Mike on Crime (4 page)

“I went through the same problem four years ago. It started with an awful pressure in my ears, and ended with the sound of a fire engine in my head for three months, I couldn't sleep, work, think. I went to emergency departments, ear specialists, counsellors for help, both medical and emotional, and all the websites I could find, even phoning people in Calgary who specialized in tinnitus. I totally relate to this man and his family, it was a living hell. There were times that I thought how can I live with this for the rest of my life? And no one really understands. I still have it, but nowhere near as bad. I got dependent on sleeping pills, and eventually got off them. Unfortunately no one can help you. My sympathies to his family, hopefully someday someone will do research on how to help people afflicted with this problem.”

“I know it is hard to deal with because I have had tinnitus since March 1995; non-stop noise, never lets up. I have dealt with it by not dwelling on it. I have practiced tai chi for 16 years and find that when I am practicing I do not hear the noise. I find that when I am absorbed in an activity it does not tend to bother me. The worst time is at night when the house is quiet. When all you want to hear is silence and there is none. I know there are support groups for tinnitus but to me being in a support group and talking about it all the time would only make it worse by keeping it in your thoughts constantly. It is better not to dwell on it and just get on with things, as difficult as that is. I have had relief from the noise (lessening of the noise slightly but it never goes away), with acupuncture and tai chi, a wonderful chiropractor who lives in St. Rose near Montreal, and staying mentally and physically active. I appreciate that the man's wife wants to bring this to people's attention as apparently there is no cure and they can only guess at the cause and anyone who does not have this noise in their head cannot possibly know how annoying, and lonely, it is. All I pray for is silence.”

S
ome facts about tinnitus

* Defined as a chronic ringing or other distressing noise in the ears or head, tinnitus can affect anyone at any age. It can range from mild to severe. It can be constant, or intermittent.

* More than 360,000 Canadians suffering from an “annoying form,” with about 150,000 of those finding the quality of their lives seriously impaired.

* At least 50 different types of noises have been identified, including hissing, sizzling, buzzing, chirping, thumping, engine-like roaring, and a pulsing noise that tends to be in constant rhythm with one's heartbeat.

* Common causes include a blow to the head, severe ear infection, exposure to loud noise, whiplash or any kind of emotional or physical stress or shock.

* Treatment varies. Relaxation techniques such as yoga, therapeutic massage and even hypnosis have been successful for some people. Others lessen their ringing with sound-generating devices that produce a “white sound” in the ear.

* About 50 per cent of people suffering from tinnitus develop some form of depression.

—Tinnitus Association of Canada

DRIVING THEM CRAZY

He has been a constant thorn in the side of justice and medical officials for more than a decade. And he is, without a doubt, one of the most interesting characters I've ever covered in my career. At times cold and calculated, at others times charming and engaging, Joey Wiebe is a man of many faces. There have been so many twists and turns with his story over the years that pretty much nothing surprises me about him any longer. His life could be a movie. Only, some might pan the plot at being too unrealistic.

MONDAY DECEMBER 3, 2001

Was he a crazed killer or a cunning con artist who had carried out his plan to perfection? That was the key question facing a Manitoba judge as a high-profile murder trial got underway. This was no whodunit. There was absolutely no doubt Joey Wiebe strangled his stepmother, slashed her throat with a knife and then tried to burn their house down. But whether the young Niverville, Manitoba man was criminally responsible for the May 2000 killing of Candis Moizer was yet to be decided.

Wiebe, 19, was being portrayed as a tortured teenager who once harboured a fascination for Adolf Hitler and Satan and left disturbing clues of his many troubles behind in a school locker. Police seized a number of bizarre poems and writings that offered a glimpse inside his mind. Including:

Sorrow, grief, and loneliness.

Mindless, covert, and hopeless despair.

Hatred and animosity, mindless mess.

Searing passion. A human love.

Shame and Embarrassment.

And the hatred grows.

Divine love, my heart won't accept.

Lust,

Infatuation.

Hear my heart roar!

Whhhhhhy!

Confusion, relentless frustration.

If only, if only, if only

My heart does not stop repeating.

When will my passion turn into action!

Coward!

I despise my own behaviour!

When will my hate raise my fist!

And I cry.

Among the several hundred pages of material filed at trial were written transcripts of Wiebe's confession and explanation of the murder to RCMP officers who repeatedly tried, but failed, to obtain a motive. Wiebe, who had been living with his 40-year-old stepmother, biological father and stepsister since 1998, claimed he awoke at 4 a.m. on May 2, 2000, feeling something was terribly wrong.

“I didn't feel like myself at all. I woke up shaking very hard. I was just confused and frustrated,” the teen, who was 17 at the time but had now been raised to adult court, said in an interview with police. Wiebe told police he walked into his stepmother's room, where she was sleeping alone, and began to choke her when she woke up and asked what was wrong. Wiebe's father was away on business, and his stepsister was asleep in the basement. “She was starting to pass out... I wanted to stop but I knew she was going to die anyways. I kept on telling her I was sorry. I didn't know what I was doing,” said Wiebe. He said he retreated to the kitchen, grabbed a small knife and then returned upstairs where he slashed Moizer's throat.

Wiebe told police he then grabbed his father's rifle, which he used to shoot out the smoke detector in the home. He then wrote a letter to loved ones explaining his actions before dousing his stepmother's bed and bedroom with gasoline and setting it on fire. “I didn't want anybody to see her like that. I was just so disgusted,” he said. Wiebe claimed he then cut the phone lines in the house, and woke his stepsister to get her out of the burning home. Wiebe said he confessed to killing their mother as he drove his stepsister to their grandmother's house in his father's truck. He said he apologized for what he'd done and told the young girl he loved her, for the first time in his life. “He said... that God loved me and that he was always going to take care of me,” Cherylynn Moizer told police.

Wiebe called his biological mother from a gas station pay phone and confessed to his sins. The transcript of his phone call was tendered in court: “Hi Mom, it's Joey. I've done something terrible. I have to turn myself into the police. Um, I just want to tell you that I'm ex... I'm sorry for what I did to hurt you guys. I love you all. I've got to turn myself in. Goodbye,” he told his mother. Wiebe then flagged down a police officer and confessed. During a lengthy period of questioning, investigators repeatedly asked him why he'd done it. His only explanation was that “some evil forces were at work there.”

Wiebe told police how he'd become a “Nazi” during his Grade 10 year at Niverville Collegiate, including shaving his head, and had begun to read up on Satanism. His stepsister said he often began speaking German in their home and told her he'd “marry her off to a German soldier” when he would “be able to get the power to be ruler of the world, like Hitler.” She said he also spoke of hatred for Jews and said he would “do like Hitler did and kill them all.”

Police later searched his locker at the school and found dozens of disturbing poems and writings he'd made, along with a series of lists which include references to the Mafia and mob terms. His principal, Howard Witty, told police he'd been concerned about Wiebe's conduct in school and had spoken with his father and stepmother, who shrugged it off by saying “they were just glad he was interested in something.”

“He was a teenaged boy we were sometimes trying to figure out. He would turn in an essay to a teacher and it would be on whatever—farming. And right in the middle of it would be an outline or drawing of a Ku Klux Klan hood or hooded person,” said Witty in a statement tendered by lawyers in the case. Witty said he took away Wiebe's computer privileges and forced him to remove offensive material from his locker, including posters he'd drawn of people with swords stuck in their heads and blood dripping down.

Wiebe, who said he only wanted to “belong to something,” told police he'd put his Nazi beliefs behind him once he reached Grade 11 but admitted to having thoughts of killing someone only weeks before he carried out the act. By then, he was regularly attending church on Sundays and briefly thought about speaking to his pastor about his problems but changed his mind. He said he had a decent relationship with his stepmother but found she was too authoritative at times, including forcing him to do homework. He admitted to a history of problems with his biological father because of years of abuse he'd witnessed him causing to his mother. “I love everybody I know. I just hate what they do,” said Wiebe.

Police also seized a handwritten note Wiebe had left behind for other family members: “To all of those that I have hurt: Please forgive me, I have gone mad, Max. May God forgive me. My sweet mother, I grieve you so. May Candis's soul be saved in heaven. Cherylynn forgive me. Dad forgive me. Why have I done this? Mom, forgive me of this selfish action I'm about to commit. I love you all and am so sorry, especially you mom and Cherylynn. Lord save me.”

TUESDAY DECEMBER 4, 2001

They had spent months in a dark and disturbing place—the mind of a troubled teen killer. And they had come to the same conclusion: There's no way Joey Wiebe should be held criminally responsible for failing to control what they called a “catastrophic rage” that fueled his violent actions.

Dr. Eric Ellis, a Winnipeg psychologist who has testified for the defence in more than 200 trials across the country, said Wiebe suffered an uncontrollable “meltdown and eruption” when he attacked Moizer without provocation while she slept. “At the time of the killing, he had almost no capacity for judgment. He reports being in a trance-like state, where his body was present but his mind was not. There was almost nothing going through his mind,” he said. “At various times he can describe it to me as if he was standing next to himself, observing himself [kill his mother].”

Those actions were consistent with borderline personality disorder and post-traumatic stress disorder, which Ellis said had been caused by Wiebe's horrific childhood which was filled with spousal abuse and parental neglect. “He could no longer control the rage that had been building up since the first years of his life,” said Ellis, who said the only reason his stepmother was murdered was because she was the closest person to him. “This is an event which had nothing to do with the person who was the subject of it. It could have been anybody in the bed that night,” he told court.

Dr. Robert Hill, an Ontario psychiatrist, agreed with the diagnosis and said the illness could manifest itself “in bizarre or severe forms of behaviour.” “There is clear evidence [Wiebe] wasn't able to distinguish between right and wrong. He didn't have the mental capacity,” Hill testified. “Unfortunately and tragically, he was not able to change or stop his behaviour because it wasn't as if he was carrying out the act. Some other force or power had consumed him.”

The Crown asked both doctors if Wiebe could be faking his symptoms, but they said the evidence was overwhelming and foolproof that his mental illness was legitimate. Both doctors said Wiebe told them his father regularly abused his biological mother in his early childhood years, both physically and verbally.

“He was overwhelmed and scared and terrorized by the life threatening violence he witnessed against his mother. He was so close to her that he was practically experiencing the terror himself,” said Ellis.

Dr. Fred Shane, a forensic psychiatrist, said the young man's mental illness acted like a powerful narcotic which rendered him helpless: “It was as though in a sense he had been given a drug, like LSD or cocaine ... which caused the psychotic episode with catastrophic results.” He said Wiebe's traumatic upbringing, which included years of witnessing his father abuse his biological mother, left him unable to cope in society. “In his head, he had a Columbine sort of fantasy for his school,” said Shane, adding any number of people could have become victim to his rage.

THURSDAY DECEMBER 6, 2001

The verdict was in: Joey Wiebe would not be going to prison. Wiebe gave a weak smile towards his weeping biological mother as Justice Brenda Keyser took only two minutes to deliver her verdict—not criminally responsible for second-degree murder due to mental illness.

Defence lawyer Greg Brodsky hailed the decision as potentially groundbreaking in law, saying the courts had finally recognized the emotional devastation felt by children who witness domestic abuse. He said the troubling case was the first in Canada in which the issue of being a battered child had been used as part of a successful defence. A similar defence of “battered wife's syndrome” had been used in courtrooms across the country, but the effects on children are usually lost, he said. “I hope there will now be a recognition that children should be treated too, and not just beaten-up wives,” said Brodsky. “This shows that children of abusers can grow up to become abusers themselves. A little child who sees the abuse doesn't have the coping mechanisms and that becomes the world he sees, the world he knows.”

Keyser said this was the only logical conclusion, especially since the Crown called no evidence casting doubt on three defence experts who examined Wiebe. “The evidence is overwhelming and uncontradicted that Earl Joey Wiebe was at the time suffering a mental disorder,” Keyser said. A mental health review board would now convene within three months to decide where the teenager should be sent for long-term treatment and monitoring.

The family of murder victim Candis Moizer wasn't buying it. They believed her teenage stepson had gotten away with murder by fooling medical authorities and a judge into believing he is mentally ill.

“It's the biggest crock I've seen in my life. He put on a really good show, and we flat out don't believe he belongs in a mental hospital. We believe he belongs in a penitentiary,” Lorne Hodge, Moizer's brother, said outside court. Along with his elderly parents, Hodge took issue with the three doctors who testified the teen could not distinguish between right and wrong. Two of the doctors admitted they had read the findings of their colleagues. “How can these doctors spend a few hours with Joey and then come to a fair conclusion when they all get to read each other's reports? It was very frustrating to sit through and listen,” said Hodge.

The family had known the teen since Candis Moizer began a relationship with his father, Earl Sr., nearly 16 years ago. At the time, he was estranged from Wiebe's mother. Many of Wiebe's mental problems stemmed from years of violent abuse of his mother he witnessed at a young age, court was told. Moizer was aware of the resentment Wiebe felt towards his father but always tried to reach out to the troubled teen, Hodge said. She often stood up for him against his father and mother, and saw to it that he got a car on his 16th birthday. “Candis would have gone to the end of the earth for him, and that makes this even more tragic,” he said. The family now feared that mental health officials would put too much stock in Wiebe's traumatic background and release him too quickly back into society.

MONDAY FEBRUARY 10, 2003

Manitoba's only long-term mental health facility wanted nothing to do with Joey Wiebe. And yet, due to a court ruling, they had no choice but to accept him into their care—despite taking the position they didn't think he was truly mentally ill. Dr. Jim Willows, a psychiatrist with the Selkirk Mental Health Facility, said Wiebe posed an imminent danger to patients and staff, along with residents of the community. He said staff could no longer treat Wiebe, who he believed tricked the courts into believing he was not criminally responsible. Willows believed the now 20-year-old should be jailed indefinitely. “He should be held responsible for what he has done. He doesn't have an illness, and I don't agree with the decision of the court,” Willows told a review board hearing at the downtown Law Courts. The hearing came after Wiebe was removed from the Selkirk mental facility by police days earlier and charged with threatening to bring a gun into the facility. He was also accused of threatening and extorting from patients, and was being detained at the Remand Centre. The hearing was to determine Wiebe's immediate future.