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The accomplice to the Snowtown murders is Mark Ray Hayden released to the communitydays before the end of his 25-year sentence for assisting in the cover-up of Australia’s most massive serial killing crime.
The Department of Corrections said Hayden, 65, was moved to a community address on Thursday.
A temporary extended supervision order was imposed in the Supreme Court of South Australia on Wednesday and will take effect when Hayden’s parole expires next week.
He had been in the Adelaide Pre-Release Center while serving a conditional discharge which was granted in February and was allowed into the community on the day of his release.
Hayden’s sentence expires on May 21, exactly 25 years after he was jailed alongside convicted murderers John Bunting and Robert Wagner, who are serving life sentences without the possibility of parole.
The State Government is continuing its efforts to declare Hayden a high-risk offender and is awaiting a mental health report.
Hayden will live in an undisclosed location.
Parole Board chairman Frances Nelson told the ABC the new address had been “very carefully vetted” by the SA police, community corrections authorities and the Parole Board.
“It’s best that he settles into the community while he’s still eligible for parole because his main sentence expires early next week,” she said.
The temporary supervision order imposes conditions modeled on his parole order, including living at an approved address, reporting weekly to a corrections officer, abstaining from alcohol and illegal drugs, no contact with the victims or their families, no communication with the media or co-offenders , and undertaking recommended treatment following a psychological assessment.
Hayden must also wear an electronic transmitter and abide by a 9-6am curfew.
The serial killings were uncovered in May 1999 when police found eight dismembered bodies in acid-filled barrels in the vault of a disused bank in Snowtown, north of Adelaide.
Two more bodies were found buried in a backyard in the suburb of Salisbury North, while detectives later linked two more deaths to Bunting and Wagner.
Hayden was found to have helped his friends cover up their crimes by storing the bodies of murder victims in barrels in his shed and later hired the infamous Snowtown Bank.
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