It shocks people because we are conditioned to think of a Hammer Horror monster, Hitler screaming wild-eyed hate in Nuremberg, or a creepy man in a park in a grubby overcoat with a van as what people who are capable of bad things look like. Which fails to take into consideration the banality of evil, which is, bad people just look and act like people most of the time, and when they do bad things, it's often for the most banal of reasons. They look like people you see at the supermarket, pruning their rose bushes, reading a paper on the tube, or nursing you in hospital. It's a shock when it's brought home to us that people capable of violence are just normal looking humans who watch soaps and football, who pay their taxes and drive a Mazda, who go on holidays to slightly boring places and play pub trivia. They are, on the surface, just like others who never dream of hurting someone else, even at their worst moments. And that average appearance, for such people, is the best of camouflages.
MOO
I totally get what you're saying here, truly I do, but I think that Lucy Letby is different to possibly every other serial murderer who has ever been caught to date.
Yes, I agree with the whole thing of
serial killers often do not present as monsters (if they did they wouldn't have been serial killers as they'd been identified much earlier) but LL is the extreme example of that, imo. There is literally
nothing in her back story which suggests that she has any proclivities towards violence, sadism, abuse or anything similar. The press have had more than five years to dig up dirt on her and anyone who knows her has had the same period to say things about her on the internet yet we have the sum total of absolutely zero as to her being nothing other than 100%, completely normal.
In literally every other serial killer story there is a prior history of abuse, harming of animals, a horribly abusive upbringing, strange sexual desires, being anti-social, being a loner, etc, etc. There is none of that as regards Lucy Letby. If there were we'd definitely have heard about it by now.
I think they may actually be struggling to fill out the usual "world's most evil killers" type documentary due to her literally having no prior issues at all.
A serial killer who was generally well liked, had an active social life and whom no one ever had a bad word to say about and had no terrible upbringing is an exceptionally rare thing. I can't think of any others.
The usual speculation as to what drove her is starting in the media and online, including here, and the usual suspects are chiming in with things like Munchausen's and suchlike. I feel that people are reaching for easy answers, though, and in her case there are no easy answers.
Human nature is very strange as to needing answers; on the one hand people crave easy answers to things like serial killers - which there rarely are, especially in this case, I think. On the other hand, the simple and often obvious answers, people refuse to accept because they can't deal with the simplicity of them and that such things can happen so easily. Look at the JFK assassination; millions of people absolutely refuse to accept the fact that a single person, acting alone could murder the most powerful man in the world with such ease and end up creating ridiculous and hugely convoluted conspiracy theories to explain it, often (always?) requiring the total disregard of the facts and, as in JFK, the bending of the laws of physics. It really is very strange.
I don't think we'll ever know what motivated Lucy Letby to do what she did. The oft repeated phrase of
only she knows why she did it is making its usual appearance but I think it's a virtual certainty that she herself doesn't know why she did any of this.
Scientists for 130 years or so have wondered what condition afflicted Joseph Merrick - the so called Elephant Man. I've heard it mentioned that his condition may have been unique to him and should be named "Joseph Merrick Syndrome". Given the extreme strangeness of Lucy Letby's case perhaps she'll open a new definition in clinical/criminal psychology?
She is a genuinely very frightening person, in my opinion. Very frightening indeed.
