Finding tonight's play 'The Sixth Commandment' a difficult watch

maddyone

I’m puzzled by the jury’s decision to find Field not guilty for the attempted murder of Anne.

I don’t think they had enough evidence. Presumably as she didn’t die they couldn’t do the forensic tests on her that they did on Peter’s body. She lived some time after the poisoning so her body had probably flushed out the poison by the time anyone realised.

Anne did die but it was a natural death. She was a lot older than Peter and the shame of what happened and the distress no doubt contributed to her passing.

I feel she died because of the effects of the poisons on her body. The way she changed in such a short time after he targeted her clearly showed that she would have died shortly (after having altered her will in favour of Field) except that after being admitted to hospital, unlike Peter she wasn’t sent home but sent to a care home instead. This lengthy period of time allowed the poison to be eliminated from her body, but in any case there would still have been evidence but unfortunately no one actually looked for evidence and presumably she was cremated rather than buried. It was fortuitous that Peter was buried rather than cremated otherwise I think Field would have carried on killing elderly people under the clever disguise of being an ordained priest.
He was the personification of evil.

Oreo

He couldn’t have been found guilty of murdering Anne as she was in hospital and after that moved to a care home where she later died.
There was no evidence.

He was charged with her attempted murder. He may have drugged her but that must have been impossible to prove with the time lapse.

Watched the documentary, and realised how realistic the drama was. If it was fiction, we'd be thinking " That couldn't happen......that's so unlikely..." but it was all real. So shocking.

maddyone

Doodledog like you I’m also puzzled by the role of Martin in it all. Do you think he was duped by Field into giving a certain amount of help?
Like the jury, I’m not convinced that he willingly participated in murder. Field was both persuasive and believable and Martin appeared rather gullible.

I’ve just started watching this and am finding it gripping. Just about to watch the last two episodes. But I’m struggling, without rewatching what I’ve already seen, to work out where Martin fits in with all this. My uncle changed his will and left his house to a young woman who befriended him via the church. Supposedly she stopped visiting him but posted sandwiches through his letter box. She cut him off from his family, especially those that had helped him after his wife had died ( he had no children). There was nothing we could do to overturn the will. As with the people in this series, it wasn’t about the money but the unfairness of it. I don’t know if she did the same to other people, but it wouldn’t surprise me to find that she did. We do get requests on our local Facebook page for people to befriend lonely elderly people and it does cross my mind sometimes that it might be opening them up to this sort of thing as I’m not aware of checks being made on the people who offer to help.

Well, I’ve finished it and am still none the wiser about Martin. What I am confused about is that there must have been an autopsy if Peter died at home alone. So what was the actual cause of death that was recorded at the time? And how was it actually proved that Ben was with him when he died?