'The two don't seem to fit.' Blame the mediaĪ front page of The Advertiser in 1999 about the infamous Snowtown killings in South Australia.

'That contrast between having what can be classed as terrible types of murders, as compared to the supposed veneer that it is a very Christian city. 'Maybe it's Adelaide's apparent 'niceness' and conservatism that make any darkness more apparent,' Ms Shaw said. She has witnessed Adelaide's morbid curiosity with murder first-hand. There are also notorious unsolved disappearances in Adelaide, including the Beaumont children.Ĭriminal lawyer Marie Shaw QC was part of the legal team for Bevan von Einem and one of the Snowtown accused, Mark Hayden. Bevan Spencer von Einem is serving a life sentence for one of those murders.

The 'Family murders' involved the killing and torture of five young men from the 1970s to the mid-1980s.

John Justin Bunting is serving a life sentence as the ring leader of the group responsible.

The Snowtown or 'bodies-in-the-barrels' murders was the now infamous killing of 11 people in the 1990s.

The remains of seven girls were uncovered five in Truro in regional SA, one at Wingfield and one at Port Gawler.

The 'Truro murders' was the name given to a series of murders uncovered in the 1970s.

Let's recap those crimes for the uninitiated: Sorry, this video has expired Video: ABC coverage of the Snowtown murders It showed SA had 15 per cent of the nation's convicted killers, but only 8 per cent of the population.įun facts like this have ensured Adelaide's macabre image has seeped into popular culture - including in an ad for the gruesome US crime show Dexter. There was one statistic from a 2008 Australia Bureau of Statistics' report which garnered attention. Per capita, South Australia's murder rate is lower than average, at less than one person (0.9) per 100,000.

The Northern Territory holds the dubious record for the highest per capita murder rate, at about six victims per 100,000. The national rate is one murder victim per 100,000 people. So why does the city of churches foster the notion that not only does it have more murders, but the killings are particularly twisted? The statistics, up frontĪcross Australia, the murder rate has been declining for decades.Īccording to the Australian Institute of Criminology's most recent figures, the country's homicides are at an all-time low. Little did we expect it would be our very first question, or one of the most asked!īut let's get one thing straight from the start: Adelaide is not the murder capital of Australia, nor the world - and it never has been. So pervasive is Adelaide's bloody reputation, we here at Curious Adelaide predicted we would be asked whether Adelaide is indeed the murder capital of the nation.

Active serial killers in the us 2017