On Feb. 24, 2006, William James Mason was “abducted at gunpoint from his apartment in downtown Hamilton by Jeremy Hall and Jason Lusted. Billy was never seen again,” the Crown began.
That day Hall, who rented a farm in Alma, near Guelph, and Lusted, who lived near Sarnia, met in Hamilton. They were “business partners of a sort,” said Fraser. “Their business was crime.”
Together they had stolen cars and committed other thefts.
Hall asked Lusted to go with him “to speak with a guy.” They drove Hall’s truck to Billy’s apartment on Main Street East in Hamilton. A person visiting Billy let them in.
Hall pulled a sawed-off shotgun from under his coat, the Crown said. Lusted hadn’t known it was there.
Hall ordered Billy, 27, to come along. In the truck, Hall allegedly asked Billy why he set him up. Billy answered that he hadn’t.
On a desolate road in Haldimand County, Hall ordered Billy out of the truck then “shot him once in the torso,” according to Fraser. Billy “stumbled off the dirt road into a field where he died.”
Lusted panicked. Hall allegedly fired a shot into the air and said to him: “Do you want to be next?”
Hall then pulled out a knife and said he wanted to make sure Billy was dead. Lusted will testify he did not see what happened next.
The men left Billy’s body in the field, drove back to Hamilton to pick up Lusted’s car. They caravanned to the Niagara region, stopping to fill a jerry can with gas. They parked the truck — stolen weeks earlier — in a farm field and torched it. A passing school bus driver reported the blaze to police.
Lusted got rid of the shotgun by putting it in a car at the East End Auto shop on Barton Street, where Hall knew the owners. Hall retrieved it from there, the Crown said.
On the evening of March 1, Hall and Lusted met in downtown Hamilton, drove to Billy’s body, wrapped it in plastic, placed it into the back of another pickup and drove it to Hall’s farm. He ordered Lusted to build a bonfire.
“Over the next couple of hours, Billy Mason’s body was incinerated,” Fraser told the jury. The ashes were placed in animal feed bags.
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