After 26 years, the youngest participant in Australia's Snowtown murders — a case that forced a nation to reckon with the darkness latent in ordinary communities — has been approved for parole release. James Vlassakis was 18 when he took part in four of eleven killings orchestrated by John Bunting across the 1990s, and his subsequent cooperation with prosecutors became the thread by which the ringleaders were convicted. His release, upheld this week by South Australia's Parole Administrative Review Commissioner after a year of legal contest, poses the enduring question societies must answer: w
Snowtown killer Vlassakis to be freed after 26-year sentence as parole upheld
Vlassakis pleaded guilty to four murders; 11 total victims were killed, with eight bodies found dismembered in barrels of hydrochloric acid in a disused bank vault.