I’m curious as to what motive was described at her trial.
I did a stint as a homicide detective so I got to “know” quite few murderers. I can’t say I ever knew any in my personal life, though.
A boy I went thru grade school with and part of high school, before he dropped out. He was always trouble. He killed a preacher in a robbery and was executed.
I was acquainted with a couple of them back in West Texas. One was a friend’s roommate. My friend had answered an ad for a roommate on a bulletin board. Three months later, the friend asked me to help him move back out, because he said “the guy was weird.” I just saw him briefly that one time, and he seemed normal. But he did turn out to be weird, as the guy eventually got married and a few years later he was in the news for murdering his wife and burying her in his backyard.
The cousin of a high-school friend also got caught murdering his wife and burying her in the backyard. I’d briefly met him a couple of times.
I’m sure I must rub elbows with some in Thailand. Farangs (Westerners) come here to escape all sorts of entanglements back in their home countries.
In elementary school and junior high I hung out with a guy who turned out to be paranoid schizophrenic. 10 years or so ago he stabbed his father to death. I can’t say I was surprised; he should have been institutionalized long before, as he had a long history of violent behavior.
When I was in college, Julie and James were friends of some of my friends. I interacted with them now and again. I’d join them at meals sometimes. I worked at the college cafeteria, where Julie and her mom also worked. One of my friends encouraged me to ask Julie out, but I wasn’t interested. Julie was very sweet, just not my type.
Julie and James started dating and later got married. James always gave off a shifty salesman vibe. You were never really sure you could believe what he was saying.
I lost touch with them after college. A few years later, James murdered Julie by poisoning her with antifreeze. As I understand it, he added it to her drinks in small doses. It apparently took some time – weeks maybe – to kill her. He’s now in prison, I believe for life.
I think about them sometimes and it just makes me terribly sad. I wasn’t close to either of them, but Julie was such a kind young woman, and thinking about her suffering like that still upsets me.
I just googled the Julie and James story. My recollection was off. It seems that he poisoned her over the course of four months. And, with that, I’m going to go back to trying not to think about this anymore.
I wouldn’t know where to start, I know and have known quite a few. Most of them are dead now. Only one of them surprised me though. We met him through one of my wifes girlfriends. He came to my house for dinner, clean cut, well mannered and well spoken educated guy. My german shorthaired pointer who was the calmest most well mannered dog I have ever owned went absolutely ballistic when this guy entered the house. It took everything I had to restrain the dog from killing him. A week later he was picked up for killing his wife about year earlier.
I’ve known two.
This one I was good friends with in elementary school. We’d play soccer and other 10-year-old kid things in his backyard all the time. Still remember the day in high school the day after this happened. “Did you hear about Steve Scotti?”
This one was more tragic. I was her desk partner the day she quit her last job before killing her child - she was upset about a call she had with a customer, slammed the phone down, I asked if she was OK, she said she had to go and take a break, and never came back. We weren’t exactly friends, but we were friendly - smoke breaks together, desk partners, etc.
A long time ago I bought a house from a guy who later killed his wife, mutilated her body, wrapped her up on a sheet, and set the house on fire. I would occasionally get his Independent Trucker magazines, but I thought forwarding them to him at the pen would be a little cruel.
I’ve personally known Dawn Breedon for over 35 years. I knew her before she met her son’s father, while she was pregnant, during her battle to have visitation taken away from the guy, and will remember getting the phone call about her son’s murder (and the suicide of his father) if I live to be a million.
Does knowing people in the military count?
Hmm, I have a similar story in a similar time frame. A classmate of my brother’s lured his father into some woods near our neighborhood on the pretext of “going for a walk” or something, and then stabbed him 30+ times and left him in the bushes. He had paranoid schizophrenia and claimed that voices in his television had been giving him subliminal messages to kill his father. This was only a few months after high school graduation, so I think it was late 2007. The judge found that he did know right from wrong at the time of the murder so the insanity plea didn’t fly, but he’s in a mental hospital anyway.
My brother claimed that he knew something was wrong with this guy as early as 3rd grade, but I’m not sure I believe him.
I am one of the daughters of the father killed on Father’s Day.
I watched as Dowell (aka Pee-Wee) drove down the gravel road and backed his vehicle up to the entrance of the back yard. I didn’t realize it was him returning until he came into the light and it was then I noticed the gun holstered to his side. He walked up to the owner of the property demanding an apology for previously being asked to leave. Mr. Seely did not realize yet that he had a gun and angrily told him again to leave. We (the kids) standing nearby were trying to alert them that he had a gun… there was a lot of commotion. Dowell shot him in the leg. A friend realizing what was happening hollered out to Dowell to put the gun down, saying it’s cool man, it’s ok! Dowell shot him and he was later life flighted to Hermann. The bullet narrowly missed paralyzing my father’s friend. My father who had been inside came out to find a man standing now in front of us kids. I was screaming and his gun was pointed at us. My father yelled out “Baby get down!” Dowell turned and fired. My father fell with his last breath.
Dowell was on the run and had threatened that he wouldn’t be taken alive.
Days later he was caught at a rest stop.
Dowell took a plead bargain and was sentenced to 50 years. Sadly, he was not tried for premeditated murder. My mother felt we had been through too much to go through trial.
Dowell was on parole when he murdered my father and shot 2 others.
His criminal records go back to him being a teenager from what all I’ve gathered.
I am sorry that they scared your family and I am thankful he did not leave any more people with loss of life.
This gave me chills. There are no words. Thank you for sharing, we don’t often get the victim’s perspective so vividly.
I know several but the creepiest one almost involved me. I was about 19 and shacking up with a hippy chick I had met. We went out one night and when we came home she told the baby sitter to go home and her and I went to bed and did the usual stuff young people do. In the morning she found her newborn ( about 2 weeks old) dead. The baby had been smothered. She blamed the baby sitter saying she didn’t check on the baby when she got home. I had already left for work so was not aware of any of this. About midnight the next night I show up at her house, she invites me in and we do the usual, about an hour later the cops show up and arrest her for murdering her baby the night before. I am assuming she did it when we first arrived home. I was not called as a witness possibly because she didn’t know my last name. She went to prison and I never heard from her again. Her baby sitter was the one who introduced us and was a friend of mine. She did not even mention to me that her baby had died when I came by that night. The coldness just freaked me out for a long time.
A guy I grew up with and actually hung out with several times just got arrested for murder and dismemberment. I know him quite well and I can’t even say I’m surprised. Still, it feels a bit surreal.
One thing I have learned about the many murderers that I have known is that it really hard to tell in advance. Some of them are hotheads and have a criminal record but so do lots of other people. Except for the people that were in gangs, I have always been shocked when I learned that someone I knew, went to school with or worked with snapped and killed someone. Most of them are a little screwy but fairly nice on a day to day basis. I never had a personal problem with any of them (except for the gang members) and even enjoyed some good times with them.
Yeah, I’m older, and you collect more stories as you go through life.
Good friend of an “attempted murderer” – by legal definition, since that’s what he was convicted for (but not even the victim believed the perp was actually trying to kill the victim – it’s just a legal thing).
Also a dude who killed his wife and put her under the patio (unless it was one of her sons, which I’m also prepared to believe). Pretty much the usual kind of reason for killing your partner - she was violent and abusive, but not enough to justify killing her – he only got off with 10 because they could demonstrate good reason why he couldn’t handle a violent and abusive partner the same way most people do.
PS: Friend 1 can’t ever get a “working with children” permit. “Attempted murder” is one of the automatic exclusion categories. I don’t think he’s a danger to children, but … I’m not going to put it to the test.
Now that this thread has come around again, I suppose I’ll tell my story. Back in the 90s, I would occasionally visit a hobby/game shop that was a bit of a clubhouse for the usual types. There was a guy who always seemed to be there- quiet, nerdy, polite- who I spoke with many times. I was reading the paper one day when I saw him in a photo- he had been arrested for the murder of two women and a child. Apparently he had tried to date one of the women, and when she rejected him, he showed up at her house with a knife, and killed everyone inside. Later it was discovered that he had done the same thing to another woman a year or two earlier.