James Vlassakis

From there, the investigation moved quickly, and within weeks police had arrested John Bunting, Robert Wagner, and Elizabeth Hayden's husband, Mark Hayden.

Days later, they arrested 19-year-old James Vlassakis.

Bunting was the leader of the gang.

He presented the killings to the others as a cleansing of society of pedophiles and homosexuals.

There's an argument that James Vlassakis was another victim in this story.

He was 14 when his mother started a relationship with Bunting.

He'd been molested by his older brother, Troy Youde, who became one of the gang's victims, and Vlassakis confessed to his involvement in the crimes during his first interview with police before he was even suspected of taking part.

And the, the epicenter of this really is the northern suburbs of Adelaide, so a suburb called Salisbury North and the surrounding areas, and that's where Bunting came to be.

And within 24 hours of finding the bodies, they charged Bunting, Hayden, and another man, Robert Wagner, with murder.

About a fortnight later, they also charged Bunting's stepson, James Vlassakis, who was 19 years old at the time, with murder, and he ended up being the Crown's key witness after pleading guilty to four of those killings, and it was his testimony in court that was key to making sure that Bunting and Wagner will stay locked up for life without parole.

Now, more bodies were subsequently discovered across Adelaide's north.

All up, 12 deaths were linked to the Snowtown murders.

So they first met, along with their accomplice Mark Haydon, when they were neighbors living in public housing in Salisbury North in Adelaide.

Psychological profiles of Bunting describe him as highly manipulative and someone who commanded authority over people around him.

One of those was his stepson, James Vlassakis, who says that he was heavily influenced by Bunting.

He said in court that he viewed Bunting as a father figure and looked up to him, and also that he was scared that if he refused to take part in the murders, that he might be killed next.

The international law around this is also a bit fuzzy, uh, so that topic is likely to be on the agenda at the next United Nations disarmament meeting, and that is happening in November.

[upbeat music] The youngest of the four men jailed over the Snowtown murders in South Australia, James Vlassakis, was approved for parole yesterday after 27 years in prison.

These are the murders that you might know as the Bodies in the Barrels murders.

That's right, and they were committed between 1992 and 1999 and have become so synonymous with Snowtown that residents actually floated a name change.

So who is, uh, James, uh, Vlassakis, and what was his role in the Snowtown murders?

Well, James Vlassakis was the, the youngest, uh, perpetrator, and he was actually, uh, living with John Bunting, who was the main r-ringleader, um, through his, uh, John Bunting's relationship with James Vlassakis' mother.

So he was involved in four of the last murders, but he was heavily under the influence of John Bunting, and that was all taken into consideration, um, during the court process.

How much, um, uh, media and public attention has there been on this parole board, uh, decision, given the, the scale and the notorious nature of these, uh, murders, uh, the bodies in the barrels?

There's been a lot of interest in, in James Vlassakis, but, but interestingly, there was possibly more interest in Mark Haydon when he came up.

Um, he, he was an assist offender.

He was the fourth offender in-involved in all of this.

But because he was the first of these four men to sort of be looked at for parole and to get out, he actually probably got more interest than Vlassakis.

[upbeat music] Good morning, I'm Georgie Page.

Snowtown serial killer James Vlassakis will be released from prison after a review upheld a South Australian parole board decision.

Vlassakis, who was 18 at the time, has spent more than 26 years behind bars for the role he played in the Snowtown killings, known as the Bodies in the Barrel case, where 12 people were murdered in South Australia between 1992 and 1999.

Vlassakis pleaded guilty to four of the murders, and in 2022 was sentenced to life imprisonment with a minimum term of 26 years.

The family of a victim of the notorious Snowtown murderers say they are devastated one of the killers will be released from prison.

James Vlassakis was the youngest of four men involved in the so-called Bodies in the Barrels killings in South Australia in the nineteen-nineties and is being released on parole after more than twenty-five years behind bars.

South Australian Parole Board Chair Francis Nelson KC says the decision is because Vlassakis has shown remorse, his behavior behind bars has been exemplary, and he's not considered a risk to the community.

Karen Davies, whose brother Ray was one of the eleven murder victims, says the decision is difficult to accept.