The Encyclopedia of Serial Killers (84 page)

self to give.”

and spent the next 14 years in prison, where he was No new charges were filed in the cases identified by

“abused” and “tortured” by fellow inmates. To make Judge Smith, but it hardly mattered. At 6:20 A.M. on matters worse, the caller said, his parents and sister had
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SNOWTOWN, Australia, murders

died while he was in prison. In retaliation for those
SNOWTOWN, Australia, murders

wrongs, he explained, “I force a woman to go where I Snowtown is a small farming community located 93

want, and when I go there I tell them, ‘Do you know miles north of Adelaide in the heart of South Australia’s what? I was hurt, so I’m doing it now.’ Then I kill

“wheat belt.” Founded in 1878, it survives by hard them.” When asked how many victims he had killed, the work and iron will, its 520 year-round residents accus-caller claimed 76—twice as many as police had found tomed to hardship. Snowtown’s only bank closed in the thus far. To verify his claim, he signed off with directions 1990s, and in January 1999 was rented out as storage to the corpse of “a lady I don’t think the police have dis-space for $60 per month. If anyone had forecast possi-covered.”

ble locations for Australia’s worst serial murders that With so many clues in hand, police soon focused year, it is unlikely Snowtown would have made the their search on Moses Sithole, a 31-year-old ex-convict list—but small towns have their grisly secrets, too.

and youth counselor who had suddenly dropped out of The nightmare began, unnoticed, with the August sight. Known to use as many as six pseudonyms, he 1993 disappearance of Clinton Trezise, a 22-year-old proved an elusive quarry, but a tip directed them to his homosexual known as “Happy Pants” to some of his hideout in the Johannesburg slum of Benoni on October acquaintances in Adelaide. An inveterate drifter, Trezise 18. Armed with a hatchet when officers approached was barely missed until his skeletal remains were found him, Sithole wounded one policeman before he was buried at Lower Light, north of Adelaide, in 1995. In shot and disarmed. He survived his wounds and was 1996, 47-year-old Suzanne Allen and 26-year-old Ray soon transferred from intensive care to a military hospi-Davies vanished from the Adelaide’s low-income distal, where physicians diagnosed him as HIV-positive. In trict. In 1997, missing-persons reports were filed on 19-custody, he boasted of teaching his victims “a very good year-old Michael Gardiner, 18-year-old Thomas

lesson” by killing them.

Trevilyan, and 40-year-old Barry Lane (a transvestite Robert Ressler’s profile of the “ABC” killer had and twice-convicted pedophile). The missing list for suggested the possibility of two TEAM KILLERS working 1998 included 37-year-old Elizabeth Haydon, her 18-together, and police initially suspected that Sithole year-old nephew Frederick Brooks, 29-year-old Garry might be an accomplice of David Selepe, linked to a O’Dwyer, 31-year-old Gavin Porter, and 21-year-old half-dozen murders of women in Cleveland, but Sit-Troy Youde.

hole denied ever meeting Selepe, and no evidence has Police came close to cracking the case in November been found to connect the two men. (Selepe, for his 1998, when Elizabeth Haydon vanished from home part, had nothing to say on the subject. He was shot after a noisy dispute with her husband Mark. Later, dead in December 1994, reportedly after attacking a detectives claimed that Elizabeth’s remains and those of policeman on a visit to one of his crime scenes. The six other victims were stashed in a disabled Toyota officer who killed him was exonerated on a claim of Land Cruiser parked on the property in Smithfield self-defense.)

Plains, but it was hauled off to a farm owned by A full year passed before Moses Sithole made his first friends, 90 miles from the scene, before officers exam-court appearance, on October 22, 1996, formally ined it. Two months later, 40-year-old Mark Haydon charged with 38 murders, 40 rapes, and six counts of and 32-year-old John Justin Bunting arrived in Snow-robbery. His trial, scheduled to begin on November 14, town, offering to rent the abandoned State Bank. The was postponed when Sithole arrived in court that morn-men told landlord Andrew Michael that they planned ing, his pants drenched in blood. He was rushed to a to store used parts for cars and motorcycles in the vault.

hospital, treated for an open knee wound apparently A deal was struck, and the new renters soon delivered sustained at Pretoria Central Prison. When his trial six black plastic vats to the bank. On Mother’s Day, finally convened in February 1997, an American voice when a neighbor asked about the contents of the vats, expert identified Sithole as the caller who had boasted Bunting replied, “You wouldn’t want to know.”

of his murders to reporters at
The Star.
Sithole had also According to police, the last of 12 murders was car-confessed his crimes in detail to other inmates, some of ried out one day later, on May 9, 1999, inside the bank whom were curiously equipped with both tape

itself. The final victim, 24-year-old David Johnson, was recorders and video cameras, capturing his boasts for lured to Snowtown by his 18-year-old half-brother posterity. The long-winded proceedings were delayed James Spyridon Vlassakis (also a half-brother of victim once again in August when Sithole started vomiting Troy Youde). As later reconstructed by detectives, Vlas-blood from a stomach ulcer, but there was no escaping sakis enticed Johnson with the offer of a cheap com-justice. On December 5, 1997, jurors convicted Sithole puter, then watched as he was tortured, strangled, and on all counts; the following day, he was sentenced to a crudely dismembered by three confederates—Bunting, prison term of 2,410 years.

Haydon, and 27-year-old Robert Joe Wagner. Vlassakis
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SNOWTOWN, Australia, murders

later claimed that Wagner carved a slab of flesh from would tell the court, “Pedophiles were doing terrible Johnson’s corpse, then later fried and ate it.

things to children and innocent children were being A tangled web of personal relationships led police to damaged. The authorities did nothing about it, I was Snowtown on May 20, 1999. Upon opening the bank’s very angry. Someone had to do something about it. I vault, heavy with the stench of death, they found six decided to take action and I took that action.” Police vats of acid haphazardly crammed with remains of eight dismissed that claim, charging that Bunting killed most corpses, identified as victims Brooks, Gardiner, Haydon, of his victims to steal their government welfare checks, Johnson, Lane, O’Dwyer, Porter, and Youde. Also seized torturing some to obtain the PIN numbers to their bank in the raid were ropes, handcuffs, knives, bone-crushing accounts.

instruments, and an electric generator equipped with Court-appointed psychologists struck a middle

alligator clips. Pathologist John Gilbert later reported ground between Bunting’s vigilante claims and bland that at least two victims bore signs of torture, including police denials. In fact, they maintained, Bunting hated burn marks on their torsos and scrotums.

all those he regarded as “weak”—the unemployed, dis-John Bunting, Mark Haydon, and Robert Wagner

abled, mentally defective—while reserving special anger were jailed on May 21 and charged with murder in for suspected pedophiles. He despised Elizabeth Hay-Adelaide Magistrates Court. That afternoon, police don because she was unkempt, obese, and had eight armed with ground-penetrating radar visited the home children by multiple fathers. Bunting enjoyed a sexual in Salisbury North, where Bunting lived with James relationship with Haydon’s sister, Jodie Elliott, but dis-Vlassakis. Detective Bryan Hearn questioned Vlassakis, missed her son (Fred Brooks) as “waste” because he describing the fourth suspect as “overawed” by the dis-had a learning disability. Bunting’s torture of Brooks on play of police technology. More evidence was seized, the day he died included inserting a lit sparkler into the and diggers unearthed two plastic bags filled with teenager’s penis. Accomplice Robert Wagner had human remains, hidden beneath a concrete slab outside attempted suicide at age eight after he was molested by the house. Two days later, on May 23, further excava-a family friend, and James Vlassakis also claimed a tion revealed a skeleton buried 10 feet beneath the first background of sexual abuse. Together, they made will-set of remains. Those victims were identified as Suzanne ing soldiers in Bunting’s war against “dirties.”

Allen and Ray Davies.

Barry Lane was a prime target for Bunting’s homici-The murders brought a short-lived economic boom dal rage, channeled through Wagner and Vlassakis. A to Snowtown, where residents cashed in with guided flamboyant cross-dresser who called himself

tours and hasty garage sales staged for the morbidly

“Vanessa,” twice convicted of molesting children, Lane curious. Unsatisfied with local trade, the old bank’s met Robert Wagner soon after Wagner left school, still owner announced plans to auction its contents on the illiterate at age 14. Traumatized by sexual abuse and Internet. “There’s been a lot of overseas interest,” she the beatings his father inflicted for trivial sins, Wagner told reporters, “so I figure I should give everyone a fled home with Lane to live in New South Wales. They chance to buy significant pieces like the door.” Police, returned to Adelaide four years later, and settled in a meanwhile, were busy perfecting their case against house near Bunting’s. Lane introduced Wagner to the Bunting, Haydon, Vlassakis, and Wagner. The story neighbors as his fiancée. Their house was “putrid,”

they pieced together was a grim mélange of sadism, per-friends recalled, because their four dogs defecated versity, and common greed.

everywhere without restraint. Bunting befriended Wag-John Bunting emerged as the ringleader and masterner, tapping him as a source for names of pedophiles mind of the deadly quartet. Born in September 1966 in which Bunting posted on a “spider wall” at home.

the Brisbane suburb of Inala, Bunting was sexually Their conversations soured Wagner’s relationship with abused at some point in childhood. He would later Lane, and Lane fled after violence erupted. The gang describe the event to friends as “his accident.” In a poor soon tracked him down and killed him at his new neighborhood awash with drugs and alcohol, Bunting home in Hectorville.

stood out for his fanatical sobriety. He worked for a Meanwhile, Bunting embarked on a relationship

time in a slaughterhouse, regaling friends with his with Elizabeth Harvey, another unwed mother with hatred of pedophiles, whom he dubbed “dirties.” Mark children by multiple partners, whose sons included Day, a teenage acquaintance, recalled Bunting’s tales of James Vlassakis, David Johnson, and Troy Youde.

assaulting child molesters, but dismissed the stories as Vlassakis fell under Bunting’s spell, and eventually sac-

“hot air.” Associate Marcus Johnson recounted a rificed his two half-brothers to profitable war on “dirt-

“game” devised by Bunting and his friends, wherein ies.” Mark Haydon was the odd man out, older than they would “take care of” pedophiles by “burying any of the rest, described in media reports as an ardent them” or “throwing them off cliffs.” At trial, Bunting neo-Nazi who fell in line with Bunting’s half-baked
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SOBHRAJ, Charles Gurmukh

scheme to “purify” Adelaide while making a buck in that I cannot envisage anything that would justify fixing the bargain.

a non-parole period. If I had the power to make an The murders, as described in court, were both brutal order for them never to be released, I would unhesitat-and ritualized. Victims were beaten, shocked, and othingly make that order.” In rejecting the strange vigilante erwise tortured, sometimes with fingers and toes defense, Martin added, “I am satisfied both of you crushed by pliers. Somber music set the tone. Victims derived pleasure from the physical act of killing and the were compelled to call Bunting “Lord Sir” and address violence and torture that preceded some of the killings.

Wagner as “God.” Three early victims were buried, and I am also satisfied you derived pleasure from the parts of the rest were preserved for easy fetishistic defleshing and dismembering of some of the bodies.”

access. Vlassakis gobbled drugs during the murders, but Even with that judgment rendered, the Snowtown his three companions seemingly abstained. Wagner’s case was not finished. Judge Martin ordered a retrial for detour into CANNIBALISM, following the Johnson mur-the Allen murder, which—like Mark Haydon’s trial—

der, stood as grisly evidence that the crimes were never had not convened at press time for this volume. Bunting strictly a matter of profit.

appealed his sentence in May 2004, claiming that pros-In the wake of Johnson’s death, Wagner visited the ecutors had obstructed his defense, but that assertion victim’s father, claiming that Johnson had gone into was rejected.

hiding because he had been in a car accident and had impregnated a 13-year-old girl. Curious friends were treated to a tape recording, extracted from Johnson
SOBHRAJ, Charles Gurmukh

under torture, wherein he said, “I’ve got myself a real Born Hotchand Bhawnani Gurmukh Sobhraj, in April girlfriend. I don’t need a whore.” By that time, however, 1944, Southeast Asia’s most notorious serial killer was police were on the case, intercepting telephone calls the illegitimate son of a Vietnamese peasant girl and a between Bunting and Wagner, recording comments to wealthy Indian merchant living in Saigon. Sobhraj’s support their search warrant in Snowtown.

father married an Indian woman in Pooma, whereupon Using fingerprints and dental records, police identi-his mother retaliated by wedding a French military offi-fied five victims from the bank vault on May 28, 1999.

cer when Sobhraj was four years old. Indochina was in Three more were identified on June 12, and a total of turmoil at the time, with French colonial troops fighting 11 by September 1. Prosecutors presented more than a hopeless rearguard action against Ho Chi Minh’s 4,000 exhibits and 1,300 sworn declarations when they rebels, and young Hotchand Sobhraj witnessed count-launched a committal hearing on December 12, 2000, less acts of violence before his stepfather took the fam-required by Australian law to decide if the four suspects ily to France in 1953.