Newthoughts
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Every rapist and murderer has previous crimes that aren't rape and murder. Everyone starts somewhere.Just playing Devil's advocate here, @Newthoughts
His previous crimes were very different to rape and murder. Not one of them involved stalking or physical contact with women. He's a menace to women, of course, but in a very specific way. All of his roaming around in the dark and researching studenty areas can be explained by his obsession with publicly masturbating etc. He was in the park having sex with Libby. She walked away. He was heading back to his car and heard a load of screaming. It scared him. He hastened back to his car and left. He thought about it later and returned because he was worried about what could have happened to Libby. I'm sure this is what his defence counsel will claim, or something similar.
His previous pattern of offending is not an unusual precursor to those crimes. How often have we heard of rapists and murderers that start like that
His previous convictions got him a sentence of 8 1/2 years despite the maximum sentence for each one only being between 2 and 3 years and despite reductions for pleading guilty.
That was because, according to the evidence put before the judge, the nature of those offences and the history of them meant he felt they warranted quite a long sentence and therefore they would run consecutively rather than concurrently. I didn't know such things happened in law.
So an experienced judge saw something in that evidence. His summing up suggested he saw planning not randomness. We know he got kicks from terrorising otherwise he'd be at home watching




He didn't look away when caught watching for example. He returned to one victim despite knowing she was terrified. The judge saw something dangerous in that
We have several witnesses to say Libby was vulnerable and distressed. Assuming an element of truth in every lie - I suspect his truth was the fact she was crying for her mum by the time he picked her up. An odd comment when nothing else about her was in the public domain.
No one that was normal would have taken advantage there. Several people had tried to help. Others walked away. Cos normal decent people don't do that . The type of person that would, in my opinion only, is capable of quite a lot more.