A bit of stream of consciousness here, but let’s see:
I would have to go back and do some reading, but I believe that men dressing in women’s clothing can be a stress outlet. It could be that some incident in Edwards‘ childhood occurred and the way he found comfort at that point was in women’s clothing. Perhaps later on if he was then being bullied at school he sought out women’s clothing, possibly driven by something subconscious. This may explain why he was doing that as a young teenager. Everyone has stress in their lives so that could be why it is something he has retained his whole life as a private activity - he gets stressed so he wears women’s clothing as a comfort.
He doesn’t seem to actually deal with stress. Recall his reactions when what would be considered stressful things have happened - he seems completely disconnected from the emotion of them. Yes, he apparently yelled at DF that he was going to kill him, but he also begged him to stay at the house. Not exactly healthy either way, let alone when viewed together.
If people have messed up wiring in their brains (eg APD), being disempowered could lead to them seeking to have power over others in quite an extreme black and white way. Bullying could have started the chain because that would have made him feel disempowered. Bullying is about power. He needed to “get his power back”.
I could never quite understand what the emotional triggers for his behaviour would be at a young age, but perhaps the sense of disempowerment from the bullying resulted in him looking for outlets that reversed the balance of power. He starts prowling around peeping into neighbours’ windows and pinching things that serve the dual purpose of feeding his clothing requirement and making him feel powerful. He went back to the same house on Huntingdale Rd several times, and the addresses on Hamperden Rd are next to each other (he may have mixed up the address given his hiatus). What if someone who had done something to cause him stress by making him feel disempowered lived at those addresses?
He progresses to breaking in to houses but runs away. He’s not really out to hurt anyone at that point; he just gets off on knowing he can get in and give them a fright. It makes him feel powerful to do that.
The Huntingdale attack to which he has plead guilty - he knew the family that lived there apparently. While I don’t believe that there was any pool incident of the magnitude that he talked about leaving him with a fear of water, the fact that he brought up the little brother in a disparaging way made me think there had been some altercation. Otherwise, why bring that person into it? What if the little brother p***ed him off and his retaliation was to go after his sister? It wouldn’t be the first time someone went down that path. He’s a coward - he could never really stand up to another bloke.
He kept a gun. Why? He never used it. Did it make him feel powerful, like he could harm someone if he wanted to?
After the attack on Wendy he focused on two things with the psychologist: financial issues and EB wanting them to get married. This is completely inconsistent with other theoretical emotional triggers, which centre around rejection by women. Wanting to get married is the opposite of rejection. So maybe we are talking general stress here and putting on a pair of women’s knickers was not enough. Or maybe others were putting pressure on him to get married and he felt he didn’t have control over his own life. Or maybe that was a convenient excuse and some guy had treated him badly in his eyes so he found a vulnerable target to relieve his stress. But he stops when she fights back because he’s never gone further; he’s still too scared, and he’s gotten the stress relief and/or power trip he needs from it.
His cruising around in Claremont - he could have been picking up women and getting off on just knowing he could do something if he wanted. Perhaps he didn’t need to go through with the act itself to get the power trip he needed at those times. His behaviour, however, could have escalated from the late 80s to the 90s by virtue of the fact that he wasn’t getting the same sense of relief from the more minor acts any more. Like any addict, he needed more to get the same fix.
It seems very much as though Edwards regarded DF as his friend, whatever his relationship with EB. Did Edwards really have many friends? We’ve seen he was friendly with the Cooks. But what if his anger at DB was because he felt DB was leaving HIM when he’d told him not to? What if he didn’t like DB’s attitude towards him? It’s nuts to me that more wasn’t examined about the fact that DF was quite possibly at the house and could have seen Edwards prior to Sarah’s disappearance. Did DF tell Edwards he was moving out that night? He moved to Warnbro at least by 16 February - just a couple of weeks later.
At the time Ciara was murdered, Edwards was in the process of selling the Fountain Way house. That’s pretty stressful, especially if it was putting him under financial strain and he was worried about his financial future. He was involved with KM during that period as well (just pre CG), so I don’t see why he would have been emotionally triggered by a sense of rejection or distress due to his relationships with women.
KK survived her attack. She pretended to be unconscious, was completely submissive. If the screams from Mosman Park are taken to be Sarah’s and the screams in Wellard are Jane’s, they fought back. Maybe not physically, but perhaps in his eyes they refused to submit to him. We know Ciara fought back, once again a refusal to submit. For someone on a power trip, that would be like a red rag to a bull. Although of course by that point, killing them might have been necessary to deal with the disempowerment issues, so it may not have mattered how they reacted.
I can’t fill in a lot of the gaps because it was never examined whether other incidents in his life may have caused him to feel disempowered or stressed, or whether he was having issues with other men at the times of his known attacks. And, as I said, stream of consciousness so it might not all fit.
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