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Victor Ernest
HOFFMAN
"The Shell Lake murders"
Classification: Mass murderer
Characteristics: Released
from a mental hospital just three weeks before the murders
Number of victims: 9
Date of murders: August 15,
1967
Date of arrest:
4 days after
Date of birth: 1946
Victims profile: James
Peterson, 47, his
wife Evelyn, 42, and their children, Jean, 17; Mary, 13; Dorothy,
11; Pearl, 9; William, 5; Colin, 2; and Larry, 1
Method of murder:
Shooting
Location: Shell
Lake, Saskatchewan, Canada
Status: Found not guilty by reason of
insanity in February 1968.
Put under the custody of the provincial Health Ministry and sent
to a mental institution.
Died
under custody on May 21, 2004
The Shell Lake
murders is the name of a single mass murder incident committed
by Victor Ernest Hoffman (b. 1946, d. May 21, 2004) in Shell Lake,
Saskatchewan, during the early morning of August 15, 1967.
Nine
people, all members of James Peterson's family, were shot in the
head by a man who was later called "Canada's worst random mass
murderer."
Victor Hoffman was
21 years old at the time and had been released from a mental
hospital just three weeks before the murders. In the morning of
August 15 he entered the Peterson's farm armed with a .22-calibre
Browning pump-action repeater rifle.
He then proceeded to shoot all
members of the Peterson family, seven of them children, at close
range around the four-room house. According to police 28 shots were
fired in total, of which 27 found their target.
Mr. Peterson was
shot in the kitchen, while his wife Evelyn and her one-year old baby
were found in the backyard. The other six children were shot while
sleeping in their bedrooms. Their ages ranged from 2 to 17 years
old.
Phyllis Peterson, then 4 years old, was the lone survivor of
the massacre. She was sleeping under the bedclothes between her two
sisters and thus was not noticed by Hoffman. However, Hoffman later
declared that he spared her because "she had the face of an angel."
The bodies were
found by a neighbor who was to help Mr. Peterson with farm duties
later that morning. He had to travel 6 km (3.7 mi) to the next
telephone post before he could report the incident to the police.
The police immediately started an extensive manhunt on the
surroundings of the house.
Aftermath
On August 19,
1967, Hoffman was arrested by the RCMP without putting up
resistance. He was found at his parents' home in Leask, about 65 km
(40 mi) southwest of Shell Lake. After his arrest he told the police
that he had fought the devil before the murders and described him as
being "tall, black and having no genitals." He was remanded to a
mental hospital in North Battleford where he was diagnosed with
paranoid schizophrenia.
Hoffman was found
not guilty by reason of insanity on non-capital murder charges in
February 1968. During the trial Crown prosecutor Serge Kujawa called
Hoffman "the craziest man in Saskatchewan." He was put under the
custody of the provincial Health Ministry and sent to a mental
institution.
He remained most of the time in an Ontario-based
institution until December 2001, when he was granted supervised
access to the towns of Penetanguishene, Port McNicol and Midland in
Ontario. This decision was not without controversy since the
hospital was only required to inform the local police of Hoffman's
release.
Canadian
journalist Peter Tadman wrote a book about the murders in 1992 and
had the chance to interview Hoffman several times. According to
Tadman, Hoffman felt no guilt about the murders and reported that he
still saw the devil that compelled him to commit them.
Hoffman died of
cancer under custody on May 21, 2004.
Further reading
Tadman, Peter (2001). Shell Lake Massacre.
Calgary: Detselig Enterprises. ISBN 1550592289.
Wikipedia.org
Leask man charged in mass murder
By Don Harvey
-
Saskatoon Star Phoenix
August 21, 1967
NORTH
BATTLEFORD (CP) - The RCMP announced Sunday that Victor Ernest
Hoffman, 21, of the Leask district has been arrested in the slaying
of nine members of the James Peterson family and will be arraigned
in district judge's court in North Battleford today.
Inspector Brian
Sawyer, in charge of the investigation, said Hoffman surrendered
without a struggle at his home about 5:30 p.m. CST Saturday, some
three hours after the funeral of Mr. and Mrs. Peterson and seven of
their nine children at Shell Lake.
The family had
been shot to death in their farm home near Shell Lake, 65 miles
northeast of here, early Tuesday.
Inspector
Sawyer said police found a .22-claibre Belgian Browning pump-action
repeater rifle Friday and that tests at the RCMP ballistics
laboratory in Regina "positively identified it as the murder
weapon."
The inspector
said Hoffman will be formally charged at today's hearing with the
murder of Mr. Peterson, 47. He said the accused would probably be
remanded to the Saskatchewan Hospital in North Battleford for mental
examination.
Other victims
of the slaying were Mr. Peterson's wife Evelyn, 42, and their
children, Jean, 17; Mary, 13; Dorothy, 11; Pearl, 9; William, 5;
Colin, 2; and Larry, 1.
Four-year-old
Phyllis, sleeping under the bedclothes between her two sisters, was
unharmed.
The inspector
said no motive had been established for the slaying.
"The arrest was
the culmination of a very casual conversation that one of our
members had with an individual and we decided it would be wise to
check the Hoffman residence."
Leask is about
60 miles southeast of Shell Lake, a mixed farming community of about
250 persons.
Sawyer said the
RCMP has advised Hoffman's parents to retain a lawyer for their son.
The inspector
described Hoffman as single and of average build, about five feet
eight inches tall and weighing about 165 pounds.
He said Hoffman
"was not a bit scared" and behaved normally since his arrest.
Inspector
Sawyer paid tribute to all the RCMP men who had worked on the case.
"This makes me
very, very proud of being a member of this force, "he said. "Credit
goes to the 75 men we had in the area as well as to many more at
other detachments elsewhere."
He said most of
the men in the immediate area had put in at least 18 hours a day
since Tuesday. A few had worked as much as 36 hours without a break.
The mass
slaying was discovered about 9 a.m. Tuesday by a neighbor who called
at the isolated four-room house to ask Mr. Peterson for help with
his haying.
Police said Mr.
Peterson's body, clad only in undershorts, lay facing the kitchen
door. The bodies of Mrs. Peterson and the baby were found in the
yard and the remaining children were in bed. Each had been shot at
least twice with .22-claibre bullets, many of them at close range.
Police said 28
bullets were fired, of which 27 found their mark.
Girl lone survivor of mass shooting at Shell Lake
Nine in farm family slain
Saskatoon Star Phoenix
August 16, 1967
SHELL LAKE - Fourteen shots from a .22-calibre
weapon snuffed out the lives of nine of 10 members of a family here
sometime Monday night.
The mystery killer gunned down James Peterson, 47
years, his wife Evelyn, 42, and seven of the eight children who were
at his home. The children were aged one to 17 years.
Bodies were found on the front porch, the back
yard and in the home. Nearly all of the children were killed in
their beds.
The dead children are: Larry, 1 1/2 years; Colin,
3; William, 6; Pearl, 9; Dorothy, 11; Mary, 13; Jean, 17.
The lone survivor of the massacre was four-year-old
Phyllis.
Phyllis, according to one report, was lying in a
bed between her brothers and sisters and may have slept through the
entire blood bath.
The RCMP officers in numbers described by one
officer as "One hell of a lot" are combing the area for the killer
or killers.
RCMP set up roadblocks and brought in the dogs to
search nearby bush. Inspector Brian Sawyer said a search party of up
to 250 persons was "ready to go."
The only confirmed clue turned up so far are five
spent cartridge casings. An unconfirmed report told of a .22-calibre
weapon being found by youngsters but this has so far been denied by
police.
A neighbor, W. J. Lange, discovered the lonely
farm house killings when he called on Mr. Peterson to begin haying
operations at about 9 a.m. Tuesday.
Mr. Lange opened the door to the Peterson home to
kid Mr. Peterson that he had slept in when he saw Mr. Peterson's
body by the kitchen door. The house was not ransacked.
Mr. Lange found the keys in the Peterson family's
1957 station wagon and drove the car to the nearest telephone at
Shell Lake, four miles away.
Coronor Dr. Calvin S. Lambert estimated the time
of death at "possibly 2 a.m." A coronor's jury, called to the scene
to view the bodies, estimated 14 shots had been fired.
Ed Simonar, who operates a garage at Shell Lake,
said powder burn indicated the victims were shot, at close range.
RCMP said there was no apparent motive for the
slayings, and the coronor said that, because no weapon was found, "I
don't think there was a suicide."
The bodies of Mrs. Peterson and 1 1/2-year-old
Larry were found in the back yard under an open window.
At the scene Tuesday night, RCMP officers were on
their hands and knees going through long grass of the farm yard
looking for anything.
A non-commissioned officer on the scene said
point blank, as he stood over a child's headless doll, "This is the
worst I have ever seen."
More officers were inside the tiny, white,
five-room homestead. Chickens pecked in the front yard and pink pigs
roosted in a pen behind the house.
The family dog, a black mongrel with white
markings cowered under the back porch while police searched for
clues as to who killed its masters. The dog never wagged his tail.
A neighbor had taken the rest of the
stock---otherwise the tiny home looked like it always has on a hot
summer afternoon. A boy's bicycle was in the dirt yard, a wash rag
was hanging on the clothes line, and an old washing machine held
blooming pink flowers.
Inside the home was death.
Through the garden, under the clothesline and
through the pines another officer with a tracking dog searched.
One officer hinted at a major clue that had not
been mentioned previously but would not be pressed on the point.
Overheard from another tight-lipped constable was
that one of the children had been shot three times in the head and "didn't
move a muscle," as she lay in bed.
The house so far is out of bounds to all but
police officers.
The neighbor who found the bodies had to go four
miles to the nearest phone to inform the RCMP in Spiritwood, 16
miles away. Since that time officers from all over the province have
been called in on the manhunt.
The little survivor is being kept at the home of
an uncle, Helmer Helgeton, 3 1/2 miles away from the death house.
Another daughter, Mrs. Kathy Hill, 20, is en route from British
Columbia.
RCMP Inspector Brian Sawyer of North Battleford,
in charge of the investigation, described the area as slightly
rolling with newly developed prosperous although small grain farms.
The area is interspersed with long stretches of heavy scrub bushland.
The wooded areas were comlicating the
investigation by more than a dozen RCMP personnel. More were being
readied to move into the area early Wednesday to expand the area of
inquiry.
"There are countless hundreds of inquiries to be
made," Inspector Sawyer said in an interview from North Battleford,
80 miles southwest of Shell Lake. The tiny community is 50 miles
west of Prince Albert, the nearest city.
