Do you personally know any criminals?

I know a convicted (and admitted) pedophile. He creeped me out. He has, fortunately, moved across the country.

No I don’t, ‘cause I still go to school. Maybe somebody will be a criminal, maybe not (Natch I hope not!!!). Of course there are some petty crooks, not really criminal guys, I don’t count them to criminals :)

Does this count? I talked to this guy on Skype less than a month before he committed his heinous crime. We both played Kingdom of Loathing together and we were on a team at the time trying to solve a really hard puzzle. He was our team leader.

It creeps me out that he didn’t ACT creepy or scary. He was a BORING guy. There was nothing that made me look back and go “Yeah,,, I had the feeling something was off about him.” I have read several articles and watched his confession on youtube—and it still shocks me that I had a very loose tie to him, but I actually spoke to this guy only a few weeks before he had finished planning his crime out. \

Oh and I knew THIS guy for sure. A friend in high school went up the wall in college and attempted to burn his professor’s office down after getting a C in the class. He was caught before he started the fire and went to prison for 18 months.

Edited for a better article.

I grew up with one. He’s not a very prolific criminal, but my step-brother is currently incarcerated; he’s serving 17 years in prison for kidnapping and multiple burglary convictions. He’ll most likely be released in 2024. I speak to him every now and then.

@livelaughlove21 That must have been really hard for you.

Also wondering if we are counting petty criminals. I mean I know tons of people who have smoked weed in the past or still smoke it today. I know lots of people who sold it. I know shoplifters and people who drove without car insurance. I mean.. how criminal does it have to be?

My long-time dentist was convicted of child pornography a couple of years ago. My jaw dropped when I read about him in the local newspaper.

Not that I know of.
Because zis is Germany. Vee are law abiding people.

@Headhurts Not at all. He’s been a little shit since he came to live with us at 10 years old. He was in and out of juvenile hall as a teen and he was heavy into gang activity while we lived in Chicago. I knew exactly where he’d end up, and prison is where he belongs. When he’s released, he’ll be right back in quickly thereafter. He’s already told me that he thinks it’ll be federal prison next time. He doesn’t know any different at this point. Crime is his career choice.

@livelaughlove21 Thank you for sharing that.

Former pastor

His son

My former Sunday School student

…that’s without thinking too hard about it. There are more.

I have had personal experience with a convicted pedophile. How does it make me feel? I’m still traumatized, and I would gleefully murder him if I knew for certain I’d get away with it.

I helped convict a drug cartel hit man once. He was a regular where I bartended. That is when I got serious about getting my CCW permit.

A friend since kindergarten has been arrested and in jail several times. A few years ago, between sentences, we were both in our home town, and I took him out to lunch. It was incredibly sad to see a former classmate who had once been labeled one of the brightest students, smelling of alcohol and cigarettes, and living in a cheap motel. Once he was back in jail, I accepted collect calls from him over a couple of months. It finally dawned on me that I couldn’t “help” him; only he could help himself.

My college Religions class professor, who was a former reverend, was convicted this year for molesting two teen boys over 40 years ago. The sentence, from what I can find on the internet, hasn’t been given yet. He is now 92 years old, and there is a good chance that he will go to jail.

I don’t, but there was this sick fuck who lived a few streets away from us who set fire to his house & killed his wife & little kids. That was about ten years ago, they tore down what remained of the house & built a small playground in it’s place.
He was locked up & they threw away the key…bastard!

No. I have known a couple of people that have gotten DUI’s but that was years ago in our wild partying youth.

Patricia Krenwinkel, just look-up Charles Manson and the Manson Family.

Several hardcore ones. I actually worked for a convicted pedophile, and have worked with several violent ex-gang members. I also went to high school with a high profile murderess.

I know a guy Christopher Cox. Murdered his uncle in a drug fueled rage and then murdered 1 or 2 inmates in prison. I doubt he will ever walk the streets again. Sad case, he was a pretty funny/nice kid when I knew him but the drugs caused major changes!

Oh yeah and the guy that delivered my first child is now on the sex offenders list for putting his tongue in another mans mouth. That elderly man bit half of his tongue off too. Dr. Kenneth Seen what a creepo. His children which I knew when I was younger were convicted and sentenced on child pornography charges also.

Yes, one of my closest friends has a daughter that is a 3 time loser. She’s currently in prison for the 3rd time.

When I was in Junior High and High School there was a boy, who seemed very pleasant, kind of shy, but nice, he sat next to me in my English class in 10th grade. A few years after we graduated, he and another boy, not from my school, murdered 2 people in cold blood in one of our local parks. Apparently he had gotten heavily mixed up with drugs and was in the middle of a drug fueled rage when this happened. This was about 30 years ago, so I don’t know if he’s still in prison.

I just remember, my father knew a murder. A friend was killed by him. But its 30 years ago, so I wasn’t alive at this time.

It’s hard to see how many people know murders. It means that many people are…

@BerlinRose Well, most of us live in the US, ‘nuff said.

My brother was convicted of strong arm robbery for snatching a roll of cash from a woman who was walking down the street counting her money. He was drunk and his friend dared him. He spent 5 years in prison. That was 50 years ago, and he never re-offended, may he rest in peace.

`Yeah, a couple of blood relatives=one I’ve never met, the other one I last saw when I was sixteen , my brother the drunk driver his entire life. Luckily, he has no idea where I live or what my name is and I’m sure he doesn’t give it a thought. The first one is a nephew who is in his thirties . I saw him when he was less than a year old. And not since then. Petty theft.

I’ve known a couple of guys who got caught robbing banks. One of them robbed a bank in the city of Alameda, which is an island with about 5 bridges and one tunnel as the only ways When the alarm went off, all the bridges were raised and the tunnel blocked. And he was dumb enough to rob it when they are at the lowest cash on hand of the entire week (Monday morning).

Another guy was high and tried to rob a bank with a lighter and a can of hairspray and threatened to use the hairspray like a torch. He didn’t make it 100 yards before he was caught.

I was on the high school swim team with this guy, Craig Anderson who murdered his fiance, and washed out his van in his driveway.

About 25 years ago, I suffered a series of crippling losses. I decided that some grief counseling might be a good idea. I’d had no experience, whatsoever, with therapy, analysis, or counseling, so I trusted a recommendation and made an appointment with a local psychiatrist.

Instead of providing the grief help that I needed, or referring me to someone more appropriate, this guy hard-sold me on twice-weekly psychotherapy sessions with no end date (cha-ching!). It didn’t take me long to figure out that the man’s ridiculing, belittling, bullying tactics – he made me feel worse than I’d ever felt in my life – were wrong. I finally quit after he’d decided that I’d spent my childhood being sexually molested by my father (not true in any way), and he badgered me about how he couldn’t help me until I accepted and admitted the truth.

Well, this guy’s on trial, right now, for allegedly having molested an underage girl over a long period of time. Yes, he’s presumed innocent until the outcome of his trial, but why am I not surprised about the charges? It’s easy to connect the dots and understand that this disturbed (and incompetent and unethical) person projected his own proclivities onto me.

@Tropical_Willie Did you grow up with Patricia Krenwinkel? She breaks my heart. The things that she did have no rational explanation and can never be truly understood. She didn’t just take innocent lives, she destroyed her own, once-promising life. Few people would argue that she’s a danger to anybody, or that society’s a safer place because she’s behind bars, but she’ll likely die in prison.

Technically yes.

I have a friend that’s a callgirl.

I worked for a CPA firm that should have been called The Firm Infused With Failure. It was a weird place, and it had a number of odd, useless partners who were there for no apparent reason.

There was this one partner who seldom showed up for work. Nobody ever knew where he was, or what he might be doing. He barely did any work. He was simply AWOL most of the time (while collecting hefty compensation).

It turned out that he had a photography studio in his basement, and he spent his time being involved in a child pornography service. There was a steady stream of kiddie porn moving into and from his home computer. He was also fond of having sex with an underage prostitute. The creep managed to plea-bargain a sweet deal – he got immunity by revealing the names of his higher-ups in the kiddie porn industry, so he was never convicted or put on any sex-offender registries.

@YARNLADY How very sad that your brother lost 5 years of his life because of a silly, drunken prank.

FOUND IT.

Couldn’t remember her married last name.

Best friend from 6th grade

I like to think I have better judgement of character than I used to. Haha.

My uncle used to be a drug dealer. He sold heroin and various other drugs. He was on the news a few years ago as a fugitive after his partners in crime were hit with a drug bust. They had a load of drugs, guns and money. I’m not sure how much prison time he did. I think he got a deal, did a few months and was let out on probation. I’m not very close with this uncle. I think I’ve seen him 2 or 3 times in the last 10 years.

@SadieMartinPaul Yes, we use to watch TV in her front room with my younger brother and her older sister. I might have been in fifth grade.

I just thought of another. A neighborhood friend and playmate from childhood murdered her mother, one of the high school teachers. Kelly committed the crime. In retrospect, it isn’t surprising. Mrs. Daniels was notorious for being domineering both in our group and as a teacher. Kelly’s personality, even from a young age, was tom-boyish and not ladylike. This is speculation, but she is probably gay, based upon her interactions with us and the fact that she fled the state with a girlfriend. Homosexuality was strictly taboo at this time and in our Christian community.

How did it make me feel? Knowing her and her mother, it was a shock. Once getting over it and realizing that I had no clue what went on in that home, I felt pity (is that the right word?) for her. What a sad environment to grow up in. A couple of years ago, I ran across an internet profile of Kelly Daniels from the same high school that would equate to her class year. A message was sent to say that if this was the same friend from years ago, I recalled fondly of our times together playing games with all of the neighborhood kids. After all, if it was her, she had done her time for the crime.

I thought of two more.

I went to high school with a guy that is currently serving 8 years for armed robbery.

My husband’s friend’s younger brother knocked up a 13-year-old girl when he was 18 and got a YOA sentence without having to register as a sex offender. Apparently his YOA parole was too hard, so now he’s doing shock incarceration.

@Tropical_Willie Wow. So you knew her when she was just a sweet-looking, decent kid with a pretty smile. Today, she’s a (most likely) harmless woman teetering on the margin between late-middle-age and senior citizenship. But, she’s spent most of the intervening years rotting in prison, where she’ll probably spend the rest of her life.

My ex-father-in-law is currently awaiting trial on child pornography charges. My current father-in-law is a lifelong offender who has been in and out of jail since he was in his teens. My niece’s father is a gang banger who has been incarcerated almost constantly for 25 years. Also, there are several kids in the classes I teach who have already been in juvie. We got a new student a couple of weeks ago who came to us straight from county lock up. The most pathetic though has to be a pediatrician I used to work with who lost his license after he was convicted of fondling new mother’s breasts to see if their milk came in.

Just think, if I ever did hatch a plan to force a little closure on my trauma, you can all say, “Hey, I knew that chocolate girl who whacked the guy that screwed her up.”

Sure, we all do. Criminal activity isn’t an outlier, it’s the norm. It’s very likely many of us know people that commit crimes, even if we don’t know they’re doing it. What, from the domestic violence to sexually abusing their own kids to white collar crime, please, do you really think all your friends and family are ‘innocents’? That’s delusional.

Does it count that I lived 10 doors down form the slaughtered family of serial killer Richard Trenton Chase, psycho murderer that terrorized my town in the late 70“s?
OMG! I lived alone and was terrified for weeks. The “Vampire Killer” of Sacramento was one of the worst to ever come down the highway of insanity.

www.youtube.com/watch?v=xmN6kwTAPhk

Yes, sadly.

And sadly, @Simone_De_Beauvoir is right. Criminality is a norm now, as it seems. I’m not talking traffic tickets, illegally downlading movies, or even a drunk/disorderly charge when you’re in your 20s and too intoxicated and too stupid to shut up. I mean, very serious crimes. Selling drugs (not simply possession citations), assault, battery, illegal weapons, murder….

My mother went to college with a man who later murdered his wife. Luckily, he got convicted and went to jail. Good riddance.

When I was 15, I was part of a secular youth club that met every Saturday. There was a guy there in his late 20s who was a “mentor” and he took a LOT Of interest in me. Always trying to flirt with me, get me to go out with him, talking about sexual stuff. Kept asking if I liked “older men”. I told him I didn’t like that and my boyfriend at the time (he was my age, 15) cursed him out and told him to leave the heck alone.

The perv ended up going to jail over making child porn (!!!!)

I got a LOVE LETTER FROM HIM WHILE IN JAIL. He didn’t know my address but sent it to a friend that we both knew and the friend gave it to me, not having any idea that it was a love letter. Yeah, I got a damn love letter from some sick pedo perv in jail. I never replied and told the friend not to give me letters from him again and he respected my wishes.

Now he lives in my city. Has been taken back to jail for violating the registry and not registering his address.

Honestly, it still makes me feel a little sick. I hope he dies soon. That would put my mind at ease. It would also keep children safe. I believe he is dangerous and I really do hope he dies somehow.

Oh yeah, my stepbrother killed a dude a few years back. Somehow only got three years. Ohio courts are whack, yo. My teen-boy-banging former school friend got worse.

My boyfriend’s family is filled with wonderful people. His mom went to jail over multiple assault charges….she beat my boyfriend’s father. Dad is a criminal too, chronic steroid user and violent Aunts are also criminals…drug/violence charges.

However, I don’t count them as “people I know” who are criminals because my boyfriend has no contact with these people and hasn’t talked to his mom in almost 10 years (he’s almost 23).

however, no one in his family knows our exact location. We worry we will somehow get a knock on the door and then some crackhead will be looking for him because <insert fake sob story here> so “please give me $$$”

Ugh, it’s nauseating.

I’m proud to say that no one in my IMMEDIATE family (father, mother, sibs) has ever been arrested.

Worked in psychiatric hospital there were several, non compos mentis, that had committed murder or had attempted it. Including a drug dealer that killed his girl friend and dealer in a foreign country where he had lived for five years, They were found as mummies a month after he admitted to the most severe ward at the hospital

@Tropical_Willie

I sometimes work in the psych ward too at the hospital. Bad place. The “bad” hall is the one filled with all the violent patients and 90% of them are criminals. Prior rapists, even. But these people clearly have no problem with pummeling people in…

I also took care of someone in the hospital who was an inmate. He shot multiple people to death. shakes head

Whole thing makes me go home after work and wash all the filth off.

My daughter who is a brand new RN just got a job at a pediatric psychiatric hospital. You name it, they’ve got it. Such as one kid who likes to sneak up behind people and tries to strangle them. It’s one of the most dangerous jobs you could have.

I knew a guy in school, who later went to jail for raping a blind nun.

@seekingwolf No, it was always like this. There is no ‘now’ where things are worse.

@Simone_De_Beauvoir

You’re probably right. I am only in my early 20s. Still adjusting to the adult world despite being on my own for almost 2 years out of college. It’s still jarring to be in a city where it’s pretty much normal that people are walking around with assault charges when just a few years ago, no, it wasn’t a norm at that point in my life. Very strange still.

I still strive to stay away though…it may be a norm to everyone else but it’s not a norm to me and it never will be.

2 former “friends of the family”, a couple, was charged with arson (children involved), larceny, forgery, etc. and will probably be going to jail soon. I don’t want to have contact with them ever again, despite knowing the woman my whole life. If I have to see her when I see her family, I’m going to ignore her.

I met this woman at a church when I was a kid. She was out on parole. This was a HUGE local crime. People still talk about it. She had her name changed and after her parole was up she left the State for good. Nobody can believe that she got out on parole after what she did.

I never spoke to her or anything but I did see her from across a room.

Until recently, I knew another American boat captain who was charged with robbing 40-odd banks, convicted for one, did less than four years in a federal facility, and necessarily lived under a false identity because felons are generally prevented from obtaining US passports. He was smart enough to put away a mil for his defense fund and had made previous arrangements with a government official down here. He was one of the best men I knew down here. He went missing last summer in a storm east of Barbados.

I have had the malodorous acquaintance of a couple of Serbian war criminals who use as a front for their operations a notorious bar on the bad side of Fort-de-France, Martinique, far from the “regular” tourist trade and at the pleasure of police officials: whores, drug running, possibly a slave trade going on, etc., who I wouldn’t touch with a ten foot pole. My last first mate had a marijuana sales conviction on his record back in the States, from when he was in high school. I do business with a Frenchman running from a government graft deal in Algeria decades ago. You can’t swing a dead cat down here without hitting a felon of one kind or another. Most of them are quite reformed and feel lucky that there are still places on earth that a person can re-invent themselves and start over. And most whom I know are homesick as hell. Except the Serbs. They are protected somehow, unapologetic, and very dangerous.

But don’t get me wrong. Most expats down here have clean records, are very well behaved, and unless they actively foolishly go hunting for something they can’t get legally, they will never knowingly come in contact with these other guys. One of the easiest ways to run afoul of the law is to negatively affect the illusion that this a sea of happy, corruption-free, law abiding islands or, more importantly, to interfere in any way with the quiet, unseen, nefarious businesses of government officials who are dependent upon graft to support thier lifestyles, their salaries being merely pocket change.

My buddy, the bank robber, was happy to start over. He ran a totally legal business and enjoyed living the straight life after being a criminal for so long. He got into it young and always told me it much easier to get an education, live in the burbs and work it straight. The criminal life requires 24/7/365 alertness, and you can’t go running to a cop or lawyer when deals go bad. A gun keeps you from being stepped on and the whole lifestyle is exhausting.

My nephew is serving life in prison for murder one. Not something we like to talk about. It breaks my heart every time I see his childhood pictures. How could such a cute little guy, safely wrapped in our close and loving family, do this? I can’t even imagine how his mother deals with the knowledge that her son is in such a place and will never get out – EVER! One horrible, drug-fueled night at a crack house, and his life was virtually over, just like that. Because of what he did, there will be no serving time, getting out, second chances, nothing! Very hard to accept.

I worked in a county jail, teaching, for a year and a half, but they were mostly kids (young adults) with drug offenses. They weren’t violent offenders.

However, in the early 70’s, while I was in my teens, I befriended this kid who had no home, no mom. He slept in his car. His name, his legal name was Buddy Jones. No middle name.
We never really became romantically involved. He’d just show up at our house, sleep on the couch for several hours, then my mom would order pizza for him. He was really good looking but….something just wasn’t there.
After a year or so we lost track of each other.
Then, in 2009 I heard a story about a Buddy Jones convicted of dismembering a woman, I assume his girlfriend.
When I looked further, and saw his picture, I knew in my heart that it was him.

Wow. I went to the top and started reading. This is insane. Some of the things you guys have gone through. Heartbreaking.

@Headhurts

For the sake of clarity:

Are we including illegal aliens or not?

I think we’re including all humans @SecondHandStoke.

No.

According to a few dogs I know, squirrels, cats, birds, mailmen, and garbage men are all criminals of the worst order.

According to my yupid Dutchess dog, all dogs walking along the street should be hung and quartered.

@Dutchess_III

My request for clarification has more to do with location than anything else.

I believe we call all appreciate that what is legal in one jurisdiction possibly is not in another.

I still don’t get the question. If something is illegal to do in one jurisdiction what does it matter if the person is an illegal alien or not? If it’s illegal, it’s illegal, no matter who you are.

If having illegal citizenship status can be considered a crime then the number of criminals I know goes from the one I mentioned above to a higher number.

I’m sorry for the confusion.

O, OK! No, I don’t think minor crimes count. If they do, then I’m one too. :) I’m reformed though.

I do (or did—he’s been on the run as a fugitive since 1982)! I worked for him in a business he had, knew his victim (his girlfriend) and another earlier girlfriend who committed suicide with his handgun in the early 1970’s.

I know I’m late to this question, but I just came across it. My step-brother is in federal prison for selling drugs and arms. I grew up with a little boy who later set a woman on fire, just for kicks, apparently. She lived, thank goodness.

I also knew a serial killer. This guy was one of my ex-husband’s best friends while they were growing up, and he’d been to our home after we got married. That was before he’d killed anyone. That I know of, anyway. They’d been out of touch for a few years when we heard the news. It was shocking. I mean, we knew he wasn’t a good guy, but we never suspected he was that bad.

OMG….

I forgot this guy. He’s long been reformed, has become a good friend, and one hell of an interesting person to spend time at sea with.

I’ll bet @Espiritus_Corvus! Tell him to come here! I’ll give him a piece of jewelry….

A good friend from high school made the national news! He’s a confessed rapist who got away scott free because of the statute of limitations! Yay.

So this individual is not a convicted rapist.

He’s only not convicted because the statute of limitations is a joke here. He fully admitted to doing it and then walked out a free man because it was more than 5 years ago.

If that isn’t a criminal, I don’t know what is.