I’ve known thousands.
Such as?
I went to high school - and graduated with - Steven Oken, who raped and murdered two women in Maryland, then went up to Maine and raped and murdered another. He was eventually executed by the state of Maryland.
–SMM
Heh. Well, I grew up in a very small town. I knew absolutely everyone in school growing up, and the kids in my class very, very well. Although there were two elementary schools in the county, we had one middle and one high school, so by sixth grade we were all on the road together, joined the hips until graduation. Kevin, who was in the higher academic classes, as I was, was one of those people. A little odd, maybe, but as I told people who asked me about it later, certainly no one whom you’d look back and say, “yeah, I could see where he’d grow up to be a double-murderer.”
In March 1985, an older couple was found brutally murdered in their home. There was an arrest a month later and a man charged who was eventually released. In June a 21-year-old college student — Kevin, whom I’d known since at least the sixth grade — from my town was arrested. The following summer he went on trial for murder.
I was back in my hometown, working as editor of the weekly paper. I’d been out of college a year, and was living by myself. All day I’d attend the trial, where the gruesome details poured out — amputated fingers, how the couple was brutally killed with a hatchet.
In the end, based on evidence that Kevin was under extreme pressure from a fraternity brother drug dealer for whom he was dealing coke, he was convicted of manslaughter. The story went that Kevin snorted up all the profits and we unable to pay back the drug-dealing frat brother. Scared, he turned to the couple, family friends, for money to repay his drug debt. When they refused, he snapped.
I’d listen to all the testimony all day, and then sit alone in my darkened office at night, writing up all these hideous details. Then I’d get in my car and drive back to my apartment, where I lived alone. Scaredy cat that I am, it was nerve-wracking!
After his conviction, I sent Kevin a letter asking if he’d let me interview him for the paper from prison. He never responded. I think he got out after serving 20 years (I think). People were incensed that he got two concurrent terms for the lesser charge of manslaughter. I have no idea where he is now, but I assume he’s out and living somewhere far from where we grew up.