The true crime writer fighting to solve decades-old Adelaide murders

Debi Marhsall can't bear the avalanche of true crime we're living through. There must be a reason to do it, she says, and that's the pursuit of truth and justice. But she understands the public's fascination with what she calls "the dark side". She can't shake it herself, despite her family begging her to stop, despite the toll she says it's taken on her life. 

An investigative journalist and author of six true crime books — including Killing For Pleasure, on which the film Snowtown is based — Marshall's investigation into the so-called Family Court bomber Leonard Warick drew attention to him years before he was charged with multiple murders. She also chronicled the 1973 murder of baby girl Deidre Kennedy and her family's push to overhaul Queensland's double jeopardy rules, which they eventually achieved.  

Marshall has promised her daughter she's finished writing true crime books. But there's one case she can't let go of — Adelaide's unsolved "family" murders — and she's fighting, along with the victims' families, to lift suppression orders she believes could lead to answers.

You've written about worrying whether you have crossed a line into "barbaric sensationalism" in your "quest to expose the truth", and that some days you question why you do the work you do, whether anyone cares. What keeps you doing this work?

It simply has to be done. It has to be written. I mean, there are so many unsolved murders in this country, sadly. And there's very few investigative crime journalists who are doing the work that I do. And when you speak to victims' families as often as I do, who reach out to me and ask for help, I just find it impossible to turn my back on them. And it could be a child murder; it could be serial killings.

So, as hard as it is on me personally, and it has taken a dreadful toll on me at all sorts of levels, I can't turn my back on it. I can't walk away. And I think it's the path I've chosen and the things that go with that, the nightmares, I regard them as something of collateral damage, but the older I get, the more I notice the toll it's taken on me.

I was recently reading writer Maggie Nelson's memoir The Red Parts. She said that while researching her aunt's murder she suffered from what she called "murder mind". She could write all day with "a certain distance", but "in bed at night I found a smattering of sickening images of violent acts ready and waiting for me". Would you describe what you experience as akin to murder mind?

Oh, absolutely. When you're writing or researching, your mind takes you to another place. You're focused on what you're doing, as you need to be, and it's only later at rest when the words and the images and the interviews and the thoughts come back sometimes in very distorted ways, but always in nightmares. And some of the nightmares I've had are unrepeatable.

My specialty, for want of a different way of putting it, is serial killers. So, when you're chasing serial killers, you need to be careful they don't start chasing you. But they do start chasing you in your dreams. And sometimes they catch you, which is awful.

Also, I'm dealing with lust killers. So, these people are opportunistic. They're the worst type of killer in terms of the public's fascination with them, but also the fear that they engender in the community, because you don't know where they are. They could be the boy next door and often are.

So, these people frequently visit me in my nightmares to the point where when my daughter was 12 years old, I was still walking her to school. It was only one block away my sister said, "you've got to stop doing this, it's not healthy". I was like, "I can't let her go because there could be someone waiting for her".

I mean, that of course is extreme. That was happening when I was writing the Snowtown book, Killing For Pleasure. When you're dealing with sexual torture, and cannibalism and dismemberment, to the degree that I was immersed in that particular story at that time, there's no respite from it.

Do you think over time you've gotten better at balancing, I guess, the statistical probability that your daughter's probably very safe compared to what you know from what you have investigated?

No. I have three grandchildren who are all under five. And I just about have a heart attack when they open the front door on their own. Because I know how quickly these things can happen. I know how quickly children can be snatched. And just because we think we're safe in our front yard, trust me, we're not.

I wrote a book, called Lambs to the Slaughter, on a guy called Derek Percy, who was an opportunistic child killer. And he wrote of his sadistic fantasies. I think that he murdered nine children in the 60s.

I know they were different days. But it was just that quick and that opportunistic and it can happen to anyone, anytime.

In 2022 you published the book Banquet: The Untold Story of Adelaide's Family Murders about the chilling abduction, sexual abuse and murder of five teenage boys and young men in Adelaide between 1979 and 83. You've investigated the murders and the rumours linking these crimes to Adelaide's elite. You're still working on the cases, of which four of the five remain unsolved. Do you believe they can be solved?

Absolutely. They not only can be solved, they should be solved and they should have been solved a long time ago. There was suppression sitting around names of people who were either police witnesses, informants or suspects and I'm in a battle royale right now working with some of Australia's senior legal figures, who are equally as appalled as I am that these suppressions remain in place, to try to get those suppressions lifted or at least one of them lifted.

What's involved in this battle to get these suppression orders lifted?

These are orders that are almost 50 years old and there's no court case within cooee. So, they were put on in the administration of justice, or part of that was in the administration of justice, to protect the integrity of a trial. Well, there is no trial that we know of, but South Australia Police recently made a public statement that they would not support the lifting of these suppressions. In the meantime, we've got victims' families sitting out there praying for justice and passing the baton of grief to yet another generation, which is just so unacceptable.

So, the lawyers are investigating how and if we get that suppression lifted. I, along with the lawyers and the Commissioner for Victims' Rights in South Australia, are representing the victims' families in this matter. We've started a GoFundMe crowdfunding called "Adelaide's 'Family' Murders: Help Lift Suppression Orders". We need that to cover running costs and also in the event that we will have to pay the legal costs of any person who challenges the lifting of the orders. If we win, the money will go to the Homicide Victims Support Group.

If you are successful in getting the suppression orders lifted, what's next?

What's next is the image or images, depending on how many we can get lifted.

How many are we talking about?

Well, there's a few, but some of them are not particularly relevant to what I'm looking at.

The family members of these young men have waited decades to see some kind of justice. You know what they're going through. You pursued the killer of your partner Ron Jarvis, and finally saw him sentenced 22 years after the crime. What did that weight feel like?

I'm always reluctant to compare what I went through with Ronnie with what the victims' families go through because to lose a child, whether they're an adult or not, must be incomprehensibly heartbreaking. To lose a partner was bad enough, but to get justice, it's just the most extraordinary thing.

In my case, to be able to visit Ron's grave site and say, you know, we got him, we finally got him, but it's taken 22 years, darling, but here we are.

In Ron's case, he was a marijuana dealer, I didn't know that until very late in the day, and he was murdered not long after that. I remember someone saying to me once, well, he's not exactly an innocent victim, is he? I guess the general public would look at it like that.

But when you're in the thick of it and you're in love with someone who's murdered, it certainly doesn't feel like that. It just feels like an enormous heartache that you carry with you forever.

I was in my early 30s, and I was on my own for a very long time after that because I was just too heartbroken to re-partner.

How do you clear your heart and your mind of all the horrors that you see in your work? Where is your happy place?

When things get really too bad for me I'll trot off and see a psychologist. But the other part of me is I'm blessed to have been born with an optimistic, happy nature so that if things get really grim, I throw a party. I love to dance and sing and drink beautiful wine and travel and I have a gorgeous little family and special friends.

True crime is everywhere these days. Why do you think it's so popular?

People are just fascinated by the dark side. What makes a person tick, pulling back that veil, looking into a human soul that is so tortured and so dark, that is endlessly fascinating. And that's part of the reason I do the work as well. Was it nurture or nature? Did something happen to them in their childhood? If it did, does that excuse their behaviour?

For example, we've got the situation with James Vlassakis at the moment, the youngest of the Snowtown killers. His parole was agreed and then, they went into this legal argy-bargy and he's still behind bars waiting to see whether they'll let him out of the gates.

He has done his time in terms of his sentence, but now it becomes a moral issue for many people. Well, yes, he has served his sentence, but does that mean he should be released?

Do you consume many true crime podcasts or books?

No, look, I don't. And my daughter, who is herself a journalist, a few years ago begged me, "mum, please stop writing this stuff, please, it's enough". And I sort of did make that promise, but I'm not sure that I won't break it one day.

It sounds to me like you're not quite finished, especially with the family murders.

I'm certainly not finished with the family members and my daughter knows that. She accepts that one. I think she just doesn't want me to go back into that darkness.

I divorced about a year ago and with my lovely ex-husband I used to just sit up at night, pretty much every night, particularly when I was doing a book or TV series or whatever, and ruminate on the cases with him. And he hates true crime. He's a builder. He's a bloke who likes to get his hands dirty and make something constructive.

Even though he was incredibly supportive, he never really understood why I was so fascinated with that. He supported me through it, but one night he said, "Deb, can you stop talking about this? Let's have some peace in our household, some fresh air from this". And I get that, you know, because it does become all consuming.