I knew a guy who was arrested for multiple counts of child rape (he molested a 10-yr old boy). While under house arrest waiting for trial, he cut off his ankle bracelet and fled. He appeared on America’s Most Wanted. Several months later he was found working for a traveling carnival in another part of the state, brought to trial and sentenced to life in prison.
I kind of lost track of him after that.
My last post got me to thinking about that guy again. Here is an article about the trial. He was ultimately sentenced to 137 years in prison.
On the one hand I feel bad for him because he was clearly a socially stunted and emotionally retarded individual who needed treatment. But of course that’s no excuse for his crime – I feel much worse for the victim. I know if it had been my son, 137 years would seem about right.
I have a few uncles who fit the bill.
One acquaintance serving time right now for trying to hook up with a 14-year old girl that was actually a deputy in his 30’s. Drove all the way to the next county for the meeting where he got collared. I can only imagine his giddy anticipation turning to indignation and horror as he realizes that his life is GONE. Not just a sicko, but a moron too.
I have another acquaintance currently sliding down the sharp edge of the justice system. Dummy didn’t think no meant no with THREE different girls in a week at his university. So I guess he’s a goner now too. Even if his sentence is light, this will be hanging around his neck possibly for the rest of his life.
Sniffing the glue a little too much? 
This thread makes me more appreciative of my sheltered life.
Perhaps literally.
Wow.
Perhaps literally. (What do you mean, I can’t use the same joke twice in one reply?)
A few family members; one, now deceased, on child molestation. He was murdered upon release by his victim, and she’s now a felon.
I don’t think you get on a sex offender’s registry for merely non-custodial abduction of your own child. Or are you saying there were manufactured accusations?
Leaving out simple pot possession, of which I’m sure there are dozens of convicted and non-convicted folks I’ve known.
A guy I was friends with got arrested for a confrontation with the cops. He was with his live-in girlfriend and a couple other guys in their hotel room (yeah, they were living there) when the police showed up for a noise disturbance. He slammed the door in the cop’s face and pulled a sword on his friends in the room. I’m not in touch with him any more. (I think he was going down the rabbit hole of depression and not able to get help.)
One of my childhood scoutmasters was convicted of fraud. He was an accountant and did some money finagling and did time.
In an act of sheer stupidity from people supposed to be intelligent, a group of my brother’s high school buddies threw a molotov cocktail at a McDonalds for some inexplicable reason. They were apparently doing some personal chemistry experiments involving things that go boom. I think they avoided prison time but were on probation and really risked their promising futures.
My sister’s brother-in-law (my brother-in-law’s brother) was convicted for meth. I don’t know if he was producing or selling or if it was just possession, but he’s a giant fuck-up. He did about a year for it.
A friend’s kid spent time in juvie for violent acts against another kid. After he was out (over 18 and finished up his time), he was around in my karate class for a while until we discovered he was on the sex-offender’s registry for what he’d done. We couldn’t have him around. It’s a shame because he really seemed to me a mild and calm guy who’d worked out whatever demons he had, but when a parent pointed out they found him on the list, we kinda had to tell him not to come back. Couldn’t have him around when we’re teaching children and teen-agers.
An old friend I worked with overseas had a previous career as a member of a ‘firm’ of bank/airport customs robbers. Being English, their heists were (for the most-part, unarmed) but eventually the got nicked and he did ‘a trey on the moor’. Once he was released he went straight, but would say to us (with a bit of tongue in cheek) that whenever he passed a bank he always wondered how difficult it would be to knock that one over.
P.S. A great guy, real character and a terrific scrabble player.
He wasn’t on Dateline’s “To Catch a Predator”, was he?
There was a doctor in this area who was arrested after he drove 3 hours to do something similar, and it gets better. His wife was the head of the local child abuse prevention council. His license was revoked in both states where he practiced; IDK if his wife stuck around. The really sad thing is that by all accounts, he was a good doctor and his patients liked him. 
Billie Sol Estes is the most famous one. I went to high school with his nephew, and once after we graduated I went with the nephew to visit Billie Sol when he was being held outside El Paso. Seemed like a nice guy.
I’ve known a few who were felons later, after I knew them. I’d see them on the news or in the paper. Drugs mostly, but some fraud and even one murderer. Although the murderer I didn’t really know. He was a friend’s roommate. I met him once briefly, when I helped my friend move. He was moving out of the guy’s apartment because he said the guy was “weird.” So weird that he could have moved by himself easily, he had so few possessions, but he wanted someone else present. Two or three years later, suddenly there the guy was all over the news. He’d gotten married in the meantime, killed his wife and buried her in the backyard.
Being in Thailand, where you can never be sure of other peoples’ history, I’ve probably known quite a few without realizing it.
Step father and his 2 brothers, 4 cousins. My son’s wife. and my other son himself.
Step father and brothers were just general bad people that stole whatever they could.
4 cousins were moon shiners, time in prison is just the price of business
Son’s wife hit her MIL and was convicted of felony assault.
Other son won a fight but lost in court even though he was attacked. He never went to prison but served a few months probation. It was supposed to be a year but he completed the program early.
Thanks, OP, now I remember this horrid family of felons who used to live downstairs from a friend in Texas. The most recently released was always saying, “In prison, yer dick ain’t got no conscience,” followed by this laugh of huhuhhuhuh that was not unlike that of Vincent Masuka on Dexter.
I know a guy who did a year in prison for income-tax evasion. He had a business that generated a lot of cash, and over some years he got in the habit of reporting about 40% of this.
He was rolling along fine until he had a falling out with his girlfriend, who turned him in. (This is apparently a common path to prison.)
I could have SWORN they all said they were innocent.
During my time as a reporter, as endless number of them.
Hmm. Tom Delay count? Interviewed him.
Personally, quite a few. I spent some time in a school for wayward youth and some of those chaps were adventurous.
As an adult? One of my college friends did a few years for banging his wife’s underage sister. Oy.
The Vice President of my Rotary group got popped for having 8 GB worth of child porn on his computer. Not a happy day for the group.
I just remembered that, back in the late 80s, a coworker was arrested for counterfeiting $20 bills on the office copier. He was a totally worthless bastard, and I hope he’s still in prison and getting everything he deserves.
[Willie Nelson]To all the felons I’ve known before… [/Willie Nelson]
That must have been one fancy copier.
I am member of Narcotics Anonymous.
Pretty much everyone I know is a felon, including my girlfriend.
I recall a problem about that time with the obverse of $1 bills being photocopied and used in dollar-bill changers for coins like you found in libraries and laundromats and such. (The technology on bill changers got better real fast after that.) How did he copy $20 bills that he could use?
No, it was a police only operation.
However, another friend of mine used to be a meter reader and almost got accidently caught up in trouble when he read the meter of a house next door to the house being used for that show. He walked around the side of the house that was next to the sting house and suddenly found himself facing a bunch of cops who thought he was their man. They pounced because they thought that he was going to try the back door of their house which was** not **according to plan. His company clothes had the FPL logo on them but it was a t-shirt so he didn’t stand out as a meter reader. It was cleared up pretty quick and he got a cool story out of it.
I have had contact with several felons in my professional capacity. Our office does electronic monitoring of offenders, amongst other duties.
Elsewhere…
There is the guy who killed my fiancée 20 years or so ago. Homicide by intoxicated use of a motor vehicle.
One guy I went to school with barricaded himself in his house, assaulted and tied up his parents, and shot at least one cop.
Father of another school friend caught several years on felony marijuana possession. He tried, and failed, to claim 125 pounds was for personal use.
The father of my niece has been in on several DUI, probation violations, and drugs charges (cocaine). Fortunately my sister had the good sense to never marry the guy.
Finally, I got to know a bit too much about a school teacher who admitted to me his previous history of molestation. He was convicted on that charge and of soliciting a minor online.