Mike on Crime by Mike McIntyre Read Free Book Online

his mind. He said he had a decent relationship with his stepmother but found she was too authoritative at times, including forcing him to do homework. He admitted to a history of problems with his biological father because of years of abuse he’d witnessed him causing to his mother. “I love everybody I know. I just hate what they do,” said Wiebe.
    Police also seized a handwritten note Wiebe had left behind for other family members: “To all of those that I have hurt: Please forgive me, I have gone mad, Max. May God forgive me. My sweet mother, I grieve you so. May Candis’s soul be saved in heaven. Cherylynn forgive me. Dad forgive me. Why have I done this? Mom, forgive me of this selfish action I’m about to commit. I love you all and am so sorry, especially you mom and Cherylynn. Lord save me.”
    TUESDAY DECEMBER 4, 2001
    They had spent months in a dark and disturbing place—the mind of a troubled teen killer. And they had come to the same conclusion: There’s no way Joey Wiebe should be held criminally responsible for failing to control what they called a “catastrophic rage” that fueled his violent actions.
    Dr. Eric Ellis, a Winnipeg psychologist who has testified for the defence in more than 200 trials across the country, said Wiebe suffered an uncontrollable “meltdown and eruption” when he attacked Moizer without provocation while she slept. “At the time of the killing, he had almost no capacity for judgment. He reports being in a trance-like state, where his body was present but his mind was not. There was almost nothing going through his mind,” he said. “At various times he can describe it to me as if he was standing next to himself, observing himself [kill his mother].”
    Those actions were consistent with borderline personality disorder and post-traumatic stress disorder, which Ellis said had been caused by Wiebe’s horrific childhood which was filled with spousal abuse and parental neglect. “He could no longer control the rage that had been building up since the first years of his life,” said Ellis, who said the only reason his stepmother was murdered was because she was the closest person to him. “This is an event which had nothing to do with the person who was the subject of it. It could have been anybody in the bed that night,” he told court.
    Dr. Robert Hill, an Ontario psychiatrist, agreed with the diagnosis and said the illness could manifest itself “in bizarre or severe forms of behaviour.” “There is clear evidence [Wiebe] wasn’t able to distinguish between right and wrong. He didn’t have the mental capacity,” Hill testified. “Unfortunately and tragically, he was not able to change or stop his behaviour because it wasn’t as if he was carrying out the act. Some other force or power had consumed him.”
    The Crown asked both doctors if Wiebe could be faking his symptoms, but they said the evidence was overwhelming and foolproof that his mental illness was legitimate. Both doctors said Wiebe told them his father regularly abused his biological mother in his early childhood years, both physically and verbally.
    â€œHe was overwhelmed and scared and terrorized by the life threatening violence he witnessed against his mother. He was so close to her that he was practically experiencing the terror himself,” said Ellis.
    Dr. Fred Shane, a forensic psychiatrist, said the young man’s mental illness acted like a powerful narcotic which rendered him helpless: “It was as though in a sense he had been given a drug, like LSD or cocaine ... which caused the psychotic episode with catastrophic results.” He said Wiebe’s traumatic upbringing, which included years of witnessing his father abuse his biological mother, left him unable to cope in society. “In his head, he had a Columbine sort of fantasy for his school,” said Shane, adding any number of