A few years back, there was an incident in my home town where a couple of girls from one gang held a girl from another down and branded her face.
It sounds trite, but this is not the kind of thing one expects to happen in a small east Tennessee town.
One of the girls I went to high school with was absent for a while, Later I found out from here why, she had been attending her friend’s funeral in Ontario.
Her friend? Leslie Mahaffy one of Paul Bernardo’s victims.
Pardon my ignorance … who’s Paul Bernardo?
I woke up to a SWAT team standing over me and a big gun in my face at 5am one morning at my (now ex) boyfriend’s house. Turns out that he had robbed a pawn shop the night before. Later I found out that he had stolen money from his ex-boss (who was also a friend of my ex). He also robbed several of his prior work places but had never been caught. So that’s what happened to my missing jewelry…
When I was in college I knew several people in Baton Rouge, LA that were involved in the big LSD bust.
My brother’s friend’s mother shot herself in the head in front of her husband and children. (My brother was in the 7th grade when it happened.)
-A guy a went to junior high with is currently in a psychiatric hospital for bludgeoning his mom to death with a hammer when home from Xmas break in college.
-The kid across the street from me (now 21) that I used to play basketball with is serving 20+ years for an armed robbery where the victim complied and he still shot the guy. The victim is paralyzed from the waist down now.
-A former co-worker of my mom’s is currently serving a life sentence for smothering his wife while she slept. I used to be babysat by them, which really creeps me out now.
-My college roommate moved in with his girlfriend after moving out of our place. His girlfriend hung herself in the bedroom while he was asleep. I read about it the next day (with the parties unnamed) in the U of A paper. I ran into him a couple of days later, not realizing it was him that it had happened to. I found out a several days later.
-The tailor across the street from my house was jailed for smothering his girlfriend (who was 22 at the time, he was 40+). He’s now out and dating another 22 year old.
Although I didn’t know the perp:
-My former next door neighbor discovered a sexually assaulted and repeatedly stabbed body in the alley between our houses. She was a waitress at a local bar that we’d frequent on Capitol Hill- I knew who she was, he knew her pretty well. The perp was arrested after attempting to rape a 70+ year old lady.
-The house a block down from mine was featured on America’s Most Wanted. Someone broke into the house and blew a woman and her brother (who was visiting) away with a shotgun. A week later the killer turned himself in- it was the woman’s boyfriend. Apparently he didn’t know the brother and didn’t know he was visiting. He just saw his girlfriend with another man, flew into a rage, and blew them both away.
I know lots of them, it’s my job.
One has just completed his 21st year (and he has more to go) for killing his wife - took her face off with a shotgun, she survived in hospital for 2 days.
We do not get serial killers or the serious gangsters in this jail - mafiosa and the like but what remains are gruesome enough.
One had hit 2 pedestrians in a 30mph zone on his bike he was doing at least 60, impaled one on the broken fairing.
Another was absolutely drunk whilst driving and killed 3 brothers out cycling.
I grew up in state childrens homes and was interviewed in the 70’s about the murder of a woman who turned out to be the first known victim of the Yorkshire Ripper.I was 14 at the time.
The police realised even at that early stage they had a very serious killer and were trying every avenue of investigation no matter how unlikely.
Years later he was still at it and I remember seeing the posters up in an area where I used to go drinking when I was on home leave (a very rough area).
I know at least one of his victims was found round there I remember seeing the house where one she lived on Harehills Lane with posters in the windows begging for information.
They caught the bastard by a mixture of luck and observant police work.
He went into Wakefield prison which is full of serious sex-offenders and nutters one of which attempted to kill him by stabbing his eyes out with felt-tip pens - nearly succeeded too.
There is plenty of stuff about him on the internet.
One rapist who was high on drugs attacked an 83 year old woman he only got 10 years and he is back out again, he was given a rough time in jail by the other inmates, quite right too.
We had one villain who came in. He’d been a security guard and decided to make off with the contents of the van he was driving - about $600k and took a flight to Florida.
He was kind of thoughtful though because he was also doing the payroll delivery for the company he worked for and left their wages in the van.
Some offenders are so stupid or unlucky that it is funny but this is not the thread for those - could put a few up if such a thread comes up.
Not personally, but I’ve got a good relative one:
When my grandmother was a teenager in Oklahoma, she walked down the street and sold a jar of moonshine for a dollar. To the infamous Pretty Boy Floyd.
My cousin strangled his wife and then wrapped her (rather large) body up in plastic wrap and put her in the closet of their home. Where she stayed for a few days before the police found her. We are unsure if their 2 year old (who was home at the time) saw anything.
IIRC, he was a serial killer who, with his wife Karla, raped, tortured, and killed three women. Their first victim was his wife’s younger sister. He was a sick bastard…enjoyed making the victims his sex slaves, and I believe he videotaped some of them. For disposal, he cut up and packed one of his victims (I think it was Leslie Mahaffy) in concrete blocks. shudder
As for people I’ve known…guy who lived across the street from me was a drug dealer. We’d see flashy cars and druggies pull in and out at all hours of the night. I was about…11, I think, so my parents flipped and called the cops. He was arrested, went to jail for a year, got out. He then proceeded to shoot someone with a sawed-off shotgun. This earned him about 10 years in Jessup. He got out and moved back in with his parents across the street…he’s actually fairly nice now. Caught a couple of kids who were going to vandalize my car once. 
Then there was the kid who went to my high school who shot his parents…but I didn’t really know him. Just heard about it.
you’re not alone Jack. Who’s Paul Bernardo?
Ok, my turn. My ex BF fell asleep at the wheel and collided head on with another car. The woman died but not from the car accident. She had a heart attack at impact
Same ex BF “inappropriately touched” his 12 year old daughter. While we were living together. I never knew or I would have cut his hands off.
A cousin is in Stateville for trying to hire a hit man to do his boss. His sister is married to the boss’s son. Those family get togethers have got to be a blast
http://www.crimelibrary.com/serials/bernardo/bernmain.htm
Nasty, nasty guy.
In middle school I played (bass) in the orchestra with a cello player named Leonard. He grew up to shoot the Vice Principal to death at a high school years after he graduated.
When I was a senior in high school, I had a friend named Mike. His father shot Mike, his mother and baby brother to death.
My grandmother’s friend killed his wife and then killed himself.
This is all so depressing.
There was this girl in my HS spanish class, Amy, (she was a year older) who was having an affair with this older (about 2X her age) mobster who owned a body shop.
Anyway, the following year, during her lunchbreak she went to the guys house and shot his wife in the head. His wife, I think her name was MaryJo or something, didn’t die, but her speech and muscular movements around her mouth has been permanently affected.
Amy got caught and went to jail.
A few years ago, I worked with a guy who was spooky even by my standards and I’ve got some pretty damn freaky friends. I remember at the time thinking that I wouldn’t want to meet him in a dark alley if he didn’t like me. In fact, my best friend (who worked with me then) used to make nervous jokes about being glad he liked us.
A year or so ago I called said best friend just to chit-chat after I’d moved out of state. While on the phone he asked: “Do you remember X?”. I laughed and said, “Of course I do. Who’d he kill?” Bad, bad joke, I know. To my horror the answer was “His wife.”
Apparently he had entered the military after leaving the place we’d both worked. While home on a leave, he and his wife had argued and he’d stabbed her to death… with his two year old daughter watching… then he called the cops.
The 911 transcript was something like:
“Hi. I just killed my wife… hold on a second. I need to wash my hands, there’s blood all over them and my kid’s screaming.”
Makes you think twice about stupid gallows humour.
Damn, I had only expected a couple replies to this thread. What a sick, sad world. 
<shudder shudder shudder>
SaxFace, I remember reading about that guy Leonard. Wasn’t it in Milwaukee? Didn’t he make the principal beg for mercy before he shot him?
My beautiful, precious fiancee (let’s call her “Sarah”) was raped by her stepfather for 11 years. It started when she was eight. Her mother was a workaholic who was away all the time. The stepfather was alone in the house all day, and he would molest and rape Sarah every single day and night.
Her mother ignored all of Sarah’s cries for help; running away constantly, spending her allowance on locks for her bedroom door, acting up at school, alcoholism, and suicide attempts.
Sarah would drink herself into a stupor and then run herself into walls, so that she could get beat up enough to go to the hospital and get out of the house that he was in.
It’s been ten years and her mother is still with this freak and Sarah still has flashbacks. Bastards.
Sarah also knew S.P., the serial killer in Delaware who would rape prostitutes and tear off their nipples with a pair of pliers. Yuck. Sarah knows his ex-wife, and one of the prostitutes that he killed.
A relative by marriage has a daughter from his prior marriage. A couple of years ago the daughter killed her allegedly abusive stepfather with a hammer.
Same branch of the tree has a guy who killed his twin babies by throwing them into the wall.
I didn’t know either of these people personally.
Couple of years ago a woman from our church drugged and then suffocated her three young kids. I knew who the family was, but wasn’t close to them. She taught religious education classes.
A guy I went to high school with beat his mother to death. (He was schizophrenic, and apparently the family had tried for years to get help for him, but since he was over 18 and didn’t consent, their hands were pretty much tied.) I knew him only slightly, but I used to live in the house where it happened – my parents had sold it to his parents. I’ve never quite been able to believe there’s been a murder in that house; whenever I think of the place it seems like my brother and I should still be playing kids’ games there. Creepy.
Myron, good memory!
Yeah, Leonard shot the vice principal of Wauwatosa West High School. (We both went to Longfellow for middle school, but I went to Wauwatosa East for high school).
He was found to be sane, but I could have testified in 7th grade that he wasn’t. He was severely disturbed back then and was a terrible cello player.