Adelaide bears the lamentable stigma of entanglement in some of the nation’s most notorious transgressions — such as the Snowtown massacres, the abduction of the Beaumont Children, and the Truro slayings. Furthermore, amongst the South Australian capital's most infamous (and gruesome) episodes lies the still partially unresolved Family Murders.
The term "Family Murders" denotes the heinous acts perpetrated against five young men and adolescents between 1979 and 1983. Each victim was snatched from the thoroughfares of Adelaide, subjected to sexual assault and torment at a secondary location, and subsequently discarded. Law enforcement authorities came to speculate that rather than a solitary malefactor, a cohort of co-conspirators collaborated in a sinister alliance to pursue and execute these atrocious deeds. The phrase "The Family Murders" was coined following remarks by a law enforcement official during a 60 Minutes interview, in which they expressed a desire to dismantle the purported "happy family" of wrongdoers.
The identified victims of this collective were:
Alan Barnes, aged 17: Seized while hitchhiking on June 18, 1979. His mutilated remains were discovered six days later, discarded near the South Para Reservoir, his demise attributed to severe blood loss from an anal wound.
Neil Muir, aged 25: An occasional sex worker without a fixed abode, Muir was last sighted on August 28, 1979, after being expelled from an Adelaide establishment by a bouncer. His dismembered corpse was found the following day, ensconced within a refuse sack in the Port River. He had been dismembered, and the cause of death was hemorrhaging from an anal wound.
Peter Stogneff, aged 14: Absent from school on August 27, 1981, Stogneff never returned alive. His charred and dismembered remains were unearthed ten months later by a farmer burning crops in Middle Beach.
Mark Langley, aged 18: Engaged in a dispute with acquaintances near the Torrens River on the evening of February 27, 1982, Langley exited their company. Upon their return, they found him absent. Nine days later, hikers stumbled upon his surgically mutilated body in the Adelaide foothills, his demise attributed to extensive blood loss from an anal wound.
Richard Kelvin, aged 15: The adolescent son of local Channel Nine news presenter Rob Kelvin, vanished while walking a mere 400 meters from his residence on June 5, 1983. His remains were discovered five weeks later in the Mount Crawford Forest, northeast of Adelaide. He had been subjected to weeks of captivity and torment, his death resulting from hemorrhaging due to an anal wound.
Only one individual faced charges in connection to a single Family Murder – Adelaide accountant Bevan Spencer von Einem, linked to Richard Kelvin’s demise through physical evidence and currently serving a life sentence. Although authorities suspected his involvement in the remaining four murders and maintained a list of other significant persons of interest, they failed to amass sufficient concrete evidence to bring these cases to trial.
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