seventeen years’ incarceration, the forty-five-year-old strolled out of Ferndale minimum-security prison east of Vancouver in British Columbia. At 5:20 a.m. the following morning, he telephoned the Abbotsford police department and asked them to pick him up. Back in custody, he was transferred to a higher-level security prison, where his day passes were revoked. Perhaps the beast had come to love his cage.
Despite both being lumped under the category of “rampage murderer,” Marc Lépine and Peter John Peters had drastically differing motivations. Whereas Lépine, a classic mass murderer, was determined to die and take as many “feminists” with him as possible, all but one of Peters’s spree crimes occurred primarily because he wanted to escape imprisonment.
Table 3: Comparing and Contrasting Marc Lépine and Peter John Peters
Italics indicate a match.
----
* Some sources say that Marc was fired in 1984. Perhaps owing to his mother’s position at the hospital, he was granted a second chance before blowing it again in 1987.
Chapter 2
The Problem with Boxes
One newspaper source consulted during the research for this book referred to Peter John Peters as a “sexual sadist,” an individual who “derives sexual excitement from the psychological or physical suffering (including humiliation) of the victim.” [25] Sadistic tendencies often develop in children who have been subjected to repeated physical or emotional agony, and who compensate as adults by inflicting pain upon another, thereby becoming the aggressor rather than the victim. Now that we have developed a clear understanding of the difference between a mass murderer like Marc Lépine and a spree killer like Peter John Peters, I will attempt to alleviate my own academic torment by irritating you with a series of “buts.”
According to the FBI’s Crime Classification Manual , the key difference between mass murderers and spree killers is the number of locations involved. The problem is that the authors do not provide a definition of what constitutes a location. Is it a room? A building? A street? City block? Neighbourhood? Small town? For this reason, some authors and criminologists have chosen to consider Marc Lépine a spree slayer, even though his “end game” psychology is more in keeping with that of a mass murderer.
The cases of Rosaire Bilodeau and Robert Poulin in this chapter exemplify mass murderer types whose multiple locations technically qualify them as spree killers. Rather, I refer to such offenders as “mass murderers with an overture.” In the two most category-confounding cases in Canadian history, Swift Runner and David Shearing committed all three types of multicide: spree, serial, and mass murder. For further annoyance, please review the cases of Alexander Keith Jr. (Chapter 3), Marcello Palma (Chapter 6), Dale Nelson (Chapter 7), and “Order of the Solar Temple” members Joel Egger , Joseph Di Mambro, and Luc Jouret (Chapter 9).
Glenbow Archive
Swift Runner
The Cree Cannibal
“I am the least of men and do not even merit being called a man.”
Swift Runner (Kakusikutchkin), shackled in Fort Saskatchewan.
Victims: 8 killed
Duration of rampage: Winter of 1878/79 (difficult to classify)
Location: Sturgeon Creek area, Alberta
Weapons: Rifle, knife, hatchet, hanging
An Unpalatable Palate
In March of 1879, a hulking Cree man shambled into the Catholic mission in St. Albert, North-West Territories. * He said his name was Kakusikutchkin , or “Swift Runner” in the white man’s tongue — the last surviving member of his family. The winter had been a particularly cruel one; the buffalo, already thinned by unsustainable hunting practices, had been prevented from migrating north of the American border by a vast swath of burning prairie. When ten of the once prevalent creatures were spotted at Lizard Lake in the summer of 1878, the story made headlines.
Yet, considering the famine that had claimed
Despite both being lumped under the category of “rampage murderer,” Marc Lépine and Peter John Peters had drastically differing motivations. Whereas Lépine, a classic mass murderer, was determined to die and take as many “feminists” with him as possible, all but one of Peters’s spree crimes occurred primarily because he wanted to escape imprisonment.
Table 3: Comparing and Contrasting Marc Lépine and Peter John Peters
Italics indicate a match.
----
* Some sources say that Marc was fired in 1984. Perhaps owing to his mother’s position at the hospital, he was granted a second chance before blowing it again in 1987.
Chapter 2
The Problem with Boxes
One newspaper source consulted during the research for this book referred to Peter John Peters as a “sexual sadist,” an individual who “derives sexual excitement from the psychological or physical suffering (including humiliation) of the victim.” [25] Sadistic tendencies often develop in children who have been subjected to repeated physical or emotional agony, and who compensate as adults by inflicting pain upon another, thereby becoming the aggressor rather than the victim. Now that we have developed a clear understanding of the difference between a mass murderer like Marc Lépine and a spree killer like Peter John Peters, I will attempt to alleviate my own academic torment by irritating you with a series of “buts.”
According to the FBI’s Crime Classification Manual , the key difference between mass murderers and spree killers is the number of locations involved. The problem is that the authors do not provide a definition of what constitutes a location. Is it a room? A building? A street? City block? Neighbourhood? Small town? For this reason, some authors and criminologists have chosen to consider Marc Lépine a spree slayer, even though his “end game” psychology is more in keeping with that of a mass murderer.
The cases of Rosaire Bilodeau and Robert Poulin in this chapter exemplify mass murderer types whose multiple locations technically qualify them as spree killers. Rather, I refer to such offenders as “mass murderers with an overture.” In the two most category-confounding cases in Canadian history, Swift Runner and David Shearing committed all three types of multicide: spree, serial, and mass murder. For further annoyance, please review the cases of Alexander Keith Jr. (Chapter 3), Marcello Palma (Chapter 6), Dale Nelson (Chapter 7), and “Order of the Solar Temple” members Joel Egger , Joseph Di Mambro, and Luc Jouret (Chapter 9).
Glenbow Archive
Swift Runner
The Cree Cannibal
“I am the least of men and do not even merit being called a man.”
Swift Runner (Kakusikutchkin), shackled in Fort Saskatchewan.
Victims: 8 killed
Duration of rampage: Winter of 1878/79 (difficult to classify)
Location: Sturgeon Creek area, Alberta
Weapons: Rifle, knife, hatchet, hanging
An Unpalatable Palate
In March of 1879, a hulking Cree man shambled into the Catholic mission in St. Albert, North-West Territories. * He said his name was Kakusikutchkin , or “Swift Runner” in the white man’s tongue — the last surviving member of his family. The winter had been a particularly cruel one; the buffalo, already thinned by unsustainable hunting practices, had been prevented from migrating north of the American border by a vast swath of burning prairie. When ten of the once prevalent creatures were spotted at Lizard Lake in the summer of 1878, the story made headlines.
Yet, considering the famine that had claimed
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