John Bunting
141
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18
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14
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Search complete. 141 mentions across 18 episodes found for "John Bunting".
Sep 22, 2026
Meshel LaurieHOST
He was 19 years old when he went to jail, so he was 17, 18 when he was involved in the murders.
Meshel LaurieHOST
He was 14 years old when the leader of the gang, John Bunting, came into his life.
Meshel LaurieHOST
Bunting started seeing, uh, Jamie's mother.
Meshel LaurieHOST
They became an item, a, a, a relationship.
Meshel LaurieHOST
I mean, that's what we're talking about her- here.
Meshel LaurieHOST
It's incredibly depraved stuff that these guys got up to.
Meshel LaurieHOST
I don't think we would ever wanna see John Bunting out of jail.
Meshel LaurieHOST
Very much a cult figure, I would say.
Gemma BathHOST
All up, police found 12 victims, eight of which were found dismembered and with signs of torture in the barrels in the bank.
Gemma BathHOST
The ringleader of the group responsible was a man called John Bunting.
Gemma BathHOST
He loved killing and relished in the torture and elimination of people he deemed unworthy of life.
Gemma BathHOST
He recruited the rest of the group.
Gemma BathHOST
As you say, it's a shame, Snowtown murders, it's the phrase that we use to remember this crime, but the story actually mainly resides in Adelaide, and it starts in the early '90s with a man called John Justin Bunting.
Gemma BathHOST
Tell me a little bit about him and his background and life in Salisbury North.
Jeremy PudneyGUEST
Yeah, well, John Bunting was actually born in Brisbane, in Queensland, and he appeared troubled as a child.
Jeremy PudneyGUEST
I think he had some of the traits that people might expect him to have displayed as a child, given what we now know he was capable of.
Sammy PetersenHOST
Also, you shouldn't be doing drugs in prison anyway.
Sammy PetersenHOST
The influence of John Bunting was also examined.
Sammy PetersenHOST
Vlasakis became involved in the killings through Bunting, who was his stepfather and a figure Vlasakis looked up to.
Sammy PetersenHOST
The commissioner considered that the circumstances that existed when Vlasakis committed the offences were unlikely to be replicated because Bunting is serving life imprisonment without parole and Vlasakis is a much older man.
Sammy PetersenHOST
And the Attorney-General had acknowledged the profound and continued impact the crimes have had on the victims' families and the South Australian community.
Sammy PetersenHOST
Blazakis' release also comes two years after Mark Ray Hayden, another participant in the case, who was convicted over his role in concealing the crimes, was released in the community in 2024.
Sammy PetersenHOST
Meanwhile, John Bunting and Robert Wagner remain imprisoned for life without parole.
Sammy PetersenHOST
The extraordinary thing about the Vlasakas story is that the Snowtown case itself has never really ended.
Meshel LaurieHOST
One of them was indeed Elizabeth Hayden.
Meshel LaurieHOST
From there, the investigation moved quickly, and within weeks police had arrested John Bunting, Robert Wagner, and Elizabeth Hayden's husband, Mark Hayden.
Meshel LaurieHOST
Days later, they arrested 19-year-old James Vlassakis.
Meshel LaurieHOST
Bunting was the leader of the gang.
Meshel LaurieHOST
Yeah, but it also explained to me how the perpetrators came to be a group, because that, that always fascinates me, how these groups of people find each other.
Meshel LaurieHOST
Sometimes it's, it's even, it's couples, you know? How do these people find each other, we often ask ourselves.
Meshel LaurieHOST
Your book helped me to understand how, in some of these cases, or in all of these cases, how John Bunting, at least initially, was a person that they were so happy to have in their lives, how he represented a father figure to a number of them, how he represented for the first time in their lives somebody they could rely on, somebody who wasn't taking advantage of them sexually, somebody who was fighting for them.
Meshel LaurieHOST
Can you explain that to us, please? Can you explain that context to us?
Meshel LaurieHOST
One of them was indeed Elizabeth Hayden.
Meshel LaurieHOST
From there, the investigation moved quickly, and within weeks police had arrested John Bunting, Robert Wagner, and Elizabeth Hayden's husband, Mark Hayden.
Meshel LaurieHOST
Days later, they arrested 19-year-old James Vlassakis.
Meshel LaurieHOST
Bunting was the leader of the gang.
Meshel LaurieHOST
Sometimes it's, it's even, it's couples, you know.
Meshel LaurieHOST
How do these people find each other we often ask ourselves.
Meshel LaurieHOST
Your book helped me to understand how, in some of these cases, or in all of these cases, how John Bunting, at least initially, was a person that they were so happy to have in their lives, how he represented a father figure to a number of them, how he represented, for the first time in their lives, somebody they could rely on, somebody who wasn't taking advantage of them sexually, somebody who was fighting for them.
Meshel LaurieHOST
Can you explain that to us, please? Can you explain that context to us?
Larissa HuntingtonHOST
And they'd come to search that house and seize the car, but that soon led them to the old bank building across the road.
Andrew WilliamsHOST
And it then came out that that bank building was being rented by Mark Hayden, as we said, the husband of the missing woman, along with a friend of his named John Bunting.
Andrew WilliamsHOST
And within 24 hours of finding the bodies, they charged Bunting, Hayden, and another man, Robert Wagner, with murder.
Larissa HuntingtonHOST
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.
Andrew WilliamsHOST
When medical research joins forces with Google AI, more is possible.
Andrew WilliamsHOST
Larissa, when it comes to cases involving serial killers, uh, there's often a lot of focus on the perpetrators, the murderers.
Andrew WilliamsHOST
And to get to the victims, we do have to start with John Bunting and Robert Wagner because to use one analogy that we read about this case, they were kind of like spiders at the center of a web that their victims unwittingly got caught in.
Larissa HuntingtonHOST
So they first met, along with their accomplice Mark Haydon, when they were neighbors living in public housing in Salisbury North in Adelaide.
Laura O'CallaghanHOST
So James was much younger.
Laura O'CallaghanHOST
He was sort of a teenager when the killings started, and many would argue that he was groomed by John Bunting and not the instigator of these attacks.
Laura O'CallaghanHOST
So that's, I think, why he's considered less dangerous than the other two involved that are serving, I'm pretty sure, non-parole life sentences.
Laura O'CallaghanHOST
But there's going to be a lot of people with some really strong feelings about this, and there's a lot of people who are still alive who had victims who were killed in these attacks.
speaker_0NARRATOR
Between 1992 and 1999, 12 people were murdered and their bodies hidden in barrels in an abandoned bank vault in Snowtown, South Australia.
speaker_0NARRATOR
Vlassakis was 18 when, in 1998, he took part in the murder of his half-brother, Troy Youde, a crime he committed at the behest of his stepfather and Snowtown ringleader, John Bunting.
speaker_0NARRATOR
Vlassakis later took part in the murders of three other men, including his stepbrother.
speaker_0NARRATOR
Robert Wagner was also involved in the murders, while a fourth man, Mark Haydon, was convicted of helping to dispose of the bodies.
Sally SaraHOST
So who is, uh, James, uh, Vlassakis, and what was his role in the Snowtown murders?
James WakelinGUEST
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.
James WakelinGUEST
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.
Sally SaraHOST
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?
James WakelinGUEST
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.
Mick MolloyHOST
There it goes.
Mick MolloyHOST
So the Snowtown Killers, of course, we remember John Bunting as the ring leader.
Mick MolloyHOST
Kodan and Infamy is our famous...
Mick MolloyHOST
It's right up
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