Thread: Have You Known Any Murderers or Victims ?

Originally Posted by freebird

I know 3 persons who've committed murder, and two of their victims.

I just came back to check the posts following mine..I think I should've elaborated a little lol. One of the perps was a high school classmate,another was a high school classmate's brother (and neighbor) who killed his Mother the third perp was some locals that I knew by name only (small town, everyone knows everyone else's business). I don't hang out with rough crowds, just live in a very small town.

I've known two murderers and three victims.

In an Italian literature class at Chicago Circle, we read Giorgio Bassani's The Garden of the Finzi Contini, which is one of the most beautiful books I've ever read. Bassani was Jewish and his novel is about a Jewish family from Ferrara that died in the Holocaust. In the novel, the daughther Micol has an affair with an Italian chemist named Giampi Malnate. When I visited Rome in 1976, on a whim, I called Bassani and asked to meet him. We had a nice conversation and he autographed my copies of his books.

Ten years later, I was at a party given by a friends of my wife's who worked for Akzo Chemie and I met an Italian chemist named Guido Boeri who handled Akzo's sales in South America. I told him the story of how I had met Giorgio Bassani and he told me that he was from Ferrara, was a friend of Bassani's and was the model for the character of Giampi Malnate. I am absolutely convinced that he was telling me the truth.

One night, about a year later, Guido Boeri got lost and accidentally ended up in a bad neighborhood in Chicago and was murdered.

Life is indeed strange.

I was just getting to know a young lady 23 years ago who was brutally slain in a random act of violence. Shortly after that a guy I knew throughout our early teens was convicted of manslaughter for accidentally, fatally shooting his girlfriend in his own failed suicide attempt.

Such actions surround us and we have no control over where and when it will happen. It's not strange. I even know a bank robber.

X

In the 70's in Shreveport LA I knew Danny Rolling (aka "The Gainesville Ripper") and his wife Omatha - at that time they went to our church, and he and his wife came over to our house for supper a few times. They were having some marital problems and my parents were trying to help them work through it. He gradually got crazier and crazier, and in 1990 he went on a killing spree in Gainesville Fla, and killed and chopped up a bunch of coeds. Even when I knew him 20 yrs earlier he was a bit odd and scary with those inner demons that later consumed him.

I've also got a 1st cousin doing life in Angola prison for murder, though he was (just) the driver in a robbery that went bad and not the actual trigger man.

I was going to answer "No I have not but I don't think it is strange that you have known that many", but actually I do know someone in a tragic murder.
It was a woman in our town who killed her little son and then commited suicide. It was not long after she left her husband. Suffice to say that he drove her quite mad and she got totally desperate as far as I know.
I didn't know her personally, but I spoke to her several times in the shop they kept.

It's quite creepy to read in the newspaper about something like that, and the day after that your mother calls and says who it actually was...life is indeed strange.

i worked with one for 6 months on my boat, we were good frinends one night we were watching america most wanted and his picture came on the screen he asked me to take him to the docks, i did his sister turned him in for the reward. he did 4 years came back home and i gave him a job. we even went through drug rehab together. he died about 4 months later in a hit and run on a saterday night. that was in 93 and i am still clean and sober.

Originally Posted by singlewedge

Sir I am not a religious man but what you do is a calling. Hats off.

Hats off (thank you) but off topic (sorry). Story of my life.

One last and I'll let it drop: Yes, I grant how I got to know them was part of the (volunteer) job rather than people I knew before the fact. I wouldn't say that it's a calling so much as a challenge: There are days and times when I my heart goes out to these men, caught up in circumstances and how they will pay for that mistake for the rest of their lives and other times when I think a rusty butter knife is too good for some. (And I'm supposed to be the one helping them!) To paraphrase Mother Teresa, I know that the Universe wouldn't hand me something I couldn't handle. I just wish it didn't trust me so much.

I worked in Law Enforcement so I've known quite a few murderers. Nothing special to me, just routine.

Originally Posted by Tony Miller

With the great loss of jobs out there now were are replacing these people with displaced workers without records, giving a helping hand in a different direction. I just hired an ex-GI who starts on Monday as one of my lab trainees. Good background, a tour in Iraq and a current National Guard member. Looks like a fine young man who needs someone to take a chance on him.

Tony

It is repugnant that any individual who has served this nation in uniform should find themselves in a situation where they need someone "to take a chance" on them. I salute you, sir!

At least if I do know any murderers they have not yet been caught.