Abattoir workers 'tortured and stabbed two victims before laying them out like butchered pigs'

Two men accused of murder left 'a house of horrors' where two victims had been mutilated and laid out like 'butchered pigs', a court has been told.

Abattoir workers Ionut-Valentin Boboc, 22, and Jacob-Bebe Chers, 46, are accused of torturing and stabbing to death Denzil McKenzie and Fahad Hossain Pramanik.

The two victims were stabbed multiple times - with some injuries resembling the way they would have butchered animals at their place of work, the jury was told.

Their partially chopped up, and exposed remains, were then 'laid up' in a 'macabre' display, prosecutors said.

CCTV footage has been released of the pair arriving at a house in Easton, Bristol and leaving three hours later, during which time the prosecution say they jointly carried out the killings.

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Helen Bartlett, from the major crimes investigation team, said CCTV evidence first showed Chers park his car in a nearby street after filling up with petrol.

The pair were then shown walking together towards the house where the alleged double murder took place exchanging items as they approached it

The court was then shown CCTV footage taken at 11.11 pm, three hours later, where the men are seen exiting the address holding further items.

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The jury was later shown footage from the early hours of the morning of Boboc visiting a nearby clump of bushes, where prosecutors allege he discarded items.

Later CCTV, taken at around 8.30am the next day, revealed that Chers returned to the carwash where he worked to clean his vehicle and throw away clothing.

Prosecutor Stephen Dent KC said on Wednesday the two defendants were the only people at the address when the murders took place.

He told the jury: "They left behind them a scene of horror, the dead and mutilated bodies of Denzil McKenzie and Fahad Pramanik were left in the sitting room of that house.

"Both men had been stabbed repeatedly while trying to defend themselves."

McKenzie suffered 23 knife wounds and there were signs he had been tortured with cuts around his eye, on his eyeball and on his big toenail.

Pramanik was stabbed at least three times in the back and abdomen.

Dent said Pramanik had also been stabbed three times and tortured.

He told the jury: "The bodies had been arranged in a macabre display. One body was on the sofa and the other on the floor with the foot of one of the bodies within the gaping abdominal wound of the other."

Pramanik had also been dismembered in a "gruesome echo of the butchering the defendants carried out in the abattoir on pigs" Dent added.

The court heard that Boboc, who at the time was 21 and his co-defendant, aged 45 at the time, were friends who worked together at an abattoir just outside of Bristol on the production line.

The trial heard the two defendants were friends and met up on the evening of Saturday, 11 September 2021.

Dent said that after spending a couple of hours together, they went to the house of a man they both knew - Denzil McKenzie.

Messages recovered by the police showed Boboc had "repeatedly" borrowed money from McKenzie - sometimes in return for sexual favours.

Pramanik however was just in the wrong place at the wrong time, the court heard.

Boboc, of Hillfields, Bristol, has admitted the murder of Mr McKenzie but denies killing Pramanik, while Chers, also of Hillfields, denies both murders.

The trial continues.