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| death_place = Mutema Tribal Trust Lands, Manicaland, Rhodesia (today Zimbabwe) | death_cause = Killed in action〔 | resting_place = Windsor, Ontario, Canada | religion = Roman Catholic | spouse = None | known_for = Acquittal of capital murder because of insanity in 1967, thus avoiding Canada's mandatory death penalty〔 | criminal_charge = Capital murder〔 | criminal_penalty = Found not guilty by reason of insanity and committed to indefinite psychiatric care. Released in 1973〔 | module = }} Mathew Charles "Matt" Lamb (5 January 1948 – 7 November 1976) was a Canadian spree killer who, in 1967, avoided Canada's then-mandatory death penalty for capital murder by being found not guilty by reason of insanity. Abandoned by his teenage mother soon after his birth in Windsor, Ontario, Lamb suffered an abusive upbringing at the hands of his step-grandfather, leading him to become emotionally detached from his relatives and peers. He developed violent tendencies that manifested themselves in his physical assault of a police officer at the age of 16 in February 1964, and his engaging in a brief shoot-out with law enforcement ten months later. After this latter incident he spent 14 months, starting in April 1965, at Kingston Penitentiary, a maximum security prison in eastern Ontario. Seventeen days after his release from jail in June 1966, Lamb took a shotgun from his uncle's house and went on a shooting spree around his East Windsor neighbourhood, killing two strangers and wounding two others. He was charged with capital murder, which under the era's Criminal Code called for a mandatory death penalty, but he avoided this fate when the court found, in January 1967, that he had not been sane at the time of the incident. He was committed for an indefinite time in a psychiatric unit. Over the course of six years in care at Penetanguishene Mental Health Centre's Oak Ridge facility he displayed a profound recovery, prompting an independent five-man committee to recommend to the Executive Council of Ontario that he be released, saying that he was no longer a danger to society. The Council approved Lamb's release in early 1973 on the condition that he spend a year living and working under the supervision of one of Oak Ridge's top psychiatrists, Elliot Barker. Lamb continued to show improvement, becoming a productive labourer on Barker's farm and earning the trust of the doctor's family. With Barker's encouragement, Lamb joined the Rhodesian Army in late 1973 and fought for the unrecognised government of Rhodesia (modern-day Zimbabwe) for the rest of his life. He started his service in the Rhodesian Light Infantry, and won a place in the crack Special Air Service unit in 1975, but was granted a transfer back to his former regiment a year later. Soon after he was promoted to lance-corporal, Lamb was killed in action on 7 November 1976 by an errant shot from one of his own men. He received what ''Newsweek'' called "a hero's funeral"〔 in the Rhodesian capital, Salisbury, before his ashes were returned to Windsor and buried by his relatives. ==Early life== Mathew Charles Lamb was born in Windsor, Ontario on 5 January 1948, the only child of a 15-year-old mother who abandoned him soon after birth. Raised by an assortment of grandparents, aunts and uncles,〔 he rarely saw his mother while growing up and never knew his father, who died in the United States while Lamb was young. Lamb spent most of his childhood with his maternal grandmother and her new husband Christopher Collins at their home on York Street in the South Central neighbourhood of Windsor, where his presence was resented by the step-grandfather Collins. According to interviews with relatives, friends and neighbours conducted by Lamb's legal counsel Saul Nosanchuk in the mid-1960s, Collins subjected the boy to sustained emotional and physical abuse, beating him and frequently calling him a "little bastard".〔 The direction of this violence was not limited to Lamb himself, however; he often witnessed his step-grandfather and grandmother fighting while he was still a small boy. Lamb started exhibiting violent traits of his own from an early age. Nosanchuk writes that the young boy lured his cousins into his bedroom, locked them in a closet and threatened them. On one occasion he followed through with these threats and beat one of his cousins so badly that medical attention was required at a local hospital.〔 "I remember once," said Greg Sweet, a childhood friend, "when he was about seven years old, he held a knife to a smaller kid and made him eat dog faeces".〔 Lamb first attended Colbourne School in Tecumseh, where Collins later said he appeared to be normal.〔 School staff agreed, later telling the ''Windsor Star'' that he rarely got into trouble, and was capable, but unable to concentrate for extended periods.〔 Starting with Grade 8, when he was 13, Lamb went to St Jude's School in Windsor, where the other pupils found him to be distant and quiet. According to a fellow pupil, he spurned attempts by the other children to include him in their social circles. For example, Lamb once refused an invitation to a party, saying that he "didn't like to dance."〔 Developing a keen interest in weapons, Lamb began to carry a knife to school, which he had little hesitation in showing off. He also became fascinated with firearms; according to Sweet, he and Lamb "always had guns, from the time () were about 12 years old".〔 Sweet later told the ''Windsor Star'' that police were not informed when, as a teenager, Lamb strolled down a residential street "firing a shotgun at the houses of people he didn't like".〔 Sweet also said that around this time Lamb assembled a collection of bullets and wrote the names of various local policemen on them. Lamb's hobby even extended to crude bombs, which he taught himself to produce using parts of various weapons. When he accidentally detonated one of these concoctions during preparation his leg was sprayed with shrapnel.〔 On 10 February 1964, barely a month after he turned 16, Lamb confronted a physically imposing〔 police sergeant outside the Windsor Arena and, in front of a large crowd of people, leapt upon the far larger man and repeatedly punched him in the face. According to journalist Bob Sutton's account in the ''Windsor Star'' (published three years later), Lamb did this "for no apparent reason".〔〔 Lamb was convicted of assault under the Juvenile Delinquents Act and served six months at the House of Concord, a young offenders' unit near London, Ontario, run by the Salvation Army. Upon his release, Lamb was sent by his step-grandfather to live in East Windsor with his uncle, Earl Hesketh. With Hesketh's support, Lamb briefly attended Assumption College School, where apart from a dislike for learning Latin, he performed creditably. However, with no real motivation to study, the boy soon dropped out to look for work. He was unable to hold down a permanent job and drifted through a series of short-term engagements, none lasting more than three months.〔 抄文引用元・出典: フリー百科事典『 ウィキペディア（Wikipedia）』 ■ウィキペディアで「Mathew Charles Lamb」の詳細全文を読む スポンサード リンク
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