Richard Dallas Kelvin (1 December 1967 c. 10 July 1983), was the son of Rob Kelvin, a long-time television news presenter for Adelaide station NWS 9. Tyres screeched. Why? Von Einem's defence team (now consisting of barrister David Peek with assistance from Helena Jasinski) appealed the conviction to the Court of Criminal Appeal in South Australia and requested that a new trial be set. I wondered why and where these poofters would gather in order to let themselves be bashed by little guys. And put a small, a small axe through the back of his head.. Boston Marathon Bombing Prosecution Rests; Graphic Autopsy So the backlash began. Von Einem stated he thought Kelvin had bisexual tendencies and said that the two of them then had a conversation about problems Kelvin had been having at school, and Kelvin willingly got into the car and they drove to von Einem's home. The purchaser of von Einem's Ford Falcon detailed the condition of the car, and the relative who hosted the birthday party on 10 July stated that von Einem and his mother had arrived there at 5:30pm and left at 10:30pm. Once they won that battle, they switched to campaigning for a royal commission into child abuse. It was just that they never came back.. James knew him from parties and the beats. It was a big buzz around the place. More interesting. The man, known as "Mr. B", was located and informed police in great detail how he and von Einem had picked up young male hitchhikers, had given them alcoholic drinks laced with hypnotic drugs, and had taken them to von Einem's previous home in the Adelaide suburb of Campbelltown, where the young men had been abused overnight and released the next day. There was a lot I didnt understand. This was, in part, due to a series of murders which would go a long way to cementing Adelaides reputation for particularly sick sadism. Steve Williams has not been seen since and is presumed murdered. He says that the whole drama cost him his job. A guy in his 20s in the drivers seat. The prosecution tried to continue with the charge for the murder of Barnes; however, with the problems associated of getting enough evidence admitted into court from associates about von Einem picking up hitchhikers, the final charge was withdrawn on 1 February 1991. A jury of 12 people (seven women and five men) was selected and agreed upon by the prosecution and defence. Now, it isnt at all peculiar that an officer investigating such a murder would focus on the allegations the victim had made. Robinson drives to the end of the track, past two more cars, and does a U-turn at the car park of the Adelaide Pavilion restaurant. He sees the lump on the road is a man, face down, motionless. Just another detail, another repercussion, another agony, rippling down the years. But what those figures dont reveal are the broken ribs and ruptured spleens that were nurtured and unheeded by a society that was looking the other way. The fact is, though, that Lewis and his team already had a deep distrust of the polices ability to handle the allegations, given what theyd been told by their informants about police cover-ups. His lawyer believed a handwriting analysis would clear von Einem. It wasnt until 10 days after he was last seen that a forensic team was sent to examine Moores bedroom and the truth was revealed. Im telling you to go. And he stood up: Cause Im bigger than you.. At approximately 6:15pm on 5 June 1983, von Einem (likely along with other unknown persons) abducted Kelvin near the intersection of Margaret Street & Peppertree Lane, North Adelaide, just 60 metres from Kelvin's home around the corner in Ward Street. The document is only available to the immediate family of the said victim. The medical examiner looks for any signs of disease or injury that may have contributed to the death. I cant help wondering if many would have preferred the dunking to the opprobrium of coming across OShea and his fellow conscientious officers; being charged, named in the paper. It was a talking point, a laughing point, all those things rolled into one., So when they asked John why he hadnt come out to them earlier, hed said, Well everybody carried on so much about Bobby, I couldnt do that to Mum and Dad. Lindsay stole a Subaru Liberty and robbed an On The Run convenience store. Further down the river, 27-year-old Roger James was walking home from dinner with a friend. [At beats] you get people like me and people who are not out. I dont have any doubt that that was the reason for him being murdered, he says. You might have hooked up with somebody in a fumbling and hardly ideal way, I dont know, maybe two in ten times. The message from this decision is that gay people are no longer protected by the law, Penley said. And it got him an occasional television star boyfriend, cabaret singer Tony Monopoly, with whom he lived. The basis for this appeal was the evidence given about Kelvin's heterosexuality, the references to von Einem's own homosexuality through the trial and the negative impact that might have had on the jury, and also how Mr. Justice White in his summation did not include reference to the testimony given by von Einem's relative about his attendance at the birthday party on the day Kelvin's body was dumped. Within a week, police had declared robbery as the motive. The South Australian appeal court agreed. They were hospitality workers. Von Einem admitted that the drugs were his and said that he used them to help him sleep. It was also announced that von Einem had been excused from attending his court hearings so that he could avoid an "unpleasant" three-hour drive with other inmates.[12][13]. Also entered as evidence were samples taken from Barnes's body which showed that sedative drugs had been present. My informants tell me that in Canberra, no one gets out of their car. Although hed been a policeman for many years, I dont think he understood that Ken was going there to pick up men for sex, because at the time remember Ken was married.. So John was staying at Mums, recalls his sister Helen Hillard. I remember a guy in my footy team, Gavin, boasting about doing it. Lindsay went back before a jury. Second, is it a reasonable possibility that what the deceased did or said might cause an ordinary person, in the position of the accused, to lose his or her Are you all right?. Another of those to walk into the Speakers office with stories of abuse was former male prostitute, Brad Shannon the beat regular mentioned earlier who remains happy to talk openly about what happened to him. She was heard yelling and swearing at Negre, wondering why hed endanger their relationship to hang out with people he didnt even know. There were three major factors in von Einem's initial questioning that led police to become increasingly suspicious that they had found their prime suspect: As von Einem went on holiday to the Soviet Union and the United Kingdom during August and September 1983, the case against him began to mount up. They grabbed him. If you are authorized, you may request a copy of the autopsy report, which is the written record of the medical examiner's findings. To do that they had to ignore Toms evidence that hed seen them pulling a jack out of the boot on a nearby street; the evidence of the ransacked glove-box; Robinsons evidence that hed seen someone hiding in the back seat, and that Verco was loitering on his boot watching the cars go by as Blaxland had said, rather than just dashing out for a leak. A parishioner found his body the next morning. Lewis told me that the perpetrators had infiltrated the police service and its administration and evidence was then either corrupted or destroyed. He came down very, very early in the piece on the Thursday morning to advise us that it was a terrible thing that had happened and that [senior officers] Lehmann and Turner were doing the inquiry and quite clearly they were investigating vice squad officers and there were instructions that we were to know nothing about it, absolutely nothing.. They took the stand and carried it through cross-examination. Von Einem then tortured, drugged, raped and held Kelvin captive for five weeks, before murdering him and dumping his body alongside an airstrip near Kersbrook in the Adelaide Hills area (to the north-east of the city and close to where relatives of von Einem lived). Tarrant County Why would they obscure the fact this was almost certainly a hate crime? I seen them scuffling and throw something in the water, he tells me. Thats robbery. Death investigations But if we take the victims of gay-bashing murders as a random sample of beat users and perhaps they are except for a bias towards an older, slower cohort they represent a cross-section of society, according to criminologist Professor Stephen Tomsen, who studied 74 gay murders in NSW in the 1980s and 90s. He was asked if he kept any other drugs in his possession, and he said no. Proceedings began on 19 June 1990 before Justice Kevin Duggan, and six months later on 17 December 1990, Justice Duggan released his findings. Immediately following the David Saint murder, in reading the media reports from police it became obvious to us that they were treating it as a burglary gone wrong. Barnes' fatal injuries mirrored those of Kelvin's closely. Shame, South Australia, Shame.. An accountant by profession, he was convicted in 1984 for the murder of 15-year-old Adelaide teenager Richard Kelvin, the son of local television and radio personality Rob Kelvin. He cant see anyone in it. His arms are folded and a cigarette dangles from his lips. Uniformed constable Rebecca Kuss arrived and saw a man sitting in the door well of the red Mercedes with his feet on the road. Kelvin was 15 years old at the time of his death. The woman called 911. I tried not to go there, but when you were desperate and hungry and tired, I went back there and hoped it would not be me chosen that night for them to have their way. There is a long pause. The next thing I know, he had taken the shoelaces out of my pair of black patent leather shoes I remember the shoes very well, with pointy toes and was attempting to strangle me with my laces. WebKelvin was held captive for approximately five weeks and a post-mortem examination revealed that he had died of massive blood loss from an anal injury, likely caused by the Kevin Samuels, YouTuber with 1.4M subscribers, has died, his Under cross-examination, the prosecution were able to show inconsistencies in her current testimony compared to her earlier statements to police about von Einem's whereabouts on the weekend of 45 June, which weakened the defence case considerably as this highlighted von Einem's change the previous February of his account of what happened on the night of 5 June 1983. Of course, it didn't. Of the 92 offenders he studied, 43 were teenagers and 23 were in their early 20s. Then Handley left a message on Lewiss mobile asking if Lewis could get him a handgun for protection. This answered the question of how fibres from von Einem's carpet had got onto Kelvin's clothes. Police also questioned other people whom von Einem had associated with, but they volunteered little information. When it comes to touching other people up especially from a stranger. It brought to mind something that a PhD student, Thomas Poberezny-Lynch, had said about how the media and courts often dealt with these crimes. But there was only so much they could take. Thomas Poberezny-Lynch tells me: The logic went that the accused would say the deceased made a sexual advance towards me and that triggered my latent homosexuality which then caused me to suffer a bout of insanity because homosexuality was considered a mental illness at the time and therefore inflict fatal violence upon the deceased. I was made to feel like an outcast. He didnt know where he was or how he came to be there. Jim Blaxland, 53, (not his real name), a fundraising manager for a prominent charity, finished the Crossquiz in The Advertiser before he got into his British red Mercedes around midnight to go and house-sit for a friend. Thats the day I lost all faith in the legal system, our whole system of government. They used to talk about it in the vice squad every bloody day of the week, says OShea. McGowan did suggest that Williamson changing his story might tend to substantiate charges being preferred, and I submit this report for directions. He had died from the head injuries. But it didnt take long to figure out that it wasnt about that. They took Pitchers mobile phone and Zito phoned his own mum. Or the car full of yobbos hurling invective. The driver has got out and is now leaning on the boot, his blond mullet illuminated in the Toranas headlights. On 1 November 2007, the ABC reported that after 24 years behind bars, von Einem was now eligible to apply for parole. WebLast updated: January 23, 2020 The Florida Supreme Court has declared that it will apply its decisions in Hurst v.State and Asay v.Statewhich held that non-unanimous jury recommendations of death violate the Florida state constitution and the Sixth Amendment of the U.S. Constitutionto new death penalty cases and to older cases in which the direct In a little ray of light shining through the darkness, though, recent retesting of exhibits has enabled South Australian police to create a DNA profile of a suspect. The four murdered were Alan Barnes in June 1979, Neil Muir in August 1979, Peter Stogneff in August 1981 and Mark Langley in February 1982. In 2009, he killed his next boyfriend, Luke Noonan, 29, in similar circumstances. Two days later, Lewis got up in parliament to say that Handley had been another of his witnesses. No, but like I said, its just its just not on what he did. It led to another investigation and this time, the three former vice squad men were charged in 1988 with manslaughter. You know hes going to go home to his girlfriend., Verco claimed at first not to remember any of this the next morning. The toilets? Bevan Spencer von Einem appearing in Adelaide Magistrates Court in 2008, Learn how and when to remove this template message, List of serial killers by number of victims, "von Einem is Kelvin killer jury decides after 7.5 hours", "Von Einem charged over selling cards to other prisoners ABC News (Australian Broadcasting Corporation)", "Von Einem faces court on child porn charges. But the other reason was they were afraid that the public sympathy over what had happened might be diminished if it came out that Ken was gay and that he was doing the beat. Robinson pulls up alongside and winds down his window. I phone the number attached and the voice confirms his identity. On 11 May 1990, Magistrate Gurry ordered von Einem to stand trial for the two murders of Barnes and Langley. He was again found guilty of murder on March 30 this year and is appealing the conviction. Thanks to the phone call, the attackers were caught and tried. Everyone would see. WebThe autopsy is designed to determine the cause of death, properly document findings, and collect evidence. Given these facts, on 25 May 1984, Magistrate Nick Manos ordered von Einem to stand trial for the murder of Richard Kelvin. As time has gone on, the desire for reform has got larger and more radical. The whole group saw it, and they heard Lindsay tell him to stop. Since then, several suspects of being part ofThe Family have been investigated by the police, but not enough evidence has been gathered against them. They each received minimum sentences of 16 months. The words The Fruit Pirates were graffitied on a chair there. Hed left a big party to go to Veale Gardens. There was also that person who had tipped off police about Von Eimen initially. Three men left a pub in Maryborough about 9pm on July 3, 2008 to smoke pot in the grounds of nearby St Marys. I thought if I was going to look for laser lights, I could do it there as well as anywhere else.. The prosecution decided after Justice Duggan's findings two days earlier to have von Einem tried separately for the murders of Barnes and Langley. I remembered it was an automatic and it was a six-cylinder and I remembered the first three letters of the number plate.. John hadnt come out to his siblings until he was in his 30s. The autopsy revealed the same injuries the previous victims had and the gut-wrenching fact that he had been kept alive, being tortured and sexually assaulted, for around 5 weeks. Lewis had wanted something more wide ranging. You would end up loitering around a toilet block yourself. That was the actual wording of the charge in those days, was it? I ask. Fraser got manslaughter and was out a few years later on parole. It was around 11pm on March 31, 2011, that Andrew Negres girlfriend left a southern AdelaIde pub in a huff. To detect them and deal with them you had to sort of operate partially covertly, which sort of put you in the realms of being a queer yourself. Karen Carpenter's autopsy (via autopsy files) revealed that at the time of her death, she weighed 108 pounds. I was taken to hospital and the police came and saw me and questioned me but when they heard where I was, they verbally abused me, calling me a fucking poofter and a pervert and I got what I deserved. Until the late 70s, the gay-panic defence was not a defence of provocation but of insanity. WebThe medical examiners conducting the autopsy and examinations also discovered that Alan's body had been washed extensively after his death; likely an effort to scrub away any Forensic investigators were able to match the many fibres found on Kelvin's clothing to those taken from von Einem's home, along with hairs found which matched those belonging to him. In 1983, I was placed in a foster home by my parents. The family closed ranks. The court heard that Handley, 38, was acting as a go-between for a third man who wanted to buy a gun from Ninnes worth $1600. Hes dead, thank Christ. You can get away with anything so long as you say, the dirty faggot came on to me.. She knew that several people had visited the unit whilst Kelvin was there. And Utting and Standfield were on notice that they faced criminal libel charges over the letter. They found him asleep and snoring on his bed. He pulled out an axe and hit him in the head with it, twice, before slitting his throat. And then I seen them running up the river a bit. I couldnt get a member of the South Australian police force to sit down and talk to me about any of these murders, but was instead asked to put questions in writing to the media depart- ment. 9 days later, his mutilated body appeared in the Adelaide Foothills. Justice Duggan ruled that the evidence relating to the Kelvin murder, and from the various associates of von Einem and hitchhikers, was inadmissible. It was a great success and it was the memory of that triumph that kept drawing him back. It would become central to an exquisitely Adelaide-style front-page drama, featuring allegations of paedophilia in high places, a string of deaths, claims of a cover-up, a political resignation and, of course, the Parklands that ring of darkness that besieges the city each night. The noose is tightening, Detective Inspector Greg Hutchins, from SA Police Major Crime Investigation Branch, says. I wonder what he has to tell me. Then they started bringing one person in at a time. Also testifying for the defence was the bushwalker, who while walking his dogs through the airstrip had discovered Kelvin's body on 24 July. "Autopsy: The Last Hours of" Karen Carpenter (TV Episode 2014) Verco, 21, and Londema, 20, remained consistent in their story throughout the committal and trial for grievous bodily harm with intent. Based on this reckoning, von Einem could conceivably have been eligible for parole in late 1999. He got pins in his cheek. Everybody thought I was gay but nobody had enough guts to say anything. Despite the intricate details of von Einem's alibi and his version of events, his story had two huge problems. I got out to see who this person was and to see what he was doing, maybe strike up an acquaintance.. It was a matter of national security. In February 1988, the State Coroner at the time in South Australia, Kevin Ahern, ordered an inquest into the deaths of these four young men, and on 24 March 1988, the State Coroner in his findings stated that manner and circumstances in which the four were murdered were very similar to that in the case of Kelvin, particularly the murders of Barnes and Langley. Alarm bells ring in his head, so he pulls away and the guy leaning on the boot turns to watch him go. With enough evidence, along with the information given by "B", to indicate that Richard Kelvin was at von Einem's home around the time of his death, police arrested and charged von Einem with murder on 3 November 1983. He doesnt want to overstate the perils. In my family I was brought up that you finished school, got married, had kids, bought a house and got a good job, but this was not me. While the forensic scientists conceded that this was a possible scenario, under renewed cross-examination by the prosecution, they conceded that it would be still unlikely given the whole science of how fibres and hair are transferred from surface to surface over time. She regained consciousness unsure what had happened. On 29 October 2006, The Australian reported that von Einem had been selling hand-painted greeting cards to prison officers for $20 each. Another man, who would become known as Witness A, had also been thrown in the river that night. And not only did the police mostly turn a blind eye to it, but sometimes, it is believed, they were the perpetrators. It was a thing. The file got sent to storage. HIs cause of death was the same as Alan and Neils and his blood also had traces of a sedative. I despise the legal system and all lawyers and every politician ever put on the face of this earth. Police didnt keep stats and even if they did, they would have been worthless because gay people didnt go to the police. Another beat regular, Brad Shannon, who jokingly styled himself as probably Australias premier authority on beat culture, sadly estimated 90 per cent of beat users were married men. He endured numerous operations. He then made money in Perth beats and travelled to Sydney via Adelaide. Three suspects were on the run and so police were trying to generate leads through the media to hunt them down, but there was never any mention of the gay angle. But the story that became public was this: that Robert Woodland, along with two others, alleged that while underage they performed sexual acts for two MPs (one of whom was still serving in 2002), a judge and a prominent policeman. Mr. Justice White then gave his summation of the trial, and in the early afternoon of 5 November 1984, the jury retired to consider their verdict. Faced with such damning scientific evidence, the defence tried to counter this during cross-examination by floating a possible theory that after von Einem's last contact with Kelvin, he had been abducted by other people, who had stored his clothing for five weeks before murdering him and re-dressing him. Lindsay said he could have a bed upstairs. This blog is about mysteries and true crime. It was 1978. His hatred of the bosses grew as he rose, very slowly, to be a detective in the CIB before he quit in 1981. Bevan Spencer von Einem - Wikipedia I dont remember a lot of it, but I went into the bushes with some guy. He saw the light show then went to leave, but as he drove down the narrow track out of Veale Gardens, the dizziness returned so he pulled over. However, police raids on various locations around Adelaide linked to von Einem yielded few clues. So just imagine the besieged atmosphere of an office where you were hearing stories like this every day implicating powerful people. Interview with a monster: The City of Corpses murders When asked about drugs, von Einem did admit he had Mandrax. People living close to the Kelvins then testified that they had heard noises and commotion corresponding to the abduction taking place on the night of 5 June at around 6pm. Because beats are such secretive places it would be near impossible to survey who is using them. Right at the same time, a group of men was coming towards him along the path until, just as they drew level, one of them was thrown in the river.