A pleasant fellow at work had killed a man in a fight some time before, and served time for it.
My best friend through grade school had a rougher time of it through his teens, and wound up running somebody over when he was out racing around drunk. I am not sure that quite meets the definition of “murder” but certainly some opined that it did.
In what was the most worrisome situation for me, a lady I worked with for a few months, with whom I struck up a very nice though brief friendship, confided in me that she had a fiancee in prison for killing his best friend one night in his kitchen. For some reason the guy went nuts and stabbed the friend dozens of times - a very splashy crime with a big media following. She didn’t know him when the crime occurred and met him through some Christian group and they got engaged, and he was now up for parole. She showed me some of his letters, written in not-very-sharp prison pencil so densely covering the paper that it looked black with white sprinkles, compulsively quoting bible passages. Oh, yeah, he was also crazy jealous of her relationships on the outside…
When I was about 16 a kid I knew got in a fight outside of a dance. He had a knife and stuck the guy he fought with, one time. He died.
Then I was working at a place and a guy with the exact same name as mine worked there. I used to kid him saying I could take all his stuff anytime I wanted to because my name was on it. Then I heard he took the name after serving 20years in jail for murder. That quieted me down a bit.
Not sure if it would count or not, but a friend of mine was in the Canadian Forces. He was sent on peacekeeping missions–no war, but trying to keep two sides from killing each other. Many Canadians seem to equate “peacekeeper” with “kindly social worker whom both sides respect,” but it is not the case. Mostly, from what I understand, the peacekeepers are hated by both sides, since they get in the way of one side’s ability to kill the other side. This is why the soldiers we send on these missions are well-trained, well-armed, and well-prepared. Anyway, my buddy served a few peacekeeping missions, and had to, as he put it “neutralize a combatant” a few times. As he puts it, he had no choice–it was either the other guy or him, and he was just better-prepared at the moment. He doesn’t like to talk about these times much, and I don’t blame him.
My next door neighbor. He was a few years younger than me. We grew up together, and played together all the time as kids.
When he was in his early 20s, after I had left the neighborhood, he and a bunch of other guys who used to hang out at the local playground beat a drug dealer to death. He ended up taking the rap, and did six years in prison for second degree murder.
I think he was basically an OK guy who got carried away by mob psychology. After getting out, he reformed and went back to school. He got a good job and is married with a couple of kids. He’s come by the house to visit my mother (who was and is still close friends with his mother); I met him again there a few years ago.
A couple. The one that sticks with me the most is the guy that I met in 3rd grade. He was new to town, and you know how kids are, they picked on him. My parents raised me better than that though! So I was nice to him, and we became friends. We fell out of touch when he moved to a different town for high school. He’d started to fall in with some bad folks toward the end of the time I knew him.
About 10 years ago, I’m in the next state over and hear his name on the news as the suspect in the murder of a pregnant woman. Killed her for a car and a trip to Disney, if I recall correctly. He was into drugs, and high on something when he did it.
I still think of him as that kid I met in 3rd grade and it’s pretty horrifying to think that he could do that.
The electrical contractor who used to work on our house when I was 8 or 9 years old later killed his wife and then committed suicide. I can’t say I really knew him, but that’s the closest I’ve come, I think.
John Orr
Joseph Wambaugh wrote a book about him. A firefighter that was also a firebug.
I went to high school with his sister ( we dated once or twice), his dad owned a sporting goods store I shopped at, and the Ole’s home center where the people died in the fire he set was run by a former boss of mine.
I did not put two and two together until I read Wambaugh’s book, then as I read my face was like this :eek: through the entire book.
There was a fellow I worked with. He was a likeable guy and he and I kinda hit it off. We played golf every now and then and drank a few beers and just
kinda had a casual friendship. He even stayed the night at my house a few times when he seemed too drunk to drive. We called him Pee-wee. got along well with all 4 of my kids and everything.
One friday morning I walked in to work and all the guys were huddled around a newspaper. Everyone asked had I heard about pee-wee?
It seems that he and another of our co-workers had gone to a BBQ with some folks along with thier families. During the festivities he sparked up a joint. Pee-wee and the co-worker were asked to leave. Pew-wee went home, got a pistol and went back to the party. He shot the father first and killed him. Then he shot the Grandfather in the leg. Pee-wee’s real name was Ricky Paul Dowell. Some in houston will remember his nickname they gave him “the fathers day killer”.
We all thought that he had been caught and all was well and went about our work for the rest of the day as usual and went home to get ready for the weekend.
My wife and I settled in for a quiet evening after the kids were in bed and were just getting comfy for the evening watching a movie. Daughter #2 walked in the room and made us aware that someone was hiding in the bushes outside her window. Daughter #1 came in and confirmed this.
Before I could get off the couch there was LOUD knock at the door. It was the Deer park police S.W.A.T. team. looking for Ricky Paul Dowell. He had not been arrested and was seen in the area. They figured he was coming to my house.
They searched the house and were satisfied that he wasn’t there and left. No apologies. No nothing
Scared the hell out of my wife and kids. And frankly scared me as well. I thought I was a better judge of character. I pray nothing like this ever happens again!
He WAS finally caught and sentenced to prison. Not sure how long.
I knew this kid way back when. I haven’t seen him since he was ten years old, but even then he was the textbook case of antisocial personality disorder. Likeable enough, no conscience, and an absolute yen to do anything he could think of that was bad. A few years ago he stole a farmer’s checkbook and forged a check for about $1,300. Realizing that the farmer would report the crime, he decided to bludgeon him to death and steal whatever cash was in the house.
Believe me when I say that every bit of this was utterly in character for this guy–even when he was ten.
The chap in this story with the satellite dishes on the sides of his head was a waiter at a restaurant that I frequent. He murdered one person at the restaurant (not an employee, but a friend of one), shot (but didn’t kill) a bum in a city park, stole a car and went on a road trip into North Carolina where he capped a convenience store customer and a clerk (I think). It was later found that he had been found responsible for a previous murder that had happend a month earlier.
He waited on my twice while he worked at the restaurant, and to be honest, he was a really good server. Had no idea at the time he’d hit the headlines.
My company hired him in the summer of 2005 to be our director of sales. I usually work from home, and I didn’t get to meet him until one or two days before his wife’s murder, and his arrest for it, occurred. If I’d only gone into the office a week later, I couldn’t say I’d ever known him. But I met him, shook his hand, and then a day or two later, our CEO called a meeting to tell us that he wouldn’t be coming to work anymore due to the…unfortunate circumstances.
When I was in high school, I had a friend from church and I knew her other siblings as well–there were 4 altogether. The youngest was about 3 years younger than me. He became involved with a couple of other kids and they got into Satanism (I know, sounds like a UL, but they did). They killed a girl out in the woods somewhere–IIRC it was him and another boy, with an older guy of 18 or so egging them on. It was all pretty awful.
My cousin Chad. He was with a group of friends one night and there was a big fight over some weed, and he and some of them got into a fight and he stabbed this other kid, and was charged with manslaughter.
It was dismissed for self-defense, being that he too had some wounds (even though it was his own knife). However, since Chad’s been in a shitload of trouble for a while, I don’t think he’s all that innocent.
If it was a friend of mine, I would talk him/her into turning themselves in. If they refused, I would tell them I’d give them a head start before calling the police, or I could wait with them until the police arrived.
If it wasn’t a friend, I would be calling the second I had solid proof it was true (rather than just a rumor.)
If they turned violent on me, I do what I need to do to stay alive.
When I was 13 years old, I would have said stuff like that too. Once you get a little bit older and learn about how the justice system works and realize that if you did something like this you would wind up in prison for years being raped and eating horrible food, you would have a cooler head about it.
