8

The Adelaide Family Murders

At around midnight on a chilly autumn evening in May 1972, on the banks of the Torrens River, which flows through the heart of Adelaide and is a notorious night-time pick-up area for homosexuals, Adelaide University lecturer Dr George Duncan and Roger James were attacked by four men. They were bashed and thrown in the river – and left for dead. Duncan, a frail man with just one lung as a result of juvenile tuberculosis, was drowned.

Severe bruising beneath his armpits indicated that he had been man-handled and thrown into the freezing river by a number of people. Roger James escaped with a broken ankle. He had been saved by a tall young blond man in his mid-20s who just happened to be passing by at the time – Bevan Spencer von Einem. This was a name that would be of enormous significance later.

Dr George Duncan’s death was treated as murder, and within days the spotlight fell on three senior Vice Squad detectives who were alleged to have gone to the Torrens River that night in search of ‘poofters’ to bash after they had attended a drunken send-off for one of their comrades. Witnesses said that the detectives were accompanied by a tall civilian; his name never came to light. The three detectives were called upon to give evidence at a coronial inquest into Dr Duncan’s death, but all refused to answer a number of questions put to them – on the grounds that they may incriminate themselves – and were immediately suspended from duty.

A subsequent police inquiry failed to find sufficient evidence to recommend prosecution of the three police officers. The public was outraged, and while the whole matter stank of a cover-up, there was little that could be done and the incident was forgotten … for the time being.

In June 1979, while Adelaide’s citizens were trying to come to terms with the murders of seven young women in Truro, the hideously mutilated body of 17-year-old Alan Barnes was found on the banks of the South Para reservoir, northeast of Adelaide. He had been reported missing seven days earlier. The state of his corpse indicated that he had died the day before he was discovered. The post-mortem revealed that he had died of massive blood loss from ghastly injuries inflicted upon his anus with a large blunt instrument while he was still alive.

Two months later, police were called to investigate what looked like human body parts found in plastic bags that had floated to rest on the banks of the Port River at Port Adelaide. The body parts turned out to belong to 25-year-old Neil Muir; he had been neatly cut into many pieces, placed in the garbage bags and thrown into the river.

On 27 February 1982, 18-year-old Mark Langley disappeared while walking near the Torrens River. Nine days later, his mutilated body was found in scrub in the Adelaide foothills. Among the mutilations to his body was a wound from his navel to his pubic region, which appeared to have been cut with a surgical instrument. The hair around the wound had been shaved exactly as it would have been had he been prepared for surgery. The post-mortem revealed that part of Mark’s small bowel was missing and that he had died from a massive loss of blood from gross injuries to his anus.

In June 1982, the skeletal remains of 14-year-old Peter Stogneff, who had gone missing 10 months earlier, were found at Middle Beach, north of Adelaide, cut into three pieces as if by a surgical saw.

By now the press was convinced that the murders were the work of a group of Adelaide homosexuals in very high places – politicians, judges, religious leaders and the like – who paid handsomely for kidnapped young men whom they drugged and used for their pleasure. When the victims were no longer of any use to them, the procurers disposed of the bodies. The press christened this unconfirmed clandestine group ‘the Family’, and from then on the case was referred to in the national press as the ‘Adelaide Family murders’.

Working on the now obvious assumption that the murders were the work of the same individual or group, and that that individual or group was homosexual, SA Major Crime Squad detectives infiltrated the state’s homosexual network. Detectives came up with a shortlist of possible suspects: consisting of known sex offenders and offenders known to have bizarre sexual preferences, known only in the homosexual subculture. One such person of interest was a tall, blond, meticulously groomed 37-year-old accountant named Bevan Spencer von Einem. Openly homosexual, von Einem was well known to police as a frequenter of homosexual pick-up spots (or ‘beats’, as they were more commonly known). Von Einem also had a reputation for being particularly fond of young boys, an activity scorned by the homosexual community.

Von Einem was brought in and questioned at length about the Barnes and Langley killings. He vigorously denied any knowledge of the murders other than what he had read in the papers and the rumours he had heard circulating about the specific injuries to the victims. Police had no choice but to let him go.

On 23 July 1983 a fifth victim turned up. His body was found by an amateur geologist off a track near One Tree Hill in the Adelaide foothills. He was still wearing a Channel Nine T-shirt, jeans and sneakers – the clothes he’d had on when he left his parents’ home seven weeks earlier. On 5 June, 15-year-old Richard Kelvin had been abducted a short distance from his North Adelaide home. He had gone to a bus stop 200 metres from his home that afternoon to catch a bus; he’d been going to say goodbye to a friend who was leaving the neighbourhood. Several neighbours reported hearing calls for help in the afternoon, and police were convinced Richard had been kidnapped.

No real attempt had been made to conceal the teenager’s body. Police weren’t surprised when the post-mortem revealed that Richard had grotesque wounds to the anus similar to those of the other victims. The post-mortem also revealed that he had been heavily drugged and kept alive for up to five weeks before being murdered – Richard’s body contained traces of four different drugs.

Police rounded up the usual suspects once again, and this time von Einem aroused their suspicions by not protesting as vehemently as he had previously. Taskforce detectives decided to search von Einem’s house, and to give him and his clothing a thorough scientific once-over. It paid off in spades. They discovered three of the drugs found in the dead boy’s body in his possession, and found his hair in the deceased’s clothing.

Von Einem was charged with the murder of Richard Kelvin. At his trial he pleaded not guilty, and although he was faced with undeniable evidence that he had been in Kelvin’s company, he denied ever having known the boy. Then, in a complete turnaround, von Einem said that he had picked up Richard Kelvin one time when he was hitchhiking and had dropped him off near his home. The jury was not swayed, and found him guilty of murder. Bevan Spencer von Einem was sentenced to life imprisonment with a non-parole period of 24 years; this was increased to 36 years, on appeal by the Crown – a record for South Australia.

But that was not the end of it … not by a long shot.

The detectives who had worked on the Kelvin case were convinced that von Einem, either alone or with others, most likely with others, was either responsible for the deaths of the other youths – Alan Barnes, Neil Muir, Peter Stogneff and Mark Langley – or knew who was. And they had very good reason to be sure of this. Apart from the fact that most of the other victims had suffered identical anal injuries to those suffered by Kelvin and had died in similar circumstances, the detectives’ homosexual informants told them it was common knowledge that von Einem regularly picked up young hitchhikers, drugged them, then sexually abused them. The detectives worked tirelessly on new leads and new witnesses, and after four years they visited von Einem. He was in Adelaide’s Yatala Prison, where he was being held in the protective custody division, for his own safety. They charged him with the murders of Alan Barnes and Mark Langley.

At von Einem’s committal hearing in 1990, the Crown pursued a committal on the basis of ‘similar fact evidence’ being admissible, and alleged that if von Einem was guilty of the Kelvin murder, he must also be guilty of the murders of Barnes and Langley, as they were identical in every fashion. Furthermore, the Crown said, it had circumstantial evidence that could support this allegation. Magistrate David Gurry allowed Crown Prosecutor Brian Murray QC to proceed along these lines. It would prove a disastrous approach. And if the packed public gallery thought it had heard stories of unbelievable horror as the evidence unfolded of how the boys died from the injuries inflicted upon them, they must have thought the Crown had saved the most shocking allegations for last. If what the public gallery was about to hear was true, Bevan Spencer von Einem would go down in history as one of the world’s most sadistic monsters.

The Crown prosecutor called 22 witnesses, including former hitchhikers and associates of von Einem. The police had left no stone unturned in their efforts to nail the person they believed to be one of the most heinous killers in Australian history. The first prosecution witness would only give testimony under an alias of ‘Mr B’, for his own protection, and his name was withheld from publication by court order. Mr B claimed that he believed von Einem had killed 10 young people, including five children who had disappeared 24 years earlier.

Mr B denied that he was a ‘perpetual liar’ and that a reward for the unsolved murders of several Adelaide teenagers, which stood at $250,000, had anything to do with his giving information to police. In an angry outburst, he claimed that consideration for relatives of the deceased was part of the reason he was telling what he knew of von Einem’s activities. ‘I have given a lot of consideration to the relatives of the kids. They deserve to know what’s really happened,’ he told the court.

Mr B was a former friend of von Einem and a homosexual. He said he had evidence that linked von Einem with the five Family murders, plus the disappearances of the three Beaumont children in 1966 and the 1973 disappearance of schoolgirls Joanne Ratcliffe and Kirsty Gordon from Adelaide Oval. The public gallery was stunned. They couldn’t believe what they were hearing.

For four days Mr B testified about how he and von Einem picked up young boys who were hitchhiking and drugged and raped them. On the night Alan Barnes died, he said, he and von Einem went looking for hitchhikers after meeting on the banks of the Torrens River. They gave Alan Barnes a lift, he said, then gave him alcoholic drinks containing a very strong sedative called Rohypnol – when mixed with alcohol, they knew, it would induce unconsciousness. The trio then went to a cafe, where Barnes showed signs of being affected by the drug: he looked as if he was going to pass out. Von Einem went away and made a phone call, and when he came back he said he had rung a friend and arranged to meet him at the Torrens River. They then met up with a man known only as ‘Mr R’. Von Einem went for a walk with Mr R and came back 10 minutes later, asking if Mr B wanted to come with them while they ‘performed some surgery’ on the now unconscious Barnes. Von Einem said that they intended to take videos of what happened, then kill Barnes and throw his body from a bridge. Mr B told the hushed courtroom that he had declined the offer, and von Einem, Mr R and Barnes had driven off.

Mr B said that when he had seen von Einem a few days later, von Einem had said that the youth had died and that Mr R was concerned about what Mr B knew about what had happened. Von Einem then warned Mr B that if he said anything to anyone about what he had seen he would be implicated in the murder. Mr B then explained that since that night, his life had been a mess and that he lived under constant threat from an ‘Adelaide businessman’.

Mr B also said that von Einem had told him he had picked up the Beaumont children at Glenelg Beach on 26 January 1966. Von Einem had told Mr B that he went to the beach regularly to have a perve on people in the showers, and had picked up three children, performed some ‘brilliant surgery on them’ and ‘connected them up’ but one had died. He said he had dumped the children’s bodies at Moana or Myponga, south of Adelaide. Further, Mr B said von Einem had told him he had picked up two children at a football match and killed them. Although von Einem didn’t mention any names, it seemed apparent that he was talking about Joanne Ratcliffe and Kirsty Gordon, who had gone missing from Adelaide Oval in 1973. Mr B said that von Einem didn’t elaborate any further.

Finally, Mr B alleged that an Adelaide trader whom he said could have helped kill Alan Barnes was in court while he was giving his evidence. ‘You’ve got no idea what I’ve had to go through … coming here … facing crap like [the Adelaide trader] sitting in the body of the court,’ he said during his testimony.

Magistrate Gurry immediately suppressed the name of the man Mr B claimed could have helped kill Alan Barnes. The man’s counsel said his client categorically denied being with von Einem and Barnes on the night Barnes was last seen alive. The trader was not called as a Crown witness. The trader’s counsel said that his client’s business of 20 years would be ruined if he was identified, and also challenged Mr B’s claim that the trader was in the public gallery listening to evidence.

Another prosecution witness, Garry Wayne Place, an insurance worker in his 30s, testified that he had come forward late in 1989 because he had ‘had enough’ after 11 years of being threatened by telephone if he talked. Place said the last anonymous call had been about a week earlier, and the caller told him: ‘Keep your mouth shut or you and your wife will get it.’ He told the court that one Saturday, about a week before his murder, Alan Barnes had introduced him (Place) to von Einem at an Adelaide hotel. Barnes had also introduced him to three other people who were with von Einem – a doctor whose name sounded like Goodard, a man called Mario and a woman. There had been talk of a party that night where there would be ‘women, drugs, booze – anything you like’. Later that week Place and Barnes had gone to a hotel where von Einem had told him (Place) that if he (Place) provided sex, von Einem would get ‘drugs, women, anything’ and the same things would be provided if he brought along some young boys.

Place told the court that the first threatening telephone call came on the night he learned that Alan Barnes had been murdered. A muffled male voice had said something like ‘Keep your mouth shut or you’re going to get it.’ There had been about 20 other calls that night.

If the parents of the missing children were hoping that von Einem would admit guilt and tell police where the remains of their children were, they were sadly disappointed. Von Einem vigorously denied any involvement in the abductions of the children and lashed out at Mr B, claiming that he was merely after a portion of the $250,000 reward on offer. But the circumstantial evidence against von Einem appeared to be overwhelming. After two months of hearings, on 11 May 1990, Bevan Spencer von Einem was committed to stand trial in the SA Supreme Court on charges of murdering Alan Barnes and Mark Langley.

Immediately after von Einem was committed to stand trial, his counsel applied for an injunction to have the trial put on permanent stay of proceedings because, the lawyer argued, it would be impossible for his client to receive a fair hearing because of the amount of public animosity towards him and the over-exposure of the committal hearing in the newspapers. The trial judge, Justice Duggan, refused the application. But there were other matters about the forthcoming trial that worried the judge. At a pre-trial hearing he ruled that the ‘similar fact evidence’ so successfully used by the Crown prosecutor in the committal hearing was inadmissible. This ruling rendered the evidence at the committal all but useless.

The Crown had to resort to different tactics: it would present separate trials for the murders of Barnes and Langley. But a couple of days later the Crown withdrew the murder charge against Langley. It believed that it had a better chance trying von Einem on the Barnes murder alone, because that was the case it had the strongest evidence for. Then came the biggest blow. After lengthy consideration, Justice Duggan ruled that evidence from the Richard Kelvin murder case, for which von Einem had been convicted, had to be disallowed. Justice Duggan also ruled that any evidence about von Einem’s alleged involvement with hitchhikers and his alleged associates was inadmissible. The case was in tatters: if the Crown went to court without all this evidence, it didn’t have a prayer of gaining a conviction. On 1 February 1991 it was all over: the Crown had no choice but to enter a nolle prosequi (unwilling to pursue) on the charge of the murder of Alan Barnes.

To the detectives who had worked tirelessly on the case for years this was a bitter pill to swallow. To the parents of Alan Barnes and the other young men who were inhumanely violated and died ghastly deaths at the hands of suspected respectable citizens, it meant that their nightmare of wondering would go on. And, to many Australians, there is little doubt that ‘the Family’ of paedophiles did, and possibly still does, exist in South Australia.

Many people also believe that there are more victims as yet undiscovered – transient hitchhikers from other states and young tourists, perhaps. These people are convinced, too, that the tall blond accountant with the aristocratic name of Bevan Spencer von Einem knows where the bodies are buried and who the guilty parties are. But while he does his time in Yatala Prison, he is keeping his dark secrets to himself.

 

>Author’s note: Two of the three detectives who allegedly threw Dr George Duncan in the River Torrens in May 1972 and left him to drown were eventually brought to trial in 1987 in the SA Supreme Court, charged with manslaughter. After a three-week trial, both were found not guilty.