It is here we get to the truth that underlies and pulses through the story of 112 Ocean Avenue. Not the truth about if DeFeo Jr was possessed by an evil force that compelled him to kill his family, not the truth about if the Lutz's really experienced a haunting by the same spirit.
We do women no favours if we discount their violence, their crimes or the great damage we can do and only see them as victims. More importantly we compound the damage they have done to their victims. We, however also do wrong if we don't take into account the fact that we live in a society where it is all to easy for impressionable, vulnerable women to be manipulated by older, more powerful men. My answer to the question that we should never be asking, if these women are victims or villian, is instead to let go of the pervasive "perfect victim," fallacy and accept that a great deal of the time, people can be both.
Marks manages to not just tell the story of Rikki's murder, but delves further into what lay behind the police and press's insistence that it must have been Ruth who was behind the murder. Reports of her harsh punishment of her children, as well as Rikki having to steal from local shops because he was starving was probably enough to make up most people's minds. It is hard to feel sympathy for someone who is willing to so mistreat children, however the laser like focus on Ruth meant that other suspects were ignored.
While it is easy to agree with Bremner, that media and social media are creating significant barriers to the persuit of justice, it is a genie that, short of worldwide apocolypse, can not be put back into the bottle.
Through the decades of speculation all the focus has been on the who of the killer, not the who of the women, who were easily dismissed and almost faded into the background while the mysterious Bible John, became bigger than life in the way that unsolved mysteries often do.
It is only when we get to the higher understanding that most people, most organisations, are neither wholly good, or wholly bad, that we can transcend some of these entrenched issues and see things clearly. One thing can be very bad for some people, and positive for others. Neither negates the other, they both just... are.
All books reviewed on the blog are availible to buy at the TCF bookshop where profits go to support independent bookshops and help keep the podcast running. For most people, losing a loved one to a violent murder is probably the worst thing we could imagine happening to ourselves or anyone we know. Even thinking …
Continue reading My Brother the Killer: A True Crime Book by Alex Sharkey
The Coombs case indeed throws up a mirror to our apparently more modern age, where we consider ourselves to have more understanding. The Wicked Boy however does not lead one to the satisfactory conclusion that we would react differently now-a-days because we are so much more knowledgeable and clever. Instead it shows us that despite the great advances we've made both socially and in technology, once you scratch the surface the human reaction to children committing murder is the same tumultuous mix of shock, horror, pity, and disbelief, accompanied by the kind of wild blame seeking and judgement that speaks more of calming anxiety than the search for true understanding.
The human centre Sounes gives us is much needed to provide depth, tone and heart. If we take only one approach, analysis without heart, or heart without analysis, we risk losing something important, the je ne sais quo, of what was happening in Gloucester and the terrible chemistry between Fred and Rose.
It is not just the effects on the soul that Dundass has got right, it's also the othering and dislike of disability from society. At the heart of HellSans is the unspoken question that all those with disability come to ask themselves sooner or later "Is it me who is disabled, or is the real disability societies inability to cope with differnece."
