John Stape: getting away with murder

John Stape

So, John Stape. He’s an interesting character, right – and viewers’ reactions to him are even more interesting still!

Let’s look at the facts. John was a schoolteacher who cheated on his girlfriend with a 17-year-old student. In order to prevent said student revealing their affair, he abducted her and locked her away in an attic for five weeks – and she was eventually released not because he realised the enormity of what he’d done and let her go, but because a) she fought hard to escape, and b) his girlfriend became suspicious, investigated and found the poor girl. John claimed repentance, went to prison and served his time. His soft-hearted girlfriend Fiz eventually forgave him and even married him while he was still banged up. Between them, they persuaded the rest of the community that he had learned his lesson. He was given a second chance that he scarcely deserved and had the opportunity to build a new life.

John with long-suffering wife Fiz

But what did he do with that opportunity? He decided that it wasn’t good enough, that he deserved more – that the profession he had quite deservedly been banned from was his by right. So he stole another man’s identity and fraudulently resumed teaching under that false name. This led to further difficulties when first his barking mad former colleague Charlotte and then Colin Fishwick himself, the man whose identity he had assumed, found out what he had done. And then Colin Fishwick dropped dead right in front of him and once again John found himself at a crossroads. He could choose to do the right thing and face the music for his crime, or he could dig himself an even deeper hole by concealing the corpse and trying to hide what he had done. He chose the latter, denying Colin a proper burial and Colin’s mother the peace of mind that would have come from knowing what had become of him. With the barking mad Charlotte sharing his sordid little secret, the lies he was telling his now pregnant wife started to spiral out of control. Then when Charlotte threatened to reveal what he had done, he killed her – and took advantage of a convenient local disaster to cover up his crime. He allowed her grieving parents to lean on him for comfort, lying to them about the nature of his relationship with Charlotte. He continued to lie to his wife. When Colin Fishwick’s mother Joy came looking for him, he lied to her, too, to hide the truth of what had happened to Colin, despite knowing that the frail old woman was deeply distressed about her son’s disappearance and desperate to make her peace with him before she died. Then when his lies tripped him up in front of Joy and she suffered an angina attack brought on by the devastating truth she had learned, he first withheld her medication and then placed a hand over her face to prevent her calling out for help, thus directly causing her death. At length the strain of living with his lies and guilt got the better of him and he suffered a nervous breakdown, leaving his already stressed wife alone to care for their premature baby while he was in hospital. Then on leaving hospital, he discovered that Fiz had claimed Joy Fishwick’s estate, in Colin’s name, in an attempt to avoid exposing John’s initial fraud. He snapped again. Unravelling fast, his lies started to trip him up. First Charlotte’s grieving parents began to realise he was not who he claimed to be – and he reacted by tying them up in their cellar to prevent them raising the alarm. Then his young brother-in-law Chesney, always mistrustful of him, became suspicious and started to investigate. With two prisoners already stashed away, John plotted and carried out an elaborate deception to lure Chesney into a position where he could also be locked away before raising the alarm – and he did that knowing full well the distress the boy’s disappearance would cause both to his pregnant girlfriend and John’s own wife.

Laid out in black and white like that, John’s crimes are revealed for what they are: the heinous and unforgiveable actions of a narcissistic and self-absorbed man who has lost touch with any concept of right and wrong and will go to almost any lengths to protect himself, heedless of the distress this might cause to others, including those he professes to love. John is a pathological liar and almost certainly criminally insane, it is clear. He commits all his acts based on self-preservation, self-promotion, self-gratification, greed, control, and dishonesty. The viewers, one might expect, would be on the edge of their seats waiting for him to get his come-uppance.

Instead, the majority of viewers are in fact cheering John on and willing him to get away with his crimes, seemingly prepared to excuse and justify anything he does. ‘But he feels really bad about it’, they say, ‘and all he wants is to be left in peace to look after his baby, he should be allowed to put the past behind him and move on,’ as if a guilty conscience and a newborn infant should absolve him of what he has done.

John

John is an enormously likeable character. He’s pleasant, polite and bookish, mild-mannered and self-effacing, somewhat bumbling…the Frank Spencer of serial killers, one might say. There is something enormously appealing about his haplessness and general air of slight confusion, there can be no denying that. Graeme Hawley’s acting is a joy to watch and John’s story has been a real thrill ride as it has unfolded over the months. John always seems as if he is trying to do the right thing, only to be thwarted by circumstance, and there is no doubt that he does feel bad about his crimes after he has committed them, and has suffered terribly as a result of his guilty conscience.

But there is also no evidence that he has ever learned or changed as a result of what he has done, while feeling guilty about one crime never stops him committing another. He has never taken responsibility for his actions, although knew exactly what he was doing every step of the way. Pleasant and likeable though he is, he is also dangerously unstable and capable of just about anything – it has been demonstrated more than once that he will go to almost any lengths to protect himself, regardless of who gets hurt in the process. John is a classic case of a potential sociopathic serial murderer who believes he is cleverer than his peer group and can bluff his way out of any situation. He must be held accountable for his crimes. Justice must be served. And this likeable but dangerous man must be removed from society.

External to the fiction, John is a brilliant character much beloved by the fans and it will be a real shame to see him go.

Internal to the fiction, John is a seriously unbalanced individual who is a danger both to himself and others and needs to be taken off the streets as quickly as possible, before someone else dies.

I can’t wait to find out how the story ends.