It wasn't my intention to ruffle feathers with my comments this afternoon. I felt the thread was a bit Modsnip> one sided.
From posts of late we'd be led to believe that Ian is a psychopathic, narcissistic, sociopath who, despite being married to his first wife for twenty odd years has obviously murdered her too and then moved straight on to look for a vulnerable rich widow to murder and all this based on his voice in one phone call where he was clearing papping his pants and trying not to drop himself in it ... and failing!
I'm not Team Stewart and I didn't know Helen so I'm just being objective, basing my opinion on what we know as fact. Sorry if that's upset anyone.
I was reactive to your post because you had brought it up a number of times throughout the thread and I resented the implication that by saying something about someone being evil meant that you didn't understand the complexities of people. But I should have responded with a cooler head.
I do understand that Ian was not pure evil and that everything he ever did was not out of evil. However, the discussion of why he did certain things and to the depth of every little thing is to wonder on motive and how this all started.
For me, I saw all the missing posts on Twitter with Helen and I read the thread here on Websleuths and when everything came to light about IS, I was even more intrigued because, like you said, he's just a man. He's every man. He is the reason why crimes such as this are so scary - everyone said he was lovely, not a bad bone in his body... etc etc. He looks pretty harmless, sounds pretty harmless, acts pretty harmless - where are the warning signs?
That's what people are doing. They're just trying to associate warning signs to him, because that's how self-preservation works.
But alongside that, here is a man who IS evil in my book. Not in a fairytale kind of way, but in a
he's a murderer kind of way. Yes, not inherently evil, but do we really let him get a pass because he's been a good boy previously?
I don't doubt Helen had her faults - we all do. The reason people weren't bringing them up is because it serves no purpose. Anything brought up about IS and his accent and/or underpants is simply observational, like 'that wasn't what I expected'. It doesn't mean he's this evil character because his voice doesn't sound how we expect...
He's not the sum of this one event. But this one event is so huge and so atrocious, you wonder if there were other events that preceded it. Hence looking at the wife.
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As you've mentioned, you're free to your opinion. But with that comes the freedom for others to have theirs and not feel like they'll be mocked or ridiculed for posting.
I think we all want the same thing in the end and that's for justice to be served.
I definitely think he was a sociopath and have no qualms about calling him evil. I was just trying to explain that even though someone doesn't display evil behaviours at all times, it doesn't mean they're not evil. I meant inherently in this instance as 'perpetually' as opposed to 'permanently', although I probably should have chosen my wording better.
