The parents of Patrick Kenney, seated in the front row of the courtroom gallery, wept softly yesterday as the macabre details of their son's death were revealed.

A former friend of Bryan Sedlak told jurors that Mr. Sedlak admitted killing Mr. Kenney, skinning and chopping up the body, and throwing some of the skin into sulfuric acid.

"Everything he told to me, he told to 10 other people," said Robert Hoover, 30. "He killed a dude and cut him up. He thought it was a joke."

In the midst of the fiery cross examination from defense attorney Lisa Middleman, a smirk crept across Mr. Hoover's lips.

"Why are you smiling? Do you think this is funny?" Ms. Middleman asked.

"No, I just find you amusing," Mr. Hoover responded.

"Do you think this is funny with his parents sitting right there?" Ms. Middleman shot back.

She was interrupted by Common Pleas Judge Jeffrey A. Manning, who ordered the jury out of the courtroom and threatened Ms. Middleman with contempt for bickering with the witness.

Mr. Sedlak's trial hit an emotional crescendo yesterday with the testimony of Mr. Hoover, who claimed he twice saw the corpse in the back of Mr. Sedlak's tanning salon.

The first time, in the early-morning hours of Feb. 3, 2005, Mr. Hoover said Mr. Sedlak kicked and jumped on the lifeless body, saying that the man had ruined his life. On the second instance, a day or two later, Mr. Hoover testified that the corpse was wrapped in a carpet and Mr. Sedlak had placed a gun in its hand.

Mr. Hoover insisted that he did not help dispose of the body, an assertion Ms. Middleman aggressively and repeatedly called into question.

In her opening statement Monday, Ms. Middleman said Mr. Sedlak killed Mr. Kenney in self-defense because Mr. Kenney tried to rob him for drugs. The body has never been found.

Ms. Middleman also claimed that Mr. Hoover talked Mr. Sedlak, 37, of Hazelwood, into getting rid of the corpse, but Mr. Hoover stuck with his story yesterday that he refused his friend's requests.

"I didn't want nothing to do with it," he said. "I told Bryan 10 times -- I don't want to know about it."

But Mr. Hoover agreed to go to the Waters Edge Tanning Salon in Homestead, which Mr. Sedlak owned, on several occasions, he admitted.

Also, on the night of the killing, he asked his mother to get a saw and generator for Mr. Sedlak, which Mr. Hoover claimed he was just doing as a favor.

Prosecutors agreed not to use Mr. Hoover's testimony against him unless they determined he was an accomplice to the murder.

Another friend of Mr. Sedlak's, Stephen Tucibat, testified yesterday that he, too, declined Mr. Sedlak's request to help him move the corpse.

The prosecution is scheduled to finish presenting its case today.