I can understand why someone - especially a woman who uses handbags- might not like the idea of just leaving a dead woman's handbag in a house. - especially if I wasn't sure if I could trust the police. Had the missing watches already been noticed by the time the bag was taken to the police station, does anyone know?
Anecdotally, when a colleague died suddenly at work, it seemed wrong to just leave his broken glasses on the desk- so a different colleague took them, with his hat, to our dead colleague's wife. Obviously his death wasn't suspicious, and it is a specific anecdote, but perhaps because of this I can understand aimee and carice's desire to help/do something/ make sure it got to her mother...
Handbag issue from Lithgow
Was Aimee taking the handbag a reasonable thing to do in the circumstances?
I asked a few women, incidentally - roughly Aimees age, 30s & 40s. Three said they wouldnt and one was unsure/might take. I did tell them imagine they have only met the deceased once.
Unsure person thought aimees action could be reasonable for safe-keeping, they would take it, only if it was foisted on them and they felt they had no choice in the matter but they would rather not take it.
That person said interestingly the only reason to take a bag of a deceased would be to hand it straight in to cops as they would not want it in their house/possession for more than a few minutes as its not their friends bag. And they thought if the cops were there/en route they would give it to the cops directly rather than go
driving looking for a police station in the early hours of the morning.
Other three said no because
1) if cops were there/imminent I wouldnt take a strangers bag because they
would not want to be responsible for the contents as they wouldnt know if important/valuables were in it and they could end up implicated and
precisely because their brother had killed the person
2) next person would only take a bag if it was an RTA and
if there was no-one alive at the scene and they were worried someone else might steal it but no they wouldnt take a bag where it was a homicide scenario
3) last person wouldnt take the back because a
crime had occurred and they didnt know the mother nor her address etc. and it would be
scary to take it in the serious circumstances of a killing so they would prefer
not to even touch it but prefer to leave it with the body/cops or medics.