Crime upon crime

Scout Tuấn swung from a branch and dropped softly in front of the cave mouth. He held out a mirror to look into the cave. It turned out the team had been worrying too much: the suspect, Bỉ, lay starved and exhausted, curled up near the cave entrance. Tuấn carefully stepped quickly into the cave, slid over, bent down and handcuffed the suspect Bỉ, though he could hardly move anyway.
The other scouts appeared, gave him water and food to restore his strength, and escorted him back to the station.
Ten days earlier he had gone to work in his field, seen a girl herding cattle, and suddenly conceived the lust to rape her. Seeing the girl cry and scream, he realised she would go home and report him, so he strangled her to death and threw the body into a stream.
The police investigation took only one day to find the culprit. He had fled into the mountains and hidden among the caves, carrying a machete. The scouts had to trudge day and night, searching every cave and crevice until they found traces of him in this cave.
When the investigating officer had finished interrogating him, he said:

• You criminals are all alike in not stopping at the first crime. Out of fear of being discovered, you kill to silence a witness. It is this second crime that is terrible, enough to fall within the range of the death penalty. If you had committed one crime and stopped, and accepted your punishment, it would have been light. Committing a second crime leaves no way to save you. But the best thing is not to commit crimes at all. Having committed one, sooner or later you are found out.
  Bỉ muttered:
• I lived alone and was hardly taught by anyone, so I was stupid...
  The investigating officer said:
• Lack of education is a disadvantage too. 🏃‍♂️

Everyone wants to be praised as a good person. Everyone wants others to look at them with goodwill. Everyone wants to cover up their faults. Everyone wants to display good qualities. But deep down in the mind, everyone may still be driven to act by tendencies towards cruelty, lust, greed and anger. Once we act from a bad mind, we return to the wish that no one should know we are bad so that no one despises us.
In order to cover up the first crime, people often commit a second. Crime piled upon crime.
Persecuting someone who points out our fault is also a second crime. Setting a trap to harm someone who knows our shameful secret is also a second crime. Wanting to take all the stolen goods and so doing away with one's accomplices is also a second crime. Slandering and smearing someone who could expose us, so that their credibility is destroyed and no one believes them, is also a second crime. Not wanting to marry a girl who has become pregnant by us, and secretly killing her, is also a second crime. A child who steals money and lies that his younger sibling stole it and he didn't, that too is a second crime...

No one has the courage to admit fault and no one wants to be discovered, so no one stops at the first crime. In fact, if one stopped at the first crime and repented, that first crime would already be lightened. The first crime is usually not as terrible as the second.
The worth of a person who knows how to live is that they cause fewer and fewer wrongs. By old age their life becomes pure and worthy of respect. Every wrong reduced counts. But out of fear of losing honour, wicked people usually choose to commit a second crime. People prize honour dearly, yet defend it with crime. They should instead defend their honour with a good, gentle life, which would leave their hearts more at peace and happy.
In short, not committing a crime is best. But something inside often pushes people to commit crimes. If we do not prepare from very early, then when the opportunity comes we will commit the crime, lacking the strength to resist the power of greed and hatred from within. We must urgently clean our inner minds from now, before it is too late.