Ray Davies

**Ray Allan Peter Davies** (1969 - December, 1995) was an intellectually disabled man who was the second known victim of the Snowtown murders.

## Backstory

John Bunting, driven to murder by his hatred for paedophiles and homosexuals, has been described as a skilled manipulator of people and "Australia's worst serial killer". Bunting had fashioned a "rock spider wall" on a wall of a spare room in his house. The chart, created using paper notes and wool, was an interconnected web of names of people Bunting suspected to be paedophiles or homosexuals.

Suzanne Allen was the ex-girlfriend of John Bunting. In about 1993, Ray Davies and Suzanne Allen had a relationship and lived together. The relationship ended after Suzanne’s grandsons complained that Davies had made sexual advances to them. They remained friends and, immediately prior to his disappearance, Davies was living in a caravan parked at the rear of Suzanne’s home.

Annette Cannon is the daughter of Suzanne Allen and the mother of the boys to whom Ray Davies was said to have made the advances. She spent Christmas Day 1995 with Allen and Davies. The following day her seven year old son told her and Allen that Davies had sexually assaulted him and tried to sexually assault another of Cannon’s sons. Cannon and Allen reported the matter to the police.

Subsequently, Annette Cannon observed John Bunting and Suzanne Allen cleaning out the caravan. Bunting gave Cannon a photo of her two sons which had apparently come from the caravan. Bunting commented that Davies was a paedophile and that was why he had the photograph. It is believed that this is when Ray Davies became a target for John Bunting.

## Events

At some point, in 1995, Bunting admitted to James (Jamie) Vlassakis that he had killed a man named Ray Davies. He recounted how the Vlassakis’s own mother, Elizabeth Harvey (wife of John Bunting), had stabbed Davies in the leg, just before their mutual friend, Robert Wagner, strangled the man to unconsciousness with jumper cables.

Years later, in court testimony, Vlassakis stated that, according to Bunting’s story, Bunting and Wagner loaded Davies’ unconscious form into the trunk of a Holden Torana. They drove ninety minutes to the northeast, to a residence in the town of Bakara. They tossed Davies into a bathtub, and proceeded to bash him in the genitals with the end of a pole, which is believed to have ultimately resulted in the man’s death.

On 26 May 1999, the body of Ray Davies was found in a hole at the rear of premises that had been previously occupied by Bunting. The hole was filled in by Bunting and Wagner with bricks, soil and concrete.

## Aftermath

Bunting created the impression that a number of the deceased were still alive in order to ensure the continuation of social security benefits being received by the deceased and to enable the accused to access those benefits. On a number of occasions between January and April 1999, Bunting was filmed by security cameras accessing Davies’ account.

The Supreme Court trial for John Bunting began on 14 October 2002. He was convicted of eleven murders and found guilty on 8 September 2003. He was sentenced to 11 life sentences without the possibility of parole and is incarcerated at Yatala Labour Prison in Adelaide.

Robert Wagner was found guilty of ten counts of murder. He was sentenced to 10 life sentences without the possibility of parole and has been incarcerated since 2003.

## Other Victims of the Snowtown Murders

* Frederick Brooks, aged 18
* Michelle Gardiner, aged 19
* Elizabeth Haydon, aged 37
* David Johnson, aged 24
* Vanessa Lane, aged 42
* Gary O'Dwyer, aged 29
* Gavin Porter, aged 29
* Thomas Trevilyan, aged 18
* Clinton Trezise, aged 22
* Troy Youde, aged 21