Two men were convicted Monday and sentenced to life imprisonment for a 20-month torture and killing spree that prosecutors said was fueled by hate of pedophiles and homosexuals.

A South Australian Supreme Court jury found John Justin Bunting, 37, guilty of 11 murders in the "bodies-in-barrels" case believed to be Australia's worst-ever serial killings. The killers ate flesh from one of their victims, a witness said.

The jury, which deliberated for almost a week following a trial that lasted nearly a year, also convicted Robert Joe Wagner, 31, in seven of the murders.

Wagner had pleaded guilty to three other counts of murder before the trial.

The men were arrested after police found eight bodies stuffed in barrels and hidden in a defunct bank vault in Snowtown, a small village near the South Australia state capital, Adelaide. Two more bodies were found buried in a suburban Adelaide backyard, and two were found in other places that have not been disclosed.

Bunting had been charged with 12 murders and Wagner with taking part in eight of the slayings, but the jury said they could not reach a verdict on one of the murder counts.

Most of the victims, killed over 20 months from October 1997, were tortured before being killed. The majority were strangled.

The case sparked a level of media interest not seen here since the so-called "backpacker murders" of 1989 to 1992, in which seven people, including some foreign tourists, were killed.

Prosecutors say the victims in the latest case were murdered so their killers could cash their welfare checks, but also for enjoyment. Both Bunting and Wagner also allegedly targeted people they believed were pedophiles.

During the trial, which began Oct. 16 last year, the jury heard that at least one victim had limbs severed and slabs of flesh cut from his body.

Bunting and Wagner pushed a lit cigarette into the ear of one victim and used pliers to break the toes of two others, prosecutors said. Another victim was given electric shocks before being killed, they said.

The pair had a deep hatred of people they thought to be pedophiles or homosexuals, according to testimony at the trial.

Police said the killers knew most of their victims.

Two other men have been charged with some of the murders. James Spyridon Vlassakis pleaded guilty last year to four murders and was sentenced to a minimum of 26 years in prison.

Mark Ray Haydon faces three counts of murder. No date has been set for his trial.

Vlassakis testified against Bunting and Wagner and described the rationale behind the killings.

"They were the disease ... we were the cure and they had to be gone to the clinic to be cured, to make them good," he told the court.

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