Representing Homicide Fact or Fiction PDF

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Representing Homicide: Fact or Fiction? The Murder of Kirk Morin

Emma Speth University of Guelph SOC2760: Homicide Professor Dawson December 1, 2020

Throughout this course, my knowledge of homicide and the details behind this diverse topic have been challenged and changed greatly. For people like myself, that have an interest in true crime material, learning about the reality of homicides and their trials outside of the unrealistic way they are often made out to be in media such as fictional movies has been a big change. While listening to episode 57 of the Canadian True Crime Podcast about a murdered British Columbia man named Kirk Morin, I analyzed the information provided on whether it was factual and relevant. As the podcast explained, Kirk Morin was murdered in the second degree on September 6th, 2016 by Lisa Miel as she stabbed him over 50 times with a machete. The victim of this crime was Kirk Morin, Morin was 51 years of age, Caucasian, a pipeline worker, married, a father of four, and grandfather. Morin has no known criminal history nor any notable health issues or important family history. On the other hand, the perpetrator was named Lisa Miel, a 24-year-old, Caucasian woman. Miel had a much more complicated history than Morin as she had a long history of homelessness, mental health, and family issues. Growing up, Miel was put into the foster care system by her birth mom because according to Miel, her mother was going to kill her and eat her. Both of these women had been diagnosed with schizophrenia. Miel had no known criminal history prior to this offense but it is important to note she has said she was sexually assaulted by her former boyfriend's uncle, although this had not been reported to police. In my opinion, the Canadian True Crime Podcast Documentaries covered the murder of Kirk Morin, in a way that presented accurate, factual, and relevant information on his homicide. When looking at this case from the victim’s side, the characteristics of Kirk Morin are fairly different from general patterns of homicide. For one, Morin was a male. Even though males are more commonly killed than females which compares correctly to Morin, what is different in this case is that Morin was killed by a female, something that is not statistically

likely. In Canada, statistics have proven that males dominate the category of who commits the most homicides (Brookman et al., 2017). Another notable difference in this case compared to statistics is that Morin did not know Miel prior to the day he was killed. In this case, Morin met Miel the night of his murder when he offered to give her a ride in his pickup truck so that she did not have to bike alone to her destination. Morin had only known of Miel’s existence for around 3 and a half hours before he was killed. According to Statistics Canada in their yearly homicide report, “approximately 4 out of 5 victims of solved homicides knew their killer” (Roy & Marcellus, 2018). A further way, the murder of Kirk Morin is different from general patterns of homicide for people with similar characteristics to him is that he had no criminal history. The same study by Statistics Canada found that over half of male homicide victims in Canada had a criminal record prior to the day of their murder (Roy & Marcellus, 2018), but Morin did not. All of the differences between Morins case and the general patterns of homicide put together made Morin out to be unlikely to ever fall victim to the violent murder. On the other hand, the characteristics of Lisa Miel have many similarities to the general patterns of homicide. Firstly, and probably most notably, Miel suffered extremely from mental illnesses, especially schizophrenia. Miel admitted to killing Morin in self defence as she truly believed that he was going to harm her. This still may be true but as the trial for Miel’s case was conducted, the court had ruled this to be false and said that the only person in danger that night was Morin. It is believed that Miel was experiencing fear because of her previously diagnosed schizophrenia. Once again, using the Homicide in Canada report from Statistics Canada, it has been found that 23% of females accused of homicide had or were suspected to have a mental disorder (Roy & Marcellus, 2018). Additionally this study found that, accused persons that have a mental disorder “used a knife or other piercing or cutting instrument” to commit said homicide

42% of the time (Roy & Marcellus, 2018), much like the machete Miel used to murder Morin. Also notable is that women have a higher likelihood of having or being suspected to have a mental disorder when it comes to the topic of homicide (Perreault, 2011). I believe that more details into Miel’s mental illnesses (as it was suspected that she suffered from more than just schizophrenia) would have helped the podcasts account of the homicide. Being that without Miel’s mental health problems, this case would likely be nonexistent or less gruesome, further information on how schizophrenia and other suspected illnesses impacts ones judgement in moments of fear would have been useful for listeners, including myself to understand what Miel was thinking at the time of Morin’s murder. While the podcast explaining the homicide of Kirk Morin was efficient at providing accurate, facial, and important information, I believe that details from the night of the murder were underrepresented. I would have liked to know more about the verbal exchanges between Miel and Morin all night long but especially from the minutes leading up to the murder and why Miel was convinced that Morin was the “Highway of Tears” killer. From what I have learned in this course, I can recognize how important the relationship between the victim and perpetrator is, even if they were strangers as I know it can help explain the perpetrators motivations. Another key element I feel was underrepresented in this podcast was Kirk Morin himself. I believe that understanding who the victim was is just as important as trying to understand who the perpetrator was in a case like this. Since it was a conversation and Morin’s actions that started the struggle between him and Miel, it would have been useful to know more about Morin and his personality to see if there was a possibility he could have been planning to harm Miel, like she believed. With that being said, this podcast did a sufficient job in providing an overview for the case in under an hour.

In general, this podcasts portrayal of the murder of Kirk Morin and its type of homicide aligned well with a good amount of information that I have acquired while taking this course. Being that the perpetrator fits into a great amount of the statistics of those who have committed second degree that I have read about, including her personal characteristics as well as the method she used while killing Morin. I feel as though both this case and this course have many similarities in their content which allowed me a deeper understand of this case. All in all, the homicide of Kirk Morin was a great tragedy that the Canadian True Crime Podcast Documentaries covered well. This case was presented not only with respect to the victim but also presented listeners with accurate, factual, and relevant information. In connection with the content learned in this class, this podcast had many similarities in the information provided, such as ties between readings/statistics and the case as well as information on this specific type of murder. Hopefully by learning about homicide and cases like this and by educating the public on such, homicide levels will continue to fall throughout the coming years, so we will not have to hear anymore stories like Kirk Morin’s.

References: Brookman, F., Maguire, E. R., & Maguire, M. (2017b). The Handbook of Homicide (Wiley Handbooks in Criminology and Criminal Justice) (1st ed.). Wiley-Blackwell. https://doi.org/10.1002/9781118924501 Roy, J., & Marcellus, S. (2019, November 27). Homicide in Canada. Statistics Canada. https://www150.statcan.gc.ca/n1/en/pub/85-002-x/2019001/article/00016eng.pdf?st=YovLGLlj Perreault, S. (n.d.). Homicide and suspected or developmental disorders. Statistics Canada. https://ares.lib.uoguelph.ca/ares/ares.dll?Action=10&Type=10&Value=253580...