Catching up on this thread, but reading through some of the documents has changed my thoughts on the case to some degree. For a long time I had assumed Maddie was the primary target, or at least his initial focus when entering the house. Realizing Kaylee’s door was open when she usually kept it shut with Murphy shut in has me wondering if he wasn’t looking for her first. He checks Kaylee’s room, potentially knowing where it is from having watched her/the house, doesn’t find her, and leaves the door open when he moves on to Maddie’s room, then kills Maddie first to get her out of the way before turning on Kaylee. I had assumed the particular brutality he displayed with Kaylee was frustration at her being a complication in his plans, but maybe it was that she had been his fixation from the start and it was Maddie who’s death was less planned. The fact that Kaylee had apparently been worried about a stalker of some kind and seen someone watching her makes me lean further towards this theory as well. We may not ever know for sure, of course, and it makes very little difference in the end, but I can’t quite get my brain to stop trying to make sense of it, somehow.
I can’t say how much I appreciate how much insight we’ve gotten into these kids’ personalities and characters from their families and friends. What smart, funny, kind, empathetic, strong human beings they all seemed to be! I don’t know, something about watching the sentencing gave me a lot of hope that BK would not overshadow these kids’ lives, not with how determined everyone is to keep them remembered.
And count me in as someone in awe of Alivea Goncalves’ statement. “If you hadn’t attacked them in their sleep, in the middle of the night like a pedophile, Kaylee would’ve kicked your f—————— a——!” I’ll remember that line forever. Because it’s so true! The only reason he managed to get the better of them was because it wasn’t a fair fight in the first place. He stacked the cards so completely in his own favor against completely unsuspecting victims and STILL screwed up enough to be caught dead to rights. He’s not even a monster, imo. Monsters inspire some sort of awe in us, some great fear, even as they repulse us. He’s simply exactly what she said; a painfully average loser who has never impressed or awed or had any notable impact on anyone in his life. It’s obviously impossible to tell what, if anything, got to him in those statements, but if it’s anything I feel it has to be that, especially if he does have a reported contempt for women. Every one of those four had more significance in their pinky finger than he has had in his whole body, in his whole life. Smarter, braver, kinder, stronger, and anything else you can name.
Sorry for the long post, this has been my first chance to get down my thoughts since the sentencing and apparently I had a lot more I needed to get out than I realized. Thanks to everyone here on the board for what you’ve all done to honor Maddie, Kaylee, Xana, and Ethan and to advocate for Bethany and Dylan. Really glad to have this community on a day like today.
All JMO.