The following question was posed on AskReddit:
Have any of you had someone in your community or circle of friends turn out to be a murderer, rapist, or something just as bad?
Turns out that a surprising large number of people do know someone that belongs to the type. Here are 32 of the most chilling responses.
1. Friends with Tyler Hadley, a guy who killed his parents.
I live in port St. Lucie. Not sure if anyone is familiar with the Tyler Hadley case but he was a pretty good friend of mine. Anyways…He killed his parents with a hammer, threw them and a majority of the items in the house in their room, and threw a party. He always seemed a little off.
2. Nice guy who threw a BBQ ended up brutally killing a girl.
I went to a BBQ at a friend of a friend’s house one weekend and had a fantastic time. I thought the dude was genuinely a really cool and nice guy after letting everybody play horseshoes and use the pool; not to mention that he bought all the food and beer. Found out 2 weeks later that he was the one that raped and beat to near death a girl who was a mutual friend of me and the guy that took me there. He raped her and left her for dead in a park. Couldn’t even recognize her if you didn’t know it was her. I had literally from the one time I met the guy thought he was the nicest guy I’d ever met, then that…
3. Used to hang out with the guy known as “White John.”
Back in 1997 there was a guy we called “white John” that hung around with us occasionally. He was a black guy but tried very hard to behave the way he thought white people did. All his friends were white. One day he stopped coming around. We figured he decided to start spending all his time with the Asian girlfriend in Manhattan he ALWAYS talked about.
Couple days later, he’s on every major news station in New York, and on the front page of every newspaper. Turns out he was a serial rapist that targeted Asian women. And the “girlfriend” he always spoke about had actually broken up with him several months before. He had been stalking her, and raping other Asian girls after the break up. He was caught after he raped and killed the ex girlfriend.
We were shocked. There was never any indication that he was capable of such terrible things. I would sit and go over every interaction I ever had with him to see if there were signs and I just didn’t see them. It rattled me pretty badly when I thought of all the times I had been alone with him walking to the store or whatever.
Ever since then, I examine the people I’m friends with looking for warning signs. It still affects me to this day.
4. Played jiu jitsu with James Biela.
I did jiu jitsu with James Biela who was a serial rapist and murdered Brianna Dennison in Reno, Nevada. It was something that was impossible to see at the time, and will never make total sense.
5. Friends with a firefighter who started his own fires.
Guy I knew was a firefighter and really serious about it. He started out forest firefighting and went to school to be a city firefighter. He was truly in love with his job. A little too much unfortunately. Houses around our area began catching on fire for no clear reason. Eventually they found out it was arson, but they didn’t know who it was. The last of these arsons resulted in a death. An old man that lived in the home couldn’t get out of bed on his own and was trapped in his room. Eventually it was found out that this guy had been starting these fires in order to do his job and put them out. He was convicted of manslaughter and arson and spent a few years (3?) in jail but he’s out now. I don’t feel like the punishment fit the crime for this one. Not sure where he is or what he’s doing but I’ve certainly seen him walking free.
6. Weird man in his church group ended up being a pedophile.
A guy at a church I went to as a teenager did a lot of work with our youth group. He was a single man in his thirties. My youth pastor called him into his office one day and said, “So-and-so, something about you really bothers me but I can’t put my finger on it. Are you ok?” The guy said he was just fine and that he had no problems. Other than that incident, to everyone it seemed like he was a nice guy who just really liked helping folks out. He was really funny as well.
He was arrested several months later by an FBI sting that pretended to solicit sex with a 12-year-old boy. He was a pedophile and he had already abused multiple people. In the end he got 15 years in prison for what he did.
7. Mom’s boyfriend ended up being a horrible child molester.
My mom began dating this one guy. None of us felt comfortable around him, and my dad, grandma and I were particularly worried of him being around my younger brother and sister. My mom would leave them alone with him all the time, even though he was this alcoholic, manipulative piece of shit.
He had served like 6 years in jail for “coke” before my mom and him got together. Later, we found out the real reason was because he came home drunk one night and made his young daughter give him a blow job. We found out because he came home drunk one day and solicited my sister’s friend (at the time they were about 10-12 years old) for sex. He’s been in jail since.
8. A friend’s mentally ill brother killed a guy.
This was so incredibly sad and we still miss our friend dearly (seriously stand-up guy whom everyone loved) but he was at his girlfriend’s house having a party when her mentally ill little brother shot him point blank with a shot gun killing him instantly and then walked down stairs and killed himself with another shotgun.
It was very tough since we were all young and not even two months out of graduating high school and man did it change both families permanently. Both sets of parents divorced, the girl’s father killed himself 2 years later.
9. Owner of a neighborhood sandwich shop killed his ex-girlfriend.
Guy who ran a sandwich shop near where I live stabbed his ex-girlfriend and her new boyfriend to death while shouting “Why did you lie!?” over and over as she tried to call 999.
Everyone just thought he closed the shop and moved away, and then we saw in the newspapers that it was him and it was a bit weird.
10. A stepbrother who ended up being into child porn.
I grew up with a stepbrother. He was around 20 when I was around 12. I shared a room with him and we played games together and I never would have thought he was that bad of a guy, but one day my mom used his computer without his permission, and found a gigantic stash (gigabytes worth) of child porn. She freaked out and told his dad. I went to live with my dad in another state and my mom broke ties with my stepbrother’s entire family. I don’t know what happened after that.
11. An old babysitter who killed his mom on a meth binge.
A kid who used to babysit me killed his mom and seriously wounded his father. Supposedly he was on a meth binge.
He was probably around eight when I knew him. He was a hyper kid but not like “I’m going to kill my family” crazy.
Unfortunately meth is very prevalent in my area.
12. An old friend who always seemed off killed his ex-girlfriend.
An ex-friend of mine was recently convicted of first-degree murder. The guy was always a little messed up, though I was still surprised he murdered someone. I always figured he’d go to jail for something else. When we were young he tried to molest my younger sister, so I threw him out and cut every tie I could (he went to my school so I couldn’t completely avoid him and no, no one believed me or my sister about what happened because we were “too young to know what sex was”). Fast-forward about eight years and he ends up dating my ex-girlfriend. I tried to warn her he was messed up, but she ignored me. Cue emotional and physical violence, and then they split up with her eventually getting a restraining order. Jump forward another six years or so and I get a call from my mom asking if I heard the news. Apparently he murdered guy for dating a different ex he had just broke up with. After a minor manhunt they found him and he confessed in court. The really shitty part about all this is his family is genuinely very nice, and tried for years to fix the worst of his problems.
13. Her brother got mixed up with a bad crowd.
My brother was in with the wrong crowd. He did petty drug dealings. His one best friend would come around often. He scared the shit out of me. He was cold. His eyes were just empty. There was a triple murder homicide on New Year’s Day at a restaurant. I remember thinking “who the fuck kills an innocent bystander running for their life?!” There were two related rival gang members shot, and a random person. Just irked me. No less than a week later, my brother’s friend’s face is plastered all over the paper as the guilty murderer. His BFF and two other idiots did it. They also linked him to several other killings. Craziest thing ever. My brother then quit dealing moved to another city. He went to school, graduated, and has had his own business going for two years. That definitely changed his attitude…
14. A classmate killed a teacher who ratted on him.
There was a guy I was at school with who seemed like a pretty cool guy but it turns out that he was unhinged. It’s quite a long story, but he hit a girl in his class – not particularly hard or anything – but a teacher happened to mention it at a PTA meeting (to illustrate reckless and violent behavior in the student body or something). The guy’s dad was at the PTA meeting and apparently was embarrassed and angry at his kid’s behavior and beat the crap out of him. This guy decided to get revenge on the teacher who ratted him out so he visited him at his house, asked his wife to call him to the door and shot him in the chest. Then this guy jumped back into his father’s car that he had taken and shoots himself in the head while driving away. It was pretty shocking, though I had left the school when it happened. I heard about it from one of the teachers who was a friend of my mom’s.
15. A friend who’s in court right now for rape.
An old friend of my brother’s and a friend of a lot of my friends is in court right now for the rape of a girl under the age of 14. She was 13 and he was 19 when it happened. Then he went and got a job as a janitor at a middle school. Kid had always been a weirdo.
16. A friend from high school was caught in a child molestation sting operation.
A few years ago I found out a kid I was friends with in high school was caught going to a nearby mall to hook up with an allegedly 13 year old girl (Was about 22-23 at the time). It ended up being part of a sting operation and he was caught. Fast-forward a year after that I meet my dad for the first time since I was 10. He’s a captain of a sheriffs department a city over from mine. He was in charge of that sting.
17. An autistic kid from high school who ended up having sex with a very young boy.
This short stocky kid autistic kid used to play on our football team, and all the coaches and kids loved him for his work ethic, and he got to be a pretty big part of the team. Anyway, 6 months out of high school I’m mopping after work and my phone gets blown up by my old classmates saying he’d gotten arrested for having sex with a 8 year old boy :/. What really sucked is we played the same position and had classes together, and he even messaged me. He explained how it was consensual, and how he’s fucked in the head, how his life is fucked up etc etc. Pretty rude awakening.
18. An acquaintance who was secretly keeping his girlfriend hostage for months.
Whole story: I didn’t know this guy too well, but my best friend knew him more; they hung out a few times and got pretty flirty.. He was a convention-goer (as are me and my friends, we attend anime/gaming conventions every once in a while). I saw him at multiple cons because he also worked for a regular vendor. He was a good-looking guy (and Asian, with the whole j-rock look, so he was pretty popular among a lot of con girls). He was strange, but I didn’t give it much thought until I realized he compulsively lied, and that started sending off red flags because he very much reminded me of someone else I knew who was manipulative and abusive. Long story short, my friend hung out with him one-on-one a few times and liked him on some level. They were flirty but nothing really ever came of it. Not a few months later after a convention, we hear that this guy was arrested, and sure enough there are news articles about it to prove it. He held his girlfriend captive for over two months, beat her with sticks and a crowbar, broke her bones, forced her to kneel on grains of rice, and forced her to cut herself with a knife. IIRC she lost hearing in one ear. I never met the girlfriend, to my knowledge. I wish I could find the follow-up to his story… I have no idea if he’s still in jail or not. A lot of people in the convention community in our area were shocked.
19. A friend’s ex-boyfriend who always seemed creepy.
My friend’s boyfriend always made me really uneasy. He’d tell these elaborate lies about his time in the military (he was discharged very early) and as a police officer on patrol (he worked dispatch for three months.) He was always very intense when talking about chasing down and beating criminals or terrorists – lots of creepy, unblinking eye contact. He was also on the local volunteer fire department and would get similarly unsettling when talking about structure fires.
A few years after he and my friend broke up, he killed a woman our age and her father and burned their bodies in their mobile home.
20. An acquaintance who ended up being a murderer.
An acquaintance murdered a girl over money a few years back. Just had dinner with him once and he seemed really nice. Saw it in the newspaper a couple years later and realized it was him.
21. An old friend from school tortured and killed an elderly man who apparently used to rape him as a kid.
A guy I went to school with (before he stopped going) was a typical dropout type and a bit of a troublemaker and became heavily involved in drugs, but generally a nice enough guy to talk to in the time I knew him.
Him and I think it was his cousin broke in to an elderly mans house and tortured him, we live in a small town so it was a big deal. The walls were smeared with his blood, he died slowly and they enjoyed every second of it. They cut off his dick and shoved it in his mouth. Everyone was shocked until one of their siblings spoke out about it, this old guy had repeatedly raped and molested them growing up. I guess that is what shaped him into the person he grew up to be, if that’s the case I honestly don’t blame him one bit for doing what he did.
22. A best friend from high school who killed his dad.
One of my best friends from high school killed his dad last year in front of his whole family. I don’t think me or anyone else from my group of friends is sure how to handle it still.
23. An acquaintance from high school who killed a family on a meth binge.
He wasn’t really a “friend” but more of a guy who hung around my group of friends sometimes when we were in high school. Anyway, about a year or two after high school he started doing meth. He broke in to a guy’s house one night to steal some shit and the guy woke up. They started fighting and the kid I knew from high school beat the guy with a hockey stick and stabbed him to death with a pair of scissors. The homeowners young son (can’t remember how old but I believe around 5 or 6) woke up and the guy cut the little boys throat with the scissors. The boy survived luckily and the guy was caught by the police about a week later. Needless to say he is serving life in prison.
24. Brother’s friend who was raping brother’s daughter.
Yes, a child molester.
My brother and his little circle of three have been friends for almost 30 years when this happened. One guy (we’ll call him “Johnny”) was always babysitting the other friend’s (We’ll call him “Rob”) two little girls when he and his wife wanted a night out. One night at dinner, Rob and his wife were having a conversation about not having secrets from each other. The youngest girl said something to the effect of, “I already have a secret.”
Turns out, Johnny was having sex with her and FILMING it. This had started when she was about 3 1/2 years old, until she was 6. He was also selling the videos online to other fucked up people.
What’s wrong with people?
25. Set up his neighbor with a convicted killer.
About 30 years ago I was friends with a nice guy. He would go camping with us, we hung out at the bar, and had cookouts at his house.
Once, when he was visiting us he asked for the phone number of the girl who lived in the house in front of us. I gave it to him, he called her, and she called me back. “I just wanted to check and see if he is an ax murder or anything. Heh heh heh.” “No, he is not an ax murder,” I replied. I think you know where this is going.
In fact, within a year he had been arrested for stabbing a guy to death. Like 30 stab wounds. It is my impression that the dead guy deserved it, but still this was some creepy stuff. The girl, my neighbor, was very upset that she had been dating a guy who turned out to be up to his armpits in blood.
Some of the people in my group go and visit the killer in prison. He is eligible to get out next year, having served 30 years.
26. Two ex-boyfriends who are murderers.
Two guys from my hometown viciously murdered a woman and her two elderly parents. I dated both of them.
27. A co-worker who turned out to be a child molester.
Co-worker of mine molested a friend of mine’s 2 year old at church along with 5 other young children. He was always a super-nice upstanding guy. Many folks didn’t think he did it and still don’t to this day. (Even though he confessed to it and named victims) The child, however was obviously messed up for quite a while.
28. A classmate from high school raped his 9-year-old cousin.
A friend of mine that was on my wrestling team in High School was arrested for raping his 9 year old cousin senior year.
29. Worked with Joseph Duncan III.
I briefly was employed at the same company as Joseph Duncan III, who went on to become a serial killer. It gives me the chills to recall that he won the Halloween contest by dressing up as the grim reaper.
30. A frequent client at the kennel who coached her 3-year-old son to kill a man.
I ran the kennel in a full-service animal hospital for a number of years and had one dog that was a frequent boarder. Her owner would bring her in every two weeks, said she was only going to board a couple of days, and then the dog always wound up staying two weeks. She was such a regular client that when the dog stopped showing up we all noticed but didn’t know what had happened.
Later the police came to the clinic and asked when this lady had boarded her dog last. Apparently they were investigating her movements following the murder of her long-term boyfriend and baby daddy. She had coached their 13-year-old son into crushing his father’s skull with a hammer and then cut him into pieces and hid his body in a freezer in their basement, then left her two children in the home by themselves to go into hiding.
I never found out what happened to Sunshine the pit bull.
31. Four kids from high school murdered a guy for weed.
4 kids from my high school murdered a guy they thought had weed in his house. Details are too much for me to type but I was in shock for weeks. I was really good friends with one of them and I still cant believe he could do something like that. 4 boys, 18 years old, threw their lives away for the possibility of weed. One kid implicated the others for a lesser sentence and the amount of hate he got was shocking. Like no one realized they all are murderers but the snitch is the worst offense ever.
32. A classmate from high school overdosed on heroin that a classmate’s father sold him.
Someone I went to high school with died of a heroin overdose a few weeks ago, and the drug dealer turned out to be another kid from my high school’s father. Apparently he had been concocting his own drug cocktails and pawning them off as genuine heroin. Here’s the article for proof.