My late DH (Kopek on the SDMB) worked with a woman whose live-in boyfriend was a particularly sleazy drug dealer. He was shot in the head one day in broad daylight, with lots of people around, and no one saw a thing. We heard that the police didn’t try very hard to find the shooter; they apparently decided that one less sleazy drug dealer wasn’t a bad thing.
If suicide counts, as discussed above, my great aunt (she and her husband moved across the country and lost all their money somehow) and my younger brother (he was bipolar) both died by suicide. Long before I was born, my father’s uncle (or great uncle?), came home from work one day and asked his wife for beer money. She refused so he shot and killed her and then himself.
When I was 8 my alcoholic father shot and killed his second wife in a drunken rage. He served 16 years and on release drank himself to death in less than a year. So yeah . . . .
Around 1982, I briefly dated a girl whose ex-boyfriend was in jail for bludgeoning a guy to death. I met him about 20 years later, he was working as a janitor.
In the late 1970s, I had a college class with a woman who in 1992 beat her boyfriend to death with a hammer while he slept. She was bi-polar, and had written a letter to the local newspaper two days before the killing claiming that a Satanic cult wanted to kill her. Her lawyer used an insanity defense, claiming that she thought the boyfriend was part of the cult. She was found guilty of manslaughter, sentenced to one to five years in prison, and served about a year.
In 1980, a former schoolmate of mine (and close friend of my brother) was shot and killed by a man suffering from schizophrenia, following a barroom altercation (two others were wounded). The perp was found guilty of murder and went to prison, but a higher court overturned that decision, citing that his mental health hadn’t been sufficiently considered. He spent time in a mental hospital, but was eventually released. In 2018, he killed his 84 year-old father, and was sentenced to manslaughter.
I once bought a house from a guy who subsequently murdered his wife, mutilated her body, rolled her up in the sheets, and set their house on fire. I thought it would be adding insult to injury to forward his Independant Trucker magazines. I looked it up the other day, and apparently he’s been out for a while.
Used to work with a Craps dealer in Las Vegas who had spent years in prison after he jumped around a Craps table and beat a player who had been cursing at him to death. The words “Convicted Felon” were printed in big letters across his picture on his Sheriff’s card. Don’t know if that was called murder or manslaughter or what.
I had a cousin who walked in on his wife in bed another man. He killed them both then turned the shotgun on himself.
My father was a suicide in 1969, and I wondered about all sorts of details for decades. About 5 years ago I requested and got the police reports. It was fascinating. I’m pretty sure the police aren’t going to tell other people involved that you got the report. We’re talking about our fathers here, our next of kin. The police will release the reports.
In the meantime, I dredged two more up from my memory. Both of them were people I was acquainted with as a young woman in the mid 1980s.
The first one was when I worked at Perkins; I was a waitress and he was a cook. He did have a serious alcoholism problem but he managed to make it to work, most of the time. Gotta admit, the guy WAS a hoot despite his high-risk lifestyle, and he didn’t deserve the life he had, or his ultimate fate.
The other was a man I knew socially, who also had a name that qualified for Prevention of Cruelty to Google Users, and I just couldn’t locate him online at all. I did find him via newspapers.com, which I subscribe to, and guess why? A couple years later, about a year after he graduated from veterinary school, he was interested in a woman who didn’t share the opinion, and he broke into her boyfriend’s house and murdered both of them. He did about 20 years, and when he got out, he worked for a concrete company and died in 2020.
I only knew him slightly, but well enough that the story completely shocked me. What a total waste of so many lives.
I knew the father of Christina Williams and was involved in the search. The killer was supsect at the beginning, but was finally brought to justice. What took so long for justice to be served was the killer’s former girlfriend had provided him with a false alibi. I know the killer is in prison for lifew without the possibility of parole, but I have no idea what sentence the alibi witness got or if she was even prosecuted for that.
I’ve mentioned before that a family friend is on Death Row in Kentucky. During an altercation at his house, he saw a police car pull up. He rushed the officer, and managed to get the cop’s gun. He then shot the officer in the face, killing him.
Close relative was strangled and raped (in that order) by a guy who was caught, and probably would have been a serial killer if he hadn’t been stupid enough to get caught after the first one. He was in a psychiatric institution for two years before “sane enough” for trial. Life in prison. Eligible for parole after something like 30 years, which is coming up. Good chance he will be moved back to a mental facility then. He has been in “special pop” for a while.
In an entirely separate case, and even closer relative shot and killed the guy his wife was dating during the time they were legally separated and their divorce was pending. They hadn’t lived together in almost two years, so they were separated for some time before they were legally separated. He had declared his refusal to grant a get, and so they would always be married. She was not particularly religious, and the guy she was dating wasn’t Jewish, and they didn’t care about a get.
He was a little nuts, though, if you ask me. He used to write me letters occasionally with the same sentence written three times, sometimes reworded slightly, then a new sentence, written three times.
He couldn’t hear very well, and some 21 years after his original trial, had some lawyer convince him she could get his case dismissed on the basis of his not having been able to participate in the proceedings. It was adult-onset deafness, though, he’d never had any training in lipreading, and didn’t know a signed language. The case went nowhere.
He died in prison at age 83, five years after being debilitated by a stroke. He spent 31 years in prison.
About 15 years ago, we had a couple of (still unsolved) murders on the premises of the psychiatric hospital where I was a resident. One of the victims turned out to be a former housemate of my best friend since university. I didn’t really know him but I ran into him occasionally when I was visiting her.
This summer, two colleagues were shot at an outpatient clinic where I used to work for some time, a psychiatrist and a security guard. The security guard lost his life.
I’ve had multiple serious criminals among my patients throughout the years, at least one of which hinted at murder. I never asked for details, though.
When I was in secondary school the brother of a student I was acquainted with was convicted of murder at 15 years old. I had met him once before that, when we were hanging out at the local swimming pool.
This was all in Holland btw, so apparently these things are less rare than one would hope. I never ran with a particularly rowdy crowd, either.
Three victims, one murderer, none of them related.
Not long after high school graduation, a popular classmate of mine was killed by a drunk driver. It was a rather sensational case at the time. She’d been riding her bicycle on a 55mph road with wide shoulders. The driver, a physician, plowed into her, her body bounced into the windshield and over the car. He was stopped later because he was still dragging her bicycle under his car. During the trial his lawyer argued that the doctor continued driving because he’d been triggered by the body breaking the windshield, as when he was a young boy a brick had hit the windshield of a car where he was riding in the front passenger seat. He was convicted.
Another classmate a few years after graduation. He was a bit of a troublemaker, and I knew him a little more than most classmates as he also went to my church. From what my mom told me, he’d been taking his motorcycle out into a field to tear around in at night. Whoever owned the field got fed up with it and strung a length of wire across the gate entrance. My classmate was was almost fully decapitated when he sped through the gate at high speed.
About 20 years ago a coworker was struck and killed while walking his dog. I had just talked to him the day before (working in IT you get to know lots of people in other departments). I believe it was a hit and run but I don’t remember if the person was caught. I think they were. Tried to hide their car in the woods.
My last job before my current one was at a place that was well known to not do criminal background checks (probably so they could get away with paying shit wages to desperate people). During a break I asked a guy I’d seen around lately what the little satchel was that he carried around slung across his chest. He was pretty straightforward and open about it. It was a GPS tracker mandated by the state. He’d killed a guy that slept with his girlfriend and stole about $100 and spent 30 years in prison for those crimes.
Lastly, while neither a murder victim or murderer, about a dozen years ago at a small local horror convention I got to listen to a guy speak about his experiences. His entire family had been murdered by the BTK killer while he was at school. He was 10 years old. I could tell he’d lived a rough life, and he said he’d been in and out of prison since then.
Horseflesh, I know exactly who that last person is. What a horrible life he’s had, and it’s especially tragic because he’s obviously very intelligent, and his life would probably have been much, much different had this not happened.
Yeah, if you know anything about BTK, you know who @Horseflesh is talking about. I’ve also heard him speak, and he comes across as very thoughtful and articulate.
My sole experience happened to the mother of one my daughter’s classmates. The daughter had a friend over for playtime (another classmate of my daughter) when a random stranger walked into the front door. He locked the two little girls in a closet, then raped and strangled the Mom. He was caught a couple of days later and later sentenced to life. No motive was ever established, and and he never admitted why he targeted the poor woman.
As a result of my my job (detective) I’ve “known” several murderers, having spoken to many of them at length and one victim. He was an informant of mine who shot to death on his front porch while sipping a bottle of blackberry brandy. My partner and I happened to be in the area and were some of the first on the scene. As a matter of fact, I was actually standing over the body when a family member who was inside the house at the time looked out a window to see what was going on. Needless to say, they were not happy with what they saw. He was actually a pretty nice guy despite his repeated, petty drug dealing. That one bothered me for a while. No one was ever charged, although we are pretty sure it was in retaliation for his cooperation.
Two high school classmates have been murdered. One had to do with drugs and another an apparent random carjacking victim.
Yup. My boyfriend’s brother’s housemate Don was murdered randomly in a bar parking lot. I didn’t know the perpetrators. Boyfriend and me got Don’s cat for a while, after that.
Robert Mitchum from Night of the Hunter sends his regards.
In the late ‘70s/early 80’s one of my sisters’ bfs was the president of the Bounty Hunters MC (colours burnt in '81 by Satan’s Angels) who ended up getting his brains blown out, soon after that, over a coke deal gone awry.
Not sure to what degree if “murder” was involved in the following, but…
Through extended contacts, there was this screwed-up deadbeat I knew with bitterness issues that would never get resolved as he stewed in pathetic, delusional self-martyrdom (I’m sure we’ve all met the type), who one time showed up early in the morning to a party that was petering out. I remembered him standing just inside the doorway, drunk, and completely spattered - head to toe - with blood. Very rattled, shaking and wide-eyed (highlighted by the blood all around them - nice visual!) he went off about how we wouldn’t believe what he had just been up to, and proceeded into this panicky, incoherent ramble about him and someone else dismembering a body and dumping it in the middle of a lake. Dude was half pscho / half fantasist, so he was basically met with drunken shrugs.
