Warning: This story contains graphic and distressing details of animal cruelty and references to child abuse.
Every month, Merinda Sharp cuts flowers and visits her neighbours' neglected rural home.
"I put them on the gate, in memory of the torture and the horrific life that those animals went through," she says.
On the outskirts of Darwin, hidden within a tight-knit outback community of dusty and isolated sprawling properties, where dogs are trained to scare off visitors, this one remained quiet and overlooked for years.
Then one of the nation's worst cases of bestial*ty exposed the sinister events that had been taking place for almost a decade, sending shock waves through the neighbourhood and fracturing it with disbelief.
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Adam Britton, celebrated as a world-renowned crocodile expert and zoologist, was arrested and remanded in custody in 2022, last year pleading guilty to 60 charges of bestial*ty, animal cruelty and possessing child abuse material.
In a shipping container he called his "torture room", Britton filmed himself abusing, raping and killing dozens of dogs and puppies.
In some instances, he would drive to a secluded location to brutally murder his victims "for his own sad*stic sexual pleasure", court documents state.
Between 2020 and 2022, Britton sourced 42 dogs for free from online classifieds giant Gumtree, promising their previous owners he would give them a "good home".
Britton killed at least 39 of them before his arrest.
Severed dog limbs, a decomposing puppy and a dog head were found by investigators on his property – where he lived with his wife, who spent long spells away for her work.
The details of Britton's crimes are so graphic, the ABC has chosen not to publish them in full.
Last September, in a rare move within a courtroom, the judge excused officers and sheriffs, describing the facts of the offending as "grotesque cruelty" and warning they had the potential to "cause nervous shock".
As Britton awaits sentencing, the ABC has investigated the profound impacts the case has had on the small community he lived in, still reeling from the findings.
Ms Sharp, an animal advocate who lives four kilometres away from Britton's former home – which is now up for sale – says the shocking details have shattered trust.
"The public really had no awareness of this going on for so long in our small community," she says.
"It just horrified me this could be happening … and that he could be living amongst us."
At Britton's past court appearances, Ms Sharp has shown up with placards calling for the death penalty.
Questioned over whether she believes the extreme punishment is in fact appropriate, she doesn't hesitate.
"Death? Absolutely, I really do. Because what's going to happen when he gets out?," she says.
Neighbours who knew Britton described him as quiet and unassuming – as someone who regularly showed up to neighbourhood meetings with his pet dogs and was willing to teach kids about his latest research on crocodiles.
The day Hannah Bohlin found out is etched deep in her mind.
"Absolute shock, despair, [and] horror … turned to grief, fear, disbelief, that this, [person] dubbed the world's worst animal abuser, was on our doorstep," she says.
"I'm privy to a lot of animal welfare issues through my work … but this was just on a completely other level."
Ms Bohlin sought out counselling to deal with the trauma of knowing the details, and joined a Facebook support group, which currently has more than 500 members.
"I realised there [were] other people all over the world feeling exactly the same," she says.
"That brought a sense of community, a sense of you're not alone."
She says the forum is also a place to catalyse change and give a voice to the voiceless.
"It transforms the shock, the horror, the despair, the feeling alone, to 'let's do something. Let's turn this anger and this frustration into action'," she says.
While Britton was curating himself as a well-respected zoologist and researcher, even appearing in documentaries with David Attenborough, he was filming and disseminating videos of his murders via the free messaging service Telegram.
It was here, hidden behind the pseudonyms 'Monster' and 'Cerberus', that he discussed his kill count and sent detailed messages depicting how he carried out his abuse.
In one message, he told someone: "I remember being sad*stic to small animals when I was maybe 7 or 8, and I repressed it but it really started to come back out again in my fantasies in my 20s and 30s".
Britton's Telegram messages
Monster: I started fence jumping when I was 13 or 14 and molesting horses
Monster: Here's one I killed a few weeks ago, what's left of her
Monster: I have no emotional bond to them, they are toys pure and simple. And plenty more where they came from.
Charles Giliam is the operations manager at Darwin's RSPCA.
He says workers have become "more wary" of potential owners since the chilling details emerged, but other than imposing a hefty adoption fee, there's little that can be done.
In the wake of the revelations, there's a growing chorus of calls for Gumtree to ban ads offering free pets.
Britton sourced many of his dogs this way, often building a rapport with the owners and taking photos of the pets before killing them.
He would then provide false narratives about them settling in when owners asked for updates.
In a statement, Gumtree told the ABC it "proactively monitor[s] all pet listings, conversations between buyers and sellers … and deletes 700 listings per week … that are in breach of our strict policies."
However, Gumtree would not commit to banning free ads, which advocates argue contributes to increased incidents of animal abuse due to the lack of financial accountability.
As calls for stronger laws to prevent animal cruelty echo louder than ever, the NT government has begun reviewing the legislation.
But Mr Giliam says there's a long way to go.
"The penalties in the NT [Animal Protection] Act are, in our opinion, woefully inadequate," he says.
As Britton awaits sentencing, on July 11, Ms Bohlin and Ms Sharp are gearing up to be let down.
For each of the 39 offences involving torture and death, he's facing a maximum of two years in prison.
"It'll never be enough, whatever the sentence will be," Ms Bohlin says.
"The legislation clearly wasn't written for somebody as psychopathic and as extreme and barbaric as Adam Britton."
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