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Thread: Jane (10), Arnna (7) & Grant (4) Beaumont missing from Glenelg Beach, Adelaide, Australia since 1/26/1966

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    Senior Member blighted star's Avatar
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    Bevan Spencer Von Einem & "The Family" Murders, Adelaide, South Australia

    Even now it's incredibly difficult to find anything online that discusses the crimes of Bevan Spencer Von Einem in any detail. I've just spent 30 mins digging & found fuckall. I've read every Aus Police Journal from the late 70's to the 00's & he was never covered. I knew he was considered one of Adelaide's most notorious paedophile inmates, I saw his name linked as a suspect of major unsolved missing children/child murders for decades, but I was never really aware of what he'd been convicted of.

    Last week I saw a CI Australia episode on his case & was stunned that so little has been publicly released about his crimes. It really seems as though it was so unspeakable it's taken 30 yrs for media to touch it in any detail - this is probably partly due to one of the victims being the son of the most prominent South Australian nightly newsreader of the time & partly due to the conservative (big & little C) nature of Adelaide.

    I had to go back at least 3 search pages to find anything with specific details, but they're mostly book synopses or blogs & very brief



    http://websearch.aic.gov.au/firstaic...p?recno=276351


    When the dismembered and surgically mutilated bodies of five young men were discovered on the outskirts of Adelaide between 1979 and 1983, the crimes were referred to as the 'family murders'. As police investigated the macabre murders, the media speculated that the persons responsible were being protected by 'the family' - a network of high-ranking doctors, politicians, judges and police. Detectives investigated a subculture of paedophilia and sexual sadism among the city's network of homosexual activity, and arrested Bevan Spencer von Einem, a known paedophile. In 1984, von Einem was found guilty of the murder of one of the victims, teenager Richard Kelvin, and was sentenced to life imprisonment. This chapter outlines the case.

    http://websearch.aic.gov.au/firstaic...p?recno=269668

    Between 1979 and 1983, the mutilated bodies of five young men and boys were found in the Adelaide region. The names of the victims were Alan Barnes, Neil Muir, Mark Langley, Peter Stogneff and Richard Kelvin. The press was convinced that the murders were the work of a group of Adelaide homosexuals in very high places, and the case was referred to as the 'Adelaide Family murders'. Following a police investigation which targeted South Australia's homosexual network, an accountant named Bevan Spencer von Einem was convicted of the murder of Richard Kelvin. Von Einem had also been on the scene to rescue Roger James when he and Dr George Duncan had been bashed and thrown into the Torrens River in 1972; Duncan drowned, and two of the three Vice Squad detectives who allegedly threw him in the river were eventually brought to trial in 1987 but found not guilty. Following von Einem's conviction in the Kelvin case, he was also charged with the murders of Alan Barnes and Mark Langley, and at his committal hearing, evidence was also given which implicated von Einem in the disappearance of the Beaumont children at Glenelg Beach in 1966, and the disappearance of Joanne Ratcliffe and Kirsty Gordon from Adelaide Oval in 1973. However the case could not proceed as a great deal of the evidence was ruled inadmissible. But for many Australians there is little doubt that 'the Family' of paedophiles did, and possibly still does, exist in South Australia.

    Memories of a teenager growing up in Adelaide at the height of the disappearances

    http://www.theage.com.au/articles/20...113928409.html
    Last edited by blighted star; 10-29-2015 at 03:15 AM.

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    Senior Member blighted star's Avatar
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    http://the-immoralist.livejournal.com/203559.html



    In the early 1980's, a well-connected, well-organised pedophile syndicate - a gang of nine homosexual men known as, "The Family" - is believed to be responsible for the abduction and rape of more than 200 boys and young men, as well as for a series of gruesome murders in which the victims turned up horribly butchered. The reign of terror lasted for 10 years from 1973 to 1983, and the murdered victims were aged between 14 and 25 and all were found to have died from similar injuries and had been sexually mutilated and dismembered.

    The first person killed was Alan Barnes, 17, who disappeared on June 17, 1979, while hitchhiking in Adelaide. His body, which had been washed and redressed, was found a week later on the banks of a reservoir. An autopsy revealed he had died of blood loss associated with severe internal wounds caused by a blunt object that had been thrust into his anus. The death disgusted Adelaide but there was worse to come. After that, after having had been abducted, the body of Neil Frederick Muir, 25, was skillfully cut into 43 pieces and found in a plastic bag in Adelaide's Port River on August 28, 1979. Next was Peter Stogneff, 14, who had disappeared from Adelaide, Australia in August 1981. Ten months later, in June 1982, his body was found at Middle Beach, north of Adelaide. It had been cut into three pieces, possibly by a surgical saw. The final death was that of Richard Kelvin, 15, the son of a prominent Adelaide newsreader. Richard was abducted, not far from his home in north Adelaide, Australia on June 5, 1983, while on his way to the bus stop. Seven weeks later, on July 23rd, his body was found by an amateur geologist off a track near One Tree Hill in the Adelaide foothills. He was wearing the same clothes that he had on when he was last seen, and he was alleged to have been kept alive and heavily drugged for five weeks before he was murdered. He bled to death from terrible injuries that were inflicted to his rectum.

    Through the course of investigating the murders, the police were led to a 37 year old accountant named Bevan Spencer Von Einem, a middle-aged accountant who lived with his mother - who also allegedly admitted to the involvement in the disappearances of the Beaumont Children and to the vanishing of Kirsty Gordon and Joanne Radcliffe. Coming forward, witnesses began to claim of being in fear for their lives and telling of a secret society of highly placed Adelaide professional men who preyed on boys and young men by: drugging, raping and sometimes killing them, and as to how Bevan Spencer Von Einem had used surgical instruments to examine and mutilate the private parts of his teenaged victims before slicing the bodies of his victims into pieces. Von Einem was charged with the murder of Richard Kelvin only, but remains as the the prime suspect in the murders of Muir, Stogneff, and Barnes. During his trial, one of the witnesses testifying against him, regarded as highly credible by police due to the accurate information he had provided about Von Einem and the killings, related a conversation between himself and Von Einem. Von Einem boasted of having taken three children from a beach several years earlier, and told of how he had taken them home to conduct experiments on them. He said he had performed surgery on each of them, and had "connected them together." He related as to how one of the children had died during the procedure and as to how he had killed the other two and dumped all the bodies in the bushland south of Adelaide. Police had not considered Von Einem in connection with the Beaumont Children, but he very closely matched the descriptions and police sketches from 1966, and furthermore he was known to have frequented Glenelg Beach and to have been fond of children. Von Einem also told the witness that he had taken two girls from the Adelaide Oval during a football match. He said he had killed them but did not elaborate. With regards to the new series of murders, the reference towards surgical experimentation also corresponded to the coroner's reports on several of the murdered men and with that, as well as all the evidence put forth against him, Von Einem was convicted of the murders of Richard Kelvin and two other youths, and even though afterwards he was formally accused of the murder of Alan Barnes, the charges were dropped because of insufficient evidence. As of to this day, the other murders, those of - Alan Barnes, Neil Muir, and Peter Stogneff - remain officially unsolved. He was sentenced to a then south australian record of 36-years non parole period. Since his conviction, he has maintained his innocence and regardless of the degree in which he himself had been implicated, he has refused to nominate anyone else that may have also been involved in the deaths of the victims associated with the so called "Family" murders



    I'll dig around for a link to the CI episode or a decent article. If anyone has something better in the meantime please link it

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    Senior Member blighted star's Avatar
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    Should've tried ytube first - here's the full episode (hopefully it stays up)




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    Senior Member Jumaki15's Avatar
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    Whoa. I had never even heard of this in the slightest

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    Senior Member blighted star's Avatar
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    You've got an excuse - age & distance.


    I'm still stunned. How can you be oblivious to a malicious paedophillic serial killer experimenting surgically on teenage boys in your own country? I mean, we're not exactly overrun with serial killer stories down here - 2 or 3 a decade at most. I was younger than his victims at the time, but when the trial started, I was old enough to notice it in the media - & I never did.




    Edit - forgot the pix



    Then



    Now






    Known Victims



    Alan Barnes



    Peter Stogneff



    Richard Kelvin






    & an article from last year on some of the missing/murdered teens & children in Adelaide & possible links to those suspected of assisting Von Einem.


    http://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/arti...oing-1966.html
    Last edited by blighted star; 10-29-2015 at 03:21 AM.

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    Senior Member emylou's Avatar
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    Every time I see Von Einems face I want to puke.

    Those poor boys. God knows how many people these fuckers tortured and murdered.

    This was my childhood. All of these missing and murdered children of Adelaide.

    There have been so many theories thrown around about the high ranking officials etc. I really believe it is true. Every 5 or so years there will be a story in the newspaper about these poor kids but it never goes anywhere.

    The only people interested are the ones that do the blogs you mentioned.

    You've gotten me interested again. Im going to read some of the blogs.

  7. #7
    Senior Member emylou's Avatar
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    Really long but informative. From 2014.
    http://m.adelaidenow.com.au/news/south-australia/lost-diary-gives-south-australia-police-new-lead-into-alan-barnes-murder-by-the-family/story-fni6uo1m-1226821049791
    NIGEL HUNT
    FEBRUARY 08, 2014 10:30PM

    LOST DIARY gives South Australia police new lead into Alan Barnes murder by The Family

    POLICE are investigating new information linking convicted killer Bevan Spencer von Einem to the abduction and murder of teenager Alan Barnes.

    The evidence is contained in a detailed diary kept by a man who was a close associate of several key players in the so-called Family murders.

    The diary entries, provided to Major Crime Investigation detectives this week by The Advertiser, reveal sensational evidence that indicates von Einem took photographs of Alan Barnes, 17, after sexually abusing him and that von Einem and another suspect in the five murders rented a unit in the eastern suburbs where they took hitchhikers they had picked up and drugged to sexually abuse them.

    The diary entries, containing the correct names of the three so far uncharged suspects and their associates, corroborate evidence Major Crime detectives already have linking von Einem to the Barnes murder and provide more evidence of the activities of the group in picking up young male hitchhikers, drugging them and then sexually abusing them.

    Significantly, the diary entries provide several new lines of inquiry for detectives and are likely to lead to several suspects and close associates being re-interviewed.

    Von Einem, 66, is the only Family member to face justice over the Family murders - he is serving a life sentence, with a 24-year non-parole period, for the murder of 15-year-old Richard Kelvin, in 1983.

    Four other murders - those of Mark Langley, 18, Alan Barnes, 17, Neil Muir, 25, and Peter Stogneff, 14, - have also been linked to the Family.

    In 1989, von Einem was also charged with murdering Barnes and Langley, but the charges were later withdrawn when crucial similar-fact evidence was ruled inadmissable.

    That evidence included testimony by numerous men that von Einem and others had picked them up, drugged and sexually abused them.

    Their testimony was backed by several associates of von Einem who gave corroborating evidence - and implicated others.

    In 2008 Major Crime detectives conducted an exhaustive review of the Family murders, targeting von Einem and three other key offenders and up to eight of their associates.

    In 2010 then Director of Public Prosecutions Stephen Pallaras, QC, said after examining the review report that there was not enough evidence to charge either von Einem or any other suspects.

    In the latest development in the case, the diary entries which detectives are now investigating were made by Kensington Park man Trevor Peters, who died last November. They were found by his brother while he was cleaning out the Shipsters Rd terrace house occupied by his sibling.

    The house is one door from another occupied by a close associate of von Einem's.

    That person, a transvestite, assisted von Einem by luring male hitchhikers into his car in return for drugs. Her former housemate, another transvestite named Pru Firman, who also assisted von Einem, died in 2010.

    The most shocking entry details how Peters, a homosexual who mixed in the same circles as von Einem's associates, saw photographs of Alan Barnes in von Einem's possession.

    He states he was at the hairdressing salon of a close von Einem associate, Denis St Denis, at Hazelwood Park in June, 1979, when this happened. Barnes was abducted on June 17 and his body found on the banks of the South Para reservoir a week later.

    Peters states in his diary that while he was having his hair cut and streaked, von Einem arrived to have his hair cut and dyed.

    "He was in a very happy mood and looking knowingly at Denis, smiling broadly and excited about something they both seemed to share,'' he wrote.

    He said while he was waiting for the bleach in his hair to work, St Denis and von Einem went to a room in the rear of the salon behind a curtain, adjacent to where St Denis' mother Dot lived.

    "I could hear Bevan and Denis giggling and laughing and both saying 'oooh how evil, oooh it's evil.' Denis said this several times and I became curious as to just what it was they both found so interesting and entertaining and, feeling that I was being left out, got out of the chair to investigate.

    "I found them huddled over a waist-high table directly behind the curtain. There was a group of photographs, polaroids, laid out on the table, maybe 4, 5 or 6 of them, with Bevan holding more photographs in his hand.

    "They both began to collect the photos quickly but not before I saw them. The photographs were of a young attractive blond-haired man lying on his side on the front seat of a car with his legs bent towards the steering wheel...''

    The Advertiser has opted not to print the diary entries describing the nature of the photographs because of their graphic content.

    "I was shocked at seeing the photos and they both hurriedly gathered them up, with Bevan putting them all into his back pocket of his trousers,'' Peters wrote.

    "When I asked who the young man was, Bevan said 'oh, just some hitchhiker'.''

    Peters wrote that he later recognised the man in the photographs as Alan Barnes after seeing newspaper stories about his abduction.

    Peters wrote that several weeks before St Denis died, in the nineties, he had called him from Calvary Hospital and Peters had visited him several times before he passed away.

    "On one occasion we sat together in the garden at the hospital and once again I asked him about the photographs. He told me that over the years that he spent at Adelaide's 'beats' and toilets, Bevan had shown him dozens of such photographs of nude young men, more often than not with objects, including bottles, inserted well into their anuses.

    "However, he said, smiling at me, he didn't remember there being any photos at the salon ever and 'if you know what's good for you, neither should you!' He died four days later.''

    Pair rented unit to terrorise hitchhikers

    CONVICTED murderer Bevan Spencer von Einem and a close associate rented a unit in the eastern suburbs where they took drugged hitchhikers to sexually abuse them, according to the associate.

    The disturbing revelation is contained in the diary of a close friend of the von Einem associate - Trevor Peters - that Major Crime detectives are now examining.

    In the diary he states that von Einem and his associate, hairdresser Denis St Denis, had rented a unit in the "inner eastern suburbs, maybe Norwood, Kent Town or Dulwich'' and that St Denis had shown Peters on one occasion.

    "Both Denis and Bevan lived with their mothers and needed a place to take the young men for sex or 'trade' especially 'rough trade' as Denis had told me on the day he drove me past the unit. Denis said they kept it a secret from their families that they rented the unit.''

    Police have stated that murder victims Richard Kelvin, Mark Langley and Alan Barnes were kept alive for a time after being abducted. They were also washed and redressed before their bodies were dumped. Investigations have so far been unable to locate any premises where they may have been kept - in the Kelvin case for six weeks - before being murdered.

    While detectives found forensic evidence that confirmed Kelvin had been at von Einem's Paradise house after being abducted, he was not kept there. At the time von Einem lived with his mother who has since died.

    Peters states in the diary that a woman, whom he named and who was questioned by detectives during investigations, "said that she had been told Richard Kelvin had been held in a unit and that Denis St Denis had cut Kelvin's hair during that time. She said that several people had visited the unit while Kelvin was there''.

    "I was surprised at what she said and suspected that she knew more than she was saying,'' he wrote.

    In another entry Peters, who died in November last year, details how von Einem used several transvestites to lure hitchhikers into his car in return for drugs and reveals another location the hitchhikers were taken to be abused.

    "Pru Firman (who died in 2010) was sharing a rented house in Alberton in the late '70s or early '80s with another transvestite or sex change named xxx xxxx and xxxxxxx. (The latter is another suspect and close friend of von Einem's, who cannot be named for legal reasons. He is also the brother of a former Olympic athlete.)

    "Pru said that Bevan von Einem frequently took drugged young men there to have sex with them. She said that xxxx (the suspect) would always have a back room ready for him and Bevan ready to abuse sexually the boys that Bevan brought there.

    "She said that xxxx (the suspect) would always have the bed made and candles ready. She said that xxx (another suspect who is an eastern suburbs businessman) was there to meet Bevan 'frequently'. When I questioned frequently, she said 'yes, all the time'.''

    "He was there lots and lots of times. He took the drugged boys after Bevan and xxx (the suspect) had finished with them. Sometimes xxx (the suspect) went with him.''

    Peters wrote that following von Einem's arrest over the Kelvin murder the suspect and two of the transvestites moved to Sydney to live.

    "All 3 of them had been actively involved with Bevan by dressing in drag and luring the young hitchhikers into Bevan's car in exchange for mandrax and sepapax, Pru said,'' Peters states.

    Peters also wrote that Firman's housemate and fellow transvestite, who lives in Shipsters Rd at Kensington Park, was also sexually involved "with Bevan and drugged hitchhikers''.

    "She (he) went as a female decoy in order to get mandrax from Bevan,'' he states.

    "Xxxxx knows a lot more than she says. I know that for a fact."
    Fucking fuckers.

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    Senior Member debk589's Avatar
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    I watched Butchered Boys the other night. Holy fuck. This guy is evil incarnate.

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    Scoopski Potatoes Nic B's Avatar
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    I thought we had a thread on this...?


    Quote Originally Posted by marakisses View Post
    yes i said i will leave it under you storage he said cuddle with me i said shut up it over??? what am i doing wrong??
    Quote Originally Posted by curiouscat View Post
    Happy Birthday! I hid a dead body in your backyard to celebrate. Good luck finding it under the cement. You can only use a stick to look for it.

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    Quote Originally Posted by Nic B View Post
    I thought we had a thread on this...?
    I looked, but couldn't find one.

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    Scoopski Potatoes Nic B's Avatar
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    Quote Originally Posted by raisedbywolves View Post
    I looked, but couldn't find one.
    I skimmed through and couldn't either, swore I read about this story here. Thought it was one blighted had posted about.


    Quote Originally Posted by marakisses View Post
    yes i said i will leave it under you storage he said cuddle with me i said shut up it over??? what am i doing wrong??
    Quote Originally Posted by curiouscat View Post
    Happy Birthday! I hid a dead body in your backyard to celebrate. Good luck finding it under the cement. You can only use a stick to look for it.

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    Scoopski Potatoes Nic B's Avatar
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    Ah, they were mentioned in this thread: http://mydeathspace.com/vb/showthrea...sts-held-2013)

    You were right, no thread but I DID read about them here somewhere, so I am not going crazy lol

    Edit: found another with more info: http://mydeathspace.com/vb/showthrea...8-Child-Murder
    Last edited by Nic B; 02-01-2018 at 12:38 PM.


    Quote Originally Posted by marakisses View Post
    yes i said i will leave it under you storage he said cuddle with me i said shut up it over??? what am i doing wrong??
    Quote Originally Posted by curiouscat View Post
    Happy Birthday! I hid a dead body in your backyard to celebrate. Good luck finding it under the cement. You can only use a stick to look for it.

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    Senior Member More Cowbelle's Avatar
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    This whole situation is so awful. I can't even imagine what the family is going through

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    Quote Originally Posted by More Cowbelle View Post
    This whole situation is so awful. I can't even imagine what the family is going through
    I am sure they want answers, but at this point it's almost worse to dig it all up again unless LE is 100% sure they can give the case closure. It's obvious the family has learned to go on and live with the situation, but this has got to pull all the scabs off those wounds. What a heart wrenching situation.

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    Senior Member blighted star's Avatar
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    Quote Originally Posted by raisedbywolves View Post
    Neither our search function nor google pulled even these up. Anyway, now they have their own thread, and hopefully soon there will be some answers.
    Just realised why they wouldn't come up for you, it's probably because they were always mentioned under the name used for the case in Australia
    - "The Beaumont Kids"


    Edit : this thread should get linked here for future reference too. Derek Percy (the second thread Nic linked) & Bevan Spencer Von Einem were both considered suspects in the Beaumont case - with very good reason

    http://mydeathspace.com/vb/showthrea...outh-Australia
    Last edited by blighted star; 02-05-2018 at 10:06 PM.

  16. #16
    Senior Member blighted star's Avatar
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    No real updates but there was a new article published over the weekend tying together a few missing children's cold cases in Adelaide

    https://m.news-mail.com.au/news/sist...retes/3449763/


    The city of kidnapped children




    Joanne Ratcliffe, 11 and Kirste Gordon, 4, vanished from Adelaide Oval in 1973 in a case often compared to the missing Beaumont children. Picture: Supplied

    by Marnie O?Neill
    23rd Jun 2018 3:00 PM | Updated: 24th Jun 2018 5:06 AM
    EXCLUSIVE

    THE sister of a girl snatched in one of Australia's most baffling unsolved child abduction cases is calling for all evidence in long-term missing children cases to be urgently retested for DNA.

    Joanne Ratcliffe, 11, and Kirste Gordon, 4, were snatched from the grounds of Adelaide Oval in broad daylight during a football match attended by thousands of people on August 25, 1973.

    Related Items
    Police confirm excavation to find Beaumont children
    https://m.news-mail.com.au/news/exca...-case/3323532/
    Beaumont breakthrough: 'Best lead that there has ever been'
    https://m.news-mail.com.au/news/beau...-been/3316999/



    The case often draws comparisons with - and could be linked to - the three Beaumont children who vanished from the same city seven years earlier.

    Suzie Ratcliffe, who has dedicated her life to finding out what happened to her sister and Kirste, says police are potentially sitting on a goldmine of DNA evidence that could resolve countless cold cases.

    "It's paramount that everything that has been collected in the cases of these long-term missing children is retested for DNA," Ms Ratcliffe told news.com.au.

    "With all the advances in DNA technology it's very possible that retesting will lead provide answers that families like mine have been waiting for years.


    "These are families who have been living in a state of anguish and grief for decades, wondering every single day what happened to their loved ones.

    "With the missing, there is no such thing as closure, it never ends and it doesn't get any easier. After five, 15 or 50 years the grief and frustration is still there and that pain never eases.

    "If DNA retesting leads to a match in just one of those cases it would be worth it and also give hope to all the others whose lives have been in suspension since the day their loved one vanished."





    Joanne Ratcliffe?s father makes a television appeal for information after her 1973 abduction with four-year-old Kirste Gordon. Picture: Supplied






    Suzie Ratcliffe, who was born 14 months after her sister Joanne?s abduction, visits Adelaide Oval for the first time in 2016. Picture: Matt Turner.


    Ms Ratcliffe, who runs missing persons advocacy group Leave A Light On Inc, says there are between 30 and 40 long-term missing children in South Australia alone.

    That's not the only shocking statistic when it comes to the country's disappeared.

    Australia's queen of forensics, Dr Jodie Ward, says there are more than 500 sets of unidentified human remains archived across the country and around 2000 long-term missing people.

    "It's time Australia committed to a laboratory solely dedicated to missing persons casework," Dr Ward wrote in an article for The Conversation.

    "Current capability in DNA forensics could allow us to match up remains with some of these missing persons cases, and potentially give families relief."

    The NSW Health Pathology forensic DNA specialist has been working with the Australian Army's Unrecovered War Casualties unit in Sydney's west to identify the remains of soldiers dating back to World War I.

    She and her team have been able to extract DNA from bone fragments and apply world leading technologies to obtain DNA profiles.


    The process involves decontaminating the bones, grinding a sample into powder and dissolving it to extract the genetic blueprint.

    The technology means that the age and condition of human remains is no longer the obstacle it once was and Dr Ward is keen to apply it to the nameless, faceless bones of civilian men, women and children gathering dust in evidence rooms.



    Les and Kathleen Ratcliffe with three-year-old Suzie in 1977. Picture: Supplied




    A police sketch of the man believed to have abducted Joanne Ratcliffe and Kirste Gordon. Picture: Supplied





    The sketch bears a striking resemblance to Arthur Stanley Brown, who abducted, raped and killed sisters Susan and Judith Mackay in 1970. Picture: Supplied

    Ms Ratcliffe told news.com.au that she was excited about Dr Ward's work and the prospect of a centralised, national DNA database.

    "It's really incredible to think that there are the bones of 500 unidentified people, just sitting there in storage, and that the remains of the Beaumont children or all the other missing children who are not as well known, could be among them," she said.

    "This is something we must do as a matter of urgency. Some families have endured the pain of not knowing for decades and some parents have died waiting for answers."

    Ms Ratcliffe said if relatives of the missing had to choose between getting justice and putting their bones to rest, the overwhelming majority would choose the latter.

    "We know that the life of the person who carried out the crime has changed forever and punishing that person is secondary to bringing that loved one home," she said.

    Ms Ratcliffe's father Les campaigned relentlessly to find Joanne and Kirste until he died of cancer in 1981 and now her mother, who she describes as her "inspiration" is growing frail with ill health.

    "When Joanne disappeared, I wasn't even born," she told news.com.au

    "I was born 14 months later and I was the 'saving grace'. Even though I never got to meet Jo face-to-face, I have always been mentally and emotionally connected to her.

    "Although it was incredibly painful for them, my family never ever denied any requests from me in regards to information about my sister; as painful as it was they wanted to make sure I knew my older sister Jo."



    Notorious paedophile Stanley Arthur Hart bears an uncanny resemblance to the police sketch of the man believed to have abducted Joanne Ratcliffe and Kirste Gordon. Source: Ancestry.com.au

    Joanne and Kirste vanished after they went to use the toilets at Adelaide Oval during a match between Norwood and North Adelaide. Joanne had escorted Kirste earlier on in the match and offered to take the little girl when she needed to go again.

    This time, however they didn't return. A witnesses later recalled seeing a girl matching Joanne's description thumping and punching and screaming at a hatted man carrying a much younger girl.

    The man bears a striking resemblance to convicted rapist and double killer Arthur Stanley Brown, who abducted, raped and killed sisters Townsville Susan and Judith Mackay in 1970.

    He also resembles notorious South Australian paedophile Stanley Arthur Hart.

    Both men, long dead, have also been linked to the missing Beaumont children.

    "I am so incredibly proud of Jo because I know she fought, she fought so hard to get Kirste back from that man," Ms Ratcliffe said.

    "People say to me: 'Why didn't she run away?' But she was given a responsibility that day - to look after Kirste and not let her out of sight under any circumstances - and she stuck with it.

    "She had a temper like you wouldn't believe so she would have given him hell. She fought to try and keep Kirste safe."

    Thanks to the work of Ms Ratcliffe and her organisation, there is now a $1 million reward attached to the Adelaide Oval abduction and 13 other South Australian cold cases currently under review.

    "What I want more than anything is to bring Joanne home to our mother before it's too late," she said.

    "I will never give up hope and I will never back down. I will fight to bring Jo home for as long as it takes."

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    This is a huge article, it's really a just a giant ad for a book & podcast but they should be pretty interesting because Von Einem has given interviews & as the author has said, there's been very little coverage of these crimes.

    There are way more pix in the orig article so click through if you want to see them all. I might add them later if I can be bothered messing around with the pic per post limit




    https://www.news.com.au/national/cri...3c501f21315248

    Interview with a monster: The City of Corpses murders


    A diabolical man jailed for one of Adelaide?s terrifying teen boy torture murders has spoken for the first time from behind bars.


    September 2, 2021 - 1:17AM




    WARNING: Distressing content

    It?s visiting time at Port Augusta prison and the diabolical Bevan Spencer Von Einem, the only man jailed in any of Adelaide?s teen boy torture serial murders, is licking his lips.

    Thirty-five years since Von Einem murdered Richard Kelvin, 15, in a prolonged slaying of barbaric sexual sadism, the now 72-year-old is facing a visitor from the outside world.

    Crime author Debi Marshall is the first such person Von Einem has seen in years, and the vile killer chooses to regale her with talk about his favourite subject: sex.

    Sitting on a plastic chair in green sweatpants, the depraved rapist and boy killer speaks in a soft voice and splays his soft, doughy hands.

    The cross-dressing mummy?s boy with massive social pretensions, despite his ordinary background, is regaling Marshall with vignettes from his sordid former life in Adelaide.


    Bevan Spencer Von Einem (above in prison in 1989) still pretends he didn?t murder schoolboy Richard Kelvin after being convicted of abducting and torturing him.




    Von Einem as a free man prior to his conviction.



    Bevan Spencer Von Einem in Yatala Prison?s visits room.



    Aerial view of Adelaide?s Torrens River gay beat taken after the drowning murder of law lecturer George Duncan in 1972, allegedly by policemen.


    Or the ?City of Corpses? as Marshall has nicknamed the South Australian capital, given the series of murders it has seen over many decades.

    Marshall is on a mission. With a podcast, a TV series and now a book, she is trying finally to resolve five serial murders for the sake of families still anxious for answers about their lost boys.

    The five boys killed in the series known as the Family Murders were all found with their torn and dismembered bodies bearing marks of incalculable pain and savagery.


    The backstory of the murders has always been the same, that a tight-knit group of five or six adult men, paedophiles who include members of Adelaide?s elite, carried out the slayings.

    Bevan Spencer Von Einem was the only one who got caught, after the fifth boy ? the son of a popular Adelaide newsreader ? was abducted, tortured and horrifically killed.

    Debi Marshall interrupts Von Einem?s indulgent jailhouse talk by mentioning Richard Kelvin, who vanished 300m from his family home on a Sunday afternoon in mid-1983.

    After being held drugged but alive for five weeks, the teenager?s body was washed, dressed and dumped in scrub by a dirt airstrip near Mt Crawford about 30km north of Adelaide.


    Richard Kelvin, 15, (above with his father, former Channel 9 Adelaide newsreader Rob Kelvin) was abducted and murdered in 1983.



    Richard Kelvin, (above) abducted and murdered in 1983, was in love with a new girlfriend who he planned to marry at the time of his cruel death.



    Day Street, Paradise home of convicted murderer Bevan Spencer von Einem, where he claims the boy willingly went after being abducted from a laneway in North Adelaide.


    Von Einem responds to Marshall with a smooth stream of well-rehearsed victim blaming about the boy, slavering as he delivers it.

    It?s a Saturday afternoon and Marshall has travelled far to be here, in this remote prison, and omitted facts though never lied to prison authorities to be seated opposite this drooling creep.

    ?(Kelvin) was not gay, just a beautiful young man with a new girlfriend he wanted to marry,? Marshall later tells news.com.au.

    Disguising her rage, she jolts Von Einem with a question about an item Kelvin was wearing when he was last seen alive and safe.

    Von Einem takes the bait and before he can help himself, a telling answer is falling off his tongue.

    ?He?s used to being in control. He wanted to control me ? the slip was pretty great and he couldn?t catch it,? she said.

    The gotcha moment sparks Von Einem?s own rage and for a moment, as Marshall fears he might be about to snap her neck in the visits room, the monster is bared.

    ?He started getting really jittery and anxious, his facial expression changed ? you were looking at the killer,? she said.

    It?s the real Von Einem, Marshall believes, the man a teenage boy saw before being brutalised and killed.


    cont'd

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    The jury visits spot where Richard Kelvin?s body was found, northeast of Adelaide.


    And Marshall is no novice at delving into the minds of evil men.

    The award-winning journalist and author has written books about the Snowtown murders, NSW Family Court bomber Leonard Warwick and Derek Percy, perhaps Australia?s most prolific child killer.

    Marshall?s goal is to prove what the South Australian justice system has to date failed to do: that more than one male youth saw this same monster and his evil cohorts before dying.

    The visit ends and Marshall leaves the inmate to return to his cell in a prison where he?ll likely die.

    Its location is a fitting purgatory for the socially ambitious psychopath Von Einem, between a featureless desert and the Spencer Gulf.

    The Gulf was named by explorer Matthew Flinders in honour of a first lord of the British Admiralty, who a crashing snob like Bevan Spencer Von Einem could only dream was his distinguished relative.

    It is that, Von Einem as the opportunistic parvenu to a perverted elite of Adelaide society, that is one of his most despicable qualities.

    In her shocking new book Banquet: The Untold Story of Adelaide?s Family Murders, Marshall returns to it as a chief motivation, to be a ?someone?.

    In the whole sick saga of the murders, from the luring of boys off the street to drug and rape, to the sinister, fastidious washing of the bodies before they were dumped, Von Einem?s social toadying stands out.

    As Marshall writes, in his imaginary world Von Einem is descended from a privileged Germanic family going back to the time of the Crusades.

    He imagines himself to be a high-flying professional, a pilot or perhaps a gynaecologist, a gay man but not a boring old gay, instead a someone that other men want to be with.

    In reality, Von Einem grew up in a house collapsing from termite infestation with a vicious brute of a Germanic father who allowed his drinking buddy to rape his own son as a boy.

    Von Einem was a would-be accountant who slogged it out in a tedious job as a bookkeeper for years, while living with his mother.

    In his secret life, he became a drug supplier and exploited drug-addicted trans women to lure victims off the streets.

    He was a 193cm-tall coward who used date rape drugs like Mandrax to overpower and sexually abuse boys.

    In revisiting the murders, Marshall is trying to unearth long-held secrets in South Australia, where suppression orders have protected ?people of power and influence? for decades.

    They still do: she succeeded in having five suppression orders on names overturned.

    These include a man named Lewis Turtur, a former acquaintance of Von Einem?s who decided it was ?time? the truth about the killer?s days of drugging and raping boys.

    Turtur, who had no involvement with any of the Family Murders, recalled Von Einem bringing drugged-up boys to his house for sex.

    All the boys he saw left in the morning still alive, but he told Marshall that they arrived unconscious, or barely so, and ?Von Einem had drugged them?.

    Turtur had gone to police following the revelations about Richard Kelvin?s murder in 1983.

    Nevertheless, powerful people who were implicated back then still today, armed with lawyers, continue to resist public exposure.


    Murder victim Peter Stogneff was abducted and slain in 1981.

    These include a shadowy figure she calls ?the businessman?, who Marshall finds and confronts in a scene she retells in the book, but who remains anonymous to most of us.

    Not to the victims? families who know the names of the people who likely killed their sons and brothers.

    Marshall?s motivation in creating her podcast and Foxtel series Frozen Lies and now this book is to prompt a royal commission into the unsolved murders of the four other young men whose horrific deaths were grouped with Kelvin?s.

    As she told news.com.au, for the murders to remain unsolved would be like Ivan Milat?s Belanglo slayings to still be open cases in NSW.

    Before all hell broke loose after Richard Kelvin?s body was found, the horrific nature of the murders of four other young men had gripped Adelaide, and created no less grief for their loved ones.


    The body of Mark Langley, 18, was found dumped (above) at Sprigg Road, Summertown, in 1982.


    Mark Langley (above).

    Alan Barnes, 16, was murdered in June 1979, Neil Muir, 25, two months later, followed by 14-year-old Peter Stogneff in 1981, and Mark Langley, 18, in 1982.

    Marshall charts the connections between the first two victims and Bevan Spencer Von Einem, who was charged with Alan Barnes and Mark Langley?s murders.

    But committal proceedings failed to come to fruition after prosecutors decided evidence was insufficient to confidently proceed to trial.

    In each murder, the manner of death is dreadful and Marshall has decided to use the forum of her book to pull no punches about what happened.

    To put it bluntly, the young men and teens died from massive blood loss from anal injuries, and what amounts to mutilation and crude surgery.


    The mutilated remains of Neil Muir were found in plastic bags in a river.


    Police recover Muir?s body in plastic bags in Port River in August 1979.


    Neil Muir?s dismemberment is related in harrowing detail, his body sawn into four, his fingers, tattoos, private parts and intestines removed, his limbs thrust inside the cadaver.

    The absolute desecration of Muir?s body can be cast against the high mindedness of South Australia?s justice system in shielding the names of possible perpetrators for 40 years.

    The same system has served to protect and even cosset Von Einem since his conviction and sentence for Richard Kelvin?s murder.

    Before being sent to the netherworld of Port Augusta prison, Von Einem lived as much of a high life that you can behind bars.

    Inside Yatala Labour Prison, he charmed guards and programs staff to bring him special food and creature comforts.

    Von Einem and fellow murderer Stephen McBride were eventually rumbled for living in a ?luxury cell? with carpet, two TVs and comfortable furniture.


    Journalist in the ?luxury? jail cell of prisoners Bevan Von Einem and Stephen McBride at Yatala Labour Prison in 1985.

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    SA convicted murderers Stephen Wayne McBride and Bevan Spencer Von Einem after their carpeted cell with two TVs was revealed.


    Von Einem had been able to have his prized harp brought into Yatala, the same one he claimed to have played to Richard Kelvin at his home in 1983.

    That had been an attempt at trial to explain how the teenager?s hair had found its way into his bedroom at his mother?s home in the Adelaide suburb of Paradise.

    SA Corrections was forced to split up Von Einem and McBride, the ?Sandy Creek killer?, who murdered a postmistress, robbed a woman at knifepoint and attempted to murder a third woman.

    Afterwards, Von Einem claimed the duo had been used as ?political footballs?, and bemoaned the publicity, which he said made his jail life harder.

    ?We are in here with a wall around us and there is not much they can do to us. It?s our families who cop it all,? Von Einem said.

    ?(Prison life) had been hard at first. But some of the fellows have shown me how to follow the ropes and get on with life inside.?

    Von Einem said he enjoyed nights when cells were locked and ?you are free to do what you want?.

    This included painting and drawing birthday cards for other inmates and their families.

    Von Einem?s power of manipulation go back decades to when he was masquerading by day as the mild-mannered bookkeeper.


    Junction of upper and lower track of path in the gay beat along Torrens River near the University of Adelaide.


    Scotland Yard detectives investigate the death of Dr George Duncan at Torrens River gay beat.

    His mother was the envy of her friends for having such a ?good? son who dutifully drove her to the Adelaide Hills to stay with a friend while he got up to nefarious life back in town.

    By night, Von Einem frequented Adelaide?s Mars Bar and the Green Dragon, and its notorious gay beats down by the Torrens River where boys were picked and sometimes tossed in to its depths.

    He was known as ?Bevbang?, his parties guaranteed to turn into an orgy fuelled by the drugs he peddled from bent doctors.

    Marshall believes Von Einem was ?very probably impotent? which might explain the terrible acts perpetrated on Richard Kelvin as a kind of twisted display of potency or power.

    He was an associate of gay lawyer Derrance Stevenson, who was murdered two weeks before Alan Barnes ? who may have witnesses the event ? went missing.

    Stevenson?s slaying, the scandalous ?body in the freezer? murder, is just one of many facets of Adelaide?s underbelly dug up and disturbed by Marshall in her quest to she light on Adelaide?s dark truths.

    Von Einem?s other associates are mostly either dead, have fled the country or remain protected by the SA system.


    Members of Adelaide's gay community mourn mark the 10th anniversary of the death of Dr George Duncan beneath the Adelaide University footbridge.


    The first Family Murder, and one of three Von Einem was charged with, was Alan Barnes, a 16-year-old who vanished in mid-1979.

    Nicknamed ?Spook? for his pale skin and hair, he was a cheeky boy whose attraction for women made him, his sister says, a ?chick magnet?.

    A week before his 17th birthday, Barnes goes missing and when he?s not home for the celebration, his 41-year-old mother Judy knows in her heart that ?Alan?s gone?.

    On June 24, 1979, a body is tossed from height into the South Para Reservoir in the Adelaide Hills.

    Two friends on an afternoon bike ride find the body; Alan?s older sister Robyn refuses to believe it?s her brother.

    An autopsy concludes the cause of death is blood loss, from bleeding from the anus which has deep lacerations and evidence of massive trauma.

    The body also has broken bones, head injuries from beatings with a blunt instrument and a severed spinal cord.

    It is also remarkably clean, having been washed and redressed; toxicology tests will find the hypnotic sedative chloral hydrate and alcohol in his system.


    Murder victim Alan Barnes, whose family is still searching for answers.


    Before her death aged 71, Judy Barnes, (above) with a picture of her son, never gave up campaigning for justice.


    Forensic examiners will deduce that Alan Barnes was held captive for a week, assaulted, drugged and horrifically abused with a high level of violence right up to his murder.

    Marshall poses the question in Banquet about why the boy?s killers had to inflict such a level of violence right up until the end when he was already drugged and captive.

    Alan?s mother Judy Barnes fought all her life for the truth to come out about her son?s killers.

    She died aged 71 in 2009 from kidney failure, having passed ?the torch? on to her three children.

    As Marshall says, the remaining relatives of all the victims are now ageing too, as are police officers and witnesses who could testify before a royal commission into the murders.

    And then there?s Von Einem, now in his 70s and suffering from diabetes.

    ?He?s the ultimate coward,? Marshall says with not a small amount of loathing.

    ?Imagine how it is for the families?? she asks.

    ?Key suspects are still walking the streets, their identities protected by the law.

    ?The same names that keep coming up time and time again, they?ve been hanging around for decades and these people are so determined to keep their reputations intact.

    ?It?s time ? to drag these cases out of the darkness and into the light. It?s long, long overdue.?

    Anyone with information regarding the Family Murders of any of Adelaide?s unsolved killings can contact Marshall on dminvestigates@foxtel.co

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    I just realised this thread's coming up in mis pers under the names of the Beaumont kids. Did we merge them at some point?

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