Lost diary gives South Australia police new lead into Alan Barnes murder by The Family
EXCLUSIVE: Police are investigating new information linking convicted killer Bevan Spencer von Einem to the murder of Alan Barnes.
POLICE are investigating new information linking convicted killer Bevan Spencer von Einem to the abduction and murder of teenager Alan Barnes.
The evidence is contained in a detailed diary kept by a man who was a close associate of several key players in the so-called Family murders.
The diary entries, provided to Major Crime Investigation detectives this week by The Advertiser, reveal sensational evidence that indicates von Einem took photographs of Alan Barnes, 17, after sexually abusing him and that von Einem and another suspect in the five murders rented a unit in the eastern suburbs where they took hitchhikers they had picked up and drugged to sexually abuse them.
The diary entries, containing the correct names of the three so far uncharged suspects and their associates, corroborate evidence Major Crime detectives already have linking von Einem to the Barnes murder and provide more evidence of the activities of the group in picking up young male hitchhikers, drugging them and then sexually abusing them.
Significantly, the diary entries provide several new lines of inquiry for detectives and are likely to lead to several suspects and close associates being re-interviewed.
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Von Einem, 66, is the only Family member to face justice over the Family murders - he is serving a life sentence, with a 24-year non-parole period, for the murder of 15-year-old Richard Kelvin, in 1983.
Four other murders - those of Mark Langley, 18, Alan Barnes, 17, Neil Muir, 25, and Peter Stogneff, 14, - have also been linked to the Family.
In 1989, von Einem was also charged with murdering Barnes and Langley, but the charges were later withdrawn when crucial similar-fact evidence was ruled inadmissable.
That evidence included testimony by numerous men that von Einem and others had picked them up, drugged and sexually abused them.
Their testimony was backed by several associates of von Einem who gave corroborating evidence - and implicated others.
In 2008 Major Crime detectives conducted an exhaustive review of the Family murders, targeting von Einem and three other key offenders and up to eight of their associates.
In 2010 then Director of Public Prosecutions Stephen Pallaras, QC, said after examining the review report that there was not enough evidence to charge either von Einem or any other suspects.
In the latest development in the case, the diary entries which detectives are now investigating were made by Kensington Park man Trevor Peters, who died last November. They were found by his brother while he was cleaning out the Shipsters Rd terrace house occupied by his sibling.
The house is one door from another occupied by a close associate of von Einem's.
That person, a transvestite, assisted von Einem by luring male hitchhikers into his car in return for drugs. Her former housemate, another transvestite named Pru Firman, who also assisted von Einem, died in 2010.
The most shocking entry details how Peters, a homosexual who mixed in the same circles as von Einem's associates, saw photographs of Alan Barnes in von Einem's possession.
He states he was at the hairdressing salon of a close von Einem associate, Denis St Denis, at Hazelwood Park in June, 1979, when this happened. Barnes was abducted on June 17 and his body found on the banks of the South Para reservoir a week later.
Peters states in his diary that while he was having his hair cut and streaked, von Einem arrived to have his hair cut and dyed.
"He was in a very happy mood and looking knowingly at Denis, smiling broadly and excited about something they both seemed to share,'' he wrote.
He said while he was waiting for the bleach in his hair to work, St Denis and von Einem went to a room in the rear of the salon behind a curtain, adjacent to where St Denis' mother Dot lived.
"I could hear Bevan and Denis giggling and laughing and both saying 'oooh how evil, oooh it's evil.' Denis said this several times and I became curious as to just what it was they both found so interesting and entertaining and, feeling that I was being left out, got out of the chair to investigate.
"I found them huddled over a waist-high table directly behind the curtain. There was a group of photographs, polaroids, laid out on the table, maybe 4, 5 or 6 of them, with Bevan holding more photographs in his hand.
"They both began to collect the photos quickly but not before I saw them. The photographs were of a young attractive blond-haired man lying on his side on the front seat of a car with his legs bent towards the steering wheel...''
The Advertiser has opted not to print the diary entries describing the nature of the photographs because of their graphic content.
"I was shocked at seeing the photos and they both hurriedly gathered them up, with Bevan putting them all into his back pocket of his trousers,'' Peters wrote.
"When I asked who the young man was, Bevan said 'oh, just some hitchhiker'.''
Peters wrote that he later recognised the man in the photographs as Alan Barnes after seeing newspaper stories about his abduction.
Peters wrote that several weeks before St Denis died, in the nineties, he had called him from Calvary Hospital and Peters had visited him several times before he passed away.
"On one occasion we sat together in the garden at the hospital and once again I asked him about the photographs. He told me that over the years that he spent at Adelaide's 'beats' and toilets, Bevan had shown him dozens of such photographs of nude young men, more often than not with objects, including bottles, inserted well into their anuses.
"However, he said, smiling at me, he didn't remember there being any photos at the salon ever and 'if you know what's good for you, neither should you!' He died four days later.''
Pair rented unit to terrorise hitchhikers
CONVICTED murderer Bevan Spencer von Einem and a close associate rented a unit in the eastern suburbs where they took drugged hitchhikers to sexually abuse them, according to the associate.
The disturbing revelation is contained in the diary of a close friend of the von Einem associate - Trevor Peters - that Major Crime detectives are now examining.
In the diary he states that von Einem and his associate, hairdresser Denis St Denis, had rented a unit in the "inner eastern suburbs, maybe Norwood, Kent Town or Dulwich'' and that St Denis had shown Peters on one occasion.
"Both Denis and Bevan lived with their mothers and needed a place to take the young men for sex or 'trade' especially 'rough trade' as Denis had told me on the day he drove me past the unit. Denis said they kept it a secret from their families that they rented the unit.''
Police have stated that murder victims Richard Kelvin, Mark Langley and Alan Barnes were kept alive for a time after being abducted. They were also washed and redressed before their bodies were dumped. Investigations have so far been unable to locate any premises where they may have been kept - in the Kelvin case for six weeks - before being murdered.
While detectives found forensic evidence that confirmed Kelvin had been at von Einem's Paradise house after being abducted, he was not kept there. At the time von Einem lived with his mother who has since died.
Peters states in the diary that a woman, whom he named and who was questioned by detectives during investigations, "said that she had been told Richard Kelvin had been held in a unit and that Denis St Denis had cut Kelvin's hair during that time. She said that several people had visited the unit while Kelvin was there''.
"I was surprised at what she said and suspected that she knew more than she was saying,'' he wrote.
In another entry Peters, who died in November last year, details how von Einem used several transvestites to lure hitchhikers into his car in return for drugs and reveals another location the hitchhikers were taken to be abused.
"Pru Firman (who died in 2010) was sharing a rented house in Alberton in the late '70s or early '80s with another transvestite or sex change named xxx xxxx and xxxxxxx. (The latter is another suspect and close friend of von Einem's, who cannot be named for legal reasons. He is also the brother of a former Olympic athlete.)
"Pru said that Bevan von Einem frequently took drugged young men there to have sex with them. She said that xxxx (the suspect) would always have a back room ready for him and Bevan ready to abuse sexually the boys that Bevan brought there.
"She said that xxxx (the suspect) would always have the bed made and candles ready. She said that xxx (another suspect who is an eastern suburbs businessman) was there to meet Bevan 'frequently'. When I questioned frequently, she said 'yes, all the time'.''
"He was there lots and lots of times. He took the drugged boys after Bevan and xxx (the suspect) had finished with them. Sometimes xxx (the suspect) went with him.''
Peters wrote that following von Einem's arrest over the Kelvin murder the suspect and two of the transvestites moved to Sydney to live.
"All 3 of them had been actively involved with Bevan by dressing in drag and luring the young hitchhikers into Bevan's car in exchange for mandrax and sepapax, Pru said,'' Peters states.
Peters also wrote that Firman's housemate and fellow transvestite, who lives in Shipsters Rd at Kensington Park, was also sexually involved "with Bevan and drugged hitchhikers''.
"She (he) went as a female decoy in order to get mandrax from Bevan,'' he states.
"Xxxxx knows a lot more than she says. I know that for a fact."