Pastor and daughter guilty of killing half-dozen family members

A pastor and his daughter have been found guilty by a Belgian court of killing half a dozen family members and dissolving the corpses in chemical drain cleaner.

The defence lawyer of Hungarian born Andras Pandy claimed the 74-year-old should be acquitted because there can be no conviction without bodies.

But after six hours of deliberations, the jury of eight women and four men found both guilty of the murders. Both face life in prison.

Pandy told the jury his two wives, two sons and two stepdaughters are still alive and he is "in contact with them through angels," even though no one has heard from them for years.

During the trial, medical experts had showed the jury photographic evidence of how effective the Cleanest drain cleaner could be. Using the corpse of a man who had donated his body to science, experts showed it could be dissolved into a thick, foamy sludge in about nine hours.

Earlier in the trial Agnes Pandy, 44, claimed her father had forced her to remove the bowels from the body of a murdered stepsister. Pandy's defence dismissed the evidence.

Although Pandy's daughter has confessed to participating in the murders, her lawyer Walter Muls said she should go free because she was under the "overwhelming irresistible spell" of a father who had raped her.

Police started digging for human remains in 1997 in several homes owned by Pandy. They found kneecaps and body parts in one cellar, but DNA tests showed they were not from the missing Pandy family members. It remains unclear whose body parts those were.

Prosecutors allege Pandy raped his daughters and stepdaughters, then turned to murder between 1986 and 1989 to cover up the incest after one stepdaughter, Timea, then 20, became pregnant. He is also charged with the attempted murder of Timea, who then fled to Canada and Hungary, with her son, now aged 16.

When asked why the missing family members could not be traced in four years of searching, Pandy replied: "It is up to justice to prove they are dead. When I'm free again, they will come and visit me."