Boris left on a bus, and Richard started making his way back home a trip that was no more than four-hundred meters. Some showed signs of prolonged captivity, while death came quick to others . This is made apparent when we look at a story from 1972, which ultimately led to drastic overhauls in Southern Australian law and cemented its place in the nation's history. Neil Fredrick Muir, aged 25,[12][13] murdered two months after Barnes in August 1979. They drove to War Memorial Drive (150m east of the Adelaide Rowing Club ) when Mark had a minor argument with the other male so got out and left. [11], Last edited on 24 February 2023, at 04:35, List of serial killers by number of victims, Von Einem: Lawyers in new bid to re-open Kelvin case, "Doctor found not guilty of 'Family' murder of Neil Muir dies in NSW", "Australian police reopen notorious 1970s Family murders case", "Body in bag: jury acquits doctor in Adelaide", "Lost diary gives South Australia police new lead into Alan Barnes murder by The Family", "Many Theories, Few Clues in String of Adelaide Murders", "Record 24-year non-parole period for boy's killer", https://en.wikipedia.org/w/index.php?title=The_Family_Murders&oldid=1141259172, This page was last edited on 24 February 2023, at 04:35. Sadly, this dark and tragic saga was just beginning. It wasn't until the following year, 1983, that police finally rediscovered George's story. The Family Murders - Wikipedia Bob O'Brien was an investigator for Major Crimes, who had just started working with the unit the year prior (1982). Because this murder seemed like the type of crime beset by emotional issues - or likely someone with an ax to grind against Alan, personally - police initially began investigating this as a personal crime. This ultimately resulted in a victory for Dr. Peter Millhouse's attorneys, earning the man an acquittal and his freedom. Enjoy reading. Australia's murder capital: Why can't Adelaide bury the myth? Only one suspect has been charged and convicted for the crimes: Bevan Spencer von Einem was sentenced in 1984 to a minimum of 24 years (later extended to a minimum 36-year term) for the murder of 15-year-old Richard Kelvin. I think we might get closer to understanding what happened but I think lack of physical evidence pretty much rules out any more charges being laid. The Clermont County Sheriff's Office . The Adelaide Festival of Arts (also known as just Adelaide Festival) started in 1960 and led to something of a "cultural revival" in the area. Although each attack and mutilation appeared different, police investigators soon began to link the horrific murders to one another. Police didn't believe that this voice was Richard, as he was a teenager with a deep voice that had already cracked. On Saturday, February 27th, 1982, Mark attended a friend's 18th birthday party in Windsor Gardens, a neighborhood in northeastern Adelaide. When using other people (sometimes transgenders, sometimes cross-dressers, and sometimes Mr B), a common ploy was to ask a lone youth if he want to go to a party where there was plenty of booze and women. Allegations would even surface that indicated Dr. Millhouse had been one of the people in the area that supplied Neil with prescription drugs, but that would remain an allegation for the foreseeable future. He was found wearing most of the clothing he had last been seen in, minus an undershirt and without the chains he often wore around his neck (which contained his zodiac sign, Cancer). It shows the facts and most likely scenarios, but is fluid so when new information comes to light changes can easily be made. Hours would begin to pass, and Alan would fail to return home at all that Sunday. Adelaide, the capital of South Australia, is perhaps most well known for its beautiful, scenic landscape, which is wedged in-between the Adelaide Foothills to the east, the coastline that runs along the west and down into the southern cape, and expanse of vast Australia that lies to the north. [8] The reward carried an offer of immunity to accomplices, dependent on their level of involvement. The Family Murders of Adelaide Australia : r/UnresolvedMysteries - reddit POLICE are investigating new information linking convicted killer Bevan Spencer von Einem to the abduction and murder of teenager Alan Barnes. What the two got up to that evening is anyone's guess, but rumors and theories have propagated this story in the decades since. He was in G Block of Yatala Prison for decades but was transferred to Port Augusta Prison in the north of the state in 2007. After all, three of the victims (Alan Barnes, Neil Muir, and Mark Langley) had all died of similar injuries, and at least three (Alan Barnes, Mark Langley, and now Richard Kelvin) had all gone missing on Sundays. Because of this lack of clarity, police were unable to press forward with any charges for the offenders, and George's story would become buried by more pressing police concerns in the coming weeks and months. The two were hiking through the area near the South Para Reservoir when they noticed something on the ground. This case includes mysterious attacks, brutal murders, and a dark conspiracy surrounding a secret group of elites that preyed on the young in the city. George gave police a description of the older man that had picked him up and driven him to the house in question, but he could not remember his name, nor the name of the two women at the house they had traveled to. George, an impressionable young man, was enticed by the offer and accepted. The evidence is contained in a detailed diary kept by a man who was a close associate of several key players in the so-called Family murders. "CIA: Crime Investigation Australia" The Butchered Boys (TV - IMDb This was cancelled the night before. A cold case review was opened in March 2008 with a $1,000,000 reward available for anyone who provided information leading to a conviction. Neil Muir had suffered the same type of anal injuries as Alan, implying that a large, bottle-shaped object had been used to intentionally injure him, which caused a large amount of blood loss. The Family Murders Unresolved A few more anonymous calls would be received in the coming weeks. Unfortunately, information gathered by police that fateful Tuesday began to cast doubt on the idea that Richard had willingly chosen to run away from home. Any person complicit in the abduction, rape and murders of the five victims, plus any person who visited the place of captivity when a victim was knowingly present, plus any person involved in the abduction, spiking and raping of teenage boys or young men with other members of The Family. 's had discovered the chemical compound chloral hydrate in the system of Alan Barnes, who also had an above-average level of alcohol in his system: roughly four times the legal limit, which was unusually high for a teenager. Richard Dallas Kelvin, (born 4 December 1967) aged 15,[23] murdered in July 1983. And at least one witness - a security guard that lived just down the street from the Kelvins - recalled some more details succinctly. Because Neil's transient lifestyle led to him becoming known as a bit of a vagabond, his sexuality was not exactly common knowledge. However, the medical examiners in Adelaide concluded definitively that Alan had died several hours before this happened. The 'Family murders' involved the killing and torture of five young men from the 1970s to the mid-1980s. He told officers what the two had been up to that weekend: hanging out on Saturday and into Sunday morning, before splitting up. Police first treated Richard as a runaway; an unfortunate symptom of the times. Their psychological profile indicated that Neil's body had been carved up due to either a psychotic killer that derived pleasure from inflicting pain on others or someone that wanted to hide his/her identity. He had seemingly disappeared, and a brief search of the area failed to come up with him. The medical examiners would also find a significant head wound on Neil, which wasn't significant enough to have killed him, but would have likely happened to incapacitate or subdue the man. True Crime Conversations: The Family Murders Of Adelaide on - Apple The Family werent an official club or group, rather a loose collection of people with Bevan von Einem at the centre. The closest thing to hard evidence that police found in this sweep was what appeared to be traces of blood on the bathroom floor, which had been cleaned multiple times over with a chemical agent; and, as such, could not be tested. He found like minded people who shared a similar sexual bent, and he found people he could mutually exploit to lure victims into his car. Bevan von Einem was no exception he also preferred youths between the 15 and 19 year old age group. When Boris had last seen Richard, walking away from the bus stop down the street from his home, he had still been wearing the collar, and it is has been theorized that the collar itself might have been a trigger for the deviant (or deviants) that ultimately decided to abduct Richard. Police believe this murder is associated with other high profile murders commonly referred to in the media as the 'Family Murders'. Needing to get away from his friends and clear his head, Mark decided to get out and walk away. Both witnesses - who were friends with Neil and drug users themselves - were prepared to testify should this man be tried for the murder. This conflict has endured because Alan's bloodstream also showed signs of alcohol consumption, which Alan had participated in that same weekend. Unlike the other murder victims, however, Mark's body showed an odd sign of surgical precision. He then moved away from Adelaide and the murders continued. Neil had several drug debts throughout Adelaide, and that is where police started their investigation. He was last seen stumbling down the street, supposedly wandering off to parts unknown. Now twenty-five years old, Neil had spent the better part of the last few years struggling with addictions and vices that left him moving from place-to-place pretty regularly. Lost diary gives South Australia police new lead into Alan Barnes However, what wasn't up for debate was the fact that Alan had been violently tortured for hours before his death, with his death ultimately coming from blood loss due to an anal injury. In addition to the driver, there appeared to be a couple of other occupants inside of the car that they, unfortunately, could not recall many details of. I first heard of the murders in an episode of an Australian television program called . Writing, research, hosting, and production by Micheal Whelan, Producers: Maggyjames, Ben Krokum, Roberta Janson, Quil Carter, Peggy Belarde, Laura Hannan, Damion Moore, Amy Hampton, Scott Meesey, Steven Wilson, Scott Patzold, Marie Vanglund, Lori Rodriguez, Jessica Yount, Aimee McGregor, Danny Williams, Sue Kirk, Victoria Reid, Sara Moscaritolo, Thomas Ahearn, Marion Welsh, Seth Morgan, Sydney Scotton, Alyssa Lawton, Kelly Jo Hapgood, Patrick Laakso, Meadow Landry, Rebecca Miller, and Tatum Bautista, Original music created by Micheal Whelan through Amper Music, Other music created and composed by Ailsa Traves, Young Bloods: The Story of the Family Murders by Bob OBrien, Crime Stoppers (South Australia) - Alan Arthur Barnes, Crime Stoppers (South Australia) - Neil Fredrick Muir, Crime Stoppers (South Australia) - Peter Stogneff, Crime Stoppers (South Australia) - Mark Andrew Langley, Crime Stoppers (South Australia) - Richard Kelvin, The Sydney Morning Herald - Adelaides Duncan case: letting some light shine in, The Sydney Morning Herald - Boys murderer refused High Court appeal, The Sydney Morning Herald - Macabre Adelaide (1), The Sydney Morning Herald - Macabre Adelaide (2), The Sydney Morning Herald - Murderer quizzed on death of youth, The Age - Men fled as Duncan died, court told, The Sydney Morning Herald - The Beaumonts, Kirste and Joanne: the mystery may be over, The Sydney Morning Herald - Witness feared threats to his life, The Age - Court told rape victim thought he would die, The Sydney Morning Herald - Family killings murder charge dropped, The Age - Lock up your sons in the worlds murder capital, The Weekend Australian - How Mother Goose ducked pedophile net, The Advertiser - Police seek von Einem associate, Perth Now - DNA tests for Family murder suspects, The Advertiser - $5M reward bid to solve Family murders, The Sydney Morning Herald - Reward doubled to solve Family murders, The Telegraph - Australian police reopen notorious 1970s Family murders case, The Sydney Morning Herald - Aussie pedophile deported from Indonesia, The Advertiser - Focus on three key suspects, The Advertiser - Revealed: The double life of a magistrate who sought young men, ABC News - Mother Goose sex trial starts in Adelaide, The Advertiser - Mother Goose claims he was set up by gay ex-prostitutes, The Advertiser - Doctor with alleged links to The Family identified as Stephen George Woodards, The Advertiser - Sex-case doctor Stephen George Woodards free to practise, ABC News - Mother Goose acquitted of sex charges, The Advertiser - Paedophile Peter Liddy fears prison attack, ABC News - Former TV entertainer sentenced for sex offences, The Advertiser - Lost diary gives South Australia police new lead into Alan Barnes murder by The Family, The Daily Mail - Will $13million reward solve the murders of 18 children? Richard Kelvin's disappearance was a slightly higher profile case than the others I've covered so far - due to him being the son of the region's top newscaster - but even then, the investigation was not without fault. While police began to investigate who might be responsible for this heinous crime, medical examiners testing the body made a pretty shocking discovery: the presence of drugs in his blood. They knew then that the description of the remains - should it become public knowledge - would alert a lot of media to the story and scare a lot of people. It was a group of homosexual men and transgender women who formed a network around convicted murderer and sexual sadist Bevan Spencer von Einem, based on the drugging, raping and sometimes murder of youths and young men. He had been killed elsewhere and then transported to this location postmortem, implying that the killer had a base of operations for his or her dark deeds. Millhouse would have. The Family Murders - 5 Teen Boys Raped, Tortured, And Killed Because of this prime location, Adelaide has become one of the country's most populated areas, and more than a million Australians live in the city itself; which is split in half by the Torrens River, which runs through the center of Adelaide. Dylan John Kovarskis sentenced to 20 years' jail for murder of Adelaide [14][15] Skin bearing tattoos had been removed and most of the body parts were placed in another garbage bag before being placed within the abdominal cavity. The two had been dating for about a month now, and Richard had excitedly told his mother that he planned on proposing when his girlfriend and he were nineteen years old. The Family murders are the name of the murders of five young men and teenagers who happened in Adelaide, South Australia between 1979 and 1983. Players - The Family Murders Players Five murdered young men, over 150 violent abduction drug-rapes, two people arrested, one person found guilty. However, that was very circumstantial evidence at best, and anything but definitive. Mark Langley For that reason, this crime remains technically unsolved to this day. 1979: The Family (1 year) 1999: Snowtown murders discovered (20 years) As of 2021, this is the longest Adelaide has gone without a crime that has made national or international headlines as either a weird case (Somerton Man), child kidnapping or brutal serial killings since WWII. Ian and Paula, Mark's friends, drove away but would return just minutes later, cooler heads having prevailed. It was speculated that a foreign object had caused the internal perforations, leading to the belief that the killer had been a sexual sadist whose only intent was to cause physical pain. The victims were all young men, who had gone missing in or near the northern section of town. When Dr. Millhouse's trial eventually commenced in the latter half of 1980 - more than a year after Neil Muir's murder - the prosecution continued to rely heavily upon their circumstantial evidence and witness statements, failing to establish any motive for the crime or provide any definitive evidence. Police were now back, right where they had started. In June of 1983, Richard Kelvin was approaching sixteen years of age. He had multiple channels to procuring young men. These details made it clear to police that this mutilation was not done simply for the killer's ease-of-mind, but indicated that they were a particularly savage killer that had likely committed similar crimes in the past. While in rehab, Dr. Millhouse refused to speak to police about Neil Muir (or his alleged relationship with the man). There were signs that he had been tortured and beaten by a sexual sadist, who had likely kept Alan drugged with a chemical compound named chloral hydrate. Over the next few days, it became apparent that Alan Barnes was not returning home. March 3, 2023 - 7:08PM. He was the son of Channel 9 News host Rob Kelvin, who had just recently taken over the hosting gig after more than a decade of field reporting through the station and a radio affiliate. One victim was killed and dumped within 24 hours, another was kept alive for five weeks, and the rest were in between. While investigators had been keeping information closely guarded in this case, they decided to publicize this information to the media in the hopes that it would attract follow-up tips. SA convicted murderer Bevan Spencer Von Einem during the jury's tour of North Adelaide dumping spot of Richard Kelvin's body. Alan was supposed to find a ride back home and was taking his luck hitchhiking, hoping that someone willing to pick him up would be heading north towards his family's neighborhood of Salisbury. The Family Murders Of Adelaide. The group was involved in kidnapping, sexually abusing, torturing and murdering 5 boys. [citation needed]. The following Sunday, June 24th - one week after Alan had last been seen alive - a couple of hikers were bushwalking up in the area known as the Adelaide Foothills. When they finally got around to doing this, after the discovery of Richard Kelvin's body, one name popped out at them. Mr B made contact with police two days after Alan Barnes was found. Police had still not linked the two cases - Barnes and Neil Muir - but while being questioned about the first murder, von Einem inquired about the second without any provocation. But the rumors that he engaged in sex work were mainly perpetrated by those that knew him from his regular haunts: members of Adelaide's gay community, who regularly saw Neil at the gay-friendly bars they frequented. He has spent that Sunday, June the 5th, playing footy, until the afternoon when his best friend Karl came over. His remains had been dissected and neatly cut into many pieces, placed in a garbage bag and thrown into the Port River at Port Adelaide. Alan Barnes was a teenager growing up in this environment, who seemed to live on the bubble between childhood and adulthood in the winter of 1979. Peter Stogneff. Sadly, almost all of the evidence that may have been left behind was now gone, burned away to ash along with all of Peter's remaining soft tissue. The Family Murders was a series of murders in the 1970s and 1980s that targeted young men in Adelaide, South Australia between the ages of 14 and 25. While the men in the river struggled to make it back to the shore, the group that had thrown them into the water made their escape before camera crews or onlookers could begin to gather. The Family Murders - Wikipedia Neil's numerous tattoos had also been cut away from his flesh, and those patches of inked skin had been placed into his chest cavity along with his severed limbs. Whatever it was, it looked like a human body but was somehow twisted and contorted in an inhuman nature. The older man in the driver's seat reached into the backseat and pulled out a beer from a cooler, offering it to George. A span of 4 years. Police believe that up to 12 people, several of them high-profile Australians, were involved in the kidnappings. Peter Stogneff, aged 14,[17] murdered in August 1981. Like most of the victims targeted by this unknown subject, Richard Kelvin was a young and athletic young man, who seemed destined to have a long and rewarding life. A day or two prior, at least. Referred to as a "Randy Mandy" among the era's deviants, Mandrax was a sedative that had just become popular worldwide with the branding "Quaalude." In the latter half of the 1970s, South Australia had started to regulate drugs like Mandrax, known throughout most of the world as "Quaaludes." It was there that they found his backpack hidden in the garage, which ultimately led to calls to all of his friends. These were connections that were hard to overlook, as police began to theorize that a single offender (or, rather, a group of offenders) had been behind all of these crimes. Richard walked him down the road to the nearby O'Connell Street bus stop, arriving without incident, and waited there for his friend's bus to arrive. [14][24] His body was found on 24 July by a geologist who was searching for moss-covered rocks near a dirt airstrip at Kersbrook. While police pounded the pavement to find out what had happened to Richard Kelvin, the young man's life was slowly coming to an end. On the final weekend of August 1979, Neil was spotted at both the Duke of York and Buckingham Arms ("The Buck"), two local gay bars that I referenced at the top of the episode. A thrash metal band singer and members of his family were killed in an apparent murder-suicide late last month, according to police. According to some witnesses in the area, screams had been heard at around the time that Richard had disappeared, some time between 5:30 and 6:30 PM that Sunday. Following the supposed abduction of Richard Kelvin, the police unit known as Major Crimes was tasked with overseeing the investigation. Mark had likely hitched a ride with someone, and his friends trusted that he would make it home. Stogneff still skipped school but never made it home. But only one recalled seeing where Alan might have gone. This story would become historic, in more ways than one. The head was tied to the torso with rope passed through the mouth and out through the neck. Bevan von Einems life revolved around sexual sadism. As the 1970s entered their homestretch, Alan was beginning to enter the phase of his life where he experimented with drug and alcohol usage. The victims were all young men, who had gone missing in or near the northern section of town. But now, they needed to find a suspect. This caller alleged that the two older men had been driving around a 1963 EJ Holden sedan. He never made it home. Shockingly, police found an insane combination of sedatives in his system, which included the drugs Noctec, Mandrax, valium, Rohypnol, and amytal. Homosexuality itself would become decriminalized just a few years later, in 1975, with the passing of the Criminal Law Amendment Act, making South Australia the first Australian state or territory where members of the LGBTQ community no longer had to fear government persecution. This bore signs of premeditation, implying that this wasn't an impulsive decision, but a conscious one by a killer afraid of being identified through forensic testing. [6] Von Einem was also one of the last people seen with a fourth victim, Muir, following his abduction. Investigator Hunter made note of this, finding it odd that one man would have connections to two separate murder investigations - especially two gruesome murders that shared such grisly traits. When this young man woke up the next day, he was surprised to find himself both at home and in significant pain.