Parents give timeline of son’s declining mental health leading up to girlfriend’s death

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In the early morning of Feb. 20, 2022, Bryan Hamp says he got a call from someone he believed to be his son’s girlfriend. He heard murmurs on the other end, and his son’s frantic yells in the background.

He repeated Emily Sanche’s name to get her to respond, and stayed on the line for up to 10 minutes because he didn’t want to abandon her, Bryan testified on Thursday at the second-degree murder trial of his son, Thomas Hamp.

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He told a Saskatoon King’s Bench courtroom that he wishes he had hung up and called police sooner, but doesn’t know if it would have been soon enough.

Hamp, 27, stabbed Sanche in the chest in a Main Street East condo in the city’s Greystone Heights neighbourhood. On Wednesday, he testified that he was having delusions of secret police taking them away to torture and kill them because they thought he was a pedophile.

He said he believed this was a “more merciful way for us to die.”

Hamp stabbed and slashed himself, but survived. Sanche died in hospital on March 16, 2022.

“I have nothing but complete empathy for the family and the loss of their daughter and I hope that someday they will be able to heal,” Hamp’s father said under cross-examination.

Hamp’s judge-alone trial began on Monday. The Crown closed its case on Tuesday, with the potential to call further evidence in rebuttal.

Defence lawyer Brian Pfefferle is trying to establish that Hamp is not criminally responsible because he was suffering from a mental disorder that made him unable to appreciate that the killing was wrong.

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His parents testified for the defence on Thursday. Bryan said they became aware in December 2021 that their son was having “false memories” about being molested by family members, a pedophile ring at his former job and people pulling guns on him.

He said Sanche, who they considered part of their family, wrote and shared a detailed timeline of his escalating mental health issues the day before she was killed.

Bryan testified that Sanche reached out on Feb. 19, 2022 to say Hamp wasn’t doing well. He said he was aware that his son had stopped taking his medication for obsessive compulsive disorder.

Hamp testified that he believed the medication was being used to brainwash and chemically castrate him. 

Bryan said he, his wife Sandra and Sanche had contacted mobile crisis several times before for advice. Their options were either to convince Hamp to go to a hospital, or call police to execute a mental health warrant, he said.

Under cross-examination, Sandra said they couldn’t force their son to take his medication or go to a hospital. Bryan testified that Sanche didn’t want them to call police because it would upset Hamp, who thought the police were coming after him.

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Instead, Sanche and Hamp called the mobile crisis line, and Hamp agreed to go to a hospital once Sanche finished the timeline, he testified.

“Our hope was that we could get him back to the ER again and advocate for him” by showing doctors the documented delusions, false memories and intrusive thoughts he’d been having for months, he said. 

The judge-alone trial has heard that Hamp misled doctors to believe his false memories during previous visits. Sanche’s cousin Catherine testified that Sanche had been repeatedly reaching out for help and believed doctors were brushing them off.

Both Catherine and Bryan testified that Sanche said she was afraid for Hamp, but not for herself. Sandra and Bryan said Sanche told them she was mentally exhausted, but felt physically safe.

At the time, they said they were concerned about Hamp being a threat to himself.

In late 2021 and early 2022, Bryan said he and his wife offered to take Hamp to the doctor “many times,” but Hamp was becoming distrustful of them. He believed his parents had molested him, and even asked Bryan about it when he was hospitalized after the stabbing, Bryan testified. 

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He told court his son was OK if they knew about his false memories, but he didn’t talk to them directly about it. Bryan said Hamp withheld some delusions from them, and believed he didn’t need help because his false memories were real.

Sanche was the only person he fully trusted, Bryan added.

The Hamps agreed with Crown prosecutor Cory Bliss that they knew Hamp was off his medication and smoking cannabis, based on what Sanche told them. Hamp testified that he felt addicted to cannabis but quit two days before the incident, at Sanche’s request.

Bryan also agreed they could have asked Hamp, who was living at Sanche’s condo, to move back in with them.

Bliss asked Bryan and Sandra why they didn’t inform Sanche’s family members — who are doctors — about what was happening. They both said that Sanche told them her mother “does not deal well with mental health issues and she didn’t want her dad to keep a secret.”

Sandra said it didn’t occur to her to go against Sanche’s wishes and call her parents. She said they respected Sanche’s knowledge of Hamp because the couple were together “all of the time” in the midst of a pandemic.

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Bryan and Sandra testified that Sanche had been coming to their house to play Dungeons and Dragons with a friend group before she started dating Hamp in 2017.

Bryan said he observed love and respect between the couple, who often came over for supper and board games.

“They always seemed very happy, always smiling. They got along very well whenever we were with them.”

“He just couldn’t believe that he would hurt her,” Sandra said about Hamp’s reaction to what he had done.

The trial was adjourned until Dec. 17 to accommodate the availability of the defence’s last witness, forensic psychiatrist Dr. Shabehram Lohrasbe.

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