Getting back on track everyone. Myself included.

Apologies to smithy for not grasping and or staying on top of the topic’s purpose … and original question.

I think I’m having trouble separating the letters themselves, ie their content and tone etc from a wider purpose. Maybe I shouldn’t be? I’m thinking it’s newspaper related but what’s the motive … indeed.

It has to be self-serving surely but is it simply to bolster a financial/sales need? If that were the case then my thinking is that there would have to be more than one person involved. I don’t see a single reporter undertaking something of that scale and nature and risk on their own to have others share in the rewards completely risk and guilt free. Perhaps as a one off but with the length of time it ran for I couldn’t see that being maintained. Unless of course the underlying motive wasn’t sales but was actually psychotic. In that case the undertaking would most likely be a solo effort and I’m not sure it can remain safely in the arena of newspaper related. Not at the level of reporter anyway.

I can’t reconcile it being financial for LE either because of the letter writers own actions in bringing in different jurisdictions. I think, given the nature of the agencies involved, for it to be financially motivated, I have to keep expanding it due to the way it was perpetrated. Now, having thought that, I’m now also thinking that if it was financial then perhaps the blanket approach kinda makes sense in that no one newspaper or jurisdiction appears to be directly benefiting. This is all getting a bit too much though because LE aren’t really going to benefit from wasting resources chasing a fictional serial killer. I don’t think in the really real world it’s that simple to get a bit of cash flowing. Not that there appears to have been anything simple in the approach of the letters.

And so we move on to the realm of the lone hoaxer.

There’s never a lone hoaxer though is there? There’s any number of idiots queuing up to apply for that position and some of them get the job, temporarily or permanently if you’re Wearside jack. This case is different though because WJ was inserting himself into an actual serial killer investigation with all of it’s inherent traits that made it that and not just a bunch of unrelated murders. This wold be more like a "Build-your-own" serial killer in monthly installments. In that respect it’s more like an artistic endeavor. Like working with clay you can almost see him shape it over time, reshape it, add detail, let it dry and them return to it for a few finishing touches. As a motive and a purpose behind it if the letters were a hoax I actually quite like that. It satisfies, for me, a lot of the tangents and content in the letters. I know it’s been suggested before that the whole thing was performance art but I think that involved the murders being linked. This is like a step back from that. So yeah, a hoaxer but one with a purpose beyond the norm. The hoax aspect being more akin to your doodles or preliminary sketches.

Yup, I’m gonna go with that. A loan hoaxer/nutjub with a cute idea for something artistic albeit sick.

I hope that’s more along the lines of what you were hoping for smithy. Sorry it took me so long to get my head around it. I couldn’t settle on an idea that didn’t have lots of problems. This for me satisfies a lot of the initial ones like the why and risk etc.

MOVED TO THE OTHER THREAD