I met him socially, at concerts as a fellow concert goer and at school functions as his children went to the same school as my two children. His were in higher grades but many school activities where parents were expected to be present were for several years of students. I later met him professionally and he was always friendly, courteous and did his best to be helpful. In short he was agreeable. I had no suspicions of any particular flaw in his character. 
The news was a shock. I was working remotely, and rarely got news of home. Home and my friends and acquaintances seemed immeasurably far away. So I received the news in snippets. A comment, an aside about local affairs in the letters that infrequently arrived. The rare meeting with a traveller from my old home. I dismissed it as lawyer talk, the cutting of a tall poppy, a local boy made good is as much a source of envy as admiration. I thought, at least at first, this could not be true. The man I had known for so many years, not withstanding the casualness of any relationship we had, seemed in complete contrast to the horrible stories of his cruelty to his own children that were being reported. 
By the time, I learnt of his imprisonment and conviction, it had all taken place months before. The evidence even at my distance seemed convincing. The conviction was a fair thing if it was true. Certain acts in our society are crimes but their commission is not a sign of irrefutable evil. The textbook villain with every aspect of his relationship with his fellow man distinguished by uniform avarice and evil, is a caricature. Many people, maybe most people who do evil things, may not be evil to their innermost natures. Like my old friend, much of their life is good, the outward signs of compassion and courtesy clearly evident in their dealings with most people but then there is their commission of evil and not once but many times. The evil act which shows part of their nature is clearly, badly fallen. Is their exemplary behaviour a sham, a put up job or is it just as sincere and true a part of their personality as the tendency to evil in a different setting?
To have good and evil exist in the same person should not be the revelation it is for most of us. No one is completely good and no one completely evil. All of us are mixtures of these polar natures. It is only a constant moral will that stops the criminality, the cruelty of which any of our species is capable of from manifesting itself. That moral will can sicken, can die or may never be born but without it, we are at the beckoning of our emotions and appetites. There must be that loud inner voice who whispers and then shouts, this must not be. Perhaps he did not listen to that inner pealing of morality, and eventually learned to ignore it, hiding the guilt from himself. He never seemed troubled to me but was always confident and relaxed. I believe, it is the great paradox of our times that is the guiltless who feel guilty, and those who should be truly ashamed are not, and walk head up, back straight with any lingering doubts smothered into silence by their internal webs of dishonesty.