The beheading of Tim McLean, 22, on a Greyhound Bus trip from Edmonton, Alberta to Winnipeg, Manitoba in July 2008 ranks as a first degree savagery. The alleged perpetrator was found fit to stand trial by psychiatrists, and the Crown laid charges of second degree murder against Vince Leiguang Li, 40, alleged by a long queue of people on the same bus, Jul. 31 2008, to have killed Mclean as the bus neared Portage La Prairie, Manitoba.
Vince Li is now in court (at the end of this year, 2008), and the allegations are that he was witnessed attacking with a knife and stabbing Tim McLean, 22, to death by inflicting multiple stab wounds to the chest; cutting off the head of McLean; committing gross indignities to McLean's body including allegedly cannibalizing and collecting body parts. The attacker unleashed a bestial fury witnessed by more than 35 Greyhound Bus passengers while the 52-window coach crawled through the night closer to the destination. Witnesses have described that Vince Li attacked Tim McLean with a knife while a movie played in the night for some of the passengers and sleep began to take others who were awakened only to be transfixed by a horrifying spectacle.
Everybody scrambled off the vehicle while heinous deeds were unfolding but it was by then too late for Tim McLean. Vince Li told police when it was finished (Li occupied the bus for several hours with the deceased during a stand-off with police) and he was put under arrest on the highway near Portage La Prairie, Manitoba, at about 1:30 A.M., "I have to stay on the bus forever."
"No, you have to go to court and change your name," which trial began in November, "and if they find you guilty you have to go to jail, and if there is any justice, there you will stay forever." This incident ranks as the most savage of the year. Vince Weiguang Li immigrated to Canada in 2004. He lived in Winnipeg first and became a Canadian citizen somehow rather swiftly and moved to Edmonton when his marriage faltered. Edmonton was Vince Li's home address at the time of the murder.
Li was a newspaper deliverer in Edmonton and had a small income. People who know him in Edmonton said he spoke Mandarin, lingua of the ruling class of China. He was fond of gambling and frequented card tables at Edmonton casinos. He had apparently reunited with his wife in recent months. Tim McLean's mother Carol DeDelley has called for a return to the death penalty for cases of extreme violence such as what happened to her son. She has said that at the very least 'Tim's Law' has to make sure people who commit heinous murders never get released. Her position has a lot of supporters, as society is outraged in the face of what appears to be increasing degrees of violence if not numbers of violent incidents.
The second most chilling news story with a maximum degree of savagery turns out to be another trial presently underway, the first degree murder trial of Jeremy Steinke, 25, on three counts, alleged to have killed the family of his 12 year old girl friend in Medicine Hat, Alberta. She was convicted last year of three counts of first degree murder, the youngest ever multiple murderer in Canada. She cannot be named because of the Youth Offender Act. Jeremy Steinke's trial was moved to Calgary and this trial is running at the same time as the proceedings in Portage La Prairie against Vince Li.
The savagery in the Steinke case involves the murder of two adults and an 8 year old boy, in the small southern-eastern Alberta city of Medicine Hat in 2006. As this trial proceeds Jeremy Steinke was recanting his Goth Cult beliefs and painting the process of triple homicide as one of passion, and in light of some of his own words to the jury, because he took the stand in his own defense December 2, 2008, as an act of self-defense. He was only conducting a home invasion with supreme stealth to sneak his 12 year old girlfriend out for the night. It went all wrong because he was dressed in a cat burgler-cross-Goth wardrobe and it scared the mother who confronted him. She died under a fury of 12 stab wounds.
Oh yeah, he testified to being wiped on several powerful drugs, including cocaine, ecstacy, and alcohol, and he was, oh, also, by the way, under the impression that the 12 year old girlfriend was 16. He hasn't explained a statement he claimed to have made at the scene in reply to the dying father, who asked, "Why?" Steinke had told officers in transit to a psychiatric assessment that he replied to the dying father, "Because you are abusing your daughter, who, he said to the jury, he thought was 16 (and if so, not old enough to deal with it herself?). Forensics showed one stab wound to the groin was 9 cm deep.
According to Jeremy Steinke, killing of the 8 year old boy (who was surely not involved with abusing the 12 year old girl), well, that was all the girl's doing. And in fact the whole awful deed was her fault. The court last year saw it that way, that she had a hand deep in the entire matter, and that court sentenced her to 6 years and maybe as many as 10 years for the multiple murder of the people who won't be there to meet her when she leaves the psychiatric facility in Edmonton. For her part during her trial she pretty much blamed Jeremy Steinke. She hasn't testified at the Steinke trial yet, but she was placed on the witness list.
Charged with first degree murder of 26, convicted of second degree murder of 6, Willie Pickton ranks as the most haunting savage in 2008. It looks for the entire world like he might get away with 20 murders or more. The proceedings have so far been stayed on the remaining 20 charges. The appeals have been filed by both Crown and defense, begun by the defense in January this year; and in April 2008 a judge set aside proceeding with the next trial of the 20 outstanding charges until the appeals have been heard. Since then it has been all quiet except for in the hearts of the families who lost loved ones.
In a footnote on savagery, the trial of Thomas Svekla took place in the beginning of the year, at the precise moment when another body of a sex trade worker was found. Svekla was charged with two murders, and found guilty of one, the second degree murder of Theresa Innes, not guilty of the murder of Rachel Quinney. If he wasn't the serial murderer that he talked about with his sister, Svekla was probably more knowledgeable about the disappearing women in Project KARE than he has admitted so far.
