Wendy's Reviews > A Thread of Violence: A Story of Truth, Invention, and Murder

O’Connell is a good writer. This book engaged me, it is well written, so that is always a treat. It made me think and it also pissed me off.

O’Connell wanted “reasons” or an explanation for the horror that is MM( I won’t give him the benefit of writing his name) and the horror he inflicted. He therefore wasted months and hundreds of hours talking and “interviewing “ this vapid sociopath only to realise that MM would never divulge the “truth” of his dead dead soul. What O’Connell refuses to recognise is that MM divulged his soul with a hammer in the back seat of a car and a shotgun shot in the face in a faraway field. There is nothing else to see here, folks.

But empathetic/ typical brains want to think there is some driving force that turns a mediocre man into a monster. No, he was never just a shy, lonely weird boy, he was always a parasite and still is. People just want to be fooled by these zombies pretending to be men. And in some ways, I think O”Connell let himself be fooled. He played MM’s game.

What did O’Connell think? That by engaging with this empty person, MM would suddenly feel free to speak authentically about what MM termed “the criminal episode”. I would have walked out immediately on hearing the term. But O’Connell is a curious soul and maybe has an inflated confidence in his own abilities. Hmm. Who knows? But it showed up as ill considered in my view and pandering to a sociopath’s ego. Creepy.

There is no “truth” or realisation available to this 2 dimensional, rather dim-witted individual. A nerd who tries to be “superior” to others and unleashes HORROR in service of his flimsy sense of worth.

I say dim witted because he has the self-awareness of a placemat, a corresponding lack of curiosity, and an equal lack of integrity to engage authentically with the pimple he is on the human species’ arse.

And let’s not talk about the “brains” he exhibited in his delusional plan and chaotic streak of violence. Puhlese,

I am annoyed at o’Connell and the rest of society/media/ social commentators who described MM as intelligent, urbane, sophisticated, taking his upper class upbringing as somehow noteworthy. What is noteworthy is the perfect articulation MM is of the utter corruption that is the class system, and the utter failure of that system to produce thinking persons. Intelligence is more than being able to be erudite about some scientific subjects. In MM’s case, critical thinking is entirely missing.

MM was an actor, empty of soul and full of artifice, bow ties, friends in high places, unearned wealth, and library membership. Devoid of a capacity to think of anyone or anything except his needs. And boy, did he succeed in taking everyone in. In a world where superficiality is king.MM was in his milieu.

MM may have uttered the words”I killed them” but has never taken responsibility, in my view. What is missing in all of these interviews is HORROR. MM is never HORRIFIED.
And in the absence of that, what O’Connell serves up is another perfect example of the banality of evil.

Well worth the read, if only to witness how the “typical” human brain refuses to fathom the cold, black space that is the malignant narcissist, sociopath, and psychopath. Applying the same rules of logic that one would apply to an empathetic person does not apply here.