A quarter of a century ago, in may 1987, after two hours of Sunday night's 23-year-old Kenneth James Parkes left her house in the suburbs of Toronto (Canada), started the car and overcame 23 km to the home of the parents of his wife. He got out of the car, pulled out of the trunk mount and opened the door issued to him the key. Once inside, he strangled father-in-law, Dennis woods, and beat the mother-in-law, Barbara Ann woods, then stabbed the woman in her own kitchen knife.

Then parks returned to the car, drove to the nearest police station and said: "I think I killed someone".

All this time the young man was asleep, and therefore could not be held responsible for their actions. At the trial, held in 1988, jury came to this decision after a nine-hour debate. The prosecution considered it ridiculous and challenged the outcome of the case, but in 1992 the Supreme court of Canada upheld the original ruling in force.

Even an expert in the field of sleep, which was invited as a consultant, was initially skeptical similar to case of sleepwalking because people made a series of quite complex actions. Imagine without incident to pass three traffic lights to overcome the section of highway, and so on, Most somnambul end up being hurt yourself or sleeping next to them, not people from them in dozens of kilometers. However, on closer examination it turned out that people actually slept...

According to testimony of laboratory instruments, parks was characterized by unusually deep sleep. Even as a child he often told in a dream, sometimes walked and to 11-12 years constantly woke up in a wet bed. (The study of 1974, which was attended by 50 adults, allowing themselves cruel actions during sleep, found that many of them too, as children, wetting the bed and went without waking up.) One night one of the brothers parks at the last moment grabbed his leg, when he was going to go out through the window. Similar symptoms are met his relatives in three generations.

Sleepwalking is widely spread in children: approximately 15% somehow survive the attacks of somnambulism, but this is usually not violent attacks against others. As a rule, the children are back in bed without any incidents and later just get over their problem.

Adults go in sleep much less frequently. However, unlike children, they are more prone to hostile and aggressive behavior, when others try their Wake, as has been documented in several studies.

However, some details from the life of parks not put him in the best light. Almost a year before the attack he was addicted to gambling that is not well reflected in his marriage. In the end he stole from work $30 thousand to cover the debts. Two months before the attack a violation was discovered, and parks was fired. He refrained from passion few weeks, after which he started to play again and double-forged the signature of the wife to get money. But three days before the attack he first visited the club anonymous players and decided to reconcile with my wife's parents, which was, apparently, pretty close. The parks even lost sleep because he was preparing for the upcoming conversation.

Psychiatrists and other specialists found parks signs of a brain disorder or psychosis. He himself was shocked by what he did. Examination of brain waves showed that he sleep phase naturally follow each other more often than most people. He also did not experience physical pain during the attack, despite the gap of several tendons that required surgical intervention. In itself parks came only in the police station.

Doctors had no choice but to recognize that blame sleepwalking. Indeed, since then, has been studies that supported the hypothesis that the brain does not sleep all at once. A small number of people synchronization process of falling asleep between different parts of the brain so impaired that comes complete disorganization: people can talk, walk, drive and even to cook, not knowing what was happening.

Apparently, parks went to his parents, wife, because not sleep that part of the brain that were planning this trip. But why he attacked? To this question were unable to answer even the prosecution: no benefit in it parks was not.

According to experts, the poor guy at that moment it seemed that he kills someone in a dream. The kind of lunacy, which suffered parks happens during a certain stage of sleep, when you dream something rare and consist mainly of fragmentary images. In addition, part of the brain that tells us what actions are necessary in this situation (prefrontal cortex), in this phase of sleep inactive.

Most likely, Dennis woods discovered that his son-in-law haunting the house sleeping, and tried to Wake parks. He took it as if his life was in danger. Unfortunately, the part of the brain which could tell him what was really going on was too exhausted to sleep the previous night and worrying about debt...

Based on the materials of Scientific American.