{"id":33679,"date":"2026-06-18T06:52:21","date_gmt":"2026-06-18T06:52:21","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/australia\/33679\/"},"modified":"2026-06-18T06:52:21","modified_gmt":"2026-06-18T06:52:21","slug":"snowtown-serial-killer-james-vlassakiss-release-on-parole-subject-to-further-review","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/australia\/33679\/","title":{"rendered":"Snowtown serial killer James Vlassakis’s release on parole subject to further review"},"content":{"rendered":"

Another review will be held to decide whether Snowtown serial killer James Vlassakis should be released on parole.<\/p>\n

Vlassakis was the youngest of four perpetrators convicted for his role in the notorious “bodies-in-the-barrels” killings, which rocked Australia at the turn of the century.<\/p>\n

Last year, South Australia’s Parole Board granted Vlassakis release on parole.<\/p>\n

However, he has remained in custody after SA Attorney-General Kyam Maher requested a review of the decision.\u00a0<\/p>\n

\"The<\/p>\n

The bank building in Snowtown. (ABC News: Che Chorley)<\/p>\n

Parole Administrative Review Commissioner Michael David KC later blocked Vlassakis’s release, but the Court of Appeal today ruled Mr David fell into jurisdictional error.<\/p>\n

The Court of Appeal judgement stated that Mr David fell into jurisdictional error by substituting his own view of the seriousness of Vlassakis’s offending.<\/p>\n

“The Commissioner fell into jurisdictional error by impermissibly substituting his view of the gravity of the offences for which the prisoner was sentenced for the view expressed by the Court in passing sentence,” the judgement said.<\/p>\n

\"Snowtown<\/p>\n

James Vlassakis was arrested in 1999. (Supplied)<\/p>\n

The judgement added that Mr David did not determine what risk the gravity of the offending, which occurred over 26 years ago, still had on the community today.<\/p>\n

“The difficulty with the Commissioner’s reasons is that they located the risk to the community ‘at this relatively early stage’ only in the gravity of the offending,” the judgement said.<\/p>\n

“Finally, we accept that the Commissioner did not describe the gravity of the offending in any materially different terms than those used by the sentencing judge.”<\/p>\n

The Court of Appeal judgement also concluded that the Commissioner’s reasons for blocking Vlassakis’s release on parole did not amount to “cogent reasons”.<\/p>\n

“The Commissioner fell into jurisdictional error by departing from the decision of the [Parole Board] in circumstances where his reasons for doing so were not capable of amounting to cogent reasons,” it read.<\/p>\n

Murders remain ‘etched’ in memories<\/p>\n

Vlassakis will remain in custody until another review by the newly-appointed Parole Administrative Review Commissioner, former Supreme Court Justice David Lovell, is carried out.<\/p>\n

He was jailed for life, but because he had helped convict his co-accused, John Bunting and Robert Wagner, he was given a 26-year non-parole period.<\/p>\n

Vlassakis became involved in the serial killings through Bunting, who lived with him and his mother in Adelaide’s northern suburbs.<\/p>\n

\"A<\/p>\n

James Vlassakis is now aged in his mid-40s. (Supplied)<\/p>\n

The murders were discovered in May 1999 when SA Police found the remains of several victims in six plastic barrels hidden in an old bank vault.<\/p>\n

He was found guilty of being involved in four of the murders, three of which were carried out when he was just 18.<\/p>\n

Bunting and Wagner were jailed for 11 and 10 murders respectively, while accomplice Mark Ray Haydon was released into the community in 2024 after serving a 25-year sentence.<\/p>\n

Nearly all of the murder victims were friends or family of the perpetrators.<\/p>\n

In a statement, Attorney-General Kyam Maher said the “horrific murders remain etched in the memories of South Australians” more than two decades on.<\/p>\n

“My thoughts are with the families and loved ones of the victims of these terrible crimes,” he said.\"South<\/p>\n

Kyam Maher says his thoughts are with the families and loved ones of victims. (ABC News: Lincoln Rothall)<\/p>\n

Mr Maher added there were “very strict confidentiality requirements” that apply to the parole administrative review process and said he was “unable to comment further at this time”.<\/p>\n

Vlassakis’s image was revealed in May after a 25-year-old suppression order was lifted by the state’s Court of Appeal.<\/a><\/p>\n

The suppression was originally imposed to protect his identity after he gave evidence against Bunting and Wagner.<\/p>\n

Lawyers for the ABC successfully argued his protection was no longer a valid reason to shield him from the public, which the court accepted.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"Another review will be held to decide whether Snowtown serial killer James Vlassakis should be released on parole.…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":33680,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[2],"tags":[22,21,14561,15407,14562,14560,14568,322,15409,14567,10753,14557,15408,14569,3365,15405,15406],"class_list":["post-33679","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-australia","tag-au","tag-austrlia","tag-bodies-in-the-barrels","tag-court-of-appeal","tag-frances-nelson","tag-james-vlassakis","tag-john-bunting","tag-kyam-maher","tag-mark-haydon","tag-michael-david","tag-parole","tag-parole-board","tag-parole-review","tag-robert-wagner","tag-serial-killer","tag-snowtown-killings","tag-suppression"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/australia\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/33679","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/australia\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/australia\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/australia\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/australia\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=33679"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/australia\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/33679\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/australia\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/33680"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/australia\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=33679"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/australia\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=33679"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/australia\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=33679"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}