Notorious child murderer Bevan Spencer von Einem will spend his final days at Yatala Labour Prison after being transferred from Port Augusta Prison this week.
The 79-year-old convicted killer, who is reportedly on his death bed, was moved to the Adelaide facility on Monday after spending years at the regional prison.
The Horrific Crime That Shocked a Nation
Von Einem was jailed in 1984 for the sexually-motivated murder of 15-year-old Richard Kelvin, the son of former Nine News presenter Rob Kelvin. The teenager vanished near his North Adelaide home in June 1983 in a case that would horrify the nation.
Police investigations revealed that Richard had been abducted, held captive, sexually abused, drugged and tortured for five weeks before his body was discovered near Mount Crawford airstrip in the Adelaide Hills.
Von Einem was arrested later that year and found guilty of the murder, receiving an automatic life sentence at Yatala Labour Prison.
Parole Eligibility and Political Intervention
Despite becoming eligible for parole in 2007, von Einem never applied for release. Then-South Australian premier Mike Rann vowed the killer would never walk free, ensuring he remained behind bars for his horrific crime.
Deputy Premier Kyam Maher expressed no sympathy for the dying murderer when speaking with 7NEWS. "Quite frankly every day that person isn't on this planet anymore is a good day," Mr Maher stated.
"South Australians have been horrified for decades by what that person has done."
Connections to Adelaide's Notorious Family Murders
A 2020 Crime Stoppers report suggested more than one person was involved in Kelvin's murder, linking the case to the notorious "Family Murders" - a series of murders of teenage boys and young men in Adelaide during the 1970s and 1980s.
Police investigations indicate that up to 12 people, several suspected to be high-profile Australians, were involved in the kidnappings. Investigators say the suspects and their associates were connected by their shared habits of actively seeking out young males for sex, sometimes drugging and raping their victims.
While von Einem was suspected in several of these cases, he was never formally charged with any other murders.
As the convicted killer faces his final days at Yatala Labour Prison, South Australians remember the young victim whose life was brutally cut short and the decades of horror that followed one of the state's most notorious crimes.
