Molestation or Murder? Pleasure or Pain?

I remember Fritz Lang's "M".

The pervert, when being tried by the criminal element who have been hard pressed by the police, asserts that the safecrackers and cardsharps are the true criminals for they choose to perform their deeds rather than work at a legitimate job, whereas he is driven to kill by something inside himself that he can not escape for no matter how fast he runs he finds that he is always chasing himself.

If we make laws that are so Draconian then we will be providing a pervert with an incentive to kill rather than to molest but allow his victim to live. I think however that the killer of JonBenet Ramsey always intended to kill her. The intruder was clearly willing to take risks in committing the crime, so if he had wanted to take flight and risk being caught by the police he would have done so. He enjoyed concocting a weird fantasy-related note in the form of a ransom demand. He enjoyed the image of the parents waiting by the phone in a maddening and futile frustration. He only seems to have applied the stun gun twice so perhaps he did not find it as enjoyable as he thought he would, but he did it for the purpose of enjoyment, not to compel some sort of compliance. After all, his victim was a tiny six year old girl and it makes no sense to think of the stun gun as an instrument related to compliance. It is an instrument of torture. It seems the bondage cords may have been part fantasy and posing, but his fantasies seem to relate to humiliation and the infliction of pain.

He molested JonBenet. He probably enjoyed his perverse activities but I fear his primary goal was to kill her. Given his enjoyment of inflicting pain and humiliation, I fear that the cord was repeatedly tightened and relaxed.

I do not think that the intruder was a pervert who chose to kill his victim in order to avoid being captured by the police. I think the intruder chose to kill his victim because he enjoyed killing. Should we seek the perpetrator in an abattoir? Or should we seek out reports of missing persons of high vulnerability such as streetwalkers and runaway youths? When Orson Welles made Citizen Kane he was advised to retire because he could never top that movie. Yet he kept trying. We tend to think of the JonBenet Ramsey murder as the ultimate in reprehensible conduct. After all, what arrest of a jerk in Thailand would ever have garnered four solid days of non-stop cable news coverage? So do you think the perpetrator retired or continued to make movies? Has he simply learned that making low-budget movies which do not garner any great publicity can be fun too? Is the killer of JonBenet Ramsey spending his time hiding out at the horrors of cockfights or dog fights? Or does he gain recurrent pleasure in an abattoir?