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Mass Murders in Canada
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Today in Calgary the worst mass murder spree in the cities history went down. Some deranged young guy lost his mind (do bath salts ring a bell?) and stabbed to death five young people. Four young men and one young women. They were university students from the U of Calgary who were partying. But this was one party that went very, very wrong.
Certain people lose their minds and start killing. Mental issues combined with unbearable stress, who knows what triggers it. But it does happen. Below are the most horrendous cases of mass murder in Canada. Mass murderers are different from serial killers. Serial killers do their dastardly deeds over a period of time, mass murderers do their morbid acts at the same time.
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John Etter Clark (March 29, 1915 – June 3, 1956) was a provincial politician, teacher and farmer from Alberta, Canada. He served as a member of the Legislative Assembly of Alberta from 1952 until his death in 1956. Clark committed one of the worst mass murders in Alberta history before taking his own life.
John Etter Clark was born in Alberta, Canada in 1915. He became a part-time school teacher and a farmer. Clark inherited the farm founded by his father and farmed a total of 1,000 acres (4.0 km) of land. He married his wife Margaret Dinwoodie in 1947 and had four children with her.
Clark ran for a seat to the Alberta Legislature in the 1952 Alberta general election as a Social Credit candidate in the electoral district of Stettler. The four race was hotly contested with Clark winning on the second vote count to hold the district for his party.
Clark ran for a second term in the 1955 Alberta general election. He won a sizable majority defeating two other candidates to hold his seat.
On June 3, 1956 Pete Parrott a neighbor residing on a farm leased from Clark next to his farm in Erskine, Alberta had stopped over for a social visit. Parrott happened upon a grisly mass murder scene finding seven people who were shot at least once through the head with one victim being shot multiple times. Six of the victims were already deceased with a seventh barely clinging to life when Parrott arrived. The seventh victim was taken to a local hospital but died shortly after. The victims had been shot with .22 caliber bullets.
The Royal Canadian Mounted Police descended on scene with 14 special field agents. Clark was not among the dead, and had fled the scene. A mass search began to locate his whereabouts. The dead included his wife Margaret Clark, his son and three daughters a hired farm hand and a visitor to the farm. The murder weapon was a single-shot .22 caliber rifle that Clark had borrowed from his uncle. He was supposed to have traveled to Saskatchewan on June 1, 1956 to help manage the Social Credit campaign in the 1956 Saskatchewan general election, but failed to show without any explanation.
Police found the body of Clark lying just on the edge of a dugout approximately 600 yards from the farmhouse where the murders took place. He had a single self-inflicted bullet hole through the head and was found with murder weapon lying at his feet. Clark was found adorned in night attire as if he had been preparing to go to bed. The search was conducted by 32 RCMP Officers who traveled the range on horseback with a team of tracking dogs. A separate aerial search was conducted by team of three mounties on a Royal Canadian Air Force Otter. The mounties spotted the body of Clark from the air a few hours after the search began.
Clark had been suffering from frequent nervous breakdowns in recent years. He was hospitalized for a month and a half in 1954 after one such breakdown. He also had one during the spring session of the legislature in 1956. At the time of the mass murder, it was considered the worst such event in Alberta’s history.
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Robert Raymond Cook (b. July 15, 1937 in Hanna, Alberta – November 15, 1960 in Fort Saskatchewan, Alberta) was a Canadian murderer. Convicted of the slayings of his father, Raymond, stepmother, Daisy, and the couple’s five children, he was the last man to be executed by the province of Alberta.
On 28 June 1959, police discovered Raymond and Daisy Cook along with their 5 children shot and bludgeoned to death in the grease pit of their garage in Stettler, Alberta. Robert Cook, Raymond Cook’s son by his first wife, had been arrested in Stettler a day earlier, and charged with obtaining goods under false pretenses after he had traded the family’s 1958 Chevrolet station wagon for a ’59 Impala convertible. Despite being implicated in the deaths of all of his family members. Robert Cook was only charged with the murder of his father in order to speed trail processions.
At just after midnight on July 11, 1959, Cook escaped from the Ponoka Mental Institution after he was denied permission to attend the funerals of his family members. He was found several days later hiding at a pig farm near Bashaw, Alberta.
It took two trials and just under 16 months for Cook to be convicted of murder. He maintained his innocence up until his execution. Cook was sent to the gallows at Fort Saskatchewan Provincial Gaol at midnight, November 14, 1960, and pronounced dead at 12:19AM on November 15, 1960. The case has been the subject of several books and two plays.
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Marc Lépine (born Gamil Rodrigue Liass Gharbi) (October 26, 1964 – December 6, 1989) was a 25-year-old from Montreal, Canada who murdered fourteen women and wounded ten women and four men at the École Polytechnique, an engineering school affiliated with the Université de Montréal, in the École Polytechnique massacre, also known as the “Montreal Massacre”.
Lépine was born in Montreal, the son of a Canadian nurse and an Algerian businessman. His father was abusive and contemptuous of women. After his parents separated when he was seven, his mother returned to nursing to support her children. Lépine and his younger sister lived with other families, seeing their mother on weekends. Lépine was considered bright but withdrawn and having difficulties with peer and family relationships. He changed his name to Marc Lépine at the age of 14 giving as the reason his hatred of his father. Lépine’s application to the Canadian Forces was rejected, and in 1982 he began a science program at a college, switching to a more technical program after one year. In 1986, he dropped out of the course in his final term, and was subsequently fired from his job at a hospital due to his poor attitude. He began a computer programming course in 1988, and again abandoned it before completion. Lépine twice applied for admission to the École Polytechnique, but lacked two required compulsory courses.
After several months of planning, Lépine entered the École Polytechnique de Montréal, on the afternoon of December 6, 1989. He had long complained about women working in non-traditional jobs, and after separating men and women in a classroom, he shot the women, claiming that he was fighting feminism. He then moved into other parts of the building, targeting women as he went, before killing himself. His suicide note blamed feminists for ruining his life.
Lépine’s actions have been variously ascribed to psychiatric diagnoses such as personality disorder, psychosis, or attachment disorder, or societal factors such as poverty, isolation, powerlessness, and violence in the media. The massacre is regarded by criminologists as an example of a hate crime against women, and by feminists and government officials as misogynist attack and an example of the larger issue of violence against women.
The massacre appeared to have been planned for several months if not longer. In August 1989, Lépine picked up an application for a firearms-acquisition certificate and he received his permit in mid-October. On November 21, 1989, Lépine purchased a Ruger Mini-14 semi-automatic rifle at a local sporting goods store. Between October and December 1989, Lépine was seen at least seven times at the École Polytechnique.Four days before the shooting, he brought his mother a present, though it was several weeks before her birthday; he also brought a note and two bags of belongings, which she did not discover until long after the shooting. Lépine had always been very punctual paying his rent, but did not do so in December 1989.
On December 6, 1989, Lépine walked into the École Polytechnique de Montréal. There, he entered a second-floor classroom where he separated the men and women and then ordered the approximately fifty men to leave. Claiming that he was fighting feminism, he shot the nine women who remained, killing six and injuring the rest. After this, Lépine moved to other areas of the building, including the cafeteria, corridors and another classroom. A total of fourteen women (twelve engineering students, one nursing student, and one university employee) were killed, and four men and ten women injured before Lépine turned the gun on himself. The event has been described as a “pseudo-community” type of “pseudo-commando” murder-suicide, in which the perpetrator targets a specific group, usually in a public place and intending to die in “a blaze of glory”.
A three-page letter was found in the pocket of his jacket. The letter was never officially made public, but was leaked in November 1990 to Francine Pelletier, and published in the newspaper La Presse. In his suicide letter, Lépine claimed political motives, blaming feminists for ruining his life. He considered himself rational and expressed admiration for Denis Lortie, who had mounted an attack on the Quebec National Assembly in 1984 for political reasons, killing three Quebec government employees. The letter also contained a list of nineteen Quebec women whom Lépine apparently wished to kill because of their feminism. Another letter, written to a friend, promised the explanation to the massacre lay by following clues left in Lépine’s apartment. The hunt led only to a suitcase of computer games and hardware.
Marc Lépine was buried in the Cimetière Notre-Dame-des-Neiges in Montreal, a few blocks from where he committed the massacre.
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Dale Merle Nelson was a Canadian mass murderer who killed eight people (including five young children) and partially ate one victim in 1970 following a drinking binge and possible use of LSD.
Nelson was a logger in Creston, British Columbia, married with three children. He reportedly physically abused his wife and sexually abused his children. He was also known to become aggressive and unpredictable when he drank to excess and used LSD.
Nelson fell into a depressed state in early 1970 and unsuccessfully attempted suicide. He subsequently spent two months at Riverview Hospital in Coquitlam.
On September 4, 1970, Nelson drove into Creston, purchased six beers and a bottle of vodka at the liquor store, drove to the Kootenay Hotel and drank eight beers with friends. Friends say he chatted about the upcoming hunting season, and did not act unusual in any way. He left the tavern and picked up from Maureen McKay a 7 mm caliber bolt action rifle he had loaned to her, then drove back to Creston to purchase ammunition for the gun as well as more alcohol. He went to the King George Hotel, where he drank six more beers before joining his friends in a hotel room at 10:30 p.m. for more drinks.
Just after midnight, he drove to the home of his distant relative, Shirley Wasyk, knowing her husband Alex was not home. He beat Shirley with a home fire extinguisher, and she cried out, “No, Dale, don’t!” He tied Shirley’s hands behind her back and left her on her bed, then gathered two of his three young relatives (Charlene, age eight, and Tracey, age seven) in the youngest girl’s bedroom. Awakened by her mother’s cry, 12-year old Debbie saw Nelson taking Charlene into Tracey’s room. She crept to her mother and untied her hands, then took the fire extinguisher and returned to her own room.When she heard Tracey scream and then the sounds of Nelson at her door, she threw the fire extinguisher through her bedroom window and escaped—running to the McKay household. Maureen McKay quickly telephoned the Royal Canadian Mounted Police.
When law enforcement officers arrived at the Wasyk home, Nelson’s truck was still parked outside.Shirley had been beaten to death with the fire extinguisher, and Tracey had died from multiple stab wounds. Charlene had been set free in the woods nearby. The police immediately drove to the Nelson household where they evacuated his wife, Annette, and his children, fearing that they might be the next targets. When they returned to the Wasyk home 15 minutes later, they were “stunned” to realise that Nelson had still been at the scene of the crime and driven away with Tracey’s body as soon as they had left.
Shortly afterward, Isabelle St. Amand, who lived a few kilometres down the road from the Wasyks, phoned the police to report “There’s a man here with a gun.” By the time police arrived, St. Amand, her common-law husband Ray Phipps, and their three sons (Paul, age 10; Brian, age seven; and Roy, age 18 months) had all been shot in the head. Their eight-year old daughter Cathy was missing, and police immediately launched a manhunt employing bush pilots to scour the countryside for Nelson’s truck. The vehicle was found on the afternoon of September 5 stuck in a ditch, and when police searched it they found a bloody hammer and dismembered remains of Tracey Wasyk scattered around the area. The 150 residents of West Creston were moved into Creston for their own safety, as police continued their search for Nelson.
Nelson was located late in the afternoon on September 6 in a shack in the woods near his home, and surrendered to police without incident. He told them that Cathy was dead, pointed out the location of her body on a map, and admitted committing all eight murders. He was put on trial for the murders of eight-year old Cathy Rose St. Amand (whom he had also sodomised) and seven-year old Tracey Wasyk (whose organs he tore out and attempted to eat).
Represented by attorney M. E. Moran, Nelson was found guilty in March 1971 despite a plea of criminal insanity brought about by his heavy drinking and addiction to LSD. He was sentenced to life imprisonment.
Dale Nelson died of throat cancer while in prison.
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The Shell Lake murders is the name of a single mass murder incident committed by Victor Ernest Hoffman (b. 1946, died May 21, 2004) in Shell Lake, Saskatchewan, Canada, during the early morning of August 15, 1967. Nine people, all members of James Peterson’s family, were shot in the head by a man who was later called “Canada’s worst random mass murderer”.
Victor Hoffman was 21 years old at the time and had been released from a mental hospital just three weeks before the murders. On the morning of August 15 he entered the Peterson’s farm armed with a .22-calibre Browning pump-action repeater rifle. He then proceeded to shoot all members of the Peterson family, seven of them children, at close range around the four-room house. According to police 28 shots were fired in total, of which 27 found their target.
Mr. Peterson was shot in the kitchen, while his wife Evelyn and her one-year old baby were found in the backyard. The other six children were shot while sleeping in their bedrooms. Their ages ranged from 2 to 17 years old. Phyllis Peterson, then 4 years old, was the lone survivor of the massacre. She was sleeping under the bedclothes between her two sisters and thus was not noticed by Hoffman. However, Hoffman later declared that he spared her because “she had the face of an angel.”
The bodies were found by Wildrew Lang who was to help Mr. Peterson with farm duties later that morning. He had to travel 6 km (3.7 mi) to the next telephone post before he could report the incident to the police. The police immediately started an extensive manhunt on the surroundings of the house.
On August 19, 1967, Hoffman was arrested by the Royal Canadian Mounted Police without putting up resistance. He was found at his parents’ home in Leask, about 65 km (40 mi) southwest of Shell Lake. After his arrest he told the police that he had fought the devil before the murders and described him as being “tall, black and having no genitals.” He was remanded to a mental hospital in North Battleford where he was diagnosed with paranoid schizophrenia.
Hoffman was found not guilty by reason of insanity on non-capital murder charges in February 1968. During the trial Crown prosecutor Serge Kujawa called Hoffman “the craziest man in Saskatchewan.” He was put under the custody of the provincial Health Ministry and sent to a mental institution. He remained most of the time in an Ontario-based institution until December 2001, when he was granted supervised access to the towns of Penetanguishene, Port McNicoll and Midland in Ontario. This decision was not without controversy since the hospital was only required to inform the local police of Hoffman’s release.
Canadian journalist Peter Tadman wrote a book about the murders in 1992 and had the chance to interview Hoffman several times. According to Tadman, Hoffman felt no guilt about the murders and reported that he still saw the devil that compelled him to commit them.
Hoffman died of cancer under custody on May 21, 2004.
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Wikipedia and Google
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