(Michigan City, IN) - A man has been found guilty of killing his roommate in Michigan City and dismembering their body, as it only took a La Porte Superior Court 1 jury about three hours on Thursday to reach the verdict against John Hallett.
Hallett was convicted of Murder and Dismembering a Corpse, with evidence showing that, in 2017, the 55-year-old Hallett choked a man to death and left the body lying on the basement floor at their home in the 1000 block of West 9th Street for nearly two months. He then cut it up with a hacksaw and disposed of it in parts in trash cans. The men were living together, having been placed into a home after living on the streets.
Authorities said nobody knew about the murder until Hallett called the police in 2022, claiming he murdered his roommate from the past. Presumably, La Porte County Prosecutor Sean Fagan said, the body parts wound up in a landfill, but helping to land the conviction was microscopic evidence of a human body recovered from the basement floor. He credited Michigan City Police for their work in collecting that evidence.
“If they wouldn’t have done what they did with this case and doing the forensic evidence on the basement floor and pointing out certain kind of samples and such then we would not have been able to present a successful case,” he said.
Hallett faces anywhere from 45 to 65 years on the Murder conviction and another 30 months on the Level 6 felony Dismembering a Corpse conviction.
