Murder victim didn't clip toenails before dying- entire world notified

So. A young woman died, correction, was murdered. It's very sad, yes, and horrifying for the parents and boyfriend, not least because a) the first they knew about it was when she went missing just days before Christmas and b) the entire nation was alerted just about every half an hour by whatever news updating service they use, with incredible detail on the investigation and inane facts which, while helping the detectives, meant diddly squat to the audience.



Now, weeks after they discovered her body, the police are issuing the press with details of every single development still. Why? In the hope that some amateur detective will have a flash of Holmesian deduction, stare into the middle distance the way Hugh Laurie does when you're about four fifths of the way through an episode of House, and ring them up with the case solved? I do not need to know that the poor girl didn't eat the pizza she bought before she was koshed over the head or whatever grizzly demise she met. What's more, if people had been paying attention, they'd know she hadn't eaten it, because in one of the earlier news reports a few days after she went missing, the police statement said they were concerned because in her flat, when they searched it, there was a pizza that had been ordered. How could it be there if it had been eaten? I'm no genius, but that's fairly self explanatory. I remember the news piece in particular, if you must ask, because it was the first I'd heard of it, and it was on my birthday, and I was in the bar of a restaurant trying to get the trogldyte pair working there to get the drinks we asked for right.

A specimen just like that which was not eaten of?

The coverage has shocked me, frankly. It's ambulance chasing gone wrong- it's hearse chasing. It's chasing the Rolls Royce taking the family away from the graveyard after the burial. It's morbid, is what it is. Outright. And the information being fed to us is unneccessary. It won't have any bearing on the case from what I can gather- unless the police are intent on tracking down an as yet imaginary person whom may have undertaken the action of not eating the pizza with the deceased.

It's a bizarre display of how news coverage has changed massively. A couple of weeks ago, they announced she was missing a sock. That's all very well and good, but there are one or two issues I have with releasing that info to the press. One, they have to be prepared for every single person who sees a discarded sock phoning in, then dispatch units to each sock location to set up a bazillion crime scenes, one per Single Sock Site. That in itself would be difficult- I'm not sure how, but the majority of train stations have a sock in a verge somewhere, along with shoes, bras and knickers. I don't know how they get there, but they do, and then there's the single socks all over the country turning up on kerbs, in drains, the lot.

Secondly, what good does releasing that information really do? A sock could have dropped anywhere. It could be in the flat, even, if she was 50% through de-socking while not eating pizza when she was nabbed.

Thirdly, why tell us and put the family through all this pain? Imagine someone close to you dying in suspicious circumstances. Then, when you try to deal with that, everyone in the country follows every development and gets told it at the same time as you, more or less.

Lastly, and this is the clincher, but who cares? I don't mean that in a callous or cold way, but it's exactly what happened to the missing Madeleine McCann girl. These things happen, enough that statistically it would be called commonplace. Why jump on this one with such vigour and ignore other murders which happened a few weeks before? Just because it was near Christmas doesn't mean it should have better coverage and status than any other murder. Nor do I think that's the reason it's being so doggedly pounced upon.

The world of rolling 24-hour news means developments are cathartic and entertainment. A murder investigation should not be, but when some people say "I hope they get the bastard", they're saying it in the same way they would while watching a forensic crime show. It's not real to them. So they shouldn't be privy to it. This isn't CSI. It isn't even bleeding Silent Witness. So leave all the developments, the 90 second quickfire exchanges of essential information in crime scenes where no one ever turns on a light, to the dodgy American shows, and leave all the sympathy for the fake deceased with their head open on a steel table to the British ones. And, without trying to sound like that bloody mascara-wearing attention whore who decided filming himself fake crying about a celebrity showed him in a good light, "Leave victims alone!" Doesn't have the same ring, I know, but here's something to make up for it-



EDIT- you might have to click the image to be able to read what ole' Horatio is saying. Bloody blogspot.