Five years later Gregory Lee Roser has been found guilty of what the victim's son called the "most gruesome and evil" murder.
Roser, 63, received a life sentence when he was found to have bludgeoned Mr Saunders with a metal bar at a property north of Brisbane in November 2017.
The body was then fed into the chipper with the assistance of another man, Peter Koenig.
"My dad does not deserve to be remembered as the woodchipper victim," Mr Saunders' son Blake said in an impact victim statement read to the court.
"My dad was a kind, happy, hardworking, wonderful man."
At his five week Brisbane Supreme Court trial, Roser did not deny that Mr Saunders was murdered.
Roser conceded that he had "shamefully" assisted with disposing of the body in the chipper then lied about it, telling police it had been an industrial accident.
However, Roser accused Koenig of killing Mr Saunders while they were clearing trees at the Goomboorian property near Gympie.
After they began deliberating on Tuesday afternoon, the jury found Roser guilty on Friday morning with Mr Saunders' family and friends in attendance.
Roser showed no emotion.
"He (Mr Saunders) was kind and generous to a fault, that ... probably became a fatal fault," Justice Martin Burns told Roser.
The disposal of Mr Saunders' body was beyond the imagination of any decent human being, Justice Burns said.
"But you are not a decent human being, far from it," he told Roser.
The Crown alleged Sharon Graham asked her lovers Roser and Koenig to kill her ex-partner Mr Saunders and make it look like an accident in a bid to claim his $750,000 life insurance.
Koenig claimed Roser repeatedly hit Mr Saunders with the bar as they finished work at the property.
He told the court that he helped carry the body to the chipper because Roser had a bad back.
Koenig then fed Mr Saunders into the machine, leaving the legs sticking out to make it look more like an accident.
Roser had pointed the finger at Koenig, who he claimed had Mafia connections and once boasted of pushing a man into a meat grinder.
Mr Saunders was killed after becoming embroiled in a "love quadrangle", the court heard.
Graham was living with Mr Saunders albeit in separate bedrooms and was in a relationship with Roser while also having "intimate relations" with Koenig.
They may have split but Mr Saunders was still "besotted" with Graham, the court heard, and had made out his will and life insurance policy in favour of her.
Roser said Graham had plotted for months to kill Mr Saunders, asking him to carry out up to three different murder plans - at one stage borrowing Koenig's handgun - but he refused.
She eventually hatched an idea to make it look like an accident with a chipper, this time roping in both Koenig and Roser, the court heard.
Roser admitted Graham had procured him and that he lied about the death being an accident, even telling police that he tried to save Mr Saunders who he claimed was "reckless" around the chipper.
Roser moved into Mr Saunders' bedroom with Graham the night after his murder.
Graham, 61, and Roser had pleaded not guilty to murder before the former successfully applied for a separate trial.
Koenig pleaded guilty to accessory after the fact to murder earlier this year.
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