Salisbury North

It's clearly, you know, 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, 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.

It was never formally investigated, but he told people that that was the case, um, and it seems likely that that was the case.

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.

Tell me a little bit about him and his background and life in Salisbury North.

Yeah, well, John Bunting was actually born in Brisbane, in Queensland, and he appeared troubled as a child.

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.

He then ends up in the northern suburbs of Adelaide with his mother, who's struggling really to raise him and control him, and he is lured, groomed, if you like we would call it now, by a pedophile by the name of Barry Lane, who ultimately becomes one of the victims.

Now, Barry Lane lures Robert Wagner, and by the time Robert Wagner is 14 years old, he's living with Barry Lane and essentially being sexually abused by a pedophile and being controlled by him, and he disappears with Barry Lane, and his mum hears nothing of him.

Uh, only for them to resurface in the northern suburbs of Adelaide, in Salisbury North, which is where John Bunting comes to meet Robert Wagner and Barry Lane, and that association begins.

And John Bunting had this burning hatred of homosexual people and had this warped inability to differentiate between someone who was homosexual and someone who was a pedophile.

So this is, it's clearly, you know, 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, 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.

That's where he came to know Robert Wagner.

That's where he came to know Mark Hayden, and that's where he came to be in a relationship with the mother of James Vlassakis.

Now, uh, tell us about the big Div 1 preliminary final.

Who won and who's into the grand final against Salisbury North?

Well, I was at this game and attending some of my mates, so it was Golden Grove eight, eleven, fifty-nine, Glenunga eight, thirteen, fifty-one.

They managed to h-hold on.

Ah.

And they've been going through from the, uh, elimination all the way through, so that is a big win.

They'll take on Salisbury North, and where will that grand final be held, Cootsie?

So that'll be at Coopers Stadium, also known as the Parade.

That geography was part of the environment in which Bunting operated.

His home in Salisbury North became associated with some of the earliest crimes in the case.

Clinton Trezise was killed there in 1992.

Later, the remains of other victims would be discovered at the properties connected to Bunting.

Time was the killer's greatest ally.

The house.

One of the most significant locations in the story was a house in Salisbury North.

This was where Bunting lived with his partner and her family.

An Adelaide man has been rushed to hospital after being set upon by an armed gang in his own home.

Live to Bianca Wiley in Salisbury North for us.

Bianca, what's happened here?

There's a large police presence on this street earlier this morning.