At the end of his second trial, Raymond Henry Muller was found guilty on Friday of the first degree murder of his roommate and musical partner Cédric Gagnon. A particularly heinous murder, since the murderer killed his friend with guitar blows before cutting up his body, which was never found.
Posted yesterday at 4:18 p.m.
The jury deliberated for nine days at the Montreal courthouse before delivering its verdict on Friday afternoon, thus avoiding the scenario of the first trial. This had indeed ended in a fish tail last year, when the jury was unable to agree unanimously.
Raymond Henry Muller thus finds himself automatically sentenced to life in prison without the possibility of parole for 25 years. He was also found guilty of insulting a corpse.
In 2018, Cédric Gagnon and Raymond Henry Muller shared accommodation on rue Bernard Est, in the Mile End district of Montreal. The two men were guitarists in the music collective Pirates!. The band performed here and there and often rehearsed under the Van Horne overpass.
At the beginning of July 2018, Cédric Gagnon, 39, disappeared without giving any news to his worried relatives. In fact, Raymond Henry Muller had murdered him and disposed of the body, presumably throwing it in the trash. But it was not until the end of August 2018 that the police made the terrible discovery when they intervened following a suicide attempt by the accused.
In his farewell letter, the musician revealed that he had killed Cédric Gagnon with his bass guitar, on July 4, while the latter was sleeping on his sofa. The murderer detailed there precisely how he had cut the body, in particular with a grinder and a saw. “What I did is horrible and unacceptable. There are no words to describe it,” the letter read.
This letter was at the heart of the evidence of the Crown, represented by Ms.and Marie-Claude Bourassa. Raymond Henry Muller then confessed, during his hospitalization, to having killed Cédric Gagnon.
The case, however, gave the jury a hard time since the victim’s body was never found. At the first trial, the accused had delivered a particularly surreal story by telling the jury that he had invented this whole story in order to find Cédric Gagnon.
Sentencing submissions are scheduled for next Thursday.