Alice Pagett and Wilkes's victim-perpetrator relationship

Alice Pagett and Wilkes are connected by an act of violence whose motive remains uncertain: Wilkes shot Alice, and both were later found dead in the ruined shrine field. The relationship is defined by that attack and by the narrative’s refusal to turn Wilkes’s background into a definitive explanation for it.

The Attack and Its Uncertain Motive

The account identifies Wilkes as the young man who shot Alice, but says there is no clear answer as to why he did so. His dead body was found among the other casualties, and the German gun was discovered nearby with its barrel jammed. These details establish his role in the shooting without clarifying whether he acted from a personal grievance, an ideological purpose, or some other motive.

Wilkes’s Background

The only unusual feature noted in Wilkes’s otherwise middle-class background is his apparent fascination with assassins. Newspaper clippings collected in his bedsit concerned the assassin of John Lennon and the men who attempted to assassinate Pope Paul and Ronald Reagan. The clippings provide a disturbing context for his violence, but the narrative does not establish a direct connection between those figures and his decision to shoot Alice.

Aftermath and Significance

Alice’s remains were found beneath the charred remnants of the oak and were buried with her mother in the graveyard of St. Joseph’s. Wilkes, too, was dead, and the gun beside him was jammed. The attack therefore leaves no living perpetrator to explain it, while the surrounding events offer no settled account of how his violence relates to the larger revenge unfolding at the shrine. Their victim-perpetrator relationship remains starkly definite in its outcome and unresolved in its cause.