I watched Netflix’s ‘Should I Marry a Murderer’ – people are missing the main point

This Netflix documentary has made a real splash – but so many are missing the main point.

Dr Caroline Muirhead (Image: Netflix)

What would you do if the person you loved told you they had killed a man, and that the body lay just below your feet? Everyone likes to think they would be a righteous hero – but the reality is, there is no way of possibly knowing what you would do.

Netflix’s ‘Should I Marry a Murderer?’ follows Dr Caroline Muirhead – a bubbly, vivacious and fiercely intelligent forensic pathologist who found herself in that exact situation when she fell head over heels for Alexander (Sandy) McKellar in 2020. After a whirlwind romance, and a hasty proposal, Caroline’s life collapsed around her when Sandy disclosed he had killed a man – Tony Parsons – in a hit and run in 2017. He and his brother Robert had hit Tony while they drove drunk through a remote part of Scotland.

The pair had then fled the scene, even though Tony was alive, and then returned to bury him on their country estate and told no one – until Sandy tells Caroline.

Torn between doing the right thing and trying to protect herself from Sandy and his brother Robert, Caroline descends into a drug and alcohol fuelled nightmare from which there seems to be no escape.

With little to no assistance or victim support from police, Caroline is left to try and pull together enough evidence to convict the brothers, all while her own mental health disintegrates.

In the wake of the documentary’s release, people online have been baying for Caroline’s blood.

One post on Reddit reads “As I watched, my opinion of this woman only got worse. She is an unbalanced, self-absorbed individual with a serious case of main character syndrome who made terrible decisions that were driven by her insecurities.

“To say that her decision-making capability is poor would be a gross understatement.”

Others accuse her of being “childish” “stupid” “desperate” “self sabotaging” and much more.

Caroline was failed time and time again (Image: Daily Record)

Time and time again, the same narrative plays out in the court of public opinion.

All people want is the perfect victim – someone who was simply walking down the street when they were set upon by a crazed murderer.

Someone who was completely powerless to help themselves, who had no idea what was coming for them.

They want someone who behaves exactly the way everyone likes to think they would behave. They want a hero and a casualty all rolled into one neat little package that they can hold in the palm of their hand and admire.

The second anyone exists outside this twisted dream of the ideal victim, they are vilified, blamed for their own misfortune and the public begins to bay for blood.

You only need to look back to Amber Heard and Johnny Depp to see the way that victims are demonised when they don’t behave how people expect them to, or dare to be less than the Platonic ideal of a victim.

The perfect victim has never existed and it never will, and yet people are furious at Caroline for her behaviour.

For having the audacity to film herself, for doing drugs, for returning to a toxic and dangerous relationship.

The reality is these people are missing the main point – Caroline was a vulnerable woman, in an impossible and volatile situation.

Because she was highly educated, and her relationship with Sandy had been short before he disclosed the killing of Tony, police decided that Caroline didn’t need help.

Even as she covertly recorded Sandy and double-crossed him to try to get justice for Tony, even as she risked everything to find out where he was buried, the police essentially just let her get on with it.

They even go as far as to reveal her as their main witness while she is in the same house as Sandy and Robert – terrifying her, and putting a target on her back.

When asked why she was never offered support, authorities have two lines – either Caroline was barred from talking to anyone because of the risk of compromising the case, or that she was a doctor, and therefore should have known what support services she was entitled to.

In the eyes of the police, she was too smart to be a victim, and in the eyes of the public, she was too stupid.

Caroline was failed at every single turn by everyone who was meant to protect her – and now, she has been brave enough to reveal the nightmare she lived through to the world, only for the public to fail her as the police did.