Criminal Investigation: The Art of Solving Crimes | Full Episode

[Music] [Music] [Music] [Music] dusk on Mother's Day May 1999 a lone car makes its way north from Adelaide through the desolate salt plains heading for the tiny wheat farming village of snow town 150 kilometres away 24 year-old David Johnson is accompanying his stepbrother 19 year old at Jamie blue Sarkis David believes Jamie is taking him to pick up a cheap computer it's nightfall as they drive into snow town a sleepy village with a population of just a couple of hundred they pull up in railway terrace outside an old brick building once used as a bank eagerly David Johnson is about to go with Jamie blah Sarkis through a side door unaware of the horror awaiting Harrison Davis Johnson will be the final victim in one of the most shocking and gruesome series of murders in the annals of Australian crime it'll be another two weeks before police converge on this disused former bank and what they find will not only horrify them but give the isolated rural community of snow town and international reputation for all the wrong reasons [Music] adelaide australia's so-called city of churches a town that has been meticulously planned from its inception but like all australian urban centres it's had to succumb to the realities of 20th century life as a suburban sprawl of low-cost government housing begins to spread north of the city here unemployment is high and prospects of bleak in these tracts of look alike prefabricated houses they become a breeding ground for disillusionment despair and inevitably crime one of the residents is teenager Clinton tries eyes Clinton's endured a difficult family life having lived most of his younger years in foster homes but despite the hardships he's grown into a carefree independent likable young man with a flamboyant taste in clothes and a happy-go-lucky attitude about him I remember when he got the unit on Philip IRA he was ecstatic he was so excited to be living on his own among the locals who befriend Clinton true size a berry Lane and Robert Wagner but he's unaware that they're members of a group of social misfits whose leader is a dangerous psychopath in August 1992 he's invited to a house in Waterloo Corner Road in the Adelaide suburb of Salisbury North Intan is sitting in the lounge room when he suddenly attacked from behind he fell to the ground and was struck repeatedly to the back of the skull it fractured the back of his skull and the force of the blows was so great at the front of his skull that had been up against the floor was also fractured my job it the killer then summons his mates Robert Wagner and Barry Laila who lived nearby they drive north into the country and dig a shallow grave on a farm Clinton's sister Cherie attempts to file a missing person report with the police I think I meant Elizabeth can't remember and said look my brother's gone missing we haven't seen him for a couple of weeks who had no contact with him we can't reach him his place is a mess and it's more than usually what it was more than usual when we had a proper look I need to file a missing persons report I just thought he God jack of all the [ __ ] that was going on in his life and decided that he was better off away from it all and picked up and moved away I just thought he'd gone through a different change of life despite shuri's claim inexplicably no missing-persons report on Troy's eyes is filed until his mother files one three years later it will also be some years before the remains of Clinton treasures are found and even longer before they're finally identified along with many other victims is a psychopath named John bunting a stocky man in his mid-20s he's a cruel and malevolent monster who lives with his illiterate and partially blind wife Veronica in the house at Waterloo Corner Road Salisbury north one of the things he would do as a youngster is grab all sorts of different chemicals and drop insects into them and watch them die in pain he would dig tunnels under his home until his dad told him it was too dangerous and made him stop as a teenager he got into Nazism the one unifying factor all the way through his story is the fact that he had a terrible hatred of gays and pedophiles and he didn't seem to distinguish between the two it's at the house in Waterloo Corner Road that bunting first meets his neighbors Robert Wagner and berry Lane and draws them into his evil web Wagner was another troubled kid who grew up in than over the suburbs of Adelaide he was illiterate and always in having problems at school he also had problems on the home front his stepdad used to was a very strict disciplinarian used to beat him he met up with a character called berry Lane who was a gay man and crossdresser also like we know it as Vanessa who hung around in the in the northern sores of Adelaide and basically Lane began a relationship with Wagner who was at this stage still almost a preteen he was 13 or so at the time Wagner and Lane become frequent visitors to buntings house as does another friend Mark Hayden a man of few words who's also fallen under buntings evil influence all are fascinated by John bunting sick obsession with cruelty and vengeance 16th of August 1994 and two farmers make a gruesome discovery here at low alight 50 kilometres north of Adelaide a shattered human skull and other skeletal remains police can't identify the body it's been two years since Clinton try XYZ's murder and it'll be another five years before he's finally identified I hope to god he died instantly but I don't know if he did or whether he just went unconscious all I can picture it's my innocent brother self-knowing couch so wore on coming up and going on the back of his head going what [Music] by the time that Clinton tries Isis remains are found in 1994 John bunting has gathered around him a larger group of social outcasts one of these is Elizabeth Harvey who'd separated from her husband Marcus Johnson they in call me out who Johnny Shawn she's moved into the bunting at Waterloo Corner Road bringing with her her two sons from previous marriages Troy you'd and Jamie blow Sarkis her son's stepfather Marcus Johnson recalls meeting bunting he was not interested in sport he had no hobbies it just seemed as if the Sun rose and sunset on pedophilia and virtually all he would discuss both Jamie and Troy have been sexually abused as children by Jamie's birth father and Troy in turn has sexually abused the younger Jamie Jamie blah Sarkis is soon under the control of bunting in a rented Caravan not far from the Waterloo Corner Road House lives an intellectually disabled pensioner 26 year old Ray Davies one day in 1995 Davies landlady Suzanne Allen confronts him at the caravan she accuses him of molesting a child she knows he protests his innocence but Suzanne Allen goes off to report him to police she then tells her neighbor John bunting it's all the excuse the murderer needs to justify his urge to torture and kill him do anything he was captured overpowered by Wagner and bunting he was bound and thrown into the boot of a car taken into bushland and beaten before he was taken back to buntings house there he was tortured further before he was strangled to death with jumper leads from an that would be used to start a car [Music] also present is Elizabeth Harvey who's convinced and Davies is a pedophile bouncing took advantage of this and goaded her into taking part in the assault she picked up a ceramic tool and stabbed Davies single leg this time his body was then dumped in the back hole of the back yard of 203 nobody seems to care how or why Ray Davies has disappeared he's not reported missing Suzanne Allen has become obsessed with bunting and they begin a sexual relationship despite the fact that he's not only married to Veronica but is also having an affair with Elizabeth Harvey Suzanne Allen's constant sexual advances are annoying bunting it's a fatal obsession in November 1996 Suzanne Allen simply disappears after her family reports her sudden and mysterious disappearance police go to Susanne Allen's home and disturbed by what they find her place which was normally quite neat and tidy was pretty much trashed and more concerning was the fact that her pets were there and she was a keen animal lover and would never leave her pets alone but bunting and Wagner know exactly where she is her body was dismembered parts put in rubbish bags and eventually she was buried in the back yard of in Waterloo Corner Road at Salisbury North where John bunting lived there's no direct evidence of foul play so Suzanne Allen is simply declared a missing person bunting and Wagner will later claim they found the Suzanne dead from a heart attack and that they only dismembered and hid her body so that they could collect her Social Security payments the tangled web of relationships around John bunting is complicated in 1996 bunting and Elizabeth hobby and her two teenage sons Troy and Jamie moved to live in a house in the town of Murray bridge around a hundred kilometres away but he keeps in contact with wagner bunting and wagner and now on a roll driven by grease and an irresistible bloodlust bunting constructs a chart that he refers to as the wall of spiders it's a list of potential victims various acquaintances that in some strange delusion he decides they're all child's molesters he often picks out a name at random then calls and abuses them at the center of the chart is the convicted sex offender Barry Lane his accomplice in the disposal of Clinton Troy Caesars body by the spring of 1997 bunting decides it's time to kill again Michael Gartner is a flamboyant and openly gay man he too has had a troubled life his stepfather resented him because of his sexual orientation and after being sexually abused by a family friend when he was 14 he was put in foster care now at age 19 he's coming to terms with life and he rents a room in a house near Robert Wagner's home in northern adulation Michael's landlady is Nicole's Arita calories fingernails for him and and used to wear a wig and calling Michelle and you know he let him be who he wanted to be and not feeling limited Nicole's Sarita's cousin Vicki Mills lives nearby and she's having an affair with Robert Wagner so Michael Gardner soon gets to know them one day an incident involving one of Miller's children sparks Wagner and Vicki Mills into a rage they came home to discover Michael Gardner chasing an excited kid around that around the room all very fun except that when gardener grabbed the kid he accidentally put his hand over the kid's mouth and this was seen as a sinister move by both mills and Wagner when Michael's landlady Nicole Sarita goes on holidays soon afterwards magna links up with bunting and they attack michael is abducted and taken to a shed at the back of buntings house in Murray Bridge he's tied up tortured and strangled is falling to his knees bunting demands that he stands up not is getting tighter Michael Gardner struggles ineffectually in his final moments his attackers will later hack off his limbs and throw his body parts into an acid filled barrel in the shed bunting and Wagner ransack Sarita's house searches unsuccessfully for Michael's wallet in the hope of obtaining his bank and ID details to access his benefits they take all his belongings and steal some of hers to make it look as if he'd robbed her and run away Nicole Zurita later finds Michaels wallet in the room under his bed then I started to get phone calls at my house from somebody saying he was Michael's friend and Michael needed his ID because he they Michaels wallet was under the bed in the room that he stayed in I just want my and Jamie had known that that I had that because Jamie had been around you know told him got his wallet so he hasn't got his social security card or anything and they wanted that and I said to this son friend I said yeah and I want my stuff so Michael better come and see me and then I got another phone call saying you know he really needs his ID can you meet me in the park and give it to me and I'm like I don't think so more threatening calls follow including one from someone claiming to be Michael Nichole dismisses them but eventually she's convinced by Jamie to hand the wallet over she remains concerned for her borders whereabouts alarm bells about Michaels disappearance fade away John bunting has only ever tolerated berry lane because he was having a relationship with his partner in crime Robert Wagner but now that's over Barry lanes has taken up with a new lover Thomas travillian a mentally disturbed teenager fond of all things military bunting also knows Lane has been talking to bunting the ever-expanding network of alleged pedophiles seems to have one common denominator the convicted sex offender berry Lane bunting hasn't forgotten how Lane told Veronica of trees Isis murder and now he's fair game berry lanes time is up the killer is getting more devious in the next attack he will force his victim to make a tape recording and a phone call to explain his sudden disappearance in case there are questions asked by relatives or police bunting Wagner and Thomas travillian went to lanes house they burst in on him and subdued him and tortured him and forced him to make a phone call to his mother in Adalind to basically bring up an abuse at her and put her off the scent after this call it's finished bunting Wagner and Trevelyan dinner renewed the assault online they used pliers to crush his toes and toenails it's some sort of warped experiment to see which was more painful they beat him up and they finally after gaining his financial details they then strangled him [Music] [Music] by his body was wrapped in a carpet and left in the house for a number of days before being removed and taken away and dismembered and put in a barrel ten days after his disappearance a female friend of lanes reports him missing she tells police that Lane has spoken to her about Clinton roses death she's skeptical but she passes the story on to police but because of the bogus tape recording police believe Lane has moved to Queensland meanwhile 19 years old Thomas Trevelyan has every reason to be terrified [Music] by late 1997 five people have died in the northern suburbs of Adelaide and in the town of Murray bridge in South Australia their bodies lie secretly bury dismembered and stuffed into barrels of acid only the killer's know of the hideous fate of Clinton trees eyes Ray Davies Suzanne Allen Michael Gartner and berry Lane following Lane's murder Thomas Trevelyan moves in with killer Robert Wagner and his girlfriend Vicki Mills travillian is mentally unstable and emotionally erratic and he's obsessed with all things military he soon confides in a cousin that he's been involved in Lane's murder and that he's now concerned for his own safety they strongly believed that sooner than later Trevelyan will tell someone about what had happened in their view thomas travillian had to die they take advantage of his troubled background and staged a suicide he's found hanging from a tree in the Adelaide Hills for some years police believed he's killed himself by early 1998 Jamie bliss arcus is still living in John buntings house along with his mother Elizabeth Harvey by this time he's become a heroin addict and he invites a fellow addict gavin.porter to move in it's a dangerous decision because bunting has now added drug addicts to his bizarre hate list while he excuses his protege Jamie's heroin use he despises gavin.porter for being a junkie Gavin is a schizophrenic on a pension and bunting soon gets his bank details and pin number when bunting accidentally pricks himself on a needle but Porter has left on the couch he flies into rage and decides that Porter will be victim number 7 and so when Jamie's away one day the familiar murder ritual is played out [Music] Jason tries the maths Waggoner it's understood that while Porter is sleeping in the back of a car Wagner and bunting strike after being beaten tortured and finally murdered Porter's body is put in a barrel and stored in the garage at the back of the house in Murray Bridge when Jamie la Sarkis returns to the house bunting takes him to the shed there to his horror he sees the murdered body of his mate together in a way his shock is doubled minutes later when budding points to a barrel lifts the lid showing him the remains of berry Lane and Michael gardener obeys mo garnet Jamie is repulsed and violently ill but he's so frightened he agrees to go along with buntings plans including accessing Gavin Porter's Social Security payments by August of 1998 bunting decides that it's time for the impressionable Jamie to have his first taste of murder he convinces the young man that his older half-brother Troy deserves to be punished for having sexually abused him armed with makeshift clubs and Jack handles they enter Troy's bedroom [Music] [Applause] [Music] the group drags him to the bathroom and take records his voice you know the repulsive recordings of this horrifying torture and murder will later become known as the voices of the dead life is fading for Troy Wagner ensures he loses consciousness bunting is exuberant on a high loving it with Troy's lifeless body lying slumped on the floor bunting orders Jamie to kick it and then to help dump the body in the shed with three victims now out there in barrels the stench is becoming overpowering Jamie is sick and terrified but has no qualms about accessing his dead brother's social security benefits to buy drugs there are now eight people dead and there's still nothing to stop the killing spree apart from the unsolved murder of the still unidentified Clinton treasures all police have are a couple of missing-persons reports and they're investigating a number of suspect social security frauds like sharks in a frenzy this is a gang that's out of control and will readily feed on its own as Mark Hayden is about to find out Payton is married to Elizabeth Sinclair and bunting takes a real dislike to her for the flimsiest of reasons he decides he'll deal with her later but in the meantime bunting targets Elizabeth Sinclair's 18 year old nephew Fred Brooks the teenager must die simply because he's an easy target the manipulative bunting is determined that young Jamie will continue to play a part in this terrible nightmare it's September 1998 only a month after Troy's murder the attack on Fred Brooks last a number of hours and was severe if not shocking its brutality he was stripped and beaten lit cigarettes placed in his nose and ear [Music] [Applause] he had a cigarette lighter was used to burn a smile or smiley in his forehead the cigarette lighter was then used to burn his nipple bunting at one point brought out a machine called a very ACMA sheen which was used for LED or nickel plating the machine was attached to alligator clips which were then attached to Brooks's genital region [Music] and at a later point after that had finished bunching produced some sparklers looks was still Australian at this point bunting split open the sparkler and inserted at one hand into books his penis used a lighter to set fire to the sparkler and watched it burn down to the bus Brooks was squirming to try and get away and this apparently amused bunting and Wagner so much that they did it again with a second sparkler and do the same thing the final things that was done was that bun-chan Wagner used syringes to inject water into Fox's testicles and at a later point some time after that mercifully passed away Brooks's body was later taken to mark Hayden's house at Smithfield Plains in North that's and or the suburbs of Adelaide where by now the other barrels had been taken for storage and subsequent to this time Brooks's Centrelink benefits were then accessed by the murder game now the madness grows the torture more extreme the selection of victims becoming more random just a few weeks later in October 1998 bunting and Jamie blah sokka's a sitting in a car in Murray bridge when they spot 29 year-old Gary O'Dwyer wobbling across the road O'Dwyer was the victim of a shocking car accident leaving him to survive on a disability pension he's easy prey and bunting contrives to get them invited to O'Dwyer's house they were all sitting around the lounge room having drinks when suddenly bunting stood up it was almost like a signal and Wagner grabbed her Dwyer from behind him again to choke him at the time I said stop you're killing him without trace of irony they proceeded to beat Dwyer up to use various tortures that had also been used previously [Music] included the variac machine that being used on Fred Brooks they said Dwyer's financial details from him so they could access his accounts and recorded his voice in the same way that they recorded Fred Brooks and Troy you'd make statements to try and put off their families and finally Dwyer was strangled at his house on Francis Troy's death number 10 and another dismembered body ends up in a barrel now that O'Dwyer's out of the way somewhere in the dark recesses of his warped mind bunting decides it's time for his accomplices wife Elizabeth Hayden to die but it's her callous murder that will give police a key lead and fuel their fears that this is a case of serial killings [Music] by May 1999 detectives are closing in on the gang of killers but they still have no idea of the enormity of their crimes incredibly in the midst of all the police phone taps and constant surveillance the gang claims its 12th victim - 24 year-old David Johnson in snow town detectives from Adelaide tell local constable ian young about their search but the Land Cruiser I pulled my notebook out and I said ah yes I can tell you where that is and I'd explained to them that it actually had come into the town back in either late January early February and it actually was loaded with some barrels in the back of this vehicle and that's when they picked their ears up and the investigation went on from there the detectives locate the Land Cruiser at the couple's house and find out that John bunting is renting a disused bank building in the town when they went over to the bank they let themselves in through the side door through to the bank vault and opened the bank vault when they push through the plastic they were hit with a foul stench which they immediately believed was a smell of dead bodies the horrified officers immediately called for reinforcements and special equipment a few hours later in the early evening of May 20th they went back inside the vault one police officer opened the lid of each barrel and turn another officer who's carrying a video camera then pointing the camera inside each barrel to document what was inside police today confirmed there were eight victims in the plastic barrels found in a disused Bank at snow town in South Australia's Mid North people didn't believe it not in a small town light snow down the smell had actually because the vault door had been opened a small had actually gone right through the bank it was days later that I can actually recall driving down the Main Street and seeing people coming into the town even in the media people down on their hands and knees trying to smell underneath the door and also they shoot at the side of the bank where or put mile into the bank they are actually putting their notes in there to see what they could smell anything the barrels are then taken to Adelaide where professor of anatomy at the University of Adelaide marchi Henan Berg is called in to assist in the identification I was shocked by the cruelty with which those crimes were perpetrated because it takes an enormous ly callous human being to be able to dismember a body of another human being as if it was an object ugly as the discovery was the dismembering and storage of the bodies is part of a behavior pattern in serial killers when murder alone can't gratified their sick urges criminologist Alan Perry has studied this now that no longer satisfies them so they have to take it they have to take it steps further those steps frequently involve sort of torturing the victims dismembering the victims and in some cases cannibalizing them but it's usually progressive sort of development from straightforward killing at the beginning the far more bizarre and ritualistic killing at the end it's also possible the killers were trying to destroy evidence of their crimes and were too stupid to realize they were actually preserving them sort of like mummified as far as I can tell the wrong acid was used because the bodies were put into barrels of hydrochloric acid which does not so easily dissolve human tissues had they been put into sulfuric acid there will be much more damage the gruesome discovery is the moment of truth it's time for police to move in their plan of attack for the day which included the arrest of John bunting Robert Wagner and mark a three separate squads were sent out with two groups each a search group at an arrest group the first house that was visited was John buntings house he was arrested along briefly with Elizabeth Harvey they were taken to the police station bunting was later charged with one count of murder around the same time Robert Wagner was arrested and he was taken to to police station and Charlie Charlie one count of murder as was Mark home that afternoon the three men are charged with the murder of a person unknown Jamie bliss aqus is questioned a few days later Lusaka s-- is interviewed by police and he rolls over over six days he tells them all he knows hoping to get immunity for his crimes Jamie leads police to where the bodies of Ray Davies and Suzanne Allen are buried at war Corner Road as news breaks of the grisly discoveries detectives struggle to explain to the world's media the daunting task they're now placing the difficulty we have is that we haven't really identified the victims and so we can't say for any certainty when they were last seen and when in fact they may have died we have located several quite large plastic bags now it's much too early to confirm as to how many bodies that might be there never before in the history of South Australia as the challenge been so great to investigate a series of crimes as a single event that is becoming fairly evident that we will now have to resort to DNA profiling to identify the rest of the people police identify 10 bodies but they yet to discover Clinton treasures and Thomas draw billion are also victims eventually bunting Wagner and Hayden were charged with ten counts of murder and four Sarkis was charged with five counts of murder when the four men appear before a magistrate it's obvious that there's tension between them blaah Sarkis is becoming quite distressed as the other three taunt him during witness evidence court officials are forced to intervene and from now on LA Sarkis will remain under guard and separated from his tormentors for the duration of the lengthy committal hearing Jamie's mother Elizabeth hobby dies of cancer before she can take part in any of the proceedings Jamie decides he can now tell the whole truth towards the end of that committal hearing after the death of Jamie verse axes mother the Sarkis no longer had a reason to protect his mother and felt able to plead guilty to the murders and turn evidence this he did and he was subsequently sentenced to life imprisonment with 26 years and on parole he then became the crown star witness at the trials of John bunting bunting Wagner and Hayden are tried in the South Australian Supreme Court on 12 counts of murder all three at first denied the charges but eventually Robert Wagner in the face of overwhelming evidence pleads guilty to three murders John bunting and Mark Hayden maintained their innocence Wagner's Supreme Court trial is interrupted when three jurors refused to continue and withdraw because of the horror of the evidence of the 12 counts they convicted John bunting of 11 counts and Wagner of 7 to add to the three he had already pled guilty to before the trial so almost 11 months after it begins the longest criminal trial in South Australia's history comes to an end but justice Martin has one last task that comes six weeks later when bunting and Wagner appear before him for sentencing after accusing them of being cowards having killed for pleasure and noting that they'd shown no remorse at all Justice Martin glares at them in the dock and sentences them to life the Supreme Court dismissed a final appeal by bunting and Wagner in May 2005 the murder charges against Hayden were dropped when he finally pleaded guilty to assisting in the killings of his wife Elizabeth Hayden and Troy you´d he was sentenced to 25 years jail with a non-parole period of 18 years [Music] John Justin bunting life with no parole date set Robert Joe Wagner life no parole date set Jaime's spur ridden blue circus life parole only after 26 years mark ray Hayden 25 years parole only after 18 the judge tells bunting and Wagner if I had the power to make an order that you never be released I would unhesitatingly make that order I think he's unredeemable I think I might have actually seen Dyer the closest thing to the devil in Australia he's given the blackest person Australia may have ever known the people of snow town are also bunting and Wagner's victims the name of their small rural community will forever be synonymous with Australia's worst serial killings even though it was only the brief final setting in the terrible saga with the monsters locked away all that's left is the grief and suffering of the friends and relatives of the victims I do get nightmares and I do still have some recurring thoughts about what's happened what's gone down it's amazing how I can go about everyday living and there'll be something just so trivial and it will just rush certain things back I try very hard to put it back and take it to the back of my brain I try not to dwell on them that the things because it just becomes too much for me to handle [Music]

Channel: Banijay Crime - Crime Documentary

Views: 1,586,741

Keywords: 60 minutes australia, australian crime, cold case, crime, crime documentaries, crime documentary, crime investigation australia, crime scene investigation, crime tv show, criminal investigation, documentaire, documental, documentary channel, fall from power, full documentary, reality tv series, top documentaries, true crime, true crime documentary, vanity fair magazine, wealthy criminals

Id: qeHL0bQVIfU

Length: 44min 33sec (2673 seconds)

Published: Wed Nov 14 2018