Snowtown

by Jeremy Pudney

  After Sue Allen’s murder, Bunting and Wagner spread their series of lies to explain her disappearance. Unlike the first two victims, Sue had a network of family and friends and they were worried. One such friend was Carol Parker:

  Sometime after Sue was reported missing, John [Bunting] and his mate Robert came around to my place to visit and told me Sue got bashed up in the face. I asked why and he said because she hadn’t paid money back she borrowed from two guys so she could fix her car. John…said she borrowed a thousand dollars from these two guys and they wanted their money…then said to me that Sue had told him that a Ray Davies was one of the guys that had bashed her up and that she was now in hiding.

  Everything John told me that happened to Sue, his mate Robert would agree with him.

  The false stories continued during a later visit:

  I remember them saying Sue was living somewhere in Gawler and that she had met some young guy in his twenties and they got married. They used to tell me this all the time.

  Within months of Sue’s brother reporting her missing, investigators discovered that Sue’s pension was still being paid into her bank account by Centrelink. The cash withdrawals continued and bank records listed an address for Sue Allen. The address was John Bunting’s, so he was contacted by police.

  Bunting’s lies continued: he told missing persons investigators that Sue had been staying with him but had recently moved interstate with her new lover, ‘Andy’. He claimed Sue was embroiled in a family conflict and did not want to be found. At the time, the story seemed plausible.

  Police told Sue Allen’s family that her pension was still active, so all seemed fine, but when her daughter Tammy turned to Centrelink for help to contact her mum, she was told privacy regulations prevented them giving her any such assistance. Sue’s sister, Joan, wrote letters to Centrelink asking that a message be passed onto her sibling. There was no reply.

  FOURTEEN

  John Bunting’s killing spree was supposedly born of his depraved fury at paedophiles and homosexuals. In his deluded mind, they were one and the same. This was the initial motive for murder, but blood lust soon took over. John Bunting loved to kill—he loved the power.

  Clinton Trezise was murdered because he was homosexual; Ray Davies was chosen because he was a paedophile. But Suzanne Allen had become a nuisance who knew too much.

  Bunting not only revelled in his crimes, he included others: Mark Haydon, Barry Lane and Robert Wagner. Lane was a paedophile whom Bunting befriended to extract information about others who preyed on children.

  Between Bunting and Wagner, however, a kinship developed—both had been sexually abused as children.

  Robert Wagner escaped the hold Barry Lane had over him, only to be lured by another evil: John Bunting. Wagner became Bunting’s ‘muscle’, his right-hand man. Wagner, too, enjoyed the killing and it was he who had strangled Ray Davies and, most likely, Suzanne Allen. Wagner earned the nickname ‘Papa Smurf’ because he turned his victims blue, the same colour as the cartoon characters the Smurfs.

  By 1997 Robert Wagner had renounced his homosexuality. He refused to even speak of his relationship with Barry Lane and became enraged if it was mentioned by anyone else.

  Wagner now even had a fiancée, Sally Brown*. The couple shared a home with her three children and late that year had a child together—a baby boy.

  Wagner developed an interest too in his community, joining the local school council and the Country Fire Service, where he trained as a volunteer firefighter. Other volunteers gave him the nickname Lurch. Said one:

  He never became a friend of mine because I found him strange. He was quiet, always looked through people and was a racist. He openly admitted to bashing ‘poofters’ and didn’t like Asians and blacks.

  On one occasion two other CFS volunteers noticed handcuffs and thumbcuffs in Robert Wagner’s toolbox. When asked why he had them, Wagner replied: ‘You can’t be too careful these days.’

  Robert Wagner disliked Michael Gardiner from the start. He was effeminate and shamelessly homosexual, which didn’t sit well with the ‘new’ Wagner. Trouble was, Michael’s close friendship with Wagner’s fiancée meant that he visited their home regularly, even babysitting the kids.

  Michael was kind to the children, but in Wagner’s twisted mind he was to be suspected nonetheless. Wagner became furious one day when Michael, playing harmlessly with Sally’s eldest son, put his hand over the boy’s mouth to stop him talking.

  The man who had abused Robert Wagner as a child had done the same thing, to keep him quiet.

  Michael Gardiner had led a troubled life. His father died when he was young, his mother remarried and Michael’s relationship with his stepfather was poor. At fourteen he was placed in foster care after being abused by someone close to him. Desperate to stay away from his foster home, Michael spent his late teens living with his sister or friends. His brother objected to Michael’s sexuality and had little to do with him.

  Despite his troubled childhood and the prejudices he encountered, friends remember Michael as easygoing. He was warm and friendly.

  In late 1997 Michael was boarding with a cousin of Sally Brown named Nicole Zuritta. On 6 September, Zuritta traveled interstate for work and left Michael, nineteen, to look after her house. She returned ten days later to find that her housesitter—and much of her property—had vanished:

  I believed at the time that it could not have been Michael as he didn’t drive and he would have needed assistance, just with the amount of stuff taken.

  It wasn’t until a couple of days later that I thought things were a bit suspicious. I was cleaning out Michael’s bedroom when I found his wallet under his bed. The wallet contained Michael’s health care card, Medicare card, and a keycard for the Commonwealth Bank.

  Near the wallet…was a letter from Michael. I recognised his handwriting. It was a thank you letter and in it Michael promised to keep in touch.

  This made me think that, definitely, something was wrong, along the lines that he had got into the wrong company and they were misguiding him. I didn’t think anything bad had happened to him at that time.

  Weak from his ordeal, Michael Gardiner could barely stand. He had been beaten and tortured but was trying desperately to stay on his feet. He had to. A rope was tied around his neck, with a slipknot at the back. The other end was tied to a beam above him. If Michael did not stand—if he faltered for even a moment—the rope would tighten and he would choke to death.

  John Bunting and Robert Wagner were enjoying the spectacle. They laughed out loud as their victim fought to stay alive.

  Hours earlier Michael had been abducted from the house he was minding for Nicole Zuritta. Robert Wagner knew he’d been staying there alone.

  Michael was taken on the long drive to the house Bunting now occupied in the rural town of Murray Bridge. The victim’s horrific final moments came to pass in the garage behind the house. John Bunting later described the killing to James Vlassakis, who told the police:

  He was laughing his head off about how he had murdered Michael. When John Bunting said to Michael to stand up, Michael stood up until basically he couldn’t. That was the big joke to John, the fact that he, Michael, tried to stand up…and fell down and he died.

  During his ordeal Michael had suffered burns to his left arm, as well as his testicles. The burns were later thought to have come from a cigarette pressed against his skin or repeated electric shocks.

  Before embarking on the murder of Michael Gardiner, Bunting and Wagner developed a plan to explain his disappearance. The first step took place while the victim was still alive; shortly before his death, Michael’s captors forced him to make a telephone call. The call was to a family friend with whom Michael was due to move in.

  The conversation lasted less than four minutes; Michael sounded tense. In the background his friend could hear voices telling him to ‘hurry up and get off the telephone’:

  He told me that he was okay and that he did still want
to come and live with me but he was going up north to live for a while to sort out some personal problems. I asked him where he was going and he said that he was going to Snowtown. I asked him where he was ringing from but at that time the phone went dead, like it had been cut off…

  After the killing, Bunting and Wagner looted Nicole Zuritta’s home. Since Michael had been housesitting, it would look as though he had stolen the property and then fled.

  Next came more phone calls from someone impersonating Michael Gardiner. An answering machine message for Zuritta was among them:

  Nicole, this is Michael, sorry about your stuff but I need the money, don’t go to the cops…

  Zuritta was one of several people told false stories about Michael Gardiner’s whereabouts:

  Robert said that he and John had seen Michael a day or two earlier at a service station…

  He said Michael was with some friends, standing near the bowsers talking to someone in a car. Robert also said that he and John had yelled out to Michael ‘poofter, thief’. He said that John and he were driving past in a car.

  Nicole Zuritta searched the area Wagner had mentioned. She visited the service station, even questioned an employee. Still there was no trace of Michael Gardiner.

  FIFTEEN

  Thomas Trevilyan was a teenager plagued by acute mental illness and prone to bizarre flights of fancy.

  From the age of thirteen he’d been raised by his maternal grandparents, a kind couple who worried for their grandson when he left home a few years later. They would speak to him on the telephone once a week and visit twice a month.

  During one such visit in late 1997, Thomas’s grandparents encountered a strange, tall man they later learned was Barry Lane. Neighbours told them Lane had been ‘hanging around’ and they had warned him to stay away.

  The next time the couple arrived to see Thomas, he and his possessions were gone. It was another three weeks before he telephoned to say he’d moved house. He told his grandfather he was fine.

  Thomas Trevilyan had moved into Barry Lane’s rented home in the northeastern suburb of Hectorville. The pair’s relationship was almost certainly sexual. It was typical of Lane to prey on a troubled teen to satisfy his own desires.

  It was only a matter of time before John Bunting and Robert Wagner turned their murderous attention to Barry Lane. He had served his purpose as Bunting’s ‘informant’. In the killers’ minds, the time had come for Lane to pay for all he had done.

  A convicted paedophile, Lane had lured Robert Wagner at a young age, spiriting the then teenager away from his family and sexually abusing him. Only with the help of John Bunting had Wagner been able to escape Lane’s influence.

  Now Lane was molesting another young man, Thomas Trevilyan. Bunting and Wagner befriended Thomas and then moved in for the kill.

  Barry Lane was murdered on the night of 17 October 1997. He was ambushed in the home he now shared with Trevilyan. Typical of their modus operandi, Bunting and Wagner overpowered Lane and handcuffed him. This time they had Trevilyan’s help.

  Lane’s attackers demanded his bank keycard and personal security number so they could steal his money.

  Next Lane was forced to speak to his mother on the telephone. At the time Sylvia Lane thought the call so strange that she assumed her son was drunk. He unleashed an abusive tirade, telling her he was leaving town and that he planned to hitchhike to Queensland:

  He called me a lot of bad names. He told me he didn’t want anything to do with me or the family. I remember that his boyfriend, Thomas, was in the background…spurring Barry on.

  Sylvia was distraught and immediately called her other son, Cyril. After visiting his mother to calm her down, Cyril considered driving to Barry’s to demand an explanation, but didn’t have enough petrol to make the trip. Cyril’s empty fuel tank most likely saved his life.

  After the phone call to his mother, it appears that Barry Lane was also forced to speak to his ex-fiancée, Joanna, as she explained to police:

  I received a phone call from Barry and Thomas late one evening about ten or eleven o’clock at night. Thomas spoke first and he said that the car was broken down and it would be a couple of days before they could get back. Thomas told me that they were both in Clare, but I didn’t believe them because I didn’t hear any STD [long distance] pips when I first picked up the phone. Thomas gave the phone to Barry.

  Barry told me that they were broken down in Clare and that he would be coming back on Wednesday. He was waiting for his pension cheque to fix the car. Barry, on the phone, asked me to check the mail and to feed the dogs.

  The end was near for Lane. A rolled-up bandage was stuffed into his mouth, the gag held in place by yellow duct tape wrapped around his head. More tape was looped under his chin to keep his mouth shut. Bunting and Wagner wanted Lane’s screams to be muffled as he was tortured—his toes were crushed with pliers. After he’d been strangled, his body was wrapped in carpet and left in the house. Bunting and Wagner would come back for it later.

  A few days after Lane’s disappearance his sister, Krystal, who lived in Queensland, received a strange telephone call. The voice was Barry’s, but something wasn’t quite right:

  He said words to the effect ‘Oh, it’s your brother Barry, I’m coming up, I’ll be there in a couple of days. I don’t know whether I’ll be catching the bus or hitching. Don’t tell Mum’.

  I thought it was strange because he didn’t say ‘It’s Barry’, like he did every other time he rang me.

  Lane’s voice was ‘strained and edgy’. The telephone was hung up before Krystal had the chance to say anything. She thought at the time that it sounded like a recording.

  After Lane’s murder Robert Wagner took Thomas Trevilyan under his wing. Others in Wagner’s volunteer fire brigade remember Trevilyan tagging along to meetings. He was quiet and never ventured far from Wagner’s side.

  Trevilyan also moved into the house Wagner shared with Sally Brown and her four children. The new boarder made Sally uncomfortable:

  Robert didn’t tell me anything about Thomas when he first moved in. He just said he needed a place to stay. In the first week of Thomas being there, I overheard Thomas and Robert talking about Barry Lane and later John [Bunting] and Robert saying the same things. They were calling him a ‘dirty’, which is what they called a paedophile. They also spoke of Barry doing the same things to Thomas as he did…to Robert. I confronted Robert about this and he told me Thomas came from Barry’s and he needed a place to stay.

  It was at about this time that Thomas Trevilyan visited his cousin, Lenore Penner, and told her the seemingly strange tale of Barry Lane’s murder. He confessed how he and two others had killed Barry Lane because he had abused them. He detailed how Lane had been tortured for his banking details, wrapped in plastic bags and tape and then placed in a 44-gallon drum. Thomas said he feared his accomplices would now kill him. It was a story which seemed as outlandish as the many Thomas had told before. Lenore Penner recorded the date in her diary: 30 October 1997.

  Not surprisingly, Thomas Trevilyan’s mental state—and his behaviour—became even more erratic after Barry Lane’s murder. Sally Brown had agreed to let Thomas stay in her home, but she was uncomfortable with his violent outbursts. Upon hearing the slightest noise he would grab a carving knife from the kitchen and run outside. To make matters worse, he wasn’t taking his medication.

  The final straw came on 4 November 1997, when Thomas threatened one of Sally’s daughters:

  He threatened to kill the puppy [she] was holding. [She] was running around the car trying to keep away from him and Thomas was chasing her with a knife in his hand and threatening to cut the dog’s throat.

  I told Robert he had to get him out of the house. I was frightened of what may have happened. Robert was not impressed but said he would talk to him.

  Robert and John took Thomas for a drive that night…I never saw Thomas again.

  There was no reason for the truck driver to glance sideways
as he cruised along the road not far from the Adelaide Hills town of Kersbrook, but he did. From his elevated position, the driver glanced down the steep embankment at the side of the road, peering into the bush. There, hanging from a tree, was a young man’s body. It was 5 November 1997.

  To police the case was seemingly routine. The young man had apparently hanged himself not far from the side of the road. There was still $6.90 in his pocket and a red milk carton at his feet. The body was identified as that of eighteen-year-old Thomas Trevilyan, and local police began compiling a report for the coroner.

  An officer telephoned Robert Wagner because Trevilyan had been living with him in the days before his death. Hoping to add to the assumption of suicide, Wagner told the officer that Trevilyan had been suffering mood swings, had threatened to kill the family dog and his behaviour had deteriorated to such a point that Trevilyan was kicked out of the house. Wagner claimed the teenager had returned two days later—4 November—and threatened to hang himself in the back yard.

  In light of what they had seen and heard, investigators declared Thomas Trevilyan’s death a suicide.

  It remains unclear whether or not Bunting and Wagner knew that Trevilyan had told his cousin about Barry Lane’s murder. The pair had most likely considered Trevilyan a risk regardless. Whatever the case, the incident with the knife had prompted them to kill Thomas Trevilyan, and everything had gone exactly according to plan. They had wanted the death to look like a suicide, and police had fallen for the ruse. Bunting was particularly pleased with his final touch: leaving money in one of the teenager’s pockets.

  Empty pockets, he reasoned, would arouse the suspicions of police.