A jury has heard that Victorian landlord Steven Frederick Johnson, now 74, abducted his tenant, plumber Christopher Jarvis, shot him in the ear with a starter pistol and beat him to death with a baseball bat, before burying his body in a forest and burning his car, following a bitter dispute over more than $2,200 in unpaid rent. Johnson, who has pleaded not guilty to murder in the Supreme Court of Victoria, allegedly lived next door to Jarvis in Wangoom and had begun tribunal proceedings to evict him, with a hearing scheduled for the day after the 38-year-old vanished in June 2006.

Prosecutor Mark Gibson told the court Johnson enlisted a friend to help confront Jarvis outside his home, striking him with the pistol before shooting him in the ear as he lay on the ground. The pair allegedly drove the still-living victim to Framlingham Forest in Johnson's car, where Johnson beat him to death with a bat and buried him in a shallow grave, before torching the car at Thunder Point in Warrnambool. The case only progressed in 2022, when police recorded Johnson admitting he had graded his driveway that morning "to attract their attention", and secretly captured him telling a friend afterwards that "the s***s hit the fan a little bit."