The ones I’ve known well enough to meet the same qualifications I put on myself in the earlier thread (emotional attachment) have all been family members. On my mothers side of the family, substance abuse and domestic violence are the norm rather than the exception. As a result, there sometimes ended up being something dropped in the food or the odd baseball bat falling off a shelf onto someones head 25 times in a row. Some of the more brutal ones were back 30 years ago when something like that didn’t really get you a lot of time - which, come to think of it, sometimes made family reunions kind of strained. Most also involved relatives who were members of a religion where divorce was not an option then. For my generation, the murder rate has dropped to almost nothing - but we have a lot more options now.
Someone murdering a stranger basically? Only known a few of them in passing and not well enough to have any insight or opinion.
A former co-worker killed at least one of his kids, I do not know exactly how many, but for some reason, he had left one alive.
He was no longer working with me at that time. The case was all over the news when it happened but they were not giving any names. It is only later, possibly when he was finally convicted, that his name and picture was released, that was a shocker.
The guy was a bit of a weirdo, I remember he was not satisfied by a performance review he got, that may be why he had left my place of work.
I saw him sometime after at a bus stop and we chatted a bit.
It was quite some time later that the news about a guy having killed his family came out, of course, I had no reason to even think of him as the killer. I seem to remember the news saying that he was in divorce proceeding with his wife and most likely it involved a custody battle.
More than a few, that I know of. And a few more that I didn’t know, I’m sure.
I knew a few cops who have killed in the line of duty, one was ruled as not with cause, and there was disciplinary action (and prison, I believe).
One great uncle was put in prison for Vehicular homicide. A great-great Uncle was put in prison for multiple homicide (with the bare minimum, concurrent sentence because the victims were known criminals).
A guy at work back in Maryland killed his girlfriend because she cheated on him, he also critically injured the guy he walked in on her sleeping with.
There are a few more, but I can’t remember them specific.
How does or did it make you all feel to have been in such close contact with these people? Or to have a loved one that was so close to them? Scared? Angry? Spiritual and thanking a higher power that it wasn’t you or your loved one that got hurt?
Curiously enough, me too…except I just worked in a kitchen.
Actually, I’d guess about 90% of the claims were complete bullshit, petty scumbags who just wanted to be ranked higher on the felon scale than their actions justified. But I know that at least 3 or 4 were genuinely guilty of voluntary manslaughter or better.
Oh, and the whole, “You can tell a murderer by the look in his eyes,” meme? Totally bogus. One place I worked at, we had dishwasher, nice, cordial kid (was actually about 30, but looked like he was 15) who’d killed four people in a gas station robbery as a teenager and had done 12 years of hard time before being paroled.
I’ve also known a few people who had previously been paid and authorized by Uncle Sam to visit exotic locations and terminate people who were not sufficiently polite and agreeable to the interests of the United States. To a man, they were some degree of sociopath, but managed to channel their energies into channels that were legally authorized. They didn’t really talk about the work much, except to each other, and then couched in gallows humor and euphemism. A good bunch of guys, actually (albeit not capable of leading a “normal-type life”), but not the sort of hombres one would care to meet in a dark alley or jungle.
He always seemed like a pretty nice guy, a biker kind of dude who used to bring their dogs to visit sometimes. I was never sure what he & my boss had in common but…shrug
I can think of 7 right off hand.
Guy I went to high school with. Got in a fight and hit a man over the head with a ketchup bottle and killed him. More of a man slaughter then murder I suppose. I think he got 7 years.
Man I worked with who lost a drag race and shot the winner in a restaurant. He then sat down, ordered some coffee, and waited for the cops. I think he was pretty young then. I didn’t know him until after he got out and he was perhaps 45. My brother, who also worked with him a few years later, told me that he had quit drinking and had been elected as his local unions business agent and was no pretty much respected by everyone who knew him.
Three who I was in Vietnam with. One is currently finishing up a 30 spot in Oregon. The second killed his wife and then himself in North Carolina in the 80s. The third was a Samoan who knifed someone in fight and did a few years.
The brother of a man who worked with Ms Hook got in a tiff with a man I also worked with and killed him. Currently doing life with no hope in Wyoming.
A man I worked with in Wyoming who had murdered his wife after walking in on her and another man.
In the mid 70s I worked for a small construction company that was remodeling Burger Kings in southern Ohio. The man who owned the company was found guilty of, IIRC, 25 counts of attempted murder. He and his brother, who I never met and had just gotten out of jail for murder, cooked up a scheme to put a bomb on a plane. One of them bought a ticket and a bunch of insurance. Of course he didn’t get on the plane. The flight was from Cleveland and flew out over Lake Erie. They figured it would blow up, sink, and there wouldn’t be any bodies to count. It didn’t go off and was later found in unclaimed baggage. He ended up getting 25 years.
Just prior to this, and right before I left his employment, he offered me the job of burning down his house for him.
Honestly it didn’t matter to me. I think the murder was completely justified and if he hadn’t committed his crime in the 60s in the backwoods of Mississippi probably wouldn’t have been convicted. I think the attempted murder was wacked out of his mind of prescribed drugs and wouldn’t have done it in his right mind. I think of them a lot like my friends who have killed people for the Army.
Some of the stories that people have told in this thread would change my mind about someone I thought I knew but in my case it ended up being more of a “huh, interesting story, so about those 9ers”
Very mixed emotionally. With my one aunt and uncle(-in-law) I really liked them both a lot - they were great people to have around one at a time. But after several attempted homicides on both sides I wasn’t really surprised when one finally succeeded. What honked me off was that at that time there wasn’t much to be done. The courts didn’t want to get involved, the church refused to admit there was a problem, and the family could have done something but all the rest were just as dysfunctional. It’s like watching two trains rush at each other and not having a switch to throw.
For me, two sentiments come to mind. I’m sorry that something couldn’t have been done to head off where everyone knew was coming (note that I have no idea what that could have been), and I’m sorry for the killer’s brother, whom I went to high school with; the brother’s a pretty good guy, and he shouldn’t have the lodestone of being related to a cold-blooded murderer.
On the other hand, I have a visceral, wrong, irrational idea that someone should have put that kid down before he killed someone. I used to teach Sunday School when I was a teen, and I remember asking some of his classmates if they knew anyone who was pure evil. I assumed they’d say no, but they were unanimous in proclaiming this kid 100%, irrevocably evil.
He kept trying to get me to go party with him after hours but he was kind of a jackass so I never did. He sat right next to me and we talked all the time.
I have a cousin who is currently in jail for murder. I never knew him very well as he is a good deal older than I and our respective branches of the family tree live far enough apart that we didn’t see each other very often.
I won’t give any names or details (to protect both the innocent and the guilty; his picture and contact information showed up after a quick Googling of his name) except to say that the case was relatively high profile; it didn’t make the national news or anything but at one point he was featured on either America’s Most Wanted or The John Walsh Show (my memory’s a bit foggy.)
No can do. He didn’t violate any rules. Trolling requires intent, which cannot be proven in this case. And the thread really didn’t get hijacked, as, while a few people responded out of the kindness of their hearts, most people know enough to just ignore him. I’d suggest you do the same.
I’m only posting this in this thread so that nobody else thinks they need to tell you this. I’m only explaining my reasoning, not trying to be a mod.
My mother dated this asshole redneck who had shot a guy who was trying to break into his garage. This was in Texas, but he got some prison time for it because the guy was trying to run off his property when he shot him in the back. I met him once.
My great-great-aunt took her four oldest children out to the barn and shot them in 1902. She then burnt down the house with her new baby in it, and after being captured wandering around the cemetery in a demented state escaped and drowned herself in the Mississippi River.
This reminds me of Perry Smith and Dick Hickock, murderers of the Clutter family immortalized in Truman Capote’s In Cold Blood. Capote’s friend Richard Avedon took some excellent photographs of Smith and Hickock in 1960. Smith in particular (on the right with the tiger tattoo) has very kind eyes.
There was a nice, older couple at my parish. Well-to-do, with several grown children. The first to donate if something was needed, always involved in parish activities. Then the husband was found shot to death at his desk in his office. The murder went unsolved for a good while, then the police began looking at one of their sons as a suspect. Finally, the wife confessed. Apparently the man was a tyrant at home, abusive to his wife and kids. She just decided she’d had enough. The lady served a couple years in prison, but not a very long time. I guess even the husband’s siblings testified about what a bad man he was. I’d say she was about 60 or so when she committed the murder. She came back to the parish for a while after she got out of prison, but must’ve moved to another parish later. The dead man’s sister was still attending church there, and it was somewhat strained for them.
One was the nicest man in the world who knifed a guy who attacked him at a party. He got 55 years in prison for that, even though it was a picture perfect case of manslaughter. He just wouldn’t take any pleas. I send him books from time to time.
The other that sticks out was Barrel Guy: a junkyard owner who shot two men, either over a dispute about a drug deal or because one of the victim’s was mean to the killer’s daughter; the prosecutor floated both possibilities. He then enlisted the help of another man to break the bodies down and put them in barrels, where they festered for a few months before the guy who helped got locked up for something or other and wanted to make a good deal. So he gave up “Barrel Guy” to the police. He was sentenced to 140 years, if I recall correctly.
I feel very heartbroken over the first guy, who is (or was, at least), one of the nicest guys, who kind of got screwed by the law and his unwillingness to compromise. I am indifferent over Barrel Guy, who is just any other client.