The fortuitous abolition of Australia’s death penalty for murder means that Victorian Supreme Court judge Christopher Beale didn’t put on his own death cap to pronounce sentence on triple murderer Erin Patterson. (“Mushy murderer to learn her fate, DT, 8/9). While Madame Defarge cleverly encoded the names of the guillotine victims during the French Revolution in her knitting, it seems the wanton Erin is sending messages too as she crochets images of rats and hands them out to her bewildered defence counsel. With Melbourne and Morwell engrossed by the intrigues of the death cap murder mystery, I guess our own Tale of Two Cities will quickly enter Aussie folklore and leave us all wondering how or why these terrible murders ever happened. Alan Sexton, North Parramatta 9Sept2025