Family charged with torturing lodger to death

London: A vulnerable teenager was taken in by a family and kept as a "dogsbody and slave" for years before he died as a result of severe beatings, a court heard on Tuesday.

Michael Gilbert was regularly hit, stabbed, shot with an air pistol and forced to sleep handcuffed to a bed, it was alleged.

Some of the beatings are said to have been filmed and one family member invented a "game show" where individuals were charged money to assault him.

When he died aged 26, after years of abuse, his body was dismembered and the remains dumped in a lake known as the Blue Lagoon in Arlesey, Bedfordshire.

A murder investigation began last year when parts of his body, including the torso, hands and feet, were found by two dog walkers. Other parts, including his head and knees, were only recovered this month. Four members of the same family, plus two other women are accused of a variety of offences connected to the death.

James Watt, 27, and his brother Robert, 20, both deny murder and familial homicide.

Their father Antonio Watt, 60, and mother Jennifer Smith-Dennis, have pleaded not guilty to familial homicide and perverting the course of justice.