Harry Roberts

That got re-cycled in the 80's with Winston Silcott replacing Harry Roberts.

Roberts was eventually caught in Bolton ? just also read, he was caught somewhere else.

http://www.theboltonnews.co.uk/news/1096263.0/?act=complaint&cid=33767

That bastard from Farnworth who killed that young copper John Egerton who caught him breaking into a scrap metal yard should have got a permanent life tariff as well.

Around the same sort of time some football fans used to sing about Aberfan as well when one of the Welsh sides turned out.

Fucking awful human beings. 

It seems utterly bizarre now to think that I actually saw blokes throwing bananas on the pitch at black players and singing "Zigger Zagger Zigger (etc)" as recently as 25 years ago at Burnden.

And nobody batted an eyelid.

Sky have ruined football in this country but in other areas we've definitely moved on for the better.

Clyde Best used to get a lot of stick.
Remember a banana being thrown at him at Upton Park.

Breadman wrote:

Bwfc1958 wrote:If you take a life you should give your own IMO. If we had the death penalty shit like this wouldn't be happening would it because he'd be dead. My partners sister got stabbed 82 times by her ex after she left him. He got 18 & a half years minimum. Not even close to being enough but One day he'll be out and she lives in fear as he's threatened her as well. Death penalty for these evil bastards would mean people could sleep that little easier knowing their life is not under threat

Sorry, can't agree.

The death penalty doesn't deter people from committing violent crime - if it did, nobody would ever be murdered in those US states that still have it on their statute books but they're still dying in their thousands.

I have a strong moral objection to the death penalty in principle, as it all seems a bit "Old Testament" to me and I don't think any society can call itself civilised if it uses it.

And the logic has always seemed flawed to me:

You kill someone - Bad thing obviously.

You're tried in a court of law - Fine so far.

You're found guilty - Ok.

You're sentenced to death - Er.....hang on.

Isn't that why you're on trial in the first place?

You know, killing someone......?

Doesn't stack up for me.

Bredders is correct here. The argument goes beyond whether juries are efficient, get things right- we all know that they don't ,that they'll make mistakes from time to time.
The real argument is about the extent to which we ,as a society, can take rights to ourselves. I don't think that ,as a civilised society, we can take to ourselves the right to kill people-apart from self defence or in times of war.
Take murder, killing someone, as an example. We all regard that as  a horrific, heinous crime, something detestable that cannot be allowed to happen without serious punishment.
And the punishment that we want to inflict is exactly the same- we'll kill someone.
It seems that its utterly unacceptable for one person to kill another- but its fine if we gang together and kill that person. I  know its called 'the law' but there has to be boundaries around what we can do collectively.
We have every right to protect ourselves by jailing someone for life as a means of protecting ourselves from sick dangerous people, but I would argue that there is a mark in the sand that, as moral, civilised people we should not go beyond, and for me that  prevents us from formally killing people.
The death penalty is immoral and degrades us as human beings. It puts us at the same level as the killer- we collectively become killers too.

You are entitled to your opinion rammy but I wonder how different that opinion would be if you had experienced what my family went through in 2008. He not only admitted what he had done he was proud of what he had done. There was no jury involved. This guy asked people how long they thought he would get for killing my sister in law. The plans were in motion for the murder he was going to commit well in advance of carrying out his threat. It later came out in the police interviews that it was my partner he was going to murder but thought it would hurt her more if he killed her sister instead. He then went round when he knew she was alone and stabbed her 82 times. He did this in front of her 2 young sons. One was 2 years old and the other was almost 4. They witnessed their mother being butchered on their own living room floor. The handle broke off the knife while he was doing it so he just carried on holding just the blade. The only reason he stopped is because it was hurting his own hand. He then grabbed the kids and marched them 2 miles to his mothers house and left them there and fled. They had the blood of their mum on their coats. That is how close they were to what happened. The aforementioned children - my nephews, were put in foster care and subsequently adopted and we have never seen them since. We tried for custody but because of what those poor children had witnessed the authorities were afraid they would have issues and could not trust them around our own child who at the time was 2 years old. We will hope this guy never sees the light of day again but that is not how it works these days is it. He has again threatened the life of people close to me. Why should we live in fear? Executing this murdering scumbag would mean safety not just for my family but for the general public as a whole. If he got the death penalty he would be killed in a much more humane way than he would ever deserve. Instead he sits there with nothing but time to think about how he is going to kill more of my family. There is no such thing as rehabilitation for people like this. All they are doing is spending years and years with like minded scum bragging about who committed the most horrific killing. The worst part of it is that it is us, the law abiding good people of this country who are paying to keep them full board in what is, let's face it, a full board hotel. It would not make us murderers on a par with this man. It would make us protectors of communities and families just like yours, mine and everyone else. People have said in previous posts that the death penalty would not deter monsters from committing these horrific acts of violence. What if, when he asked people how long he would get for this murder, they told him he would be executed, he would have changed his mind. I suppose we will never know, but he asked the question so it was obviously a factor for him. Sorry for waffling so much but it is a subject that holds significant importance for me and my family and had to get that off my chest

Evil - beyond words.

RIP

http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/england/manchester/7908338.stm



My heart goes out to you and your family BWFC1958.

Cheers sluffy I appreciate that but I would also like to say that it's not sympathy I'm after. I just wanted to point out that wanting the death penalty for people like this does not, and never will, put me on a par with them. It's easy to say from the outside, that it is wrong. Especially when to others it is just another news story. Another statistic. It isn't. It is mothers, fathers, brothers, sisters, sons and daughters whose life will never be the same again. To have something so precious taken away in this manner is something you can never understand unless it happens to you and I truly hope none of you ever get to find out

My condolences 58. What happened to your family was made worse by the knowledge that there was no doubt whatsoever that this bastard did it and yet he's still alive.
Rammy & Breaders may not have as strong a conviction against the death penalty in such cases where guilt is indisputable - although you'd have to ask them.

wanderlust wrote:My condolences 58. What happened to your family was made worse by the knowledge that there was no doubt whatsoever that this bastard did it and yet he's still alive.
Rammy & Breaders may not have as strong a conviction against the death penalty in such cases where guilt is indisputable - although you'd have to ask them.

Cheers wander and yes that is an interesting point. I too wonder if they would oppose it in such circumstances. I get the feeling they would oppose it no matter what and that is ok. Everyone is entitled to their own moral beliefs and opinions. I bear no ill feelings towards them by any means and fully respect their opinions. They seem like educated and above all good people. I am not on a crusade here it's just that I'm in a position to give an opinion from a personal POV. Maybe breaders and rammy could give their opinion if they happen to read this because I would be interested to know

I'm quite reticent to really comment further here as I'm talking from a rather abstract position  and BWFC1958 is in a horrific place where this obviously affects him deeply. I don't wan't to say something that sounds like I'm not sympathetic to what has happened to him and his family.  Even though you say in one of your posts that you are not looking for sympathy, it would be impossible not to feel for you in the pain that you and everyone in your family must be going through.
As Sluffy says- this is a deeply evil man and the world would be better rid of him.
But the dilemma I face here is that this evil man has killed someone in a horrendous way and no-one can feel anything but contempt and hatred for this person.
My dilemma though is almost philosophical- do we have the right to kill him.
When I say that killing him puts us on a par with him, I don't mean it in terms of making us as evil as he is- far from it. I'm finding it difficult to find the words to express it- but  I'm trying to say that someone individually killing someone else is unforgiveable (unless there are circumstances like in war or self defence) but that if we decide to assume that we have the right  to kill him, is that not an equally unforgivable act. Both acts are premeditated and done deliberately, and I find it difficult to see the difference between the individual act to kill and the collective act to kill. Where does our collective right to kill come from?

I would rather this guy was jailed for life- meaning actual life so that he dies in prison.
The Americans do it- they've jailed people in their teens and twenties for similar crimes in some states and they will never be freed. The next  time they leave prison will be  after they have died.
It's perhaps even more humane to execute someone rather than lock them away for decades without even a hint of  ever being freed.
That 's what I would do in this case- the guy is obviously a threat to someone's family and therefore he should stay behind bars. until he's dead
I'm not a 'do-gooder' -I would happily jail someone for the rest of his or her natural lives and mean exactly that.
I can't even begin to put myself in BWFC's shoes as I've never been near a situation like this and can't imagine the anguish that they have to live with. Perhaps if I had I would feel differently.

I'd be easy to sit here and say that my conviction that the death penalty is morally wrong wouldn't waver if I found myself in that awful position, but the honest truth is, that'd just be more hope than fact.

Until you're faced with something like that, it's impossible to accurately predict how you would react.

It's easy to pontificate about a subject that you've had little or no real experience of because you're dealing purely in theoretics and there's no emotion involved.

Emotions change everything but I would hope that I'd be able to stand firm and not be swayed by mine.

I agree with everything that Rammy has said above (and that's not a glib cop-out, I really mean it) and I think I would be satisfied with seeing the bastard locked up for life, provided it really was life.

That said, no plan ever survives first contact with the enemy, so I can't really say and I obviously hope I never have to.

All he best to you and yours, 58, I know you're not looking for sympathy, mate and I hope that raking over all this hasn't dragged up too many painful thoughts and memories.

No to  the Death penalty, but life should mean life, with hard labour, make the fuckers suffer!!!!!

I respect you're opinions breaders and rammy and I appreciate it is probably hard to comment on this thread without feeling you are going to offend me in some way but that is not the case at all. The world would be a very boring place if everyone had the same opinions. I am not a fragile person and I'm a firm believer that the experiences you have in life, the good and the bad, make us the people we are today. There's no way I'm going to let that bastard have any impact on the way I live my life. I know this sounds a bit of a cliche but it has taught me to try to make the most of everything you have and enjoy life as much as possible because not everyone gets the opportunity. We take the simple things in life for granted. All you can do, as you well know breaders, is keep putting one foot in front of the other and crack on.

Fascinating debate, brilliantly and respectfully argued. I agreed with Bredders, then with 58, and think it nigh on impossible to separate the immense admiration I feel for how 58 is handling an appalling situation, for him and his family, from my internal view that the death penalty is wrong. For me, the arguments about whether it not it is a deterrent, or how awful it would be if a mistake was made, or the economics of keeping someone locked up for life v killing them, or if redemption is possible v the existence of evil are all interesting debates, but my non negotiable argument is as follows. I don't ever want to ask an individual, or the state, to do anything I wouldn't or can't do. I couldn't plunge in a needle, or press a button, to kill someone else, no matter what they had done, even if they had admitted it and it was truly awful, so I shouldn't expect someone else to do it in my name.

This thread is what the best of the internet is all about.

People talking and actually discussing the important stuff in life.

Not bloody X Factor and pointless nonsense like that but the real issues that have an impact on us all.

That's why I love Nuts - you get a brilliant cross section of views and opinions about life and it promotes serious discussion and makes you think.