True Crime Tonight: Snowtown Killer Gets Parole

0:00Warning, this is a true crime segment and not suitable for children. It contains references to sexual violence and suicide, which some listeners may find distressing. If you need support, you are not alone. Contact Lifeline on 13-11-14. Or visit lifeline.org.au for 24-hour support. It's a voice that will send shivers down your spine. Stand off with police. Wanted fugitive? Step 19. Time. The suspects were the victim. To the worst. We get legal dramas in Hollywood. Today is a major when to show what the system can do. This is true crime tonight. You can't tonight. Hello there. This is true crime tonight. I'm your host, Michelle Laurie. And I'm here with one producer this week. That's Matthew Tankard. Hey Michelle. Hello Ruby is not here. No Ruby. She's in Bali. I'm just going to tell you that right now. She's in Bali. So jealous. She is not thinking about crime. She is relaxing by a pool. And she'll be back next week though. And we're here to bring you some true crime recommendations. We've got some listeners to hear from which I love so much.

1:02And we've got a very big Australian true crime story this week. We're big sort of update. Update. Yeah. On a story that's all coming up. And part of the update is our main interview tonight by the way. We're going to hear from a man called Jeremy Padney who is a journalist and an author. And he wrote the definitive book on the snow town bodies in the barrels murders. So that'll give you a hint. It is a massive hint as to what I'm really frothed about this week on true crime tonight. Welcome back to true crime tonight. You're hearing this around Australia and hello wherever you are in Australia. We have a message from a key week cousin. If we do, yeah. Lee sent us a message on our true crime hotline. You can find a link to send us your own message in any episode of Australian true crime. Let's listen to this week's. Hi Michelle. I've just been listening to Maggie's story. And I think if anyone can move a law, it should be Maggie's bus. Because all the survivors and her bus, she's a hero. If he came across as very make him very mild, but my goodness, she is.

2:04She's got some some guts. And they weren't her children, but there were Australia's children. I just wonder where the common sense is when it comes to this. I'm struggling with the lack of common sense around, you say? Why can't we lock them up for a very, very long time? Because look at the lives that have been ruined. And Dennis gets to lay on a nice warm bed. And there's no consequences. There's no remorse. Maggie was a guest on the podcast Australian true crime. And she told us the most incredible story. It's really popped off, hasn't it Matthew? Dennis McKenna, he was a... He's kind of labeled as... Even though you hear this a few times with different people, but whenever I look him up, he's labeled as Western Australia's worst child sex offender. Isn't that horrible? And you're right, in Australia we do hear that. Especially in the last however many years, it's been 10 or 15 years since we had a Royal Commission into such a long-winded name, isn't it? Institutional responses to child sexual abuse. Well done.

3:05And ever since then, unfortunately, there have been a few individuals who have been called Australia's worst ever pedophile. So this one happened in Western Australia. Yeah, in the town of Katanning. Katanning? I'm so sorry if you're listening from Katanning because it's not a great mark on the town. There are a couple of officials in the town that Maggie took this news to. She went to and said, look, some young people have disclosed to me that they have been victimised in this establishment and that it's an ongoing thing and the guy who runs it is a pedophile. Yeah, it was a San Andrews youth hostel. Which, you know, I think you and I were both thinking it was something else. I thought it was a boy's home. Yeah, it's not. Like for naughty boys. Not at all. It was where kids would go so they could get to school easily. It was a farming community. Yeah. So it was like either have your kids sit on a bus for two hours every morning and every afternoon or you drive them that way or we set up this hostel that effectively worked like a boarding school. Yeah.

4:05So they'd go to school every day, come back, stay there during the week. Horrible, horrible story, but I think what's captured everybody is Maggie herself. Just such a fabulous lady. She's an older lady now, but she's telling this story that happened when she was in her 20s. Yeah. So she's talking about being a young woman was suddenly this huge responsibility of young people trusting her and telling her. And then she takes it to the older people in the town, her bosses and that and none of them want to hear about it. In fact, in her own words, she says she's run out of town. Yeah. In favor of this bloke. Yeah, because obviously having that youth hostel brings a lot of economic prosperity to the town because, you know, the parents drop them off. They buy their weekly shopping. And all those kids living there, they're eating and, you know, using the electricity and all that kind of stuff. Yeah. And so all of that is bringing prosperity to the town as well. But she's a trailblazer. She's one of those people who, when it was very unpopular, when nobody wanted to hear about it, she pushed through and, oh god, what about that? That other lady talks about K, K lost four of her five sons.

5:10Basically to the offending of Dennis McKenna, two of them were abused by Dennis McKenna and took their own lives. And two of the other brothers took their own lives because of the tragedy in the family. So effectively, four of her kids. Yes. So we're definitely going to pass on everyone's well wishes to Maggie Dawkins, just a fabulous, inspiring woman who somebody mentioned, well, maybe it was Leah, call her there. Just mentioned that she was so unassuming, Maggie. She's just like, oh, yeah, stuff happens. It's like, no, you are amazing. Yeah, I know. She's written a book. She's written a book about it. To be believed. Yeah, and I could only imagine that unassuming temperament that she has. If you're the offender or if you're someone defending the offender, you're just thinking this person's not going to be any... A threat. This person's not going to be a threat. No, absolutely. Also, I guess maybe that was all part of the attraction for the victims, the victims who went to her and trusted her

6:11and told her because she wasn't from the community. Something about this young woman that they thought maybe she can help us when no one else can or will. That episode's called The House of Horrors in Catanning on Australian True Crime. And if you want to leave us a message, please do on our True Crime hotline. You can find the link to do that in any episode of Australian True Crime. Coming up, we're going to talk about another House of Horrors, a bank of horrors, actually. The bank in Snowtown, that police discovered eight bodies in many, many years ago. Now, 1999, one of the offenders who was imprisoned over these crimes has gained his release. I don't think he's actually walked out the gate yet, but he's been given parole. So we'll talk about that soon on True Crime Tonight. Around Australia, this is True Crime Tonight with Michelle Laurie and me, Matthew Tankard. We also have another member of our team, Ruby Barts. She's on assignment. She's on assignment on having some mojitos by the pool and Bali. Good, Anna. That's what they say on TV. Everyone's always on assignment. One of the assignments.

7:11She's on assignment. But Michelle, yes, massive news has happened in Australian crime this week. Massive news, the announcement of the parole of a man named Jamie Vlasakis. Now, again, maybe it's a generational thing. If you're my age, I reckon you know exactly who that is. If you're a bit younger, maybe you don't, but you'll know this. He is a member of the gang who committed this Snowtown bodies in the barrels murders. James Vlasakis was the youngest member. He was 19 years old when he went to jail. So he was 1718 when he was involved in the murders. He was 14 years old when the leader of the gang, John Bunting, came into his life. Bunting started seeing Jamie's mother. They became an item, a relationship. John moved into their house. He became a stepfather. And Jamie Vlasakis, you'll notice by my tone that I do have some compassion for this guy. And I wonder if today he would be sentenced as severely as he was back then. Because I think he's a victim as well as an offender in this story.

8:13Now, so he's been let out on parole, right? Yes. So it's not as if none of his convictions have been lost or anything. He's just served his time. He's met the time to parole and he's been let out. He's done 27 years. And the parole board decided to give him parole. Upon that announcement, the Governor General, I believe, of South Australia, asked for a review. He was against the parole. Even though Vlasakis has a perfect record during his incarceration. I wonder what community expectations are of this specific case. Because, you know, like me and I assume most people really, really know this story from the movie. It's no take. Right. Oh, God. The movie. And I wonder, I wonder what people think. I wonder, please let us know. Contact us on socials or send us a message on the true crime hotline. Because, yeah, if you're only what's the movie like me, you do have compassion for him. Right. Yeah, yeah, you're right. The movie does lean very, very heavily into the narrative that he is a victim. I mean, he was victimized by his older brother. He was sexually assaulted by his older brother during his childhood and as adolescents.

9:15His older brother then became a victim of the gang. Jamie was present when his older brother was tortured and murdered guys. I mean, that's what we're talking about here. It's incredibly depraved stuff that these guys got up to. I don't think we would ever want to see John Bunting out of jail. Very much a cult figure, I would say. Yeah. I think he probably ticks a lot of the cult leader boxes. So, sociopath, psychopath. We never want to see him out of jail. I would argue we probably don't even want to see Robert Wagner out of jail. Although Wagner's story is not dissimilar to Jamie Vassarcuses in terms of victimization in childhood. But he was older when all of this happened. So, there's definitely a sense that Vassarcus was a child, was a minor during most of this, the evolution of this story. He was 19 by the time the police caught up with them. He confessed to everything in his first interview. He wasn't even a person, he wasn't even a suspect.

10:15They called him in because he was the stepson of John Bunting and he lived with John Bunting. And this kid sat down and just blurted out everything he'd ever seen, heard, participated in, everything he knew. So, that obviously cracked the case open. And don't you think that just speaks to the guilt that he was carrying too? If he was that quick to say it? Absolutely. And again, I know the film really leans into this. There is a feeling of inevitability about his participation in all this, that he had no choice or no agency. We know that theoretically he did. He could theoretically have done all the things people always ask, why didn't they just? Yeah. Why didn't he just ring the police? Immediately when it started, why didn't he just tell somebody else? Why didn't he just run away? Because psychologically he was very much trapped by his circumstances. He didn't feel like he had anyone to talk to. There were a lot of predators in his life and in the vicinity, we're talking the northern suburbs of Adelaide. Apologies, Adelaide. And this is a big part of this book. Later in the show, we'll be hearing from Jeremy Padney,

11:15who wrote the ultimate book on the situation. It's called Snowtown, The Body's Embarrows Murders. And Jeremy goes into a lot of description of the environment, of the way people live, the place people live, the neighbourhood, everybody on welfare, generational welfare, very few people growing up with both parents, a lot of violence, a lot of sexual violence, a lot of predators. And so that context is really important to this story and I couldn't possibly do it justice in a summary. So we're re-issuing this podcast episode with Jeremy Padney. It's like 45-minute long conversation where he really explains to us what happened but also who these people are, where they came from, how this happened. So that's coming out this week. It's out now actually on a straight and true crime, the podcast. But coming up later in the show, we'll play your little excerpt so you can understand how sort of complicated this is. And yet when Jeremy maps it out, that's when I get that sense of inevitability,

12:16particularly with Jamie Vlasakis. That's coming up on True Crime Tonight around Australia. Welcome back to True Crime Tonight. It's finally time for this interview we've been teasing you about for the last 45 minutes. This is Jeremy Padney. He wrote the best book, I think the most definitive book on the subject of the bodies in barrels, murders, the bodies that were found in Snowtown. The murders took place mostly in the northern suburbs of Adelaide and we've had news this week that one of the offenders, Jamie Vlasakis, is about to be released on parole. But we go now to Jeremy Padney, who takes us back to where this all began. One of the reasons that these killers were able to go on for as long as they did was because victims weren't reported missing or they weren't reported missing for a long time. And that was because they came from fractured, unusual backgrounds. What happened to them went undetected and then what happened to others went undetected as a result. The interesting thing about John Bunting is that his background wasn't that different in terms of trauma and troubles to some of the other people that he then coerced into his circle of killers, if you like.

13:18But he had this way of endearing himself to people, of making them think that he would help them, save them, protect them, and earn their trust. And then what he did, I think it would be fair to say, he's got them to a point of no return, where they were implicit in what had gone on, either by helping after the fact early on, or by taking part in murders or luring people to their deaths. And so once he had you, he had you, and he was also a terrifying person. I mean, clearly he's a terrifying person. Yeah. And childhood sexual abuse was endemic in this community, right? This could never have happened if that weren't the case. No, so this is, it's clearly unfortunate that Snowtown is how these killings have become known, because that's where the bodies were found, and that's where the last murder took place. But the reality is a lot of this happened in other places, well before that. And the epicenter of this really is the Northern suburbs of Adelaide. So a suburb called Salisbury North, bunting almost certainly endured sexual abuse as a child.

14:19It was never formally investigated, but he told people that that was the case. And it seems likely that that was the case. Robert Wagner absolutely was sexually abused as a boy, and then abused continually by Barry Lane, who became one of the victims, and was also involved in helping after the fact with one of the murders. And James Lasakas endured the most horrific abuse of all. And so he was very susceptible to John Bunting, and shared his thoughts of revenge to some extent. John Bunting modeled himself as some sort of anti-petophile crusader. The truth is he had a burning hatred for a whole lot of people. He was being hatred for homosexual people, and he really couldn't differentiate between the two, which was very wrong, because it just wasn't true about many of his victims. One of the things that happened was that no one knew not even the police how big this was, until after the discovery had been made. So even when the police rolled into Snowtown that day,

15:19they were investigating the disappearances of five people. And what they found was six barrels with eight bodies in them. And so they were in the headline the next day that I was one of the reporters who worked on said six barrels, six bodies, we got that wrong. But that's because some of the victims had been dismembered, and so there were parts of bodies in some of the barrels. So six barrels, six bodies, but as you know, there were 12 victims. So Bunting, Wagner, and Hayden were all arrested on the morning after the bodies were found. Wow. I think. So in dawn raids, if you like, on their homes. And Lasakas, not for a while, how he became to be implicated in the case, he was a young man. He's much younger, obviously. He's much younger, yeah. And essentially, his mother was being viewed as a suspect, Bunting's partner was being viewed as a suspect. More so in the stealing of victims' money after the event, wasn't clear whether or not she knew they were victims of murder. She's dead, she died of cancer, she likely knew. She likely took part in some way in the murder of Ray Davies. And so, Lasakas was scared for his mother initially.

16:23But then when the heat was on, and the focus of the investigation was all around him, he made a confession to a friend that he had some involvement and that friend tipped off the police and so the focus went on him as well. Wow. So was he the first to speak? I mean, of the group, did people speak? Did they start turning on each other? He's the only one that spoke. Okay. So John Bunting has never cooperated. He's never pleaded guilty. He sat through a trial when he was found guilty of 11 of the 12 murders. Robert Wagner was convicted of 10 of the murders and with assisting after the fact in the murder of Clinton Trasice. He pleaded guilty to some of those but didn't make any confession, didn't implicate Bunting still sat with him at trial. So he was obstinate in his admission of some of the crimes. Mark Hayden, as you know, was never can be, was charged but never convicted of any murders. So he's serving his time for assisting offenders. James Rosakis was abused by his own father,

17:25who died in front of him. And then he was abused by a pedophile who lived up the street because his drug-affected mother wasn't a wake up to what was going on. And then he was taken in by, as luck would not have it for James Rosakis, a serial killer. But at the end of the day, I know it's easy to say, but he could have ended it at some point by picking up the phone and calling for help and not actively being involved in murders and then luring people, including his own stepbrother to his death. I think telling the story of how the victims came to be in the place they were and why it is that their vanishing wasn't noticed or the alarm wasn't raised sooner. I think that had to be done to be fair to them. Yeah, you made us look at them and no one was looking at them when they disappeared. No one was looking for them and no one was looking at them. It took this and it took you to make us see them. And I think if you allow yourself to look at this case

18:25and write these people off as no hope, as all petafiles, well, that's what John Bunting thought about them. Thank you Jeremy Padney. You can listen to the entire interview on the Australian True Crime podcast. Thanks for listening to this episode of True Crime Tonight. We'll see you next week from 6-7 around the country.