FREDERICTON, New Brunswick – A neighbor of an elderly New Brunswick couple murdered in their home says the daughter of one of the victims pleaded with him to help her find her father’s head after she discovered the butchered bodies.

Day three of the first-degree murder trial of Gregory Despres Wednesday focused on the accounts of friends and neighbors, chronicling the final hours of Fred Fulton, 74, and his wife, Verna Decarie, 70.

They were found dead in their Minto home in April 2005. Both had been stabbed and Fulton was decapitated.

Paul LeBlanc, a neighbor of Fulton and Decarie in the small, coal-mining village of Minto, told the court he heard a terrifying scream on April 26, 2005, the day the bodies were found.

He said that when he stepped out of his house, which is located near the Fulton residence, he saw a panic-stricken Debbie Mowat, Fulton’s daughter.

“I asked her what had happened,” LeBlanc recalled in his testimony.

“She said, ‘My father is dead on the floor and someone has taken his head.’ … She grabbed at my hand and asked me to come and help find his head.”

LeBlanc said he couldn’t believe what Mowat was saying. But he said his wife peeked inside the Fulton house and saw blood everywhere.

Despres, 24, was a neighbor of the victims, and some witnesses have suggested there was an ongoing feud between Despres and Fulton.

Despres is on trial for the first-degree murders of Fulton and Decarie before a judge alone in the New Brunswick Court of Queen’s Bench.

A police video shown at the trial Tuesday revealed the nightmare scene that greeted people entering the Fulton home after the murders.

One of the first sights upon entering the small home was Fulton’s headless body stretched out on a blood-drenched kitchen floor. His severed head was in a pillow case pushed under the kitchen table.

Decarie’s body was in the master bedroom, lying in a pool of blood by the bed.

Despres, who has dual Canadian and U.S. citizenship, was arrested in Massachusetts shortly after the slayings. He was stopped at the U.S. border crossing at Calais, Maine, but was allowed entry into the United States despite the fact he was carrying a chain saw, homemade sword, hatchet and brass knuckles.

Crown prosecutors said they will be calling border officials to testify during the trial, which is expected to last until the end of January.