Snowtown

by Jeremy Pudney

  ‘He [Vlassakis] noticed some things that he thought were strange. He noticed that John Bunting would go into people’s rooms while they weren’t there and search through their room. He noticed John Bunting had an obsession with guns, at one point in time John Bunting had about ten guns; he also had a silencer.

  ‘He came to experience a number of incidents when John Bunting killed animals, dogs and cats, when James Vlassakis was present. Over a period he was desensitised to violence towards animals, violent talk towards people who were targets of animosity, such as paedophiles; acts of aggression towards those people and eventually acts of violence. It was similar to the sort of initiation performed by paedophiles on young children. It was part of John Bunting’s approval of him that he engaged in those activities.

  ‘What’s psychiatrically important is this progression of violence. Constant discussion about sexual abuse. John Bunting said he was a victim of sexual abuse himself as a child by someone outside his family. It wasn’t just a discussion about sexual abuse. John Bunting encouraged violent discussion about retribution against paedophiles and not just paedophiles, homosexuals. This was so much a part of their relationship; my client says it was daily conversations. Elizabeth Harvey, people who casually knew him [Bunting], all commented about his expressed hatred and comments with respect to paedophiles. His obsession was so great that in the house at 203 Waterloo Corner Road he devoted a wall to collecting references to paedophiles. What was actually created was something like a web with yellow Post-it stickers, sometimes photos, and pieces of wool connecting various people. Witnesses also talk about him discussing paedophiles and paedophilia. He also collected information about paedophiles, contact phone numbers and other information. He would keep typed dossiers on people, including on Barry Lane. This process was well under way when Vlassakis moved in. Vlassakis spent a lot of time at the house sleeping on the sofa bed or the floor. Vlassakis added some details to the chart on the wall and it grew over a period of time. Vlassakis was on social security.

  ‘In about 1996 Elizabeth Harvey, along with Kris and Adrian, moved into 203 Waterloo Corner Road. The chart was taken down because she objected to it.

  ‘Bunting would randomly choose a paedophile from the chart, and call them and abuse them on the phone. However he did mix with Barry Lane on a regular basis and that’s how he met [Robert] Wagner. Lane was a source of information to him about paedophiles and the links between them. Bunting spoke a lot about protecting children. Bunting and Vlassakis would go and graffiti the houses of paedophiles and pour brake fluid on cars. In addition to the harassment of alleged paedophiles and damaging of property, John Bunting enlisted James Vlassakis to larceny and other offences, breaking and entering. Elizabeth Harvey would turn a blind eye. It was referred to as ‘going shopping’. She would know James Vlassakis was going out with John Bunting for that purpose.

  ‘James Vlassakis gradually became afraid of John Bunting. He maintained an emotional bond with him, but he became afraid. There was talk of violence, there was talk of paedophiles and what they deserved, and then there was talk of killing; of a man he…now knows of as Ray Davies. John Bunting talked about killing lots of people. Vlassakis found it difficult to tell if he was serious.

  ‘Ray Davies was killed in late 1995, early 1996. James Vlassakis learned about it some time later. James Vlassakis says from that time on, John Bunting talked about killing regularly. A small number of the people he talked about killing were actually killed, to James Vlassakis’s knowledge.

  ‘James Vlassakis was told by John Bunting and Elizabeth Harvey of the killing of Ray Davies and her involvement. He was told that Davies was buried in the back yard at 203 Waterloo Corner Road. Clinton Trezise was actually murdered at an earlier time [July to August 1992]. “Happy Pants”—my client heard reference to the killing of someone known as “Happy Pants”.

  ‘Ray Davies is the first murder my client heard of but he didn’t see evidence of it and wasn’t sure whether or not it was real. He heard that his mother was involved with John Bunting and Robert Wagner. That the man [Davies] had been taken from a place, taken out into the countryside, beaten, taken back to the place at Waterloo Corner Road and Ray Davies was apparently tortured and murdered and buried in the back garden.

  ‘It wasn’t until he saw the body of Gavin Porter at 3 Burdekin Avenue, Murray Bridge, with John Bunting and Robert Wagner, that he realised what was talked about was a reality. Porter was a friend of his.

  ‘After that, and certainly by the time he became involved in the murder of Troy Youde, he was frightened and terrified he would become a victim of John Bunting, and that was part of the factors influencing him.’

  Vlassakis’s lawyer went on to detail the twelve murders, highlighting her client’s limited role. The killings and the torture had been in progress before Vlassakis was enlisted. Not once did he instigate the torture or murder of a victim.

  ‘Why was Vlassakis involved if he wasn’t mad? And he wasn’t. Our client’s not evil, not motivated by evil. Why didn’t he tell, why didn’t he run away? In the first record of interview [with police] he was cross-examined about that very issue. He was put through the grill. He talks about this fear, a fear that his mother would be harmed. It’s not necessarily something he himself can answer. The relationship can’t be looked at from the perspective of an ordinary person.

  ‘Firstly, there was this relationship with John Bunting. It was one of dependency and John Bunting himself is demonstrated as being highly manipulative. My client is young; he was eighteen, nearly nineteen, and also a serious drug user. His abuse of drugs amplified his dependency.

  ‘Secondly there was his mother. She was involved. She had participated in the killing of Ray Davies. His mother was physically ill from early 1998 onwards. She was also mentally ill. Any disclosure would potentially disclose his mother’s involvement.

  ‘There was fear. My client had seen the torture. He had seen the killings. He knew more than one person was involved. He felt the more involved the safer he was—he was part of the group and unlikely to be a target.

  ‘There was a lack of knowledge of what he could effectively do or where he could go. In the life and environment my client grew up in, the police were culturally the enemy.

  ‘He didn’t have another significant adult he could trust and rely on. Vlassakis was a heavy drug user and Bunting hated drug use and had referred to him as a “waste”. This amplified fears he could be a target.’

  Vlassakis’s cooperation with the police was also detailed in full, for the first time. Ms Davey told how her client, with the help of another lawyer, had gone to police in the days after Bunting’s arrest, offering information about the murders. Vlassakis’s mother did the same. Both were promised consideration of immunity.

  ‘The statements made by Elizabeth Harvey and James Vlassakis were privileged and not to be disclosed without an order of the court.

  ‘The [Vlassakis] interview can only be described as harrowing from anyone’s point of view. He was visibly crying and distressed. He was vomiting during part of the interview. At times he was cross-examined. Police were confronted with information beyond their wildest expectations. Notwithstanding the harrowing nature of the interview, my client continued and continued. During that interview process my client’s distress was so great he was unable to continue any longer. He took an overdose of heroin.

  ‘There is a record of a telephone intercept between James Vlassakis and Elizabeth Harvey which shows his absolute distress. These were not the words of a callous killer. This is a young man whose life is out of control. It’s an unvarnished expression of anguish.

  ‘He continued using drugs throughout this time. Even at the police station. James Vlassakis found it very difficult to face another human being and admit what he had been involved in. He did not know or understand his guilt of murder because he didn’t physically kill. Of course, he knew his participation was wrong. His position is that in respect of the four murders he never
wished to be involved at all, including that of Troy Youde…one thing drew him into another.

  ‘A lot of the [evidence] arises from information provided by James Vlassakis. Particularly, he told police of how the victims were brought to their deaths, and always it was in the context of paedophiles, or a person was a “dirty” and in some way deserved to die. John Bunting used to say regularly, “I can tell a paedophile by looking at him.”

  ‘My client details how these people died and the nature and extent of the torture. He also told police of Bunting’s delight in watching the victims and the process undertaken in the torturing of all these people.

  ‘He told police invaluable information of the other eight deaths [in which he wasn’t involved]. He refined police inquiries and the evidence uncovered subsequently proves the truth of his first interview.

  ‘There was a promise of consideration of immunity in the first interview, even though he admitted murder. At that point [June 1999] he was arrested and charged with the murder of David Johnson. It was not until April 2000 that he was told he would not be receiving immunity.

  ‘James Vlassakis was the only one of the accused to submit to the identification line-up process.

  ‘The identification of the deceased was one of the most valuable pieces of information provided. For all of them it was not necessarily known. That was the lynchpin that allowed police to focus their inquiries to match property—he told police of cars and items taken from the victims. He told of the tape recordings and the tape recording of Elizabeth Haydon was found in John Bunting’s possession, the computer voice recording. He produced items of evidence to the police, credit cards et cetera.

  ‘He presented a PIN number and receipt from David Johnson. He said Wagner had stored David Johnson’s PIN number in his phone and, when the phone was seized, there it was.’

  Vlassakis also told police of how—at Bunting’s instigation—he had posed as Fred Brooks on visits to a doctor to try to obtain an alternative social security benefit.

  ‘He told police of the existence of the two bodies at 203 Waterloo Corner Road. James Vlassakis told police about the “U-Store-It” facility which was very important to provide evidence linking John Bunting to the death of Ray Davies. James Vlassakis told police of the source of the barrels. There are literally probably hundreds of pieces of evidence but there’s a broad sample of the sorts of matters brought forward by my client.

  ‘John Bunting instructed James Vlassakis at his arrest to get rid of the things in the cars. James Vlassakis didn’t do that. He never attempted to do that. He did not come forward as a result of police approaching him; he went to police.

  ‘Before he pleaded, he offered to assist police and prosecuting authorities. In September 2000 he participated in the lengthy second interview.

  ‘James Vlassakis became upset from time to time but generally speaking was much more composed. He will continue to cooperate in any way that’s reasonably requested and will participate in any further interviews requested of him.

  ‘There’s shown an inherent underlying consistency between the two interviews. The main difference is the reference to the role of Elizabeth Harvey.

  ‘It’s probably fair to say that the DPP always believed Elizabeth Harvey had a direct role in the murders. It was probably not a surprise. There were long discussions in regard to immunity and it was only late in 2000 that her interviews were disclosed because of problems about her wanting more extensive immunity.’

  As she argued for leniency for her client, Rosemary Davey drew on the opinion of two psychiatrists. The court was told that James Vlassakis was a young man profoundly affected by his disturbed childhood. His mother had suffered from significant psychiatric disorders and a very disturbed personality. She would have found it very difficult to provide any consistent or effective care to her children, and this led to a disruptive life for the children.

  For Vlassakis there was no consistent care and no kind of parental model that might have given some fortitude and stability to his character. He was left with very little strength of character, vulnerable because of the severe sexual abuse in his past and the absence of any supportive male figure in his life. There was no close or ongoing relationship with anyone, other than his disordered relationship with his mother.

  Sexual abuse, in the context of Vlassakis’s already disturbed background, was even more damaging than it might otherwise have been. There was abuse as a young child and in early adolescence, and on both occasions he may well have been exposed to the grossest forms of sexual abuse. To an already damaged and vulnerable youth, this was devastating to his development.

  As a result of all this, James Vlassakis developed a long-standing depression.

  Depressed people are easily caught up and suborned by others because they desperately seek support and comfort during depression. They are also susceptible to drug use.

  The court heard that one psychiatrist was struck by the way in which Vlassakis was greatly drawn into John Bunting’s world. First he was pulled into the peculiar set of beliefs that John Bunting had about paedophiles, the threat of paedophiles, his ‘missions’ to save children from paedophiles. At the same time Vlassakis became involved in the behaviour: property damage, then theft and violence. Bunting introduced him to guns as well, then shooting and the killing and torture of animals.

  This was a kind of grooming, a gradual introduction to escalating criminal behaviour and into the world and thinking of John Bunting.

  The same psychiatrist noted that serial killings are fortunately rare. Serial killings involving more than one person are extremely rare. Such a terrible set of undertakings rarely occurs with a group of people agreeing to involve themselves in such behaviour; it also requires that the people have a remarkable level of trust in each other. Largely they are people driven by perverse sexual motivations; the vast majority are essentially sadistic. For a group to be involved it needs to be a group that either shares that sadistic drive or has somehow been persuaded to assist someone in gratifying their perverse needs.

  John Bunting had been totally preoccupied with the notion of a conspiracy of paedophiles—a network of paedophiles—and preoccupied with the notion that somehow he had a role to save or protect children, firstly by exposing paedophiles, later by killing them. He appears to have been constantly preoccupied with these themes and to have drawn others into his preoccupations.

  Without examining Bunting, one expert said he couldn’t tell whether he had a peculiar set of beliefs which had arisen out of his experiences in real life, or whether they stemmed from a paranoid illness. On the face of it Bunting was profoundly disturbed, and the question was why and how he used that disturbance to justify the most horrific of acts. Clearly there were other elements that came into the dreadful mixture which led to these crimes, but paedophilia provided the superficial justification for his actions.

  The expert believed that John Bunting could be psychotic, but possibly not psychopathic—although on the material available he might be both.

  The psychiatrists believed James Vlassakis was not psychopathic. The evidence of this was the young man’s distress and difficulty in recounting the torture and murders. This was not someone who had taken pleasure in the victims’ suffering. Vlassakis was not calm, calculating and collected; instead he was as overwhelmed as any normal person would be by the horror of such acts as they had participated in.

  The relationship between John Bunting and James Vlassakis was more than dependent: James was totally dominated by John Bunting. He had become caught up in the abnormal world of John Bunting and it was only with the passage of many months that he had been able to separate himself from John Bunting. So this was not just admiring someone or accepting their views; it was a matter of feeling almost completely under the control and influence of someone else, so that he came to accept his bizarre and twisted views of the world as the natural and real world in which they lived.

  The expert conclusion was that Vlassakis could
mature and develop—one day emerging as a man who was not anti-social, damaged or vicious.

  These sentiments were echoed by Ms Davey as she concluded her impassioned plea for her client to be given a glimpse of freedom, albeit decades away.

  ‘My client is kept in a very restrictive regime. The consequence to him of his incarceration for the foreseeable future is that he welcomes few visitors. He has recently had the support of a nun and another supportive visitor.

  ‘He has commenced further education. He is studying his Year 11 and 12 simultaneously. He has presently indicated great interest in commencing a course through TAFE, which he hopes to do.

  ‘My client has publicly acknowledged his legal and moral responsibility for these deaths. He, at twenty-one, had the courage, the moral fortitude, to face up to his responsibility. Although he did not physically kill, he knows he is both morally and legally a murderer.

  ‘This court and community should recognise the courage of this young man and the progress and maturity he has shown.

  ‘The persons who should have protected my client failed to do so. Elizabeth Harvey left her son in the care of a man she knew to be a callous and wicked killer. John Bunting did nothing but initiate my client into a world of evil and malignancy.

  ‘He [Vlassakis] will spend a long time in prison. He knows that, he accepts that and he feels that he deserves it. But we say on his behalf that James Vlassakis has never had a life. He has never had any joy, any family. He is truly alone. He will not marry nor have children. He is denied his freedom and that is the way it must be. But he is not evil. He has participated in evil but he is also worthy of redemption. We ask for the mercy of this court. Because it’s right that although he be punished, he be shown mercy too.’

  Late in his sentencing submissions hearing, James Vlassakis opted to speak for himself. Dressed in a white shirt, red patterned tie and blue slacks, the then twenty-one year old stood in the dock flanked by Ms Davey and a court sheriff. He fought back tears as he read from a written statement. It was as much an apology as it was a plea for mercy.