Sleep Crimes

[Firevixie]

I was watching a documentary last night about people committing crimes while sleepwalking, with no apparent reason to do so.

Case #1:
The guy is with his girlfriend at a hotel. Apparently he kills her while sleepwalking, wakes up, and calls the police telling them that he thinks he killed his girlfriend in his sleep, though he has no recollection of it whatsoever. Police investigators start to doubt the sleepwalking excuse, because the crime seemed to be extremely well calculated; not something you would come up with while sleepwalking. The guy is investigated by a sleep disorder expert at Stanford, and it's discovered that the guy does some extremely violent sleepwalking.

Case #2:
A guy is at his apartment. He gets up sleepwalking, gets in his car, drives all the way to his parents-in-law's house, brutally beats his father-in-law, and then beats and kills his mother-in-law. After he is done, he gets in his car and drives away. Apparently on his way back to his apartment, he notices that he's covered in blood, goes to the police, and tells them that he thinks that he killed someone, but has no memory of it at all.

Both of them were acquitted.

What do you guys think about this?

[crossfade]

I hardly believe all those things.In case 1,i wonder why the guy not awaken when he killing his girlfriend?I bet his girlfriend will start scream and yell after seeing her boyfriend something wrong.Thats no way the guy still can sleep sweet under such condition.He is just too dangerous for anyone and why is this accident not happened during his earlier days??

Case 2:Unbelievable!!!that man can drive safely even dreaming :blink:.Under such unconcious condition,he can regonised his parent-in-law's home,opened their door and went in to kill them.I really stunned at a moment after finished reading.Man,this is too much.I can't accept that.

Anywhere as a ex-youth cadet senior,i heard my senior encountered sleep walking incident but not that serious.During a camp,my seniors knew his friend had sleepwalking habit.So,they all slept on the sleepwalker body to ensure he was not sleepwalking anywhere as it will be dangerous for him inside the jungle.But the next morning,the sleepwalker dissappeared from the tent.He was saw by an organiser committee and awaken by committee using cold river water.You know what was the sleepwalker doing?
He went to the place where we keep woods there to break wood(we break the woods for easier to make fire).Luckily the head quarter was near the woods-keep-place,if not something bad might happen.

[pumpkin13]

Well, you can sleep walk, sleep talk, sleep eat, so why not sleep kill? The subconscious is an incredibly complex and powerful thing, it helps shape who you are from a very early age.

The vast majority of people have a trigger in their brain which, when they go to sleep, basically locks down the bodies muscles so they cannot perform the actions that they dream in their sleep.

People sleep walk and so on because their trigger is faulty or sometimes doesn't kick in at all.

So have you ever had a dream where you're killing someone or beating someone up or doing something that you'd never do in real life? Now take away your "safety catch" and you could very well actually end up acting that action out in your sleep.

As for how well calculated the crimes seem, if someone can make a ham cheese and pickle sandwich in their sleep and unwrap and rewrap all the various items with clingfilm and place them back exactly where they were in the fridge so that your wife doesn't know where all the food is going for five years, then yeah it's perfectly possible.

My subconscious often produces dreams that are far more fantastical and complex than anything my conscious could produce during the day, seriously, my subconscious could be a best selling author lol.

I hardly believe all those things.In case 1,i wonder why the guy not awaken when he killing his girlfriend?I bet his girlfriend will start scream and yell after seeing her boyfriend something wrong.Thats no way the guy still can sleep sweet under such condition.He is just too dangerous for anyone and why is this accident not happened during his earlier days??

As for not waking up at her screaming, during the point when he'd be dreaming at this stage he'd be in deep sleep, for some people not even fire alarms can wake them up. Her screaming would just fuel his imagination as his subconscious turns her screaming into the rages of something trying to attack him making him fight back even harder.

As for it not happening earlier in his life, firstly it might have, but not to this severe extent, the story doesn't say, secondly, it might have been triggered by something happening in his personal life, one of his parents might have died, he might have been fired from his job etc.

Case 2:Unbelievable!!!that man can drive safely even dreaming :blink:.Under such unconcious condition,he can regonised his parent-in-law's home,opened their door and went in to kill them.I really stunned at a moment after finished reading.Man,this is too much.I can't accept that.

When you learn something, particularly if you learn to do it well or it comes naturally to you, it becomes engrained in your subconcious. For example, your personal mobile number, i know that off by heart, or my bank account details. So this accounts for how he can find his parent-in-law's house. It's similar for driving, even more so that it would be engrained in your subconcsious if your driving for a while everyday, it's not unreasonable that your subconscious would either be able to learn it or simply re-enact what you do when your conscious, he may have recently driven over to his inlaws, or maybe he passes their house everyday on the way to work etc.

[Fatstogey]

This is so crazy. LMAO. I was thinking about this last night!

LOL I sleep with a gun near me. I was thinking "what if i started sleep walking and shot my roomate." LOL Thats crazy.

I dont sleep walk. But it was just somethign i was thinking about last night. lol

[TW501]

Apparently there have been a lot of cases like this. Not just with killing, but with robbery and sexual assault too. To someone who doesn't sleepwalk, it must be odd to think about how you could do that sort of thing, but it is well-documented.

[ms07gtr]

Please, anyone with a logical mind can see right through that load of BS. Your not going to get in your car, drive XXmiles through traffic, avoiding other cars/stopsigns/signal lights/pedestrians, make complex turns, arrive at a destination, load a gun, walk into a house, find a person, aim, and shoot them dead while sleeping. Personaly I think its a load of BS like the temporary insanity plea. That is a Premeditated Murder let off the hook by an ignorant judge and even more ignorant jury.

[Exploits]

Its already been generally proven that while you are sleep walking, you possess no fine motor control skills. Therefore driving would have been impossible in that one.

I can't find any actual article for proof, since Google is down for me, but I very much recall it.

[TW501]

Well the psychological examinations of the people involved seem to say otherwise. People killing while sleepwalking has been documented, and while I'm sure some killer tried to pull off the defense, it really has occured. It is called Homicidal Somnambulism, and there have been something like 65 cases of it. Here is an article pertaining to the subject.
http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/uk/4362081.stm

[Firevixie]

Found a link to the cases:

Case #1:
http://www.msnbc.msn.com/id/29658353/#storyContinued

Case #2
http://www.citynews.ca/news/features_4792.aspx?&categoryurl=http://www.citynews.ca/news/features_4268.aspx

I don't know if it's real or not, but I just don't understand how someone can be let off so easily for a crime, regardless of the circumstances. Shouldn't that person be under any kind of medical/psychiatric supervision?

[ms07gtr]

Psychological evaluations are not fact. Psycology is interperatation of what is observed, and therefore can be viewed to say whatever you want it to say. That is also why if you have a single person evaluated by 10 differnet psychologist you will get 10 different results. This is well known in that field.

If it was say to strangle someone in the same room, I could see that as in the relm of possibility. Cars, guns, airplanes, building a small block chevy, not going to happen sans-consiousness. Hell most people can't drive or shoot while awake.

[pumpkin13]

Found a link to the cases:

Case #1:
http://www.msnbc.msn.com/id/29658353/#storyContinued

Case #2
http://www.citynews.ca/news/features_4792.aspx?&categoryurl=http://www.citynews.ca/news/features_4268.aspx

I don't know if it's real or not, but I just don't understand how someone can be let off so easily for a crime, regardless of the circumstances. Shouldn't that person be under any kind of medical/psychiatric supervision?

He is. And if he wasn't, if he murdered his wife in his sleep and they were perfectly happy he'll be suffering the rest of his life for it even if he isn't in jail.

Here's something similar... http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=lPMA-vNvC3Y

[maxime1007]

Please, anyone with a logical mind can see right through that load of BS. Your not going to get in your car, drive XXmiles through traffic, avoiding other cars/stopsigns/signal lights/pedestrians, make complex turns, arrive at a destination, load a gun, walk into a house, find a person, aim, and shoot them dead while sleeping. Personaly I think its a load of BS like the temporary insanity plea. That is a Premeditated Murder let off the hook by an ignorant judge and even more ignorant jury.

That is what an ignorant like you think.
Before talking try to know at least a bit of the subject you are talking about otherwise it only make you look like a moron who think the reality bend to what he know -.-

[ms07gtr]

Would you like me to list all the grammatical errors in your post?

[kochito22]

It'd be pretty pointless. I don't expect much from people when it comes to grammar on the internet.

[ms07gtr]

Thus why I can't take them seriously.

[kochito22]

Here's a plausible way to kill someone while sleeping.

An overweight man is sleeping next to his wife. He rolls over on her. Her nose and mouth are covered by his man-boobs. She struggles subconsciously but suffocates to death.

[ms07gtr]

Actually that happens with mothers and babies on a regular basis.

[maxime1007]

It'd be pretty pointless. I don't expect much from people when it comes to grammar on the internet.

What is pointless is to be talking with someone who think the world resolve on his sole knowledge who is limited to almost nothing in this case, only on what he think and his reasonning on the subject without any proof to support his light argumentation

Ms07gtr, my poor grammar doesn't mean anything. I can easely write the same shit perfectly in another language and the same point will come from it: You are an idiot

[pumpkin13]

Would you like me to list all the grammatical errors in your post?

quit your grammatical naziness. English probably isn't their first language, cut them some slack. Attacking someone's grammar is also the lowest form of retort to someone's point or arguement, indicating you have little else to attack them with in terms of a valid arguement.

[Firevixie]

Psychological evaluations are not fact. Psycology is interperatation of what is observed, and therefore can be viewed to say whatever you want it to say. That is also why if you have a single person evaluated by 10 differnet psychologist you will get 10 different results. This is well known in that field.

If it was say to strangle someone in the same room, I could see that as in the relm of possibility. Cars, guns, airplanes, building a small block chevy, not going to happen sans-consiousness. Hell most people can't drive or shoot while awake.

Sleepwalking is not a psychological evaluation. It's a condition. And I bet that a person with a sleepwalking disorder will be evaluated by 10 or 20 doctors and all of them will come up with a similar, if not the same, conclusion. Just because you're narrow-minded and can't even imagine such an episode in your relm of possibility (you should check your own grammar before chewing out other people for theirs) doesn't mean it's not real or that it's impossible, except maybe in your head.

Feed your head:
http://www.emedicinehealth.com/sleepwalking/article_em.htm
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sleepwalking

[DC_VulcanRaven]

I think everyone is making great points, but I'm leaning a lil more toward pumpkin on this one...
I think this sort of thing IS possible; although very unlikely.
I also think that people kill, and then look for a cop-out, and use this to get away with it. It's sick, but people are resourceful.
If we knew more about the human brain, then we could prove people guilty or innocent better. But we dont.
We use 10*% of our available Muscle/brain, on average. Some people surpass that number, rarely. But we hardly know why or how most things in the brain work, so we cant rule out this sort of thing, or reject it.
Therefore, a compromise would be most advantageous.

[blunt_smoker_420]

Its very very hard to believe but i can see something like that happening, not to that extreme though.

[TW501]

I think everyone is making great points, but I'm leaning a lil more toward pumpkin on this one...
I think this sort of thing IS possible; although very unlikely.
I also think that people kill, and then look for a cop-out, and use this to get away with it. It's sick, but people are resourceful.
If we knew more about the human brain, then we could prove people guilty or innocent better. But we dont.
Actually, yes we do. There have been a lot of studies on the brain's subconcious, and in the cases where people were acquitted for this sort of thing, there was obviously lots of psychological examination. The courts don't operate on the honor system; if someone claims that they killed someone while sleepwalking and not out of malicious intentions, there will be complex psychological examination and a lot of evidence will need to be presented to pull off such a defense.
We use 10*% of our available Muscle/brain, on average. Some people surpass that number, rarely. But we hardly know why or how most things in the brain work, so we cant rule out this sort of thing, or reject it.
Therefore, a compromise would be most advantageous.
Urban legend, not true.
http://www.snopes.com/science/stats/10percent.asp