Evil lurks among us and we must adhere to the signs. More often than not the signs are big and flashing in neon. When you feel that slight unease or "sense" in the pit of your stomach upon interacting with certain people, listen close, you already know that you're too close to trouble--your body is trying to tell you. I can't tell you how many stories on "Dateline NBC" start with.... "I had a feeling." Well if you have a scratch, itch it.
Redditor u/peasantchoker was wondering who else has been able to sense when they were surrounded by evil by asking....
People who knew Murderers, when did you know something was off?
The Boyfriend
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 and 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.
I met the girl only a few times and him only the 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.
The Roommate
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 like 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 we don't know each other as well as I 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 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.
The Gentle Giant
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.
That Kid
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. Our senior year he got suspended for like 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.
Editing for spelling and adding to this because I remembered that I actually knew a second murderer. Im related to someone who attempted to murder his wife by stabbing her in the back several times with a butter knife when she found out he was gay and then many years later stabbed his partner to death after they broke up.
He Said So
When he said there was.
A teenager, his mother and his step father lived around the corner from me. My mother knew them better than myself, 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 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.
Edit: 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.
The Burns
Had an employee on my work crew, acted strange and wouldn't listen to direction. Had goofy huge sideburns. Ended up going to jail for a short time, when he got out he shot his GF and her parents.
The Uncle
My uncle murdered somebody and is currently serving life in prison. From my earliest memory I knew he had some screws loose.
Edit: I was at work when I originally commented so I didn't have time to provide details. He caught his wife at her lovers 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 guys house down in an attempt to cover his tracks. As soon as his wife could get free of him she immediately reported him.
As far as me saying I always got creep vibes from him, he always reminded me of a poor mans Charles Manson
The Customer
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 to 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 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. \
The Bully
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 realize 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 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.
The Co-Worker
My ex-coworker was always a huge angry moron who nobody liked to work with. He'd always be on his phone and talking to someone, even when he had a customer waiting to order in the drive-thru. The moment I knew he had something wrong with him was when I caught him "looking for his dab pen" in one of the lockers in the backroom. He always used a top locker, but he was searching through one at the bottom, which happened to be my locker for the day.
I told him that, so he just stared me in the face for a second, and walked away.
Later that same year, I learned that he shot and killed someone at a gas station.
Edit: to clarify, he was (most likely) trying to steal from me, and the fact that he made up his lie on the fly set me off (not to mention the creepy stare at the end).
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