Ever know someone that committed an awful crime?

In My Humble Opinion
61

I worked in a tiny (36 beds) county jail for 18 months and met an interesting assortment of people. I did clerical work so I didn’t meet all the inmates.

One guy I had known socially for a couple of years. He was busted for a grow lab in his house. When his fingerprints are run, it turns out he was really an escaped murderer from Florida. By the time that was determined though he had already posted bond and skipped. He was eventually found & seved his time for us. On his release date, U. S. Marshals arrived with paperwork to pick him up. I was impressed, I’d never met Marshals before. Oddly enough he was a very intelligent and friendly man. Never a problem with him as an inmate.

Our detectives arrested an Irish Traveler when I was there and I got to meet their famous Mississippi lawyer, but I have forgotten his name. Damn.

I also met a girl who left her two babies in their car seats while she went into an apartment to party at 9 pm or so. Unfortunately for the two babies, she didn’t return to check on them until after noon the next day. She was kept heavily medicated by her shrink pre-trial, I wonder how she’s doing in prison.

62

A guy that was in a couple of my Chinese classes killed a guy two years ago by smashing his skull in from behind with The Club auto theft device. It was over a parking space. He seemed like nice guy, he even helped me on my homework once.

63

When I was around 8 years old, the man who lived next door murdered his wife. He was having an affair and wanted her out of the picture. Whatever happened to saying, “I want out of this relationship”?.

Anyway, he shot her and dumped the body in the river. He was evenutally arrested for the murder and served several years in prison. I don’t live in that town anymore, but when I visit, I still see him from time to time. He was always such a nice man to us kids. Who’d have thunk it?

64

I don’t know why I forgot this.

There was a girl I knew in grammar school, lived a couple of blocks away. Her mom found out her dad was cheating on her, went to where he worked and shot him dead where he sat.

65

:eek:

Wait, wait… Can I (PLEASE!) assume that the “they” in “they ended up killing him because he tried to grab the gun they were using” does NOT refer to the girl and the guy you rode the bus with? Because if so, how the hell did he get custody of their child after being involved in felony murder AND avoid going to jail with her, for at least as long if not longer???

66

When I lived in Bristol I was friends with this really cool guy who used to come round to my house to chat, smoke a bit of weed, write poetry and play backgammon (he taught me how to play). He was a really nice guy but he lived in St Paul’s, which is a notorious area of Bristol and is a predominantly black area. Now along with being black himself having this postal code is a serious handicap when it comes to getting employment (I wish it wasn’t so but that’s how it was) but he did all he could to better himself and not end up dealing crack on the streets like a good proportion of the residents there. One day he didn’t turn up at the usual time we got together and I couldn’t get hold of him on the phone, turns out he had gone to his sisters house to find her being threatened by her ex-boyfriend and got into a fight and wound up stabbing the guy in the neck with the knife he was threatening his sister with. He will get out later this year. It still upsets me to think about such a brilliant, nice person having his life ruined by this awful turn of events.

Another thing that happened that may or may not be considered to be an ‘awful’ crime was my cousin getting five years for importing half a million pounds worth of cocaine from Jamaica. She had gotten involved with these heavy guys from where she lived who half persuaded and half threatened her into flying to Jamaica, picking up a suitcase and walking the load through customs. She barley made it two steps from baggage claim before they busted her as she apparently fitted the precise description of the classic drugs mule; single female in her thirties, well dressed and on her way back from a very short stay in a notorious drug route country. It was a bizarre moment in my life when my Nan rang me up to tell me she was on TV on a show called ‘The Real Bad Girls’. She is now happily married with a kid but is still worried about reprisals as she gave evidence against the ringleaders for a lighter sentence and they jumped bail.

67

Another person I remember: When I was in 9th grade one of my schoolmates got pregnant, had the baby alone at home, and then drowned it in the toilet. I can’t remember what, if any, punishment she got.

68

My brothers little league coach killed his wife. She wouldn’t give him a divorce, and he paid some guy to run over her. He had “accidentally” shot her once before in a “hunting accident” and he had tried to hire someone to kill her once before. I never did understand why he didn’t just leave her or why she was so determined to stay married to the s.o.b.

69

I don’t know if it really counts as a crime, but my next door neighbors when I was a kid committed a double suicide. Or maybe a murder suicide. If there was a note, I never heard about it.

They were really weird people. They both worked night shift at a pizza parlor and we never saw them during the day - hence, my family called them “the Vampires”. We even had them listed in our rolodex under V. In retrospect, it seems clear that they were both heroin addicts, although I was too young to really get that.

Anyway, on some landmark anniversary of their meeting, they got a hotel for the weekend in San Francisco and he killed her, then himself. It was shocking to see that as a small note in the paper a couple days later. “Oh my god…it’s the Vampires!”

The kid who sat in front of me in 9th grade Spanish tried to rob a bank with an unloaded sawed off shotgun. There was a picture in the paper of him being arrested. Of course, it didn’t show his face but we all knew who it was. He was new and had been teased and bullied terribly. I never saw him again.

70

When I drove taxi, I had a partner who had done time for running a meth ring, and had not done time for a murder he committed.

71

A kid from my neighborhood is currently doing a life sentence for murder in Ohio. He and 2 accomplices broke into a house and were surprised to find an old lady at home. They beat her to death.

A kid of friends of my parents did several years in juvenile detention for dropping a bowling ball off an overpass, seriously wounding a driver.

72

I knew these guys in the service. Seemed like normal guys. No idea what turned em crazy.

73

Dude. Did that happen in the Melrose apartment complex, off Riverside? If so, a couple of my friends were there when it happened. (Luckily I was at work that night, or I woulda been too… @_@)

As for my fucked up acquaintances:
From about age 10-14 I lived down the street from this guy about 6 years older than me of whom all my neighbors were frightened to death. Looked like a typical skinhead, listened to bands called stuff like Cop Sodomy and Cannibal Corpse, owned & regularly used the Anarchists’ Cookbook, had a hairless rat as a pet, etc upon etc. He was weird, no doubt, but as far as I knew perfectly harmless-- he came over a few times, played football with my little brothers & I, pushed us on the swings, brought his rat for us (them) to pet; he even taught me how to smoke a cigarette properly (heh). So one day he gets pissed off at this little 14-year-old aspiring gangster for accidentally hitting him with a paperball on the schoolbus (high school & jr. high kids share buses in bass-ackwards Arkansas), and they exchange some words, and it escalates over the course of a week or so to the point that they have to be seated mandatorily at opposite ends of the bus. Things seem to calm down… then one day as we’re stopping at the kid’s stop, he gets up, walks up to James (the older guy), shoots him six times in the head, neck, & back (James was trying to escape), and gets off the bus as if nothing happened. James died en route to the hospital; I don’t know what happened to the kid.

My half-brother’s dad (my ex-stepdad), a sweet if somewhat easily frustratable (but never dangerous!) man, shot & killed a boyfriend of a former girlfriend of his for coming to his house drunk and heckling him off & on for about 2 hours. I don’t even think he served six months.

The summer after my senior year of high school, a guy I half-knew (& pretty much hated) from school & various social gatherings took a bunch of X with two other kids from school (guy & girl) and went to a rave; smashed right into a tree on the way home, killing them both instantly. I don’t know if there were legal consequences, but he lost his legs. Won’t be raving again anytime soon, willya, fuckface?

74

I knew a woman in college who gave birth to a baby in her dorm room then dumped the baby in a dumpster behind the dining hall. Guess she thought what with it being the dining hall and all everybody would just think they ordered one to many that day? She spent several year in a state hospital.

In my hometown, a friend was shot to death by his wife and mother-in-law for the insurance money. They served several years in prison. The wife works as a waitress in a Waffle House now. The MIL died several years ago. From prominent fairly wealthy family to waitress in a Waffle House. All for some insurance money.

Where I live now, a man I know who ran a music store and taught music went into his bank one morning and robbed it. He was arrested at his home about 30 minutes later. Another one who dove off the deep end. He’s serving his sentence in a state hospital.

A guy I knew in my hometown murdered his grandparents. He shot the grandfather and beat the grandmother to death with a garden hoe. He was found not guilty on grounds of insanity and will spend the rest of his life in a state hospital.

Apparently I need a better class of friends.

75

My Economics teacher in high school ended up stabbing his estranged wife to death and committing suicide by cop - he kept stabbing her even after the police arrived.

76

A landscaped guy I knew had a beef with money one of our tenants owed him. So he attacked him with an electric chainsaw. Yes, a real live chainsaw massacre.

The chainsawee survived with severe damage to his arm. The chainsawer is still doing time in prison, and the victim promises to kill him when he gets out.

77

Every time I hear this, I interpret it as “he didn’t want to pay alimony”. Your spouse doesn’t have to “give you a divorce” - you just have to file and argue it out in court.

Anyway, I currently know several Level III sex offenders, though I’m not familiar with the details of their crimes.

When I was a teenager, my family became acquainted with a murderer. We attended church with his first ex-wife and their 3 sons, the oldest of whom was my age. What the guy had done was kill his second wife. She was having an affair, and he traced her and her lover to a local restaurant. He went to the restaurant armed with a shotgun and waited outside, intending to shoot the lover when they came out. He missed, and killed his wife instead, then sat down and waited for the police.

He did several years in prison, where my dad, a police officer, met him. The guy had turned himself around and was a changed man. He and my dad became friends, and the rest of us got to meet him when he was transferred to a minimum-security “honor camp” - sort of an unfenced prison camp in the woods. During this time he became reacquainted with his first wife and his sons, and when he was finally released from the honor camp, they remarried.

It was a beautiful story, to tell the truth. The guy was one of the nicest guys you ever wanted to meet. But then, several years later, he started drinking again, and turned violent. He ended up hitting his wife with an axe, but didn’t seriously injure her. However, it was enough to get him sent back to prison.

I already knew the story, and was very surprised when I came across the story in The Weekly World News (that bastion of credibility). I guess they don’t make up everything they print! A few details were mixed up, but it was essentially correct.

78

A kid I grew up with was convicted of homicide last year. His parents and my parents were very close so I spent a lot of time with him throughout my childhood and adolescence. His dad was an abusive SOB in so many different ways, his abuse extending to certain young females of his acquaintance, so needless to say they are not good memories :frowning: Anyhow, this kid shot and killed a woman over a dispute that was on the surface over a dog (long story there) but turned out to be a drug deal/debt gone bad. Left the woman’s husband to raise a nine-year old daughter. Just tragic. I have to say I was shocked but not surprised when I first heard of the crime.

79

I’ve known a few.

A teenaged girl who killed her father. Her brother took the blame so she stayed out of jail.

A guy who used to kill women, cut them up, and wrap the body parts in women’s clothing and scatter them around.

Someone who killed a guy over a $300 crystal meth deal gone bad.

A guy who raped a german shepherd then stabbed it to death.

A guy who repeatedly burglarized, and eventually flat-out robbed an old senile lady.

80

My uncle shot a man to death with a gun, but while it was self defense the firearm was unregistered and he had jumped bail in another state so he did quite a bit of jail time.