Turns out my college buddy is defending one of the UMass-Dartmouth scholars charged today

[markpkessinger]

15. That's a tough one . . .

. . . and I'm not sure the case I'm talking about is necessarily the best context in which to answer it (more on that in a moment).

In the abstract, I think most people probably could be driven to kill. But I think the trigger point (pardon the unintended pun) for some people is probably significantly lower for some people than for others. I think everybody has a breaking point, if you will, beyond which there is no telling what they might be capable of.

As for the case I mentioned, and the reason it may not provide the best context for a discussion of your question, a few days after the murder, it was reported that the guy had been the subject of an FBI investigation, the details of which have not been made public other than the fact that the FBI had raided his house (with a warrant) two days before he murdered his ex-wife. A friend of his ex-wife said that the ex-wife had heard about the raid, and was terrified the he would think she had something to do with it. She apparently told her friend that there had been something at the time of their divorce two years earlier for which she had been sworn to secrecy as a condition of a no-fault, uncontested divorce proceeding. (Pure speculation here, but I think this has "child porn" written all over it.)