Shell Lake murders

The Peterson family lived on a farm near the village of Shell Lake in central Saskatchewan, Canada. James Peterson, 47, and his wife Evelyn, 42, were raising a large family; on the night of the killings, eight of their children were at home with them, ranging in age from seventeen years down to one year old.

In the early morning of August 15, 1967, an armed intruder entered the four-room farmhouse and shot the family members he found there. James Peterson was killed in the kitchen, Evelyn and the youngest child in the yard, and the older children in their bedrooms. Nine people died: James and Evelyn Peterson and seven of their children, Jean, 17; Mary, 13; Dorothy, 11; Pearl, 9; William, 5; Colin, 2; and Larry, 1. A four-year-old daughter, sleeping unnoticed among her sisters, was left unharmed and was the only survivor present in the house. An adult daughter who had married and moved away was not home; she later returned and cared for her surviving young sister.

A neighbour discovered the scene and travelled several kilometres to reach a telephone and alert the Royal Canadian Mounted Police, who began a search of the surrounding district. On August 19, 1967, officers arrested 21-year-old Victor Ernest Hoffman without resistance at his parents' farm near Leask, some distance to the southeast. Hoffman had no prior connection to the Peterson family, and the crime was later characterized as random.

Hoffman had been discharged from a psychiatric hospital only a few weeks before the killings. After his arrest he was assessed and diagnosed with paranoid schizophrenia. At trial in February 1968 he was found not guilty by reason of insanity, a finding now described as not criminally responsible, and was committed to secure psychiatric custody rather than prison. He remained in institutional care, largely in Ontario, for the rest of his life and died of cancer on May 21, 2004.

The case drew lasting attention across Canada, both for the number of people killed and for the questions it raised about the psychiatric care and release of a patient who went on to kill nine people. For the surviving family members and the Shell Lake community, the loss of nearly an entire household remained a defining event for decades afterward. Public accounts in later years, including remembrances marking the fiftieth anniversary, have centred on the Petersons themselves and on the daughters who lived to carry the family's memory.