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  Travis Vader wasa no show for the start of his double murder trial today because his car broke down.

The second week of Travis Vader's trial for the murder of St. Albert couple Lyle and Marie McCann got off to a slow start Monday morning as Vader was not present.

Defence lawyer Brian Beresh said he spoke to Vader earlier in the morning, and his car had broken down so he was waiting for a tow truck and would arrive as soon as he could.

Meanwhile Justice Denny Thomas, a court clerk, half a dozen lawyers, several witnesses, sherriffs and members of the public spent the morning waiting on the sixth floor of the Edmonton courthouse for his arrival.

"In any criminal trial, the trial must proceed in the presence of the accused person," Thomas explained before adjourning the proceedings.

The Friday afternoon testimony was in line with what the court had heard already, with some added details.

First, Edson firefighter Lt. Robert Burgess, who was the commander on the fire scene involving the McCanns motorhome, testified he believes the fire started as a result of a fuel leak.

"It appeared the motorhome was driven up to the berm very quickly, in an attempt to get over it," he said.

Burgess explained that impact may have forced the engine back into the chassis, severing the fuel line, and he believed a subsequent spark started the fire.

Under Beresh's cross-examination, he said it was possible the driver would have suffered lower-leg injuries as a result of that collision.

"I won't discount that. It's possible," he said. "I would suspect there would be some visible bruises."

Burgess confirmed as well that based on his decades of experience as a firefighter, and that of Capt. Lee'Roy Lonsberry who commanded the second vehicle on the scene, there were no human remains in the vehicle.

He also testified that a bill of sale and registration document for the motorhome were found on the scene, which survived the fire, and a licence plate that was registered to a one-ton truck and not the motorhome.

He said the documents likely survived the fire in a compartment fairly low in the vehicle, and didn't burn before firefighters got the blaze under control.

"It's a fairly safe assumption they weren't sitting on the floor," he said, adding he couldn't say specifically where those documents might have been stored.

Burgess provided his testimony via video-conferencing from Palm Springs, Calif.

Court also heard the continued testimony of RCMP Sgt. Michael Donnelly, who had been testifying over the course of the last week about the continuity of evidence: where it was collected and when, who handled it, and what records were kept.

Donnelly provided a handwritten document to court, marked as Exhibit 5, identifying the specific locations of several of the scenes where evidence was collected, including GPS co-ordinates.

There was a moment of confusion as Crown prosecutor Jim Stewart asked the court clerk to retrieve a specific piece of evidence from among the dozens of bags left in the jurors' box, and after a five-minute search she came up empty handed.

Prosecutors soon realized the piece of evidence, in this case the beer can they say had Vader's DNA on it, was still in possession of another RCMP investigator outside the courtroom, who is himself expected to testify later in the trial.