Losing Control: Provocation and Excusing the Inexcusable
| Author | David M. Paciocco |
| Pages | 279-295 |
CHAPTER
13
Losing
Control:
Provocation
and
Excusing
the
Inexcusable
to
those
of us who use law
books
to
peer through private win-
dows.
The
pages
of
those
books
do not
tell
us
what kind
of
wed-
ding
they had.
The
case reports
do not
tell
us how
excited they were
when
they bought their home
in
Edmonton,
Alberta,
or
whether they
had
been good
friends
to
each other before
the
spring
of
1991.
Those pages
do
not
even
tell
us
whether
Norma
and
Joan Thibert
had
been wonder-
ful
parents
to the two
daughters they raised
together
into
early adult-
hood.
We
know very
little
about
the
early lives
of the
Thiberts
other
than
the
unsavoury detail
that
Norman
had a
series
of
extramarital
affairs
early
in
their marriage.
We do
know,
however, more than
we
should about their
lives
in the
spring
of
1991.
We had to
find
out
about Norman
and
Joan
during
this period because
it was
then
that
Norman shot Joan's
lover,
Alan
Sherren,
to
death.
Our
criminal justice system
had to
find
out how
and
why
this happened
so we
would know
how
best
to
punish Norman
Thibert. Their pitiable story
is as
follows.
In
April 1991 Norman Thibert experienced
the
anguish
that
his
wife
had
doubtlessly
suffered
when
she
first
learned
of his
extramarital
affairs.
It was
then
that
Joan told
him
that,
for
several months,
she had
taken
her
co-worker,
Alan Sherren,
as her
lover.
She
wanted
out of the
marriage.
Despite
his
anger
at
being betrayed, Norman
did not
want
to
break
up. He was
desperate
to
keep Joan.
He
made
the
usual promises
that things would
be
different,
that
the
marriage would work,
and
that
they would
grow
old
together
and be
happy. Joan agreed
to
give
it one
T
he private life of Norman and Joan Thibert remains largely closed
280
JUSTIFIABLE
HOMICIDE
more
try but
after
little
more than
two
months
it
became evident
to her
that
the
marriage
was
truly over.
On 2
July
1991,
when Norman
was
out,
she
packed
her
bags,
preferring
to
stay
in a
hotel
room
to
returning home
with
him.
Norman
was
distraught when
he
noticed
that
she had
cleaned
out
her
drawers.
His
first
reaction
was the
understandable, rational one.
He
went
looking
for
Joan
so
they could talk things out. After all,
he had
talked
her
into staying with
him
once before.
He
drove around
the
city,
even
combing through
the
hotel
where
she was
staying,
but he did not
find
her.
As he
wandered around
their
empty home waiting
to
hear
from
her,
his
grip
on
constructive
thinking loosened.
His
mind
became
a
caul-
dron
of
horrifying
thoughts
—
images
of him
blasting
his own
brains out,
vignettes
in
which
his
wife
was
under
him
being strangled
or
stabbed,
Sherren
on his
knees with
a gun to his
head about
to
die.
For a
time
the
stars seemed
to be
aligned
and
fixed
so
that
a
violent
end was
unavoid-
able.
In
preparation, Norman
had
pounced down
the
stairs,
flush
with
twisted
resolve,
and
grabbed
his
rifle
and a
shotgun
from
the
basement
of
his
house.
He
dragged
the
weapons
into
the
garage, loading
the
rifle.
It
was
as
though
he was
watching someone else's hands opening
the
maga-
zine,
inserting
the
cartridge.
He
paused
and let out a
wail.
His
resolve
wilted into confusion.
He
tossed
the
guns
into
the
corner
and
walked
away,
afraid
of
them,
afraid
of
himself.
He was
unsure
both
of
what
he
should
do
next
and of
what
he
would
do
next.
He was
sobbing loudly, holding
his
head
in his
hands, when
his
nine-
teen-year-old daughter Catrina came home. "Your
mother's
gone,"
he
blurted out. "She's been cheating
on
me."
He
wiped
his
hot,
contorted
face
with
his
sleeve, hoping
to
clear
the
blurred image
of his
daughter
standing
before him.
She
made
him a cup of
coffee
and
they
talked.
At
11:00
that
evening
the
phone rang
—
Joan
—
calling
to
tell
Norman
herself
that
she was
leaving him,
that
their marriage
was
over.
"Just
talk
to me
first,
Joan,"
he
pleaded. "Just
let me
talk
to
you. Talk
to
Catrina."
They
set up a
breakfast meeting
the
next
day:
Smitty's
Restaurant
on
Albert Street,
7
o'clock.
Norman
Thibert
sat up all
night, waiting.
Minutes ticked
by,
one
second
at a
time, then those minutes collected
slowly
into
hours,
until,
mercifully, morning broke.
An
eternity.
A
night-
time
of
semi-lucid fantasies,
of
dark thoughts,
of
abject
agony.
A
night
spent alone with
the
demons.
At
their meeting, Norman, Joan,
and
Catrina talked
for an
hour.
When Joan spoke, Norman stared
at
her, wondering
if he
loved
her or
hated
her for
what
she was
doing
to
him,
but
when
he
spoke,
the
words
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