Bizarre Crime of the Week : Investigation Discovery

Adam Leroy Lane Case Update

Last month, 43-year-old trucker Adam Leroy Lane had another murder charge added to his list of crimes as he made his way through the northeast during the summer of 2007.  This time Lane faces a murder charge in Pennsylvania for the death of Darlene Ewalt, who authorities say he stabbed to death as she was talking on the telephone on the patio in the back yard of her Harrisburg home at 2:00 a.m. on July 13, 2007.  While languishing in a Massachusetts prison on a 30-year sentence for the Chelmsford home invasion involving an attack on a 15-year-old girl who he attempted to rape and kidnap, Lane had also been charged with murdering 38-year-old Monica Massaro in her Bloomsbury, New Jersey home on July 30, 2007.  He has since been transferred to a jail in Hunterdon County, New Jersey, where he awaits trial for Massaro's murder, to which he has pleaded not guilty.  It seems that the adding of charges against Lane is not yet finished as additional allegations continue to mount.

Just last month Lane was charged with attempted homicide, along with several other related charges, in an attack on a Pennsylvania woman, Patricia Brooks, who was awakened inside her rural home at 2:00 a.m. on July 17, 2007 by a man dressed in black who had plunged a knife into her shoulder as she slept on her couch.  Brooks was also slashed across the neck by the man, who fled when Brooks began screaming.  Police have alleged that the attacker was Adam Leroy Lane, and have linked him to the vicinity of Brooks' home through DNA analysis.

"When something like this happens in a rural community, I think people are (going to be) upset," said Chief Carl Segatti, Northern York County Regional Police Department.  "Ordinary Pennsylvanians who never expect a criminal act of this magnitude go to bed worried."

The Case of the Canadian Bus Killer

Some cases, simply put, go way beyond bizarre, and this is one of them.  Readers be forewarned that some of the details of this story are quite gruesome, and are not for the squeamish.

It all began late Wednesday evening, July 30, 2008, aboard a Greyhound bus en route from Edmonton, Alberta, to Winnipeg, Manitoba.  The bus was traveling along a lonely and deserted segment of the Trans-Canada Highway, several miles outside of Portage La Prairie, a small town of about 13,000 people and one of the last stops along the lengthy trip before reaching Winnipeg.  Many of the passengers were sleeping, and others were enjoying reading material with their overhead reading lights on, and some of the passengers were watching a movie.  Tim McLean, 22, was seated beside a man of Oriental persuasion, who officers with the Royal Canadian Mounted Police (RCMP) would later identify as 40-year-old Vince Weiguang Li.  Li had boarded the bus in Brandon, Manitoba, approximately 80 miles west of Portage La Prairie.  McLean was one of the passengers who had been sleeping during the evening leg of the trip, wearing headphones.  It seemed doubtful that he even saw or heard what was coming.

McLean was seated behind passenger Garnet Caton, who was among the first of the passengers to see the horror that occurred that fateful night.  McLean and Li had been sitting quietly for most of the trip, and Caton later told police that he had not heard them speaking at all prior to the violence.

"We heard this bloodcurdling scream and turned around, and the guy was standing up, stabbing this guy repeatedly," Caton told news media personnel from a hotel where he and the other passengers had been taken.  "It was like something between a dog howling and a baby crying, I guess you could say.  I don't think it will leave me for awhile.... When he was attacking him, he was calm.  There was no rage, or anything.  He was just like a robot stabbing the guy."

There was much blood, and many of the passengers began vomiting from witnessing the sickening sight.

According to Caton's account of the horrific event, the driver promptly stopped the bus when he realized that someone was being attacked and quickly ushered the passengers off of the bus.  A short time later Caton, the bus driver, and a truck driver - curious about what was happening - reentered the bus and saw that the already bad situation had actually gotten worse.  Li had McLean down on the floor of the bus and was in the process of cutting his head off with what appeared to be a large hunting knife.

When Li saw the three men on the bus with him, he came toward them with the knife.  Caton, the driver, and the trucker quickly exited the bus as Li slashed at them through an opening in the door, but they were able to block the door to prevent Li from escaping.  The driver disabled the bus from the outside when it became apparent that Li was attempting to start it up with the intention of driving away.

At one point, while the three men guarded the door with a hammer and a crow bar as they awaited the arrival of the police, Li very calmly returned to McLean's body, picked up his victim's head and brought it to the front of the bus to show it to his captors.  At one point he dropped McLean's head and returned to the decapitated body and began hacking off pieces of it with a knife.  At another point he began eating the pieces that he had cut from McLean's body, witnessed by RCMP officers after their arrival.

Stay Tuned for Posts Resuming Next Week

Gary will be posting to the Bizarre Crime of the Week again beginning next week.  In the meantime, check out Investigation Discovery's other blogs, including The Criminal Report Daily and Sleuth the Truth.