【The Pursuit of Lust】

There are The Pursuit of Lustonly two episodes of Sharp Objectsto go and many watchers still don't have a solid idea on who the Wind Gap killer actually is.

At the end of Episode 6, "Cherry," the chief of police informs Detective Willis that a worker at the pig farm identified teen weirdo John Keene as the person who dumped a bike belonging to Natalie, the second victim and John Keene's little sister, into a river of pig feces around the farm...but something about that bicycle and the case against John Keene still seems wrong.

If Keene is arrested in the seventh episode, the Wind Gap authorities will likely have napped the wrong person.

That's not to say that John Keene is incapable of the murder. It seems that everyone in Wind Gap has a chip on their shoulder about something or other, but Camille rightly notes that John Keene had zero motive to kill his sister — they were close in a way that made sense for siblings who grew up in Pennsylvania but translated poorly to the hyper-masculine world of Wind Gap Missouri. To the outside observers, in this case the audience, there's nothing out of the ordinary about John Keene. Ordinary people don't just murder their sisters.

So if not John, then who? Sharp Objectshas laid many hints that while the Sheriff and Detective Willis have focused on the men in the town, their refusal to acknowledge that a woman might be responsible may be blinding them to some of the more insidious female characters around them:

Ashley Wheeler

John Keene's girlfriend is a power-hungry piece of work, a cheerleader who desires popularity and acclaim more than anything else. It's clear that she didn't really like Natalie or Ann, the other victim, that much, but keeps trying to get Camille to write about her relationships with them in the paper.

When Camille asks Ashley why she thinks John didn't kill the girls, she says "because it would make him popular," which is a completely bonkers way to look at a double homicide. Did Ashley kill the girls to get her name in the newspapers and earn long-lasting "popularity?" Yikes.

Adora Crellin

Listen, Adora sucks but it's hard to believe that she was responsible for murdering two teenagers. That doesn't mean, however, that she's not culpable in another way. Her odd reaction to finding out the bicycle was found on her pig farm was to tell the Sheriff not to do anything until she got there and didn't tell Camille at all what was happening.

Adora clearly has a certain amount of control over the way things work in Wind Gap, and that which she can't control outright she manipulates with delicate airs and constant malingering — could she be aiding or abetting the real killer to protect her position or the town?

Amma Crellin

In a town of scary teens, Amma really is one of the scariest out there. She's been cagey about her personal history with the dead girls, first denying that she knew them while others insinuated that she used to be best friends with them as recently as a year ago.

It would be physically difficult for Amma to murder two of her contemporaries and harder still to yank their teeth out with pliers, but she has an oddly loyal cadre of friends who do, in Amma's words, "whatever I want them to." Teen murder squad? Teen murder squad.

Jackie O'Neel

Ha, it's probably not Jackie. The town drunk/gossip who's actually kind of nice to Camille doesn't have the coordination to pull off double murders without telling anyone about it, but it's possible that she knows more about the murders than she's letting on right now.

For all the talk of the women being overlooked, however, there are still some male suspects to be examined. For instance:

Bob Nash

Eh, Bob seems to be having too hard a time with being accused of killing his daughter to actually have done it. Like the other prime suspect John Keene, he doesn't have any motive to kill little girls even if people say he's a drunk and (potentially) an abuser. Leave Bob Nash alone.

Alan Crellin

A lot of online theories point to Alan Crellin, Adora's husband and Amma's father, as a likely candidate for the murderer. To examine the evidence, Alan is physically neglected by his wife and may have some kind of pent up psycho-sexual weirdness to work out, he seems to fixate of records sung by young women with racy portraits on their record sleeves, and he...doesn't really seem to have much else going on.

If Alan is the one behind the murders, it does explain Adora's need to have control over the investigation. On the other hand, he seems rather weak-willed unto himself and doesn't do very many things without his wife's permission. Are Adora and Alan in on it together? That's...creepy.

Kirk Lacey

Music teacher and repentant sexual assaulter (ugh) Kirk Lacey got his big scene in Episode 6, when he apologized to Camille for what he and his friends did to her in the woods after a football game in their youth. Camille doesn't exactly forgive him (because she shouldn't have to), but something in his behavior then and in previous episodes still seems off.

This is the same teacher who brushed off Amma's advances when they rehearsed the Calhoun Day play, but the girls in the class seemed to have some in-jokes about their young teacher. If Kirk had inappropriate relationships with his students, it's possible that he is a strong suspect in the two disappearances.