Three individuals in Alberta have pleaded guilty after being charged in a curious and bizarre naked kidnapping case that may have been caused by a bad trip on hallucinogenic tea.
In November of 2017, RCMP discovered that a man, his daughter and her baby were forced out of their home and into a car with several naked people inside.
Are you sufficiently confused? So was I! Let’s try and understand this together.
Two women and one man, who are not able to be identified due to a publication ban, all pleaded guilty in Leduc provincial court to unlawful confinement, with one of the women also pleading guilty to dangerous driving. The two daughters of the woman facing the most charges, aged 13 and 15 at thetime, were also found naked in the car but were not charged.
According to CBC, the suspects were a Group of Jehovah’s Witnesses who believed “The Great Tribulation” (aka Armageddon) was taking place and they simply wanted to save their neighbours. You may find yourself asking, “but why were they naked?”. According to a court document, “Four who were naked were changing, but they had to leave right away because it was unsafe, so they left without clothes,”
What Exactly Happened?
The series of events allegedly began when the group gathered at a home near Leduc on November 2nd, 2017. The mother, 35 at the time, had brought her two teenage daughters with her to visit her 27-year-old nephew and his 30-year-old wife. Over the next three days, they did not leave the house and barely ate. One of the teens recalls watching movies; she also remembers hearing screaming and banging and seeing ashes in the air. Scared, some of them sought refuge in a bedroom or a bathroom: According to the court document, “They did so because they believed that they were in danger, either from bad or wicked people outside or from demons,”. In their flight to safety, the group thought it only logical to rescue their neighbours as well. The mother, who was the only one dressed, drove them all in a BMW SUV. However, she was so frantic and in such a rush that she drove through the garage door and while heading to the neighbours’ home, she also hit and bent a metal gate with the vehicle.
The group’s unsuspecting neighbours, and soon to be victims, were then forced out of their home and into the snow, barefoot, where one of them, a woman and her six-week-old baby, were instructed to climb into the back seat with the teenage girls who were naked under a blanket. The man was put in the trunk and supposedly ordered to chant “Jehovah” 10 times. The group also chanted “Jehovah” as they sped down roads and ran a red light. Thankfully, by some grace of the universe, the trunk of the truck was not able to latch shut and the man climbed out when the vehicle slowed down. A passing truck driver came to their aid. The court document claims that the SUV then rammed into the truck from behind, resulting in the woman and her baby being thrown into the truck’s dash before the SUV drove into a ditch. After having her hand slammed in the door of the SUV, the mother was also able to climb out with her infant
When Mounties arrived, the group began chanting and refused to exit their car, at times clinging to the vehicle or one another. One of the teens believed that the police “were monsters who would kill them,” according to the document. Officers claim that the group in the SUV demonstrated great strength, with two of them seemingly unaffected after being pepper sprayed and all three adults being shot with Tasers. One of them managed to slide under the vehicle and had to be dragged out with a strap.
Trial and Error
The neighbours later informed police that the group appeared to be demonic and were “obviously not in their right minds.”
A father of one of the accused offered the defence that while they were committing the supposed offence, and unbeknownst to them, the group was under the influence of a hallucinogenic tea that had been brought back from a trip abroad. However, the agreed statement of facts submitted in court stated that alcohol and drugs were not factors and hallucinogenic tea is not mentioned anywhere in the document.
Luckily and thankfully, no one was injured.
A judge has ordered pre-sentence accounts as well as risk evaluations, which may potentially include psychological testing. Sentencing is scheduled to take place Dec. 20.