Victims and Villains.
The language of persuasion is subtle. With so many journalists chasing a by-line in the mediaâs favourite subject â serial killers! â the message is becoming muddled.
The Daily Mail, usually a source of clear-cut bias, veers between the victims being prostitutes and sex workers on alternate lines in the same article â too many contributors confuses the sub-eds.
They are in no doubt though, that you should know Steven Griffiths went to the same school as John Haigh â the âacid bath killerâ â and lived but a short hop from Peter Sutcliffeâs home. This is what the courts would term circumstantial irrelevance, but the newspapers have no doubt as to its relevance. He could well live but a short hop from the Archbishop of Canterbury too, but if he does, we are unlikely to be told.
Former neighbours step forward to describe Griffiths as âvery weirdâ
He shared a council semi in Wakefield with his two siblings and mother Moira. The children never played outside and were considered ânerdsâ.
ââNerdsâ â a common term used to describe those who study diligently and read a lot of books, in Griffithsâ case it is evidence of his âweirdnessâ.
Faced with near identical evidence of the behaviour of one of the victims, Suzanne Blamires, such habits take on different complexion.
She enjoyed the cultural side of life â friends remember her reading philosophy and Salman Rushdieâs novel The Satanic Verses in her spare time.
Be sure we would have known all about it in the headline had Griffiths been found reading the Satanic Verses. Or anything else with âSatanicâ in the title.
Griffiths had other âhabitsâ too.
Stephen was once seen out in the garden killing and dissecting birds.
We are not told when, how old he was; he read psychology at University, so presumably did a Biology âAâ levelâ¦but the phrase âdissecting birdsâ is left hanging in the air, willing us to see him as a cruel and thoughtless man.
Griffiths went on to take a degree in psychology and developed an obsessive interest in serial killers.
Could that be because he went on to do a PhD on investigations into serial killers? He would be a âweirdâ PhD student if he wasnât obsessed with his subject. PhD students obsess, itâs what they do. They spend years obsessing, driven on by Professors who are convinced that they are not obsessing sufficiently. I once shared a sleeping compartment on the overnight train to Wiesbaden with a PhD student who had spent 8 years obsessing over the differences between two near identical examples of the genital warts suffered by Sea Lions. 12 hours passed and he still hadnât finished explaining his thesis.
But this is all grist to The Daily Mailâs thesis that âthe police have got the right manâ and we have but a few hours to dig the dirt before he is charged and we must shut up.
Miss Blamires fares somewhat better at the Mail hands, as you would imagine befits the victim.
Her life as a sex worker/prostitute, depending on which line you are on, was as a result of âaddiction to Heroinâ and an evil boyfriend who âallegedlyâ â careful now folks, donât want a libel tort for insinuating he was a pimp, do we? â sent her out on the streets to earn money to pay for their joint addiction. Who introduced who to Heroin? Nobody asks. Certainly not the journalists. It just âappearedâ in her life, and we are invited to think that someone â probably âShifty Iftyâ, we are helpfully given his descriptive nickname, and the fact that he is Asian â was responsible. Not her. Good God no. Sheâs a victim. Even though âsheâs a bright articulate girlâ who might have been expected to make some sensible choices for herself.
But âshe protected her familyâ by keeping âherself to herself so people knew very little about herâ â unlike Griffiths, who, displaying the same habits, ended up being described as âsecretive and introvertedâ.
Griffiths fares somewhat better at the hands of the Telegraph. They had also discovered his interest in serial killers, but as âin keeping with his university studiesâ and noted that these consisted of “aggregate homicide, multiple homicide, capital punishment and targeted political homicide”.
âFor the past six years he had been studying for his PhD in the history of homicide in 19th century England from 1847-99, comparing Victorian investigative techniques with modern policing methods.â
Alone amongst the prowling journalists, they had uncovered his previous mental health issues – in December 1991 he was sent to Rampton Special Hospital for assessment. Â I await the discovery of his frequent attempts to get help for his mental health issues â it is almost inevitable. Meanwhile we must content ourselves with demonising him.
The Telegraph journalists had also been more thorough on the subject of Suzanne Blamires.
She had worked as a prostitute for about a decade and had taken heroin for a similar period. She also had a long-standing alcohol problem.
Although once again â âshe wanted to stop but was forced to continue to fund her pimpâs drug habitâ. Not her own drug habit, nor her alcohol problem, you understand, itâs that âShifty Iftyâsâ fault again.
Onto the Guardian, where the sex workers/prostitutes metamorphose into just âwomenâ. Hurrah!  Even Griffiths is only an âoddballâ PhD student, in parenthesis, least any of their readers think that they are labelling all PhD students as oddballs â although they are delighted to describe the three years out of his entire education, three years which may or may not have been paid for by bursary as âprivately educatedâ â and we are given the current figure of £9,000 a year for the fees, not the fees of 18 years ago â if they were applicable. The Guardian have diligently perused Amazonâs book site and report back breathlessly that he was reading a book on Cross cultural Homicide in North America â and the story of the trial of Lizzie Borden. Still diligently attending to his studies then?
The Times discovers that on Griffithsâ web site he had listed âmore than 50 serial killersâ â is this evidence of evil intent? Careful folks. He is doing a PhD in the subject remember? The Telegraph writer Andrew Hough has helpfully posted this morning a list of 8 serial killers. A small step in the same direction? Perhaps we should keep Mr Hough udner observation?
The Yorkshire Post is at pains to tell us that the families of all three women were âbeing supported by police family liaison officersâ â as well they might be, it is surely a traumatic time for them. Whatever the cause or background to the cause, they are grieving families.
But what of Griffithsâ family? Is anyone supporting them? They lost a bright articulate son to mental illness and must now watch from the sidelines as he â and by implication, they â are vilified and demonised. Does any journalist care to ask them of their anguish and dismay?
All we are told is that:
His mother, now 61, lives in a run-down block of flats behind Dewsbury station.
As Mother of a villain, she doesnât get the chance to paint a rosy picture of her offspring.
It wouldnât be popular with the readers.
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1
May 28, 2010 at 10:42 -
“but the phrase âdissecting birdsâ is left hanging in the air, willing us to see him as a cruel and thoughtless man.”
Well, yes. What else would you call someone who kills and dissects animals, outside of a laboratory?
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2
May 28, 2010 at 11:20 -
A butcher. Happens a lot. There’s one on every high street (just about). ;-p
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3
May 28, 2010 at 11:28 -
I’m going to be a bit surprised if my local butcher starts offering blackbirds.
Well, unless I want to make a pie, of course…
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4
May 28, 2010 at 16:09 -
Call me cynical but at least your local butcher would sell you four-and- twenty blackbirds instead of “family size”packs of ten that supermarkets would market them in for convenience (theirs, of course).
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5
May 28, 2010 at 11:08 -
Dedicated.
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6
May 28, 2010 at 11:16 -
“Well, yes. What else would you call someone who kills and dissects animals, outside of a laboratory?”
The same type of person who enjoyed torturing animals, skinning frogs alive and breaking their legs, and later dissecting the finger tip of baby Peter Connelly.
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7
May 28, 2010 at 11:45 -
He’s just blown the tight-lipped police responce to rumours of cannibalism out of the water by, when in court and asked his name, replying: ‘The crossbow cannibal’…
/facepalm
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8
May 29, 2010 at 12:48 -
If he changes his name by deed-poll like that Bronson bloke….
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9
May 28, 2010 at 13:11 -
I once shared a sleeping compartment on the overnight train to Wiesbaden with a PhD student who had spent 8 years obsessing over the differences between two near identical examples of the genital warts suffered by Sea Lions. 12 hours passed and he still hadnât finished explaining his thesis.
*********Oh how slowly your will to live must have ebbed away during those 12 hours!
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13
May 28, 2010 at 16:12 -
Interested or not, my will to live would force me to stay awake all night if I was sharing a sleeping compartment with such a character.
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16
May 28, 2010 at 14:36 -
His mother is remembered as a woman who was promicious and probably a prostitute at least she was a bit of a slapper and probably didnt hide it from her son who got affected he grew up gay and killed similar women when faced with them, likely to have taken him back to those childhood feelings of discust and hate. OK so his brother and sister arent like that but werent not all the same are we? what and how 1 person deals with things is not the same as the next person.
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17
May 28, 2010 at 14:39 -
“But âshe protected her familyâ by keeping âherself to herself so people knew very little about herâ â unlike Griffiths, who, displaying the same habits, ended up being described as âsecretive and introvertedâ.”
Griffiths didnt have a reason to keep himself to himself, Suzanne did – she was a drug addict. Why was Griffiths secretive? could it be to do with his craziness?
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18
May 28, 2010 at 16:49 -
You don’t get sent to Rampton to be assessed for nothing. It’s a special hospital ffs
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19
May 28, 2010 at 17:59 -
Just because he went to QE Grammar school in Wakefield means nothing, We all go to schools just because he went to a fee paying one means jack shit. You cannot tell from a 13-16yr old what he is going to grow up into unless he has specifically told you exactly what he is going to do, This guy obviously had different ideas. Still having different ideas is heresy and choice. No one expects the Spanish Inquisition after all.
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20
May 28, 2010 at 20:54 -
I would really not like to be in the shoes of his PhD suoervisor who can look forward not only to public villification but trial-by-management as well – duty of care, lapses in professional judgement, failure to follow internal mechanisms of scrutiny…. Sabbatical now, please.
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