…if I hi-jacked your thread…I didn’t mean to.
What scares me more are these stories than the ones that the news “pretties up” for the press.
A friend of mine did his residency in Detroit. Dunno which hospital. He would tell us stories that made our heads spin.
One stuck out.
Some guy coked up decides to ax his wife and kid(s). They are found by police mangled on the front lawn of the house. Some are still alive, if barely.
The son of a bitch is standing over them in his state, with the murder weapon in hand and as the cops order him to drop the weapons, etc, he starts to chop again. The cops shoot him several times.
Then they wait…like 10 minutes…before calling for an ambulance…letting his hopefully bleed to death.
Ambulance comes and scoops the family and son of a bitch off and you know what. Most of the family dies and the SOB lives. My friend and his team operated on him.
Never made the news.
I used to be a crime reporter, so I’ve met a few. One was a guy about 20 who I interviewed after his fifth-grade mildly mentally handicapped neighbor was kidnapped, tied up and strangled in the woods behind his house. A ransom demand had been made by phone, but the kid already was dead. The “concerned neighbor” whom I interviewed, along with all the other neighbors, turned out to be the killer.
I also met Ted Bundy, after he was arrested, at the Sheriff’s Department. He was handcuffed – good-looking guy. I interviewed a teen who dated him once. She couldn’t believe he was guilty. He was SO nice, she said. Made her feel special, like what she said really mattered, not like she was dumb. Not like most of the guys, she said. Took her to one of the most expensive restaurants in town – with a stolen credit card, it turned out at the trial. He had lots he had swiped from purses at grocery stores when someone stepped away from cart.
Well
You all know me
Well, I went to school with a girl named Darlene. It was a small school system, and everyone knew everybody else, or at least we thought so. A couple of weeks before school ended in eighth grade, Darlene disappeared from school entirely. It turns out her 65 year old widowed father had been not only molesting her for the 5 years after her mom died, but he had also been forcing her to “perform” with several of his friends, and had made little “home movies” of the incidents. She finally confided in an older friend, an adult woman. This woman, whom I did not know, for some inexplicable reason left a gun in Darlene’s mailbox, which Darlene used to put some much needed new holes in her father’s head. The woman went to jail, and Darlene was spirited away to parts unknown, whether relatives or a state home.
Whenever I hear Aerosmith’s “Janie’s Got a Gun” I instantly think of Darlene. The sad thing is that she was such a nice girl, and she lived with this secret for years without ever revealing it to anyone. I certainly don’t consider what she did heinous, though. Her father deserved every bullet and then some.
My first assignment as a radio reporter was to record Richard Nixon.
I also met Pauly Shore, once.
I have a couple of good (well, horrific) ones…
First, A guy i knew in high school (not a friend, but small school- ya know everyone) had his Dad shoot his Mom. His dad found out that his Mom was having an affair. So while the cheating wife was at a local restaurant with the “other man”, the Dad walked into the restaurant with a shotgun. Horrible scene. That also lead to an odd “Haunted Restaurant” story…
The second one was even worse. Back when I was in elementary school, and was a recent transplant to Texas, there was an odd kid named Wesley. Of course since he was “different”, and I was new to the school, we hung out for a while. Well, a few years later there was the infamous Slave Ranch story that came out where a local family was crusing I-10 and picking up hitchhikers and forcing them to do labor at the ranch. They were tortured with cattle prods, forced to do manual labor, and make souveineir keychains that the family sold at thier country store. Several of the Hitchikers were killed and the bodies burned. Well, it turned out that Wesley was the youngest member of this family. He was never implicated in the whole thing, but it went a long way to explain why he was a bit odd…
My 18th birthday party was catered by our local hamburger joint owner, Norm. Everyone in high school loved him to death - he’d sit and talk with kids about their goals or plans after high school. His mom ran the restaurant with him. Several years ago, he murdered 2 guys at his and his mom’s house, then took the bodies into some woods to bury them. He returned after he heard someone complain about a strange smell, dug them up, and poured lime on them and reburied them to try and aid decomposition.
His case, of course, is on appeal while he’s in jail. It’s hard to believe that most times it’s the normal looking folks that are the most harmful, and the weirdest ones that are the most harmless.
And I don’t know if this counts, but I found out that my gymnastics teacher from when I was a little girl was arrested for molesting his students. That kinda freaked me out.
…that ended up being used to kill someone. One Sunday I came home from an outing – this was 8-9 years ago – and on the porch of the apartment building across the street, I saw Chris, the brother of a friend, someone I was slightly acquainted with. He had a .22 rifle in his hands. I called out hello and went inside. A few minutes later, he knocked at the front door. I invited him in, it being a hot sunny day, and offered him a beer. Now, for reasons that don’t matter, I kept an large-frame 8-shot .22 revolver on the endtable next to my chair. So, Chris notices it, asks to see it, and having done so, offers to swap me the rifle for it. Now, the rifle is a very good brand with a rotary magazine and a Bausch & Lomb telescopic sight, so it doesn’t take me long to agree. He finishes his beer and thanks me, and says he has some business to attend to, so 'bye.
Two hours later I get a phone call – Chris has gotten into a gunfight with a particularly cantankerous old man who, along with the old man’s wife, had given him the bum’s rush out the door of his OWN rented trailer after negotiating their own deal with the landlord. It turns out the reason Chris wanted to swap the rifle for the pistol was that the pistol was more concealable, and when he got out of his truck (so he said, later) he didn’t want to provoke an instant confrontation by displaying a weapon. They both ended up getting off some shots, but unfortunately for the old man, one of Chris’s got him right between the eyes.
For some reason, it took most of a year for the case to come to trial, during which Chris was bonded out and even went to several other states to work in construction. He ended up convicted of manslaughter and is currently finishing up a 10-year stretch. He was offered parole (he’s been a model prisoner – in fact he repairs most of the electronic equipment at the rural prison farm to which he’s assigned) but declined it because he’s apparently finding life in this particular prison to be somewhat monastic and he’s had ample time to also educate himself in a number of fields, including photography and computing; in addition, when he regains his freedom, he wants it to be with no strings. Felt awfully odd to be called as a witness for the prosecution against him, though.
When I was 18 in 1981, I was a cashier in my mother’s store in Pensacola. Mom had a friend who owned the beauty parlor a few stores down – Judy Buenoano (Goodyear), the “Black Widow” who was executed in Florida a few years ago.
It seems that every few years, Judy would marry and poison a new man in order to collect enough life insurance to support her lavish lifestyle. She told everyone she was a physician. At the time, I was in pre-med, and I remember my mom telling me that Buenoano was an M.D. who did research on rhesus monkeys. And I said, “No way is that lady a doctor. It’s a lie.” She just didn’t seem polished enough to be the product of that much education. And why would a research scientist have a beauty parlor? It turned out she was a nurse’s aide.
She got caught when she tried to wire an explosion in the car of her boyfriend–who owned a third store in the same shopping center. The police started digging up her past husbands. They sent the photos of the exhumed corpses to be developed at the camera store of another friend–who had worked with me at Mom’s store. The photo lady described the bodies in vivid detail: moldy face, wearing a bow-tie, and so on.
Towards the end, Judy began taking out life insurance on a lot of people. Friends, employees of her beauty parlor, etc. Most of her dead husbands had been killed with low doses of arsenic over time. (In fact, the guy she tried to blow up had been taking “vitamin” capsules she gave him and had been hospitalized for an unexplained stomach ailment.) One of the beauty parlor ladies told us that Judy was obsessed with arsenic and had begun advising her employees to self-administer low daily doses to treat a variety of ailments, from acne to constipation.
During the trial, it came out that she had killed her own son, I paraplegic and former soldier. She and another son took him out in a boat and came back without him. At the time, it was ruled an accident. It also came out in the trial that she supplied her own teenaged children with cocaine.
Of course, she became a born-again Christian before she got the chair. It didn’t save her.
When I was in sixth grade, I had a crush on this girl who sat at my table in art class. About 15 years later I saw her on ‘Americas Most Wanted’, she was being called a ‘Black Widow Killer’ because she had killed a number of guys she went out with.
When I was 15, I knew this guy who lived with the cousin of a friend of mine, who lived at the apartment complex my Mom managed. He was a really cool and popular guy, my nephew was so impressed with him he got his hair cut just like him. He moved, and a few months later an FBI agent showed up at the apartment complex office asking about where my friend’s cousin lived now. My Mom wasn’t going to give out any personal information without a warrant, but the FBI agent explained to my Mom why they were wanting to find her - a serial killer had been murdering people, chopping them up, wrapping their parts in women’s clothing, and dumping them out in places where they would be found. They found a note or bill from a dry cleaner in one of the articles of clothing and used it to get the name of my friend’s cousin. Apparently the cool guy with the cool haircut stole some of her clothes and used them to wrap up some of the parts.
When I was 22 or so one of the older residents in the apartment building I lived in fell out his 3rd story window, and was found dead in the alley behind the building the next day. My best friend at the time (who also lived in the same building) confessed to me when he was drunk that he pushed him out of the window, but I’m not sure I believe him and have never told anyone.
One time me and a couple of friends were asked by a drug-dealer friend of ours to go down to the local bar with him to wait on this guy who was supposed to bring him some crystal meth. The dealer had already paid for it and the guy was already a day late delivering it. We sat around a few hours, the guy never showed up, and the dealer friend was getting kinda upset. Three days later the guy who was supposed to deliver the speed was found with his head blown mostly off by a shotgun in a ditch in Dallas. I don’t know for certain that the dealer did it, but I think it’s likely, he had killed people before.
My friend’s girlfriend and her brother killed their parents, but only her brother did any time for it.
I knew some people who robbed a grave and took the corpse to a party with them. It was there a couple of hours before anyone called the cops. Most of them did some time for that.
I’m sure I will think of some more later…
I see one of your touched on what sounded like this earlier, but I got details, soooo:
I worked at a Borders Books a few years ago, makin’ coffee. There was this cat who had just stopped working there when I sta4rted who still came by to “hang out.” Only no one he had worked with liked him, cuz he was lazy and an ass (spoiled jerkoff). Anyhow, One night not too long ago he drove his car thru the front wall of his house to try and kill his mother, and when he found out she was still alive, he beat her to death with a baseball bat. The Washington Post article that covered his sentencing to a mental institution said he had gotten instructions to kill his parents from a chess piece at a coffeshop. I still have this article in e-format for anyone who wants to read it.
FYI- The guy’s name was Alfred Head, he lived in Reston, Va, the Borders was in Tysons Corner, Va, and when all this went down his father was out of town.
Small world. I used to know people who worked at that
Borders (ca. 1991).
Oooo! Could you please e-mail to me or post that link? I live in Florida and would like to make sure of two things:
- My pedophile uncle hasn’t been hanging out in Florida, or worse, my neighborhood…
- That my neighborhood is relatively free of perverts. At least convicted ones…
Thanks! I can relate about the family-gathering-stomach-ache. My uncle was famous for always wanting to “babysit.” Needless to say, the rest of the family made sure about 15 escorts went with him any time he wanted to spend time with anyone under 21.
I have a friend who puts maple syrup AND -shudder- peanut butter on his pancakes!
When I was in grade 9, back in the mid 70’s, and there was a kid in my class who was the sole survivor of a murder/suicide. His dad had shot him, his mother, and two(three?) other of the kids with his 30-06 rifle. He was out of school for quite a while recovering. I had heard he was hit six times, but that could have been how many shots in total were fired. More likely the latter as I can’t imagine someone taking six 30-06 and surviving. I didn’t know the kid until he came back to class (My family had moved into town shortly before), but I still felt sorry for him. That was until I actually met the mouthy, little prick.
He’s been brought up before but…
My mother went to high school with Ted Bundy in Tacoma, Washington. Once, she went on a double date with him - he was dating a friend of hers at the time. She said he seemed like a relatively normal person.
I guess appearances can be deceiving.
Ummm… does leaving the cap off the toothpaste count?
The first guy I didn’t actually get to meet:
I grew up an Air Force dependent, and my dad was stationed in southern Italy in the '70s. We flew out of Rome to come back to the states when his tour was done in Dec '73. While we were in the terminal I noticed a guy with a rifle case and asked my dad if it illegal to carry guns on planes, to which he replied it’s okay as long as they’re properly registered and checked through customs, etc.
Anyway, our planes taxiing to the runway and we’re notified that takeoff will be delayed indefinitely. Turns out somebody has hijacked the airliner two planes in front of us. After sitting for a while, the terrorists get impatient, blow up the plane they’re on, and board the one directly in front of us. I don’t remember how it was resolved, but they got out of our way at some point and we were able to take off.
TV news reports when we got into New York showed one of the hijackers as my guy with the gun case.
The second one I knew for years:
The father of a close high school friend was a bit of an anti-government nut. Not the blowing up buildings type, but he didn’t think he should pay taxes and that sort of thing. He tried to stage a robbery, things went bad and he took a hostage and fled in his pick-up. The police got to the point where negotiations clearly weren’t going anywhere, and a sniper put a bullet through his head.
The really unfortunate thing is that the next day at school, a casual acquaintance had seen the guys last name in the news, didn’t realize that he was Steve’s father, and thought he’d give Steve a hard time about being related to the regions dumbest crook.
The third one I had to work with for a few years:
There was a quiet, likeable squad leader in my company while I was in the Army. He ended up being court martialed when his wife caught him sodomizing their infant daughter. I don’t imagine the folks at Leavenworth gave him to much of a hard time.
Dogzilla -
Don’t know if this is the one cited above, but these are two sites you should check out, the second specifically for Florida (you can also check by county or zip code if you want a general view of the area, or by name for a specific person).
www.crime.com/ then click on ‘sex offenders’ (you can check any state)
or, specifially to Florida.
www.fdle.state.fl.us then click on sexual predators’, ‘missing children’, 'FL’s most wanted, etc.
Back when I was in college, I knew a CompSci grad student who always had a dopey smile on his face, even during final exams. He seemed to me to be a little strange, but harmless.
One night, he torched the house of one of his professors, killing the prof’s wife and at least one of his kids.