In the hours after Steven Robertson brutally murdered his former wife and her daughter, police were quick to reassure the public it was not a “terror” incident.
If Emma and 24-year-old Nicole Anderson were alive today, they would no doubt disagree with that description.
The horror they faced in their last moments at the hands of this pathetic, selfish thug is impossible to imagine.
And while the police statement was designed to reassure, the truth is that every day thousands of women live in fear of exactly that sort of despicable domestic terrorism.
A picture is now emerging of a man whose squalid life of petty crime was disintegrating.
And like all cowardly bullies, Robertson decided to take it out on the women around him rather than face up to his own shortcomings.
Excuses will no doubt be made about his state of mind – but his attacks were as calculated as they were barbaric.
Telephone recordings obtained by the Sunday Mail show he had murder on his mind for days.
And while his knife attacks were frenzied, the time he spent lying in wait to commit them suggests a sick but calculated train of thought.
Shortly afterwards, he died himself, crashing his car into a tree.
Whether this was intentional or not, the world is a better place without him.
But unfortunately he will not be the last man who feels entitled to take his personal insecurities and failures out on women in the form of violence.
It is a crime that will unfortunately never be eradicated.
What we must never do is make excuses for the gutless lowlifes who perpetrate it.
