A GREAT deal has been said recently about the Mary Bell story and whether this child-killer should have been paid for her contribution to the publication on her life, the claim being that anyone convicted of crime should not profit from that crime.
Mary Bell has been accused of having brought the subsequent public condemnation, and media hounding, upon herself, and her innocent daughter, by giving the issue new life through the book and its serialisation in the Times.
Now it seems that the two British nurses, Lucille McLauchlan and Deborah Parry, both convicted of killing their Australian colleague, Yvonne Gilford, are being freed to return home from Saudi Arabia.
One national newspaper has stated in its columns: ''The scramble to capture the story of their ordeal is well under way, with a media relations company employed by their British lawyers already finding six-figure bids from newspapers, magazines, and television companies''.
Is this another case of convicted
killers benefiting from their crimes with blood money?
Perhaps the Home Secretary, Jack Straw, should review this situation in the same light as the Mary Bell case, or is there a difference because of the intervention of the Prime Minister and the Foreign Secretary?
Richard Brown,
46 Gourlaybank, Haddington. May 19.
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