Although I abhor all murder (apart from the one murder that I think we should all be entitled to commit for free) I have a sneaking affection for some serial killers. Jeffrey Dahmer, the Milwaukee Cannibal is amongst my favourites. How can you hate him? He was clearly off his nut. In such cases one has to blame the police for not catching him sooner (especially as one of Dahmer's victims escaped - after having a hole drilled into his skull which was then filled with cleaning fluid - and managed to find a couple of policeman who you would hope would have helped him. He was babbling incomprehensibly - well he had a hole in his head that had been filled with cleaning fluid because Dahmer wanted to turn him into a zombie - when Dahmer managed to catch up with him. The police, assuming the pair were a couple in the middle of a row, returned the victim to Dahmer's care. Dahmer took him home and finished him off.
There's something about a cannibal that is hard to hate (take the recent case in Germany) and I was a bit sad when Dahmer was himself murdered in prison. Those who believe in karma might think that he possibly deserved his fate.
I remember feeling a similar tinge of disappointment when I heard Fred West had killed himself. He always looked such a happy and likeable soul in all his photos, not all serious and strange like so many of his fellow multiple murderers. I didn't feel sorry for him, like I did for Dahmer, possibly because Dahmer was clearly mentally ill, whereas West seemed to know what he was doing and be clever enough to get away with it. But it was weird at the time that people were upset that he had escaped justice, as if he had scored some kind of victory by being dead and had got away without being punished for his crimes. And I'm sure that many of the people who made such a complaint are the same ones who call for the death penalty. The fact that it's important to them that someone else must do the executing probably says as much about them as it does about the killers. If West is dead, he is dead. He doesn't score any points for having managed to do the deed himself (though he adds one more victim to his tally, I suppose). Whether he had gone to trial, been executed or serve fifty years in prison, I am sure that the families of his victims would be no nearer knowing or understanding why he'd done what he'd done.
Most of us will never know that, because most of us will never feel the need to do it. These people are mental. Different shades of mental, but mental.
Now Harold Shipman has managed to cheat justice in the same way. I heard a newsreader say that he's been sentenced to life imprisonment, but had managed to get away with serving only four years. Which again misses the point a bit, as well as being a misunderstanding of the term "life".
Shipman was never the kind of serial killer that even serial killer enthusiasts were going to like. He was a grumpy, miserable man with no sense of humour (Dennis Nielson, a deeply tragic individual with, I believe, no control over his actions at least had a sense of humour. One of his victims had a tattoo of a dotted line on his neck saying "Cut here", and Nielson drily commented, "So I did.") and his methods were so clinical as to allow no prurient interest for the casual (and thoughtless) observer. In a way he should be the most terrifying killer of all: he was outwardly sane and in a position of authority and trust - who doesn't do what their doctor tells them? Who questions what he is injecting into you? Perhaps it is the ultra-reality of the situation that means he lacks the cachet of the cartoonish (though tragically real) and insane monsters with their weird and elaborate rituals of murder.
Again I don't think his death is his final triumph (but if he gets off on killing old people, then he, himself was his only real option in prison). He would never have told anyone why he did what he did; he would always have denied he did it. Surely that would be as big a torment to the families of his victims as the certain knowledge that they will never know. I don't think that even if he cold explain his motivation that anyone would find his reasons satisfactory. Because once again, most of us don't want to kill defenceless old women.
He has ended up a sad figure, hanging from his own bed sheets; this man is not a winner and he's actually received the punishment that many people wanted him to get.
He hasn't escaped, he's dead. That's it. It's over. And if there is a vengeful God (who doesn't take mental illness into account when judging the people he has created with mental illnesses), then I would think there's a pretty good chance Shipman is burning in Hell. Unless of course, just before he died he genuinely repented of all his sins and accepted Jesus into his heart. In which case he is now gamboling around in Heaven with Jesus and the apostles, Mother Theresa and any of his two hundred plus victims who were good enough and believed in God enough to gain entry to that Holy Kingdom. I suspect that there will be a bit of an odd atmosphere over the next week or so, but eventually everything will be forgiven and forgotten. It must be annoying for any atheists that he killed (who didn't get the chance for a death bed conversion) who are down in Hell and looking at their killer enjoying an eternity of splendour.
Damn, that newsreader was right, Shipman has escaped justice. The only real punishment for these people would be to keep them alive forever on a life support machine. God is just too soft on these mass murderers.
