I'm intrigued by why you and
@JosieJo doubt it's murder? I wholly agree we're not party to the evidence so we can't make the sorts of informed decisions the jury will have to make. All of our opinions could change. But from what little we know, I can't think of anything in his previous crimes suggest an individual that panics. Nor am I sure how manslaughter charge would play out?.
His guilty plea in August meant we only heard a fraction of what the judge had access to. That alone was quite chilling. But we do know the judge specifically stated in his summing up that PR was "Potentially a very dangerous individual".
We were all surprised by the 8 1/2 year sentence which seemed to rest on "principate of totality' suggesting to me that the judge thought the crimes serious enough to warrant being served consecutively. I don't know how rare that is but up to that point I'd assumed all sentences tried at the same point were served concurrently and I recall lots of people here had expected the same. Something must have been behind that decision.
We also know the judge threw out the defence plea that the crimes were opportunistic and specifically stated in his sentencing address that they were "planned, not on the spur of the moment".
We also know there must have been ample opportunities between spotting Libby and the end of that awful night where PR could have thought about what was happening and changed his mind. He could easily have committed his usual crime at the spot where he saw Libby. Leaving her terrified but physically unharmed. Ditto in his car and then left her unharmed.
This bit feels most horrible to say but he was bulky and strong - overpowering someone wouldn't have been a problem. Lots of rapists don't kill their victims because they don't need to to commit that crime. Surely that negates his one manslaughter chance.
And like everyone else I hate saying all of these things because of his victim. She had her while life ahead of her.
At the moment we really don't know
