Salt Creek trial hears alleged kidnapper used car, hammer and knife to attack female backpackers.

By Loukas Founten

A man accused of kidnapping two female backpackers and driving them to a remote South Australian beach at Salt Creek stripped one naked and attacked the other with a hammer and his car, an Adelaide court has heard.

Prosecutors have begun outlining the case against the 60-year-old man, who cannot be identified because of numerous suppressions surrounding the case.

The man pleaded not guilty to seven charges including aggravated kidnapping, indecent assault and attempted murder.

It is alleged he met the two backpackers, one from Brazil and the other from Germany, at Mawson Lakes train station in Adelaide’s north on February 9 last year, after responding to an ad on the website Gumtree posted by the Brazilian.

Opening the trial, prosecutor Jim Pearce said the backpackers didn’t know each other and it was “simply a matter of chance that they ended up meeting each other” while in Adelaide.

“They set off for what they thought would be their adventure,” he said.

Mr Pearce told jurors the accused drove the women to Salt Creek, an “isolated” and “remote” spot in the Coorong National Park, along the beach.

Jurors were told that while the German slept in the vehicle, the Brazilian drank wine with the accused.

The court heard that she wanted to see kangaroos, so the pair went for a walk into the dunes, where the man then attacked her and used rope to tie her hands to together “behind her back”.

Mr Pearce continued:

“He grabbed her, he pulled her to the ground face first, he positioned himself over her body preventing her from getting up. Then he produced a knife.

“The accused had total domination over her. With the flurry of a knife she was naked. Lying in the sand she was helpless.”

Victim’s face punched and spat on: prosecutor

Mr Pearce said the man used his knife to cut the woman’s bikini off her, and that he touched her body, kissing and licking her on her face and her left breast.

“She thought she was going to die. She asked the accused if he was going to kill her. He didn’t respond,” he said

“He punched her in the face, he spat in her face,” Mr Pearce said. “At that point he shoved her bikini bottom into her mouth in an attempt to gag her.”

The court heard she tried to reason with her attacker, at which point the accused turned her again so she was lying face down in the sand.

He tied her ankles so that she could walk but not run, and the pair walked slowly towards their campsite through the dunes.

But when the backpacker screamed for help hoping to alert her friend, the court heard the man punched her again and got on top of her.

The court was told the German backpacker was woken by the scream and came to her friend’s aid.

Mr Pearce said the Brazilian had tried to warn her companion away, and said the German tried to get her belongings from his car, but the man chased her and hit her on the head with a hammer.

He said:

“She’ll tell you she felt wobbly as if she was at sea. She tried to get away.

“The blows to the head… caused a number of ragged lacerations to her head and skull.

“Like [her friend] she though she was going to die.”

Mr Pearce said the woman, who was bleeding profusely, tried to run and was followed by the man in his car.

She managed to help untie her friend’s hands before they decided they would be safer if they split up.

German ‘mowed down’ by car

The Brazilian, Mr Pearce said, managed to hide in a bush but the German was then hit by the man’s car.

“He mowed her down in his car. He knocked her to the ground and he did this on several occasions.”

Mr Pearce said, on one occasion, the car ran over her but fortunately she was flat on the ground and the tyres missed her.

At one point, the court heard, the woman jumped onto the bonnet of the car as it drove towards her.

She moved onto the roof and refused to get down, even when the man stopped and tried to hit her with the hammer again.

Eventually, Mr Pearce said, the man let her go and drove off down the beach, where he was found in his blood-stained car and was arrested by police.

Mr Pearce said a group of fishermen in a white ute came to the aid of the Brazilian backpacker.

Frightened, naked and screaming, she warned the men to “get out of here, get out of here, he’s going to kill us all”, Mr Pearce said.

He said DNA testing had revealed saliva on the women’s bikini bottom consistent with him having put it in her mouth, while saliva on her left breast was “100 billion times more likely to have been obtained from the accused” than anyone else.

Mr Pearce also said there were “massive areas of blood staining” on the bull bar, bumper and roof of the man’s car

Keep an open mind: defence lawyer

Defence lawyer Bill Boucaut asked the jury to keep an open mind in the case.

“There will be no dispute that these young ladies emerged from the sand hills at Younghusband Peninsula highly distressed [and] injured,” he said.

“The issue in this case will be whether things happened the way they say they did.”

The trial is expected to run for just over two weeks.

This post originally appeared on ABC News.