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Snowtown ‘bodies in the barrels’ accomplice Mark Ray Haydon has been granted parole and will be released from prison.
Haydon was sentenced to 25 years imprisonment and was due to be released in May, however, the South Australian Parole Board has approved his application for early release.
The board’s Presiding Member Frances Nelson said his behaviour in prison had been “excellent”.
“His compliance with prison rules and regulations has been such that we’re confident he will comply with parole conditions,” she said.
“We’re also mindful that his head sentence ends in May, so in our view, the community would benefit, and he would benefit, from a period of supervision on parole prior to that.”
As part of his parole conditions, Haydon will have to wear an electronic bracelet and be subject to a curfew.
Nelson said he will also need to report to a community corrections officer, and is not allowed to have any contact with the victims’ families or the media.
“[He] will be released firstly to the Adelaide pre-release centre, we’ve placed electronic monitoring as a condition, not because we think it’s really necessary from his perspective, but it will give some reassurance to the community given the notoriety of his offences and the fact that it’s attracted so much publicity,” she said.
Haydon was convicted for his role in the “bodies in the barrels” murders in Snowtown in the 1990s. Eleven people were killed and eight of them were found in barrels in a disused bank vault in the rural South Australian town.
He was not convicted of the killings but of covering up seven of the murders.
The bodies were found when police investigating a missing person case entered the vault and were hit with the smell of decomposing bodies, which had been placed in barrels filled with hydrochloric acid.
His parole conditions will lapse when his 25-year sentence ends in May.