The "Family" Murders

The Family Murders

At around midnight on a chilly autumn night in May 1972, on the banks of the Torrens River which flows through the heart of Adelaide and is a notorious "pick up" area frequented at night by homosexuals, Adelaide University lecturer Dr. George Duncan and Roger James were attacked by four men, bashed and thrown in the river and left for dead.

Duncan, a frail man with just one lung as a result of juvenile tuberculosis, was drowned. Severe bruising beneath his arm pits indicated that he had been man-handled and thrown into the freezing river by a number of people.

Roger James escaped with a broken ankle and had been saved by a tall young blond man in his mid-20s, who just happened to be passing by at the time, a Bevan Spencer Von Einem, a name that would be of enormous significance in the time to come.

The body of Dr. George after being pulled from the river.

Dr. George Duncan's death was treated as murder and within days the spotlight fell on three senior Vice Squad detectives who were alleged to have gone to the Torrens River that night in search of "poofters" to bash after they had attended a drunken send-off for one of their comrades. Witnesses said that the detectives were accompanied by a tall civilian whose name never came to light.

All three detectives were called upon to give evidence into a Coronial Inquest into Dr. Duncan's death but all refused to answer any of the incriminating questions put to them and were immediately suspended from duty.

A subsequent police inquiry failed to find sufficient evidence to recommend a prosecution of the three police officers. The public were outraged and while the whole matter stank of a cover-up, there was little that could be done and the incident was soon forgotten... for the time being.

In June 1979, while the God-fearing citizens of Adelaide were trying to come to terms with the murders of seven young women in the Truro Serial Murders, the hideously mutilated body of 17-year-old Alan Barnes was found on the banks of the South Para reservoir northeast of Adelaide. He had been reported missing seven days earlier.

His "fresh" corpse indicated that he had died the day before he was discovered. A post-mortem examination revealed that he had died of massive blood loss from ghastly injuries inflicted upon his anus by a large blunt instrument, while he was still alive.

Neil Muir

Two months later police were called to investigate what looked like human body parts found in plastic bags that had floated to rest on the banks of the Port River at Port Adelaide. They turned out to be the dissected remains of 25-year-old Neil Muir, neatly cut into many pieces, placed in the garbage bags and thrown into the river.

Peter Stogneff

In June 1982 the skeletal remains of 14-year-old Peter Stogneff who had gone missing ten months earlier were found at Middle Beach, north of Adelaide, cut into three pieces as if by a surgical saw.

On 27 February 1982, 18-year-old Mark Langley disappeared while walking near the Torrens River. Nine days later his mutilated body was found in scrub in the Adelaide foothills. Among the mutilations was a wound that appeared to have been cut with a surgical instrument that went from his navel to the pubic region. The hair around the area had been shaved as it would have been in an operation in a hospital. Part of his small bowel was missing. The post-mortem revealed that Mark had died from a massive loss of blood from gross injuries to his anus.

By now the zealous press was convinced that the murders were the work of a group of surreptitious Adelaide homosexuals in very high places throughout the community; politicians, judges, religious leaders and the like, who paid handsomely for kidnapped young men who they drugged and kept alive for their pleasure. When the victim was no longer any use to them the procurers disposed of the bodies.

The press christened this unconfirmed clandestine group "the Family" and from then on the case was referred to in the national press as the Adelaide Family Murders.

Note: Two of the three detectives who allegedly threw Dr. George Duncan in the River Torrens in May 1972, and left him to drown, were eventually brought to trial in 1987 in the South Australian Supreme Court, charged with manslaughter.

After a three- week trial, they were found not guilty.