All about the Killing Eve TV character that inspired the Kiambu murders

Piece by: Grace Kerongo
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The prime suspect of the five Kiambu

murders, Lawrence Simon Warunge told police he planned his murder using TV scripts of the BBC dark comedy-drama spy thriller TV show Killing Eve.

The bodies of Nicholas Warunge, his wife Annie, sons Maxwell and Christian and that of farmhand Jeremiah Kinyanjui were found mutilated, stabbed and bloody in their house in Kiambaa, Kiambu county last Tuesday.

Lawrence has confessed he killed them all.

Lawrence confessed to the police that he went online to search how he can execute his mission the same way the main character in the series, psychopathic assassin Villanelle does without a trace.

Villanelle has been described as "a manic pixie dream assassin who's as charming as she is psychopathic", a "chillingly relatable monster" who takes "fulsome pleasure in a murder well performed".

Not simply a hired assassin, Villanelle was described as "taking joy in the pain of others" and having "no moral fetters holding her back", having been "raised to kill without guilt or concern, ... love or loyalty".

An innocent exterior hides a cold brutality, and Villanelle—a "living, breathing, shopping psychopath"—"kills with flair".

She is "exceptionally gifted, completely soulless, and odd-duck hilarious ... rude, funny, awful, naughty. She's twisted and conscienceless, but she is also irrepressible. She's a proper psychopath."

Playing cat-and-mouse games on an intellectual and psychological level, Villanelle is "hyperaware of ... the narrative" surrounding her but then defies it, first leading interactions to make them appear predictable but then upending them.

Despite having deep psychological damage from her past, the "playful" Villanelle not only has a "wicked sense of humor" but, being "just plain bored", craves stimulation and challenge, causing her to take risks while expressing her playfulness in "creative and showy murder".

Though Villanelle's competence is "frightening" and "exaggerated", Jia Tolentino wrote in The New Yorker that she is "essentially a child, petulant and silly and rude", but whose "theatrical instincts flare back to life" in a deadly situation.

Series creator Phoebe Waller-Bridge explained how her crafting of Villanelle's character resulted from continually asking, "What would you do if you weren't afraid?"

Actress Jodie Comer described her character as a free spirit, not self-conscious at all, likening Villanelle during her acts of murder to a cat playing with a mouse before going in for the kill.

Sandra Oh praised Villanelle's vitality and power but described it as a "deeply immature disappointment" when people don't behave the way that you want.

- Wikipedia