Have you ever met someone you felt was truly evil?

[Isisiris]

Inspired by a thread,not a TAAT. have you ever met someone and just known they were evil?
Or has someone you know done something you felt showed they were?
I'm suffering insomnia and this subject fascinates me.

A woman I worked with called Sarah. I knew she wasn't nice from the first time I met her. Horrible, nasty, bullying twat. No one liked her but everyone sucked up to her because they were scared of getting on the wrong side of her. I hated going to work because of her. But I don't know if she was evil, I think she was unhappy with her life and looking back I actually feel sorry for her as I don't ever remember her being happy.

My dh was visiting family in Pakistan as a child. He had gone with his cousin to a shop with arcade type machines. Once there he was approached by another young kid who said that they had better games at their home and to come with him. Dh was with his slightly older cousin and thought it would be OK and went. Once there he was introduced to the child's 'dad'who instantly recognised that dh was from the uk. He showed him uk money and have him £4. He also had a huge gun collection and dh's cousin was super impressed. He let them both fire a rifle. He then asked what they would like to eat and said he would order it for them. They both said thanks but no thanks as they would get food at home. He also kept trying to get them to have a drink. Both boys left but he asked them to come back. Dh told his mum, who told him not to go back and he wasn't allowed out without adult supervision whilst on holiday there again.

At a much later date the man was on the news in Pakistan tv for the rape and murder of 100s of young boys, mostly orphans or runaways. He would drug them, abuse, and then murder them. When the police stormed his home they found sandals of the boys whom he had killed. His 'sons' were boys he would abuse to lure other kids to him.

Dh said it was the insistence that they have something to eat and the fact that he seemed so keen for them to come back that scared him. He had a lucky escape.

@surelynotnever

I think the danger of this thread is that it encourages people to think that 'evil' can be spotted. We are encouraged from the picture books we read as children to movies as adults to think that 'bad' people look bad or ugly can be spotted in some way, as if their inner evil radiates outwards. In reality they cannot be spotted. Its the person you least suspect who abuses your child. They are likeable and normal people, if not, you wouldn't have let them near your child in the first place. That's the most terrifying thing about it.

absolutely.

Which is why in my post upthread I said that I had met one eveil perosn, and also that I had know, for years and perfectly normal bloke, liked by everyone, who turned out to be a horrendous sex offender.

Yes, I would hope that people recognise it is just a thread for when people have sensed something untoward OR for when someone theyve met has turned out to be such, not to perpetuate the notion that we can always tell, we absolutely cannot!
As I've said up thread, the murderer I met had absolutely nothing about him to suggest be was anything other than a nice pleasant (overly so) bloke.

For real crime experts out there, isn't there something about injuries to the frontal area of the brain that has been a theme in murderers? That quite a high number of nasty killer have had head injuries in earlier life, which affects their level of empathy? I think I read it somewhere...

Fred West was an example. He had a motorbike injury (although he also had a horrific childhood, if my memory serves me correctly). I think 'evil' is a combination of things. Like a perfect storm of brain wiring gone wrong and trauma.

I do find it interesting.

I am a teacher and have also had the creeps from young children who have grown up to do horrible things, but aside from the seemingly normal family veneer, you can never really know what's going on in their lives. They could be abused by an extended family member or exposed to some level of trauma that even their parents are unaware of. So it could be that those who say 'their siblings were perfectly lovely, but this one gave me the creeps' are actually picking up on some damage inflicted outside of the family entirely.

I do tend to see it as the effect of some kind of psychological damage. I don't believe in evil as a concept. Evil deeds, yes, but not evil people. Just messed up ones.

@Sceptre86 thats shocking,thank goodness he got away, but those poor boys.
@tigerbearyou did what you could at the time, please don't let others make you feel responsible.

Two examples. A family member who I disliked for no reason. I loved the other members of that side of my family. As I grew up, I started to identify them as a bully. Years later, their partner tried to commit suicide ( they succeeded eventualy) and it turns out they'd been physically and financially abusive to them. I wasn't surprised at all.

Second example, I worked alongside Dennis Neilson. He seemed to be an ok kind of person, almost anonymous.

Goes to show you never can tell. I'm not sure either could be called evil ( not sure what that is really) but they both did very bad things

I’ve been teaching for 20 years and I can honestly say only one boy struck me as ‘evil’. He was very intelligent, manipulative, sneaky etc. Always had a smirk on his face that unnerved you. He did go to prison for drug related offences, but there’s time yet for worse. He would be around 30 now I think. I know any woman would be wise to stay clear, the way he treated female teachers.

When I started secondary school, a boy in my class would follow me around and grope me. My breasts, up my skirt. I was a very innocent 11 yo and wash shocked to my core. So much so, I never told anyone. When he was 19 he raped and murdered an elderly woman - stabbed her repeatedly. A few years later he tried to sue the prison for breaching his human rights by making him clean up after a blocked toilet flooded his cell. I believe it even got higher up the courts system and was in the news. When I saw his picture on the front of the local newspaper I felt sick.

I've known 2 people who actively manipulate people and try to destroy them. To me it seems such a waste of energy.
To hear a 15 year old saying that they have to force someone to commit suicide is one of the most unpleasant things I've ever heard.

My late DM procured children to be sexually abused. She was part of a paedophile circle and took her little sister to be abused. Their mother sent this little sister across the road to masturbate the manager of a local football club. This was in the 1930s. Both my DM and her mother were pillars of their local CofE.

I have the greatest compassion for what she must've suffered and I regret not going to the police as she should have ended her life slopping out in Styal.

Some of these are terrifying @tigerbear's story particularly freaked me out.

I know a child who has the most evil eyes I've ever seen. He was only about 7 last time I saw him and he was manipulating and terrorising other children at the time, encouraging them to do his bidding and picking on the "weakest" of the group. The smirk and stare as a PP mentioned was quite disturbing. He honestly looked like a character from a horror film. My SIL mentioned it to me too after he'd gone so I know I wasn't imagining it at least. I dread to think what he'll do when he hits teenage years.

Did anyone ever watch that Piers Morgan interview with that young man in Americe, that murdered his little sister because he hated his mum that much he wanted to give her the worse pain he could think of. He stabbed her multiple times after he’d told the babysitter to go home. That was pure evil imo.

@supernanmam

Did anyone ever watch that Piers Morgan interview with that young man in Americe, that murdered his little sister because he hated his mum that much he wanted to give her the worse pain he could think of. He stabbed her multiple times after he’d told the babysitter to go home. That was pure evil imo.

I saw this. What scared me most was that he was due to be released - and his Mum was planning to have him back, but she had more children. I hope she didn't risk it, because he had no remorse whatsoever and I'm not convinced her little ones would be safe.

No, I've never met anyone who I think is truly evil. I know and have met people who are truly hideous people but not evil.

Yes I thought the mum was a bit strange in that she was standing by him. He’d brutally killed her little daughter and then she’d had another, yet she seemed prepared to put him at risk too. I don’t think I could ever forgive tbh.

@MrsHugsxx sounds very like a Sarah I used to work with. I genuinely think she was a psychopath.

Not so far, although I alot of people, have worn various masks and it's intriguing when the masks slip at different times.

Yes I have, it was horrible. Looking back, I no longer think the person was evil but my perception was skewed.

@MrsHugsxx

Did her surname begin with S? I came onto this thread to write about a truly sociopathic ex-colleague called Sarah. Spookily dead behind the eyes and would manipulate/blackmail so easily it was frightening. It was such a relief when she ‘left’ the workplace.

I find it very interesting when people talk about "well then I found out that s/he had had a terrible childhood and had been abused themselves" because, to me, isn't that absolving them of personal responsibility?

I'm one of the many who had an absolutely awful childhood. My dad took great pleasure in battering my brother and I for any reason or no reason at all. We were punched, slapped, kicked, thrown against the wall. Verbally abused and terrorised. Starved. Deprived of liquid in the summer - we weren't allowed to even get a drink of water from the tap if he was in that mood. I remember regularly biting my tongue, hard, to produce saliva because my mouth was so dry.

As an adult, I was NC with him for years, and moved house several times and he didn't know where. He eventually tracked me down via my business, and sent a letter to my workplace asking to meet up.

I had strong reservations, but DH and I went. He said that he was sorry if he "maybe wasn't the best dad" but that he'd had a "tough upbringing from his dad too". I said "so you're seriously telling me that you think that that was the right way to bring up a child then?". He didn't answer.

DH and I walked out and I never saw him again.

I had decided while I was still a child myself that I would never have children of my own, but I can assure you that despite or because of him, I am a gentle, kind, patient and loving person.

If I committed a terrible crime though, I would like to think that I'd take full responsibility for it, and not blame it on my bastard of a father or my damaged upbringing.

The one that has stuck with me the most wasn't so much a single person, but a place with a consistent group of people. Years ago DH-at-the-time and I were walking with DD in a stroller in our new neighborhood and found a small video rental store. We decided to go in and rent a dvd. Literally as soon as I entered the store I had the most awful feeling of dread. I said "nope, not being here" and turned straight around and went out. DH was very confused, but I flatly refused to go in. When asked, all I could really say about it was "it feels like a very, very bad place."

About two weeks later DH read a piece in the local newspaper about how a statewide child-pornography ring had been busted. The main hub of the whole thing was that video store.

Yes it's interesting how some children are all brought up in the same family, share the same poor life experiences, but 1 child might be evil, the others not.

So although we might think that certain behaviours and experiences can be the reason for the evil person, why haven't their siblings ended up the same.

I do think some peoples brains are damaged in some way, born that way, psychopathic if that's the description.

I know a child who didn't come across as evil, but her actions certainly were.

My very good friend discovered that his beloved Grandparents were both Nazis in the war. They lived on site at a camp, with their own children, alongside kids of the same age who were starved or gassed, and babies who were “not worth a bullet” and executed by smashing them on walls and trees.

They were intelligent empathetic people, kind to animals, paid their taxes. But that was what they did, for years. I met one of them, and you’d never guess that was their past. But that’s the point of evil, isn’t it? They didn’t identify their acts as evil at the time, it was just what they were required to do for the life they wanted. They were both imprisoned for war crimes and then went on to have utterly ordinary lives.