The man, who is accused of killing his roommate over stolen mail and hiding his body for 56 days in his basement before slicing it up in garbage cans in their Indiana city, was arrested by Massachusetts police last Thursday.
According to an arrest affidavit obtained by the Times of Northwest Indiana, John Hallett (now 54) stunned his roommate Paul Gonzales using a crutch, then choked him on November 25, 2017 in their Michigan City apartment.
Both men had been homeless before being placed together in a home on the 1000 Block of West 9th Street in 2015 by a local non-profit — Hallett believed Gonzales was “stealing his mail…and trying to get [him] kicked out of house,” according to the affidavit.
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A media release by the Michigan City Police Department states that the investigation was not launched until August last year.
Police said a cadaver alerted them to the possibility of human remains being found in the basement. Decomposing matter was confirmed by a laboratory as human.
In a release, Massachusetts State Police stated that Michigan City Detective Lieutenant Anna Painter had “worked rapidly” to identify Gonzales and Hallett the primary suspects in the murder of the man.
Painter, in her investigation, wrote that “John… moved Paul’s body into a room for a few weeks but then moved him to the basement where he remained for 56 days.”
John then used a hacksaw and cut up Paul’s corpse. He placed the pieces in trash bags, which he then dumped into the residential garbage cans of the city.
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After an arrest warrant issued on August 8, police determined that Hallett moved to Cambridge Massachusetts.
On August 24, around 10:45 am, he was arrested at his apartment in Chester Street.
Alex Majetich, a neighbor of Hallett in Boston told WBTS she thought “they were shooting something like a movie” when she first saw the 20 men in bulletproof vests surrounding Hallett’s apartment building on that morning.
Lindsay Garito told Boston 25 News, that Hallett looked “as normal as you can get” when he got arrested.
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Garito reported that a commotion was taking place in front of the building across the street, and a man was walking out with handcuffs. This caught his attention as being unusual.
Hallett now awaits extradition to Indiana’s La Porte County Jail in Middlesex Jail & House of Correction, Billerica Massachusetts.
