26 Extremely Unsettling Stories From People Who Knew Murderers

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a day ago

I hate horror movies and have an extremely low threshold for gore in video games. Sometimes, though, I stumble upon something scary that I somehow can't look away from, even though I know it'll keep me up at night. Cue this Reddit thread started by u/peasantchoker asking "People who knew Murderers, when did you know something was off?". The answers are totally terrifying.
Warning: This post contains graphic and disturbing descriptions of violence, death, and sexual assault.
1."I sat next to him in choir class. He was always kind of off. He operated on his wavelength. Constantly in his own world, never really engaging with anybody. People just didn't really exist on his radar. On a class trip, we slept in the same hotel room, and he walked around naked like I wasn't even there. I always assumed he was autistic, but in hindsight, it might have been something much worse, like schizophrenia. He never seemed violent, but nobody ever talked to him enough to ever make that conclusion in the first place. A few months ago, he beat and stabbed his mother to death with a kitchen knife. It was so bad that dental records were needed to identify the body."
He cut off one of her breasts and implied in his confession that he ate part of it. He waited until his dad came home from work to show him what he'd done. Claimed he saw a sign from the devil that told him to kill her. (That may have been a lie. From what I heard, he was very excited to tell the police what he had done. And from what I do know about him, he might have said it for the attention.) He turned himself in, waived his Miranda rights, and confessed to everything. When the cops found him, he was literally soaked in blood. He refused to shower it off, so they had to hose him down before they put him in a cell. He's looking at 40 years in prison. His Mom was an amazing woman; she tailored our suits for choir and was constantly volunteering. If there was an event, she was there. She was gonna be her town's councilwoman next year. She loved her son very much. She didn't deserve to die like that.
– u/Alsikepike
2."Obligatory, didn't know him as a friend, but a regular customer in my shop. He would come in after his shift to buy beer and tobacco. On one occasion, he caught and helped us evict a shoplifter. He seemed friendly enough. Then, a local girl went missing and was eventually pulled out of a river a few weeks later. They announced they were looking for somebody in connection with her death, and it was him. They had CCTV footage of him tailing her through a park and footage of him buying beer in a shop, still unconfirmed to this day being our shop as they blurred out the surroundings."
"Anyway, as we had a TV in our shop, we switched to the news channel as it was a rolling story local to us, we started to discuss the guy, if we saw him on the day she went missing, that kind of thing. We hadn't, but it was at that point when one of my staff, a young girl, who had previously said to management that she didn't want to work the closing shift anymore because there was 'too many creepy men around,' told us that he used to stare at her when he came in to the store in a way that made her uncomfortable enough to not want to be on the floor when he came in. They never got to question him about the murder, as he was found dead in a local park a few days later. He'd hung himself."
— u/deleted
3."I went through primary and high school with a guy in the year below me who seemed a little... distant. We lived near each other and caught the bus from the same stop. He was a bit of a bully, but it was something more. Like you could tell, he wasn't a bully because he was hurting inside or because he felt threatened in some way, he was a bully because he did what he wanted to do and didn't realise that it hurt other people, like the kind of kid who enjoyed pulling wings off flies. Not long after I left my hometown, I heard that he had been charged with the murder of a 2-year-old. Apparently, his girlfriend at the time left her daughter with him for an hour or so while she ran an errand. He couldn't deal with the toddler crying anymore, so he beat her. He caused severe internal bleeding, and she died in the hospital not long after. He would have been around 22 when he did it. He was sentenced to 36 years with a non-parole period of 27 years."
— u/Adelineslife
4."I know a guy who murdered a nurse and wanted [to be] our town's first serial killer. He bought a "murder kit" online and stabbed her over 50 times. Let's call him Steve. I knew him through scouts. Now, to preface, our scout troop was pretty laid back. We didn't tend to bother with badges, and the two troop leaders were pretty cool guys. Mostly, we played silly games like crab football, built catapults to fire stuff across the hall at each other, etc. You get the picture. We were a little bit of a gang of misfits. But Steve was really weird. First time it came out was when he would do this thing where he'd get his butt out and dance around."
"At first, it was outrageous and funny, and he kept getting told to stop. When he kept doing it got a bit annoying (none of us were keen to see his bare arse...), then it got boring, then just outright weird when its not remotely funny, no one wanted him to do it and he continued. He also used to bring in print outs of super gross porn (obviously confiscated and thrown away). Again, he was clearly trying to gross people out for his amusement. A few times he was suspended for a week or so but give we were quite laid back and the troop leaders were good guys, they probably couldn't bring themselves to bin him off completely. It was a long time ago so I can't recall all the details but I recall him being quite childish in mentality but also veeeery creepy. When I found out, I was shocked, but not surprised. Then I remembered I'd played hide and seek in the dark with this guy, in a hall with a kitchen full of knives..."
— u/Nome3000
5."I moved to a new town when I was 19 and was making new friends at my new job. I met this girl at work, and she invited me over to hang out with her and her best friend. I went, and the best friend's boyfriend was there, and the vibes were waaay off. I was uncomfortable. He was cold and just seemed angry for no reason. They had mentioned to me before he got there that he was always controlling and had hit the girl before. Turns out controlling was an understatement. She came home one day, and he was digging a hole in the backyard. She asked what he was doing, and he replied, "Digging your grave."
"He hit her, said if he can't have her, nobody could have her, all of that. So, eventually, she left him and had to get a restraining order and everything. He somehow persuaded her to get in a car with him on her work break, and they went missing for a few days. Turns out he stabbed her to death, threw her in a river, and killed himself. I met the girl only a few times and him only once, but the face that I was in such close proximity to someone capable of that gives me chills. She was so young, it was really sad."
— u/TopWoodpecker1062
6."I worked at a box store about 20 years ago, a guy I worked with was always 'off,' and would give away pocket knives to other employees. One day he came in with scratches all over his face; he had raped and murdered a disabled girl the day before, using a pocket knife he had given our co-worker later that day."
— u/Grover_washington_jr
7."A teenager, his mother, and his stepfather lived around the corner from me. My mother knew them better than I did, but we all thought they were lovely. A couple of years ago, the son went to the hospital several times asking for help. He claimed he had voices telling him to kill his stepfather, but each time he went, he was released and told to come back (they would give him an appointment). A few weeks later, during a small argument, he stabbed his stepfather to death in the front garden. He turned himself in the next day, and wasn't convicted as he sought help before it happened. Instead, he got the treatment he needed. I see a lot of people wondering if it might've been a defense/planned murder. It wasn't. The way he was killed and how the son acted after, removed any doubt."
— u/KellyTheBroker
8."I knew a guy who killed his dad with a baseball bat (found not guilty). I met his dad when he came into the bar where I worked. He was a nightmare. He would squeeze people's hands when he shook them. He and his son were both boxers, and the dad was really rough with him, apparently. The day he was found not guilty, he sent a text to someone at the bar saying 'I told you I would get off."
— u/Defiant-Machine
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9."I worked in a food court in my early 20s. This family would come in pretty regularly. The family stuck out because they were giants. Mom was easily 6'1" and Dad was 6'7". They had a few kids. Nothing really stuck out at the time. They never seemed happy, but never fought. They just always looked like they were just coming out of mourning. I heard a few years back that the mom decided to leave the dad. The dad murdered the whole family and then killed himself."
— u/rand0yes0
10."My uncle murdered somebody and is currently serving life in prison. From my earliest memory I knew he had some screws loose. He caught his wife at her lover's house, so he shot the guy. He was going to shoot her, too, but she convinced him she wouldn't tell anyone. He burned the guy's house down in an attempt to cover his tracks. As soon as his wife could get free of him, she immediately reported him."
— HelloFellowKidlings
11."I never suspected a thing. She was the nicest woman. I even let her babysit my cousin when I had custody of him for a little while. She was my neighbor (couple houses down), and everyone loved her; she grew gigantic pumpkins, was always outside, so everyone interacted with her a lot. I moved away and a few years later and was shocked to hear everything from my family and friends who still loved in the area. The story: She was married to a man, and I knew him from my time living there, too. One day, he was just gone. She was all beaten up. She said he beat her up (we always suspected this happened before this incident) and had left her because he got a woman pregnant a few towns over."
"We never heard from him again, but didn't really have a reason to. She would mention every once in a while that he was still harassing her and was even beaten up on another occasion after his disappearance. He was self-employed and didn't really have any family; no one suspected anything. Three years later, she was dating another man. While dating this man, the police had been investigating her for stealing money from the grocery store where she worked. They went to the boyfriend's cabin, where they both were, to arrest her. She came to the door, said ok, let me go put on some clothes. The police waited at the door (I obviously wasn't here for this part, so this is what I hear). The police then hear two gunshots. They ran inside, and she had poured gasoline and set the house on fire, then shot her dog, then herself. It took some time to get the house fire under control. Once they did, and began investigating, they found another body in the basement that didn't die in the fire, but several days earlier. The body in the basement was her boyfriend. Then, they began investigating further and found a blue 55-gallon drum in her backyard that contained her husband. So, she killed two people and her dog, and all she was suspected of was stealing from the grocery store."
— u/spamix0924
12."The murderer I know was more of an acquaintance or casual friend – he lived down the hall from me, and we hung out sometimes, but not just the two of us. Still, we'd chill at each other's place regularly. I passed him one day in the stairwell, and I said hi. He said hi back but called me by the wrong name. He was really distracted and kind of awkward. He didn't make eye contact and kept moving. I remember thinking maybe we didn't know each other as well as I had thought. Later, he was playing Nintendo (yep, my N64 - this was a while ago) with my roommate when I came home. He apologized and said his mind was elsewhere. A couple of days later, there are cops all over the building, interviewing people and searching his place. They'd found the guy's roommate with a bullet in the back of his head in an abandoned lot across town. The next day, he confessed."
— u/jimmymd77
13."There was a kid I went to high school with who always gave me the creeps. We had a lot of mutual friends, so we always ended up hanging out, and it always made me feel really uncomfortable. In our senior year, he got suspended for about a week because someone had found and turned in a hit list he had made; no one really took it too seriously. About three years after we graduated, he was in the news for murdering a man in our town that he barely knew. He told the police that he held the man's eyes open so he could watch his life leave his body."
— u/ThatLilChica
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14."I didn't. He was the sweetest, kindest, gentle giant kind of guy. Kind of a weirdo, but still a great guy overall. I remember once that he shed a tear just by talking about his kid, because he was so filled with emotion from having him in his life. He turned out to kill his wife, kidnap his child, start the longest Amber Alert in the history of Canada, as he tried escaping to a different province, he killed another man to steal his car. I'm still unsure today if I should have seen anything at any point. It comes to haunt my nightmares from time to time."
— u/SpadesFairy
15."I had an employee on my work crew who acted strangely and wouldn't listen to directions. Had goofy huge sideburns. Ended up going to jail for a short time, when he got out, he shot his gf and her parents."
— u/Jitdoka
16."Looking back, I should have known immediately, but I didn't even know what I was seeing. In 2016, I was working as a server, and one of my coworkers was always complaining about her shitty husband and how they always fought. They were from Chicago, and kind of just always loud and aggressive, so I didn't think much of it. One night, they both came in for dinner and drinks and sat in my section, and I was looking forward to finally meeting her husband so I could give him a face...I just remember not being able to look him in the eye; feeling super uncomfortable any time I needed to go over to their table, because my friend would try to spark a convo—and I wanted to talk to her—but the guy's presence just sitting there would make my skin crawl."
"They left that night, but soon she stopped coming to work, and then, a couple of weeks later, news broke about the murder-suicide (husband being the murderer). It was heartbreaking...and I no longer take lightly the word of domestic disputes."
— u/honeyspunk
17."Never did, quiet shy lad at school with a small circle of friends. He started losing his hearing as a teenager and became increasingly frustrated and angry. A minor disagreement in a pub, possibly caused by him not hearing the other guy, turned into a fight, and he glassed him. The other guy bled out."
— u/Platypupduck
18."One of the smartest, most popular, and friendliest guys at my high school. He stood up for people who got bullied, he included everyone, and he helped people who needed it all the time. Seemed like an utterly selfless guy. Literally, everybody loved the guy. Two years ago, he killed his wife and then himself after an argument."
— u/deleted
19."Not sure if this fits here, but it's a sad story nonetheless. About 4-5 years ago, my mom hired this man to remodel her kitchen because he had been recommended to her by a bunch of people. The day he shows up, he has his 11-year-old daughter with him to 'help out.' The second I see both of them, I think, 'I think he's molesting her.' I don't know why, but I have zero proof of it. It's just a weird feeling, and his vibe totally creeped me out. Maybe because she was so young, he mentioned having another girl and a son, and she should've been in school. He brought her over every day for two weeks while he did the kitchen. She was seemingly happy and fine, so I just sort of kept that in the back of my mind. Every day, I would ask my mom when he'd be done so he could get the hell out of her house because he was so creepy and I didn't want him around us."
"My mom ignored it and told me she didn't understand, because he did good work and was 'really nice.' Cut to about a year later, and my mom calls me and goes, 'Hey, remember Andrew, the guy who did my kitchen?' I said, 'Yeah, why? Did he get caught molesting his daughter?' She goes, 'Uh...how did you know that?' Turns out he had been brutally torturing his entire family, not only molesting his children, but also doing stuff like tying his son to a shed outside and making him eat his own feces, all in the name of Christ. They fled from him in the middle of the night, and he's now in prison for the rest of his life."
— u/TopLahman
20."My bio-dad ended up murdering my step-mom. Everyone in my family, my mom and two older brothers definitely knew that something was up. He had severe anger issues and was very abusive. Some of the earlier memories I have are of him choking one of my brothers. He even almost choked my mom to death a couple of times. Obviously, my mom was smart and divorced him as he didn't want to see him kill my brothers. Years later, I come home from school, and my mom and step-dad take us all to the side and tell us he shot our step-mom and was currently in jail. None of us were surprised. If anything, I was just so grateful my mom left him. It's so strange that I am directly related to a murderer."
— u/rassion-isle
21."Not my experience, but my grandmother's. She got pregnant at 15 by my grandfather and had to get married (1960s). He was extremely abusive, and my grandmother went to the police multiple times because she felt like he would wind up killing someone. Still, they just didn't take it seriously and ignored her. he later went on to strangle and beat a 14-year-old girl to death with a baseball bat just a couple of years later. My grandmother did get away from him (they had been separated when this happened), and he was put in prison. But I do know he got out, and from what I was told, it was on insanity? I'm not 100% on the details of his release, as he is a pretty taboo topic. But he finally died in 2014, though I didn't find that out until a year later. I had only ever met him once."
— u/FionnaAndCake
22."Worked with a kid for a year or so, and he was so sweet and nice. I went off to college, and that summer I visited home and ran into him. He was his usual nice, sweet self. He killed two classmates and shot a third about twenty minutes later. I never had any weird feelings from him and was completely shocked to learn this news the next day."
— u/MagicalGirlMarina
23.I know one and still keep in contact with him. We all knew he had issues with rage, but we never thought he would kill someone. We worked together at this restaurant for a while, and we got really close. If I weren't in a committed relationship at the time, I would've dated him. He was super chill, down-to-earth, and the sweetest person...until something triggered him. He didn't get angry often, but he had triggers that would send him into a rage. He was horribly abused as a child by his father, so there was a lot of resentment towards men who looked like his dad or talked down to him. That is where we bonded, because I was abused by my mother. Thankfully, I had the resources to manage my trauma.
"Unfortunately, he did not. His parents believed that God was going to cure his traumas. It got to the point where his mother left, because his father would pull him out of therapy as soon as they would start making progress, and she couldn't deal with it anymore. He ended up suffering from a concussion about six months after I met him. He was helping a friend move, but a dresser fell on his head. After this, he wasn't the same. He quit coming into work and went almost radio silent. We would still talk, but we weren't as close as we were before. At the time, I was moving into the city, and he lived in the suburbs, so we had planned on getting together to catch up! A week later, I got a call from my friend at 7 a.m. saying that he was in jail for hiding a body...I was shook. After an investigation, they interrogated him and he confessed pretty quickly. He beat his dad to death with a barbell and tried to hide the body in the house. Afterwards, he ended up trying to kill himself but was unsuccessful, so he just left the house. After he was booked, I sent him a letter to check in on him. He had suffered from a psychotic episode and only remembers moments from the act. He's now serving 40 years with the possibility of parole after 20. He's medicated and doing really well! The last time I checked, he had a few activities he was responsible for managing, and he was working through his traumas with a psychologist.
— u/GaudyBass94
24."Honestly, this girl I went to school with killed two kids she babysat and their mother. Before that, I would have told you she was one of the calmest coolest people in our school. Would have never suspected her to do something like that."
— u/Nordll
25."A kid I went to school with from fifth to eighth grade. He was always a dick. Typical class clown but with a mean streak. When we hit middle school, he was always making comments about/to girls that were incredibly inappropriate. I never liked him and hated being around him. He ended up getting into meth and shot his mom and dad in their sleep while high. His mom died, and his dad survived but was severely injured. Last I heard, he was crying crocodile tears, saying he regrets everything and wants another chance. But knowing him, it's total bullshit. He deserves to rot."
— u/VitriolicWyverns
26.Finally, "There was this guy who stabbed a young brunette woman 37 times and then raped her post-mortem. It turned into a cold case for nine years; they finally caught the guy a couple of years ago. The crazy thing was, I (a young brunette woman) worked next door to the bar where this guy drank every night. I also was a raging alcoholic and got blacked out drunk and walked home from there on and off nights regularly. Almost every night. (Almost two years sober now, thank god). However, I knew something was off about this guy the minute I laid eyes on him. I read people like a MF, and I just knew he wasn't someone to know. I talked to everyone who frequented that bar, but I never had a single conversation with him, and if I was out on a smoke break while he was outside, I just never felt like I could turn my back on him."
When they arrested him due to one of his relatives adding their DNA to a genetic testing site, I straight up got chills down my spine for the first time in my life. Crazy thing was, I wasn't surprised, I was just surprised I knew from the minute I saw him."
— u/SerVinSwerVin
If you or someone you know is in immediate danger as a result of domestic violence, call 911. For anonymous, confidential help, you can call the 24/7 National Domestic Violence Hotline at 1-800-799-7233 (SAFE) or chat with an advocate via the website.
If you are concerned that a child is experiencing or may be in danger of abuse, you can call or text the National Child Abuse Hotline at 1-800-422-4453 (4.A.CHILD); service can be provided in over 140 languages.
The National Alliance on Mental Illness helpline is 1-800-950-6264 (NAMI) and provides information and referral services; GoodTherapy.org is an association of mental health professionals from more than 25 countries who support efforts to reduce harm in therapy.
If you or anyone you know has information on a missing person case, call local law enforcement first. You can also contact the National Center for Missing & Exploited Children at 1-800-843-5678 (THE-LOST) or visit the National Missing and Unidentified Persons System site for regional case assistance.
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