SA: Snowtown victims strangled, gagged and mutilated, court told

AAP General News (Australia)
12-12-2000
SA: Snowtown victims strangled, gagged and mutilated, court told

(EDS PLEASE NOTE: all details about prosecution's opening and pathologist's evidence
in this story are suppressed and CANNOT be broadcast or published in South Australia)





The Snowtown bodies-in-barrels case is set to continue in Adelaide today after prosecution
evidence yesterday that some of the 10 victims were strangled before being mutilated with
a sharp knife.

South Australia's chief forensic pathologist Dr ROSS JAMES performed post mortem examinations
on five of the 10 alleged victims.

He told the committal hearing in the Adelaide Magistrates Court that some of the bodies
had been mutilated.

Three men -- ROBERT JOE WAGNER, aged 28 of Elizabeth Grove, JOHN JUSTIN BUNTING, 34
of Craigmore, and MARK RAY HAYDON, 42 of Smithfield Plains -- did not enter a plea to
10 charges of murder.

A fourth man, JAMES SPRYRIDON VLASSAKIS, 20, of Craigmore, did not enter a plea on
five counts of murder.

The charges relate to the eight bodies found in barrels at a disused bank vault in
Snowtown, north of Adelaide, and in the case of WAGNER, BUNTING and HAYDON, two more found
buried in a backyard at suburban Salisbury North.

According to police, the deaths occurred between 1995 and 1999.

Earlier, Crown prosecutor WENDY ABRAHAM, QC, told the court the alleged killers stole
the victims' social security payments and sometimes impersonated them or forged signatures
and documents to keep the money coming.

AAP RTV sl/tjd/sl/jx/jn/jx/rt

KEYWORD: SNOWTOWN (ADELAIDE)

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