Derrick Bird: Was He Driven Mad By Steven Seagal Film?

Derrick Bird: Stephen Seagal, On Deadly Ground, last words, evil, a Thai bride and drugs…

Sunday Telegraph (front page): “Gunman’s last words: Am I being paranoid?”

Well, not his last words. Not by long chalk.

Derrick Bird: The Last Will And Testament In Full

Cumbria gunman Derrick Bird watched violent film before killings

He watched the telly. Did the telly make him do it?

Derrick Bird, the Cumbria gunman, spent the night before his killing spree watching a violent film at his best friend’s house before asking, as he left: “Do you think I’m paranoid?”

Introducing Bird’s “best friend and near neighbour” Neil Jacques. The night before the killings, they watched On Deadly Ground. It stars Steven Seagal. It was not on DVD. It as on the telly.

Says Jacques:

“He [Bird] came to see me at my house because he had something on his mind. He got there at about 6 or 7pm and stayed till about 12.30am. He didn’t have any alcohol, or food. Just coffee. He had something on his mind – that he was going to go to jail over tax evasion.”

A reason? The People says:

“Fatal rejection – crazed Lakes killer and Thai lover – he flipped when she refused to marry him.”

What then of the Telegraph’s reaon?

“I said he needed to talk to the solicitor [Mr Commons]. He was going to see the solicitor the next day.”

Mr Commons is dead. Murdered. He was skilled the next day.

Derrick Bird Was Stopped By Red Lights And Prostitutes: News Round Up

“At the end of the film I said I would ring him tomorrow to find out about the meeting. The last thing he said to me was, ‘Do you think I’m paranoid?’ I said, ‘You are. You’re not going to jail for something like that.'”

Says Stuart Hyde, the Deputy Chief Constable for Cumbria:

“We may never know exactly what turned this man [Bird] from a taxi driver into a killer.”

But still, it’s fun guessing. A cabbie tells us:

“Then he found out about the will, and what he found out wasn’t what he wanted to hear and it must have tipped him over the edge.”

Adding:

“I thought that he must have just become utterly depressed and miserable.”

In the Mail, Peter Hitchens has another reason why Bird dunnit:

Was Bird taking the anti-depressant pills that are now prescribed so readily by NHS doctors to so many people whose lives – like Bird’s – have gone down the drain?

Dunno.

Channel 4 News has its own angle – was he self-medicating?

Cumbria killer ‘may have had drink problem’

Get me an expert!

Police have confirmed Cumbria killer Derrick Bird was subject to an ongoing tax investigation and they believe he may have had a drink problem, as criminology expert Professor David Wilson, writing for Channel 4 News, looks into the dark motives behind his killing spree.

There was no suicide note and no hit list of victims, but there is a growing picture suggesting that Cumbrian killer Derrick Bird was struggling to cope with a raft of issues in his life.

Hmmm… Struggling, eh? To cope, you say? Well…

What about Derrick Bird being evil, Fay Weldon?

To dismiss Derrick Bird as “evil” is too easy: it’s to claim he was possessed, to shrug and say there is nothing to be done about the faults in our society, the horrors of its fantasy life and the anxieties of its real one. The deed of mass murder was evil, but the man himself was not necessarily so.

He was insane, driven mad by his own demons, not by some exterior force. “Madness” is something that can happen when a man loses touch with reality, when he can’t make the distinction between saying, “I wish you were dead” and actually killing the object of his hatred.

Sunday Times (front page): “Bird planned massacre 9 months ago”

Maybe….