SYDNEY, Australia -- A killer who took part in Australia’s infamous “bodies in the barrels” serial murders is to be released on parole after serving more than 27 years in jail. The murders came to light in May 1999 when eight dismembered bodies were discovered in plastic barrels in the vault of an abandoned bank in Snowtown, north of Adelaide. Investigators eventually found 12 bodies in all -- including two in the backyard of an Adelaide home -- though a jury was unable to return a verdict over one of the deaths. The serial killings were the subject of the 2011 award-winning movie “Snowtown.” James Vlassakis, the youngest of three men convicted of murder in the case, admitted to four of the killings and gave evidence for the prosecution against other offenders. He was sentenced to serve a minimum of 26 years behind bars before being eligible for parole. Though a parole board granted Vlassakis conditional release last year, the decision was overturned following a review ordered by South Australia’s attorney general. After a challenge in the Court of Appeal, a fresh review upheld the original decision to release him on parole. The parole administrative review commissioner, David Lovell, found there were no “cogent reasons” to block his parole due to the risk he posed on release or for the safety of the community. “I dismiss the Attorney-General’s application and affirm the decision of the Parole Board, dated 5 August 2025, to release Mr. James Spyridon Vlassakis on parole,” he said in a written decision dated Sept. 14. In 2003, a jury convicted John Justin Bunting of 11 counts of murder in the case and his co-accused Robert Joe Wagner guilty of seven counts of murder. Jurors heard how Bunting and Wagner killed and tortured victims, allegedly motivated by a hatred of pedophiles and gay people. Vlassakis, who was reportedly 18 when he took part in his first killing, had looked up to Bunting as a “father figure”, the parole administrative review commissioner said. But “it is clear that this same power dynamic cannot be replicated, given Mr. Bunting was sentenced to life imprisonment without parole and that Mr. Vlassakis is now of a more mature age.”
