Should I marry a murderer? Netflix

[IAmKerplunk]

Has anyone watched this? I have just finished it. Honestly I feel mixed about Caroline. Don’t want to say too much in case others haven’t finished it.

I remember the story being reported but didn’t know how much else went on in the lead up to the trial.

Place marking

Thank God!
Thought it was just me.

I kept hoping she’d get less annoying but I was disappointed.

Just watched the 2 part BBC series Murder Case - The Vanishing Cyclist about this case on iplayer - really interesting to see it from the family and legal perspective after Caroline’s NF version.

I've just watched it. She's a heroine. Thanks to her, Tony Parsons' family have been able to lay him to rest. They and she were badly let down by the Police and the Scottish prosecution service. Caroline was a victim of misogyny.

Reading some of these comments, it's almost as if she is on trial.

I think it's easy when you see the story all laid out and with the benefit of hindsight to say "that was a mistake - she shouldn't have done that" or not understand her thought processes, but it must have been very different to go through it at the time when you're involved with the people and you don't know what's coming.

I also think in some places she did take more risks than I would have and she was very brave. Making recordings and leaving the red bull can to mark the grave was the only reason they actually found the victim. She clearly unravelled after that and needed exernal help. I think if she'd been more aware of how long it would take to make the arrests she'd have been better prepared.

The police needed her testimony so they should have given her more support, regardless of whether they thought she should have been able to sort herself out or not. In that respect they torpedoed their own case.

Just watched this. Found it absolutely compelling. Amazed that everything seemed to take the police so long! I’m so glad she had the courage to come forward. She was clearly not in a great place mentally when they got together imo, and everything seemed to go downhill fairly quickly at points no doubt due to the drugs. I really hope she finds happiness

I know, it was almost like she was creating footage for a Netflix series. Very odd for a 30 year old woman to be filming every little scenario - it’s like she was getting some weird thrill being in a twisted thriller drama or something…

An aside I think she’s been in love with ‘friend’ James.

Shoot me - but I had a little tender spot for Sandy. Hear me out. I think he deeply loved Caroline and even him telling her after 6 only weeks what had happened showed some vulnerability / naivety I think? He could have chosen not been ‘honest’ with her in that moment. I think if he hadn’t had the accident / drunk driven / covered it up they may well have had a lovely life together. I think their career in hunting allowed them to be cold, brutal and dispassionate in the moment. There was evidence that that decision destroyed him (his brother told Caroline he was wrecked in his head, he had suicidal ideation/plans at least twice).

I know he put the family through unnecessary hell - but he also said that Caroline did the right thing.

I wonder if Robert is out already?

It wouldn’t surprise me if Sandy and Caroline got back together down the line as their passion for each other and the outdoors seemed intense - but maybe that was just the coke and SM staging in the first weeks of a relationship?

Can I check the timelines - did they first meet at the end of Oct, then he proposed mid Dec and she went to the police after Xmas? She was then with / living with him until he was arrested the 2nd time? When was that the following September?

Shoot me - but I had a little tender spot for Sandy

You could become his prison pen pal.

You have a tender spot for someone who said “the cunt shouldn’t have been there” (or something along those lines)?

I doubt very much there was a truck

She reminds me of someone I know well with borderline personality disorder. Why did her parents agree to the doc?

The police messed up so badly they really let the victims family down by not insuring the welfare of this victim - her evidence was the entire case!

the police came over completely incompetent

I think it's a little unfair to paint the police as incompetent. They did do the investigation thorougly and forensically and that was their focus.

They definitely dropped the ball looking after Caroline. I think she had unrealistic expectations of the support they were going to provide and the time it was going to take and they had unrealistic expectations of the role she could play in the trial because of their lack of support.

I binged on this over the weekend . I am amazed she is a doctor. Clearly an intelligent woman. I couldn't believe that she would go off to the middle of nowhere with a man from Tinder.

I just don't understand the constant documenting of everything. I think there were more photos of the pair of them than my husband and I have of ourselves in the past 20 years!! It seems so strange - to take multiple photos and videos of yourself. It seems so narcissistic. My husband and I were talking about this earlier.... Imagine that you are genuinely upset and crying about something....where are your hands? They are usually wrapped around yourself in some way? Now imagine you are crying and put one arm up as if holding a phone... It feels very odd and unnatural.

It really saddens me to think that some of our missing people may have had their lives ended like this...buried by a coward in an unmarked grave.

Watching episode 3 again with my husband as he hadn't seen it yet and we've just realised Caroline's flat might be quite near our house.

I also wondered what support she would have accepted from the police.
She was so erratic and seemed like one moment she wanted their protection (but I don’t really understand in what form) and the next she is hell bent on doing things her way.
We weren’t given any indication that she should have had witness protection for example, she chose ( in her limited capacity) to continue to be an informant but from what I saw the police didn’t ask her to be, they advised the opposite.
Obviously this was likely a response to the additions she had and a weird addiction/ trauma bond with Sandy but I think it would have been incredibly difficult for the police to try and keep her safe.

I did think her mum seemed a bit hysterical about the threat Sandy posed to them, he hadn't committed a violent murder and from what was shown wasn’t generally violent or abusive.
It seemed to me that if she was of sound mind she could have told him she was going to the police and that she couldn’t move past his confession and crime and they were over and we have no reason to think he wouldn’t have left her alone.
He didn’t seem clever or manipulative more emotionally stunted and an addict himself.

Maybe her mums fear came from being lucky enough to be sheltered from such things as addiction to the point they were all way out of their depth and naive, but I think a lot of the perceived threat and danger came from Caroline’s own mind and actions and she was enjoying it in a fucked up way that obviously indicates a very unstable person.

They failed to protect their own witness and therefore her evidence was lost and so they failed to get justice for the family of a murdered man. This is basic! Of course they were incompetent

I also wondered what support she would have accepted from the police

She didn't get the chance to accept or reject it because she was offered nothing at all.

Thanks @NancyBlackettt for the link to that excellent substack article.

Apologies if it wasn't Nancy who posted it.

I also thought she seemed vulnerable from the beginning. From the very gregarious way she began telling the story and the way her friends and family were not happy about her engagement news I got the impression she had a longstanding history of manic or reckless behaviours.

That said, the stress that she endured from the confession and what came after was horrific. It would have had a terrible impact on anyone. The police let her down badly.

Some of the way the documentary portrayed the twins was a bit heavy handed IMO. I didn’t like the way the Community Policing Officer pretended that he always saw it all coming on the basis of a minor conviction against their father, and the description of the discovery of some deer bones as a “death pit”. The twins committed a terrible life-changing crime after the accident. But the producers tried to make it seem like they had a longstanding shady past when there was nothing to suggest that they did.

I think part of the reason they were so critical of the twins is because of more information that they told Caroline which due to the trial collapsing never came to light. I know someone close to her and before the trial had heard a lot of the details and some of the things the twins were said to have done to that poor man were awful.

Caroline did allude to it at one point - covered him in bleach etc.

That’s interesting. The reference to bleach didn’t make any sense to me.