There's a Cheetos bag tucked into a white filing box on a shelf in an anonymous room on the second floor of the Court of Queen's Bench in Saskatoon.

The bright orange foil packaging advertising the "crunchy flamin hot" cheese-flavoured snacks is visible through the clear plastic the bag is stored in.

While the imagery is familiar, this Cheetos bag is unique. It's Exhibit 2016-1452921.

Like many of the objects bagged, boxed and catalogued in Room 244, it is more than it appears.

A wallet fashioned from a Cheetos bag. (Don Somers/CBC News)

This Cheetos bag has been fashioned into a makeshift wallet. It was owned by "Papa John" Klassen, a 53-year-old itinerant farm labourer stabbed to death in Kerrobert, Sask., in November, 2016 by his son, "Little Johnny" Klassen.

Little Johnny Klassen was found guilty of second-degree murder at trial in a courtroom not far from the room where his father's last belongings are stored.

Everything in this room has a story. They're all sad.

Roll Call of Crime

Glen Metivier is registrar at the Court of Queen's Bench. One of his responsibilities is making sure exhibits entered as evidence at trials are properly catalogued and stored.

There is no time limit on how long this detritus of destruction is kept.

"Once you destroy evidence, you can't get it back. So it makes sense for us to keep it," Metivier said.

Cases can be reopened because of new evidence surfacing or scientific advances, such as DNA technology, shining a fresh light on existing evidence.

"If there was new evidence uncovered, you would want that whole case to be brought back with that new evidence as well," Metivier said.

While most of the evidence is kept in sturdy file boxes, some items are too large. These objects are bagged separately, or kept in open plastic cartons.

In a corner, for instance, is a piece of white truck fender from the Curt Dagenais trial. The Spiritwood man was convicted of murdering RCMP officers Robin Cameron and Marc Bourdages in 2006.

Registrar Glen Metivier with a piece of truck fender tendered as evidence in the Curt Dagenais murder trial in 2009 (Don Somers/CBC News)

In another corner, there is a plastic crate with a length of rusting, heavy chain used in 2000 by David MacKay to drag Crystal Paskemin behind his truck on a grid road outside Saskatoon before murdering her. He was convicted of first-degree murder.

The boxes stored on the metal shelves offer a roll call of Saskatoon crime and criminals that span decades — from Larry Fisher, convicted of murdering nurse Gail Miller in 1969, to Brian Casement, convicted of killing Victoria Nashacappo in 2002.

Each name is written with a black Sharpie on the side of the box, alongside the case particulars.

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Our Complex Relationship With Objects

There is something compelling about the sheer variety of objects in this room, the strangeness of a red sun hat juxtaposed next to a garden shovel next to the Cheetos wallet.

Is there something larger and deeper at play here than a macabre curiosity about objects associated with acts of violence?

University of Saskatchewan psychology professor Valery Chirkov thinks so. He says it all has to with meaning and usage.

Take, for instance, the Cheetos wallet. On first look, we recognize it as a Cheetos bag. We know the shape and colour from seeing it on store shelves, and we understand that it's used to carry the cheese snacks.

On second look, though, we see that it has been re-purposed. It's still recognizable as a snack bag, but now it is a curiosity because it also a wallet. It has the familiar colour and markings of the snack bag, but it also clearly something more than that.

On third look, when we see this wallet presented in court during a murder trial, is when it becomes almost bizarre. This wallet holds the ID, cash and pills of a man murdered by his own son.

These are Papa John Klassen's final worldly belongings.

This is the source of our fascination, Chirkov says.

"Sometimes when people discover that the ordinary objects are used in a very, very unusual way, they're fascinated," he said.

"It's a cognitive dissonance. Cognitive dissonance between the habitual, taken for granted way of using them and then with the very, very idiosyncratic, obscure way of implementing an object in different context."

Not all the evidence in the room is from the scene of a crime and not all the evidence presented at trial is stored in this room.

There are exhibits such as street maps, house blueprints and aerial photos that are enlarged and mounted on posterboard to assist juries visualize a scene. These oversized images are propped against the wall.

Metivier said that weapons and drugs are handed back to police after the appeal period passes. The courthouse is a secure building with its own security protocols, but he says there is no reason to invite trouble.