My friend’s kid brother shot and killed several people before turning the gun on himself. I had only known him as a young child, so I don’t know what had transpired in the years in between to drive him to do something like that.
There was also a sweet girl who worked at our town’s little frozen yogurt shop who was murdered by her boyfriend. It was a creepy situation.
I’ve Known several of both. My next door neighbor for nearly ten years was on parole for manslaughter, one of my daughters school friends killed her grandmother during a fight. I met a couple of guys who were finishing up prison sentences for murder when they were on work release. As for victims, one of my coworkers was shot by her estranged husband, the clerk at the local gas and go was kidnaped and murdered and at least three people that I grew up with met their end at the hands of another. A couple of these are still unsolved. Most recently one of my youngest daughters friends went missing and her boyfriend has been arrested for her murder. This happened just days after they attended a party at my house. All in and around a small town in Oklahoma.
Pity these scumbags didn’t switch the order around…
Someone I knew through work was shot and killed by an ex boyfriend. I didn’t know her that well, but one of my clearer memories was standing with her at the north-facing windows of our office area, watching the smoke from the Pentagon on 9/11.
Scrolling back and noting that the 9/11 victims should also be counted, yes to that as well. The younger sister of a classmate was working in the WTC that day. Several people I know fairly well were in the Pentagon, though they got out safely.
In my 28 years as a school teacher, I have had two students convicted of homicides. Both were adults, not students, at the times of their crimes.
The first was a student fairly early in my tenure at the school, so I did not know him terribly well. He killed a guy in a drug deal gone bad. I didn’t know the victim, but I did not the victim’s wife (also a former student) and others in his family.
The second was a student I knew much better. I was actually quite fond of her. She tended to scare other students and teachers, but I was able to work with her quite successfully. As an eighth grader, she wrote me one of the sweetest student notes I’ve ever received. At heart, she was/is really a good person. Unfortunately, drugs can make people into monsters. I won’t go into the full story of her crime, but she had succumbed to a lifestyle that was not healthy (for her or the victim). I knew her as an adult, too, and she was very excited that her son would be in my class. Things went sideways not long after that.
One of my wife’s best friends in high school was murdered by her step dad. Mom and step dad fled the country. This happened while they (my wife and her friend) were still in high school. The body was found in the family’s trash can.
This thread has grown to 83 posts. I know there are many Dopers around the world, but most are in the USA. This seems to be a pretty sad commentary on our society. We are a sick people.
An acquaintance from high school was shot in the head a few times not so long after graduation. I don’t have all the details but it was drug related. A friend’s father was car jacked by two assailants in the parking lot of a supermarket. They drove him to another location and murdered him. I think one of the murderers is still on death row.
I had a friend whose cousin was murdered and eaten by Jeffrey Dahmer.
I worked with Bernd Brandes, the guy who volunteered to be killed and eaten by German cannibal Armin Meiwes.
Actually, I don’t think you can draw such conclusions. Instead, I think it’s just a matter of statistics, that each of us knows some number of people (50? 100?) and so it’s likely that some percentage will be the victim or perpetrator.
I had a colleague who was murdered. I didn’t know her that well, but talked to her, occasionally. A man broke into her apartment and killed her, This was in the mid-1980s.
I had a relative – third cousin – who was killed by a shop-owner when he was breaking into his store. This was either late-1970s or early 1980s.
Then in the 1990s, a mother of a friend at church was killed in a school shooting.
She was either a teacher or a school administrator.
That’s all I can remember, so far.
One of my former girlfriends was shot to death in a high profile incident a decade ago.
It’s one of those weird things where I still loved her as we had only been broken up for maybe 3 years at that point. I always think that if I had been more willing to hold onto the relationship she’d still be alive. She wanted to “leave the city” and I wanted to stay, so she broke up to get with her ex-boyfriend who was already living where she wanted to live. It’s always weird when someone asks you what the best sex of your life was and it turns out it was with your dead ex. Brings up so many weird memories.
I used to work at a VA pain clinic and was pretty shocked when I learned that one of our patient, polite and nice patients helped blow up a large building. The last I heard from Terry Nichols was when he called after the bombing to cancel his appointment because he was going to be arrested.
What a nice, thoughtful young man! I wasn’t aware that he wasn’t totally against Federal agencies.
I always wondered about the dichotomy as well. Every business has problem clients that the staff dreads dealing with, pain clinics probably have more because their client base is in constant pain. Terry was not one of those, he was one of those clients that we looked forward to seeing because he was so nice and patient.
Just goes to show, you never know about people.
My department had a workplace shooting (fortunately I was working from home that day). Four of the five dead were good friends of mine. I didn’t know the shooter.
My cousin was murdered decades ago. She’d gotten hooked up with a sketchy crowd, and apparently told these folks that she had an uncle who was a cop and another uncle who was a highway patrol officer as a way of trying to keep herself safe. She was tortured and murdered. It was so long ago that I’m really light on details, plus I was youngish at the time and the older folks didn’t say much in front of us kids.
They lived across the country, so we weren’t close, but I liked her when I did see her the few times we went Back East to visit.
I was after the comment upthread saying to myself that nope I never knew anyone…but I then realized that I did,
A physician colleague of my father’s who worked at the same hospital as he did; our families entertained each other on several occasions. Body found floating in the river near his dock, severe cranial trauma to the back of his head. IIRC his spouse at the time was the prime suspect; I’ll have to ask my mom if she got charged and/or convicted.
In high school a kid transferred in from another local town. Later, one day he tried to kill both parents- succeeded with his mom (pushed her down the basement stairs), failed with his dad (tried to blow the house up with the gas oven).
However, the best part is that when he switched schools his old nickname followed him- “cow fucker”. It’s what you think it means. He also owned a Jeep and would throw buckets of mud on it to make it look like he was bad ass and went off roading.
One of my daughter’s childhood friends was murdered in her twenties. I never learned any details. A woman who was almost certainly related was a victim of Jack the Ripper.
I remembered that I knew a victim, and I had met her murderer.
She (the victim) was a colleague of mine, who lived with her boyfriend. I had met him at company parties and other dos. He didn’t quite fit in (we were a law firm, and he thought nothing of showing up to the annual Christmas party in T-shirt and jeans, while the rest of us men were in suits), but he seemed a nice guy, if a little weird.
One night, he shot and killed my colleague, set fire to the house, then went outside and shot himself on the front lawn. The house burned, and when the fire was extinguished, investigators found her body inside. She had indeed been shot, in the head.
Maybe. When I worked at an ISP I became workplace friends with a guy who ended up on The Charlie Project a few years later - he had disappeared long after I got canned- for a number of years before his body was found. Although the family is apparently leaning towards suicide the brief news bit on him maybe a year after his disappearance was the police asking if anyone saw who drove his car to where it was found.
I played with the girl across the street. While in high school, she tried to have her mother killed when she found out she was doing drugs. She eventually cleaned up her life, and went on to become a semi-famous author. Being a professional gangster is apparently part of her appeal. Last I heard though, she was falling on hard financial times though. I think she was living too high on the hog.
In the Summer of 1983, my mother’s Swiss hairdresser, Michel, was killed, apparently by a jealous girlfriend. A woman who was getting her hair done at the time, was wounded, but survived. But like my mother pointed out, that could’ve been her getting her hair done at the time. I remember my mother’s hands were shaking when she heard, just thinking about it.