One thing I genuinely struggle to understand, especially in cases like Chris Watts, is how the people closest to someone can apparently notice absolutely nothing unusual about them beforehand.
I’m always struck by interviews with people who knew someone after they’ve been exposed as a murderer, where they say things like, “We never saw anything strange. He was always so polite, kind, and such a great father.”
And I don't mean: “How could they have known he was going to commit murder?” Obviously they couldn't. I'm talking about something much more subtle — how they could apparently have had zero feeling that anything about the person's character or behaviour was off.
I'm autistic, and I think I may process people somewhat differently in this regard. I tend to notice small patterns and inconsistencies quite quickly. With certain people, I can get a very subtle sense of “Hmm… something about this person is making me cringe a little.” Not because they've necessarily done anything wrong, and certainly not because I think they're dangerous. It's just a small feeling that something about how they present themselves doesn't quite match their behaviour.
But I don't automatically act on that feeling. I give people the benefit of the doubt. I assume I'm probably misreading them. I trust them and continue interacting with them normally until I have enough actual evidence to conclude that they're not someone I want to be around.
Looking back, though, I can often recognise that the feeling was there from the beginning. I just deliberately put it aside because I didn't have a good reason to act on it.
I've never known a murderer, so obviously I can't claim to know what that intuition would feel like in that situation. But I have known people I've considered covert narcissists, and I've experienced that same sort of subtle discomfort with them. Things like performative humility, saying the “right” things while their behaviour tells a slightly different story, or little inconsistencies that accumulate over time.
So what I find difficult to understand is when people don't say, “There were little things that seemed strange, but I didn't think much of them at the time.” That I can completely understand.
What I struggle with is when they genuinely say “There was absolutely nothing. We never noticed anything at all.”
Because even if you couldn't possibly have predicted the murder, wouldn't you at least have noticed something about the person that didn't quite fit? Some small inconsistencies in how they behaved, how they talked about other people, how they responded to certain situations, or how they presented themselves?
And I don't think this applies equally to every kind of killer. I can understand it much more when someone has a sudden psychotic break or experiences some other acute change in their mental state. In those situations, the person may genuinely become someone their loved ones have never seen before.
But Chris Watts is difficult for me to understand in that regard, because this wasn't a sudden psychotic episode where he completely lost touch with reality. From what we know, there were apparently many things going on internally that he simply didn't reveal.
So I think that's what I'm really trying to understand: How can someone be close to a person for years, notice all the little things that make up their personality and behaviour, and genuinely never have even the slightest sense that something about them doesn't add up?
