RedHanded - Episode 76 - Sandy Charles: The Boy Who Wanted to Serve Satan

Episode Date: January 3, 2019

At just 14 Sandy Charles started hearing voices. He thought the voices were ghosts, and they were telling him to kill. On July 8 1995 Sandy obliged by luring 7 year old Johnathan Thimpsen out into the woods. What Sandy did to Johnathan, in the hopes of "pleasing Satan", shocked the world.   See acast.com/privacy for privacy and opt-out information.See Privacy Policy at https://art19.com/privacy and California Privacy Notice at https://art19.com/privacy#do-not-sell-my-info.

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And welcome to Red Handed. And Happy New Year! Oh yeah, Happy New Year. This week, because we're recording this before New Year's Eve, but it's going out in the new year. So happy 2019. We're not there yet. We're from the past. We are from the past. But yeah, we thought we would start off 2019 the way we intend to carry it on. So as ever, you've been warned, don't eat during this episode unless you are an absolute pervert, in which case, please carry on. And as you can't tell from my voice, I have what we could call the death cold, as Hannah has called it before.

Death flu. The death flu, sorry. During one of my many, many fever nightmares last night, I did dream that I was trapped in this particular case. So you had a dream that you were in the case? Yeah, I had a dream that someone was doing to me what happens to the person in this case. Oh, yikes. You're in too deep. I know. I know. I was very, I had a very high temperature though. And I still do. But I think I'll be okay for like the next hour and a half because I've eaten like three Christmas Ferrero Rochers, drunk a can of Coke Zero,

and taken a fistful of Cocodamol. So I reckon you've got like an hour and a half of me on pretty good form before I collapse again. Let's go before that happens. So Jonathan George Timpson was born in the town of La Ronge in Saskatchewan, Canada, on December 30th, 1987. And at the age of just seven, he was murdered in that very same town. His body was found on the 11th of July, 1995, in the woods just a few hundred yards from his

grandmother's house. His throat had been slashed, his head had been crushed, and his body had been mutilated. To say that this was a shock to the community would be a stupid thing to say, because of course it was. Jonathan was a super cute seven-year-old kid. His hero was Zorro, and everyone who knew him described him as playful and outgoing. It was an unbelievable tragedy to hit this indigenous community in central Canada, but the biggest shock was yet to come. Because Jonathan's killers had been a pair of local boys,

a 14-year-old named Sandy Charles and his eight-year-old accomplice William Martin. But even more shocking than the fact that those responsible were children would be their motive. As ever, let's start at the beginning. Sandy Charles was born on the 6th of July 1981 to a 17-year-old girl named Jean in La Ronge. La Ronge is a town of about 2,600 people, mostly young and mostly indigenous. A mix of First Nations, like Jonathan, and Métis, like Sandy. And although unemployment is at an all-time low right now, unemployment in La Ronge has been as high as 50% in the past. Sandy's father was off the scene before he was even born, so his mother was left to raise him on her own. Sadly, that's not something that was that uncommon in La Ronge.

And everything in Sandy's early life seemed pretty normal. There certainly weren't any immediate red flags that we could find. Actually, Sandy was an incredibly responsible child for much of his childhood, because a few years later, his mother had two more children, and still on her own, she had to take on a few part-time jobs to support her family, which meant that Sandy had to take on a lot from a young age by looking after his siblings. Sandy even excelled at school. His teachers remember him being a good student who worked hard and rarely got in trouble. But things started to change when Sandy hit 13. He started to withdraw from his social life.

He stopped trying at school and he even abruptly quit his paper round that he'd been so diligent about in the past. It's hard to say that these are massive red flags in any way. He's 13. It might be hard to distinguish between normal teenage angst and a bigger issue. But there was definitely a bigger issue with Sandy Charles. But tragically, his mother, his teachers, his friends, no one had any idea what was going on with him. And by the time they did find out, it would be far too late. Because unknown to anyone, Sandy Charles was hearing voices. He believed that they were the voices of ghosts that were haunting his room and his house the voices that had started out just talking to him

now started to give sandy orders and out of desperation to better understand the things that he was hearing sandy even got a ouija board to try and communicate with the ghosts did you see someone this morning tag us in a thing on Twitter, listener, and it's a thread of children like remembering their past lives, like being able to point out relatives in pictures that they've never met and who've been dead for years and being like, oh, that's Aunt Elaine. She protects me from the scratchy man in my cupboard. Oh, my God. No, I've been in like I've been in the death flu sweats. So I haven't been on social media. I'll retweet it when we release this episode so you

can all read it it is horrifying just these kids being like mommy who's the man behind you terrifying stuff kids are horrifying they have all of those threads and like blog posts where it's like parents tweeting or writing about the horrifying things that their kids have said to them and it's like I love you so much I'm gonna eat your bones and stuff like this like kids are kids are fucking weird careful around your kids you don much. I'm going to eat your bones and stuff like this. Like kids are fucking weird. Careful around your kids. You don't know what's going on. There was one on the thread that's really stuck with me.

This mother was saying, oh, my daughter will not have any water on her face. So like bathing her is really, really difficult. She just throws a fit. Rabies. You have hydrophobia when you have rabies. That's true. That's very true. But this kid apparently said

to her mum, sorry, mummy, I'm just scared because I drowned last time. Oh, my God. Scary. I'll retweet it. You all have to read it. Like lose a half an hour of your life. It's so worth it. Wow. Let's get back to Sandy's ghosts. The delusional thinking escalated. At just 13, Sandy seemed to be showing signs of schizophrenia. And I thought that this seemed very young because usually schizophrenia begins to present itself when people are in their early to mid-twenties. But apparently what we're dealing with here is called early onset schizophrenia. And it's when a child aged between 13 to 18 experiences hallucinations, delusions and cognitive impairment associated with schizophrenia. You can even get, and I was like shocked by this, that apparently you can even get very early onset schizophrenia, which is children below the age of 13 showing symptoms of

schizophrenia. It's incredibly, incredibly rare. And I think the statistics I saw were like one in 30,000 children. So it's not common. But still, I just didn't think that it started so early, or that it could start so early. I don't know if I've ever thought about that before. I think it must be so difficult to diagnose it in a child. Children are learning new things all the time. If something like that is present, they maybe wouldn't be able to differentiate between what's real and what's not because they're constantly engaging with new information. True and I also think there must be a certain feeling of unease to want to diagnose children that young with something so serious. Yeah I just thought it was interesting because early onset schizophrenia is a thing and it doesn't seem it's not as rare

as the very early which is below the age of 13 So it does seem like this is what Sandy was coping with or struggling with. And the symptoms of early onset schizophrenia include what we see with Sandy, like withdrawal from friends and family, a drop in performance at school, trouble sleeping, irritability or depressed mood, a lack of motivation, strange behaviour and substance abuse. And in fact, compared with schizophrenia symptoms in adults, teens may actually be more likely to have visual hallucinations, though Sandy only ever talks about auditory hallucinations.

And as Saru mentioned, symptoms of schizophrenia may be difficult to interpret in teenagers and very young people. When childhood schizophrenia begins in early life, symptoms may build up gradually. Early signs and symptoms may be so vague that it's impossible to recognise what's actually wrong. Or the symptoms may just get attributed to a developmental phase. So just being a dick of a teenager or having imaginary friends. How many kids have imaginary friends? How can you tell the difference between that and my kid might actually be seeing something that's not there? Absolutely. It must be so incredibly difficult to, at that age, at 14, to be able to differentiate

effectively between those two things. And that's also assuming that he was, or that anyone in that situation was getting effective access to mental health care. For a parent to just be able to distinguish between those two things, I mean, come on, if an expert can barely do it, how is a parent going to be able to know? But the problem is that when left undiagnosed and untreated, as time goes on, symptoms become more severe and more noticeable. Eventually, the child may develop symptoms of psychosis, including hallucinations, delusions, and difficulty organizing thoughts. As thoughts become more disorganized, there's often a break from reality and full-blown psychosis. And that's exactly what happened in this case.

Sandy would later reveal that during this time, so from when he first started experiencing the voices to when he eventually killed Jonathan, he thought about killing himself on many occasions, but he said that the voices had stopped him. I guess hinted at by the fact that he thought the voices were ghosts and trying to use a Ouija board to speak to them, you'll be unsurprised to hear that Sandy was obsessed with horror films and would watch any that he could get his hands on. And I do think a lot is made of this as we go on to talk about in this case, but again, he's a 14-year-old boy. Of course he's a 14 year old boy of course he's obsessed with horror films i was obsessed with horror films yeah who was exactly what was the first horror film that you watched that like you really remember uh the others the others oh

really i think it was the blair witch project for me you know oh i watched it at a friend's house that's the same thing with the others for me it was a sleepover and just like it was oh my god yeah at least mine wasn't a sleepover it was just the guy who used to live down the road i watched it his house and then i was like yeah i need to go home i need to go home right now i'm so scared it was horrifying you walked home in the dark on your own rather than stay in a house oh it wasn't the dark it was in the middle of the day it was in the middle of the day but we re-watched the Blair Witch Project in Romania and I was still scared I was too it's a scary film it's a fucking scary film what else did we watch The Descent and then we binge watched The Haunting of Hill House yeah I've literally

won't shut up about it everyone I meet I'm like why aren't you why haven't you watched it I don't understand but you must have gone back and watched it again because there were many nights when we were watching it after we'd been out all day in Romania that we'd be watching it. I'd look over at you and you would just be asleep. And I was just watching it on my own in that creepy, creepy fucking house in Romania. And I would be like, I don't really want to wake her up, but I don't want to keep watching this on my own. But yeah, I just asked because one film in particular really stuck with Sandy, even though he was obsessed with horror films and he watched loads and loads of them. And it was the 1989 fantasy thriller Warlock. And I've not actually watched that film. And as much as I want to be committed to the research that we do for these

cases, I watched the trailer. And that was about all I could manage of this particular movie, because it's about a 17th century warlock who travels to the future. And this is straight from the OG trailer. It's, quote, about a warlock with the face of an angel, the charm of the devil, and the powers of a god. And it's, quote, a terrifying adventure that could set the world on fire. Actually, if I was 13 in the 80s, I would have watched the shit out of that. We grew up in the early noughties, not in the 80s. It's not aged well, let's put it like that. But essentially, it's about a male witch that killed unbaptised boys, skinned them and boiled down their fat to make a flying potion. That's quite the plot line. And this is pre-Fight Club, I assume,

so boiling down fat to use it for stuff was probably not in the public consciousness. No, I think it was quite pioneer in that sense. And oh, and it's also got Richard E. Grant in a shit wig, like a really shit wig. And it was actually Richard E. Grant's Hollywood debut. So if that ever comes up in a pub quiz, you now know the answer. That is such a good quiz fact. Well done. And in an interview about it, he said that he's never since had the opportunity to play such a macho role.

And he loved it. The only thing I've seen Richard E. Grant in that I can think of is Widnell and I, and I love that film. Basically, he just plays a foppish actor and is amazing. But probably just what he's like, isn't it? I think that's probably just who he is. Have you not seen it? It's so good. It's one of my top three, I think.

I think it's just like how Johnny Depp is just playing himself in every film. People are going to come for you for saying that. Oh, fucking come at me. I don't care. He's so overrated. Don't get it. Absolutely don't get it. Everyone's always on about how hot he is. I do not get it. I don't get it. Everyone's always on about how hot he is. I do not

get it. I don't see it. He's so weird and creepy to me. Who's your celebrity hot guy? Don't say Johnny Depp. Trevante Rhodes. Who? Oh my god. He's in Moonlight. He's the grown up boy in Moonlight who's a drug dealer. Oh okay. And he's also in Bird Box which I watched two days ago. Mixed feelings. I'm gonna watch it later today. And also Trev in Bird Box, which I watched two days ago. Mixed feelings. I'm going to watch it later today. And also Toronto Roads is in it, so just watch that for the biceps. No, I'm going to watch it. Now, my celebrity hot guy is Jason Momoa.

He also just seems really fucking fun. He does. You just have a great time. Have you seen the video clip of him drinking Guinness and playing darts? Yes, I have. It was in love. Just love. Pure love. But after watching Richard E. Grant in a shit wig boiling small children,

Sandy was filled with a sense of purpose. The voices in his head now started to tell him that Satan was set to return to the earth and if Sandy wanted to be taken on by him as a disciple, he would have to please him. And to do so, he needed to make his very own potion, complete with unbaptised boy bits. So Sandy started to plot, and on July the 8th, 1995, he set his plan into action. I have a question. Unbaptised children, doesn't the devil want them? They go to hell,'re his army i don't know why they needed to be unbaptized there's a lot of question marks around this maybe your baptism

protects you from it maybe that's what it is maybe maybe once you get baptized baptized baptized your fat won't allow someone to fly if they drink it because it's full of jesus yeah it's full of jesus in this apparently they need to be virgins and they need to be unbaptised. Straight from the movie The Warlock. It was a hot Tuesday afternoon in 1995 and Sandy Charles invited eight-year-old William Martin and seven-year-old Jonathan George Timpson to play baseball.

The game started off as normal. Then Sandy hit the ball hard and it landed in the woods, near where they were playing. The three boys went looking for the ball and it was then, when and it landed in the woods, near where they were playing. The three boys went looking for the ball and it was then, when they were deep in the woods, that Sandy grabbed Jonathan and held him down with the help of William. Sandy and William had been well prepared. They had come out to the woods before the baseball game and hidden a knife in the undergrowth.

It was totally premeditated. They had led Jonathan to the spot they had hidden their weapon and now they attacked. Sandy stabbed Jonathan, then beat him over the head with a beer bottle and a rock that were lying nearby. Sure that Jonathan was dead, Sandy ran back to his house and grabbed another knife.

He returned to the body and proceeded to cut 12 strips of skin off Jonathan's body. It was for the potion. Once the boys were done, they dragged Jonathan's body further into the woods and left him there and went home. It wouldn't be long before the alarm was raised. Jonathan's family pretty much immediately realized that he was missing and soon the entire community was searching for him. They found Jonathan's body just two days later, and when they saw the state of his remains, it was immediately obvious that Jonathan hadn't died of natural causes,

and a police investigation to find his killer was launched. And straight away, witnesses came forward to say that they had last seen Jonathan playing with Sandy and William the day that he had vanished. So the boys were immediately brought in for questioning. And at this point, the police, I think, only thought that Sandy and William may have seen someone suspicious hanging around. They probably just thought that these two boys were witnesses. They were totally unprepared for what came out during the interview because Sandy easily confessed to the murder. Sandy Charles was incredibly open in explaining to the police all about his beliefs.

He told them that he had had to kill Jonathan because he needed to impress Satan. When they asked Sandy about the mutilation of Jonathan's body, so the skin strips that had been cut off the boy, Sandy was totally up front. He said that he'd needed Jonathan's skin to make a potion. He also told them about the Warlock movies because yes, there was a sequel that Sandy also bloody loved. So he told them all about his need to make a potion out of the liquefied fat of an unbaptized child so that he could gain the ability to fly. Sandy explained to

the officer questioning him that every thousand years Satan was released upon the earth and that his plan in committing the murder was that Satan would be so impressed that he would take him on as a disciple in the year 2000. And he also told the police about the voices saying, quote, there's a spirit in my room that gives me these thoughts. He also told them that he had been contemplating suicide, but the voices had told him that it might be just as good to kill someone else instead. He said that he thought that Jonathan didn't have a father, which to him was the same as being unbaptised. So that's why he'd chosen Jonathan as a victim. That's funny logic. Yeah, especially because like Sandy's dad wasn't on the scene.

So what does he mean? Did he mean he literally thought that he didn't have a father? He's not exactly got logical thinking. If voices in your head can convince you to murder someone, they can probably convince you that not having a dad is the same as being unbaptised. And if you skin someone who is unbaptised, boil down their skin and drink it, that you'll be able to fly. It's not the most outlandish detail.

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So when the police asked Sandy what he'd done with the skin he'd removed from Jonathan, he told them that the skin was in a can next to the furnace in his basement. He had been trying to melt the flesh, fat and skin so that he could drink it. He told investigators that he had boiled the skin on the family's stove to try and reduce the fat to liquid, based on a scene from the movie The Warlock. The movie also includes an off-camera murder of a young boy whose fat is extracted to make the potion. So there is like a very real like parallel between what he's seen in this film and then what he's tried to do. Now, there are also an absolute plethora of articles and reports that I read out there that said that Sandy had been eating the flesh. But he didn't.

He admits to everything and he is adamant to the police that he didn't do it. Even when I say adamant, that's almost the wrong word. He's not forceful in denying it. He's just like, oh, I just didn't. I just didn't eat it. I didn't do it. And it doesn't really make this case less horrific, but it's just the truth. Like he didn't consume the fat that he took, even though that's why he had taken it originally. Cassandy told police that he had wanted to, but that in the end, he couldn't go through with it. And it doesn't seem in the way that he tells them that it was because of like any kind of remorse, but just because he said apparently that he decided that after the murder, he didn't want to fly after all, and that he quote, wanted to stay just as he was. But I think

probably it maybe had something more to do with like the smell of what happens when you boil down skin and fat. I don't even want to imagine what that smells like. And I think that he just couldn't go through with like putting it in his mouth. I think that's what it was. And whilst he was clear that he never ate the skin, Sandy insisted to police that when it came to the actual murder, he had done it, he couldn't stop himself. And after a marathon confession session, the police had heard enough. They charged 14-year-old Sandy Charles with murder. And in Canada, criminal responsibility begins at age 12. So William Martin, Sandy's accomplice who was only eight at the time,

the police just let him go. They didn't charge him with anything in relation to the murder. And actually throughout the entire investigation and the trial, he was simply referred to by his initial M. Given the magnitude of the crime, it was of course the Royal Canadian Mounted Police or the RCMP who led this investigation. And in the run-up to the trial, the RCMP officers investigating the murder concealed many of the details of the crime for fear of possible mass hysteria. In a public statement before the trial began, RCMP Corporal Dave Hoefel absolutely refused to provide details about the murder. Due, he said, to the possible impact that it would have on jury selection. He told the press, quote,

When you take a look at a 14-year-old doing this to a seven-year-old, there has to be a reason. And there is a reason. We just have to decide whether it's in the public interest to know that reason right now. And I'm not sure whether the community is ready for this or not. In reality, I don't even think the province is ready for it. Perhaps due to how tight-lipped the RCMP were about the investigation, there were accusations that they weren't pursuing this case, as they should have, because the boys were from the indigenous community. And while we absolutely cannot deny that such things happen, of course they do. There is an epidemic of missing and murdered indigenous women in North America.

But in this case, we didn't really find in the research any evidence that this happened during this particular investigation. But that's not to say that it doesn't. It's just not this time. It doesn't seem like there was. It seems like everything happened really quickly with this case that they found the body quickly. They arrested Sandy quickly. He's put on trial the next year. He's found guilty. Like there's never any real feeling that I saw that they tried to sort of ignore this case. It had way too much media attention on it for them to have got away, even if they'd have wanted to, with not following up on this story. But because of how closely the RCMP played this case by not revealing any of

the details, until the trial began, the world didn't have much idea at all of what had really happened. They only knew that Sandy had been arrested. And this in itself was a shock. According to those who knew him, Sandy was not considered a troublemaker. He was actually described by those who knew him as studious, and he'd even taken part in the science fair at his school the very same year as the murder, just like a couple of months before. Compared to some of the other teenagers in town, Sandy was noted as being, quote, not your stereotypical tattooed punk hanging out in the pool hall. But whether or not he looked like the type, he was their man, or should I say boy. But based on the circumstances of the trial, despite only

being 14 years old, Sandy was tried for murder in an adult court. And in June 1996, the trial of Sandy Charles began, and unsurprisingly, his defense lawyer, Barry Singer, pleaded not guilty because of mental incapacity. But the Crown prosecutor, Robin Ritter, told the court how Sandy and his eight-year-old friend, M, had randomly selected Jonathan as their victim and coldly lured him into the woods on the pretext of playing a game. Ritter spoke of Sandy's obsession with the occult and a bloodlust that led him to attack, kill and mutilate the young boy. Ritter also went into great detail, telling the jury that Sandy had pounced on the unsuspecting youngster, stabbing him at least

four times in the throat, body and face with a paring knife. He went on to tell a shocked jury that Sandy had stabbed Jonathan so hard in the face that the knife had become embedded in Jonathan's eye. So to get it out, Sandy had crushed the little boy's skull with a rock and a beer bottle. The prosecution then explained to the court how Sandy had been influenced by the warlock. They had been copying a scene in the movie when they cut strips of flesh and fat from Jonathan's now lifeless body. Prosecutor Ritter told the judge that Sandy had then returned home, placed the strips in a soup can and covered it with foil, put the can on the stove and cooked the flesh to reduce the fat to

liquid. Obviously a narrative like this was enough to terrify any jury. But couple this with Sandy's behaviour in court, and things just got super weird. Because Sandy certainly came across in court as not being totally A-OK. He had grown his nails long and would sit in the wooden dock and scratch into the wood endlessly during the trial. And also, he would make these long moaning and groaning noises as he scratched. It completely freaked everyone out. His own defense attorney, Barry Singer, said that the days that he was doing this and he had to stand in

front of him and talk that even he felt a bit scared. So that Sandy wasn't doing anything to kind of not come across bizarre during this trial. And while he was sat there scratching his nails into the wooden dock, when they broke for recesses, the press would even rush over to where Sandy had been scratching to see if he had been writing anything in the wood. But it had just been like deep scratches. And against the backdrop of his client doing all of this scratching and moaning and groaning,

Barry Singer argued that Sandy wasn't responsible for his actions and that it was a combination of mental illness, a difficult childhood and an obsession with horror films that had led to this horrific crime. Barry explained to the jury that the idea was that if you could cut off the fat of a virgin, unbaptized child, then boil it down and and drink it this would give you the power to fly that idea had come from the movie but the sandy was suffering from such severe delusions that's why he'd been able to believe it because yeah i agree with that like how many of us even as kids could watch those kind of movies and understand the difference between what's real and what's not real and i think this argument is reincarnated so many times, whether it's video

games or whether it's drugs or whether it's horror films, people just do horrible things to other people. Like I really don't think whenever I see this argument raised in court, I just I think it's bunk. Like you can't put violence down to perceive violence or witness violence through another medium. I don't think I think every time it comes up, it's always proved to be not really what was going on. Absolutely. And we do go on to talk about that in a bit more detail. Because yeah, I think, as you said, this comes up time and time again. So it's something worth us talking about. But during Sandy's trial, there was just so much evidence that this was what was wrong with Sandy, that he was just not mentally well. And at his trial, a psychiatrist also testified that Sandy Charles, quote, did not see the victim as human, but as an object whose death was necessary to fulfill his deluded plan. Sandy's mother even testified. She said that her son had a

passion for science fiction movies and had seen the Warlock series at least 10 times. Jean, his mother, also told the judge that her son had admitted to her that he did physically carry out the murder, but he claimed that he was not in control of his actions. Sandy had told his mum that he couldn't stop himself, that it was like a dream and that he didn't want to do it, but it was like it wasn't really him doing it. And on August 2nd, 1996, Sandy Charles was found not guilty by reason of insanity. The judge concluded that Sandy was suffering from a mental disorder, so he was exempt of criminal responsibility. He was transferred to the North Battleford Saskatoon Psychiatric Centre,

where he remains today. He's 37 years old. As you can imagine, the killing of Jonathan Timpson and the subsequent trial of Sandy Charles generated huge amounts of international publicity given the age of the victim and the killer, as well as the bizarre quote-unquote satanic circumstances involved.

And as many expected, the trial also re-sparked the old debate concerning the link between movie violence and real-life crimes. And this debate about the impact of media violence on children is nothing new. The idea of the potential impact of inappropriate or excessively violent content in movies and TV has generated tons of controversy over the years due to concerns that children model their behaviour on graphic violence seen on screen. This moral panic is obviously commonplace.

But does media violence really lead you to youth violence? We, of course, can't answer this. We're not experts. We can only offer our opinion and dig into some of the research that has been done. And there is, of course, the experiment that everyone points at when this kind of issue is raised, the classic Bobo doll experiments. And this was a series of experiments conducted by a psychologist called Albert Bandura in 1961. The purpose of the experiments was to investigate if social behaviours like aggression can be acquired by observation and imitation. And the results did indeed suggest that children tend to imitate aggressive behaviors after they see them being

modeled. But the thing is, the Bobo doll experiments show what happens when children see it in real life, face to face. But the impact of observational learning as it applies to movie and television violence seems more muted. Because the thing is, there is no causal link, no clear causal link, between media violence and real life crimes that has ever been found. Despite absolutely decades and decades of media violence research. There have been so many studies into this and no one has been able to show that there is a real clear link. And I think that we can say that there has certainly been a rise in movie and TV violence over the last couple of decades. Look at the films that come out now compared to even what came out a couple of years ago.

But this hasn't led at all to a similar and comparable rise in real life violence. Surely that in itself undermines the idea that more violent content on TV and movies leads to more violent crime in real life. Because if anything, there has been a sharp decrease in violence during that same period, especially among adolescents. But these panics will always rear their heads when we have such crimes occur. But to me, it seems like a quite lazy thing to point the finger of blame at. And whenever I've seen a case of video games or movie violence or whatever raised, always i'm trying to wreck my brain to think of an example and i'm not managing it but almost always there is some

underlying very very serious mental health issue that is much more important to the crime than the fact that they watched i don't know what's a violent film the terminator people are influenced by we talk about this time and time again whether it's you know people who think they're possessed because they've been influenced by the fact that they've grown up in a particular religious home with hearing these kind of stories, and then they it gets absorbed into their psychosis, and then they present and their psychosis manifests itself as that just the same as that. It's watching these violent films is almost just a problem if that child is already suffering from some sort of underlying mental illness and

they can't tell the difference between what's real and what's not. And while we're not saying that media violence should be left out of the conversation, I think we should be careful about drawing general conclusions and instead consider that violent movies could be a precipitating event for an already troubled child. And in this case, as with many, you don't have to look very far to find more obvious reasons for why this may have happened. In an interview, Michelle Harding, who was at the time of the murder, the elected area director for the Métis nation of Saskatchewan. So she's representing people of mixed white and indigenous ancestry, just like Sandy Charles. So Michelle

Harding said, we've not only lost Jonathan, but we've lost another child, and possibly a third. I think sadly about what their lives could have been like. And I also think what could force an innocent child, or should be innocent at 14, to do something so heinous. Poverty, abuse, and untreated mental illness are generally the leading reasons for such violent crime. And there's a very clear indication of the difficulties that many of the children faced in the community of La Ronge, reflected by the calls that came into a telephone crisis line operated by the La Ronge Native Women's Council. The year before the murder occurred, the centre received calls about 514 children. The calls related to drinking,

abandoned children, parental battery, sexual assault, suicide attempts by the child, suicide attempts by the parent, substance abuse, domestic disputes, parents in crisis, and runaways from foster care. Two-thirds of the total crisis calls were about children. Irvin Waller, a criminologist at the University of Ottawa, pointed out that the high rates of poverty, unemployment and substance abuse combined with low levels of education and the prevalence of single motherhood give many northern indigenous communities characteristics similar to inner cities of the United States. And as in other northern communities in Canada, the economic and social depression and cultural dysfunction in La Ronge meant that the town was plagued by a high rate of suicides, especially among its young people. And it's not

hard to see why. Professor Doug Durst of the Department of Social Work at the University of Virginia noted that until just a generation ago, Indigenous people were routinely educated in residential schools, where they had to abandon their language and culture. Physical and sexual abuse were terrifyingly commonplace. So this generation, which would have been Sandy's mother, having been abused physically and sexually, and then given no support to recover, and then having their difficulties compounded further by living in areas of economic deprivation, well, it's just tragic. And we know, as we said, that poverty, abuse, mental illness, these are absolutely the foundations that cause this kind of violent

crime. And as you said, Hannah, just pointing the finger at like, oh, well, look at this violent movie he was watching is just such a lazy point to make, in my opinion, anyway. So instead of going down the road of talking about movie violence causing teenagers to kill let's talk about the real issues because everything else just seems like a bit of a distraction all of the headlines just talk about the warlock the warlock the skin like it just seems like such a distraction doesn't it oh absolutely because if you're if you're blaming on a film you don't have to deal with the fact that the socio-economic deprivation in that area is serious. That's a much more difficult thing to talk about rather than being like, oh, he watched a film where Richard E. Grant eats children and that's why he murdered someone.

Not he's living in poverty. Richard E. Grant is actually the hero of the film, though. It is another man whose name I can't remember is the warlock, but I can't remember. The guy who plays the warlock is described as a British heartthrob, but he didn't make my heart throb when I looked at a picture of him. His surname is Sands. I can't remember what his first name is. Just wanted to say it before somebody else came to you on Twitter about that. Oh, yeah. Come for me, they will. So let's look at what the actual problems were.

Sandy Charles had an undiagnosed, untreated mental illness. So he obviously is in the right place now. And sometimes we see psychotic killers actually thrive in psychiatric care. Take Ed Gein. He did really well in hospital. But it hasn't been smooth sailing for Sandy Charles. In March 1998, Sandy escaped from the hospital's psychiatric ward and was free for 15 hours before he was recaptured. And then, in 2000, Sandy found himself in yet more trouble

after he was accused of assaulting a prison nurse. The court was told that Charles got into a fight and knocked a nurse unconscious. He was sentenced to one day in solitary confinement before being returned to the psychiatric hospital. But in 2013, Sandy Charles was transferred back to Saskatchewan Hospital in North Battleford after being found no longer a risk, having spent 13 years at the high security regional psychiatric centre in Saskatoon. And this is what Sandy Charles had wanted. He'd been asking for this for a long time. He wanted to move back to Saskatchewan so that he could be nearer to his family and to the people that he knew. And yeah, in 2013, he eventually was

allowed to do that. And as you can imagine, not everyone was thrilled by this because the move was the first step towards reintegrating Sandy Charles back into society. They only made this move because they agreed that they thought that he was no longer a risk. And there is always going to be controversy around how long those who are found to be not criminally responsible should be kept institutionalized. But a 1999 ruling by the Supreme Court of Canada states that a review board must order an absolute discharge if a person is found not to pose a significant threat to public safety. And while of course you can understand the fear that the public can have as a potential release date is discussed,

we have to surely believe that recovery, rehabilitation and redemption are possible for people with schizophrenia who commit crimes like this. Because it seems difficult to reasonably say that those found not criminally responsible should stay in custody for their entire lives. Because according to the Schizophrenia Society of Canada, 93 to 95% of released offenders found not criminally responsible never ever go on to re-offend again. But we have to say that is if they continue to receive treatment, not just they're let off on their own and then they're all good. what we're not saying

is that everyone who has schizophrenia commits violent crime that's categorically not true we're talking about people with schizophrenia who have committed a crime and then have been re-released and this is what we're saying it's just about the support and the continued care it's absolutely not that if you have schizophrenia you are likely to be a violent offender but violent offenders who have got schizophrenia when they are re-released, they have actually a very low percentage of re-offending compared to people who are violent offenders who don't have schizophrenia, as long as they receive that continued support and treatment. That's the key thing. And it seems that despite the fear we'd expect, the public seemed to feel the same way.

Look at the case of the Canadian man Vince Lee who killed 22-year-old Tim McLean on the Greyhound bus in 2008. Tim's mother Carol tried to push for legislation that would keep those found not criminally responsible in custody indefinitely. But even after five years of campaigning, her petition only got 1,200 signatures, which is pretty surprising. I thought people would have jumped on that being like, lock them up and throw them away the key, but it doesn't seem like that's what... I was really surprised by that. Really surprised. She spent five years. Her 22-year-old son was murdered really violently. This guy was released

last year. She petitioned hard for this and only 1,200 signatures. Shocking. That was surprising. And it is a totally brutal case. It's very famous. I'm sure you will have heard of it. Tim fell asleep with headphones on a bus from Alberta to Manitoba. Vince Lee was sat next to him. Lee suddenly pulled out a large knife and began stabbing Tim in the neck and chest. The other passengers managed to escape the bus when the driver pulled off the road. But Lee carried on his attack and actually ended up decapitating Tim McLean. He then lifted up Tim's head and showed it to the horrified passengers stood outside the bus. Lee then went back to Tim's body and began cutting off bits of flesh and eating them. In his 2009 trial, Lee was found to be not criminally responsible for the crime

as he had been suffering from undiagnosed schizophrenia. Lee is said to have performed the attack because God's voice told him McLean was a force of evil and that he needed to execute him. In 2017, so just last year, Vince Lee was released. And while we definitely believe that Lee, or Will Baker as he is now known, isn't evil but sick, the justice system does need to be careful in treating him like he's cured. Or should I say, in not treating him like he's cured. Because all the statistics show, like we just said, that re-offending is super low with offenders who are found not criminally responsible. So due to some form of mental illness.

But this is only when treatment and medication is continued. But the thing is, with absolute discharge, as Vince Lee was given, and as we said, the Canadian Supreme Court ordered that if your review board finds you no longer a criminal, no longer a public risk, you should be given absolute discharge. With that, it means that there is no legal recourse if that offender who has been released stops taking medication or stops seeing a psychiatrist. And I think that's potentially the worrying part about that. So they don't get in trouble if they stop taking their medication. It's not a part of their parole. With Vince Lee,

he's not on parole anymore. That's it. With absolute discharge, it means you're done now. You're off. You're free. You are no longer a public risk. You're not under parole. Absolute discharge means that there will be no legal ramifications if he stops taking his medication and stops seeing a psychiatrist. That is placing a huge amount of responsibility on that person to keep up their end of the deal you know and what happens if if you're in a country where health care is really expensive yeah what happens then who's going to pay for it absolutely and also a lot of those drugs i've read some antipsychotic drugs like that they can make you feel really numb they can make you gain loads of weight loads of people they might feel like oh i'm fine now maybe i'll just stop taking these drugs. And then they'll slip back into their old psychosis. So it does seem worrying when they talk about absolute discharge. That is the case of Sandy Charles and also a brief toe dip into the case of Vince Lee. I remember that happening. I remember watching that on the news. It's truly, truly one of the most horrific things. Imagine just being on a packed bus

and suddenly some guy just takes out a knife and starts stabbing the guy next to him. I think that's why it captured the public imagination so totally is because you don't know who you're sitting next to on the bus, on a train, on a plane. You can't get out, especially one of the, like a greyhound, a long distance. You're on there for hours. And you're just going about your normal life and suddenly someone stabs you in the neck decapitates you and then starts eating you like it is you're right it's completely the most horrific thing it's so unpredictable that people are completely fascinated by this kind of thing i always think about that when i'm on a plane do you that the person next you might kill you i'm on

here for however many hours i can't get out so you just gotta gotta hope they're chill I'm not gonna eat you. I feel really sorry for the guy who was sat next to me on the plane back from India because I was really I was starting to get sick and I was so fidgety I kept moving around and I just felt so sorry for him I was coughing I was like spluttering all over the place. You've definitely given him your germs yeah. Oh he's 100% ill now. You're welcome. You're welcome you're welcome happy new year merry christmas yes we hope that you all had a lovely christmas and new year and that being back at work isn't too traumatizing i'm dreading it and we're so glad to be back and we have so many incredibly exciting things planned for 2019 i mean this show has completely changed my life

quite literally so thank you guys because you're the ones that have helped us do that. Because if you weren't there, it'd just be us two talking into microphones under our duvets and no lives would be being changed. So thank you very much. And yeah, we only were off for a week, but it feels like we've been gone for ages. I'm really glad to be back. So yeah, I'll be more glad to be back next week when I don't sound or feel like this. But apart from that, thank you guys. And speaking of life changes, here are some people who have been doing so by helping support us on patreon.com slash redhanded www dot. Neil, Whitney Gifford, Amy Biscoe, Helena Murphy, Diana Waltz, Holly Ginsberg, Sarah Chamberlain, Tracy, Gemma Frye, Lane Miller, Charlotte Steineck, Joanna, Marina Hogan, Jordan DiStefano,

Jessica Iguero, Maya McKenzie, Heggy Crossland, Samantha Hendricks, and Jessie. Big thank you to Jessie. Bloody hell, do you want to double check that? Well, Jessie, that's a lot. Thank you. Thank you. Shit. Thanks. Everyone else, you can, as said, you can help support the show there. You can follow us on social media at Red Handed, the pod. We're on Instagram, Twitter, Facebook, everything. Not Snapchat. Don't understand Snapchat. Do you understand Snapchat? I don't. I think I had it briefly when I lived in Korea and then deleted it after six months because you can see it might be different now, but you used to be able to see the top three people

that the person was Snapchatting. And I'd just broken up with my boyfriend. I was like, I don't need to be able to see who he's talking to. Oh, absolutely not. Absolutely not. Don't need to give myself access to that. So I deleted it. Exactly.

So we won't be going there. So yeah, come follow us there and get ready for another exciting year of Red Handed in 2019 and we'll see you next week bye bye they say Hollywood is where dreams are made. A seductive city where many flock to get rich, be adored, and capture America's heart.

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