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I had an employee that worked for me doing minor maintenance repairs on construction equipment. One day it just took him way too long on a job and I was pissed. I pulled the GPS info and he was nowhere near where he was supposed to be. My admin and I both called him repeatedly with no response. Now I'm even more pissed because this wasn't the first time he took too long/didn't answer his company provided nextel radio. We start digging. Find out it has happened repeatedly. He gets back late and I waited for him, alone, in my office. I terminated him and he took it surprisingly well. Surprised me because I dealt with a ton of BS as a woman working in a male dominated field and company.
Few years later, I'm working in a different location for the same company and some cops show up and want to know what I remember about him. I tell them I fired him, etc. They subpoena the GPS records from the company. Then they started finding the rest of the bodies. He pled down and pled guilty to avoid the death penalty. He was picking up prostitutes in the company work truck, killing them and dumping bodies in a rural part of the neighboring county.
…and you were alone with him after hours, firing his ass? Even years later I would’ve absolutely pooped myself in terror putting two and two together, yeesh!!
delayed onset terror poops are the worst
Robert Lee Yates was an Army pilot flying OH-58s while I was flying UH-1s (same battalion but different company) at Fort Drum, NY. They would send us down to fly helicopter simulators once a year in Pennsylvania to maintain our instrument ratings. We would carpool in one vehicle.
Bob had a van with shag carpet in the back so he would drive about 5 of us during those trips. It was about a 4 hour drive so we'd joke and tell stories to pass the time.
I was a fairly new pilot who enjoyed hearing the veteran pilots tell war stories. Bob was a CW3 at that time and was a bit odd but nothing alarming.
18 years later we see him on TV being charged with multiple killings of prostitutes across several states. He had used a corvette and a van for the killings.
Yes, that same van.
Not a serial killer (maybe), but your story reminds me of one my dad told me. He joined the army near the end of Vietnam, so got sent to Korea. He was a UH-1 mechanic and hung out with a lot of the Huey pilots and mechanics coming back from Nam.
There was one native American guy who I want to say was Apache. He had seen at least 2 or 3 tours over there flying combat missions and had loved it. I forget the guy's name, I'll have to ask my dad the next time I see him. For some reason, he made friends with my dad, who was this hayseed from Montana and kept telling him about the crazy shit he'd done in the war.
My dad was shipping out not too long after meeting him and the guy seemed super insistent on having my dad stay over for dinner before my dad left. The whole experience was really uncomfortable since the guy was incredibly mean to his wife through the dinner and my dad suspected that she was probably getting beaten. After, they went out on the front porch as the guy got drunk while carrying a holstered gun. My dad was worried that he'd end up getting shot, so he humored the guy and listened to him go on.
Eventually he started telling my dad about this woman in Vietnam. They'd make a game of flying just off the deck over the rice patties and trying to get the farmers who were walking on the walls between them to have to jump off into the mud. There was this one woman who was too proud to jump. They buzzed her several times and she just ignored them. He got infuriated by this, told the pilot to pull alongside her and blew her in half with a shotgun.
He told my dad that he'd killed tons of people but for some reason, this one woman got stuck in his head. He was seeing her in his dreams every night and he kept seeing her death over and over. Then he started drinking more heavily and just sat in silence. My dad quietly excused himself, just glad to get out of there.
A few months later, my dad ran into another guy from the previous base and learned that the dude who had told him this story had blown his brains out later that night. My dad is probably the last person to see him alive. I have no idea if the guy was a serial killer that used the war as a killing field or just a regular soldier that got turned into a psychopath from too much combat exposure but I've always wondered what made that one killing so different that it ended him.
From his wikipedia page:
that gave me major chills. What an utterly monstrous piece of shit person.
I was once sat in my car at the back of a country lane carpark eating pizza in the dark with a friend, no street lights and just woods surrounding. Finished up and turned on the headlights and all we could see was a man army crawling towards the car, was a few metres away.
I have never turned the ignition so fast and sped off in my life, to make it scarier the guy just slowly got up and looked at us, didn’t try to chase or grab the car or anything.
Out of all the responses on this thread, yours just made my heart pound. That is terrifying.
Something I find very chilling is that he can do that a hundred times and not be arrested. He'll be successful at some point. In a perfect world, you immediately run that guy over, twice.
😭 That mental image is terrifying
Out of all the stories, this one scared me the most. I don’t know why.
My grandmother swears she met David Parker Ray, aka the Toybox killer. My grandfather was stationed in Fort Bliss so she took her 3 daughters camping in Elephant Bute State Park, the same place where he was a ranger. She said a ranger kept trying to get them to stay in his trailer instead of camping by the lake. Obviously they refused and went on a hike but when they came back their campsite was trashed so she packed them all up and drove home in the dark. When I got into true crime and was telling her how close he was to us she relayed the story, and when I showed her a photo she said that it was definitely him just aged a bit. Not his usual MO but this would have been in the mid-seventies and no one's exactly sure how long he killed for. *edited changed national park to state park
Years ago when the internet was more like the wild west some website had his audio tape that he would play for his victims as an orientation of what was about to happen to them.
It was some of the sickest shit imaginable. Read further at your own peril:In the tape he was basically explaining to his victims on day one what was going to happen to them. He called them meat and went into detail how they were going to be raped, trained how to both give him oral and his wife. He went on to explain that he liked to breed his slaves with his German Shepherd and there was a 50/50 chance his dog would find the right hole. He also said they would be made to do these acts in front of his friends and to his friends at parties.
And that's barely scratching the surface. He describes in deep detail the absolutely brutal torture he's about to put them through.
I don’t know how David Parker Ray isn’t more well known. I mean seriously, this man is up there with Dahmer and Gacy and Gein and BTK. I’ve always heard of the Toybox Killer, but never really looked into him until recently. I’m a true crime podcast addict and can stomach nearly anything. This is the first case I’ve ever listened to where I had to stop and seriously reconsider finishing listening to the case because it made me actually sick. I seriously wish I could go back in time and never read those transcripts.
I’m so glad your grandmother trusted her instincts.
Years ago I heard his "orientation" audio tape he'd play for his victims on day one of their kidnapping. Absolutely insane shit you can't imagine.
As a youngster, my parents told me the time my father met Ted Bundy. He was walking into my mom's workplace as Bundy was walking out. They exchanged pleasantries and Bundy shook my father's hand. Bundy said he was working for a farmer in a town about 20 miles away. It struck my father odd because Bundy was wearing a long wool coat and his hands were baby-soft smooth...not the hands or attire of a farm hand. There were announcements in the 70s warning residents that he may be in the area. (We live very close to Colorado). It was an interesting story.
When I was nearly 40, I was at a birthday party for a friend and afterward went to her house for some homemade food. She was telling me of when she was a criminal justice student in college and wrote her thesis on Ted Bundy. She said some of her material came from the police reports from when Bundy attacked my mom, which took me by surprise. I decided to talk to my parents about it.
My mom worked at a Montgomery Wards in those days and was working there alone that day. Bundy came in and pulled her to a back room and dragged her to the ground. She said she started kicking and hitting him as hard as she could, fighting for her life. After a while, he got up, pointed at her, and said he was going to go get lunch and then come back for her and then left. It was around this time that he passed my dad coming in as Bundy was leaving. (My mom looked like she could have been a sister to many of his victims.) My father drove around with the local sheriff looking for him at several restaurants to no avail.
Today my father can't stand watching documentaries of Bundy as he is often shown in that same wool coat and same smug smile. My parents protected us kids from feeling like evil could be that close.
Oh my god. Bundy leaving your mom with such a bizarre comment... I'm sorry she had to go through that.
Of course your dad would hate documentaries. I feel like a lot of media really flatters Bundy too much :/
My last conversation with my mom about the attack, she said that after he got up off of her, that she had bloodied his lip. She said he wiped a little blood from his lip when he told her that. She said she had nightmares for a few months after that feeling like he was going to make good on his statement of coming back for her.
We were having a family barbecue at my cousin's farm in the late 70's / early 80's, when my 12 year old cousin decided to ride his bike to the store. Just after leaving, a van pulled over to him and the driver tried talking him into the vehicle. When that didn't work, the man got out and tried to force him into the van. My cousin kicked and screamed and refused in every way possible to get away. A passing car saw what was happening and stopped, which probably spooked the van driver. The guy got back into his van and drove away immediately. My uncle, who was a member of the RCMP, had heard the commotion, had jumped into his car and drove to see what was going on. He managed to catch up to the van and arrested the guy for attempted kidnapping.
Unfortunately, the charge didn't stick and the guy was eventually let go. The man's name was Clifford Robert Olsen. We're pretty sure that my cousin might have been one of Olsen's first attempts.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Clifford_Olson
Jesus, I was a kid myself when that shit was going on. Even living Up North people got skittish when that was going on.
After this incident, my RCMP uncle, who was also the uncle of my almost victim cousin, discovered that Olsen had a record of lesser crimes, and followed the case when he could. Apparently, once victims started to be found, the police knew it was Olsen, but didn't have enough evidence to arrest him. The police were watching him like a hawk, but he kept being able to evade them. The guy was a psycho.
My grandmother had three husbands die of food poisoning “accidentally” - I don’t believe it for a second.
Maybe she's just an awful cook?
Maybe she didn’t wash her hands.
We got another Typhoid Mary on the loose, fellas!
(In all seriousness this is terrifying, though)
Lol not funny but this reminds me of fhe movie "Arsenic and Old Lace" it's an older black and white film but basically the premise is these two old grandmas have a sort of B&B and whenever old men who lost their wives show up with not much left to live for, they poison them with Arsenic.
The movie is a comedy and involves the son of one of them coming home and finding out and trying to keep his mom out of jail. A funny movie my mom and I watched together.
You hear about The Australian woman who feed her parents and husbands parents a mushroom dish that killed a few of the them. She claimed it was an accident until her ex husband came out of the woodworks and said he’d been poisoned by her cooking and survived.
This is a ‘definitely encountered a serial killer’ rather than ‘pretty sure’.
I grew up in a small town in North Wales (UK). The local cinema had been closed for 15 years, but a guy from out of town had reopened it. As kids, this blew our minds, as it was a rural area, with very little to offer in terms of entertainment so it seemed unbelievable to us that we would actually have a cinema in town.
On one visit to the cinema, I ended up needing to use the toilet during a film, so left the theatre, walked through the foyer and into the toilet. There was no toilet paper, so I went back into the foyer and spoke to the cinema owner to ask if he had any toilet paper. I was younger than ten at the time and very nervous about speaking to adults, but the owner was incredibly kind and friendly, gave me the toilet paper and we had a conversation about the film and how happy I was that we now had a cinema in the town.
I used the toilet then went back into the theatre.
A few weeks later the friendly cinema man was on the front page of every news paper. He was Peter Moore.
https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Peter_Moore_(serial_killer)
From wikipedia:
That last sentence just tacked on there like it isn't fuckin major
Wow that must’ve been creepy to see him on the news like that. I can see how he can look like a friendly guy, such a shame that he had to be a killer though.
Thanks for including the wiki link. Made it easier to not have to Google this response lol
weren't you lucky not to be older (unusual in these cases)
Yeah it's interesting how in some of these experiences the people meeting the killer just aren't in their target demo and they either completely lose interest or act relatively normal.
Honestly. I learned as an adult that the younger sister of one of my friends had been SA'd by their neighbor - the same neighbor who always had us over to swim in his pool. He never touched me or my friend, only the younger sister. His reasoning? He didn't like blondes, only brunettes, and my friend's sister was the only one with dark hair among us. So scary to think about...
I was in jail in Summit county in Ohio for being an idiot, basically, and came across the man that would be known as the Craigslist killer. The guy held Bible studies every night, was super preachy, and was very persuasive with people. He was in jail for a parole violation (running a prostitution mainly IIRC) from a robbery case in Texas and was waiting to see if he would be extradited to Texas. Somehow Summit county messed up and released him even though Texas sent them the paperwork saying they wanted him. He and the kid he had been partnering with had already killed multiple people, and when he was released they failed to kill another person and were caught. Saw his face in the paper about a month later and was like holy shit, I was in jail with that guy lmao
Not me, but my uncle - his manager at the fast food place where he worked in high school invited him and another kid over to his place after work. My uncle and his friend declined, and were very glad they did years later when it became public what exactly his former manager, John Wayne Gacy, was doing to and with those kids he invited over.
My uncle accepted a ride from Gacy. He wasn't supposed to be hitchhiking but it was the 70s. At some point he got a bad vibe and jumped out at a red light. When Gacy was arrested he put two and two together.
Edit: since this got some traction, here's the full story. Uncle was 16 and decided to hitchhike home. Dude pulls over and he gets in. Immediately, the guy locks the car. As they're going along, this guy starts getting pretty creepy, saying things like we could go to the airport and I'll fly you anywhere you want. My uncle is very freaked out at this point and waits for his moment - he pulls the lock and jumps out at a light, and takes off running. He says the guy started following him but by going through alleys and stuff he was able to shake him off. After he gets home, my grandma could tell something was wrong so she asked him what happened. He admitted to hitchhiking and told Grandma what the dude had done/said. Grandma got a baseball bat and they drove around town looking for the guy, but didn't find him. It was not too much later that they arrested him and the story broke. My mom rode her bike over and watched them take the bodies out from down the block, or so she says.
Damn. Respect to Grandma, not only did she believe your Uncle, but went out to kick some ass!
Mine hitchiked too. No incidents though. My grandpa worked for the city, and Gacy knew him.
Talk about trusting your gut. Most wouldn't jump out and think themselves rude to do so.
That's not dodging a bullet, that's dodging a fucking nuke.
I'm glad your uncle declined.
My uncle was best friends with Rob Piest, Gacy’s last victim. I wonder if our uncles were classmates.
Damn. A relative of mine was a friend of Rob Piest, too. They moved away from Des Plaines in 1976.
I have a John Wayne Gacy story, but for my aunt. My grandma, mom and her two sisters lived in the Chicagoland area when he was also there. For context, my aunt was in her young teens and wore her hair short and dressed more masculine. She looked like a young boy. My grandma and aunt remember walking around their neighborhood one day and being stalked by Gacy. My grandma always said he got close enough to see my aunt was actually a girl and that’s why he no longer pursued them. Was pretty creepy to think how close they got to being a victim.
A fiend of mine mentioned one of his aunts still has love letters from school that Richard "The Nightstalker" Ramirez sent to her.
Whilst I was at university, I worked at a cafe in a local shopping centre. One of our regular customers was a mum and son who would come have breakfast most mornings. The mum was delightful, however the son always seemed a bit off. Nothing major just you’d say “have a great day” and he’d reply with “yes.”
Anyway, one day he comes in without his mum and has breakfast. The next day his face is all over the news as he had just been arrested for murdering his mum.
Edit: Just to address some of the comments, the son was of adult age and reportedly suffered from paranoid schizophrenia. Mum was his carer.
Oh my god, that poor woman! May she rest easy...
This made me feel extra sad for some reason :(
My Mom once told us about a suspected run in she had with Clifford Olson.
She was around 13 years old walking home from swim club and a man matching his description pulled up alongside her and tried to strike up a conversation. He would ask her where the post office was located and said he needed some help mailing a present. My Mom was smart enough to realize it was Labour Day and the post office was closed, she saw he had plates on his car from the US and had leather gloves on. When she finally worked up the courage to end the conversation and walk away the man started swearing at her telling her to get in the car and then he sped off. The dates and location all add up too, freaky shit.
(Edit. I didn’t expect this to blow up lol. I asked my Mom for more information but she pretty much told me the same story. She ran off the sidewalk into the park across the street to get away from him and didn’t stop till she got home. She never reported it to the police but told my Grandparents about the encounter, she wasn’t allowed to walk home from Swim Club anymore and the parents set up car pooling programs for the group.
Clifford Olson “The Beast of British Columbia”, was finally arrested in 1981 on Vancouver Island on suspicion of trying to abduct 2 teenage girls. He committed 11 known murders of children and teenagers in a little over a year, with countless assaults and sexual assaults before and during his spree. They found the decomposing body of a 13 year old girl a few weeks after this encounter within an hour of my Mothers house. The body was later linked to Olson.)
God I remember that guy. I grew up in small town BC and we heard that he was coming towards our town or in the area and you could’ve heard a pin drop around town. It was so quiet because everybody was freaked right out.
He was known for abusing kids before he started killing them. I was in my early teens, walking down a Vancouver street on a sunny afternoon and this guy in a car asks me directions, then starts telling me he’s a producer from Hollywood etc.. He offers me a ride so we can talk about my potential. Ha. I used to hitchhike and figured what the hell, he seemed like a friendly guy… He drove me to my destination, but along the way managed to get my phone number and said a lot of what I now realize were very creepy things intended to see how far he could manipulate me. When I got out of the car he grabbed me and forced his slimy tongue down my throat... A few years later I see his picture in the paper and learn his full name, Clifford Robert Olson..
My grandad was a cop and pulled Olson over once. He had black bags of "trash" in his back seat :(
He wasn’t one when I met him…
Worked a retail job that sold iPhones at a high end mall. Guy comes in carrying a Nordstrom bag, wearing Gucci sunglasses and asks to buy an iPhone. While I waited for our BOH team to bring the iPhone, I’m making casual conversation with the guy. I ask what he does for work, says he’s an actor. I ask if he’s been in anything I might have seen…he says The Hunger Games. I say cool, who did you play? He mumbles something about being one of the tributes…
Conversation somehow leads to him asking if I’m single, I told him I was engaged and he was visibly annoyed. His attitude was very arrogant, and he did a lot of uncomfortable/creepy staring that I noticed after he took off his sunglasses.
I had initially asked him if he was eligible for an upgrade on his phone, he was confident that he was. Well, after checking his ID (standard protocol) and pulling up the account…nope, not eligible. But his brother’s phone was eligible. He insists that he can use his brother’s upgrade, but I tell him that stuff like this needs to be approved by the main account holder/authorized users. So he calls his stepmom and asks to use the brother’s upgrade.
His stepmom says no, and the guy throws a complete tantrum. Saying that his brother is too young for an iPhone anyway, that he’s fine using an older model, that he NEEDS a new phone. Stepmom doesn’t budge, yet I’m stuck there for at least twenty minutes while this guy yells at his stepmom trying desperately to get his way. He leaves in a huff and I’m so relieved to get away from this entitled prick.
The guy was Elliot Rodger.
I was listening to a podcast about him. Paused it to browse the phone a bit and saw this thread ….
Weird coincidence.
Good podcast, interviews his mother extensively. Poor woman. She’s trying to use her son’s history to help people identify warning signs to stop future tragedies.
https://revealnews.org/podcast/lessons-from-a-mass-shooters-mother/
Hopefully his mom can get in touch with Susan Klebold, she seems to be the best person to talk to after your son commits mass murder. Her book was heart-breaking, but a worthwhile read, and I highly recommend it, A Mother's Reckoning.
Surprised you didn't end up mentioned in his hyper detailed manifesto/autobiography. Or at least I don't remember a part where he bitches about his phone but that would be completely on the mark.
My mother in law taught one of the girls that he killed. She was close to the family. She still cries when sharing memories about her.
Heart breaking.
The fact that he became incels' patron saint is nuts
This channel covered his story and two other guys that were inspired by Elliot. It’s pretty pathetic that he even managed to inspire other incel morons to try to get “revenge”. https://youtu.be/32I4uxAU8wQ?si=LFZ5g3s37Dq5lU9l
This is one of the dudes that was inspired by him and even mentions it in his interrogation after killing some people. https://youtu.be/ubEwaITzTKc?si=zPJ6qdY8QmmySEga
I looked him up. Never heard of Elliot Rodger before, he killed six people.
I couldn't find him working as an actor on the hunger games (maybe his role was very small or he just wanted to brag?), but I found his dad working at the set as second unit director on the Hunger Games movie.
Poor family
EDIT:// Oh god I found his wikipedia page, he is an incel and killed women to punish them for not sleeping with him -.- he's the most red pill incel that ever incelled
His dad was a producer on the hunger games. I ended up reading his manifesto where he talked about frequenting the mall that I worked at, and how he was also very envious of the actors in The Hunger Games when attending the premiere with his family. I am assuming he thought that lying about being an actor in the movie would make him sound impressive.