One of the assistant managers at the Burger King where I worked in high school tried to break up a fight at a bar one night, and was stabbed to death as a result.
In 1980, a classmate was murdered by her stepfather. He had recently been paroled for a previous murder conviction, went home, killed his three step children. He waited for his ex / kids’ mother to come home and shot her. She lived.
My classmate had been shot in the head, stuffed into the dryer. She was 11.
My father was murdered when I was 8 (1962). At least that is the “official” story. One Friday night he went to the store to buy cigarettes and three popsicles. He had $1 on him. He didn’t return and was missing for two weeks. One day the week after he disappeared, my brother (5) and sister (3) came in the house (I was at school) and told my mother that my father was outside. She went out and no one was there. The next Sunday at church, the pastor stopped speaking and stared at the back door. My mother turned around and my father was standing there. They both ran outside but no one was there. A body was found the next week on the banks of a creek. It was badly decomposed and my uncle identified it by my father’s boots. The cause of death was a blow to the head and drowning in the creek.
Every Friday night after this men would come to our house and stand around outside. I remember all of this clearly. One of my aunts started coming to stay with us each week. We would call the police but by the time they got there, the men would be gone. This went on until we moved a few months later. Sometime after this, I was in the house alone when the phone rang. I answered and a man who knew my name asked me what I knew about death. When I asked who this was, he said “just say I’m a friend of your father”. Things like this went on for years. At one point, someone burned the grass on my father’s grave.
There is a whole lot more to the story but suffice it to say that I’ve never been sure what exactly happened. The story got even more bizarre when my sister got married about 25 years after this happened. My cousin took me aside and said he needed to tell me something that had always bothered him. On the day my father disappeared, he had been with my aunt when she picked my father up from work. My cousin said that my father was very upset and crying and saying that he couldn’t handle the responsibility of having a family.
I’m about 50/50 on whether he was murdered or somehow faked his own death. The murder itself was never solved. In fact, it seems that the police never really tried very hard to find out what happened. My mother and my aunt had done some investigating at the time and found out some interesting information but that was never followed up on by the police. As a young adult I often thought of trying to get the police reports to see what they knew but I was too afraid that the people involved would somehow find out so never did. Now I’ll never know.
No to both. I feel like some kind of oddity.
One of my old bosses and two colleagues of mine have been murdered - all separate incidents.
My older sister’s first boyfriend George, who gave me my first motorcycle ride, was later shot dead by his crazy and violent father a year or two after George got out of high school. The mother was also killed. One sister my age was left alive.
Another friend of my sister was murdered in the 1970’s in what was described as a “Looking For Mr. Goodbar”-type situation, a one-night stand with a stranger who happened to be a murderer.
A very nice fellow I used to work with many years ago, Danny, was killed by a soldier hitchhiker he’d picked up not too far from the base. He was found stuffed in the trunk. The soldier was arrested but I never heard any more about it.
Last summer, my daughter’s friend was mowed down during BLM demonstrations by a guy who drove around the police blockades and deliberately plowed through the crowd.
I’ve never known a murderer that I’m aware of.
A friend of mine was murdered by a hit-and-run driver. The murderer left the scene, and has not been found by the police, 9 years later. If the Devil is efficient, I’ll see him in hell. My profane and cathartic Pit thread from the time: I pit a murdering hit-and-run driver scumbag
There was another thread on here a few months ago, asking if dopers knew anyone who went missing. I didn’t reply to that thread, but someone else I went to high school with disappeared and hasn’t been seen in 40 years.
I met someone in grad school who had gone to high school with Dahmer. Said he was weird.
That was the vibe that my sister got from him, too; she said that he sat in the company lunchroom, and just stared at people.
I worked with a guy about 20 years ago who murdered his wife and then killed himself. A big teddy-bear of a guy you would never in a million years think could do this. To my knowledge, no one ever knew why.
Yes to both.
A guy who lived across the street where I grew up got involved with the wrong people and was found in the woods with a bullet in his head. I have no idea if they ever pinned it on anyone.
A fellow teacher in the district (who I knew vaguely) was at school on a Saturday doing classwork when three people entered, kidnapped him and killed him in a local field. All three were convicted and are serving life terms.
I’ve taught so many kids over the years odds are at least a couple of them have killed people. I know of several who have committed suicide.
I went to high school with one of the victims of the Kent State shootings in 1970. I call that murder.
No to both. Let’s be odd together.
One of my mother’s old friends was murdered by her son years after we last saw her (I was 7ish when she and Mom fell out). I do remember the victim some, but while my parents said I knew the son too when I was a toddler, I don’t remember him because he’d stayed with his dad for a few years beginning when I was three-ish. Too bad he didn’t stay with his dad, as her abuse of him is alleged to be what drove him to kill her when he was an older teenager.
Maya Jakic was a photographer I hired for the 1993 Christmas (Santa photos). She was murdered in 1999. When the police published some erroneous information about her (hoping to find the killer), I stopped by a local police station, gave them photos of Maya, and said if they needed more information about Maya to contact me. The police never contacted me.
Her killer killed again two years later.
Her murder is well-known:
We had a contractor who employed a tradesman, Giovanni, who we really liked and was a really nice guy. He was murdered, and his son badly beaten.
According to another report Giovanni was stabbed 14 times in the head.
@Lancia I remember that sad incident. Thanks for your tribute to the victims. I teach English at a college, and ever since Virginia Tech and then Umpqua, at the beginning of each semester I look for possible ways to secure my classrooms against a shooter and think of emergency exit plans.
And if those killed on 9/11 are counted as murder victims, one of them was the brother of a favorite student. I never met him, but she wrote a couple of essays about him and their sibling bond.
Two.
A co-worker was sitting in her car at a fast food place while her daughter went in to order some takeout. A man walked up and shot her for reasons unknown – there was no robbery – and was never caught.
Back when it was popular, a friend of ours asked if our son could join our D&D group meeting biweekly, saying he found it hard to make friends and she was worried. we were mid-20s to mid-30s and he was 20, 22 so a bit younger but not uncomfortably so.
He was at two sessions and there were some odd interactions but less than some other misfits we’d had. Then he missed two and after the second, as GM I asked the rest of the group whether I should try to get him back; they said yes. When I called he said he didn’t feel welcome and still demurred when I told him I’d specifically asked the group whether I should reach out and they said yes.
Six months later he was found walking down the side of a road with his jaw blown off by a shotgun and died a day later in ICU. I’m not sure how much of an investigation was made.
I assume so. I had a co-worker I shared an office with for about a year in 1999-2000. He left the company, but we kept in touch and had lunch once. I found out on September 12th that he had been on one of the planes that flew into the World Trade Center.