john grainger

John Grainger was decapitated with an electric jigsaw (handout)

Two brothers have been jailed for the torture, murder and decapitation of a man whose body they set alight in Stockport town centre.

Joseph and Anthony Jenkins were jailed for the murder of John Grainger, 33, who they battered with a hammer, stabbed in the legs and then executed with a shotgun.

A jury at Manchester crown court heard how the pair, after killing Grainger in a flat, dragged his body to a bathroom and decapitated it with an electric jigsaw

The body was stuffed into a holdall and the head into a separate bag, which the brothers carried into the street in the early hours of January 26 and set alight.

Joseph Jenkins, who denied murder, was jailed for a minimum of 32 years. Anthony Jenkins, who had already pleaded guilty to the same charge, was handed a minimum 30-year sentence.

The brothers were regulars of the Egerton Arms pub, where they are understood to have met Grainger, before the three moved on to another bar and eventually a nightclub, then went to the defendants' flat.

The details of the attack and its motivations are not clear/ A postmortem revealed that Grainger may have still been alive, after having been shot once in the leg, beaten and stabbed, when he was shot in the head.

Investigating officer Andy Tattersall told PA: "The Jenkins brothers put Mr Grainger through a horrifically violent and cruel attack before shooting him. What followed was nothing short of macabre."