For my small Texas hometown of occasionally 6000 people (depends on whether the rodeo’s in town,) there are FAR too many psycho-killers.
I’ll start off with Mac and Ken–these two are forever trying to kill each other:
• They are riding in Mac’s pickup, when they find a tree across the road. Ken gets out to move it, expecting Mac to help. Instead, Mac floors it, running Ken over.
• The two have been drinking beer together at the VFW all night, when Ken has to go to the bathroom. He comes back with a Louisville Slugger and smashes Mac across the head with it…repeatedly.
• The two are about to go into the VFW to begin their night of beer drinking–when Ken buries a hunting knife into Mac’s side.
• Most recently, one of them (I don’t remember who did what this time) walked up to the other’s house, knocked on the door, and shot the other in the head, point-blank, with a handgun.
To this day, neither is dead, neither is in jail, and both can STILL be found most weekends, drinking beer and playing pool together at the local VFW.
They’re great friends–just ask 'em!
On to more grisly things:
A guy named Ryan ran in pretty much the same circles as I did, though I would hardly have called him a friend.
One night, he and a few of his buddies decide to rob a local drug-dealer. They go out to the dealer’s house, kick in the door, and smash the dealer’s mentally deficient son in the head with a pipe.
As they’re securing the son to a chair, the dealer arrives home. He sees his son strapped to a chair, so he turns and runs.
Ryan, no doubt prodded by his buddies, thinks that the dealer’s running for a gun, so he shoots his .22 into the dealer’s back.
The bullet richocheted within the dealer’s ribcage for a while, turning his innards into jelly. Ryan and company are now spending life in prison.
Back in March, Bricker was kind enough to find documentation of Ryan’s trial, and he posted it in the Double Jeopardy? thread.
Now, on to the really sick stuff:
Bernie Tiede.
Great guy!
Bernie was the pastor of a local church. He loaned money to people who wanted to start their own business. He played the organ at my girlfriend’s aunt’s funeral.
Nice guy–everybody loved him.
One of the special things that he did for the community was helping the elderly and homebound. He visted them, brought them meals, played handyman when things broke, and generally gave them a friend that they could count on.
One of his favorite friends was an old recluse lady, who just happened to also be a multi-millionaire.
The lady was a true recluse–she never went anywhere. No church, no friends, no local family, no PTA or American Legion.
She did, however, have a son. He lived far away, in Phoenix (I think.)
After 10 months of trying to contact his mother, only to be told by Bernie that she was vacationing in Mexico or at therapy in Houston, the son came here to check things out for himself.
Police questioned Bernie, finally getting him to crack. He confessed that he had shot the old woman in the back, twice.
She had become domineering, he said.
She had a demon inside, he said.
Police found the old lady right where Bernie had kept her for almost a year–in her deep freezer, nestled in among the deer sausage and spring peas.
He was convicted last year, sentenced to life, and I think that “Court TV” even followed the case.
Makes one hell of a bedtime story, doesn’t it?
-David
