Well told story

Blue sky all day, somewhat colder. Housework after breakfast, then a walk together across Llandaff Fields and through the village to reach Rookwood Hospital's vaccination centre for our RSV vaccinations. As we arrived, Diana and Peter were leaving by car after receiving theirs. Clare decided to wait for a bus to take her back to Pontcanna. I walked, arriving home just five minutes before Clare, and was already cooking a veggie sauce for a pasta lunch.

I walked in Thompsons Park later in the afternoon and had an idea for another poem, this time about a heron. I sat down and drafted it when I got back home.

After supper I watched the last two concluding episodes of 'Sambre' in which the unsolved crimes of the Sambre Valley rapist emerge again as a cold case taken on by a very experienced investigator. He and his team review all the evidence and make progress when it's realised the older crimes and more recent cases have the same modus operandi, fitting the localised pattern described by the forensic statistical analyst. In the end, the rapist is caught and interviewed, as are his family and associates. The community that knows him is shocked. Nobody wants to believe such a 'nice' family man could do such awful things. Local police are faced with the fact that their own football coach and drinking buddy was never considered a suspect. At his trial fifty seven women were identified  as his victims over thirty years, with many of them in attendance.

Why did it take so long to stop the man? First a male dominated police force back in the '80s weren't as diligent in their investigation of violence against women. Change in attitudes, acknowledgement and  pursuit of equality and diversity in society generally, began to influence policing. Investigative methods in the form of DNA and statistical profiling of criminal behaviour radically transformed crime detection of all kinds. This evolutionary process was the social and cultural backdrop to the whole story and the roles occupied by different people over three decades the constant around which the drama is presented. It was well acted, and the suffering of women sensitively portrayed, at uncomfortably close quarters. It more of an educational watch than an entertaining one. I hope it gets the recognition I think it deserves with an media industry award.