Channel 4 Psycho - Kill me if you can

[The Tiggster]

I fell asleep last night just before the last adverts (10:40ish) & wondered if anyone could update me on the outcome?

1. Did John survive the stabbing?
2. Was Mark convicted of the stabbing?
3. Did the police trace the Spy Mistress or other net user that Mark communicated with?

Anything else??

Thanks in advance.

[CarolG]

Hello Tiggster,
It tuned out that John had been all the characters in the chat room � the girlfriend, gay stalker and the secret service woman. It was told that he�s made up the girlfriend and gay stalker to see how gullible Mark would be and then contacted him as the secret service woman. He�d basically planned his own murder � he did survive the stabbing. Mark was charged with attempted murder and John with planning his own murder (can�t remember the exact term they gave for this). Neither of them was given a custodial sentence. They are both now fine although not allowed to see each other ever again, plus they cannot go on the internet unsupervised & are banned from entering chatrooms. 

[seal!]

Brilliant program, i missed the first part, i tuned in at the point where Mark discoverd that his girlfriend had been raped and murdered by his gay stalker, what actually happend up to that point?

[georgit79]

This was a guy at my brothers' school (if you're talking about the same person, but it certainly sounds familiar), in fact they were there at the same time as him and always thought he was a bit odd....the guy who was stabbed, that is. It all happened in Altrincham, near Manchester, didn't it?

[londondave]

John had over 170 pseudo personalities in the chat room.  Mark did not even report to the police that his online girlfriend had been kidnapped and he was made to masturbate over his feet on cam to release her, and when he found out she had been murdered did not go to police with info.

Not only did John plan his own murder but he instigated a homosexual act on himself from Mark.

[dog&duck]

That program was total bollucks. Intresting yeah, but how retarded can you get? Seriously...

[dog&duck]

P.S I'm not calling The Tiggster or any of the above posts retarded, I'm called the dim Mark kid retarded. Gullableeee...

[bernardo]

Mark was obviously gullible but not retarded.  At the age of 16 the brain is still not fully developed and he would have not been able to judge properly the importance or realism of some things.  John made a full recovery physically.

Mark was charged with attempted murder, he spent 8 months in a Young offenders' institute on remand before the trial.  He pleaded guilty to attempted murder and was given a three-year supervision order with the conditions that CarolG mentioned.

John was charged with "soliciting to murder" i.e. encouraging someone else to commit a murder.  The lawyers had to trawl through loads of historical cases and precedents in order to see if there were any similar cases.  They found that he was the first person ever to be charged with soliciting his own murder, but decided that it was still something he could be charged with.  He also pleaded guilty and got a two-year supervision order.

Incidentally, the fictitious spy-woman (Janet Dobinson) told Mark that she would be the first on the scene after the stabbing - she would be disguised as an ordinary police officer and would be able to "sort things out" to ensure that Mark would not get into trouble for doing his secret-agent work.  She told Mark that "6969" was a code-word which would mean that the whole thing would be called off.  John could have prevented Mark from stabbing him at any time merely by saying the code-word "6969", but his friendship with Mark was so close that he was willing to risk his own life rather than expose the lies, and never said anything to make Mark stop.

[bernardo]

When Janet Dobinson failed to appear, Mark kept thinking that she would arrive at any time and get him released.  It wasn't until a month after he was arrested that he eventually told the police about her and the secet-agent stuff.  At first the police thought that "Janet Dobinson" was a paedophile who had been grooming and manipulating Mark & John into doing things, but they eventually discovered the truth when they recovered 57,000 lines of chat-room messages which had been recorded on the hard-drive of Mark's computer.  They realised that John, Janet Dobinson, Kevin and the fictitious girlfriend were all the same person partly because they all used the same words and phrases, and the same spelling-mistakes such as "mybye" instead of "maybe".

Mark completely believed in the truth of all the spy stuff, and it was not until the trial that he discovered that Janet Dobinson was in fact John.

[The Tiggster]

Thanks folks for the answers, I found the programme fascinating & struggled to believe that it actually happened. I thought there would be a twist, but hadn't guessed that 14 year old John would be the mastermind.

I have since found these links of anyone is interested.....

manchesteronline

bbc

Many thanks again.