It’s interesting that you should want to ask a lawyer a question like this. It’s really more one for a newspaper editor, isn’t it?

I think some criminals become well known because their crimes touch a raw nerve with the public – some act of particular horror, for example, like the abuse and killing of children that took place in the Moors murders, or the case of Fred and Rosemary West.

Other crimes, though less horrifying, have a particular storybook quality to them. The public are intrigued, as with the recent case of John Darwin, now suspected of fraud, and under investigation. Nothing is proven against him at this stage, of course, but if it is, what fascinates will not be the gruesome nature of what he has done, but rather the intrigue of someone walking out of his own life for five years, and then walking back into it, without any clear reason for his absence.

Essentially the public like mysteries. That is why crime fiction, and stories of “real crime” are so popular. There is something fascinating about being confronted with the pieces of a puzzle, and then putting them together. And where the puzzle is a particularly dark one, that satisfies an almost universal appetite for the macabre. Where the answer is never quite provided, it gives the public – or the audience – a chance to invent the answer for themselves.