Australian Mother Kills Daughter to Save Her From Imaginary North Korean Soldiers
In 1950, many Australians were fearful of Asians in general, and Asian communists in particular. The country was only 5 years removed from WW2 when it had been threatened by the Japanese invasion. More recently, Mao’s communists had won control of China in 1949, and in June of 1950, the North Koreans had crossed the 38th parallel to invade South Korea, initiating the Korean War.
Those fears were particularly intense for Patricia Cogdon’s mother, Ivy Cogdon, a 50-year-old woman from a Melbourne suburb, who suffered from night terrors. On August 11th of that year, Ivy entered her 19-year-old daughter’s room with an ax, and smashed Patricia’s skull. When police arrived, Ivy admitted what she had done, and was duly arrested and charged with murder.
Ivy claimed that she left her bedroom in a somnambulistic state, in which she imagined that North Korean soldiers had invaded her suburban home and were attacking her daughter. So she reacted by grabbing an ax and rushed to her daughter’s defense, swinging at the imaginary North Koreans to fend them off, and in the process, ended up killing her daughter. As she told detectives: ” I dreamt the [Korean] war was all around the house. I heard Pat screaming and rushed into her room, it was full of soldiers. I hit at them. I remember hitting the bed. Oh Pat, I don’t want to live now“.
Ivy pled not guilty on grounds that she had been sleepwalking, and was thus unaware of her actions. A psychiatrist testified that he thought Ivy was a somnambulist or sleepwalker. Other doctors who had been treating her before she killed Patricia testified that Ivy had a history of night terrors, and had been diagnosed as a “hysterical type” prone to blackouts and somnambulism. They concluded that she would not have known what she was doing when she killed her daughter.
Ivy testified at trial that of her many fears, her greatest was of the recently sparked Korean War, and of how she would protect her family from invading North Korean soldiers. She was particularly worried that the invaders would “pollute” her daughter. On the night of the killing, those fears were exacerbated and made more vivid when her daughter told her that she would volunteer as a transport driver if the Koreans invaded Australia. As Ivy lay worrying, Patricia told her: “Mummy, don’t be silly worrying about the war. It is not at your front door“. That attempted reassurance only worsened matters, and made Mrs. Cogdon imagine what would happen if the war actually did come to her front door.
Based on the mental history, medical evidence, and testimony by family and friends that she had been a loving mother, devoted to her daughter, the jury returned a not guilty verdict: Ivy was unaware of her actions, and was thus not responsible. It was the first time in Australia that somebody successfully used sleepwalking as a defense, so the case, Regina v. Cogdon, made legal history.