Warning: Disturbing Graphic Content
A Surrey man found guilty of beheading his roommate and desecrating his body in 2008 has lost an appeal of his second-degree murder conviction.
Ernest Allan Hosack was sentenced in 2018 to life in prison with no eligibility for parole for 15 years for the murder of Richard Falardeau, 54.
He appealed his conviction based on the admissibility of a statement he made to police and claimed Justice Terry Schultes erred by finding him not criminally responsible by reason of mental disorder and by failing to stay the case on grounds of “unreasonable delay.”
The Court of Appeal for British Columbia dismissed his appeal.
“In my view, the judge made none of the alleged errors,” Justice Gail Dickson said in her reasons for judgment June 29, with Justices David Franklin Tysoe and Lauri Ann Fenlon concurring. “He interpreted the evidence reasonably and drew available inferences that supported his admissibility ruling and his conclusion that Mr. Hosack was guilty of second-degree murder. Nor did the judge err by failing to find Mr. Hosack not criminally responsible given the inconclusive nature of the salient evidence or by failing to stay the proceedings for unreasonable delay.”
Richard Falardeau, 54, had invited Hosack to share an attic apartment he’d been renting at 14358 88th Ave. in 2008. After Falardeau went missing, his brother filed a report with the Surrey RCMP Missing Persons Unit. Encountering clouds of flies in the August heat, police found 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.
During the trial - held in New Westminster and Vancouver in 2012-13 - Crown prosecutor Christopher McPherson said that when the 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.”
McPherson argued at trial that Hosack murdered Falardeau to punish him for “messing” with his designs. The prosecutor noted that during a 12-hour police interview “chock-a-block” full of delusions, Hosack spoke of nuclear cutting wire, more efficient ways to wage war, light-speed engines and other stuff he’d designed. During his interview with police, Hosack said Falardeau had belittled him about his designs, laughed at him, and threw his plans and binders out. Falardeau fell into darkness, he said, “because he was looking at something that wasn’t his to behold.”
Toward the end of his interview with police, the court heard, Hosack spoke of “The Entity.” A voice claiming to be that of his dead grandpa said Falardeau died “faster than he ever thought possible” and that his grandson saw him “snap his head like a twig.”
The voice told police he “appropriated” Falardeau’s soul and then “scattered” it. “You would call it murder,” the voice said.
tom.zytaruk@surreynowleader.com
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