Have you ever known someone who committed a serious crime?

[TheGhostsOfMeAndYou]

I’ve been listening to a true crime podcast recently and it got me thinking. One of the episodes was about Fred and Rose West. When Fred was first arrested (at the stage where police had only uncovered three bodies in the garden), his brother and sister-in-law spoke about him and said they couldn’t believe he’d done what he was accused of, as he had always seemed so gentle and polite spoken.

It made me wonder — has anyone here ever known someone who’s committed a serious crime, and did it come as a total shock? Or were there warning signs in hindsight? Did you ever suspect anything at the time? And how did others around them react — was it disbelief, or did some say they weren’t surprised?

DH's good friend of many many years. I always said he was gay and stuck deep in the closet despite being married twice with kids.

I found out he'd been convicted of possession of indecent images of children via a court report on Twitter. All were young boys and babies. I think DH went into actual clinical shock for a few days when I had to tell him.

ExDP and his domestic abuse to me. It was certainly pretty serious for me. The police weren't interested. A police officer visited me to and told me that yelling wasn't abuse. I told her my GP and Women's Aid said the opposite but she reckoned she knew better. That was 2 years ago. I'm still having counselling to recover and I'm too unwell to work.

My aunt worked with Dennis Nilsen at the Job Centre, said he kept himself to himself so didn’t get to know him really.

My PE teacher was imprisoned for paeedophila about 20 years after I left school. We 15 year olds back in the day always used to mutter what a perv she was because she always wanted to check that we were wearing the blue knickers under our PE skirts as specified by the uniform rules. It turned out we were right all along!!!

My old primary school teacher got found out to be a peadophile and then subsequently committed suicide. He was a really nasty piece of work at school, I remember him regularly targeting kids in the class and screaming in their face and all the kids were petrified of him. This was primary school too. He also ran the (all girls) school gymnastics club.

Me too

I had a friend who’s 6 month old baby drowned in the kitchen sink (she was bathing her and left her unattended). Nobody seems to know to this day why she left her baby in a bath unattended. She wasn’t convicted because she was deemed too unstable to stand trial.

Lad I went to school with killed his father.

Is this like writing to prisoners when you hear about women who fall in love with people on death row in the US?

Why did you visit prisoners instead of e.g. hospital patients or the elderly? Is it to prisoners who don't have any visitors? What do you chat about? Are the prisoners open or just talking rubbish about the justice system.

Don't answer if its too personal.

Yes very well known murder. Turned out to be a friends boyfriend at the time who was the murderer. I always thought he was odd but never would have imagined him capable of committing a brutal murder!

My former teacher was convicted of the manslaughter of their spouse - the spouse was also a former teacher. They will be out by now as I think they got seven years and this was over two decades ago.

Report them to HMRC, you can do it anonymously.

When I was a child, my friend’s stepfather got put away for sexually abusing her and her brothers. I was always creeped out by the guy so in a way it wasn’t that shocking. One of the worst parts is she’d told her mother and she didn’t believe her! Believed her monster of a husband.

My childhood neighbour also turned out to be a paedophile. He was a much more genial, friendly guy, so it was kind of more of a surprise, although once he was convicted I could kind of see it I guess.

I had a few flower arranging classes with a local florist. He was pretty camp and seemed harmless. He was replaced and the next thing I knew he was being arrested on an array of charges relating to animals, children and necrophilia (!!!)

This happened when I was 8, He was a neighbour. Very long story so will try to make it shorter! It also has a trigger warning below..

Started hearing noises in the attic, Told my mum about it but it was explained as house noises/pipes etc I still remember being wide awake in my bed hearing various bangs and noises.

This went on for weeks.

Got home one day and my mum went upstairs for something then shouted for me to get out of the house, She also ran out of the house, shut the front door behind her and ran to the neighbours house where she called the police.

Long story short another neighbour had been hiding in our attic for weeks, The reason my mum told me to get out of the house was because when she went upstairs she saw the attic door was open. We never went in the attic for anything so she noticed right away. We had clearly got home before he was expecting us to that day.

Police went up into the attic and found him there, He had a make shift bed made up, a blanket and a pillow, empty food wrappers and the worst thing for me was the small hole he had made through my bedroom ceiling so he could watch me at night when I was in bed (I can't sleep properly if I think about that part a lot)

Found out later he was hiding from the police because he had been TRIGGER WARNING sexually abusing his 8 year old son, Neighbour went to prison.

Also found out after the fact that said neighbour had been the local 'peeping tom' and would look through windows at night, exposing himself to women and children, and would also call people and heavy breathe down the phone etc and was well known as the local creep. He admitted to the police that he was going to take me away but obviously didn't get the chance.

There but for the grace of God go I.
Scary how an unplanned "event" can have such devastating consequences.
I know of several people with various types and numbers of convictions (none sex related) and they are all OK people.

I worked with a guy who a few years after the place had closed down was convicted of a violent rape in the park after following a woman home on a night out.
I found him really sinister and mysoginistic when I worked with him, although some of my friends thought he was a nice guy.
I was not surprised in the slightest. He got a long sentence, but I thought I saw him a few years ago at a train station (when he likely could have been out).

I remember this so clearly, my DD was 3 weeks old at the time it was all in the papers. That picture of her in the doorway haunts me.

A man who taught me when I was in secondary school was relatively recently convicted on absolutely heinous sexual crimes. The number of attacks and the nature of them was truly appalling. While he was always a creepy bastard, I was shocked to discover the true depths of it.

A boy I went to school with (I say boy because this was only a year or so after we left secondary school) was convicted of murder. He’d always been a fighter, a bit of a billy big bollocks type, and he’d decided to start carrying a knife. You can guess how that went. Completely unsurprising. He was never going to turn out to be a good’un.

Yes, my father-in-law. Stabbed and killed the man who raped
my then 11-year-old sister-in-law. My husband was a baby at the time and didn’t see his father again until was in his late 20’s.

Does your friend's first name begin with the same letter as the boyfriend/murderer's surname? If so I think I know which one you are referring to.

A supermarket security guard who went to prison for kidnapping, a trainee teacher for stalking and a teacher for grooming and underage sex.

I have also taught someone who murdered whilst he was still at school.

All made national newspapers.

My friend's ex raped her then the judge let him out on bail and he stabbed her and slit her throat and then tried to burn the baby alive.

The judge said it wasn't necessary to try him for rape as she was dead. Family court then let him push for contact for the baby.

I know someone who murdered someone. There was heroin and mental illness involved. He's in prison now.
I also know someone who killed someone in a hit and run. Again, there was heroin involved. I don't know about mental illness in that case. He was imprisoned for it, but I don't know what's happened to him now.

Unfortunately a few, mostly violence against women. The one that I immediately thought of though was a relative (by marriage) who was done for death by dangerous driving. He has since reoffended, another ‘accident’ involving a pedestrian. Nobody was shocked, he drives like a maniac and nobody trusted him behind a wheel long before the first crime. Most believe both incidents were entirely intentional, including me and his own mother- he uses his big trucks like weapons.

He’s not outwardly horrible, can actually be quite the kind protective type, but not someone I’d want to make an enemy of, or even associate with when not absolutely necessary.