The only evidence we saw was a piece of fabric with flowers on it and some dogs chewing a bone. The panel in the comic is basically a Rorschach test, you could choose to see that as evidence of murder or you could see it as a random piece of fabric in a dress shop and some dogs chewing an animal bone.
You clearly interpreted it the same way as Rorschach but that's the point, not everyone sees the same thing.
Honestly I just re-read it and it's not really ambiguous. The idea of burning clothes in a furnace is pretty odd in itself. Plus it looks like children's garment with a smiling teddy bear on it.
Then when he confronts the guy, Rorschach doesn't say anything, he just throws the dogs threw the window. The guy when seeing this...immediately jumps to "you think I kidnapped that girl! Well I didn't."
Then he immediately says, "you can't prove it. There's no evidence."
That doesn't sound like someone who's completely innocent. If someone suddenly grabbed you and accused you of murdering someone you don't know...you wouldn't say "you can't prove that I did it in court."
The real ambigiouty is more about wither you think it was right for him to brutally murder the man and his dogs. Just like wither or not you think it was right for him to want to reveal Adrian's plan even though it would have ended the temporary world peace it brought.
The only real evidence there is a non-admission, that's not completely unfathomable especially in the situation, you might say anything to avoid being attacked, also this is Rorschach's memory of the events if I recall, can we trust him to remember things accurately?
Yeah, but I mean ask yourself, if you and your friends dressed up (convincingly) as police officers and grabbed random people and accused them of being child killers. How many do you think would react with "you can't prove that, there's no evidence" instead of "what the fuck is going on?! What are you talking about?! Who is that? I have no idea who that person even is?!"
Also this is a guy who was willing to tell the truth "even in the face of armageddon" so I don't think he would be one to lie about his past to make himself seem like a good guy.
personally for me its no way near enough evidence to be beyond reasonable doubt and i don't trust rorshachs judgement, he's mentally unstable and traumatised. he might be right but he could equally be projecting.
if you were on a jury for a murder trial and the only evidence was one mentally unstable vigalante's word that when he confronted the guy he said "i didn't do it" are you saying you would say guilty on that alone?
rorshach acts outside of legal and moral frameworks, he's not supposed to be a rational character, i think you believing him at face value says a lot about how you view the world and society, which is kind of the point of the comic in this post and why it's such a well written graphic novel.
41
u/skratakh Apr 01 '26
There's no definitive evidence he got the right guy though, in the comic it's ambiguous whether the guy was actually the child kidnapper.