Shallow Graves by Paul B Kidd

Author:Paul B Kidd [Kidd, Paul B.]
Language: eng
Format: epub
Tags: homicide, Shallow graves, murder, Australian true crime, True crime, John Buntin, Samantha Knight, Wales-King murder, Australian criminals, Mark Haydon, John Candy Killer, aussie criminals, Robert Wagner, Snowtown serial murders, John Makin, Jaidyn Leskie, crime investigation Australia, true crime stories Australia, Sheree Beasley
Publisher: Five Mile Press
Published: 2011-12-04T13:00:00+00:00

CHAPTER 13

THE SNOWTOWN SERIAL MURDERS

Never before in the annals of multiple homicide anywhere in the world has there been a gang of serial killers. Couples, yes. But never a group of more than two torturing and killing as they wished. Never, that is, until the Snowtown serial murders. The killers barred no one in their murder spree, which included adult and teenage males and two women, all of whom were known to them. And, as if to add insult to their already despicable crimes, the gang went on cashing their victims’ welfare cheques and using their keycards until they were caught.

Before Thursday, 20 May 1999, Snowtown, situated about 150 kilometres north of Adelaide in rural South Australia, was best known as a sleepy hamlet in surrounding countryside, ideal for sheep grazing and farming wheat. But that all changed for the population of around 550 when, in the closing stages of a long missing persons investigation, police arrived in town in force.

There, in the vault of a disused branch of the State Bank of South Australia situated on the tiny town’s main street, they found remains of eight different human beings decomposing in hydrochloric acid in six black 44-gallon plastic barrels. Police wearing breathing apparatus looked inside the barrels and found clothing and random body parts. Knives sat on top of some of the barrels. A machine used to give electric shocks was also found in the bank building.

An examination by a leading pathologist concluded that prolonged torture had taken place using common everyday tools such as pliers, pincers and clamps – some of which were found in the bank. After the victims were tortured, they were strangled or asphyxiated, and cut up. The death toll connected to the ‘bodies in the barrels’ case would eventually rise to 12, shocking the nation and making it the most prolific serial murder case in Australia’s history.

• • •

The day before the discovery of the bodies in the barrels, police had arrested John Bunting, Robert Wagner and Mark Haydon and charged them with another murder. As it would turn out, 32-year-old Bunting had met his main accomplice in the horrifying string of murders, 27-year-old Wagner, in 1991, when Bunting moved into Wagner’s house at 203 Waterloo Corner Road, Snowtown – the address where another man was reportedly murdered and where authorities would later find the remains of two other bodies. Described by neighbours as ‘brooding’, feral’ and ‘illiterate’, Wagner and Bunting remained reclusive strangers in the small community. As a result, the citizens of Snowtown tended to leave them to themselves.

Though not a lot has come to light about Bunting’s past, it is believed he was the victim of sexual abuse in his childhood and into his teens and that he harboured a murderous resentment for those he believed to be homosexuals and paedophiles, which in his ignorance, he believed to be one and the same.

His friend Wagner was said to be a white supremacist and a member of the fascist National Action group.

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