But it seems that ratepayers weren't funding this one - or not directly. It was voluntary contributions, organised by a charity. Gramsci still didn't see the difference. "Paying rates here is pretty discretionary, too!" he pointed out. The Cow gave up.
"At least they've got a suspect!" she informed Gramsci. "And he's got a MySpace page!" She clicked excitedly to view the profile of Ipswich's most famous underachiever. "Ah. never graduated from his Specialist Sports school... but he did become a team leader at Tesco!"
Gramsci looked horrified. "Imagine team-building exercises!" He shuddered.
The Cow was less concerned with that. "At least he didn't mix business with pleasure," she remarked. "Imagine what might have turned up in the Special Of The Day...."
Gramsci blanched, and quickly distracted himself with the computer. "Look," he pointed out, "the news article says he has eight MySpace friends, but I can see only six here, and one of them - Tom - comes with the package"
The Cow looked up. In the time since his outing, two of his "friends" had already disowned him. She wondered how soon the others would follow.
Gramsci shrugged. "No loss," he ventured. "I'll bet even now a whole bunch of new weirdos are sending through 'friend' requests. Just think - this guy's MySpace page is going to be getting hits like crazy. You make it onto his friends list, you're bound to get some of those going to your page, too."
And, after all, friendship with a serial killer never harmed anyone's online ratings....
Listen to the BBC interview with suspect Tom Stephens here.