Horrific beheading on Canadian Greyhound bus

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

Another "sign of the times"???

The whole world is going mad in one way or another.
 
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.
Click to expand...

OMG

how little it takes nowadays to tip people over the age. What else is out there helping the process along? Bizarre is the word.
 
I just read this one on SOTT: Philadelphia: Psycho hammers subway passenger!

Notice these parts:

Then he flew into a monstrous rage.

Without uttering a word, police said, the unidentified man whipped out a double-claw hammer and began bludgeoning a 20-year-old man who was dozing off in his seat.

For five long minutes, SEPTA surveillance cameras captured the deranged attacker - who was still on the loose late last night- digging his hammer into the man's head and neck.

Through it all, disgusted investigators said, at least 10 passengers stood by and did nothing as the random attack moved from the train to the platform, when the hammer-wielding maniac tried to push his victim down onto the train tracks.

When the beating was finished and the suspect fled with the little boy, the victim staggered back onto the train, bloodied, confused and alone, said Detective Kenneth Roach, of Central Detectives.

And even then, no one tried to help him.

[...]

The motive remains a mystery.

"I'm baffled," Roach said. "He had no reason to do that. It was unprovoked. The victim was just going home from work, minding his own business, listening to his iPod."

[...]

The victim and the hammer-toting psychopath never exchanged a word or a glance, Roach said.

"According to the victim, there was no contact or verbal discussion," he said. "They didn't even notice each other."

The hammer was hidden in a black-and-yellow book bag that the attacker clutched throughout the short subway ride.
Click to expand...

Totally unprovoked, unexpected, and horrifying how he just "switched on". Most horrifying that the others present did nothing, even afterwards - if someone is going to use the he had a hammer line - to help.
 
Judge finds Li not criminally responsible in bus beheading

_http://www.theglobeandmail.com/servlet/story/RTGAM.20090305.wli0305/BNStory/National/?page=rss&id=RTGAM.20090305.wli0305

CHINTA PUXLEY

The Canadian Press

March 5, 2009 at 12:46 PM EST

WINNIPEG — A man who believed he was following God's orders when he stabbed and beheaded a fellow passenger on a Greyhound bus in Manitoba has been found not criminally responsible to the consternation of the victim's loved ones.

Justice John Scurfield said Vince Li's attack on Tim McLean last summer was “grotesque” and “barbaric,” but “strongly suggestive of a mental disorder.”

“He did not appreciate the actions he committed were morally wrong. He believed he was acting in self defence,” Scurfield said Thursday.

Both Crown and defence psychiatrists had testified at Li's trial that he was suffering from schizophrenia and believed God wanted him to kill McLean because the young man was a force of evil.

Li, 40, was charged with second-degree murder but pleaded not guilty.

McLean's mother, Carol deDelley, was upset but not surprised by the verdict.

DeDelley said Li may have been mentally ill when he attacked her son, but the fact remains that a crime was committed.

“He still did it,” she told reporters outside court. “Whether he was in his right frame of mind or not, he still did the act. There was nobody else on that bus holding a knife slicing up my child. Nobody else did that. Just one individual did that.”

DeDelley said the law needs to be changed so someone can be found not psychologically accountable but still criminally responsible for a crime.

She also took a shot at Canadian immigration policies which she said allowed Li, who was born in China, into the country with a mental illness in the first place.

Li will be institutionalized without a criminal record and will be reassessed every year by a mental health review board to determine if he is fit for release into the community.

Such boards look at police reports and transcripts of previous judicial hearings and also hear evidence from treating psychiatrists, who testify about a patient's current mental condition, treatment plan and prognosis. Crown and defence lawyers get the opportunity to ask questions.

The board must carefully consider whether a patient could function in society or would pose a risk to the public. Members take into account a patient's insight into the illness as well as into what happened.

DeDelley said she and her family will attend the annual reviews to try to ensure that Li will never be allowed on the streets again.

Scurfield's decision brings an end to a trial that lasted barely two days and only heard from the two psychiatrists, both of whom testified that Li is mentally ill and didn't realize killing McLean was wrong.

McLean's family has dismissed the trial as a “rubber stamp” that is allowing Li to get away with murder. They are vowing to turn their attention to fighting the law that allows people who are found not criminally responsible to be released once they are deemed well, without serving a minimum sentence in jail.

DeDelley said her son didn't die in vain. His death highlights concerns about the justice system, she said.

“Now people are aware that there is a problem.”

That Li killed the 22-year-old carnival worker — brutally stabbing him dozens of times, beheading him and then mutilating his body — was never in question at the trial.

An agreed statement of facts read in court detailed how Li sat next to McLean after he gave him a smile and asked how he was doing. It was after McLean closed his eyes to listen to music on his headphones that Li said he heard the voice of God.

“Suddenly the sunshine came in the bus and the voice said, 'Quick. Hurry up. Kill him and then you'll be safe,”' Li told one of his psychiatrists. “It was so quick, such an angry voice, and I had to do what it said. I was told that if I didn't listen to the voice, I would die immediately.”

Li ignored other horrified passengers as he repeatedly stabbed the young man, who unsuccessfully fought for his life.

When the bus pulled over near Portage la Prairie, Man., Li was engrossed with stabbing and mutilating McLean's body. Passengers fled the bus and stood outside.

Li tried numerous times to leave the vehicle but was locked inside and continued methodically carving up McLean's body. Police said body parts were found throughout the bus in plastic bags, although part of his heart and both eyes were never found and were presumed to have been eaten by Li.

The victim's ear, nose and tongue were found in Li's pocket.

God told him to cut up McLean and scatter his body parts around the bus, Li said.

“God told me to do it. Otherwise it would come back to life very quick and kill me. So I cut it up to make sure he couldn't come back to life ... God told me to cut off his head, so I did.”

Li tried to escape from the bus through a window and was taken into custody.

After that, with blood smeared on his face from the attack, he politely apologized to police and pleaded with officers to take his life.
Click to expand...
 
Re: Judge finds Li not criminally responsible in bus beheading

[quote author=article]
Justice John Scurfield said Vince Li's attack on Tim McLean last summer was “grotesque” and “barbaric,” but “strongly suggestive of a mental disorder.”

“He did not appreciate the actions he committed were morally wrong. He believed he was acting in self defence,” Scurfield said Thursday.
[/quote]

Seems like a good example of how deeply ingrained in the public mind is the concept of a vengeful, murderous "God".

The judge's statement: “strongly suggestive of a mental disorder”, seems to leave open the possibility that it could be so.

Sheesh, with a "God" like that, what's the 'Devil' for?
 
Found this, the story Li may have read when he delivered the paper several days before the beheading. Bizarre and eerie.

Evil spirit made man eat family
A look back at Swift Runner
By ANDREW HANON -- Sun Media
The Edmonton Sun

On a cold December day in 1879, a man was hanged in Fort Saskatchewan, putting an end to one of the most horrifying killing sprees in Alberta history.

Swift Runner was executed for murdering and then eating eight members of his own family over the previous winter. He believed he was possessed by Windigo, a terrifying mythological creature with a ravenous appetite for human flesh.

It wasn't an isolated case. During the late 1800s and into the 20th Century, fear of Windigo haunted northern Alberta communities, resulting in several grisly deaths.

Sun Media's Andrew Hanon speaks with Nathan Carlson, one of the world's leading authorities on Windigo, about Carlson's personal connection to the blood-curdling creature.

Some call him a serial killer.

Others call him a desperate madman.

But right up until the trap door swung open and the rope snapped taut around his neck, one of Alberta's most prolific murderers insisted it was an evil spirit that compelled him to butcher and eat his entire family.

Over the course of a single winter, he devoured his wife, six children, mother and brother.

MOST HORRIFYING

The man, a Cree trapper named Swift Runner, was hanged in 1879 in Fort Saskatchewan, the first legal execution in Alberta. The macabre case is considered by many to be the most horrifying crime in the province's history.

But what most people don't realize is that it was part of a much larger phenomenon that Edmonton ethno-historian Nathan Carlson calls Windigo condition, which haunted communities right across northern Alberta in the late 19th and early 20th Centuries and cost dozens of lives.

The Windigo (an Anglicized form of the word Witiko) is a mythological creature among native cultures from the Rockies to northern Quebec. It has an insatiable appetite for human flesh and wreaks destruction wherever it goes.

Carlson describes it as "the consummate predator of humanity." It's sometimes described as "an owl-eyed monster with large claws, matted hair, a naked emaciated body and a heart made of solid ice."

"It's extremely destructive," he says. "The more it eats, the hungrier it gets, so it just keeps killing."

Windigos can possess people, transforming them into wild-eyed, violent, flesh-eating maniacs with superhuman strength. Many native people in northern Alberta lived in terror of being possessed.

"It's important to understand that cannibalism was repellent to the people," Carlson explains. "The Windigo personified evil."

The Swift Runner case caused an international sensation, making headlines in newspapers across Canada and the U.S.

According to accounts, he wandered alone into the Catholic Mission in St. Albert in the spring of 1879, claiming to be the only member of his family who didn't starve to death over a particularly cold, bitter winter.

The priests became suspicious when they realized that Swift Runner, who weighed around 200 pounds, didn't seem malnourished at all and was plagued with screaming fits and nightmares as he slept. He told them he was being tormented by an evil spirit, called Windigo, but said little else about it.

They reported their misgivings to police, who took Swift Runner to his family campground in the woods northeast of Edmonton, where they made a horrific discovery - the site was littered with bones, bits of flesh and hair. Some accounts claim that the larger bones had even been snapped and the marrow sucked out.

He eventually confessed that he shot some of his family, bludgeoned others with an axe and even strangled one girl with a cord. In some accounts, Swift Runner said he fed one boy human flesh before he too was killed.

'THE LEAST OF MEN'

Before he was hanged, Swift Runner expressed extreme remorse. He told Father Hippolyte Leduc, "I am the least of men and do not merit even being called a man."

Interestingly, Swift Runner is the only documented case Carlson can find of someone killing others because he thought he was possessed by a Windigo.

All other deaths he can document were cases of "Windigo executions," where others have killed the person believed to be possessed. They were acts of self-preservation, attempts to protect their community.

In most of the cases, the victims themselves begged to be killed before they harmed their families.

In many cases, witnesses reported physical changes -bodies swelling and growing, lips and mouths enlarging. Some of the victims spoke of icy cold in their chests and an inability to warm up.

Carlson, who's Metis, first heard about the Windigo from his grandmother, who told him about an incident at Trout Lake, where members of the community killed a man possessed by a demon that had been cursed and turned into a Windigo.

The story haunted him throughout his childhood, and after his grandmother died in 2002, he discovered an eerily similar story in an archived newspaper.

"I was somewhat confounded by the discovery of the newspaper account that seemed to confirm a story that had been in my family for almost 100 years," he says.

Further research revealed that the man who was killed was also a distant relative of Carlson's.

Carlson is now writing a book on the Windigo condition in northern Alberta and is negotiating with filmmakers about a documentary.
Click to expand...
 
You must log in or register to reply here.

Trending content

Back
Top Bottom