Warning: This story contains details of a homicide.
A woman accused of killing and dismembering her boyfriend kept his remains in a fridge, carrying “pieces” from her apartment in a backpack to dispose of them over the course of six months, her murder trial was told on Tuesday.
Paris Laroche, 28, is being tried in B.C. Supreme Court in Vancouver for first-degree murder and interfering with human remains in the killing of Sidney Mantee, 32, in Nanaimo in 2020.
Laroche confessed she killed Mantee in his sleep by hitting him with a hammer because Mantee was abusive, threatened to kill her family and friends, and threw her cat against the wall, said Terry Boyle, who employed Laroche for about eight months and who called Laroche a friend.
Court also heard that a close school friend who considers Laroche “like a sister” to her was the one who went to police, on April 18, 2021, after Laroche confessed to her that she had killed Mantee.
Before that date, Nanaimo police were treating Mantee as a missing person’s case. After Robyn Bartle’s tip, Mounties launched an uncover operation during which Laroche led officers to the places in Neck Point Park and Pipers Lagoon, two popular hiking and recreational areas in Nanaimo where she had left remains.
The undercover officers, who recovered 13 bone fragments (a 14th was found by a resident walking in Neck Point Park), are expected to testify on Wednesday.
The officers also seized tools from Laroche’s apartment as evidence, including a large-clawed framing hammer, a short-handled sledge hammer, hacksaws, various kitchen knives and a hunting knife, a knife sharpener, two backpacks and large silver mixing bowls.
Boyle told court Laroche was a regular pot smoker who often arrived at work stoned. She said Laroche often “microdosed” hallucinogenic mushrooms but nonetheless was one of the best workers she had at her Nanaimo shop, which sold New Age paraphernalia such as crystals, small witches cauldrons and other spiritual accoutrements, like Buddha statues.
She described Laroche as punctual, helpful and knowledgeable about the products. She also told court how Laroche, an avid hunter, had likened the dismemberment of Mantee to the gutting and dressing of a deer.
She said she “deered” him after killing him in March 2020, a process she learned by watching YouTube tutorials.
“She kept him in her apartment until August (2020) and she treated him like a deer,” she said. “She said she had taken pieces of him out in a backpack and spread him around the Island.”
Boyle said she learned Laroche had been charged with murder around May 27, 2021, when police contacted her because Laroche wanted to make sure Boyle knew not to expect her for her shift the next day.
Laroche was released after that arrest and worked a couple of more shifts at the shop before Boyle fired her. They kept in contact, including Laroche calling her to tell her she’d found a new job at a male-oriented clothing chain.
She was arrested more than a year later and has been in custody since.
Bartle told court she and Laroche had been close friends since starting Grade 8 at a Nanaimo high school and Laroche had regularly spent weekends at the Bartles’ home because Laroche’s parents didn’t want her around on weekends and she even lived with the Bartles in Grade 12.
Bartle said she had witnessed Mantee “cut her down, shut her down, tell her she was stupid,” and once slapped her on her backside while they were all in Home Depot, an action Bartle considered abusive. But she said she had never heard Mantee threaten to kill her family and friends.
Another Crown witness testified he was sent to repair a water leak in Laroche’s apartment in September 2020, and the small leak near the bathroom had spread across the floor to the living room and that the leak “had to have been going for a long time.”
The trial continues.
