Warning: The following post contains discussions of murder and sexual assault.
1. "When I was 7, a man knocked on our door at about 8:30 at night. My mom and I were in the living room watching TV. My mom answered the door, and he said something about selling newspapers. She said she wasn't interested, and as she tried to close the door, he tried to force his way inside. She always had the chain latch on, and she kicked the door closed on his arm as he tried to grab for her. He ran away, and she called the police. About a year later Cleophus Prince Jr. was arrested for killing six women, mostly in our neighborhood. My mom recognized him as the man who tried to force his way in that night."
2. "My dad met Charles Manson at a motorcycle shop (if I remember right) in Venice Beach in the '60s. Said he remembered a really short (my dad’s a foot taller than him) creepy dude with scary eyes. Didn’t think anything of it until he turned up on the news."
3. "My best buddy’s older brother lived off the grid in northern Yukon in the '70s. Came home to Edmonton once every couple of years. Due to terrible gravel and dirt roads back then, it was a four-day drive. One time he picked up a hitchhiker. It’s the code of the North: People help each other. They hit it off, and the hitcher even helped out with the driving duties. One time when the hitcher was sleeping, my buddy’s brother heard on the radio a police alert about a multiple murderer in the area. He matched the description of the hitcher. As they were still in the middle of nowhere, he turns off the radio and ended up staying with the guy for two more days. When they finally got into a populated area, they stopped at a diner, and he called the cops. Provincial cops did a traffic stop 30 minutes later and got the guy. He had killed his wife, kid, and [his wife’s] parents."
4. "My grandmother was a neighbor to John Wayne Gacy for a brief time. My mother used to talk about a photo they had with him, completely unaware of what was going on. Of course, after his conviction, they were floored."
5. "Elizabeth Wettlaufer was my dad's nurse. She disappeared. We saw her on the news about three months later, led away in handcuffs for killing several seniors over a period of years. Reaction: 'Holy shit!' Then checking the dates of when she was still working and my dad's date of death (about a month later). Exchanges with her never raised any red flags — just typical visitor/nurse talk."
6. "My aunt was a judicial assistant in Florida back in the 1980s. One day, three well-dressed men came to see the judge. One was particularly good-looking and charming and really chatted her up. She found out later that she had been chatted up by Ted Bundy."
7. "My aunt was one of the only ones who wasn't killed when Ted Bundy went to that sorority in Florida because that night her friend asked her to sleep over. She still has never talked about it, and I only found out she was in that sorority from a project I did in psychology and asked my mom about it since I grew up in Tallahassee where it happened. Very wild and still gives me goosebumps, so I can't even imagine how my aunt feels — especially these past couple of years when all these shows and movies came out about him."
8. "Adam Strong used to work at the gas station right around the corner from my in-laws’ house. I saw him there once. I was sitting in the car while my (then boyfriend) husband went inside to pay for gas, and Strong came over and stood right by my window. He was just hanging around the gas pumps. I just felt an overwhelming feeling of fear and disgust. I thought he was the grossest thing I’d ever seen — he didn’t even seem human."
9. "An old employee of mine dated the Phoenix canal killer for a couple of years and didn't find out about him 'til she saw his face on the news. They were no longer together at this point. She came into work the next morning and told me they had arrested him on suspicion of being the killer. The FBI interviewed her and everything. He was eventually found guilty of, I think, at least three murders. She was pretty freaked out about it."
10. "When I was 13, I was living on the streets of Lake Elsinore, California, and had a lady looking after me who was a drug addict and a prostitute. She had a John that really liked her and invited us to his place once. He was a real weird-ass bastard. A year later she turned up dead with a whole bunch of other working girls in the area killed by the I-15 strangler. When they caught the guy, I instantly recognized him as the John. His name was William Lester Suff, and the trailer that he took us to was his kill shack. 😳"
11. "My teen sister and her girlfriends started hanging out with these slightly older guys that brutally murdered a teen couple from our neighborhood within days of knowing them... I feel like my sister dodged a bullet there for sure. The perpetrators ended up being the first to be executed under South Carolina's reauthorizing of the death penalty in our state."
12. "I went to school with Paul Bernardo, who partnered up with his wife and raped/killed three young girls. I was totally shocked to see this good-looking, successful, seemingly normal guy on the front page of every newspaper!"
13. "My mother used to carpool with Jerry Brudos. They worked at the same electronics company, and she fit his victims' profile. This was several years before I was born."
14. And finally, "My great uncle lived in Wichita, Kansas when the BTK killer was killing people. He went to the same church as Dennis Rader. Uncle said that Rader seemed self-absorbed and was an asshole. He was 'not surprised at all' when he found out Rader was the killer."
Note: Some submissions have been edited for length and/or clarity.
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