Unsolved The Family Murders

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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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Mar 21, 2016
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The Gay Scene of the 70s and early 80s

The Green Dragon
– Corner South Terrace and Pultney St, Adelaide.

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If I didnt know better - the young fella with beer/smoke 1 handed combo looks a lot like me at the time

I mean I could have been there - but the Green Dragon was a ''I need beer'' location and the person looks fairly sober there - and I dont recognise the cigarettes . Escort Reds and Winfield were my smoke of choice at the time. Cant think of what brand they might be

Also the older gentleman on the right - looks legal/lawyer type - I dont think its Liddy but could be convinced it is
 
Jun 23, 2021
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Seems too much of a coincidence about Barnes being killed just weeks after Stevenson.

Here's my wild theory trying to connect all the dots after watching Frozen Lies

Gambardella phones Stevenson and tells him that he's bringing a boy (believed to be Alan Barnes) over. Szach overhears the call, knowing that he's about to be pushed out to Coober Pedy to run a carpet cleaning business and potentially replaced he snaps and shots Stevenson.

Gambardella arrives with Barnes and finds Stevenson dead on the bed.

Gambardella panics, he retrieves the home made porn videos from the hidey hole in the floor and then helps Szach clean up and put Stevenson in the freezer.

Szach, knowing that he wasn't going to make the bus to Coober Pedy cancels the ticket and races off to Coober Pedy in Stevenson's car

The next day a young guy with long blonde hair goes to the Legal Services Commission (believed to be Alan Barnes) asking for a lawyer and tells the girl who spoke to him that "he was with Derrance Stevenson the night before, but he was in no position to act for anyone". If it actually was Alan Barnes at Legal Services then chances are that he was wanting to speak to someone about what he witnessed the night before.

If Gambardella was picking up and dropping off boys to Stevenson, then it's very possible that he was doing it for others too. Potentially some of the members of The Family may have even been on those tapes so when word gets out that Barnes has been opening his mouth about what happened to Stevenson and the tapes they decide to shut him up.

I'm guessing it may have reached a stage where people started to worry that Barnes was going to start attract attention towards them so a decision was made to shut him up and/or find out what he had told people. I don't know whether the intention was to kill him or whether they were supposed to just scare him and things got out of control, but it seems way too co incidental that Darko Kastelan was the last person to see Barnes alive before he was killed by The Family.

Cold Lies linked Darko to Szach, Gambardella, Stevenson and also potentially to BVE so it appears very probable that Darko assisted in some way in bringing Barnes to The Family on that Sunday he disappeared.

The other interesting things to note was that Gambardella fled the country never to return and the woman that Barnes allegedly spoke to at Legal Services was apparently subjected to many threatening calls threatening her and her family if she didn't keep quiet so she quit and fled interstate.

The threats make absolutely no sense unless Stevenson's murder didn't link into a bigger picture and given the timing of things it's hard not to connect them both.

Just another possible thought, what if the thrill of what they did to Alan Barnes led to them replicating it with the other four victims? Could Stevenson's murder have set off a chain of events that eventually led to The Family murders?
 
Jun 23, 2021
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Sounds very credible, but I don't think the chain of events started here. Was Stevenson not friends with Ric Marshall who lived up the road and used wards of the state, crossing paths with McIntyre and Munro who stem back to the Beaumont children. Ky Meekins and Rachel Vaughan's testimonies do not sound unreasonable.
 

bth18

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The worst thing that’s come of this case (outside of the horrible crimes obviously) is the mudding of the waters with this wide spread conspiracy that all pedophiles or people involved in sex crimes that have ever lived in the city are involved. It’s just simply not true

BVE along with 4-5 others committed the family murders and crimes, with probably another 6 peripheral people involved in luring boys.

fleeting encounters or being able to connect others through degrees of separation are likely nothing more than coincidental

edit: did SGW and R etc go to parties and abuse drugged boys where other men outside of these crimes were? almost certainly.
 
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Nemisis

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Jul 27, 2012
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Sounds very credible, but I don't think the chain of events started here. Was Stevenson not friends with Ric Marshall who lived up the road and used wards of the state, crossing paths with McIntyre and Munro who stem back to the Beaumont children. Ky Meekins and Rachel Vaughan's testimonies do not sound unreasonable.
Ki Meekins has spoken the truth from living through it. Rachel Vaughan's so called testimony is speculative at best.
 

squawk

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Tbh no one in here knows 100% who or what connections there are and how deep they go
I’d say there’s a pretty strong community of interest within this thread.
There have been published authors on the topic; family members of victims; and plenty of passionate researchers who have spent a lot of time reviewing material from many different sources, who have collectively contributed to this thread.
If you have something further to proffer and a good rationale for it, why don’t you put it out there for everyone here to consider?
 
I’d say there’s a pretty strong community of interest within this thread.
There have been published authors on the topic; family members of victims; and plenty of passionate researchers who have spent a lot of time reviewing material from many different sources, who have collectively contributed to this thread.
If you have something further to proffer and a good rationale for it, why don’t you put it out there for everyone here to consider?
Nothing to proffer
Just saying i dont think the truth is ever going to come out and hopefully i havent came across as some nwgative blow in
My connection id rather not say apart from its nothing that can contribute to finding out more info to help moving fwd.
And in no way at all am i knocking the work done here and elsewhere as that has been fantastic.
 

Bits

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Oct 31, 2019
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Adelaide is a small place - we have two or three degrees of separation, not six. Back in the 70’s and 80’s it was even smaller. And the subset of gay/drag/trans etc would have been even smaller, as would the number of places accepting of that group. I have no doubt that paths were crossed, overlap between groups occurred and people knew each other.Were they all involved in every similar crime? No.
 

John Barnes

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Charlie Barnes would often post about Alan attending SANFL games and as we know BVE was also a regular attendee. Back in 1979 crowds ranged between 3,000 & 20,000 depending on the clubs playing. There has been suggestions BVE knew Alan from his coke delivery job however wondering if there was further interaction between them at footy games?

No preacher was with Alan a lot of the time and they would go to port games or footy park at west lakes


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John Barnes

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If Alan knew anything about Stevenson murder I can tell you he would not keep it to himself, preacher would have known.
Ps : Alan was taken a week after Stevenson’s body was found . The weekend Stevenson was found Alan was home as he was not working and had no money to go out .

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John Barnes

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Yeah I think Debi drew a long bow coming straight out saying she thought it was Alan who went to the legal commission with no real evidence outside of hair colour

True we are taking about the late 70s and a lot of people had long hair . I think it’s about 20% had blond hair and out of that 20% had long blond hair so that makes it about 10000 people who would have had long blond hair and all would have been young between ages 15 to 25 . Now that’s a lot of people and the lady was old and could not finger Alan but just said it could have been . The same thing was said by the people who told the police that they seen Alan in Elizabeth . “ it could have been “ .


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Bits

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Found this - Cold Chisel had a residency there in their early days. Apparently it is now Red Square, which makes it 111 Hindley Street

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