‘Bodies in the barrels’ killer James Vlassakis walks from Adelaide pre-release centre

The youngest serial killer from South Australia’s Snowtown murders has been seen in public for the first time in decades after he was filmed leaving an Adelaide prison pre-release facility.

James Spyridon Vlassakis left the Adelaide Pre-release Centre on Thursday morning, walking through a carpark with another man before getting into a white vehicle and being driven away to a nearby Department for Correctional Services office.

He later returned to the facility.

The 46-year-old was transferred to the centre, which sits alongside Yatala Labour Prison in Adelaide’s northern suburbs, after his parole was confirmed on September 23 following a long legal battle.

The move marks the next step towards Vlassakis’ eventual release into the community after serving the non-parole period attached to his life sentence.

Vlassakis has spent nearly 30 years behind bars and last year he was granted parole.

The State Government later sought a review of that decision, but the challenge failed after the Parole Administrative Review Commissioner found the Attorney-General had not established grounds to overturn the ruling. He is understood to be the first serial killer in Australia to be paroled.

Vlassakis was the youngest of four murderers involved in the Snowtown serial killings between 1992 and 1999. He was sentenced to life imprisonment with a non-parole period of 26 years over his involvement in the murders of Fred Brooks, Gary O’Dwyer, David Johnson and his half-brother Troy Youde.

Under the parole process, Vlassakis can spend up to 12 months at the Adelaide Pre-release Centre while the Parole Board monitors his progress and determines the conditions that will apply when he is released into the community.

Parole Board chair Frances Nelson previously said Vlassakis would be subject to strict conditions.

Those include a curfew, restrictions on his movements, random drug and alcohol testing and mandatory psychological intervention.

“He can’t leave the State without Parole Board permission, he can’t contact any of the victims’ families, there are some geographical exclusion areas where he cannot go because of proximity of victims’ families,” Ms Nelson said in September.

“He is liable to random drug and alcohol testing, he must obey the conditions at the pre-release centre, he’ll be sent off for psychological intervention.”

Vlassakis received a shorter sentence than two of the other killers, John Bunting and Robert Wagner, after becoming a key prosecution witness in their trials. Neither Bunting nor Wagner received parole periods with their life sentences.

A fourth man, Mark Haydon, was convicted of helping to dispose of bodies in barrels filled with acid and hidden in the vault of a disused bank in the small town of Snowtown, north of Adelaide. He was sentenced to 25 years with a non-parole period of 18 years.

The group collectively murdered 12 people they saw as undesirable — including the disabled, homosexuals and alleged paedophiles.

Ms Nelson said Vlassakis was 17 years old when he was drawn into horrific offences by his “dreadful” stepfather Bunting.

“He came under the thrall of Bunting when he was 14-years-old, and he regretted very quickly his involvement to the point where, age 19, he gave evidence in two trials ... against his co-offenders,” she said.

“From that time onwards, he’s been completely contrite, remorseful, and has accepted responsibility for his crimes. He’s now in his mid-40s.

“His institutional behaviour has been exemplary, including a very long period that he spent in solitary confinement, because having given evidence against Bunting and Wagner, he was at risk in the system.

“He doesn’t have a drug problem currently that we can see, and if you add up all those circumstances, the possibility of being drawn into a scenario similar to that in which he was in when he was 17 years is minimal.”