The French students murdered in New Cross

I was just thinking exactly the same - even the police spokesman on the news looked really quite shaken. It's awfully sad.

Just looked on the BBC website. It's horrific.

So far I've only caught a '90 second' slot on TV - 200 stab wounds? I was shocked, moreso than usual. Poor men, and their familes.

MG was about to say the same thing. 243 stab wounds between them and one guy had 200 the other 40, just seems so vicious!

So so sad...

It sounds so so personal an attack too.

Horrid, really horrid.

Really horrible. I think they were on an exchange year at Imperial weren't they? It'll knock the whole place sideways.

Such a horrible news story and I really feel for their family and friends.

its utterly horrific - I cannot help but read the stories about it even though I shudder at the terror and pain they must have felt.

Horrendous, isn't it? I feel for the poor police men and women who had to deal with the scene - the chap at the press conference looked very shaken up.

I suppose the only 'consolation' (for want of a better word) is that because the attack was so frenzied and messy, I think the police stand a good chance of finding who did it. With modern forensics I don't think anyone could dispose of that amount of blood entirely.

I hope that's the case anyway.

I only heard about this this morning. I heard students and wrongly (and I don't know why) assumed they were female. When I saw the photos of the two men it really shocked (again, I don't know why). I can't begin to imagine how horrific it must have been.

Hopefully Janna - although the corpses were badly burnt there must be other evidence in the rest of the flat.

This was my first thought to. I mean over 200 hundred stab wounds, that's such an awful amount of time and anger. I really hope they catch the person responsible.

I was reading about it just now. Horrible, horrible. [shudder]

I heard about this on the news last night, it sounds absolutely terrible, they showed pictures of the neighbours all signing a card for the families and they all looked pretty shocked that this could happen in their nice leafy street. Feel very sorry for the families of the two guys and the policemen and women dealing with the scene and investigation.

An attempt to destroy evidence I guess?

Although I was thinking more about their own clothing/skin/etc. Without putting too fine a point on it, you can't inflict those kind of injuries and not get covered yourself surely?

Unless it was premeditated and covered themselves in a suit like the film Mr Brooke.

It's so sad - I feel really sorry for their families. There is some speculation that it may have been a case of mistaken identity. I always feel so bad when things like this happen - they had such bright futures ahead of them, just starting out on their adult lives! It just hits home to me that you can never stop worrying about your children, even when they're grown up!?

I read the story earlier it is horrid. It's a frightening world that we live in.

I'm just horrified by the complete brutality of it

To think that humans can do that to other humans

Horrible

It is horrific isn't it? I can't understand what the motive for it could be. Their poor families and friends.

It just doesn't make any sense, does it? So sad.

Totally crazy ! What could these guys have done to merit such an awful end. My first thought when I heard it was New Cross, was could it linked to the spate of homophobic attacks (and a murder) a few years back? Some local thug(s) seeing two men going into a flat etc.

Am I right in thinking they were DNA science students? Could they have discovered something they shouldn't have? Could it be drugs related or just a sad case of mistaken identity? Either way it's truly horrific.

They were, but I think that's highly unlikely. They were studying structural proteins associated with DNA molecules, not doing any DNA fingerprinting / forensic work.

Ah thank you. I shall stop speculating and pray the killer is caught.

If this were a novel, they'd definitely have made some earth-shattering scientific discovery, some details of which were on the stolen laptop, but when they refused to give up the full secret of the mystery they were tortured and killed.

But it's not, and it's likely to be something far more mundane and senseless.

And anyway, science doesn't really work like that. Students don't just make discoveries, at least not without the help and knowledge of the entire lab and supervisor

They're discussing this now on Jeremy Vine. Apparently most of the stab wounds were after they had died. They were stabbed over time too. Horrific.

I'm really hoping that the person who did this is suffering from some really severe mental illness, because the thought that someone could do that just out of sheer evilness rather than insanity doesn't bear thinking about.

It's such an awful story, I can't even describe how terrible it must be for their families.

It really disturbed me, too - I used to know someone who lived in Sterling Gardens and have stayed there. It was years ago now, but it makes me shudder to think he might still be living there amidst all this.

Jeremy Vine was saying something along the lines of how the French are asking themseves what is going on in London at the moment....am asking myself the same question. My family are from South East London originally, and some are still in Eltham, and they're horrified at the violence there seems to be on the streets at the moment

"Seems" being the word here.

Just about anywhere between Waterloo and the white cliffs of Dover has suddenly become "South London" where knife crime is concerned, with the press only too glad to add fuel to the fire for the sake of a story. France has a violent crime rate little different to the UK and has had its fair share of horrendous murders over the years, a fact they seem to have conveniently forgotten while decrying London as "barbaric". Yes, things have been worse in the last 12 months, but nearly as bad as the press would have you believe.

AFAIK rates of knife crime in London are little different now from 20 years ago ?