Criminology - The Sleepwalking Murders

Episode Date: April 21, 2024

Can a person commit heinous crimes, including murder, while sleepwalking? There have been many cases over the years where sleepwalking has been used as a defense. Join Mike and Morf as they discuss cases involving murder and sleepwalking. In some cases, the victim is in the same house. In others, the person drove their car to the murder scene. Ultimately, as it always is, it's up to a jury to decide what happened and the defendant's fate. You can help support the show at patreon.com/criminology An Emash Digital production Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices

The award-winning Fallonius Florida series is back with an all-new season available exclusively on Wondery Plus. Imagine waking up in your own bed late at night with a stranger standing over you. This nightmare became reality for dozens of women in Miami in the 1980s, when a serial rapist began stalking and ambushing his prey in the safety of their own homes. The pillowcase rapist, nicknamed for the way he hid his face from his victims, quickly became one of Florida's most prolific serial rapists. Detective Dave Simmons, a young investigator just kicking off his career, is tasked with leading the hunt for this masked menace. But he can't seem to catch a break as the pillowcase rapist becomes more brazen in his attacks and public pressure mounts to bring an end to his reign of terror.

Philonius Florida In the Darkness digs into every twist and turn of this heart-pounding manhunt that lasted over four decades. Listen to Philonius Florida in the Darkness, exclusively and ad-free on Wondery Plus. Join Wondry Plus in the Wondry app or on Apple Podcasts. Criminology is a true crime podcast that may contain discussion about violent or disturbing topics. Listener discretion is advised. Hello everyone and welcome to episode 304 of the Criminology Podcast. I'm Mike Ferguson. And this is Mike Morford.

Mr. Mike Morford. How are you doing, buddy? I'm doing good. We're recording on a Friday. I'm looking forward to the weekend. I got some games mixed in between my work. But other than that, just looking forward to... to the weekend. How are you doing? Yeah, I'm doing good. It's been a pretty fascinating week.

To be honest with you, we started off on Monday with the eclipse. And I don't know if you were in the path. I don't think you were, but we were in the path of totality. So that was the first for me. And it was really super cool. Oh, that's very cool. I've heard a lot of good stories and saw some neat pictures. It is going to pass right over Southwest Florida here in like another 24 years or something. like that. So I'm not going to what I'll be here for that one. Yeah. So in 24 years, we can talk about that. But it was pretty cool. I mean, to see it get darker and darker and to the point where like street light automatic street lights came on and stuff. Um, yeah. And then I had a root canal on Tuesday. So it's been an interesting week. Yeah, that's that's when you follow up the

eclipse with a root canal. That's tough. Well, let's go ahead and give our Patreon shoutouts. We had Elaine Ahern, Marcy Nelson. and Deborah Batelan. So that's a lot of great new support. We really appreciate it. Yeah, thanks to everyone that supports the show. It really helps us out for anyone else that would like to head over to patreon.com slash criminology to sign up.

So let's go ahead and jump into this week's episode. And in this one, we'll be talking about a collection of cases with one common theme. And that is sleepwalking. And I want to start off with a stat from a U.S. news news. and World Reports and World Reports article that said nearly one third of American adults have sleepwalked at least once in their lives and about 8.5 million Americans sleepwalk at least once a year. And I thought those stats were pretty high. I was shocked by those. And maybe it's because I don't really have any experience with sleepwalking. My wife and I don't sleepwalk. Neither one of my kids

has ever, you know, walked in their sleep. I know we've done some cases that involved possible sleepwalking before, or at least that was a theory in a case or two. What about you more? Yeah, there's only one incident that I know of, and that has to do with my daughter. She's probably not going to be happy with me for sharing this story, but she went to a sleepover when she was younger and in the middle of the night, she got up and walked into her friend's parents' bedroom and into their closet and let's just say that she mistook their closet for the bathroom and both of her you know the parents jumped up and went over to see if she was okay what she was doing she was sound asleep in their closet um so very strange and besides that the rest of the morford family doesn't sleep walk

that i know of although my wife does an awful lot of talking her sleep she can have a complete conversation and i once woke up to her singing a song at the top of her lungs and when i jumped up And looked at her, wondering what was going on. She was sound asleep, but still singing. So me, I sleep like a rock, but my wife and daughter, not so much. Yeah, well, you mentioned sleeping like a rock. I sleep very soundly. I'm very hard to wake up.

But if I am woken up, and this has happened a couple times where, you know, one of my daughters, you know, tried to get me up for whatever reason. Sometimes I guess I swing on people. That's, that's come up a couple of times. my daughters have said that I took a swing at them or something, which is a little scary, but it only happens, I guess,

when I'm woken up suddenly. But my wife doesn't sing. I've never heard of that. It's kind of interesting. She has, uh, like restless legs. She's,

she's kicking me all the time and, and says that she doesn't. So I will say this, that when I do wake up in the little of the night, I usually cannot go back to sleep and I'll go out and watch TV. have some water and hopefully get tired enough that I can go back and go back to sleep, but sometimes I can't. So, you know, when you think about those things that you talked about happening to your

daughter, your wife while they're sleeping, those are pretty harmless. And you can look back, you can laugh at that type of stuff. But sometimes people do things in their sleep that have deadly consequences. And we're going to talk about some of those cases in this episode. we're going to discuss some murder cases with an identified killer who admits to the fact that they took a life. The only issue is they claimed that they were sleepwalking when they committed their crimes. All of the cases we're going to talk about have gone to trial and they've all been officially closed. The defense claimed at each trial that the killer had been sleepwalking and was unaware of their actions until after the murder.

What differs in each case is how the jury decided the fates of the defendants. The first successful use of sleepwalking as a legal defense, at least in the United States, was in 1846. When Albert Jackson Terrell was 21 years old, he left his wife from Maria Bickford, a woman who performed sex work. Torell was said to be completely in love with her, and they ended up living together, despite the fact that she was also already legally married to another man. Maria continued sex work at a brothel in Boston, which Terrell reportedly was not fond of. They had a pretty volatile relationship, but were still pretty close. According to Smithsonian Magazine, Maria once admitted that she didn't mind the fights because the two had quote-unquote such a good time making up that it was worth it.

In September 1845, Torell was charged with adultery since he had abandoned his wife and children and was openly with another woman. He tried to stay out of jail as long as he could. could, but he was eventually arrested. After multiple letters and support from his friends and family, including the wife he had abandoned, his trial was rescheduled for six months out. After posting a bond, Terrell went straight to Maria. Well, on October 27th, Maria was found dead in the room they had been staying in on Cedar Lane. The first article about her murder published in the Boston Daily Mail, noted that her throat was cut nearly ear to ear, and the bed set on

fire in order to conceal this act of atrocity. She had been found around 4.30 in the morning after the smoke from the fire roused others. She was lying on her back in her nightgown and had almost been decapitated. There was a bloody razor blade at the foot of the bed, which was on fire. Some of Maria's hair had caught on fire and her skin was burned. Albert Jackson Terrell was nowhere to be found. One witness claimed to have crossed pass with. with Terrell and that he was desperate to flee.

The witness said they saw him trying to rent or buy a horse to get out of town because he was, quote, in a scrape. He ended up south of Boston and Weymouth where his family gave him money to leave the country, thinking he was still running from the charges of adultery. They didn't know that he was a murder suspect. He made it to Montreal, Canada, where he planned to take a ship to Liverpool, England. but when that trip was canceled due to storms, he boarded a different ship and ended up in New Orleans, Louisiana, where authorities had already been alerted to the fugitive heading right to them.

Terrell was arrested on December 5th, was still on a boat in the Gulf of Mexico. He hired attorney Rufus Choate to represent him at trial. It's probably a good thing for him that he did since Choate came up with a very unique defense that other attorneys may not have thought of. In fact, a law clerk recalled. seeing Choate discover the book, Sylvester Saon, the somnambulist by Henry Cocton, according to Smithsonian magazine. The clerk recalled that Choate became interested, then absorbed with the book, before finally abruptly leaving. Albert Terrell's defense was that he had been sleepwalking when he

killed Maria Bickford. His family agreed that he had a long history of sleepwalking, going back to at least the age of six. He was violent during those episodes, ripping down curtains, threatening a cousin with a knife and breaking windows. According to Smithsonian Magazine, a neighbor who lived near the house on Cedar Lane remembered Terrell coming to her home the morning of the murder, knocking on her door and asking, are there some things here for me? She was frightened. Due to Terrell's strange state, as if he was asleep or crazy, Terrell's brother-in-law,

Nathaniel Bailey, claimed that he seemed shocked by the murder, which Nathaniel had to inform him of and he had only been fleeing the adultery charges. The defense also put forth the question of whether or not Maria could have taken her own life, implying that such a fate would be almost the natural death of persons of her character. In the Victorian era, sex workers were generally looked down upon. It was easy for the defense to convince the jury that Maria had succeeded in a wonderful man. And a wonderful man, in ensnaring the prisoner, the otherwise upstanding Albert Terrell, and that she had, quote, held him spellbound by her depraved and lascivious arts.

According to defense attorney choke, somnambulism explains the killing without a motive, in this case, while premeditated murder does not. After just two hours of deliberation, the jury found Albert Terrell not guilty. He lived the rest of his life as, a free man. And we're going back to 1846 here, but there were a couple of things that jumped out of me. I mean, number one, this was a very brutal murder. We talk about this woman's throat being cut nearly ear to ear. It was said she was almost decapitated. And then, you know, her bed set on fire. Then you couple that with this guy trying to flee. It really makes

it sound as if, you know, he murdered Maria and then, you know, was trying to get away. But then you kind of interlace everything with reports of him, you know, having been a sleepwalker for a long time. This neighbor saying that he kind of came over seemed like he was sleepwalking, was asking strange questions. And then obviously this kind of novel defense put forth by his attorney. The one thing that did not surprise me was the talk about sex workers because I think that has been something that continued long after 1846 where they were looked down upon by certain people and here you have the defense using that notion, almost flipping it around as if, in Instead of being the victim, she was at fault in some way because of what she did.

I think that's something that we see play even today. Yeah, I think in this case, there's really no motive. They seem like a happy couple despite, you know, what, you know, being married or being a sex worker, it seemed like they were happy together, so there's no real motive. and the theory that he was sleepwalk and put forth by the defense attorney to me seems like it was worth trying. Obviously it worked out. But the one thing that he put forward, you know, sort of raising doubt was that maybe this was a case of suicide. And that, to me, seemed to be ludicrous because who would take their life in that way to where they slit their own throat, almost decapitating themselves and then set themselves on fire?

that that seemed far fetch, but the, the sleepwalking defense, I could believe that a lot easier than I could that this was a suicide. Yeah, I think the suicide angle just sounds ridiculous, really, when you, when you say it out loud like that. But my thought is, okay, in 1846, this would have been maybe a pretty tough one for a jerk, a little bit of uncharted territory with this kind of defense and, you know, maybe. back to your point, morph, what's the motive? Why would he have wanted to kill her? The one thing I will say is it's hard for me to kind of reconcile that someone could do something this heinous while walking in their sleep. I mean, this is a really nasty, violent episode. And I guess it's because a lot of times we think of

sleepwalking a little more lightheartedly. And you think of like the movie Step Brothers. where they have those scenes of the guys sleepwalking and they're, you know, they're doing all kinds of strange stuff, but they're not trying to cut anybody's throat with a knife. I think this was definitely a challenge for the jury to consider this defense. Ultimately, they found him not guilty. So they bought into that he wouldn't have done what he did had he not been asleep. I think if this case happened today, we might say, see experts get involved, sleep studies being done, sleep test just to prove someone, you know, was capable of walking in their sleep. I think it would just be a totally different type of

trial with different experts. So that was the first case we're going to talk about, but there was another case worth discussing out of England with some similarities, but a different outcome. On June 2nd, 1988, Barry Douglas Burgess attacked his friend, Katrina Curtis in the middle of the night. She was asleep on the couch when Barry got out of bed and bludgeoned her with a bottle, then a camcorder, before beginning to strangle her. While being choked, Katrina yelled out, I love you, Bear, which seemed to snap him out of a trance. He called for an ambulance immediately. Barry was charged in the attack on Katrina, and in court, a defensive automatism doing something without being conscious of your actions, was rejected. On July 20,

He was instead found not guilty by a reason of insanity in order to be held in a psychiatric facility. An appeal on that sentence was denied. The reason he was not able to walk free like Albert Terrell had was because Burgess's court had considered sleepwalking a pathological illness. That was likely to happen again. While Terrell was considered to have suffered a violent sleepwalking episode, Burgess was considered to suffer from a violent sleepwalking disorder that would need treatment to ensure he wasn't a danger to himself or anyone else. And I was really struck by this one thinking, what would that be like to snap out of, you know, some type of trance or sleep, let's call it, to find out that you're hurting someone you love.

And apparently being snapped out of it by hearing this person say, I love you. That's a good thing for Katrina that she was able to snap him out of it. Well, and it sounds like a much different case. Obviously, we're many, many years on compared to the Terrell case. But, you know, here's a guy who called for an ambulance right away. He wasn't trying to get away with something. But you also have this notion that if he did this, and this is where I'm kind of comparing it to the Terrell case, is it an isolated incident or is this a,

condition that could cause this to happen again. And so it's interesting to see how the court viewed it in 1989. Unfortunately, we don't have as many details on this one, but so we don't know if he had a sustained background with this kind of stuff or if there was testing done, but obviously they came to the conclusion that he was not guilty by reason of insanity. So it seems like this finding of not guilty by reason of insanity was proof that they believed he had done what he had done and still holding him accountable, but they didn't seem to think that it was malice and intent involved. While at the same time, kind of ensuring that he would get some treatment, I guess in order to make sure this didn't happen again.

In the suburbs of D.C., a woman fails to show up for work and is found brutally murdered. I wonder what's emergency. We just walked in the door and there's blood in the foyer. For the next two decades, the case remained unsolved until new technology allowed investigators to do what had once been impossible. A new series from ABC Audio in 2020, blood and water. Listen now wherever you get your podcasts. Like the first two cases in the U.S. and the U.K., Canada has seen its own infamous sleep walking case as well. The details of this case are almost unbelievable, especially to those

unfamiliar with sleepwalking. This isn't someone who was in the same bed or even home as their victim when they fell asleep. And in this case, the sleepwalking perp didn't walk to his victim. He drove. Kenneth Parks drove 23 kilometers, just over 14 miles from his home to the residence of his wife's parents. He used a key that they had given to him and let himself into their home. He took a tire iron inside with him. He hit his mother-in-law Barbara Woods in the head repeatedly with the tire iron. She was asleep in bed when he began to attack her.

Most reports claim that he also stabbed her multiple times. When his father-in-law Dennis Woods tried to stop him, he was repeatedly stabbed and Parks strangled him with his bare hands. Barbara died from her injuries, but somehow Dennis survived his. Still covered in blood, Parks showed up at the police station appearing confused. According to the Toronto City News, he said, I think I have just killed two people. The immediate belief of investigators was that Parks had killed the couple

to try and inherit money to cover his gambling debts. He did admit to fraudulently billing almost $35,000 to his employer, Revere Electric. to fund his gambling addiction. He spent it all at the racetrack betting on horses. He had also spent all of his family's savings and borrowed money, but it was still underwater. Did his severe addiction to gambling make him desperate enough to kill his in-laws? Investigators believed that it could have.

But if he was trying to inherit money from their deaths, what good would it do him if he went to prison for their murders? Parks claimed he had fallen asleep, watching TV, and was sleepwalking during the murder, and wasn't even fully awake. until after he had driven to the police station and turned himself in, the stress of his debt and his addiction to gambling, caused him to sleep less,

which left him more susceptible to about a sleepwalking. Parks claimed to have had lifelong trouble with sleep, particularly with waking up out of a deep sleep. There was apparently no reason to attack his in-laws, according to NBC News. They had a great relationship. With Kenneth saying of his mother-in-law, I loved her. She was, she was great to me. The experts who testified at Perks murder trial did not consider sleepwalking to be a mental illness or a disease of the mind.

According to court documents, it was clear to the jury that while sleepwalking, Parks would not have even had the capacity to intend to commit murder, nor would he have understood the consequences of what he was doing. When he arrived at the police station, he had injuries to his hands. Some reports state that he actually severed the tendons in his hands, but wasn't even reacting to the pain, which was proof that he was asleep. Dr. Roger James Broughton, a neurophysiologist and specialist in sleep and sleep disorders, told NBC news the behavior during these attacks would all have been an unconscious activity, uncontrolled and unmediated. Dr. Broughton testified that it was absolutely improbable that Parks may kill again while

sleep, explaining that the probability of it occurring is not statistically significant. He went on to talk about a few of the ways someone could limit the recurrence of sleepwalking episodes. His recommendations were going to bed at a regular hour, getting sufficient sleep, having availability of sufficient exercise and so on that you are tired enough at the end of the day, that your body wants to go to sleep, avoiding getting overweight and obese and things that could impair sleep and avoiding alcohol. Kenneth Parks was found not guilty of the first-degree murder of Barbara Woods. He was also acquitted of second-degree murder, but he still had to face

the charge of attempted murder for his attack on Dennis Woods. The only evidence the defense presented at this trial was the not guilty outcome of the murder trial. If he hadn't been aware of his actions during that murder, how could he be aware of what was going on during the attack immediately after? The jury believed him in this instance too, and he was found not guilty. Although Kenneth Parks was free from the charges related to the murder and attempted murder, he still had to answer for embezzling the money from his employer, and he had to sell his house to help pay restitution to them. And to me more, if this is the most bizarre case yet, I think in part because it involves this guy driving over 14 miles while apparently sleepwalking.

That jumped out to me. I just, again, I don't know a lot about sleepwalking. I've heard stories from people. But I don't think I've ever heard of anyone, you know, getting out, getting in their car, making, you know, a drive like this. not to mention the fact that he then gets out and kills his mother-in-law, tries to kill his father-in-law. But I think what you see here again is that, you know, this is not a person who flees and tries to get away with it. He shows up at the police station right away and tells them what happened.

Yeah, this is definitely a case that's hard to believe the fact that someone in their sleep could get in their car and drive and, and commit these crimes. And here, there's a little bit of a difference in the first case we talked about. We thought there was no real motive. Here, there's technically a motive if he was trying to kill his in-laws on purpose. You know, you could have made the case that he was trying to inherit money from them to cover up his gambling nets. So there are, you know, a little bit of a difference here,

the big one being driving a car in order to do this. So the conspiracy theory person in me wonders if someone could ever concoct this type of scenario, meaning that, you know, they had the plan to kill. But in order to try to get away with it, they made the decision to go this route. And, you know, think about it. It's a very strange route to take, if that were to be the case. case, but it's plausible. You could see where maybe someone would have that thinking. Now, they're taking a big chance. You know, is the jury going to buy it? And I'm not saying that's what

happened in this case, but man, you'd have to admit this is a very strange one. Yeah, and that scenario you just mentioned, it would be very risky on his part to have faith that the jury is going to come back and with a not guilty verdict because again, we're not talking about somebody in the same house that allegedly slept walk and attacked someone in the house. He got into his car and drove. So the jury would have to overcome all that. At the end, it worked out. And that's what they did believe that he had been sleeping when he drove all the way over there.

So in the first three cases we've discussed, the perpetrators got off. but there have been multiple sleepwalking defense cases in the United States that resulted in convictions. On December 26, 1993, Michael Thomas Rickskers of Butler County PA called 911 and reported that his wife, Janet, had been shot in the leg, but that it was an accident. Before officers arrived, Rickskers called 911 again. This time, reporting that Janet may have been shot in the back. and that he had woken up holding the gun. He added that Janet needed help, and she needed it quickly.

When officers arrived, his wife, Janet Rickskers, was pronounced dead at the scene. Michael Ricksker's claimed that he must have been sleepwalking, and he only remembered calling 911 once. He was sleeping when a loud bang woke him up. When he jumped out of bed, he dropped the gun on the floor. He also claimed to suffer from sleep apnea, which somehow caused him to shoot Janet. The argument was that the lack of oxygen to his brain during sleep caused his erratic but unconscious behavior.

He also claimed that Janet kept a 357 caliber magnum pistol under her pillow when she slept because he usually worked late and it helped her feel secure. Unlike some of the other cases we discussed earlier, Janet's family did not support her killer. In fact, her friend's family and even her coworkers told investigators that Janet had been planning to file for divorce. just after Christmas. She was thinking of their two children and didn't want to ruin their holiday. She had planned to leave the state with the kids and had a safe place to go all lined up.

According to L.A. Times, one coworker claimed that Janet admitted that her husband had beat her up and also threatened to kill her if she ever left him. Multiple coworkers backed this up and also recalled seeing bruises on Janet. Her friends and family also disputed the location of the 357 caliber magnum pistol telling investigators that she kept it in the drawer of her nightstand and not under her pillow. After a trial, the jury found Michael Ricksger's guilty of the first degree murder of his wife, Janet.

On January 12, 1995, Judge Briden sentenced him to serve life in prison with no possibility of parole. So here's a case where the jury didn't buy the defense. And this may also go back to my earlier statement. You know, could someone premeditate a murder with the thought that ahead of time, their defense was going to be that they were asleep, they were sleepwalking or something along those lines. To me, this case feels a little bit different from the other ones we talked about because you do have friends and family talking about the fact that she was going to leave her husband, that he allegedly threatened to kill her if she ever left him, that he had beat her up. So, you know, bruises on her. So this is a backstory here that seems like it's leading up to something bad and then something

bad happens. And I think that could be why maybe the jury in this case didn't believe that he was really sleepwalking when he did this. I think this was a little different. than some of the others we talked about just because there does seem to be what you would think of as a pretty clear-cut motive. You know, if she said she was leaving, if he knew about that at all and he was abusive and had threatened to kill her if she left, then it kind of seems to fit in line with that. In the next case, we're going to talk about out of Arizona, yet another husband has claimed to have murdered his wife while sleepwalking. By 2 a.m. on January 17, 1997, Scott Fowler had been arrested by the Phoenix Police Department. His wife, Yarmilla, had been killed. A neighbor had witnessed some of the attack. They saw Scott drag

Yarmilla into the backyard. Before this, she had been stabbed 44 times with a hunting knife. She didn't move from the spot in the backyard while he went to the garage and got a pair of work gloves. He then dragged her over to the pool and held her head underwater. Yarmilla didn't move or resist at all. During this attack, Fowler instructed his dog to lay down. The neighbor, shocked by what he had seen, called 911, and responding officers entered the home through the unlocked patio door. They found Fowler inside confused. According to the Phoenix New Times, one of the officers Joseph Jones wrote in his report,

As he spoke to me, he seemed very shaky, with shortness of breath. He also had difficulty breathing. Fowler claimed in his statement to police in the report that he had no memory of the attack, He said, I remember I was in bed. I heard the dogs go crazy. And I heard all the voices, came down, and you guys were all over me. According to him, he went to bed, but Yarmella stayed out on the couch watching ER. At first, he wasn't sure why he was a suspect since he had been sleeping. According to the Phoenix New Times, when Fowler was told that a witness was staring at him, watching him do it. His response was only, geez. The knife used to kill Yarmel was found in a

Tupperware container in Fowler's car, along with a pair of bloody boots, clothes, gloves, and underwear. Scott Fowler has a history of sleepwalking, and it was reportedly proven with the use of a polysumnograph, which measured and recorded his sleep patterns. His parents recall times that he would sleepwalk coming into the living room in the middle of the night naked, saying that he was ready to go to school. His mother, Lois Wilczek, told the Phoenix New Times. I said, come with me, son, and I led him back to bed. You couldn't touch him when he was like that. Nobody thought it was a big deal. Scott was also severely sleep deprived due to stress at work, and he had no motive. Further along in his police statement, he said, Yarm and I hadn't even had an argument. We hadn't

screamed and shouted at each other in 15 years. I never would have thought of hitting her or striking her or yelling at her. But he did yell at her, though. At around 10.10 p.m., the witness heard yelling and screaming coming from the backyard of the Fowler residence. By the time he was able to get up onto a plan or see over the fence, Aramillo was lying on the ground a few feet away from the swimming pool and a light switched on in an upstairs window of the Fowler home.

Just after it turned off, the neighbor was able to see Scott Fowler walk through the kitchen and the living room on his way to the backyard. For several minutes, he stood over Yermella, watching her. Then he went back into his house and got gloves before coming back outside and rolling her into the pool. The neighbor watched in horrors, Fowler held Yermela's head under the water. Despite the sleepwalking defense in a documented history of dealing with sleepwalking, in 1999, a jury found Scott Lewis Fowler, guilty of first-degree murder, and he was sentenced to life in prison without parole.

And here we have yet another very bizarre incident. I mean, on the one hand, you know, you have this guy saying, I had no motive. We got along. We didn't fight. And he did have, according to his family, a documented history of sleepwalking, I guess for me. You know, it started out with the 44 stab wound. That got my attention.

And then it was really some of the things that this eyewitness said. One was that, you know, he brought Yarmilla out into the yard by the pool and then went back in to the house to get gloves before coming back outside and holding her head underwater. That stuck out to me, as did the fact that the knife that he used. that he used, along with, you know, bloody clothes, the gloves, some boots were all found in a Tupperware container in his car. That sounds to me like a person who is trying to hide something, is trying to get away with something. Now, could you make the argument that you could do all of that in your sleep? Yeah, I guess you could, but I think it's a tough one. And obviously the jury found

it tough to believe. You know, with this case, you know, I'm sort of conflicted because it doesn't seem like there's a real clear motive, you know, according to him, they had a good relationship, and haven't seen anything that says otherwise. So they weren't used to argue them, but on this night they did argue and it led to this. It's possible. The one thing that really sticks out to me was how nonchalani was when he was told that a witness had watched him do this.

He was like, geez. You know, I think you picture someone legitimately being sleepwalking, waking up to find out they've killed someone they love, they'd be heartbroken, they'd be crying, they'd be really upset. And all he has to say is, geez, when he's told that a witness seen him do this. So to me, that that kind of doesn't sit right with me. Yeah, I think that's a great point. Even if you didn't mean to do something, but was told that you did it, I can't believe. that that would be your reaction. Especially when we're talking about your wife,

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Growtherapy.com slash book now. Availability and coverage vary by state and insurance plan. A more recent case out of California of a supposed sleepwalking killer also failed to sway the jury, 25-year-old Stephen Wright and 42-year-old Eva Marie Weinfertner both living in Coronado, California. We're staying in a hotel together on Catalina Island. It was a normal and fun night, just part of a quick weekend getaway for the couple who had been dating for about six months by October 1st, 2001. Eva Marie had been married three times and divorced twice. her third husband, a pilot, was the love of her life, and she was hoping to ultimately end up reconciling with him.

Eva Maria and her husband have been talking recently about patching things up. He invited her to Catalina Island when he was back in town after work, and she accepted. For whatever reason, she invited rights on a quick trip to Catalina before her husband would return. She had plans to meet her friend April Bozar, who was due to give birth so that she could be with her and help her. But she would never meet April's child. At around 1 a.m., Wright's walked to the nearby fire station to report that Eva Maria had been killed. He thought he may have been the one responsible for her death. Her murder had been a violent struggle.

Eva's shoulder, elbow, and wrist had been dislocated. Some reports say broken. A flower pot had been broken when she was hit over the head with her. her skull had been fractured and her jaw was broken in three places. She had been beaten and then finally she had been stabbed four times in the back of the neck with a pocket knife. The hotel room crime scene was a brutal one. Detective Richard Tomlin told NBC News, the first thing that jumped out at you is the lack of a better term, mayhem.

And Detective Ken Gallatin said there was only two people there. And so only he knows whether or not there was motive. And whether they got into an argument or a little point. pushing matchover or something. The knife used to stab Eva Marie belonged to Wright's, who was a commercial fisherman who caught shark. It was said that

the stab wounds to the back of her neck were very similar to the wounds Wrights would inflict on a shark to kill it. Wrights claimed he had no memory of attacking Eva Marie, but that he did remember having a dream about fighting with a stranger

who had broken into the room. Wright's claimed to have a very long history of sleepwalking, as well as other mental health factors like a bipolar disorder diagnosis. Unfortunately, the night before Eva Marie was murdered, Wrights forgot to take his medication, but he did take Eva's prescription medication for anxiety. They had also been partying together that night. There was cocaine on a rolled up $5 bill, multiple empty bottles of beer, and a half empty bottle of tequila in the room. There seemed to be no clear motive in the killing.

It looked like the couple had been having a great time on their getaway. Detective Ken Gallatin said, there was no indication that they'd argued or fought about anything. And according to him, they were having a wonderful, beautiful evening when he was awakened by an intruder, and everything else transpired after that. Wright's had no real explanation either, saying, I woke up looking at Eva's body on the ground. He talked about his dream a bit, saying, you know, I think it could have been an intruder or something. I'm thinking, I knew I felt threatened for some reason, but it had nothing to do with

Eva. I wasn't dreaming about Eva. Investigators didn't find Stephen Wright's story plausible. Instead, they put forth the theory that Eva Marie made Stephen angry somehow, maybe by trying to break things off with him, trying to make her marriage work, in telling Stephen that this getaway was kind of a last hurrah. Detective Richard Tomlin told NBC News, I think something went wrong, obviously in that room, and he snapped.

Eva Marie's relatives believe this too. They remembered seeing bruises on her body and bite marks on her legs, a result of Stephen's temper and also recalled an incident where Stephen actually broke into Eva Marie's third floor apartment by kicking in the plate glass window on her balcony, and he threatened her with a knife. Was it a coincidence that Eva Marie had been stabbed to death? She ran from the apartment and called the police from a neighbor's home.

After that incident, later that night, Wrights was arrested for driving under the influence. At the jail, Eva visited him despite his threats earlier that day. Linnell Piro, a relative of Eva Marie's, recalled another attack that Eva Marie confided in her about. This time, it was in the middle of the night. She woke up and Wrights was on top of her choking her. Was he sleepwalking then, too?

Linnell told NBC News that as soon as she was informed that Eva Marie was dead, she asked the police. Steve killed her, didn't he? Deputy District Attorney Chris Friscoe told NBC News, so you see the parallel, the very same behavior, pounding on the door, breaking into the room, wielding a pocket knife, and then threatening to gut her, is the very same. Same thing he did in this case. How do you say he was sleepwalking when on the prior occasion he had the dress rehearsal?

Importantly to investigators, the flower pot wasn't inside the hotel room that night. Stephen had to have gotten it from outside. Deputy District Attorney and Lamb believed that Stephen had been locked out of the hotel room by Eva Marie and got so enraged, he consciously decided to attack her. He grabbed the flower pot and took it back to the door, where he knocked and knocked until she finally agreed to let him back in. Maybe he guilted her since she had invited him there in the first place. Eventually, for whatever reason, he made it back inside with the flower pot and blindsided her, striking her over the head before using his hands and then a knife.

Deputy District Attorney Chris Frisco said everything he did was directed specifically at Eva to ultimately murder her. Detective Ken Gallatin added, I think Eva was breaking it off, telling them that this was their last time together and he couldn't handle it. If he couldn't have her, no one could. That probably started a fight and ended up. He ended up killing her. Stephen Wright's explanation for the bruises that had been seen on Eva Marie was that she just bruised very easily and he grabbed her too hard. He also mentioned that she had seen a doctor specifically to ask why she bruised so easily. Even if this was indeed true about the bruising, it did nothing to prove he was asleep during the attack.

The decision to use the sleepwalking defense wasn't exactly a stuiting. choice. According to a statement to the LA Times, defense attorney Theodore Begains, who represented Stephen Wright, said, it was the only defense we had because my client said he was unconscious. There was no other defense we could use because this is what really happened. We had the best doctors in the nation say that this could happen. Stephen Wright's family believed he had a long history of sleepwalking. He had walked through a place. He had walked through a plate glass window once, and another time he had either fallen or jumped from a second floor window and claimed to have no idea what happened. He told his family that he had been sleepwalking,

but his friends knew he was using methamphetamine at the time. His violent outbursts likely caused by both bipolar disorder and substance abuse got worse as he got older. It was a three-week trial hearing about other cases like that of Kenner. Kenneth Parks who was found not guilty, scared Eva Marie's family and friends. Her niece, Linnell told NBC News, hearing about trials that had gone on and the people were innocent, you know, of course, that's scary. It's very scary. There's no accountability. But after trial, Stephen Wrights was found guilty by a jury after they deliberated for a day and a half. Defense attorney Ted Vagains felt that the jury only came to a guilty verdict

because they were too afraid of what would happen if they did otherwise. According to the L.A. Times, he said, they were scared to let him go free because of what the public would say. Jurors, however, explained their reasoning. One juror Tom Mahoney said, he was a fisherman. He knew what he was doing with that knife. Roll Salvador, another juror, said, you could do a few things sleepwalking, like the doctor said, but not all that. Stephen Wright's appealed the conviction, and he was able to go to a sleep clinic for further testing, the conviction was later upheld and Wrights was sentenced to 25 years to life in prison. The maximum sentence the judge could give, former district attorney Dinko Bosonage

was relieved that the sleepwalking defense didn't work telling NBC news, I'm sure we would have seen a bunch of sleepwalking defenses presented since. So it's going to take a while for somebody to try it again. And that's a point that I kind of keep going back to. You know, could somebody do something while they were sleepwalking? Yeah, I think the answer is yes. Now, you heard a jury in this case say, a sleepwalker could do something, but not all of this. You know, and I kind of go back to, you know, driving 14 miles in a car. Could a sleepwalker actually do that? I don't know. It seems that it it would be hard for that to be the case. But in some of the other ones we talked about,

they're really not being a clear-cut motive or really not much of a motive at all. I think with this one, the investigators were able to paint a motive. Now, whether it's true or not, we don't know. But even Marie was said to have been trying to reconcile with her husband. she's on this getaway with rights.

You could see how this could be kind of like a, their last time together. And she could have sat him down and told him that this is it. I'm trying to make my marriage work. We can't do this anymore. And that may have caused him to snap. Yeah, this definitely seems like a case where there is some, some evidence that this is a potential love triangle that she's trying to end it and you get a

little bit more of a motive here in some and in some of the other cases we talked about and then you also have the fact that he's reportedly bitten and bruised her things along those lines prior and I think that just strengthens the case that he could be dangerous and a threat to her well I think the other thing you have to do is you have to look back at the wound, you know, how this woman died. It was very violent. She had multiple parts of her body that were at the very least dislocated. Some reports even said broken, you know, this flower pot to the head, the skull fractures. Her jaw was broken in three places. And then the beating and and then finally the stabbing multiple times in the back of the neck. I mean, when you think about all

of that stuff. The first thing that that hops into your brain is not that that's the act of someone who's sleepwalk. Again, I don't want to say it can't happen. I'm just saying it's kind of hard to believe, at least in this case, that things went down the way they did while someone was technically asleep. And looking back at these cases we've talked about, and Albert Terrell is acquittal, it's hard to feel a modern-day jury would have come to the same conclusion. Experts would have been able to testify about sleepwalking and the limits of unconscious behavior. Trying to burn Maria's body may have shown that he knew he was guilty and needed to cover up a crime so that he wasn't really asleep.

Fleeing because he was in a scrape, as he put it, is also indicative of awareness and thus alertness. Not hiding the fact that you committed the crime didn't always guarantee an acquittal. Stephen Wright's walked straight to the fire station after Eva Marie's murder and turned himself in. He told him he must have done it. That wasn't enough for the jury. According to NBC News, psychiatrist Dr. R.H. Billing said, there's been cases of mothers throwing their kids out of a window and of husbands killing their wives in bed.

Dr. Alden Avedin explained to NBC News that with the Kenneth Park's case, the argument was that he would never have done it had he been conscious and aware. This is not the same in Wright's case since he had attacked Eva Marie and threatened her in the past. If you take away the sleepwalking claim, there is nothing odd about Stephen Wright's attacking Eva Marie. It's a clear domestic violence incident. However, with Kenneth Parks, it's a perplexing story of a man. driving across town and attacking his beloved in-law for absolutely no reason. So while some of these cases have some similarities, there are very clear differences too. All of these cases pushed forward

the belief that a sleepwalker could do very complex things, drive, seek out items from other locations, get dressed, and even try to hide their crimes. There have been documented cases of sleepwalkers doing laundry, eating, and cooking. But when it comes to to killing, it seems like it's up to the jury. In some cases, the killer is found to be innocent, unable to control what they're doing. In other cases, the jury believes that the sleepwalking story is just that, a story, one not to be believed. No matter what, it's frightening to think that any of us could literally wake up to a nightmare and find that we have been involved in a case like one of these that we've discussed. And you just said morph that, you know, when it comes to killing,

it seems like it's up to the jury. And I think that's true in a lot of cases. You know, you could present the same exact evidence. The defense could put on the same exact defense for multiple juries. And they may not all come to the same conclusion. And why is that? Because juries are made up of people like you and me. People are going to have different opinions. Sometimes there's going to be somebody in that jury room with maybe a very strong will who, I don't want to say overpowers others, but kind of gets them to see their way of thinking. I'm sure that happens in a jury room. We've also heard of cases where there are multiple holdouts, people who don't believe the same as the rest of the group. And it's almost like they're either shamed or prodded to the point where they end up falling in

line with everyone else. Yeah, it seems like each case and each jury may be unique. So maybe the circumstances in one case may be not as clear that sleepwalking is to blame. You know, we've talked about some of these cases where they had a very distinct history of incidents. going back to when they were young of sleepwalking. So I think maybe in those cases, that has a little bit more sway with some juries, whereas other cases,

there's not a real distinct background. And it makes me wonder why, and it's sort of frightening to think about, how do more killers on trial not try to use this defense? You know, if they're caught red-handed and they don't have a legitimate excuse, you think more than would be desperate and try a defense like this. Yeah, yeah, I get what you're saying there.

I think what's interesting in some of these cases is that people go to the authorities right away, either walk there or make the 911 call. Is that because they truly woke up to find that they had, you know, done something horrific? Or was that part of a bigger plan? And again, sometimes the juries have thought it was real, and other times they have thought it was put on for the lack of a better term. Yeah, it almost seems like something out of a movie, some script that a nightmare scenario

we wake up to find out you've murdered someone. That has to be something that's beyond frightening to be in that situation. But just as frightening, you could be the victim in that situation. And thankfully, that doesn't happen very often, but the fact that it happens enough that we can document several cases, it's pretty scary. Yeah, it is scary. And all of these cases share some similarities but are unique in their own right. Some, it seems as though there was no motive at all. Some there seems to be a pretty clear cut motive or possible motive.

I always think, you know, when someone says, well, there was no motive whatsoever. These people loved each other or, you know, whatever it is that people say. How can they really know? They weren't there that night. People who seemingly have a great relationship. Could it not turn volatile in the span of one night? And I would say absolutely it could. We don't know everything that is said.

between the two parties. So I guess what I'm saying is just because it doesn't seem as though there's a motive doesn't mean that there couldn't have been some type of spark that happened that night that ignited someone's anger and caused them to to lash out. And I think there's a debate to be had here, maybe sort of along the lines of a death penalty debate, the accountability of someone who if they're truly, and it can be proven that they're truly asleep and did not intend to do what they did or couldn't control it, had no way of knowing what they were doing was wrong because they're asleep. Do you want those people to be punished? You know, somebody's been murdered, but they're not really responsible because they're not in control of what they were doing. So

you can open up a debate as to what should the punishment be, how harsh should it be, should they be punished at all? Yeah, and along those same lines, though, then you have to think of, well, if it happened this time, what are the chances that it could happen again? And how do you stop that? You know, in the one case, I think it was the Kenneth Park's case, he was, you know, made to undergo treatment and things like that. So that would be a real question as well. If a person was able to do it once, what would stop them from doing it in the future, even if they were truly found to not be responsible, let's say.

Like they didn't know what they were doing at the time. And what do you do in that scenario? I don't know. These are interesting cases. There's questions that come out of them that have to be raised. And I don't know that there are clear cut answers for all of them. But I guess as we wrap this up, I could see where there are some sleepwalking incidents or have been sleepwalking incidents that resulted in violence. I'm sure that has happened. But I'm also sure

that there have been people who have made the claim to try to get out of a murder charge. I think it falls in line with mental health. We know that men, that, people have mental health issues, some of which have caused them to do things, very horrible things, for which they've been found not responsible. At the same time, we also know that there have been incidents where people have done something and they did it with malice. They did it with, you know, forethought. It was premeditated. But after the fact, they tried to say that, you know, they weren't in their right mind. And I think you're going to have that with all kinds of different cases.

Some are going to be real and some are going to be ploys to try to get out of what someone has done. Yeah, I think the juries in these cases, when they pop up, really have their work cut out for them coming to the right conclusion because, you know, I think all of us agree we don't want to see the wrongfully convicted in prison. And we don't want to see, you know, I think most of us would agree, we don't want to see somebody in prison if they were legitimately sleepwalking and did something like this. And then the flip side is we don't want to see people get away with crimes that they truly committed. But the problem is it's not always so cut and dry. And back to your point, juries have a very difficult task in some of these, trying to figure out,

you know, What exactly happened? What should be the punishment? What should be the ultimate ending? But that's it for our episode on the sleepwalking murders. If you love the show, but haven't done so yet, go out and give us a five-star rating. You can leave a review.

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