Profile of a Killer

[Erik Narramore]

In regard to how this is relevant to the Bamber case, this is the question I am asking myself:

Is there some factor that is common to most or all of these cases and that is also found in the Bamber case?

I am no expert on this, but possible commonalities could be:

- drug use or abuse, such as cannabis, and/or medication and/or dependency on alcohol;

- serious psychiatric interventions;

- changes in medication;

- a lack of family support;

- poor or nil maternal bonding with biological mother and/or surrogate, such as adoptive/foster mother;

- divorce or marriage problems;

- recorded ideation of violence ('All people are bad and deserve to be killed');

- recorded suicidal ideation;

- para-suicidal attempts and/or a record of self-defeating/self-destructive behaviour;

- child victims are always of a certain age range - say, below 10;

- perpetrator is always of a certain age range - let's say, late 20s to early 30s;

- mother nearly-always kills sons, rarely daughters;

- low academic achievement or academic underperformance;

- low vocational/occupational aptitude/potential;

- deep religious convictions and/or verifiable interest in marginal faiths or esoteric spirituality;

- interest in demonological themes, the Devil, etc.

To address some of these:

People go on about Sheila's childhood difficulties, including expulsion from at least one school, but I'm not sure I agree that she had any significant difficulties.  On the face of it, her childhood experiences were fairly normal.  Lots of exuberant youngsters in private schools find themselves in trouble and end up expelled.  Lots of older teenagers struggle to find direction in life and drift between jobs, leaning on their parents a lot.  Lots of them try drugs and other things they shouldn't try.  Often there are mental-emotional problems, which are part of normal adjustment.  None of this is unusual.

Sheila did have family support from the Bambers.  While she may not have seen eye-to-eye with June Bamber, and it could be said June was not the most emotionally-warm matriarch, nevertheless June did support her.

Furthermore, while the bonding with June may have been poor, Sheila was able to talk through this with others, including peers, which meant she 'cleared it out of her system'.  She didn't just bottle it up.  Sheila also met with her biological mother and this was a positive experience.

Sheila also had an advantageous situation as an heir to the estates, which meant she could expect to have some sort of cushion of economic support in the future, and she could be reasonably assured that her sons would not be left out in the cold.

Sheila also had a reasonably supportive relationship with her ex-husband, Colin Caffell, who kept in contact with her.  We can argue back-and-forth about Colin, but to his credit, he didn't just slough-off Sheila and the twins.

There are points that could be made in the other direction as well.

But my main interest is in whether there are commonalities across different cases.

[Erik Narramore]

I suppose, in principle, four of those motives could apply to Sheila.  That's not to say I think they did.  I don't believe motive (c) could apply.  There was the incident with the taxi, but there's no suggestion she would ever harm the children intentionally and no evidence of this that I'm aware of.