In my creating writing class we drew different scenarios for writing a mystery. Lucky me, I pulled out a case where a man (or woman) is the main suspect for the murders of three middle-school students. Why would anyone go around killing innocent kids?--that's basically the question I have to answer. So, I need to come up with a "valid" motive for these murders... any suggestions? Thanks!
Scenario 1: They stumbled upon some information about his past that could ruin his reputation and cost him his job, family, freedom, etc if revealed. One of them made the mistake of trying to use the information to coerced him to give the person a better grade (if he is one of their teachers) or to extort money. The other two figuered out who killed their friend, so they had to die as well. Scenario 2: One of them was walking along the side of the road at night, and he struck the kid with his car while driving drunk. The kid died, but one of his friends got a look at the car and started nosing around. He caught the next kid about to call in the police and killed him, then had to do the same with one of a third kid the second one had been talking to about what he suspected.
Well, he might have some kind of complex since his childhood. He was bullied maybe. lol can't think of any other example, but 'complex' sounds good, I guess. I wish I could help more.
A confrontation with a group of drunken yobs? The children were killed in self-defence? Just to propose a different slant on the matter.
Maybe it's just too much Special Victims Unit, but I can think of a few reasons someone would want to kill a few kids. But then again, rape, pedophilia and incest don't much go well with school projects. So more on the "Why" side than the "What": Brain tumors, bad genetics, Bad parenting, Nature and nurture are always good excuses. Or, going to the flip side, as Ivan said, what if the killer was the one who was raped and took her bloody vengeance on the kids? Or, they could have misinterpreted the incident based on previous bad experiences. That is to say, they could have been bullied and beaten when they were children and mistook that these kids were bullying and beating and not realizing things killed them. That works better if they weren't actually beating the person up, because it makes them a victim. A victim of society. Also it sets up a bittersweet ending in that they didn't mean to do it but they still get punished as much as an unrepentant mad man. Of course, you could just have the person not actually be the one who killed them, and only be the main suspect, a red herring if you will. But that'd just be quibbling, and you'd still need reasons for it to have been thought it was them anyway. Maybe it was all over an affair. Mostly though it should be a woman, because it goes against conventional belief that a woman can be a murderer, and even better it garners more pity, and a pitiable criminal is an interesting animal.
as most who know me know, i'm agin' any kind of violence, but the first thing that jumped into my head on this is that the adult was a parent of a child killed in a columbine type attack and knew from intercepted online writings that those three were planning a similar massacre at their school, so in an excess of vigilante zeal, decided to take them out before they could cause other parents the same heartbreak s/he suffered...
spitball... his life is in a downward spiral... he is facing jail time or is dying... he feels society is corrupt and worthless, he decides to take his anger out on some punks... these boys throw a rock at his car or some daredevil kid stuff... ya know... and in a blind rage he beats them to death... blunt force trauma with a bat, i guess he keeps a bat around for protection... anyways it was dark And he could not see they were only in middle school... he could not react in a reasoning manner at this point of his life... he just snaps on them... and realizes what hes done when he sees them lying motionless
