Grisly Australia murders make for gruesome trial

POLICE hunting several missing people broke into a disused bank vault and found a grisly collection of severed limbs, bones, slabs of flesh and bodies crammed into six barrels, an Australian court heard yesterday.

Speaking at one of Australia’s most gruesome mass murder trials, forensic pathologist John Gilbert said the remains of eight people were taken from the barrels along with fluid and other items including rubber gloves and syringes.

John Justin Bunting, 35, and Robert Wagner, 30, face life sentences if convicted at the trial in Adelaide, which is expected to take six months and feature about 500 witnesses.

Bunting is charged with murdering 12 people over 20 months from October 1997. Wagner faces eight counts of murder.

The charges relate to eight bodies discovered in the barrels in Snowtown, north of Adelaide, two found buried in a suburban Adelaide back garden, and two in other places that have not been disclosed.

Prosecutors say the victims were murdered so their killers could cash their benefit cheques.

In a pre-trial hearing earlier this year Wagner pleaded guilty to three murders but denied any part in the killings for which he is currently on trial. Bunting denies all charges.