David Wilson (2019) My Life With Murderers.

Below the typeface of David Wilson’s name is the tag ‘The UK’s Leading Criminologist’. Fourteen other books written (or co-written) by Wilson about well-known criminals and criminal justice system are listed inside the cover. It was only when I had neared completion of the book, and the Chapter Theory into Practice: Interview with a Murderer, I realised this was a programme on Channel 4 that I’d watched.

Here we had encapsulated everything Wilson had been preaching. He was asked to write the foreword for a book, with the subtitle The Truth about the Killing of Carl Bridgewater. Carl Bridgewater was shot in the head delivering newspapers to a farm near where he lived. Nobody was convicted of his killing. Channel 4 could tag the Interview with a Murderer because the original suspect of the police investigation, an ambulance driver, Bert Spencer was convicted of another killing, It was that of his friend and a ‘father figure’ that sometimes employed him, Hubert Wilkes. Spencer shot him in the head and claimed amnesia. In many crime dramas the protagonist suffers amnesia and the viewer later finds out that’s not the way it happened. He was not guilty. Spencer was guilty and sent to prison.

When he came out of prison he set out to clear his name. The Carl Bridgewater case, apart from family members, was largely forgotten. Most of us recognise what a psychopath looks and sounds like by seeing the moron’s moron, President Trump, on television and the way he needs to feed the continuing ‘I’ into his angst on social media. Bert Spenser was a littler ‘I AM’ that was not to be ignored.

Trump’s bestseller The Art of the Deal wasn’t ghost-written by Tony Schwartz, but wholly written and fabricated by him (a deal with the moron’s moron he later regretted).

Similarly, author Simon Golding had written about the Carl Bridgewater murder based on what Bert Spenser had told him. Like the moron’s moron in the Whitehouse, Spenser liked to claim he’d-all-but-written the book. Similarly, he was the hero in his own story. Setting the world to rights. Grandiose thinking and impetuosity are attributes of the psychopathic mindset.

In the same way that the moron’s moron craves the endorsement of well-known celebrities, Spenser wanted to hook the leading criminologist to endorse his book. Spenser wanted to make the splash of big ‘I AM’ bigger.

I must admit I underestimated President Trump. He used other people’s money to get elected and expected to be defeated, but had gone along for the ride because the cameras were always on him. I expected when the circus died down President Trump would be brought down by his own narcissism, greed, lies and above all by his own incompetence. But the moron’s moron repositioned those attributes as virtues. The smell’s still there, but we’re looking –for now- the other way.

Wilson did not fall for Spencer’s false bonhomie and old worldly charms. The criminologist looked at Spencer, looked at his alibi, met the woman that had provided the alibi and quickly concluded it had no validity. Spencer’s ex-wife later agreed to be interviewed and she talked about Spencer washing a jumper in the washing machine on the night of the Bridgewater murder.  Spencer had never done a washing in all the years they had been married. The green jumper and one of Spencer’s shotguns later went missing. Spencer’s daughter also thought he could have killed Carl Bridgewater.

Spencer argued the world was against him. He claimed that Wilson’s eyes were dilated and he took drugs. He was incompetent. He didn’t fully understand the case.

Every time you listen to one of the moron’s moron rants imagine Spencer, both are not guilty of any crime. The question remains, what do we do with the psychopaths among us? We elect them to the highest office, out of harm’s way, President of the United State and Prime Minister of a disunited kingdom. Psychopaths have that great ability to not really care what you think. Just don’t get in their way. When you think of Spencer, think of the moron’s moron and the man that hides what little brains he has under mussed blonde hair.