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