Australians horrified by 'slice and dice' trial

A sensational tale of murder, mutilation and cannibalism will unfold in an Adelaide courtroom tomorrow when two men accused of Australia's worst serial killings go on trial.

After a week when the country has been preoccupied with another murder – that of the British tourist Peter Falconio, after DNA tests identified an outback drifter called Bradley Murdoch as the chief suspect – the Adelaide case will further undermine Australia's image as a place where violence is rare.

Twelve people died at the hands of a gang that went on a sadistic killing spree in South Australia in the 1990s. Eight were dismembered and stuffed into barrels of acid that were stashed in a disused bank vault in Snowtown, a small country town. Others were buried in suburban back gardens in Adelaide.

Australians have been avidly awaiting the trial since the plastic barrels were unearthed by police in May 1999. Last week potential jurors with weak stomachs were excused by the Supreme Court judge, Brian Martin, who warned that the evidence would be gruesome.

Prosecution lawyers are expected to portray John Bunting, 36, as the ringleader of a gang of four men who preyed on acquaintances and neighbours in Adelaide's depressed northern suburbs. They will argue that the killers' motives were utterly mundane: to steal their victims' welfare benefits, meagre savings and second-hand cars.

Bunting, a former abattoir worker, has pleaded not guilty to 12 murders. Robert Wagner, 31, has admitted three murders and denied eight. Mark Haydon, 43, will be tried separately, while James Vlassakis, the son of Bunting's girlfriend, Christine Harvey, pleaded guilty to four murders last year and was jailed for life.

The evidence of 22-year-old Vlassakis is expected to be lengthy and enthralling in its exposition of the group's modus operandi. It is believed that the victims were strangled or asphyxiated, mainly by Wagner, the tallest and strongest of the four men. It was Bunting who allegedly cut them up – "sliced and diced" them, as he termed it.

While the gang did steal money and property from their victims, it appears some murders were motivated by hatred and bloodlust. Bunting despised homosexuals, paedophiles and the disabled; he would walk down the street and point out passers-by, saying: "They need to be killed." He reviled Haydon's wife, Elizabeth, an eventual victim, because she was obese. Another victim, Barry Lane, was a transvestite and former homosexual partner of Wagner.

The jury will be told that the victims – 10 men and two women – were tortured before they died. Two of the men had scorch marks on their genitals, and equipment recovered from the vault included handcuffs, knives, used sparklers, a device for crushing toes and a voltage regulator to administer electric shocks.

Solemn music was played during the killings. Several victims were forced to repeat scripted phrases on tape before they died. The tapes were later played over the telephone to relatives. A document found in Bunting's handwriting outlined the ritual: "The routine of confession had to be got through. The grovelling on the floor and the screaming for mercy, the crack of broken bones, the smashed teeth and bloody clots of hair."

The final victim, David Johnson, was killed in the vault after being lured to Snowtown by Vlassakis, his half-brother. A piece of flesh was cut from his body, after which the men adjourned to a friend's house. Vlassakis will testify that he took a shower and came out to find Wagner cooking the flesh in a frying pan in the kitchen.

The gang initially hid their growing collection of bodies on a property north of Adelaide, and then rented the vault in Snowtown. They told a friend who noted the foul stench in the building that it came from rotting kangaroo carcasses.

The discovery of the barrels and their decomposing contents horrified people in the tiny wheat-farming community. The publicity brought an unwelcome flood of tourists who posed for pictures in front of Snowtown's bank.

Two bodies were found in the garden of a council house once rented by Bunting after police used ground-breaking radar similar to equipment employed to locate the victims of the British serial killers Fred and Rosemary West. The family that rented the house after Bunting fled the same day, leaving their washing hanging on the line.