Hmm, upon closer scrutiny, the killer was not an ordinary bloke. He was a dangerous, agressive, misogynist sexual predator, a sadist and a serial criminal.


Or, such is my conclusion. Most of the people who knew him considered his behaviour as completely normal. And thus focus has been on tax problems, his being insulted, or other explanations.

Far from it, I think. This man has spend his entire adult life seeking to agressively control others. This, unfortunately, is regarded 'normal' behaviour. Normal, that is, until it culminated in his shooting people in the face to watch them bleed to death.

Derrick Bird 'normal'? He was a sexual predator

Normalising sex tourism doesn't just harm women in Asia – it leads people to see men like Derrick Bird as regular guys




Here is the account of a barman, Chris Bulmer, who knew Bird and witnessed his transactions with women who worked as prostitutes:
"He slept with a few of my girls upstairs and soon got a taste for it … But in the end he would only want to see one young lady in particular. She was about 22 and pretty. He became obsessed. He loved her and whenever he came back he would immediately find her, compensate the bar and take her away. She was his. And that was how he saw it".
The barman told the Sun that Bird was besotted and fell into a rage if the young woman wasn't available whenever he wanted her. In the end, according to Bulmer, she became terrified of Bird and ran away. It isn't clear whether he later sent money to this woman or another he'd met in Thailand, but the pattern – inadequate man seeks to dominate woman working in the commercial sex industry – is familiar. Often such men explain their behaviour as a manifestation of love but it's actually about control, a fantasy-driven compensation for the slights and insults they perceive in everyday life. She was his. And that was how he saw it. She no doubt saw if very differently, but was paid to behave otherwise until she got scared and fled.


The widespread cultural imperative to normalise sex tourism by Western men in south-east Asia is a barrier to admitting how damaging the trade is to women. But it also does something else: prevent us from seeing at an earlier stage that there is something very seriously wrong with men like Bird.
http://www.guardian.co.uk/commentisf...rd-sex-tourist