Homicidal sleepwalking

"The Boston Tragedy," the murder of Maria Bickford, 1846; Tirrell was acquitted because of "sleepwalking." National Police Gazette, 1846

Homicidal sleepwalking, also known as homicidal somnambulism or sleepwalking murder, is the act of killing someone during an episode of sleepwalking. There have been some cases in which an alleged act of homicide has occurred and the prime suspect may have committed the act while sleepwalking. The veracity of recorded cases is disputed. About 68 cases had been reported in the literature up to the year 2005. One such case is that of Kenneth Parks, who was acquitted of the murder of his mother-in-law in 1987 after using the sleepwalking defense.^[1]

Notable Cases

Boshears case

Sergeant Willis Boshears was a US serviceman based in the UK. He confessed to strangling a local woman named Jean Constable in the early hours on New Years Day 1961, but claimed that he was asleep and only woke to realize what he had done. The following day, Boshears disposed of the body in an isolated lane. Several days later he was arrested and charged with murder. At his trial in February 1961 at the Essex Assizes he pled not guilty on the basis of being asleep at the time he committed the offence and was acquitted.^[2][3]

Parks case

In 1987, Kenneth James Parks was a married 23-year-old man with a 5-month-old daughter. He had a very close relationship to his in-laws, with his 42-year-old mother-in-law Barbara Ann Woods referring to him as "her gentle giant." The summer before the controversial events, he developed a gambling problem and fell into deep financial problems. To cover his losses, he took funds from his family's savings and then began to embezzle at work. Eventually, in March 1987, his actions were discovered, and he was fired from his job. On May 20, he went to his first Gamblers Anonymous meeting. He made plans to tell his grandmother the following Saturday (May 23) and his in-laws on Sunday (May 24) about his gambling problems and financial difficulties.

In the early morning hours of May 24, 1987, Parks reportedly got up from his bed, still asleep, drove roughly 23 km to his in-laws' home and broke in, assaulted his father-in-law, Dennis Woods, and stabbed his mother-in-law to death. After all this, he managed to drive himself to the police station. Aside from a few isolated events, the next thing he could recall was being at the police station asking for help, saying “I think I have killed some people…my hands.”

Parks’s only defense was that he was asleep during the entire incident and was not aware of what he was doing. Naturally, nobody believed it; even sleep specialists were extremely skeptical. However, after careful investigation, the specialists could find no other explanation. Parks’ EEG readings were highly irregular even for a parasomniac. This combined with the facts that there was no motive, that he was amazingly consistent in his stories for more than seven interviews despite repeated attempts of trying to lead him astray, that the timing of the events fit perfectly with the proposed explanation, and that there is no way to fake EEG results, led to a jury acquitting Parks of the murder of his mother-in-law and the attempted murder of his father-in-law. The Supreme Court of Canada upheld the acquittal in the 1992 decision R. v. Parks.^[4]

Falater case

Scott Falater, a resident of Phoenix, Arizona was accused of murdering his wife, Yarmila, by stabbing her 44 times on the night of January 16, 1997. According to an eyewitness, Falater was also seen holding his wife’s head underwater. When he was tried, the prosecution claimed that after the murder had been committed, Falater changed his clothes, put the murder weapon in a Tupperware container, put the container in a trash bag with his boots and socks, and then stashed the bag in the spare tire well in the trunk of his car. Prosecutors testified that Falater's actions were "too complex" to have been carried out while sleepwalking. In June 1999, Scott Falater was convicted of first degree murder and sentenced to life in prison without the possibility of parole.^[5]

Nieto case

Antonio Nieto, 58, a resident of Málaga, Spain murdered his wife and mother in law using an axe and a hammer on January 11, 2001. Nieto's daughter suffered a jaw fracture but was left alone after feigning death, and his son disarmed him after receiving a cut on the ear. Nieto claimed to have been asleep during the attack and dreaming that he was defending himself against aggressive ostriches. However, his children stated that he had recognized them and had even told his son to not turn on the lights because their mother (gravely injured already) was sleeping. In 2007 Nieto (already under psychiatric treatment) was sentenced to 10 years interment in a psychiatric hospital and ordered to pay 171,100 euros as compensation to the victims. He also lost custody of his children and wasn't allowed to interact with or be within 500 meters of them.^[6]

Lowe case

On October 30, 2004, the body of 83-year-old Edward Lowe was found on his driveway in Manchester, England. His son, Jules, admitted that he caused his father's death, but did not remember committing the act. He has used "automatism" as his defense. He was found not guilty by reason of insanity and detained at Her Majesty's pleasure (that is, indefinitely) in a secure hospital.^[7] He was released after ten months.

Brian Thomas Case

Brian Thomas, 59, who suffered from automatism and sleepwalking since he was a child, confessed to strangling his 57-year old wife, Christine in July 2008 in their camper van while on vacation. He called emergency services, and was heard telling the operator, "What have I done? I've been trying to wake her. I think I've killed my wife. Oh my God. I thought someone had broken in. I was fighting with those boys but it was Christine. I must have been dreaming or something. What have I done?..."^[8] He claimed he had mistaken his wife for an intruder, waking up to find it was his wife. He was freed in 2009 by a judge, who found him not guilty of murder.^[9][10]

Cases from the Book of Lists 3

In The Book of Lists 3 there is a list of eight people who were recorded as having killed in their sleep by means of using firearms, fighting, or mishandling infants.

"A.F." case

"A. F. " was a gun fancier and a hunter who kept loaded firearms in his room. His father, with similar interests, slept in the adjoining room. Hearing a bump against the connecting door early one morning, "A.F.", still asleep, hollered "You dog, what do you want here?" and fired the gun nearest to his reach. The intruder turned out to be his father.

Fraser case

Simon Fraser, of Glasgow, Scotland, often dreamed that a beast had invaded his home at night. One time, he dreamed that a white beast had come up through the floor. He seized it and dashed it to the ground. He woke up to find he had killed his infant son. This episode was probably a night terror, with or without sleepwalking.^[11]

Gnypiuk case

Wasyl Gnypiuk, a Polish immigrant to England, had suffered Nazi internment which caused him to have nightmares. In one of these, he dreamed of fighting back. In fact, he was in the home of his landlady, and when he woke up it turned out he had beaten her to death. He decided to cut off her head and bury it in a nearby woods. He buried the rest of her some 60 yards from the house. He also stole £350 from her. He was found guilty of capital murder, sentenced to death and hanged at Lincoln on January 27, 1961.

Griggs case

Esther Griggs, resident of London and a mother of three, dreamt one night that her house was on fire, screaming "save my children!". Though asleep, Ms. Griggs threw her baby into the street. This episode was probably a night terror, with or without sleepwalking.^[11]

Kiger case

Jo Ann Kiger, a teenager, was asleep when she took a revolver in each hand, poised to defend her family against a "monster." She fired, and fatally shot her brother and her father. She was found not guilty.

Ledru case

In 1887, Robert Ledru, a French police detective, was asked to investigate the murder of André Monet on the beach at Le Havre. Examining the evidence—the fatal bullet and some footprints—he decides he himself had been sleepwalking on the beach and fired the fatal shot. He turned himself in. While in jail, he was given a gun loaded with blanks. One night he got up and fired at one of the guards at point blank range. This convinced the authorities he was telling the truth about his sleepwalking. From then until his death he lived on a farm outside Paris, under 24-hour watch.^[12]

Frederick Oughton's novel The Two Lives of Robert Ledru is based on this case.

Pollard case

William Pollard was a farmer whose neighbors knew him well as a sleepwalker and sleepworker—doing his chicken-farm chores while fast asleep. One night he dreamt he was fighting with a marauding stranger. When his wife awakened him, he found he had killed their daughter.

Legal rulings

The volume says how the law dealt with these cases, adding that Western law recognizes sleepwalking as a defense but is otherwise not consistent.

"Griggs was charged but the grand jury refused to hand down an indictment; Pollard was never charged; 'A. F.,' Kiger, and Boshears were acquitted; Fraser was not formally acquitted but the court adjourned and then deserted the diet simpliciter, Ledru was acquitted and both were ordered by the court to sleep henceforth only by themselves, in locked rooms; while Gnypiuk, denied an appeal to the House of Lords Appellate Committee, was hanged."

Causes

Sleepwalking and other forms of disorders of arousal occur from deep non-REM slow wave sleep (SWS). There are parasomnias that occur from rapid eye movement sleep. It is caused by an inappropriate physiological event where the brain tries to exit SWS and go straight to wake. In normal sleep, the brain transitions from sleep either from stages 1 or 2 of NREM or REM sleep, but almost never from SWS. As a result, the brain gets “stuck” between a sleep and wake state.^[13] In the case of Kenneth Parks, his EEG showed that his brain tries to wake from SWS 10 to 20 times a night. Needless to say, this is an incredible number compared to normal sleepers who almost never experience this. Nobody is sure why some people will commit murders in their sleepwalking episodes, but it seems reasonable to assume that many conditions must be met. Using Kenneth Parks as an example again, he was planning to go to his in-laws’ residence the next day, he was stressed and depressed from marital and financial troubles, and he had been sleep deprived because he couldn’t get any sleep the night before.^[4]

In Fiction

In the first season of the Perry Mason TV series, one episode was titled "The Case of the Sleepwalker's Niece."

On the episode "Dreamcatchers" in the fifth season of the TV series Teen Wolf.

In the episode 'In the Dark' of Criminal Minds, a serial killer suffers with this illness, killing multiple people during the night.

In the webcomic and animated short Welcome to Hell, the main character Sock accidentally kills his parents in his sleep.

Movie Depictions

The 1920 German horror film The Cabinet of Dr. Caligari centers upon a series of murders committed by a somnambulist under control of the eponymous Dr. Caligari.

The 1932 American gentlemen jewel thief romantic heist comedy "Arsene Lupin" features numerous depictions of somnambulism, specifically sleepwalking both real and faked by various characters.

The 1971 Italian thriller A Lizard in a Woman's Skin involves a woman who thinks she may have murdered a neighbor in her sleep.

The 1997 TV movie The Sleepwalker Killing depicts a story in which a man kills his mother-in-law and wounds his father-in-law in the middle of the night, then turns himself in.

The 2010 thriller In My Sleep depicts a character who believes he may have murdered a good friend while sleepwalking. The movie was inspired by real life cases.

The 2013 thriller Side Effects focuses on a woman who allegedly kills her husband while sleepwalking due to a side effect of the medication she is taking.

See also

• Parasomnia
• Sleepwalking
• Sleep disorder
• Rapid eye movement behavior disorder
• Sleep sex
• Automatism

References

Walker, N, (1968) Crime and Insanity in England Volume One: The Historical Perspective’, Edinburgh: Edinburgh University Press.