Horrific beheading on Canadian Greyhound bus

[Vulcan59]

Horrific incident aboard Canadian Greyhound bus

Well, now we have a news report of another gruesome crime this time in Greece.

 

[CarpeDiem]

Horrific incident aboard Canadian Greyhound bus

one more strange 'accident', happened just 2 weeks ago (July, 14th) in Eastley, UK
Man cuts off own head with chainsaw after flat is earmarked to be bulldozed by developers
What extremely unconvenient method of taking one's own life, fwiw!

It is understood police are not treating his death as suspicious.

And shortly before that, on July, 5th:
Wax Hitler in Museum of madam Tussauds gets decapitated

 

[neema]

Horrific incident aboard Canadian Greyhound bus

Hum, very disturbing, don’t know if this is on sott yet but you can add one more incident of random acts by the mentally disturbed. Some man went on a rampage with a hammer at the annual gay pride festival in Vancouver. So far police are saying it’s not hate related.

“Police say he has a history of mental illness, but while they have dealt with the suspect in the past, there was no indication something like this would happen.”

_http://www.news1130.com/news/topstory/article.jsp?content=20080804_140714_7112

Interesting that this man also appears to be an immigrant Canadian.

 

[Keit]

Horrific incident aboard Canadian Greyhound bus

Well, now we have a news report of another gruesome crime this time in Greece.

There was another recent report about a similar murder in Australia. It happened in 2005 though.

Australian man sentenced to life for murder after decapitating teenager, bowling with head
http://www.sott.net/articles/show/163027-Australian-man-sentenced-to-life-for-murder-after-decapitating-teenager-bowling-with-head

An Australian man was sentenced to life in prison for murdering a teenager who was stabbed 133 times and then decapitated in an alcohol-fueled argument.

Jones told friends that Roughan used the head like a puppet and a bowling ball. Several witnesses testified that they overheard Jones and Roughan boasting about the killing.

 

[Third_Density_Resident]

Horrific incident aboard Canadian Greyhound bus

I didn't realise that Keit had already posted a link to the gruesome Australian 2005 murder. I tried to delete my post but for some reason I am unable to.

 

[mamadrama]

Re: Horrific incident aboard Canadian Greyhound bus

I don't recall reading that anyone on the bus tried to stop the killer. If so, does anyone else find that disturbing?

 

[Bobo08]

Re: Horrific incident aboard Canadian Greyhound bus

I don't recall reading that anyone on the bus tried to stop the killer. If so, does anyone else find that disturbing?

Well, what do you expect when the killer had a big knife? It's good that they quickly exited the bus without trampling on each other. And some people even tried to prevent the killer from leaving. I would say that the passengers' actions were better than what can normally expected from the average folks.

 

[mamadrama]

Re: Horrific incident aboard Canadian Greyhound bus

I would say that the passengers' actions were better than what can normally expected from the average folks.

Hmm, you think? I don't know about that. If I may take some liberty here with the quote:

Evil persists when good men do nothing

osis

 

[Bobo08]

Re: Horrific incident aboard Canadian Greyhound bus

Evil persists when good men do nothing

Laurel, the operative word in the above quote is "do". It's not "doing" when you go up unarmed to a killer with a knife. It's called suicide.

 

[mamadrama]

Re: Horrific incident aboard Canadian Greyhound bus

It's not "doing" when you go up unarmed to a killer with a knife. It's called suicide.

Bobo,
Don't you think a bus load of people could have the wherewithall to restrain one assailant with a knife?

 

[Bobo08]

Re: Horrific incident aboard Canadian Greyhound bus

[quote author=Laurel]
Bobo,
Don't you think a bus load of people could have the wherewithall to restrain one assailant with a knife?
[/quote]

I think this is getting longer than necessary. First, if you read the article again, you will see that the victim was dead before anyone even noticed. So there's no point for anyone in risking their lives to try to confront the killer. Second, the bus is not open space. Even if they wanted to arrest the killer, only a few could approach him at once, which eliminated any advantage the passengers have in number. Thirdly, who do you think would be the first to go up to the killer? For gawd's sake, remember that the passengers were average folks. They were not trained commandos and they were not heroes. Keep that in mind when you judge their actions. Words are cheap. It's very easy to sit in the comfort of your home and imagine what you would have done.

 

[PepperFritz]

Re: Horrific incident aboard Canadian Greyhound bus

I don't recall reading that anyone on the bus tried to stop the killer. If so, does anyone else find that disturbing?

Well, it's not like the just callously sat there watching the murder. Newspaper reports indicate that by the time most of them had their wits about them and realized what was going on, the guy was probably already dead and beyond helping. It would be logical to expect that a crazed maniac with a large hunting knife would start killing someone else next, and the smart thing to do would be to get the hell out of there. One of the nearby passengers said he suggested to another man that they try to disarm the killer, but the man was too frightened, and he didn't feel that he could manage it by himself. As another poster pointed out, to attempt to take the guy on in those circumstances would have been tantamount to suicide, and wouldn't have helped the victim anyway. "Helping" is one thing, but heroics just for the sake of it would be stupid.

 

[Happyville]

Re: Horrific incident aboard Canadian Greyhound bus

Church members enter Canada, aiming to picket bus victim's funeral

http://www.cbc.ca/canada/manitoba/story/2008/08/08/westboro-protest.html?ref=rss#socialcomments-submit

This is beyond believable... This is just getting to read like fiction, and I can't believe people would actually do this. Imagine if bible thumpers were to have shown up at ground zero spewing this kind of garbage... I am sure New Yorkers would have roughed them up in short order and I seriously hope these these pscyho's are driven out of Manitoba in short order...

Sorry to vent here, but I blew a gasket when I read this...

 

[Laura]

This gets weirder:

_http://cnews.canoe.ca/CNEWS/Features/2008/08/11/pf-6413481.html

Bus beheading similar to Windigo phenomenon
By ANDREW HANON -- Sun Media

Nathan Carlson has barely slept since July 30.

"Ever since it happened, I haven't been able to get it out of my head," Carlson says haltingly. "I just don't know what to think of it, quite frankly."

The Edmonton ethno-historian is one of the world's leading experts on Windigo phenomenon, and the recent horrific beheading and alleged cannibalism on a Greyhound bus bound for Winnipeg from Edmonton rocked him to his very core.

As the grisly details of Tim McLean's last moments on Earth came to light in the following days, Carlson sank deeper and deeper into a fog of horror and revulsion.

Vince Weiguang Li is accused of abruptly attacking McLean, who by all accounts he didn't even know -- while McLean slept on the bus.

Up until a few days before the killing, Li held a part- time job delivering newspapers in Edmonton. He was well thought-of by his boss and considered a nice guy, if a bit quiet and shy.


On July 20 -- just 10 days before the killing -- Li delivered copies of the Sun that contained an extensive interview with Carlson about his research into the Windigo, a terrifying creature in native mythology that has a ravenous appetite for human flesh. It could take possession of people and turn them into cannibalistic monsters.

The two-page feature talked about how, in the late 1800s and into the 20th century, Windigo "encounters" haunted communities across northern Alberta and resulted in dozens of gruesome deaths.

In one case, a Cree trapper named Swift Runner was hanged after admitting to killing and eating his wife, children, brother and mother in the woods northeast of Edmonton in the winter of 1878-79.

Prior to being charged with murder, he had suffered screaming fits and nightmares, which he attributed to being possessed by a Windigo.

In several other cases, people banded together and killed individuals they feared were possessed by a Windigo. Often, they would decapitate the corpse and bury the head separate from the body in order to keep it from rising from the dead.

Carlson documented several cases in northern Alberta communities where people believing they were "turning Windigo" would go into convulsions, make terrifying animal sounds and beg their captors to kill them before they started eating people.

In last month's bus case, Li allegedly butchered McLean's body, brandishing the victim's severed head at the men who trapped him on the bus until police could arrive.

He was later accused of eating McLean's flesh.

When he appeared in a Portage La Prairie courthouse on charges of second-degree murder, the only words Li reportedly uttered were pleas for someone to kill him.

A lot of his reported behaviour eerily mirrors the Windigo cases recounted in the newspaper feature that Li helped deliver to Edmonton homes just days before McLean was killed, one of the most gruesome slayings in modern Canadian history.

Several media reports called McLean's killing unprecedented - an unspeakable, random attack the likes of which has never been seen in Canada.

But Carlson knows better.

"There are just too many parallels," he says.

"I can't say there's definite connection, but there are just too many coincidences.

"It's beyond eerie."

From Wikipedia

The Wendigo (also Windigo, Windago, Windiga, Witiko, Wihtikow, and numerous other variants)[1] is a mythical creature appearing in the mythology of the Algonquin people. It is a malevolent cannibalistic spirit into which humans could transform, or which could possess humans. Those who indulged in cannibalism were at particular risk, and the legend appears to have reinforced this practice as taboo.

Windigo Psychosis is a culture-bound disorder which involves an intense craving for human flesh and the fear that one will turn into a cannibal. This once occurred frequently among Algonquian Indian cultures, though has declined with the Native American urbanization.[citation needed]

Recently the Wendigo has also become a horror entity of contemporary literature and film, much like the vampire, werewolf, or zombie, although these fictional depictions often bear little resemblance to the original entity.

The Wendigo is part of the traditional belief systems of various Algonquian-speaking tribes in the northern United States and Canada, most notably the Ojibwa/Saulteaux, the Cree, and the Innu/Naskapi/Montagnais.[2] Though descriptions varied somewhat, common to all these cultures was the conception of Wendigos as malevolent, cannibalistic, supernatural beings (manitous) of great spiritual power.[3] They were strongly associated with the Winter, the North, and coldness, as well as with famine and starvation.[4] Basil Johnston, an Ojibwa teacher and scholar from Ontario, gives one description of how Wendigos were viewed:[5]
“ The Wendigo was gaunt to the point of emaciation, its desiccated skin pulled tautly over its bones. With its bones pushing out against its skin, its complexion the ash gray of death, and its eyes pushed back deep into their sockets, the Wendigo looked like a gaunt skeleton recently disinterred from the grave. What lips it had were tattered and bloody [....] Unclean and suffering from suppurations of the flesh, the Wendigo gave off a strange and eerie odor of decay and decomposition, of death and corruption. ”

At the same time, Wendigos were embodiments of gluttony, greed, and excess; never satisfied after killing and consuming one person, they were constantly searching for new victims. In some traditions, humans who became overpowered by greed could turn into Wendigos; the Wendigo myth thus served as a method of encouraging cooperation and moderation.[6]

Among the Ojibwa, Eastern Cree, Westmain Swampy Cree, and Innu/Naskapi/Montagnais, Wendigos were said to be giants, many times larger than human beings (a characteristic absent from the Wendigo myth in the other Algonquian cultures).[7] Whenever a Wendigo ate another person, it would grow larger, in proportion to the meal it had just eaten, so that it could never be full.[8] Wendigos were therefore simultaneously constantly gorging themselves and emaciated from starvation.

[edit] Human Wendigos

All cultures in which the Wendigo myth appeared shared the belief that human beings could turn into Wendigos if they ever resorted to cannibalism[9] or, alternately, become possessed by the demonic spirit of a Wendigo, often in a dream. Once transformed, a person would become violent and obsessed with eating human flesh. The most frequent cause of transformation into a Wendigo was if a person had resorted to cannibalism, consuming the body of another human in order to keep from starving to death during a time of extreme hardship or famine.[10]

Among northern Algonquian cultures, cannibalism, even to save one's own life, was viewed as a serious taboo; the proper response to famine was suicide or resignation to death.[11] On one level, the Wendigo myth thus worked as a deterrent and a warning against resorting to cannibalism; those who did would become Wendigo monsters themselves.

[edit] Wendigo ceremony

Among the Assiniboine, the Cree and the Ojibwa, a satirical ceremonial dance was originally performed during times of famine to reinforce the seriousness of the Wendigo taboo. The ceremonial dance, known as a wiindigookaanzhimowin in Ojibwe and today performed as part of the last day activities of the Sun dance, involves wearing a mask and dancing about the drum backwards.[12] The last known Wendigo Ceremony conducted in the United States was at Windigo Lake of Star Island of Cass Lake, located within the Leech Lake Indian Reservation in northern Minnesota.[13]

[edit] Windigo psychosis

The term "Windigo psychosis" (also spelled many other ways, including "Wendigo psychosis" and "Witiko psychosis") refers to a condition in which sufferers developed an insatiable desire to eat human flesh even when other food sources were readily available,[14] often as a result of prior famine cannibalism;[15] Windigo psychosis is identified by Western psychologists as a culture-bound syndrome, though members of the aboriginal communities in which it existed believed cases literally involved individuals turning into Wendigos. Such individuals generally recognized these symptoms as meaning that they were turning into Wendigos, and often requested to be executed before they could harm others.[16] The most common response when someone began suffering from Windigo psychosis was curing attempts by traditional native healers or Western doctors. In the unusual cases when these attempts failed, and the Wendigo began either to threaten those around them or to act violently or anti-socially, they were then generally executed.[17] Cases of Windigo psychosis, though real, were relatively rare, and it was even rarer for them to actually culminate in the execution of the sufferer.[17]

One of the more famous cases of Windigo psychosis involved a Plains Cree trapper from Alberta, named Swift Runner.[18][19] During the winter of 1878, Swift Runner and his family were starving, and his eldest son died. Within just 25 miles of emergency food supplies at a Hudson's Bay Company post, Swift Runner butchered and ate his wife and five remaining children.[20] Given that he resorted to cannibalism so near to food supplies, and that he killed and consumed the remains of all those present, it was revealed that Swift Runner's was not a case of pure cannibalism as a last resort to avoid starvation, but rather of a man suffering from Windigo psychosis.[20] He eventually confessed and was executed by authorities at Fort Saskatchewan.[21] Another well-known case involving Windigo psychosis was that of Jack Fiddler, an Oji-Cree chief and shaman known for his powers at defeating Wendigos. In some cases this entailed euthanizing people suffering from Windigo psychosis; as a result, in 1907, Fiddler and his brother Joseph were arrested by the Canadian authorities for murder. Jack committed suicide, but Joseph was tried and put to death.[22]

Fascination with Windigo psychosis among Western ethnographers, psychologists, and anthropologists led to a hotly debated controversy in the 1980s over the historicity of this phenomenon. Some researchers argued that Windigo psychosis was essentially a fabrication, the result of naïve anthropologists taking stories related to them at face value.[23] Others, however, pointed to a number of credible eyewitness accounts, both by Algonquians and by Westerners, as proof that Windigo psychosis was a factual historical phenomenon.[24]

The frequency of Windigo psychosis cases decreased sharply in the 20th century as boreal Algonquian people came in to greater and greater contact with Western ideologies and more sedentary, less rural lifestyles.[25] While there is substantive evidence to suggest that Windigo psychosis did exist, a number of questions concerning the condition remain unanswered.

A similarity between Wendigo behavior and the beheading and alleged cannibalization of Greyhound bus passenger Tim McLean by Vince Weiguang Li, in Manitoba on July 30, 2008, has been noted. Nathan Carlson, "one of the world's leading experts on Windigo phenomenon", highlighted the parallels and suggested the connection with Windigo psychosis, "A lot of his reported behaviour eerily mirrors the Windigo cases recounted in the newspaper feature that Li helped deliver to Edmonton homes just days before McLean was killed.

 

[anart]

No wonder Carlson is freaked out - that is really too bizarre to ignore... :/