1. The police are trying to keep people safe and prevent further deaths. All right, they haven’t got there yet. Think you can do a better job? Feel free to catch Billy and bring him down the nick at your earliest convenience – maybe having all the right thoughts about violent men and misogyny will make you a better detective than trained and experienced officers.
2. The police haven’t ignored or erased any murders. All their official communications mention all of Billy’s victims – including Joshua Norbury, the man Billy murdered whose name you don’t even mention in passing. So if anyone’s erasing anyone’s murder, it sure as shit ain’t us.
3. ‘After all, belonging to the superior sex class is more fun if you get to exterminate the subordinates once in a while – right, guys?’ Unless I’m mistaken, you’re implying that all or most men would find it enjoyable to murder women. This is an out-and-out lie. The vast majority of men don’t want to kill anyone, just like the vast majority of women.
4. Your chiropodist point, and what you think it proves, is a load of crap. If a killer kills only men, or only women, then it’s noteworthy. If he kills a mixture of both, it’s seen as not relevant, for obvious reasons. Men + women = people. People = everybody. What use is it to say a killer’s targeting people? It doesn’t narrow down his victim field at all. All Billy’s female victims were straight. His male victim was gay. According to your logic, does that make it the ritual slaughter of heterosexuals? Or would you say that, no, that makes no sense because there’s one gay victim? If so, I’d agree with you.
5. Best friends pattern. It was there in four out of the five cases. In the fifth case – Marion Hopwood – you’re right, it seems not to be there. Let’s hope that means there’ll be no sixth victim. Or, to put it in terms you’ll be able to relate to, let’s hope that if there is a sixth victim, it’s only one of those potentially lethal male murder machines you talk about (otherwise known as ‘men’) and not a fellow human being that you dane to consider worth caring about and writing about because she happens to share certain body parts with you.

From: David Howard, Oxford

Well said, Sondra! Your analysis is, as ever, superb. Unfortunately, your brain is too large and brilliant for most people to be able to cope with. I wish everyone would listen to you! I have been spreading the feminist word as best I can!

From: Herr Jennda, Wolverhampton