Source : Perth Now news
Notorious serial killer James Vlassakis has taken his first steps towards life on the outside after being moved into halfway house accommodation.
Vlassakis, the youngest of the infamous Snowtown killers, was controversially granted parole earlier this month.
He is one of four men handed lengthy jail terms for roles in the shocking ‘bodies in the barrel’ murders which rocked the South Australian town of Snowtown in the 1990s.
He was the youngest of four, who collectively murdered 12 people they saw as undesirable – including the disabled, homosexual and alleged paedophiles.
He was handed a life sentence with a minimum of 26 years without parole, a time period which has since lapsed.
Following a number of hearings, the decision to grant him release on parole was upheld earlier this month.
The 46-year-old will spend his first night outside of prison custody in more than two-and-a-half decades on Wednesday night.
ABC reports he has been moved into the Adelaide Pre-release Centre in Yatala, in Adelaide’s northern suburbs.
He will reside there for up to 12 months while members of the state’s Parole Board monitors his progress and decides when he is suitable to return into the community.
Previously, he had been residing at a South Australian prison, believed to have most recently been Mount Gambier prison.
He received his prison sentence after pleading guilty to the involvement in the murders of four of the 12 Snowtown victims – Fred Brooks, Gary O’Dwyer, David Johnson and Troy Youde who was his half-brother.
However, he received a considerably shorter sentence than two of the other killers, John Bunting and Robert Wagner, after becoming a key prosecution witness in their trials.
Neither Bunting nor Wagner received parole periods with their life sentences.
A fourth man, Mark Haydon, was convicted of helping to dispose of bodies and was sentenced to 25 years with a non-parole period of 18 years.
