Anybody ever known someone that did something so wrong it made the news?

[xeqter]

I'm talking REALLY bad. I used to know Shawn Dee Adams and his wife. If you don't remember them you can get the story here.

http://www.texnews.com/texas97/terror042597.html

He seemed like such a nice guy.

[Barbarian]

One of the teenaged murderers of Frank and Jocelyn Toope (http://www.nextcity.com/main/town/5murder.htm)used to play with my youngest brother. We didn't like him much, and my mother banned my brother from associating with him after a couple months.

Of course, I run into lots of people who make the news now, since I'm a TV News Producer. Some of them make the news for worthy, respectable reasons.

[pldennison]

I wish I could find a link to this somewhere online, but it was more than ten years ago. Before we were married, Leigh-Anne and I were out visiting some friends one night, a fraternity brother of mine and his girlfriend, who went to high school with Leigh-Anne.

When we got home, the 11 o'clock news was one, and they had live coverage from the scene of a double murder in Mentor, where we lived at the time. A husband and wife had been murdered, apparently shotgunned to death while they slept. As we were watching, we heard the anchor say something along the lines of, "The couple's son, Michael Bailey, is being held for questioning."

Michael Bailey?! Michael Bailey happened to be the ex-boyfriend of the girl we had just been visiting. Michael and I were attendants of, and group leaders for, several Episcopal Youth Services events. Michael had joined the Air Force for a few years, and had recently returned home. At the time, we were both attending Cleveland State University, and we had a class together.

I had been in class with him that day, and he had told me all the stuff he had done the night before. He said he had gone down to Akron, and seen some girl at some restaurant, blah, blah, blah. Mike was tried and convicted for both murders, and sometime during the whole thing (although none of us was ever questioned by police, because we weren't that close to him), it dawned on me that he might have been trying to establish an alibi.

Needless to say, people in my class were freaked out the next day. It turned out to be a particularly bad semester; one of the grad students helping out with this class happened to be a babysitter for Amy Mihalovich, who Clevelanders will remember was a little girl who was kidnapped and murdered. Her body was found that same semester.

[Kiki]

I can't find a link for mine either. It happened about 14-15 years ago. There was a kid (Johnny Moss) who was in my oldest brother's class and he was a real troublemaker. When he was 18 he got in a fight with someone and beat them to death with a bat. It took a couple of days before he was arrested and he ended up going to prison. He had gotten some girl pregnant a few months before all this happened and she was always afraid that he would try to take her son away from her or fight for custsody when he got out of prison. She got remarried but was/is afraid he's going to do something when/if he gets out. The last I heard (a couple years ago) he was still in prison but was up for parole soon.

This was a kid that stole my bike lock when I was 8 and my brothers tracked him down and got my lock back for me. He was always picking on me and my brothers were always sticking up for me and fighting with him. He was always a violent person. It was really weird that someone we knew had done something so terrible.

[Eve]

I grew up with the guy who created and produced "Friends." Does that count?

[Zoff]

I used to know Shawn Dee Adams and his wife.

Sorry for the slight hijack, but I know one of the FBI agents who made the arrest in this case. According to him, these folks were Republic of Texas members.

One of the guys they busted asked them to be careful because he had a bad leg. My friend said it was a pretty pathetic scene.

[dalovindj]

Yeah. Some freaky shit too. I use to hang out with Natasha Cornett. She was part of the group from Kentucky that murdered most of the Lillelid family.

http://www.geocities.com/justice_cove/

She used to date a guy I was in a play with in high School. I picked her up from school a couple times to take her to our rehearsals. I hung out in her house. New her pretty well for about 6 months. Graduated, moved away, never heard of her again until someone sent me a copy of the news story. Crazy shit.

One night I saw her on a show called "Bad Girls" on some cable channel. Life imprisonment. Deserved at that. Shame on you Natasha. A little child?

[Fretful Porpentine]

I can't find a link to the story, probably because it didn't make national news, but one of my high-school classmates beat his mother to death.

The really creepy part, from my perspective anyway, was that it happened in the house where I grew up, which my parents had sold to his parents some years earlier.

[Sasquatch!]

A few years ago, there was an Army officer who was discharged and/or prosecuted for sexual misconduct. It was a pretty big deal at the time. He is my wife's childhood best friend's brother.

I also saw a guy that I went to high school with on "Emergency 911" many years ago. He had tried to make a plaster cast of his face, and the plaster stuck. 911 was called, and the EMTs - with camera crew in tow - arrived. What a maroon.

[Jimson Jim]

While not on par with murder, I once caused an accident that shut down all northbound lanes of the 101 Freeway in Santa Barbara…during rush hour.

No injuries but mighty embarrassing. There is something surreal about sitting in your totaled truck listening to the traffic report about the accident you caused and the resultant 5 mile back up.

[dalovindj]

Sasquatch:

Best mental image I've had in a while. Of course, the time you make a dumb ass move, fox tv happens to be in your neighbourhood with cameras looking for stupid shit. Murphy's law if I've ever seen it.

Jimson Jim:

I love it. Reminds me of an episode of Malcolm in the middle!

DaLovin' Dj

[wring]

Guy I went to middle and high school with. Wasn't a particular friend, ran w/a different crowd. Several years later couldn't make it to the reunion 'cause of those pesky immigration and extradiction laws.

You know those magazines that come in Sunday's papers??? He made the cover of the "Detriot" magazine supplement, "Fast times of" When the DEA did a search and confiscation of his home, they took several slot machines, several million in cash, several cars, etc etc, confiscated his home, his mom's home, etc. He even raced cars with Paul Newman. Of course, he was also importing great quantities of cocaine at the time. He won't be available for the next several reunions (doing something like 40 years in the federal system).

[jk1245]

Originally posted by Sasquatch!
...I also saw a guy that I went to high school with on "Emergency 911" many years ago. He had tried to make a plaster cast of his face, and the plaster stuck. 911 was called, and the EMTs - with camera crew in tow - arrived. What a maroon.

Now, dat funny!


A cousin of mine (the family black sheep), was recently sentenced to 5-8 yrs for holing up in his apartment with an "arsenal" and firing down the hallways of his complex (apt complex, that is. Not whatever complex made him do this in the first place). That was quite the local news story at the time.

Even odder, a good friend of mine was the 2nd cop in when they finally stormed the building.

[Themis]

Sorry, no link to the news story.
About 10 yeasr ago, I was bartending in an upscale nightclub/pool hall (yes, such places exist) :) . Anyway, one of our regulars, a nice guy who hung out with the staff, turned out to be one of two bankrobbers (plus a driver) that had been going thru a rampage around the region. Although they had not shot or seriously injured anybody during the robberies, they were armed and had scared the crap out of a lot of people.
Some of the female staff of the bar got a funny look on their faces (hmmm, wonder why?) when the R.C.M.P. and provincial police came to investigate and question us about this guy.
He got a few years in a federal pen. You never know who you're really talking to.

[Chekmate]

Knew the couple of kids involved in a murder suicide at Kalamazoo College a couple of years ago. They were a couple, and she broke up with him, so he killed her, then himself. Happened in the same dorm building I was in, though not when I was there (thankfully). I had both of them in separate classes of mine. Terrible thing.

[Why A Duck]

I'm not sure which is worse:

1) I met (not actually a friend, more of a real FOAF) the guy who shot up the state lottery HQ here a few years back killing 5 (I think), one of whom I used to work with at my last job, then himself. (Note to self, get a fraggin grammer guide, no-one could diagram that rambling mess).

2) In high-school, Adam Sandler was a year behind me.

[Billdo]

I knew Lizzie Grubman, the publicist that allegedly drove her SUV in reverse outside a Hamptons nightclub, running down a bouncer and 15 other people. It's the biggest tabloid story (http://www.nypost.com/seven/08182001/news/regionalnews/617.htm) in New York this summer.

Her father, Alan Grubman, is one of the biggest entertainment lawyers around.

I was law school buddies with her ex-husband. Their celebrated wedding made the cover of the New York Times Magazine, with the Village People performing and Madonna showing up. The marriage, however, broke up shortly thereafter.

Anyway, after law school my buddy went to work for her father's entertainment law firm. Through both the marriage and the divorce (and now this), he's still working for the father.

By the way, the really bad hair dye job you see in all of the pictures of Lizzie looks even worse in person.

[Pepper Mill]

Met Lyle Menendez at the small restaurant he once owned in Princeton, NJ. Also several years back I worked in a dental office in the North End of Boston. A coulpe of years ofter I left there, there was a shooting at a "99" restaurant in Charlestown. Peopel on both ends of the deal had been patients at the office.

[ShibbOleth]

My great, great grandfather shot a guy and did time for it, was back when, in Tucson. I only found this out a few years ago and never met him, he died before I was born. But its kind of interesting to look up all of the newpaper articles from back when covering the trial. There is some sentiment that he was framed since the guy he killed came from a rich family, and my ancestor was a relatively poor Mexican. Arizona at the time was a territory but not yet a state.

One of my cousins on the same side of the family is currently doing time for running down and killing his wife's lover with his Cadillac. He is still in prison but has reconciled with his wife. Ain't love special.

A closer cousin, on the other side of the family, was arrested at least once for armed robbery. But my mother doesn't talk to her brother so not sure exactly what is happening over there.

As far as friends and people I choose to associate with sadly I have only know a victim, never a perpetrator.

[ChockFullOfHeadyGoodness]

My high school class' ASB president just pled no contest to charges of taking topless pictures of underage (15 and 16)girls. Can't wait for our 20-year reunion in two years :D

[missbunny]

I knew a man who killed his wife and then concocted this elaborate scheme to make everyone believe she was still alive when she was actually dead the whole time. He got the idea for it from a TV movie. He was eventually convicted, based on the testimony of a child who overheard one of his faked telephone conversations with his already-dead wife; the child, many months after the killing, mentioned in passing this weird thing that Mr. X used to do: pretend to talk on the phone to a dial tone. That's how the police finally figured out what he did.

He was convicted and ended up sharing a cell with Richard Crafts, the guy who killed his wife and then fed her body through a woodchipper.

[Falafel Waffle]

10th grade, small Texas town, after school, Drama Class

Kid walks in carrying a gym bag. He sits down at the front of the class on a stool, unzips the bag and pulls out a sawed off 20 ga. shotgun. He sticks it in his mouth and blew off the top of his head.

You bet that it made the news. Also gives me nightmares even many years later. I refuse to dredge up his name as it's something I'd rather forget.

[racinchikki]

At my school's unofficial post-prom party this May, less than a mile from my house, four of my classmates beat five grown men who happened to be camping along the river near the party, with metal baseball bats. Two of the victims died. I wasn't there at the time. It was big news. It even made the Albany newspaper.

[alice_in_wonderland]

I had Math 10 with a guy that went on to become the most notorious local pimp - so much so that an expose was done by one of the local news stations.

I had Beauty Culture 11 with a gal that ripped of the local Co-op (grocery store) for about $40,000 and fled to the US before she was aprehended.

And people ask why I didn't want to go to my reunion...

[katiekilldare]

I did!

In 1988, I spoke to the Hillsborough County School Board in Tampa against teaching Sex Education in school. My church asked me to do it, and I was only 14 at the time. Aaaaand, of course, I did it. I made the Tampa evening news on the three major networks. You should have seen the perm I was sporting.

My bad. I was just a youngster then, and also a Southern Baptist. :D

[Sofa King]

One year in college I lived with a couple of girls. One of 'em had a thing for guys in uniform, so it was only natural that she would start dating a ROTC guy.

At the time, I was a lot like Floyd from True Romance, fearlessly manning the couch 24-7 with bong in hand and cooler at foot. When the girls would disappear into the fifth dimension getting ready to go out, I'd sit around and shoot the shit with their boyfriends. This one guy--the ROTC guy--and I got to be pretty good friends. We shared a military history course, so we'd talk crap about that sort of thing for hours.

Anyway, my roommate promoted herself to the Navy, and that was it for ROTC guy. Until we started seeing him on the news. It turns out that he was "the ringleader" of a gang of ROTC dudes who had a dislike for a particular fellow Rat.

One night (we later learned), while he was still dating my roommate, he came over, had a few beers with me, took my roomie out and brought her home, went back to his barracks, got his gang together and beat the ever-lovin snot out of the guy they didn't like and left him for dead in the duck pond. The victim failed to die and ROTC guy was identified as the primary assailant, but it took a couple of months before the story blew up. It was all over the local news for at least a year afterward, and ROTC guy won himself a nice chunk of soap-on-a-rope time.

Funny thing is, the police never once asked us about it. I don't know if ROTC guy was doing us a favor or if the police just didn't care. Anyway, that's when I first learned that nice people were capable of doing some really shitty things.

[lolagranola]

A book was written about my cousin. Scapegoat : How the Army Betrayed Kyle Brown (http://s1.amazon.com/exec/varzea/ts/exchange-glance/Y04Y2105223Y5553102/104-6448964-6401538). I haven't read the book, but I understand that he beat some kid in Somolia, and it was under the orders of his commanding officer. Big mistake, and made the news for 5 minutes.

Also, an ex-boyfriend bombed his old high school. Might have been bigger news, but the bomb wasn't very big, and it was during the summer when there were no students there.

[Tyklfe]

My parents used to know Jim and Tammy Faye Bakker (http://www.mcjonline.com/news/news3570.htm), if that counts....

[Airblairxxx]

About seven years after I finished high school, a couple of kids at the school persuaded a third, honor-society type kid, to help them with their senior prank. This was basically at the end of the school year.)

The joke was to hide a smoke bomb inside a concrete wastebasket.

Problem was, the pressure built up so much inside the wastebasket it exploded. Injured about 25 kids, the explosion made CNN.

What was sort of funny was that I had started a new job that week, and I went around telling everyone "Hey, didja hear about that high school that blew up? That's my alma mater!" A nice, quick way for people to learn not to mess with you.

[Tyklfe]

Originally posted by ChockFullOfHeadyGoodness
My high school class' ASB president just pled no contest to charges of taking topless pictures of underage (15 and 16)girls. Can't wait for our 20-year reunion in two years :D

Ok, so what does ASB stand for? Anti-Social Behavior?

[CBEscapee]

My adopted cousin killed ex-congressman, civil rights activist Allard Lowenstein in his New York office. They had worked together for civil rights in the South and in leading anti-war demonstrations in the 60's. Very sad story.

[phouka]

ASB = Associated Student Bodies

It's the Student Life organization on campus. Usually, they're in charge of things like pep rallies and such. Also, it's the governing organization for all the clubs on campus.

[hardygrrl]

It's kind of a stretch but my Econonmics teacher in high school-class of 87-stabbed his ex-wife to death in the driveway of their former home. In front of the children, no less. He didn't stop until the police-called by the oldest child-shot him to death.

It made the Chicago newspapers.

[ndorward]

A grad student I knew in the English program at Dalhousie University (Halifax, NS) was gunned down by another student (they shared a house with another couple of students) on the street outside the department--I missed being in the proximity of the shooting by about 10-15 minutes, in fact. The victim survived. The background to this was that the shooter had serious mental problems: her reason for shooting the girl was because she believed she'd done away with the shooter's cat, which had disappeared. The shooter had in fact just before the attempted murder tried to check herself into the mental hospital & was turned away (causing something of a public furore when the newspapers reported this). -- My parents own a music store in Halifax & played a small role: they sold the shooter the instrument case (I forget--a guitar case or a violin case?) in which she concealed the weapon.

I'd known the victim--frankly, a truly repulsive woman with several screws loose herself (her thesis was on Shakespeare's use of images of honey, sugar, &c, forming part of her campaign to denounce the unhealthiness of refined sugar).

[Cosmopolitan]

There was a murder earlier this year at my former school, Hofstra University (Long Island, NY), & I remember having seen the suspect constantly. He was in a fraternity & had been my best friend's floormate 3 years ago.

A sophomore vanished this past April. At first everyone thought he'd just gone off to take a break from finals crunch, he'd be back in a day or two. However, his parents came down to visit a few days after & knew things looked odd. His car was in the parking lot & his wallet & clothes were in his room. He was not. People started worrying. Flyers went out, etc. A 23 year old senior was arrested for murder about a month later & confessed.

He apparently lured the victim out during a late night in April, saying he needed help with a problem. They drove to a motel room where he made sexual advances toward the victim, who rebuffed him. The suspect flew into a rage & stabbed the victim to death, then cleaned up and got out with the body.

He held the body in his Land Rover for two days. He gave friends rides. They later commented that they'd joked about the smell in the car. After 2 days he stuck it in a storage facility for a week, then took it out and buried it in the backyard of a house he was co-renting. The body was eviscerated, hands bound, mouth duct taped. He may or may not have sexually assaulted/mutilated the victim pre- or post- death. The suspect lived normally the entire time people were hunting for the victim.

I'd transferred the semester before, right next door to Hofstra. I'm still tight with my Hofstra friends. They didn't mention the disappearance the one or two times I saw them in April. One day, my dad came home and asked, "Didja hear about what happened at Hofstra?". I hadn't. "Some student was murdered!" Dead shocked, I flipped on the 6PM news. I just about fell over when they showed the suspect being led out of the police station. Holy shit. I have a whole new sensitivity when I hear about murders.

[JimOfAllTrades]

About 14 years ago, a girl who I had been close friends with but hadn’t seen in a while blew her abusive live-in boyfriend’s brains out with a shotgun, stuffed his body in the trunk of an old car in the backyard, and didn’t tell anyone for two days.

She then came to me for help. We talked and I convinced her she had to go to the police. So we called, and the cops (and half the news media in the city as near as I could tell) met us at her house for a friendly get together.

She was arrested, and I spent the day talking to detectives telling them the story of my life for the previous year. An interesting day. An interesting few months, in fact.

Ugly

[CreaseMunky]

Long story short, and like most everyone else, I don't have a link to the news story:

In November 1997 I started dating a girl I worked with. She really wasn't my type, but we were both on the rebound and one thing led to another...

I was laid off in May 1998, and by June she stopped returning my calls.

In December, I got a call from a mutual friend. "Did you hear about 'X'? She's been arrested for murder."

I found out later that 'X' had a drug habit she kept very well hidden from me. She got tired of having to keep her habit a secret, so dumped me for someone who had more of the same tastes.

One night, 'X' and her new dude found themselves short of drug money. They concoted a plan where she would lure some poor schlub somewhere on the pretext of screwing him. Before poor schlub got to the room, new boyfriend would jump out and rob him, and she would flee in terror.

Sounded like a good plan on paper, but, like all good plans, it got F'ed up. New Boyfriend actually stabbed the guy. Guy gave a description of his assailants; 'X' and New Boyfriend were arrested on Aggravated Robbery charges. Both turned state's evidence on the other ('It was his idea' 'It was her idea' etc.) While the perpetrators were in county lockup, the victim died. Charges were bumped up to Murder.

The mutual friend told me about the charges being moved up before the local news was on. I went to a buddy's house and insisted on watching the news. About 10 minutes into the broadcast was a story on the charges being moved up, complete with pictures. I nudged my buddy.

"Doesn't she look familiar?"

"Isn't that 'X'?"

"Yep."

"Wow. You've fucked a murderer."

I don't know the disposition of the case; was she tried and convicted, did she cop a plea.... I don't know. I do know that 'X' is in prison for (IIRC) 20 years minimum.

[Kathara]

Chicagoians might remember this from a few months ago. April Goodman, married to very, very rich Albert Goodman, tried to hire a hitman to kill him and was caught. The story was all over the news, tabloid tv shows, etc. Don't even get me started about how incredibly biased the coverage was.

Anyway, my brother is married to her sister, and we were both bridesmaids at the wedding.

Back to the shadows now...

Kat

[Globe-trotter]

Lawrence Ford murder (http://www.lexum.umontreal.ca/csc-scc/en/pub/1993/vol2/texte/1993scr2_0482.txt)

Ok, so I didn't know the murderer but we did go to the same school (he was a few years ahead of me). I did, however, know Lawrence Ford's daughter Laurie Jean (and not Laura Jane as is indicated in the document). To make a long story short, Aalders broke into the victim's house (who just happened to be his friend's father, so he knew the house well), shot and killed the family dog and then Ford.

[THespos]

Two stories...

1) When I was in college, I caught my at-the-time GF fooling around with some dude from the college next door (VMI). I broke up with her after giving her a piece of my mind. Some time thereafter, the guy I caught her with filled up my gas tank with sugar and completely destroyed my car. I took it to the cops and ended up dropping the charges after the guy and an accomplice offered me several thousand dollars to replace my car. I never saw the guy again until his picture appeared in the paper - he had been arrested for shooting and killing someone.

2) My dad (THesposSr.) was a HS teacher several years ago. One day, while on lunch duty, he saw two kids in the lunchroom go into fighting stances. He recognized one of the kids as someone who had been expelled some time back and who wasn't supposed to be on school grounds. As soon as this kid saw THesposSr. coming over to break up the fight, he bolted. THesposSr. chased him out a door and into the HS's parking lot, where he lost track of the guy. A few days later, THesposSr. is reading Newsday and sees the guy's picture in the paper. Shortly after he chased the guy across the parking lot, the guy shot and killed someone in a botched robbery attempt. The times of the two incidents were so close together that THesposSr. reasoned that he probably had the gun on him during the parking lot incident. Needless to say, this scared the crap outta my dad and it definitely accelerated his retirement (he took an early retirement incentive - the kids were getting too out of hand).

[Laser45]

I knew a couple of guys who had been in school with me and later knew around town, one of which had been a police officer for a time, who turned out to be serial killers.

Here, we called it the 'Gore Murders' because the main killer was David Gore. This was in a time before serial killers were showing up all over the place and they actually could not be considered true serial killers. Gore kidnapped an Asian lady and her teen daughter and held them at his house, where he raped them and called his cousin, Steve, in to participate. When they finally killed them, they dumped the chopped up bodies into a couple of 55 gallon drums and tossed them into alligator infested drainage canals at the edge of town, where they were discovered.

During the investigation, it turned out that they had apparently done this before, which accounted for some body parts showing up in the same area over the years and Gore, when he had been a cop, had raped a few girls he pulled over.

Gore was a flat slob, while Steve was a nice enough looking guy and Gore was a bit weird in high school, while Steve was more normal and well accepted. With our police department, hiring weird was not unusual because they hired on one officer so big and fat that his uniforms have to be custom made, he wears out the shocks on the drivers side of the cars he drives and he weighs (d) in at close to 400 pounds but he knew the right people to contact to get in.

The we hired this lady cop, who turned out to be as mean as a snake, whose kid later went and did something like rob a bank and no one knew he did it, but when the bank offered this huge reward, she turned him in off duty and sued to collect the reward!

[pldennison]

I remembered another one: A few years ago, I guy I went to high school with by the name of Van Patterson, was convicted of being the Lake County Underwear Bandit. He would break into people's homes at night and cut their underwear off, running off with it. I think he also stole a great deal of underwear from clotheslines and laundry rooms.

[Peta Tzunami]

The vice principle of my junior high school (and later high school--he actually moved to the high school the same year I did) was arrested for taking pictures and/or video of cheerleaders changing clothes in his bathroom. That made the news! I had actually liked Mr. Conti and had interviewed him for the school newspaper once...

My home-economics teacher from junior high school was an eccentric old woman who always wore a very obvious wig, those awful, frumpy floral-print house dresses, and she smelled kind of funky. After she died, she made the news for being a compulsive hoarder--a rich one, too. Along with the tons of the stuff they found in her house after her death they found lots and lots of money.

[bdgr]

Originally posted by Zoff

I used to know Shawn Dee Adams and his wife.

Sorry for the slight hijack, but I know one of the FBI agents who made the arrest in this case. According to him, these folks were Republic of Texas members.

One of the guys they busted asked them to be careful because he had a bad leg. My friend said it was a pretty pathetic scene.

That would be Shawn. He had a screwed up leg. Me and Xeqter knew him before he became a moron. In fact, he is in most of my wedding pictures. Didn't know about any Republic of Texas membership(its possible, I guess), but he was in the KKK. He and his wife got hooked up with the KKK through her Tuperware sales. I remember one of my friends remarking "Oh my God! Our tupperware lady has been arrested for Terrorism! I hope we don't have an order out!" One of my friends, when asked by the reporters what he thought about the KKK said "I think its an Inbreeder dating service". Unfortunately, they didn't air this on the news.

I knew Shawn for years, and kinda lost all respect for him when he got into the white power crap. I stopped associating with him and I kinda hoped he would grow out of it and come to his senses. He didn't.

[bdgr]

Other than Shawn Adams, I used to work with a male nurse at an adolescant psych hospital. He made a coment about getting to see the teenage girls breasts during an exam one time, which everyone who heard it took as a joke(A lot of people who work in such places make some rather in-appropriate jokes from time to time...Its a stressfull job and its a way of not letting it get to you). Years later I was watching some network show about a sting to bust people trying to pick up underage girls on the internet. Heres this guy I worked with being lead out an airport in handcuffs after trying to meet what he thought was a 14 year old girl.

Me and some friends tried a senior prank in high school that made the news. We tried to re-wire the pa so we play a tape during morning announcements, and move the principals office into the bathroom...we came out of the school at 4 am and there were cops as far as the eye could see. My mom saved the newspaper clipping. "HIGH SCHOOL PRANK LEADS TO THE ARREST OF SEVEN"

[kunilou]

Let's see, one of Mrs. Kunilou's former students (and a frequent baby sitter for us) was convicted of armed robbery and murder.

Another student was killed in the crossfire of a gang shootout.

Another student's mother decided to set off a bug bomb without turning off the pilot lights on the gas stove and water heater. The resulting explosion took out several houses in that subdivision.

My sister and her husband woke up one morning to find a Hard Copy crew at their front door. It seems his business partner absconded with the company's funds and left several clients high and dry.

My boss and I mentored at a middle school. Several years later the principal plea-bargained several charges of sexually molesting his students, including some during the time we mentored there.

[Kiki]

I got promoted at work and they hired this girl, Suzanne, for my old job. She seemed pretty nice and we all liked her. I'd gone out to lunch with her at least once a week during the time she was there. It turns out, she was dating a guy that worked at one of our larger car dealerships and she wanted his girlfriend out of the picture. She had tried to pay some guy to kill this woman but she was really stupid about it. She sent this guy a letter offering him money to kill this woman. She was at work when the police came to arrest her. She was escorted downstairs by our own security officers and the police read handcuffed her, read her her rights, and led her outside. No one knew what was going on until everything came out on the news and in the papers.

Here (http://www.kstatecollegian.com/issues/v103/sp/n145/news/news.murder.evenson.html) is a link to the article printed in our K-State Campus paper.

[Cervaise]

1. A high school friend of mine was making fireworks in his basement when something went wrong. The explosion not only nearly vaporized his body (even his skull was in fragments), but it knocked the end wall of the two-story house off and down the hillside and shattered neighbors' windows. What was left of the house had burned to the ground before the second fire truck arrived.

2. This doesn't really count, because I didn't know anyone personally, but a software company I used to work at had a regional office in Atlanta next door to where one of the higher-profile workplace shootings took place a few years back. I spent a lot of time on the phone setting up counseling for the people traumatized by having armored-vest SWAT officers running through their office with scary-looking weapons, making sure the killer wasn't hiding among them.

3. I went to college with Brendan Fraser, and I consider The Mummy Returns to be pretty wrong.

[Doug K.]

At my high school (Liberal, KS) was a guy named Jermarr Arnold. He was involved in forensics, debate, vocal music, wrestling,drama, and made secretary of state at Boys' Nation. He was never in trouble (that I knew of, anyway), and we all assumed he'd go on to law school and be quite successful.

Here's where he is now:
http://www.caller.com/autoconv/newslocal98/newslocal211.html

[Ashtar]

I used to go bowling several times a week in high school with a guy named John Proctor "JP" Remsen. He was a quiet kid.

A couple weeks after our league was out, I saw his mug in the newspaper--he had been arrested for the murder of a 14 year old runaway.

Not just a simple murder, either. Remsen ran him through with a knife--then scraped his body clean, acid-washed the remains, and stuffed everything down a sewer. Shortly after he was arrested, his parents were, too. On weapons and explosives charges.

According to Remsen--he stabbed the runaway because the kid had insulted him.


He was a damn fine bowler. He consistently scored over 200, and occasionally above 250.

-Ashley

[Annie-Xmas]

I'm in property management, and a guy who lived in one of our buildings owed some money to a free-lance landscaper who had done some work for us. When he refused to pay him and ran into the bathroom, the landscaper got his chainsaw and started sawing through the door, chain-sawing the guy's arm in the process (37 stitches and a cast for the sawed bone). When I told my supervisor about it, she said "No wonder he didn't do the work at my house today."

I also knew a copy where the father killed the 3 year old and himself in one of those custody battles that never happen to anyone to know, until they do.

[Patch!]

The victim of J.P. Remsen - Tristan Jensen was not a runaway.
They were classmates, J.P. was a bully & was jealous that girls like Tristan.
J.P. attempted to eliminate the competition.

[My Darn Snake Legs]

My in-law's neighbor's son was caught by Chris Hansen on "To Catch a Predator." It wasn't aired, but he did a little time I think.

[FordTaurusSHO94]

I know someone that brought a nine year old zombie back from the grave!

[Harmonious Discord]

Somebody I worked with got a restraining order for breaking into another worker's car and leaving flowers and a note. He was later Identified as the person stealing ladies panties from a certain local area. This got him in the paper.

[Frazzled]

I was in marching band in High School. I just learned that one of our drum majors is serving 60 years in prison for child molestation.

[Andy L]

During my second semester as a Freshman in college, I was assigned a lab partner in an introductory engineering course. In May, he was arrested (along with another fellow I knew slightly (small college)) for burning an abandoned fraternity house to the ground after burglarizing it (which he had done in December during first semester). Lesson to be learned from him - if you get drunk enough to do something like that, try not to get drunk enough later on to brag about it...

[Katriona]

I didn't notice the OP date when I posted

[GHO57]

Kill it with fire?

[Fear Itself]

A friend of mine was convicted of embezzling $150,000. It made all the papers.

[FallenAngel]

CEO for a software reseller my then-wife used to work for was a complete slimeball. Cooking books, double charging credit cards, etc. He was an LDS bishop and brought in one of his pals from church as the new CFO, and the two of them started skimming cash right off the top.

All would have been fine except the guy who started the business, and whom they were buying out in installments, kept his fingers in the operation and when he noticed revenue going down but sales going up, brought in an outside auditor.

He filed embezzlement and fraud charges against them and the case went federal because of the fraudulent credit card charges in multiple states. Their perp walk was on the local news.

[FuzzyOgre]

I knew a kid that grew up to murder his mom. He was such a nice little boy.

In lighter events, I was standing on later next door to a building that blew up. Some idiots were welding/cutting on an empty fuel tanker truck and they flashed the vapors which flattened the shop.

The building went boom. Meanwhile, I ducked... standing about 12 feet off the ground!

Other than the workers being deafened, nobody was hurt. They were sheltered because they were laying on the ground between two sets of tires.

[Student Driver]

Depending on the location and how slow the news day is, you can get in the news for really minor stuff, and avoid the news for major stuff.

A guy I grew up with got busted as a teenager for stealing hood ornaments, and got on the front page of the newspaper; it happened in a suburb and on a slow news day. A few years later, he and a friend shot two children (killing one) who they thought were messing with their cars (stealing hood ornaments?). It took place in Indianapolis proper and on a busy news day, and it didn't make the news.

The neighbors of my in-laws unfortunately were in the news a decade ago for a multiple-murder/suicide; a man shot and killed his infant children and his girlfriend, then himself. Sadly, none of us were really surprised.

In my apartment complex, a puppy got stabbed a while back, and it was in the newspaper and on television for weeks, while a man who had a night-long armed stand-off with police and killed himself after police shot in tear gas and kicked in the door earned almost no coverage whatsoever.

[madmonk28]

My sister's ex live in boyfriend murdered his new girlfriend and is on deathrow in VA.

[Colophon]

I've posted this before, but David Copeland (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/David_Copeland), who set off three bombs in London in 1999 and killed three people, was in my year (and some of my classes) at school. He lived in the next street from me.

By coincidence, I was also drinking at a pub a few hundred yards from the third bomb when it went off.

[Skammer]

I knew a guy, Jeremy Duffer, who made the news a couple of times.

He worked in a game store nearby, which is how I knew him. A lot of kids would hang out in the backroom playing Pokemon, D&D and other games. Turns out Jeremy was hanging out with at least one of the boys in inappriate ways. The child told his mother, and Jeremy was arrested on charges of child rape. He was placed under house arrest with an ankle bracelet to await trial.

Then he escaped! He cut off the bracelet and got away. There was a big manhunt and he was on billboards and America's Most Wanted (http://www.amw.com/fugitives/brief.cfm?id=37932). They caught him a few months later working at a traveling carnival in eastern Tennessee.

He's in jail now - he was sentenced to 137 years. I know raping a boy is pretty abhorrent, but 137 years seemed a little excessive to me for someone who clearly needed mental help. But at least he won't be abusing any more kids.

[Shodan]

My neighbor across the street became the first civilian ever shot by the police in the history of my town. His wife called the police during a domestic violence incident, he was drunk and tried to get at a knife on the counter in their kitchen, and in the subsequent struggle was trying to get one officer's pistol out of the holster. He ignored pepper spray and repeated warnings (he was really drunk) and one of the cops shot him.

It not only made the news, it got me on the news - I was interviewed on one of our local news stations.

Regards,
Shodan

[Minnie Luna]

The Laurie Kellogg case happened not just in my town, but in my former neighborhood. We had moved by the time the murder happened. Free Laurie Kellogg (http://www.grandpaws.net/lauriekellogg/)

Laurie was in the same class as my sister in high school, her stepdaughter (the daughter of the victim, her husband Bruce) was in my class. They made a TV movie out of it starring Jennie Garth. One of the conspirators, Nicole Pappas, was just a year older than me (and Bruce's daughter). It was widely known that Bruce was a bastard, but the actual circumstances surrounding his death are still widely debated. The largest detail being did Laurie put the teenagers up to it or did she not know they were going to kill him.

[Duke]

I kind of like having these old threads back.

An high-school acquaintance, someone I knew but not really a friend, was big into hunting. Of course since I grew up in central PA a lot of kids were, but he was kind of known for it. His favorite thing to do in life was to go hunting with his older brother, who was really like his best friend in the world.

I came home from college over one weekend and was watching the local news. Top story was about my high-school acquaintance, who had accidentally shot someone in a hunting accident. The victim was his older brother.

[Yorikke]

I know someone that brought a nine year old zombie back from the grave!

I was reading the thread just now, and noticed - "Hey, that link is to Geocities! This must be a zombie!"

Yep.

Joe

[MsWhatsit]

Whoa. For a second I got all excited because I saw that Eve had posted.

[Floater]

Someone I knew as a teen killed himself rather than letting the police catch him. He was also believed to have shot and killed the local grocer in an attempted robbery the day before Christmas.

[Patty O'Furniture]

A friend of mine was convicted of embezzling $150,000. It made all the papers.

I've got you beat by $400K.

http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2009/03/12/AR2009031201426.html

This happened about 18 months ago. I saw this guy almost every day and we worked on several projects together.

[LouisB]

I used to run around with a guy who was convicted (IIRC) of kidnapping and extortion. He got the idea from the movie Crazy Larry and Dirty Mary. I think that was the title. The guy I knew was basically a career criminal with a sideline in gambling.

[Procrustus]

I used to work with this woman:

Earlier this month, four jail officers reported seeing Burns and his then-public defender, Theresa Olson, having sex in a jail conference room. The alleged encounter led to a series of court hearings in which the judge and a roomful of lawyers tried to figure out how to handle the situation.

http://www.seattlepi.com/local/84506_olson28.shtml

[Spiff]

They were sheltered because they were laying on the ground between two sets of tires.Screwing around on the job, eh? ;)

[Skammer]

I used to work with this woman:

Earlier this month, four jail officers reported seeing Burns and his then-public defender, Theresa Olson, having sex in a jail conference room. The alleged encounter led to a series of court hearings in which the judge and a roomful of lawyers tried to figure out how to handle the situation.

http://www.seattlepi.com/local/84506_olson28.shtml Is that frowned upon? I have to claim ignorance.. if anyone had told me I shouldn't have sex with my public defender...

[corkboard]

I had a copyright professor in law school who I remained in contact with after graduation. I hired some of his copyright students as unpaid interns in the years following my graduation, and I came to speak to a couple of his classes. Nice guy. He wrote a book on copyright for the layperson; I went to his booksigning and I have an autographed copy.

Imagine my surprise when I read that he had just been arrested for possessing, on both his work and home computers, what was then the single largest collection of child pornography in New York State.

http://nymag.com/nymetro/news/crimelaw/features/n_8815/

[Procrustus]

I used to work with this woman:



http://www.seattlepi.com/local/84506_olson28.shtml Is that frowned upon? I have to claim ignorance.. if anyone had told me I shouldn't have sex with my public defender...

From Washington State's Professional Responsibility rules:

Client-Lawyer Sexual Relationships

The relationship between lawyer and client is a fiduciary one in which the lawyer
occupies the highest position of trust and confidence. The relationship is almost always unequal; thus, a sexual relationship between lawyer and client can involve unfair exploitation of the lawyer's fiduciary role, in violation of the lawyer's basic ethical obligation not to use the trust of the client to the client's disadvantage. In addition, such a relationship presents a significant danger that, because of the lawyer's emotional involvement, the lawyer will be unable to represent the
client without impairment of the exercise of independent professional judgment. Moreover, a blurred line between the professional and personal relationships may make it difficult to predict to what extent client confidences will be protected by the attorney-client evidentiary privilege, sinceclient confidences are protected by privilege only when they are imparted in the context of the client-lawyer relationship. Because of the significant danger of harm to client interests and because the client's own emotional involvement renders it unlikely that the client could give adequate informed consent, this Rule prohibits the lawyer from having sexual relations with a client regardless of whether the relationship is consensual and regardless of the absence of prejudice to the client.

[friedo]

I went to high school with a dude who ended up stabbing his girlfriend to death in her driveway.

[EristicKallistic]

The woman who lived next door to us and babysat my younger brother and I (I was maybe very early teens or just before, my brother 5 years under that) ended up faking a kidnapping of her own infant son, we heard she had Munchausen by Proxy. Anyway the local news did a short bit on it, I think I remember my mom getting interviewed.

[california jobcase]

A short-time roommate of mine recently got arrested for kiddy porn on his computer.

A fraternity brother got arrested for throwing mercury all over his mother's house in a psychotic fit.

A friend of mine built a pipe bomb and the other friend blew up a phone booth with it (decades ago). No one was hurt and they never got caught, but it hit the papers.

[Duke]

Is that frowned upon? I have to claim ignorance.. if anyone had told me I shouldn't have sex with my public defender...

From Washington State's Professional Responsibility rules:

Client-Lawyer Sexual Relationships

The relationship between lawyer and client is a fiduciary one in which the lawyer
occupies the highest position of trust and confidence. The relationship is almost always unequal; thus, a sexual relationship between lawyer and client can involve unfair exploitation of the lawyer's fiduciary role, in violation of the lawyer's basic ethical obligation not to use the trust of the client to the client's disadvantage. In addition, such a relationship presents a significant danger that, because of the lawyer's emotional involvement, the lawyer will be unable to represent the
client without impairment of the exercise of independent professional judgment. Moreover, a blurred line between the professional and personal relationships may make it difficult to predict to what extent client confidences will be protected by the attorney-client evidentiary privilege, sinceclient confidences are protected by privilege only when they are imparted in the context of the client-lawyer relationship. Because of the significant danger of harm to client interests and because the client's own emotional involvement renders it unlikely that the client could give adequate informed consent, this Rule prohibits the lawyer from having sexual relations with a client regardless of whether the relationship is consensual and regardless of the absence of prejudice to the client.

Procustus...psst, over here (http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=-RvNS7JfcMM).

[ENugent]

Not only the news; there was a made for TV movie (http://www.imdb.com/title/tt0109847/) about two of my high school classmates.

[Rushgeekgirl]

Just the local news. I just found my daughter's father in jail in Nevada by a news blurb online.

My brother did something so good it was in the news. He pulled a woman from a burning building. She died but it was still heroic what he did.

Local media was all over it when my SO's best friend was murdered but they got every detail wrong except names and the fact that he died.

[jasg]

Sadly, too many times.

The first was a classmate at college who killed his ex-fiancee with an axe.

The second was a CEO who shot 32 head of buffalo - that were being raised by his neighbor as livestock - but they jumped the fence trampled his lawn.

The third may not be wrong legally, but was a guy who collected a $25 million severance after 3 months of work.

[BrotherCadfael]

When I was in high school, a friend of ours once introduced us to her cousin and his wife (or was the wife the cousin - I can't remember). A year or two later, the guy murdered his wife, fairly messily. The papers were full of it at the time.

Come to think of it, the papers are still full of it...

[CookingWithGas]

I had a high school classmate who is now in a federal pen for selling classified information to Cuba.

[Hypno-Toad]

My old neighbor was murdered execution style by his own son and the sons drug buddy for not coughing up cash for their habit. Made the papers and the son is still locked away for life.

[Annie-Xmas]

I knew Dawn Breedon (http://dawnbreedon.com/sitebuildercontent/sitebuilderfiles/HopeandHealingstorywpictures.pdf) for about 15 years before this nightmare happened, knew her son in utuero, and knew the monster that did it.

[MLS]

It was just in our local paper, but a couple decades ago one of the teachers in our local high school was arrested, together with his live-in girlfriend, for possession with intent to distribute either cocaine or heroin. He was the health/drivers' education teacher. At least it provided a good teaching moment to my daughters. This guy had a tenured teaching position, and this was one of the few things he could have done to lose his job and his state teaching license, regardless of how much time he eventually did or didn't do.

[MLS]

This is just a friend's story, but it's cool anyway. My friend lived in the general neighborhood where the infamous Son of Sam murders were happening, and she had a resemblance to the usual victim type (brown hair, for example). She was late finishing her shopping one day and was anxious about walking home alone. A neighbor offered to escort her and was especially amused that she though she could be a potential Son of Sam victim. Her escort was David Berkowitz, later identified and convicted of all the murders. His next (and final) victim was blonde.