NEW Correctional Services Minister Tom Koutsantonis has vowed to ban Snowtown serial killer James Vlassakis from marrying his childhood sweetheart. Mr Koutsantonis today dismissed the possibility that Vlassakis - who pleaded guilty to four of the 11 Snowtown murders - would be allowed a prison-yard marriage ceremony, and even cast doubt over the legitimacy of the relationship.
"It won't be happening on my watch," Mr Koutsantonis said in Parliament.
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"It is the policy of (the Department of) Corrections that Mr Vlassakis is a high-security prisoner. We only allow low-security prisoners on rare occasions to marry.
"He has not made any request to the department ... to marry, and we are not even sure if the claim that the marriage is on is legitimate.
"I don't think the family of the victims of the bodies in the barrel (case) would appreciate a hard ruthless crim being married in a beautiful ceremony."
Woman tells of her love for serial killer
Yesterday, AdelaideNow revealed that South Australian woman Bianca Roberts had told the latest edition of That's Life magazine she would marry Vlassakis on September 2.
"We've been together for almost seven years," Ms Roberts told That's Life.
"I wish we could be together like a normal couple but you can't help who you love and I'm prepared to wait for James, even until 2025 when he will be eligible for parole.
"I know that some people reading this will find it hard to understand how I could marry a serial killer but that's not how I choose to see James."
Ms Roberts told the magazine she had been Vlassakis's first girlfriend for 18 months when they were aged about 11.
She was shattered when she discovered he was one of four men convicted over the nation's worst serial killings.
Eleven people were murdered in South Australia between 1992 and 1999, eight of whom were found dismembered in barrels of acid in a Snowtown bank vault on May 20, 1999.
Vlassakis pleaded guilty to four of the murders and was jailed for life, with a non-parole period of 26 years.
He confessed to the murders of his stepbrother David Johnson and half-brother Troy Youde, and the murders of Gary O'Dwyer and Frederick Brooks
He became the star witness against his "father figure" and murder spree ringleader John Justin Bunting, as well as Robert Joe Wagner and Mark Ray Haydon.
Vlassakis was regarded as less culpable in the monstrous murder spree than his co-accused, and told Ms Roberts he had been "brainwashed" by Bunting, who had a burning hatred for people he suspected of being pedophiles or homosexuals.
Ms Roberts said she wrote to Vlassakis in jail after his arrest, and they fell in love again.
She said Vlassakis asked her to marry him on January 18, 2003 - a year into their renewed relationship.
"It might be an unconventional relationship, but James had always been the man for me and now he was going to become my husband," she said.
"What he has done is all in his past and now, together, we're focusing on a future which will be full of all the love and understanding that he's so far been denied in life."
