a child psychologist who later wrote that even from the beginning, "it was clear he was not one of us." Two years later, at age five, he was referred to the family psychiatry department of the Royal Hospital for Sick Children, Edinburgh, where he was considered to be highly aggressive and mercurial. Cronin's school years expanded his psychiatric profile, with numerous instances of disruptive behaviour, most notably a 1987 incident when he was interned for a night at a psychiatric hospital in Edinburgh, after threatening to burn down a homeless shelter. In the case of the hospital stay, he became agitated and repeatedly threw faeces at a nurse. Later years Robert Waite, a psychiatrist who assessed Cronin in the wake of his first offence, found marked discrepancies in Cronin's intellectual abilities; his verbal skills operated at the university level, while his visual-spatial skills were below average. Cronin had revealed to Waite that he had felt suicidal while serving his sentence for the initial assault. Waite later concluded: "It is clear he has a severe disorder of his personality, which has grossly interfered with his social adjustment and might be expected to do so for some considerable time." During his discussions with the social worker, Cronin was said to be defiant and arrogant, interested in politics and expressing admiration for Nazism and dictatorship, which he felt was a form of true leadership. Dr. John Baird, whose report on Cronin was instrumental in the initial 1992 life sentence, did a study on him. By this time, Cronin had a long criminal record and was considered by some psychiatrists as untreatable. Baird later wrote: "Regarding the question of dangerousness, his life-long behaviour pattern has been one of senseless, dishonest, unreliable and unacceptable behaviour. I have not been able to find any evidence of other behaviour similar to that which he displayed on 21 May 1992, when he committed a very serious and sustained sexual assault, nor have I been able to find any reason for his behaviour on that day." Of the 1992 assault on Judy X, Cronin told Baird that in his mind, she had not been there, but instead, he was imagining an assault on his maternal grandfather, with whom he had a lengthy love-hate relationship. He did talk at length about his parents; though he knew he didn't have a good relationship with them, he described his father as a