By GREG ANSLEY
CANBERRA - A brutal tale of torture and murder is unfolding in an Adelaide court as prosecutors outline their case against four men charged with one of Australia's worst serial killings.
The murders were discovered last year when the trail of a missing woman led to the vault of a defunct bank in the country town of Snowtown, north of Adelaide.
Inside the vault were the mutilated bodies of eight victims packed in barrels, along with restraints and instruments of torture.
Another two bodies were found later beneath the backyard of a suburban Adelaide home.
The committal proceedings for the four accused - Robert Joe Bagner, aged 29, Mark Ray Haydon, 42, John Justin Bunting, 34, and James Spyridon Viassakis, 20 - are surrounded by extraordinary security and packed press benches could not handle the demand from Australian and international media.
The proceedings have also been blacked out in South Australia by a gag ordered by Magistrate David Gurry, who issued an interim suppression order on the evidence of two forensic experts.
Defence counsel yesterday argued that the evidence should be suppressed to prevent the broadcast of any evidence that may be inadmissible in a subsequent trial.
And the four accused have also refused to plead, although under South Australian law their silence has been taken as pleas of not guilty.
Wagner, Haydon and Bunting have been charged with all 10 murders - including Haydon's wife Elizabeth, 37 - and Viassakis with five killings, among them that of his half-brother David Johnson, 24.
The other victims were Michael Gardiner, 19, Barry Lane, 42, Gavin Porter, 31, Troy Youde, 21, Frederick Brooks, 18, Gary O'Dwyer, 29, Ray David, 26, and Suzanne Allen, 27.
The court was told that the discovery in the vault of the old bank followed inquiries into the disappearance of Elizabeth Haydon.
Crown prosecutor Wendy Abraham, QC, said the accused had forced their victims to make tape recordings intended to be used to convince relatives they were still living, and had stolen their social security benefits.
The victims were also known to the killers. Four were living with their alleged murderers, and Viassakis is alleged to have lured his half-brother Johnson to the bank on the pretext of buying a computer.
Inside the vault the bodies of Johnson, Haydon, Porter, Gardiner, Lane, Youde, Brooks and O'Dwyer were found packed into six plastic barrels.
Five of the victims were believed to have been asphyxiated or strangled - four were gagged and four had ropes around their necks.
A post-mortem showed that blackened marks on Gardiner's scrotum, were likely to be the result of burns. The hands and feet of some of the bodies had been removed, and others were lacerated.
The court was told that other discoveries in the vault included a machine capable of delivering an electric shock, handcuffs, knives, rubber gloves, rope and tape.
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