Aiming a Bit High

In this chapter, Ronson tells the story of a once renowned criminal profiler named Paul Britton.  Britton became popular for his ability to interpret a crime and create an image of the type of suspect police should be looking for.  His career was extremely successful up until a case in which a man was wrongfully accused of the murder of a twenty-three-year-old woman, Rachel Nickell.  In this case, Britton created the profile for the type of suspect police should be looking for, and then helped initiate a trap in which the primary suspect was lured and hired impersonators were used to try to get a confession out of him.  In the end the suspect, Clin Stagg, was arrested for the murder of Rachel Nickell and later released when the actual murderer was arrested.  After this case, Britton's career essentially ended and he was no longer used as a criminal profiler.

Although I found both chapters interesting in that they gave two different stories of psychopathic incidents, I find chapter 8 especially confusing.  I feel that Ronson jumps around a lot in telling the story of David Shayler and it was difficult for me to connect the different aspects.  One thing I took away from that particular chapter was how Ronson shows how society only appreciates the right sort of madness.  Shayler's popularity dramatically decreased once he started to claim he was the Messiah because people thought this was "too mad". However, when he told news stations of his theory about 9/11, he was a large success.  I find these types of situations occur in the media as well.  Journalists will look for just the right sort of madness to portray, and society finds it extremely interesting.  But just when the story becomes too extreme, their popularity decreases.