Arabic version: نقل جيمس فلاسكاكيس إلى مركز أديلايد لما قبل الإفراج
According to ABC News, James Spyridon Vlassakis has been transferred to the Adelaide Pre-release Centre after being granted parole, in the first step towards his release into the community.
The 46-year-old will live at the centre at Yatala, in Adelaide’s northern suburbs, for up to 12 months. The Parole Board will monitor his progress and determine the conditions that will apply when he is released into the community.
Vlassakis had been living in a South Australian prison. The decision to release him after he completed his non-parole period was upheld earlier in September after the South Australian government sought to block it.
He was the youngest of four perpetrators in the so-called “bodies in the barrels” serial killings between 1992 and 1999. Vlassakis received life imprisonment with a 26-year non-parole period after pleading guilty to involvement in the murders of Fred Brooks, Gary O’Dwyer, David Johnson and his half-brother, Troy Youde.
Vlassakis was a key prosecution witness in cases against John Bunting and Robert Wagner, who were jailed for 11 and 10 murders respectively after convictions at trial. Ronald Lane, nephew of Snowtown victim Barry Lane, said he considered Vlassakis’s sentence “very soft”. Vlassakis was not involved in Barry Lane’s murder in October 1997.
