. It was his friend. He
26:24
Speaker 9: was frightened.
26:25
Speaker 3: He believed at that moment that Bunting and Wagner were
26:28
Speaker 3: about to kill him. He was basically frightened, intimidated, and
26:32
Speaker 3: implicated from that point on.
26:34
Speaker 1: Throughout the days, giving crucial information to investigators, Vlasarkis tells
26:39
Speaker 1: of how the killers were now joined by their friend
26:42
Speaker 1: Mark Hayden.
26:44
Speaker 4: Mark Kayden was a very inarticulate man who obviously could
26:50
Speaker 4: be so easily manipulated. If Bunting said something, it had
26:55
Speaker 4: to be done, It had to be done.
26:58
Speaker 1: The ordeal of cataloging deaths is traumatic for Bla Sarks.
27:02
Speaker 1: He can barely manage to cope as he recalls every
27:05
Speaker 1: horrific detail, but he will shock officers as he recounts
27:09
Speaker 1: how he progressed from bystander to killer, beginning with the
27:13
Speaker 1: murder of his half brother Troy.
27:16
Speaker 6: You'd Rob and Tom were just shuffling Troy into the bathroom.
27:22
Speaker 6: I thought he was just going to be best.
27:25
Speaker 1: Troy you had raped Jamie right through his childhood.
27:28
Speaker 5: He as Jamie had had grown up in his household
27:31
Speaker 5: of frank abuse with a mother who was psychiatrically ill.
27:34
Speaker 6: I thought he was just going to be best.
27:37
Speaker 4: Given there talking to Jamie, told John Bunting that Troy
27:43
Speaker 4: had sexually abused him and that was virtually the death
27:47
Speaker 4: world of Troy.
27:50
Speaker 1: What are you doing?
27:54
Speaker 6: I took him into the bathroom and they started yelling
27:57
Speaker 6: and screaming, pulling him.
28:02
Speaker 3: A faggot and a baby.
28:03
Speaker 9: Rapist and things like that.
28:06
Speaker 3: Tray Youth endured shocking forms of torture for a substantial
28:11
Speaker 3: period of time before he died, and James Lossaka stood
28:14
Speaker 3: there over him while this happened. And in fact, Troy
28:19
Speaker 3: you his brother, is appealing to him as he's being
28:22
Speaker 3: tortured and killed.
28:24
Speaker 9: What's going on? Why are they doing this to me?
28:27
Speaker 6: He was losing consciousness. John turned around to Troy and
28:32
Speaker 6: he said, this was fun. I could do this all day.
28:40
Speaker 6: I remember walking down the hallway again. I couldn't handle it.
28:48
Speaker 6: I said to him that I enjoyed it. I didn't.
28:57
Speaker 6: And the reason I kept a lie going it's because
29:02
Speaker 6: I didn't want John to kill.
29:05
Speaker 3: He was shattered, mentally, a mess. He was at breaking point.
29:10
Speaker 3: He was a drug user. He'd been controlled by John
29:14
Speaker 3: Bunting an attempted suicide as police were starting to interview
29:17
Speaker 3: him as a suspect. He was just a broken person
29:23
Speaker 3: who didn't have the ability to stop what was going on,
29:26
Speaker 3: didn't have the courage to stop what was going on,
29:29
Speaker 3: and ultimately believed that he was about to be a
29:31
Speaker 3: victim at any moment.
29:34
Speaker 1: The killings have accelerated, with the last five murders carried
29:37
Speaker 1: out between November nineteen ninety seven and September nineteen ninety eight.
29:42
Speaker 1: The killer's frenzied desire for death only increases.
29:47
Speaker 4: They actually sat around tables and talked about murdering people
29:52
Speaker 4: like we would talk about what the weather is like.
29:55
Speaker 4: I got my eye on that one around the corner.
30:00
Speaker 6: About due a visit oric.
30:02
Speaker 1: The next killings of Fred Brooks, a mentally handicapped young man,
30:07
Speaker 1: and Garry O'Dwyer, a local disabled man, followed within six weeks,
30:12
Speaker 1: and a notable for their prolonged torture.
30:15
Speaker 9: Some of the torture was horrific.
30:17
Speaker 3: John Bunting obtained a voltage very act of visa, basically
30:22
Speaker 3: an electrocution tool where he could turn up the amount
30:25
Speaker 3: of current that was going into someone with the victim
30:34
Speaker 3: count increasing.
30:35
Speaker 1: Their remains were stored in barrels, the very act of which,
30:39
Speaker 1: for psychologists involved in the case provides a disturbing insight
30:43
Speaker 1: to the mind of John Bunting.
30:46
Speaker 2: I think with Bunting is clearly a fascination.
30:50
Speaker 6: With dead bodies.
30:52
Speaker 2: He retains these bodies not simply to prevent them being found,
30:56
Speaker 2: because believing's going to risk them being founded them, but
31:01
Speaker 2: because of his need to keep control even over the
31:05
Speaker 2: dead bodies and so still keep them available to serve
31:09
Speaker 2: his fascination.
31:12
Speaker 1: Mark Hayden has remained silent during his time in custody.
31:16
Speaker 1: His wife Elizabeth's disappearance in November nineteen ninety eight triggered
31:19
Speaker 1: the whole investigation. But through Vlasakis, police discover that the
31:24
Speaker 1: barrels were stored in Hayden's garage, and they also discover
31:28
Speaker 1: how Hayden made the mistake of telling his wife Elizabeth
31:31
Speaker 1: too much.
31:34
Speaker 3: Her husband was storing bodies in barrels in the shade
31:37
Speaker 3: in their backyard.
31:38
Speaker 9: John Bunting was looking for people to kill.
31:40
Speaker 3: By now, there's no doubt that Elizabeth Hayden knew some
31:44
Speaker 3: of what had happened, if not all of what had happened,
31:47
Speaker 3: and that was enough to mean that she would be
31:49
Speaker 3: targeted next.
32:03
Speaker 1: Despite the killer's efforts to conceal Elizabeth Hayden's disappearance, it
32:07
Speaker 1: was investigated immediately by police.
32:11
Speaker 3: Elizabeth Hayden was really the turning point in terms of
32:14
Speaker 3: the investigation and the intensity of the pressure on this
32:17
Speaker 3: group of killers.
32:19
Speaker 1: For the first time, the three men would come under
32:21
Speaker 1: close scrutiny.
32:24
Speaker 3: Because John Bunting would panic a little bit the bodies
32:28
Speaker 3: in barrels that he had been storing in Mark Hayden's garage,
32:31
Speaker 3: he hastily moved.
32:35
Speaker 9: All of this created a trial.
32:38
Speaker 1: The barrels were eventually moved to a disused bank two
32:41
Speaker 1: hours north of Adelaide in Snowtown. Despite an increasing and
32:45
Speaker 1: uncomfortable police presence around the suspects, the killings did not stop.
32:51
Speaker 14: Bunting towards the end of the killing was getting more
32:54
Speaker 14: and more of a high just through the pleasure of
32:57
Speaker 14: killing someone and the power it gave him.
33:01
Speaker 1: Lasarkis tells how Bunting asked him to lure a young
33:04
Speaker 1: man to Snowtown. About young man neither homosexual or a
33:08
Speaker 1: pedophile is flasarkus step brother, twenty four year old David Johnson.
33:13
Speaker 1: Marcus Johnson's son.
33:15
Speaker 4: David was a very good young man who had never
33:20
Speaker 4: been in trouble with the police. He was clean cut,
33:25
Speaker 4: he was well dressed and well behaved and everything he
33:28
Speaker 4: did and he did not deserve anything like he got.
33:33
Speaker 5: He was lured to his death by Jamie Vasakas at
33:37
Speaker 5: John Bunting's insistence. And we had tapes which were played
33:41
Speaker 5: to the court, and it's spine shilling to hear them.
33:44
Speaker 5: Bunting waiting in the vault at Snowtown as Jamie Vsarkus
33:49
Speaker 5: brings his prey along that lonely road. Bunting's on the
33:53
Speaker 5: phone to Vlasarkus saying this is the voice of happiness
33:58
Speaker 5: and Vasakas saying, har we're on.
34:01
Speaker 4: Our way.
34:07
Speaker 9: Down it, hey grave.
34:14
Speaker 5: We know that when David Johnson actually entered the vault,
34:16
Speaker 5: he was confused, as you would be.
34:19
Speaker 9: Put him down, Robin.
34:24
Speaker 6: He was panty and his lads were shaking and just shaking.
34:29
Speaker 9: Hold him down, Robin, you know, me, run hold him down.
34:35
Speaker 6: He was looking around, but he didn't know what was
34:37
Speaker 6: going on. It was obviously in a lot of pain.
34:45
Speaker 1: Aside from the horrifying torture. VLAs Arkis reveals to police
34:49
Speaker 1: that the killing of David Johnson marked the last taboo
34:52
Speaker 1: for Wagner and Bunting. VLAs Arkis watched both men eat
34:57
Speaker 1: a section of flesh from their last victim.
35:03
Speaker 4: There had been some cannibalers, these people I knew, and
35:07
Speaker 4: I actually sat down at night and I think that
35:10
Speaker 4: I've eaten my son.
35:11
Speaker 9: That's an indescribable theme. So he had rituals.
35:15
Speaker 2: I mean, the most extreme ritual was the eating together
35:19
Speaker 2: of the flesh of the victim. And they were now
35:22
Speaker 2: tied together by mutual guilt and at one at one
35:26
Speaker 2: with each other.
35:38
Speaker 1: On the second of June nineteen ninety nine, after six
35:41
Speaker 1: traumatic days, giving evidence to Peace. James Vleisakis is charged
35:46
Speaker 1: with murder. His testimony is crucial in the case against
35:50
Speaker 1: his fellow killers. On July the second, John Bunting, Robert
35:53
Speaker 1: Wagner and Mark Hayden had jointly charged with ten counts
35:57
Speaker 1: of murder. The whole of a Australia awaits the most
36:01
Speaker 1: shocking trial in the country's criminal history, as the public
36:05
Speaker 1: reel at the horrific details of the killings. The country
36:08
Speaker 1: is rocked by the revelation that Bunting could have been
36:11
Speaker 1: caught after his first murder. Four men are awaiting trial
36:21
Speaker 1: for a series of horrific murders in South Australia. All
36:25
Speaker 1: twelve murder victims were known to the four accused and
36:29
Speaker 1: all lived in the same deprived ghettos of North Adelaide.
36:35
Speaker 1: The bodies in the Barrel's trial will begin in two
36:37
Speaker 1: thousand and one. It'll be a massive undertaking.
36:42
Speaker 10: It was complex, it was demanding if put a big
36:47
Speaker 10: slice out of the police officers' careers.
36:50
Speaker 1: On the twenty first of June two thousand and one,
36:53
Speaker 1: Jamie Lasakis appears in court to face four charges of murder.
36:58
Speaker 1: It is his confession to police the forms the basis
37:00
Speaker 1: of the entire prosecution case.
37:04
Speaker 3: It was a sacred deal that had been brightened for
37:06
Speaker 3: some weeks, and he appeared in court unexpectedly and played
37:09
Speaker 3: it guilty to four of the five murders for which
37:12
Speaker 3: he'd been charged.
37:14
Speaker 1: VLAs Arkis pleads guilty to four charges of murder for
37:17
Speaker 1: his part in the murders of his half brother Troy Eude,
37:21
Speaker 1: Fred Brooks, Darry O'Dwyer and his stepbrother David Johnson. Plasarkis
37:26
Speaker 1: is sentenced to twenty six years in Britain.
37:28
Speaker 2: Throughout he was horrified by the killing, but he was
37:32
Speaker 2: caught up in Bunting's world. It took months and months
37:35
Speaker 2: of physical separation before he escaped from that world and
37:39
Speaker 2: woke up one morning to the full horror of what
37:42
Speaker 2: he'd been part of.
37:45
Speaker 1: Lasarkis returns to court to take the stand for thirty
37:48
Speaker 1: two days to testify against his co accused.
37:52
Speaker 3: It helps to have a star witness when you're trying
37:54
Speaker 3: serial killers, and in return for that he gets out
37:58
Speaker 3: of jile one day.
38:00
Speaker 1: Mark Hayden pleads not guilty to two counts of murder
38:03
Speaker 1: and five of assisting offenders. He will be tried separately.
38:08
Speaker 5: Mark Hayden was the monosyllabic sidekick who just did what
38:13
Speaker 5: he was told. He had his own trial, and he
38:16
Speaker 5: just said staring at the floor.
38:19
Speaker 1: The murder charges against Hayden are dropped, but he is
38:23
Speaker 1: found guilty on all counts of assisting offenders. He is
38:27
Speaker 1: dismissed by the judge as a passive man servant and
38:29
Speaker 1: sentenced to twenty five years in prison. In October two
38:34
Speaker 1: thousand and two, the trial of Robert Wagner and John
38:36
Speaker 1: Bunting begins. Robert Wagner, charged with eleven counts of murder,
38:41
Speaker 1: pleads guilty to three and not guilty to the remaining charges.
38:45
Speaker 1: John Bunting pleads not guilty to twelve counts of murder.
38:50
Speaker 3: They say they were killing pedophiles, people who would harm children,
38:54
Speaker 3: when in actual fact most of their victims were simply
38:57
Speaker 3: people who weren't as privileged others.
39:00
Speaker 9: Or whose lives had in some way gone off the rails.
39:06
Speaker 4: The world.
39:06
Speaker 1: Here is the full appalling detail of each killing the
39:10
Speaker 1: prosecution placed to the jury recordings made by the killers
39:14
Speaker 1: during their torture sessions. It proves traumatic for all those
39:17
Speaker 1: who attend.
39:19
Speaker 5: I was haunted by the voices of the victims screaming
39:22
Speaker 5: for mercy and receiving none, and it played over and
39:27
Speaker 5: over in my mind. I had nightmares, and I know
39:29
Speaker 5: a lot.
39:30
Speaker 1: Of people did. Marcus Johnson has to endure listening to
39:34
Speaker 1: the recordings of his son David being tortured.
39:37
Speaker 4: It was a very, very very emotionally strange, indescribable time
39:44
Speaker 4: to have to sit there and know that he was
39:49
Speaker 4: under such terrible stress and strain that lay human being
39:53
Speaker 4: for go through.
39:55
Speaker 1: Despite the prosecution revealing the victim's suffering, there is no
39:59
Speaker 1: emotion the accused.
40:01
Speaker 3: I've watched John Bunting and Robert Wagner in the dock
40:04
Speaker 3: and I haven't seen one glimmer of remorse in either
40:07
Speaker 3: of them.
40:09
Speaker 1: In September two thousand and three, the verdicts are announced.
40:13
Speaker 1: Robert Wagner is found guilty of ten murders. He will
40:16
Speaker 1: spend the rest of his life behind bars for his
40:19
Speaker 1: compulsive desire to kill.
40:22
Speaker 14: I think it was almost like a drug, and he
40:25
Speaker 14: longed to get that feeling, and I think that's what
40:30
Speaker 14: perhaps kept the killing going.
40:32
Speaker 1: John Bunting is found guilty of eleven murders. The jury
40:36
Speaker 1: fails to reach a verdict on the cause of death
40:38
Speaker 1: of one of the victims, Suzanne Allen. Along with Wagner,
40:42
Speaker 1: he will never be released from prison.
40:46
Speaker 5: I have never ever in my career as a crime
40:48
Speaker 5: writer come across the likes of Robert Wagner and John Bunting.
40:53
Speaker 5: I said, it just meets from them in court watching,
40:57
Speaker 5: particularly John Bunting, smirking, loving it, and I remember thinking
41:03
Speaker 5: at one point, if ever there was the devil, he
41:07
Speaker 5: was sitting just made us from me.
41:08
Speaker 1: Here the case is closed, four men are in jail
41:17
Speaker 1: and twelve victims are dead. But could the killings have
41:21
Speaker 1: been stopped earlier? Forensic anthropologist Mattie Hanniberg believes mistakes were made.
41:28
Speaker 11: The case would have been solved earlier, and there are
41:31
Speaker 11: for the death of some other victims prevented.
41:37
Speaker 1: In nineteen ninety four, the remains of Bunting's first victim,
41:40
Speaker 1: Clinton Tressize, were discovered. Despite a nationwide appeal, it was
41:44
Speaker 1: five years before the remains were identified.
41:48
Speaker 8: If we'd been able to identify the skelet remains as precise,
41:52
Speaker 8: the police will be making inquiries. Then with all of
41:55
Speaker 8: Precise's associates, you would almost be certain that Bunting and
41:58
Speaker 8: Wagner would have been spoken to by police.
42:01
Speaker 1: Professor Hanniberg was asked by police to help identify the remains. Inexplicably,
42:07
Speaker 1: he was never given the only existing photo of Trecise,
42:10
Speaker 1: which he is confident he could have matched accurately to
42:13
Speaker 1: the skull.
42:14
Speaker 11: If we know, for example, that certain people are missing
42:19
Speaker 11: and we have their photographs, and that we find one skull,
42:22
Speaker 11: we can do by image mixing supreme position of the
42:26
Speaker 11: skull into the photograph, a skull will fit only one face.
42:32
Speaker 3: That error meant that police didn't investigate initially Clinton Recis's
42:37
Speaker 3: disappearance as a murder, and that probably meant that John
42:40
Speaker 3: Bunting wasn't investigated as a suspect early on and allowed
42:44
Speaker 3: his activities his killings to continue. This snowball into Australia's
42:51
Speaker 3: worst serial killing when it could have been just a
42:53
Speaker 3: single case of murder.
42:56
Speaker 1: Australia's worst serial killing has left an indelible mark on
42:59
Speaker 1: those involved in the case.
43:02
Speaker 5: The Snowtown's story may have ended for people, but for
43:05
Speaker 5: people like myself who covered it, it will never end.
43:10
Speaker 16: When you find out that somebody you care about is
43:16
Speaker 16: not only dead, but has been tortured simply because they
43:24
Speaker 16: were a little different.
43:29
Speaker 1: Do you know why? For those touched by the tragedy,
43:33
Speaker 1: the horrors will never recede. I carry my grief.
43:37
Speaker 4: I don't look upon myself as a normal human being.
43:41
Speaker 1: I just can't.
43:42
Speaker 4: I find it extraordinarily hard to trust people.
43:46
Speaker 1: I don't think I overcame.
43:49
Speaker 3: The thing that it showed me most of all was
43:52
Speaker 3: how if we allow people to become completely isolated, if.
43:56
Speaker 9: No one misses them, well what can become of them?
43:58
Speaker 3: And I think it showed me that we owe these
44:00
Speaker 3: people are a bit more than what we give them,
44:02
Speaker 3: and what these victims got