36 Horrifying, Heartbreaking, And Shocking Stories About People's Friends, Coworkers, And Family Members Who Ended Up Being Murderers
Recently, we wrote about people who knew murderers, and the BuzzFeed Community ended up submitting many of their own experiences. Here's what they had to say, along with some responses from the original Reddit thread.
NOTE: There are mentions of violence, abuse, sexual assault, and murder ahead.
1."I won’t go into too many details because there were kids involved and this person was just sentenced a few weeks ago, and I want to protect the kids and family’s privacy. I knew the killer since I was 15. I used to date his brother, and even though that didn’t work out, I’ve always been close with his entire family. He was a good kid, did very well for himself, and held a good job. I met his girlfriend (who eventually became his wife) through him in our late 20s. She and I became best friends, and I was even in their wedding. He was hard working, a great dad, and a family man. They bought a new house and you’d have thought they were living the American dream. Some years ago, he started acting out of the norm and seemed more miserable. My best friend couldn’t take it anymore and had a plan to leave once the timing was right. But when she put it into action, things got way worse. It’s as if something snapped."
"Hidden cameras, GPS trackers, phone hacking apps, and more. Everything we spoke about, he seemed to know about. We resorted to Snapchat, but he even knew about those conversations. One day, she texted me saying, 'Do you know (his name) can see everything we talk about on my phone?' I was too busy at work to answer, and by the time I did answer, it was later in the evening. I didn’t get a response back, which I thought was odd. I followed up next day and still nothing. I got a call from a mutual friend telling me she was in the hospital. He had stabbed her dozens of times the night she texted me. She held on for a few days, but passed.
I pleaded with her so many times before to call the cops regarding the things he was doing, and she wouldn’t, because we all hear the stories about cops not taking things seriously until it gets physical. It’s sad but true. But maybe her story is one more to prove that the behaviors this man displayed are a warning sign and should be taken more seriously."
—Anonymous
2."When I was a senior in high school, a good friend of mine’s older brother killed his ex-girlfriend and himself in her college dorm room. I hadn’t really known him well — he was four years older than us, and the oldest child in the family. He had seemed just quiet and serious. ... There was a lot of really obvious sexism in their family. The two older boys were allowed to basically act like normal kids, playing sports and going out with friends, while the two younger girls (including my friend) were not. I always felt bad for them and how strict the parents were. ... There was a lot of pressure on all of those kids to be high achievers."
"The girlfriend had apparently broken up with my friend's older brother, and I think maybe started seeing someone else. He asked if he could come see her and ended up shooting them both. Apparently, his parents had talked to him on the phone just a few hours before, and he’d seemed just fine. I went to his funeral to support my friend. ... To this day it’s the saddest funeral I’ve ever been to. When they lowered his casket into the ground, his mother wailed so hard she passed out. Their whole family was in so much pain over losing him and what he had done, and they couldn’t even really mourn him properly because what he did was so shameful."
—Anonymous
3."At the end of the '80s/early '90s, one of my older brother’s best friends shot and killed a 12-year-old (my age at the time) with a shotgun from outside the victim's home. The killer was a nice guy, witty, popular, and came from a somewhat well-off family…nothing that shouted ruthless murderer. I was never sure why he really killed the kid — it was said he insulted his sporting abilities, but that seems flimsy to me — and to this day, it appears the record of the incident and his time in jail are sealed up tight and scrubbed from the interwebs."
"From what I can tell through tracking online presence after release, the dude has been hired by various ‘black ops’ agencies that excel in extrajudicial killings. Guess that one found the right market for his remorseless kid-killing skills in return for a clean social slate."
—Anonymous
4."I knew Jeremy Strohmeyer, who raped and murdered 7-year-old Sherrice Iverson in a Nevada casino bathroom. We went to high school together and weren't friends, but acquaintances. He was on the football team (JV), and a little weird, but nice to me. I heard rumors that he didn't treat the girls he dated very well. He left our school, supposedly because his family moved to another country. I saw him a year later and thought he'd moved back (still don't know if the foreign move was ever real). We were both on dates. I was happy to see him, and I got his number to stay in touch (as friends only)."
"The next day I went to write his number in my phone book, and the number was gone. I'm sure my date took it, but it felt like a guardian angel must've been looking out for me when later that year the news broke that he'd been arrested for murder."
—Anonymous
5."In Italy, high school lasts five years. I was in my fourth, and this guy was in his first. He somehow resembled Kurt Cobain, and since he studied music, we kinda knew him by that name. I would talk to him a little, sometimes, but nothing more. ... Later that year (or maybe two), we found out he had killed his mother who had adopted him and his older brother, pushing her out a window. Reasons are unknown. I don't know what happened to him after. More than 10 years have passed, and the fact still shocks me."
—Anonymous
6."Halloween night in 1975, our rural neighbors in Cedar Falls, Iowa were all murdered: the mom, the dad, the 1-year-old little boy, and the 4-year-old little girl. The dad's brother who was a lawyer in California did it. He was mad about his brother getting the family farm. ... Scott Cawelti wrote a book called Brother's Blood."
—Anonymous
7."I met my ex-husband at an amusement park when I was 14 and he was 16. After 13 years of on/off drama (including him being married, adopting a kid, having a biological kid, and getting divorced), we thought we had our shit together and got married when I was 27 (against the wishes of some very vocal friends and family). Over the next nine years of marriage, we moved across the country, had three kids (plus the two he already had), and had what I thought was a pretty great life. But over the following two years, things changed dramatically."
"His dad got sick, and so my ex's coping mechanism was drinking heavily on a daily basis. Like a pint of vodka for breakfast, a fifth of Jack for lunch, and a 12-pack of beer for dinner kind of drinking. And he just didn't stop. He said that his goal was to drink himself to death like Nicolas Cage in Leaving Las Vegas, and that's what it looked like. He drove all over the place with our kids in the car without a care in the world. He picked me up from work drunk four out of five days a week. I quit an amazing job because I couldn't stand working 45 minutes from home knowing that I would walk in to find him passed out on the couch with our newborn child stuffed into his armpit. I called the police regularly, but he was a volunteer firefighter in our small town so guess who got labeled as hysterically overreactive? They'd pull him over drunk with the kids in the car and send him home!
Come to find out, he was also a serial cheater and nursing a newfound love for heroin. He would take his dad's cancer pain patches, stuff them into his mouth, and down a fifth of cheap vodka to get wherever it was that he wanted to be. And in his family's eyes, I was the nagging wife that just needed to be grateful to have a 'healthy' husband. After so long with this bullshit, I packed up the kids, and the dog, and moved home — 1,700 miles away. He eventually moved, too. Three restraining orders, two nasty divorce trials later, and I was (almost) free. Then the judge mandated 50/50 visitation.
Two more years of misery, and then, he found himself a live-in girlfriend that just happened to look just like me. Over the course of the next nine months, she cared for him, his dying mother, and — during visitation — my kids. Of course, this was a secret I learned about later. She tried to save him from himself — heroin, meth, booze, schizophrenia. And in return, he beat her to death with a baseball bat in the master bedroom of his childhood home.
He claims self-defense because she (5'4, 200 lbs) allegedly came at him (5'10, 250 lbs) with a 'tactical' flash light. Fucking coward. ... His sister funded a lawyer for me so I could (FINALLY) afford to finalize the divorce. Six years later and we're still waiting for the murder trial to commence. I've worked myself to the bone to provide for our kids all this time. A calm/stable/loving home, good food, security, plenty of toys and games, and recreational/musical opportunities (two of them studied violin)... Guess who they can't get enough of? Life is not fair."
—Anonymous
8."My grandfather was an avid hunter. He would travel frequently to Alaska because he liked hunting big game. He became friends with this man who owned a bakery up there. The man also owned a small plane, and my grandpa would hire this man to fly him out into the Alaskan wilderness. My grandpa described him as being very nerdy and mild-mannered — harmless, even. One day my grandpa received a call from someone in the FBI. His friend turned out to be Alaska’s most prolific serial killer. His name was Robert Hansen, the Butcher Baker of Alaska."
—Anonymous
9."I worked at a pizza shop in college that was right under my apartment (might be the most convenient job I’ve ever had, LOL). ... They hired a guy named Jason to run deliveries. Jason was a skinny white dude who tried VERY hard to portray a thug lifestyle. It was annoying, but whatever, he seemed chill. ... So one night, we’re cracking jokes back and forth, he’s waiting for an order, and I’m making food at the station. He said something about us hurrying up because he wanted to take a new order because it was in a rich area, and he wanted the tip instead of the other delivery driver who was on his way back. I made a joke about slowing down so the other delivery guy would get it. I then bent down to get something from the cooler and heard him say, 'How you like this, motherfucker?' I laughed then I felt something at my temple. Turns out he thought it would be funny to point his gun at me."
"I made the order fast, kept him laughing, spoke nicely to him, gave him the order, and when he left, I ran to my apartment and told my boss what happened. Jason was instantly fired, but to be safe, I took some time off work.
Well, two years later, the boss’s wife and I were watching the news at work and see that Jason shot and killed his baby’s mother, shot her new boyfriend, then killed himself. He was upset that they split, and he staked out their new place one day and tried taking them all out. It was all very sad."
10."My boyfriend's brother was a...teddy bear one minute and beast the next. He was my boyfriend’s brother, but we were kind of friends as well by association, and while my boyfriend was a boxer that had a great professional career, his older brother still was the most brutal brother. ... Anyways one night we went to the club, and my boyfriend and I went into the bathroom. ... There were two other guys in there, and when we walked in, one of them said, 'Here comes Forrest Gump.' We didn’t pay them any attention. ... We just figured they were talking to somebody else or telling a story, we didn’t know or care. Then his brother walks in, and they made the tragic mistake of saying 'now here comes big Forrest Gump.' Well, by now we had caught on to their joke. It didn’t take my boyfriend's brother any time to figure out what was going on. ... The guy who said what he said got hit with one the most vicious uppercuts I have ever witnessed."
"My jaw dropped, and then the other guy attempted to run, but my boyfriend's brother grabbed him and body slammed him in the bathroom stall and then proceeded to bang his head on the toilet. The guy's teeth were falling out and hitting the floor, sounding like Tic Tacs hitting the ground. Then my boyfriend's brother said, 'Now you're a toothless Forrest Gump.' My boyfriend and I looked at each other with our mouths wide open at what we had just witnessed. We left that bathroom so fast — my boyfriend and I left in my car, and his brother left with his best friend, and as we were pulling out of the parking lot, the police were blaring in. Apparently one of the men in the bathroom had a brain hemorrhage and died."
—Anonymous
11."The president of my fraternity in college was probably the most mature and stable college student I knew, and obviously popular because he was elected chapter president. He had a good sense of humor. I never saw him drunk. He didn't even smoke pot. About 10 years after graduation, he killed his wife, kids, and himself."
—Anonymous
12."My friend from high school. He was always a great dude. His ex was seeing a guy who said he was taking her and my buddy's kid to another state. He argued with him in a public place, went to his car and got a gun, and came back in and shot the guy. It was surreal because we had a game of Words with Friends going, and he was taking forever to take his turn. It was because he was arrested for murder."
13."I shared the backseat with a future murderer. Kevin was one of two janitors at my tiny, private grade school where my mom was the kindergarten teacher. We drove Kevin home from church one morning when I was in high school, and he gave me the creeps. Fast forward two or three years, and he murders the other janitor on the school sidewalk with a hammer. First murder in that town in over 100 years."
14."Not only did I know a couple murderers, but I unknowingly walked upon two crime scenes. My grandma's next-door neighbor was a man living with his nephew. My cousin (being raised by Gram) and the nephew were dating. Across the street lived a friend from school, his sister, and his mom. His mom had been engaged to the uncle but broke it off. I was out with my cousin and her boyfriend (the nephew) when his uncle called him in a panic. We rushed to the uncle's house and found blood everywhere. We called 911."
"The friend from across the street walked into his own house asking what was going on. He screamed from inside.
The uncle had beheaded his mom. He then went back home and tried to kill himself. Failed. Ran away.
I was in the uncle's house and came running when the friend screamed so I unwittingly walked into the two crime spots of the murder.
It was incredibly tragic."
15."My tattoo artist got away with killing a guy back in NYC, like, 10 years ago. My artist’s sister had gotten involved with drugs and owed a guy a lot of money she couldn’t pay back. In return, this guy had her sexually assaulted. When my artist found out about it, he found the guy and shot and killed him, and left."
"He was never questioned by police or arrested, and now lives a thousand miles away. He’s a really amazing guy, though. Super fun to hang out with, and a very loving husband and father. He’s also an amazing tattoo artist. I’m not sure if anyone was ever charged in connection to the guy’s death, but my guy completely skated by under the radar."
—Anonymous
16."An ex partner from decades ago told me he thought he might have killed someone. He was in a car riding around with his friends when he threw a beer bottle out the window. He hit a guy in his stomach and the victim was doubling over in pain and falling to the sidewalk. The next day he read a newspaper article about a guy dying from being hit with a bottle to his abdomen at the same location at about the right time. This is the first time I have ever mentioned this to anyone anywhere. To this day it still haunts me. I stupidly had a child with this partner — but luckily, my child has turned out to be nothing like him."
17."I sat beside him in math class for two years and played table tennis with him. He dropped out in the final year of school to work full-time at the supermarket. He developed a serious mental illness, developed a full-on obsession with a coworker, and ended up kidnapping her. He was released back to his parents' place, five minutes away from her home. No support, no meds, or anything. Only family to supervise him, and they all worked."
"A while later, he stabbed her on her back deck until the knife bent. Her Mum came home to find her.
He's locked up in a mental ward now. Apparently, he got on different meds and is much better now. But he won't be released unless the minister of health okays it, so he's probably never coming out.
It really fucked up our year's group at school. Some people still want to kill him for what he did. I see it as a failure of the justice and mental health system."
18."A friend was camping when he and another guy got into it. The other guy left, came back with a screwdriver, and attempted to stab my friend. In the tussle, my friend managed to take screwdriver from other guy, stabbed him with it, and ran away. My friend drove his truck down the logging road until he got service, then called the cops and an ambulance. My friend got arrested, and the other guy died in the hospital. My friend went to jail, and did five years. Canada has no self-defense laws."
19."One of my classmates fatally stabbed his girlfriend when she broke up with him during our junior year of high school. She also went to our school but was new to the area, so I didn’t know her. He came to take the SATs under police escort."
"If I remember correctly, he received sentencing as a juvenile and went on to college and a ‘normal’ life after serving a couple years."
20."My neighbor. His wife was going to leave him and then just vanished one day. They found her car out in the desert, her purse and belongings all inside. No trace of her. He did have a mysterious barrel of acid in his garage, though."
21."A guy I went to school with killed someone about two years ago. I never really knew him, knew him, but we attended the same schools from kindergarten all the way through graduation, and shared a few classes, mostly when we were younger. He wasn't really nice, well-behaved, or super bright, but there wasn't ever anything outrageous (that I know about, anyway). He's someone I could have foreseen getting into drugs or legal trouble, but nothing like what happened. (Keeping some details vague for privacy.) Basically, one night, he broke into this house, killed the guy that lived there, and stole his gun. The next day, he got picked up a few counties over for attempting to kidnap someone (I have no clue how old she was), using said gun. It didn't take too long for the cops to put the pieces together. In addition, it turned out he'd been sexually abusing his (partner's?) young children."
"Last I heard, he was being held in the local regional jail, presumably awaiting trial. I remember a bunch of our former classmates posting about it on Facebook, and everyone was shocked. I also recall seeing someone, I can't remember who, wishing that our state still had the death penalty. I hope he rots in his cell."
—Anonymous
22."I used to work with juvenile delinquents. We had a kid that was almost impossible to deal with. He never should have been sent to our facility. He needed some serious mental health treatment. His father had committed suicide, and his mother was always on the run from the police. His uncle who took him in blamed him for his father's death. He had been through every type of abuse. I quit working there a few years ago. This is him today."
23."I went out with a guy twice when I was senior in high school. A year after I graduated, he killed three of my former classmates while on dates."
24."TWO clients at the vet clinic I work at have been charged with murder. One was charged with second degree murder for killing her son. She was convicted of a lesser charge of manslaughter. She claims it was accidental. I kinda believe it. Her son was not okay; he had terrible addiction/mental health problems, and he was abusive to her. She will be sentenced this month. The other has been charged with first degree murder of her mother. Both of her cats were surrendered to the shelter (we work closely with the shelter) prior to the murder...so obviously, we're speculating that either her mother surrendered the cats...and pissed the daughter off or the daughter surrendered them knowing she was planning this and would be getting locked up. Obviously, we have no idea if either is true...but we can't help but speculate."
"The first lady I've interacted with multiple times. She seems very nice, if maybe a bit troubled.
I don't live in a high crime area, so it's a bit weird that it's two (although the first one took place far from here)."
25."I know three. One was a manslaughter charge. He was driving drunk and hit a woman. He drove away from the scene because he didn't realize he had hit anyone, and by the time he was arrested, he was sober, so they couldn't prove he was drunk. Otherwise, he would have gone to jail for MUCH longer. He's now out, sober, and has really turned his life around."
"The second guy...was a genuinely dangerous person. He decided to go off his meds without telling anyone, and when his therapist did a home call on him, he murdered her. He's in a state mental hospital for the rest of his life.
The third guy was an ultra-Christian who didn't believe in divorce. He started cheating on his wife and decided he didn't want to be married anymore. But divorce is a sin, so somehow, it made sense to murder her instead? Anyway, he got a first degree charge and will never walk free again, thank God."
26."My cousin. Super outgoing, funny, SO friendly. He had two kids he loved dearly and spent a lot of time with. He got messed up on drugs and booze and strangled his fiancée with an apron, then killed himself."
27."An old member of my family. No one liked him, he was incredibly abusive to my aunt and her kids. They divorced a long while ago, but about a year or two ago, he killed a man with a machete. I've heard a few variations of the story, so I'm not entirely sure what happened, but he's in prison nowadays."
28."One of the little girls I drove to school every day in my son’s pre-k/kindergarten carpool went on to kill her boyfriend a few years ago. There was a Dateline episode about it; the jury found she acted in self-defense, but the whole thing was very sketchy."
29."I was back visiting my family in the former Yugoslavia in 2005, and I was walking up a hill to go back to the village where my grandmother and her family were rebuilding their home. A guy pulled over and gave me a lift (very common in villages across the region). He dropped me off in front of the house that was getting rebuilt and drove back to his house. Everyone looked at me and asked, 'Why did you get in the car with him?' I go, 'Why?' Turns out he was a part of the group of soldiers that came into the village in '93 that killed, raped, and torched the whole village. He still lives in the neighboring village (unless he's died since)."
30."My friend was sexually abused by his father. The father made advances toward the younger siblings, and my friend snapped. He killed his dad to protect his siblings from also being sexually abused. He was 14. His parole ends in December. I’m so proud of him and his progress despite being a convicted felon; he’s made his way in life. One of the best people I’ve ever had the pleasure to call my friend."
31."He was a close coworker as we worked on a lot of special projects together. He was a tough but smart guy to work for and with. We hung out after work and partied together. We then lost touch a little when I moved to the west coast. I ended up getting a text from a mutual friend — the guy murdered his wife in front of their kids. The middle kid called [the] cops. He had gone off his meds and said the TV was talking to him — he got off on [an] insanity plea."
32."My uncle went on trial for murder after he shot and killed a guy. Tldr: A guy came at him with the gun, he got it away from him, and killed him. He was found not guilty due to evidence he was fired upon first."
"Story:
He had a drug dealer friend who was at his house, and a deal went bad. His friend was high off his gourd and ended up blaming my uncle for his misfortunes. He said he would kill him then beat my uncle bloody. There was another guy there, but he was too scared to do anything.
The dealer sat my uncle in a chair and aimed a revolver at him. He closed his eyes and turned away from the gun, bracing himself to be shot, and the dealer fired two rounds that hit the chair. They didn’t hit my uncle because he was curled away — basically half off the chair. The dealer calmed down a bit and told him to go clean himself up.
He went to the bathroom and stayed in there just wondering what he should do (this was back before cellphones so he couldn’t call for help). After a while, he heard the dealer tell the other guy he was going to kill my uncle and could hear him coming.
My uncle decided to fight him and positioned himself where he would be behind the door when it opened. The guy came in, my uncle fought the gun away from him and shot him dead.
The thing that saved my uncle during the trial was the chair (witness could not be found). They said he couldn’t have been shot at while he was in the chair because he was so large and covered the whole back. So defense brought the chair in, had him sit in it and reenact how he curled up and turned away to show the chair’s back was uncovered by this action.
Even though he was found innocent, he was still very traumatized by the events and became a shut-in for years. He eventually recovered, but for a long time, it was rough."
33."Ex-boss of mine from Walmart beat his ex-girlfriend and strangled her to death on her front lawn. ... He has always been a piece of shit. He used to beat his ex-wife when they were married. He cheated on her with an underage girl. He avoided jail time because his parents have money. He was fired from Walmart for stealing several grand from the cash office. Again, rich parents got him clear."
34."A woman that went to my church got her son to murder her husband. Her son was in jail for burglary, and she wrote him letters and called and complained about her husband. She told him horrible things he was doing, including sexually assaulting his own daughter (never found to be true). To be fair, I do believe she was being abused by her husband. Her son got out of jail, and days later, he and another recently released inmate shot...his father. He was caught right away running away from the crime scene. Even the daughter knew of the plan. She saw her father and didn’t say anything."
"The mom skirted prison for a long time, and is currently serving eight years, I believe. My mom is friends with her and is going to prison soon to see her. I lost respect for my mom because of it. If the woman wanted her husband killed, I feel like the least she could have done is do it herself. But to forever ruin her son’s life and probably also fuck her daughter up a bit is just wrong. I can’t believe a 20/20 hasn’t been made about it."
35."I knew a guy who worked as a correctional officer. He was HUGE, like 6’7” and 300+ lbs. While he was at work, an inmate tried to jump him. He climbed on the officer's back and attempted to choke him out. Big guy was not having it. He flipped the inmate over his shoulder and punched him in the chest so hard it stopped his heart. Inmate died, big guy went home."
—Anonymous
36.And finally... "My good friend's ex-boyfriend. He had a temper, a drug problem, and liked to beat up anyone weaker than him. After my friend escaped him, he murdered an old man seemingly for no reason in a rage. He's still in jail."
Have you ever known someone who admitted to, or was later convicted of, murder? Tell us your story in the comments or via this anonymous form.
Submissions have been edited for length/clarity.
