Unfortunately, though, when one knows there has been a murder, and that their buddy/sibling/child was most likely the murderer, the first things they say are these pointless comments... "he was a nice guy in high school, opened my door once..." "Bought me a cookie," "Put socks on his kid."
Point being, how nice a person is it if they likely murdered someone? Does buying a cookie once last summer make them a nice person even though they've murdered the mother of their child? I think that's the OP's main point.
I don't know about others here, but it's really sickening to me when the MSM focuses upon these little inane tidbits about "what-a-nice-guy" these killers were.