Know any murderers or friends with any serious criminals?

I just remembered another one, though not really relevant to mr2s2000elise's question:

My great-grandfather killed someone. He was on the way to a barn dance with his date in his buggy, when a group of local boys surrounded them & started accosting them. He shot & killed one of them. 

I have the newspaper articles from both his hometown & the assailant's hometown. His hometown paper calls him a victim, while the other paper calls him a murderer. I don't believe he was arrested for it. He died in 1958 & I didn't learn about it until after my great grandmother & my grandfather had died, so I don't know any other details. 
 

I don't know anyone who has done anything that serious.

I know on former HS classmate died in a meth making accident. Another in jail for making meth and resisting arrest and another for gun running charges. But I wasn't friends with any of them.

Another was recently arrested for embezzling money from the city government. That one was a surprise cause I knew her family fairly well having played soccer with her brother for a long time growing up through to HS.

In reply to Duke :

I don't know what actual evidence cops had, but a psychiatrist said it's improbable he didn't act.  Better if he did kill someone, I heard those guys don't do well in jail.

My best friend since kindergarten, godfather to my daughter, and best man in my wedding, along with his brother and father (who were all close family friends for almost 2 decades) all went from highly religious (the father was a pastor) and owning their own successful trucking company to all 3 ending up in prison in the matter of just a few years. They enjoyed riding motorcycles and eventually got mixed up with and joining the Galloping Gooses (silly name but a pretty serious motorcycle club). Drugs got involved and everything went down hill fast.

The brother and father ended up kidnapping a guy who stole money from the club and basically beat him within an inch of his life, injecting the guy with drugs to keep him awake while they beat him. Ended up getting caught and are both doing a pretty hefty sentence.

My best friend got picked up on a warrant of some sort while out of state, then got some extra time tacked on from drugs and guns found when his house got raided. He was in prison for a few years and just recently got out a few months ago, he seems to have his head on straight so far so fingers crossed he stays that way.

My Mom's BFF's husband is a career lowlife. He's in his 70s, went to jail multiple times for embezzlement, pyramid schemes, being a general con-man. Supposedly he started a short lived cult in the 1970's. When my mom passed he came sniffing around for money, despite (intentionally) not having any interaction with him for over 20 years. Fortunately he's the idiotic, obvious, type of con-man, but still, one of the most repugnant people I've ever had the displeasure of meeting.

Straying a bit from the topic, but I think it's relatable.

The girl who I might have married (boy, is that a long story) had a MIA father. He was basically living in the woods of the pacific northwest, I was told hiding from the IRS.  One night my GF told me the story of how her own father sexually molested her. Not just once, but several times.

A few years ago Liam Neeson confessed in an interview that he had once wanted to kill someone. He described feeling a blinding rage that just overtook him. I know exactly how he felt. If her father had been anywhere within driving distance I'd have bludgeoned him to death. It was a scary feeling, afterward. I hope to never feel that way again. 

I have a good friend (let’s call him “Howie”) who grew up in the Federal Hill area of Providence, RI in the sixties. “The Hill” as it was called was the home of the Patriarca New England crime syndicate. Howie was just a little kid but through his own personal family connections he became trusted among the crime family. Thus little Howie unwittingly became a neighborhood runner for the mob (as in “Howie … run down to the corner grocery and pick up the bag from Salvatore and bring it back here. He’ll give you a candy bar. Don’t look inside the bag”). He became friends with convicted mob hit man Maurice “Pro” Lerner and as a teenager worked with him on various legitimate tile jobs, including one for convicted mob boss Raymond (never call him Ray) Patriarca at his new house in South Kingstown, RI. Before the Patriarca syndicate was finally busted by the Feds, Howie wisely moved away from The Hill and assumed a normal life. These days Howie is retired from a legitimate career, and whenever we get together over cocktails he’s a treasure-trove of great personal mob stories. And because I grew up in RI at the same time, I remember all the shady players.
 

Raymond L. S. Patriarca, New England crime boss in the sixties:

Maurice "Pro" Lerner, mob hit man:

(No pic of Howie).

Behind a small buffer of woods sat an old farmhouse. No one seemed to know anything about it, but you'd hear some activity–like the occasional tractor. 

But we were kids, so what did we care about an old farmhouse located a few hundred yards away from us? It was alllll the way around the corner, so it might as well have been on another planet. But from the road, yeah, it looked bleak: untreated siding, hollow windows, unkept yard. 

Through the magic of the internet, a little while back I started to research that farmhouse. What stories did it have to tell? 

Well, the house was built in the 1750s, with the house I grew up in–as well as all of the ones around us–built on their old farmland.

But the farmhouse also saw a grisly double homicide!

The husband and wife who lived there were attacked with a hammer or such heavy object. 

From the deposition:

“Alexander lay with his head from the fire place, his body was chiefly consumed up to his 3rd or 4th rib.”

Sounds like he was struck and then fell into the fire, which then burned him up.

About his wife: "Mrs. Smith was lying in the right corner of the fireplace; her head at the corner of the hearth… her dress was bloody down to her waist…She seems from appearances to have struggled. There was blood in the middle of the floor, and spread to the place where she lay."

I recently asked my mom: How come no one ever told us about this!?

My mom had no idea.

The murders took place in 1842.

My wife's uncle killed his wife, mother in law, and children.   He is now a guest of the Commonwealth of Massachusetts for the rest of his life.   Another one of those that nobody would ever think he was capable of this, then he snapped.  

Back before I worked in cancer care, I worked in the emergency department of a local nonprofit hospital. We saw everybody, so I've had a lot of contact with murderers and victims both. Sometimes on the same day.

But the worst was a physician I worked with for years. Dr Farid Fata, an oncologist that the patients just loved. He was always on call, would come day or not to see his own patients - never let any of the resident physicians or his colleagues cover for him. He was five foot nothing, and had this sickly sweet smile while he held his patient's hands and assured them they were in good hands here.

One day I was on shift and taking care of one of his patients, and on the patient's TV there was a special report; a helicopter was circling Dr. Fata's home, with government agents swarming and taking boxes of documents out. The hospital brass came down and let me know Dr Fata no longer worked here and another oncologist would be coming by shortly to see his patients while they were admitted.

A little while later it came out he had been giving patients treatments they didn't need, even giving chemo to some patients who never had cancer, taking their family's money into his own charity, and referring them to the imaging center he owned, where he'd read the scans himself, and insulate himself from discovery. He was extremely smart, and an evil, evil man. His family escaped the country with much of his wealth. He continues to rot in jail, far as I know. 

My high school Chemistry and Physics teacher shot four school administrators a few years after I graduated.  He told them all he was going home to get his gun and come back and kill them.  He drove 25 minutes to his house, got his gun, told his terminally sick wife (also a teacher a the same school) his plan, and drove 25 minutes back.  She called ahead and told them to get out of there, they failed to heed the warning.  2 dead, 2 seriously injured.  

He is locked up for life.  Too bad, he was a damn good teacher.  The kids really liked him. 

In reply to GeddesB :

If someone calls me and says "x just grabbed his gun and is heading over to kill you" I'm leaving....

ddavidv said:

Straying a bit from the topic, but I think it's relatable.

The girl who I might have married (boy, is that a long story) had a MIA father. He was basically living in the woods of the pacific northwest, I was told hiding from the IRS.  One night my GF told me the story of how her own father sexually molested her. Not just once, but several times.

A few years ago Liam Neeson confessed in an interview that he had once wanted to kill someone. He described feeling a blinding rage that just overtook him. I know exactly how he felt. If her father had been anywhere within driving distance I'd have bludgeoned him to death. It was a scary feeling, afterward. I hope to never feel that way again. 

Similar maybe ...

The house next to us (back when us were 3 of us) came up for rent.  My now ex told her best friend that it'd be great for her kids to move into.  I didn't know it but my ex did know that they were low level pot dealers.  After they move in I figure that out and the fact that they were stupid enough to sell out of the house.  Anyway a friend of theirs moved in and one day accidently fired a round off from his gun.  Not happy but no harm no foul I guess.

About a month later I hear a gunshot from next door and go out front to see WTF happened and the kid comes running out of his house yelling "Are y'all ok! Are y'all ok?"  At that moment I realized that he had accidently fired towards my house.  I snapped.  I jumped the chain link fence between the houses and went for him.  He ran, he ran real fast.  About that moment I remembered that he had a pitbull that was mean as berk.  I calmed down enough to jump back on my side of the fence but turned and told him that he had three days to get out or they wouldn't find his body.  Dude was gone the next day.

Oh... totally forgot one friend.  She did time for murder because she sold drugs to a guy who OD'd and died.  Not sure what the actual charge was - murder, manslaughter, whatever - but she just got out about a year ago and is still wearing the ankle monitor.

A preacher at my old church is in jail for inappropriate things with kids.  He got busted by a cop posing online as a 12 year old boy.  Preacher shows up to find a cop instead of hard candy.  I wouldn't say he's a friend.  I met him once.

I forget the exact details, but apparently my wife's grandfather (on her mother's side) was involved in killing some waitress at a honky tonk

They lived somewhere in Wisconsin.  Grandma had three or four kids at home, dogs, other pets.  Grandfather comes home in the middle of the night, tells her to load up, they're moving.  Moved to BFE Minnesota, Grand Marais (which I absolutely love.)  Literally the only appeal it could have had at the time was it was so damned far away and it was about 45 minutes from the Canadian border.

Grandma, actually.

Grandpa was a world war 2 vet, and clearly didn't come back well. Heavily catholic, she was ordered to be a "Good wife" as a nurse to him through 6 kids and alcoholism. When the physical abuse began, she just took it. They were destitute, and his alcoholism got worse throughout the 50s with much of that side of my family learning to fence and steal despite my parent keeping them on some form of control as "replacement dad".

THEN he began attacking the kids. My parent had chunks taken out of their ear from where he'd get drunk and decide to give them haircuts at nearly midnight; my grandmother, renounced her religion and was excommunicated, because she beat him nearly to death with a cast-iron frying pan and divorced him one morning. My parent took the other 5 kids and went to Nebraska at the age of 12, having already built a plan to get out as fast as possible so she could rebuild her life. She was never charged, but hearing stories about the man after the fact (before his death to cancer) implies she dealt lasting neurological damage to him.

I still have the framed picture of the last family reunion she was apart of- all 40+ of us around her. 

Curtis73 (Forum Supporter) said:

A preacher at my old church is in jail for inappropriate things with kids.  He got busted by a cop posing online as a 12 year old boy.  Preacher shows up to find a cop instead of hard candy.  I wouldn't say he's a friend.  I met him once.

The brother of one of my good friends was a well respected teacher and an award winning writer of children's books.  He got caught sending a picture of his junk to an undercover deputy posing as a horny 14YO on the interwebs.  To say we were shocked is vastly understated.   He escaped prison and his wife didn't leave him, but it ended his teaching and writing career.  

I went to school with Heather Wendorf, the gal from "the vampire cult" killings after she was free and clear of charges. Her and her friends, supposedly just her friends, killed her parents. I think she was living with her lawyer which was next to my school.  I never talked to her really other than a passing "hello". This was the "adult education program", basically a dumping ground for all the kids who got kicked out of public school for violence, drugs, or just plain having given up on the crap school system because your parents didnt want to face it that you had raging ADHD and crippling anxiety. I was option 3.  
anyways, one day one of the drug jackass kids sees Heather and really loudly says "AREN'T YOU THAT GIRL THAT KILLED HER PARENTS?"

I dont think she even aknowledged him. 

Saw a post online today that made me remember something.

My fifth grade teacher was Mrs. Kasso. From what I heard in the hallways (so you know it's totally legit), her grandson was Ricky Kasso. I linked his name to his Wiki entry, but the TL;DR is that he was the "Say You Love Satan" guy. Rolling Stone did a big piece on it, while there have been other books, documentaries, etc. 

This happened about four years after I was in Mrs. Kasso's class. The murder took place in the next town over.