More from Snowtown

[jack_ryder]

ferkster and I were doing research on Snowtown for a Short and Sweet submission before we realised we just couldn't do it justice in under ten minutes (or even in one act.)

The abuse of the victims was hard enough to read about in the two published accounts of the murders, but there's still more coming out.

Comments

[girliejones.livejournal.com]

woah! I did want to know. I too will never look at them the same.

Its more than just welafare fraud - its seriously twisted individuals

[jack-ryder.livejournal.com]

The welfare fraud is what most people remember, but it appears to have been a side effect of the killings. Bunting's original motivation was ridding his community of paedophiles (according to the book I read, anyway.) His taste of killing, and torture required that he broaden his client base, so to speak. I keep forgetting the name of his main accomplice - Robert Wagner (not the guy from Hart to Hart). The welfare fraud grew out of their attempts to throw police and relatives off the scent by pretending that their victims were still alive - even to the extent of James Vlassakis (the accomplice who became crown witness) appearing in place of one of their victims to a Centrelink interview.

One of the most harrowing scenes I read (which we were going to convert to a play) was Bunting forcing one of his victims to recite a list of words and numbers into a computer, so that Bunting could re-edit them into phone messages to convince the victim's partner and relatives that he was still alive.

[girliejones.livejournal.com]

Yes I vaguely remember that they had one of the victims leave a message on an answering phone to prove they were still alive.

It was quite the operation really wasn't it?