Episode 5 of Crime Historian: the Podcast is a short episode detailing three stories about people who committed bizarre crimes/actions and then successfully used the sleepwalking defense. In 1987, a Canadian man drove to his mother-in-law’s house and killed her while he slept. In 1859, a British woman threw her baby out the window while she dreamed her apartment building was on fire. In 2005, a man was acquitted of rape after claiming he had been sleepwalking while committing the act. Tune in to episode 5 here or on your favorite podcast app to learn more about these stories: https://soundcloud.com/user-293072616/episode-5-sleepwalking-and-criminality .
Note: It’s been over a year and a half since we released an episode. Life has settled down a bit since then, so be expecting new episodes more regularly!
Sources:
- https://www.psychologytoday.com/us/blog/the-superhuman-mind/201212/sleep-driving-and-sleep-killing
- https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Homicidal_sleepwalking
- https://www.psychologytoday.com/us/blog/day-in-day-out/201212/sleepwalking-killers-and-what-they-tell-us-about-sleep
- https://www.sleepfoundation.org/articles/sleep-and-parasomnias
- https://toronto.citynews.ca/2006/10/27/man-acquitted-of-sleepwalking-murder-running-for-school-trustee-in-durham/
- https://sleepforensicmedicine.org/case-studies/sleep-terrors/
- The Book of Strange and Curious Legal Oddities: Pizza Police, Illicit Fishbowls, and Other Anomalies of the Law That Make Us All Unsuspecting Criminals by Nathan Belofsky
- https://historycollection.co/12-sleepwalking-killers-history-will-make-want-lock-doors-night/3/
- https://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/uknews/1505918/Sleepwalker-cleared-of-three-rapes.html
