Two men procured to flog a Beenleigh man cut his throat and torched his body, court told TWO men "procured" to execute a "flogging" on a Logan nursery owner cut his throat, torched his body and then hired prostitutes to try and cover their tracks, a court has been told. Crown prosecutor Sarah Farnden today told the Brisbane Supreme Court Brett Andrew Seymour, 45, and Adam Kenneth Terry, 26, were "counselled or procured" to do the deed by victim Brian Bathgate's step-daughter Michelle Josephine Warren, 32. All three have pleaded not guilty to Mr Bathgate's bloody murder on August 20, 2009. Seymour and Terry have pleaded guilty to interfering with the nursery owner's corpse by burning it in the tray of his ute in an Eagleby field the next day. A jury heard Mr Bathgate, 55, separated from his wife Antonia six weeks earlier and was living in a caravan at the back of his Mt Warren Park nursery and landscaping business when he was killed. In her opening address, Ms Farnden said Warren may have procured her co-accused into assaulting or stealing from Mr Bathgate over a grievance relating to a domestic violence incident or for court proceedings in which Antonia Bathgate may have lost her house. She detailed how Warren told her mother: "I wish you had let me handle this my way. I own Beenleigh. You won't know a thing, you'll never hear from him again. Ms Farnden said the Crown alleged Warren procured or counselled the pair into committing the murder out of her own animosity towards Mr Bathgate. The court heard two employees at the nursery saw Mr Bathgate's ute being driven out the front gate shortly after they arrived for work at 5.45am on August 20, 2009. Ms Farnden said the employees thought it had been unusual because the vehicle was moving quickly. The employees called Mr Bathgate's son, who later contacted police, when they noticed a trail of blood leading from Mr Bathgate's caravan into trees on his property, as well as a knife with a glove still attached to it and a half-smoked cigarette. Police found blood in the caravan that matched the DNA profile of Mr Bathgate as well as footprints, a shovel with a yellow and black handle, a stained shirt, the knife and glove, a watch and various shoe impressions. They also found a perfumed wig and a sledgehammer. The following day, firefighters and police were called to a cane field at Eagleby where they found Mr Bathgate's body "burnt beyond recognition" in the tray of his own ute. Ms Farnden said Mr Bathgate's body had been stabbed a number of times and he probably bled to death as a result of a severed pulmonary artery. The trio were arrested by police following a series of phone taps and after footage of one of their associates buying jerry cans of fuel at a service station came to light. It heard they had travelled to the Gold Coast after the killing where they had talked about cutting a man's throat and remarked on how heavy a dead body had been, before hiring prostitutes. Police found receipts for gloves, balaclavas and a duffel bag at the home of an escort Seymour regularly associated with. She said Seymour asked another escort to be an alibi for him on the night Mr Bathgate was killed. The court heard an associate of Warren wore police wires before police arrested her in connection with Mr Bathgate's murder in October, 2009 The court heard that at a gathering at the Greenbank RSL - when no wire had been worn because of the clothing the woman was wearing - Warren told her friend "I planned a flogging and now I will go to jail for life." Barrister Angus Edwards, for Brett Seymour, urged the jury to consider the circumstances leading up to the death carefully. "A person is entitled to defend themselves if attacked and a person cannot be held responsible for something that is an accident," he said. He said Mr Bathgate had a "propensity for violence" and told the court the victim had ruptured the spleen of a former partner during a domestic violence incident. Queensland Police Service scientific officer Sen-Constable Amanda Medic told the jury there had been a significant amount of blood outside Mr Bathgate's caravan when she investigated the scene in August, 2009. The trial, before Justice Martin Daubney, is expected to continue for four weeks. One jury member was discharged on Thursday after admitting to "googling" the case after being empanelled on Wednesday.