AB 9/19/18
2. Did SW.’s friends & family ever suspect that C.W. wasn’t quite right? I just can’t imagine there weren’t any signs that this man was a whack job! Richard Hodges, former roommate said he was a great guy. Steve Helling asks why did NU call police so quickly? She must have assumed something was wrong.
It is very strange. I just remember the situation that happened many years ago and that I obviously successfully buried in my memory. (Proving that people can bury unpleasant memories).
Many years ago, in another part of the world, I had a friend who later switched schools and then I lost touch with her. Periodically, I heard about her, her parents were very famous people, each in own way, who divorced when she was 8 or 9, so she was raised by her mother. Her mother adored her only, very late, child. Then the mother died.
It so happened that the day before the funerals, no one could host this ex-friend of mine. Her dad had another family, I don't know about other friends. My mom volunteered. We had not seen her for years.
We were both about 18 at that time. It was a great summer day. And during the whole day, the ex-friend
acted as if nothing had happened. She told me about her boyfriends, her life, her school, was joking, we went swimming, in fact, we had wonderful time.
When she left, my parents were shocked by her lack of emotions. I tried to normalize her behavior, mentioning that her mother used to be a "strange" woman. My mom retorted, "Oh, come on, she might have been strange, but she adored her only child".
Now looking back at this, this girl's behavior was the exact replica of CW during the interview and maybe, with the Thayers (asking for pizza, etc).
My long-forgotten ex-friend was absolutely normal, as far as I remember. She had no autistic traits, I am sure of this. Coming from artistic family, she could have been slightly moody (just my assumption), but even of this I am not sure, because all I observed was an average person who behaved adequatly - in any other situation.
Looking back, I explain her behavior by the facts that: 1) financially, nothing changed in her life and 2) she had zero feelings towards her mother. How can someone be raised with neither love, nor hatred, towards the closest person, I don't know. But this is what happened. And this context, her mother's death was less important than her next date that was at least bound to generate some pleasant emotions.
From what I know, later that woman had a normal life, married, had a child, had some issues in marriage... well, like everyone else does. But nothing extraordinary happened to her. And she never did anything extraordinary.
I think in this light, CW is quite right. But either he is simply uncapable of love and all his relations are mostly sexual in nature, or maybe he is able to have these feelings, but not to his ex-wife or kids. Perhaps with SW, he was pretending all the time, going through the motions, doing and saying what other people say or do.