Unsolved The Family Murders

[Kurve]

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Out of Sight - The Untold Story of Adelaide's Gay Hate Murders

The Cases of Forensic Pathologist Colin Manock

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Unsolved - The Family Murders - MEDIA

This thread may be used to post the Family Murders media related content. To include press and gathered photographs from various sources. Please feel free to post but as this is a no discussion thread, comments will be deleted or moved at discretion. WHO'S WHO VICTIMS AB - Alan Barnes 16yo...

www.bigfooty.com

 

[Macka_321]

Are these people still alive Novak and all them?

 

[PaulSubetro]

Unsure about Novak.

Firman died in 2008, Gant and Brooks have also passed. We don't yet know who the mysterious "Miss K" is yet?

 

[Macka_321]

Would be interesting to know what else was in TP diaries I’d say a fair bit. The 3 people for me who had been involved are the businessman denis and Bevan and clearly would have been others.

 

[PaulSubetro]

SAPOL think the main 3 (apart from BVE) are Mr R, Mr B and Woodards.

 

[PaulSubetro]

A lot of early deaths.

Dead - Age at death
Gant - 40
Brooks - 42
Firman - 53
Novak - 57
St Denis - 58
Brown - 62


Alive - Age in 2019
BVE - 73
Mr R - 73
Woodards - 69
Turtur - 66
Mr B - 60


Unknown
Miss K - ?

 

[Kurve]

Dead - Age at death
Gant - 40
Brooks - 42
Firman - 53
Novak - 57
St Denis - 58
Brown - 62

Interesting, do we know what Firman, Novak, Brooks and Gant died from?

 

[u2uabrs]

Debi Marshall mentioned in her podcast that she had the overseas phone number for Gambardella - look like News Corp have tracked him to South America. There's an article on the AdelaideNow Website

Sorry for those that cant get past the paywall.

I'm busy right now but will post a summary later on - unless someone beats me to it!

 

[Bits]

Interesting, do we know what Firman, Novak, Brooks and Gant died from?

hi, no info available on cause of death for any of them

 

[Kurve]

Debi Marshall mentioned in her podcast that she had the overseas phone number for Gambardella - look like News Corp have tracked him to South America.

What a coincidence. Ghislane Maxwell and Jean luc Brunel accused of sex trafficking minors, last seen also in South America.

 

[PaulSubetro]

Interesting, do we know what Firman, Novak, Brooks and Gant died from?

As Bits said - no idea.

I believe Firman and Novak lived with each other. We know Firman was a drug addict. Also read that Novak had a tough life so my guess is she was also on the hezza.

TP died of AIDS related complications. St Denis - unsure but wouldn't be surprised if the same. A lot of premature deaths there are no shortage of options - AIDS, overdose, suicide, cancer etc.

 

[PaulSubetro]

What a coincidence. Ghislane Maxwell and Jean luc Brunel accused of sex trafficking minors, last seen also in South America.

Coolio wrote a song about it.

Been runnin' most their lives,
South America is a pedo's paradise

 

[Macka_321]

As Bits said - no idea.

I believe Firman and Novak lived with each other. We know Firman was a drug addict. Also read that Novak had a tough life so my guess is she was also on the hezza.

TP died of AIDS related complications. St Denis - unsure but wouldn't be surprised if the same. A lot of premature deaths there are no shortage of options - AIDS, overdose, suicide, cancer etc.

Denis died of aids. These scumbags still alive need to be charged enough is enough.

 

[Bits]

Who is still alive?

Turtur - must have had some sort of immunity because he admitted to raping unconscious boys/men.
Mr B - immunity again? Lack of evidence?
Mr R - lack of evidence, other than Mr B (unreliable)?
Woodard - they tried to get him on other charges which didn’t stick. Lack of evidence?

All of the above other than Turtur would rely on witnesses to convict. Turtur isn’t in it for the murders, just for rape. The main reason they got a conviction to stick with BVE was forensic, namely the fibre evidence and the drugs.

As an aside, the suppression of Mr R is a joke. There is case law from years ago on the Austlii website (go to the South Australia section and enter Von Einem into the database search) that names Mr R.
Turtur’s name is also there despite suppression orders being in place at the time.

 

[DropBearess]

hi, no info available on cause of death for any of them

 

[DropBearess]

Pru Firman passed away due to sleep apnea.

 

[Bits]

Pru Firman passed away due to sleep apnea.

Thank you for sharing.

 

[Hendrix27]

Who is still alive?

Turtur - must have had some sort of immunity because he admitted to raping unconscious boys/men.
Mr B - immunity again? Lack of evidence?
Mr R - lack of evidence, other than Mr B (unreliable)?
Woodard - they tried to get him on other charges which didn’t stick. Lack of evidence?

All of the above other than Turtur would rely on witnesses to convict. Turtur isn’t in it for the murders, just for rape. The main reason they got a conviction to stick with BVE was forensic, namely the fibre evidence and the drugs.

As an aside, the suppression of Mr R is a joke. There is case law from years ago on the Austlii website (go to the South Australia section and enter Von Einem into the database search) that names Mr R.
Turtur’s name is also there despite suppression orders being in place at the time.

I can't understand the suppression either when his name is easily found online. Doesn't make sense. He really needs to be outed. If I ever get diagnosed with a terminal illness I know whose house and business I'll torch.

 

[SkipLee]

Debi Marshall mentioned in her podcast that she had the overseas phone number for Gambardella - look like News Corp have tracked him to South America. There's an article on the AdelaideNow Website

I'm busy right now but will post a summary later on - unless someone beats me to it!

I'll leave a full summary to others but it reads like a PR piece, or at least not involved/interested enough to question anything "official". A lot of information missing regarding his situation in Italy/South America but perhaps an introduction to something more. Remains to be seen.

 

[PaulSubetro]

He says he's never met BVE which is interesting. How is he going to help police investigate the "notorious sex-torture ring" when he says he doesn't know any of them? Does sound like PR but I suspect his estrangement from his kids is behind this - he wants to show them that he's not involved (in the Family and DS murder).

I would like to know what he knows about DS's murder (he must have a good idea what happened because he was seen at the house in the hours Derrance was dead outside the freezer).
I want to know what he knows about Alan Barnes.
I want to know about the "Friday night soiree's" - was DS getting young men to his house because he would give them heroin?

Turtur is ready to talk. Gambardella is possibly ready to talk. Someone needs to go hit up Kastelan.

 

[SkipLee]

A lot of information missing

Reading now: a passage from Tom Mann's Body in the Freezer conspicuously missing from News Corp's account.

Mrs Gambardella approached investigative journalist for The Advertiser, Dick Wordley, for personal help in regard to the abduction of her children. According to Mrs Gambardella, one of her husband’s clients was the Italian consul in South Australia, who procured false Italian passports for their two South Australian born children to travel with her husband to southern Italy. Dick Wordley was able to introduce Mrs Gambardella to another South Australian, Stewart Clarke, whose two children had been abducted to West Germany. On his way to Bonn in Germany, Clarke went to southern Italy, located the Gambardella children, but, through Gambardella’s connections in Calabria, was put on the plane at gunpoint for Zurich.

Mrs Gambardella confirmed later to the police that her ex-husband Gino had procured young boys for a homosexual group on a weekly basis. She believed the killers were protected by ‘strong interests’ in South Australia and members of the legal profession were involved when she lived in Adelaide before 1980 and when Barnes and Muir were murdered.

Dick Wordley was the journalist who interviewed Von Einem in 1989

 

[DropBearess]

This thread is great reading. As an Adelaidean, I've followed this case very closely since it's beginning. I have a few different perspectives which might be of interest and might provoke some discussion.

I don't believe for a moment the first murder occured in 1979. I think this whole sordid caper was happening well before then. There are still many missing young men in Australia before and after these crimes who inexplicably disappeared and have never been found.

Strange things have happened in Adelaide from 1970 or before. Around that time runaways and semi-homeless kids would congregate in Rundle Street, with City Cross being their Hub at the time. There didn't seem to be many genuinely homeless kids in those days. They were mostly 15-19 year olds, mostly males. They frequently adopted aliases and their parents were usually searching frantically for them. Several came from Mildura or interstate. They couldn't get any benefits and were effectively non-persons. Churches would assist them from time to time, with their young people offering friendship and peer support. Needless to say, they inevitably found themselves in trouble, usually break and enter etc. Violence was rare. For this they would find themselves in McNally Training Centre at Magill, where they learned all sorts of things and usually exited with homosexual experience.

There began the strange situations. These kids would be released with no verifiable homes and dodgy people to stay with. They would end up back in City Cross and church workers would try to reconnect with them. Then some of them began to mysteriously disappear for days at a time with no-one knowing and few caring where they were. They would reappear for a while, having been living with "some people", then vanish again. Often they would be wearing new, very modern clothes and have new haircuts, as opposed to their previous poverty. They would emerge looking very attractive, with someone having made the most of them. They were uncontactable when at these places and the whole thing was very mysterious. Volunteers were met with hostility over the phone if they managed to make contact. It gradually came about that the 'kind' people who were hosting these street kids were transgender and/or gay and lived a very high life. Their homes were located in places such as Stepney, St. Peters, Hackney, Gilberton and Norwood. The Buckingham Arms was their hang-out at the time.

At this time, it was difficult to ascertain how street kids were making connections with these people. Then it was gradually discovered that some of these creeps worked in central Adelaide in very mediocre jobs, in places where homeless boys might frequent. They had various nick-names. The boys were then introduced by these procurers to the wealthy gay men and transgenders. A couple of well-known stores come to mind.

It seemed the homeless youths were in awe of and afraid of these people. They would return to them for a time, then come back to the streets. They would make snide jokes to each other about sore bottoms and various other ailments but would display their expensive belongings to others and go back for more. But there were a number who were very afraid and in pain from medical conditions they would not discuss, caused during their strange abscences. There is no way of knowing what eventually happened to these young people.

At this time in Adelaide there was a totally inadequate support system for runaway youth and no way of identification. Youth support workers were hopelessly naive, as indeed were many police at the time. No-one had any real idea that there were actually people in existence who did these things. It's hard to believe there are not plenty of people who have information about these times.

Of course ages would not match all those suspects from 1979 onwards. But this scene definitely existed well before then and has obviously thrived since, with plenty of willing participants ready to change their sordid baton to the next team. There are people from the era described above who clearly could have been involved for many years.

I think that when trying to join the dots, we need to go way back. The more I learn about this case, the more I think delving more extensively into previous years might hold the key. And for what it's worth, I think the biggest mistake in the investigation was not putting much more pressure on Pru and co. at the time.

 

[Bits]

Thanks DB. It is logical that this didn’t just start with BVE and his mates. Drugs and sex have long been the currency for those with no other means of support. A desperate and hungry homeless boy would see others coming back with all sorts of goodies, and no matter how terrified, putting up with a few hours/days of whatever was being done to them might not have seemed such a high price to pay sadly. What else could they realistically do in those days? Every city has an underclass whose only asset is their bodies unfortunately.

The Eastern suburbs of Adelaide have generally been the more affluent so it’s not surprising that a group could develop in that cluster of suburbs you mentioned who had loose connections through their sexual preferences, and social hang-outs (The Buck, The Green Dragon, The Duke etc) and the means to procure drugs/money to fulfil them. BVE was in his 30s when the killing started. Plenty of time to observe, learn, and then take it further.

I totally agree that there were missed opportunities with Firman, Novak, Turtur etc. How none of them were ever charged with assisting, withholding info etc is shocking. I know Firman was charged over that young boy, but yet again the standard of proof wasn’t met because there was no proof that she knew he was underage. But there must have been lesser charges that would have stuck. I would love to know what deals were made in order to get them to testify.

And what of Kastelan? He seems to have been in both circles - working for Gambardella and hanging around BVE with Barnes. Surely he has more to say.

Hindsight is wonderful, but you can’t help wondering if things could have/should have been done very differently.Even now, they should be able to do something more. George Pell was convicted on historical charges pretty much on the word of thirteen year old choir boys. There must be dozens if not hundreds of victims out there who could step up and identify Mr R.

Surely lifting the remaining suppression orders and then publishing photos of everyone involved (photos from the time of the crimes) would jog some memories. I don’t think photos of Firman, Novak, Brooks, Gant or even Turtur (as he looked back then) have ever been released. Certainly seems like people have been contacting Debi Marshall with their experiences. Photos might knock a few more useful memories loose.

 

[DropBearess]

In regard to my previous post, l would be very interested to know where BVE worked in 1970. He would have been in his early 20s. Does anyone have any info on this and did he have a nick-name?

 

[PaulSubetro]

In regard to my previous post, l would be very interested to know where BVE worked in 1970. He would have been in his early 20s. Does anyone have any info on this and did he have a nick-name?

BVE was born in 1946. In 1970 he was 24. My understanding is he finished school and then got a job at Pipeline Supplies of Australia as an accounts junior and worked his way up to being the accountant. So it's likely he was at Pipeline Supplies of Australia in Regency Park.

What is the nickname you're trying to match?

 

[Hendrix27]

BVE was born in 1946. In 1970 he was 24. My understanding is he finished school and then got a job at Pipeline Supplies of Australia as an accounts junior and worked his way up to being the accountant. So it's likely he was at Pipeline Supplies of Australia in Regency Park.

What is the nickname you're trying to match?

On the topic of nicknames, I've heard that Mr R had the nickname of Tick Tock, for obvious reasons, but am not sure if this is correct.
I don't know if anyone else can confirm this.