Not really. I had a cousin killed in the Oklahoma City bombing, but I did not know him very well and had not seen him since we were kids. Guess I’ve been lucky.
Oh yeah, forgot another one. One of my best friends from early high school drifted away and started getting into “gangsta” type culture. He thought he was pretty badass from what I can gather.
On October 1, 1994 in Moline, IL, he was jumped by a couple of local gangbangers - according to official reports “unprovoked” but knowing him, he said something to them - who proceeded to beat him to death with the Club. He died in the hospital the next day.
When they arrested one of the guys, he had the murder weapon hanging on his bedroom wall.
I swear, one of these days I’ll meet a criminal as clever as Alan Rickman’s character in Die Hard, but the vast majority of criminals are at about the same intellectual level as a sea slug.
Stranger
Our school bus would pick up kids from the farms and hamlets on the way to school. I must have been around 15 at the time. There was a girl around 13 or 14 who’d get on the bus at one of the hamlets. Over time she started to appear more and more disheveled, she was growing, but no one was buying her a bigger skirt and shirt. I just kept thinking “something’s wrong” and eventually I reported to one of the teachers that “something was wrong.” I couldn’t put my finger on it, she just wasn’t being looked after properly. She looked greasy and uncomfortable. They told me she was on the “at risk” list and was being monitored.
Her naked body was found in a ditch by ramblers who at first thought they’d stumbled on a shop dummy. There’s an example of trying to make sense of it all. Can’t be a murdered girl - must be a shop dummy for some reason discarded at the edge of a field. The mother’s boyfriend did it - the girl was “in the way” it seemed. I can still see her getting on the bus. It still bugs me that she was on this bloody list but nothing more was done, but then lots of kids were and they didn’t get murdered. Fuck.
I’ve known two, neither well. The first owned a hardware store in the Frankford area of Philadelphia and was found head bashed in from behind and till empty. This must have been at least 60 years ago. He and his wife were friends of my parents and I knew him. I tried for weeks to imagine what it must have been like (I was a pre-teen) and it just felt gruesome. The case was never solved.
The second one was a professor when I was in graduate school. I knew him, again not well. The murderer was a graduate student whom I met in 1960 or so. I finished in 1962, but he was still a graduate student in 1970 when he came into a seminar and started shooting. The only two people he hit were his advisor, who died two weeks later or massive internal injuries (a friend on the staff told me that there was literally no chance he would recover) and the department who lost the joint on an index finger (don’t recall which one). The student then turned the gun on himself and blew his brains out. I was older and away from the scene and it didn’t affect me nearly as much as the first one.
Yup, a former FWB. He was stationed in Norfolk and got into a fight with a local about some chick in a bar. The local purposely drove over the guy in the bar’s parking lot.
My cousin was killed in the rather notorious mass murder on PSA Flight 1771 near San Luis Obispo. A disgruntled ex-employee snuck a gun onto a flight using his USAir credentials to bypass security, shot his supervisor and both pilots, resulting in a crash killing all 43 aboard.
Crap, it was a long time ago, but reading that Wikipedia article brings it all back.
One of my high school classmates (I knew of him, but never met) was killed by the Xerox killer.
Another high school classmate went to jail for murdering his girlfriend, I never met the girl though.
This guy I knew in one of my teen hangouts (total jerk, I suspect he broke into my car for drug money) killed a guy in the parking lot. There was an old guy riding a bike, and jerkface pushed him. He fell off the bike, cracked his skull, and died. Iirc, the eggshell skull syndrome had something to do with it, jerkface didn’t hit him.
?
As for the topic, a high school classmate of mine (knew of him, I believe, but not all that well) was killed, along with his little brother and mother, by his father, who then committed suicide. It was a very sad story.
A girl I knew in college was murdered. I wasn’t close to her, but even after graduation when we saw each other at the grocery store or something we’d stop to chat for a moment. Two years ago her boyfriend killed her in a domestic dispute. I found out about it when I looked her up on Facebook.
My best friends worked with this woman, who murdered her husband. It was one of those situations where, after the murder, being interviewed, people say, “Yeah, I can totally see here as a murderer.” Apparently, the victim was a really nice guy.
I THINK one of my uncles was murdered, but I’m not sure. I don’t know the full story, and it’s a wound I don’t want to open by asking my Mom.
Joe
There was a girl I had a crush on from about the 2nd to 6th grade. Lost track of her when I moved to a different school district. Saw her again at a football game my Sr year when our schools were playing against each other. I was in the band for my team. She was a cheerleader for hers. Got a hug from her after half time to the astonishment of all onlookers. Several years later I read an article where the manager of a fast food restaurant had been killed during a robbery. It was her.
Explain, please. You don’t hang out with people like what?
Yes.
A second cousin, who was involved in dodgy dealings.
A friend’s father, who according to rumours was leading a double life and was killed by a gay lover.
Presumably he was aiming for irony “My standards are too high for innocent victims, I only hang around with the ____ who kill them.”
Fascinating thread. I wonder what percentage of the dope has stories like these. Murder isn’t that common an occurrence, but I suppose that when we think of how many people we know…the cumulative chance is significant.
It makes me rather nervous about my family ever returning to the US. Not just for the personal anecdotes, but the realization that there have been so many gun-related murder/suicides in my home country.
Ah, thank you. I wasn’t parsing that correctly and was somehow seeing the second sentence not as “have murdered” but “been murdered.”
A kid from the neighborhood where I grew up. He was always a little weird, I got into a couple of fights with him, didn’t like him. He got into a strange sexual thing with a much older man when he was in his late teens and was killed by him.
I can’t remember his name…
A friend was killed on 9/11, he was in the FDNY in engine company 55.
A friend from early high school that I had drifted away from killed someone a couple years after graduation. Knifed him in a street fight.
Yep my cousin, about the same age as me, was murdered in DC or MD, apparently gunned down on the street. Hard to tell what he was into though, could have been a drug or gang thing, or maybe just random. I didn’t pry. We used to play together as kids, he was my uncle’s stepson.
I was rather shocked too. When I first saw this question, I thought, not me. But after I remembered one, then I remembered another, and another…
And for those of you who think you went through untouched, don’t forget those who died by accident or suicide.