Crossbow murders: prevention, missed opportunities
The horrific crossbow murders in Bushey occurred relatively close to where I used to reside in St Albans, Hertfordshire. While the suspect was on the run, I rang some friends who live in the area to ask if they had checked all their doors and windows were really locked.
It was risky to publish so much detail about the case while it is still in progress knowing that some new evidence might come along to contradict me. As it turns out, the blog was largely correct with its focus on the relevance of social control media and the toxic culture. At the very end of the trial, prosecutors revealed that Kyle Clifford had been following Andrew Tate, justifying my concerns about the role of social control media.
One key piece of evidence appears to be inconsistent: the date of the crossbow purchase. This is really fundamental to understanding what was going on in Clifford's mind. In some reports, they claim he called his brother in prison on 1 July 2024 to declare he had ordered a crossbow. In reports from the same media organizations, sometimes within the same page, they claim he made the purchases on 3 July, that is, the day that his ex-girlfriend shared a Tweet about women leaving their partners.
Examples of the contradiction:
- Daily Mail timeline only mentions the purchase of weapons on 3 July
- The Sun timeline mentions both 1 July, conversation with his brother about buying a crossbow and 3 July, buying the crossbow
- Sky News live feed from the trial and the sentencing hearings has consecutive posts about both 1 July ("He had a conversation with his brother Bradley, who's serving life in prison for murder, and told him about his crossbow order, the prosecution says.") and 3 July ordering the crossbow
Sometimes journalists do make mistakes with dates. Sometimes lawyers make mistakes with dates. Maybe he had started thinking about the order or started the online shopping cart on 1 July but only made the payment on 3 July. Maybe the conversation with his brother on 1 July was really boasting about something he hadn't actually ordered yet.
The British police themselves have attracted a lot of controversy for their infiltration of environment activist groups and the relationships between undercover police and female activists. Yet when they had this recording of a convicted murderer talking to his brother about the purchase of weapons, they may have had a missed intelligence opportunity.
The news summaries of this horrendous crime only give us the broad brushstrokes. It is very easy to hate this guy. Even the killer's lawyer stood up before the judge and said he was only defending the guy because it was his job to do so but he also thinks it is a particularly despicable crime.
To really deal with the Andrew Tate phenomenon, we need to break it into three phases, which can be easily confirmed using the live feeds from the trial and the "timeline" news articles:
| Date(s) | Who | What |
|---|---|---|
| 23 June | Louise | Begins to communicate the relationship is over |
| 23 June to 2 July | Kyle | Begins plotting, although his only concrete action is to purchase rope and arrange it as a noose for himself in the cemetary. |
| 3 July | Louise | Shares / re-tweets comment about women leaving their partner, gives the break-up a public dimension |
| 3 July, 4 July | Kyle | Buys offensive weapons, crossbow, knife, air gun, petrol cans |
| 9 July | Kyle | Triple murder with crossbow and knife |
To understand Clifford's feelings when his ex starts to engage in publicity on social control media, we can take a detour and look at the case of one of the four police officers who committed suicide after the January 6 riot at the US Capitol.
Of particular interest is the case of Officer Kyle DeFreytag. DeFreytag was only deployed to the US Capitol after the rioters had been chased away. He was posted there to enforce the curfew in the empty building where five people had been killed earlier in the day. Despite the fact the riot was over, the officers posted there that night must have felt like they were in a haunted house. Moreover, they may have feared a return of the rioters. After all, the rioters had been egged on by the president himself, Donald Trump, who still had another two weeks in office. Trump had used social media and a speech in ways that appeared to encourage civil disorder. Many officers who served in the days after the riot reported feeling a sense of dread and despair, an ongoing trauma. A few months later, DeFreytag became the fourth January 6 suicide victim.
Whether it is the January 6 mob or the vigilantism when a woman starts a rumor on social control media, the sense of apprehension is much the same. I spoke to another man in a high profile position who was subject to vendettas by a woman. Somebody in a more senior position made the mistake of sharing it too quickly. The victim told me that his first response was to get his wife and children out of the house. The mob mentality that grips people in social control media is very similar to the way people behave out of character when they assemble in a large group at a protest or a football match.
When Elon Musk's Twitter/X platform enticed Louise Hunt to make their break-up into a public story, she may not have intended any harm at all. Clifford, on the other hand, may have feared the worst, including the possibility that her celebrity father may share tweets with his 10,000 followers. Clifford's perception of the potential for a mob may have been based on the worst case scenario, nonetheless, he is not the only man who was taken by this sense of dread. If he saw the break-up becoming a public drama it doesn't justify the extreme violence but it may help us understand the step change in his behavior.
When Clifford's brother was convicted for murder, it brought about an online wave of public hostility against his family. Most of us never experience something like that. Yet for Clifford, when he saw his ex starting to create a negative narrative on Twitter, his previous experience of social media shamings would have compounded his sense of dread about how Twitter might exploit his current break-up.
Social control media clearly seeks to profit from the public fascination with conflict involving young white women. Sadly, a good profile photo and an emotional story goes a lot further than fact-checked evidence. When journalists hacked the mobile phone of 2002 murder victim Milly Dowler, looking for her last voicemail messages, there was public outrage. The rise of social control media has allowed Elon Musk to profit from tapping into the last thoughts of crossbow victim Louise Hunt. The erosion of this couple's privacy may have been a factor in Clifford's turn for the worse.
The fear of vigilantism doesn't justify Clifford's actions but it does suggest why on 3 July there was a step change in his planning on the day the tweet was shared. Before the tweeting, he appeared to be more concerned with ending his own life but after the tweet, his actions were far worse.
The suicide rate for men is four times higher than for women. Shortly before the crossbow murders, somebody submitted this Freedom of Information request asking how many people had taken their own life on the London Underground. The authorities were unable to reply, partly because the transport department is not responsible for classifying the cause of death, that is the job of the coroner. A report on Wikipedia suggests 643 suicide attempts in the period 2000 to 2010, roughly one per week. It is not clear how many of these relate to relationship breakdown.
People widely commented on the fact that Clifford, who is in prison, could refuse to come to the court for the trial and sentencing. Even the Prime Minister's office in Downing Street made public comment on this feature of the trial. Nonetheless, neither Andrew Tate nor Elon Musk attended the trial either. The content they respectively create and propogate is clearly harmful to people at vulnerable times in their lives.
Look at how Jack Dorsey was confirmed to speak at FOSDEM this year but he changed his mind and canceled at the last minute.
Who is the bigger psychopath?
In the victim statement of John Hunt, he stated:
When I challenge myself about how you were able to deceive us all, I simply say that you are a psychopath who, for the duration of your time together with Louise, was able to disguise yourself as an ordinary human being.
We could say similar things for social control media platforms pretending to be like a trusted friend while they are really exploiting people's trust to violate our privacy.
Fact checking: date of the tweet, date of crossbow purchase
Daily Mail tells us that Kyle purchased the crossbow on the same day Louise re-tweeted.
The Sun tells us about the conversation about "buying" the crossbow on 1 July and also on 3 July.
Sky News send live updates during the trial. They appear to be paraphrasing a speech by the prosecutor. Once again, it is not clear whether Kyle Clifford really made the actual purchase on 1 July or 3 July.
Louise Hunt's "last tweet" was actually re-tweeting somebody else. Did Kyle Clifford see this and did he only go through with the purchasing of weapons after this impacted him?
Remembering Dr Jacob Appelbaum
I don't want to suggest Louise Hunt intended to start a mob, she is a victim of social media just as much as anybody else. Social media mobs have a mind of their own.
When social control media vigilantism started to spread rumors about Dr Jacob Appelbaum in 2015, it quickly turned into real-world aggression, as evidenced by the graffiti on Dr Appelbaum's home (below). I checked the debian-private gossip messages and proved that the rumors were falsified for what appears to be a sadistic political motive.
How many men fear similar reprisals when somebody makes their life into a subject for public speculation?
