EP68: The Snowtown Murders: Bodies in Barrels (Part 1)
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All right, welcome back to another episode of the Psychopedia Podcast. I'm your co-host, Hank Sinatra, here with my psycho co- psycho host. Love it. Investigators later. I felt that. You felt that enthusiasm, right? It was, I mean, that was an in the moment thing. I can't, you know, I'm fucking- Psych host? I'm a genius. You can say psych host.

No, Psycho Host. Psycho Host. Psycho Host. I don't know why that just happened. Here we are, back with another episode for you freaks to listen to and absorb and tell us what you liked about it. I'm sitting here. I know nothing, obviously. This is for the new people, by the way. And if you're new, welcome. And if you're returning, welcome home. Freak.

Yeah, I sit through a case. I know nothing about the case. And I don't just not know the details. Like, I don't know what the fuck we're about to talk about even. It's weird. It's, you know what? It's a little bit of pressure too that like every single week I'm picking the case unilaterally. Yeah. Like no input from anyone. Yep.

And then delivering on it. Like, there's a lot of eggs in my basket. Yeah, it begins and ends with you. Oh, my God, I can't. Which, thank God it does, because I can't see how it would contribute positively to that situation. You? Yeah. I mean, you pick your Tankopedia cases, and they're bomb. Yeah.

once a month. True. You know? Yeah. And I got quite a runway of cool cases. But still, I'm saying you have your finger on the pulse of what's going to hit. I like it. Yeah, I like when you don't know anything about the case. And so do you. Tell me about it. Exactly right. Yeah. Well, if you're an avid listener and you're all caught up and you want more of us, join the club. Go over to patreon.com slash psychopedia and there you can find episodes of Unhinged,

behind-the-scenes-ish content, stuff that we don't post on the Instagram or any other social media because it's just too hot for the feed. And we get more of you guys over there. It's just more intimate, right? Especially you're all over Patreon.

I'm in there 10 times a day. I know. It's great. It's lit over there. The group chat is lit. I love it. People from everywhere, and I love it. Doesn't it feel like going home when you go on there? Oh, yeah. But that's how I feel about, honestly, our main feed on Instagram, too. For me, when I close Instagram and go to Patreon, I'm like, oh, thank God. I feel like I'm home when I'm on our Instagram page. Yeah. Also, stick around until the end for Tank's tidbits. And...

I mean, boy, do I have a doozy of tidbits for you. That was good. Yep, sick whistler. Yeah. Oh, my goodness. All right. Well, without further...

That fucking review, by the way. I know. Listen, it is what it is. There was a review on Apple that came in that you sent to me. You saw it first, but I just, I mean... Oh, you hadn't seen it yet? I Jay-Z'd all over the place. Yeah, I saw it. Also, just so you know, the link did not work when you put it in the story. Oh, really? Just realized it or I would have obviously told you sooner. Yeah. Very cool. Very cool. I don't even know what link I put. There you go. Shocking. Yeah. They said...

this podcast is uh uh uh hit and that's the nicest thing anybody's ever said to me so thank you wait it was uh uh uh uh hit yeah yeah I think you might have missed the uh I did sure yeah and I put the intro to what more can I say in there because that's the most uh uh uh

Jay-Z has ever been. All right. Except for Picasso Baby. No clue what you're talking about. On Magna Carta, Holy Grail. Okay, that I know. Jay-Z. Got it. All right. Well, seriously. You gotta get started. Without further ado, let's get into the case. Okay. First of all, it's a two-parter.

Wow. So you know that we're diving deep. It's a fascinating, terrible, heartbreaking, tragic, devastating two-parter. I'm sure it is. Very highly requested, which I know I say a lot, but this one... Yeah, we get a lot of requests. We get a lot of requests. I'm trying to spread it all out and to check every box and accommodate everyone. This one is very highly requested. Okay. I hope I do it justice. Listen, I'm sure you're going to. Thank you. I hope so. All right. Are you ready? Yes.

Manifesting a daydream or a dream into reality is an act of will fueled by imagination, determination, and belief in the boundless realm of possibility.

It involves transforming fleeting inspirations and vivid visions of a more desirable future into tangible experiences that enhance our lives. The act of manifesting demands that we harness our energy and channel it into reality one intentional step at a time, driven by the conviction that if we can dream it, we can achieve it. It's a powerful, spectacular process.

Unless the person who holds and seeks to manifest the vision is utterly fucked up. You know what? People probably do use manifestation for bad things. I'm sure of it. We're going to hear about it right now. This is not a tidbit, but I heard my friend Linda from California used to say, worrying is like praying for something bad to happen. I don't like that because I worry a lot. Well...

So I'm making it happen. I'm manifesting that. Listen, I don't know how much I believe in that exact thing, but at the very least, your mindset, not yours, but anybody who worries a lot, you see things that are not worrisome and you go, that's fucking, that's fake. Let me get that out of the way. Oh yeah, there's something I can worry about. Cool. Maybe time to up the medication.

So I must share a chilling vision with you, not born of my own dark creativity, for a change, but rather of a man named John Bunting.

John Bunting's twisted vision that he wished to manifest involved ending a human life in the most heinous way imaginable while inflicting maximum psychological damage on those who would ultimately discover the remains of that victim. Oh my God. One example of a fantasy conjured by John's twisted imagination went like this.

Oh. Oh.

John would place a living, breathing chihuahua inside the gaping hole left in the man's neck as his blood congealed around the base of the chair in which he sat. And the chihuahua was just going to stay there? Man, you and Dave. Dave could not figure out the logistics of how that would work. There's a huge gaping hole in somebody's neck. A chihuahua is very small.

And he would just insert the chihuahua. Did he wind up doing it? No. Well, there you go. He didn't manifest that one. It wasn't possible. Because that vision was just one of many experienced by John, each progressively more perverse and disturbing than the last.

Unfortunately, many of John's dark musings did not remain confined to his mind's eye because John Bunting indeed went on to manifest acts of absolute barbaric brutality in reality. From August 1992 to May 1999, John Bunting led a gang of self-proclaimed vigilante serial killers on one of the world's most bizarre and sadistic murder sprees.

Today, we are venturing into some very dark corners of the human psyche, my favorite place to explore, where the lines between victim and perpetrator have a habit of becoming terrifyingly blurred. And we will be exploring in devastating yet absolutely fascinating detail one of the most shocking examples of stone-cold psychopathy you will ever hear about.

I will warn you that the facts of this case are so absolutely heinous that when the long and complex trial eventually took place, three out of the original 15 jurors dropped out. Really? And a woman who was previously engaged to John Bunting wound up spending her days rocking back and forth in a psychiatric facility gripping a porcelain doll. Wow. John Bunting's cocktail of depravity includes a dash of Patrick Mackay,

a pinch of Jerry Brudos, a dollop of Catherine Knight, a hint of Robert Pickton, a splash of Pedro Rodriguez Filo. That's what I was thinking about. A dab of Javedic Ball, a heap of Israel Keys, and a sprinkle of Anatoly Moskvin. And he was served cold as ice. Damn!

Thus, ergo, I just wanted to get wordy with it. I urge you to listen with caution, for real. Yeah, obviously. Because we are delving into the worst serial killer case in Australian history known as the Snowtown Murders, a.k.a. the bodies in the barrels. Oh, I did see the people commenting Snowtown. And, like, there was so many Snowtown comments, and I was like,

I guess it's Snowtown. It is. It is Snowtown. I don't know what that means, but... Ironically, so it's called the Snowtown Murders because I'm skipping ahead, obviously, but that's where bodies were found. In Snow... In Snowtown, Australia. Is there snow there? Stupid question. I don't know. Okay. Want to hear something funny? Sure. When I was taking the train into the city, there was a kid that we went to high school with that was on the train with me. And one day, we were already like, we were like this, laughing our asses off every day on the way home.

He goes, I'm going to Hawaii. He goes, I'm going to go, I'm going to try and go skiing. And I was like, where are you going to go skiing? And he shows me a picture in this brochure of a mountain, like a volcano, that has like a four foot square patch of snow. Wow.

A Slater size. He's like, it snows here. I'm like, I mean, that may be 800 years old. It's just never melted because of the altitude. You're not going skiing anywhere. Did he really think he was going skiing? Yeah. Oh, oh. And I said, oh, this is what it was. I go, what else are you going to do there, bro? Rainbow riding? Because there's rainbows. Good one, Tank. Thanks. Thanks. Thanks. Okay. All right. Back to the case. All right. Before we officially kick off, I have to warn you that this is a very complex case with a lot of moving parts.

Changing players, various names, people who have changed their names, a ridiculously confusing nonlinear timeline, and multiple locations. So pay attention. Yes, try your best. I'll keep bringing you back to center. Good, do it. Also, this is your official trigger warning tank. This is for you and this is for all of our listeners with respect to the actual content.

I don't have a choice. No, you're stuck. This case will not only discuss horrific acts of violence, which I will obviously endeavor to deliver respectfully, but it will touch upon issues involving animal abuse, which will not be told in any graphic manner, but it does pop up, so I want to issue that warning, as well as generational child abuse that was sadly endemic in the area where the crimes were committed.

And this case will definitely hit you over the head with the deplorable inner thinkings of a homicidal, homophobic, Nazi-loving maniac and his gruesome gang of motley misfits. What a, sounds like a great guy. Oh yeah, I mean, great A. Real sweet guy. Great A. So with all of that said, let's begin with the ringleader himself, John Bunting. John Justin Bunting was born in Brisbane, which is the capital of Queensland in Australia, on September 4th, 1966.

John grew up in Inala, which is an inner-city suburb with an aboriginal name meaning good camping place, which was initially planned as a residential utopia for returning servicemen and women, as well as migrants from Europe and the United Kingdom. But a utopia it was not.

Because instead, Inala essentially wound up becoming a government experiment gone wrong that spiraled out of control and yielded dysfunction and alarmingly high crime and unemployment rates. John Bunting was an only child to his mostly well-intended parents, Jan and Tom Bunting, who strived to provide John with everything he could ever need or want.

Jan worked as an office secretary and was an extremely conservative woman who maintained the Bunting family home with obsessive immaculateness bordering on sterility.

She was extremely uptight and insisted that everything always be in its exact place. Tom, John's dad, worked at a printing factory and used to regularly play guitar until a freak accident with a guillotine at the factory severed his fingers. What? Why do they have a fucking guillotine at the factory? I know, right? So it's a completely irrelevant fact to the case, but I had to include it because I literally said the same thing out loud. When I was reading the book for this, I was like,

Why is there a guillotine at a factory? Every day, the foreman probably looks at it and goes, we got to get rid of that fucking guillotine, dude. We're not, we haven't used it in 250 years.

It's just a hazard, right? Just sitting there? John was cut from a different cloth. Oh, nice pun. Oh, thank you. Than his parents. He was a mess of a child and was constantly chastised for not being clean enough. His parents, especially his mother, would regularly rifle through his belongings and insist that he tidy his drawers and reorganize his room. Which, like,

You can't live like that as a mother. No. If you, like, honestly have that expectation of your children, you're going to be disappointed constantly and you're going to make them insane. Oh, yeah. Which is basically what happened here. Tidying is one thing. Reorganizing is like, how many different places do you want me to put this fucking hat? So make your bed, be respectful of the things that we buy you, right? But you're a little child. Like, you're not going to be...

disciplined if you're not completely immaculate. Side note, shout out to rearranging your bedroom as a kid. I almost sent you something. I guess it was a meme type. You've probably seen it. Yeah. It was like, I guess a kid in his room is like when you redo your room and it's like a whole new you. Oh yeah. Like you feel like the shit. You walk into your room, you're like, damn, I forgot the bed was over here.

Exactly. Yeah. But it really, it really felt good. Oh, amazing. Like a new identity. Yeah.

So John felt that his privacy was constantly being disrespected, a sentiment that over time grew into deep resentment towards his overbearing, domineering mother. Sure. Sound any alarms for you, though? Yeah, tons. Mommy issues, right? In a bid for autonomy, John decided to take matters into his young hands by digging an underground tunnel beneath the house that was 14 feet deep and 16 feet long, which he then reinforced with brick and wood.

What? So here we get our pinch of Jerry Brudos because if you recall, when he was 16 years old, the shoe fetish slayer also constructed an underground tunnel near his family home where he spent countless hours fantasizing about holding women captive.

John's goal was to create a completely private sanctuary, a secluded place shielded from his parents' prying eyes where he would deeply engage with his hobbies in total isolation. But unfortunately for John, his not-so-subtle hidey hole was eventually discovered by those pesky, intrusive parents who insisted that he fill in his cherished underground retreat.

I mean, of course they're going to find it. It's a fucking tunnel under the house. And like a damn good one. Yeah. Like not a little hole, which is probably the type of tunnel I would have dug if I endeavored to do this. That's all you need. Okay. Fair enough. Not if I'm going to bring my dog and all the neighborhood dogs. True.

My dad works in B2B marketing. He came by my school for career day and said he was a big ROAS man. Then he told everyone how much he loved calculating his return on ad spend. My friend's still laughing me to this day. Not everyone gets B2B, but with LinkedIn, you'll be able to reach people who do. Get $100 credit on your next ad campaign. Go to linkedin.com slash results to claim your credit. That's linkedin.com slash results. Terms and conditions apply. LinkedIn.com slash results.

LinkedIn, the place to be, to be. As a child, John developed a strong fascination with science, particularly chemistry and astronomy. Regrettably, though, his school did not allow him to pursue these subjects formally due to his poor grades in math. Relatable. Undeterred, John decided to explore his scientific passions on his own. Pop quiz. In what way did John begin to independently pursue his scientific interests?

A, he experimented with torturing and killing bugs with chemicals. B, he studied the moon with an old telescope. C, he created a dark room in his home and experimented with photo-developing chemicals. D, all of the above. C. No. A. No. D. Yes. Oh, okay. I guess it's not really no. It's half yes. Yeah, I mean, they're all true. Right, but you chose the wrong...

Answer. It's D. You don't have to explain to me how I was wrong. I know. I just want to for some sadistic reason. So he experimented with bugs and chemicals, looked at a moon through a telescope, and...

The other thing. He fucked around with chemicals to develop photos in his house. Placing nitric acid, brake fluid, and chlorine into a glass, John, who wasn't even eight years old by this point in the case, would collect bugs, specifically spiders, and then drop them into the chemical solution to watch as they convulsed and died. He would laugh eagerly.

each time and then do it again. So there's our dash of Patrick Mackay. Do you remember what he did? Do you remember that weird, horrific thing that he did? He did a lot of horrible things to animals. I do, but why don't you tell me? He cooked a tortoise on a barbecue. Yeah. Yeah. Also during this time in life, so at about eight years old, something very traumatic happened to John. And here's where we get that sprinkle of Anatoly Moskvin, unfortunately.

While at a friend's house, John and his friend were hogtied and locked in a room by the friend's older brother, who then proceeded to beat and rape them both. Oh my God. While burning cigarettes onto their skin. Fucking terrible. Horrific. Eventually, the attacker's father walked in on the scene, untied John, and instructed him to seek medical attention. However, John was understandably too traumatized and humiliated to tell anyone about what happened, so for a long time he said and did nothing.

And as his abuser continued to torment, abuse, and bully John systematically for years after, according to John, until he, the abuser, was eventually killed in a motorcycle accident. Oh, my God. That sounds like a guy from our town. That was a fucking nightmare. Oh, I know exactly who you're talking about. You've talked about him before. Bryce. Bryce, yeah. Worst name ever. Sorry if you're named Bryce, but it's just, I still, to this day, if I meet a Bryce, I'm like...

Go away. Yeah. Yeah, he died in a motorcycle accident at like 17. Oh, that's still unfortunate. He was never going to make it very far. Well, so that's a theme in this case to kind of hold on to, unfortunately, is just sort of the generational abuse and trauma and the years and years and years of just underprivileged people

Like I was going to say holes that these people fell into. I'm not going to say it was impossible. They never had a chance because I work with survivors and I see what people can overcome. But it would be extremely difficult to see anybody make it given what so many of these people were contending with. Yeah. So this abuser of his died in an accident. Thereafter, John developed an obsession over the fact that he was deprived of the opportunity to seek revenge on his abuser because he died.

He also developed a persistent fear that he would be victimized again by another sexual predator, which is understandable. 100%. So at the age of 13... Oh my God, he's only 13 at this point? It's wild. It's wild. Yes. John arranged for protection. He befriended a grown man in his 40s named Benny who agreed to protect him against future abuse.

because Benny, sadly, was no stranger to the horrors of abuse, as he too had been abused by his father, who once cut off his toes with bolt cutters for the hell of it. Oh my God. So Benny agreed to offer his protection to John, but at a price. Benny required that John act as bait to lure in creepy older men on the street corner for Benny to then beat up and punish for being alleged pedophiles.

Staged vigilantism. They're not alleged if they're in there. Yes and no. I assume yes, given what I just explained. But knowing who John winds up to be, his radar or his ability to determine who was a perpetrator in reality and who wasn't, very skewed. So like he could have said...

My cat ran up a tree. I need help. And a guy said, okay, let me help you. You know what I mean? He was setting people up? Yeah, I think so. I think it could have been anything. I think it's probably a combination. Okay, so alleged. I'm with it now. Okay. Years later, John would brag to his friends about his older friend, Benny, who showed him the ropes on how to, quote unquote, deal with fags. Okay, not my language, obviously.

Now, it's important to point out at this juncture that John Bunting conflated gay and or transgendered individuals with pedophiles. In other words, in John's fucked up mind, every gay and or transgendered individual was a pedophile. Is John alive right now? John Bunting? Yeah. Why? I'm just kidding, because that's still going around. Oh, oh, I see. Crazy. It's horrific.

He couldn't be more wrong, obviously. Yeah. So according to Dr. Gene Abel, who's a researcher in the field of sexual violence for over 25 years, the majority of men, nearly 80% who go on to sexually prey upon boys are in fact heterosexual or bisexual. And most of these men are married and have children of their own. Really? Yep.

Dr. A. Nicholas Groth, who's another researcher on adult male offenders and is author of Men Who Rape, Psychology of the Offender, indicates that there is clinical research supporting the connection that heterosexual molesters abuse children because they see themselves in their victims, which is why they're not attracted to adult males. They feel that they're not attracted to adult males.

They feel themselves to be more child than adult and therefore find themselves more comfortable, particularly sexually, in the company of children. Oh my God. So I guess, you know what, like...

being attracted to one sex or the other is obviously very different from being attracted to children. It's a whole other thing. Yeah. Well, that makes perfect sense because if you're attracted to, like you said with Chris Hansen, like, what did he say? Like, he was getting ready to have sex or something. Oh my God, I pounced on him a little bit. And you were like, rape. Let's say rape, right? Because it's rape. Right. So like, if you're a pedophile, the

the gender might not matter. According to what I'm talking about here, though, like this research, the reason why pedophiles, I guess this particular group of pedophiles, target boys in particular is because they see themselves in those children. Yeah. So it's not, I mean, it appears obviously to someone who's not looking deeper as being homosexual, but

Not according to the research. Yeah, that makes perfect sense. So you can see, aside from being ridiculously prejudicial, John's reasoning was simply incorrect. It was flawed. He singled out gay individuals, falsely labeled them as pedophiles, and then erroneously equated their sexual orientation with criminal behavior. It's

Idiotic at best, lethal at worst. As John entered into his teenage years, he developed a fascination for military history, particularly World War II, as well as with weaponry. Here we have our dash of Patrick Mackay again.

John would empty out fireworks and then fashion a homemade mortar using gunpowder from his slug gun. Really? He explored and deeply connected with Nazi ideology and white supremacist bullshit and got his hands on a copy of Mein Kampf from a neo-Nazi group while attempting to obtain a real SS uniform and Nazi flag. That's, you know, Shane Gillis, the comedian? Yeah. He goes, uh,

He goes, I'm a history buff. By the way, if someone's a history buff, that is early onset Republican. So if you're a Democrat now, just wait. Good to know. Eventually, John went on to paint a swastika on the interior door of the trunk of his car. Wow, okay. Random ass, annoying, horrible fact. Yeah. At now 17 years old, so this was all before he was even 17. Oh my God. John entered into a brief relationship that's

being generous, with a young girl named Lisa whom he impregnated. John barely acknowledged the existence of his baby girl Tammy, never told his parents about Tammy or Lisa, and over time completely distanced himself entirely from both of them. As he completely abandoned his responsibilities as a father, John redirected his energies towards fostering an even more intense and vehement hatred towards both gay individuals and pedophiles.

he would openly discuss his plans to one day annihilate a gay man, any gay man, with an iron bar. Until such time, John and his pal Benny, frickin' much older frack, Oh, they were still hanging out? still at it, decided to settle on breaking into the homes of people they determined to be pedophiles, then killing their pets and defecating in their beds. Then, using their own feces, they'd smear the word f*** it on the walls of their victims.

Horrific, disgusting on so many levels. Very cool behavior, guys. And this went on until Benny, the man who John largely regarded as a father figure in many respects, died of throat cancer. So in 1986, at about 21 years old, John, who at this point felt he had nothing left in Queensland except Benny's ghost, a shitty haircut, and a squeaky high voice with a lisp. Benny was dead? Yep, he died of throat cancer. Oh, like you just said three seconds ago? Twice, no less. Okay.

He moved out of his domineering parents' house and into an apartment in North Salisbury with a friend named Kevin Reed, as well as Kevin's partner, Michelle White. And Kevin, who felt that his new roommate John was a bit odd, decided it would be a good idea to get him a job doing which of the following things? Pop quiz. Pop quiz.

A, working as a chauffeur for a gay escort service. Okay, working as a chauffeur for a gay escort service. B, working as a janitor at a science research lab. Working as a janitor at a science research lab, okay. C, working as a butcher at an abattoir. Working as a butcher at an abattoir, C. Yeah. Yeah. Your eyes literally lit up. Well, you know why? Abattoir, Catherine Knight. Catherine Knight, yeah. And Father...

Hans Schmidt. That's when we first learned of that lovely word. Abattoir. Right, but there's our dollop of Catherine Knight, to bring it back to my cooking or baking or whatever reference earlier, and Robert Pickton, because he was also a butcher. Yes. So John Bunting was a bit of a legend, or so he thought, at the South Australian Meat Corporation.

He worked in the liver, spleen, and intestine department and was a knife-wielding, carcass-eviscerating wizard. Sounds like a superstar. Yeah, well, he was. I'm kidding. In his mind. In his mind. So proud was John of his mad skills at bringing a gory death upon the living that he never washed the blood or guts off his hands and clothing after leaving work.

opting instead to proudly display the gruesome fruits of his labor. Random fact that actually comes into play later, John Bunting was born missing his sense of smell.

Yep. Your hands would be so sticky though. So uncomfortable, right? Anyway, that condition is known as congenital anosmia. Oh, anosmia. Yeah. Oh, you know it. Okay. Well, when I had COVID and my sense of smell disappeared, but then it came back and things smelled weird and different than they had ever smelled before. I remember hearing the term anosmia. Okay. There you go. Yeah. John relished the power of playing God over the meek and weak, the damned and the depraved. Man.

How long did it take you to write that one? Too long. Yeah.

It worked out. Thank you. This mentality, initially directed towards animals, was increasingly extending to humans as well. Of course. Whomever he deemed unworthy of life for whatever the reason, he felt justified in eliminating. In his dreams, at first, it was gay men and pedophiles, or they're one and the same in his mind. At work, it was the quote-unquote brainless cows and pigs. And at home, it began with his roommate's bull terrier,

Yeah. Yeah.

pivotal in the burgeoning career of his budding serial killer life because it made John realize that while he very much enjoyed watching the lifeblood slowly drain from a victim, he took little pleasure in instant death. It turned out that guns were too impersonal a weapon, too fast, too

To final, he now knew that he preferred slower instruments of death and the idea of dragging the dying process out while making the pain and terror last as long as possible. So he was a process killer. Oh my God.

Well, I'm glad you brought that up. For now, it would seem he's a process killer. Yes. And yes, I think he is a process killer. Right now. To your point, because he enjoys the process of killing. Yeah. But we're going to explore this in a little while. Yeah. I'd like to say we're going to circle back. I don't think we are. We're going to reroute to a different thought process. Okay. But that was very good, and I'm very proud of you. Thank you very much.

For example, he enjoyed sticking skewers into pigs to watch them slowly bleed out before then decapitating them for good measure at the end, which he did at the abattoir. All right, so let's have that conversation now because I didn't realize it was coming up so soon. So fast. What kind of killer kills because they feel justified in eliminating society? Mission-oriented killer. Yes, yes, yes, yes.

John is poised to begin a moral crusade aimed at cleansing society of gay people, pedophiles, and those he deems too frail to deserve a place in this world, which tragically includes people with intellectual disabilities. Mm-hmm.

But I'm going to plant the seed now so it can hopefully grow in your brain as we continue to work through this case because I want to explore or for like for this to kind of like mull over in your brain. Was this truly his motive? Was he really trying to rid the world of gay individuals and or pedophiles or?

Or was that merely a pretext, a sinister cover for his real incentive to kill, which was simply because he liked it? Yeah. I mean, there's crossover between killer types. Yeah, I mean, I think that what I just described is a sadist, and he's very much a sadist. And I think he's a mission-oriented killer. And I think he's a process killer. Does he become a product killer later?

I think when you have a mission-oriented killer, it's a little bit of a product killer in a sense that, like, you want that end result of cleansing the world. He's not a product killer in a sense that, like... He doesn't fuck with the bodies. He... Actually, I'm sorry. I stand corrected. You guys checking off all the boxes, huh? You know what? Yeah. Because I'm thinking about it. To the extent that I'm, like, trying to avoid giving away too much, but...

He ends up wanting to hold on to bodies as trophies, which for me makes him a little bit of a product killer. So why else would you want to hold on to that body? I'd say he's primarily a process killer with a little bit of mission oriented on the front and a little bit of product on the back. So well said. Fucking so smart. You're nailing it.

In 1989, John met a 19-year-old woman named Veronica Tripp who was intellectually disabled, partially blind, partially deaf, and completely illiterate. I thought you were going to say Veronica Vaughn. He married Veronica in September of that same year because Veronica was exactly the type of wife that John expected her to be. Compliant. Yeah. For example, John made it clear that he expected sex...

every single day. So even when Veronica didn't want to have sex, she would still comply so as to appease John because in her mind, John always knew better.

Or so he said. Yeah. Veronica also obediently listened to hours and hours of nonsense stories in which John bragged about how much he liked to kill and chop up pedophiles, even though until that point, he hadn't actually killed anyone. Oh my God. He openly fantasized about how he dreamed about filling their home with the corpses of gay pedophiles, laughing in delight at the thought as Veronica sat there and dutifully listened.

Wow. Eventually in 1991, John and Veronica moved into a government-owned semi-detached house at 203 Waterloo Corner Road in Salisbury, South Australia...

which is one of Adelaide's poorest suburbs. And for a bit, they were doing okay. They lived a stable, low-key life. Yeah. Well, as stable as a homophobic, Nazi-loving, bloodthirsty psychopath can be. And this is where John met his main accomplices and formed the most notorious serial killing team in Australian history.

So John Bunting orchestrated his heinous killing spree with the involvement of eight different accomplices, each participating in varying roles, some unwittingly entangled in his crimes. All people from that neighborhood that he moved into? Yeah. And all vulnerable. Oh, really? Yep. B.

Yeah. Yeah.

This neglect raises a critical question, just to keep in your mind, not to answer right now. How could so many people, both perpetrators and victims, fall under the influence of one man? Money? No. Good guess, but no. The answer lies not only in the individual psychopathy of John Bunting, but also in the systemic failures that left a segment of society dangerously unprotected.

So bearing that in mind, okay, John's core group of accomplices, while he roped in about eight different people, consisted of three main people. His superstars. His Motley misfits. Motley Crue. I was going to say Motley Crue, but Motley probably actually isn't even the right word. Why? Because Motley means like varied and diverse, but he really homed.

on like one type of person. Yeah. They're actually not Motley, which is why I didn't just call them Motley Crue. But then I said Motley anyway, so I should have just gone with Motley Crue. Macabre? Hmm.

Sure. Macabre Misfits? Sure. Okay. I like it. Macabre Misfits. That's the name of the episode, probably. What's up, future Patreon? So his three accomplices, his three macabre misfits, Robert Wagner, Mark Hayden, and Jamie Velasquez. Okay. Let's begin with his right-hand man, his enforcer, Robert Wagner. Okay. Accomplice number one. My mom loved Robert Wagner. Okay.

He's an actor, I know. I know. It's good to get that out of the way now. Isn't he a singer? Robert Wagner? I think he's an actor. Might be both. Maybe. Some people would be talented like that. It's not Jack Wagner. I know that. I don't know who that is. Jack Wagner. I need is a little more time.

Nope. You're nailing it, whatever this is, but I don't know what it is. My mom's going to love that. This is for you. Yeah. This is Tink. Robert Joe Wagner was born in 1971 in South Wales and was raised in Adelaide by his mother after being abandoned by his father at just nine months old. Robert has been described as dull and a bit blank in the eyes. He never learned to read or write and struggled with learning difficulties, including dyslexia.

Robert was severely beaten by his mother's boyfriend, Les, and was sexually abused by the teenage son of his mother's friend who stayed in their home for a short time. This is what I'm saying. Like, this is going to be a common theme, unfortunately. At just seven years old, after enduring the trauma of sexual abuse, Robert attempted to take his own life by ingesting a handful of sleeping pills that he found in the bathroom.

When he was discovered after taking the pills, Robert was heard mumbling, Michael, don't hurt us. Leave me alone. Just like devastating. And just going back for a second to the manifesting thing. Yeah. Like when your upbringing is that dark and that tragic, what you expect from the world is in line with that. Mm-hmm.

So like if the worst thing that ever happened to you is something that's like not bad for most people, you're going to think the world is generally a safe place where success is yours and people are friendly and the sun is always out and blah, blah, blah. You reach for the stars. You strive for things. You're not afraid to take risks. So when you see something positive or a good opportunity, you go for it because you think A, it's possible. B, you deserve it. Why wouldn't you deserve it? And if it doesn't work out, it's still going to be okay. Exactly. But when you're raised with that kind of background, it's like...

You see something that's negative for you and you go, that's what I deserve and can achieve. That's heartbreaking. Yeah. And Robert Wagner goes on to become a disgusting man. But as always, we can empathize with the broken little boy at this stage in the case. And I for sure do. Yeah.

Robert wound up dropping out of school at age 14 and moved away with a neighbor named Barry Lane, who was a 31-year-old transgender individual who identified as Vanessa. Now, the issue with Vanessa was not that she was transgender, but rather that she essentially kidnapped a 14-year-old boy, Robert, after previously serving four months in jail in 1980 for the indecent assault of two other boys under the age of 12.

Robert's mother appealed to law enforcement for help in locating her son after he ran off with Vanessa, or let's speak appropriately, after he was kidnapped. Kidnapped.

But nothing ever happened, and Robert and Vanessa disappeared for a total of four years. Oh, my God. Ultimately, after Robert turned 18, he and Vanessa returned to their original neighborhood in Adelaide, where they continued having a relationship together openly. You know what it is with this case, too? Every single player is its own complex universe. Its own episode. Exactly, truly. Yeah.

Robert, who worshipped Hitler and even named one of his German shepherds Adolf, stood out tremendously when he came back to town in both appearance and behavior. He was massively tall, your type of person, Tank, incredibly muscular, and covered in tattoos all over his body symbolizing violence and hatred. He joined a neo-Nazi group called National Action, but got kicked out for being too radical. Really? The fuck do you have to do?

to get kicked out of a neo-Nazi group for being too radical.

Neither Robert nor Vanessa had jobs and therefore both relied on government assistance. Their house was absolutely filthy and covered in piles and piles of dog and cat shit. Oh my God. As well as fleas jumping around the carpet while mildew collected on the mountain of dirty dishes in the kitchen. I thought you were going to say piles of clothes and even that to me was going to be gross. I know. Robert liked to blast church music from their disgusting house and

as he held hands with Vanessa, smirking at disapproving neighbors while telling them to fuck off and mind their own business. But this was difficult for neighbors and passersby to do, particularly when Robert and Vanessa would openly engage in which of the following behaviors?

Pop quiz. Okay. A, bestiality. B, BDSM. C, mutual masturbation. So you're saying like out on the porch they were... In their backyard. Out in the backyard. What was the first one again? Bestiality. Bestiality, BDSM, or mutual masturbation. A.

Unfortunately, yes. Robert would forcibly hold down one of their Dobermans while Vanessa would rape the poor animal. Doberman? All while children and neighbors walked by and saw this in horror. Can you fucking imagine? I'd rather not. Looking out the window and seeing some guy raping a dog? No, Tank. No. No.

Oh, my God. Or holding the dog down? It's awful. While the other one rapes it? Disgusting. Horrible. I mean, listen, I realize that both of them...

had shit in their childhood. Yes. I do. It's not lost on me. This is why people, you know, sometimes people think I'm like too empathetic with like perpetrators. I'm not. Yeah. I just seek to understand them and to like apply that understanding to their deplorable behaviors. I don't excuse it for one second, but it's important to understand it, I think. Well, acceptance doesn't mean approval. Right. That needs to be out there. Yeah. So you can take the facts for what they are and not

Celebrate it. Yeah. Which you never have. No. Then in 1991, while out on a walk together in the neighborhood, Vanessa and Robert met a new couple that just moved into a nearby home. Enter John and Veronica Bunting. Oh, okay. And while homophobic John loathed Vanessa and Robert for being- That's not a fucking male dog, is it? No? Okay. All right. All right. You're good. Ooh.

So while homophobic John loathed Vanessa and Robert for being openly gay, he empathized with Robert after learning that he too had been victimized by sexual abuse as a child. He also felt that since Vanessa had been previously convicted of molesting two young boys, and since she'd taken Robert away from his parents when he was just 14, that she somehow had knowledge of and crucially access to all

all the pedophiles in the neighborhood, which he wanted to have so he could exact some vigilante justice. Yeah. So he tolerated the friendship.

John took it upon himself to also save Robert from homosexuality, positioning himself as a savior figure, because he also definitely had some kind of savior complex going on here. Yeah, for sure. With a history marred by turmoil and abuse, Robert found himself drawn to John, who endeared himself as a strong, capable, protective friend, brother, and leader.

This dynamic played a significant role in Robert's involvement with John as he sought stability and guidance under his influence because he never really had that before. Here was this man who wasn't looking to take advantage of him sexually, but was instead the total and complete opposite. He was a loud voice against sexuality.

such atrocities. Yeah. Because you mentioned earlier like how all of these people found each other. Found each other and wound up like following John's lead. First of all, they were all vulnerable. Yes. Again, you're learning as we go along but also because they saw him ironically as a safe place. Yeah. Now during this time another significant friendship was formed between John and another vulnerable individual. Enter Mark Hayden who is

Motley Misfit, accomplice number two. Macabre, misfit, accomplice number two. How did I forget that already? John and Mark met... How dare you? Forgive me? I know not what I do. So Mark is number two of the three. Correct. That we're hearing about. Robert was number one. Mark is number two. Okay.

So John Bunting and Mark Hayden met at a welding course and bonded, pun intended, if I could speak, that would have been a really good... It would have been a 10 out of 10. It remained a 3 out of 10. What? No, I'm kidding. Eight out of 10. Sure. On a scale of nothing else.

So they met at a welding course and bonded, pun intended, after John learned that Mark, too, had endured a difficult childhood. Mark's mother had been in and out of psychiatric facilities and struggled with schizophrenia. He was barely educated and was often described by people who knew him as being backward, slow, and a taciturn dullard.

That's a fucking really sophisticated insult. It is. It is. The taciturn dullard to my right.

Most of the time, Mark remained entirely silent but for uttering a single monosyllabic word here and there and collected a carer's pension for looking after his sick father. So he too was unemployed. Mark was also described as being a weak follower, someone who did not have the wherewithal to say boo, which of course made him ripe for John Bunting to manipulate and control. Through Mark came another character in this shit show named Verna Sinclair.

She ends up becoming one of those eight sort of ancillary accomplices. Yeah, yeah. Verna was Mormon, had seven children with five different men, and actually initially set her sights on dating John. Since John was married to Veronica and otherwise uninterested in contracting Verna's STDs, she switched gears and refocused on the available bloke to his right, Mark Hayden, who didn't mind the fact that she had herpes and thrush.

Mark also watched her kids while she continued to go out and party, which was a plus. So Verna was now with Mark. She let the taciturn dullard watch her seven kids? That she did. Wow. Now, Verna also sadly had a horrific life, and she was abused by her mother's boyfriend with a cattle prod as a child before being sold into a brothel and then getting impregnated by extremely violent men seven different times. Wow.

Mark either didn't mind or did not have the mental capacity to understand Verna's complex life, and the pair wound up getting married in the LDS church, at which point Verna Sinclair officially changed her name to Elizabeth Hayden. He converted to Mormonism? I don't think he converted, honestly. I don't know if he had to be Mormon for that. Perhaps he did. I don't know, so I can't really comment.

But what I do know is that she changed her name to Elizabeth Hayden. Okay. So keep Elizabeth and Mark Hayden on ice for a few because this next bit doesn't involve them quite yet, but I needed to introduce them at this stage to keep true to the story's timeline. Sure. And because both Mark and Elizabeth, for different reasons, soon make a very dramatic reappearance.

So at this point in the case, the vile piece of shit that was John Bunting talked a big game about hunting down gay men, but actually hadn't killed anyone yet. Until something happened that seemed to flip the switch from fantasy to reality. Pop quiz. What happened?

A. He was forcibly groped by a man at a train station. B. He suffered a traumatic brain injury in an accident. C. His mother died and excluded him from her will.

B. Yes. Wow. Well done. He sustained an injury in a motorcycle accident that left him unable to continue working at the slaughterhouse, which not only caused financial strain, but also deprived him of an outlet to satisfy his bloodlust. The traumatic brain injury from the accident appeared to also blow the lid off the pot of his simmering depraved fantasies. Damage to the prefrontal cortex. Probably.

Suddenly, John would explode into fits of rage over minor annoyances, hurling household items at Veronica and becoming violent.

His behavior grew increasingly bizarre as he started collecting stray animals from the street and inviting active drug addicts into his home under the guise of helping them all. And that was John's way. He relished playing God. He enjoyed being the authoritative figure, whether it was over the animals that now depended upon him for care or the vulnerable people who had little choice but to depend on his support.

One year after moving into his home at 203 Waterloo Corner Road in Salisbury, Australia, John began to dig another underground tunnel, reminiscent of his childhood endeavors. He's having flashbacks. Meanwhile, Robert and Vanessa befriended a new neighborhood teenager, Clinton Trezise. So Clinton was a 17-year-old openly gay man with a bold style marked by orange nail polish, flashy clothing, and copper blonde dyed hair.

Clinton endured a troubled childhood with stints in foster care, and he relied on church handouts for a little while. Now nearing adulthood, though, he was stable, and he was securing his own apartment through South Australia's housing trust, close to where Robert, Vanessa, Mark, Elizabeth, John, and Veronica all lived.

John absolutely despised Clinton and referred to him as happy pants because he wiggled his butt a little bit when he walked. Why are you looking at his butt, John? Oh, how the tables have turned. I was going to say how the turn tables. How the butt cheeks have wiggled. Wiggled. So on August 31st, 1992, under the guise of hospitality, and this is when shit gets crazier.

John lured Clinton into his home. As Clinton relaxed unsuspectingly on the living room couch, John stealthily approached with a shovel and bashed his head in. Oh my God. So brutal was the assault that the back of Clinton's skull caved in with such force that it caused the front of his skull to protrude forward. Oh my God.

Then, using his psychopathic ability to control and manipulate, John Bunting convinced Vanessa Lane and Mark Hayden to help him dispose of Clinton's body. Together, they loaded the body into Vanessa's station wagon and drove 20 minutes out of town to lower light. There, they dug a shallow grave and callously discarded his corpse like they were taking out the trash. I mean, that's fucking wild to have someone in your house

grab a shovel, wind up, and then hit like... Bash his skull in. How the fuck? I mean, I don't know. I mean... Don't try to understand it. You can't. You're not built like that, thank God. Yeah.

This experience was pivotal. John felt an unprecedented thrill when he killed Clinton, who was victim number one. Okay. And he wanted, needed more. He was officially out for blood now. Yeah. Only now John realized that he needed to make the process hurt more and last longer. To that end, he needed more frontline help from his macabre misfits rather than just assistance after the fact with disposing of the body.

And so he expanded upon his crew by adding another troubled individual named Jamie Velasquez. Jamie lived in John's neighborhood with his severely depressed and suicidal mother, Elizabeth Harvey, which is confusing because it sounds like Elizabeth Hayden,

and his three siblings. Jamie and his brother Troy were regularly and brutally sexually assaulted by their father, Spiros, until he eventually died of a heart attack when Jamie was just seven years old. Rather than escaping abuse with his father's death, Jamie found himself targeted again by an adult neighbor named Jeffrey Payne. Jeffrey would sit outside Jamie's home,

taunting him and his brothers while ominously referring to them as my boys and surreptitiously taking their photographs.

This predator was particularly interested in Jamie, who at just 14 years old met every single one of his sickening desires. He was emotionally deprived, lonely and vulnerable, and physically a quote-unquote boy man. So wait, whose desires were those? The neighbor? The neighbor, Jeffrey Payne, who was an adult. And he set his sights on 14-year-old Jamie. Jeffrey pounced.

Oh my God, what a mindfuck. Yeah.

Additionally, Jamie was diagnosed with epilepsy at age 15 with doctors noting that his neurological activity was erratically switching on and off up to 300%.

100 times a day. So he's just going through shit. Suffering. Yeah. Now watching all of this abuse unfold between Jeffrey and Jamie from the same neighborhood was Vanessa Lane. Vanessa. Vanessa was Robert's. Okay. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Living girlfriend. Person. And she told, or let's call, she was a kidnapper really. But at this point, Robert was an adult.

So Vanessa told John Bunting that Jeffrey Payne was a pedophile abusing another one of their neighbors, Jamie Velasquez. So one afternoon, John rode his BMW motorbike, how the fuck he had one of those, don't know, over to Jamie and Jamie's mother, Elizabeth, to warn them about Jeffrey Payne and, while he was at it, about Vanessa Lane, too. Wait, John warned them about his live-in girlfriend? Vanessa was Robert's live-in girlfriend.

Robert was the really tall. Gotcha. So suddenly, John Bunting was seen by both young Jamie and his mother as being a hero. Elizabeth was immediately dazzled by John's take-charge mentality. And Jamie, for the first time, saw a male figure in his life as being protective rather than predatory. This is what I'm saying. This is exactly what he did to Robert. He's making himself somebody that these...

boys or men never had before. Swoops in like a hero, but he's the furthest thing from it. He's a wolf in sheep's clothing. Yes, perfect. I mean, he's the most of that. So Elizabeth, Jamie's mother, wound up engaging in a sexual relationship with John even though he was married to Veronica. Wait, the 14-year-old's mother engaged? Okay. Because she fell for him because it seems like he was protecting her or really Jamie from this neighbor. Yeah.

John was 13 years Elizabeth's junior, so he was younger. And then they ended up entering into a relationship relationship with each other after Veronica finally decided that she'd had enough of John and left him. Well,

Well, that's what I was thinking the whole time was like, how did she stick it out with him? She stuck it out for a decent amount of time, but... Years. Yeah. At least, but like, you know, the fact that when they first met, he's like, I want to kill, you know... She was completely blind, partially deaf, illiterate, very reliant upon him. And it made her the exact wife he wanted, compliant.

And that's not to say people with those, you know, vulnerabilities are reliant upon people and should accept abuse. In her case, though, she... Played into it. Exactly.

So Veronica left John, but she actually stayed in the house on Waterloo Corner Road. Remember I said the locations get tricky. Everything gets like, it's a lot. So she left him, but stayed in the house. Exactly. John moved in with the other one. So John ended up renting a house in a community called Murray Bridge, which was 50 miles southeast of Adelaide. Okay. All right. Eventually, John and all of his accomplices wind up living together. Okay.

Okay. He's going to plant that seed now. Eventually. So, eventually, Jamie reported his abuser, the abusive neighbor, Jeffrey Payne, to the police, but it took law enforcement months and months to even respond.

Ultimately, Jeffrey did wind up being sentenced to four years in prison, but the delay in justice had a terrible effect on Jamie's psyche, as it would. I was just going to say why, like ask why it took them so long, but like... Because these are less disappeared people. Yeah.

Now, not only was Jamie betrayed and or terribly harmed by almost all of the adult men in his life, but now he'd also been abandoned for months by law enforcement as well. So Jamie was abused by his father. His father died. He went, oh, thank God. Yes. And the neighbor comes along and starts abusing him. He tells the police. The police are like, yeah, we'll fucking figure it out. This...

pattern or process is so unfortunately common. Like the survivors of sexual abuse that I work with who are adults now, but who were sexually abused as children, this is such a common theme. They were preyed upon. They were singled out and targeted for being victimized previously. So the cycle keeps repeating itself with new people. They either tell law enforcement, a parent, somebody, a priest, or they don't. But when they do, they're

nothing happens. Yeah. So why, why try and fight it? You know what I mean? It's horrific. So all of this served to paint John in an even better light as Jamie felt for the first time, a sense of safety and protection from an adult. At first, Jamie's relationship with John was everything he felt he ever wanted or needed from a father figure. They rode motorbikes together. They went to the movies and John even encouraged Jamie to return to school after he dropped out. But

But everything that John Bunting did with Jamie under the guise of taking care of him and protecting him was calculated. Because what John was really doing was grooming Jamie. He saw in Jamie a protege and a future accomplice. If he could play his cards right, he could mold this child into becoming exactly what he wanted him to be.

And so the grooming process commenced. John began exposing Jamie to violence little by little in an effort to harden and desensitize him. He killed cats and dogs in front of Jamie and then forced him to watch as he skinned their bodies. That was fucking easing him into it? Yeah, when you go on to hear what he does, I mean, it's not easy. Wouldn't be easing me into it. No. But slowly but surely...

He'd then place the gun in Jamie's hand, encouraging him to try it to see how it felt to take a life and to learn that it really wasn't that big of a deal. Yeah, it's a big deal. Then John introduced Jamie to a very disturbing obsession, what he called his wall of spiders. Pop quiz. What was the wall of spiders?

A, exactly what it sounds like, only worse. It was hundreds of spiders and other insects and rodents that were nailed to a wall in his house while still alive. Oh. B, an evidence board where he listed local pedophiles and used string to connect the various notes, making it look like a spider. Cat's cradle. Exactly. Very good. Yeah.

C, a giant poster of a human body opened up, displaying amongst everything else veins and arteries that looked like spider legs. Spider wall, exactly that. Or the cat's cradle thing. Or the poster. I mean, it's Australia. I'm going to go with A. False. I made that up. Interesting. B. Correct. Okay. Yes. Yes.

He kept yellow sticky notes with the names of people who he considered to be local pedophiles, as well as their addresses, phone numbers, and specific proclivities and transgressions. So John exposes Jamie to this now at this point? Yes. Okay. For example, John would write the person's name and then write, prefers young boys.

or plays Santa Claus at Christmas and has been banned by the stores. Like he's keeping copious notes on everyone. Then he'd connect all the pieces of paper using blue string, which really served no purpose. He just wanted to be cool. So that it formed a chart that looked like a spider with all those legs. Yeah. Yeah. Do we know where he's getting all this information from? This guy seems like he's got people out in the streets, like ears and eyes. We do. He's got one person out on the streets who's his ears and eyes. Vanessa. Vanessa.

You are listening. Good for you. I'm just really trying to keep up. Yes, but listen to this. So he kept full files on these people that were like also on his wall of spiders. Yeah. And guess who he kept the biggest file on? Who? Vanessa. Oh. Isn't that nuts? So he's like sending her out to field like all of this information for him. But still, like how is like, I don't know any pedophiles. Neither did John. Yeah.

But she, you know, Vanessa was able to find them, I guess. Yes and no. Yes and no. Some of them were maybe false. Some of them were false. Some of them were gay. Some of them weren't. Some of them were just people that had whatever they had that John didn't like. Yeah. That he eventually, this is what I said earlier, to keep this like little seed in your brain so that it could grow. Was he a mission-oriented killer trying to eliminate society of gay pedophiles? Mm-hmm.

Or was he just a sick fuck who wanted to kill? Because when you hear who his victims were, they do not all fit the bill. Yeah. So process. Right. Jamie, now firmly under John's influence, was far from thriving. At 14 years old, he was addicted to Valium, along with a cocktail of psychoactive drugs that he would inject, including speed, LSD, and cocaine. He was constantly exposed to a stream of violence, vitriol, and hateful rhetoric.

Yeah. Yeah.

as Vanessa resented all of the time that Robert was beginning to spend with John. Because John is kind of, like I said, he needs more frontline players now. So he's bringing Robert into the fold. He's bringing Jamie into the fold. And this caused Robert and Vanessa's relationship to fall apart.

Robert actually moved out of his home with Vanessa and into John Bunting's home that he shared with Jamie and Jamie's mother, Elizabeth. So Robert moved out, moved in with John, and John lived with Jamie. And Jamie's mother, Elizabeth, who he was in a relationship with. We haven't heard from Mark Hayden in a while. Yeah, I know. Very good. But you will. I told you we were going to thaw him out soon, right? That's right. He's on ice still. Exactly. Exactly.

Robert also started dating women at this point to prove to John that he was no longer gay and therefore not a pedophile. So don't put me on your wall of spiders. Yeah.

Additionally, Robert and John joined a new neo-Nazi group together and made the decision to start physically hunting down gay pedophiles, again, with them being considered one and the same to these shit fucks. Suddenly, the wall of spiders was no longer just a conspiracy board. It was a list of targets.

John began holding pedophile takedown vigilante meetings in his kitchen in Murray Bridge, where he and his cronies would discuss ways in which to eliminate these abusive men from society. And lucky for these men, in terms of planning and logistics, John's old house on Waterloo Corner Road in Salisbury, South Australia, had a detached shed.

A shed in which the group's very first victim, Ray Davies, would be taken and killed as part of their pedophile cleansing mission. The group's first victim. Yep. Not John's first victim. Right, because his first victim was...

Clinton. And who had the shed? Where was that? What house was that at? So remember his first house with Veronica? Yeah. And remember she stayed even though she ended the marriage? So she's now living with her parents and the house is just existing and they have a detached shed with that house. Oh, so in his old house. In his old house, which kind of becomes his stomping ground again, but he does still have his home in Murray Bridge, which is where he lives with Robert, Jamie, and Elizabeth. Got it.

Enter Ray Allen Peter Davies, victim number two. For John, victim number one for the... Collective. Macabre misfits. Yes.

Ray Davies was 26 years old and lived in a caravan at Port Pirie. Ray's parents were both intellectually challenged and unable to care for Ray when he was a child, and he was also intellectually challenged and raised by an aunt. When Ray was just 13 years old, he was discovered raping the family dog in the backyard, an offense that he repeated later in life as an adult, which got him into trouble with the law. That was Ray? Yeah. Him and Robert were talking about that? Maybe. Maybe. Maybe.

And a fact that his mother always used to like to openly talk about with the media after Ray's body was eventually discovered. So the mother would voluntarily be like, yep, he would have sex with dogs.

Like, just such a fucked up world. Yeah. In Australia, the laws surrounding bestiality are strict, and the act is illegal across all states and territories. The specifics of the laws can vary slightly from one jurisdiction to another, but generally, bestiality is considered a serious criminal offense, often dealt with under statutes related to animal cruelty or sexual offenses against animals, as it should be. Now, eventually, Ray, as an adult...

moved his caravan, in which he lived, into the backyard of a woman named Suzanne Allen. Remember Suzanne's name for later. I'll do my best. All right. Who lives in the same neighborhood as John and crew in Murray Bridge. Yes. Okay. Okay.

And it was there, in that caravan, in that backyard, where Ray continued having sex with dogs before attempting to prey upon neighborhood children, including Suzanne's grandchildren. Now, various psychological and criminological studies have already

unsurprisingly, indicated a correlation between those who have engaged in sexual activities with animals and a higher incidence of committing sexual crimes against humans, suggesting that bestiality might be associated with more ingrained or severe patterns of sexual deviance.

But all of Ray's depravity came to an end in December of 1995 when John and Robert decided to take him for a little drive in their car. And during this drive, Robert bashed Ray in the genitals with the end of a pole repeatedly in the backseat of the car to a point where Ray's testicles swelled to twice their size. Oh my gosh. Then they brought Ray to the shed.

Once inside, John and Robert tossed Ray into the bathtub where they continued to physically assault him while verbally berating him for being a quote-unquote nappy raper. I think nappy means baby in Australia. Yeah, yeah. Well, it's a diaper. Right. Yeah. And filthy F-slur. Yeah.

Then they dragged Ray out of the bathtub. So this was in the main part of the house, okay? Handcuffed him and tossed him into the trunk of their car, bloodied and beaten before driving him two hours back to Salisbury North. So he's in the trunk just like literally dying. Yeah. They laid Ray's naked body down on a mattress in the bedroom that contained the wall of spiders, literally giggling with excitement as they forced Ray to refer to them as Lord and Sir.

They proceeded to violently stab Ray with garden tools while simultaneously strangling him with jumper cables until his body gave out and he died.

Now, Jamie's mother, Elizabeth, who was John's girlfriend, was stoned out of her mind on prescription medication, and she even participated in the torturing and killing of Ray while Jamie stood guard at the door making sure no one came in. After Ray was dead, John and Robert hid his body in the underground tunnel that John the Demented Badger had previously dug. Yeah, John the Demented Badger. Yeah.

Enter, at this point, Suzanne Allen. Okay, she's back. And she's victim number three. Oh, she's a victim. Or number two for the group. Okay.

Suzanne was 47 years old and engaged in a brief romantic relationship with John Bunting following Ray's death, which she hadn't known that John killed Ray. She just thought that Ray up and left. You know, all of these kind of players are transient. They're all kind of drifters. So when Ray suddenly wasn't in his caravan anymore in her backyard, she figured he up and left. Yeah. Then she engages in a sexual romantic relationship, whatever, with John, even though John is technically still dating Elizabeth. Yes. Yes.

Suzanne and John only dated for a few months in 1996, but John broke it off after Suzanne became a stage five clinger and absolutely obsessed with her Johnny Angel. That's what she called him. John repeatedly told Suzanne to fuck off, but she refused. And she became an unrelenting irritation, an annoyance that simply had to go.

Now, some sources indicate that what really grinded John's gears about Suzanne was the fact that she allowed Ray to stay on her property knowing all of the depraved shit that she was doing. Other sources indicate that John felt Suzanne knew too much or suspected too much with respect to Ray's disappearance. So we don't know the precise motive for Suzanne's murder, nor do we know exactly how she was murdered. But we do know that she was murdered.

And that after her death, John and Robert gruesomely mutilated her corpse in her own bathtub, employing techniques similar to the ones that they used at the abattoir. Mm-hmm. John.

They sliced off both of Suzanne's legs, severed her left arm from the shoulder joint as well as her right arm and shoulder blade. Then those severed appendages were defleshed from the bone as her skin and tissue was meticulously removed.

Suzanne's heart and right lung were removed, as were her breasts and genitals. She's still alive? No. So they cut off her legs, which I was actually at that point thinking like, oh my God, is she still alive? I mean, she could have been. Yeah.

Cut off her arms and then got her heart and lung. Yeah, and they defleshed her as well, her skin and her tissue. Both of her feet were cut off at the ankles. She was scalped and all of her teeth were removed. Then Suzanne's butchered remains were stored in 11 different plastic bags.

But, but, before placing Suzanne's severed and scalped head into a bag, John and Robert first played football with it and humiliated her in death by pretending to make out with her, laughing and encouraging one another to, quote, kiss the puppet. Oh my God.

Once finished, the depraved men threw Suzanne's remains on top of Ray and Clinton's decomposing corpses in the tunnel and then proceeded to cash in on Suzanne's welfare checks thereafter, claiming a total of $17,000 after authorities wrote her disappearance off as a suicide. Wow. I can't believe this actually fucking happened. Oh my God. I can't believe any of these things. God, I know. I know. Sometimes I have to like

I mean, I'm always painfully aware that it's real human beings, like painfully aware. But sometimes even when I'm getting into the writing of it, I like intentionally will step back and I'm like, you must make sure you are processing this. Yeah. This is so horrific. Yeah. And that concludes part one. Oh, wow. If you can believe it, it only gets worse from here because we haven't even gotten to the cannibalism yet. Well, they were playing football with their head. That's pretty bad. That's pretty bad.

Next week in part two, we will go on to discuss the trial related to what amounted to 12 murders, which is one of the most infamous in Australian legal history due to the gruesome nature of the crimes, the psychological impact on the public, on the level of control and manipulation involved. Oh my God. But keep this in mind.

Bunting's actions, I just want to leave off on this, were not a form of justice. They were a series of brutal and inhumane acts. His method of determining guilt was arbitrary and not bound by any legitimate legal process leading to the torture and murder of individuals based on his own biased judgments. Moreover, some of his victims were not involved in any criminal activities. The ones we talked about today, some that we're going to talk about next week,

but they were simply disliked by John for one reason or another. Yeah. His actions contributed to a climate of fear and violence that ultimately harmed society more than it helped. That makes me actually appreciate the justice system. I mean, I know it's like... It's flawed, but... But it's, I mean, depending on who you are, it can be really fucked up and corrupt and whatever. Yeah. But at least it's not one person determining who goes to jail, who gets killed, right?

Judge, jury, and executioner. Yeah. Like just one person, one person's like preferences or whatever. Yeah. You have to remember that legitimate justice systems exist to handle. Of course. Crimes of all natures, but specifically like ones so depraved, like the ones we're talking about. Yeah. And circumventing these systems with vigilante violence undermines the rule of the law. And it can, and in a few instances here did, lead to innocent lives being lost. Yeah, I'm sure. Yeah.

Next week is a doozy, so definitely come back for part two. And probably listen to this one twice. Yeah. So that you can make sure you're clear on all the details. It's a lot. I'm not saying to sit there and take notes, but... I'm saying to have a pen handy. Yeah. That's what I would do. And paper. Yeah. What, do you want to write on your arms? Maybe. In which case, send us a picture. Exactly. Do a evidence board, you know, wall of spiders on your arm.

All right. I think it's a good time now for a tank's tidbit. Okay. So there's this saying that, you know, don't let the ocean water onto your boat and it can't sink you. Right. Okay. You know what that is in reference to? I mean, I'm thinking it through right now, but I've never heard of it. Yeah. So like, you know, the water in the ocean can't sink the boat unless it gets in. The takeaway is like, don't let other people, their bad energy into your psyche or consciousness or whatever. Right.

But, and this is a caveat that I think is very important to mention, what if the hull of your ship has holes in it from past experiences, damage, trauma, whatever? Because it's easy enough to say, don't let the water in the boat. Okay, fine. I won't put the water- Intentionally do it. Nobody does it intentionally. That's what I'm saying. I think the water gets in through the holes that are created, but-

Kind of like the opposite of blockages, like releasing blockages. Like you got to, you got to plug those up one way or another. And usually, and I hate to say it because people like, I don't know if they're just not, I hate to use this word, but like enlightened or elevated enough because it is like a lofty, lofty prescription for some people. And I totally get that, but forgive, right?

Everybody for everything. Why? The holes are made from not forgiving? No, the holes are made from that, from the act. So like, let's say you're, God forbid, you are like beaten as a child, right? And you were a blameless participant. Because like in my mind, like if something happens between me and another person, I'm

I'm at least, I'm responsible for at least 1% of it. Maybe I said something that pissed them off and then they really fucked me up. You know what I mean? But when you're a child, no excuse. However, and I think you, I don't know if you can speak to this from working with survivors of abuse, but like,

forgiving them is putting a blockage in that hole so they can't affect you anymore. Plugging the hole. Yes, plugging the hole. And I said during the episode, acceptance doesn't mean approval. Forgiveness doesn't mean that you're okay with what happened. It just means that you're not going to let it affect you any longer. And I know that's a tall order, but I can't emphasize how important it is. Yeah, I think the issue for me is

Is genuinely feeling that forgiveness. You know what I mean? Like, cause you said it once, like you have to be authentic. You can't just be like, I forgive you. No. It doesn't work. You have to actually feel it. But like, if I try and forgive somebody and I really don't, then I may plug that hole, but I've just made a new one. Cause I'm pissed. Yeah. Well, listen, that's another hole you can fill in. Yeah. True. But like the, uh, the eighth step is made a list of all people we had harmed and became willing to make direct amends to them all. And, uh,

Typically in steps, there's like little pieces of magic in one part or another. For me, it's all in that second half. Became willing to make amends to them all. Because at that point, you're saying, damn, I did have like... And again, I'm not talking about blameless victims. I'm talking about interactions you've had with people over the course of your life where you felt like they wronged you. Like, I'll never forget when I went through that work. Yeah.

I kept seeing the same fucking thing over and over again with different people. I was like, yo, am I the problem? Maybe it's me. Yeah. It's like the Taylor Swift song, you know? Yeah. It's me. Hi. Yeah. I'm the problem. It's me for sure. But yeah, just like, I don't know, forgiveness as a way of life. And it is going to feel inauthentic at first, just like when I was in communication class

And the teacher said, you know, if you, if you see somebody who seems to be having a hard time, don't say what's wrong with you. Ask them or say, Hey, you seem a little off. Is everything okay? And I remember putting my hand up and going, I would never say that. It sounds totally bizarre coming out of my mouth. She goes, you haven't said it yet. So you don't know how it feels.

Do it. It'll feel awkward the first couple of times. And then your opinion of that phrase will be informed by the response. Because when you say, what's wrong with you? You know what? That's so true. So Dave started doing like a non-religious type of prayer every single night with our little one because he wants it. And when I would first hear it, it sounded so awkward to me because it's just not my wheelhouse like prayer or like...

higher thinking like that. It's just, you know, I'd like it to be, but it's just not. And now I've heard it so many times that it's comforting. Yeah. Is that like, Oh, praying's the best. I mean, I get it, but it's like a non-religious prayer. It's just a gratitude. It's just thanking whatever, whoever for the life we have. Well, one of my notes that I had ready to go, but I felt like it was too short, um, was change your prayers from please to thank you.

Because, you know, obviously... You're not like that. You're not petitioning God for something to happen. Or if you do, we talked about the vibration and the manifestation. The prescription in recovery when you have a resentment against somebody, let's say you fucking hate them.

The prescription is pray for them for two weeks. See how you feel at the end of the two weeks. And everybody says the same thing. They're like, I'll pray that they die. It's like, don't do that. Just pray for them that they get everything that you want in life. It's like Young Sheldon. Effortlessly. I don't know anything about Young Sheldon. I'm a pray for you. Oh yeah. Well, that's a little condescending, but. I liked it though. See, I'm so dark.

Okay, so let's put an end to this episode. Yes, this episode was really, it's for everyone, but especially for our Aussie people down under. Our Aussie contingency? Yeah. That's not an I. This is an I. It didn't feel good that time either. Just say down under. Yeah, no, I crocodile Dundee. I mean, Steve Irwin. I'm just naming. The ring? Yeah.

I love Australia. Steve Irwin. Crocodiles. The Hobbit. Steve Irwin. By the way, I can't believe I didn't even mention this. My twin sister studied and lived in Australia for six months. Really? Yeah. In college? Yes. Obviously studied abroad? Yes. Wow. Yeah. That's fantastic. Figured I'd mention that. I'd like to hear about that. Maybe on the Patreon unhinged episode. Sounds good. All right. If you made it this far, you're a real...

Shrimp on the body. I don't know what the fuck I'm saying. So let's just maybe stop it. We'll see you guys at the next episode. Thanks for listening. Bye.