Apologies if I'm commenting in the wrong place, I'm still getting the hang of this! Just want to say Hi and thank everyone for such an interesting and illuminating ongoing discussion. As others before me have said, I am glad to have found an outlet for my emotions, opinions and questions on this very distressing case. I did not know Helen but felt I did through her wonderfully clever, funny and direct writing. She communicated with such truth and was clearly a class act in all kinds of ways, both professionally and personally. It must have been quite something to have known her as a friend. For her to have met such an appalling and premature death, along with that beautiful little dog Boris who she loved so much, makes me feel pure rage!
I suppose I should declare an interest here - I'm a writer of a similar age to Helen and though not widowed, found myself unexpectedly single late in life. This thread is not about me but I'd like to share some observations that I hope others will find interesting. Like Helen, I relied on my gorgeous little dog for comfort and company as I contemplated a scary future as a single woman, a few decades past the first flush of youth. It is a daunting prospect for many of us and sadly this goes some way to explain why so many women 'settle' for men who really aren't worthy of them.
I think it's pretty clear to any reasonable person that Helen and IS were not an obvious match. Her intellect, achievements, eligibility, wealth (of course) and general appeal were far above his. He should have been a fling at best - her 'transitional man', ie the one who moves you on mentally from your lost love and prepares you to meet the next one. IS was not marriage material - so why did Helen (and why do so many other women) settle?
As Helen's brother has stated, Helen was hugely unlucky to have fallen for a dangerous psychopath and her fate at his hands was so mind bogglingly horrific, she could never have predicted it. Had she even known he was capable of harming her beloved Boris, she'd have shown him the door. It is heartbreakingly ironic that her blog was full of safety warnings for widows hitting the internet dating scene. It's too late for Helen and Boris but I hope other women who find themselves in a similar situation to Helen's in mid-life can learn some lessons from her tragedy.
I married a sociopath and I now see (with that wonderful thing called hindsight) that there were umpteen clues he did not love me and had only pursued me for my high salary and comfortable lifestyle. I willfully ignored/dismissed every clue about his real feelings for me. I now puzzle over why I clung to this denial for so long and went ahead and married a cold, self-serving man I knew in my heart did not love me. My blood ran cold when I read the little digs IS repeatedly made about Helen, how you would find her books in charity shops for example, describing her as menopausal and constantly emphasising her anxiety (anxiety he had no doubt contributed to with his constant, subtle undermining of her). This was my ex husband's modus operandi too. He was happy for me to bankroll our lifestyle, pay for flash cars and 5* holidays yet he was dismissive of my work, mocked me at every opportunity and would never acknowledge that my talents and toil had paid for these things. I became jumpy, anxious and introverted - a shadow of the happy, outgoing, fun woman I was when I met him. I believed I was at fault, that he was right to point out my inadequacies. I now totally understand how older women can override their own feminine intuition in romantic matters and see a relationship as they want it to be and not as it really is. I suspect this is a very common scenario and many unhappy, late life marriages result. In most cases, they do not end in murder.
I hope, armed with this self-knowledge, I would not allow myself to be duped by such a man again. I only wish Helen had been given the same opportunity to learn this lesson but the sociopath she fell for took her life. Not content to share the luxury lifestyle she so generously offered him (and his grown up sons), he believed he deserved to have it all to himself and killed her to get it. What happened to Helen is the most unlikely and extreme life 'plot twist' imaginable. Her death, along with her beloved dog, at the hands of a man who professed to love her, reminds us starkly there are far worse things than being a middle aged single woman.
I hope you'll forgive me for throwing these very personal thoughts into the mix. I have been so impressed with the high standard of the debate here on Web Sleuths and the polite, respectful camaraderie between contributors. God bless.
