Jury hears busker's detailed recounting of killing
After dismantling body in bathtub, accused killer attempted suicide
Raymond Henry Muller planned to die in the same bathtub where he dismembered the body of the fellow street musician he killed.
The 54-year man on trial at the Montreal courthouse provided a detailed description of his crimes while being interrogated by a homicide detective on Sept. 1, 2018, the day after he had tried to take his own life while bleeding from self-inflicted wounds in a small bathtub in his apartment on Bernard St. E. in Mile End.
While interrogated by Montreal police Det.-sgt. David Desrochers the following day, Muller admitted he killed Cedric Gagnon, a musician he sometimes played with, early in July 2018.
The jury in Muller's trial was shown the first part of a video recording of Muller's interrogation on Tuesday. Muller is charged with first-degree murder and causing an indignity to Gagnon's body, which has yet to be recovered.
Muller's neck and arms were covered in white gauze bandages as he answered Desrochers's questions. At the start of the interrogation, he had at least two tubes inserted into his body but they were removed later by medical personnel during a break.
The murder suspect appeared tired but was also calm, especially when Desrochers urged him to give Gagnon's mother some closure and provide the location of three Dumpsters in which he disposed of the victim's body parts. Muller admitted he dismembered the body inside the same bathtub he was found in when he tried to kill himself.
Muller explained everything in a suicide note that police officers recovered seconds after they found Muller in the tub.
The note detailed how, after having spent the night sleeping in a park five blocks east of Bernard St. E., Muller woke up at 7 a.m., walked back home, found Gagnon asleep on a couch and pummelled him with a bass guitar.
Muller said he was convinced Gagnon died after he struck him on the forehead “two or three times.”
“I guess it was just to deal with the blood,” Muller said when asked why he dismembered the victim's body.
“What do you mean,” Desrochers asked.
“Well, after this has happened, I … I had to do something with what I'd done.”
As the interrogation progressed, Muller opened up and provided very detailed descriptions of how he killed Gagnon and dismembered the body. He also gave details of the locations of the three Dumpsters where he disposed of the remains.
That included how he used a children's green wagon, kept at the entranceway to the building, to dispose of the torso. He said he was able to dispose of the other body parts, wrapped in plastic, by carrying them in backpacks on foot to the other Dumpsters.
At least during the portion of the interrogation played for the jury on Tuesday, Muller seemed to offer little in terms of why he killed Gagnon. But at one moment he revealed that he and Gagnon did not get along. While Muller was subletting an apartment from a friend, it appeared to be used as a space where musicians could crash anytime they liked. The apartment was part of a building street musicians referred to as the “Rock Hotel.”
At the time, Muller said, he was suffering because his wife had left him with their kids only weeks before he killed Gagnon. This appeared to be the partial root of a conflict between Muller and Gagnon.
“Mine and my family's problems aren't the Rock Hotel's problems and `you're not the one who runs it,' or whatever,” Muller said while recalling something that Gagnon said that bothered him.
The trial resumes Wednesday.