ITV broadcast a programme about the convicted killer, Peter Tobin, last week. A month ago, while already in jail for the murder of two young women, he was found guilty of yet another killing, and given a third life sentence.
While in prison, Tobin is said to have boasted to a psychiatrist of having murdered 48 women in total. Police are trying to link this sadistic monster to the three infamous “Bible John” killings in Glasgow in 1968 and 1969, and to a large number of other cases involving the murder of young women.
It looks as if Tobin may prove to be one of the most prolific serial killers Britain has ever seen: a sexually sadistic psychopath who hates women.
What a pity his true nature didn’t become apparent to the authorities earlier. But it did.
In 1994, Tobin was convicted of the extended rape and attempted murder of two fourteen year old babysitters at his flat in Havant the previous year. Having subjected these children to a grotesque ordeal - at knifepoint - he turned on the gas taps and left them for dead.
For this, he was sentenced to fourteen years in prison, of which he served ten.
Fortunately, the number of serial killers in the UK is relatively low – despite what you might glean from almost every detective series on British TV during the past ten years. That’s why, when you catch one, it must be pretty obvious that you’re not dealing with the usual pathetic common-or-garden thug, thief or all-round loser. And when you’ve got a psycopath under lock and key, it seems screamingly obvious that you will need an overwhelmingly compelling reason for releasing them. Ever!
I’m no expert on the Tobin case, but he subjected two minors to an unbelievable horrific assault and then tried to kill them. And for this he loses his freedom for ten measly years? And when he’s let out, he kills – at the very least – three other young women.
As we now all know - thanks to endless “True Crime” books, films and the TV crime series already mentioned - psychopaths are, quite simply, evil: they feel no pity for their victims – or indeed, for anyone but themselves. They enjoy hurting other people and they have no conscience: they were born without a moral compass. They are not normal people acting out of character by giving way to occasional evil impulses: they are irredeemably evil creatures who occasionally reveal their true natures by committing the sort of senselessly cruel crimes that revolt and sicken the rest of us.
Ordinary people sometimes do wicked things: fortunately, most never do. When the ordinary person commits evil, they must be punished to satisfy the perfectly reasonable need for justice and vengeance felt by victims and their families, and by society as a whole. They need to be shown the error of their ways, and released when justice and vengeance have been satisfied, and, if the crime is serious, when they are judged to be unlikely to harm anyone else.
The psychopath, unless radically chemically coshed, or unless their brain has been surgically altered, will commit further evil acts when back amongst his natural prey - us. Once an offender has been identified as a psychopath, there seems to be very little justification for the state ever releasing them: especially given the state’s primary responsibility to protect its citizens.
Along with so much of our national life, the criminal justice system appears to have been taken over by sentimental liberals more concerned with feeling good about themselves than with protecting the rest us. I can think of no other reason for the failure to recognize psychopaths as a distinct breed of criminal to whom the concepts of reform and redemption cannot be applied.
If a savage dog attacks a human being, they are killed. We could stick them in jail for a couple of years and let them out, I suppose, but they would only attack someone else. You might argue that Tobin is different, because he is a rational being. But he isn’t. He is a beast: the only differences between him and a dangerous dog is that he knows what he is doing, and the only “master” he will ever follow is his own craving to destroy others.
I’m sure there are cases where it’s difficult to identify a psychopath: but the sadistic rape and attempted killing of two fourteen-year olds isn’t one of them. The judge who gave Tobin his third life sentence recommended he never be released: pity for Angelika Kluk, Vicky Hamilton and Dinah McNicol that the system didn’t reach the same conclusion in 1994.
“Lock ‘em up and throw away the key” sounds like something a taxi driver might say. That’s fine me: why do the “compassionate” classes assume that cabbies are always wrong?
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