Sonoma body-in-barrel trial opens

A Sonoma man accused of bludgeoning another man to death and stuffing his body into a barrel left in front of City Hall admitted that he did it because of repressed anger unleashed by the way his mother treated him his entire life, according to opening statements at his murder trial.

Christopher Michael McNatt, 41, admitted that he got into a fight and killed Ronald Gordon Sauvageau, 64, of Cazadero with a hammer, according to the prosecution. He then packed the body into a 55-gallon barrel and left it in front of Sonoma City Hall, prosecutors said.

“You will see and hear him explain that he killed the victim, how he killed the victim and most importantly, why,” Deputy District Attorney Brian Jamie Kandel told the jury, describing a videotaped statement McNatt made to detectives.

But the case is far from being open and shut, Deputy Public Defender Jenny Andrews said. Others are implicated, she said, telling jurors that it is not a case of murder, but a “false confession” extracted by investigators from a sleepless, exhausted McNatt.

“He admitted to things he did not actually do,” she said.

The blood-spattered McNatt was spotted driving erratically and arrested by a sheriff’s deputy for being under the influence of methamphetamine just minutes before the body was discovered shortly after midnight March 21.

The defendant said he had been using the drug for a year, including that very day, according to the prosecution.

The defense is not disputing that McNatt got into a fight with Sauvageau at a Boyes Springs trailer park earlier in the evening, that they grappled and wrestled, with mutual headlocks, and that Sauvageau stopped breathing.

And the defense even acknowledges that McNatt loaded the body into an orange barrel and drove it in his pickup to City Hall in the historic Sonoma Plaza, where it was quickly found, covered by a blue tarp and a black bandana with skull images on it.

But Andrews said there was an assortment of injuries to the body - stab wounds and hammer blows - that McNatt did not cause. Instead, she said, they were inflicted after his friend returned to the trailer, found Sauvageau not breathing and angrily sent McNatt away.

That friend, Donald Arrasmith, 69, has been charged as an accessory to the murder after the fact, but has pleaded not guilty.

“There was an assortment of injuries Chris McNatt did not cause,” the defense attorney asserted, adding that her client heard other men there being directed by Arrasmith.

The prosecution’s version, based on McNatt’s taped statements to investigators and other evidence, is far different: that McNatt not only got into a fierce struggle with Sauvageau, but he acknowledged using two hands to bring a hammer down on the victim’s skull.

“The defendant confessed in nuanced detail to detectives. And detectives were able to corroborate the truth of what he confessed to,” Kandel said.

The lightly goateed, balding defendant is being held without bail. He showed no emotion Tuesday, other than blinking rapidly at times as he listened to the court proceedings.

On the day of the homicide, McNatt, unemployed and living with his mother, decided to hang out with Arrasmith to watch TV and listen to music videos, the prosecution said. Arrasmith later left to do some errands and told McNatt he was welcome to stay.

But when Sauvageau showed up in the evening looking for Arrasmith, the victim decided to wait in the yard until the older man returned.

What happened next irritated McNatt, who tried to make small talk and engage the stranger, according to the prosecution.

“The victim wouldn’t look at the defendant. He looked elsewhere,” Kandel said. He said McNatt told the detective it made him feel more and more insulted and offended as he tried to make conversation, but felt completely ignored, similar to the way he had been treated by his mother.

“It touches on a deeply raw nerve,” the prosecutor said. “His mother has been extremely hard on him his entire life … he felt he can’t do anything right in the eyes of his mother.”

Angered, McNatt grabbed the victim’s shoulders, forced him out of his chair and the men began to wrestle, with Sauvageau’s strength surprising the defendant as they grappled in the yard, based on his statements to detectives.

“He described all the rage swelling up within him. He made a decision to ‘end the victim,’?” Kandell said, adding that McNatt reached out for a hammer and struck Sauvageau twice.

McNatt admitted he knew Sauvageau was dead, and dragged him into the trailer using snow tire chains wrapped around the lifeless man’s arms and legs, Kandell said.

He described putting the lifeless body into the barrel, but because the head protruded, he put a blue tarp over the victim.

The prosecution contends Arrasmith later returned from a bar and saw what happened. With Arrasmith looking on, McNatt lifted the barrel into his pickup with the help of an unwitting, inebriated neighbor, according to the prosecution’s version.

He took the body to City Hall because he told investigators he had nothing to feel bad about: “I stood up for myself and there’s nothing to hide.’”

The barrel quickly was reported as suspicious trash by an Uber driver. A sheriff’s deputy arrived within 20 minutes to make the grisly discovery and link the homicide to McNatt.

The trial in Judge Peter Ottenweller’s court is expected to last two to three weeks.

You can reach Staff Writer Clark Mason at 521-5214 or clark.mason@pressdemocrat.com. On Twitter@clarkmas.