The following is an extract from Infamous True Crimes and Trial Volume #1 - Sleepwalking Slayers by Guy Hadleigh available on Amazon here
The steamy stillness of a midsummer Kentucky night is shattered. A madman, guns blazing, has broken into the home of 16-year-old Jo Ann Kiger. But it’s all a dream: Jo Ann wakes... she has shot and killed her father and brother. The unconscious is no respecter of law.
One of the most valuable assets any detective can have is the ability to imagine himself in the position of the criminal he is hunting. "What would I do if I were in his place?” That is the line of thought which brings success to so many crime investigations. “If I wanted to rob that bank... if I intended to kill that man... how would I set about it?”
Many detectives commit the crime, time and time again, inside their own minds. Some become so absorbed that their lives are dominated by their current cases. They work on the cases through the day. They mull them over as they drift into the limbo-land of sleep. And, just occasionally, there is a danger of them becoming obsessed.
Robert Ledru, a brilliant murder detective, did become a victim of his own dedication. It began to manipulate his mind —and it transformed him into a Sleep-Walking Slayer.
Courts of law, on both sides of the Atlantic, have returned "not guilty” verdicts on men and women accused of a wide variety of crimes —although the people concerned admitted the act and were seen committing it. These have involved allegations of dangerous driving... shop-lifting... money thefts, and of first-degree murder. Charges have been dismissed because the accused have convinced judges and juries that, at the time of the offence, they were fast asleep.
The innocent killer
Ledru provides one of the most dramatic examples of this phenomenon of somnambulistic crime, for he is the only man in recorded history who has tracked himself down as the innocent killer. But, before considering his extraordinary case, let us look at the broad picture of nightmares and sleep-walking crime.
When a man is sleeping the defences of his mind are relaxed; fears and violent emotions which he has suppressed through the day —or which he may not even know exist —are free to roam out of their dark corners. The subconscious, which still bears the imprints of our primeval ancestors, takes control, and the shackles of inhibition and convention are torn away.
That is why so many sleep-walkers display such startlingly uncharacteristic behaviour—why shy and respectable women wander naked through busy streets, and why gentle and compassionate men become savagely brutal killers. Sleepwalking, which usually starts an hour or two after falling asleep, is far more common than many people realize. Britain has half a million sufferers and America has two million. Children are more prone to it than adults, with 5 out of 100 sleepwalking at some time compared with the adult ratio of 2 in every 100.
Killings have been committed by sleep-walking children but, before we get to examples, let us look at a much simpler case —that of two-year-old Craig Welsh. In York, England, he was recently seen walking in his bare feet between rush-hour cars and lorries on one of the city's busiest streets —wearing just his pyjama top and rubber pants.
Analysis of the sleep-walking state reveals that the sleeper is invariably grappling with some problem. But a child of only two? What sort of inner turmoil could provoke him into somnambulism? The most common reason is that the child wants to escape from some situation which, while appearing trivial to an adult, seems intolerable to him. Possibly he feels he has been scolded or punished unfairly.
In his sleep he dreams of escaping from the unfairness, and so urgent is the need that he really acts out the escape. In Lancashire there was a far more serious case. A seven-year-old boy climbed into the cot of his baby sister and lay on top of her. She was suffocated and the coroner, after hearing that the boy was sleep-walking at the time, recorded a verdict of misadventure.
But what stimulated that misadventure? Unconscious jealousy of the newly-arrived “intruder”? A burning desire, normally buried in the boy's subconscious, to return to his old place as the pampered baby of the family?
Parents have also been killed by their own innocently sleeping children. Carl Kiger, a successful local-government official in Kentucky, a typical victim, was shot five times by his 16-year-old daughter Jo Ann. On August 16, 1943, Mr. and Mrs. Kiger and their two children—Jo Ann and six-year-old Jerry —went to bed early. Soon after midnight Jo Ann, who had a history of sleep-walking, had a vivid nightmare; a huge madman with wild eyes was easing his way into the house. She saw him creeping up the stairs and she was convinced he was going to murder the rest of the family. It was up to her to save them.
There is a popular but completely false belief that sleep-walkers tend to walk slowly with their arms protectively extended in front of them. In fact, the sleeper usually sits up quietly, gets out of bed and starts to move about in a clumsy and confused way; soon his movements become more co-ordinated and complex and the only clue to his somnambulistic state is the blank expression in his eyes.
This is how Jo Ann Kiger was on that August night. She took two loaded revolvers belonging to her father and first went to the “rescue” of her little brother: one bullet went into his head, two more went into his body. He never woke.
But the “nightmare madman” was still amok in the Kigers' once-peaceful suburban house. Jo Ann chased him into her parents' bedroom and blazed away with both guns. Her father died almost immediately. Her mother, 49-year-old Mrs. Jennie Kiger, was shot in the hip. Suddenly Jo Ann woke up —still holding the guns and with the nightmare still lingering in her mind. She stared in horror at the body of her father and said: “There’s a crazy man here who's going to kill all of us.”
She was arrested on a charge of first-degree murder but, because of the sleepwalking defence, was acquitted.
Blemishes on the mind
What really caused that tragedy? Our most deeply-rooted motivations, of which we may not even be aware, are a complicated legacy of the past —as it has impinged on us and on our ancestors. Anxieties and irrational dislikes are often buried deeply because they are mental blemishes, “warts” on the mind, which people are too frightened or too inhibited to consciously recognize.
A man, for instance, may have repeated nightmares in which he is being strangled: this may not be a fear which worries him in the daytime and he may see no reason why it should haunt his nights. But, if it were possible for him to trace all his own history, he might well find that when he was a few days old he had almost suffocated in his cot. The incident has long gone into oblivion but the scar is still etched on his mind.
Legacy of dread
The same applies to the illogical fears and superstitions which we have unconsciously inherited from our long-dead ancestors.
Our ancestors lived in terror of the beasts that prowled through the night. In their caves and rough huts they knew that death could be stalking them, that they might have to kill or be killed. Fraser, in a small and shabby house in 19th-century Scotland, wrestled through his sleep with that legacy of dread. The adrenalin surged through him in exactly the way it had done through his forebears. He jumped from his bed. He fought the monster and he killed it: and then he found it was his baby.
This common legacy of ours is still there, whether we realize it or not, and it forms a background tapestry to our thoughts: occasionally we make use of it and then we tend to talk about a “hunch" or about “acting on instinct”. The normal conscious mind, one not shadowed by mental sickness, is capable of keeping these mental blemishes in their proper perspective. However, during sleep the conscious reasoning process is no longer in command —and so there are tragedies such as the one at the Kiger household.
The Kiger case was a classic demonstration of somnambulism being stimulated by insecurity, a motivation which psychiatrists know is immensely common among children. A child hears his parents quarrelling, perhaps, and hears them threatening to leave each other. This frightens him and the fear permeates his dream: he is going to lose one or maybe both of them; he is going to be robbed of their love and protection.
There does not have to be a row. This pervading sense of insecurity could be fuelled by a chance remark, by a wrongly-interpreted remark even, which festers in the sub-conscious.
Jo Ann Kiger deeply loved her family. The bond was so important to her that she had an obsessive fear that, in some way, she might be robbed of them, and although this fear may not have been in her conscious mind it was firmly lodged in her sub-conscious. She was an intelligent girl and, if she had been awake on that awful night and had really seen an intruder, she would probably have screamed and raised an alarm: it is most unlikely that she would have tried to tackle him single-handed. But, with reason suspended in her trance-like state, her response was purely emotional. She was going to lose her father, her mother and her brother. She alone was alive to the danger and she alone could save them.
Her brother was the smallest member of the family and so the most vulnerable. That was why her sub-conscious mental blemish took her initially to his room, and that was why he was the first to die. Children are more susceptible to sleepwalking than adults because they react more vigorously to most forms of mental stimulation. They have fewer inhibitions and have not learned the average adult’s habit of self-control.
Their lips may tremble
There are ways to recognize potential sleep-walkers, even a day or so before they have set a foot out of bed. They often become quieter or more sullen, their lips may tremble a little or they may have unusual difficulty in pronouncing certain words. These are signs of some problem deep in the mind.
After a sleep-walking session the sufferer’s heart usually beats faster than usual and the palms of his hands perspire more than normal. Most sleep-walkers, of course, wander harmlessly around. They may go downstairs or walk along corridors in blocks of flats and then return to their beds without realizing they have ever left them.
Some have killed themselves. One youngster, the son of a professor at Cambridge University, doused his clothing in turpentine and then set fire to himself. Another drank prussic acid. Many have fallen through windows or from great heights. In nearly every part of the world there have been cases of sleep-walkers who have woken up to find themselves in a state of acute embarrassment.
Back in 1954, for instance, there was a housewife who was found doing a Tarzan act, swinging completely naked from the branch of a garden tree. She had to be rescued by her husband and the fire brigade.
Many others find that in their sleep they have innocently broken the law. A 19-year-old apprentice bricklayer was charged with dangerous driving at Chesterfield, Derbyshire, and witnesses described how he was travelling at 60 miles an hour when he crashed into a car. The case was dismissed because the court accepted that he was fast asleep.
At Lymington, Hampshire, a 20-yearold girl admitted having taken more than £3 belonging to fellow servants in a large house. She was also found not guilty because she too had been sleep-walking. In February, 1970, a 51-year-old housewife appeared at South West London sessions accused of stealing a case and a calendar from a store. A store detective said that he followed her outside and shouted after her but “she didn’t seem to hear”. Again the defence of somnambulism was accepted.
Psychiatrists agree that these cases of “innocent dishonesty” again have their roots in our ancestry. Primitive man used to take what he wanted when he wanted it; to him this was absolutely natural. Through the centuries, for the majority of people, that sort of instinct has been repressed, and has become antisocial and unlawful, but the unconscious mind owes no particular allegiance to the laws of modern man.
The full potential horror of sleepwalking, however, is brought home most forcibly by the violent killings and the number of incidents which almost end in a violent killing. At Devon Assizes in February, 1952, consultant psychiatrist Dr. Hugh Scott Forbes emphasized the startling frequency of somnambulistic attacks. Giving evidence in the case of a 34-year-old Royal Navy lieutenant who was charged with attempted wife-murder, he described two other cases of somnambulists attacking their wives which, to his, personal knowledge, had taken place in the previous eighteen months. One had tried to strangle his wife on two occasions and the other had injured his wife with his fists.
The lieutenant admitted that he had fractured his wife's skull with an axe and that he had woken up to find himself with his hands around her throat. His wife told the court: “Our married life has always been perfectly happy— always. We have never had a serious quarrel. At no time, apart from that night, has he ever used any kind of violence towards me."
The defending counsel, Mr. Dingle Foot, asked Dr. Forbes if a man in a state of somnambulism would have any conscious purpose.
The psychiatrist replied: “No, he is living out a dream. He is not fully in touch with reality. He is incapable of forming any logical purpose.”
Dr. Forbes added that somnambulism was not a mental disease; it existed mostly as an entity in itself, without any other abnormality. It did not cause any form of mental deterioration and it never necessitated certification. It tended to recur. After a retirement of ten minutes the jury returned a verdict of not guilty, and the lieutenant left the court arm-in-arm with his wife.
Some legal experts feel that somnambulism, if it can be established beyond doubt, provides such clear evidence of innocence that it is pointless to put a man through the ordeal of a formal hearing in a criminal court. That was the attitude the authorities adopted towards William Pollard, a 24-year-old chicken farmer of Arkansas after he became a Sleep-Walking Slayer.
Everyone in the district knew that Pollard was an habitual sleep-walker. One typical night, wearing his pyjamas, he loaded his wagon with chickens he intended to sell and started to make the journey to the nearby town of Little Rock; then he woke up, wondering why he was not in bed.
Nobody was very concerned about this type of escapade; his friends thought it was all a bit of a joke. “Wait till he nods off.” they used to say. “He always works best when he's asleep.” But in November, 1946, the joke exploded into horror.
Pollard had a nightmare in which he was being attacked by a strange man. He lashed out in self-defence and then awoke. That was all he could remember - just a short and simple nightmare. But his four-year-old daughter was dead.
Strange and vacant look
Fuller details of that terrible night were given to a coroner's jury by Mrs. Pollard. She had been woken up by noises and had been aghast to see her husband, a strange and vacant look on his face, aimlessly playing a torch over an object on the floor; that object was their daughter Brenda and the back of her head had been crushed. Mrs. Pollard screamed hysterically but the child seemed beyond help.
Pollard had looked at her in a bemused way and shook his head hopelessly; he could not remember. He could not remember if he had dragged the child from her crib or not. He could not remember what he had hit her with or if he had hit her at all; he could not even remember where he had got the torch. All he could remember was the nightmare and how he had lashed out.
When he had collected his senses, Pollard rushed to get his father from next door and the two men took the child to a local hospital; she died within minutes of getting there. The authorities felt that, as Pollard's reputation as a sleep-walker was so well-established, he was not to be held responsible for any crime, so no charges were made.
Some people may feel that the slaying of little Brenda Pollard was no more than a gruesome psychological accident, one of those freaks of behaviour which cannot be explained, and this view might seem to be endorsed by the fact that Pollard was undeniably devoted to the girl. However, there is a strong line of expert opinion which indicates that the cause of the tragedy was Pollard’s survival instincts and those to protect his wife and child.
His sub-conscious reacted to the “nightmare intruder’’ and immediately propelled his body into action. Fright, in this raw and basic state, leads to one of two things, flight or fight. Pollard, aware of the need to defend his family, chose to fight.
The snatching of the child from the crib, even though he could not consciously remember it, could well have been a desperate attempt to pull her to safety. Then, if she had struggled in his arms, his imagination was almost certainly capable of transforming her into the person who was opposing him. So his daughter could become the enemy who was threatening the safety of the home and who had to be destroyed.
The sleeping strangler
A very different type of unconscious motivation would seem to have been behind the curious strangling of Jean Constable. The way she died, in England in 1961, is described in a separate article but here let us consider the psychological battle which must have raged in the mind of her sleeping strangler.
Staff Sergeant Willis Boshears had a marriage which was apparently normal and quite happy; but on New Year's Eve his wife and three young children were away visiting relatives and he was left all alone.
In the early hours of the following morning he was still asleep when he killed a girl who was sharing his bed. As he later explained to the jury: “There was no quarrel or argument. At no time did I make any overtures or sexual advances to her, nor did I have any desire to kill her or harm her in any way.”
Other evidence seemed to confirm the truth of that statement; so why, then, did Jean Constable die? One of the most probable explanations is that Boshears’ sub-conscious mind regarded her as a dangerous intruder. He wanted the company of his wife and this woman beside him had stolen his wife's place; there could be no hope of his wife and children returning to him while this girl was there. So the girl represented a threat to his marriage, and he had to get rid of her.
That may sound as if the killing had undertones of premeditation but this was certainly not the case; the subconscious cannot be indicted of premeditation.
The most bizarre case of a somnambulist killing was the one involving the French detective Robert Ledru. He was a man with a fine record of success which, to a great extent, he owed to his own lively imagination. He specialized in murder and he would try to put himself inside the mind of the criminal; so, in his head, he executed murder after murder, perfecting a small point here, a tiny detail there. He was conscientious, perhaps too conscientious, and in 1888 his long arduous hours brought him a nervous breakdown.
He went to convalesce by the sea at Le Havre and, because the nights were cold, he got into the habit of wearing his socks in bed; one morning, after sleeping for twelve hours, he was perplexed to find that his socks were damp. There seemed no explanation but, then, it was not all that important; he shrugged, put on fresh socks, and forgot the matter.
A chill of recognition
Later that day he received a message from his chief in Paris: the naked body of a man called Andre Monet had been found with a bullet wound on the beach at nearby Sainte Adresse. Ledru's vast experience might prove useful to the local police and, although he was still on leave, would he be interested in helping? Ledru was delighted and, naturally, flattered.
The dead man had been running a small business in Paris and he had apparently gone for a night swim; his clothing was found in a neat pile near the body. As far as could be established, he had no particular enemies and he was not a rich man. So what possible motive could there be? There were two clues to the identity of the killer but the local police did not consider them to be useful.
In the sand, quite near the body, there were distorted footprints which had apparently been left by stockinged feet. Then there was the bullet which, it was established by ballistics experts, had been fired from a Luger. It was so very little to go on; Lugers were such common weapons and, indeed, even Ledru himself had one.
But as Ledru examined the footprints through a magnifying glass he noticed a detail which sent a chill of horror through him; in each footprint there was something missing, the imprint of one toe. Ledru, as the result of an accident, had one toe missing from his right foot.
He pulled off his right shoe and pressed his foot into the sand; then he compared the prints and realized why he had woken with damp socks. His Luger was at his hotel and he found it had a discharged cartridge in the breech.
Robert Ledru had made up murders in his mind just once too often; they were fine and safe when his conscious mind kept his fantasies on a leash and made use of them, but when they percolated through into his unconscious mind they became a grim reality.
He surrendered himself to the authorities, but a court decided that he could not be held responsible. But, because doctors warned that he might kill again while asleep, he had to agree to report nightly to a Paris prison to be locked in. So until he died in his mid-eighties in 1939 he spent his days in freedom but, for the hours of darkness, he always submitted to captivity.
Nightmares in harness
However, no one should imagine that nightmares, in themselves, are dangerous; they can, in fact, be blessings in hideous disguise. Those grotesque fantasy creatures which trespass through your sleep can actually be harnessed rather like cart horses to work for you.
They can, for example, give you advance warning of imminent illnesses. British psychiatrist Dr. J. A. Hadfield reports a typical example. He had a patient who repeatedly had the same frightening dream —that he was paralyzed in the mouth and one arm; months later he did become partially paralyzed in the mouth and in one arm.
This man, Dr. Hadfield concluded, had been suffering mild attacks in his sleep, for the unconscious can pick up tiny symptoms from the body long before they penetrate the conscious mind, and translate them into dream form.
The most important function of nightmares and dreams in general, is that they release tension. They let us indulge in refreshingly different fantasies, in amazing adventures and even in crimes which real life denies us. Only in the minority of cases is this release function ever likely to develop into tangible physical action. But from that minority come the pitiful ones who, usually unexpectedly, are identified as Sleep-Walking Slayers.
