Australia’s worst serial killers were sentenced on Wednesday to life in prison for their role in what became known as the bodies-in-the-barrels case.
”The evidence has drawn me to the conclusion that both of you are incapable of true rehabilitation,” Judge Brian Martin told John Bunting (37) and Robert Wagner (31).
Bunting was convicted of 11 murders. Wagner, who had owned up to three murders before the latest trial began, was convicted of a further seven.
The dismembered bodies of eight of their victims were discovered four years ago steeped in acid in six black plastic barrels in a former bank vault in Snowtown, 150 kilometres north of Adelaide.
Another four bodies were found, two buried in the back garden of a house Bunting had rented.
James Vlassakis, who confessed to playing a part in four of the killings, and who gave stomach-churning evidence at the trial, is serving 26 years in jail.
A fourth man being held over the murders, Mark Haydon, has yet to be tried.
Wagner cast himself in the role of vigilante, telling the court that ”paedophiles were doing terrible things to children and innocent children were being damaged”.
He went on: ”The authorities did nothing about it. I was very angry. Somebody had to do something about it. I decided to take action. I took that action”.
The majority of their victims were not paedophiles.
Bunting, who also showed no contrition, read a book during the sentencing.
Bunting had been charged with 12 murders, and Wagner eight, but after huddling for 45 hours the jury could not reach a verdict on whether the pair were telling the truth when they insisted they found one woman dead in her bath. They cut her up anyway.
Vlassakis, only 14-years-old when he took up with Bunting, spent 32 days on the witness stand regaling the jury with details of the killings and the perverse pleasure the pair took in them.
Their eighth victim, James Brooks, had burning cigarettes placed in his nose and ears. They burned a smiley face onto his forehead with a cigarette lighter. His toes were crushed with a pair of pliers. A sparkler was inserted in his penis and then lit. Water was injected into his testicles with a syringe.
After David Johnson was killed, they fried and ate his flesh.
The pair boasted to Vlassakis that the ”good ones” never screamed.
Bunting and Wager initially picked on paedophiles and homosexuals, but their range expanded to include their own friends.
Apart from a delight in cruelty, the killings were for personal gain. The pair would pretend their victims were still alive to collect their social security payments and loot their bank accounts. Altogether, they took close to 100 000 Australian dollars (US $70 000) from their victims.
Australia’s previous worst serial killings, the so-called backpacker murders between 1989 and 1992, took seven lives. Ivan Milat is currently serving seven life sentences for those crimes. – Sapa-DPA