Reading the various responses in this thread I am struck by how emotional many of them are and I wonder if everyone has even tried to find all the available facts about this case, or if you're just gut-reacting to what are undeniably horrific crimes.
Sure, it's difficult to imagine that so many people would hear a confession to murder, and do nothing. But is it impossible? Not at all.
If Wettlaufer is telling the truth when she says that she confessed to all these people, their reaction was in all likelihood not "meh". They probably failed to wrap their heads around the fact that this person they knew well, was in fact a serial killer. People do react in strange ways with a lot of psychological defense mechanisms coming into play.
If it is true that she confessed to all these people, I doubt they will admit to it today, so her story is likely hard to corroborate. The people who heard her confessions, if in fact they did, have to come to terms with the fact that they could possibly have prevented the later murders if they had acted.
Have you ever interviewed family members, close friends or neighbors of a person who's being charged or has been recently convicted of any type of gruesome or sensational crime? The standard response is they had no idea. Some might say that "he" was always a bit of a loner or aloof or something along those lines, but they never believe that someone they know could in fact commit such horrific crimes.
CBlover, why do you think she has zero credibility? I agree that she might not be upstanding citizen numero uno, but the way I view it is that criminals who confess to things and acts, where the confessions actually hurt them/their case, gain at least a modicum of credibility.
I'll give you an example from this specific case. She confessed to deliberately choosing the most vulnerable victims available, because she realized that their dementia might help her if they were to ever accuse her of wrongdoing. She knew her victims would likely not be believed due to their condition. As I said previously, that's cold and calculated.
She could easily have explained her choice of victims in a way that didn't paint her in such a repulsive light. She could have said that she picked victims with dementia because she felt sorry for them and she was convinced they had low quality of life due to dementia, and tried to portray her murders as acts of "mercy". That's still not a pretty picture, but it's light-years better than wilfully preying on the weakest, most vulnerable population for the express purpose of self-preservation.
She didn't do this. She went for the ugliest explanation possible and owned it.
Of course crazy isn't a legal diagnosis and we aren't in a position to say anything definitive about this case, but I do agree with you in general terms.
Murder is always wrong, but in my opinion in most cases you can at least identify a motive from the murderer's perspective. It can be for financial gain, it can be anger, jealousy or revenge, it can be to conceal a crime/rid oneself of a witness. There are many reasons. It doesn't make murder in any way acceptable, but you can logically identify a motive in these cases. When there isn't a logical motive, I agree that crazy is an appropriate label.
AFTER Wettlaufer voluntarily confessed and was sentenced to eight concurrent life sentences AND had started serving her sentence, she was CONTACTED BY three lawyers who visited her in prison.
These lawyers were a part of a a public inquiry that the provincial government had commissioned. The inquiry sought to "get the answers we need to help ensure a tragedy such as this does not happen again" and one of the people they interviewed was the convicted murderer. She was specifically asked what SHE THOUGHT: "could have stopped, or reduced, her killing spree?"
Since she acknowledged that what she did was wrong in her trial, I think we can safely assume that she knows.
The "whatever" reason she was caught, was that she VOLUNTARILY confessed her crimes after she had voluntarily entered a drug rehab program. She wasn't "caught".
Neither do you I assume.
We don't know if a different psychiatrist might have been more successful in identifying and treat what appears to be a gravely dysfunctional human being. What we do know is that the one she had, apparently failed to.
I'm not about to pass judgment on a psychiatrist when I'm aware of the fact that I hardly know anything about this specific case, about the care the physician provided and how the patient cooperated with her care.
However, without saying anything definitive about this one particular physician, let's not pretend that there aren't psychiatrists out there who only do the bare minimum, and who more or less rely solely on medications.
Interesting. You sound like you live in a black-and-white world. How do you diagnose "evil"? Is there an accepted standard and a standardized test you can run?
When I see people who make claims like yours, I think they are afraid that if you admit that a perpetrator suffers some kind of mental abnormality, that somehow diminishes their responsibility for the crimes they committed.
Many violent offenders I've met have had diagnoses like antisocial personality disorder and narcissistic personality disorder and a couple of them had a third one as well; sadistic personality disorder.
Is that what you mean by evil? Because trust me, their brains aren't wired like yours and mine. I'm not a psychiatrist, but my layman interpretation is that they are mentally abnormal. They do however know the differnce between right and wrong and in my personal opinion, jail and not a psychiatric facility, is the right place for this group of offenders to serve their sentence.
To me the clincher is if a person know what they did was wrong/illegal. I have no problem admitting that a person's personality disorders or other diagnoses might be a factor in the crimes they commit. In a few instances their disease might be a defense for their crime, in most cases it's not.
I think it's important to point out that the majority of people who struggle with mental illness NEVER commit violent crimes. If anything, they are more likely to become victims of it.
What I've seen in violent offenders over and over again, is what was previously classified as axis II, mainly cluster B, disorders.
What's your point? Should she be given a ninth life sentence for not being sufficiently "ladylike"? Farting in public is indicative of what exactly? A homicidal nature? Would her crimes have been less repugnant if she'd been physically attractive?
