E05 | The Snowtown 'Barrel Bodies' Murders

In the late 1990s, the quiet South Australian town of Snowtown became the unlikely epicentre of Australia’s most infamous serial murder case. Behind the doors of an abandoned bank, police uncovered six plastic barrels. Inside were the acid-preserved remains of eight people — men and women who had been strangled, tortured, mocked, and discarded by John Bunting, Robert Wagner, and their small circle of accomplices.

Over seven years, twelve lives were taken. Victims included neighbours, friends, even family. Some were killed for their sexuality, some for their disability, some simply for being inconvenient. At trial, jurors were confronted with not only photographs and forensic evidence, but also tapes — audio recordings of victims being humiliated and begging for mercy while their killers laughed.

The Veil pulls listeners inside the full story: Bunting’s twisted rise from a childhood of cruelty to self-styled leader; the spider’s web chart that mapped out his hatred; the growing group of followers who became entangled in his violence; and the police operation that finally exposed what lay hidden in the barrels.

But Snowtown is more than a catalogue of murders. It is about betrayal, complicity, and the fragility of trust in the most ordinary of places. It is about how prejudice can mask cruelty, and how silence can allow horror to thrive.

Behind every closed door is another veil. In Snowtown, when it was torn open, the truth was almost too grotesque to comprehend.

While some dramatic license is taken during the retelling of these stories, but you can be sure that these true crime stories are all based 100% on real events and facts.

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This podcast is researched, and written by the Brevity Studios team using AI tools, and is narrated in its entirety by - Ryan Wolf.

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