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Speaker 3: You are now listening to? True murder the most shocking
Speaker 3: killers in true crime history and the authors that have
Speaker 3: written about them. Gasey, Bundy, Dahmer, The Nightstalker DTK. Every week,
Speaker 3: another fascinating author talking about the most shocking and infamous
Speaker 3: killers in true crime history. True Murder with your host
Speaker 3: journalist and author Dan Zufanski.
Speaker 6: Good Evening. A Voice out of Nowhere Dell's deep into
Speaker 6: the mind of a psychotic killer. In this tragic true
Speaker 6: story about one young man's heroing descent into madness and murder.
Speaker 6: A Voice out of Nowhere offers a rare glimpse inside
Speaker 6: the workings of a criminally disordered mind. In a narrative
Speaker 6: style of nonfiction novels like in Cold Blood and Columbine
Speaker 6: best selling author Janice Holly Booth draws from court transcripts,
Speaker 6: eyewitness statements, and personal interviews to go beyond the headlines
Speaker 6: and share little known details of the tragedy. Fascinating, riveting,
Speaker 6: and heartbreaking, A Voice out of Nowhere will incite readers
Speaker 6: to think differently about the insanity, defense and the awful
Speaker 6: consequences of untreated mental illness. The book that we're featuring
Speaker 6: this evening is A Voice out of Nowhere Inside the
Speaker 6: Mind of a mass Murderer with my special guest journalist
Speaker 6: and author, Janis Holly Booth. Welcome to the program, and
Speaker 6: thank you for agreeing to this interview. Janis Holly Booth,
Speaker 6: Thank you, Dan, I'm glad to be here. Thank you
Speaker 6: very much. Very interesting book, and let's get right to this.
Speaker 6: This crime and the trial and everything that we really
Speaker 6: talk about in this book, for the most part, happened
Speaker 6: in the eighties, in nineteen after nineteen eighty three. Tell
Speaker 6: us why you felt it important to put this book
Speaker 6: out at this time. What made you or what compelled
Speaker 6: you to put out this book at this time.
Speaker 7: Well, Dan, I was actually a court recorder at the
Speaker 7: time that the Voice Out of Nowhere case came into
Speaker 7: the courtroom, and I was really fascinated by how untreated
Speaker 7: mental illness can drive people to do really the unthinkable.
Speaker 7: And I'd always thought I would tell the story, but
Speaker 7: it just never seemed like the right time. And then,
Speaker 7: you know, the last twenty years in the United States,
Speaker 7: we've had just growing numbers of murders committed by people
Speaker 7: who were found to mentally ill, and I decided when
Speaker 7: Sandy Hook happened that it was probably time to tell
Speaker 7: this story. When the Aurora movie theater shooting happened, I
Speaker 7: knew it was time to tell the story to help
Speaker 7: people gain an insight into the mind of someone who
Speaker 7: is driven to do the unthinkable because of the mental
Speaker 7: illness that they suffer from.
Speaker 6: Now, you say you were a court recorder, and so
Speaker 6: you're involved in the criminal justice system, but you were
Speaker 6: also interested in mental illness and schizophrenians and psychology. And
Speaker 6: in the beginning of the book you talk about what
Speaker 6: inspired you to wow? What again gave you this interest
Speaker 6: in psychology of an interest unlike most people's interests. So
Speaker 6: tell us about these incidents that shaped your life and
Speaker 6: direction in your life.
Speaker 7: Well, when I'm in my early twenties, I was working
Speaker 7: in the court system. I was also studying creative writing
Speaker 7: at college at night, and I had a woman in
Speaker 7: my class who was a very good writer, and she
Speaker 7: kind of disappeared from class. We never really knew what
Speaker 7: happened to her. And then one day I found myself
Speaker 7: in court and she was brought in because and she'd
Speaker 7: been arrested because she tried to commit suicide by jumping
Speaker 7: off a bridge. And she was the woman who had
Speaker 7: disappeared from my writing class, and so she didn't recognize me,
Speaker 7: but I was, you know, obviously very interested in what
Speaker 7: had happened to her, what was going to happen to her,
Speaker 7: and I followed her case. It turned out that she
Speaker 7: was she had been diagnosed with paranoid schizophrenia, she was
Speaker 7: not staying on her medications. She had she'd had a baby,
Speaker 7: and the baby had been taken away from her. And
Speaker 7: I watched her descent, and it was absolutely harrowing to
Speaker 7: see this former friend of mine be literally railroaded into
Speaker 7: failure by the system.
Speaker 6: And she was.
Speaker 7: She was institutionalized at a mental institution known as Riverview,
Speaker 7: and she committed suicide while under suicide watch there, and
Speaker 7: I was completely outraged by that that the system that
Speaker 7: was supposedly trying to keep her safe had failed her
Speaker 7: on such an epic level. Two years later, another one
Speaker 7: of my writing fellow writing students was murdered. He himself
Speaker 7: was a person with paranoid schizophrenia and was trying to
Speaker 7: make a life for himself. His roommate was also a
Speaker 7: diagnosed paranoid schizophrenic, but he had gone off his medication
Speaker 7: and killed my friends. And in that case, my and
Speaker 7: death barely even made the headlines. And so I just
Speaker 7: became fascinated by this mental illness known as schizophrenia and
Speaker 7: really wanted to know, you know, what might it be
Speaker 7: like to have to live under its spell, what goes
Speaker 7: on in the mind of someone who is possessed by
Speaker 7: that mental illness. And thus began really a lifelong fascination
Speaker 7: with the disease and a dedication to studying it and
Speaker 7: telling the stories.
Speaker 6: Now to give it a little aside as well, This
Speaker 6: this crime, this incredible mass murder, happened in the eighties
Speaker 6: eighty three, and you moved to the United States North Carolina,
Speaker 6: South Carolina in eighty five. Kid, it's not really I'm
Speaker 6: just curious myself. Why did you move at that time.
Speaker 6: We'll be able to talk about some of the study
Speaker 6: that you've done since you've been a US residence and
Speaker 6: the differences from Canada and the West, and that'll be
Speaker 6: important to this story, I think as well.
Speaker 7: Well, I actually moved not from British Columbia to North Carolina,
Speaker 7: which would kind of make sense, but I moved from
Speaker 7: British Columbia to Buffalo, New York, and I lived there
Speaker 7: for thirteen years. I like to say, I did a
Speaker 7: hard time in Buffalo for thirteen years, but only because
Speaker 7: of the snow. You know, the people were wonderful, the
Speaker 7: food was great, but I actually moved because of marriage,
Speaker 7: and when that didn't work out, I stayed in New
Speaker 7: York for a while and then had an opportunity to
Speaker 7: move to where it's sunny all the time in North Carolina.
Speaker 7: And I've been here now for about sixteen years.
Speaker 6: Now. Getting back to this incredible case and incident, tell
Speaker 6: our audience for those that don't know in proximity to
Speaker 6: a city that they had even an international audience with
Speaker 6: no Vancouver, British Columbia on the west coast of Canada,
Speaker 6: and we're talking about Coquitlam, British Columbia. So just describe
Speaker 6: what this community is. Is a suburb, is it a
Speaker 6: community outside of Vancouver? What's it really like? Tell us
Speaker 6: how big it is, and then we can see that
Speaker 6: the impact of two people that you know, going to
Speaker 6: this one little hospital and or from the same hospital
Speaker 6: and like you say, meeting there their desk, both people
Speaker 6: you know.
Speaker 7: Right right. Well, of course Vancouver is a huge and
Speaker 7: beautiful city. Coquitlam it's probably a thirty minute drive from there,
Speaker 7: and in nineteen eighty three it wasn't overly developed. It's
Speaker 7: quite a bustling place now, but it was a quiet,
Speaker 7: kind of sleepy neighborhood. Actually, the murders occurred only eight
Speaker 7: miles from where I was living, and uh, you know,
Speaker 7: just really nothing, nothing, much of any national import happened
Speaker 7: in these what they what they called bedroom communities. So
Speaker 7: when this particular mass murder occurred, it caught the nation's
Speaker 7: attention in such a big way for lots of different reasons.
Speaker 7: A it was you know, it was considered at the
Speaker 7: time one of Canada's worst mass murders. But it was
Speaker 7: committed by a young man who had absolutely no history
Speaker 7: of violence. And yet the crime was was gruesome, horrific
Speaker 7: and inexplicable, So you know, it had it had those
Speaker 7: qualities of capturing national attention right away, not only for
Speaker 7: its you know, the hugeness of it, but also because
Speaker 7: it literally came out of nowhere.
Speaker 6: Now, tell us the background of the perpetrator, the killer
Speaker 6: in this case, and the family, the available information that
Speaker 6: you had on give us the background on this young man,
Speaker 6: because you said this man was very similar in age
Speaker 6: a year apart you and he and tell us as
Speaker 6: much as you can about the family itself.
Speaker 7: Sure, the young man was twenty two years old. I
Speaker 7: was twenty three, which seems impossible right now, Dan, you know,
Speaker 7: I mean, I just can't imagine that. But he was
Speaker 7: a young man who was from a fairly large family,
Speaker 7: a very loving family, a family with no draw I mean,
Speaker 7: you know, parents were good people, They worked hard to
Speaker 7: provide for their kids. No mental illness in the family history.
Speaker 7: They did move around a lot. The young man, his
Speaker 7: name is Bruce, who committed the murders. He has some
Speaker 7: issues growing up. You know, he was a little bit dyslexic.
Speaker 7: He was an identical twin. But he was diagnosed early
Speaker 7: on as being quote a mirror twin, which I know
Speaker 7: there are people in the audience gasping now because that's
Speaker 7: not really a legitimate diagnosis for anything, but back then
Speaker 7: it was. And I think it kind of set in
Speaker 7: his mind this idea that he was always going to
Speaker 7: be opposite, you know, opposite. Everything that happened to him
Speaker 7: was opposite what would happen to his brother. His brother
Speaker 7: had good gray it's Bruce had horrible grades. His brother
Speaker 7: was very organized and neat Bruce was very disorganized and
Speaker 7: kind of disheveled, and this diagnosis of being a mirror
Speaker 7: I think set into Bruce's mind the idea of opposites,
Speaker 7: which would play a huge role in the ideology that
Speaker 7: he created. His mind created the delusions created around the
Speaker 7: circumstances of the murders. But he was, you know, up
Speaker 7: until the time that he started exhibiting signs of mental illness,
Speaker 7: he was very likable. He was a you know, really friendly,
Speaker 7: very happy, go lucky, easygoing young man who had had
Speaker 7: a lot of friends and really just didn't have any
Speaker 7: skeletons in the closet. I should also mention, because this is, uh,
Speaker 7: this is something that's going on in our society right
Speaker 7: now that we need to be paying attention to, that
Speaker 7: he was a heavy, heavy user of marijuana and had
Speaker 7: been since grade seven or seventh grade as we say
Speaker 7: in the US, and doctors did agree later on that
Speaker 7: that probably contributed to the severity of his psychosis.
Speaker 6: I wanted to ask where did he get the concept
Speaker 6: again for and please explain this a little bit more,
Speaker 6: And I guess maybe with this question you will be
Speaker 6: able to the concept of this mirror twin where did
Speaker 6: this come from? And when was Bruce and his family
Speaker 6: tell us about this incident where this concept is accepted
Speaker 6: by Bruce. But more importantly, who is the person that
Speaker 6: explained this concept?
Speaker 7: Okay, Well, his mother, Irene, was very worried that Bruce
Speaker 7: was not doing well in school, even though he was
Speaker 7: trying very very hard, and they were putting a lot
Speaker 7: of pressure on him to do better because you know,
Speaker 7: his twin brother was doing just fine. And when when
Speaker 7: improvement wasn't forthcoming, she decided, Irene decided to take Bruce
Speaker 7: to see a specialist, and she did, and he took
Speaker 7: the standard tests, you know, to check for dyslexia and
Speaker 7: certain other things. And while he was in the doctor's office,
Speaker 7: this this doctor, I think he was a psychologist, made
Speaker 7: the pronouncement that that Bruce was a mirror twin and
Speaker 7: and we we do have evidence that it kind of
Speaker 7: really shocked both of them. It shocked the mother and
Speaker 7: and it shocked Bruce. And Bruce said later on in
Speaker 7: interviews with with the psychiatrists that that, you know, that's
Speaker 7: kind of when the idea stuck in his mind that
Speaker 7: whatever he saw in the world going forward, he needed
Speaker 7: to perceive it as an opposite, So black would be white,
Speaker 7: man would be woman, right would be wrong. I mean,
Speaker 7: I'm being very sort of general, But that suggestion that
Speaker 7: the doctor made, I think was one of the seeds
Speaker 7: that grew when his mental illness took hold.
Speaker 6: Yeah, it seems like a ridiculous diagnosis, all things considered. Regardless,
Speaker 6: I was unaware of this diagnosis. Sounds like something out
Speaker 6: of a B movie. Anyway, must be Canada. We'll get
Speaker 6: back to that. We'll get to that point a little
Speaker 6: bit later. Anyway, So at this time, he was not
Speaker 6: on any medication. After this first meeting with a psychologist,
Speaker 6: how did his mental health and how did his did
Speaker 6: he frequent this doctor quite often? And how did his
Speaker 6: mental health progress from that point?
Speaker 7: Well, he actually was not showing any signs of mental
Speaker 7: illness at this point because he was maybe you know,
Speaker 7: I'm just pulling from my memory now, but maybe you know,
Speaker 7: very very early teens. Maybe he was twelve, but we
Speaker 7: don't really know. You know, nobody can really say for
Speaker 7: sure when symptoms of schizophrenia begin to take hold, and
Speaker 7: maybe you know, it was very mild at that point,
Speaker 7: because he did sort of become fixated on the idea
Speaker 7: of opposites. But the signs of mental illness really manifested
Speaker 7: in him in nineteen eighty two around October, and he
Speaker 7: started to hear voices, particularly from coming from the television,
Speaker 7: and the voices were telling him that the world was
Speaker 7: going to end and that he, Bruce, had some part
Speaker 7: in that. Then he began to hear a particular voice
Speaker 7: from what he called the White Woman with eyes of fire,
Speaker 7: and she told him that he was alternatively God, the Devil,
Speaker 7: the Antichrist, Jehovah, and that he was about to become
Speaker 7: time with a capital T. And so he had all
Speaker 7: of these very confusing messages coming at him, and he
Speaker 7: was actually saying to people, I think I'm possessed. I'm
Speaker 7: hearing voices. I don't know what's happening to me. He
Speaker 7: was certainly telling his parents, he was telling his friends,
Speaker 7: but his parents were aware that he was a heavy
Speaker 7: marijuana smoker, and they initially thought, you know, it was
Speaker 7: just due to that, so they really didn't take him
Speaker 7: very seriously. But then it got to the point where
Speaker 7: he couldn't sleep, he couldn't eat, he was shaking all
Speaker 7: the time. He was just fixated on this idea that
Speaker 7: the world was going to end, and got the idea
Speaker 7: that the answer, which was written specifically for him, was
Speaker 7: in the Book of Revelation. So he began to read
Speaker 7: that religiously, no pun intended. He began to read it
Speaker 7: to the exclusion of everything else and began to form
Speaker 7: what is really a very fascinating thread of reality out
Speaker 7: of unreality in his mind, and that's what ultimately drove
Speaker 7: him to commit a mass murder.
Speaker 6: Now let's go backwards just a bit. You talked about
Speaker 6: the chronic marijuana use, and again we'll discuss this a
Speaker 6: little bit later, because I have heard this research that
Speaker 6: at least it can be connected to the schizophrenia. But
Speaker 6: at the same time, marijuana youse at an early age,
Speaker 6: schizophrenia on set is typically at.
Speaker 7: This early age.
Speaker 6: I don't know if that's you know, I think that's
Speaker 6: a point of contention in terms of the drug or
Speaker 6: which came first, the chicken, early egg, but certainly it
Speaker 6: can contribute to the overall symptoms of out of touch
Speaker 6: with reality. Now let's get back though to what was
Speaker 6: his situation in terms of he had this loving family.
Speaker 6: They were pretty normal family at this chronic marijuana use,
Speaker 6: but he also was living with was he living with
Speaker 6: a roommate and was there the eye dea that he
Speaker 6: wasn't sleeping, which again is very very consistent with what
Speaker 6: schizophrenia's schizophrenics exhibit in terms of behavior, not sleeping, not eating.
Speaker 6: Tell us about what you wrote in the book about
Speaker 6: in terms of his situation, his living situation, his lifestyle
Speaker 6: at that time, Well.
Speaker 7: He had had a number of jobs that he wasn't
Speaker 7: able to keep. He worked as a roofer, He worked
Speaker 7: as a car mechanic, and he was actually very good mechanic,
Speaker 7: but he wasn't able to hold down these jobs. And
Speaker 7: then he got a job as a as a swamper
Speaker 7: on a garbage truck and basically the guy who hangs
Speaker 7: off the back of the garbage truck and jumps down
Speaker 7: and you know, empties the garbage into the truck. And
Speaker 7: he really he liked that job. You know, with his
Speaker 7: dyslexia and everything. He didn't have to fill out reports,
Speaker 7: he didn't have to read manuals. It was he could
Speaker 7: go to work, could do his you know, do his job,
Speaker 7: and and so that that was a good situation for him.
Speaker 7: He was living in Lonsdale on Lonsdale Avenue in North Vancouver,
Speaker 7: which is near Grouse Mountains for those of our listeners
Speaker 7: who've ever been out there and speed, and he he
Speaker 7: had a roommate who was also a heavy marijuana user,
Speaker 7: and the roommate was the first person to really notice
Speaker 7: the signs. And when he gave evidence in court, he
Speaker 7: said that that Bruce was constantly saying, uh, you know,
Speaker 7: the world's going to end. Look, look the television, Look
Speaker 7: at the televisions. And then Bruce would sit there and
Speaker 7: stare at it, and it was, you know, it was
Speaker 7: an episode of All in the Family, and you know
Speaker 7: that there would be a laugh track going, there'd be
Speaker 7: a really funny scene and Bruce would say, oh my,
Speaker 7: you know, there it is. Look, the world is going
Speaker 7: to end. But his roommate, for whatever reason, just dismissed it,
Speaker 7: didn't tell his parents, didn't reach out, didn't say to Bruce,
Speaker 7: you know, I think you might need help. And then
Speaker 7: there was this incident. As this whole thing was escalating,
Speaker 7: there was an incident when his roommate came home with
Speaker 7: a friend and there were three coffee five coffee mugs
Speaker 7: set out on the table and Bruce told them that
Speaker 7: the three of them and two of their other friends
Speaker 7: had to be there that night because the world was
Speaker 7: going to end and they all had to be together.
Speaker 7: So they the two friends said, you're you know, you're crazy,
Speaker 7: ha ha, and they left. Well, Bruce was so convinced
Speaker 7: that that the world was going to end and that
Speaker 7: they all had to be together and it was his
Speaker 7: job to make sure that they were that he ran
Speaker 7: over to the friend's house where they all were and
Speaker 7: just you know, was just begging and pleading with them,
Speaker 7: we all have to be together at eight o'clock. The
Speaker 7: world's going to end the world's going to end, and
Speaker 7: you know, they put him off and mocked him. He
Speaker 7: got really angry, and as he was leaving, he opened
Speaker 7: the door and he fell to his knees and started
Speaker 7: weeping because he said he saw the beast. And what
Speaker 7: was there was the neighbor's dog, you know, wagging its tail.
Speaker 7: But what Bruce saw was this hideous monster with fangs
Speaker 7: dripping blood, and he thought that the beast had come
Speaker 7: to end the world. And so that's when things really
Speaker 7: started going haywire. But nobody got him any help, and
Speaker 7: so Bruce was experiencing these kinds of episodes, these delusions
Speaker 7: and hallucinations on a fairly regular basis, with no one
Speaker 7: who would believe him or help him. By the time
Speaker 7: it got to be you know, really critical, he was
Speaker 7: really I mean, you know, fully holy psychotic. I mean
Speaker 7: he was not.
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Speaker 7: Details connected to reality at all. But he hadn't tipped over,
Speaker 7: you know, he hadn't gotten violent. But that's only because
Speaker 7: he hadn't in his mind figured out what all of
Speaker 7: these messages were. And it would it would take that,
Speaker 7: It would take the weaving together of all of these
Speaker 7: messages and creating in his mind a plausible story before
Speaker 7: he would commit the murders.
Speaker 6: No, a little bit more of his background. Was his
Speaker 6: family at all religious? And does did Jehovah Witness pamphlets
Speaker 6: have anything to do with this story?
Speaker 7: As family was not they were not religious. There was
Speaker 7: absolutely no evidence presented in court that the family went
Speaker 7: to church or practice any kind of religion. But when
Speaker 7: Bruce was living in his apartment on Lonsdale Avenue in
Speaker 7: North Vancouver, Jehovah's Witnesses would leave pamphlets and so as
Speaker 7: he was entering this early stage where ideas were kind
Speaker 7: of being planted in his mind, he would read those
Speaker 7: pamphlets called Awake and I can't remember the other one,
Speaker 7: but Watchtower, thank you, yes, Watchtower. And in these pamphlets
Speaker 7: typically what he would zero in on was the message
Speaker 7: that the end of the world was coming, and when
Speaker 7: the end of the world came, that only a few
Speaker 7: people would ascend to heaven, and of course he wanted
Speaker 7: to be one of those. So that's why he began
Speaker 7: this fervent focus on the Book of Revelation, which of
Speaker 7: course details the end of you know, the end of
Speaker 7: the world, the end of time, and trying really to
Speaker 7: find some clue, some directions as to what he was
Speaker 7: supposed to do to save himself. And eventually, by trying
Speaker 7: to figure out how to save himself, he realized he
Speaker 7: had been the one chosen to save the world, and
Speaker 7: that involved his family.
Speaker 6: Now, how many you talk about in the book? How
Speaker 6: many days this is this spiral as you call it,
Speaker 6: So we're talking about we're not talking about a really
Speaker 6: long time. To make sure that the audience knows what
Speaker 6: we're talking about, So tell us how many days this dissent,
Speaker 6: is this spiral into this obvious murderous ramage and tell
Speaker 6: us that he does have no contact with his family.
Speaker 6: I mean, this friend seems to be clueless, or at
Speaker 6: least he sees the symptoms but doesn't recognize it. How
Speaker 6: can we tell us how many days this is and
Speaker 6: how on earth anybody could avoid, you know, family and
Speaker 6: friends seeing this obvious dissent and doing something about it.
Speaker 7: Well, his trajectory was steep, frighteningly so. And I really
Speaker 7: hope that any listeners out there who have family members
Speaker 7: who might be exhibiting some signs really take this to heart.
Speaker 7: Because Bruce himself identifies the very day that he went
Speaker 7: over the edge, and that was December third. And I
Speaker 7: can talk about what happened on that day if you want,
Speaker 7: But sure from the day that he himself knew that
Speaker 7: he was a goner to the time he committed mass
Speaker 7: murder was forty six days.
Speaker 6: Well, tell us about that from that December third, tell
Speaker 6: us about that, how the logic that he conjured up
Speaker 6: in his mind to be able to do this.
Speaker 7: Okay, And and I'm going to I'm going to add
Speaker 7: something to at the end of it. But he was
Speaker 7: you know, he'd already had he was already reading the
Speaker 7: Book of Revelation. He'd already had this white woman with
Speaker 7: eyes of fire speaking to him. He'd heard in his
Speaker 7: mind the devil. And he sits down on December third
Speaker 7: to watch television and The Magic Christian starring Peter Sellers
Speaker 7: and Ringo star comes on and he starts watching it,
Speaker 7: and every single delusion that he has had, every single
Speaker 7: voice that he has heard, is manifested in that show.
Speaker 7: And he said to his psychiatrists, that is the day
Speaker 7: I became possessed. I was no longer me. And I'm
Speaker 7: going to tell you something, Dan. I watched part of
Speaker 7: The Magic Christians, and everything he said is true. There
Speaker 7: is a white woman in there with eyes of fire,
Speaker 7: there is the devil, there are world's colliding. I mean,
Speaker 7: it put childs down my spine when I watched that.
Speaker 7: And the scary thing is that show didn't put those
Speaker 7: ideas into his head. He already had them. That show
Speaker 7: just underscored them, you know, drove the nail into the coffin.
Speaker 6: Yeah, it seemed to reinforce the ideas and so but
Speaker 6: it's it's typical as well that they would look for
Speaker 6: something like that to be communicating with, be in sync
Speaker 6: with for this manifestation of the same type mindset. Anyway,
Speaker 6: go ahead, absolutely absolutely.
Speaker 7: But what's so weird about this whole case, and I
Speaker 7: say that's in retrospect, is there were so many bizarre
Speaker 7: coincidences like that, you know, to have It wasn't just
Speaker 7: a couple of things in that movie. It was everything
Speaker 7: in that movie. And I'm sure we'll talk about this
Speaker 7: later on, but there was some you know, he was
Speaker 7: interested in numerology too, and he figured out that birth
Speaker 7: dates and birth weights and birth times and everything meant
Speaker 7: something in terms of, you know, the hallucinations that he
Speaker 7: was having. And even the psychi interesting Court said, you know,
Speaker 7: it's a very odd coincidence that X, Y, and Z happened,
Speaker 7: and that he was right about that. He also seemed
Speaker 7: to have a little bit of an ability to kind
Speaker 7: of predict what was going to happen. Very strange, you know,
Speaker 7: those't the typical you know, you just sort of fall
Speaker 7: off the cliffs and and get lost. I mean, there
Speaker 7: was just there were just so many very very unusual coincidences.
Speaker 6: Now in his mind, how does through revelations, what does
Speaker 6: he hone in on in particular in terms of passages
Speaker 6: and what does he sort of create in terms of this,
Speaker 6: save this, save the world? What does he is commanded
Speaker 6: to do or what does he believe he needs to do?
Speaker 7: Well a lot, you know, And depending on which voice
Speaker 7: was talking to him at the time, uh, you know,
Speaker 7: he would he would pull a different meaning. But basically
Speaker 7: he was looking at the end of the world. He
Speaker 7: was looking at the at the what was what would
Speaker 7: be the end of the world. It would be the
Speaker 7: Big Bang? How would that happen? Well, in his mind,
Speaker 7: the Satanic star was going to collide with the Star
Speaker 7: of David and create the Big Bang, and that would
Speaker 7: be the end of everything. Because Alpha and Omega, the
Speaker 7: beginning and the ending. We started with the Big Bang,
Speaker 7: we end with the Big Bang. The the Do you
Speaker 7: want me to talk about the book the Little Book?
Speaker 7: The okay, well somebody, you know, some people might want
Speaker 7: to cover their ears. But he he he read the
Speaker 7: piece about the little Book, you know, eat of the
Speaker 7: Little Book, which will be bitter in the belly, and
Speaker 7: he decided that that meant he needed to eat his
Speaker 7: semens in order to discover the Tree of knowledge and
Speaker 7: see God. So the tree of knowledge to him meant
Speaker 7: eating his semen, and in women, it meant consuming their
Speaker 7: menstrual blood. And this this played out in a very
Speaker 7: bizarre way in his whole scenario. So so there was
Speaker 7: that And and you know, Dan, I mean, when he
Speaker 7: was calling his family members and saying, you know, you
Speaker 7: need to you need to eat your semen, you think
Speaker 7: that would be a major clue. But you know, it's
Speaker 7: easy to judge in retrospect. But when you have a
Speaker 7: when you have a situation where he's got a family
Speaker 7: where there's never been any mental illness, you don't know
Speaker 7: anything about mental illness. I would imagine it's kind of
Speaker 7: like having a parent, a beloved parent, begin to show
Speaker 7: signs of dimension. You just don't want to admit it.
Speaker 7: You know, you want to make you want to make
Speaker 7: excuses and put it off as long as you can.
Speaker 7: But his this fixation on consuming bodily fluids would cause
Speaker 7: him to do something. You know, one of the more
Speaker 7: bizarre features of this crime is described in the book.
Speaker 7: And you know, if you want me to tell it,
Speaker 7: I'll tell it. But it was, you know, just and
Speaker 7: many of many of these things we're so outlandish and
Speaker 7: so disgusting and so really kind of horrifying. It just
Speaker 7: boggles the mind that his parents didn't commit him.
Speaker 6: Yes, tell us, tell our audience, they're not squeamish.
Speaker 7: Okay, well, good, good for them. Well, he you know,
Speaker 7: he had been consuming his semen on a regular basis,
Speaker 7: and of course as he did that, he really felt
Speaker 7: like he was getting closer and closer to God. And
Speaker 7: so he called his sister. He called his sisters and
Speaker 7: told them that they needed to consume their menstrual blood.
Speaker 7: And then he got this idea that if they wouldn't
Speaker 7: do it voluntarily, he might be able to help them.
Speaker 7: So he went over to one of his sisters and
Speaker 7: you know, told her that she needed to do that
Speaker 7: in order to understand what he was going through. And
Speaker 7: she basically said, you know, don't ever talk to me
Speaker 7: about that again. She went off to work. So he
Speaker 7: went and went into her bathroom and found a discarded
Speaker 7: menstrual pad and got extracted as much blood as he
Speaker 7: could out of that, took it to the kitchen, put
Speaker 7: it in a blender along with some orange juice, a
Speaker 7: packet of chicken soup, and some pages from the Bible,
Speaker 7: whipped it up and then waited for her to come
Speaker 7: home and made her drink it. Well, of course, you know,
Speaker 7: she didn't drink much of it, but she got a
Speaker 7: little bit of a sip of it. So he felt like,
Speaker 7: you know, he had done his job, and she, you know,
Speaker 7: she was going to be able to see God. And
Speaker 7: again she didn't know what was in that concoction, but
Speaker 7: her husband did. And again he was not committed. Yes,
Speaker 7: and I keep saying this again for the benefit of
Speaker 7: people who are out there, who have people in their
Speaker 7: lives who are are are exhibiting these bizarre behavior. You know,
Speaker 7: do something about it. You know, how far does it
Speaker 7: have to go? And that's a rhetorical quace question that
Speaker 7: when you read the book, when you read A Voice
Speaker 7: out of Nowhere, readers tell me this all the time.
Speaker 7: They're literally shouting, shouting into the air. Why won't you
Speaker 7: do something? You know, basically to the parents, why won't
Speaker 7: you do something? So denial, you know, denial was as
Speaker 7: much of an enemy in this situation as a mental illness.
Speaker 6: So so continue from from this point when he's he
Speaker 6: has the idea of of consuming his own semen and
Speaker 6: his family, menstrual blood for women, So tell us proceed
Speaker 6: with the story.
Speaker 7: Okay, well, he's he starts fixating on numbers, and it's
Speaker 7: complicated to go through the whole thing because it would
Speaker 7: just take too long. But he counts his and he
Speaker 7: had a deceased brother who born stillborn, but he counts
Speaker 7: him in his calculations of how he decides that his family,
Speaker 7: each member of his family has to sit on one
Speaker 7: point of the Star of David in order to hold
Speaker 7: it in place when the Satanic star comes to collide.
Speaker 7: So he starts adding it up and they're they're missing
Speaker 7: a number. So he's just think he's puzzling it out
Speaker 7: and puzzling it out, and he decides that one of
Speaker 7: his sisters must be pregnant. So he starts calling his sisters,
Speaker 7: and sure enough, one of them is pregnant, but they
Speaker 7: hadn't she was so early on they hadn't announced it,
Speaker 7: and that was a bit. That was another one of
Speaker 7: those sort of creepy you know, him being able to
Speaker 7: go to tell things. And so she so his older
Speaker 7: sister who lived far away, was pregnant, and he, as
Speaker 7: he was getting closer to his you know, complete break,
Speaker 7: he decides to go up there on a bus and
Speaker 7: which is no small feat. I mean, you know, you're
Speaker 7: going to travel from Vancouver to the interior of British Columbia,
Speaker 7: which is a which is a long, long bus ride,
Speaker 7: nine hours I think, maybe more, and surprise her. And
Speaker 7: he walks into her house. She's in bed, and I
Speaker 7: think it's three or four or five o'clock in the morning.
Speaker 7: It's total darkness, and he's standing in her room and
Speaker 7: scares her to death. That morning, he says he'll fix
Speaker 7: her an omelet. And at this point he had he
Speaker 7: had started to see a psychiatrist who had given him
Speaker 7: some antipsychotic medication. He ended up putting the anti psychotic
Speaker 7: medication in her omelet, isn't He was never really sure why.
Speaker 7: He thought it had something to do with the unborn baby,
Speaker 7: and the unborn baby needed to be killed to go
Speaker 7: up to the star. And uh, she took one bite
Speaker 7: was terrible, so she gave the omelet to the dogs.
Speaker 7: The dog almost died. She ended up going to the
Speaker 7: hospital for eight days and almost lost the baby. So
Speaker 7: at this point, you know, you could say he tried
Speaker 7: to kill his sister and they still didn't do anything.
Speaker 6: Did the family, Well, the family nen't called the police obviously.
Speaker 7: Nope, Yeah, they did not.
Speaker 6: Call the police. Were involved in a psychiatrist would have
Speaker 6: to be involved. But if no one told the psychiatrist
Speaker 6: or a psychologists pardon me, well, did the psychologist know about.
Speaker 7: It, about the incident, Yes, but he was more concerned
Speaker 7: that they had let Bruce go up there on the
Speaker 7: supervise and I'm not making that up yet.
Speaker 6: Did he have any specific instructions for the family once
Speaker 6: he was under the care well, he had Bruce under
Speaker 6: his care.
Speaker 7: Well, to the psychiatrist's credit, when he first met Bruce,
Speaker 7: he did sign commitment papers which were good for thirty days,
Speaker 7: and I think that was on December sixteenth, Yes, it
Speaker 7: was December sixteenth, I believe. And he signed commitment papers
Speaker 7: and he said, I'm not telling you to put him
Speaker 7: away right now, but you know, you may you may
Speaker 7: need this, and if that's the case, please use it.
Speaker 7: So the doctor on the first visit, he went to
Speaker 7: the home. He went to the home. He gave Ruth
Speaker 7: long acting shot to calm him down and quell the
Speaker 7: psychotic symptoms, and then put him on oral medications and
Speaker 7: then set up a you know, a schedule to come
Speaker 7: and see the doctor, which was which was followed sort
Speaker 7: of haphazardly. But as as is the problem with many
Speaker 7: people who have schizophrenia, Ruth at this point didn't believe
Speaker 7: he was mentally ill, and he didn't take his medications regularly,
Speaker 7: So without the family and the and the psychiatrist really
Speaker 7: did not counsel the family about, you know, supervising him
Speaker 7: when he takes his medicines and making sure or that
Speaker 7: he's actually swallowing them, counting the pills, you know, all
Speaker 7: of the things that we do now or we should
Speaker 7: be doing now, really didn't happen. And unfortunately, every time
Speaker 7: the doctor saw Bruce, Bruce seemed he did not seem
Speaker 7: that agitated, you know, he and occasionally he was even
Speaker 7: fairly articulate and able to kind of explain himself. So
Speaker 7: the doctor really never saw him other than the very
Speaker 7: first time when he signed the commitment papers. He never
Speaker 7: really saw him kind of florid, you know, he never
Speaker 7: saw him, and he saw him full blown.
Speaker 6: But that's.
Speaker 7: Still doesn't excuse the inadequate treatment.
Speaker 6: It would seem normal. It would seem from my experience anyway,
Speaker 6: from what I've seen, is that he would have been
Speaker 6: hospitalized or at least the minimum, and they would have
Speaker 6: done a review and they would have administered medication based
Speaker 6: on that. I don't understand how he could be forced,
Speaker 6: you know, determined to have this illness, forced to have
Speaker 6: the medication, but yet not in a hospital setting, and
Speaker 6: then expect him to take the medication. I mean, that's
Speaker 6: why they would commit someone to at least those few
Speaker 6: days and then assess whether they could release this person
Speaker 6: or you know, that seems to be normal, right.
Speaker 7: But the family didn't agree. They had the opportunity to
Speaker 7: have him committed on December sixteenth, and they chose not to,
Speaker 7: and quite frankly, that is what likely would have prevented
Speaker 7: the tragedy because he would have been diagnosed. See he
Speaker 7: was never diagnosed as a paranoid schizophrenic until after the murders.
Speaker 7: And the reason for that is because of the way
Speaker 7: the DSM, the Diagnostics and Statistical Manual of Disease defined
Speaker 7: mental schizophrenia at that time, and you had to have them.
Speaker 7: You have to have displayed the symptoms for a period
Speaker 7: of time. I believe back then it was six months,
Speaker 7: so he couldn't he the doctor was not able ethically
Speaker 7: to to diagnose him as as a paranoid schizophrenic. But
Speaker 7: if but if he had been committed, but they would
Speaker 7: have discovered, you know, that the severity of his illness,
Speaker 7: they would have been able to say, look, this is
Speaker 7: this is the course of treatment we have to take.
Speaker 7: This is how serious it can become. You know, you
Speaker 7: can't just you can't just let him go out into
Speaker 7: the world and bang around on you know, bump into
Speaker 7: corners and fall down and make mistakes that he this
Speaker 7: young man needs help and he's going to need help
Speaker 7: for the rest of his life. It very likely if
Speaker 7: that had happened, could have been the bump in trajectory
Speaker 7: that would have changed everything.
Speaker 6: Now I still need explanation in terms of this medication,
Speaker 6: but in terms for our audience. Even though he wasn't
Speaker 6: diagnosed as a paranoid schizophrenic by the psychiatrist, and as
Speaker 6: a result, what kind of medication was he given or
Speaker 6: is there just an antipsychotic drug that is encompasses all
Speaker 6: illnesses and regardless of the severity even or the designation
Speaker 6: by a psychiatrist, Well, he wasn't actually.
Speaker 7: Given the medication appropriate for someone who is suffering from
Speaker 7: paranoid schizophrenia. It's just that Bruce would not take it
Speaker 7: on a regular basis. He he at one point he
Speaker 7: was taking it and things kind of normalized, and I
Speaker 7: think that lulled the family into a false sense of
Speaker 7: everything's going to be okay. But then his delusions began
Speaker 7: again and he just stopped. Because the evidence in court was,
Speaker 7: you know, the doctor would ask the family, because the
Speaker 7: family was calling the doctor fairly regularly, saying, you know,
Speaker 7: he's going on again about the end of the world.
Speaker 7: And the doctor would say, is he's taking his meds?
Speaker 7: And they would say, well, I'm you know, we can't
Speaker 7: be on him all the time. How do we know?
Speaker 7: So the likelihood is, no, he wasn't taking his medicine.
Speaker 6: Why was Bruce not taking his medicine? Did he have
Speaker 6: a reaction to it? What was his rationale for not
Speaker 6: taking it regularly?
Speaker 7: Well he you know, he of course didn't give evidence
Speaker 7: in court. But this is a common problem with people
Speaker 7: who have schizophrenia that's developed to the point where you know,
Speaker 7: it's it's in, it's literally embedded in who they are.
Speaker 7: They don't believe they're sick, and some people with schizophrenia
Speaker 7: will even believe that the medication is poisoned, so they
Speaker 7: don't want to take it. There's also the other side
Speaker 7: of it, where someone does know that they need to
Speaker 7: take the medicine, but the side effects are just so
Speaker 7: unpleasant that they decide they don't want to, you know.
Speaker 7: And there was a case a year and a half ago,
Speaker 7: I think, in another one in North Vancouver where a
Speaker 7: young man his name was Jordan Ramsay knew he was
Speaker 7: mentally ill with paranoid schizophrenia, but hated the side effects
Speaker 7: so decided to Hello, it is Ryan.
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Speaker 4: Were necessary d where if I lost the terms conditions
Speaker 4: eighteen plus to.
Speaker 7: Go off them and take vitamins instead, and these vitamins
Speaker 7: are marketed on the internet for people with mental illness.
Speaker 7: Within a very short period of time, he became completely
Speaker 7: psychotic and murdered his father and almost killed his mother
Speaker 7: because he believed that they they were, that the people
Speaker 7: inhabiting his mother and father's bodies were aliens, and he
Speaker 7: had to kill those aliens in order to get his
Speaker 7: parents back. So yeah, it's and again you know, Jordan knew,
Speaker 7: Jordan knew he was sick, and that he just didn't
Speaker 7: want to take that medicine anymore because of the weight
Speaker 7: gain and the lethargic way it made him feel. And
Speaker 7: so on.
Speaker 6: Now, let's get to the actual day in question and
Speaker 6: tell us about Bruce's behavior or what all happened. What
Speaker 6: does he finally have conjured up in his mind, tell
Speaker 6: us about his plan go back, and then tell us
Speaker 6: what actually happens that faithful day.
Speaker 7: Okay, Well, as I mentioned, he had been working as
Speaker 7: a swamper on a garbage truck, but his father had
Speaker 7: applied on his behalf to Saltkirk College in Nelson, British Columbia,
Speaker 7: which is in the interior for a mill wright course,
Speaker 7: and a mill write is somebody who works on large machinery.
Speaker 7: And to everyone's total amazement, Bruce got accepted. But it
Speaker 7: was a very last minute thing. So he had, you know,
Speaker 7: I think like a day or two days to pack up,
Speaker 7: to quit his job, pack everything up and move to
Speaker 7: Selkirk to start his classes. And the father called the
Speaker 7: psychiatrist and told him this, and the psychiatrist said, you know,
Speaker 7: I don't think this is a very good idea, that
Speaker 7: the lack of structure and the new environment could cause
Speaker 7: Bruce to regress. I really don't think you should let
Speaker 7: him go. The family sent him off and while Bruce
Speaker 7: was on the bus heading to tom Nelson, the voices
Speaker 7: were he hadn't been taken his medicine, so the voices
Speaker 7: were just on him, you know, just all of them,
Speaker 7: all of the voices, all at once. And onto the
Speaker 7: bus walks this woman named Mary, and Mary was sort
Speaker 7: of your class hippie, you know, with this long skirt
Speaker 7: in the peasant's shirt and the beads and high as
Speaker 7: a kite. She sits right down next to Bruce and
Speaker 7: taps him on the side of the head, right on
Speaker 7: the temple, and says, did you hear about the bug
Speaker 7: in the star? And he looked at her and that
Speaker 7: was it. He thought that she had some kind of
Speaker 7: message for him directly from God. And she began to
Speaker 7: talk about things like, you know, she had died five times,
Speaker 7: and you don't really when you die, you don't really die.
Speaker 7: You know, you can keep coming back, and you don't
Speaker 7: really bleed when you die if you've got a higher purpose.
Speaker 7: And so she's putting all of these ideas into his
Speaker 7: head and he's bleeding every word that she says. Well,
Speaker 7: he gets He finally gets up to his dorm room
Speaker 7: and when they hand him the key, when he checks
Speaker 7: in hand him the key, looks at the key and
Speaker 7: he realized he now has the key to saving the world.
Speaker 7: And what that meant was that he had to go
Speaker 7: back home and kill his family so that their spirits
Speaker 7: could ascend to Heaven, take their points on the Star
Speaker 7: of David, and hold the star in place. And when
Speaker 7: he figured that out, when they put that key in
Speaker 7: his hands and he figured it out, he felt such relief.
Speaker 7: He felt such peace because he finally knew what he
Speaker 7: was supposed to do, and as hard as it is
Speaker 7: to believe, he never went about this task with any
Speaker 7: aggression or hatred. He actually did it out of love.
Speaker 7: So he spent the night in his dorm. They couldn't
Speaker 7: get a bus home that night. He spent the night
Speaker 7: in his dorm, got up the next morning, caught a
Speaker 7: plane ride home. Finally, it was hard for him to
Speaker 7: get a flight Anyway's got a plane ride home, showed
Speaker 7: up at home, surprised and scared everybody. His father immediately.
Speaker 7: Bruce's father immediately calls the psychiatrist and tells him what
Speaker 7: has happened. The psychiatrist says, I want you to take
Speaker 7: him to Royal Columbian Hospital right now, which was five
Speaker 7: miles away. I'll call ahead. You can get him medicated
Speaker 7: in the emergency room, but that's what I want you
Speaker 7: to do, and then I want you to bring him
Speaker 7: in tomorrow. And the father unbelievably said, you know, it's
Speaker 7: already after ten and the hospital's five miles away. I
Speaker 7: think I can handle this until tomorrow. So mom goes
Speaker 7: to bed, young brother Ricky starts watching TV. Dad sits
Speaker 7: down to do a crossword puzzle. Bruce goes downstairs and
Speaker 7: loads a couple of rifles and hides them, and then
Speaker 7: he goes back upstairs and lays down on the couch
Speaker 7: in the TV room with his brother and starts listening
Speaker 7: to tape mix. You know that he's made of music
Speaker 7: that he likes, predominantly The Who and the Rolling Stones.
Speaker 7: And he anyway, he's getting up and sort of ranting
Speaker 7: and raising about the end of the world. His dad
Speaker 7: is trying to calm him down. Bruce goes outside, smokes
Speaker 7: a joint, eats some of it, gets some self calmed down.
Speaker 7: He comes back in, lays back down on the couch.
Speaker 7: Hears Roger Daltrey of The Who singing a song and
Speaker 7: then a Rolling Stone song that one of the lines
Speaker 7: was do it, do it? Do it now?
Speaker 6: Do it?
Speaker 7: Do it? Do it now? And he took the headphones off,
Speaker 7: he got up, he went down, got a rifle, stood
Speaker 7: at the bottom of the stairs, and the voices were
Speaker 7: just screaming at him, You've got to do it, You've
Speaker 7: got to do it now. And they kept saying to him,
Speaker 7: the gateway is narrowing, The gateway is narrowing, meaning the
Speaker 7: world is going to blow up if you don't if
Speaker 7: you don't make it through this gateway. And he didn't
Speaker 7: want to do it. He just didn't want to kill
Speaker 7: his family. But then he remembered what Mary had told him,
Speaker 7: that you don't really die and you don't bleed, and
Speaker 7: so he ran up the stairs pointed the gun to
Speaker 7: his father. His father saw him coming, tried to defend
Speaker 7: himself and shot him, killed him. Brother came running up
Speaker 7: the stairs, turned the gun on him, killed him, ran
Speaker 7: upstairs to where his mother was sleeping. She, of course,
Speaker 7: had no clue what was going on. All she heard
Speaker 7: was screaming and gunshots down below. She ran for her
Speaker 7: life into the bathroom. He shot her in the back,
Speaker 7: and then to make sure that she was dead, shot
Speaker 7: her point blank in the head. Once she was down.
Speaker 7: Then he went downstairs and phoned his sister, told her
Speaker 7: to come and bring this other sister, but to leave
Speaker 7: his brother in law at home. So they were in
Speaker 7: North Vancouver. They make the thirty minute drive. Oh, and
Speaker 7: they called the psychiatrist and say, we want Bruce committed.
Speaker 7: It's four o'clock in the morning or four fifty five
Speaker 7: or something. Really, you know, dark dark, we want him committed.
Speaker 7: The commitment paper had expired two days before.
Speaker 6: So the.
Speaker 7: Psychiatrist says to the sister, don't go over there. Call
Speaker 7: the police. She said, no, we don't want to upset
Speaker 7: our father. We're going over there. So the two sisters
Speaker 7: and the brother in law come over. Meanwhile, Bruce is
Speaker 7: listening to the voices telling him to clean up the blood.
Speaker 7: He moved some of the bodies around, He's cleaning up
Speaker 7: the blood. He's cleaning up the blood. And then they
Speaker 7: arrive and he master fors them. He and there were
Speaker 7: eyewitnesses to this, believe it or not at that early
Speaker 7: in the morning, but he believed at some point during
Speaker 7: this whole thing that his brother in law, who was
Speaker 7: a big guy six two or three and two hundred
Speaker 7: and thirty pounds. Bruce, on the other hand, is like
Speaker 7: five foot five and one hundred and twenty the brother
Speaker 7: in laws and was able to overpower Bruce shoots him
Speaker 7: six or seven times in the leg, in the face,
Speaker 7: and this big guy, sweetheart of a guy, won't die.
Speaker 7: So Bruce decides he's Bruce decides to this brother in
Speaker 7: law is the devil, and that the devil is trying
Speaker 7: to keep Bruce from saving the world. So Bruce goes
Speaker 7: and gets a hammer and bludgeons his brother in law unmercifully.
Speaker 7: When they found this poor man, his features were just indecipherable.
Speaker 7: And once Bruce had killed everyone, or thought he had
Speaker 7: killed everyone, he had a leather headband around his head.
Speaker 7: He looked at himself in the mirror, adjusted that headband,
Speaker 7: decided that that was his crown of thorns, and walked
Speaker 7: out into the night.
Speaker 6: Now, how do police get to the uh, find the bodies?
Speaker 6: How does that all happen? And tell us where does
Speaker 6: Bruce go?
Speaker 7: There were there were several probably five, either eye or
Speaker 7: ear witnesses. Nobody really was exactly sure what they saw
Speaker 7: because it was so dark, right, But but the one
Speaker 7: neighbor's name's William in my book, he he he saw
Speaker 7: the shots fired, and well he heard them, actually he
Speaker 7: heard them. Of course, they sound like twenty two, sound
Speaker 7: like firecrackers. He hesitated at first, but then he called
Speaker 7: the police, and the police were very close by. I
Speaker 7: think it took them maybe three to five minutes to
Speaker 7: get there. And when they arrived they found a young
Speaker 7: man who turned out to see Bruce sort of wandering
Speaker 7: aimlessly on the streets. They had no idea. They had
Speaker 7: no idea that what was waiting for them in the house,
Speaker 7: and that this young man had committed the murders, so
Speaker 7: they left him. They left Bruce with a rookie cop
Speaker 7: who was on the force for less than a year,
Speaker 7: and three police officers made their way to the house
Speaker 7: and you know, went inside, discovered the bodies. They discovered
Speaker 7: that the brother in law who'd been bludgeoned was still
Speaker 7: incredibly he was alive and struggling for breath. They called
Speaker 7: an ambulance. Meanwhile, the rookie RCMP officer is questioning the
Speaker 7: young man and blurts out that he's the Antichrist in
Speaker 7: the world is going to end at midnight. He radios
Speaker 7: that to the police officers who are out, you know,
Speaker 7: walking around outside the house, and they go in and
Speaker 7: make their their grizzly discovery. But anyway, the police off,
Speaker 7: the rookie officer is talking to Bruce, and Bruce admits
Speaker 7: that he has killed his family. He's arrested for murder.
Speaker 7: He's taken to the detachment and and then you know,
Speaker 7: that's really that's where I got involved. He came Bruce
Speaker 7: came into my courtroom the next day for his first
Speaker 7: appearance where he was sent away on a psychiatric remand.
Speaker 7: And and that's how his life, in my life collided.
Speaker 6: Now, when police found him, was there any evidence like
Speaker 6: blood spatter on his clothing? Was there any indication that
Speaker 6: of the carnage that he had just created?
Speaker 7: He the the The arresting officer wrote in his note
Speaker 7: that he noticed dark splatches on Bruce's shirt, and it
Speaker 7: was raining, and it was extremely dark. I don't have
Speaker 7: any any evidence that he shone a flashlight on him.
Speaker 7: You know, you would think that he would have testified
Speaker 7: to that in court. So he said he noticed dark
Speaker 7: slatches on his shirt and that and dark markings on
Speaker 7: his hands, and that the young man was shaking violently
Speaker 7: and appeared as though he wanted to cry. So they
Speaker 7: knew that there was something up, but really, until they
Speaker 7: got him to the detachment and examined him and had
Speaker 7: him turn his clothes over, et cetera, they weren't able
Speaker 7: to confirm that it was blood.
Speaker 6: Plus now he made.
Speaker 7: No I have to tell you this. The other thing
Speaker 7: is if you, if you, if you saw this man,
Speaker 7: this young man drews, and you saw what happened in
Speaker 7: that house, you couldn't. You could not put two and
Speaker 7: two together, you could you could not believe that such
Speaker 7: a small and mild mannered person could do what happened
Speaker 7: in that house.
Speaker 6: See how so small was he?
Speaker 7: What's this?
Speaker 6: What is the size and what's his relative size? Well?
Speaker 7: I think five five five five four, maybe one hundred
Speaker 7: and twenty if one hundred and twenty pounds, And.
Speaker 6: What does he look like in terms of me twenty
Speaker 6: twenty two years old? But what does he look like
Speaker 6: in turn of boyish?
Speaker 7: Uh? He was actually very handsome young man, looked kind
Speaker 7: of native. He looked like he had some native blood
Speaker 7: in him. So you know, he had the long he
Speaker 7: had a long bridge nose. He had beautiful, really beautiful black,
Speaker 7: straight shiny hair, very elegant bone structure, which he inherited
Speaker 7: from his mother, and he also inherited her petiteness because
Speaker 7: his dad was a big guy, really good looking young man.
Speaker 7: I mean, just such just such a sad thing, but
Speaker 7: you know, not menacing at all. In fact, the doctor
Speaker 7: who the GP who came in and examined him that
Speaker 7: night in the in the jail, said, you know, he
Speaker 7: wasn't threatening at all. He was a small fellow not
Speaker 7: threatening at all and to me and I remember, you know,
Speaker 7: sitting through the trial just looking at him and thinking
Speaker 7: how powerful his psychosis must have been to literally give
Speaker 7: him a kind of demonic strength that he did not have.
Speaker 6: Right now, how do how do they proceed with him
Speaker 6: in terms of again, he's he is locked in a
Speaker 6: psychiatric facility, in terms of his in terms of him
Speaker 6: coming to terms with what he has done. Is there
Speaker 6: any how long does it take for him to recognize
Speaker 6: or have a break from the psychotic break that he
Speaker 6: actually had.
Speaker 7: Well, you know, they're very protective of that information because
Speaker 7: it's patient confidentiality. But he he did not come to
Speaker 7: trial until he had stabilized, and so he started receiving
Speaker 7: medication in February of nineteen eighty three and his trial
Speaker 7: was scheduled for November. So it took, you know, quite
Speaker 7: a few months for him to stabilize. And although they
Speaker 7: didn't really talk about remorse or anything specifically, they did
Speaker 7: talk about him being on special attention, which is basically
Speaker 7: suicide watch. When the reality of what he had done
Speaker 7: began to sink in, and the psychiatrists gave testimony that
Speaker 7: you know, he moved from from being very florid in
Speaker 7: his psychosis to being moderate and to questioning whether or
Speaker 7: not his delusions were real to you know, and this
Speaker 7: is all in the course of medic patients, you know,
Speaker 7: to suddenly realizing the you know, the catastrophic nature of
Speaker 7: his actions and then just becoming really, really depressed. Because
Speaker 7: the other thing also was that his surviving twin brother
Speaker 7: and sister, the one who he had put the had
Speaker 7: made the omelet, for they were afraid for their lives
Speaker 7: because he said that he maintained the whole time that
Speaker 7: the whole family needed to die in order to keep
Speaker 7: the world from blowing up, and that he needed to
Speaker 7: finish the job, and if he couldn't do it himself,
Speaker 7: they needed to commit suicide. And so they were they
Speaker 7: were afraid. So he had he had killed most of
Speaker 7: his family, and the two remaining family members wanted nothing
Speaker 7: to do with him. So when he finally moved to
Speaker 7: the other side of his psychosis, in other words, he
Speaker 7: moved to sanity away from insanity, had nothing, you know,
Speaker 7: he had nothing but the people in the mental hospital,
Speaker 7: because you know, the other reality was that the rest
Speaker 7: of the world, certainly all of Canada and anybody else
Speaker 7: paying attention elsewhere thought he was a monster. You know,
Speaker 7: they looked at him like, you know, like a like
Speaker 7: a devil. And so he knew he had no one
Speaker 7: on the outside to be caring about him or thinking
Speaker 7: about him, and that he had brought that on himself.
Speaker 7: So the psychiatrists, you know, mentioned very briefly those kinds
Speaker 7: of things, but of course did not get into any
Speaker 7: sort of details.
Speaker 6: Now we've got it for our audience. We've got to
Speaker 6: and if they've listened to the show regularly, they I've
Speaker 6: pointed out that there are major differences in the way
Speaker 6: our courts, even though they're based on the same system,
Speaker 6: from especially Glaring Moore most clearingly from the US and
Speaker 6: Canada's comparisons. Now in terms of you say that everybody
Speaker 6: in Canada, the US and internationally, you know, a man
Speaker 6: slaughters his family is considered a monster. But the Canadian
Speaker 6: courts look at things quite a bit differently than the
Speaker 6: American courts and American prosecutors, and so Canada believes it's
Speaker 6: more evolved in this regard, and that is a point
Speaker 6: to I guess debate to a certain degree, but regardless,
Speaker 6: there is a difference. So tell us about in nineteen
Speaker 6: eighty three, the prosecution, how that worked, and how the
Speaker 6: courts were dealing with this particular case.
Speaker 7: Well, the interesting thing that probably most people don't know
Speaker 7: is that back in nineteen eighty three, the law was
Speaker 7: such that if you were found not guilty by reason
Speaker 7: of sanity, you would be sent to a secure forensic facility,
Speaker 7: Riverview hospital, you know, any other mental hospital. And this
Speaker 7: is the language of the law quote until the pleasure
Speaker 7: of the lieutenant governor is known unquote. And the big
Speaker 7: joke was, what Canada has a lieutenant governor? You know,
Speaker 7: nobody knew who he was or she, or whether there
Speaker 7: was even anybody in that post. So basically, if you
Speaker 7: were sent away on a not guilty by reason of
Speaker 7: insanity charge, you were going to stay there forever. But
Speaker 7: here's what happened in the and I'll talk about Remind
Speaker 7: me to talk about prosecution when I'm done with this.
Speaker 7: In the United States, in the fifties and sixties, the
Speaker 7: American Civil Liberties Union started petitioning for people to have
Speaker 7: the right to be mentally ill. Mentally ill had the
Speaker 7: right to refuse treatments. That led to this movement called deinstitutionalization.
Speaker 7: Which basically meant closing down the mental hospitals and putting
Speaker 7: people who are mentally ill out into the community, replacing
Speaker 7: mental hospitals with community based mental health care, so that
Speaker 7: the mentally ill could exercise their free will and have
Speaker 7: lives like the rest of us and be supported by
Speaker 7: effect of mental health care in there, you know, in
Speaker 7: the place where they lived. It was really it was
Speaker 7: a beautiful idea. It was grand and noble, but it
Speaker 7: was an epic fail because there was no infrastructure created,
Speaker 7: and in fact, the money that was saved by closing
Speaker 7: the mental hospitals, and this should surprise no one, was
Speaker 7: not funneled into the new schemes. So Canada decided to
Speaker 7: follow the United States lead in the in the eighties.
Speaker 7: And so when Bruce went into Riverview Mental Hospital, Canada
Speaker 7: was already underway looking at the idea of the institutionalization.
Speaker 7: And shortly after he was committed what we thought, we
Speaker 7: all thought for life, the institutionalization began. In fact, it
Speaker 7: was beginning at Riverview. So I'm going to tell you
Speaker 7: the last part of that story, but go back to
Speaker 7: the question about how the prosecution handles cases.
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Speaker 7: I think in Canada it can be very very different.
Speaker 7: And in Bruce's case, certainly both the Crown that's the prosecution,
Speaker 7: and the defense both agreed that Bruce was mentally ill
Speaker 7: at the time he committed the crime. So it was
Speaker 7: not an adversarial trial. It was more an informational trial
Speaker 7: so that the public could be assured that you know,
Speaker 7: enough evidence had been presented that you know that would
Speaker 7: prove be on a shadow of doubt that Bruce was
Speaker 7: mentally ill when he submitted a crime. Here in the
Speaker 7: United States, you rarely see that. You know, when James
Speaker 7: Holmes comes back into court, that's the Aurora movie theater shooter.
Speaker 7: You know they're going for the death penalty. There's no
Speaker 7: question in my mind that Jane Solmes was mentally ill,
Speaker 7: but there's going to be no agreement between prosecution and
Speaker 7: defense on that. You know, they're going for the death penalty.
Speaker 7: So that's one huge difference. And you know, again, yes,
Speaker 7: it's debatable. Is it more evolved, is it more humane?
Speaker 7: Is it that Canada is seeing to wish you washy?
Speaker 7: It doesn't really matter. I mean, it is what it is.
Speaker 7: But but that is a bit that is a huge
Speaker 7: difference between the two countries for sure.
Speaker 6: Well, you know the difference is is I've spoken to
Speaker 6: a lot of true crime authors and authors and people
Speaker 6: in general in the US, and that is what the
Speaker 6: judicial system and the public is afraid of, is that
Speaker 6: someone deemed not criminally responsible because they're insane over something
Speaker 6: like this or taking of life, period, and that that
Speaker 6: person someday would be released. And that is what I'm
Speaker 6: trying to convey to our American and international audience. Canadians
Speaker 6: believe in that, and that's when I talk about an evolution,
Speaker 6: there's been an evolution of thought in terms of Canadians believe,
Speaker 6: of course, the person's not going to spend the rest
Speaker 6: of their life in jail because it didn't mean to
Speaker 6: kill anyone. And we've also evolved that we don't have
Speaker 6: a life sentence without the possibility of parole, so we
Speaker 6: do much more believe in rehabilitation and we walk the
Speaker 6: walk in terms of actually letting people out. So in America,
Speaker 6: they are actually so afraid that someone would be deemed
Speaker 6: insane that they might get out someday from an institution,
Speaker 6: that prosecutors in the public even shy away from the
Speaker 6: most obvious cases of obvious insane perpetrators.
Speaker 7: Right. But you know what just makes me shake my
Speaker 7: head in bewilderment is that, yes, we're all afraid that
Speaker 7: Bruce Blackman or James Holmes will get out again, even
Speaker 7: after they're stabilized, because we see what they're capable of,
Speaker 7: We see what can happen if they don't take their
Speaker 7: medication and if they're not getting mental health care. So
Speaker 7: rather than live in fear and rather then stick these
Speaker 7: poor people who never asked to have a mental illness
Speaker 7: away in jail or a mental hospital for the rest
Speaker 7: of their lives. And this is a rhetorical question, but
Speaker 7: why can't we get a mental health care system that's
Speaker 7: community based, that works, and that's proactive, and that there's
Speaker 7: no expense keeping people like Bruce and like Jane stable
Speaker 7: and safe and supported because their safety directly translates to ours.
Speaker 7: You know, we just keep focusing on all the wrong things.
Speaker 7: I know they're going to be released, so let's make
Speaker 7: sure we have a system in place that makes that
Speaker 7: an okay eventuality.
Speaker 6: Here's the thing that I want. Yeah, well, here's the thing.
Speaker 6: I'm Canadian too. But this is where I differ from
Speaker 6: vast majority of people, and I don't buy into this
Speaker 6: because we have an example, and an extreme example. Here
Speaker 6: is a gentleman named Vincent Lee, the Greyhound Bus beheader,
Speaker 6: cannibal killer. Now this person is in a hospital and
Speaker 6: now is receiving this extraordinary care where they believe he's
Speaker 6: responding to the antipsychotic medication so well that he has
Speaker 6: now within three years, been granted unsupervised visits into the
Speaker 6: community of Selkirk. At first, he was given extraordinary freedom
Speaker 6: from the community from the incition itself, because it didn't
Speaker 6: have a fence around it, confining the institution. Yet he
Speaker 6: was out for walks and recreation. To me is just extraordinary.
Speaker 6: And what I look at is that they have an
Speaker 6: eventual plan of letting this person, this killer out, despite
Speaker 6: the public, despite the victim's mothers pleading to have this
Speaker 6: person spend the rest of his life incarcerated in an institution,
Speaker 6: that there is sort of a battle going on to
Speaker 6: prove that the Canadian psychiatric industry can cure almost anyone
Speaker 6: via these Again I hate to say this, but miracle
Speaker 6: drugs rendering this former killer mass murderers, or but in
Speaker 6: this particular case, Vincent Lee to be harmless for the
Speaker 6: rest of his life. And then people say, well, how
Speaker 6: do you know he's going to take his medication? And
Speaker 6: we have talked about people who won't take their medication
Speaker 6: for various reasons. But my question is, how do we
Speaker 6: know this medication can render everyone harmless? Or are we
Speaker 6: dabbling in this experiment based on our ideology that we
Speaker 6: have that we can fix anybody.
Speaker 7: I think the latter. I think we are dabbling and
Speaker 7: and you know, beyond beyond having an adequate and proactive
Speaker 7: mental health care system that actually works. I think we
Speaker 7: need to look at the law. And I think that
Speaker 7: you know, if you if you commit murder while you're psychotic,
Speaker 7: yes you you weren't responsible because you know you were
Speaker 7: in a different realm. However, I don't think that the
Speaker 7: law should should render you not guilty by reason of
Speaker 7: insanity or because of mental disorder. I think if you're
Speaker 7: I think you are guilty comma but insane or mentally
Speaker 7: ill or whatever. And if you, if you are ever
Speaker 7: let out, a condition of your freedom is that you
Speaker 7: will report monthly for your medication. And if you don't,
Speaker 7: you get locked up. And I don't think that's too
Speaker 7: much to ask. And the ACL you can, you know,
Speaker 7: just suck on that. But I don't think that's too
Speaker 7: much to ask. I think this idea of keeping people
Speaker 7: in a secure facility where they have the structure and
Speaker 7: they have the medication and they have the support that
Speaker 7: they need to get well, and then you know, gradually
Speaker 7: releasing into them into the community and then suddenly saying okay,
Speaker 7: you know you're done, You're off our radar screen. You've
Speaker 7: done great, go on now, you know, go have your life.
Speaker 7: That to me is insanity.
Speaker 6: Because that's yes, I agree with the reason.
Speaker 7: Yeah, the reason that they're able to go out into
Speaker 7: the world now is because they've had all of that support.
Speaker 7: That you cannot change a brain disorder. You can't get
Speaker 7: rid of it. It's always going to be there. So
Speaker 7: the quote miracle cure is all of the medication and
Speaker 7: all of the support and all of the psychotherapy and
Speaker 7: everything else that this person has gotten, which once they
Speaker 7: are fully released goes away, So the miracle drug goes away.
Speaker 6: The other thing that I think is valid as well
Speaker 6: is that, and you can we can discuss this, is
Speaker 6: that the vast majority, like I would feel sorry for
Speaker 6: anyone that this says, walks into a party, walks into
Speaker 6: a job, and says, oh, by the way, I'm schizophrenic.
Speaker 6: Based on Vincent Lee and all of the cases where
Speaker 6: a schizophrenic is the headline where a schizophrenic killer, I
Speaker 6: believe that it just happens to be a killer who
Speaker 6: happens to be schizophrenic, because you still have to have
Speaker 6: the ability to kill, and most schizophrenic don't have the
Speaker 6: ability to hurt anyone and don't and so they're not
Speaker 6: as a statistic aggression, and violence is not a trait,
Speaker 6: a character trait. So when we say a schizophrenic killer,
Speaker 6: but that person still had the capacity to kill, and
Speaker 6: maybe we should look at those that have the capacity
Speaker 6: to kill. And again, in Canada, I'm totally disgusted with
Speaker 6: I'm drunk and I can't remember or I'm drunk diminishes
Speaker 6: the role, diminishes murder to a manslaughter and we're not
Speaker 6: talking first degree manslaughter. We're talking slap on the wrist manslaughter.
Speaker 6: In Canada, that's another issue. But I think that we
Speaker 6: should look at that because the name schizophrenia already comes
Speaker 6: with enough of a label and a stigma that it's
Speaker 6: not going to do much good a guy like Vincent
Speaker 6: Lee and the headline for two or three or years
Speaker 6: or in the paper is schizophrenic killer. So what do
Speaker 6: you think about the idea that schizophrenics are not known
Speaker 6: to be violent? Maybe we should just look at the
Speaker 6: idea that who has the capacity to kill and make
Speaker 6: sure those people remain in prison for the rest of
Speaker 6: their life or in some institution.
Speaker 7: We'll say, well, the the you know, the challenge with
Speaker 7: that is how do you determine who has the capacity
Speaker 7: to kill? And Bruce, for example, was extremely gentle and
Speaker 7: mild mannered. He had no history of violence, no tenants,
Speaker 7: these towards aggressions at all, so there were no, you know,
Speaker 7: no clues. And really I think that you know, we
Speaker 7: have this problem with hearing the words schizophrenic or schizophrenia
Speaker 7: and immediately thinking violence. And you're right, the majority of
Speaker 7: people who have schizophrenia are not a danger to others.
Speaker 7: They're more of a danger to themselves, because you know,
Speaker 7: the suicide rate amongst people with schizophrenia is really high.
Speaker 7: But it's the severely severely mentally ill comma untreated individuals
Speaker 7: that we have to worry about, and not just people
Speaker 7: with schizophrenia, but people with severe bipolar or a combination
Speaker 7: of the two, even people with severe depression. But again,
Speaker 7: what I want to underscore is severe untreated and when
Speaker 7: allowed to progress as as Bruce's was, and who knows
Speaker 7: what you know, if mister Lee showed any signs, but
Speaker 7: when they're allowed to progress with with no either no
Speaker 7: intervention or inadequate intervention. If you look at the statistics
Speaker 7: that have been revealed in the United States, an alarm
Speaker 7: there's been an alarming increase of mass murders committed by
Speaker 7: people with severe untreated mental illness. Since the institutionalization happened
Speaker 7: and the Winsor started a really interesting article a few
Speaker 7: years ago, the same trend is happening in Canada. So
Speaker 7: you know, I think again, I go back to this
Speaker 7: idea of having if we're not going to have mental hospitals,
Speaker 7: we need to have community based mental health care that works.
Speaker 7: And that's easy, right, That easy for families to get
Speaker 7: all for their for their family members, because that's the
Speaker 7: other thing. There's so so much paperwork, there's so many
Speaker 7: hoops to jump through. It's uh, you know, it's just
Speaker 7: so hard to get the help that's needed when often
Speaker 7: that help is needed now, like right now, and we
Speaker 7: don't have that, and we need to work, We really
Speaker 7: need to work towards that. But I think the whole
Speaker 7: problem is is messed up and that we can do better.
Speaker 7: I mean, we're supposed to be an evolved you know,
Speaker 7: North America excluding Mexico. I don't mean anybody any offense
Speaker 7: by that, but you know, Canada and the US just
Speaker 7: think I think they're capable of solving any problem, and
Speaker 7: I believe we are, but we're just not. We're just
Speaker 7: not focusing. Are the correct energy and intelligence on this
Speaker 7: huge problem.
Speaker 6: Yes, I think that we we don't. Again, we've we
Speaker 6: we thought we should let these people out of institutions
Speaker 6: and and then treat them in community centers, but we
Speaker 6: didn't do that. We just basically save some money. And
Speaker 6: these people are wandering around at and you see them
Speaker 6: at the soup kitchens. You know, they're wanted around the
Speaker 6: streets all day. So that's their you know, they had treatment,
Speaker 6: now they don't have treatment. So and I agree with
Speaker 6: you that this this is you can see the trend
Speaker 6: in the US, this mental illness, people taking out their
Speaker 6: entire family based on depression against schizophrenia or some other
Speaker 6: you know, mental illness where they're diluted and hallucinating. And
Speaker 6: we have things like you know, the Aurora movie shooting.
Speaker 6: So yeah, I agree with you that it's And then
Speaker 6: we've had I've had programs where those stats are rising
Speaker 6: and more alarming, and again bigger and worse incidents always
Speaker 6: because that's always the way it's going to be, so
Speaker 6: bigger and worse and more of and so and with
Speaker 6: no end in sight. So I agree with you that
Speaker 6: we have to far our own good for all the
Speaker 6: potential victims, everyone being a victim involved in this story.
Speaker 3: And.
Speaker 6: Not wait for the police to have to do you know,
Speaker 6: basic psychiatric counseling or anything like that. You can't rely
Speaker 6: on the police to do anything like that. They have
Speaker 6: their job, which and that is very little training in
Speaker 6: that respect, and so we do have to have trained
Speaker 6: professionals to intervene before they become to the police's attention,
Speaker 6: because that can go off the rails quite easily. So Abso,
Speaker 6: I agree with you.
Speaker 7: And in fact, after my book came out, I got
Speaker 7: a letter from a police officer in New Westminster, which
Speaker 7: is another bedroom community of Vancouver. She knew one of
Speaker 7: the victims in this book, and she wanted to tell
Speaker 7: me that at least fifty percent, that's five zero, fifty
Speaker 7: percent of the calls that the newest Minster Police Department
Speaker 7: is having to deal with have mental illness at the
Speaker 7: at the route fifty percent.
Speaker 6: Yeah, and they're seeing that in the institutions too. There's
Speaker 6: a far more people medicated in the institutions. It seems like,
Speaker 6: you know, the the makeup of the prison population again
Speaker 6: is reflected in the rising mental illness that's through our society.
Speaker 7: So basically, right, right, well, what I meant with no,
Speaker 7: I was just going to say, there's got to be
Speaker 7: somebody out there who wants to take on this great
Speaker 7: leadership challenge, because I really think this is one of
Speaker 7: the biggest uh, you know, moral crises of our of
Speaker 7: our century, and there's got to be somebody out there
Speaker 7: who's willing to spearhead the change.
Speaker 6: Well, you know, like I think that it's caused for alarm,
Speaker 6: the you know, the amazing amount of cases that are
Speaker 6: not plea bargained in the US when there is an
Speaker 6: obvious insane perpetrator because of a different system in terms
Speaker 6: of you know, electing judges and zealous prosecutors trying to
Speaker 6: make a name for themselves election time, and just the
Speaker 6: sentiment of the public that's sort of just sort of
Speaker 6: fed up and it's easy to be portrayed as soft
Speaker 6: on crime on something like that. And the media is
Speaker 6: quite a bit of different animal in the US as
Speaker 6: compared to Canada. We kind of shy away from a
Speaker 6: lot of the details, as evidenced by the pickt And
Speaker 6: trial and by the Bernardo and Amalkatarle trial. When you
Speaker 6: really asked your average Canadian about those, you know, they
Speaker 6: didn't really focus on them what I wanted to mention,
Speaker 6: just because I think you missingstrue what I meant, and
Speaker 6: it was probably my fault when I said about the
Speaker 6: capacity to murder, I do not mean that there is
Speaker 6: any kind of magic bullet to predict people's violent behavior
Speaker 6: in the future. What I'm saying is that when you
Speaker 6: have the capacity to kill and dismember and cannibalize a victim,
Speaker 6: I think you have the capacity to be to kill.
Speaker 6: And I think that Vincent Lee. I hate, I apologize
Speaker 6: maybe Vincent Lee, but I don't think you should ever
Speaker 6: be released from a psychiatric institution. And inversely, I think
Speaker 6: in the US that many more cases should be the
Speaker 6: perpetrator should be deemed insane, and then as a humane gesture,
Speaker 6: they should be and whether they can afford it or not,
Speaker 6: they can afford murder trials and all the subsequent appeals,
Speaker 6: they can afford to put those perpetrators in a psychiatric institution,
Speaker 6: regardless of people's fears that they might someday be released,
Speaker 6: I'm pretty sure that that won't be allowable for the
Speaker 6: most part anyway.
Speaker 7: Right right, Well, the way the law is, I mean,
Speaker 7: the law has got to change in both places, And
Speaker 7: I don't know who's willing to tackle that, but because
Speaker 7: you know, you've still got you've still got the ACLU
Speaker 7: saying people have a right to be meant and they
Speaker 7: have a right to refuse treatment. But my counter to
Speaker 7: that is, you know, all those children who died at
Speaker 7: Sandy Hook had a right to expect that they could
Speaker 7: grow up and lead meaningful lives. So does why does
Speaker 7: one person's right right or right outweigh the rights of
Speaker 7: all these other people? I don't get it.
Speaker 6: Well, I mean, the thing is is that if a
Speaker 6: person has displayed violent behavior to the point that they're incarcerated,
Speaker 6: then that's the end of that. Then they're they're incarcerated
Speaker 6: if that person is released, you know, because of the
Speaker 6: law we have that with you know, psychopathic killers, which
Speaker 6: is not a mental illness, but those people that totally
Speaker 6: cannot be rehabilitated and they re offend. But someone in
Speaker 6: this particular case that is not criminally responsible because of insanity,
Speaker 6: once they've demonstrate that they are dangerous, then the onus
Speaker 6: is on them to and not the public. Is not
Speaker 6: a reverse They have to like you say, a monitoring
Speaker 6: whatever it seems reasonable by the public to ensure that
Speaker 6: this person would not be harmful in the community is
Speaker 6: what they need to do once they have shown the
Speaker 6: capacity to kill. However, I think again, I think the
Speaker 6: judicial system should take care of that and ensure that
Speaker 6: that doesn't happen.
Speaker 7: Again, I agree with you. I agree with you. I
Speaker 7: think once you do that, once you cross that line
Speaker 7: mental illness or no mental illness, life for you is
Speaker 7: never going to be the same.
Speaker 6: Now, just to sort of wrap up here, what was
Speaker 6: the fate of this Bruce gentleman. Now we're talking about
Speaker 6: nineteen eighty three, to your best of to your knowledge,
Speaker 6: what is his what happened to him?
Speaker 7: He spent twelve years in the institution he was given
Speaker 7: and remember the institutionalization is beginning to happen in Canada
Speaker 7: at this point. So in preparation to see if he
Speaker 7: was going to be able to be released, they started
Speaker 7: giving him supervised passes or supervised visits outside of the asylum,
Speaker 7: and then he was given unsupervised day passes. He had
Speaker 7: to return to the institution every night, and that worked
Speaker 7: out well because, of course, you know, he would come
Speaker 7: back and he would get his medicine and he would
Speaker 7: talk to the nurse and there were no problems. And
Speaker 7: then when the law changed where a person could no
Speaker 7: longer be held indefinitely by virtue of whether the Lieutenant
Speaker 7: governor made an order or not. Once that law changed,
Speaker 7: they pretty much had to release him and UH doctors
Speaker 7: testified on his behalf. There was a public outcry. People
Speaker 7: did not want him release, but they they the government
Speaker 7: helped him change his name and then released him quietly
Speaker 7: into the community. Uh. And he has never granted an interview.
Speaker 7: Nobody he has. He's living under an assumed name. Nobody
Speaker 7: is exactly sure where he is, and he's he's pretty
Speaker 7: much stayed way under the radar, but he's he's living
Speaker 7: amongst us now, right.
Speaker 6: And if he would have reoffended journalists with the means
Speaker 6: that they have, would have known. So as far as
Speaker 6: we know, there's been no reoccurrence obviously thankfully. Yes, that
Speaker 6: was not much family left, so I know, Yeah, that's
Speaker 6: bad joke. Sorry, but anyway, I want to thank thank
Speaker 6: you very much for this. Is anyway people can contact you.
Speaker 6: I know you do Facebook, you have a website, so
Speaker 6: maybe people were compelled to contact you further after this.
Speaker 7: Interest, Yes, and I would love that. I'm at Janicehollybooth
Speaker 7: dot com. And if they can't remember that, then just
Speaker 7: google A Voice out of Nowhere and and it'll, you know,
Speaker 7: it'll pop up. But I would love to hear from folks,
Speaker 7: you know, on any aspect of what we've talked about.
Speaker 7: This is a you know, this is a topic of
Speaker 7: great concerns to me, as it is for many many people.
Speaker 7: And there will be a sequel coming out. I don't
Speaker 7: know when because the first one took me thirty years
Speaker 7: to write. And but there's but there is quicker on this, yes,
Speaker 7: a little quicker.
Speaker 6: A little quicker this time.
Speaker 3: Yeah.
Speaker 6: Well, I want to thank you very much for coming
Speaker 6: on and talking about A Voice out of Nowhere. It's
Speaker 6: a fascinating book and equally fast nating interviews speaking with you,
Speaker 6: and I got to vent a little bit about Canada
Speaker 6: system too, so I got to thank you for that too,
Speaker 6: So you're very kind. So thank you very much, Jennie
Speaker 6: holly Booth for coming on and talking about A Voice
Speaker 6: out of Nowhere.
Speaker 7: Thank you, Dan, it was a pleasure.
Speaker 6: Thank you.
Speaker 7: Have a good night, you too,