WARNING: Graphic content

NEW WESTMINSTER - What's a gory murder scene with no evidence of blood letting?

Ernie Allan Hosack's lawyer, Brian Coleman, says the lack of blood suggests a post-mortem desecration of a human corpse rather than a homicide.

Hosack, 40, is accused of second-degree murder in the death and dismemberment of his roommate Richard Falardeau, in the summer of 2008. The Crown has completed its closing arguments and the defence is expected to finish theirs on Aug. 16 in B.C. Supreme Court in New Westminster.

Falardeau, 54, met Hosack at a coffee shop in Surrey in June 2008 and invited him to share the attic apartment he was renting at 14358 88th Ave. Falardeau was a stocky man with scruffy greyish white hair and a thick French accent. He'd been living in the stuffy attic apartment for nearly 10 months. His brother from Quebec reported him missing in the summer of 2008, bringing officers from the Surrey RCMP Missing Persons Unit to Falardeau's home to look for him on a hot August morning. They found clouds of flies in the sweltering attic, and venturing deeper inside, located Falardeau's headless torso stuffed inside a suitcase in a closet. His thumbs, anus, scrotum and testes were found in plastic bags in the refrigerator freezer. His skull, with some hair and part of the spine still attached, was found three months later, in marshy tall grass in a hollow off a pathway along the Hydro right-of-way, near 92nd Avenue and King George Boulevard.

When police asked Hosack where he put Falardeau's head, an "entity" purporting to be his long-dead grandfather replied, "In the Y next to the Z. Next to Zion. You don't want to go."

Crown prosecutor Chris McPherson argued that Hosack murdered Falardeau to punish him for "messing" with his designs.

In a 12-hour police interview "chock-a-block" full of delusions, McPherson said, Hosack spoke of nuclear cutting wire, more efficient ways to wage war, light-speed engines and other stuff he'd designed. McPherson said Hosack set himself up as a guy who helps people but just gets punished for it, and complained that crackheads were stealing his ideas, which would turn up on TV.

"The statement is replete with elements of paranoia," McPherson said. The court heard Hosack once asked a lawyer to contact the National Guard because somebody had stolen his designs.

"You don't want some absent-minded idiot taking a nuclear weapon," Hosack told police.

The court heard Hosack found his stuff on the steps of the house after returning from Whalley's Front Room drop-in centre. Falardeau had been overheard yelling "You can't stay at this house any more."

During his interview with police, Hosack said Falardeau had belittled him about his designs, laughed at him, and threw his plans and binders out.

"In my submission, that's motive," McPherson said.

Hosack talked to the police about "dead souls," angels waiting to be released, and how Falardeau fell into darkness "because he was looking at something that wasn't his to behold."

Toward the end of the interview, Hosack spoke of "The Entity." Speaking in a voice claiming to be that of his dead grandpa, Hosack told police Falardeau's thumbs and genitals were put in the freezer. McPherson noted that this was hold-back information known only to the police and the killer. "It's obvious that he did it," McPherson said. "He murdered Mr. Falardeau."

The voice told police Falardeau's thumbs, genitals and head were "sent to different places in hell to be torn apart." The thumbs were removed, he explained, so Falardeau "won't be able to meddle in anything."

Hosack's grandpa voice said Falardeau died "faster than he ever thought possible" and that his grandson saw him "snap his head like a twig."

He said he "appropriated" Falardeau's soul and then "scattered" it.

"You would call it murder," he told the police.

But Coleman attacked the "purported confession," accusing the police of "creating straw men." He suggested the "very clever, experienced" officers who interviewed Hosack were "constantly placing" ideas "that were or were not knocked down by Mr. Hosack." If any motive-related comments came out of Hosack, Coleman suggested, police had planted the ideas. "When the entity talked, of course, he adopted a number of those suggestions."

Coleman noted that Falardeau had been to see his doctor shortly before he was reported missing but police failed to establish the reason why. He might well have died from natural causes, Coleman argued, adding there's no evidence he died of "human endeavour."

Coleman said someone else could have told Hosack about the information the police had held back.

"If he did anything, he dismembered the body after he (Falardeau) passed away."

tzytaruk@thenownewspaper.com