Truth is in these situations we don't know so no one outside of the case should speculate.
I feel the tendency to turn criminal cases into public spectacles does more harm and disservice to justice than anything else. The public has no business passing judgement or deciding for themselves. Leave them out of it.
Though the gruesome spectacle of public obsession with criminal cases like this has a long and (ig)noble history. There were late Victorian and early Edwardian “police reports” that filled exactly this sort of lurid fascination with the macabre.
However, I found the wider premise of the article more interesting than the speculation about the crime - which is whether someone convicted of an unpleasant violent crime can be simultaneously a warm and friendly person, and whether the justice system is as cut and dried as people like to think.
I found it very thought provoking beyond (or possibly in spite of) the “unsolved mystery” aspect.