Not too long ago I found out that a man I went to highschool with killed a man. It was kind of weird to find that out.
“Maniac Miller” (I made up that name, but we called him something similar) was always a bully and a tough guy. The wrestling coach thought it was kind of funny, allowed it in wrestling practice, even kind of encouraged it. He was at least two years older than I and his brother was in some of my classes.
He was from a “bad” family, and I don’t doubt that there was neglect and abuse in his home (although I don’t know that there was abuse.)
He was in trouble with the law very quickly after graduating. Theft and dealing. It was a very small town, so it wasn’t something we were used to.
He got out of jail and found religion for a time. Went back and made restitution for as many of the thefts as he could remember.
I don’t know when he slid back into his old ways, we weren’t friends and I left the area.
Anyway, apparently he went to a bar and asked for them to cash a check. The bartender told him that he was not allowed to do so. Maniac Miller pulled out a knife and slashed the man’s throat.
People kill people every day. I know this isn’t unique, but it felt weird to me that someone I knew did something so permanent.
I grew up in a poor rural area and know way more than my fair share. The most notable and hurtful was one of my best childhood friends. We used to watch the Dukes of Hazard on Friday night and brag about the Trans-Ams we were going to buy when we got older. He moved away later and developed a gambling addiction after high school.
He racked up huge debts and came up with the great idea to stalk the casino for a big winner and he finally found one that was also stupid enough to take tens of thousands of winnings home in cash. My friend followed him home, took the money in his driveway, told him to get down on his knees, and then then casually blew the man’s head off. He was up for the death penalty and probably would have gotten it except his father made up this crazy alibi and stuck to it no matter what. He is serving life without parole in Angola.
Recent developments strongly suggest that he was actually an undetected serial killer for a while and he has confessed to some other murders. I am not sure what will happen with that.
Back when I was a kid my family befriended a teenage kid named Eric, who was from the projects. (My grandmother’s farm was nestled in a hollow which was within walking distance of the projects.) My dad kind of took Eric under his wing because he was a really sweet kid who obviously had it rough at home. Anytime we’d come to see grandma, here would come Eric to come help feed the goats, etc. He has the first black kid I’d ever gotten to know well.
In any event, a few years later, Eric was shot to death after shooting a police officer to death. It was heart breaking for everyone.
My sister had a friend in high school named Amy. I knew who her parents were, though I never spoke to them. A few years after high school, her father snapped one night and beat her mother to death with a hammer. The father later got off using the insanity defense, got re-married shortly thereafter, then then died of a heart attack about 3 years after the event. Poor Amy.
I know dozens of murderers. Working in a prison gives one a lot of opportunities to meet a wide variety of individuals.
Frankly, they run the gamut of personality types. One was a successful businessman with a loving family and great responsibility in his community and church before his crime, and he’s always a helpful and pleasant person when I see him. Another is a sullen, angry, demanding, self-pitying pile of s**t. And the others are usually somewhere in between.
I won’t go into a whole lot of detail, but I know (knew) two. I had an uncle on my father’s side of the family who shot and killed his girlfriend, served 10 years, and went on to lead a good life until he died of a heart attack at age 40. The second is my step-father’s brother who is currently serving a life sentence for murder. I don’t know any of the details of the crime, but my Mom and step-dad go and visit him a couple times a year.
Well, only sort of indirectly. My best friend in elementary school/junior high suffered the murder of her older step-sister around 6th-7th grade. It seemed to be one of those random truck stop raping and killings, but just about a year ago, my friend’s father was convicted. I met him a handful of times, don’t really remember much about him. That’s about as close as I’ve ever come.
A childhood acquaintance, the next-door neighbor of my best friend, shot and killed a child for touching his car. His roommate, another acquaintance and former coworker, shot the child’s friend and crippled him. The first acquaintance came from an upper-class family, a rather exclusive neighborhood, that seemed to spawn a lot of gangsta wannabes. I was really weirded out by the closing of ranks that occurred among the upper-class parents when the murder occurred-- no one wanted to admit that a bad child could come out of their group, therefore the child who was murdered must have been at fault.
A female relative shot and killed her father after nearly two decades of continuous sexual abuse came into the open and her close relatives pretty much disowned her for making waves.
A neighbor of my ex-in-laws killed his children and girlfriend over the course of a quiet weekend, then shot and killed himself on his front lawn.
Guy who used to work for grew up in east LA, call him Dan. He moved up here to get away from the gangs and was doing pretty good. He brought his younger brother, who was mildly retarded, up to live w/ him. The brother got involved w/ a meth dealer and Dan confronted the dealer, who pulled a piece. Dan had his own gun and killed the guy and buried him in the boonies. Dan later confided in his GF. Several years go by and the cops arrest Dan, telling him they had found the body and traced it back to him. Dan tried stonewalling them, but they threatened to charge his GF as an accessory after, so he cut a deal for manslaughter to protect the GF. Turns out she’s the one who told the cops after an argument they had had. He did 7-8 years. I saw him once, or twice after he got out. His resolve to go straight was pretty much gone. Don’t know what happened to him after that, but I’d bet it wasn’t good.
Probably. I used to work with (later interviewed for another job at another company with) the husband in this case. He doesn’t go to trial until March, but the evidence is extremely solid so there is almost no chance he’ll get off. I always knew the guy to be very nice, very gentle, and just an all-around good guy. It took a while before the evidence came out and he was arrested so prior to that I and some friends who worked with him were almost sure of his innocence. When the evidence was revealed, though, we all changed our opinions. The guy is guilty.
Probably. I worked with a guy about 9 years ago who was the prime suspect in the disappearance and presumed murder of a park ranger. The case was still open when he rolled his car while drunk and died. The body of the park ranger has never been found.
This guy was seriously creepy. He later got fired for stealing a customer’s credit card number and using it for phone sex at work! :eek:
Went to school with a guy (he was in special education, and I don’t think he knew that there would be consequences to what he was doing, but he knew well enough that he wasn’t supposed to do it) who helped his friend and his underage girlfriend hack an old woman up with an axe, and put her in her car and set it on fire. They wanted money for the underage girlfriend to get an abortion. They got sixty dollars out of the whole thing.
I had many run-ins with another fellow I went to school with (for about 10 years) whose hobby could be said to be rape. When he was 12 he raped a girl whose family immediately left town. I’ve had to get an adult to stop this guy from killing an asthmatic kid who couldn’t breathe while this POS beat the hell out of him. The kid was 10, the aggressor/rapist bastard was 17. He got convicted of another rape in there somewhere too. Last year, this guy raped and smothered an elderly woman. The cops took him down at a Waffle House. This guy is the worst POS I’ve ever known, and I hope he gets a taste of his own medicine in jail. I’ve never seen him be nice to anyone, and I think the world would be a better place without him.
My first husband had a friend, call him Bob. Bob had three kids; two boys and a girl. The oldest boy, call him Tom was a mean one - even as a child, he was mean. A few years ago this boy killed my ex’s cousin. The circumstances are very weird:
Tom was in jail or prison(I forget which). Bob took advantage of this situation and began dating Tom’s girlfriend. (I know, WTF? There’s twenty-something years’ age difference.) Tom gets out of prison and goes hunting his dad. Ex’s cousin was fishing down at the river when Tom comes by looking for Bob. Tom is all strung out on meth or something and shoots the cousin. I figured that he was in a blind, drug-enhanced rage. The next weird part is that he loaded the body up in his truck, and went to another guy’s house asking for help to bury the body - this other guy was another cousin of the dead guy - sheesh.
My ex was supposed to go fishing that night as well - good thing he didn’t !
I used to work at the local community college with a guy named Lloyd Riddle who was convicted of committing a murder for hire, and also for killing his daughter’s boyfriend, and remains the only suspect in the disappearance of one of his tennants. We had lunch together fairly often, and he was always trying to sell me guns. At work he was repeatedly warned against bringing guns to work, really amazing that he was never actually disciplined for it. I think the administration was scared of him – rightfully so, apparently.
Eons ago, a friend hooked me up on a blind date with a guy. There was no spark or anything, and the fact that he took me to a Clint Eastwood movie didn’t help a lot, either. After the movie, we were talking, and he confessed that he really wasn’t supposed to be in Maryland (he’d driven up from Virginia) because he was out on bail, having been accused of being the hitman for another guy. For whatever reason, he didn’t go thru with it, then he ratted out the guy who hired him. Date ended shortly thereafter.
Two days later, friend called all in a panic telling me not to date the guy (oops - too late) and that was the last I heard for a long time.
Some months later, I got a letter from a guy in prison - apparently he changed his name after he snitched. And he found religion. He apologized to me, and that was the end of that. As far as I know, he’s it.
My next door neighbor. He was a few years younger than me, and as kids we played together, along with our respective siblings.
In his early twenties he was with a group of neighborhood guys who beat a local drug-dealer to death at the playground they all used to hang out at. (I doubt they intended to kill him at first.) Although others participated, he ended up taking the rap and doing six years for second-degree murder.
After he got out he rehabilitated himself. He got a decent job and has a wife and family. He occasionally stops by to visit my mother. I saw him on one such occasion.
There was a couple in my parish, older-middle-aged, well-to-do folks. Always willing to help out the parish’s homeless shelter or anything the parish needed. The husband turned up shot in the head. When the police started seriously looking at the adult son as a suspect, the wife confessed to killing him. She said he browbeat and verbally abused her and she just couldn’t take in any more. She went to prison for a couple years, then came back to the parish.