17 Real People Talk About Their Terrifying Experiences With Serial Killers And Mass Murderers
"Don't ever lend anyone more than $5,000...because it's cheaper to kill you than it is to pay you back."
Responses originally posted on Reddit
1.
A good friend of mine knew a for-hire killer (aka an assassin)
He had a flat rate of $5,000 apparently, and passed on the greatest advice I’ve ever heard….
“Don’t ever lend anyone more than $5,000…because it’s cheaper to kill you than it is to pay you back”
2.
I’m currently a guard at ADX Florence, a supermax facility that only houses the worst of the worst and I have met many serial killers. I’ll share a story about each one just to give you a variety of their personality.
Inmate 1: Is doing life for rape and murdering over 17 people. Men women and children. He’s actually a very intelligent person and loves to have normal conversations. He will not speak to people who don’t read and/or seem like they are not smart. He doesn’t show any remorse for what he’s done and blames it on society for having such strict sex laws. When he gets to go outside he usually tries to talk to birds and insects.
Inmate 2: only killed 3 people but he was a bit more violent in his acts. He’s actually well below the average IQ level. He never committed rape with his victims but he got off sexually killing them. (Without any intercourse) He’s never got an erection except for killing and once when he was a kid. He talks in circles and is super hard to talk to. He also feels no remorse for what he did. He constantly talks about how satisfying it was to watch what he was doing. He blames his crime on his extreme case of erectile dysfunction that lead him to killing.
When he was a kid he got in a fight with a girl. During that fight he got an erection and never after that. He talks about having a GF and a wife that he couldn’t get turn on with. One thing led to another, he went to rape a woman and killed her prior to actually committing rape. When she died is when he ejaculated. It was downhill from there because he figured that was the only way to receive pleasure. He also misses his family deeply and wishes he could see them. He constantly mentions how badly it hurt that he hasn’t spoken a word to his family since he was arrested.
Inmate 3: was completely looney tunes and he was charged with over 19 murders although believed to have killed more. He was smart but in a weird way. He was into necrophilia, torture, and decapitation. His crimes were extremely violent and twisted. I didn’t spend much time getting to know him because of his crimes.
To further express his mental illness: he ate 3 of fingers and then swallowed 2 razor blades. He used a 3rd blade to cut open his stomach and took his fingers back out before they were digested. He decided he wanted to keep them. A few years later he tapped a hole through his skull and filled his brain cavity with a cleaner solution. He said he felt bugs running around his brain and wanted to kill them.
3.
I knew a person who, I think, had murdered more than once, according to my mother. He was a good friend of my mother’s and something of an uncle to me for a short time. Very, very short man, but muscular (half Irish/half Chinese) He was a hopeless drug addict and would constantly be wobbling between sobriety and relapse, as was my mom. Such a fun happy guy to hangout and clink beers with! Always alert, cracking jokes and extremely good at hiding his feelings. So extroverted.
As recreational fun, he would happily beat the shit out of enemies of his friends. He has always offered that service to all close friends, including me, in the chance that I ever want revenge on someone. Friendly dude! He truly, truly had an absolute blast fighting people, he would tell me. He did it for the thrill, similar to why people will shoplift for shits n’ giggles. This, he would talk about casually and sometimes I would see him with cuts and bruises on his body. When I would comment on the wounds, he would say something along the lines of “oh, just a little brawl.”
According to my mother, he murdered a pedophile who mollested a very small child. He had a reputation, apparently. It’s all pretty mysterious to me. Sometimes I question if how true it is.
4.
I started counting and discovered that I have known personally five murderers. Rough town I live in. One guy killed three people, one killed two, and the rest were solos.
I will use the names of the killers, but not the victims:
Simon Beaubier lived across the street from me. He lured a female classmate over to where he was staying, raped and strangled her, set her body on fire, then finally burying it in a shallow grave. The really f*cked up thing about this? The killer’s Dad and the victim’s Dad worked at the same place. Neither had knowledge of this until the case was solved years later.
Michael Lee Platt was a classmate of mine. He made history (in a bad way) by being involved the largest FBI shootout at that time. Platt killed two FBI agents before dying of serious lead poisoning; 12 shots were needed to end his career. Took place in Miami, Florida.
Alvie (Copie) Kiles was a stock clerk and bag boy at the store I worked at. His girlfriend also worked there. Drugs screwed up their lives, and soon all the income they had was food stamps. He demanded that she give them to him so he could trade them for some crack. She had two children from previous relationships, and told him ‘no’, that the stamps were for the kids. He walked out to the car, pulled the tire jack out of the trunk, and beat her and her two children to death. One child was 5, the other was 9 months. Kiles is currently sitting on death row.
Robert (Bob) Labistrie was one of my classmates. He went to the local junior college, and at some point (I’m not entirely clear on this part) his roommate, or a friend of the roommate, loaned the keys of his Volvo to LaBistrie. After a couple of days, the roomie wanted the keys back. Apparently, that was a bad idea, because LaBistrie killed him instead. Was arrested while driving the car.
Frankie Bejarano was a drinking buddy. He bragged one night that a druggy neighbor of his was really pissing him off. Said if the neighbor wouldn’t stop f*cking with him, Frankie was going to cap his sorry ass.
48 hours later Frankie was in jail, and the neighbor was dead.
5.
My dad worked at one of the prisons where John Wayne Gacy was housed at one point. According to my dad, he was kept away from other prisoners and had minimal exposure to personnel. He said when the time came to transport Gacy that a lot of staff were nearby to watch him be escorted and that Gacy started addressing people by name and asking about their kids by name. Supposedly Gacy asked my dad about one of my sisters.
6.
The guy I knew only killed once, but did so in pretty spectacular fashion. He’s in for life with no possibility of parole, only because the victim’s family asked the court to take the death penalty off the table. When he was tried initially, he was facing 15 charges.
- Aggravated murder (x3)
- Murder (x4)
- Aggravated robbery (x3)
- Kidnapping (x2)
- Felonious assault
- Grand theft of a motor vehicle
And my personal favorite,
- Gross abuse of a corpse.
All of that for one murder. To be fair, it was nasty. According to news reports, a guy I literally knew and hung out with dozens of times (he was 21 at the time) jumped a 17 year old kid, beat him to death with a large chain and strangled him with it just to be sure he was dead, stole his cash and debit card, stuffed the body in the trunk of his own car (the kid’s,) stole the car and drove around with it for a week before being caught.
I mean, fuck, dude.
7.
Ok, so here’s the setting… completely suburban environment, bordering on hick-ish, but not quite, about 1/2 an hour to an hour and a half from multiple major metropolitan areas. I’ll do these in chronological order.
The first murderer that I knew was guilty of a double homicide. Honestly, from the moment I met him something about him rubbed me the wrong way. I first met him when our sons started playing midget football together. In our community when your kid is involved in a sport you don’t just drop your kid off, you actually stick around sitting on camping chairs holding on to your kid’s water bottle and offering encouragement. The rest of the time (90 minute practices) you’re kind of forced to make small talk. So as the summer goes on you get know the people and their family.
This one family consisted of the dad, the mother, an older daughter (around 11?) and the son (8-9). Since we had to bring our 3 year old daughter to practice with us, their daughter would frequently play with out “baby”. The daughter was a really sweet girl, and the mother was nice enough. The boy was ok, kind of not too bright, but ok none the less. The father, now he was treat.
This guy was pretty much your stereotypical obnoxious redneck with anger issues. He was the type of guy that would yell at the coach at half time because his son isn’t getting enough playing time – this is in a league where all the kids are required to play X amount of plays… but anyway.
So for 90 minutes a night we were treated to this jackass just running his mouth about about everything – how great he his, how awesome his son is, how he could coach the team better than the current group, etc. It just rubbed me, and my wife, and the other parents the wrong way, but everyone stayed polite, just a grin and bare it situation.
So this was the status quo for a couple of years. I never felt comfortable around him, but was able to avoid him for the most part. Then one game day, they don’t show up. No one really thinks too much about it, because it is easy enough to oversleep for a 9 am game. As it turns out they didn’t make it because he was pulled over for a D.U.I on the way to the game. Obviously this is a glaring red flag. Now I don’t know if this is the catalyst for the marital problems, but I’ve seen less throw a relationship on the rocks. Luckily (for me and my wife and kids) this was the last season of midgets, and the boys started playing Jr. High ball. I would still see them from time to time, at the store and what not. If he wasn’t there I would say “Hi”.
So as a couple of years (2-3) go by I find out they were separated. I kind of think “good for her” and blow it off. No big deal.
Then one drizzly morning, after hearing police sirens all over the place, I found out that he had waited outside of his estranged wife’s house and beat her boyfriend to death with an aluminum baseball bat as he left for work at 5:25 in the morning. He then proceeded to go into the house and stab her to death.
His daughter woke up as he was leaving, and he told her that he had killed the boyfriend… then he left.
— Cannon1
8.
My girlfriend’s aunt ran into one. There was a guy kidnapping and killing women in the area, so a lot of the times husbands would accompany their wives until he was caught. Her aunt (we’ll call her Sue) decided to take a jog in the park while her husband was at work, so she took her dog. As she was running, she was stopped by a normal looking man asking for directions.
She recalled that he seemed completely normal and was in the middle of giving him directions when her dog planted his feet down and started growling. She was confused and noticed the man shifted a little bit from it. Luckily, Sue decided to follow the dog’s instinct and keep jogging, going through the most public part. A few weeks later when they caught the serial killer and showed his picture- sure enough, the same man from the park.
— Michris
9.
I met Isaiah Kalebu shortly before one of his (many) arrests, and shortly before his murder of Teresa Butz. His attack on Teresa and her partner (as well as the murder of his aunt) was the subject of Eli Sanders Pulitzer Prize-winning article which was later expanded into a really excellent book.
I was walking my dog in a local park and saw a young man practicing his golf swing. He had a pit bull with him, and the pit bull had a leash on, but he wasn’t holding the leash. My dog didn’t enjoy encounters with off leash dogs while she was onleash, so I yelled for him to take his dog’s leash. He ignored me. The dog started to approach us and the body language, while not unfriendly, wasn’t relaxed either, so I yelled at him to come get his dog. He yelled back his dog was friendly; I told him mine wasn’t. He looked pretty pissed off at me, but I wasn’t leaving it alone; I explained that the leash law meant you actually had to hold the leash, that his dog could be put in a bad position, that my dog could too, and that I chose this park for the express reason that it was NOT an off leash dog park. He didn’t say anything else, just walked away to continue practicing his golf swing.
I wanted to continue my walk with my dog, but I felt uncomfortable with the situation and that we were the only two people there. The tension didn’t dissipate, so I ended up taking a shortcut home. I later found out that our encounter took place a few minutes before he was tasered after resisting arrest.
The summer he murdered Teresa, I worked in Seattle and I remember the city FREAKING out about this guy and discussing sightings of him. I followed the case pretty closely but never made the connection that he was the same man I’d met until I read Sanders’ article and almost pooped myself, because I immediately recognized the place/circumstances/man/dog, and learned Kalebu had a huge issue (understatement of the year) with women, especially women that spoke authoritatively toward him.
10.
I went to high school with some dudes who murdered one of their mothers.
These guys were all kind of outcasts in high school, but I knew two of them well enough to think, “Wow, they were really nice.” One guy was a big dopey, nerdy kind of dude that was most likely extremely impressionable and trying to fit in with this crew. (Was the getaway driver) The other guy, was one of the ring leaders and it was his mom that was murdered. He was kind of a goth/punk kid in our school. He was always really friendly to me and we had a ton of mutual friends back then. I didn’t find anything off about either of them in a murder-y way.
The long story short, these morons came up with an idea to kill this kid’s parents for insurance money. They were going to take that insurance money to open a coffee shop in Amsterdam. (Yes) The plan hit a snag when they busted into the house in the middle of the night, shot mom first, and dad escaped out of the window. Police called, kids tracked down, arrested and so on…
11.
Not quite a serial killer, but only because his victims were lucky.
Lad used to live next door, a year younger than me at school. We were mates as kids, played in the streets and round each other’s houses and that. Never had a problem with him personally. Really nice kid, sociable, played for community football teams, joined various out of school activities, etc. Only ever saw him in one fight which he didn’t start.
Few years later, see him on the front of the paper. Ten years in prison for stabbing and raping multiple prostitutes.
12.
I went to high school with a kid who turns out raped a bunch of girls at his house and on school grounds. Looking back, there was nothing about his exterior that pointed to his issues, but then again there is no universal look for a rapist. He was always nice and polite to females, and I almost saw him as one of those guys who ended up in the friend zone a lot.
By the way, he was not cute. He was into the almost emo/skater look, and of average build for those who are curious. Anyway, now that I look back it makes sense why he was so nice. He asked me to hang out one time over facebook and I didn’t think anything of it, I just told him no. He is going to be behind bars for a long time. I know his siblings and it’s just painful all around. For his family who had no idea — and are genuinely good people — and the victims who deserve justice for what that bastard did to them.
13.
A coworker of mine went to high school in Bath, Ohio with Jeffrey Dahmer. Her current best friend (from the same town) was his best friend.
She really didn’t tell me any bring that I didn’t know or couldn’t find out from Wikipedia. She says that mostly he was known around the school for being really creepy and getting in trouble for drinking on campus a lot. She said everyday he would wear army fatigues essentially everyday to class. One day he took his best friend in the field behind his house and they were just talking and he randomly said “this would be a great place to bury a body.”
The most interesting thing she told me is that one day at one of their houses her best friend and Jeffrey Dahmer were at one of the neighborhood houses an had a seance with a ouija board and she says that Jeffrey had really felt like he connected or communicated with something that day.( DISCLAIMER: I am a huge skeptic about most things and don’t really believe in anything spiritual or paranormal but this is her side of the story so I’m just passing it on)
She said her bus stop was right in front of his house.
14.
Ok, so she wasn’t SERIAL but I was friends with a girl in school who ended up killing someone and burying him in her backyard for like 3 years.
I actually really liked her in school, she wasn’t an extreme outcast or even a loser. She was just kinda normal except for her dry sense of humor and this very Daria-esque attitude. So it was kind of a surprise to find out she killed someone.
It was less of a surprise when she came out as gay. Apparently, she had been dating this girl whom had gotten pregnant when she cheated on my friend. So my friend knocks him over the head with a shovel, kills him, puts him in a gym bag in the closet for 3 days until she buries him in the backyard for 3 years.
This dude’s parents finally report him missing and my friend’s girlfriend confesses. My friend is in jail and I’m friends with the other girl on Facebook.
15.
My girlfriend’s dad is a fitter/turner, and worked on a massive job for a few weeks, along with Ivan Milat. I can’t remember what the job was, something about a train station or railway tracks, or something.
Anyway, he ended up having a few beers with the guy and a bunch of other dudes in this pub in the middle of NSW buttfuck nowhere, to celebrate the job being finished. Apparently, these end of job celebrations often turned into massive fucking parties that would shake down half the town, especially 10-15 years ago when you’d see half of West Wyalong party it up after a shut at the local gold mine was finished.
Wild times.
He ended up remembering Ivan for being mega intense really quiet. Like, he’d intently stare at each bloke whenever they spoke but never really joined in. He also noted he drank fairly little, which was something he’d notice as a seasoned drinker :P
Didn’t matter if you were driving or not the next day, these guys would attempt to drink a bar dry. So Ivan nursing a few beers over the hours was something noticed.
16.
Gary Zeiger was my dishwasher in Anchorage, AK at Leroy’s Family Restaurant for about 4-5 months. He was about 18 years old. He went on to kill 10 to 15 people. Two were people I knew. He had a total lack of effect; never smiled, joked, played around. Never talked about friends, girlfriends, family, hobbies, music; nothing. He was creepy and I didn’t like him. Robert Hanson was a customer of ours about the same time; I don’t remember him, but some of my waiters recalled him very well after he was convicted.
17.
The guy I knew was a year above me in school. I tried to be nice to him whenever I saw him around school as he was bullied around school. Although, he wasn’t very nice back.
One time he seriously threatened to stab me for hugging his girlfriend at the time (my friend and I’m also gay so I didn’t understand his problem) Turns out he had murdered two people in our town. Stabbing one man 100 times and scalping another woman. This all happened whilst we were in school but wasn’t found out till he had left.
I also remember him having to walk around with the head teacher as he had told friends he was going to bring in guns and shoot up the school. He’s been sentenced to life in prison now.
— Bensaski 