LA PRAIRIE, Que. - A Quebec man was arrested Friday after his mother's corpse was found stuffed inside a freezer at their condemned home just south of Montreal.
Police headed to Daniel Martin's small, decrepit bungalow in suburban La Prairie on Thursday after a local clinic reported it had not heard from the 73-year-old woman for weeks.
The fire department was called in to inspect the home to ensure the structure was stable for a search, said provincial police Sgt. Martine Isabelle.
"It was so dirty, so they asked the firefighters to come and check if it was safe," she said.
Firefighters lugged trash out of the filthy building to a large red dumpster on the street in front of the home while officers looked for the woman.
That's when they made the grisly discovery.
Martin, the woman's mysterious 50-year-old son, turned himself in to police on Thursday.
Isabelle would not confirm reports the woman may have died as long ago as September. She said the autopsy could not be performed Friday because the corpse was still frozen.
She said the man was charged Friday with improperly disposing of a body and he could face additional accusations.
"We have to wait for the autopsy to know if it was a natural death or if it was a homicide," Isabelle said.
Martin's lawyer, Marc-Andre Gauthier, has requested a psychiatric evaluation.
Neighbours, meanwhile, said Friday they never saw Martin interact with anyone.
"He's always alone," said Nathalie Beriault, 34, who has lived a few doors away from the residence for about 30 years.
"He's always in his house. I've never seen him take a walk."
When Beriault was a child, she said Martin was known as "The Hermit" among neighbourhood kids.
On Friday, police used yellow tape to cordon off several homes on either side of Martin's house. A lone local police officer stood guard across the street.
The dumpster was partially filled with boxes and a plastic lawn chair. Another lawn chair, flipped on its side, sat on the front lawn.
Beriault said Martin almost always wore sunglasses and regularly collected junk from the end of driveways on garbage pick-up day.
He gathered old bicycles, chairs and scrap metal.
"There was always all sorts of debris on his property," Beriault said.
"It made me laugh and I would always say, 'It's incredible what he can gather. What's he going to do with that stuff?"'
The only time Beriault recalls seeing the woman was more than 20 years ago, when she answered the door on Halloween.
Neighbour Carole Legault has lived a few houses away from Martin for the last five years.
"We would never expect this on our own street," she said.
"I didn't know his mother lived with him. I always thought he lived alone. He was really strange."
She said it's "horrible" the woman was found in the freezer.
"Maybe he wanted to keep her," Legault said.
"Maybe he is scared of the authorities and thought it would be better to keep her in the house."
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Article online since May 2nd 2008, 0:00
Steven Guilbeault - 
