Ever know someone that committed an awful crime?

In My Humble Opinion
101

I was in a hotel in Northern Manitoba one night, having just ended a loooooong day of travel and quite exhausted and weirded out at the prospect of starting work the next day in such a remote locale (small mining town 8 hours straight north of the US border). Flipped on a news program, and the first thing I see is a police line taping off the main intersection in my hometown, a 24 hour drive and one province away. The cognitive dissonance of seeing such a familiar local area as the first thing on the TV when in such an unfamiliar place was like mental whiplash.

But not as weird as the followup: an announcement that a graduate student in the University Department at which I was a student had, on new year’s eve (two days before) beaten a fellow student to death in a computer lab…the same lab I used daily when in school. When I saw the guy’s face in the cutaway…he had been one of my first year teaching assistants, and was a well-known face in our department. Friendly guy. Apparently he was a bit shnockered and cracked when a computer would not work properly, or something…

It took me several minutes to convince myself that I hadn’t already fallen asleep and was caught in some surreal dream. It turns out that the hotel had a TV dish and the first channel that came up was my hometown news (my University’s town was just on teh edge of the viewing area, I guess).

102

On a summer job that I had in college, there was a cow-orker who just rubbed me the wrong way. Besides being sadistic, there was something that just wasn’t ‘right’ about him. Unfortunately, I was his ‘in office target’ and there were many times I literally wanted to break his jaw. (Once I did get angry enough to put his personal container of mustard in the microwave for 2 minutes and then stuff the molten goo back into the fridge).

After I quit, police raided the company to arrest him. Evidently, he and his roommate had kidnapped a 10 year old boy from NYC and had held him in a Philadelphia apartment against his will as a “sex slave”.

My wife’s family is extremely ethnic-oriented towards one country in Northern Europe. At her family’s events, the ‘English Only’ speakers are always herded to one table (English is a distant second language at these events). At that table, my wife and I got to know 4 of her cousins at various weddings, baptisms, significant anniversary parties, and retirement dinners. These cousins were very happy and generally fun to be with. Her oldest cousin was about 6’7" and 270 with a flat stomach and a generally handsome guy. His wife had a cute face & ran a gymnastic studio (so she was in shape). People used to kid them about when they were going to have kids (that crap happens in all families).

One day, while I was at work, I saw an article about a murder-suicide. The last name was the same as my wife and I called her to kid her about it. It turns out it was her oldest cousin & his wife. Slowly, the story came out through family in whispers & rumours about the truth about the couple…and this is what I picked up:

Evidently, she was sleeping (semi-discreetly) with everything with legs (men, women, unattended pets) for as long as he’d known her. (It was another reason why there were no kids: they could never be sure who the father was.) He had joined her in these escapades for the first few years after they were married, but she’d grown bored with him and desired younger men; she stopped sleeping with him.

Her affairs, meanwhile, had lost all discreetness and it had started to get back to him at work. They say that one day the humiliation became too much for him and he went home, shot her, and then shot himself. Very sick stuff.

103

A friend of my parent’s killed his wife with a single blow with a hammer.

104

When I knew Shelly Shannon, we were involved in Operation Rescue in late '89 or early '90. In those days, we were all about nonviolence, all about peaceful protest. I had this woman in my living room, talking and praying. She didn’t believe in violence, or so she said. She was totally against it. In fact, I remember her being horrified about the firebombing of an abortion clinic in Everett Washington and how it was so very wrong.

When I heard that she had shot and wounded a third-trimester abortion provider in Kansas City, I was horrified. I wrote to the group with whom we had both been affiliated, Advocates for Life in Portland, Oregon, and asked them how they could defend her actions (as they had done in an editorial in their magazine), and they wrote back to tell me they “always knew it would happen, that it was coming, they just weren’t ready to face it yet then.” Yeah. Right. This from the guys who bitched me out for hand-delivering a box of chocolates to all the local abortion clinics because it was “political”.

Anyway, Shelly died to me that day. If I had the chance to talk to her now, I suspect I’d walk away rather than deal with her.

105

When I was just getting ready to go into middle school, my 18-yr-old uncle called my mother late at night and started ranting about how he knew his brother/my father (who was away on a business trip) was there holding a gun to my mother’s head, etc. etc. etc. My mom didn’t know what was going on, at one point she talked to my grandmother (who was hysterical because she couldn’t calm my uncle down) briefly, but eventually they hung up. Ten minutes later, as my mom was hurrying us kids around getting packed so we could stay with a family friend and she could go up to their house, my aunt called and told her my grandmother had been stabbed to death. The police caught him on the side of the road…

The most unsettling part (now) is that they never did really get a handle on what went wrong. The diagnosis was Brief Psychotic Disorder–academic wording for “he just snapped.”

I guess that counts.

106

Yeah. Seems like the rest of the immediate family knows more than I do about all those people on my father’s side, I was usually less involved with family stuff for some reason; a lot of people over on that side but they seem to think there are some really creepy people there. I found out that I have a cousin (or second cousin), my mom’s favorite niece, that doesn’t want anyone in the family to know of her whereabouts. Apparently I have an uncle (her father) that molested her, and I takeit that much of the family sides with the uncle.

And then there are a couple other items to be noted of my family but I’m not ready to talk about them yet.

107

Oh goddammit that’s fucked up wrong.

108

I was wondering if people outside the U.S. would have as many stories to relate about violent crimes committed by people they know as U.S. dopers do.

109

I had a friend who was a star female athelete at her school. (This is some 25 yrs ago, we were both 16.)

One day, her step father took a knife and stabbed her several times. Injuries included puntured lung, lacerated liver, and damage to her spinal column. Yeah, he was really evil.

He killed her younger half sister, and then went after the mom.

She (the mom) ran out to the front lawn (it was about 3:00 pm on a weekday) and franticly calls for help, bleeding profusely.

Neighbors subdue the step dad before the police arrive.

The oldest son was between school and work and decided to stop by the house first. Th police had to prevent him from beating the step dad to death when he saw what was going on.

My friend couldn’t even walk for a few months after that, and continues with a partial disabilty to this day.

At a parol hearing 10 or 12 years ago, the step dad called on my Dad as a character witness. So, my Dad went down to the prison and told eveyone on the board that he is sickened by the very thought of this man having once been a family friend, and that he hopes the fucker rots in jail and then in Hell.

A few years back (maybe 5 or 6), the step dad was beaten to death in a prison fight.

110

Suposedly my sisters friends boyfriend owns and operates a local brothel and is a drgu dealer, and apparently currently on the run in amsterdam. The use of supposedly and apparently is just from a lack of confirmation not a doubt on my part.

111

Well, I’ve been tangent to a few.

My folks once bought a home where a violent death occured. No problems, but a decent price.

I’m sure you could find at least one blood relation on a registered sex offender’s registry. And that’s from the side of the family I talk to.

This Guy and I had the same science teacher (several years off in a different school).

A woman a year behind me in high school was murdered by her husband of 40 days, buried in their back yard with his father’s assistance. For a while, they acted as though she were missing, like the three to four hundred other women in the area of similar demographics, but a few years ago (2000), she was dug up and the husband was put on trial. It’s still not done; I believe the father skipped town and that’s hung them up. His aunt has fled to Mexico (or was arrested) for major drug smuggling charges as well.

112

A guy I went to highschool with ended up becoming a prostitute in the Gay Village in Montreal, and he was arrested on a drug charge a couple of years ago. Really sad - he was such a nice, quiet kid.

My father was kidnapped by his father in a custody battle when he was still a baby, and my grandmother (his mom) had to go to the States to get him back. I don’t have any details about what happened, though, because it’s a subject not to be discussed. I can’t figure out why there were never any police involved.
In a few years I’m sure I’ll be able to bring you a new story. The kid next door is only 7 years old and he’s already remarkably violent. Almost every day I see him outside smashing something, or hitting trees and cars with sticks. Not the normal kid-type smashing to make noise - it’s seriously disturbing. The few times I’ve tried to speak to him, he responded with “Fuck you Anglais” (even though I spoke to him in French, he had heard me speaking English with my family, I guess). And the look in his face when he said that… I didn’t think I could be genuinely freaked out by a kid, but… :eek: Only a matter of time, I think, before I hear his name on the news.