Canada Greyhound Bus Murder Cannibal Case

At 8:30 p.m. on July 30, 2008, 40-year-old Chinese Weiguang Li suddenly and frantically assassinated Timothy Richard McLean, a 22-year-old young man adjacent seat, on the Greyhound bus, and in full view , a series of horrific acts of beheading, dividing and eating corpses.

The case may be one of the most horrific in Canadian criminal history. The case has attracted much attention because of its particularly cruel plot. In the week of the incident, the search rate for the term "Greyhound bus" soared to 400%. The murderer "Li Weiguang", the victim "Tim" and "beheading" occupied the top three search terms in Canada.

1. The bus to the end of life

Greyhound Bus is named after the slender and good running hound "Greyhound", as one of the most well-known intercity buses, Greyhound Bus not only has stops in most cities, daily There are multiple round trips, and the bus also has rest stops along the way for passengers to get off for smoking or grooming.

Because of its flexibility and convenience, Greyhound buses are loved by young people. The tall body not only makes Greyhound buses safer in the traffic flow, but also allows passengers' large luggage to be stored in the lower space of the body

Greyhound buses are like greyhounds with excellent athletic performance, galloping down the highways and taking countless passengers to their destinations, but today this bus...

Greyhound buses

This is a west-to-east bus going through Edmonton, Erickson, Brandon, Portage la Prairie Prairie, Winnipeg and Thunder Bay.

At around 12 noon on July 30, 2008, after an event in Edmonton, Tim took a Greyhound bus back to his home in Winnipeg and sat in the last row of the carriage .

Tim's parents divorced at an early age, but it did not affect his sunny and cheerful personality. He likes listening to powerful pop music, is obsessed with cool motorcycles, and loves fitness shaping. Contrary to his powerful hobby, he has a very gentle and tolerant personality. He never judged anyone and never fought anyone.

Tim is a 22-year-old boy who loves new things and makes new friends. He can't stand the boring life day after day, so he chooses to work on carnival activities. The addition of those new faces and the occurrence of new stories can make him feel the freshness of life. Before the incident, after Tim had sex with his old acquaintance Colleen Yestrau, Colleen became pregnant, but Tim didn't seem to want to take responsibility for it. He hoped that Colleen could abort the child. But the accident would come before tomorrow. He dissipated on the way home, and Colleen left the child behind.

He never expected that this time the bus did not take him to the end of the journey, but to the end of his life, and he was about to be dismembered and eaten.

2. Arrival of the Ogre

At about 18:00, Li Weiguang sat in the third and fourth rows in the front of the car after getting on the car in Erickson City

Tim returned to his seat after the Greyhound bus stopped at a rest stop between Brandon and Portage la Prairie. Soon, Li Weiguang came over and sat next to Tim. Tim politely showed a friendly look, but did not have a conversation with the middle-aged man.

The long way back is over 100 kilometers. Tim listened to music with headphones on and quickly fell asleep.

Tim

Around 20:30, Li Weiguang took out a large hunting knife and repeatedly stabbed Tim, who was unsuspecting in his sleep. Tim woke up in severe pain and tried to escape, but his window seat was surrounded by three sides, and his body function was damaged by the knife wound.

Tim lost his ability to resist and Li dragged Tim to the aisle between the seats, then sat on Tim and continued to stab him repeatedly with a large hunting knife.

From the first attack, Tim's shrill cry made everyone in the car shudder. There was a panic in the car, some people started screaming, some people started to vomit, some people panicked. The driver quickly parked the car on the side of the highway, and people screamed and fled to get out of the car, but Li Weiguang seemed to be in a no-man's land, stabbing Tim in an orderly manner, like a robot, without the slightest emotion.

The Greyhound bus driver, together with a passenger and other passing drivers, used emergency tools such as hammers and crowbars as temporary "weapons" to try to rescue Tim, but only attracted Li Weiguang's resistance and pursuit. Just as Li Weiguang was about to cross the door, the driver closed the door first, blocking the blood dripping blade.

Li Weiguang turned and ran to the cab, as if trying to open the door or start the car through the controls. But the driver managed to activate the locking system, freeing the vehicle from control and creating a locked enclosure that trapped Li Weiguang and Tim, who was fatally attacked.

Li Weiguang, who had nowhere to escape, then returned to Tim and continued to destroy Tim's body. Then came the horror scene. With 34 passengers watching, he cut off Tim's head and proceeded to cut up the rest of the body, which he then ate on the spot.

Police who arrived at the scene surrounded the Greyhound bus. Until about 2 am on July 31, Li Weiguang smashed the window glass and threw the bloody hunting knife and scissors out of the window, then jumped out of the broken window, ignoring that the sharp broken glass would scratch himself.

Li Weiguang, who fell to the ground, was quickly arrested. The police found a plastic bag from his right front trousers pocket, which contained Tim's ears, nose and part of his lips and tongue.

When the police boarded the carriage, they found that the body parts, which were divided into plastic bags, were scattered all over the carriage. When the body was finally put together, the police couldn't find Tim's two eyeballs and part of his heart. The only possibility was that they were the part that was eaten by Li Weiguang in public.

From when Li Weiguang launched the attack to when he was captured by the police, in the entire six-hour process, he was faced with a steady stream of requests from the outside world: "Don't move", "Stay in the car", "Put down the hunting knife"... Li Weiguang did not Respond or follow, with only one sentence throughout: "I must stay in this car forever."

Arrested Li Weiguang

After his arrest, Li Weiguang remained silent most of the time. Facing the interrogation by the police and the accusations of the procuratorate, the only words he responsed were "I'm sorry", "I'm guilty" and "Please kill me". He responded by shaking his head and nodding, and then there was endless silence, even in the face of the assistance lawyer assigned to him.

Background investigations and eyewitness statements show that Li Weiguang and Tim did not have any intersection before the crime.let alone any grievances, At the scene of the crime, until the moment before Li Weiguang committed the murder, there was no conflict between the two. No one had even the slightest conflict with anyone present. This makes this terrifying case even more eerie. It seems that this world, which operates according to the rules, is broken here.

3. Elusive Motive

Looking at Li Weiguang's life history, it seems to be too ordinary to be ordinary.

On April 30, 1968, Li Weiguang was born in Dandong, Liaoning, China, a small northeastern city that is recovering. His father was a doorman and his mother was a math teacher. Li Weiguang has an older brother and a younger sister. He grew up without abuse, chronic illness or dysfunction. With the exception of an uncle, he and the rest of the family have no history of mental illness.

Li Weiguang was born a month premature, but due to the extensive medical environment at the time, he could not be placed in an incubator (simulating a uterine environment) to continue his development. Maybe it is related to premature birth,He was very frail and often sick before he was a teenager. He learned to speak, walk, etc. two years later than his peers, so when he entered school, he was already 9 years old.

Despite this, his high school grades were good. In 1988, he was admitted to a university in central China, majoring in automation engineering, and graduated with a four-year bachelor of science degree. In those days, the college entrance examination was truly one in a hundred. Only 12 out of every thousand peers had the opportunity to receive undergraduate education.

After graduating in 1992, Li Weiguang went to work in a factory in Beijing, where he met his future wife, Anna (Chinese, Chinese name unknown), and married her in June 1995.

Since then, domestic life has remained unremarkable.

In 2001, the couple immigrated to Canada. Similar to many immigrants, Li Weiguang and Anna's new life in Canada faced the problem of high talents and low performance. Although Li Weiguang has a higher education, he can only find the lowest level of work. In the following years, Li Weiguang worked as a forklift driver, a McDonald's clerk, a general laborer in a warehouse, and later went to Grant Memorial Baptist Church, where he usually worships, as a night doorman. Two of my most recent jobs were night janitor at Walmart and newspaper delivery.

In the eyes of colleagues, Li Weiguang is an ordinary person who has no sense of existence. Li Weiguang is nothing different from ordinary people in terms of daily wear and daily conversations. If it hadn't been confirmed by the police, they wouldn't have believed that the man in prison uniform and shackles in the report was Li Weiguang. Compared with other people, Li Weiguang is relatively more introverted and stays in his post silently most of the time. He has also had disputes with colleagues and customers, but the content and frequency of disputes are no different from those of the general public. Just two days before the incident—July 28, 2008, he went to work in the newspaper office as normal, and completed the newspaper delivery work that day.

Two days after the delivery of the last bundle of newspapers on July 28, 2008, he made this world-shaking tragedy calmly and quietly under everyone's attention.

Everyone said that he had never had a violent tendency or a bad habit of taking drugs and alcohol, and Li Weiguang's criminal background record was also clean.

No one can explain how this all started.

The court ultimately had to focus on whether Li Weiguang had criminal responsibility, that is, whether he had the ability to recognize that what he had done was wrong.

The wide-ranging world-class attention made the trial especially cautious. After testimony from two Winnipeg psychiatrists—one representing the prosecution and one representing the defense—the court accepted that “Li Weiguang was in the midst of a psychotic episode at the time of the murder,” and found Li Weiguang not guilty. But innocence does not mean release. The court forced Li Weiguang to be admitted to the hospital for treatment, and he needs to undergo a mental state assessment every year until he is determined to be harmless before he can return to society.

4. God is going to kill me

Everyone's brain is an independent planet. If you want to find out the laws of operation of a planet, the only thing you can do is to understand it.

After his arrest, Li Weiguang was placed under 24-hour suicide surveillance and remained silent. The experienced psychiatrist Stanley Yaren did not ask more questions, but left a stack of blank paper and a pencil. While expressing his willingness to communicate, he handed over the dominance of the topic to Li Weiguang, and at the same time gave full Li Weiguang's freedom to refuse or delay.

In the end, Li Weiguang wrote this line on the paper: "God is going to kill me."

In the later conversation between the two, Li Weiguang described how God had a dialogue with him, and even during the conversation between the doctor and himself, God was also talking to him at the same time. Several times, Li Weiguang thought that the doctor could hear the voice of God with him, and at that moment, he who had always looked indifferent suddenly became excited.

 With the opening of the communication breakthrough, the doctor learned from Li Weiguang's narration what he experienced from the perspective of the perpetrator.

On the evening of July 28, 2008, Li Weiguang left a note in the apartment where he lived with his ex-wife: "I'm leaving. Don't come to me. I hope you are happy." Then he bought a ticket under the pseudonym Pent Wang to Thunder Bay and boarded a Greyhound bus from Edmonton at midnight.

At around 18:00 on July 29, Li Weiguang got off the bus from Erickson. The kind driver told him that he had not arrived at the station yet, but Li Weiguang did not obey the advice and insisted on getting off the bus. He stayed in Erickson for hours, spending most of his time sitting or sleeping on park benches.

Li Weiguang said that God directed him to use a false name to go to Thunder Bay, but he received God's will in the middle to let him get off at Erickson. It also puzzled him. Then, God began to instruct him to burn and sell his possessions—including laptops. It troubled him, but he did it anyway.

Although God told Li Weiguang that he must stay in Erickson forever to have eternal life, perhaps it was Erickson's wandering life that made Li Weiguang feel dazed and uncomfortable, or perhaps Li Weiguang wanted to try to accomplish God's original will to see if there would be any Better results, Li Weiguang finally embarked on the journey to continue to Thunder Bay.

God's punishment seems to come quickly. When Li Weiguang was waiting at Erickson's station, God told him that the man driving around near the station was going to kill him. Li Weiguang seems to have had an ominous premonition. In order to protect himself, he once bought a knife at the Edmonton tire store and has been carrying it with him ever since. Hearing God's warning, he took out his knife, ready for defense whenever the man entered the station. The man, however, did not appear to be planning to take the Greyhound bus and drove off shortly after in his car.

Passengers waiting for the bus at the same station did not realize what was going on in Li Weiguang's mind. They only noticed that Li Weiguang was constantly pacing back and forth, talking to himself in Chinese, and seemed a little anxious.

At around 18:00 on July 30, Li Weiguang boarded the Greyhound bus from Erickson to Thunder Bay that day. Although he did not have a direct ticket, the driver endorsed the ticket he had purchased the day before. Tim was in the car, sitting in the back of the car.

The journey since then was still quite torturous, and the voice in Li Weiguang's mind put him under a strong inner conflict. Because Li Weiguang did not stay in Erickson according to God's will, God was very angry and warned him that the devil was about to kill him. And Tim, who is about to be identified as a demon.

After the bus arrived at the next stop, Tim got off the bus and rested for a while. When he started again, Li Weiguang sat next to Tim because he thought that Tim made a "friendly gesture" to him.

After Tim closed his eyes and listened to the music, at about 20:30 in the evening, the sun suddenly shot into the carriage, and the voice of God sounded: "Quickly kill him, then you will be safe." This voice was hurried and angry, making Li Weiguang extremely incomparable. Panicked, he was convinced that if he didn't do what he did, he would soon be executed by Tim.

Under the strong fear of death, Li Weiguang began to attack the sleeping Tim.

Unsuspecting Tim soon died under Li Weiguang's butcher's knife.

But this is far from enough.

Li Weiguang believed that Tim could be resurrected, so he continued to destroy the body, disassembled the body parts, and threw them into various corners of the carriage to ensure that Tim could not be resurrected, and then ruled on him.

From the beginning to the end, Li Weiguang could not understand the wrongness of his actions. This unbelievable bloody tragedy was just a legitimate defense in his cognition. He claimed that it was not his intention to kill Tim, all of which were the will of God.

When the psychiatrist took a long time to convince him that Tim was just an innocent bystander, Li Weiguang also believed that God can also be divided into good and evil, and it was the evil God who directed him to kill Tim, because Judging from God's dialogue with himself, if he doesn't kill Tim, he will be killed. But even if there is an evil God, I still believe in God because God is right 99% of the time. The thing that worries me the most is disobeying God's commands. He believed that it was only a matter of time before God killed himself for this.

It was not until a long time later that Li Weiguang realized that all this was just hallucinations and auditory hallucinations.

5.Ignored omens

In fact, this is the first time that schizophrenia has caused Li Weiguang to create a human tragedy, but it is not the first attack.

In 2001, 33-year-old Li Weiguang and his wife Anna immigrated to Canada and settled in Winnipeg. Both of them were engaged in low-level jobs, sometimes even two jobs a day. Although it is hard work, but to a certain extent, it also reveals enthusiasm and hope for life.

Around 2004, 36-year-old Li Weiguang began to experience hallucinations and auditory hallucinations, which he believes gave him direction and guidance.

In the summer of 2004, Li Weiguang walked for many days without sleep or food. He burst into tears and told Anna that he had seen God. Anna thought that Li Weiguang was too tired, so she went to the pharmacy to buy him sleeping pills, but these drugs did not seem to work on Li Weiguang.

Li Weiguang once told a friend he made in Winnipeg at the time that someone was watching him behind his back, but in fact there was no one behind him. Friends speculated that he had schizophrenia and paranoia, and urged Anna to take Li Weiguang to see a doctor as soon as possible, but Li Weiguang insisted not to go to the hospital.

Anna said that Li Weiguang has a very strong fear of Western medicine, but the disagreement over whether Li Weiguang should go to the hospital for medical treatment has also become an irreconcilable conflict in marriage. In the spring of 2005, under multiple pressures, the conflict between the two reached a peak and brought the marriage to an end. Soon, Li Weiguang moved to Thompson, 700 kilometers north of Winnipeg.

Li Weiguang claimed that he went to Thompson because he wanted to buy a piece of land. But in fact, he has no savings to land. After arriving at Thompson, he took a job as a night doorman at Walmart for four months.

In June 2005, he returned to Winnipeg, took a job at a gas station and worked part-time at a fast-food chain. Soon, he developed more severe symptoms of schizophrenia.

In September 2005, it was discovered that Li Weiguang was walking along the 427 Freeway in Toronto, and it seemed that he had not eaten or slept for several days.

Li Weiguang explained that he thought it might be easier to find a job in Toronto, but he failed to find a job, and then the voice of God directed him back to Winnipeg, but he was not sure if God wanted him to walk back (Toronto The straight-line distance to Winnipeg is 1,500 kilometers, and the drive is 2,200 kilometers), so he started walking down the highway and, by God’s will, dropped his luggage and followed the direction of the light.

Li Weiguang, 37, was taken to a psychiatric facility in Toronto. Doctors advised Li Weiguang to stay here for at least a month in order to make a full mental state assessment.

How Li Weiguang was discharged from the Toronto psychiatric hospital is unknown. Li Weiguang said he escaped. There is indeed no discharge record in his medical record. It is likely that he refused to receive treatment, and ignored the doctor's advice and left directly. Doctors had prescribed some medication for his condition, but probably because the diagnosis was too short, doctors could not diagnose for sure whether he was mentally ill at the time.

No one knows how Li Weiguang returned to Winnipeg from Toronto. But when his wife Anna saw him, Li Weiguang was unkempt and bony, no different from a homeless man. Then Li Weiguang asked Anna to buy him a one-way ticket back to China.

After returning to China, Li Weiguang's parents felt that Li Weiguang seemed to be becoming irritable. They took him to see a doctor who is said to be very professional, but it did not seem to improve. Li Weiguang tried to find a job in China, but he couldn't hold any job for long.

Anna soon returned to China. She found Li Weiguang, divorced him, and then returned to Canada.

A month after Anna returned to Canada, Li Weiguang also returned to Canada, this time he chose to settle in Toronto. Since then, Li Weiguang has often called to talk to Anna, and the end of each other's separation has immersed himself in great sadness. He also often complained that it was difficult for him to find a job. Anna suggested that Li Weiguang return to Winnipeg to live with her, and Li Weiguang readily accepted the invitation.

Back in Winnipeg, when she was reunited with her wife (Although Anna divorced Li Weiguang, but from the follow-up point of view, she took the initiative to undertake his wife's obligations, and it was generally believed that she was still Li Weiguang's wife), it seemed that she could not let her reunite. Li Weiguang's condition improved. A few months later, in 2006, Li Weiguang moved to Edmonton. A few weeks later, when Anna learned that Li Weiguang had failed to find a job, was financially strapped and lived in a car, she sent some money to Li Weiguang.

In July 2007, Anna moved to Edmonton to live with him. After that, Li Weiguang became happy, but he would still take the bus to other cities without warning and for no reason.

In the summer of 2008, Li Weiguang bought a plane ticket to go back to China to see his family, but only stayed for one day. At that time, his wife was still in Canada, but he told his family that he came back this time to find his wife.

After returning to Canada, Li Weiguang continued to work in humble jobs. At the end of June, Li Weiguang was fired from Walmart because of a conflict with his colleagues, and he lost his night duty job. He found his previous newspaper boss and regained his job delivering newspapers. In early July, he told newspaper bosses he planned to go to Winnipeg for an interview, but never said when.

On July 28, 2008, when Anna came home from night work, she found a note left by Li Weiguang: "Don't come to me, I hope you are happy." On July 29, Anna received a call from the newspaper boss looking for Li Weiguang. Knowing about Li Weiguang, she told the boss of the newspaper that Li Weiguang must have gone to another city. This is an emergency situation. On July 30, before preparing to work the night shift, Anna received a call from the police and was informed that Li Weiguang had been arrested.

Before the incident, even if Li Weiguang could only engage in the lowest-end labor, he had been working hard to make a living, trying to make himself and his wife a better life. No one expected this catastrophic outcome because his disease had never been particularly severe.

6.Return

On March 5, 2009, the court ruled that Li Weiguang was not subject to criminal responsibility due to mental illness.

Since Tim was killed, Tim's mother has been mobilizing the power of the people to apply to the review committee to improve the law, and for the principle of fairness and public safety, Li Weiguang will be imprisoned forever. But until the day Li Weiguang was released into society, the application failed.

With the recovery of his condition, in March 2016, Li Weiguang was free to live alone, but he still needed to take medicine and receive psychological counseling on time. On February 10, 2017, Li Weiguang obtained absolute freedom.

Li Weiguang obtains absolute personal freedom

On December 21, 2008, Colleen gave birth to a baby boy. Because Colleen had not completely bid farewell to her last marriage at that time, this child with Tim's blood was destined to be involved in the battle for custody rights from the moment of birth.

Every bit of progress in the case draws the public's attention back to the case itself. People care about this not only because they are curious about the horror plot, but also want to know how to prevent this kind of thing from happening to them. In fact, these kinds of events are completely random, and there really isn't much room to guard against. We all want the environment around us to be controlled, safe, and identifiable. But there are too few things in this life that we can control by ourselves. In more states, we are all the same as Tim, facing the disasters that hit us. These disasters, both tangible and intangible, include what we are aware of, and also include what we have not been aware of yet. arrived. Tim's murder is just to present the things that are happening all the time in the world in the most impactful form.