Daily Mail journalist KARLEIGH SMITH confronts Snowtown serial killer James Vlassakis as he tastes freedom for the first time in 26 years: ‘What do you have to say for yourself?’

Australia’s first serial killer to receive parole refused to answer questions as he re-entered the community after 26 years in prison.

James Vlassakis, who was the youngest of the three notorious murderers involved in South Australia’s grisly Snowtown Bodies in the Barrels case in the 1990s, temporarily left the Adelaide Pre-Release Centre at noon on Tuesday.

He was driven by a case officer in a Toyota RAV4 SUV to the North East Community Corrections Centre in Holden Hill, in the city’s northern suburbs, where he attended a 90-minute meeting.

Sporting a fresh haircut and without the goatee Vlassakis has had since first facing court in 2001, the 46-year-old was wearing a black T-shirt emblazoned with the words ‘freestyler’ – perhaps in a nod to his newfound partial freedom.

Vlassakis, who killed his half-brother Troy Youde in a bathtub at a rented home in Murray Bridge in 1998, had been serving time since 2002 for his role in four of the 11 Bodies in the Barrels murders.

He was 18 when he killed his 24-year-old stepbrother David Johnson in the abandoned State Bank building in Snowtown, 150km north of Adelaide with a population of less than 500, in 1999.

Johnson was the only victim physically killed in Snowtown, where the murderers stashed the dismembered remains of eight of their 11 victims.

The body parts were found floating in hydrochloric acid within six 44-gallon blue plastic barrels, with the killers attempting to dissolve their victims – making them difficult for police to initially identify.

Vlassakis lured his stepbrother to the bank vault on the premise that there was a cheap computer for sale there.

Bunting and Wagner, who were lying in wait, overpowered Johnson, killed him, and reportedly fried and ate a piece of his flesh, according to court evidence.

The Daily Mail confronted Vlassakis as he left the community corrections centre after a 90-minute afternoon appointment.

He was asked on camera if he had anything to say to his victims’ families, and how he felt about two of those victims being his own family members.

He was also asked if he was enjoying returning to Adelaide – the hunting ground of Wagner and Bunting, who was described as a father figure to Vlassakis at the time of the brutal murders.

As part of his parole conditions, Vlassakis is forbidden from speaking to the media.

He steadfastly refused to respond to the reporter’s questions, keeping his piercing blue eyes downcast as he followed his case officer meekly to his waiting vehicle.

In a bid to avoid the Daily Mail, he mistakenly tried to enter the driver’s side front door of the reverse-parked Toyota. 

In 2025, Vlassakis’ approved bid for parole was overturned by the SA Government, which again tried to block his release this year.

But in September, a legal challenge failed and he was transferred to the Adelaide Pre-Release Centre, where he will enjoy low-security imprisonment until he can return to the community under strict, lifelong parole conditions next year.

Vlassakis’ co-murderers, John Bunting and Robert Wagner, are serving life sentences without the possibility of parole at nearby Yatala Labour Prison.

Accomplice Mark Haydon walked free in 2024 after serving a 25-year sentence.

Vlassakis was also involved in the sadistic torture and killing of 18-year-old Frederick Brooks, after his role model Bunting claimed he was ‘touching up little girls’.

He also pleaded guilty to taking part in the murder of disabled 29-year-old Gary O’Dwyer.

Vlassakis was just 18 when he was arrested for murder after police stormed the bank vault in Snowtown in May 1999, making the grisly barrel discovery that would haunt the village in the state’s Mid North forever and inspire a 2011 movie by the same name.

Bunting was the ringleader of the murders.

He killed people he suspected of being paedophiles or homosexuals – with little evidence – and plotted out the murders on a ‘rock-spider wall’ containing names of his targets interconnected with string.

The murderers often impersonated their victims, collecting their government benefits after the person had died.

After pleading guilty, Vlassakis became a witness for the crown, helping secure the convictions of Bunting, Wagner and Haydon.

He will now spend the next year learning to reassimilate to society, with prisoners at the Pre-Release Centre encouraged to spend time in the community.

Around 84 mixed-gender inmates are housed in low-security, self-contained cabins overlooking busy Grand Junction Road, where they do their own laundry and are free to exercise on a grassed half-football oval.

Some are in charge of maintaining the facility’s gardens, while others are seen joining work gangs that depart the centre each morning. 

It’s also understood prisoners spend time with rescue animals, with dogs from Greyhounds as Pets SA adoption service seen entering the facility on Tuesday afternoon.

Many inmates appear to have struck up friendships behind the razor wire, and are seen strolling the grounds in pairs and groups after work detail is complete. 

When Vlassakis is released, he will be subject to strict parole conditions for the remainder of his life.

He is forbidden from entering Snowtown, as well as nine other geographical locations due to their proximity to victims’ families.

He is strictly prohibited from contacting the victims’ families, as well as speaking to the media or profiting from his crimes.

A curfew, along with drug and alcohol testing, will be enforced, along with ongoing psychological treatment. 

He must seek permission from the parole board to leave the state.

Any breach of these conditions will see him back in custody.

Until his move to the Adelaide Pre-Release Centre, Vlassakis was in protective custody at Mt Gambier Prison, in South Australia’s south-east, due to his role in helping secure convictions for Bunting, Wagner and Haydon.

Haydon, who was convicted as an accomplice for helping store and move the bodies, was released into the community in 2024 and is believed to live in Adelaide’s north-western suburbs.

Until May, Vlassakis’ image had been suppressed for his own protection for 25 years. 

Bunting and Wagner were locked up for life receiving 11 and 10 consecutive terms of life imprisonment respectively, with the remaining victims including Clinton Tresize, Ray Davies, Michelle Gardiner, Vanessa Lane, Thomas Trevilyan, Gavin Porter and Elizabeth Haydon.

Prosecutors were unable to secure a conviction for a 12th victim, Suzanne Allen, who the defence argued had died of a heart attack before she was dismembered.

In his decision to approve Vlassakis’ first steps toward total freedom, Parole Administrative Review Commissioner David Lovell KC referred to the influence of Bunting, but said there was no danger of that relationship continuing.

‘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,’ he wrote.

He said that while Vlassakis had ‘significant’ drug problems before being taken into custody on June 2, 1999, he noted the inmate had only returned three positive results from 29 tests during his time in prison.

A friend of Vlassakis’ previously told the Mail that he suffered from a heroin addiction at the time he committed his heinous crimes. 

Mr Lovell also acknowledged that Vlassakis ‘demonstrated excellent behaviour while in custody and there is no suggestion that he displayed any violent behaviour during this time’.

READ MORE: Read Snowtown serial killer James Vlassakis’ letter to his old cellmate