Man who killed, dismembered housemate sentenced to life

A Surrey man who murdered and then dismembered another man nearly 10 years ago has been sentenced to life in prison with no parole eligibility for 15 years.

In April 2013, B.C. Supreme Court Justice Terence Schultes found Ernest Allan Hosack, 46, guilty of the July 2008 second-degree murder of Richard Falardeau, 54.

Before the slaying, Hosack had been staying at Falardeau’s attic suite in a home on 88th Avenue in Surrey.

Responding to a missing person’s report filed by the victim’s family, RCMP entered the suite in August 2008 and found Falardeau’s badly decomposed body in a suitcase in the bathroom closet.

Parts of his body were found in a grocery bag that had been put in a freezer and his head was found several months later near a B.C. Hydro easement off the King George Highway.

A pathologist found that the victim had suffered rib fractures suggestive of two separate impacts and fractures to the neck area often seen in cases of strangulation.

When police searched a stolen vehicle that Hosack had been arrested in, they found a jackknife that had the victim’s DNA on the blade, evidence that the judge concluded tended in general to confirm that the accused was involved in killing and dismembering the victim.

In statements to police, Hosack outlined grandiose plans that he had been working on for inventions and claimed to communicate with organizations such as NASA and General Electric.

At one point in the interview, Hosack informed police that they were actually talking to his deceased grandfather. In the grandfather persona, he confessed to details of the murder and dismemberment.

The judge found that even in the delusional universe described by Hosack, the “savage and bizarre” indignities inflicted on the victim’s body reflected a degree of hostility unlikely to have been generated solely by Hosack having come upon the victim after he had died of disease or an unrelated accident.

He said the evidence supported a strong inference of a homicidal state of mind, but before entering the murder conviction, he heard an application from the defence that Hosack was not criminally responsible due to a mental disorder (NCRMD).

After several delays due to Hosack changing his lawyer, the court heard the NCRMD application, with the judge concluding that there wasn’t enough evidence indicating the required level of mental disorder necessary to absolve him of criminal responsibility at the time of the slaying.