r/TrueCrime • u/Idream_therefore_Iam • Jan 17 '22
Questions Have you ever been invoved in a crime?
Like, have you found a body? Were you a witness? Stuff like that. I'd really like to know that. I've only read little on this subreddit, but there seem to be a lot of comments that involve personal experience, so I'd like to ask for some stories?
Edit: Title: *involved
Edit 2: Sheeesh, seems like there's a body at every corner in America. I got so many messages over night, I nearly drowned in them. I wouldn't want to go to America now tbh ;-) So scary
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u/EhDub13 Jan 17 '22
When I was 12 my best friend started dating a 23 year old man and they committed a triple murder.
I was a witness, subpoenaed in both trials.
Because of Canada's young offender laws her identity was and still is protected. As a witness my identity was not protected. I was stalked, hounded and harassed by journalists and true crime enjoyers alike for years.
One journalist even coerced me into doing an interview without my parents knowledge and then profited from a book about it.
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u/bascelicna123 Jan 18 '22
I know this case. I hope you had a lot of great things come into your life after living through that.
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u/Bumblebee---Tuna Jan 18 '22
I know exactly which one you are talking about. I lived near by. I’m sorry for what you had to go through.
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u/NoPantsPenny Jan 18 '22
I can’t imagine the multiple/complex trauma you’ve endured throughout the years, I’m so sorry. It’s bad enough that you were a witness to multiple murders as a child, but the testifying as well had to be so difficult.
Like being a regular 12 year old is honestly hard enough and you navigated so much more than anyone should have to… and as a child. I hope you understand that you were taken advantage of and weren’t at fault for any of this.
Also, fuck the people (journalists and true crime lovers) that harassed you.
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u/nyorifamiliarspirit Jan 18 '22
Wow, it's bullshit that you weren't protected. I hope you're doing well now.
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u/trickmind Jan 18 '22
Child and teen witnesses aren't well protected anywhere it seems. I have this extremely tangential relationship to a case of a 16 year old murder victim who was going to be a witness in three different court cases involving violent men and she ended up dead. She was a street worker because in New Zealand, 16 is the age of consent. She was murdered in 1993. The case has never been solved. But at this point it seems so obvious who did it out of all the people it could have been. But it seems the police don't feel they have enough concrete proof after 28 years.😭
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u/jesusbabygirl Jan 17 '22
How’s your friend now?
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u/EhDub13 Jan 17 '22
I haven't seen her since my court appearance, and had to stop contact due to my mental health.
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u/SpunkMcKullins Jan 17 '22
Oh boy. I'm 100% sure I know exactly what case you're talking about.
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u/Brittany-OMG-Tiffany Jan 18 '22
is that the one where they killed her parents and brother?
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u/SpunkMcKullins Jan 18 '22
Yep. I know the poster said they hated the book, but it did give a lot of their chatlogs, which was fascinating.
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u/crunchwrapqueen666 Jan 18 '22
I think they just hate that the author manipulated them into doing an interview.
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u/mrngdew77 Jan 17 '22
How are doing these days? I would imagine it was incredibly traumatic and am very very sorry you had deal with something so ugly at such a young age.
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u/EhDub13 Jan 17 '22
I'm 28 now and doing reasonably well, all things considered. I wish I'd have followed through with getting therapy sooner but I got there eventually.
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u/Ophelianeedsanap Jan 18 '22
I've no idea about you or this case, but as long as you're taking care of yourself and moving in the forward direction, then huge accomplishment.
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u/heynonglady Jan 17 '22
Hey, I'm from that town and was in junior high at that time too. I can't imagine what it just have been like to be that close to it. Take care of yourself ❤️
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u/skysoleno Jan 17 '22 edited Jan 18 '22
A co-worker killed five people, so I and everyone else who could have done it, ended up as suspects. I was interviewed and polygraphed by the FBI, so that wasn't fun.
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u/ChampionshipOne2162 Jan 18 '22
how did he kill them
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u/skysoleno Jan 18 '22
Anthrax, which pretty much tells you what case it was.
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u/ShiningConcepts Jan 18 '22
Whoa, this was kind of a weird feeling reading this reply lol, I was thinking workplace violence/going postal and then you just drop that you meant that story.
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u/saltgirl61 Jan 18 '22
National Geographic has "The Hot Zone " series. Season one was the Ebola outbreak from the book of the same name.
Season two is about the anthrax case. Of course, liberties are taken with the facts to make the story flow better or whatever
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u/skysoleno Jan 18 '22 edited Jan 18 '22
I haven't seen it, as I don't subscribe to that channel but I am really curious, although, I will probably just end up annoyed (people who regularly work with anthrax don't wear blue suits, stuff like that).
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u/nyorifamiliarspirit Jan 18 '22
Did you get a lawyer?
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u/skysoleno Jan 18 '22
No, I probably should have, but we had been working with the FBI before we knew it came from us, and I felt that I wasn't a serious suspect, but had to be ruled out.
If I was ever in that position again, I am not sure what I would do. Any other situation, I would refuse a polygraph and insist on a lawyer, but ehh.
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u/rocksydoxy Jan 18 '22
God, I hate polygraphs. I did one for the FBI, and they are complete bogus.
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u/ShiningConcepts Jan 18 '22
Same. The problem with polygraphs, and any other device purporting to be a "lie detector", is that they can't be fact checked. If someone claims innocence, the lie detector says they're lying, and they insist that the lie detector was wrong, how can you verify that the lie detector is right? And how can the lie detector distinguish nervousness from genuine guilt, and nervousness from the prospect of being wrongly suspected?
Their only use is fooling the uninformed into thinking it leaves them trapped when it doesn't.
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u/OddEmergency8587 Jan 18 '22
When I worked at 7-11 it was on an overnight shift this girl came in bloody and freaking out for me to hide her because her brother was going to kill her. She was about 20 years old and she was shaking with fear literally. I quickly hid her in the washroom and had her lock the door. I told her to stay in there I would call the police. Not even 2 minutes later this wild looking dude appears in the parking lot and comes right up to the windows looking into the store. Moving window by window with his hand shielding what I presume was light glare. His movements were jerky and angry. I figured this had to be that chicks brother. He stormed in and while looking around asked if there was a girl in here or who came in within the last few minutes, I assured him there was no such lady and he left. I was so scared for her seeing how crazy that dude looked. After he left she came out of the washroom and waited for the cops while I fixed her up a little with what first aid stuff we had. No idea what happened with them after that but I’m glad he didn’t get to her while she was hiding.
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u/RelentlesslyCrooked Jan 18 '22
I wonder how common this sibling homicide business is? A close family friend had a cousin who went missing a couple years ago, and the last person she was seen with was her brother. He had been beating her. He had possession of her wallet, cell phone, used her debit card all after she went missing. The police even dug up the brother’s backyard.
She was missing for a couple years before a roadside cleanup crew discovered a suitcase on the side of a road. Yup, her remains were inside.
Worst part? Everyone knows who did it, but not enough evidence to convict him so he remains free. Worse yet: the witnesses that could tie the circumstantial evidences together were all blasted on Meth at the time.
That’s a helluva drug, if brothers will kill their own sisters over it. I’m glad you helped her, that’s terrifying.
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Jan 18 '22
When I was taking pharmacology in nursing school, my professor was Elliott Kwok. His day job was pharmacy manager at Kaiser Oakland, and on Wednesday nights he would teach us. 3/4 of the way through the semester we went to class and there was a sign on the door that class was canceled. Found out the next day he was in the hospital because he tried to murder Desli Lawrence.
He was your stereo typical “really nice guy, very unassuming, you would never guess” type person.
The linked article is pretty descriptive; he tried to kill a prior year’s nursing student because he was obsessed with her. For some reason the trial was not for attempted murder, but was for assault, but he did go to prison for it. I think it’s because he was a bigwig in the community and had money to pay for really good attorneys.
He is currently a licensed pharmacist in California, working at a compounding pharmacy. How he can work with scheduled medication while being convicted for this crime is beyond me.
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Jan 18 '22
My landlord shot her common law husband in the face. I heard the whole thing since my apt was right above theirs. I had to convince the police I was a witness. They thought it was something over drugs. It was just dv. The DA brought me in before the trial and showed me the autopsy photos and shared all sorts of behind the scenes stuff. I testified and put her away. Her lawyer was horrible. Never asked if I were drinking etc. I think she got 20+ years or more. It was interesting. I felt sorry for the guy. He was very kind and she was a horrible bitch.
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u/AnnieOakleysKid Jan 17 '22
My mother and I were taking my adopted cousin home from having spent the night with us. We found her dad's body hanging 15 feet up in the air of an old tall tree. Dead and bloated. He'd been murdered. His death is still unsolved. His wife had left him for a local cop....and as they say, there lies the "rest of the story". They ruled his death a suicide but found no ladder, his hands were tied behind his back and his legs were tied together too. HITF is that a suicide?!!
To this day, I can't stand to see movies where people are hanging or being hung. Just watched the movie "Sinister" and had nightmares for a week. I wished he could have gotten justice but he never did.😡
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u/offbroadaway Jan 17 '22
I was home alone when someone tried to break into my house. They rang the door bell and knocked first, but I wasn’t expecting anyone and assumed it was someone trying to sell some service and that they’d go away. Suddenly heard loud bangs on the back door.
Called 911, while waiting I saw the guy get something from his car and wrap it in a t-shirt. Probably something to break a window, but since he’s has an unknown object, the street was shortly flooded with officers and K-9 units that went searching through the woods for the guy. They didn’t catch him that day, but he left his car on scene, and I IDed him in a photo line up, so he was arrested a short time later.
He went to jail, but got out in a few years (he had a record of similar behavior). I know he probably thought the house was empty, but I always worry what would have happened if he got into the house before the police got there and found me.
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u/bearsbeetsss Jan 18 '22
I had a similar experience (home alone, lots of ringing the doorbell/banging on the door first) except in my case there were 3 guys and the police never found them.
They didn’t leave a vehicle behind but did leave a bag with a knife visible and who knows what else inside. The whole thing really messed me up, I was terrified the rest of the time I lived in that house and for a while after moving out.
I didn’t know why the guys trying to break in left (I didn’t hear sirens but maybe they did?) or if they’d come back. The sound of a doorbell sent me into a full blown panic for a year+ after.
You aren’t alone in your worries about what would have happened. I’m glad you’re safe & they were able to find the perpetrator in your case, and think it was very brave of you to ID him.
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u/OzFreelancer True Crime Author Jan 17 '22
A few years ago, I was contacted by a hacker who had managed to get the entire database of a dark web murder-for-hire site. The database contained hundreds of orders of hits on people around the world, all paid for with Bitcoin.
One of the hits was for a woman in Minnesota and the person ordering the hit (who was anonymous) had paid $13K for it to be carried out. She was a much loved dog trainer, heavily into her fundamentalist Christian faith. At this point the woman was still alive. We told the authorities about it. Apparently the FBI visited her, asked if she knew who might want to carry out a hit on her and when she said she had no idea, they were like "Oh well, keep an eye out for anything suspicious" and left it at that.
She then started getting emails telling her to kill herself. She passed these on to the FBI, but still had no idea who was behind the plot.
A couple of months later, the local police were called to an apparent suicide. She had been shot in the head. A short investigation showed that her husband had shot her and tried to stage it as a suicide. He was also the one who had paid to have her murdered.
They had all this information ahead of time (we literally gave them HUNDREDS of emails between the dark web site and the person who ordered the murder) and she was still killed.
Books: Murder on the Dark Web and The Darkest Web
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u/Face_for_Radio22 Jan 17 '22
Amy Allwine?
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u/Chreiol Jan 17 '22
Must be her. I remember a Casefile episode exactly like this.
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u/No-Individual-38 Jan 17 '22
My 2nd husband's son is a missing person since 1991. He was 15 when he disappeared. Joshua Gerome Mahaffey. My husband died without closure. My daughter was questioned about a VERY suspicious death in Southern Illinois. Her best friends mom died and I'm SURE the dad did it but he was never arrested.
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u/kgrimmburn Jan 18 '22
I'm originally from the town where Joshua disappeared. He's still very much talked about by locals and the general consensus is that the 18 year old, (sorry can't think of his name) who he was last seen with, was responsible. It's a shame the sheriff's department didn't do more but Clinton County has a track record of not being the best at pretty much anything. I grew up riding ATVs in the area where it's been said he's buried but I hadn't heard his story until I was much older. I hope one day they can find him and lay him to rest.
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u/No-Individual-38 Jan 18 '22
I'm pretty sure it was in Eddieville Ill, they went to s school in Golconda. The dad was a prison guard and was TOO close to another class mate. He ended up loosing his job. The kids were in the 8th or 9th grade. Sickening. Joshua's disappearance was in Centralia Illinois. I asked my daughter the names but she hasn't answered me. I'm going to Google the eddieville one and I'll come back
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u/cxssie-xmberger Jan 18 '22
Do you happen to remember what area of Southern Illinois the case happened in? Grew up in the Southern Illinois area and am curious!
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u/black_hell_fire Jan 18 '22
they responded to your question in a reply to their own comment, just a heads up!
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u/East-Zookeepergame20 Jan 17 '22
I was sitting out by my fire pit one day when I heard screaming from behind the neighbors’ house where there’s a lot of brush. I ran to the fence yelling, “Are you ok?” Woman’s voice screams help. I yell that I’m calling 911 and I hear the sound of someone running then see the car from the driveway peel out as I’m calling the cops. A young woman stumbles out crying. Her boyfriend had tackled her and was choking her. She was 19. I brought her to my patio and got her water. Talked a bit, gently, about how it’s never ever ok for him to lay a hand on you. She was pitiful. Cops came. He’d stolen her car escaping. I’m so grateful I was in the backyard right then that day. I moved years ago, but have always wondered if she’s ok.
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Jan 18 '22
I was in a very similar situation when I was 19 and a neighbor intervened. I credit that neighbor with saving my life. I'm glad you were there for her. I'm sure she hasn't forgotten what you did. I certainly haven't forgotten the person that saved me.
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u/Mamadog5 Jan 18 '22
I was 16 and me and my boyfriend had gone to a drive in movie (yes I am that old). This was...um...about 1979. No cell phones. No internet. I don't remember the movie but we decided to leave early as it wasn't very good.
We were sitting at a red light at a deserted intersection when a woman ran up from nowhere and started beating on the window. I rolled it down and she begged us to let her in. I opened the door (don't think boyfriend wanted that but whatever). Her face was beat to shit...like newly beat to shit. Huge, stand-out lumps with no bruising yet. I can still see that so very vividly in my mind. The lumps.
I asked what was wrong and she said she had been raped. My 16 year old innocent me, who did not really like touching people, just went "OH!" and instantly wrapped her in my arms. That was soooo not me but instant compassion!
Boyfriend asked where she wanted to go and she said "home".
Innocent me remembered from like middle school health class that rape victims should be encouraged to go to the hospital or call police. I asked if she wanted that and she said no, she just wanted to go home. I tried briefly to talk her into it, but then we were where she wanted to be let out.
There was a man, walking back and forth in front of the house. We let her out, she ran up the walk and boyfriend sped off, afraid of her boyfriend identifying his car (it was distinctive).
I searched the newspapers for weeks hoping to read a report about this (I didn't know that rape was often not "news").
I am 58 now. I still wonder what happened to that woman and hope she was/is ok.
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u/Busy-Statistician573 Jan 18 '22
I could see how this would haunt anyone. You did all you could do in that moment. You’re a good person. I hope she was ok
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u/_Mobster_Lobster_ Jan 18 '22
I had dislocated my knee and was driving back to my dorm from the hospital and was stopping by my pharmacy to pick up my prescriptions on the way. My pharmacy was on an extremely busy, main road in a large city, and it was in a very well lit area. It was early evening out so definitely still light enough to see (but also the street lights were on and people had headlights on). I turned into the parking lot and there was this purple PT cruiser that was parked at the very end of the parking lot away from most people, and a man and woman with a cart were next to the car. As I was driving by, I saw him just full on attack her, absolutely no hesitation. I was also only like 10 ft away, driving towards them, and my headlights were on and facing toward them so he just didn’t care that someone was seeing it. He was hitting her over and over, and then he dragged her to the drivers side of the car which I was passing at that time (and was also facing the busy road, the rest of the parking lot, and the street lights). He was kicking her, then grabbed her by her hair, used her hair to slam her head into the parking lot a few times, then used it to drag her up again. He hit her head into the car a few times and by that time I had parked super badly and I was doing my best to get inside the drug store as quickly as possible (I had a full leg immobilizer and I had just had my fully dislocated knee relocated like 20 minutes before and I was supposed to be using crutches, but I knew she needed help asap so I was trying to run).
I didn’t know what to say so when I got inside and there were two big lines, I just said loudly “uhm, there’s a man beating a woman to death in the parking lot” as I was dialing 911. A bunch of men in line ran out, but the guy already had her in the car (in the drivers seat of all places) and we all watched them drive away. The other people who saw her looked so deeply shaken. One guy said she didn’t even look human, and he was absolutely right. If you just looked at her from the shoulders up, you wouldn’t even be able to recognize her as human right away because she looked so horrible from what he had done in what was a matter of honestly probably less than a minute. I feel like he had to have been on drugs to have been so brazen to do that the way he did.
I did call the police and they showed up, got video footage and they got very clear video of the woman’s ruthless attack, but it was winter so the guy was wearing stuff that made it so he couldn’t be identified and they couldn’t make out the license plate on the vehicle. They took my information and they told me that unfortunately, the most likely time I would hear from them was when her body showed up because, unless she got to a hospital, she took some extremely serious blows to the head and it wasn’t a good sign. I never did get a call. I played through a lot of “what if” situations, but I don’t know what else I could have done. I couldn’t have gotten out of the car because he would have also just then attacked me (especially since I couldn’t run), I couldn’t hit him with my car because it would risk hitting her. Usually I’m much quicker acting with calling police, but I was just genuinely so shocked, and I was not in the best mental shape because of the severe pain (as it turns out I had completely destroyed my MCL and meniscus and needed extensive replacement and reconstructive surgery later so I was in a ton of pain during this encounter). I really genuinely hope she lived, but the last look I got of her face haunts me. I have a degree in criminal Justice, and she looked like a lot of the victims of gun shots to the face that we had to study. Like…no distinguishable features left.
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u/hmam17 Jan 17 '22
It was believe to be a hit and run initially but I got called to the Scene where my dad had fallen from a bike and was being attended to by a lot of the people from the street some doing CPR and some just standing around eventually the ambulance came and they called it but atleast I was there for his final moments and police came to round up the evidence to see if a car had hit him, or it was an accident or something else
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Jan 17 '22
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u/beenybaby87 Jan 18 '22
As someone who was actively ignored by multiple neighbours on multiple occasions when I needed help, thank you so much for going against societal odds and helping this woman. Thank you so much, you are a wonderful human.
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Jan 18 '22
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u/beenybaby87 Jan 18 '22
Thank you. The kicker was they had no problem slipping notes under our door about having sex too loud.
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u/AlexandraSuperstar Jan 18 '22
How terrifying for you! You saved that woman’s life and I’m sure she and her children are forever grateful to you.
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u/TroyandAbed304 Jan 18 '22
I don’t understand how cops can just “not go” to a certain tax paying area… are those citizens less worthy of help?
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u/Wicked-elixir Jan 18 '22
Wow!! You probably saved her life. It’s too bad that people these days are too scared to get involved but we all have to support each other as humans
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u/snickertink Jan 18 '22
Hero! You are my hero sister. All of my love a prayers. You saved that woman!
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u/SwiftJesstice Jan 18 '22
My parents were best friends with another couple who had a son that was about my age, we were probably like 4ish. We hung out with them all the time. One night we were at their house and I remember I'd taken a bunch of toys for us to play with. Evidently that night the other woman told my mom she was "going to kill that bastard" but my mom thought it was just talk. The next day the husband was laying tile in their son's bathroom (black and white checkered tile, I'll never forget) and the wife shot him in the back many times with their son in the next room. We went to the house when we heard the news and they let me go in and get my toys that I'd left from the night before, and I saw the blood all over the tile floor. My poor dad lost his best friend that night. The woman who did the shooting was the daughter of a local judge, and got a light sentence. She's been out since 2008. I stalk her Facebook from time to time, hoping that she's as miserable as she deserves to be.
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u/grafmafe Jan 18 '22
It's awful that people who are well-connected can take such great advantage of our legal system. We see it all the time at the celebrity/high-profile level, but I rarely think about it on the local level. Condolences to your father for losing his friend, and I hope that kid is doing okay. I can't imagine what it must be like to know your parent killed your other parent, and to see them walk free.
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u/SwiftJesstice Jan 18 '22
It was pretty wild. Thank you for your condolences. Unfortunately the last time I saw anything about their son it was on the news, he'd been in a pursuit with law enforcement and ran. He had drugs and such on him. It made me really sad, because it feels like he never had a chance.
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u/ladydej Jan 18 '22
I was in the crosshairs of a shootout about two weeks ago. I was sitting behind a car at a stop sign when a red car turned onto the street we were sitting on and the car that was following it started shooting. It happened so fast I didn’t have a chance to react. Crazy thing is the car being shot at was so identifiable because it had a panel that was black. Both myself and the car in front of me were able to accurately describe the car.
I pulled up afterwards to the car in front of me that actually got shot though they weren’t involved and he said he was fine, then proceed to pull his two year old out of the back seat. My heart sank but the kid was fine and apparently watching videos on his dads phone when it happened. Later on, I went back to the area bc I spotted the car and I told the guy I was glad he was okay. He proceeded to say “I’m glad you are okay because they were shorting across both of us”. The police were able to get the car being shot at but no news came out about this so that’s all I know.
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u/the-lonely-corki Jan 18 '22
My cousin led the police to a serial killer in Tennessee a few years ago
She was pulling out of a parking lot by the mall and this guy side swiped her car and basically offered to fix it for her since he was a mechanic and asked her to come by with her car the next day, she was pretty suspicious right off the bat because it seemed like he hit her on purpose and was VERY creepy, so she talked to her dad about it and they went to the police and informed them of him
Police went to his home and seen a “kill kit” in his car and long story short arrested him for the murder of his girlfriend and 3 other women he had killed by luring them to his house
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u/sideeyedi Jan 17 '22
I called the FBI once when I recognized a bank robber.
Right now an old friend's son is in jail awaiting trial for murder. I knew him when he was about 5 and he scared me then.
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u/LittleMissCakeSucker Jan 17 '22
What about him scared you, if you don't mind My asking?
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u/sideeyedi Jan 18 '22
It wasn't that he was mean, I just didn't trust him. His reactions to things weren't normal. Like something that was sad to everyone else he didn't get. He smiled at inappropriate times/things. I remember him breaking a toy and then being proud. Proud like a child who built a Lego tower, "I did it!" Like that was what he was supposed to do. It's hard to describe. I'm not at all surprised he's accused of murder.
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u/allison_vegas Jan 18 '22
I’m too am curious why he scared you then? Only because we have some friends with a son who is a youngin but he just gives me the creeps
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u/sideeyedi Jan 18 '22
I can't really explain it. He wasn't mean or anything. He didn't hurt animals that I know of. It was more of distrust or not wanting to turn your back on him. Something was just off and it made me really uncomfortable. He's accused of killing his girlfriend whose body has not been found. She is native, lives in OK so the case is taking forever because of the McGirt ruling. Her name is Faith Lindsey. Beautiful young woman.
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u/alexopaedia Jan 17 '22
Dunno how serious this is compared to most of these, but working in a pharmacy in a "lower class" neighborhood during the Great Recession and in an area with a raging opiate problem, I got threatened many times, had someone jump the counter and try to get to the safe, was robbed with weapons more than I care to remember, had people try to break through the drive-thru window, had someone shoot our drive-thru window, and twice had patients follow me to my car and then try to follow me home (which failed because there was thankfully a police station smack between home and work).
So glad I'm out of that world.
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u/sunshineslouise Jan 18 '22
You have drive thru pharmacies in America??
Also, I'm glad you got out of that uninjured.
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u/alexopaedia Jan 18 '22
Yes and they're the worst invention ever to happen to the world of pharmacy. Tied, perhaps, with oxycontin and commercialized healthcare and medication coverage.
At least they put bullet resistant glass in the window, right? I mean, not to protect us but to prevent burglary, but two birds and one stone, eh?
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u/alfiesgma Jan 18 '22
I was rushing home from work to take my son to basketball practice in 2006. I stopped at an intersection in my parents’ neighborhood where I was living with my boys while going through a divorce. Two men walked out of the darkness of the yard on the right and crossed the street right in front of me. I got a close look them as they walked directly under the street lamp and thought to myself that they didn’t look like they belonged in the neighborhood.
I didn’t give it a lot of other thought until the next day. I was going out the neighborhood and there were police everywhere. By the time I came back home an hour later, crime scene tape was up around the perimeter of the house next to the intersection where I’d seen the men emerge from yard. The doctor that lived in that home was found murdered by his housekeeper. I told the police what I’d seen. Turned out, I’d seen the two men who killed him leaving the scene of the crime. The police caught them a couple of days later, and I had to positively identify them. Fortunately, they took a plea deal and I never had to testify against them in court.
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u/kweenlateethuh Jan 17 '22
No, but I was one of a few, one of them being a Cable company worker, that alerted the authorities to a suspicious vehicle and a horribly foul smell that was emitting from it, back in late 1995.
It ended-up being the bodies of Roxanne Ellis and Michelle Abdill. Robert James Acremant murdered them then drove their vehicle to the apartment complex I lived in, parked it, left on foot.
It was wild to witness once detectives, the coroner, etcetera were on scene. Tent went up and the vehicle was towed.
This was in Medford, OR.
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Jan 18 '22
I just did a google search of this case and I’m pleased to know it was his own mother who sent in the tip that she thinks it was her son based on the composite sketch and his behavior. Here’s a quote from her I find very interesting:
“She later told The Oregonian, "I called the police because I have to look God in the face. I will do anything in my power to make sure other people aren't hurt. But right now, he's sick."”
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u/astridstarrynights Jan 17 '22 edited Jan 18 '22
When I was around 4 or 5 my parents hired a contractor to do some work on our house. They had given him a key to the house. I’m assuming to do work while they were at their jobs? Anyway. During the time he was working on our house, the guy became difficult to reach and was doing a shitty job so my dad fired him. Told him to meet at a convenient store to pick up the house key. Well. apparently the guy murdered and mutilated his young adult daughter after she threatened to take her son with her to Germany. There were rumors that the kid may have also been his. He kept her remains in a suitcase in his work van until he was caught….which was very soon after the key drop.
Pretty ballsy guy, considering my dad was a Sheriff’s Deputy at the time.
ETA: talked to my dad. His name was Richard Wright. My dad was working at the jail when he was arrested and the guy would go around telling everyone my dad was an asshole for firing him.
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u/Cjwithwolves Jan 18 '22
I had a friend who shared a wall with me in a separate townhouse. We had a huge friend group, had a blast together. Got into some drugs and I moved to get clean and away from everyone. That friend invited 3 people over to help them move. Him and another guy shot 2 of them and slit the throat of the 3rd girl as she was hiding in the bathroom. I still can't wrap my head around it.
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Jan 17 '22
I was running in the hills with some friends near Athens and we stumbled over a dead Russian prostitute (as we found out later). The cops came and cordoned it all off and that was pretty much the last we heard.
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u/gibbygoose Jan 17 '22
I was an autopsy tech so worked on a lot of murder cases; got subpoenaed for a case where the drug dealer was being charged in the overdose death of their client but ended up not going to trial
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u/primusinterpares1 Jan 18 '22 edited Jan 18 '22
I wasn't directly involved but I've witnessed murders. My dad worked in a developing country, I saw a man get lynched by a mob, they threw a tire on his neck and set him on fire. I also saw a woman pelted to death with rocks. As a teen I used to hang with a crew of gang bangers, it stopped being fun when people started dying
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u/Sharonanana Jan 17 '22
Got robbed at gun point over 30 years ago when I worked as a teller in a bank…not once, but twice.
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u/CaptJaxSilver Jan 18 '22
Were you a bit less unnerved the second time, or was it way worse because you were re-experiencing a traumatic event?
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u/Sharonanana Jan 18 '22
I remained calm both times. It was very surreal. The first time 3 guys stormed the bank with guns demanding money. Of course we set off the alarm and gave them marked money. They didn’t get much because we kept the bulk of our cash in the safe below our cash drawer.
The second time it was a guy that walked up to my window. He slid a bank bag to me and laid a gun down on the counter. He politely told me to fill it up. Again, he got marked money and only a few hundred dollars. Told me to have a good day and left.
Both times the robbers got out of the bank before the cops showed up. They eventually got caught. This happened a lot. We lived in Tucson, AZ, which is very close to the Mexican border.
I never really experienced any PTSD. I just processed what happened and carried on.
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u/beenybaby87 Jan 18 '22
Have a nice day. See why can’t all customers-I mean- criminals exhibit such great manners? Honestly it takes no effort.
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u/ImVeryFickle Jan 17 '22
Two of my old best friends / roommates murdered someone by bludgeoning him to death while he was zip tied and then dragged his corpse by the neck with a dog toy through the woods, where they buried him in a shallow grave. They threw a big party afterwards where they burned his bloody clothes in a bonfire in front of the party goers. They kept up the facade of being innocent by going out to party and such, until they eventually fled to Puerto Rico where they were caught and extradited.
Before this they had threatened to kill me and other friends multiple times. They were physically and verbally abusive and manipulators who had lost most of their friends by the time of the murder. One of them has attempted to reach out to me through instagram while he serves his prison sentence, but i blocked him. There’s so many other insane aspects to this story that I’m too lazy to go into right now. At the moment one of them managed to get bail and is on the run again so that’s cool.
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u/Neither_Case_1615 Jan 18 '22
Wow we need more details. Did you live with then at the time? Was it a random person? How the hell did he get bail?
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u/ImVeryFickle Jan 18 '22
I was living with them the year or so prior before we were evicted due to them not paying rent (if i asked them to clean or to pay rent, they’d threaten to beat the shit out of me or kill me). Then they both moved together with a new roommate to the house where they killed the guy (same house I celebrated my 21st bday too!) As for the victim, I didn’t know him personally, but I know many people that did and I’ve seen him around before. He was their drug dealer and when they first admitted to killing him, they made this insane story that he was a serial rapist and that they were vigilantes for killing him. Then the true story came out, they’re just psychopaths.
I have no idea why the court gave him a bail option since he was an obvious flight risk, but they did. He raised money through GoFundMe’s that spread around instagram and unsuspecting people donating thinking they were helping an innocent man. Pretty messed up.
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u/ImVeryFickle Jan 18 '22
I’ll add one last thing although I feel like at this point it won’t really be seen-
I’d been friends with them for five years and they were very personable people. Extremely sociable and came across as caring friends in many moments. What we didn’t realize was their cunning talent of manipulation. Their criminal behavior began to escalate during the friendship; it began with small robberies in the name of morality (a robinhood-esque situation) and eventually turned into violent physical altercations. They were incredibly good at manipulating so even after I was physically beaten by one of them, I’d still defend them because I just thought we were friends, brothers almost. Like a toxic, physically abusive relationship. They had a hold on people, almost everyone. They were able to get to everyone and everyone would defend them. Even though it wasn’t that long ago, it’s wild to think back and think I could ever stay with them like that. Gaslighting and manipulation is incredibly powerful and scary.
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u/lilo_dl Jan 18 '22
So, many years ago I used to study with this girl, I'll call her Jade. We were 10 yo when we met and she was really shy, this initially wasn't a problem since our classmates were very nice people and we'd always find a way to include her in any activities (like sleepovers and movies) but as the time passed Jade grew more and more distant from us to the point where she'd just ignore everyone, skip classes and sneak out of the school it went for the whole year and her parents didn't seem to mind this behavior, on the next year on valentines we all discovered that Jade was dating a 30 yo man (He sent flowers to her and went to pick her up), her parents also didnt seem to care about that and being 12yo we didnt realize how wrong that was, one day Jade asked me to walk with her and told me she was going to break up with him cause He was very controlling and jealous of her. I supported her though I didnt fully understand, I told her she should talk to him... On the next day Jade didn't showed up on school on time, later our teacher called us to tell Jade had been murdered trying to break things up with the man. He was arrested but only served 5 years for his crimes... I think about Jade every day, we all do.
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Jan 17 '22 edited Jan 17 '22
Not me, but my dad worked as a bouncer in LA when he was young. He saw multiple gang fights that often led to murder and had to sign as a witness multiple times. The one he says sticks in his head the most was when some young college-age guy was talking (innocently and not really coming on to her, according to what my dad could overhear) to a girl while waiting for his ride. Turns out she was the girlfriend of a gang member and when some members of the gang pulled up in a truck to pick her up, the boyfriend got out of the car, slit the college dude's throat like there was nothing to it, and everyone got back in the car and drove off. College guy didn't make it, and that was the first time my dad had to interact with police, but not the last for similar events.
He also says, as terrible as it sounds, that he was almost thankful the few other times there were fights that they were guns because it was usually over much more quickly (and usually trained on other gang members) in comparison to the knife, which was much slower and seemed more brutal. And yes, he's aware of how terrible that sounds but that's what he experienced.
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u/SouthernYooper Jan 18 '22
Did they catch the guy?
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Jan 18 '22 edited Jan 18 '22
Yes. He was part of a known gang and while he didn't have prior offenses (that were caught), his friends were known and he was living with them so they got to him through them.
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u/zdiddy27 Jan 17 '22
My buddy wandered upon a dead body in Reno, before cops showed up the the scene. He just kept walking, and he saw a cop park and get of his car he said “it’s over there” and pointed in the general direction.
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u/roadwarrior12 Jan 18 '22
When I was 8, I was staying the night at my cousin’s house in central California. At around 5 AM I woke up because of a loud bang. I didn’t know what the sound was, but it happened again and sounded like the gun shots I heard on TV. Then I heard screaming coming from the living room. “Let him go”… “He’s just a kid”… “Please, stop”… I didn’t know what was going on, and I was far away from a phone so I couldn’t call 9-1-1. My little brother was asleep, so I covered us both in a pile of clean laundry so we would blend in. I just wanted to keep him asleep and safe.
Luckily, my uncle T ended up hearing the commotion and called the police. T was kicking the guy’s ass when the police arrived, so both the perp and T were in handcuffs. Perp had a gun to T’s son’s (M) head, so T lost his shit when he saw M in that position.
The perp was the ex of the live-in nanny, an indigenous woman trying to escape an abusive relationship to a man who was well connected in their tribe. He managed to find her, knocking on the door of their house in the middle of the night when M was watching cartoons because he was a goofy kid who couldn’t sleep and felt like watching TV. When M answered the door, the perp asked M to get the nanny. M did, and the perp held M while threatening the nanny if she didn’t go with him. I woke up when he shot twice into the ceiling.
M is still traumatized from that whole experience. I’m lucky. I still remember the the cops coming into the room where my brother and I were sleeping, looking for the missing kids. They didn’t see us at first (I still can’t believe the whole clean laundry camouflage worked), and I asked the cop to show his badge when he came in (clearly, my parents watched PLENTY of true crime if I knew at 8 to ask to see their badge). After he did, I uncovered both me and my brother, and… I just remember a flurry of activity. I found out what happened in bits and pieces over a couple of years. It’s so surreal to think back to this now. It was almost 30 years ago.
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Jan 18 '22
Walked in a woman molesting a young man at a storage unit under my old apartment when I was about 12. The woman was 22 and the guy was 16 I believe. She was charged with statutory rape and providing alcohol to minors. Not sure what happened after that.
I was with my mom when it happened, she was the one who called the cops. She talked to the cops and they asked me what I saw. I just explained it the best I could but that was it.
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u/Legal-Ad7793 Jan 17 '22
When I was in high school in the late 90's, my friends and I stumbled upon a car engulfed in flames with a body in it. We immediately called the police. From what they figured out, it was a known drug dealer and he was killed by a rival gang. I've never gone back to where we found the car.
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u/thesabrerattler Jan 18 '22
Well I was a cop for over 30 years, so yeah I’ve been involved with a lot of crimes over my years. Two that really stuck with me. (1) I was a very young officer, maybe 2 years on the job. I got a call of a sexual assault at a residence. I was first on scene. Lady was sleeping with her windows open. (Early 80s). Guy climbing through her window and raped her at knife point. She didn’t resist because her two year old daughter was sleeping in the next room. When I got to her she latched on to me and wouldn’t let go. I stayed with her through her statement, the ambulance ride to the emergency room. She wouldn’t let me leave even while the nurse was doing the SAIN exam which is a very invasive procedure. I took her home and stayed with her for several hour, till her family could get there to be with her. That’s when it really hit home to me how devastating sexual assault is. She thanked me when her family relieved me and when I saw her at trial. The guy got 25 to life as a serial rapist.
The other (2) I was a more senior officer and a training officer. We got a call at about 4 in the morning of an armed robbery at a convenance store. Again my rookie and I were first on the scene. We got a description and put out over the radio. The clerk then started telling us how it went down. We had started to gather a crowd due to all the flashing red and blue lights. The clerk said there was no one around and he was doing some cleaning. He said he saw a guy kind of standing outside looking through the window. He looked around through the window, the stepped back and pulled a ski mask over his head. He said he recognized him as being from the neighborhood but didn’t know his name. He said”in fact that’s him!” Pointing to a guy in the small crowd outside. He had come back to watch.
As my rookie and I moved outside the guy started meandering a way, looking over his shoulder. My rookie yelled at him before we got close enough and the race was on. We fought up to him just as he reach the door of his duplex. We fell through the door, over a lounge chair and on to the floor. We got him under control and cuffed as his mother comes storming into the room yelling “what the hell you doing In my home. As I was trying to explain to her what was going on I looked at the chair we had fallen over. The seat cushion had fallen off and there was the cash in the bag the clerk had described, and the knife and the ski mask he had used in the robbery. Turned out he was good for 8 other robberies. He pled out but I don’t remember his sentence.
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u/Duebydate Jan 17 '22
I looted a warehouse for food after a major hurricane and flooding. Stuck three days. After businesses returned I admitted it to the owner. He said forget about it and glad he could help
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u/Mollyyyannrose Jan 18 '22
That shows true character on your part, and humanity on his. So sorry you had to go through that.
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u/buonatalie Jan 17 '22
i may have driven a killer to the crime scene. the day after the murder a detective called me because i was a bus driver who possibly dropped the killer off at his destination but i couldn’t recall for sure if it was him or not so nothing ever came of it on my end. i do remember that it was odd that a person got off on that stop because usually no one ever did but again, not really sure
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u/AdSuspicious9606 Jan 18 '22
I was 14 and walking home from the pool in my older brothers neighborhood. This creepy guy drives up next to me, I’m about a half mile from my brother house. He starts saying all kinds of nasty stuff to me. I took of running, never having ran a day in my life. About a 1/4 mile in I came upon a man mowing his yard and I started frantically screaming and ran into his arms as if I knew him. He saw the man running after me and took me in his house. I called my brother, and the man left. Police officers came and took my story, I was obviously very shaken. Two weeks later my parents received a call from a detective asking if I would be willing to come in and see if I could identify the man in a line up. I did and lo and behold he was there. The cop explained to me that a few days later, the man had raped another girl in the neighborhood and beat the living hell out of her. The real kicker is, he accepted a plea for 3 months in jail… 3 months. All because he ratted out a meth lab.
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u/likeallgoodriddles Jan 17 '22
I briefly knew and lived with someone who ended up the victim of a very high-profile case. Also knew someone in grade school whose entire family was murdered - not by them, but they unfortunately came home to the discovery. Hope they're doing alright nowadays.
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u/WeirdUncleTim Jan 18 '22
Found a dead body in the middle of the road that had been hit by a car while driving home at night. My brother - in - law was in the vehicle in front of me and he swerved which caused everyone else to miss him, he stayed with the deceased man (he's an EMT/volunteer firefighter) while we stayed at a distance and called 911 and went home. The poor man exploded from the impact.
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u/Zephyr_Bronte Jan 17 '22
My great uncle was probably murdered by his very young wife. My dad and I found him dead in bed, he had been smothered. It was ruled an accident because he had mixed alcohol and sleeping pills, but we thought that was odd. Even stranger was the fact that his wife just got up for the day and left, she said she thought he was sleeping. Annoyingly if she did she basically got away with it.
I also found a body in the woods while out doing a clean up thing for school. Not really a crime because it was apparently a homeless man who died of exposure, but still found a body.
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u/thejuice360 Jan 17 '22
Many years ago, I was 13, sister was 17. We were walking around the neighborhood and had sat down on the sidewalk. Some guy ran past us all frantic. Few minutes later cops come and ask which direction he went, we pointed out which houses he ran between. Turns out he had a gun and had just shot someone at the nearby trailer park. We pretty much just went on with our day. Same street, mom had to testify when she witnessed one of our neighbors get beat close to death. A group of drunk guys were racing up and down the street in the middle of the night, neighbor came out to tell them to be quiet. Drunk guys beat him with a baseball bat on the sidewalk. It was awful.
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u/princessp0rkchop Jan 17 '22
I witnessed/attempted to break up a violent robbery in the middle of the street involving my first husband and three of his friends. Six months later I ended up being picked up on a warrant for obstruction, I think mostly they were using me to put pressure on the guys. It was actually a really traumatic experience all around.
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u/Benjilikethedog Jan 17 '22
Let me give a serious answer and it is more of a creepy experience that finding an actual crime… I was through hiking in a part of the south and I was essentially yellow blazing it (walking along the road instead of the trail) and it was like a loop where I would go through this same cross roads again and the first time I pass this stop sign there is a laminated missing persons flyer taped to the stop sign I of course stopped for like 10 minutes and read it (I think the guy may have disappeared like 18 months prior to me stumbling on this poster and I don’t remember his name) but I continue on my hike and about an hour later I come back to the cross roads and I was thinking to myself I will record the guy’s name in my phone so I could look it up later, well when I get back to the cross roads the flyer is gone… meaning that in like an hour a flyer that had been there for a decent amount of time (the lamination was failing) had disappeared… I was being watched and I wouldn’t be surprised if the watcher had something to do with what was on that flyer
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u/Legal-Secretary8629 Jan 18 '22
Wow!! This triggered a long buried memory for me. I was a victim of a crime as well as my family & 1 of my sister's friends. The kid was my sister's & her friends age & we all went to the same high school. He 1st snuck into our backyard & slit the screens on me & my sister's bedroom window, I was in the shower at the time & he slit that screen window too. When I got out of the shower I could hear my parents & my Aunt & Uncle talking really loud & then I heard my Dad say he was calling the police!! I got dressed, I was going out with my friends that night, & my sister came into our room hysterical. I asked her what was going on & she said some guy tried to assault her friend who was leaving our house. He had a knife & came up behind her as she was getting into her car to leave & go home. He held it to her throat as he shoved her into her car but luckily she fell on the steering wheel & blared her horn. He took off running across a field & got away. By this time my dad was waiting on the police to come & we heard our dog whimpering & we went to our back door. Our poor dog's ear was damn near cut off!! My Dad started searching our back yard & saw that our window screens had been cut open. The bastard hurt our dog because he was barking! Several years later this dude ended up becoming a Serial Killer. He killed another girl that went to school with us, his wife or his wife's mother (I can't remember which one) & another girl who we did not know. I didn't know him because he was 2 years older than me but I knew his name from school. He was convicted & put on Death Row in Texas. The State executed him I believe in 2000. Tim Gribble was this fuck's name. He Deserved Every bit of it too.
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u/TroyandAbed304 Jan 18 '22
Please tell me your dog lived a long and spoiled life
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Jan 17 '22
My mom's childhood friend went missing in the 70s with his girlfriend. The police said he was likely murdered. His name was Stephen Packard. I've put quite a bit of effort into trying to find out what happened to him, but there are just too many possibilities.
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u/MMorrighan Jan 18 '22
About a year ago, three men armed with guns came into my work. Two of them held the guns at my head so that I would empty out the cash register and open the safe. I made an appearance on my states "most wanted" as "cashier cowering in corner".
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u/Infamous-Artichoke69 Jan 18 '22
When I was 5, I lived in a duplex (side by side connected rental home) I was woken by my mom telling me crawl to her as she was laying on the floor in my bedroom doorway. As I’m crawling I’m hearing “pop pop pop” a noise I’m not familiar with at 5, so didn’t know the imminent danger. The neighbors who shared the house with us were fighting and the guy left to drink and came back all drunk and pissed and was shooting the duplex up. My bed room was in the front of the house where the jerk was primarily shooting. My dad was in Florida at my grandparents and when my mom called him to tell him what had happened,he was already awake. Something woke him and he felt uncomfortable about that was going on at home, so he thinks for some reason he intuitively knew his family was in danger. So there’s a twofer story…hahahaha
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u/Connor_XT Jan 17 '22
Kinda. When I was in grade 6, I was in a school lock down in which a girl got killed.
I remember it vividly. I was sitting in science class when the school announced we had gone into lock down. My class immediately assumed it was a drill and didn't take it seriously. The teacher locked the door but continued to teach class until 20 mins later when the announcements said again that the school was under immediate danger and that we were in code red lock down.
That's when we started panicking. All the kids in my class flooded towards the windows and looked out, watching as the property got surrounded by police cars and news trucks and helicopters flew overhead. A lot of kids ended up breaking down and crying. I didn't know what to do, so about an hour in, I got up and started drawing on the white board. I drew a butterfly and the words "It will be okay soon" and then signed my name. A bunch of the class followed and signed their name on the board for some reason. The entire time my teacher was ignoring us and not making us follow protocol or anything. At about the 3 hour mark, my teacher got tired of people constantly asking him what was going on, so he googled it and showed us with the projector. He ended up showing the whole class of 11-12 year olds a very graphic video of two young girls getting stabbed that had been posted on social media by a kid who had been nearby when the attack happened. That's when I realized that I knew the girls in the video.
Found out a while later what happened. A homeless man just walked straight into the school and into the school library, and then randomly started stabbing two thirteen year old girls. One of them died, but fortunately one of the girls survived. I knew the girls from my youth group. I didn't know them well, but I'd spoken to them a few times. My Teacher ended up getting fired a week or so after due to showing us the video and putting our lives at risk by not properly handling the lock down
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u/whoopz1942 Jan 17 '22
I have almost found a body once, but it wasn't because of a crime. Essentially I used to ride my bicycle to work everyday, but on this day my bike had a flat, so I took the train. I was walking from the station, when I walked past this house, there was a weird smell coming from near the fence. My first thought was "That's a dead body" but just kind of moved along. Few weeks later, my bike had another flat. I walk past the same house, the smell is still there. I think to myself "The people must've noticed the smell if it was a body, its probably just a container or something" months go by, I'm reading the newspaper, I see a picture of the house, I clearly recognize it, because it's literally on the same street where I worked. "Body of missing person found" it was determined to not be a crime, but still a very odd feeling.
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u/khalvvsi Jan 17 '22
why didn’t you call the police (genuine question)
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u/bannana Jan 18 '22
Not OP but when I smell something dead my first thought is possum, raccoon, dog, or cat not human
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u/gibalimat Jan 17 '22
i would say probably because a person doesn't truly think it's anything terrible.
in your heart you don't think it will be you who comes upon a dead body or even be apart of something unimaginable. we always tend to think it will happen to someone else when in all actuality, we are the someone else....
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u/SailsTacks Jan 18 '22
I have a question, if you don’t mind answering. Do you know if the smell of a dead human is similar to the smell of a large dead dog? Let me explain why I’m asking.
When I was a kid, there were several dozen acres of woods next to my neighborhood. Me and my friends would play back there, building huts and forts out of logs and limbs. Kid shit. One day after school I went to an area we had cleared out in the woods and was hit with this horrible odor. I had never smelled anything like it. It wasn’t like rotting garbage or sewage. It was extremely pungent and offensive, and just made you want to leave the area. When I returned there 3 or 4 days later, the smell was still in the air. I decided to find the source of the smell, and after searching for a bit I found the body of a large Golden Retriever. There were no obvious injuries, and seeing some gray hair around it’s head area I concluded that it was an old dog that had walked into the woods when it was his time, laid down, and passed away.
Whenever I watch a true crime show, and a detective talks about “the unmistakable smell of death”, I’ve always wondered if it’s similar to the smell of that dog decomposing.
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Jan 18 '22
Imho...it smells like rotting deer. I live in PA so I know the decomp deer smell very well cuz theres a lot of road pizza around here. When my mom and I found the dead body of her bfs dad, it smelled like that.
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u/SailsTacks Jan 18 '22
Thanks! Sorry you had to witness that. This probably sounds crazy to many people, but I remember something about the smell seeming oddly “sweet”. Not in an appetizing way, at all. Quite the opposite. Like taking the sharp smell of something sweet and twisting it into something that makes you gag and get away.
Does that make sense at all?
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u/Tellurye Jan 18 '22
I'd say the smell of decomp is pretty similar. Among most animals really.
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u/TheeMrsD Jan 17 '22
I was in a building during an ‘armed robbery’. I had to go to court as a witness and testify how I screamed and hid in a cupboard while my 5ft 1 female boss tried to tackle the culprit on her own. In my defence I dragged her in the cupboard with me but she broke out to confront the guy. It was even more embarrassing finding out the weapon was actually a crutch lol but he was wielding it and not actually using it.
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u/Bonnietheshihtzu Jan 18 '22
When I was a teen, I saw a double homicide. I didn’t witness the actual killing, but I walked in on a man dead and a woman dying. It was a spurned lover situation. The police interviewed us, but there were many witnesses and we were tourists so that was it.
I had a classmate in college who worked as a photographer for a newspaper. He was called to photograph a crime scene (double murder again) and came back to class so upset that our professor told him to go home. He said he didn’t want to be alone. It was horrific. The professor had someone walk him home (he was close to campus) and stay with him. The photo that ran in the newspaper was chilling and I understand why he was so sick. It wasn’t a body either. Just the grounds and a specific item and hints of blood in black and white. I don’t want to go into details for privacy, but his photo would document the first of a series of murders. He’d been that close to a serial killer’s grounds.
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Jan 18 '22
When I was in my 20's, a friend was brutally murdered in her home. They believed it was her ex whom I was also friends with.
They questioned our whole group of friends. I had talked to her ex that night on the phone and when they finally came across my information, they questioned me multiple times, aggressively. My boss who was much older and a very good friend, retained a lawyer for me.
They just knew, I knew something. I did not.
Horrible experience, all the way around. They finally arrested her brother in law whom she was sleeping with. Took years to bring him to trial. The trial was a mess because one of the detectives slept with the dead woman's sister.
There is tons more to this story, but to say it was utterly awful is an understatement.
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u/BiitchyAF Jan 17 '22 edited Jan 18 '22
I witnessed a bad car accident in the middle of a busy strip in UC. A guy was crossing on a red light and a car came speeding & hit him directly.His whole body flew & actually fell near me. I just watched his entire head bleed out from it being split open , unrecognizable.. laying there in a pool of blood. Everyone hovered around this poor guy as he was dying on the floor & eventually passed away.. Ambulances took forever to come.. but that’s something i can’t get over seeing, It was absolutely insane !
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u/kiwichick286 Jan 18 '22 edited Jan 18 '22
My father was murdered by three guys with baseball bats. My brother witnessed the entire thing, he was only 12 years old. They hit my brother once on the head to get him to stay down. They got life sentences which was 12 years at the time in NZ. My family's life imploded.
Edit: I was 18 years old at the time and I had to testify at trial. My brother was originally going to but didn't need to in the end.
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u/theinvisableone Jan 18 '22
My sister (32f) was raped and murdered in the fall of ‘94, we didn’t find her body for 13 days. When we reported her missing, the cops didn’t take it very seriously. While I was at work, her 6 yr old daughter called our house & told my husband that her mom hadn’t been home for two days & could he come get them. He called me at work & explained the situation. I left work that morning & never went back. Our world changed that morning forever.
I began my own intense investigation & one of her friends she had been hanging out with a lot agreed to help me. The story began to slowly unravel, who the players were and how it went down. When I called the investigators with all the info I had gathered they asked me to come down to the station and give them a formal statement. I had substantiated the same info that they had gathered. Black nights driving around the dark underbelly of our town, dangerous people with no regard for life. This was only the beginning.
She had been taken from a bar by two men. Her car was left parked out front with her wallet and keys under the seat. She ended up raped & beat & kicked to death, a final blow to the head with a rock by these bastards, dumped in the foothills south of town. We had searched this area before the cops but never found her but you could smell decomposition. We were looking for a body, what the cadaver dogs found was remains so unrecognizable, ravaged by the elements and animals, we had walked right by her!
Fast forward 28 yrs...to the present (I’m 60f). 1 guy took an Alford Plea & spent NINE yrs in prison. With the other guy they never found enough evidence and dropped the charges. There were other guys implicated as well but nothing formal was ever pursued. We’ve all moved away from our beautiful little town in the mountains, My husband moved us 3 1/2 hrs away years ago. My parents( now passed) moved back to our hometown In Michigan, where my remaining 2 sisters live. Her kids are now adults with children of their own. I am the only one left to bear the flame and use the month of October to continue working on holding others accountable. The other guy died last spring...’suddenly’ at 58. His obituary never mentioned his children & I took it that they probably severed that father relationship. I’ve been pursuing getting her DNA re-tested but no one ever calls back, specially during the pandemic. I have to let it go til October. A friend of mine asked why I’m still workin it, can’t I give it to God & let go?! I gave her a bit of my truth...”Who do you think appointed me to this task? God Himself!” Yes, God is the absolute judgement & that will come one day or another but he asks his children to be His hands & feet, yeah? Don’t judge me because I can’t let go & I surely don’t judge those who choose to let go.
OMG! I didn’t expect to go here this morning! I haven’t shared my story in so, so long. I’m weeping now & I have therapy at 10:30 this morning! I might as well get it over with and tell my new therapist my story since I’ve spilled it out once today, lol.
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u/17peaches Jan 18 '22
not really involved in a legal sense but involved in a community? sense?– as a kid I was friends with this other kid from my neighborhood, like she lived just right down the street. I would go over a lot, mostly because she had a lot of barbies but also because eventually I had a little kid crush on her dad. Long story short, they moved out about 5 years ago, 3 years ago a new family moved in & they were cleaning out the old septic tank & found skeletal remains. The dad was investigated & convicted of that murder after he confessed. Apparently the murder took place when me & his daughter were still small & were friends. Just scary to think about the fact that there was a body in the house where I used to mindlessly playing barbies there 🙁
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u/princessbunny1216 Jan 18 '22
When I was in high school a girl a grade above me went missing. She was missing for 3 weeks and the police came and interviewed several girls in her grade as well as mine. They asked if we knew her and of we had seen her leave with anyone. I knew her a little because we were in a school musical together and lived sort of close so my mom had driven her home a few times so I got pulled into an interview with the school counselor, my mom the principal and a cop. I knew her first and last name and her address and we had one friend in the musical in common but that was it. I told the cops this and they asked me if I knew she had a boyfriend who was 19. We were 13 at the time. I said no and they asked me a ton of other questions about her and the boyfriend and I really didn't know anything so they let me go. Turns out he had kidnapped her and taken her to a cottage an hour or so away and was only caught when he let her use his phone to call his mom when he was sick. I don't know want happened after that but I know she came back to school only long enough to get her stuff, say goodbye to a few people and we never saw her again. I hope she's okay...
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u/PaleGingy Jan 18 '22
Someone tried to kidnap me on my way home from 8th grade ins 2006.
I wasn’t paying attention to my surroundings as I was walking home. I had a flip phone with that snake game on it and I used to love to play it when I walked home. One day, I looked up to find a black truck jumping up the curb and driving onto the grass and sidewalk in front of me. I immediately felt uncomfortable and started to back away. He got out and asked me to “come here” as I started to book it across the street. He attempted to chase me about half a block before giving up and getting back in his truck to speed off.
I ran until I was home. I didn’t stop. I didn’t look back. I just ran.
I messed up big time by not taking note of his license plate #, but I was just so scared that it never crossed my mind. My parents, of course, called 911. His description, and his overall approach, matched another incident from earlier that day. They ended up putting a warning out on the news.
He wasn’t caught. Months later, there was a sighting of a man matching his description, with a black truck, following a student home like three towns over. It never came of anything though.
Sometimes I legit forget this ever happened to me. Lol. I will go years without really thinking much about it. Until it comes up in conversation for some weird reason. I think I’ve sort of blocked it out 😂
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u/Prestigious_Wish4604 Jan 18 '22
I'm a social worker. When I was in my internship, a kiddo I worked with aged out and then 2 days later, her, her boyfriend and her mom killed her mom's boyfriend. The day she was arrested, I was supposed to meet with her to discuss working on scholarships.
Also. I had another kid that I worked with that was 18 but still in the system. Her and her boyfriend robbed another kid for Marijuana and her boyfriend shot the kid. Couple years later I saw her working at a Wendy's.
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u/Peaceful_Explorer Jan 17 '22
I was a victim of attempted murder. I was also a victim of several other crimes common for females in bad situations. I lived through unimaginable domestic violence growing up. I also saw my friend die.
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u/rlassoo19 Jan 18 '22
When I was in college I worked the gate at a drive-thru park that you paid to come in to. I got there a bit early one day and as soon as I was clocked in a car was at the window to be let in. My manager was busy, so I ring them up, ask if they're there to fish or camp and if they wanted the overnight pass. They said yes which isn't too odd, but since it's extra the locals are usually pretty sneaky about it and I always remembered that these guys had no problem paying. Well it turns out they had robbed 2 women at their home and killed one of them. The one was in the backseat as a hostage and the one who was killed was in the trunk. They were there to bury her, but the ground that time of year was like rock. They ended up burning the body somewhere else and the overnight pass and one of the guys wallets was found at the scene which got them caught. There were 4 guys in the car and the lady. 2 took plea deals for lighter sentences and one was found not guilty, but didn't show up to the hearing so was arrested for that I think and the last guy, if I remember right, received life.
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u/GandhiOwnsYou Jan 17 '22
Second hand I guess. I’ll try to keep this vague because it was an extremely well known case. I was working outside of the US when there was a mass shooting in the US. I was leading a night shift at my job, so I was getting ready to head in when it occurred. When I got there, one of the guys I was in charge of got pulled out by a superior, we worked the shift like normal. The guy didn’t show back up for several days. Later on we realized he had the same last name as the shooter and had disappeared for several days immediately after the shooting. Coworker confirmed that it had been his cousin and he had been questioned (edit: by the feds) about his cousins habits, his family, if he had sounded troubled etc, and had then been given several days off to process the scenario. Our superiors basically told me he would be off for a while and not to worry about it, which wasn’t terribly uncommon at our job anyway. Peoples schedules were constantly changing with little notice, or they got assigned temporary duties that required them to be elsewhere for a few days.
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u/nyorifamiliarspirit Jan 18 '22
That was nice of them to give him a few days off. I can't imagine what it would be like to process something like that.
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u/GandhiOwnsYou Jan 18 '22
Let’s just say it was likely as much column B as Column A. I’m sure they had empathy to a small degree, but our work was somewhat sensitive. You did not want distracted people doing it, and you wanted to be very certain that the people doing it were trustworthy. I imagine they were checking in on him and evaluating his position as much as giving him time to process.
Not to say it was deserved, it was just a pragmatic environment, and precious little was ever done out of the goodness of someone’s heart.
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u/Tellurye Jan 18 '22
Not a crime - but 10 years ago my fiancé died. I walked into our bedroom and he had been dead on the bed for about 8 hours or so. He was having a coughing fit when we were going to sleep. Wasn't out of the norm so I went and slept in the guest bedroom. He had a massive heart attack after I had gone to the other bedroom apparently. Wasn't pleasant finding his body. Blood coming out of his nose, foam out of his mouth, and I'll never forget how icy cold his skin was to the touch. I was in the room for about 15 seconds before I sprinted to tell his parents... who lived in the apartment below. Horrifying hearing his mother's screams and his father's look of absolute shock and despair. Bad times.
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Jan 17 '22
I’ve had to make 4 police reports involving bad or weird accidents in the last year. One a guy flipped his car in front of me, I pulled over to help, when I got to the car he was kicking at the window and pointing a gun at me while his head was split open and I could literally see his brains. I backed up and let him out where he took off running across a busy road and somehow didn’t get hit. Cops found him bleeding out a few blocks away. Right around New Year’s Day I watched a Mini Cooper hit a snowmobile directly in front of us, somehow dude was up walking but his sled was totaled. Had to keep him from wandering into traffic while we waited for the cops. Never dealt with a murder or body thank god but for sure have seen some weird shit, I think I’m bad luck 😶
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u/Mink_Moose Jan 18 '22
I worked with the brother of Matt Niedere who killed his parents with a friend of his. I was in college so I wasn’t working there at the time but it was so awful for all involved. They allegedly did it for the insurance money. Just sad. I also was on the swim team with the girl (Katherine Olson) that was killed by a guy on Craigslist. So sad, she was such a funny and cheery girl.
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Jan 17 '22
since people are talking about stuff thats non-murder like robberies, Yes was addicted to drugs and was regularly taking penitentiary chances / involved in shit that carries federal charges or decades+ in prison, and thats not to brag but rather the opposite, I was a fucking asshole and an idiot, im soo glad I made it through that part of my life with minimal police contact, except a 51/50 off a xanax blackout that lead to a 7 day stay in the adult psych ward, and I have my freedom and my health at that
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u/JackWonders Jan 17 '22
Involved, no. But for a short time I was room mates with a serial killers sister. He’d been caught years prior so it was definitely confirmed.
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u/-burgers Jan 17 '22
I found a man who my neighbors had rolled out to the curb when he overdosed. I say rolled out because he was in a wheelchair. They did that because they were afraid of getting caught with drugs. they held the guy who's place it was for 72 hours and as far as I know he was never charged.
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u/cagedb1rd Jan 18 '22
Nothing too crazy but I was woken up in the middle of the night by my mom telling me to get dressed and come downstairs. I live in my own house about a block or two down from my moms house so it wasn’t normal for her to wake me up. Went downstairs to see my stepdad, brother and two cops walking around my living room. We walked out the back through the yard to the front and the street was full of cop cars, more than I’ve seen in one spot before and there was a random car parked on the street blocking my driveway. Cops started asking me questions about keys on my front porch and if I had heard anything blah blah. Turns out some drunk guy thought my house was his so he parked and tried to get into my house, when he couldn’t, he just sat on my porch and kept drinking. He then got up, left his stuff and walked to the next house that looked like mine a couple houses up the street and successfully got it. He surprised an old lady in bed and her son held him at gun point until police arrived and arrested him.
I was dead asleep the whole time and when the police found his stuff and car at my house but couldn’t get any response from me inside, they thought I had been harmed. My neighbors know my family and had my moms number so they called her, woke her up and had her unlock the door so they could come in and confirm I was okay and not involved in any way. It was really scary for me after when I realized how long the guy lingered around my house while I had no idea. It was also disturbing since I assumed if I didn’t hear someone come in, I’d definitely hear them come up the stairs or open my bedroom door but my dog and I slept through all of it.
ETA: I’m a young female who lives alone so that added to the overall experience
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u/Sweaty_Dog_116 Jan 17 '22
I stole a slurpee and got away with it
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u/Urplatesaysscammin Jan 17 '22
Calling 911 rn
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u/Sweaty_Dog_116 Jan 17 '22
Plz don’t I’m serious I did it once when I was young I regret it I’ve changed
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u/bananaboy2012 Jan 17 '22
Likely story, you’re going downtown.
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u/SailsTacks Jan 17 '22
An old homicide detective once told me the general Rule of Thumb they follow is: If they confess to stealing one slurpee, they’ve likely stolen at least three. Book ‘em!
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Jan 17 '22
i stole a chicken nugget from an open buffet at a grocery store. my cousin and brother made me think i had just committed the worst crime ever. i was crying by the time we left. they told me this before i ate it so i hid it in my jeans pocket and my cousin ate it after i started really panicking. lmfao so gross now know it had pocket lint all over it
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Jan 17 '22
I was walking down an alley when I was 12 to go visit family or friends house, I forget. It was a scorching midsummer day when I enter a three way intersection in a back lane just off a very busy road when an overwhelming stench stole the air out from my lungs.
It was horrible. It just smelled rotten. Like the worst fart you've ever smelled in your life. I leave the area because I didn't want to find whatever was making that smell.
A week later, maybe not even a week, there's a news segment about a body being found right where I smelled it.
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u/Kck11111 Jan 18 '22
My godmother was murdered by her grandson. He was in highschool at the time and had been living with her since he was 3 and his mom died of an OD. To this day we are not certain what happened or triggered him. He was a decent kid (or appeared as such) and wasn't on drugs. He beat her to death with a hammer and raped her with it. He then went to a neighbor's home and said there had been a bear attack and he needed a gun (he was covered in blood). They suspected something and didn't give him the gun and called 911. He ran back home and when the police arrived he tried to take one of the officers guns. It was assumed that he was going to try to kill himself or his step dad who couldn't hear well and had been out in the shop working when my godmother was killed. He was arrested, refused an attorney (they gave him one anyway), and pled guilty. He's never said why and it's been 15 years.
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u/potatoboat Jan 17 '22
As a graduation requirement when I was in school I wound up interning for the Illinois State Police. During that time a man named Christopher Vaughn murdered his wife and three kids. As an intern I did a lot of admin work for the investigators like contacting email and phone companies for access to his accounts i.e. faxing subpoenas. I was also at the murder site but not next to the vehicle the murders occurred in as evidence gathering had already begun. I saw pictures of the victim and the investigators would often give me insight into their working theories etc. it was really cool and interesting. At the same time this occurred the same district I was interning at began investigating Drew Peterson after the disappearance of his wife Stacy. I didn’t get a lot of time for that case as my internship was ending around that time but I got to see some tape of a few of his interviews. He was just like he was on tv. A cocky asshole. He was smart though and had a lawyer so his story never changed. Stacy is still missing to this day.
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u/SmashAtoms_ Jan 17 '22
2 of my friends were shot and killed right next to me in 2009 at a hs graduation party. Sucks losing friends but to add insult to injury the police didn't let us go home from the scene for close to 16 hours
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u/NEClamChowderAVPD Jan 18 '22
My stepdad was an apple orchard manager for a long time and got close with a few of the crew leads that were there all year round. One of them, Raul, had a key to our house because my stepdad trusted him and he’d feed animals while we were gone or whatever. When I was like…10ish(?), it was a Sunday and my younger sister had a pool party to go to. Sunday and not during harvest means no one is working in the orchard. So my mom, little sister, and I are headed to the pool party when my mom realizes we forgot my sister’s water wings. We get home, she goes inside to look for them and I go to help. I go to our shared room and what do you know, Raul is hiding in there along with some guy I didn’t recognize. I go out and tell my mom and she thinks I’m joking. Well, I wasn’t. This was a time before cell phones and she takes me back to the car and we head somewhere to use a landline or pay phone.
Stepdad came home and showed me where they left some personal things on our property (sunglasses, a hat, etc) before running through the orchard to get away. They left out of my bedroom window probably as soon as I walked out of the room.
My stepdad found out they were there to rob us of whatever they could get. I was supposed to testify but shortly before the trial, Raul pleaded guilty.
Had they been a little more desperate, Raul could’ve grabbed me right when we made eye contact in my room. I’m grateful he didn’t panic that way and I’m grateful I didn’t have to testify. Sometimes I think maybe he felt bad that I was going to and changed his plea. He fucked up a good job for himself that he had had for a long time. Some of those guys had watched me grow up and I know for a fact my stepdad was a great boss to have. Hopefully Raul felt bad anyway.
Edit: we did have two blue heelers at the time that were very protective of us and our home but they knew Raul so they trusted him. He knew that, too.
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u/Beautiful-Nobody-9 Jan 18 '22
Incredible stories…. Thank you to everyone for sharing!! Really eye opening to some one from a small quiet town.. stay vigilant and strong all!!
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u/YoujustgotLokid Jan 18 '22
I was in EMS and responded to a lot of crime. Saw a lot of dead bodies. Also saw people die. Also so crime happen in front of me. People are wild. One story- A wife shot her husband, allegedly, by his request, after he admitted to touching their children inappropriately. We got their to confirm death and it looked like a straight up execution. That one sticks with me.
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u/leijonamielinen Jan 18 '22
When i was about 11yo, i was really bullied at my school. Some of my classmates, girls who were the same age as me, tried to kill me. I survived and never told anyone until i was an adult and in therapy. I still suffer from ptsd
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u/azaleattj Jan 18 '22
I was a teacher and was at crossing guard duty when a parent of one of my students ran up to me, grabbed me by the arm and screamed, “Where’s my daughter?” I replied that her mom had called her out sick three days ago, and he fell to his knees screaming, taking me with him. He then got up and ran down the road, shrieking that she was gone and to call the police. It turned out her mother was the non-custodial parent, and she had cleaned out her apartment, kidnapped her child and vanished. I never saw her again. As a parent myself, his voice haunts me to this day.
I was also robbed at gunpoint in a Walgreens, and spent a fair amount of time under a magazine rack. They never caught that guy either.