Quite often the same motives too. A desire for attention; frustration with life; need for publicity; explanation for failure; revenge; madness; delusion...

Whether it's guns and balaclavas or fake claims and invented exaggerations... and the results can be just as deadly. I'll bet even more suicides are provoked by false allegations than deaths by loony shooters.

These false accusers have battery acid in their veins. They exist on malice and a desire to provoke pain. Sometimes for very good reason but never accepting any responsibility for their own acts. And often the curses they fire hit a mirror and come back to destroy them with misery, sourness, health problems, addiction, fear...

When I see the murders by social injustice and incompetence and witness people like poor Sally Clark have their lives destroyed, I feel it's even crueller and nastier than those cut short by maniacs with a more obvious desire for media coverage.

And perhaps the answer to ALL these tragedies is - total anonymity. Don't ever print or carry or promote the names and images of the perpetrators. Or their victims.

Remove the oxygen of publicity.

One thing I can guarantee: without the publicity in my case, there would have been no prosecution, let alone convictions.

And without the publicity for Columbine and other previous tragedies there would probably have been no Virginia Tech disaster. Without the knowledge of posthumous fame and media coverage, would the mad Korean have bothered?

I think not.