Special focus on Mark Ray Haydon as he applies for parole in infamous Snowtown killings case
INSIDE STORY: Was Mark Haydon a gullible, frightened follower under the grip of a psychopath, or a callous acolyte to Australia’s most depraved serial killer? Either way, he could soon be freed.
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THE “Three Amigos” sauntered across the walkway at the back of Adelaide Magistrates Court, apparently unfazed by the gravity of the heinous allegations against them.
In late May 1999, South Australia reeled at yet another bizarre set of murders, following the horrific discovery of eight dismembered bodies inside six barrels in the vault of the old Snowtown bank.
The youngest alleged killer, Robert Joe Wagner, led the way, flashing a smirk tinged with disdain as he raised his finger to a photographer.
Behind him, with bespectacled head held high and eyes keenly darting about, was the bearded and podgy John Justin Bunting, whose short stature belied the towering infamy he would gain as the evil mastermind behind Australia’s most grisly serial murders.
Languishing behind the younger men was Mark Ray Haydon, sporting a heavy dark beard and wearing denim jeans and jacket, with a look of mild confusion on his face.
Their initial indifference set the tone for the marathon legal saga that would ultimately see Bunting and Wagner sentenced to die in prison.
Haydon was jailed for 25 years for assisting in seven murders and Bunting’s stepson, James Spyridon Vlassakis, was sentenced to life in prison with a 26-year non-parole period.
While reams of newspaper and true crime copy has been written about the enigmatic and creepily charming Bunting, his unflinchingly loyal henchman Wagner and the impressionable and young Vlassakis, Mark Haydon has most often been referred to as “the fourth Snowtown guy”.
While the name Mark Ray Haydon will forever remain a footnote in true crime archives, the reclusive and introverted father grew up as Mark Lawrence, before changing his surname in the 1990s.
Like virtually all the other players, the young Haydon endured a tormented childhood in which his schizophrenic mother was in and out of mental institutions. His only brother died in a car crash in 1972, when Mark was in his early teens.
Too shy to form a wide circle of friends, Haydon probably thought his luck had changed when he was befriended by a shorter, younger bloke named John at a welding course in Adelaide’s north in 1989.
Though he did not know it then, Haydon’s life had taken a sharp and dark turn.
Bunting was still perfecting his innate gift for identifying and controlling vulnerable and fractured humans.
The friendship would lead Haydon into the front line of an increasingly nauseating and hateful murder spree, fuelled by Bunting’s indignant and superior rage at those he branded “dirties” or “wastes”.
Haydon’s own wife, Elizabeth, became the penultimate victim in late November 1998, as detectives began to join the dots and link him, Bunting and Wagner to a string of missing people.
Prosecutors would later say Bunting, Wagner and Haydon were so tight they were dubbed the “Three Amigos”.
A jury was later unable to decide if Haydon was complicit in the murder, after prosecutors claimed he had taken her sister, Jodie Elliott, for a drive while Bunting and Wagner killed then dismembered her inside the Haydons’ Smithfield Plains home.
Elizabeth Haydon had also endured a miserable life before her abominable end.
Growing up as Verna Audrey Sinclair in a gypsy-like family as the youngest of seven neglected siblings, she fell pregnant in her mid-teens before having seven children to at least five men over the next decade.
Ill-equipped for motherhood, Verna put her oldest five children either into state care or with relatives but kept her two youngest sons, who moved in with her and her new beau, Mark Haydon, who she married in 1997.
Verna Sinclair changed her name to Elizabeth Haydon, apparently out of concern one of her abusive ex-partners might try to track her down.
Mark Haydon steadfastly denied any role in the murder of his wife, telling the Supreme Court jury that his “whole world had fallen apart” when she vanished.
“My wife had left, the children were no longer there ... my life had no purpose or direction any more,” Haydon told the jury.
Haydon, who with Bunting co-signed the lease to the Snowtown bank under his previous surname Lawrence, told the court he had simply agreed to help store the barrels because he believed they contained kangaroo carcasses and had visited the Mid-North town to “break the monotony” of his daily life.
The quietly spoken Haydon was also charged with the murder of Troy Youde, but again, the jury was unable to decide whether he had left Bunting, Wagner and Vlassakis inside the Murray Bridge house where the 21-year-old was tortured and died.
During the lengthy committal process, suggestions emerged that both Vlassakis and Haydon risked joining the list of victims because they knew too much.
After being convicted of assisting in five murders and later pleading guilty to assisting in the deaths of his wife and Youde, Haydon was not liable to a life prison term like his three co-accused.
During sentencing submissions, Haydon’s lawyer, John Lyons, said his client was a “passive” and “gullible” man who was manipulated and trapped into the vicious cycle of death by Bunting.
“(He) is incapable of dealing with stressful situations, the type of person whose only real coping mechanism is to try and stick his head in the sand and hope things go away,” Mr Lyons said.
Describing Bunting as “not only a serial killer of the worst type ... but also a great manipulator and consummate liar”, Mr Lyons urged Justice John Sulan to show Haydon mercy.
Justice Sulan imposed a 25-year head sentence with a minimum non-parole period of 18 years which will expire on May 21. Bunting, Wagner, Vlassakis and Haydon had obsessed over a so-called “spider wall” of men — linked with strands of string — who Bunting believed were child sex offenders, or “rock spiders”.
In addition to their murderous secrets, Haydon and Bunting shared a curious trait — neither had a sense of smell.
That deficiency no doubt assisted them to carry out the vulgar butchering of bodies and shuffling of the six barrels across rural SA before they reached their final destination of the Snowtown bank vault.
Bunting and Wagner used their circle of acquaintances to cash in their victims’ welfare payments, a scheme which worked well until Elizabeth Haydon’s disappearance attracted too much heat.
The barrels were moved from Murray Bridge to Haydon’s northern suburbs home, then to Hoyleton in the Mid-North and finally to Snowtown.
Some have theorised that the homophobic Bunting may himself have harboured deeply secret homosexual tendencies.
Bunting believed gays and paedophiles were one and the same — and deserved to be “made good” — which in his murderous reasoning, meant they should be removed from existence in brutal fashion.
As the body count rose sharply throughout 1997, Bunting’s list of traits that warranted the death penalty expanded to include the mentally ill, disabled, drug users — or in the case of Gary O’Dwyer, looking too much like another of his victims.
Unrepentant to the end, Bunting was belligerent and disrespectful of the court processes throughout. He refused to stand in the dock and casually read a book as Justice Brian Martin told him he would die in jail.
Wagner echoed his master’s views in sentencing submissions when he said: “Paedophiles were doing terrible things to children. The authorities didn’t do anything about it. I decided to take action. I took that action. Thank you.’’
Wagner, who himself had a homosexual and illegal relationship with one of the victims, Barry Lane, was later credited with penning a poem from Yatala Labour Prison bragging about his exploits.
In 2012, Wagner was caught trying to attract penfriends through an online prison dating site.
After being denied permission to marry a woman while in prison several years ago, Vlassakis’s whereabouts in the correctional system remains a closely guarded secret.
The murders were too much for even some hardened police, who remained haunted by the pungent odour emanating from the Snowtown vault, and lawyers and journalists struggled to comprehend the depths of depravity inflicted upon the victims.
Snowtown is also indelibly marked with the stains of murder, despite fruitless efforts to shed itself of its unfair connection with the case.
The description “the bodies in the barrels” murders stuck for a while — but the one-word Snowtown moniker will forever evoke ghastly images.
The town, like Truro before it, copped a raw deal, locals said.
Debate raged when a business tried to cash in on the tragedy with novelty fridge magnets but rightly or wrongly, Snowtown remains among the most recognisable town names in SA.
The marathon legal proceedings cost South Australian taxpayers more than $20 million over almost seven years, during which Haydon aged markedly as his dark hair and beard rapidly greyed.
Haydon is understood to have done his time in an unobtrusive manner, counting down the days until he could apply to rejoin the outside world.
There are only 15 days left until his minimum sentence expires, but whether the Parole Board sees fit to allow him conditional freedom seven years before the end of his head sentence, will not be known until at least the middle of June.
He will be released by May 2024, a year before Vlassakis becomes eligible for parole.
Bunting — who is understood to have recruited more eager followers in prison — and his former protege Wagner are almost certain to live the remainder of their lives in maximum security.
Their life sentences are a pale and insignificant penalty compared to the lifetime of torment and anguish they imposed upon dozens of surviving family and friends of the Snowtown murder victims.
JOHN JUSTIN BUNTING
Born September 4, 1966
Convicted of 11 murders
John Bunting’s intense hatred of paedophiles and homosexuals apparently triggered the killing spree. A charismatic leader despite his unremarkable appearance, Bunting initially focused on killing those he called “dirties”. But after discovering a taste for killing, Bunting graduated to murdering those he considered were wasting their lives — drug users, welfare recipients, people with disabilities — and claiming their welfare payments. The sentencing judge said “by 1999, you were in the business of killing for pleasure”.
ROBERT JOE WAGNER
Born November 28, 1971
Convicted of 10 murders
Robert Wagner had been in a decade-long gay relationship with victim Barry Lane. But after meeting John Bunting, he became an enthusiastic partner in his homophobic killing spree. Wagner was a willing participant in the torture and dismemberment of their victims. He helped Bunting make audio recordings of their terrified victims that would be played over the phone to convince their families they were still alive. He even fried up some of the flesh of the final victim, David Johnson, and fed it to Vlassakis.
JAMES SPYRIDON VLASSAKIS
Born December 24, 1979
Convicted of four murders
James Vlassakis was John Bunting’s stepson and main father figure. Bunting groomed the impressionable teenager with his hateful ideology and gradually introduced him into his twisted world of torture and murder. In an attempt to cope, Vlassakis turned to drugs including heroin and amphetamines. He participated in four murders, including the sadistic killings of his half-brother Troy Youde and stepbrother David Johnson, but eventually became the Crown’s star witness against the serial killer he once worshipped.
MARK RAY HAYDON
Born December 4, 1958
Convicted of seven counts of assisting an offender
Mark Haydon was one of John Bunting’s trusted lieutenants but was never convicted of murder — the jury was deadlocked on charges that he participated in the murders of his wife, Elizabeth Haydon, and Bunting’s stepson, Troy Youde. But he played a crucial and long-lasting role in helping his co-accused dispose of the bodies and cover up their appalling crimes. After spending seven years in custody, in 2006 Haydon was sentenced to 25 years in prison with a non-parole period of 18 years — meaning he will soon be eligible for parole.