 As South Australian police
use DNA tests to investigate suspects in a series of murder cold cases, Daniel G. Taylor looks back at an era
of fear and loathing.
In late March, Adelaide’s
The Sunday Mail announced that South
Australian police were reopening investigations into crimes attributed to ‘The
Family’. A recent change to the law allows police to take DNA samples from
suspects in major indictable offences and South Australia signalled its intention to
use this new weapon against the men they believe were involved in a series of
horrific murders.
It’s been almost 30 years since The Family became a by-word for fear and
loathing, a loathing directed against homosexuals; for The Family were – are –
according to police, a “close-knit group of Adelaide homosexuals”.
In the Mail’s
opinion, The Family is a group of prominent gay men and their associates who
carried out five murders between 1979 and 1983. The Mail makes it clear they know the identity of the current suspects,
describing them with enough detail that someone “in the know” would recognise
them: an eastern suburbs businessman; the brother of an Olympic sportsman. But
if it’s true the Mail knows the
identity of The Family, if there is a group responsible, then it’s a shameful
indictment of police that in almost 30 years, only one person has been
convicted for the crimes.
In 1979, Alan Barnes, 18, was found dead, with the cause
attributed to shock and haemorrhaging due to laceration of the anus by a
tapered object, such as a beer bottle.
Eight weeks later, the dismembered remains of Neil Muir, 25, were found in two
plastic bags, with some evidence of damage to the anus.
In 1981, Peter Stogneff, 14, disappeared after wagging
school. His dismembered remains were found a year later, devoid of soft tissue,
making it impossible to assess damage to the anus.
Five months before Stogneff’s body was found, Mark Langley,
18, disappeared near the River Torrens at night. Eight days later, his body,
with a torn anus, was found on the outskirts of Adelaide.
In June 1983, Richard Kelvin, the 15 year old son of a
prominent television news reader, disappeared. Seven weeks later his body was
found in the foothills outside Adelaide
with severe anal injuries. The now-defunct The
News ran the headline, ‘Homosexual gang could be killers of four’.
Kenton Miller lived in Adelaide
during the height of The Family hysteria. He's angry that what he believes is a
media myth is being resuscitated.
“I’m angriest at The Sunday Mail’s
eagerness to resuscitate the corpse of a long dead fiction with no thought of
the negative social impact on the gay community,” says Miller, a former
community spokesperson for Lesbian and Gay Community Action at the peak of
media interest in The Family.
“It was assumed it was a gang - no single young man would go off with
homosexual unless they were over-powered and abducted. And it was assumed the
gang members were homosexual - after all, who else does things to anuses?”
Following South Australia’s decriminalisation of homosexuality
in the mid-70s, the arrival of AIDS and the subsequent negative portrayals of
gay men, coupled with the mainstream media’s insistence on blurring the lines
between homosexuality and paedophilia, meant that the time and place was ripe
for a uniquely Adelaide form of homophobia.
Aged 18 at the time of the murders, Miller came out against
this backdrop of fear and homophobia.
“I grew up in Adelaide
in a working class family,” he says. “The expressed response was, ‘If we hadn’t
decriminalised gay activity these crimes wouldn’t have happened.’ The media
gave everyone the right to judge gays because of ‘The Family’.
“Drag queens would take people on the scene aside and point
out someone and say, ‘He’s a member of The Family.’”
In 1983, Bevan Spencer von Einem was charged with the murder of young Richard
Kelvin. Later, he was charged with the murders of Barnes and Langley, but these
charges were subsequently dropped after key evidence in the cases was ruled as
inadmissible.
Detective-Sergeant Trevor Kipling of the Major Crime Squad
advanced the theory that all the murders were connected, focusing on the
victims’ similarities in age and method of death.
When 60 Minutes
coined the term ‘The Family’ in 1988, the existence of a gang was almost
universally accepted. This perception, shared by the media, and until recently,
the police, has persisted.
A paper co-authored by Miller, however, reached a different
conclusion.
“Our ultimate assertion was that the construct of ‘The
Family’ was nothing but a myth – a myth that relied upon homophobia for its
origins and permanence.”
He suggests the murders were unlinked and happened for a
variety of reasons, including drugs, revenge, and being in the wrong place at
the wrong time.
“Anal rape using a blunt instrument,” Miller reasons, “was a
crime of violence more often associated with heterosexual men, who saw this as
the ultimate degradation.
“It’s completely in the interests of the gay community for
these murders to be solved. No one suffers more than the gay community because
of the fear and innuendo and rumours associated with the deaths. As long as
they remain unsolved, The Sunday Mail,
at least, will continue with its intimation and its innuendo that will always
cast a cloud of suspicion over Adelaide’s
gay community.”
Anyone with
information relating to the murders is urged to contact Crime Stoppers on 1800
333 000.
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The humble hero 
Made in Manchester