Crimehub: A True Crime Podcast · Crimehub Studios

The Bodies in the Barrels: The Charles Manson of Australia | Part 2

·36 min·2 clips

Michelle Gardner was kidnapped, tortured with a noose, and forced to phone a friend before the line cut off.

1. Crimehub: A True Crime Podcast covers the Snowtown case and the bodies hidden in barrels across South Australia. 2. The episode centers on John Bunting, Robert Wagner, Jamie Vlasakis, and Mark Hayden, whose roles range from ringleader to accomplice to witness. 3. The episode asks how Bunting’s control over the group turned into a series of murders, cover stories, and barrel burials. 4. Suzanne Allen is introduced as Bunting’s former partner, and the narration says he tried breaking things off in 1996. 5. Suzanne’s brother reported her missing in November 1996, after her home was ransacked, her car disappeared, and her pets appeared starved. 6. Bunting told Jamie Vlasakis that Suzanne had died of a sudden heart attack and later claimed she had run off with a man named Andy. 7. Police believed Bunting and Wagner diced Suzanne up in a bathtub and buried her behind the Waterloo Corner house in the same shallow grave as Ray Davies. 8. Michelle Gardner, a 19-year-old transgender woman, is described as close friends with Bunting’s new wife and as someone who loved children. 9. Her roommate found the television, games, and VHS tapes missing, then discovered Michelle’s wallet under the bed with a thank-you letter written in her handwriting. 10. The narration says Michelle was kidnapped to Murray Bridge, woke in a shed with a noose around her neck, and was burned with cigarettes and shocked with electricity. 11. A forced phone call to a friend becomes one of the episode’s clearest moments, because the line cuts while Michelle is explaining where she is calling from. 12. Barry Lane is described as 14 years old, with Tommy Trevelyan, an 18-year-old paranoid schizophrenic in army fatigues, in a relationship with him. 13. Bunting and Wagner cornered Lane in his home on October 17, 1997, gagged him, duct-taped his head, and tortured him into giving up his banking information. 14. The story says Bunting then posed as Lane to steal welfare payments, while Tommy Trevelyan later became unstable and talked about the killing. 15. Troy Ewed is presented as Jamie’s brother, and Jamie’s allegation that Troy had molested him as a child becomes the pretext for Troy’s death. 16. Troy was forced to record messages such as “Mom, I can’t handle it in this house no more,” before he was strangled, hidden, and eventually placed in a drum. 17. Fred Brooks is framed as a teen trying to escape through Royal Air Force acceptance in September 1998, but Bunting took him into the Murray Bridge bathroom and subjected him to pliers, hot cigarette butts, and a Variac machine. 18. The episode’s tone is grim and procedural, with narration that lingers on exact locations like Murray Bridge, Snowtown, and Humbug Scrub. 19. Listeners drawn to Australian true crime, serial offender networks, and detailed case timelines would likely follow this episode. 20. Listeners seeking light explanations or minimal violence would probably skip it.

As heard by us

A grim, tightly focused account of how domestic spaces became part of the Snowtown killings.

Crimehub tracks the bleak logistics around John Bunting's circle, from Suzanne Allen's disappearance to the lie built around her death and the movement of bodies and barrels toward Snowtown.

Read the full review in PlayNext →

Why you'd press play

You want the Snowtown case to turn on stolen pension checks, moved barrels, and one vanished aspiring Air Force cadet.

Read the full recommendation in PlayNext →

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