This is Christy and welcome to Canadian True Crime, Episode 11, The Shell Lake Massacre.

This podcast contains coarse language, adult themes and content of a violent and disturbing nature. Listener discretion

is advised. This is a story from Saskatchewan. It's the tale of a young man's descent into madness

in the 1960s, leading to a collision with an unsuspecting family that will have tragic consequences.

The Hoffmans were a working-class family based in a farming village 70 kilometres north of

Saskatoon, which is the largest city in the province of Saskatchewan.

Saskatchewan is in the western half of Canada and is part of the Canadian Prairie Provinces,

named because they're partially covered by prairie or grasslands.

The province's economy is based on agriculture, mining and energy.

It's a farming province. The Hoffmans were an ordinary farming family,

devout Lutherans. Robert Hoffman was German and his wife Stella was Ukrainian. As with most

other farmers in the district, the Hoffman's practiced mixed farming, growing hay and raising cattle. With seven children,

they were a hardworking, locally respected family who only took occasional holidays

when the season would allow for it. As devout practicing Lutherans, they kept the Sunday

as a holy day and attended church often. Their fifth child was Victor Ernest Hoffman,

born in 1946. Growing up, Victor seemed like all the other children, meeting his milestones on time

and seeming healthy, shy and able to amuse himself. At about age six, he started school. He remained shy and a bit

reclusive, although he did have one close friend. It was around this time that Victor would

later say he first saw the devil. He recalled a pitch black creature about six feet tall, naked, with a long tail.

He would sometimes hear tapping sounds and would wake up in the middle of the night to a drumming sound

that seemed to go faster and faster.

He said he felt like he was in the middle of a fight between God and the devil. As Victor's

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