It would be tempting to say this true story was stranger than fiction except that I'm almost certain I've read it before in a novel:
In a grisly case that British newspapers have compared to the Yorkshire Ripper murders of the 1970s, the police on Thursday charged a 40-year-old man pursuing a Ph.D. in 19th-century homicides with the murders of three women identified by the police as prostitutes.
One victim was caught on closed-circuit television last week being killed with a crossbow shot to the head before her dismembered body was dumped in a nearby river.
Think for a moment about the diver assigned to recover that poor woman's body parts from the River Aire. The newspapers are likely to obsess over the warped psychology of Stephen Griffiths, the man accused of these gruesome crimes. But the inner lives of psychopaths have never held much interest to me. It's that brave diver and what he must have been thinking before he climbed into the water that fires my imagination.