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

In My Humble Opinion
21

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.

22

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.

23

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.

24

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…

25

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. :smiley:

26

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.

27

A book was written about my cousin. Scapegoat : How the Army Betrayed Kyle Brown. 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.

28

My parents used to know Jim and Tammy Faye Bakker, if that counts…

29

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.

30

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

31

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.

32

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.

33

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.

34

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).

35

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.

36

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

37

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.

38

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

39

Lawrence Ford murder

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.

40

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).