When I was a kid my brother had a friend who was a doofus and practically lived on our farm all the time. When Iwent to college I found out he kidnapped an Amish girl and raped her. He’s still in prison.
Oh and my sister murdered our father for money(she owed almost $40000 and he was getting married and she was afraid his new wife would inherit his estate)
I sort-of dated a guy in high school who had burned down a local play house, and later attempted to rape a girl.
My best friend from high school married a crazy, sadistic bastard who ran off & left her for some girl he’d met. This was good, because he beat & raped her several times while they were married, and brought his girlfriend home with him. He wound up being a sniper in some tall building where he was shot by the police, but survived.
I was briefly engaged to this same friend’s cousin, who I learned years later had been convicted of more than one rape and was serving time in prison.
I have also known victims of terrible crimes - a coworker’s sister, whom I had just met a couple of days before, disappeared the night of her birthday. They found her body months later in a local river. Her husband was suspected, but never convicted. The story was aired on “Unsolved Mysteries.”
Another co-worker whom I had become good friends with went to the Phillipines to try to salvage her marriage to her husband, who was stationed there. He hired his girlfriend’s brother to kill her. She was stabbed to death.
I don’t know anyone personally, but one of my older brothers knew Jesse James Hollywood.
Geez, Monster, that guy looks like half the male student population from my high school.
In fact, the creepiest thing about this thread is the posts that say “He seemed like a real nice guy, was totally normal.” Some posters or their family members even dated them for months. But then the poster discovers that they’ve committed some unspeakable crime.
It makes me wonder just how these people manage to hide it!
Criminals I have known?
Shoot just look where I live. Our area is famous for some pretty high profile folks looking to hide out.
I drank lots of beer with international spy Christopher Boyce, though we called him Jim. (Falcon and the Snowman).
Used to argue frequently in the bar with Randy Weaver and once got a “get out of Jail Free card” from him when he was running for sheriff of our county. (Ruby Ridge fame).
There are a few others who I think I’ll decline to mention since they are still on the loose and I don’t want to piss 'em off, or are too close to getting out of prison.
First, a Shipmate in the Navy, a friendly, witty, very intelligent guy. He held popular parties at his place, drank excellent beer, and smoke top-quality cigars. He was also a child mollester - His own child. Scum. He nearly didn’t survive the crew finding out, as we all doted on his kids, and were all plenty pissed. He’s still doing Military/Federal time (His crimes took place in military housing, on a military base), and that’s probably the only reason he’s still alive: Military prison is tightly controlled.
Next, a child abuser in the Navy. I won’t call him a “Shipmate”, 'cause I never knew him until he’d been charged. This vicious scum punched his girlfriend’s baby in the belly, causing the child to have to have ~3 feet of intestine removed. He wound-up under my supervision while awaiting his trial by civil authorities. I had to put him on solitary detail to keep him alive. I had him picking trash from the verges of the abandoned airstrip for 10 hours a day, for several months, while an armed sailor kept watch in a truck idling along behind him. The guard was there to make sure the prisoner stayed alive, not to stop escapes. This guy was also smart, charming, and personable. Scum. He disappeared into New Jersey’s criminal justice system, and I have no idea if he still lives, or what his sentence was.
Third, a thief, while stationed in Philadelphia. He’d been disposing of Gov’t property to local scrap yards illegally, and pocketting the money. Mind you, it was scrap, and it wasn’t much, but it sure as hell wasn’t his! He found his way under my supervision also, and wound-up cooperating with NCIS and the FBI, allowing them to sting some really big-time thieves. This one made the papers, as one of the people they nabbed had illegally sold-off functioning aircraft engines and the complete equippage necessary to create a M.A.S.H. unit. He didn’t get too bad a deal, but did do some limited Federal time. Nice guy, just thoughtless. Smart enough to do the right thing and 'fess-up immediately when caught.
Locked-up any number of wife-beaters while in the Nav, and a few husband-beaters too. Turned the SP & DoDPD loose on the Enlisted Club a couple of times, including once having to call in the military working dogs to clear the place.
Girl I was close friends with in highschool when down for drug dealing. Cute, no, scratch that: Hot! She wound-up loosing custody of her kids when she went up the river. Last heard from, she was working the drive-thru at McDonalds.
I have a cousin who is currently being held for murder. A 14 year old girl was found dead at a racetrack outside of town. Two other guys were arrested with him, one of whom was also charged with murder. The trial is supposed to be sometime this summer.
When I was in high school, there was a guy I had met who shot another kid to death over a drug deal. The kid’s mother had just lost her husband several months before and had no family left. The killer is now serving 80 years in prison.
My grandfather: blew a woman’s head off around 1954.
My aunt: killed her own husband and said it had been an accident while “cleaning the gun”. She was completely acquitted.
My cousin (daughter of aunt): was released from prison two weeks ago after a 4 1/2 year sentence for cocaine possession and B&E.
A friend I grew up with married a stripper. A client in the club made passes at the stripper in front of the husband (the stripper also happened to be recently pregnant by the husband). The husband became enraged, followed the man home with the intent to rob him, and wound up stabbing him to death with a kitchen knife. He is serving life in prison. My friend’s little boy is probably five now.
One of my former students is serving time for dealing heroine, and another is serving for the molestation of a mentally retarded boy in the school bathroom.
Let’s see:
When I was in first grade, a group of older kids used to pick on one of my friends. I stood up to them in a little kid “Quit picking on my friend! Leave him alone, what did he ever do to you?” kind of way. They laughed and were so amused by it, they turned to other kids to pick on. When I was in high school, one of them was sentenced to life in prison for being the go between for the arranged murder of a local preacher’s wife. The preacher and the two killers were also all convicted and sent up.
My grandmother’s neighbor - who helped us do odd jobs at her house and was very friendly with my father, uncles, and myself - got jealous when he thought his much younger girlfriend was cheating on him. So he went to her house and shot her to death in the bathtub, while her little girl was in another room. Life in prison for him. Shortly after his arrest, the victim’s male neighbor, who had a crush on her, claimed he heard voices tormenting him coming from her house and burned it down.
One of my better friends in high school, who was very religious and planned to become a minister, was arrested along with another guy from his church for molesting a 12-year old boy about a year after graduation. They both pleaded to lesser charges and did about three years. Don’t know where he is now.
My father and uncle were childhood friends with Tommy Arthur. He’s well known in Alabama for a contract killing he carried out on the husband of a woman he was working for while on work release. When convicted, he requested and recieved the death penalty because it gave him greater access to appeals and legal materials to prove his innocence. He always claimed he was set up by the police. He was a guest on one of Geraldo Rivera’s syndicated specials back in the 1980s.
Matthew Solomon Went to High School with this guy. Had the same circle of friends, though I can’t say I knew him real well. Don’t read that page if you’re squeamish, or if you believe Long Island, NY to be a safe haven from the evils of NYC.
Well, my story is a little different.
I was an assistant manager at a major pizza chain in 92 and the other assistant manager, who is also a good friend of mine, hired a guy named David. I got to do the training-paperwork stuff. While going over the application I notice that he had been in prison for second degree murder. I was, well, really upset about the hire. Turns out I was wrong.
David and I ended up being pretty good friends. After a little bit I figured out that David would do any job and do it right. Except, when he was the only cook on the line he screwed up alot of orders. It took a day or so but I figured out that he couldn’t read very well. That night I went out for a beer with David and got the whole story.
It turns out that David was from a small town in New Mexico. While growing up he got picked on alot because he was small, full grown he was 5’6. Being in a small town the bullies always went to the same school with David. In his senior year during metal shop his biggest antagonist slammed David in the back. David, who had just turned 18, picked up the first thing he found and turned and hit the guy in the head. He picked up a hammer. He killed the guy. Since he was 18 he was tried as an adult. He was found guilty, obviously, and spent 12 years in the NM state penn.
David admitted that he did the crime but thought his lawyers screwed up because they never meantioned the abuse he went through before. I agreed with him on that. He also really regretted what happened. Hell, he cried about it. He also told me that he could barely read. He also told me some other really nasty stuff. David lived through the Sante Fe prison riot, the worst prison riot in American history. He saw a guy put a blow torch to another guys head. He also said, though not in detail, that he’d been violated in prison because he wasn’t a big guy.
After that I got David into a reading program and did everything I could to help the guy. Regrettably it did not turn out well. In prison he got AIDS. About 9 months after he started working he got too sick to work and we lost touch. He died about a year later and I found out six months after his funeral.
Slee
Well, I now work as a chaplain in a maximum security jail so I know hundreds and hundreds of criminals including some of the most hardcore and famous cases in Northern California…none of which I can mention for reasons of confidentiality.
I did had lunch with Manson family ringleader and attempted presidential assasin Squeaky Fromme while touring a federal women’s prison in the mid-eighties. She was one of the guides of our group of criminology students and I ate lunch right next to her and we had a nice little chat.
On a more personal note, one of my best friends in high school has a brother that ended up doing some hard time. He was feuding with another guy over a woman and got badly beaten up, grabbed a gun and started blasting way. He shot the guy four times but unfortunately shot the girl as well who was trying to pull them apart. The guy died, and the girl ended up paralyzed. He might have gotten off with self-defense except for the sight of the girl being wheeled into the court room, which got him twenty five to life. It was a very sad situation as he was a basically good hearted if not particularly smart guy.
Not only did I work for the company that was bilked here, but I knew this guy!!!
And it’s classic. He was the sweetest person you could meet.
The most criminal of all the criminals I’ve known is Rod Hasson, though I want to stress that he was a friend of my brother, not me. Rod and two friends of his raped and murdered a woman they met in a club.
The interesting part is, the rape/murder took place in March, 1992. Rod was an usher at my brother’s wedding in December, 1994.
In 1995, the conscience of one of Rod’s compatriots got the better of him, and he turned the other two in. Rod is in the New Mexico State Penitentiary as we speak.
The answer has to depend on whether you mean convicted, acquitted (but guilty), never tried, or never arrested. In which case, I’ve known at least one of each. None of them were ‘friends’, but more accurately described as classmates, co-workers, or casual acquaintences. I’ve known:
2 rapists
3 statutory rapists
1 armed robber
2 burglars
3 prostitutes
4 weapons violators (illegal firearms)
numerous people guilty of assault and battery
numerous shoplifters
untold numbers of speeders
I went to high school in Dresden, OH (home to the Longaberger Basket corporation and also home to the World’s Largest Basket), and one of the kids I used to hang out with, attempted to set fire to the World’s Largest Basket one time.
Apparently it had been treated with some kind of flame-retardant chemical, so he only succeeded in creating a huge scorch mark.
first of all it makes me think how much more deserving i am then these folks…:mad: but hey at least ive never been on the recieving end of them…
secondly, I went to a “Gifted school” in highschool. A guy at the school was caught making and selling pipe bombs, some of which were used to blow up mailboxes, charged w disruption of postal system, etc. At least, then we were no longer “That school where all the Smart People go”, we were the “School where the Pipe Bomb Guy went to”…some improvement. :rolleyes:
Of the people I know who were caught…
[list=1]
[li]A biker friend of mine, that goes by the name of Butcher, got his road name by cutting the fingers off a guys hand in a knife fight. He then wore the fingers around his neck as a necklace until the cops took them. He wound up geting 5 felony convictions for everything from Grand Theft Auto to robbery and drug dealing. He Killed a man in prison who was attempting to force his affections on him(Butcher isnt a very big dude). He has been off drugs and out of prison for aroun 15 years or so now, and is one of the nicest people you would ever want to meet.[/li][li]A former friend of my is in the federal pen for trying to blow up a chemical plant in texas. [/li][li]A friend of a friend came over to my house after my dog died. He had a puppy and needed to find a new home for it. Turned out he was a serial killer. He killed his father, then left him in a recliner and continued to mow his fathers lawn and pay his bills. He then killed his cousin/sister (his family tree didnt branch much), and stuffed her in the trunk of a car for about a year. It is believed that she was pregnant at the time with his kid. Next, he tried to murder another friend of mine, but she got away, and he went to jail. His Ex wife bailed him out, afterwhich he proceeded to shoot and kill her and her children. [/li][li]A guy I used to bowl with in Jr. High wound up as a teacher who was dorking one of his students, and then killed her.[/li][/list=1]
I worked in a maximum security prison for four years.
My mother is from northern New Jersey, and has first cousins that are deeply involved in organised crime. I don’t know them particularly well (we were never very close to that branch of the family, for probably obvious reasons) but I do remember playing with my wee second cousins at my great-granny’s funeral in 1979 and being astounded to learn ten years later that those cute little boys were now Mafia drug-runners. My mother says that’s why she likes The Sopranos so much, it reminds her of home :rolleyes:
I also know a number of Irish republicans who’ve broken laws and/or done time (the two don’t necessarily go hand in hand) for their cause, though I wouldn’t put them in the “criminal” category.