One of my best friends in high school went drag racing on a public road one night, hit a family head on, killed everyone but a little girl. We all lost touch with him while he was in prison. I saw him once after he got out, in front of a movie theater. He had that thousand yard stare. I didn’t even think about talking to him. What would I have said – how’ve you been?
I’ve got a family member who went to jail for molesting children. He got out on probation then fled the state. God knows where he is now. We sure don’t.
One kid I grew up with shot both his parents to death in their front yard one morning. He meant to stop his father from continuing to beat his mother, but killed his mother by accident. Did it right with the second shot. He was such a sweet guy. They sent him to live with his grandmother – a just decision if ever I’ve seen one.
I let myself get talked into <violent armed crime for money> as a young teenager to help out a friend whose girlfriend was about to have a baby. No one was hurt, thank God. He wound up in prison within a month anyway. (Statute of limitations is long over by now, so I don’t think I’m breaking any rules by admitting this, but just in case…)
There were acquaintances I had growing up. One screwed up a guy for life by beating him in the head with a piece of pipe because he owed him money. Another brought a gun to school and shot an administrator in the bus yard – there were lots of rumors but I never really knew why. And that was before school shootings were cool (I wish I could say I was kidding about that).
Jesus, there’s so much more if I want to think about it. Nobody seemed to give a fuck back then. So many people went bad.
Really nice family: mom, dad, my friend and her older brother. I played over at their house once in a while, though we usually played at my house. We were close in the goofy way kids are.
One day a lot of police cars swarmed over to their house. My friend wasn’t home; she and her father were out…somewhere for the morning. I knew something was wrong mostly because my mother was so upset and trying not to show it.
My friend’s mother took her son into the basement, killed her son with a shotgun and then shot herself.
My friend and her father moved away immediately, and I never saw her again.
It was very weird. Years later–at least 15-- I was invited over to another friend’s house for a party. Ever get that itchy, “something’s vaguely familiar” feeling? It was the same house. My new friend’s family had bought it after the murder/suicide. It looked a lot different inside, and kids don’t pay much attention to furnishings. When things finally clicked into place, and that the party was being held in the basement, I couldn’t get out of there fast enough. Stupid, but it really rattled me.
As mentioned in other threads around here, my mother went to high school with John Wayne Gacy, and yes, I met him before he was arrested.
And… this person’s sister is my godmother:
Pretty sad because he molested the son of his cousin, the molester’s mom and the victim’s grandmother are sisters. That must be hard on their relationship, i don’t really know.
I don’t have any stories aside from that. Im sure there is alot of underground violence, but i never notice it.
Basically, he killed a woman, and set fire to her car, but no one knew he was the culprit at the time.
A month or so later, he showed up at the restaurant, planning to kill a certain one of the employees. He ended up actually killing the guy this employee was traveling with.
Then he went on a road trip and committed a couple of murders in North Carolina.
And he probably would have gotten away, had it not been for the drag caused by those ears.
Two are now dead and the others’ victims won’t/wouldn’t testify. I’ve posted at length about it enough that by now some folks are surely tiring of it, but if anyone who doesn’t remember is curious and can’t find the posts in a search, feel free to drop me email (iampunha at netscape dot net) and I’ll give some basic details.
Just remembered…
I met a guy–casual, social stuff–who was convicted of murdering his wife, then disposing of her body by dismembering it and tossing the parts into the Mississippi River. It was a big case locally (James Klindt), but became a landmark in forensics.
(All together now…“But he looked perfectly normal.”)
I went to a very small high school, a graduating class of about 100, so everybody knew everybody. There was a small group of boys that I wasn’t friends with, but knew by name and sight and could have told you a little about (“plays on the baseball team,” “was my partner in tennis last semester,” etc). On the evening of our senior prom, they went down to the river (about a mile from my house) for an after-party. Somebody who owned the riverfront property they were on had been out camping that evening, and they were being very loud and obnoxious - plus, of course, they were trespassing on his land. When he came to their bonfire to confront them about it, they beat him to death with a baseball bat.
I don’t know what happened after that - they never went back to finish school and their trial wasn’t until after I’d moved away for college.
There was a nice family at church. Older parents, with several of their children also attending Mass at St. Pat’s. They were well-to-do folks, and if the parish ever needed anything, they’d be the first to chip in. The husband was mysteriously murdered at work. Shot in the back of the head. It wasn’t until it looked like they might indict the son that the mother came forward and confessed. She spent a couple years in prison, and returned to our parish for a while. Her family (and the husband’s own siblings) said they didn’t blame her. It turns out the “nice” father was verbally abusive and overbearing to the entire family and particularly the mother.
This isn’t really a big story, but back in my junior year of high school on some party weekend some guy that went to the college I go to now was drunk off his ass and was trying to go to a friend’s house that he’d never been to before. He gets to the door of this place and starts banging on it like a dumbass and thinks that his friends had locked him out, from what the owner of the place said he heard from the guy’s screaming. I vaguely knew the guy who lived there, he was the father of my old high school history teacher and he was a chaparone on a couple of trips my freshman year. The guy started banging on the door loudly, and I think broke the screen door. Well the old guy shot him in the chest with a shotgun from the door at point blank range. He had called the cops when the guy started banging on the door but they took another couple of minutes to get to the scene.
I wasn’t around for a few months, but whatever happened, but he didn’t go to jail mostly due to his age and something about the police response time, from what I heard.
A kid who was a coulple years behind me in school, and who also happened to be in my boy scout troop growing up, and who furthermore had the reputation for having a screw loose even then, was the trigger man in a workplace massacre a couple years ago.
People to whom I’ve been very close have been victims of molestation, rape, and horrible domestic violence; in all those cases I knew the perpetrator.
My college roommate was killed by a drunk driver.
And a relative was Mr. High-Powered Wall Street Broker Guy until he got busted for something or other involving money and did federal time in one of those minimum-security pens where you get to play tennis.
In general, I guess I’ve known more victims than perps.
One of my idiot cousins somehow got involved in a murder a few years ago.
A young girl (about 14 or 15) was found dead, beaten to death by a rock or some other type of blunt instrument. Her body had been left in an abandoned race track and exposed to the elements (including a hard rain) for several days, which destroyed significant amounts of evidence. My cousin and one of his buddies took off and were found by police a couple days later in another state.
Literally years went by as extradition problems were sorted out and court proceedings slowly took place. Cousin finally plea bargained and got 25 years in prison, his roommate got 45 in a sepeate plea bargain.
Because no trial ever happened, the exact circumstances of the girl’s death are still a mystery. Apparently some drinking was involved, but most other details are sketchy. Just a sad story all around.
The last time I saw my cousin was at a wedding maybe 2 or 3 months before the murder. It is scary to have things like this happen so close to home.
A lawyer who practiced in a nearby community (I only knew him in passing from seeing him in court) was convicted of helping one of his wealthy clients kill his (the client’s) wife after she asked for a divorce, to protect his assets. The two of them got caught dumping the body. Now, that’s a full service law firm!! The attorney who represented him at trial later got convicted of trafficking in cocaine (not a terribly hienous crime, just an interesting side note) and died in prison.
A guy who belonged to my parent's church was murdered in what looked like a random break-in gone bad. It was later discovered that they guy's wife was having an affair, and she and her boyfriend had murdered him. They both pled guilty and went to prison.
My sister’s ex-boyfriend spent five hours (on and off) attacking his wife with a knife. Smart guy (nuclear engineer), and also funny and nice; Mr. S and I had dinner with him once a few years after he and my sister broke up. He got something like 40 years for attempted murder. (Way to go, pal.) It was a pretty high-profile case in Milwaukee last year.
In college I worked with a guy who later killed his wife by pouring Drano down her throat. I think of that every time I pass the domestic abuse center that’s named for her. He creeped me out even back then.
Another college job: After I got laid off, a guy showed up at the factory and shot another guy dead for fooling around with his wife. I don’t recall the shooter well, but the victim and always been nice to me.
Around 5 years ago one of my regular customers killed his girlfriend and then himself. No one’s ever offered any reasoning for this. He was in the bar the day before. I waited on him, gave him a cigarette, and even commented to others that he was in an exceptionally good mood.
Around 5 months ago another regular killed his (seperated) wife and then himself. He also shot her new boyfriend, who survived. He (the shooter) was in the bar 4 days before and was celebrating because his cancer was in remission.
Another customer is serving 19 years for killing his neighbor. His neighbor came to his house to break up a fist-fight btwn the killer and the killer’s brother-in-law. The killer stabbed him in the chest, and then in the eye. I’m happy this guys in prison for so long because it guarentees I’ll never have to see him again. He was hands down the worst customer I’ve ever dealt with.
A good friend of mine had a three year old son that was the victim of a murder/suicide by his father, in one of those nasty custody battles that never happens to anyone you know, until it does. Oddly enough, she had a conceived another son by her new boyfriend a week before, though she wasn’t aware of it till five months later.
