Are you sure they weren't semi-hardened?
How do you mean?
Define the difference.
Okay. To my mind, what separates a hardened criminal from a first-timer is exactly that: experience. A hardened criminal is inured to committing crimes. Very little remorse. No real desire to make an attempt at honest life. Has been in prison at least once before, and has no real desire to go back, yet has no appreciable fear of it.
Contrast that with an amateur, especially one with no real forethought about it. They rush. They make mistakes.
Don't you get it?
Just WHAT am I supposed to get?
How are you qualified to figure out what they should or shouldn't be thinking?
I'm not. I'm just going by what those more qualified have said.
And, BTW, if you look closely, you hand them all kinds of credit with hardened criminal capabilities.
I realize it must seem that way. You're not telling me anything I don't know.
You need to step back and take a good, hard and very long look at what you offer here. If you will, and you won't, you could end up learning some important things.
What makes you think I haven't? I wish other people would take a good look at what I have to offer.
Fang, I'll level with you: I'm well aware the limitations of my theory. I just happen to think that my theory is LESS ridiculous than the alternative. Some time ago, I quoted Arthur Conan-Doyle's Sherlock Holmes. I shall do so again:
"When you eliminate the impossible, that which remains, however improbable, must be the truth."
I'd also like to say that when you and MurriFlower decide to get serious, you do very well for yourselves. And if it turns out that I'm wrong, I'd have to say that your ideas seem like the best ones. In fact, let me go a bit further.
My mother, RIP, seemed to think similarly to how you do, to a degree. Except her suspect was someone nobody's thought of: Pam Paugh. Any thoughts?
How did Pat reach the stick that locked the wine-cellar door?
I thought it wasn't that high off the ground. No?
Oh kind lord and Master, thou art full of mercy and knowledge. We thank thee for thine most kind admission of our mere existence and especially for thine kinds words as to our humble strivings to offer something non-offensive to thee, the Great One. Amen and amen.
Come off it, man. Don't embarrass yourself.