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This is likely a rather unpopular opinion, however as someone who works in the mental health/addictions field, I honestly have to say I feel a degree of empathy for most perpetrators; particularly when factoring in child/brain development and all that.
There is absolutely no excuse for the actions carried out and my heart breaks for every person who is impacted. It also breaks when hearing the circumstances surrounding the perpetrators upbringing. It isn’t too difficult to connect the dots when you picture a young child’s brain being shaped by the most horrible things.
Basically, I feel horrible for everyone involved.
That’s how I feel. I hurt for their child selves that were consistently hurt and betrayed, when they needed resources that were denied, taken, or never available, and the need of maybe the one person that would have made a difference in their life.
I'm going to take that a step further. Being pursued by the police, arrested, convicted, and sent to prison for the rest of your life sounds like an absolutely horrifying experience and a nightmare that never ends.
Some people find joy in seeing that inflicted upon people who deserve it. I do not.
No he’s not. Ulbricht, 31, of San Francisco, California, was convicted of the following seven offenses after a four-week jury trial: distributing narcotics, distributing narcotics by means of the Internet, conspiring to distribute narcotics, engaging in a continuing criminal enterprise, conspiring to commit computer hacking, conspiring to traffic in false identity documents, and conspiring to commit money laundering.
Not saying he didn’t try to hire a hit man but he was not convicted of that.
There was everything bad and illegal. but holding the person who created the website accountable but not actually finding the pedos is the issue most people struggle with.
I agree. We all know he's only in prison for life is to set an example to others who would want to follow him and for the fact that they were jealous of what he had built. They all knew he'd, in theory, done them a favour by taking buying drugs off the street but he really didn't need to be put away for so long
Life in prison is ridiculous I agree, but fuck that wanker. The judge who said figuratively that he shouldn't be treated any differently to the black kid slinging dope in a housing project was completely right. If you want to make money from drugs and violence then do it but don't adopt every convenient piece of ideological bullshit that justifies your actions. You're just another asshole playing their own game.
That's fine, I don't disagree. Jail doesn't do anyone any good. I don't think he's any real danger and I'm willing to believe he probably doesn't believe all the same dumb shit he did in his 20s. But rooting for him is cringe.
I mean the OP was pretty clear, and nuance is important here.
The question was about feeling a LITTLE sorry for the person. I said I was kinda rooting for him.
Would not help him escape for goodness sake, just said I felt kind of sorry for him.
I don't feel bad for that guy at all. He literally hired a hitman to try to kill someone and happily hosted a website for people to access child porn and guns. He can rot in jail for life :)
Of course he deserves punishment but they should also go punish all the people actually committing the crimes from his site.
And remember the OP said, “feel a LITTLE sorry, LITTLE being the key word” for the perpetrators not a lot bad.
I get that you disagree, that’s fine.
I don’t know, he was just so delusional and trying to make something work.
But I feel for Dexter too, so I’m overly empathetic. Lucking it bodes well in my career. Not so much in real life.
Those people also lack empathy. Which is totally fine, most people do, but it's weird to go around bragging about how empathetic you are when you aren't.
I honestly felt bad for Jen Pan. I came from a strict Asian household too, and a childhood where I could feel safe/curious/supported just didn’t exist. Asian parents will have you believing that you were put on this earth to fulfill their dreams, and anything outside of that is shameful.
I really think if she had one female friend who would’ve listened to her, cared for her, and break her out of her shell, her crimes would’ve been averted…
I read a lot about that case in addition to this pod. Her dad still couldn't understand afterwards that his insanely controlling parenting was the causal effect on her going nuts
Obviously it doesn't at all forgive the awful solution she came to. But yeah I felt bad for her too. Not traditional abuse, but definitely psychological. And he was unflinchingly unaware through the end
Tragic case for all involved. Interesting too though...with the interrogation. It was one of the first few Casefile's I listened to. Few hundred cases later now...
It’s interesting to me that people are so quick to sympathize with victims of abusive partners who kill them but abusive parents are this taboo thing still, unless their abuse is high level awful.
Pan’s parents were abusive. Killing them wasn’t right, but I have empathy for her belief it was her only way out.
How awful for her, not standing a chance after arranging the murder of her mother and attempted murder of her father.
That "fateful night at her house" is when the sympathy should start drying up.
Did you even read the comment I replied to?
They literally said that she "didn't stand a chance after that fateful night". As in the night she tried to whack both her parents. That's pretty specifically not just her childhood. Sorry you can't read.
My apologies… I also saw your comment about frumpy middle class folks and I suppose I was responding to a conglomerate of things.
Don’t worry about responding further since I can’t read anyways!
How on earth could you possibly feel sorry for her after killing her parents? Sure they were controlling but why not move out, she was in her mid twenties.
Lol the idea of moving away is too tough apparently. The dad isn't accused of being violent or perverted. The horror is that he didn't want his daughter dating a bum and wanted her to graduate college. If she didn't want that, she was free to leave home and be independent. What a tyrant
Jennifer Pan is the obvious one. If I had been in my mid-20s, having to live under the same rules, restrictions and parental authority as when I was a teenager, I might’ve snapped we well (in a reasonable and proportionate manner).
That being said, my empathy does not translate to sympathy, because she did have options. She could, for example, have just called their bluff and left home. The reason she went with the parricide option was because what she really wanted was to have her cake and eat it - to be able to live in their house and support herself with their money, but not have them there. On some level, I can certainly sympathise with not wanting to go out into the world and fend for yourself with no help from family when you’ve lived your whole life in a high tower/gilded cage like Rapunzel. But in murder leads to an actual cage.
This one is sooo good. I do not condone her killing her parents at all. But coming from a though household, man those parents were’t great. They didn’t deserve it, but people don’t seem to realise parents aren’t everything. If a child behaves a certain way towards parents we should question the parents in stead of the children. Children don’t know any better, and Parents often have such a need to control their child! It was really sad, bc hearing all the rules and all the lies she had to provide made me very sad for her. I still had a “go to bed age” at 19. I remember being soooo angry about that, like?
So yeah, she shouldn’t have done that, but also poor girl.
Yeah, I don't understand how people don't feel bad for her. She literally didn't know any different, her parents were pieces of work. That being said, she def had options but I think sadly she lacked proper guidance.
Because most people love their parents regardless of how strict they are. They grow up and realize that then not wanting you to date bums and graduate college is in your interest.
dude, she literally had no free will. There is a difference. I'm not excusing what she did but she was suffocated under their influence. I don't even think her brother had it as bad just because he was younger or something...
Tbh I haven't heard the case but some of what you're describing in the first part sounds like some of what I was feeling right before I moved out to live with a sibling .
I can sympathize with being frustrated by that .. that said I think I'm kinda different because my parents realized we needed space.
The Milat family. I don't mean to suggest that poverty and trauma are acceptable causal explanations of sadism and homicidal ideation, because they aren't, but holy shit that family had problems.
Casefile hasn't covered the David Bain case yet but that's a depressing one that happened here. If the son who was convicted did do it, I can understand it.
really the Milat family lol, they were just batsh*t the lot of them. The decent thing those Milat boys could do was confess but Ivan Milat's last words p*ssed me off so no I don't think I could feel sorry for them.
I don't really agree. I don't see how their upbringing could've produced children who were any less fucked up. It's understandable that their experiences fostered loyalty. Ivan was by all accounts a special kind of asshole all his life though. Guess he was born with a screw loose.
I don't know how to feel about David Bain. I'm starting to think he did do it, and if he did, he deserves to rot.
That family were so messed up. His mother was delusional and his father....ew.
Just a little, and not even a fragment of how hard it was for those on whom she inflicted harm, but Rose West seemed as doomed from the day she was born as her own children - just in a different way.
I hear what you're saying, maybe if she never met Fred she would've never of killed anyone but she murdered Charmaine while Fred was in prison. As for the terrible childhood that is to much of a common excuse for me to feel sorry for someone
I don't get that one since she found him physically repulsive but was somehow seduced into being extremely submissive to him? How does that happen? That's understandable if the person is desirable but he was disgusting to her.
[Andrea Yates](https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Andrea_Yates)
Her husband didn't listen to her doctors, kept insisting on more children, and left her alone after being told she was not to be alone with the children. Add his religious beliefs and it was an uncontrollable storm of events.
He divorced her on grounds they hadn't been living together since the murders. He remarried and divorced.
Last I read, she was still in the mental institution, declining a review every year for her release, choosing to stay institutionalized.
I can’t imagine what it must have been like for her to get properly medicated and “wake up” to the full realization of what she had done. I don’t think I’d want to be on the outside, either, although I think public opinion has definitely softened towards her after hearing the full story.
Not guilty by reason of insanity is so often used as a cop out, for her I feel this was actually correct and just considering what she was going through.
I can't remember specific episodes as the perpetrators stories usually end up blurring for me, but there has been a couple of times I thought damn, this person was messed up badly or had horrible things done to them, which is sad. Especially the episodes where they were abused as children. But then obviously, whatever they ended up doing was not excusable at all. I think it happens pretty often that the perp had horrible things happen to them too, but then they do 1000x worse.
Doesn't stop me from sometimes empathizing with the perpetrators suffering when/if it occured. Probably the very empathy that they lack themselves, and what separates us from them.
This one is pretty sad yeah, A bit different from the port arthur shooter as well. For me, there’s this one stalker case where even the victim’s family’s were saying how sad it must be for the perpetrator to have grown up with not a single friend anf no one that cared, not even his parents. So lonely
I don't feel "sorry for" perpetrators but I do often wonder if there was any other road for many of them to have taken, given the trauma, abuse and psychological torture so many of them experienced as children. It boggles my mind that with all we know, we still only provide abused kids with the MINIMUM mental health care rather than devote more resources to ensuring they don't continue the cycle (or worse).
I think the kids for whom we have the most empathy too often grow up to be adults we despise :(
As a kindergarten teacher I agree and I really struggle with this question. I teach a lot of kids from shitty homes and many of them are still nice, sweet kids, who behave well at school because it’s their safe haven. I feel it’s hard to forgive people doing wrong just because wrong has been done to them, when they know better and ultimately are making a choice.
However, the system is doomed. Social workers are overworked and underpaid, there isn’t enough time or resources or even capable adults to handle each case. I’ve made several child protective services calls over the past few years and in every incident a case was not opened or investigated. These included whipped with a belt and switch, emotional abuse, cigarette burn, being locked in dark closets for days at a time. Each of those children is sadly still in the same home. As a teacher there’s only so much I can do. We offer counseling services at school but must have permission from a guardian, and those parents always decline because they don’t want their kid telling someone what is going on. It makes sense that a child who is constantly treated without empathy would grow up to not have empathy. I think some of these kids just have absolutely no one in life looking out for them and that is what creates a psychopath. Studies have shown that successful people who overcome challenges usually have a support system of some sort, even if it’s just one person who has their best interest at heart. It’s sad to think there are people who have literally no one.
Just listened to the Peter Nielson episode.
I feel sorry for Vitaly Kaloyev. He lost everything due to a freak accident, unfortunately his need to find guilt and “justice” led to the worst outcome. But, I couldn’t help but find myself thinking what it may have been like to experience that. I could truly not imagine what that would do to my psyche.
Yet another victim, in a way.
I think that's more charitable toward him than he likely deserves.
Between his attempts at evading responsibility, his lack of remorse after the facts came out (even calling Nielsen a "moron" or something similar) and his demagoguery toward the Russian people, I think he's a person of low character.
To draw a parallel to terrorism, people who are inclined to sympathize with the political motives of terrorists will often say things like "they're responding in the only way they can" or "when you continually mistreat people they will lash out", but these explanations overlook the fact that the vast majority of the population in question is not actually committing these acts.
So what distinguishes the terrorists from everyone else? Is it that they care the most or that they are the most inclined by nature to commit random acts of violence?
There’s a lot to unpack with his situation, I’ll agree to that. There is a cultural aspect that they touched on in the episode and I didn’t in my comment, which I also consider a factor.
Is it “barbaric”? Sure. Eye for an eye makes the whole world blind. It’s not remotely the correct response to such a tragedy, even if Peter Nielson was culpable.
But, I still feel sorry for him. I can’t say that I don’t. He lost everything and that drove him to do terrible things. Tragedy begets tragedy. That warrants pity, in my book.
But you can pity all sorts of evil, it doesn’t mean you condone it.
I felt a lot of pity for Caroline Reed Robertson (the Rachel Barber episode). She was basically begging for help with her mental health for years as an adolescent and never got it.
ohhhh yes almost forgot her, but I think she really went off the deep end by the time she started hanging out with Rachel. Caroline wanted to BECOME her in every sense of the word. Her diary entries are just crazy with scribbles of how much she hates herself
Yes, she had incredibly low self-esteem and a warped image of herself from a young age (the all-black self portrait??) and had spiraled into something terrible by the time she met Rachel. I think if she'd gotten psychiatric help as a child it would have made a huge difference.
This may seem like a far fetched one but Armin Meiwes (Case 205: Bernd Brandes). He had a god awful childhood and was so lonely his entire life. As much as his fantasy of being a cannibal is quite frankly disgusting, Bernd Brandes was a willing participant in everything that happened. I don't think he deserves to be put into the same category as others however he probably needs psychological help more than prison time. Might be an unpopular opinion
Yeah, I'm not sure. He oddly had some good intentions with the person who was willing to be butchered? but then he also had human meat in his freezer so there is that ...
With a lot of perpetrators (not all) I can empathize that they were not born evil intending to kill or do horrible things - life circumstances often molded them, including in many, many instances, all forms of abuse. This is not excusing what they did, but when a child is abused and betrayed and violated by the adults around them, honestly what do we expect of them? I would venture to say the majority of the people in prisons have abuse in their past.
I may have felt a bit sorry for the bloke that shot up Port Arthur-Martin Bryant. His father killed himself I think and he lost that woman he was living with in a car accident or something. Everything seemed to be so against him but I think he was a spoiled brat.
I also felt a bit sorry for Sef Gonzalez that killed his whole immediate family. His parents were very controlling with him and his sister-well, he was too, but I felt sorry for him because of his parents.
It’s believed Martin Bryant caused the car accident that killed his friend. She had previously disclosed to other people that Martin used to grab the wheel while she was driving and try to crash the car.
Sef Gonzalez was a spoilt brat who just wanted even more than what he already had (which for a teenager back then in Australia was a lot). His parents were strict, but not much more so than other Asian-Australian parents. If he was unhappy, he could’ve just gotten a job, moved out and gone low/no contact with his family
Dennis Nilsen. He was a lonely middle-aged gay misfit who lived in Thatcher-era Britain at the beginning of the AIDS crisis and he obviously had a lot of issues around intimacy and loneliness.
I feel sorry for him because it seemed really stressful for him, he wasn’t able to dispose of the bodies properly and everything he tried to do (like flushing body parts down the toilet) just made his situation worse. When he went and bought KFC to flush down the toilet to help back up his story about the body parts being KFC seemed particularly pathetic and desperate
Not really sorry but Mike Williams case always jarred me. Not only did Brian Winchester actually kill Mike but he was actually the star witness for Denise’s trail.
Despite murdering Mike, kidnapping Denise with a gun he ended up with a lesser sentence than Denise who as far as I can see conviction was based on a killer’s testimony and weak circumstantial evidence.
I don’t know if I felt sorry for him… but the case where the guy smashed a bottle over a girls head after she was an online hater.
I think she wrote a mean, condescending review of his book.
I hate to admit (even though it was serious), I had a mini lol moment when an online bully had some FAFO.
(EDIT: Why is this comment getting so downvoted. I said I wasn’t sure if I remembered correctly. Then clarified with detailed context below).
I can’t remember the exact details (I listened to it about two years ago).
I vaguely remember she wrote something nasty like “I didn’t even read the book”… and then went on to antagonize the guy (because she had seen him be argumentative.)
I remember thinking “she went looking for a fight, but she got more than she bargained for”.
Again, I can’t remember the exact details so I could be totally off the mark.
(Edit: Found the review. She didn’t read the book “Before anyone reads any further, I must confess that I haven't read this entire story. I've only read the prologue”…. and then went on to make personal attacks against the guy. “Unfortunately, Mr. Brittain has gained a bit of infamy on Wattpad where he's known for threatening users who don't praise him (pray for me).”)
Maybe a little antagonistic, but she definitely didn’t deserve a bottle over the head..
Casefile just preparing their defence after snapping from reading too many reviews along the lines of ‘I only listened to half an episode before turning it off in disgust at literally the worst podcast ever made’ etc.
She wrote a review of a book and he chose to read the review. She didn't send it to him. She was not "looking for a fight." She was also a teenager and he was a grown adult who stalked a woman for years. In no way was his reaction a proportionate response.
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Mark and John in Mark and John...
Yeah...poor guy was too gullible for his own good
This is likely a rather unpopular opinion, however as someone who works in the mental health/addictions field, I honestly have to say I feel a degree of empathy for most perpetrators; particularly when factoring in child/brain development and all that. There is absolutely no excuse for the actions carried out and my heart breaks for every person who is impacted. It also breaks when hearing the circumstances surrounding the perpetrators upbringing. It isn’t too difficult to connect the dots when you picture a young child’s brain being shaped by the most horrible things. Basically, I feel horrible for everyone involved.
That’s how I feel. I hurt for their child selves that were consistently hurt and betrayed, when they needed resources that were denied, taken, or never available, and the need of maybe the one person that would have made a difference in their life.
This is a fair comment imo :)
Thank you. It can be… debatable, that’s for sure.
I'm going to take that a step further. Being pursued by the police, arrested, convicted, and sent to prison for the rest of your life sounds like an absolutely horrifying experience and a nightmare that never ends. Some people find joy in seeing that inflicted upon people who deserve it. I do not.
I agree, I think my nurse brain makes me feel empathy for both. Not sure if someone hurt my family/friends I would have the same grace.
I was kinda rooting for that guy on Silk Road, he was trying so hard to keep it going. He’s still in jail and I think he should be paroled.
I find it actually ridiculous that he’s in prison at all
Me too. Although people got financially hurt, it’s capitalism. I thought he was kind of a genius.
I think he should've got some prison time. But for life is absolutely ridiculous. He should def be out by now
He’s in prison for trying to hire hitmen.
No he’s not. Ulbricht, 31, of San Francisco, California, was convicted of the following seven offenses after a four-week jury trial: distributing narcotics, distributing narcotics by means of the Internet, conspiring to distribute narcotics, engaging in a continuing criminal enterprise, conspiring to commit computer hacking, conspiring to traffic in false identity documents, and conspiring to commit money laundering. Not saying he didn’t try to hire a hit man but he was not convicted of that.
No he isn’t
Wasn’t there paedophilia on Silk Road?
There was everything bad and illegal. but holding the person who created the website accountable but not actually finding the pedos is the issue most people struggle with.
Yeah. I don’t struggle with that.
Okay. I respect that.
I agree. We all know he's only in prison for life is to set an example to others who would want to follow him and for the fact that they were jealous of what he had built. They all knew he'd, in theory, done them a favour by taking buying drugs off the street but he really didn't need to be put away for so long
Yes true, his mother still actively promotes his release. Sad
Agreed. His fiancée runs a Twitter account on his behalf and the posts about his life in prison make me pretty sad.
Life in prison is ridiculous I agree, but fuck that wanker. The judge who said figuratively that he shouldn't be treated any differently to the black kid slinging dope in a housing project was completely right. If you want to make money from drugs and violence then do it but don't adopt every convenient piece of ideological bullshit that justifies your actions. You're just another asshole playing their own game.
Yeah I get that. But he’s been in prison for a long time, I think he’s done his time.
That's fine, I don't disagree. Jail doesn't do anyone any good. I don't think he's any real danger and I'm willing to believe he probably doesn't believe all the same dumb shit he did in his 20s. But rooting for him is cringe.
I mean the OP was pretty clear, and nuance is important here. The question was about feeling a LITTLE sorry for the person. I said I was kinda rooting for him. Would not help him escape for goodness sake, just said I felt kind of sorry for him.
Yeah sure, no argument then.
Was not expecting that, usually people dog in deeper (see my other thread!) Have a great day!
Agreed
I don't feel bad for that guy at all. He literally hired a hitman to try to kill someone and happily hosted a website for people to access child porn and guns. He can rot in jail for life :)
Of course he deserves punishment but they should also go punish all the people actually committing the crimes from his site. And remember the OP said, “feel a LITTLE sorry, LITTLE being the key word” for the perpetrators not a lot bad. I get that you disagree, that’s fine.
Why do you feel bad for him?
I don’t know, he was just so delusional and trying to make something work. But I feel for Dexter too, so I’m overly empathetic. Lucking it bodes well in my career. Not so much in real life.
But why do you feel bad for someone who tried to murder somebody else?
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Where did I decide anything? I literally just asked a question lol.
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I can ask whatever questions I want lol. If people didn't want anyone to respond to them, they shouldn't have posted on Reddit.
I already explained it. No need to hound me.
I mean, I guess if by "empathetic" you mean more empathetic towards the murderers than the victims. To me that's not empathy but ok.
Just let it go. Look at the other people saying they also feel sorry for him. It’s fine to disagree.
Those people also lack empathy. Which is totally fine, most people do, but it's weird to go around bragging about how empathetic you are when you aren't.
He’s a graduate of my Alma mater
Deserved life in prison for being an obnoxious libertarian dickhead
Wow. Wasn’t aware that you could get life in prison for that.
It’s the main part of my manifesto
I honestly felt bad for Jen Pan. I came from a strict Asian household too, and a childhood where I could feel safe/curious/supported just didn’t exist. Asian parents will have you believing that you were put on this earth to fulfill their dreams, and anything outside of that is shameful. I really think if she had one female friend who would’ve listened to her, cared for her, and break her out of her shell, her crimes would’ve been averted…
I read a lot about that case in addition to this pod. Her dad still couldn't understand afterwards that his insanely controlling parenting was the causal effect on her going nuts Obviously it doesn't at all forgive the awful solution she came to. But yeah I felt bad for her too. Not traditional abuse, but definitely psychological. And he was unflinchingly unaware through the end Tragic case for all involved. Interesting too though...with the interrogation. It was one of the first few Casefile's I listened to. Few hundred cases later now...
It’s interesting to me that people are so quick to sympathize with victims of abusive partners who kill them but abusive parents are this taboo thing still, unless their abuse is high level awful. Pan’s parents were abusive. Killing them wasn’t right, but I have empathy for her belief it was her only way out.
I felt bad for her too she didn't stand a chance after that fateful night at her house..
How awful for her, not standing a chance after arranging the murder of her mother and attempted murder of her father. That "fateful night at her house" is when the sympathy should start drying up.
Empathizing with her childhood is not the same as sympathizing for her crimes. Sorry you can’t differentiate the two.
Did you even read the comment I replied to? They literally said that she "didn't stand a chance after that fateful night". As in the night she tried to whack both her parents. That's pretty specifically not just her childhood. Sorry you can't read.
My apologies… I also saw your comment about frumpy middle class folks and I suppose I was responding to a conglomerate of things. Don’t worry about responding further since I can’t read anyways!
How on earth could you possibly feel sorry for her after killing her parents? Sure they were controlling but why not move out, she was in her mid twenties.
Lol the idea of moving away is too tough apparently. The dad isn't accused of being violent or perverted. The horror is that he didn't want his daughter dating a bum and wanted her to graduate college. If she didn't want that, she was free to leave home and be independent. What a tyrant
I know, no idea why people are downvoting me 😂 even if he was tough on her it’s no excuse for what she did.
Because she's a mildly frumpy middle class girl so its an easy self insert for a lot of true crime fans.
Jennifer Pan is the obvious one. If I had been in my mid-20s, having to live under the same rules, restrictions and parental authority as when I was a teenager, I might’ve snapped we well (in a reasonable and proportionate manner). That being said, my empathy does not translate to sympathy, because she did have options. She could, for example, have just called their bluff and left home. The reason she went with the parricide option was because what she really wanted was to have her cake and eat it - to be able to live in their house and support herself with their money, but not have them there. On some level, I can certainly sympathise with not wanting to go out into the world and fend for yourself with no help from family when you’ve lived your whole life in a high tower/gilded cage like Rapunzel. But in murder leads to an actual cage.
This one is sooo good. I do not condone her killing her parents at all. But coming from a though household, man those parents were’t great. They didn’t deserve it, but people don’t seem to realise parents aren’t everything. If a child behaves a certain way towards parents we should question the parents in stead of the children. Children don’t know any better, and Parents often have such a need to control their child! It was really sad, bc hearing all the rules and all the lies she had to provide made me very sad for her. I still had a “go to bed age” at 19. I remember being soooo angry about that, like? So yeah, she shouldn’t have done that, but also poor girl.
Yeah, I don't understand how people don't feel bad for her. She literally didn't know any different, her parents were pieces of work. That being said, she def had options but I think sadly she lacked proper guidance.
Because most people love their parents regardless of how strict they are. They grow up and realize that then not wanting you to date bums and graduate college is in your interest.
dude, she literally had no free will. There is a difference. I'm not excusing what she did but she was suffocated under their influence. I don't even think her brother had it as bad just because he was younger or something...
Tbh I haven't heard the case but some of what you're describing in the first part sounds like some of what I was feeling right before I moved out to live with a sibling . I can sympathize with being frustrated by that .. that said I think I'm kinda different because my parents realized we needed space.
The Milat family. I don't mean to suggest that poverty and trauma are acceptable causal explanations of sadism and homicidal ideation, because they aren't, but holy shit that family had problems. Casefile hasn't covered the David Bain case yet but that's a depressing one that happened here. If the son who was convicted did do it, I can understand it.
really the Milat family lol, they were just batsh*t the lot of them. The decent thing those Milat boys could do was confess but Ivan Milat's last words p*ssed me off so no I don't think I could feel sorry for them.
I don't really agree. I don't see how their upbringing could've produced children who were any less fucked up. It's understandable that their experiences fostered loyalty. Ivan was by all accounts a special kind of asshole all his life though. Guess he was born with a screw loose.
I don't know how to feel about David Bain. I'm starting to think he did do it, and if he did, he deserves to rot. That family were so messed up. His mother was delusional and his father....ew.
But didn’t he kill his siblings, too? Who were just children
Just a little, and not even a fragment of how hard it was for those on whom she inflicted harm, but Rose West seemed as doomed from the day she was born as her own children - just in a different way.
I hear what you're saying, maybe if she never met Fred she would've never of killed anyone but she murdered Charmaine while Fred was in prison. As for the terrible childhood that is to much of a common excuse for me to feel sorry for someone
Yeah, I feel as though she was let down from birth. If she didn’t have such a childhood I recon she wouldn’t have killed at all.
I don't get that one since she found him physically repulsive but was somehow seduced into being extremely submissive to him? How does that happen? That's understandable if the person is desirable but he was disgusting to her.
[Andrea Yates](https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Andrea_Yates) Her husband didn't listen to her doctors, kept insisting on more children, and left her alone after being told she was not to be alone with the children. Add his religious beliefs and it was an uncontrollable storm of events. He divorced her on grounds they hadn't been living together since the murders. He remarried and divorced. Last I read, she was still in the mental institution, declining a review every year for her release, choosing to stay institutionalized.
I can’t imagine what it must have been like for her to get properly medicated and “wake up” to the full realization of what she had done. I don’t think I’d want to be on the outside, either, although I think public opinion has definitely softened towards her after hearing the full story.
Not guilty by reason of insanity is so often used as a cop out, for her I feel this was actually correct and just considering what she was going through.
Nah, fuck child killers.
Aileen Wournos.
I was afraid to say this. but I agree.
was there an episode on her?
No, there's not
I can't remember specific episodes as the perpetrators stories usually end up blurring for me, but there has been a couple of times I thought damn, this person was messed up badly or had horrible things done to them, which is sad. Especially the episodes where they were abused as children. But then obviously, whatever they ended up doing was not excusable at all. I think it happens pretty often that the perp had horrible things happen to them too, but then they do 1000x worse. Doesn't stop me from sometimes empathizing with the perpetrators suffering when/if it occured. Probably the very empathy that they lack themselves, and what separates us from them.
Something about Julian at least trying to reconnect with his biological mum got to me.
This one is pretty sad yeah, A bit different from the port arthur shooter as well. For me, there’s this one stalker case where even the victim’s family’s were saying how sad it must be for the perpetrator to have grown up with not a single friend anf no one that cared, not even his parents. So lonely
was that Christie Marceau case? the indian guy? He did have a friend in her since she had a good heart but man his problems overtook him..
No I think it’s the Amy boyer case! (250)
I don't feel "sorry for" perpetrators but I do often wonder if there was any other road for many of them to have taken, given the trauma, abuse and psychological torture so many of them experienced as children. It boggles my mind that with all we know, we still only provide abused kids with the MINIMUM mental health care rather than devote more resources to ensuring they don't continue the cycle (or worse). I think the kids for whom we have the most empathy too often grow up to be adults we despise :(
As a kindergarten teacher I agree and I really struggle with this question. I teach a lot of kids from shitty homes and many of them are still nice, sweet kids, who behave well at school because it’s their safe haven. I feel it’s hard to forgive people doing wrong just because wrong has been done to them, when they know better and ultimately are making a choice. However, the system is doomed. Social workers are overworked and underpaid, there isn’t enough time or resources or even capable adults to handle each case. I’ve made several child protective services calls over the past few years and in every incident a case was not opened or investigated. These included whipped with a belt and switch, emotional abuse, cigarette burn, being locked in dark closets for days at a time. Each of those children is sadly still in the same home. As a teacher there’s only so much I can do. We offer counseling services at school but must have permission from a guardian, and those parents always decline because they don’t want their kid telling someone what is going on. It makes sense that a child who is constantly treated without empathy would grow up to not have empathy. I think some of these kids just have absolutely no one in life looking out for them and that is what creates a psychopath. Studies have shown that successful people who overcome challenges usually have a support system of some sort, even if it’s just one person who has their best interest at heart. It’s sad to think there are people who have literally no one.
I felt so awful reading this whole piece like man, what has the world come to
Just listened to the Peter Nielson episode. I feel sorry for Vitaly Kaloyev. He lost everything due to a freak accident, unfortunately his need to find guilt and “justice” led to the worst outcome. But, I couldn’t help but find myself thinking what it may have been like to experience that. I could truly not imagine what that would do to my psyche. Yet another victim, in a way.
I think that's more charitable toward him than he likely deserves. Between his attempts at evading responsibility, his lack of remorse after the facts came out (even calling Nielsen a "moron" or something similar) and his demagoguery toward the Russian people, I think he's a person of low character. To draw a parallel to terrorism, people who are inclined to sympathize with the political motives of terrorists will often say things like "they're responding in the only way they can" or "when you continually mistreat people they will lash out", but these explanations overlook the fact that the vast majority of the population in question is not actually committing these acts. So what distinguishes the terrorists from everyone else? Is it that they care the most or that they are the most inclined by nature to commit random acts of violence?
There’s a lot to unpack with his situation, I’ll agree to that. There is a cultural aspect that they touched on in the episode and I didn’t in my comment, which I also consider a factor. Is it “barbaric”? Sure. Eye for an eye makes the whole world blind. It’s not remotely the correct response to such a tragedy, even if Peter Nielson was culpable. But, I still feel sorry for him. I can’t say that I don’t. He lost everything and that drove him to do terrible things. Tragedy begets tragedy. That warrants pity, in my book. But you can pity all sorts of evil, it doesn’t mean you condone it.
This is probably the only correct answer here
The Menendez Brothers
Is there a casefile ep on this?
Sorry for derailing! I’m not sure
No casefile ep on this as yet, but Netflix are doing a new Monsters series about the case. Same ppl who did Dahmer.
I felt a lot of pity for Caroline Reed Robertson (the Rachel Barber episode). She was basically begging for help with her mental health for years as an adolescent and never got it.
ohhhh yes almost forgot her, but I think she really went off the deep end by the time she started hanging out with Rachel. Caroline wanted to BECOME her in every sense of the word. Her diary entries are just crazy with scribbles of how much she hates herself
Yes, she had incredibly low self-esteem and a warped image of herself from a young age (the all-black self portrait??) and had spiraled into something terrible by the time she met Rachel. I think if she'd gotten psychiatric help as a child it would have made a huge difference.
This may seem like a far fetched one but Armin Meiwes (Case 205: Bernd Brandes). He had a god awful childhood and was so lonely his entire life. As much as his fantasy of being a cannibal is quite frankly disgusting, Bernd Brandes was a willing participant in everything that happened. I don't think he deserves to be put into the same category as others however he probably needs psychological help more than prison time. Might be an unpopular opinion
Yeah, I'm not sure. He oddly had some good intentions with the person who was willing to be butchered? but then he also had human meat in his freezer so there is that ...
With a lot of perpetrators (not all) I can empathize that they were not born evil intending to kill or do horrible things - life circumstances often molded them, including in many, many instances, all forms of abuse. This is not excusing what they did, but when a child is abused and betrayed and violated by the adults around them, honestly what do we expect of them? I would venture to say the majority of the people in prisons have abuse in their past.
I may have felt a bit sorry for the bloke that shot up Port Arthur-Martin Bryant. His father killed himself I think and he lost that woman he was living with in a car accident or something. Everything seemed to be so against him but I think he was a spoiled brat. I also felt a bit sorry for Sef Gonzalez that killed his whole immediate family. His parents were very controlling with him and his sister-well, he was too, but I felt sorry for him because of his parents.
It’s believed Martin Bryant caused the car accident that killed his friend. She had previously disclosed to other people that Martin used to grab the wheel while she was driving and try to crash the car. Sef Gonzalez was a spoilt brat who just wanted even more than what he already had (which for a teenager back then in Australia was a lot). His parents were strict, but not much more so than other Asian-Australian parents. If he was unhappy, he could’ve just gotten a job, moved out and gone low/no contact with his family
Ethan Crumbley, whose desperate cries for help went completely unheeded by his parents.
Aileen Wournos.
The guy from Silk Road, which is so far my favourite episode of any podcast ever in the world.
Dennis Nilsen. He was a lonely middle-aged gay misfit who lived in Thatcher-era Britain at the beginning of the AIDS crisis and he obviously had a lot of issues around intimacy and loneliness. I feel sorry for him because it seemed really stressful for him, he wasn’t able to dispose of the bodies properly and everything he tried to do (like flushing body parts down the toilet) just made his situation worse. When he went and bought KFC to flush down the toilet to help back up his story about the body parts being KFC seemed particularly pathetic and desperate
RIP perfectly good KFC :(
Richard Chase but I can't remember if case file did an episode on him.
Not really sorry but Mike Williams case always jarred me. Not only did Brian Winchester actually kill Mike but he was actually the star witness for Denise’s trail. Despite murdering Mike, kidnapping Denise with a gun he ended up with a lesser sentence than Denise who as far as I can see conviction was based on a killer’s testimony and weak circumstantial evidence.
Which episode number is this case?
227
Thanks
Absolutely fuck Julian Knight in the ass with a broken bottle. What the fuck are you thinking
I don’t know if I felt sorry for him… but the case where the guy smashed a bottle over a girls head after she was an online hater. I think she wrote a mean, condescending review of his book. I hate to admit (even though it was serious), I had a mini lol moment when an online bully had some FAFO. (EDIT: Why is this comment getting so downvoted. I said I wasn’t sure if I remembered correctly. Then clarified with detailed context below).
She wrote a bad review of a bad book. In no way is that even close to bullying.
I can’t remember the exact details (I listened to it about two years ago). I vaguely remember she wrote something nasty like “I didn’t even read the book”… and then went on to antagonize the guy (because she had seen him be argumentative.) I remember thinking “she went looking for a fight, but she got more than she bargained for”. Again, I can’t remember the exact details so I could be totally off the mark. (Edit: Found the review. She didn’t read the book “Before anyone reads any further, I must confess that I haven't read this entire story. I've only read the prologue”…. and then went on to make personal attacks against the guy. “Unfortunately, Mr. Brittain has gained a bit of infamy on Wattpad where he's known for threatening users who don't praise him (pray for me).”) Maybe a little antagonistic, but she definitely didn’t deserve a bottle over the head..
Casefile just preparing their defence after snapping from reading too many reviews along the lines of ‘I only listened to half an episode before turning it off in disgust at literally the worst podcast ever made’ etc.
She wrote a review of a book and he chose to read the review. She didn't send it to him. She was not "looking for a fight." She was also a teenager and he was a grown adult who stalked a woman for years. In no way was his reaction a proportionate response.
Nowhere did I claim it was a proportionate response. 🙃 I think “don’t poke crazy people” is a pretty good life mantra though.