Soham Murders Quotes

I believe that all sex offenders, and especially those with multiple allegations against them, should be made known to the locality where they live. ~ Stephen Richards

I used self-injury as a coping mechanism to help me overcome the emotional stress that I was incapable of dealing with in any other way. Self-injury was a means of escape, a way to relieve the numbness, and an expression of the pain within me. Something that the police wouldn't care about. ~ Stephen Richards

The police were actually adding to my pain and
suffering by pursuing me. If it had been Huntley doing that to me and I had the proof, I would have said, 'Hey, Mr Policeman, Huntley is giving me trouble here,' and then they might have sent him a letter, at the very least. ~ Stephen Richards

By today's standards, if you go by the early morning TV misery shows, my broken home family of mixed parentage siblings was quite normal. ~ Hailey Giblin

I had not learned anything about Huntley that would
have alerted me to what he was. I had no reason, as an 11-year-old girl, to be wary of him. No one said, 'This guy likes to have sex with young girls. ~ Stephen Richards

Another crucial problem was errors made by the
Cambridgeshire Police in their use of their 'check
system', which allowed Huntley to get a job at Soham
Village College. ~ Stephen Richards

In a lifetime among cops since, I've noted that investigators who piece together the aftermaths of home invasion murders tend to keep their guns on all the time after that, even when off duty in their own house, and keep them by the bed when they go to sleep.They have learned from the helplessly-murdered dead ~ Massad Ayoob

It was a good thing, we told ourselves; the eyes grow weary with looking at new things; sleeping late, we said, has its genuine therapeutic value; we would be better for it, would be able to work more effectively. We have little doubt that all this was true, but we wish we could build as good a rationalization every time we are lazy. For in some beastly way this fine laziness has got itself a bad name. It is easy to see how it might have come into disrepute, if the result of laziness were hunger. But it rarely is. Hunger makes laziness impossible. It has even become sinful to be lazy. We wonder why. One could argue, particularly if one had a gift for laziness, that it is relaxation pregnant of activity, a sense of rest from which directed effort may arise, whereas most busy-ness is merely a kind of nervous tic.
...
How can such a process have become a shame and a sin? Only in laziness can one achieve a state of contemplation which is a balancing of values, a weighing of oneself against the world and the world against itself. A busy man cannot find time for such balancing. We do not think a lazy man can commit murders, nor great thefts, nor lead a mob. He would be more likely to think about it and laugh. And a nation of lazy contemplative men would be incapable of fighting a war unless their very laziness were attacked. Wars are the activities of busy-ness. ~ John Steinbeck

But the Platonists never argued that evil's lack of ultimate reality meant that there was no moral evil in the world. Plato was well aware of wars, murders, and lies. Evil exists, but it exists as a lack of good, just as holes in a Swiss cheese exist only as lack of cheese. The evil of a lie is the absence of truth. Plato did not think that the nonbeing of evil removed evil from the world, only that it removed responsibility for evil from the creator. Evil arose not from the God, but from matter. ~ Jeffrey Burton Russell

Remember, democracy never lasts long. It soon wastes, exhausts, and murders itself. There never was a democracy yet that did not commit suicide. ~ John Adams

That was 1986. That year I felt myself to be drowning in the news reports of murder. I was aware that these murders very often did not land upon the intended targets but fell upon great-aunts, PTA mothers, overtime uncles, and joyful children - fell upon them random and relentless, like great sheets of rain. I knew this in theory but could not understand it as fact until the boy with the small eyes stood across from me holding my entire body in his small hands. ~ Ta-Nehisi Coates

Seated opposite me in the railway carriage, the elderly lady in the fox-fur shawl was recalling some of the murders that she had committed over the years. ~ John Boyne

I knew I hadn't been the most innocent of victims, but I didn't deserve this. DC Smith stood and grinned at me as he thanked me and left the room, leaving me to cry and to ponder on his not very adept handling of the situation. ~ Stephen Richards

As a child, I was attractive to paedophiles. I suppose being indecently assaulted when I was 13 years old should have warned me that there were some weird and dangerous men out there, but I had got over that episode in my life. ~ Stephen Richards

He had a particular liking for olde England, especially if the olde was spelled with an e. He found things like croquet, cream teas and cricket both incomprehensible and irresistible and he would have been in his element here. ~ Anthony Horowitz

The diabolical work that has taken place since the legalization of abortion is that it has destroyed, in those tragic women who have allowed their child to be murdered, their sense for the sacredness of maternity. Abortion not only murders the innocent; it spiritually murders women ... the wound created in their souls is so great that only God's grace can heal it. The very soul of a woman is meant to be maternal. ~ Alice Von Hildebrand

a man travels back in time and murders his grandfather, thus preventing his own birth, the universe simply carries on with the grandfather dead, the time traveler forever unborn, and it does so without a care in the world as to how that murder was possible in the first place. No one will ever be aware that history has changed, and no one will ever be aware that he was supposed to have offspring, and grand-offspring. No one, that is, except the time traveler. That person, who should now never have existed, continues to exist anyway. And again, the universe just shrugs it off, insisting - and rightly so - that it owes no one any explanation for its conduct. ~ Edward Aubry

I'm tired of the whole anti gun thing. Saying that Guns cause Murders is like saying Steering Wheels cause car wrecks ~ Stanley Victor Paskavich

The cafe was empty, but the cook was unscrewing the outlet plate above my seat. I took my book into the bathroom and read while he finished. When I emerged, the cook was gone and a woman was ready to sit in my seat.
- Excuse me, this is my table.
- Did you reserve it?
- Well, no, but it's my table.
- Did you actually sit here? There's nothing on the table and you have your coat on.
I stood there mutely. If this were an episode of Midsomer Murders she would surely be found strangled in a wild ravine behind an abandoned vicarage. ~ Patti Smith

How many murders, suicides, robberies, criminal assaults, holdups, burglaries and deeds of maniacal insanity it causes each year, especially among the young, can only be conjectured ... No one knows, when he places a marijuana cigarette to his lips, whether he will become a joyous reveller in a musical heaven, a mad insensate, a calm philosopher, or a murderer ... ~ Harry J. Anslinger

How many times have I failed before? How many times have I stood here like this, in front of my own image, in front of my own person, trying to convince him not to be scared, to go on, to get out of this rut? How many times before I finally convince myself, how many private, erasable deaths will I need to die, how may self-murders is it going to take, how many times will I have to destroy myself before I learn, before I understand? ~ Charles Yu

You give me a water board, Dick Cheney and one hour, and I'll have him confess to the Sharon Tate murders.
(Larry King Live, May 11, 2009) ~ Jesse Ventura

History does seem to be just one long succession of murders, doesn't it? ~ Jeanne M. Dams

It's an insane, insane crime, a lot of it isn't going to make sense. That's why people are so obsessed with these murders. If they made any sense, they wouldn't really be mysteries, right? ~ Gillian Flynn

We must clean our national psyche from all manifestation of evil, be it kidnapping, militancy, insurgency, murders or assassinations. ~ Sunday Adelaja

There have been a lot of murders and suicides in my family; it's like the primary cause of death. I wonder if there's a certain energy that attracts that. ~ Rose McGowan

The San Francisco police force was deeply implicated in the murders of Moscone and Milk. Dan White was not carrying out SFPD orders that morning in city hall, but he was carrying out the department's will. He was no longer on the force, but he was one of them: their star ballplayer, their political representative, their brother. He knew all about the cops' murderous feelings toward the city's liberal leadership. He felt the same way. They had the will, he had the willpower. ~ David Talbot

Have you noticed that life, with murders and catastrophes and fabulous inheritances, happens almost exclusively in newspapers? ~ Jean Anouilh

Windham, but not often. There were no murders in anyone's memory, no rapes or molestations or sudden disappearances. It's a quiet town. Windham was perfect, we thought. Safe and sound, and that's where Veronica and I would grow up. We moved there ten years ago. That was in April 2005. I was nine and my little sister Veronica was almost three. My dad, Dr. Simon Taylor, had made a bunch from the popularity of his book, and it was number four on the best-seller list and still holding fast. I'll bet fifty thousand a month was tumbling in, and Dad had already signed a two million dollar advance on his next book. ~ Peter Gilboy

This place isn't even on the internet," Hutch said as though completely proud of himself for finding a motel that looked as though fifty murders occurred in it every day. ~ Lexi Blake

The sneak-peeks you get off the top are of them in their real life. You're more invested, you know both of them, and you've already made assumptions. A murder who would murders someone - that makes them immediately bad - but here you see them in a different. ~ Kristin Lehman

Let your Neshuma (soul) be the real inspiration. You have a soul, you have a spirit, don't lock it in a box and forget it ... Let's make this a better world ... We dare not assume that the next century will have less hatred or murders than the past centuries. How can we? Are the weapons of tomorrow less harmful? Are the leaders more dependable? Are our peace treaties more durable? Are our ethics more honorable? Time is running out ... We must hurry. ~ Benjamin M. Friedman

Mercy but murders pardoning those who kill. ~ William Shakespeare

Surely until all of us own and honor one another's dead, until we have admitted to our murders and forgiven one another and ourselves for what we have done, there can be no truce, no dignity and no peace. ~ Alexandra Fuller

Always expect the unexpected. Right around Thanksgiving, when the new Alex Cross will be out. It's called Four Blind Mice and it's a pretty amazing story about several murders inside the military. ~ James Patterson

a prince, so long as he keeps his subjects united and loyal, ought not to mind the reproach of cruelty; because with a few examples he will be more merciful than those who, through too much mercy, allow disorders to arise, from which follow murders or robberies; for these are wont to injure the whole people, whilst those executions which originate with a prince offend the individual only. ~ Niccolo Machiavelli

We condemn the Inquisition in the name of Christian values. After all, we can't condemn it in the name of the Mahabharata, which is comprised of a series of alternating murders, rather like the Iliad! ~ Rene Girard

As it was in the age of the prophets, so it is in nearly every age: we all go mad, not only individually, but also nationally. We check manslaughter and isolated murders; we wage wars and slaughter whole peoples. Ferocity appears natural; generosity, superimposed. Since the natural often seems sacred, we seldom dare suppress or try to remake what has been called "all that fine belligerence within us." We measure manhood by the sword and are convinced that history is ultimately determined on the fields of battle. "There is no peace, says my God, for the wicked" (Isa. 57:21; cf. 48:22). ~ Abraham Joshua Heschel

We don't like murders here, said a man's voice, low and threatening, from the back of the crowd. Megan glanced at Cassie and her friends. They looked away, as if they didn't see what was happening.
Anger boiled in her chest. Why wouldn't they leave her alone? She hadn't killed anyone. She hadn't killed Harlen Trooper, all those years ago. She knew it and the judge knew it. She hadn't even been charged.
If I wanted to, I could have you all killed, she thought, and was stunned when the thought didn't scare her the way it should. She looked at their faces, stony and stubbled, shiny with alcoholic sweat. The power in her chest hadn't worked against Ktana Leyak, but it could against them, this miserable bunch of humans with their heavy boots and beer guts.
She pictured those guts exploding. She pictured the terror in their eyes when they realized they were messing with the wrong fucking demon, they were -
Demon? ~ Stacia Kane

We must not be surprised when we hear of murders, killings, of wars, or of hatred ... If a mother can kill her own child, what is left but for us to kill each other? ~ Mother Teresa

Dodd continued to hope that the murders would so outrage the German public that the regime would fall, but as the days passed he saw no evidence of any such outpouring of anger ... ~ Erik Larson

Once you'd been with Freddie, you wouldn't go anywhere else.' (How true this was to prove.) This incessant bragging by Fred West was at best, annoying and at worst, sickening. According to him, he was God's gift to women. ~ Stephen Richards

The peasant rebellion against collectivization was the most serious episode in popular resistance experienced by the Soviet state after the Russian Civil War. In 1930, more than two million peasants took part in 13,754 mass disturbances. In 1929 and 1930, the OGPU recorded 22,887 "terrorists acts" aimed at local officials and peasant activists, more than 1,100 murders. ~ Lynne Viola

The Thames Torso murders almost fell into my lap. After deciding to use a real historical crime as the focus for the book, I went to Google and searched for unsolved murders in Victorian London, and they basically popped out at me about halfway down the first results page. ~ Sarah Pinborough

The murders in Paris are sickening, we stand with the French people in the fight against terror and defending the freedom of the press. ~ David Cameron

We hear every day of murders committed in the country. Brutal and treacherous murders; slow, protracted agonies from poisons administered by some kindred hand; sudden and violent deaths by cruel blows, inflicted with a stake cut from some spreading oak, whose every shadow promised - peace. In the county of which I write, I have been shown a meadow in which, on a quiet summer Sunday evening, a young farmer murdered the girl who had loved and trusted him; and yet, even now, with the stain of that foul deed upon it, the aspect of the spot is - peace. No species of crime has ever been committed in the worst rookeries about Seven Dials that has not been also done in the face of that rustic calm which still, in spite of all, we look on with a tender, half-mournful yearning, and associate with - peace. ~ Mary Elizabeth Braddon

If you had a front row seat at the Renaissance, you would have seen Machiavelli come by plotting, and you would have seen murders in the streets, you would have seen violence, you have seen people burning books and it would have looked like the world was a horrible place, but that's where all these incredible stuff we're still living with comes out of. ~ Juan Enriquez

It is incredible that this must be said, but the obvious seems to escape politicized academics, so we must state the obvious: Genocide is deliberate; it is premeditated. There is no genocide without premeditation. The murders are not unfortunate coincidences. This is why it is called "mass MURDER" and not "mass MANSLAUGHTER. ~ A.E. Samaan