Fridae

A South Australian Supreme Court jury in Adelaide has sentenced two men to life imprisonment for a 20-month torture and killing spree that prosecutors said was motivated by a hatred of homosexuals and paedophiles.

John Justin Bunting, 37, was found guilty on Monday of 11 murders and Robert Joe Wagner, 31, guilty of seven. Wagner had earlier pleaded guilty to three counts of murder before the trial began last October.

Bunting was charged with 12 murders and Wagner eight, but the jury was unable to reach a verdict on one of the murder counts, Australian media reported.

Another man, James Spyridon Vlassakis, who pleaded guilty to murdering his stepbrother David Johnson, halfbrother Troy Youde, and Fred Brooks and Gary O'Dwyer, was sentenced to life in prison for each case in June, 2001. Vlassakis was 14 when he befriended Bunting who was involved with his single-mother, Elizabeth Harvey.

A fourth man charged over the murders, Mark Ray Haydon, will be tried later.

The case is believed to be Australia's worst-ever serial killings. Most of the victims, who died between 1995 and 1999, were tortured before being killed.

Police found eight bodies stuffed in acid-filled plastic barrels in a disused bank vault in Snowtown, a small town located 150km north of Adelaide, in May 1999. Another two bodies were later found buried in a suburban Adelaide back yard, and two more were discovered in other places.

In an earlier pre-trial hearing, prosecutors said the victims had been either friends or relatives of the defendants.

During the trial, which lasted over 11 months, jurors heard how Bunting and Wagner killed for pleasure. The court was told the pair had an incessant hatred of pedophiles and homosexuals and would torture their victims. Their victims were also forced into making a "confession" which was recorded in their final moments.

One victim had a sparkler inserted in his penis and lit while others had electric shocks inflicted and their toes crushed with pliers. Another victim was completely dismembered - her head and arms were cut off and her torso was almost entirely de-fleshed, with breasts and genitals removed, the court heard. Most were finally strangled. The duo boasted that "the good ones" did not scream as they were tortured.

Prosecutors claimed victims were murdered so the killers could cash their welfare cheques. Bunting and Wilder also preyed on suspected paedophiles.

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In a bizarre twist, Bunting and Wagner got to know each other in 1991 when the then 26-year-old Bunting and his wife, Veronika Tripp, moved into their new Salisbury North home. Soon after, Bunting befriended Wagner who was then in a gay relationship with Barry Lane, who became one of their victims. Gradually Wagner began to spend more time with Bunting and less with Lane.

The court heard that Lane, who is a convicted pedophile, had started an unlawful relationship with Wagner when he was just 14 years old. Lane took the boy interstate and away from his family for four years, returning when Wagner was 18; by which time, they acted like a loving, homosexual couple who called each other "sweetie" and talked of marriage.

Wagner, who pleaded guilty to Lane's murder, tortured him in his own home in the company of Bunting and another friend, Thomas Trevilyan. Trevilyan was later found hanging from a tree which was made to fool police into thinking that he had committed suicide.

Vlassakis who had been raped by family members including his half-brother as well as a neighbour found a friend in Bunting, whom he thought of as an older brother. The court heard that Bunting, who was also sexually abused as a child, took the boy on motorbike rides and the pair would later sit up all night discussing the abuse and their now combined dislike of child molesters and homosexuals. Vlassakis eventually moved in with Bunting and Tripp.

In 1998, Vlassakis was coerced into torturing and killing his own half-brother, Youde, as he had already confided in Bunting that Youde had sexually abused him as a young teenager.

Three weeks after he killed his half-brother, Vlassakis participated in the murder of Fred Brooks, the son of Bunting's new girlfriend, Jodie Elliott. Elliott was also the sister of Elizabeth Haydon, Mark Haydon's wife. Bunting immediately took a disliking to Brooks and thought he was a "dirty" and told Vlassakis he believed the teenager was a pedophile.

Brooks was handcuffed, thumbcuffed and beaten. He was made to repeat abusive phrases into a tape recorder. Bunting and Wagner also recorded a so-called confession from Brooks that he was involved in the abuse of young girls.