Brian Thomas strangled his wife in his sleep. A Sleep Forensics Lab now helps sort the innocent from the guilty.
Thomas told police that he thought he saw a man wearing jeans and a black fleece laying on top of his wife, Christine.
He said he’d screamed at the man and grabbed him round the throat. But as he woke up, he found his hands were around Christine’s neck. When he realised what he’d done, it was too late.
The last decade has seen a growing number of crimes involving sleepwalkers, including a case where a man drove 20km (12.4 miles) stabbed his mother-in-law to death and injured his father-in-law, all while asleep.
Dr Michel Cramer Bornemann, at the Minnesota Sleep Institute, set up the world’s first Sleep Forensics Lab to help settle cases where a sleepwalking defence is used.
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