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.

Who wants to bet that she is writing to/visiting him in prison and/or will get back with him when he gets out? (Regardless of her alleged current new rship).

Thanks. You’re quite right, had forgotten.

She was/is mentally unwell & desperate for love & a relationship at any price.

Handsome, professional James (it seemed odd he appeared as he didn’t help re: a favourable view IMO) she’d give her eye teeth for a relationship with someone like him but had air of having tried & failed. It stung peers having babies/loved up/married.

Trying on wedding dress felt odd & Miss Havishamesque.

How close had she been to marriage with previous man?

Honestly? I think she on some level really enjoyed the drama. Her amateur dramatics re-enacting things for Netflix.

What on earth were her parents thinking, letting her go on TV? They must not realise how badly she comes across.

She's certainly an absolute laughing stock on TikTok and FB reels.

Yes. Why did parents go on? If edited differently it might have given a more sympathetic portrayal. Did they hope for/expect this? Was it about ££ as her professional career over?

Dreadful (repeated) apostrophe error on Netflix's captioning as well:

"6 months since the McKellar's arrest"

The "stealing a tractor" and "filming myself with a fag singing je ne regrette rien"...less mental illness and more drama llama imho. Watched too many films I think.

And yes, she should have been prosecuted for contempt of court. Plus stealing the tractor - presumably, ironically, putting other road users in danger. Indeed, wonder what a state she often was driving back and forth between Auch Estate and Glasgow.

I agree, she didn’t come across well. I assume she did the documentary for financial reasons.

The bottom line for me is that she did do the right thing, despite significant personal cost. It seems she wasn’t the only one who was fully aware of the crime, but she was the only one with the balls to report it to the police.

Christ! It's like I said, you'd think she was on trial.

As well as getting some form of closure, the family were able to get a "six figure payout" from the insurance company of the car that hit Tony Parsons.

The brothers are such scumbags. I found this from an interview with Caroline.

Though both of the brothers are now behind bars, the ordeal is far from over. Caroline has feared for her life ever since and has installed security cameras at home to protect herself.
“You’re telling me that man is not going to come knock on my door when he gets out,” she said in 2023.

I just felt awful to her.

you could see her physically transform throughout the documentary. She started out as hardworking young doctor, nice flat, dog, same boyfriend since she was 21, all perfect.

then something happens in her relationship (she calls it a betrayal and says it meant her relationship was built on lies, probably cheating). She takes a chance and goes to meet some sexy farmer type from tinder in the gorgeous Scottish highlands, driving an hour and a half into the wilderness to meet him.

her friend tells her not to go in case he murders her! Honestly I think most women would not do this for that exact reason and this was her first big mistake. Obviously that doesn’t justify what happens next but it is a reminder for all women to keep your wits about you when dating!! Unfortunately this guy actually was a murderer…

he lovebombs her, they get engaged within a month, and then she gets drawn in to knowing about this murder. So suddenly she finds herself in this maelstrom of reporting him, the police not being very proactively protective, and she’s still in this relationship dynamic, partly not to tip him off that she was the one who reported him and partly because she was still in love with him and deeply in this toxic dynamic.

by the time the trial rolls around, it’s been covid, she hasn’t been able to work for months, she’s spent months drinking and drugging, she looks completely dreadful and she’s slipped into mania and psychosis.

tell me you’d make perfect decisions throughout all of that. She’s not a criminal just because she fell in love with someone who is. Ultimately she reported it and led them to the body.

she struck me as someone with attachment issues maybe, which can be debilitating for so many people.

She comes across as an attention seeking narcissist. I’m not entirely sure I believe her story. Any rationale person would have gone straight to the police but she was infatuated with him. Even now I think part of this is about conveying a message to him. I have no doubt she’ll be waiting for him when he gets out.

Caroline needed protective custody as soon as she went to the police. She was failed by the police. There was no victim support. The prosecutor made so many assumptions about her just because she qualified as a doctor. It was shocking to see.

Her filming herself was jarring to me but there is a generation of people who do that. I just don’t understand why she wasn’t accompanied to court. I’m glad she’s managed to move on with her life.

Caroline needed protective custody as soon as she went to the police

It was odd that the Police considers him such a dangerous risk that, instead of arresting him during the day, they turned up in the dark of night with a firearms squad! Then released him and told Caroline if he - who had access to firearms of his own - turned up at her parents, give them a call!

Her male friend really did nothing at all to help how she came across. He might as well have rolled his eyes every time he spoke.
I couldn't decide whether she had once been in love with him, or vice versa. There definitely seemed to be a bit more to it all.

WRT her friend, he apparently really did not want to appear on it at all. Agree he made her sound like a complete nightmare. But then he’s a surgeon so fits the mould ha!

I think she with him. Unfortunately. It was only her photographic memory that meant she qualified.

I had watched the original BBC documentary on the police investigation, so was fascinated to watch this. What a drama around it all. I think the police did let Caroline down, but she also behaved very strangely. Making crazy decisions one after the other. I think whoever near the start of the thread said she is still infatuated with him is probably correct.

By a) going on Netflix, presumably in return for a sum of money and b) committing crimes (drug possession, stealing a tractor) she IS putting herself on trial and opening herself to our judgment.

there was a sense of her enjoying the act of wallowing in the trauma of the past and the romance of being with this edgy drug addled farm boy bit of rough.

I think when someone's been through something traumatic there's a need to talk about it. A Netflix documentary wasn't the best place for Caroline to talk but I can see why she did it.

It most likely wasn't for money or because she's a narcissist, but because she wanted to get her side of the story out there.

I expect a lot of people knew about her erratic behaviour, her drug and alcohol problems, and speculated about her whirlwind relationship with Sandy and why she stayed with him. I imagine she saw this as a chance to set the record straight, to say, 'This is what I went through, this is why I made some terrible decisions.'

Obviously it backfired on her because she's just getting even more judgment now.

I did think she took a huge risk in going out to the middle of nowhere to meet Sandy for the first time, I wondered why she wouldn't insist on somewhere halfway in separate hotel rooms for the first time.

Maybe Sandy was looking for someone vulnerable/ lonely/ desperate enough to take that risk, and once she showed him she was then I wouldn't be surprised if he was emotionally manipulative and controlling.

It's interesting that he didn't tell her the whole story of what he did to Tony Parsons at once. First it was that Parsons died immediately and they panicked and buried the body. Then other details, that he was still alive, that they poured bleach over the body etc came out.

I think that was to slowly, piece by piece, make her- not sure if comfortable is the right word but the only one I can think of right now- comfortable with what happened.

He accidentally killed someone, (and Sandy told her Parsons shouldn't have been on the road anyway), panicked and made a bad decision is the kind of thing a vulnerable person who thinks they're in love can wrap their head round, maybe even feel flattered to be entrusted with that secret.

And once she'd accepted that, then she's part of it and could gradually be pulled in deeper.

I think it's easy for us to judge her, but none of us know how we would act in that situation.

I’ve just watched the BBC documentary and someone told the police that it had basically been an open secret for years.

So, why didn’t they report it to the bloody police??

They tried, but without evidence what could they do? Even Caroline's evidence wasn't enough for them.

I don’t see how she can be criticised. Her mental health was seemingly fragile after the end of her previous relationship and then this sequence of events absolutely wrecked it, through no fault of her own. What a horrible situation she found herself in, purely by chance.

I think she’s a deluded self-publicist with a side-order of bonkers-ness.

The weirdest bit was that they’d been together a couple of months at most. She must have been very vulnerable to have not just cut her losses and left him at such an early stage in the relationship. I can see why the police were confused by her actions.