A man in Tasmania who murdered his friend in an “execution-style” killing and then disposed of his body parts has been sentenced to 32 years in jail.
Jack Harrison Vincent Sadler, 29, was found guilty this month of killing Jake Anderson-Brettner, 24, in August 2018 by a 12-person jury.
Sadler’s jail sentence was backdated to August 2018 and he will be eligible for parole after 20 years in jail.
“This was a planned, intentional, execution-style killing,” justice Robert Pearce said during the sentencing on Friday.
Sadler had lined a room in his house with plastic before shooting his former friend three times — two times in the chest and once in the back — the prosecutors said during the trial of the case in the Supreme Court in Launceston.
He used a “chopping implement” like an axe or a knife to cut up Anderson-Brettner’s body and then disposed of the body parts in bins with his then partner Gemma Clark.
Anderson-Brettner’s torso was discovered in bushes off a highway, but the other body parts have never been found.
Denying the murder charge during the trial, Sadler said Victorian drug suppliers had killed his former friend and told him to dispose of the body.
The court was told that Sadler had been getting drugs from the suppliers and Anderson-Brettner would sell them in Launceston, according to ABC News.
Clark is currently serving a five-and-a-half-year jail sentence for being an accessory in the murder after pleading guilty in 2019.
She had said that Sadler told her to buy items like plastic, a saw and disposable gloves. She reportedly also bought cayenne pepper and chilli powder to mask the smell of the decomposing body parts.
Justice Pearce had said during her sentencing that she not only “failed to report his killing but also acted with the intention of keeping the murder secret so the perpetrator may escape punishment for his crime”.
