I know 2 of them.
The first one is an SOB that murdered one of my best friends. He slammed a free weight into the back of her head and left her bleeding and unconscious. They think she died shortly after as she was not found for 2 days.
The second is a guy I was friends with as a teen. He’s still serving his time for murder, he’s got 3 years until the parole board. He’s already done 22 years. It was a stupid incident that happened between him and 3 other guys. Unfortunately, one died.
I used to know a lot more when I worked as a C.O. But that was a long, long time ago.
In jr. high I was friends with a girl who grew up and had three kids and killed them in a fire. She used to stay at my house and I at hers. She lived with her grandfather and seemed normal in every way. I don’t know what went wrong once she grew up. Here’s a link to a court doc regarding the case: http://www.in.gov/judiciary/opinions/archive/03040401.ehf.html
And this guy who used to bounce for me at private parties kidnapped and killed a liquor store clerk in Muncie, Indiana several years ago. It’s really creepy to think that I was alone with him many times, with large amounts of cash on me. I remember him stealing $20 one time, but I didn’t confront him about it. He was close with my best friend and her boyfriend at the time, and came to their apartment only hours before the murder. They didn’t answer the door because they were having some alone time. But after they found out what he did they felt semi-guilty because they thought they could have prevented it.
The same best friend’s brother was shot and killed, and her step-son’s mother was strangled to death and left in a ditch. No one was convicted in either case.
I have a cousin who appeared on America’s Most Wanted. I’m not going to give any names, but the story is essentially this.
This cousin was adopted. A few years after the adoption, my aunt and uncle have two natural sons. This cousin was always jealous of his two adopted brothers and would beat them up and get his friends to help. The cousin was in trouble with the law frequently as a young man, usually on violence or firearms related charges. Some years later, he fell in with a white supremacist group and joined some of the other members in beating a young man to death in a convenience store parking lot. He’s currently serving something in the neighborhood of 25 years in a prison.
I never knew this cousin very well, him being 15ish years older than I am, but still it’s jarring to realize that (even if not by blood) I’m related to this man.
I’ve represented a few, but never got to know them too well.
My husband, on the other hand, went to high school with the “freeway sniper” in Columbus, Charles McCoy. He shot at cars on I-270 for a while, and one of his bullets ended up killing a woman. The story made national news, and for a while we were getting calls from CNN for interviews because Patrick was the president of their class. Several of the “stock video footage” shots of Chuck showed him playing for running back of their high school, with my husband blocking downfield for him.
Yep, I do/did. We were in a psychology class together in college, and studied together several times at the library and at her apartment. She was talking about a guy she’d met on the internet, at that time. Soon after he moved in with her and they got married. Eventually, he left her for another woman. She showed up at his new apartment one evening and shot him once in the front and once in the back, then drove home and called the police.
Apparently I once knew a murderer and his victim. I don’t remember him at all (from what my parents say I was probably 5 the last time I saw him before he was sent away to school) but I do remember his victim - his mother. They were neighbors when I was young.
You know how people will occasionally remark if so-and-so turns up dead no one will wonder why? Well, no one wondered. She badly neglected and abused her kid, so no one was terribly surprised that he killed her when he was in his late teens. My parents feel bad for him, not her. sigh.
When I was in college, one of my roommates had a friend from her home town who was a regular visitor to our apartment. (He was a freshman; we were sophomores.) He seemed like a perfectly affable guy. I was really shocked when my roommate told me her friend, when he was a juvenile – maybe 13? – had in a fit of rage blown his TV set to smithereens with a shotgun, then shot and killed his father when his father asked, “What the hell are you doing?” or words to that effect.
A kid I grew up with (a knuckle-dragging troglydite) went to prison for murder after a house robbery gone wrong. He and two other morons broke in in the middle of the night. The owners, an eldery couple, woke up and they were beaten to death.
Yes, although he was only found guilty of manslaughter. Does that count?
I’ve spoken about him before. The connection between us is a little obscure. His name is Dennis, and he used to date my brother’s best mate’s mother… got that? My brother and his mate got along with Dennis like a house on fire, and continued to hang out with him long after he and the mother split. I met him on several occasions during the 90s and remember visiting him at his house with my brother. Always found him a likeable, easy-going sort of character.
Years later, police dug up his backyard and found the body of his first wife buried under his shed. He’d killed her in 1981. He claimed he’d acted in self defense, and was sentenced to four and a half years in jail. Link to an article about the crime.
Ditto here, my job introduced me to about 2 dozen over the years. In my private life I’ve known three. One was a distant relative who was executed a few years back. His accomplice/co-defendant served his time and goes to church with my parents - He competes in a rodeo I help run in the summer. He’s a good guy, despite his ugly past. Third, my niece’s husband’s father murdered his girlfriend.
I went to school with this guys sister, and met him once or twice. I also shopped at their dads store.
I did not put two and two together until I started reading the book then I went :eek: .
I became fairly good friends with a girl during my senior year of high school. We spent most of the year sitting in the back of metal shop class talking for an hour a day. Just after graduation, she and her boyfriend went on a cross-country killing spree, stabbing at least 5 people, several of them fatally.
I tried googling her but cannot find any details online 20 years later.
No, I just wasn’t properly caffeinated when I wrote it. :o He got fired after I didn’t work at that place anymore. Sorry for the confusion. He was creepy enough to be a zombie, though!
A former SO’s brother shot his other brother to death as kids in a fit of rage. The brother who did the shooting was placed into the care of grandparents until adulthood and became a productive member of society to the last of my knowledge.
Not exactly someone that I personally knew, but my ex’s brother was doing life for murder 2K miles away (that’s why I didn’t really know him in person) when we were together. He died there about 5 years ago.
My cousin’s son is doing time for a murder during the course of a robbery at this time.
I also have a nephew who is awaiting trial on a murder charge stemming from a bar fight.
IME, homicide is probably nearly as hard on the families of the perpetrators as the families of the victims.
This girl was in an extra-curricular thing with me (also, we went to the same school), and her dad accompanied the team to a couple events. A few months after the last trip he was on, he and the girl’s mother got in a fight, and he shot her in the head. The girl, who was in the house at the time, ran next door to our coach’s house, and called the cops. It was a big story around town because it is a very small town that hadn’t had a murder in over 30 years, I think.
The girl had a rough time of it afterwards, as you might imagine, and started acting out. Last I knew, she had pulled herself back together and was getting on with life.
My sister’s ex-boyfriend is in Memphis, doing two life sentences for double murder. It’s unclear if he actually pulled the trigger, but he was clearly involved. There were three sets of prints on the gun, including his, but the DA didn’t seem particularly interested in calling the ower of the gun or the third person who was there even as witnesses, which struck me as weird. He took a plea bargain to avoid the chair if found guilty.
ETA: I met him several times. The guy was a total prick, wannabe gangsta, who bought my little sis knuckle dusters with her name on them. From my sister’s PoV, his incarceration is the best thing that could have happened to her.
Yeah, I know one (again, someone convicted of a lesser crime, but still). A gal I know is serving time for causing the death of her young son in a DUI accident. She was unhurt.
As noted in several posts above, many of these folks went on after their crimes to become productive members of society. That makes sense, as my husband the prosecutor often said- most people only have one murder in them. It is a crime of revenge, or passion, or incredible circumstance, or something like that. They will probably never be a danger to anyone else.
