The sister of Thomas Svekla told an Edmonton courtroom Monday she first touched what felt like an elbow in her brother's hockey bag before working up the courage to look inside.

Donna Parkinson said she grew suspicious of what was in her younger brother's bag in May 2006 after he brought to her Fort Saskatchewan home.

"I said, 'What the hell is that?'" Parkinson told the court. "He said it's compost worms."

Svekla, 39, is charged with two counts of second-degree murder and two counts of offering an indignity to a body in the deaths of prostitutes Theresa Innes, 36, and Rachel Quinney, 19.

She said she eventually worked up the courage to open it a few days after Svekla left it in her garage in to her Fort Saskatchewan home.

"It almost seemed like it was an elbow joint," she told an Edmonton courtroom. "I pulled my arm back."

Later the evening, Parkinson said she convinced her husband to help her unzip the bag. She said she tried to describe what her felt to her husband.

"Do you not see this is the head, here's the back, these are the hands..." she said.

Parkinson and her husband then called police.

RCMP would later confirm the body was Theresa Innes, a city prostitute who was last seen in September 2005.

In a separate set of questioning, Parkinson also described a night two years earlier when her brother came to her and was very upset.

"(He said,) 'I did a really bad thing, I can't say, because you'll hate me," she said.

Earlier in the day, another witness told the courtroom Svekla stumbled upon another body after smoking crack for hours in June 2004.

Police would later identify the body was 19-year-old Rachel Quinney, a prostitute who had been missing since May 2004.

Twenty-six-year-old Shannon Millward said she was working on 107 Avenue and 109 Street on June 11 when Svekla approached her to do some cocaine.

Millward testified said Svekla asked her to join him for a ride in his white truck.

"(He said) 'If you're not doing nothing come with me for awhile,'" she said.

Millward told the court they smoked crack cocaine for a few hours in the city's south side before making their way the Sherwood Park area.

She said Svekla provided the drugs, adding there seemed to be "an endless supply."

Millward said they were out near Sherwood Park when Svekla told her he had to stop.

"Tom said he needed to go to the bathroom," she said. "He went out of the truck."

Millward said Svekla quickly returned moments later with a weird look on his face.

"He told me there was a dead john lying in the field," she said.

Millward said she didn't believe he was serious at the time.

"(I said), 'Yeah, right, quit f---ing around,'" she said.

The court then heard she grew anxious because Svekla didn't look normal.

"The look on his face, something about the look on his face," she said. "I made him show me there was a body there."

Millward told the court it was hard to make out who it was at night.

"You could tell it was a human form," she said. "I honestly couldn't tell if it was male or female at the time."

The trial continues for four months.

With files from David Ewasuk