The "Family" Murders

The Tall Blond Man

Working on the now obvious assumption that the murders were the work of the same individual(s) and that the person(s) they wished to talk to most of all was a homosexual, South Australian Police Major Crime Squad detectives infiltrated the vast South Australian homosexual network. Through their secret contacts they came up with a short-list of possible suspects consisting of known deviants and "closet" kinks known only in the homosexual sub-culture.

Bevan Von Einem

One such person of interest was a tall, blond, well-groomed, 37-year-old accountant named Bevan Spencer Von Einem. Openly homosexual, Von Einem was well known to police as a frequenter of homosexual pick-up spots or "beats" as they were more commonly known. Von Einem also had a reputation as being particularly fond of young boys, a pastime scorned by the homosexual community.

Von Einem was brought in and questioned at length about the Barnes and Langley killings. He vigorously denied any knowledge of the murders other than what he had read in the papers and the rumours he had heard that were circulating about the specific injuries to the victims. Police had no choice but to let him go. For the time being.

Richard Kelvin

On 23 July, 1983, a fifth victim turned up. Seven weeks earlier, 15-year-old Richard Kelvin was abducted a short distance from his North Adelaide home and his body was found by an amateur geologist off a track near One Tree Hill in the Adelaide foothills. The boy was wearing a Channel Nine T-shirt, jeans and sneakers — the clothes he had on when he left his parent's home on June 5.

He went to a bus stop only 200 yards from his home that afternoon to catch a bus to say goodbye to a friend. Several neighbours reported hearing calls for help at about that time and police were convinced he had been kidnapped.

Police search the area where Kelvin's body was found.

No real attempt had been made to conceal the body. Police weren't surprised that the post-mortem revealed that the lad had similar grotesque wounds to the anus as the other victims.

The examination also revealed that the teenager had been heavily drugged and had been kept alive for up to five weeks before he was murdered. Richard's body was found to contain traces of four different drugs.

Police rounded up the usual suspects once again and this time Von Einem aroused their suspicions by not protesting as vehemently to their questioning as he had previously. Task force detectives decided to search Von Einem's house and give him and his clothing a thorough scientific once-over. It paid off in spades. In Von Einem's possession they found three of the drugs taken from the dead boy's body and found Von Einem's hair in the deceased's clothing.

Von Einem was charged with the murder of Richard Kelvin. At his trial Von Einem pleaded not guilty and even though he was faced with undeniable evidence that he had been in Kelvin's company, he denied ever having known the boy. Then in a complete turnaround Von Einem said that he had picked Kelvin up one time when he was hitchhiking and dropped him off near his home.

The jury was obviously unimpressed and found him guilty of murder. Bevan Spencer Von Einem was sentenced to life imprisonment with a non-parole period of 24 years which was later increased to 36 years on appeal by the Crown, a record for South Australia.

But that was not to be the end of it. Not by a long shot.