Mathew Charles "Matt" Lamb (5 January 1948 – 7 November 1976) was a Canadian spree killer who, in 1967, avoided Canada's then-mandatory death penalty for capital murder by being found not guilty by reason of insanity.

Seventeen days after his release from jail in June 1966, Lamb took a shotgun from his uncle's house and went on a shooting spree around his East Windsor neighborhood, killing two strangers and wounding two others.

He was charged with capital murder, which under the era's Criminal Code called for a mandatory death penalty, but he avoided this fate when the court found, in January 1967, that he had not been sane at the time of the incident.

Over the course of six years in care at Penetanguishene Mental Health Centre's Oak Ridge facility he displayed a profound recovery, prompting an independent five-man committee to recommend to the Executive Council of Ontario that he be released, saying that he was no longer a danger to society.

The Council approved Lamb's release in early 1973 on the condition that he spend a year living and working under the supervision of one of Oak Ridge's top psychiatrists, Elliot Barker.

[5] According to interviews with relatives, friends and neighbours conducted by Lamb's legal counsel Saul Nosanchuk in the mid-1960s, Collins subjected the boy to sustained emotional and physical abuse, beating him and frequently calling him a "little bastard".

[7] On 10 February 1964, barely a month after he turned 16, Lamb confronted a physically imposing[6] police sergeant outside the Windsor Arena and, in front of a large crowd of people, leaped upon the far larger man and repeatedly punched him in the face.

[2][5] Lamb was convicted of assault under the Juvenile Delinquents Act and served six months at the House of Concord, a young offenders' unit near London, Ontario, run by the Salvation Army.

[5] On the evening of 24 December 1964, Lamb smashed the front window of Lakeview Marine and Equipment, a sporting goods store in Tecumseh, and stole three revolvers and a double-barrelled shotgun.

[8] Motivated by a presentence investigation report characterizing Lamb as exceptionally violent,[9] Magistrate J. Arthur Hanrahan sentenced him to two years at Kingston Penitentiary, a maximum security prison.

Six young people—Edith Chaykoski, 20, her 22-year-old brother Kenneth, his wife and three friends, 21-year-old Andrew Woloch, Vincent Franco and Don Mulesa—were heading south from 1635 Ford Boulevard on their way to a bus stop on Tecumseh Road when they approached the tree behind which Lamb was hiding at about 22:15.

The young man continued to rise and pace around the room as the interview went on; he spoke in a casual, off-hand manner, giving non-specific answers to the doctor's questions and describing people especially vaguely.

The Penetanguishene report concluded that Lamb "suffered from a disease of the mind as a pathological anti-social or psychopathic personality", which was a recognised psychiatric disorder under the Criminal Code and therefore grounds for an insanity defence in court.

In Ontario at that time, a defendant found not guilty under these terms remained imprisoned indefinitely unless an order for his release came from the province's Executive Council, acting on the advice of a Review Board including a Supreme Court judge.

It was still possible for the lawyer to approach the prosecution and propose a plea bargain, offering to plead guilty to non-capital murder, which would result in life imprisonment for Lamb but allow a parole hearing after 10 years.

[15] After a brief preliminary hearing starting on 8 October 1966, during which Lamb reportedly showed no signs of emotion,[16] the young man's trial for capital murder began on 16 January 1967 at Essex County Courthouse in Windsor.

[5] The trial started with Lamb pleading not guilty to the capital murder of Edith Chaykoski and Andrew Woloch; Nosanchuk then opened his mental disorder defence under Section 562 of the Canadian Criminal Code.

Yaworsky recounted in detail his examination of the defendant two days after the shootings; he put weight on the fact that Lamb had laughed while incoherently describing the events of 25 June, and had at one point giggled and exclaimed "poor broad", referring to Edith Chaykoski.

[5] The prosecutor proposed that it was not beyond Lamb, with his psychopathic personality and high level of intelligence, to invent a story of amnesia and confusion to avoid responsibility for satisfying his dangerous impulses by consciously killing people.

"[5][14] George Scott of Kingston Penitentiary then told the court that Lamb lived in a fantasy dream world, which had existed in his mind since early childhood, and had been in a pre-psychotic state when released from jail on 8 June 1966.

Boothroyd, of Sunnybrook Hospital in Toronto, then spoke, arguing that Lamb had been acting out strong feelings of anger and bitterness and fully intended to kill the people he confronted, knowing and understanding what that meant.

He conceded that the defendant's actions were senseless and violent, but stressed that if found not guilty by reason of insanity, Lamb would stay in custody and could be kept in psychiatric care for the rest of his life if necessary.

Five out of the eight psychiatrists in the court, the prosecutor said, had testified that Lamb had understood on an intellectual level that shooting Chaykoski and Woloch would kill them, which he asserted should be enough to incur criminal responsibility, even taking the psychiatric evidence into account.

He was escorted by police back to Penetanguishene and placed in the hospital's maximum security unit at Oak Ridge, where he was to remain indefinitely pending an order from the Ontario Executive Council.

"[26] Barker's "Social Therapy Unit" (STU), initially made up exclusively of young male psychopaths and schizophrenics of normal intelligence, began in September 1965, with a programme of 80 hours of treatment a week, focussing on cures brought about by mutual cooperation and interaction.

[26] Joan Hollobon, the medical editor of the Toronto Globe and Mail, volunteered in 1967 to spend two days at Oak Ridge as if she were a patient, and afterwards heaped praise on the inmates, saying that they were "pioneering a brave and exciting experiment in self-government and self-therapy ... [displaying] individual responsibility, co-operation with colleagues and authority, and acceptance of rules reached by consensus.

The Capsule's purpose, Barker writes, was to provide "a place of undisturbed security where a small group of patients could focus on issues they felt important enough to warrant the exclusion of the usual physical and psychological distractions.

[40] In late 1976, at the age of 28, he was promoted to lance corporal and took command of a "stick" of four men from 12 Troop, 3 Commando on Fireforce duty on Operation Thrasher, which covered Rhodesia's eastern highlands against guerrilla activity.

[44] In the late afternoon of 7 November 1976, three insurgents from a group of seven were spotted by an Army observation post in the Mutema Tribal Trust Lands, just south-west of Birchenough Bridge in Manicaland province.

A dark figure suddenly ran across the soldiers' line of sight, between Lamb and the riverbed, and from a distance of about 16 paces Olivier reflexively swung his rifle around and let off a frenzied, imprecise burst of fire.