People come from all walks of life, and some times you can never truly know them. They may seem all sweet and friendly, but turn out to be a burglar or a murderer. In some cases you can suspect a few things, but in most cases it’ll catch you by surprise that they have actually committed a major crime.
Here are some of people’s craziest stories of people they’ve known who have committed major crimes.
[Source can be found at the end of the article]
Donald Traub. Willow Grove, PA. He used to babysit my little sister and I’d go over to his apartment and borrow movies and such. He was randomly shooting people at this point. He finally murdered some lady in a supermarket parking lot. I’ll never forget, my mom was scared about the shootings cause she rode the bus to work and people at bus stops were shot at and she was talking to Donald about this and he goes “oh Kathy, I don’t think you have anything to worry about.” I’m just glad he liked me and my family, I guess.
wamkitten
A whole bunch of us who hiked the Appalachian Trail over the last ten years knew and liked “Bismark”, one of the coolest and nicest guys anyone met along the trail. He’d been hiking for years and practically lived on the trail. Turns out he was on the run from the FBI for having embezzled millions.
garmachi
Met my cousin’s cousin at a wedding when I was a kid. We got along instantly and had a lot of fun despite the boring wedding. Seemed like a perfectly normal kid. Couple years later he’s in jail for kidnapping, and murdering a girl he liked. Got caught trying to get rid of the body in the woods.
Jauxerous
A bloke I had known for years bought me a drink at the pub one night. About 5 hours later he murdered a woman with an axe. He had planned it for days and had the axe in his car at the pub prepared for his night ahead. Found out at 10 am when the cops got him.
perplegerkins
There were two kids in my grade in high school that had been dating for a few months. They kind of flew under the radar, but seemed nice enough. Pretty “goth”/emo-type, but didn’t cause any trouble.
One day I heard that they’d both been missing from school for a few days, which was weird.
Turns out, they had been plotting to kill the girl’s father over the phone when he overheard and called the cops. They admitted to it and were in jail waiting for trial.
SheaRVA
A good friend of mines dad, who was really loaded, got caught making fake paintings from famous artists and selling them at auctions for a ton of money. He went to a federal prison for 5 years and is now out and still really rich.
R1ckJamesBich
Continue reading on the next page!
My dad used to rent the bottom half of his house out to random guys so that he could afford his mortgage. One of them was really nice to me and my brother, and he ended up hanging himself downstairs while the rest of us were all in the living room.
The guy after that was also really cool and funny, but he used to invite his girlfriend over and verbally abuse her. One day my dad was sick of his actions, and fought him. The cops were called, and his roommate ended up going to jail. While he was in there they matched his finger print to a cold case from years before. He is currently in prison for first degree murder.
[deleted]
Met a friend of a friend in college. Right off the bat this was a person I didn’t want to associate with. He said he wanted to be a cop.
Years ago he went drinking with his friends. The 5 of them all got into his car. The thing is they all knew he had been drinking and was drunk at the time. But they let him drive.
He got into a head on collision with a young HS couple. The driver, a 16 year old boyfriend was killed at the scene and his girlfriend had minor injuries. The drunk driver’s 4 passengers were fine, shook up and didn’t suffer any serious injuries.
Frosted1337s
Liked this girl in college, always used to chat her up at the mall, she was gorgeous. We became friends over time, nothing serious. One day her ex-boyfriend shows up and starts talking to her so I give them some privacy. I knew the guy, but nothing really beyond his name.
Someone else saw me walking away from them and said “Oh no! that’s her ex. Never leave those two alone!”
I didn’t think much of it at the time, I just thought that person was being melodramatic. But 6 months later he kicked her apartment door in with a shotgun and murdered a guy she was on a date with. Then he handcuffed her to a bed for several days before she convinced him to let her go. The last time I saw her, I went to the funeral to give her support.
weaksquare
A good friend had a co-worker friend (who she was also interested in at the time) that she had tag along to dinner and a couple of hangouts. Never liked the guy, and she eventually stopped bringing him around. A few weeks later, he was arrested and eventually found guilty of shooting and killing a cab driver after getting a ride home from a party. Still freaks us out.
oneszeroes
The shift supervisor I was closest with at a grocery store I worked at briefly at 18 ended up getting federally charged, or arrested, I don’t know, for being a domestic terrorist. After working with me he moved down state to NYC and was going to put pipe bombs in certain individual’s car.
He was caught before he did that though.
PoopDog77
Continue reading on the next page!
I was dating this guy I had met at work. He started staying at my place pretty frequently after about 3 months. One day, my boss (who was like family to me) called me and told me there was a sheriff at my workplace looking for my boyfriend. He apparently had a warrant for his arrest for violating his probation. I had no clue he was on probation, neither did my boss.
Turns out he had been previously charged with kidnapping and attempted murder of his ex girlfriend.
That was an abrupt ending to that relationship.
pumpkinbread987
I had a friend who seemed a bit off to me when I met him, from a mutual friend. We used to smoke weed, drink, etc, together. I don’t know what happened, but he wound up 2 states over, stand off with cops. He had a backpack, a gun, ammo. In the backpack he had a list of cops he wanted to kill. No idea how he even got their names. In the end he was found uh… incompetent, I guess is the word. Spent some time in an institution. Got released. He’s doing ok now.
tePOET
I am a cop. My first arrest was for this guy who stole a bag of potato chips from the corner store. He had a few open warrants too. He was overall very polite and nice and kind. Very respectful to me and my training officer throughout the whole ordeal. Would see him periodically time to time on patrol, he would always be courteous, say hello and ask how I was doing.
About three months after I arrested him he broke into an apartment and stabbed an elderly man and his wife to death, in the process he nearly decapitated the man. The elderly man was a drug addict and the murderer was trying to collect on a debt.
bluegnatcatcher
I went to school with this guy who was overly aggressive and just.. weird. If you were in the hall alone and saw him, you would have to turn and run the other way (if you were a girl) because he would corner them and rub himself on them. It was gross but no one really did anything about it. He was also always angry.
He is in jail now for killing his girlfriend’s toddler. No one was surprised.
seasonalcrazy
This guy I used to go hang with at parties and what not during high school, made it to San Diego news last December. Headline is “Marine sentenced for beating son to death.” Tons of his friends/family posted on his Facebook about how he couldn’t have possibly been responsible for it. Then it got deactivated. And it wasn’t until recently that he pleaded guilty.
juicyymango
Continue reading on the next page!
Not me myself, but a woman I used to work with (I work in education). She told me about all the other schools she had worked in and in one, there was a boy who went by the name Jon Venables. She recalled how she went to work one day to find out that he told his little brother to lie about being sick and not come in. She thought nothing of this, the little brother normally always told the truth.
Then she told me how she went home and saw on the news a little boy being taken from ‘The Strand’, which is a shopping centre, and tortured. She saw the CCTV images and was debating on whether to call the police as she couldn’t be too sure. In the end, she did and it turned out to be him!
fingertipslip
The first weekend of November when I was back home visiting mum, one of my older brother’s friends from high school popped around (unexpected) twice to say goodbye before he was to move interstate. This would be completely unnoteworthly if not for the following weekend when he went into a blind rage and killed his own father. He is currently being held until psych evaluations can be taken, so until April (when his murder trial begins) he’ll either spend his time in prison or in a psych institution
It’s unfortunate, he was a really lovely guy in high school but turned to alcohol and later much harder drugs to repress the fact his father used to beat the three boys (possibly also his two sisters) when he was a kid. The drugs then exacerbated the schizophrenia he had inherited from his father.
We’re not sure what made him snap or how he killed him as they’ve released very few details in the week and a half since it happened, I imagine they won’t release anything until the trial.
Soakl
My family used to rent out half of our house when I was a child. My dad always thought the couple he rented to were creepy, but they paid rent on time so they stayed. Apparently I even used to think I was related to him (child logic said he was in our house so he was family) and go up and hug him, which bothered my dad a lot.
Eventually my dad’s fears were confirmed, the man kidnapped and a little girl the same age as me. Then he came over to our part of the house and tried to come in (luckily me and my sister pretended we were not home). He is in jail now.
It freaks me out thinking about it sometimes. Did u ever feel like you were being watched as a kid? Because in retrospect I probably was.
tweetypi
A friend of my dads that he used to drink with in the pub called Dave, murdered his wife and child with a shotgun, he then tried to kill his other daughter too, but she escaped out of a window.
He then proceeded to turned the gun on himself and failed. This was back in 2011. He died in prison a few years later.
Scary thing is he babysat for me and my brother, and my dad and I also helped him move house once. Never struck me as a guy who could do anything like that to anyone.
GoonerChaz
Continue reading on the next page!
Had a client at the animal hospital where I worked who would bring in her sweetheart of a pitbull every couple of weeks for boarding. She always said she wanted to board for 3-4 days and the poor dog always wound up staying close to two weeks. She spend half her life in our kennel but we loved her and tried to keep her happy.
One day the lady comes in to pick up the dog, as usual more than 7-10 days later than she said she would, and that’s the last time we saw her or the dog. About a week later, a couple of policemen come into the clinic asking when we last saw the woman, and the receptionists followed up by searching her name in Google.
Turns out she had murdered her boyfriend and gone on the run. It gets worse, because she didn’t do the dirty work herself. She manipulated their 13-year-old son into crushing his father’s skull with a hammer while he slept, and then got him and their 16-year-old daughter to help her dismember the body and store it in a freezer in the basement. Then she left the kids in the house when she went fugitive.
The police found her hiding under a bed at a relative’s house. We never found out what happened to her dog, Sunshine.
willingisnotenough
There was a guy at my high school, we’ll call him Barry. Barry was kind of off, but not the creepy loner type. He was into drugs, but not in a pothead way. He was doing pills and starting to get into harder stuff.
Sophomore year of college, a very very old friend of mine who had gotten into hard drugs was doing pills with Barry. My friend stopped breathing. Barry did nothing. His mother, at whose house they were, did nothing. By the time they ended up calling the paramedics, my friend was dead. One of the nicest, beat people I ever knew died while this guy watched.
Years later (about two years ago) the cops get called out to Barry’s house. He was threatening his fianc with a knife. The cops show up, Barry comes out with a knife. He refuses to drop it and so the cops drop him.
I try very hard to forgive people. I try very hard to move on and not let anger poison me. But I won’t say that I don’t feel a little bit of satisfaction, like the world is better off. I’ve never said “good riddance,” and I’m not saying it now. But yeah.
Er_Hast_Mich
He wasn’t a friend or anything but I did meet him. I get in to a fender bender in downtown St. Louis in front of a police precinct. So cops just walked up to the scene. They take a report and run my name. Apparently I had a warrant for my arrest due to an unpaid metro/subway ticket (funny story). Im surprised when they put me in cuffs as it eventually totalled all of 50 dollars. Anyway I’m at a precinct before being transferred to city jail holding tank. On the paddy wagon ride over I’m next to a guy thats not saying a word and some blokes who were trespassing somewhere.
We get to the holding tank which is a small cell with 30+ people in it. The silent guy (who the other jailbirds dubbed “OG”) immediately walks to the toilet, takes a shit, and doesn’t flush. It was so crowded a few people were sitting on the cinder block dividing wall, and they start saying, “WHY?!” Still not a word from OG.
About an hour later OG is taken somewhere else. First to go. Another hour later my 50$ fine/bail is paid and I’m free to go.
Next day I see OG’s face in the news. Apparently he had kidnapped three 16 year olds and had been pimping them out in his basement. Guy got 20 years
Slimjeezy
Continue reading on the next page!
I only met the guy a few times in passing, but my husband grew up with him. He seemed normal. His father was a pastor of a church and he ended up doing some work with kids. Turns out, he was sexually assaulting kids and it finally came out. My husband and his friends were shocked. My husband wondered if it was true at first, but the more that came out the more damming it got. He felt sick. So did our friends. This guy was a monster and no one suspected he was doing this. There weren’t any clues. He pleaded guilty to a lot of charges and is in prison. One friend wanted to go and visit and demand answers, but I tried to explain he wasn’t likely to hear what he wants.
It really shook my husband to the core. We have two daughters and he finds it hard yo trust people. I am very cautious too, but I have to remind him it is okay to let our kids interact with people while we are watching. He knows it, but he keeps an extra close eye on anyone who takes an interest in our kids because of this experience.
Viperbunny
My mother and another woman tried to get some of the boys in a very bad area involved in the boy scouts with us.
She used to drive into the ghettos to pick them up and bring them to our house for the meetings. Some of the parents would be so messed up on drugs they wouldn’t notice the kids were even involved in something positive. We were all in a troop for several years before life just kind of got in the way and the troop just kind of fell apart.
Years later one of the boys was involved with a drive by shooting, another one paid a different boy we were in with, to shoot his parents. And finally three were the lure and trigger men to shoot a police officer, execution style.
The worst part to me is that my saint of a mother feels guilty because she couldn’t keep the boys involved in a positive lifestyle.
WaffleMonsters
My parents let my brother’s high school friend crash at our house to “get back on his feet.” Nice guy, charismatic, had a very slight vibe of bad boy, but not much. He went to jail for something super lame, drugs or something… the day he was released, he went to his former best friend’s house, did NOT ask for money, but beat him over the head with a bathroom scale and tried to suffocate his mother (who had taken this kid in during high school and treated him like her own son) with a plastic bag. He had been at my wedding.
Another guy I went to high school with went out drinking with a buddy in a college town, were last seen arguing and broken up by security guards, and two days later his buddy is found drowned in the river with his hat on the shoreline. The alive guy, in the intervening time, had gone back home, gotten an attorney, and would not talk to anyone. That one is pretty obvious but with no evidence other than a drowned body, he’s living his life as a free man.
Also my former father-in-law worked on getting my mother-in-law back into a relationship for two years, and six months after they moved in together he had her sell all of her possessions and change her life insurance policy to having him as the sole beneficiary. Three months later she was dead of a significant amount of pills and a gaping head wound. However he fed her too many pills for it to look like an accidental overdose/fall and it was written off as a suicide so he got nothing. He’s now in jail for probably the rest of his natural life for another scheme where he took advantage of an elderly woman to the tune of $20K+ before the woman’s family intervened.
PM_ALL_YOUR_SECRETS_
(Source)