3. Murder Their Mother-In-Law
tumblrThe most famous case of whats referred to as homicidal somnambulism involved then 23-year-old Kenneth Parks, a native of Pickering, near Toronto, Canada, in May 1987. Parks had recently developed a gambling problem, which had in turn led to heavy debt. Hed embezzled money from his employers to cover his losses and as a result, had lost his job, leading to extreme stress, which apparently led to problems sleeping properly. The story goes that Parks was days away from sitting his wifes parents down and telling them of his foolishness he got on with them very well, by all accounts, and had been too ashamed to admit what hed done to them. On the night of May 23rd, he rose from his bed, left the house, got into his car, and would proceed to drive the 14 miles to nearby Scarborough, where the couple lived. He would then enter their home with a tyre iron that hed taken from the boot of his car, and bludgeon his mother-in-law to death, also seriously injuring his father-in-law in the process. He also used a knife taken from the couples own kitchen during the assault. Parks then drove to the nearest police station, covered in blood, and repeated over and over, I think I have killed some people with my bare hands. His defense in court was that he had been asleep at the time, having had a history of sleepwalking. The court eventually acquitted him in 1992 after evidence from his own doctor and five other neurological experts supported his claims, providing reasonable doubt to the jury that Parks had acted voluntarily in attacking his wifes parents.