RedHanded - Episode 55 - Snowtown: The Bank Vault Body Barrels - Part 1

Episode Date: August 2, 2018

On the 21st of May 1999 police in South Australia went to investigate the contents of a derelict bank in the small town of Snowtown. Inside, they found 6 large barrels full to brim with decomposing human remains. Little did they know, this was just the beginning of what would become one of Australia’s most unrelenting and harrowing cases. Australia Expert - Kelly Ryan   See acast.com/privacy for privacy and opt-out information.See Privacy Policy at https://art19.com/privacy and California Privacy Notice at https://art19.com/privacy#do-not-sell-my-info.

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BetMGM operates pursuant to an operating agreement with iGaming Ontario. They say Hollywood is where dreams are made. A seductive city where many flock to get rich, be adored, and capture America's heart. But when the spotlight turns off, fame, fortune, and lives can disappear in an instant. Follow Hollywood and Crime, The Cotton Club Murder on the Wondery app or wherever you get your podcasts. I'm Hannah. I'm Saruti. And welcome back to Red Handed after two whole weeks off. We're back. I'm so excited to be back. It does feel like a really long time, doesn't it? It did. But like, what did you do in that time? Okay, you went on holiday to Croatia. I went on a work trip. No,

good news. I have been working with the lovely Isla Krumak to get our designs ready for the merch shop. They're so good. which is very exciting they look fantastic and yeah watch this space launching within the next like couple of weeks so that is really really exciting that was something exciting I did get done other things just you know getting my head out of true crime and watching some other things has been fun I watched open water 3 have you seen that surprisingly good movie I know I have not seen Open Water 3. It's actually, I put it on and I was like, okay, make myself some popcorn. I'm going to put this shit movie on and I'm just going to look at Twitter or something on my phone. Oh my God. I watched

the entire thing. Like my eyes were glued to the screen. It's actually really good. Oh, maybe I'll watch it. I can't help myself. I saw my cousin last night and she was like, oh, do you know what you should really watch? There's a Nick Broomfield documentary about brothels in London. Definitely watch that. And I did. It's because we're passionate, Hannah. It's because we're really passionate. It's good because take a couple of weeks off and now we can come back stronger than ever.

And we have got one hell of a case to kick things back off with, right? We really, really have. You used the perfect word when you described it you're like it's unrelenting unrelentingly grim it's so miserable just when you think it can't get any worse it gets so much worse everyone in this story is just so like such a no-hoper there was just no chance for anyone in this story and if you've seen the film it is just all shot in like sapia it's so grim and that's exactly what it feels like this is only our second australian case isn't it have we done more than we only did katherine night haven't we i think we've done

yeah that's it we're going to australia and we're going to southern australia to be exact and we're going to the northern suburbs of adelaide to be even more specific. There are also a lot of names in this one, so please listen closely. I'm not kidding. We're dealing with one incredibly messed up extended family. There's about seven different Elizabeths. You just need to really prick your ears up. And as you know, at Red Handed, we like to get our facts right. And the details of this case are pretty sensitive.

And I didn't want to have anyone come for me for not having all of my geographical points correct. So I called in an Australia expert, my friend and real-life Australian, Kelly. And I asked her, on a scale of zero to murder town, how rough is Adelaide? And this is what Kelly said. Bodies in the river is the norm. Once the football fans of the Adelaide team peed on the opposition team as they ran out onto the football ground. The northern suburbs are pretty rough, particularly Circus 2014. Heaps of assaults, problems with coward punching. No one has any teeth but that is unrelated to getting beaten up. So don't come for me any Australians listening

because I've fact-checked and my extensive research has concluded that Adelaide, and particularly the north suburbs where we lay our scene today, can be pretty fucking rough. And actually, my impression of Adelaide is, I've never been, but they have a theatre fringe festival, so it's quite common that people would do the Edinburgh Fringe Festival with their show and they'll do the Adelaide Fringe. So I just thought it was the Edinburgh of Australia and it would appear that I am quite wrong. Coward punching. What's that? Is that like happy slapping? No. So as I understand it, it's basically the same thing as a sucker punch. It's like basically you punch someone really hard when they're not expecting it and they don't have any chance to defend themselves so usually you just knock them straight out oh they're also called like a king hit or something

but they do seem to be a particularly australian thing because they have a specific law against it wow one punch the back of the head and you're on the way down you can hit yourself hit your head on anything on the way down so i think there's been a lot of cases of people who've ended up either dead or like with really severe brain damage because it's gone so horribly wrong. Wow. Did you ever watch that Channel 4 documentary, One Punch Killer? It's kind of like that. It's sad. That rings a bell, actually. It's like a guy outside of a nightclub. He gets into a fight, punches this guy once and he dies.

And then he obviously goes on trial for murder. Like, imagine just punching someone once drunkenly outside of a nightclub and he dies. They weren't in like a brawl just one pit dead fuck it was in a band when i was at uni and we had this gig in like yeah i will never show you any of the footage what was your um what was your role in this band i was i was the front woman so yeah we're doing this gig and then this guy started getting really leery it was in um the king's head in angel this pub and so this guy gets kicked out of the pub for like starting a fight basically obviously i was playing very uh very fancy venues and this guy is like really pissed he's just spoiling for a fight

so he gets like kicked out the pub he rolls into the street stands up he's looking for anyone to hit gets up punches the first guy he sees this guy just this randomer who's walking down the street happened to be the boxing champion of north london so this like incredibly drunken guy like swung at him and this guy was like no fucking way and just knocked him straight out picked up his bag and like walked off wow angel is like literally the least rough place in london that's the best story excellent right i think we better get on with it. Yeah, let's get on with it. Back to the case. When people go missing, it's usually for one of three reasons. Firstly, they want to. Secondly, they've killed themselves. Or three, foul play. In 1999, the Adelaide Police Department changed their missing persons policy. So rather than just let

cases sit around and go cold, officers would look into cases that had been sitting around for a while. So not closed cases, just the ones that hadn't seen any developments recently. And one of these cases that the police officers took a second look at was the disappearance of a man named Clinton Trezoas, who had disappeared in 1992, but wasn't actually reported missing for three years. Clinton had had a rough go of it. Like everyone else in this story, he had had a really, really rough childhood. He spent most of his adult life homeless, but he did manage to get his own place in one of the northern suburbs of Adelaide called Salisbury North in the early 90s. Clinton was pleased to have his own place and seemed to finally be making a life for himself.

He'd even made some friends. His file showed connections with Salisbury North locals Robert Wagner, Barry Lane and John Bunting. Clinton was quite well known on the small Adelaide gay scene and didn't seem to have any enemies. But this happy period in Clinton's life was short-lived because one day in late 1992, Clinton just vanished. And the sad thing is, nobody seemed to be that bothered. People came and went from Salisbury North all the time and Clinton was a drifter after all. Nobody missed him when he was gone. Which is heartbreaking. And when his mum eventually did report him missing in 1995, the police accessed his bank records and saw that Clinton hadn't been withdrawing his fortnightly state pension since 1992. How depressing is it that his own mum didn't know he was missing until three years after he was

gone? That just tells you everything you need to know about his childhood. What the police and Clinton's mum didn't know is that Clinton's body had been sitting in a forensic research centre since 1994. He just hadn't been identified. The reason the police took a second look at Clinton's case was the name mentioned in his file, Salisbury North local Robert Wagner. Wagner was very, very well known to the police. He was in an extremely violent and abusive relationship with fellow Salisbury Northian Barry Lane for a number of years. And Robert Wagner, like everyone else we'll come across, was from an extremely troubled home.

His father had left when he was just nine months old. He had a shit time at school and he was sexually abused by his babysitter when he was just nine months old. He had a shit time at school and he was sexually abused by his babysitter when he was just seven years old. These traumas led him to make several suicide attempts as a child. Barry Lane, on the other hand, was a known predatory paedophile. He had been imprisoned in 1980 for sexually assaulting two 12-year-old boys, but unbelievably he only served two months for this. Lane received counselling from the state as a condition of his parole, but it didn't work because as soon as he saw Robert Wagner, who was 16 years his junior,

he couldn't leave him alone. By the time Wagner was 14, which made Barry Lane 30 years old at the time, let's not forget, Robert Wagner was spending almost all of his time at Barry's house. When I was reading that, I was like, oh, 16 years isn't that bad. But then when you actually like lay it out, 14 and 30, oh, 16 years isn't that bad. But then when you actually, like, lay it out, 14 and 30. Oh, my God, it's so gross. Exactly. Barry Lane is sick. If you're 30 and you're spending time with even, like, an 18-year-old, you're fucking sick.

There is no need. When I was at school, I remember boys in sixth form having girlfriends in, like, year nine. That's so gross. It's really, really gross. But this is unbelievable. I mean, come on, he's a paedophile. Barry Lane was 30 years old. Wagner was 14. All this time they were spending together, Wagner's mother was understandably horrified by this. And despite her many attempts to discipline her son

and keep him away from Barry Lane, Robert Wagner would always end up back at Lane's house. Eventually, Lane and Wagner actually ran off together and they were totally AWOL for about four years. And when they finally reappeared in Salisbury North, Wagner was 18 and the pair were in a full-blown relationship. They moved into a house opposite a school, yeah, a school, and continued to have fearsome arguments for years. Clear to say they were not in a totally happy relationship. Tumultuous is an understatement. And in October 1997, Barry Lane went missing. The only obvious link between Clinton Trezoas and Barry Lane's cases

was the one thing that connected them both, Robert Wagner. And the police rightly thought that this deserved a closer look. Unlike Clinton Trezoas, Barry Lane's state pensions were being accessed every two weeks. They were being withdrawn from the same ATM at the same service station every time.

So the police set up a surveillance camera at that ATM. And who was taking out Barry Lane's pension every two weeks? Robert Wagner. But the police weren't going to stop there. The more missing persons cases they trawled through, the more Robert Wagner's name came up. Another one of these cases was the disappearance of Elizabeth Hayden. This disappearance was particularly odd because Elizabeth was reported missing by her brother and not by her husband, Mark Hayden.

Surely the husband is usually the one to notice first when their wife is missing. So this is immediate alarm bells for the police, as it fucking well should have been. And guess who Mark Hayden was friends with? Correct, Robert Wagner. Hayden and Wagner were really, really good friends, and they were both in the thrall of incredibly charismatic, neo-Nazi, white supremacist, and self-proclaimed paedophile hunter vigilante, John Bunting.

And we really can't stress enough how much Mark Hayden and Robert Wagner would do absolutely anything that Bunting told them to do. He was their idol and they worshipped the ground he walked on. Even though to the outside observer, John Bunting appeared totally unremarkable. So Elizabeth Hayden, Mark's wife, went missing on the 21st of November 1998. When her husband Mark was questioned by the police, he said that he had been out with his family and when he came home, Elizabeth was gone. Mark told police detective Greg Stone that John Bunting said that in Mark's absence, his wife, Elizabeth Hayden, had made a pass at Bunting. And when he turned her down, she was so upset that she just stormed into the bedroom. Like a child like she just flounces off. This is Bunting's story remember

that guys and just how arrogant like it's like the most perfect story for someone as arrogant as him to tell. Apparently according to John Bunting when he had gone to check if she was all right because you know how nice and considerate of him. Yeah he's he's the good guy in all this let's not forget. He is always the good guy. I really just I can't have sex with you. You're my friend's wife and I just respect you too much. I respect him too much. Oh he's a fucking dickhead. And the whole like going to check on her if she was okay. Oh fuck off. And apparently when he does go to check on her in the bedroom she was nowhere to be found. But guess what? The window was open. Soting assumed that elizabeth hayden had taken off which just seems a bit insane if i walk into a room and there's a window open i don't automatically assume that someone has escaped

out of it like a cat burglar unless the only reason i would think that is if i was keeping somebody captive that's so true so we don't know what the real case was here. What a ridiculous conclusion. Oh, window's open. Exactly. She's gone. She must have jumped out of it. She was so distraught, she just couldn't possibly use a door. So she escaped out of the window.

She was too humiliated to come back through the living room and see me because I had obviously rejected her. Exactly. So she just escaped out the window. And the police weren't stupid because they listened to John Bunting's story and they knew that something was wrong. So they kept pushing and they got a warrant to search the Hayden house. And they found that even stranger still, despite, you know, all of the window escape apology, Elizabeth had left behind her wallet, which had all of her bank cards and her ID inside. So how far could she really have gone?

Or perhaps, you know, she was just so upset by John Bunting's rejection that she stormed off, escaped out of this window, gone off to a totally different state, and just decided not to take anything with her. Seems plausible. But no matter how dashing John Bunting thinks he is, I just find it very difficult to believe that she would have been so flustered by a rejection that she would forget her wallet on her way to start her new life.

And the police aren't buying it either. And they kept bunting Hayden and Wagner under close surveillance. And they tapped their phones. Detective Inspector Greg Stone and his team started asking around the neighbourhood. They asked if anyone who knew Elizabeth had seen anything strange. And they were in luck. Because Mark and Elizabeth's neighbours reported that they remembered men loading plastic bags into Elizabeth's Toyota Land Cruiser in the middle of

the night around the time that she went missing. It's so bait like everything they do is so obvious like they don't think about it at all. And so this Land Cruiser that had sat on her drive the entire time she'd lived in Salisbury North, had also not been seen since she disappeared. And when the police searched the Hayden household, another detail came into play, one that the investigating officers couldn't shake from their minds. The garage at the Hayden house held the unmistakable smell of death. And during their close surveillance of Bunting, Hayden and Wagner, officers followed Bunting on a drive one day. And he led them to a tiny town called Snowtown, which is according to Google Maps about an hour and 45 minute drive north of Adelaide.

The house Bunting stopped at in Snowtown had a Toyota Land Cruiser parked outside. After Bunting left, police questioned the house's tenant, Dennis Caldwell. And he didn't put up a fight at all. He told the police with no problems that Bunting was his mate and that he had asked him to watch the car and its contents for a while. The Land Cruiser had large barrels in the back of it, and for a while, Dennis just did as he was told and didn't ask any questions, until, that is, the Australian heat hit, and the most horrendous stench started to exude from the barrels,

and Dennis's wife just couldn't stand it. Bunting, however, quieted any concerns that Dennis or his wife had by explaining that the barrels just contained the bodies of dead kangaroos. They needed to be hidden from the police because they had been shot with an illegal gun. Fuck off. He is just the excuse wizard, isn't he? Like, he just can't come up with anything even remotely plausible. Yeah, it's just full of dead kangaroos.

I just need to wait until they fully decompose because I shot them with an illegal gun. Oh yeah, don't worry about it. They're just some dead kangaroos. God, he's so full of shit. Nevertheless, Bunting agreed to take the barrels elsewhere because, you know, despite his excuses, I think Dennis's wife was just, still, whatever dead is in those barrels, get them away from her. So he agrees and he takes them away. And luck would have it that there was an abandoned bank laying empty just over the road from Dennis Caldwell's house. According to Dennis, Bunting

arranged a meeting with the landlord and he told them, and this is just, this gets even better, that he wanted to rent the land to store computers on before selling them on. Is that where you store computers? I don't know. Like, I don't know why you need an abandoned bank for some keyboards and stuff. But I just, it really seems like the people who come across John Bunting, just in general, just aren't really in the business of asking any questions. Like, everyone's just like, oh, all right then.

Even the police, to a certain extent, until they get to their shit together much later on. they're just like, oh yeah, all right then, John, you keep doing what you're doing. Nothing to see here. And the landlord is very much the same because he agreed and Bunting paid for everything upfront in cash because, you know, that's not suspicious at all. The contents of the Land Cruiser were moved into the bank's vault and the Land Cruiser stayed on Dennis's drive. As soon as they got this information, the police wasted no time. They got over to the bank across the road and headed straight for the vault

on Friday 21st May 1999. They opened the vault door and were met immediately with a wall of black bin bags that had been sellotaped to the doorframe. Like Dexter, but cheap and shit and wonky. Once they were through the black bin bag barrier, the investigators were overcome by the stench. The same one they had found in the Hayden garage, but times 100 million. And once their eyes got used to the dark, they saw six large barrels.

And surrounding the barrels were hacksaws, pliers and bottles of hydrochloric acid. And at this point, the police have no idea what is in these barrels. It could be anthrax or anything. They could be bombs. They have no idea. All they know is that the room smells like death. And one brave officer opened one of the barrels and inside he instantly saw a human hand. All six of the barrels turned out to be brimming with human remains,

all at different points in their decomposition. The police knew that they had stumbled onto something massive at this point because John Bunting and his crew at this stage were only associated with the disappearance of Barry Lane, Clinton Trezoas and Elizabeth Hayden. And there was no way, and this is just some really, really like grim maths, but there is no way the three people can fill six barrels to the brim. So who were the rest? The remains they found in the vault were taken to the forensics lab where the team made a horrifying discovery. Because there weren't six bodies in those barrels, there were eight. Some of the bodies had been put in one barrel

altogether and some had been distributed among multiple barrels. I mean, it's like some sick riddle. How do you get eight bodies in six barrels and fill them all up to the brim? Yeah, it's like the worst GCSE maths question. If I have eight victims and six barrels, but I need them all to be full to the brim, how do you do that? But maybe GCSE maths, but these guys were not passing gcse science because it was very interesting mix of situations in those barrels that is the best segue you have ever done i am like inspired by you right now happy to help the forensics team had a stroke of luck because whoever had put these bodies in the barrels and covered them with acid had used hydrochloric acid which

doesn't actually dissolve bodies it preserves them that is just the most perfect thing it's just so perfect they're literally just like oh acid that'll do that's gotta do it right that's what acid does oh my god literally like hydrochloric acid is a component used in like the embalming process it's so this is just you couldn't make this up. And as all of you true crime fans should know, the go-to acid for getting rid of those inconvenient dead bodies is the old mafia favourite, sulfuric acid. So either the person or persons who doused these bodies with hydrochloric acid were too stupid to look up what kind of acid they needed to dissolve human bodies, or they were actively trying to preserve them and

I think I do want to believe they were too stupid to know the difference but the fact that they're keeping all of the bodies in barrels in a vault in a bank maybe we're trying to keep them they were trying to preserve them but I want to believe they were too stupid at work that's what I want to believe but whatever the reason it made the forensics team's life a whole lot easier because they were able to put all of the bodies back together again like Humpty Dumpty. Now, to work out how these eight bodies ended up in six barrels in a vault in an abandoned bank in Snowtown, we need to do our own fucked up jigsaw. To piece together this total horror show, we need to go way back to the beginning

and we have to start with the ringleader of this whole affair, John Bunting. John Bunting was born in 1966 near Brisbane. He was an only child and he kept to himself at school. And he was particularly interested in chemistry, believe it or not. It's your fave. Shame. I guess if he was trying to preserve it, he really held on to what he learned at school. His favourite thing was dipping different insects in different types of acid to see what would happen. Now, we did wonder, does this count as part of the McDonald triad?

I want to say yes. I don't think it needs to just be like cute animals. I know everyone doesn't kill bugs, but you don't fucking torture them in like pots of acid. There is a big difference between swatting a fly and dipping them in acid just to see... What happens. What happens. That is... It's like the kid with the magnifying glass and the ants. Like that is sadistic. It is.

I mean, I guess if they're dead, I guess it's just kind of intellectual curiosity. If they're alive, you're fucking sick. Your kid is sick. Do something. I don't alive, you're fucking sick. Your kid is sick. Do something. I don't know what you can do, but maybe just run away. It's like my biggest fear is to have a child that is completely fucking nuts. Yeah, counselling maybe. Yeah, fucking hell.

Like, we need to talk about Kevin's situation. That is literally my worst nightmare. Terrifying. When Bunting was eight years old, and again, just further proof that all of the people in the story have fucking terrible childhoods, he was at a friend's house when his friend's older brother and like a gaggle of his mates pinned him down and raped him. And as we often see, especially when it's boys who are sexually abused, he was too ashamed to tell anyone. Bunting just started

to act out even more and not knowing how to cope with the situation, but most certainly not making it any better, his mum just gave him a good beating every time he did. I called them a gaggle of his mates. What is the collective term for a group of rapists, I wonder? Oh, that's a good question. Shall we do, let's do an online competition for who can come up with the best name. Because a gaggle is a gaggle of geese. A gaggle.

The best one is a murderer of crows. Is it murder of crows or murder of ravens a confederacy of gorillas there's one that's almost like a senate of gorillas or something it's like but it's a it's a murder of crows definitely and it's a parliament of owls oh that's a good one that's a great one but yeah let us know what is the collective term for a group of fucking rapists yeah i wonder a shit bag shit bag let us know a ball bag of rapists and by the time john bunting was 17 he had already fathered his first child he and the mother however separated before the birth and she took the child with her when she migrated to britain and they never saw each other again bunting then moved to salisbury

north with a few friends he had when he was 18. Here, he met Victoria Tripp and the two got married. John found a job in a local abattoir and they started their married life. And literally, we've covered two cases about Australians, this and Catherine Knight. Abattoirs again. Abattoirs and Australians. What is it with the abattoirs? Like, I can't. But then I feel like, is there just like, there is a lot of like farming in Australia.

And then if you have a lot of farming, there are going to be a lot of abattoirs. Because is it just like if people in the UK like worked in factories? I should have looked that up actually how many abattoirs there are per head in Australia compared to the UK. That would have been a good statistic. I'll have a look. And this was also during like the 80s. So I can imagine 80s Australia like if you probably didn't have a good education, you probably had no choice apart from and you lived in like a 80s. So I can imagine 80s Australia, like if you probably didn't have a good education, you probably had no choice apart from, and you lived in like a rural area, you

probably had no choice apart from to work in an abattoir. And then a few of those just happened to be fucking crazy people like Catherine Knight and John Bunting. But anyway, John also had a fearsome hatred for authority in any form that he saw it and he would talk anyone's ear off who would listen to him it's classic that classic sort of what is it authority defiance disorder is that yeah like that's something really common again that you see in sociopaths and psychopaths they don't want to be told what to do he just he thinks he knows best like that's the thing that we'll see throughout the cases his attitude is is like, I'm better than the police, I'm better than the government, my way is more correct than what anyone else is telling me to do. I do think he he's a very intelligent guy. And I think maybe because he grew up in such like

impoverished circumstances and wasn't given a shot at anything, really, he had all of this intelligence and nowhere to put it. And it sort of manifested in this incredibly negative way. We see how manipulative he is like he's clearly very intelligent and he's got serious Charles Manson vibes as well this is evident as we go through because he does the classic gathering of less intelligent people he gathers them around him and he just rules over them until they hang on to his every word he completely breaks down their egos which is exactly what Manson did Mansson would feed his followers like shit tons of lsd and he would do very little or none at all and remain in the same room so he is the anchor to reality for them and then once they come out of their trip

like their relationship with him has completely changed and john bunting did quite a similar thing he would encourage those around him to get really fucking drunk but he would hardly drink at all and it's all about the control of the people around him and that's exactly what he was doing and you know these days this is 100 true i'm sure you guys have read about it i kind of feel like there's a link between the whole like manson vibe with all the lsd dosing and like literally silicon valley and all these tech ceos they all get around together and they do this thing called micro dosing where they're in the office and they take lsd and these tech ceos they all get around together. And they do this thing called micro dosing, where they're in the office and they take LSD. And these tech CEOs, they are little mansons. And they just

happen to be more, you know, corporately successful. And it's again, that kind of control that you see micro dosing, they are literally doping themselves up on LSD, because they think it will like open their minds, make them more innovative, make them more creative, whatever it might be. But it really, really has parallels to what Manson did. Absolutely. Fascinating. Bunting's main gripe though, the thing he hated the most, even more than he hated the government, even more than he hated the police, he hated paedophiles. He saw them as absolutely

the scum of the earth, the worst thing you could possibly be. And he saw that nothing around him, nothing was being done to fight them. He thought the police were useless and And it's that thing again, what you see in like authoritarian dictators and people like that who are very narcissistic and controlling. It is that I am the only one that can save you from this. I am the only one that can do anything about this. Look at all these paedophiles running around and no one is doing anything. I'm the only one that can change this. That level of narcissism and that level of like delusion of like his own superpowers. Again, just classic, classic, classic. Yeah. What I was quite struck by though is like, and we will see this in the rest of the story, but there are quite a lot of paedophiles running around Salisbury

North and no one seems to be doing anything about it. he kind of has a point that is true but I think it's like look at how many of these people were growing up in such difficult circumstances they have a severe amounts of neglect and abuse and pretty much everyone in this story seems to have been sexually abused as a child no one is getting any counselling or any help from that obviously we know and we're not saying that everyone who's sexually abused goes on to be an abuser, but you do see that people who are can go on to do that. And I think it's just like a second never ending cycle of not just poverty, but abuse. And that's so sad in this story is that yeah, no one was helping them. But I also think at this point, we should say like, yeah, pedophiles are fucking awful. Child sex offenders are awful, of course, but we're not

giving bunting any credit for being some sort of fucking paedophile vigilante. And as we always say with these people who are vigilantes, it will always spin into something else. There are killers out there who think that they're doing God's work by murdering prostitutes. He thinks that he's doing the right thing by murdering sex offenders. But like, if somebody has crossed the line to kill anybody, you can't control that person. that's why vigilantism is not helpful it will only spin out they can choose another target just as easily and go after them and that's exactly what bunting does like he starts out with a set of morals and they very quickly slip away but bunting would go on endless rants about this which as saru just said fine pedophiles not good but the problem was bunting saw no difference between gay people and paedophiles.

He saw them as the same thing. And throughout the years, the distinction between paedophiles, gay people, and simply people he didn't like, or people who got in his way, started to significantly blur. Bunting also loved guns. He collected them. And he loved, most of all, blowtorches. And there are reports of him turning a blowtorch onto a dog who was winding him up he's the worst who sets a fucking dog on fire and bunting's main hangers-on as you may have

guessed were mark hayden who he met on a welding course in adelaide and robert wagner but when bunting and wagner first met wagner was living with and still very much romantically involved with barry lane and if you remember barry lane was Bunting's two least favourite things in the world. He was gay and he was a convicted paedophile. Bizarrely, however, this didn't stop Bunting from letting Barry Lane hang around. Either he saw Robert Wagner as too valuable to let go or he saw him as a victim who needed to be rescued from Barry Lane. As Robert and Barry's lives were so intertwined,

Robert was able to give Bunting intel on who was a paedophile in the neighbourhood, and sometimes he managed to hand over their phone numbers. John Bunting would write all of these tips down and pin them to his wall, like a total fucking maniac. He's a fucking mission-oriented killer. That's what he is. He thinks that he has these morals. He thinks he has this mission. He thinks he's like saving the world from paedophiles.

And that totally absolves him of any of the horrendous things that he does and that he goes on to do. John, when he got these numbers, would ring them and just hurl abuse down the phone at these suspected paedophiles. There's no proof that these people were. I'm sure some of them were. But this is how it starts and soon it escalates. And it escalated into John Bunting breaking into these people's houses and stealing their stuff. John claimed that this was a public service, but I think it's pretty fucking obvious that he just loved doing it. He and Robert Wagner also became very close. They spent a lot of time together and John couldn't stand Barry Lane, but he tolerated him. But he would call him homophobic

slurs at every opportunity he got. John and Robert then, to take their friendship up to the next level, decided to join a white supremacist group together. But they got kicked out because the group, get this, found their views to be too extreme. Now let that sink in for a while. A white supremacist movement, so a group of people who openly ascribe to the notion of a master race found John Bunting to be a bit too much. That's how you know, isn't it? That's how you know that maybe it's time to like, I don't know, go on a holiday, chill out a bit. He just needs like an all-inclusive Club Med holiday. Send him on a cruise. Hi, I'm Lindsey Graham, the host of

Wondery Show American Scandal. We bring to light some of the biggest controversies in US history, presidential lies, environmental disasters, corporate fraud. In our latest series, NASA embarks on an ambitious program to reinvent space exploration with the launch of its first reusable vehicle, the Space Shuttle. And in 1985, they announced they're sending teacher Krista McAuliffe into space aboard the Space Shuttle Challenger, along with six other astronauts. But less than two minutes after liftoff, the Challenger explodes. And in the tragedy's aftermath, investigators uncover a series of preventable failures by NASA and its contractors that led to the disaster.

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The last person seen with him was Lainey Jacobs, a seductive cocaine dealer who desperately wanted to be part of the Hollywood elite. Together, they were trying to break into the movie industry. But things took a dark turn when a million dollars worth of cocaine and cash went missing. From Wondery comes a new season of the hit show Hollywood and Crime, The Cotton Club Murder. Follow Hollywood and Crime, The Cotton Club Murder on the Wondery app, or wherever you get your podcasts. You can binge all episodes of The Cotton Club Murder early and ad-free right now by joining Wondery Plus. He was hip-hop's biggest mogul, the man who redefined fame, fortune, and the music industry. The first male rapper to be honored on the Hollywood Walk of Fame, Sean Diddy Combs. Diddy built an empire and lived a life most people only dream about.

Everybody know ain't no party like a Diddy party, so. Yeah, that's what's up. But just as quickly as his empire rose, it came crashing down. Today I'm announcing the unsealing of a three-count indictment, charging Sean Combs with racketeering conspiracy, sex trafficking, interstate transportation for prostitution. I was f***ed up. I hit rock bottom, but I made no excuses.

I'm disgusted. I'm so sorry. Until you're wearing an orange jumpsuit, it's not real. Now it's real. From his meteoric rise to his shocking fall from grace, from law and crime, this is The Rise and Fall of Diddy. Listen to The Rise and Fall of Diddy exclusively with Wondery Plus. And it was around this time that John, Barry and Robert meet Clinton Trinzoas, whose missing persons case started this whole story.

Clinton was openly gay and quite flamboyant, and John did not like this one bit. John invited Clinton to his house. Robert, Barry and Mark Hayden were all there too. They were all just sitting around having a chat, when out of nowhere John crept up behind Clinton and struck him over the back of the head with a shovel. Clinton fell to the ground immediately, but that didn't stop John bunting. He kept hitting Clinton in the head until he was sure that he was dead. Barry Lane and Mark Hayden helped John dispose of the body. They packed it into the back of John's car and drove to a town 20 minutes away called Lower Light. I have never heard of a more terrifying place name in my life that has given me nightmares.

Like I can deal with the bodies in the barrels. I can't deal with a rural australian town called lower light there are just some great town names that you have in like rural america and rural australia the one that really sticks with me and it's not actually terrifying maybe it's because of what happened there as well truth and consequences i was just gonna say that so weird i was literally just gonna say that's where david parker ray did did his majesty didn't he isn't it yeah fucking hell it's all these like rural in the middle of fucking nowhere hillbilly killers that fucking terrify me the most genuinely oh my god it's too much but yeah truth and consequence no thank you and lower light no thank you but it was good enough for john bunting apparently because when

they got there they buried clinton in a shallow grave in a paddock and they just left him there. Two farmers discovered Clinton's body in 1994, so two years later, and forensic pathologists concluded that the cause of death was brain injury as the result of a blunt force. But Clinton hadn't even been reported missing yet. And when his mum did file a report the following year, a picture of Clinton was sent to the forensic centre where his body was being held, but inexplicably, no match was made. And this is a real missed chance. Had the police identified Clinton's body when they found it, it's possible that they could have stopped the murderous chaos that was about to unfold. Barry Lane tried to tell Veronica Tripp, Bunting's wife, what had happened, but she didn't believe him. And Barry had a terrible reputation for making things up.

He claimed to have once been pregnant and that he had regular periods just like a woman. So I can understand why Veronica thought he was full of shit. Why is he telling Veronica? Why not? I mean, I get that they're terrified of him, like John Bunting. They've just watched him beat Clinton to death with a fucking shovel. But why bother to tell Veronica? Why not just run away and tell the police? He's not on the best terms with the police. They're at his house every five minutes.

He's beating up his boyfriend. That's true. So Veronica didn't take anything that Barry had said seriously, but she did mention it to John. Uh-oh. And all he said was that she better watch her mouth or she would end up like the body in lower light. Good cover-up. Yeah, exactly. Don't you fucking believe him? And if you open your mouth, you she would end up like the body in lower light. Good cover up.

Yeah, exactly. Don't you fucking believe him. And if you open your mouth, you'll fucking end up like that body as well that I definitely didn't kill. Soon into this little fuckfest weird family that we've got going on here, a new lady appears on the scene for John Bunting. Cracks are starting to appear in his and Veronica's relationship at this point. And everyone just moves on. No one lets Clinton's

memory bother them for too long. And this new woman was Elizabeth Harvey. And she had just as much of a fucked up background as everyone else in this story. By the time she met John Bunting, she had three sons from two different fathers. The father of her first son, Troy, had fucked off before he was even born. Then Spiros Vlasakis, who was the father of her other two sons, I think at this point she was probably wishing that he too had fucked off just like Troy's dad because all Spyros did was violently rape Elizabeth and all three of her children. Thankfully one day Spyros died suddenly of a heart attack and Elizabeth quickly remarried Marcus Johnson. Marcus had a son David who was the same age as her second eldest son, Jamie. And they all got on well enough.

So they all moved in together in Elizabeth Park, another northern suburb of Adelaide, close to Salisbury North. Troy Ude, so her eldest son, whose dad fucked off, if you remember, was a really difficult child. He would light fires all over the place. And he also, and this is just fucking horrible, he also severely sexually abused Jamie who was three years his junior and his half-brother. Neither Troy nor Jamie, as we see again and again with this case, told anybody but they both made suicide attempts. Now in the house opposite the

Harvey Johnsons in Elizabeth Park lived a man named Geoffrey Payne, again a known sex offender and paedophile. He took a special interest in Jamie Vlasakis. Payne would invite Jamie to his house and he started off taking pornographic images of him and eventually progressed to raping him. And you may be wondering how this links into our story. Well Jeffrey Payne happened to be very good friends with Barry Lane. The nonce network just runs so deep in this town, it seems. And Barry, being Jeffrey's mate, wanted a turn at assaulting Jamie. But Jeffrey wouldn't let him. So Barry turned sour. And so he took Robert Wagner with him, marched up to the Harvey Johnson house and told Elizabeth Harvey everything that Jeff Payne had been doing with her son, but told her that she shouldn't worry because he knew a man that could fuck Payne up for her.

He was obviously talking about John Bunting. This catastrophic news sent an already vulnerable Elizabeth Harvey over the edge. She called the police and an investigation into Jeffrey Payne was launched. He was arrested but granted bail with no restrictions, which meant he could just go right back to the house opposite the kid he had been raping for weeks. He eventually did go to prison, but for only two years after being sentenced to four. Before Payne was charged, Bunting took it upon himself to protect Elizabeth and her children from Geoffrey Payne. So he was around Elizabeth's house a lot, and eventually

her gratitude turned into something else. It became very obvious to everyone that Mark Johnson and Elizabeth Harvey were over, and he and his son David moved out, leaving Elizabeth Harvey and John Bunting to be together. And this all seemed to work quite well, apart from the slight snag that John Bunting was still very much married to Veronica Tripp. John started using the Harvey house as a meeting place for his anti-paedophile vigilante group. He started hosting them so much that they took over his life. He no longer had time to work at the abattoir. It was an all-consuming obsession. And in one of the documentaries I watched about this case,

there's like a reconstruction of one of these meetings and they've got the actor who's playing John Bunton talking very like inspiredly about the horror of pedophiles. And in the shot behind him is this mug that's just a pair of tits. It's so weird. In this reconstruction, it's like, oh, he's a man's man. That's how you know, tit mug. Oh, God.

So bizarre. Like somebody was like, you know what this shot needs? Tit mug. It kind of does fit, though. It's almost so perfect. It's so perfect. But then back in our story, there is a bizarre twist. John moved Elizabeth Harvey and all of her children in with him and Veronica Tripp.

What the fuck is wrong with these people? Why do they all insist on living together all of the time? I guess it is John sort of pushing this, isn't it? Maybe he just wants everybody really close so he can control them. Ultimate win for someone like John. Like, two women, all these kids. he's the fucking, like, big man. Like, he's protecting all of them from all of these fucking feral paedophiles that are out there. Like, it kind of fits. And what happens now is just exactly what you don't want to happen. Jamie, Elizabeth Harvey's second eldest son,

became more and more enamoured by John Bunting. This is the only father figure that he's had in his life, basically. He hasn't tried to fucking rape him, so you can understand why. He watched Bunting every day just spewing out this hatred. And as you said, he was charismatic, though, when he did it. And Jamie just drank it in. And in 1995, John finally kicked Veronica Tripp out of the house. She didn't kick up her fuss, though. She just got her shit and left.

I think by this point, she's seen exactly what he's capable of and probably potentially quite grateful to escape this situation. And Robert Wagner began spending more and more time with John Bunting. He's at every one of the meetings that they held and he was hanging off every single word that John said. And Robert Wagner began spending more and more time at John Bunting's. He was at every meeting and he was hanging off every word that John Bunting said. But Barry Lane and Robert Wagner were increasingly at each other's throats more than ever. It was so serious and so public that the police, who had known the couple and known of their violent dispositions for years, advised

Barry to leave the house. They no longer thought it was safe for him to be there. This prompted Bunting to ask Robert to move in with him and Elizabeth Harvey. And once Barry Lane was out of the picture, Robert started going out exclusively with women. Now, possibly this was in an attempt to impress Bunting. Remember, this is a man with a tit mug. He is like toxic masculinity personified. We've seen a couple of people misunderstanding potentially what we mean by toxic masculinity. But when we say that John Bunting is toxic masculinity personified, I don't mean it's because of the way masculinity is so toxic. I fucking hate the idea of masculinity. Fuck that. Kill men. No. Toxic masculinity, and correct me if I'm wrong,

Hannah, first and foremost affects other men. Yeah, 100%. That's what it means toxic masculinity is feeling like you can't tell anyone when you are sexually abused because you're a man exactly it's the kind of thing that in society other men and women to some extent are guilty of oppressing men in our society by telling them don't fucking cry you're such a pussy definitely women definitely of course man up get your shit together you're meant to be the man. That is toxic masculinity. Through that oppression, we create men who are less capable of dealing with their emotions. And then, of course, they're not fucking happy.

That's what toxic masculinity means. It has stuff to do with women in how those men can then go on to treat women. But this is first and foremost an issue that affects men. And this is what John Runting was. Absolutely. What really winds me up is when uh it's like oh don't be a pussy like don't be don't be a coward basically don't be a little girl about it yeah or yeah but the opposite is oh get some get some balls get some bollocks

let's discuss that for a second because a pussy pushes out a baby bollocks are the most sensitive thing on the human body so maybe we've just got that a bit twisted and also the whole i hate the phrase man up not because it should be woman up it should be human up because i'm a woman and i'm strong that's not what i'm saying saying the fucking phrase man up implies that you're not a man if you have any feelings if you have any emotions if you dare to express them if you dare to be sad about something if you dare to cry let's not get it twisted in that i'm angry because it's oppressing me as a woman. I'm angry for you, for men who are oppressed by bullshit phrases like man up. Man up shouldn't mean shut your mouth and have no feelings.

So that's all we mean by that. So we don't know exactly why Robert Wagner decides to then switch to exclusively dating women. Maybe it's to, as he said, impress Bunting. Or, you know, sexuality is a spectrum. Maybe he was bisexual. Maybe now he was done with men. And honestly, at this point, it's the least of his fucking worries. And just down the road from John Bunting's house, 203 Waterloo Corner Road, lived a young man named Ray Davies. Now, Ray is another unfortunate, interesting character to be pulled into this story. Ray had severe learning difficulties and he had gotten into a lot of trouble with police when he was growing up for carrying out sex acts with animals.

26-year-old Ray lived in a caravan in the back garden of his landlady's house. Her name was Suzanne Allen and Suzanne Allen was friends with John Bunting and he was around hers a lot. And Ray had a reputation for, and by reputation for, I mean most definitely did, flash people all over Salisbury North, and he publicly masturbated constantly. There were also rumours flying around that he had been sexually abusing children in his caravan. Obviously, this didn't endear him to anyone, and particularly not to John Bunting. Suzanne Allen, despite his Nazi leanings and gay hating,

loved John Bunting a little bit too much. She would drive past his house all the time and Elizabeth Harvey hated her for it. So perhaps in an attempt to impress John Bunting, Suzanne confronted Ray Davis about the allegations that he had been sexually abusing children on her property. The confrontation got violent and Suzanne took out a restraining order against Ray Davis and not long after he disappeared. No missing persons report was filed because no one was going to miss the neighborhood flasher. But here is what actually happened in December 1995. John Bunting and Robert Wagner bundled Ray

Davis into the back seat of Bunting's car. Wagner held him down and beat him with a metal pole. They then put him in the boot and drove him to John Bunting's house, where Elizabeth Harvey was waiting. Once they got Ray Davies inside, Wagner and Bunting continued to beat him. Elizabeth Harvey joined in and stabbed him with a ceramic tool. So she is definitely not an innocent bystander in the least. Eventually, when they thought that he'd had enough, they strangled Ray Davies to death and buried him in the back garden. The next day, John went round to Suzanne Allen's house to see if Ray Davies had left anything valuable in the caravan, and Suzanne came on to him, hard. John tried to tell her that he wasn't interested, but that didn't work either, so he accused her of allowing Ray to do what he'd been doing. Bunting claimed

that by not stepping in, Suzanne was condoning his actions. John told Suzanne that she was responsible for everything Ray Davies had done, all the flashing, the public wanking, and the child molestation, because she hadn't stepped in. She hadn't stopped him. John had a name for women who didn't stop men

from being paedophiles. He called them tooth fairies. And being a tooth fairy, to John Bunting, was just as bad as being gay. And this was because if you saw abuse happening and you turned a blind eye to it you were just as guilty so guess what happened to Suzanne Allen she went missing her car went missing too and her neighbors reported men packing her car with furniture in the middle of the night

Suzanne's brother reported her missing in the November of 1996 the police looked into it and found that her fortnightly state pension was still being accessed. So the police assumed that she must just be alive somewhere and that she just didn't want to be found. The police noted that there had been a change of address on the account. The address was now a house in Murray Bridge, another suburb, and John Bunting lived in the house the pension was now assigned to. The police questioned Bunting about Suzanne Allen when she disappeared and he said that she had met a man and moved to another state. This seemed to be enough to satisfy the police and they left John to it. Why they didn't have a few more questions about the change of

address I have absolutely no idea. If she's moved state why is she getting her welfare delivered to John's house? This seems to be an enormous red flag that the police in their initial investigation just totally missed. This is what I mean when like anyone who comes across john they're just like oh yeah carry on that's so obvious he's one of the last people to see her alive and then her welfare is getting sent to his house and nothing is done i'm really surprised that the police missed that so what had actually happened was that bunting and wagner went round to suzanne's house in the middle of the night and they killed her then they chopped her up into tiny pieces and put her into some bin bags and then they drove the bin bags back to 203 Waterloo Corner Road and buried Suzanne directly on top of Ray Davies. And as if that isn't fucked up enough,

John didn't even live there anymore. Him and Elizabeth Harvey are in Murray Bridge. His ex Veronica Tripp is living in the 203 Waterloo Corner Road house and she just lets him walk in with bags of dead body. But I bet she was pretty used to John just turning up and doing whatever he wanted and I'm sure that she knew exactly what he was capable of. So Veronica let John dig up her garden in the middle of the night, totally unchallenged. John Bunting also stole Suzanne's furniture and put it in his new Murray Bridge house. He fucking loves furniture, John Bunting. He will take anyone's furniture. He's a hoarder. Like I bet his house that you can't move for it. He fucking loves furniture, John Bunting. He will take anyone's furniture. He's a hoarder. Like, I bet his house, like, you can't move for it. Like, everyone he kills,

he just takes all of their stuff and puts it into his house. He explains to his partner, Elizabeth Harvey, that he and his mates had broken into Suzanne's house, only meaning to rob her. But by the time they got there, she was already dead, so they disposed of her body so they wouldn't get in any trouble for the breaking and entering. Doesn't really explain why they cut her up into tiny little pieces though, does it? But Elizabeth Harvey agreed to take Suzanne's ID to the bank so they can get her welfare checks sent to their house. And Elizabeth may be very vulnerable and she may think that Suzanne died by accident. But she's still complicit in taking the pension payments of a woman she knows is cut up in bin bags in the

garden. Yeah. There's no one in this case that is innocent. There's no one in this case. Absolutely not, no. Now we need to move on next to Robert Wagner's new girlfriend, Maxine Zerita. She had moved to Salisbury North with her cousin, Nicole, and struck up a relationship with Wagner pretty quickly. She knew about his previous relationship with Barry Lane, but it didn't seem to bother her. But she knew never to bring it up, especially not in front of Wagner's best friend in the whole entire world, John Bunting, known homophobe. Maxine's cousin, Nicole, made friends with a young man called Michael Gardner. Now, Michael was openly gay. Michael also wore women's clothes sometimes.

And in September 1997, Nicole went on holiday and left her friend Michael in charge of her house. And 10 days into her holiday, she received a phone call from a friend telling her that her house had been broken into. Her furniture and TV were gone and so was Michael Gardner. Nicole didn't believe for a second that Michael had stolen her stuff. She came home from her holiday early to investigate. And that's when she ran into Bunting and wagner who told her that michael was quote a poof to thief and they had seen him running away after he had robbed her house what with like a fucking sofa on his back like fuck off this is bunting's mo he loves furniture he

just loves killing people and stealing their furniture he literally does i think he his like ideal life is to be like a vigilante pedophile hunter, but also a furniture salesman. I think that is his best life. And he's doing it at this point, and he's getting away with it. And the lie is just so stupid, because they also find Michael's wallet still on the table in Nicole's apartment, with all of his fucking bank cards and ID in it. Why didn't Bunting dispose of that? He's fucking stolen everything else. As much as I've been like, oh, he was intelligent and very charismatic,

he is also a bit of a moron because he does make howling mistakes. Maybe he just gets so distracted by all the sofas he can steal that he forgets to cover his own fucking tracks. I think he leaves the clean-up to his minions and they're not as intelligent as him is what I think. Come the fuck on. Stealing furniture isn't the most important bit. The clean-up after you've committed a murder is the important bit.

Maybe it is. Maybe it's just all about the furniture. You're the fucking team leader. Delegate the most important bit. The clean up after you've committed a murder is the important bit. Maybe it is. Maybe it's just all about the furniture. You're the fucking team leader. Delegate the most important things to yourself, not to the fucking minions. Clean up is something they need to be doing. Furniture stealing is something you can fucking give to somebody else. You can delegate the furniture stealing.

But again, it's just how much he loves it. He doesn't want to give up that bit. That's what gives him life. And it doesn't stop there either because Nicole received a phone call from someone who claimed to be Michael's mate telling her that she needed to hand over his wallet what the fuck and obviously Nicole fucking refused she then received a call from Michael himself well someone claiming to be him at least and of course she knew it wasn't him.

Are you fucking kidding me? If my friend disappeared and then someone called pretending to be them, after someone had called pretending to be his mate and I hadn't given him the wallet, I'm going to know it's not him. Jamie Vlasakis, who quite liked Nicole, agreed to help her when she suspected foul play. He agreed to break into a business and leave Michael's wallet behind so that the police would launch an investigation into Michael without Nicole having to report anything to the police. What a ridiculous plan. He's obviously not going to do it because he hands over the wallet straight to John Bunting, but like, he doesn't even try to make it sound believable. I mean, I don't

understand. And why couldn't Nicole just report it to the police? Her house was burgled. I think she was scared. No, no, that's fair. So John Bunting, of course, disliked Michael from the outset because of his sexuality. Bunting and Wagner had beaten Michael in the back of Bunting's car. And then they had tortured him for hours in the shed of the Murray Bridge house. They electrocuted him and they made him plead for

his life before eventually strangling him to death. Bunting really liked strangling his victims because it's so personal. He loved to pinpoint the exact moment of death. According to Jamie Vlasakis, Bunting and Wagner would often strangle their victims until they were just about to pass out and then they would stop so the person would come back and then they would do it again and they would do this for hours. It is key to note though that Bunting very rarely did the actual strangling. Wagner was much bigger and stronger than him so he usually did the physical work and Bunting just watched. When Michael was dead they put his body in a barrel and kept it in the shed at the Murray Bridge house. In later interviews, Bunting would qualify this kill by saying that Michael had been playing with a child

and had placed his hand over the child's mouth. Bunting and Wagner saw this as an aggressive move and enough of a reason to take Gardner out. Michael Gardner was the first body in those Snowtown barrels. Barry Lane was oblivious to the attack. Him and Robert Wagner were not on speaking terms and Barry had struck up a relationship with someone new, a lady called Michelle.

Michelle had three young children and was perfectly aware of Barry's history of child molestation but didn't seem to be that bothered by it. The police seemed to be the only people thinking clearly in this situation and they imposed an order on Barry that he was only able to see Michelle's children during supervised visits and they certainly couldn't live in his house. So Barry got a new flatmate, 18-year-old Thomas Trevelyan,

and it wasn't very long before the pair started sleeping together. Michelle wasn't too surprised or bothered and moved on. But then, in October 1997, Michelle got a phone call from a very strange-sounding Barry. He told her that he was going away for a while and that he would appreciate it if she could come over and watch his dogs. She agreed, although Barry's voice sounded really odd. When she got to Barry's house, it was clear that it had broken into and she never saw Barry again and neither did anyone else

because Bunting and Wagner had killed him. They had made Barry call his mum while they were torturing him and told him to scream abuse down the phone. Barry had also been being tortured when they forced him to call Michelle. John Bunting and Robert Wagner crushed Barry Lane's toes with pliers. They also demanded that Barry tell them his PIN number. We really see them starting to learn here. It's escalating. When they killed Michael, pretending to be him on the phone didn't work. And when they did get hold of his wallet, they couldn't do anything with it because they didn't know his pin. You really see Bunting, the brains of the operation, starting to hone his craft.

Bunting and Wagner dismembered Lane and put him in a barrel. He was 42 when he died. And Thomas Trevelyan, the 18-year-old flatmate, was there for the whole thing. And to find out what happens next, to find out what Thomas did, to find out what Thomas did and how Robert Wagner handled murdering his ex, I'm afraid you're going to have to wait until next week. Sorry. Cliffhanger. But no, thank you for listening.

That is definitely a tough case to get through. But it's good to be back. Exactly. So good to be back. And just an update for all round two Patreon people. If you didn't get all your patreon stuff in the first shipping it has all gone out now and the next lot of people who joined i believe it would have been after anybody who joined after the 15th of july you will get

your stuff in the next round that will be going out very soon so watch out for that basically you'll have post which is very exciting who doesn't love getting post i love getting post i never get post i got a box of beer yesterday my mom sent me a box of beer in the post oh that's so sweet yeah that was nice no one sends me post i'll send you some post yay it'll just be a picture of me just middle finger such a bitch do you know how much a fucking stamp costs? It's not worth it for that. If you haven't already, please leave us a five-star review. And if you would like to give us some money, that would also be very much appreciated.

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And we look forward to discussing this case with you guys on there because I know it's all sorts of fucked up. See you next week for part two. Bye. I'm Jake Warren, and in our first season of Finding, I set out on a very personal quest to find the woman who saved my mum's life. You can listen to Finding Natasha right now exclusively on Wondery+. In season two, I found myself caught up in a new journey to help someone I've never even met.

But a couple of years ago, I came across a social media post by a person named Loti. It read in part, Three years ago today that I attempted to jump off this bridge, but this wasn't my time to go. A gentleman named Andy saved my life. I still haven't found him. This is a story that I came across purely by chance, but it instantly moved

me and it's taken me to a place where I've had to consider some deeper issues around mental health. This is season two of Finding, and this time, if all goes to plan, we'll be finding Andy. You can listen to Finding Andy and Finding Natasha exclusively and ad-free on Wondery Plus. Join Wondery Plus in the Wondery app, Apple Podcasts, or Spotify. Harvard is the oldest and richest university in America. But when a social media-fueled fight over Harvard and its new president broke out last fall, that was no protection. Claudine Gay is now gone.

We've exposed the DEI regime, and there's much more to come.