Tim McLean was sleeping against the bus window when Vince Li pulled out a knife and began stabbing him because the voice of God purportedly told him the 22-year-old stranger was a "force of evil" and an alien who needed to be destroyed.
ViceVince Li, the man who killed Tim McLean in 2008.
In July 2008, a man named Vince Li gruesomely murdered a fellow bus passenger named Tim McLean. The two men had never met before, and nothing occurred between them that would have prompted what happened — few things would.
Three hours into a long ride on a full Greyhound, Li stabbed, beheaded, and cannibalized McLean. The other passengers and the driver fled, waiting outside the bus as Li’s carnage rampaged on, locking him inside so that he couldn’t escape. After they arrived, it took police five hours to arrest Vincent Li.
In the wake of this horrifying incident, there were, naturally, many questions to be answered. Who was Vince Li? Why had he killed Tim McLean? More importantly, why had he consumed McLean’s flesh?
Li’s lawyers argued that mental illness was to blame. Li had been hearing voices in his head, which he claimed to be messages from God, and he said they told him to kill McLean. Although Li was ultimately found not criminally responsible, though, there was no erasing the impact of this horrific crime.
The Brutal Killing Of Tim McLean
On July 30, 2008, Tim McLean boarded Greyhound bus 1170, bound for Winnipeg, Canada. He had been working a carnival in Alberta and was napping with his head against the window, exhausted after a long night out.
He’d been sleeping for almost six hours when the bus made a rest stop in Erickson, Manitoba. A tall man named Vince Li boarded the bus and sat toward the front in a seat by himself.
As the bus pulled out of the stop, he moved to the back, to the vacant seat next to McLean. McLean barely noticed, continuing to sleep with his head against the window, and his headphones on.
Timothy McLean, the Greyhound bus attack victim.
Suddenly, almost three hours after boarding, Li pulled out a large knife and stabbed McLean. The bus was full, and all 34 passengers were witnesses to the carnage. A couple who were sitting across the aisle from Vince Li were the first to notice and the first to scream.
They ran to the front of the bus to tell the driver, who immediately pulled over, evacuating the passengers, while leaving Li locked inside.
For the next four hours, the passengers remained outside the bus while Li wreaked havoc inside.
Vince Li had not only stabbed McLean, but had decapitated him, carrying his severed head around the bus like a trophy, and holding it up for the passengers outside to see.
He dismembered McLean’s body, tossing the pieces around the bus.
CBCThe Greyhound bus crime scene.
He tried at one point to steal the bus, but the quick thinking driver had engaged an emergency stop feature, rendering the bus immobile. He had also tried to flee the bus, though a group of passengers kept him contained.
A passing truck driver who had been carrying steel pipe had seen the roadside commotion, and had stopped to see what was wrong. When the passengers told him what Li was doing, he grabbed a pipe from his truck and stood guard outside the doors until police arrived.
When they finally did, they ended up in a standoff for over two hours. They watched as Vince Li paced back and forth up and down the bus holding McLean’s severed head. After some time, they even observed him eating the dismembered parts of McLean’s body.
The standoff finally ended when Li tried to escape by breaking a window. The police caught him, shot him twice with a taser, and handcuffed him, placing him in the back of a police cruiser. In his pockets, they found TimMcLean’s ears, tongue, and nose.
His eyes and heart were never found. They were believed to be eaten by Vince Li during his time on the bus.
The Aftermath Of Tim McLean’s Murder And Vince Li’s Trial
The trial took place one year later, during which Li pleaded not criminally responsible. His plea meant that he accepted the charges, but was unable to form the necessary mental element.
A psychiatrist on Li’s defense team argued that Li attacked McLean because God’s voice told him McLean was a force of evil, and to execute him. The judge accepted the psychiatrist’s diagnoses and remanded Li to a mental institution.
Andrew Francis Wallace/The Toronto Star via Getty ImagesA woman cover’s up an advertisement after the murder of Tim McLean.
“The voice told me that I was the third story of the Bible,” Li told the BBC,” that I was like the second coming of Jesus [and that] I was to save people from a space alien attack.”
Li clearly suffered from schizophrenic delusions, and this formed the basis of the defense argument — in fact, when he was later informed that he had indeed consumed bits of McLean’s flesh, Li himself was horrified at the news. In court, Li said he was “really sorry” for what he had done.
The trial also forced Greyhound to redo their marketing techniques, as they had just released a campaign based on the friendliness of the bus system.
After A Few Years Of Monitoring, Vince Li Was Determined Not To Be A Danger To Society
Vince Li sat in isolation in the Selkirk Mental Health Centre in Selkirk, Manitoba for three years, until his doctors granted him access to the outside world. He was now allowed to take supervised visits to the town square, and conduct interviews about his imprisonment and crime.
Two years later, doctors decided that Li’s visits to the town no longer needed to be supervised, and granted him 30 minutes a day, and eventually full days, to be on his own in the town.
In 2015, Vince Li’s doctors expanded his visit range to Winnipeg, allowing him unrestricted access to the town, as long as he carried a functioning telephone with him. In 2016, Li formally changed his name and announced that he was seeking the clearance to live independently outside of the mental facility.
Li’s petition was ultimately granted. A judge on the Manitoba Criminal Code Review Board ordered Li to be discharged and ruled that there shall be no legal obligations or restrictions on his independent living.
“The review board is of the opinion that the weight of evidence does not substantiate that Mr Baker poses a significant threat to the safety of the public,” they said in a written decision.
He now lives as a free man in Canada, under the name Will Baker.
Another Murder Case Reignites Concerns Over Canada’s Criminal Responsibility Rulings
Of course, not everyone agreed with this decision — Tim McLean’s mother, Carol de Delley, least of all. In a statement to APTN News, de Delley said setting Li free was “wrong and should never be.”
“Vince Li committed one of the most horrific murders in Canadian history and has faded back into society. My son is still dead.”
Vince Li’s story was thrust back into the spotlight in 2024 during the trial of Jeremy Skibicki, a serial rapist and murderer who admitted to “unlawfully” killing four Indigenous women because he was mentally ill. Although the term “unlawful” in this instance would suggest a level of criminal culpability, the defense of mental illness brought up concerns that, like Li, Skibicki would be deemed not criminally responsible.
FacebookKiller Jeremy Skibicki espoused racist, misogynistic, and white nationalist beliefs online.
“The system focuses on the killer and how best to meet their needs,” de Delley argued. “With NCR cases, the review board must make a decision that is the least onerous on the patient… That means the crazed killer turned patient could potentially be working with children, the elderly, and the vulnerable, because they have no criminal record.”
“Vince Li changed his name to Will Baker and may well have changed it again,” she added. “We have no idea where he is, he is not required to report anywhere or to treat his lifelong illness.”
So far, Vince Li/Will Baker has not reoffended or committed any other violent crimes — at least, no incidents have ever been reported. Still, it’s an interesting case study on rehabilitation and mental health. Should someone like Vince Li be reintegrated into normal society if he has successfully undergone treatment, or should he be kept under watch for the rest of his life?
De Delley had made her stance clear, but the outcome of Skibicki’s trial also showed that Li’s case was quite rare as, in July 2024, the BBC reported that Skibicki had indeed been found guilty, even writing, “Had Skibicki been found not criminally responsible for the four murders, it would have been a relative rarity in Canadian law.”
If nothing else, Vince Li and Jeremy Skibicki represent the two outcomes of these sorts of scenarios. Both men claimed to suffer from schizophrenic delusions, but Li was determined to have actually been afflicted by the illness. Skibicki, on the other hand, had a history of abuse and racist beliefs (his victims were all Indigenous), with the court agreeing with prosecutors that his crimes were “intentional, purposeful, and racially motivated.”
Next, check out the story of Issei Sagawa, a Japanese man who cannibalized a Dutch woman in the 80’s and was never convicted. Then, read about this Russian cannibal couple who killed and ate over 30 people.
