Jurors view taped confession in Sonoma body-in-barrel case

Jurors this week watched an hourslong video in which a Sonoma man admits fighting to the death with another man, stuffing his body in a barrel and dropping it in front of City Hall.

Christopher Michael McNatt, 41, confessed to a Sonoma County sheriff’s detective the day after he was arrested on suspicion of killing Ronald Gordon Sauvageau, 64, of Cazadero at a Boyes Hot Springs trailer park last March.

The alleged murder weapon - a wood-handled framing hammer - the red plastic barrel and a pair of blood-stained jeans sat off to the side in Judge Peter Ottenweller’s courtroom as the jury listened to the interview Thursday.

McNatt told Detective Joe Horsman he was watching TV at a friend’s mobile home when a man he didn’t know walked into the yard and rebuffed his efforts at conversation.

The perceived slight triggered repressed anger over family issues and prompted McNatt to start a fight, he said.

In a rambling statement that drifted off point, McNatt described grabbing the older man by the shoulder and wrestling with him to the point of exhaustion.

He dodged Horsman’s repeated questions about whether he ended it at some point by hitting Sauvageau on the head with a hammer. After continued grilling, he admitted striking him not more than twice to make sure he was “done.”

“I did become kind of like a wild animal,” McNatt told Horsman. “It didn’t feel good or horribly bad, either.”

McNatt said he packed the body feet-first into the barrel, loaded it into his pickup and brought it to Sonoma City Hall. He said he didn’t get help to put it in the truck, although prosecutors believe he did.

Asked why he disposed of it in such a public place, McNatt said he didn’t want to appear “devious or sneaky.”

“The more I try to hide this and be deceitful about it, the more wrong it would seem,” he told the detective.

Prosecutors played the video at the end of the second week of a trial expected to run through the end of the month.

McNatt, who was arrested the night of the killing, listened from the defense table clad in a light gray suit.

His lawyer, Jenny Andrews, hasn’t denied McNatt got in a deadly fight with Sauvageau or loaded his body into a barrel. But Andrews claims other people may share the blame and that detectives extracted a false confession from her sleep-deprived client.

In the video, McNatt lies on the interview room floor during breaks.

He appears to be awakened when the detective returns.

McNatt’s friend, Donald Arrasmith, 69, has been charged as an accessory to the murder after the fact. He has pleaded not guilty.

The trial continues Tuesday.

You can reach Staff Writer Paul Payne at 568-5312 or paul.payne@pressdemocrat.com. On Twitter @ppayne.