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AIBU?

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Original poster

To find this absolutely shocking...

94 replies

GnusSitOnCanoes · 03/01/2018 13:58

This man has just been jailed for murdering his partner - the third woman he has killed since the early 90s. How is it possible he's been allowed to kill three times, and released twice? I'm furious and so sad for the families involved, who have seen this happen three times now.

www.bbc.com/news/uk-england-london-42540995

OP posts:
Popchyk · 03/01/2018 16:17

It is just so awful, isn't it?

Serving less than 7 years total for the killing of 2 women isn't a right lot, is it? Murder this time, not manslaughter, I notice. From this article in the Times.

Seems like he did have a serious psychiatric illness, but doesn't that mean he should have been in a psychiatric unit, rather than outside forming new relationships with successive women?

Clearly, certain people must have concluded that he was no longer a threat after each of the first two killings. And given that they were demonstrably wrong, do these people get to just shrug their shoulders about it all?

And even after he was released each time, what monitoring, if any, was carried out of him by authorities?

Efferlunt · 03/01/2018 16:27

Depressingly I though this would be a story I read a while back where a woman’s parents struggled to get her partner charged with her ‘accidental’ killing after discovering his two previous partners had been ‘accidentally’ killed but it’s actually a completely different story about a man who has killed multiple partners and got away with it.

hellsbellsmelons · 03/01/2018 16:37

Effer it will be interesting to see what sentence he gets for those 2 killings.
I shall make a note to check it out.

hellsbellsmelons · 03/01/2018 16:38

Ignore that - I've just googled and he got 25 years.

PyongyangKipperbang · 03/01/2018 16:43

This is why I think there should be a campaign that says is ok to check up on potential new partners. Its ok to find out if they have a criminal past and not just on behalf of children. And it should be much easier for women to do this.

DamnDeDoubtanceIsSpartacus · 03/01/2018 16:45

So many people have mental health issues and manage not to kill 3 women. My goodness, we can never name the problem can we.

jaseyraex · 03/01/2018 16:49

We have Clare's law in Scotland where you can request information on your partner to see if they have any previous for domestic violence. I wish more people knew about it. I'm not sure if there's similar elsewhere.

I was in an abusive relationship before my now DH, and when I met DH I did a Clare's law form on him. He was a bit upset when I told him but he understood and of course thankfully there was nothing of concern on his record.

PyongyangKipperbang · 03/01/2018 16:57

The trouble is that many women, especially those who havent experienced domestic abuse, wont do a search because they dont want to be seen as untrusting or disloyal. Ask your friends and I bet you would get a lot of appalled faces at the thought of it. That and the old "Oh he would never do that......" so they dont even think of doing it.

We need to change attitudes and make it ok and normal to check up on someone new (for both sexes) so we know what we are potentially getting involved in.

Original poster
GnusSitOnCanoes · 03/01/2018 17:11

Pyongyang agree completely. You should be able to see if someone has a record of violence, and to be able to make an informed choice. It's not a complete answer, but it's certainly a step in the right direction. I'm sure it would save lives.

OP posts:
Anniethinggose · 03/01/2018 17:46

This government sanctions the mass murder of women. Until the law changes in order to enable judges to give longer sentences and more is done to prevent these murders, I see authorities as culpable as the killers, especially if the killers are not of sound mind.
Those poor women's families, knowing their deaths were preventable...I can't imagine.

Hygge · 03/01/2018 18:24

Gnu I'm glad then that the Times have said that.

About twenty years ago now, I worked with someone who went on to kill his ex partner.

Members of his family claimed that he was provoked because he went to collect something from the home he had shared with her and found her with another man, so she provoked him. They were very keen to establish that he was the real victim, even though she was the one who was dead. She'd had an affair, and brought another man into his home, and he was upset and didn't mean it but it was her fault.

I've never liked the provocation argument anyway but I don't think it should apply at all to "she broke up with me / met someone else, and so she made me kill her."

What his family didn't say, was that when he went to collect whatever it was, it was in the middle of the night, he broke in, and she was asleep in bed at the time.

She was asleep when she 'provoked' him, after he broke into her house in the early hours of the morning. Which he only did because he really, really needed to collect something at that very moment.

'Provocation' of that sort should never be a defence to murdering someone. This kind of 'provocation' is something we all have to face at some point in our lives.

Someone ends a relationship, romantic or otherwise, and even if it hurts, we have to get over it. Accept their decision and move on.

Johnson's mental health might have made that a lot harder for him to do, but if he's so mentally ill that he repeatedly kills his partners or ex partners because he feels provoked, he should never have been free to start new relationships, and we should be allowed to call him what he is.

He's admitted to murder this time according to the linked article. I think his past crimes should also be called murder as well.

Manslaughter is an insult to the women he has killed.

And yes, I also feel very sorry for the driver of the train.

Original poster
GnusSitOnCanoes · 03/01/2018 19:23

Hygge a man I know vaguely through work last year murdered his wife. (It was murder but he hasn't yet stood trial - so who knows what the courts will call it.) It was following an argument and she had gone to bed when he attacked her. The mental gymnastics I have seen mutual friends undertake in order to excuse or justify his behaviour, has been shocking and eye-opening. Many of them are women, and many were friends of his late wife. They talk about 'pressure' and how he 'snapped' and how out of character it was (the famed 'pillar of the community' speech). At a memorial for her, people were collecting for his legal fund.

As was said right at the start of this thread, DV is seen as a lesser crime - even when fatal. It is explained away. Women are seen as being in some way complicit in their fate.

OP posts:
Alicetherabbit · 03/01/2018 19:37

Did she know he had killed his previous two wives, I would suggest that when getting into a relationship with a man whom you don't know the past off that every woman should request background under either Megan or Sarahs law (can't remember which way around it is) I don't think much can be disclosed but the police can say if the person has a history of DV.

StrangeLookingParasite · 03/01/2018 20:09

That’s not depression, thats self indulgent rage and anger that the women in his life have had enough of him and found someone else. He’s a nasty revolting scumbag.

Absolutely agree with this. I've suffered from depression for more than thirty years, sometimes quite severely. I can very safely say that the only person I have ever remotely considered hurting in any way, was me.

Hygge · 03/01/2018 20:51

Gnus that is awful.

How must her family have felt knowing that people were collecting money to help the man who killed her?

meandmytinfoilhat · 03/01/2018 21:00

He's disgusting.

I can't believe he was released the first time. Where was the sense in that.

LakieLady · 03/01/2018 21:19

Murder is killing someone with intent, manslaughter is when the intent to kill or seriously harm is not present, eg a spontaneous fight between two unarmed individuals which ends with one of them dying.

If there is no evidence of planning and/or premeditation, it's very hard to secure a murder conviction.

That's why "domestic" murders often end up as manslaughter.

peppapigwouldmakelovelyrashers · 03/01/2018 21:22

But there is evidence of intent, and it isn't spontaneous when you are talking about years of DV. Its never spontaneous and there is always intent.

ButchyRestingFace · 03/01/2018 21:23

Unlikely now that he is in a wheelchair and has no hands. Shame he didn't kill himself before he committed his first murder.

Isn’t it awful that that is the thing that makes women safe in the long term from him?

Not the fact that he’ll be incarcerated for the rest of his natural life but the fact he’s down an arm and a hand? Sad

IrkThePurist · 03/01/2018 21:33

People are saying if he had been a woman people would be talking differently.
No we wouldn't. I'm sick of seeing that argument used on this type of thread.

ButchyRestingFace · 03/01/2018 21:35

Yes Stealth and he's no doubt traumatised the train driver in the process

I’d be traumatised too. Traumatised I never managed to kill the fucker.*

*Disclaimer: I realise how horrendous these incidents are for train drivers.

peppapigwouldmakelovelyrashers · 03/01/2018 21:42

If he was a woman he'd still be in prison for the first murder.

nakedscientist · 04/01/2018 18:09

He's not a woman though and it rarely is.

"Women were far more likely than men to be killed by partners or ex-partners (44% of female victims compared with 7% of male victims)"

www.ons.gov.uk/peoplepopulationandcommunity/crimeandjustice/compendium/focusonviolentcrimeandsexualoffences/yearendingmarch2016/homicide

greenlids · 04/01/2018 18:26

If he is mentally ill, has killed people because of it, and is being released from prison, then he should go straight from jail to a secure psychiatric hospital.

Keep the bastard locked up where he belongs.

(SIL has just suggested the alternative solution of giving him free access to an unsafe 9th-floor balcony in a high wind)

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