“A Guy That I Almost Considered A Friend”: 59 Stories From People Who Knew Murderers Before Everyone Did

In my first semester of college, I had a computer science professor I really loved. Near the end of the semester, he told us he may be taking time off and finding a replacement for the semester. His severely autistic son had died in a 'tragic pool accident'. He noted that the media was trying to make him look bad. I created a GoFundMe for funeral expenses; he appreciated it and shared photos to use on the page.

Fast forward half a year. I get calls from news reporters asking what my thoughts are... He had been arrested on suspected unintentional manslaughter. It turns out, he had left his son outside in the cold by the pool, unsupervised, when he left for work. His son was never supposed to be unattended. His son was outside for who knows how long before the professor's daughter found the boy face down in the pool.

Further research into the case revealed the boy was living in an unfurnished basement, feces all over the walls, often left alone. The police were at the home frequently; CPS had made various safety requirements for them that they never followed.

He's being charged with unintentional manslaughter and various forms of child a***e. Him and his wife are being charged for filling the boy's Ritalin prescription for many, many months after the d***h.

I still believe it was intentional. Texts revealed the daughter discovered the boy when the professor texted her, asking her to check if 'Freak' was okay.

EDIT: Some people here did their research. I learned a lot more about the case. Any doubts I had have been dissolved; I'm confident this was not just some big, sad accident.

When it first happened, he told his classes that one particular media outlet was trying to portray it as more than an accident. He told us directly how upset he was about that, and really emphasized how important it was that it was nothing more than an accident. I didn't think much of it - of course you wouldn't want people blaming you for your son's d***h. Looking back, it should've raised more red flags.

It's crazy because he was so nice. He motivated me to stick to computer science, he seemed so appreciative of the GoFundMe, he was very highly rated... It's crazy.

One of my parents friends use to come around all the time. He was probably only 21. Nicest guy ever. Type of guy who wouldn't hurt a fly.

A couple of years later he moved and we seen him on the news for m****r. Turned out he got on the ice and his girlfriend convinced him to k**l her ex with her. They then buried him in concrete.

Only reason they got caught was because they wrote their names in the concrete.

I just needed to get it off my chest. My father was a m****r. He k****d my grandparents, his mom and dad, and as a side effect his grandmother as well. IT will haunt me the rest of my life, and it had a profound effect on the way I grew up. My family hid it from me saying he had just done some bad stuff. I thought it was d***s or domesticate violence that sort of thing. I loved my dad. We used to watch batman and beveeus and b******d together. He was probably the most chill guy you ever would know. I didn't know that he was on d***s, that he drank, that he made deals and had problems with a lot of people to cope with his problems. I knew of the concept back then, so I always thought it was that.

Well naturally in this day and age you can't keep a secret like that from long from an inquisitive child with the power of the internet at their finger tips.

So here's the story. He hid under his parents bed waiting to grab my grandpa's wallet to steal some money. I don't know what the money was for, some say to get more d***s, other say to pay some people you wouldn't want to owe 14 cents to. Well he got caught my grandpa pulled out his gun cause he didn't know who it was. They fought over it. He shot my grandpa in the chest, strangled my grandmother with a lamp cord. After word he turned the gas on the stove and walked out. You ever seen the movies where the pilot light turn on and everything is incinerated? that's what happened to the house. My great grandama was still in the house. She used to have a room full of stuffed animals, they burned up and all the toxins they release cause her to have chemical brns on her body and lungs. Let's just say I no longer find fluffy teddy bears adorable after seeing what happened to her.

Here's a kicker my sister and I were suppose to be at their house that night. I think what's worse is because of what he did, my sister and I were declared to be the spawn of the devil. Our family shunned us, they took everything we were suppose to inherit. I can't tell you the amount of trouble I got into as a kid. This event cut me off from any emotion other than anger. For years that's all i could feel or relate to. All I can say is that revenge is never the answer. I watched him d*e, The state executed him for him crimes. It did not settle anything for me, it didn't make everything better. I watched this man take his last breath, and all I could think about was how I wished, That none of this had never happened. That I would never get those years of my life I spent in anger back, and how I wasted so much time on hatred. I wished we could have watched batman together again one last time.

In grade school I sat next to this guy named George. Super quiet kid, and occasionally I would go over his house after school. His mom would occasionally be our substitute teacher.

Fast forward to when I am in college and go to pick up a NY Post in the morning. I see the headline "THREE STRIKES, SHE'S OUT ... KID BEATS MOM TO D***H WITH BASEBALL BAT". And there was a photo of George and his mom. It was big news in NY for a brief period, and last I heard he was sent to jail.

Fast forward a few years later and I am working in Manhattan and I literally bump right into him on the subway platform. Apparently he got out after a few years. It was seriously the most ackward small talk I ever made with someone in my life.

I knew a kid in boy scouts who moved to a different town and beat a homeless man to d***h when he was 17. I wasn't terribly surprised; I'd heard stories about him k*****g kittens when we were younger and I suspected that his adopted father, our scoutmaster, was a molester.

A few years ago I hired a father-son handyman team to help me get my house ready to put on the market. Among other things, my outside doorknobs were in bad shape so they installed new ones. The dad seemed pretty nice, even did a little bit for free. On their 3rd and last day at my house, he was pretty fired up about a big job they were starting the next day. Three days later he k****d his new clients because they were unhappy with his work. A neighbor saw what happened and ran into her house and hid. He kicked her door in and shot her too. I was terrified until he was caught.

I dated a guy who later stabbed his mother to d***h. He was psychotic and a*****e, and I fled the state because I was afraid he was going to k**l me. I found out years later that he m******d his mother just a few months after I left him. He's still in prison. It's been 20 years and I still have nightmares about him and I still feel a little sick talking about it.

Went to high school with a guy who tied 2 hitch hikers to a tree and bayonetted them to d***h. The summer before he kept coming to the house where I lived with 5 friends and tried to date me. He was always a loner with poor social skills. I had a boyfriend which probably saved me.

I know a guy who worked with Dahmer. I asked him about it and he was extremely reluctant to talk about working with him but made it sound like everyone who worked with him thought he was a pretty normal guy and were shocked to find out about everything he had done.

ls10032:

My aunt worked with Dahmer at the chocolate factory. She said he was a nice but quiet kid, and yeah, a lot of people I know that knew him generally say the same things.

I grew up around Donald Traub from Willow Grove, PA. he lived in the same apartment building as my mom. He actually babysat my sister a couple times. i would borrow movies and stuff from him. He had the biggest collection of action and horror vhs'. He seemed perfectly normal, if a little introverted. When the attacks he was doing were going on my mom commented to him that she was afraid to wait at bus stops now. Donald said "aw Kathy, I don't think you have anything to worry about!" Good thing we were his friends, I guess!

Late to this, but I do have something to contribute.

I knew James Holmes in college. He was one year ahead of me, but same major. I remember taking classes with him, he also did a bit of research in the vivaria and so did I but in separate labs. So our paths crossed often.

I remember him being super paranoid. I remember filling out health questionnaires/medical clearance forms for a final that required in vivo work and access to the vivarium. He threw fit in our lab, telling our TA he wasn't going to fill it out. He finally did, but put a disclaimer on the bottom of it. It was bizarre. I think that was around 08/09, I think he was already unraveling then.

I remember when I found out about Aurora I was working when my old college roommate text me asking if I heard about the shooting in Colorado followed shortly by her texting me who did it. My roommate remembered him clearly from a GE class we both took with him. I remember feeling scared for some reason when I put the name to a face. My teeth started chattering wildly. I was shocked.

It still freaks me out to this day remembering working in labs, and having class discussions with that guy. We were definitely not friends but, I probably saw him nearly every day for at least a couple years. I can still see him working across from me under a fume hood in my minds eye anytime his name is brought up.

My parents had close friends, M & J, who were almost like family to us. We always spent time with them. We’d gone on vacation with them. They were a big part of my childhood. When I was a teen, they split up. He liked his blue collar, laid back life. She was moving up the corporate ladder and wanted her life to reflect it. There were no hard feelings. They just grew into different people. It rocked the whole circle of friends, because this was the first couple to divorce. J (the wife) stayed in town, while M moved away to follow work. A few years later, the cops come around asking questions of J and eventually my parents and their friends. Turns out M had been arrested for m****r. His DNA matched two unsolved cases within 100 miles of our hometown. Those occurred during his marriage to J and his close friendship with my family. No one could believe it. He confessed to all three murders, all young women. It turns out that he had kept one of the bodies in their garage for a few days at some point. His ex-wife went off the rails for a while. She lost her job. She didn’t leave her house for months, and then very rarely for years. She’s starting to come back into the fold of her friends now. This was years ago and I still can’t really come to terms with it. We never mention him in my family at all.

Yes. Was hired at the same time as him. Worked right next to him for several years. He was one of those stoner guys always bragging about the parties he went to. He was a little obnoxious in a "bro" sort of way so I always skipped hanging out with him after work.

After I left that job a little while later he k****d his ex girlfriend while her 5yo was in the apt watching tv, took the kid on a road trip to Texas, and smothered her on Christmas Morning and left her in a suitcase on the side of the road.

I cut my teeth as a teacher at a rough school in Portsmouth. It was a deprived area where lots of students had it tough outside the school gates - lots of d**g-a******d parents, thieves as role models, etc. I've posted before about a boy who pulled a knife in my classroom.

I once taught a boy called Sam. He was a rude, aggressive boy who liked to make people squirm. He had streak in him that, when it came out, made him into something akin to evil - cutting girls' hair, pushing over old ladies, and the like. However, Sam and I had a strong relationship. I was always praised for "getting through to him" and we often had lengthy chats about life after secondary school. It was my second year as a teacher when he left and I genuinely thought I'd made a difference.

Five years later, Sam's face is on the news. He's mown down two teenage girls - on purpose - as they walked home from a party. He drove over them, then rounded a roundabout to drive over them again.

Nothing compared to the horror I felt alongside the impotent feeling left inside me - I thought I'd perhaps got through to him in some way, but clearly I hadn't. I felt like I could have done, *should* have done more to help him seek the good inside himself in those four hours a week we spent together. I was naive.

I'm no longer so arrogant as to believe that my words can change lives, but it hasn't stopped me trying.

As a teacher, life can be tough. You are but a flicker in the long night of these students' lives and you strive to make a difference, but at times like that - when you realise you made none - that really hurts.

Ted Bundy worked on a suicide hotline. His coworker during the late, lone hours in the middle of the night was actually researching and talking about the murders to him during their shared shift as he was going about killing people during off work hours. She says she never felt afraid, never suspected him. She has been a police officer and now writes true crime. It took her many years to accept that he was a serial killer capable of all that. She finally was able to write a book "The Stranger Beside Me". She says oddly enough, he saved more lives on that Suicide Hotline than he ever took. That chilled her.

I spent 3 months on a study abroad with a special forces, ex-FBI, guy named ‘Joe’. We were a small group of mostly students whereas Joe was older and there as part of foreign immersion training for the military. He was a little odd/awkward at times and didn’t share too much about himself which we mostly attributed to the age difference.

I’d describe Joe as very intense but kind-hearted. The military was very important to him and he always seemed very focused on that. But occasionally he’d make a dry joke or let his guard down for a moment with the group. He was very into photography and shared lots of great photos from the trip.

He was also somewhat the protector of the group and we always felt completely safe with him. One story I’ll share was when he was walking over a bridge and spied some guys in the trees waiting to jump down and rob him. He pulled out a large knife he carried on him and casually brandished it as he walked by. The guys smartly decided not to mess with Joe, but after he crossed he saw them sprint across the bridge and hide behind a building. Two policemen showed up shortly after and Joe showed them where the guys were hiding so the police could arrest them.

Anyways, a few years after we got back I heard the news that he had k****d someone and took his own life. He had been training for a new position and his commander deemed that he wasn’t physically fit enough for the job. The judgment effectively ended his career and he felt he had been unfairly judged. He brought a gun into the base and shot his commander d**d then k****d himself.

A guy I used to be acquaintances with (played on bar league darts and pool teams with him, and went to a few parties at his house). The authorities found about a dozen bodies on his property, and he is suspected/linked to many more murders.

While in jail waiting for his first trial, he escaped using a rope made out of bedsheets and throwing his cellmate three stories down on to the razor wire fence so he could scale it with minimal injuries.

He isn't a scary looking guy (although he could handle himself in a bar fight), and didn't give off a crazy vibe at all. He was a friendly guy, and could strike up a conversation with anyone on almost any topic. He apparently is a psychopath though that has no problem k*****g other humans if he can somehow benefit.

My story is kind of the opposite of most of these, but I knew a guy who was involved in a brutal multiple m****r and who by his own admission probably would have gone on to be a serial killer (in the loosest sense of k*****g 3 or more people in separate incidents) if he hadn't been caught. The opposite part is that I knew him after he'd gotten out of prison. He served about 20 years before being paroled.

I met him when I was a teenager, because he went to the same church as us, was a friend of my father's and a caretaker on a neighboring horse ranch. So I sort-of knew him for a long time, then I got a job starting colts on that ranch when I was in high school. He was always up for joining me if I needed someone to ride an older horse to "babysit" a youngster who wasn't really safe to ride out alone on, so we spent a lot of time just riding out together and talking. I knew he'd been in prison for a long time but I just sort of figured it was d***s. And it kind of was, because the m****r happened over a gang/d**g dispute, but not in the way I was thinking.

Anyway, I never would have guessed he could do something like that. He was one of the kindest, most gentle people I've ever met. He was always so attentive and gentle with the livestock and dogs, did things like nursing orphaned feral cats that everyone else probably would have let d*e, and he had a pet prairie dog because he hit it with his car by accident and nursed it back to health. He'd go out of his way to help everyone who needed it, even if you didn't ask him, and he never asked for anything in return. He was very insightful, intelligent, and thoughtful. Incredibly well-read, too, which apparently was mostly due to the prison library. We used to talk about philosophy and theology a lot.

He never really hid what he did, either. He passed away when I was in my 20s, and I never knew that he was a m******r until after his d***h. It came up while my dad and I were talking about him, and my dad was honestly surprised that I didn't know why he'd been in prison for so long. And I guess in retrospect I should have figured it out (some of my siblings did, but some of us didn't), but I think a big part was just that he seemed so opposite of what you'd think a m******r would be like.

I'm very glad I knew him, and knowing him and what he did really informed a lot of my attitudes about the justice system.

I went to college with a guy who was friendly and funny when he was sober. Always polite and easy to converse with on most any topic. Well liked by guys and fancied by many girls.
When he was drunk... different story. He would get this d**d behind the eyes look and seek out fights. Not stupid bar room brawls but extremely violent encounters where he would get people on the ground and try to stomp their head in. My friends and I avoided him (he tried starting fights with many of us) and we all said that he was going to k**l someone some day.
Well that happened in 2007 when he took a girl back to his apartment after a baseball game. She apparently didn’t do what he want and he beat, choked and stabbed her. I was shocked when I heard but not surprised (if that makes sense).
He’s currently in jail serving a 35-year sentence.

My neighbors father m******d his entire family and then k****d himself shortly before he was to be indicted over a ponzi-esk scheme. I knew the whole family well. The Dad was always a little weird and would do things like wear a full 3 piece suit to a child's soccer game. Never showed any signs of being violent though. The mother and 2 daughters were wonderful people, it was a real tragedy.