Wow, I can’t believe that even posting about my grandpa trying to kill my grandma and then himself, I forgot that he did kill someone.
When he was 14 he stole an apple from a Chinese man’s store. The man tried to tell him to stop so my grandpa beat him to death. Times being what they were, nothing happened to my grandpa at all. Over the years I’ve tried to find out information and see if his family could be tracked down so I could apologize. I’ve never been able to find them though.
I used to work as a prison shrink during my doctoral internship, so yes, I’ve known quite a few. Some of them had never been arrested for their crime. Nothing I could do about it either, which was difficult.
a close neighbor of mine when we were kids. I knew him all of his life and still know his brothers.
He found out his girlfriend was cheating, so he went to her house with a shotgun, shot her and the guy, and then blew his own head off.
My father.
He was an alcoholic and shot is 2nd wife (not my mother) with a hunting rifle after a night at the bar. Served 16 years. When he was released, he went on a drinking binge and was dead within 7 months.
When I was in Journalism we were required to go to the local courthouse and cover some of the proceedings. We picked one of the courtrooms and waited for it to start.
They walked in a fairly stocky guy with very intense dark eyes.
He was on trial for killing and eating his wife.
That’s as close as I got. I do not count the people I work with in the military as I do not consider them murderers.
Only once.
In my not-so-nice teen years I was a bit, um, I’m gonna call it “rebellious”. I did some dumb things (nothing violent, but stupid all the same) and wound up in Youngin’ Jail for a bit. (Actually, I found the experience more fascinating than punishing, but it certainly wasn’t fun).
During one particular meal I was talking to the guy next to me. Nice enough guy, lived in my block and seemed more or less normal, considering the community. Finally got around to popping the ever-popular ‘so, what are you in for’ question. Without missing a beat, in a tone so casual you would’ve thought he was giving me the time of day, he answered “murder”, shrugged like, “eh, what can you do” and continued eating. He was 14 years old.
Still gives me chills.
Yes, lots. Hazard of the trade. I’m currently becoming acquainted with a bevy of rapists and child molesters as well.
Honestly? Not all THAT scared, since he’s actually a second cousin I was never close to. What I do find interesting though is that his brother is the complete opposite – a stand up guy, he’s in the Marines, (I think he’s over in Afghanistan?)
But then their dad, (my dad’s first cousin) has always been a womanizer, and he and his wife divorced when the boys were young, so maybe he didn’t have quite such a decent role model? Who knows?
(I’m just glad I haven’t been to the official family reunion in a long time!!!)
Um, threadshitting IS considered against the rules, and I think that would count.
My former next-door neighbor, Tim, killed a man. I think I may have spoken to Tim once. Tim was an 18yo live-in boyfriend of an older, mid-to-late-30s woman. His girlfriend had several children, all of which were “home-schooled”. Tim , the-girlfriend’s-older-boy (aged 16, I believe), and another boy from several streets over tried to hustle some gay guy living in a trailer a few miles away. It ended badly with Tim whacking the victim in the head with a brick. Tim went to prison. The other boys got off without any punishment.
Tim and his girlfriend’s children had been in trouble previously for trying to de-rail trains by placing large rocks on the rails.
That Tim is serving time for murder is fact. All of the additional information is unverifiable as it was obtained via neighborhood gossip. I don’t even remember Tim’s last name. And, thankfully, I no longer live anywhere near the neighborhood.
I was wrong - one of my husband’s cousins was a key player in this - Somalia affair - Wikipedia
Not a murderer, but I once new a guy who turned out to be a pedophile. He’s in jail now.
A regular at a bar I used to bounce at killed a guy in a botched drug deal and buried the body in the desert. In a miscarriage of justice I can’t get my head around, particularly for Arizona, he was sentenced to 8 years for second degree murder and was out in 1.5. He and his cousin were both major steroid freaks, and I’d always make sure all my gear was conveniently within reach and ready to go whenever they came in. The cousin got arrested for attempted murder over a fight in that same bar when he tried to beat a guy to death with a toilet tank lid. Charges were dropped when the victim wouldn’t cooperate, probably out of fear and intimidation.
A guy I went to high school back in Ohio with beat another guy to death when he was around 19. He did five years for it and lost an eye in a prison fight.
This guy is some kind of in-law to my brother: John Edward Robinson - Wikipedia
I met him at Bro’s wedding.
I knew a guy in high school through several mutual friends. We’d wind up at the same birthday parties, social gatherings, etc. He always seemed like a good guy, outgoing and funny.
During a highschool football game he broke his leg. It was a pretty severe injury and caused him to miss most of that school year. When he finally made it back, he was still on crutches and had bars protruding from his leg. Later, the rumors got around that he was hitting the painkillers pretty hard and eventually had moved on to other drugs.
I heard just a few months ago that he beat one of his neighbors to death and took her prescriptions and credit cards. He’s doing a life sentence now.
This one comes with a story about a neighborhood. I didn’t live there, but I hung out there all the time when I was about 16/17. This area consisted of about forty or fifty “starter homes”, that is, single story on-slab 1200 sq ft houses with scruffy shrubbery. Not poor, but not the best maintained. Working class.
The centerpiece of the neighborhood was Jerry, a 40-ish year old man with no real job. Jerry was a real life Fagan (Oliver Twist) in that he ran a theft ring. He also dealt a lot of weed and coke. He put a brand new dining room set out on his concrete back deck. In the center of the table was a “drip candle” (as it burns, the wax drips in multicolor rainbow effect down the sides). Every morning, Jerry had breakfast at this table. Breakfast was a glass of orange juice and two Qualudes (which he also sold). Then he lit the candle and watched it drip for a few hours. Jerry had a doberman named Ali, who was a highly trained attack dog. His house was on the corner and he could see up two streets from the sliding glass door of his wood paneled den. The door had silver mirror window tint, so you never knew when he was watching you. If he saw you and wanted to converse with you, he tweaked the alarm so the siren on the side of his house went bip bip. That sound meant business.
Daryl lived next door. Sporting a sixth grade education and a manipulative deviant (and highly intelligent) personality, Daryl was a key player in the theft ring. Usually small stuff, construction tools, outboard motors, HVAC units with hacksawed freon lines. A nice outboard would get you a quarterpound of weed. All business was paid in drugs, and business was good.
Robert lived on the other side, but he wasn’t much into thievery. He sold weed at the highschool ball games, along with Qualudes and a few other items. He and Jerry saw a lot of each other.
Mark lived down the street, but he never came outside. Daryl explained that one night they gave Mark three hits of white matchhead (mescaline) and, when he tripped hard and tried to hide in his room, they stood outside and chanted “The power of Christ compels you!” (The Exorcist) until he started screaming and wouldn’t stop. Supposedly he had not spoken since. Sometimes we would go visit him via his window. He was a quiet guy.
Goober lived on the railroad tracks. He called Daryl one day and told him to look outside. There was Goober waving from the window of the house across the street. He had broken in to steal food and take a shower. You could tell were Goober was living by the railroad tracks from all the chicken bones laying around. I never really hung out with Goober.
That brings us to Tony. He lived on the cul-de-sac half a block down the street with his mother. Tony was a small guy filled with attitude. Taking his cue from Daryl, Tony upped the ante and went into grand larceny, mostly motorcycles. Jerry had a connection about a half hour away that could change numbers and provide papers. There wasn’t a bike Tony couldn’t steal. We were at his house once when he pulled up the garage door and showed me the Suzuki 1100 turbo he just lifted. It was surrounded by about fifteen other motorcycles. He pulled that Suzuki out and cranked it up and tooled around the neighborhood, his stringy long blond hair trailing behind. Everyone knew. Tony and Daryl used to give me a hard time for having a straight job. They sneered that they made more in 15 minutes than I made all week. It was true.
Then things went south. Jerry wrecked his brand new Oldsmobile (it was gold) because of the Qualudes. He bought a new one the next day (black) and had the gold one put in his front yard like a display. Two days later he rear ended someone (Qualudes again) and blinded a little boy. He had the black one put next to the gold one. He had no remorse whatsoever. But the karma seemed to catch up to him. The narcs got him for 1 1/2 pounds of cocaine. He got 25 years. His wife got 10. His two kids went to social services. Jerry’s house stood empty and the lawn became overgrown.
Daryl and his mother moved a few miles away. Robert got sent to military school. Tony and his friend were living in a trailer. Rumor was they kept a girl as a sex slave, chained up in the living room to a post. I never knew for sure. Tony was stealing more bikes than ever, having inherited Jerry’s out of town connection, and he was generally armed.
A boy I didn’t know, who lived across the street from Mark, was having his 16th birthday party and Tony (now 17), who had known him his whole life, showed up. I never knew what the argument was about, but Tony felt disrespected. He walked the block and a half to his mother’s house, where he still kept bikes, and walked back to the party toting a double barrel shotgun. He shot that boy point blank right in front of his house, on his birthday, with his momma standing right there on the front porch. The blast blew his heart right out of his back. Tony strolled down the road, past Jerry’s empty house and into the woods behind it.
The police surrounded the patch of woods and waited until dawn (very wise). When the combed the woods they found Tony up a tree. He led them to the buried gun. Tony got 25 years for first degree. The walk to his mother’s house and back was enough for them to show pre-meditation. Somewhere I have a yellowed newspaper clipping of Tony, shackled, standing between two deputies on the courthouse steps. He’s out by now, I suppose. I wouldn’t know and wouldn’t want to. Tony wasn’t my friend (I don’t think he was anyone’s friend) but he was a close acquaintance and we had some laughs. He was a frequent visitor at my house.
I don’t know if he was ever convicted or not so all nouns and verbs written below have the understood word “alleged” or “allegedly” in front of them.
I was (allegedly) working in a military (alleged) unit in (alleged) North Carolina. (you see how this works, right ? I am deleting most of the following "alleged/ly"s so you can follow the story.)
This one much higher ranking Non-Commissioned Officer comes through to meet everyone in the unit he is about to take over. He is not taking over yet. He is still on leave after coming back from overseas but he is on orders to take over the unit and wants to meet everyone.
He never showed up to take over and we got the word that he was arrested for killing his wife. He allegedly killed her and kept her in is apartment for a week or two. then he put her in the box that a refrigerator comes in and took her body to the dump. Then he returned to the USA. He allegedly did this in a country which formerly was not as affluent as the USA. In that country, they don’t throw away anything useful and they know that Americans do. So the indigenous personnel of course opened the refrigerator box and found the body.
I knew another case of a teenage boy killing his abusive father with a shotgun. He was from one of my college roommates’ teeny little hometown, and they were friends. He came over to our apartment to hang out several times.
I knew one a long time ago when we were both in high school (different schools). We used to go to the same parties and shows, and while he was not really a friend of mine, I knew him pretty well. He was a racist asshole and he developed into a major skinhead and killed a guy in the nineties in Denver. I can’t remember the guys name for the life of me…
We lived across the street from Paul Bernardo in St. Catharine’s for a while. That’s where he raped and murdered two girls. Now the house is torn down. It still makes me so sick to think of it. Paul Bernardo - Wikipedia
I worked with John Floyd Thomas, “Los Angeles’ most prolific serial killer” LAPD ties 72-year-old man to two waves of serial killings until he was arrested last March.
We didn’t work closely together - I tried to avoid him, not because he was creepy but because he wore SO MUCH AFTERSHAVE that it would linger behind him for a half hour, I kid you not.
It was pretty scary when word got out what happened.