When I lived in Chicago, I did some freelance garden design. One of my clients were Lee and Marilyn Miglin. I dealt mostly with Marilyn, but I was on cordial terms with Lee; they’d hired me together. Lee Miglin, you may recall, was killed by Andrew Cunanan. I was about to send Marilyn a note of condolence, but at the time no one had any idea who had killed Lee; Cunanan was still on his rampage. I chose not to send the note. Lee was killed in his own garage, with (at least, this was the belief at the time) one of the gardening tools. My fingerprints were undoubtedly on those tools. Having watched too much TV, I pictured some cop “following up” on all notes sent to Marilyn; matching up my prints; and Det. Sipowicz going, “Why don’t we go downtown, get this straightened out?” and then, in my dream, I saw it spiralling out of control, with me strapped to an electric chair (I think by this time I was being played by Susan Heyward), screaming, “But I’m In-no-cent, I tell you! In-no-cent!” When the figured out who had done it, I felt bad for not having sent Marilyn a note, but I never did.
Also, I knew about Jeffrey Dahmer about 24 hours before his name was released to the media. His last victim was the nephew of my boss at the time, and she’d been “in the loop” on the investigation, and they notified the family members before they made an public announcements. And she of course told everyone who worked at her pet store.
I’ve been told I have the hand writing of a serial killer. Does that count?
25 years ago I assisted this man who has mental illness to find a job. That was my job then, to help people with disabilities find jobs. Two weeks after I finished job coaching him he killed his parents and grand parents. He shot his parents and strangled his grand parents. :eek:
I went to school with and knew one of the people Henry Lee Lucas confessed to killing, although I, and many others, suspect he wasn’t really guilty of the murder.
Another “not really a serial killer” but he did kill two people.
One of my mom’s neighbors back in my itty bitty hometown of Honeydew California was the defense attorney for Dan White. Dan White shot and killed San Francisco Supervisor Harvey Milk and San Francisco Mayor George Moscone.
His attorney’s defense that Dan White was severely depressed, as indicated by his consuption of twinkies and coca-cola prior to the killings, resulted in a lesser conviction of voluntary manslaughter and coined the phrase “twinkie defense”.
Dan White commited suicide in 1986, shortly after being released from his prison term for good behavior.
Not a serial killer: One of my kids grade school teachers had also taught Mark David Chapman, actually tried to help him some due to his miserable childhood.
One of Ted Bundy’s victims was kidnapped from one of my friends parking lots. Presumably there’s a small degree of separation there but I don’t know it.
Oh, and I was born and raised in Texarkana - home of the Phantom Killer, subject of the movie The Town That Dreaded Sundown. Due to the size of the town, I’m certainly connected to the killer by just a few degrees, although he was never identified. I have met the editor of the paper at the time. And older family members have recollections of the events and knew some of the victims.
My brother and some of his friends new Clifford Olsen as a nice, helpful guy. He was at our house (in Maple Ridge) at least once, in 1979. Much too close for comfort.
I can’t find a link or remember the guy’s name (and it’s not a serial case) but my sister had a brush with a killer, too. She used to work at a cheesy british-themed chain pub called “Sherlock Holmes’ Pub” (ugh) in West Edmonton mall. There was a creepy guy tworking in the kitchen here who used to stare constantly (at both my sister and some of the other girls) and had a habit of following her at a distance when she’d go to her car. She complained about this, and arranged to always have someone accompany her when she left because she was so skeeved out – and eventually the guy was fired, basically for being a bug.
A couple of months later, he was arrested for rape and murder. He’d cut a woman up, put her in a suitcase, and ditched the suitcase somewhere. (Early nineties.)
My mother was in prison with Pablo Escobar’s mother-in-law. He was married to her daughter, a beauty queen who was Miss Colombia or something similar. She told my mother that towards the end of his life Escobar went paranoid crazy because he suspected that someone close to him was betraying him.
I’ve met cartoonist Derf, who was kind of friends with Jeffrey Dahmer in high school, right before Dahmer began killing people. When Dahmer was captured, I worked with a kid who lived a few doors down from Dahmer’s home from that time, where the cops later dug up his first (?) victim.
That’s the only serial killer I know us being tenuously connected to. When I was a kid, the guy who lived the other side of my next-door neighbor was arrested as one of the 10 accessories to the murder of Akron beauty-supply magnate Dean Milo. And my dad was in high school with a guy who, 30 years later, killed his mother, chopped her into pieces, ate some of the pieces, and had sex with others because she was a “zombie vampire” and he believed this the only way to stop her from harming innocent passerby.
A close friend of mine helped mass murderer Richard Farley move. My friend didn’t know Farley, but he was roped into helping with the move by a friend of his.
Through the same friend, I briefly met a woman who worked at ESL (site of the killings). She had called in sick that day. Had she been at work, she could have very well been wounded or killed.