Confessed triple murderer Glen Race has been sentenced to time in a secure hospital in Canada after being found not criminally responsible by the Supreme Court of Nova Scotia Jan 24 in the murders of two gay men.
Race was convicted on two counts of murder in the 2007 stabbing deaths of Trevor Brewster and Michael Knott, who were picked up in known Halifax-area cruising spots.
“He suffered from a mental disorder on both occasions, that being schizophrenia,” Justice Kevin Coady ruled. “I am also satisfied that Mr Race, as a result his mental disorder, did not realize that these actions were morally wrong. I am satisfied that he really believed they were necessary to achieve his psychotic mission.”
Race told his psychiatrist that he killed the men to rid the city of “demons.”
While undergoing a psychiatric assessment to determine whether he could be held responsible for the murders, Race told a doctor, “Gays are easy targets . . . because they got me into their personal space for what the situation demanded,” according to a Canadian Press report.
Between 2001 and 2006, the court ruling says, Race was repeatedly in and out of psychiatric hospitals.
“It is very clear from the evidence that by 2002 Mr Race was extremely ill and resistant to any kind of treatment,” Coady says in the ruling, which notes three psychiatrists agreed Race qualifies for a not-criminally-responsible ruling.
On Sept 30, 2013, Race pleaded guilty to the second-degree murder of Knott and the first-degree murder of Brewster. He then made an application to be found not criminally responsible in both homicides.
Knott, 44, was a former military cook who did not appear to be out of the closet. He is survived by his wife and two children.
Brewster, 45, worked at a Halifax pub, and police believe he picked up Race on Citadel Hill, a historic fortress at the south end of the city’s downtown that is one of Halifax’s most-visited cruising spots.
Coady says it is unlikely Race will be released “any time soon.”
He may still face life in prison without parole in New York if he is extradited on a first-degree murder conviction for fatally shooting an American man at a hunting lodge.
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