After shooting dead his mother and brother and two farm labourers on their farm in Mannville, Alberta, in July 1928, Vernon Booher, 22, reported the killings to the police. They called in an Austrian psychiatrist, Dr. Adolph Langsner, who claimed to be able to read people’s brainwaves. Reading Booher’s, he deduced that Booher was the murderer and even elicited where he had hidden the murder weapon – a .303 rifle stolen from a neighbouring farm.

Told of the psychiatrist’s findings, Booher confessed. He had killed his mother because she did not like his girl friend, and he killed the other three because they were witnesses to the murder of his mother. He was hanged at Fort Saskatchewan Prison on Wednesday, April 24th, 1929.