Snowtown serial killer James Vlassakis gets parole after attempt to block release fails
Posted Tue 15 Sep 2026 at 12:49pmTue 15 Sep 2026 at 12:49pmTue 15 Sep 2026 at 12:49pm, updated Tue 15 Sep 2026 at 1:06pmTue 15 Sep 2026 at 1:06pmTue 15 Sep 2026 at 1:06pm
Snowtown serial killer James Spyridon Vlassakis will be released from prison, after a review upheld the decision of SA’s Parole Board.
Last year, the board granted his release on parole, but the South Australian government requested a review of that decision.
The Parole Administrative Review Commissioner has now found the Attorney-General failed to establish that reasons exist to overturn the decision of the Parole Board.
“I dismiss the Attorney-General’s application and affirm the decision of the Parole Board, dated 5 August 2025, to release Mr James Spyridon Vlassakis on parole,” commissioner David Lovell KC wrote in his decision.
Vlassakis was the youngest of the four perpetrators of the notorious “bodies in the barrels” killings, which involved 12 deaths between 1992 and 1999.
Eleven of those deaths were later deemed to have been murders, and Vlassakis — who is now aged in his mid-40s — pleaded guilty to four of them.
Vlassakis was 18 when, in 1998, he took part in the murder of his half-brother Troy Youde — a crime he committed at the behest of his stepfather and Snowtown ringleader John Bunting.
Vlassakis later took part in the murders of Fred Brooks, Gary O’Dwyer and David Johnson.
The remains of all four of those victims were found at Snowtown.
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