Unusual Criminal Defenses: The Sleepwalking Defense

Once Upon A Crime | True Crime

Esther Ludlow

True Crime, Society & Culture, Crime, Truecrime, Criminology, History, Criminals

4.6 • 5K Ratings

🗓️ 6 March 2018

⏱️ 39 minutes

🔗️ Recording | iTunes | RSS

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Summary

Three cases are outlined where a person commits murder and then blames the crime on sleepwalking.

First up, Albert Tirrell murders his mistress in 1846 claiming he was in a trance-like state at the time. Kenneth Parks travels 23 km to commit a murder - all while asleep, he claimed. Finally, another man tries to use the sleepwalking defense after killing his wife in Phoenix, Arizona in 1997.

Resources:
Karen Abbott, Smithsonian.com, "The Case of the Sleepwalking Killer," April 30, 2012.

Paul Rubin, NewTimes.com, "A Killer Sleep Disorder," Nov 19, 1998.

True Crime Truant, "Scott Falater: Sleepwalking Killer Gets a Wakeup Call," July 20, 2017.

Berit Brogaard and Kristian Marlow, Psychology Today, "Sleep Driving and Sleep Killing: The Kenneth Parks Case," Dec 13, 2012.

Transcript

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0:00.0	This podcast details true crime cases.
0:02.8	It contains adult themes and may contain descriptions of violence.
0:06.2	It is not intended for children.
0:08.0	Listener discretion is advised.
0:12.8	Thank you for joining me for today's episode of Once Upon a Crime.
0:16.8	It's March 2018, and we're beginning a new series, Unusual Criminal Defenses.
0:23.0	When a person is charged with a serious crime, like murder, and their guilt is not in question,
0:28.5	the only option sometimes left to their defense attorney is to come up with a good reason they committed the crime.
0:35.0	Common defenses for murder charges are things like self-defense or it was an
0:40.2	unintended accident, but some defenses that have been used and sometimes successfully can be quite,
0:47.1	shall we say, creative. In this series, I will detail the crimes committed, as well as the unusual
0:53.4	defenses that have
0:54.7	been used in court to try and mitigate the perpetrator's guilt.
0:58.4	I think you will find these cases strange and fascinating.
1:02.4	In our first chapter, I'll tell you about a very interesting defense that has actually
1:06.3	been around for a very long time.
1:08.8	In fact, it's a defense that has been employed to explain murder as far back as 1846.
1:15.3	I'll tell you about that case briefly, and then outlined two other murders where the
1:20.1	sleepwalking defense has been used in 1987 and then a decade later in 1997.
1:27.0	This is Chapter 1 of Unusual Criminal Defenses, the Sleepwalking Defense.
1:34.7	In 1846, sleepwalking, then commonly known as somnabilism, was used as defense in a sensational
1:42.6	murder trial.
	...

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