29 People Share Their Close Encounters With Murderers

1. Almost killed in her sleep.

I met a person who tried to kill me in my sleep by shoving a steak knife into my right eye socket. Hurt like hell. Didn’t lose my eye though. I was pretty lucky. He received five years in prison. He’s out now living outside the US somewhere.

2. Charles Manson.

Not me, but a friend’s dad roger.

Roger was a hippie in southern California during the late 60’s. He played in some unsuccessful bands, did live sound to pay the bills (and continues to do it for a living), and knew a lot of people in that scene.

One night he’s out at a party in Topanga with no ride back into Los Angeles. A folk musician offers him a ride back down the hill, they hit it off. Roger says he’s one of the nicest guys he’s ever met. They say their goodbyes when the guy drops roger off.

The next week roger sees his friend on the news. It’s Charles Manson.

3. Close encounter with a neighbor’s husband.

When my mom was 16 or 17, she was home alone one afternoon when she heard someone pounding on the front door frantically. She opened it to find her neighbor covered in blood. Her neighbor’s husband had shot her in the leg. I can’t remember if her neighbor survived or not, but her husband was arrested. He had a full beard, and to this day my mom is still afraid of people with beards.

4. Close encounter with a man who just committed murder.

I met a murderer right after he killed someone. I was getting off of the Garden State Parkway in New Jersey on a freezing cold night in December six years ago when I saw him walking up the exit ramp. I thought he was just some unfortunate guy who needed help, so I pulled over and asked him if he needed a ride. He looked at me but didn’t answer, so I went on my way. He was on the front cover of the Asbury Park Press the next morning. He had kidnapped a mother and her two kids. He killed the kids, but the mother got away so he fled on foot and was caught later that night.

5. BTK killer.

Not me, but my dad’s college friend use to go to the same church as the BTK killer and had him over for dinner a few times. He and his wife did not believe he was the real killer until he confessed, they thought he was a great intelligent guy.

6. Coworker’s client.

I used to sell industrial supplies several years ago. One of my coworker’s regular clients bought a blade for a reciprocating saw that he used to cut up the body of his wife that he murdered.

It messed my coworker up a bit, not least of which was that the cause of death wasn’t immediately known and he was afraid he’d sold a blade that carved her up alive. It was actually a relief for him when it came out that the murder weapon was a steak knife.

7. A friend’s estranged father.

My friend asked me to go to lunch with her and her estranged father (we were 14) because she was uncomfortable going alone since she didn’t know him well. He had recently got a job painting some lady’s house and took us for fries. A week later the front page of the paper said he was wanted for the lady’s murder. He broke into her house in the middle of the night beat her, lit her on fire and stole a few things.

8. High school classmates.

When I was in high school my best friend and I made a list of who we thought was most likely to shoot up the school. We were bored. Two out of the four on our list have been convicted of murder. One of them killed a 3 year old.

9. A close encounter with mom’s coworker.

Went to lunch with my mom and her co-worker once. Found out later that she tortured a pregnant mentally disabled woman to death. She had her two young children help her do it and they got charged as well.

10. Neighbor.

My neighbor murdered his girlfriend because they had problems and she decided to move out. I don’t quite like the new ones, but hey, at least they haven’t murdered anyone up until now.

11. An old friend from childhood.

When I was 16 I was friends with a guy, we all used to hang out at his house and get stoned, and a lot of the time we’d end up staying there. We lost touch when we turned 18.

Fast forward 7 years or so, I get a frantic phone call from my best friend who used to be his girlfriend telling me that he had been arrested for murder. He was caught on camera so there is no doubt that he’s guilty. I used to sleep over at that guy’s house!

12. A classmate who planned to bomb the school.

I talked to a kid from my school that got caught planning to bomb us during an assembly. It’s sad because he was a nice and smart kid. To think that he hated most of us so bad to do that scares the hell out of me. It was Josh from the Roy High Bomb Threat.

13. Close encounter with a customer.

I work at a cell phone company and this distraught lady came in asking if she I can delete her call history or if “court” can get to it. I told her no and yes, if they have a court order. She bought a prepay phone from me and I sent her on her way. It gets boring around here so I went to my local news website, and her face is on the front page saying something like “Murder suspect let go from questioning” (something like that!) basically she was innocent until proven guilty. She and her boyfriend killed her boyfriend’s 9-month-old baby.

14. A neighbor, two houses down.

My neighbor. Nice guy. Few years later he murdered his wife and shot himself dead, I lived two houses away.

15. Close encounter with foster sister’s husband.

My foster sister was pregnant and living with this guy. We used to hang out all the time. One morning, a bunch of school kids found a dead body behind their school. A couple months later, my sister’s boyfriend was arrested for the murder. Apparently, he and a friend of his were stoned on crack when they ran into a guy who had “snitched” on him when he was previously incarcerated. They sliced the guy’s throat and left him to bleed out. Aside from the fact that he was a murderer, he was a really nice guy. I knew he’d been in prison before for stealing cars, but I never would have thought he’d do something like that.

16. A good family friend.

This guy.

His family (mainly his ex-wife and daughters) is good family friends. They all had to go into protective custody while this whole thing was going on. He was always pretty scummy but I never would’ve expected him to murder anyone… he was basically “high society” in KY.

Somehow my family ended up getting his pool table; I guess they didn’t know what to do with all his stuff.

17. An ex-boyfriend.

I dated a guy in high school who turned out to be a murderer. He beat 2 guys to death with a hammer a few years after we graduated. It shocked the hell out of me, because I knew him as a pretty laid back, easy going kid, a little moody, but what teenager isn’t?

18. A friend’s dad, hours before he killed himself.

I was at my friends’ house the day before their dad killed himself. Trippy shit man, I shook the guy’s hand and everything.

19. Childhood neighbor.

When I was thirteen I lived next to a guy who killed his wife with a hammer. I met him a couple of times. I think he was a professional clown. That’s just even creepier. Their son is now a famous magician here in Norway. Weird family.
Here’s an article about it. He got fifteen years. The article is in Norwegian.

20. A classmate.

A popular guy at my high school heard that one of his girlfriends wanted to break up with him. He asked his best friend if he could borrow his leather gloves because he was going to kill her, the friend assumed he was joking and gave him the gloves. The crazy guy took her to a lake and drowned her and was arrested a few days later. He claimed insanity at his trial, but I always remembered him as just some arrogant prick with a huge ego.

21. Discovered he had been swimming in a lake riddled with a dead man’s body parts.

Well I didn’t meet the guy, but when I was really young a guy got murdered in my neighborhood, which was a lake development. My dad says he remembers hearing a chainsaw late on a windy night when there would be no use for one. The story goes that the victim was having an affair with the guy’s wife, so the guy killed him but was never convicted. They found body parts in our lake, which I had been swimming in since the incident happened.

22. An old teacher.

I was a student at a “behavior modification” school as a teenager and under the “supervision” (abuse) of a staff member who soon after I left the “school” attempted to kill a man with a gun (non fatal wounds) before blowing his own brains out. But maybe this is off topic because I wouldn’t have shaken this guys hand if I wasn’t forced to.

23. Close encounter with an old coworker.

I worked with a guy in Reno who ended up murdering another girl we worked with. I don’t remember the whole story but he killed her, wrapped her in a blanket, dumped her body in a dumpster at a construction site and tried to burn it. I guess he left the receipt for the stuff he bought at a Wal-Mart at the scene, which is how the cops caught him.

I never knew him that well, but we talked about movies a couple times. Seemed like a perfectly normal guy. Weird. He’s serving a life sentence if I remember correctly.

24. Mom’s good friend.

Yes I have, his name is Mark Arnold. He was a friend of my moms and he had a snazzy sports car and I asked him to give me a ride around town, so I chilled with him for about an hour or so.

He was pretty cool when I was with him but a few weeks later he does this.

25. Parents missed their shot to stop a murderer before he committed his crime.

My parents were in an undercover task force of the police (this is how they met, btw), and they were driving after this guy that was on his way to kill someone, so they had to go throw a red light at one point. they got stopped by the police who didn’t believe their story and the other guy went on and murdered someone.

26. An old high school friend.

One of my friends from high school came over about a month ago with a mutual friend to show us the car he wanted to get. Then, he was charged with homicide after admitting to beating a man to death with a baseball bat while the man was sleeping.

27. Close encounter with girlfriend’s sister’s boyfriend.

I stayed the night at my ex-girlfriend’s house and her sister’s boyfriend, Ernesto Reyes, stayed there that night also. The next night he got a ride from a girl, raped her, beat her, strangled her and then burned her.
This is the story.

28. High school physics teacher.

Well, it wasn’t RIGHT before; but my grade 11 physics teacher, who everyone thought was a pretty cool guy, went on to kill his pregnant wife, burn her body and dump it on the side of the highway about a year after I graduated from high school.

29. Ex’s best friend.

Yup. My ex’s best friend. Murdered his wife and hid her body in a storage container for 2 months.

I was a witness at their wedding. The kicker is he’s the nicest guy I had ever met. :/