Bound by Blood

Why would a 17-year-old youth be driven to bash, dismember and mutilate the body of the 68-year-old former Mayor of Wollongong? Mark Valera stripped the victim, stuck pins into his eyes and kicked and beat the corpse for several hours before discarding his own clothes for those of the dead man's. Two weeks earlier, the body of a 60-year-old shopkeeper was discovered in his suburban Wollongong home, his severed head jammed in the kitchen sink. Again, Valera's handiwork. When Valera walked into a Police Station four months later and confessed to the murders, he pleaded childhood sexual abuse and family dysfunction as his defence. Then in August 2000, his own father was found dead, dispatched by a tomahawk, knife and steel pipe. This time it was Mark's 22-year-old sister who was behind the killing, though it was her lover, Keith Schreiber, who landed the blows. This is a bizarre and chilling tale of blood lust, homophobia and the sinister world of satanic rituals. Focussing on the lives of the murdered and their murderers, John Suter Linton tracks the police investigations and uncovers the dark secrets of three young Australians bound by blood and an insatiable desire for revenge.