Willie-O - You are clearly right that Timothy McVie lives in a fantasy world, and that that led him to commit (and justify in his own mind) a hideous crime.

The thing that struck me while I was reading your comments, though is this...virtually everybody lives in a fantasy world. My workaholic father does. My paranoid mother does. Everybody I know does, in one sense or another. I do. I am well aware of some of my tendencies to fantasize, but am also probably quite unaware of some of the others that I take for granted, and which lead to my usual typical behaviour.

The only difference with Timothy McVie is this...his fantasies happened to be on a much more dangerous level than is the case with most of us, and he acted them out where many would not have gone that far.

I kid you not. We all walk around in our own state of unreality, and take it ever so seriously. Look at the present state of the world, and you can see where it is leading us...as a race of semi-intelligent beings.

The world doesn't need another shopping mall or another casino...it needs clean air, clean water, open land, old growth forests, renewable agriculture, space reserved for wild animals and plants...and all that could be done...but we are way too busy walking around in our collective fantasy world, doing business as usual. It's Fantasy Island on a very large scale....

Ebbie - It's not surprising that any number of women have written love letters to McVie. It just shows there are a lot of really lonely people out there, sitting in their lonely little lives, and trying desperately to find some sense of meaning to fill their emptiness. McVie is "famous" (or infamous...), so he gets the attention of some of them. It happens with anyone who is famous, whether they are a movie star or a serial murderer. It's sad and pathetic, but it's not surprising.

I'm sure that some of them have convinced themselves that he is a martyr. Some may even think he's innocent! (anything is possible) Some may think they can redeem him. Etc....

Some people who feel that they are "outsiders", irrevocably isolated from the rest of society, may well identify with someone like McVie.

I remember when the O.J. thing was happening...virtually everyone around here believed he was guilty...based on forensic evidence, and his thoroughly incriminating behaviour, both before and after Nicole's murder. And yet, there were 2 individuals I knew who were ABSOLUTELY convinced that he was innocent, that he had been framed, that there was a massive police conspiracy to fake evidence, involving a very large number of people on a high level...and so on.

I have no idea how those 2 people came to such a conclusion (it was not for reasons of "race"), but they did. And they never wavered from it. Like I said, anything is possible.

(To some people it is very appealing to take an unpopular or unusual position on a given issue, because it makes them feel like they are smarter than most people, because they know something that the others don't. Along that line, I have a friend who only likes music that virtually NOBODY else he knows likes...it has happened too many times now to be a mere coincidence...he enjoys being an outsider, and it makes him feel superior, I believe, on an intellectual and artistic level.)

I have also met a few elderly Germans (all very nice people in a general sense) who have gone on believing to this day that Hitler was a very good man who was led astray by various corrupt underlings, such as Himmler, Goering, etc., and that he was doing wonderful things for Germany, but it presumably got ruined by those underlings.

So, like I said, anything is possible. Depends on the person's initial frame of reference...as to how they happen to be seeing and interpreting reality...from their little vantage point on the world stage.

In the final analysis, it has little or nothing to do with whether the person is "evil" or not, but rather with what the person is or is not aware of. Basically "good" people can commit the most evil of acts under certain circumstances...and feel justified. It happens every day in the most ordinary of families and situations, all over this world, and never gets on the news at all.

- LH