The circumstances surrounding the murders were interesting. Firstly, three of the boys were last seen on a Sunday.
Alan Barnes was last seen on Sunday 17 June 1979 and found on Sunday 24 June 1979, one week later. The postmortem revealed that he had not been killed straight away, but in the forty-eight hours before he was found. Also, shortly before he was killed, he had been hit with some type of blunt object; there was a circular abrasion around his right eye and intense bruising of his right eyelid. He was beaten as well as abused.
The examination showed that rigor mortis — where the body stiffens — had set in and was starting to wear off. Alan was probably killed on the Friday and dumped on the Saturday. He wasn’t killed straight away. What was he doing for the week after he was seen hitchhiking? Was he kept captive or was he with someone voluntarily? If he was kept captive, where was he kept?
Mark Langley disappeared in the very early hours of a Sunday morning, on 28 February 1982, and he was found one week and one day later. He disappeared after Peter Stogneff but was found before him. Severe putrefaction had occurred before he was found. The soft tissue under the skin that was exposed to the sun had almost disappeared due to February’s heat working on the body. Mark’s head was almost reduced to just the skull and the soft tissues around his neck were totally destroyed. Jeans covered his lower body and putrefaction there had just started. Because of the state of his body the time of death was not certain but pathology suggested he died at least five days earlier. Was he killed immediately after he went missing? If not, where was he on the Sunday, Monday, Tuesday and possibly Wednesday?
Richard Kelvin also went missing on a Sunday. He was found seven weeks later, on a Sunday. As well as the anal injuries he had sustained, he had injuries to his head, back and one buttock. Pathologist Ross James’ assessment of Richard’s head injury was enlightening. He had received a blow to the head very early in his captivity, which had caused a subdural haemorrhage — bleeding between the brain and skull. The blow could have killed him but he recovered from his injury. Trevor and I felt that the blow could have been inflicted when he first was grabbed in North Adelaide — we knew that he resisted being dragged into the car. His cries for help showed that. The pathology findings indicated he was probably hit around the head when his abductors first grabbed him and forced him into the car.
When Ross James checked Richard’s body, he found a deep-seated bruise on the left side of his back inflicted two or three weeks before his death. The bleeding into the tissues of the back had stopped and the colour of the bruise had changed, allowing Ross to estimate when Richard was hit. There was another deep-seated bruise to his right buttock caused several days before his death. The bastards had beaten Richard as well as abusing him during his captivity.
Neil Muir and Peter Stogneff did not fit with the theory about Sunday. Just over one month after Alan Barnes went missing, Neil Muir was killed. He was last seen on Monday 27 August 1979 and his body found on the next day, at Mutton Cove. He was probably killed on the Monday and dumped in the early hours of the Tuesday morning. Obviously, the people who grabbed Neil Muir could have had an extra day off work but his disappearance varied the pattern. Peter Stogneff’s case was also different.
Peter Stogneff was the third to go. He followed Alan Barnes and Neil Muir. Not on a Sunday this time or the day immediately after a weekend. He wagged school on Thursday 28 August 1981. We could never be sure when he was dumped because Peter was found nearly a year after he went missing. There was insufficient information gathered from Peter’s remains to determine when he was murdered. Was he held captive also?
The similarities between the killings were numerous. The people who murdered Barnes, Langley and Kelvin most likely worked during the week and had Sundays off to ply their terrible trade in mutilation.
Barnes, Muir, Langley and Kelvin all had similar injuries to their anuses that most likely caused their deaths. The bare bones of Peter Stogneff did not reveal any injuries to his skin, tissue and muscle but the saw marks left on his bones and the fact that he was a good looking young man suggested that he, too, probably had been abused before being killed.
All of the young men would have lost one hell of a lot of blood. Alan Barnes, Mark Langley and Richard Kelvin were wearing clothes that were not stained by blood. Also, their bodies showed no dried blood. Blood obviously had been wiped from their bodies. This meant that they had been undressed to some degree, abused and then redressed. The redressing was confirmed because Mark Langley’s belt was replaced in the loops of his pants the wrong way around. The belt buckle was on the right-hand side of the zip instead of the left, where all men place their buckles. Also, his pants were done up but his zip was still undone.
Neil Muir was not redressed. He was not wearing any clothes. His corpse was bizarre enough without having any clothes put back on it. His new clothes consisted of the garbage bags he was dumped in. We could not tell with Peter Stogneff. He and Neil Muir were sawn apart and discarded.
All of the cleaning and cutting meant that the young mens’ bodies had been washed at some stage or that their body parts
