Imprisoned for Sleepwalking: An Investigation of Somnambulist Killers

2024 Author: Seth Attwood | [email protected]. Last modified: 2023-12-16 15:55

A jury in the American city of West Palm Beach had to consider an unusual case. The killer claimed that he had committed the crime in a dream and did not remember anything about what happened. Should you believe him? Or is he cheating to avoid punishment? "Lenta.ru" studied the history of the murderers-somnambulists and found out how that process ended.

On Saturday morning, an agitated young man called 911 in the American state of Florida and said that a murder had occurred. “Just send the police,” he asked the dispatcher. - It was me.

When the deputies arrived, they were greeted by the caller himself, 24-year-old Randy Herman. He was covered in blood from head to toe. In the house, police officers found the body of his neighbor, 21-year-old Brooke Preston. The killer stabbed her more than 20 times.

Randy couldn't explain why he did it. He, Brooke, and her traveling sister Jordan met over five years ago while living in Pennsylvania. Six months before the incident, they moved to Florida and together rented a three-room house. They had a great relationship - no reason for murder.

On that day, Brooke was leaving for New York and woke Randy up to say goodbye and pick up the things that he asked to give to a friend. The young man claims that in the end they hugged, after which the girl left, and he returned to sleep. “Then all of a sudden I'm standing over her covered in blood, a knife in my hand,” Randy says. He did not remember what had happened, but he understood that only he could be to blame - there was no one else to blame.

The lack of motive puzzled not only him, but also the investigators. Things began to fall into place when his mother remembered that Randy had suffered from somnambulism since childhood. This meant that the murder could have been committed in a dream.

Hooligans, bandits and ostriches

Somnambulism usually occurs when a person is not fully awakened from a deep sleep phase. In this state, he can perform various actions, and sometimes quite complex ones, without even understanding what he is doing. Upon waking up, the somnambulist does not remember anything.

Debates about how to punish crimes that are committed in a dream have not subsided since the Middle Ages. One of the first laws on somnambulists in Western Europe was passed in 1312. At the Vienne cathedral, the Catholic Church decided that children, madmen or sleeping people cannot be called to account, even if they kill or injure someone. After that, the cardinals and bishops moved on to solving more pressing issues of that time: how to protect the Holy Sepulcher and who will get the wealth of the disbanded order of the Templars.

200 years later, the Spanish canonist Diego de Covarrubias y Leyva argued that murder in a dream is not only not a crime, but not even a sin, unless the killer had planned it when he was awake. In the 17th century, the Dutch legalist Anthony Matthäus adhered to similar ideas about justice. He believed that only those somnambulists who, in reality, had unkind feelings towards their victims should be punished for murder.

In tsarist Russia, crimes committed by a sleeping person were equated with the acts of the mentally ill. According to the Code of Criminal and Correctional Punishments of 1845, the crimes and misdeeds of "sleepwalkers (sleepwalkers) who, in fits of their nervous breakdown, act without proper understanding" were not imputed.

In practice, punishment largely depends on the skill of the lawyers. In 1943, the American state of Kentucky fully acquitted the 16-year-old daughter of a local politician Joe Ann Kyger, who unexpectedly shot her relatives. Her father and six-year-old brother were killed, and her mother was wounded. At the trial, it turned out that the girl was acting in a dream: it seemed to her that she was protecting the family from the bandits who attacked the house. Jo Ann's advocates presented strong evidence that she suffered from nightmares and somnambulism. After a year in a psychiatric hospital, the girl was released.

A similar case in Spain ended in a completely different way. In 2001, 58-year-old Malaga resident Antonio Nieto had a nightmare about being attacked by a flock of aggressive ostriches. He fought off the birds as best he could, and when he woke up, he found that in a dream he had killed his wife and mother-in-law. The man was sentenced to 10 years in a psychiatric hospital.

In 2008, Briton Brian Thomas killed his wife while spending the night in a motor home they were traveling on while on vacation. He also claimed that it happened in a dream. The man thought that he was fighting with the hooligans who attacked them, in reality he was strangling his wife. The psychiatrists who examined Thomas confirmed that he suffers from somnambulism and is most likely telling the truth. As a result, the court found him not guilty and left him at large.

Robert Ledrue's last case

Perhaps the most unusual murder in a dream was investigated by the Parisian detective Robert Ledroux. It happened in 1867, when a detective was recovering health in Le Havre after a difficult case that brought him to a nervous breakdown.

The man, who was identified as a small Parisian merchant Andre Monet, was shot at point-blank range. He came to the sea on vacation, went for a walk on the beach at night and before his death undressed to swim - his clothes and things were neatly folded on the sand next to his body. Nearby there are traces of an unknown man - most likely a murderer.

The local gendarmes were at a dead end: they could not figure out who could have killed the newcomer. Monet was not rich, led a quiet life and had no enemies even in his native Paris, and even more so in Le Havre. The version of the armed robbery disappeared when it turned out that nothing was missing from him.

The clues left by the culprit did not add to the clarity. Judging by the footprints, he was barefoot and had socks on his feet, that is, it was impossible to recognize him by his boots. The bullet, too, could not serve as a sign. The attacker fired a Parabellum, one of the most common pistols of the time.

It was then that it was decided to involve Robert Ledru, the star of the capital's investigation, in the investigation, who revealed even more riddles. He went to the crime scene, took out a magnifying glass and carefully examined the tracks. Judging by the footprint, the perpetrator was missing a toe on his right foot.

This discovery had an unexpected effect on Ledru: he turned pale and began to take off his own shoes. Before the eyes of the startled gendarmes in Havre, he left a footprint in the sand, and then carefully compared his footprint with that of a murderer. After that, the detective asked for the bullet that killed Monet, and, without saying a word, returned to the hotel.

Once in the room, Ledru took out his pistol - it was a Parabellum. He shot the pillow, found the bullet and under a magnifying glass compared the grooves on it and on the bullet from the crime scene. His fears were confirmed.

The detective immediately returned to Paris to report to his superiors. “I have found the killer and evidence of his guilt, but I cannot determine the motive,” Ledru announced and put the bullets and photographs of the footprints on the table. "It was I who killed Andre Monet." Everything agreed: the trail of the detective completely coincided with the trail of the attacker, and the grooves on the bullet from the beach in Le Havre confirmed that the shot had been fired from his pistol.

The problem was that Ledru did not remember the beach, Monet, or the murder itself. From his point of view, he slept all night in his own bed. The only explanation for what happened was somnambulism. Ledru, without waking up, went to the beach, shot the unfortunate businessman, returned safely to his room and continued to sleep.

The court acquitted Ledru, but he considered himself dangerous to society and took refuge in a secluded farm near Paris. He spent the rest of his life there under the protection and supervision of nurses.

Dream or Truth

Experts have developed a list of criteria that help determine if the murder was committed in a dream or is it just a convenient excuse invented to avoid punishment. Almost all somnambulistic crimes have several characteristics in common. For example, with rare exceptions, they are committed by men between the ages of 27 and 48. As a rule, they, and often their relatives, experienced cases of sleep-walking, nightmares and enuresis. There are other signs as well.

However, there is no complete certainty and cannot be. The psychiatrist can also be deceived, especially knowing what exactly he expects to see. “There is a potential situation when a somnambulist concocts a crime and, since he knows how to reproduce the details that interest me, he can actually commit it,” admits psychologist Chris Idjikowski, who examined Briton Brian Thomas after his wife's murder. "In that case, it won't be easy to catch him by the hand."

Should I believe Randy Herman when he claims to have killed a neighbor in his sleep? Or is this just a convenient way to shirk responsibility? This was what was argued about during his trial in court, which began in May 2019.

The lawyers considered their trump card the testimony of the mother of the defendant and forensic psychiatrist Charles Ewing. They talked about the manifestations of somnambulism that Randy had seen as a child. On one occasion, in a dream, he rode a bicycle to a bar where his mother worked and returned home without waking up. After this incident, the parents at night put a heavy chair in front of the door of his room so that the boy would not leave again in his sleep.

Ewing stated that what happened in Florida met all the criteria for murder in a dream. Randy suffered from somnambulism in the past, he got along well with the deceased girl, and at the same time he had no motive for the crime and no memory of it. “I see no other explanation,” he concluded.

The prosecution insisted that the young man acted quite deliberately. This version was supported by the sister of the murdered woman, who claimed that during the entire time of her acquaintance with Randy, she had never seen him walk in a dream. Psychiatrist Wade Myers, who appeared before the court as a prosecution witness, suggested that the murder had a sexual overtones.

After three hours of deliberation, a jury found Randy Herman guilty of murder. He was sentenced to life imprisonment.