I Discovered Snowtown's Bodies in Barrels (Classic)
6/7/202648 min
In May 1999, police found eight bodies decaying in barrels in a disused bank vault in Snowtown. Four men were eventually jailed for 12 murders. Former senior constable Gordon Drage was the first to discover the vault and tells us what he saw.. We're re-running this 2023 interview because the youngest of the four, James Vlassakis, has just been approved for parole. It’s a decision that’s being fought out in the South Australian Supreme Court.
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First 90 secondsGordon Drage· Guest0:00
[gentle music] Super Real.
Julian Morgans· Host0:02
Hey friends. So we're doing a rerun this week, and for a good reason. So a case that we covered in 2023 is suddenly back in the news here in Australia. What you're about to hear is an interview with ex-policeman Gordon Drage. In 1999, Gordon walked into a disused bank vault in Snowtown, South Australia, and he stumbled upon several barrels containing dismembered bodies. What he'd found was the work of a serial killer and kind of mini cult leader named John Bunting, who'd led three accomplices to murder vulnerable people across South Australia for a lot of the previous decade. This was the Snowtown murders, and it's one of the most infamous cases in Australian criminal history. And now here's why it's back in the news. So James Vlassakis, who was the youngest of the four killers, he was, he was actually 18 at the time, he's just been approved for parole. Now, a review commissioner has blocked his release, but the parole board has appealed to the South Australian Supreme Court. So James' fate is kind of being argued out as we speak. Now, for what it's worth, I actually think Vlassakis should be paroled because if you dig into his case, you'll find that he was a pretty damaged, impressionable teenager when all this went down, and he was basically coerced into participating. He provided a lot of the evidence against the others, which is why