John Roughan: Chilling calm of brutal murderer

Narcissism, inadequately defined in the Concise Oxford as excessive interest in oneself, is probably common.

Many a parent watching Clayton Weatherston analyse himself at his trial must have sympathised with his mother and father.

Until they saw him on the witness stand, I suspect, they did not realise what they had raised. After the verdict this week his father said it was not the son they knew.

Even that terrible day a year and a half ago, when they were told what he had done, might not have prepared them for the sickness they saw in court.

They, like the rest of us, probably imagined the murder was committed in an extended fit of fury, and perhaps it was.

Psychologists diagnosed their son after the event, to be suffering from a personality disorder and prone to "narcissistic rage".

Rage happens. It is no excuse for murder even when provoked. But rage we understand. The narcissism seen in that court was something far more chilling, a supreme, impregnable, egotistical calm.

Somebody defined narcissism as the belief you can go out in the rain and not get wet. It is a conceit that you are somehow immune to the consequences of chances you take.

It's probably a good thing up to a point. I wonder how much narcissism drives war heroes, thrill-seekers and business entrepreneurs. It is not bravery and it is too calculated to be reckless. It is a degree of detachment from one's actions. Weatherston had it to a monstrous degree.

In court his parents undoubtedly would have preferred to see rage, or passion of any sort, preferably grief. Instead they saw a serenely calm, calculating man of 33 who looked like their son, but was utterly disconnected from what he had done.

In the snippets of his testimony shown on television, he seemed to be treating the trial as an intellectual contest in which he had no particular personal concern beyond winning points in a battle of wits with the barristers.

He was finding it quite interesting, even amusing at times. He could discuss his emotions and actions as though they were the subject of an academic seminar, showing no more remorse or responsibility than he would for the moves in a chess game.

Watching him, his parents must have searched their memories for early signs of a now glaring human deficiency. Parents do that. In their unconditional love they would prefer to blame themselves.

When the verdict was in they issued a dignified statement expressing their shock, their love for their son, their hope that he will receive the help they they had not realised he needed, and their sympathy for the victim's family.

The news, naturally and properly, concentrated on Sophie Elliott's parents and the ordeal the trial had been for them. The Herald devoted its front page next day to the brilliant young woman he killed, putting reporter Jarrod Booker's insightful review of Weatherston on the witness stand inside the paper.

On the Herald website that day, though, the Weatherston piece was one of the most heavily read items of the past six months. His testimony had been well read from the time he took the witness stand. People were revolted by the man's astonishing self-absorption, but fascinated too.

They wrote letters to editors complaining of his presence on television every night, but website hits told us they were still watching and reading about him. The appalling can be morbidly compelling.

But I wonder how much of the fascination arose from a sense that the horror we were watching was a little too recognisable. Self-absorption, detachment, the techniques of transferring blame. Who doesn't at times?

So we watched this character who had stabbed a woman more than 200 times, mutilating her with scissors, while her mother screamed at the locked bedroom door, and watched him watching himself.

Sophie Elliott's parents had to watch him too. They saw this preening intellectual idiot, utterly unaware of the way others were seeing him, boasting of his academic record, and they knew their dead daughter's potential had eclipsed his.

By all accounts, she had been a better person in every way and nothing he said against her character in court amounted to more than a symptom of his distorted responsibility. In his mind he had to have been the victim.

The Elliott family's trial was a second tragedy for them, for which they cruelly were made to wait 18 months, then endure a hearing that went on for weeks.

At the end, when Weatherston had been led away and his parents had said what little they could, Lesley Elliott was able to exchange a hug with his mother.

Then the Weatherstons stepped into a lift and left, destined to wonder for the rest of their lives how this could have happened.