Passionnel

 

Crime passionnel is filling the news. That’s the old-fashioned French term. Coverage turns the mind to our understanding of crime of passion. Beaumont has murdered Jesse and Luke. We knew he did this very early. Reports had established it as fact before their bodies were found by the police. This grotesque true crime story plays itself out in real time to an entire nation, or the percentage who for their own reasons follow each grisly update. Unhappily, it continues to play itself out. Sometimes we question ourselves, our interest in knowing every detail, details police, media, and the algorithms readily supply. That Beaumont was a police officer does not make the work easier for the police. That he was, until last week, a celebrity blogger leads the nation to ask, what is a celebrity blogger? Daily the psychological profile builds, even though at some stage we don’t want to know. Tracking his desperate movements across city and country roads leaves an emptiness inside, a revulsion. Even a certain guilt about the secret, irrespective of its public nature. Would someone do that? Following the case each day we say inside, don’t do it! Don’t go there! The lyrics of ‘Walk Away Renée’ surface, “... you won’t see me follow you back home. The empty sidewalks on my block are not the same. You’re not to blame.” To wish for the other person to exist is the most essential definition of love. We learn this over a lifetime. We all want a lifetime. Nor are Beaumont’s actions a crime of passion in the strict legal sense, it seems. The law wants proof of  a shocked spontaneous response, or proof in turn that he was out of his mind at the time. Evidence in the news indicates Beaumont probably was out of his mind. A lawyer is required to define and prove the state called in English ‘mad-at-the-time’; but the murders were premeditated over a course of some time. The jury of public analysis is in session. It’s horrible, it’s true. They have enough evidence. People write blogs, are forensic over morning coffee, wait for the next instalment. Live and let live. When it’s over, it’s over. Everyone concludes, crime passionnel is a waste, there is no love there, love had already turned into hatred, ego, selfishness, denial. How is that? And that’s before criminologists begin introducing the pathologies. Their big words arrive too late, after the fact. Soon the story falters as the presence of the present moment holds sway. What more do we need to know? This is not a noir series, the next episode of our favourite detective show. Lives are lost. None of this need have happened. Lives are badly damaged, but everyone is still tuning in. What to do with others’ misfortunes? It’s all happening somewhere else. We cannot return Jesse and Luke to the world of the living. We can talk freely, we can reflect. We will not envy Beaumont the celebrity he will experience amongst his fellow prisoners.