The most disturbing of murders is the type where the victim’s body cannot be recovered. The most common ways a murderer disposes of their victim’s body in this manner is usually through dissolving their corpse in acid. But there exists a more disturbing method of fully disposing of a victim’s body, a method that few murderers use due to how messy and disturbing it is, but nonetheless, there have been cases where murderers have attempted to dispose of a body in this manner. The method that I’m talking about is completely destroying the body by putting it through a woodchipper.
This method has been used as soon as 2017, when 54-year-old Bruce Saunders died when he was dragged into a woodchipper, but only recently have police reached the conclusion that his death was suspicious, and it is now being investigated as a homicide.
It started on November 12th, 2017, in Queensland, Australia, at a Goomboorian property, while Bruce Saunders and two of his friends were working in a rural area, helping a family friend clear trees from her yard. The friend had recently lost her husband, and asked the three men for help while she was in the process of selling her property.
After three weeks of helping the family friend, they were almost completely finished, but at around 7:40 PM, Saunders appeared to have gotten entangled in the branches of a tree that had been placed in the shredder. The two friends working with him had allegedly not seen Saunders enter the woodchipper, but had found him inside of the machine and tried to save him, but they were unable to do so. The family friend was also home at the time of the incident, but hadn’t seen Saunders enter the machine either.
54-year-old Bruce Saunders died at the scene as a result of the injuries he sustained from the woodchipper.
Gympie Police Acting Inspector Paul Algie explained the horrific scene, by stating: “I went out there this morning to speak to officers from Brisbane and I’d have to say it’s one of the worst incident scenes I’ve ever seen,” He also said: “A man went through a machine designed to shred plant material, so you can imagine the scene,”.
It was reportedly so gruesome that it affected emergency workers who had responded to the call, with Algie stating: “They wouldn’t be human if they weren’t affected at the time.” He did not elaborate in detail on the extent of Saunders’ injuries, but did say that the Specialist Police Unit Disaster Identification Squad was brought to the scene in order to identify the man. Algie also said Saunders had died a few seconds after entering the machine.
At the time, Algie said: “It’s just a tragic accident … there is no suggestion of foul play,” but that would later be disproven.
In the days following Saunders’ death, information came to detectives that indicated to them that the death was not an accident. Directly after Saunder’s death, further evidence was found at the scene, and on the weekend prior to February 9th, 2018, police raided the Goomboorian property, and discovered a number of “items of interest.”, which were seized for forensic examination.
Police announced to the public on February 9th, 2018, that the death is now being investigated as a homicide.
At the press conference, Detective Inspector Gary Pettiford stated that police could not elaborate further as to what the “items of interest” were, but said that they have given a number of “promising” lines of inquiries. Pettiford said that detectives were contacted by people who knew Saunders, who suggested to them that his death was not an accident. Since they were told this, detectives have been working constantly until they arrived at the conclusion that Saunders’ death is suspicious. Pettiford was unable to comment on if the death was premeditated or random, and was also unable to comment on if Saunders was dead before he entered the woodchipper.
The detectives working on the case are confident that their investigation will end with an arrest, but as of the making of this video, Bruce Saunders’ murder remains unsolved.
Sources
https://www.gympietimes.com.au/news/chipper-horror-there-was-nothing-that-could-be-don/3264369/
http://www.smh.com.au/queensland/man-dies-in-woodchipper-in-tragic-accident-20171113-p4ywzo
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