Five years later, Gregory Lee Roser has been found guilty of what the victim’s son called the “most gruesome and evil” murder.
Roser, 63, was jailed for life when he was found to have beaten Saunders with a metal bar at a property in Brisbane’s north in November 2017.
Bruce Saunders was beaten to death by Gregory Lee Roser before his body was fed into a wood chipper. (9 News)
The body was then put into the shredder with the help of another man, Peter Koenig.
“My father does not deserve to be remembered as the chipper victim,” Saunders’ son Blake said in a victim impact statement read to the court.
“My father was a kind, happy, hardworking and wonderful man.”
At his five-week trial in the Supreme Court in Brisbane, Roser did not deny Saunders was killed.
Roser admitted that he had “shamefully” helped dispose of the body at the wood chipper and then lied about it, telling police it had been an industrial accident.
“Peter Koenig (left), Greg Roser (centre) and Bruce Saunders (not pictured) were all in love, apparently at least at some point with Sharon Graham (right),” Crown prosecutor David Meredith said. (Supplied)
However, Roser accused Koenig of killing Saunders while they were clearing trees on Goomboorian’s property near Gympie.
After beginning deliberations Tuesday afternoon, the jury found Roser guilty Friday morning with Saunders’ family and friends in attendance.
“He (Saunders) was kind and generous to a fault, this … probably turned into a fatal flaw,” Judge Martin Burns told Roser.
The disposal of Saunders’ body was beyond the imagination of any decent human being, Judge Burns said.
Gregory Lee Roser (left), pictured with Sharon Graham, 61, has been found guilty of murder. (Supplied)
“But you are not a decent human being, not much less”, he said to Roser.
The Crown alleged Sharon Graham asked her lovers Roser and Koenig to kill her ex-partner Saunders and make it look like an accident to claim her $750,000 life insurance claim.
Koenig claimed Roser repeatedly hit Saunders with the bar as he was finishing work on the property.
He told the court he helped carry the body to the chipper because Roser had back pain.
Roser had pointed the finger at Koenig, who he claimed had mob connections and once bragged about pushing a man into a meat grinder.
Graham lived with Saunders albeit in separate bedrooms and was in a relationship with Roser while maintaining “intimate relations” with Koenig.
Sharon Graham, 61, and Bruce Saunders, 54, whose bodies were found in a wood chipper in Brisbane in 2017. (Supplied)
Roser said Graham had planned for months to kill Saunders, asking him to carry out as many as three different assassination plans, at one point borrowing Koenig’s gun, but he refused.
Eventually, he came up with an idea to make it look like a shredder accident, this time getting both Koenig and Roser stuck, the court heard.
Roser admitted Graham had solicited him and lied about the death being an accident, even telling police he tried to save Saunders, who he claimed was “reckless” around the crusher.
Graham, 61, and Roser pleaded not guilty to murder before the former successfully applied for a separate trial.
Koenig pleaded guilty to accessory after the fact to murder earlier this year.