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?

Was in a group of friends, one was this lovely gentle guy, kind, soft person. Knew his family, went out with his brother briefly. All lovely people I moved cities and we lost touch. He violently raped a woman about two years later. He was all over the papers.

I’m still so confused about it. It really shakes your trust in people. Apparently he had been repeatedly abused as a child and had a kind of breakdown.

Yes, he stabbed and dismembered his girlfriend. Total shock. He was a polite and intelligent young man.

My ex husband. We continued living together in the same house for a few months after we split as we hadn't told the children and they were doing important exams at the time. He was drinking heavily every night. Woke up in the early hours one morning with him on top of me raping me. Next day he acted like the victim, drinking heavily as we'd split up, didn't remember any of it, acted scared, questioned my recollection. Totally reeled me in so I didn't report him.
I only reported him 2 years later when I had been away from his emotionally abusive ways for a good while and could see his abusive, selfish and downright nasty behaviour begin to play out. He told my kids, who didn't know what he had done that I was lying. He lied to the police. It didn't go to court due to insufficient evidence.
He now lives in Scotland with a woman he used to work with and her 2 younger children. When we were together he used to complain about her being useless at her job. And that she only got promoted as a women in a male dominated field. He moved 300 miles away (excellent for me) from his own children after a long distance relationship of a few months with this woman, and now expects my kids to make it work and visit him. Again acting like the victim in a situation he created. My daughter didn't want him to go but he told her it was right for him.
I never thought he would rape me but I did see him get blind drunk many times and have no idea where he was or what he was doing. Also saw him act innappropriately around a friend's 13 year old daughter at a party. He now lives with partners 11 year old daughter. I wanted to warn the child's father about the ex, so reached out to him through social media and asked him if I could call him. He didn't reply but I got a phone call a couple of days later from a Scottish policeman saying my ex,s new partner had made a complaint about me. Said I was harassing them by trying to speak to her family members. I told him why and he just said don't contact him again. So it's off my hands now, nothing else I can do.

A neighbour who i used to see when we both walked our dogs was convicted of online scamming. I could not believe it. He was living in a lovely Victorian villa in an expensive neighbourhood with all his ill gotten gains!

A girl I used to babysit was convicted of fraud when she skimmed about £47k from customers at the restaurant she worked at in London over a period if about 7 months.

It was a massive scandal in the town she lived in as her family owned one of the pubs there so people wondered if she did the same thing there. She definitely didn't as people paid cash in small town Ireland at the time.

I adopted two girls. We met their birth parents - social services like to set up a meeting like this before the children move. The birth father was so charming and likeable - social workers clearly had a soft spot for him and were incredibly positive about him (while being pretty hostile to birth mum tbh).

A few years later he was convicted of paedophilia against another family member and received a long sentence. He was part of a paedophile ring and there is a strong suspicion that one of the (male) social workers was involved too, as his behaviour towards the birth dad was completely unprofessional and actually pretty disturbing. Management got involved, it was so serious, but I don't know what happened.

Can you imagine what went on fifty or a hundred years ago, when all this was just swept under the carpet? I should imagine that the rape and abuse of poor girls was so common people barely even noticed. I don't mean they approved, but they just shrugged and said "well, men will be men, and there's nothingg we can do about it, just as there's nothing we can do about lice and hunger and cold." Plus most girls kept quiet. They knew those in authority would say "be quiet girl, who do you think you are? How dare you make up such wicked lies?" Those awful workhouses and orphanages must have been infested with rapists and paedophiles.

I have a suspicion that sexual abuse was common in care homes/orphanages until very recently. It's a scandal that, for some reason, has never broken. Time and again I have heard or read accounts by people raised in care in the 1960s and 1970s who were abused. It almost surprises me when someone wasn't. Why aren't the vermin who did such things being dragged out of their retirement homes and put on trial? I once read a book called The Golly in the Cupboard. It was an account of the author's time in a British orphanage in the 1960s and 1970s. The 'man' who ran it routinely raped and abused the girls. I honestly wish I had never read it. It has haunted me ever since. Now if that creature was in his 30s back then, he'd now be around 80. Why isn't he on trial? These men ought to be hunted down like Nazi or Japanese war criminals. Maybe people think they're too old. Really? I don't give a f-ck if the man who raped those girls is 90 and dying of cancer. I'd drag him into the dock and make him face the survivors before his filthy, worthless life ends.

A lot of them have been brought to trial.

There was an article in The Guardian on Friday by a woman who lodged with Fred and Rose West as a young girl, recently arrived in England from her abusive home. The confusion and guilt she carries still is overwhelming. Frequently assaulted by West, scared of both of them, she attempted to report to police yet couldn't bring herself to do so. I completely agree that sexual abuse of the unprotected young by predators was commonplace and sufferers of it were generally considered both provocative and complicit. Disgusting. It's not so far away even now, we're just more observant.

Yes a man I worked with at one point. He tried asking me for a lift from work a few times as he knew I needed to go via the town he lived in to get into the motorway to come home. I didn't feel right about it so invented things I was doing so I wouldn't be available for a lift. 3 of my friends in the office often made plans with me directly from work which only existed to avoid him.. We all felt something was off with him.

Months later I moved to a different site and someone else was doing my old post in the office, He got my personal number from her as he said he had lost it.. He never had it in the first place. Anyhow I left that job the following year and was settled in a new job, new area and with a new partner. So he held this number for about 18 months.

He rang me one Sunday afternoon for a chat. He said Ann gave him my personal number. My partner was sitting on the sofa beside me. We had got engaged the week before. I put the call on speaker as I had an off feeling so I wanted a second listener.. He made small talk about how much he missed me since I left. Weird.. He tried to find out where exactly I was living. Nope. I stayed vague.

Then he asked me on a date as we would be so good together, I told him I was newly engaged. He hung up the phone abruptly.

Didn't think of him for another 3 years when I heard of a murder in x town, I thought to myself that's where John lived. Later that evening on the news, I saw where he had been arrested for murdering his mother and attempted manslaughter towards his brother who survived. He pled insanity and unlikely to ever be free.

I know someone who was jailed for fraud to the tune of hundreds of thousands of pounds. Absolutely shocking - he was a stereotypical “pillar of the community”.

The dad of a school friend was also jailed for murder. He was always a bit taciturn but I never had him down as a murderer! I think he’s dead now. (The dad, not the victim, obviously.)

A childhood best friend of mine was jailed for 27 years some 8 years ago for committing, and allowing her husband (not dc dad) to commit atrocious sexual and physical abuse on her 4 dc.

Knocked me sick, she seemed a lovely girl at school.

I used to babysit a little boy who was definitely a very difficult child. When he grew up he blinded someone in a fight then shortly after getting out of prison he killed a police officer.

😳

I am getting rather bemused at so many people who are adamant they don't know anyone with a criminal record. Some won't of course but, how do you know ? People go about advertising it? Anyone who has been arrested and charged has to wear a t-shirt with their crime written on it?

I worked with someone whose husband tried to set their house on fire with their 4 children (well, three of them his) in it. He hung himself in Strangeways and is allegedly the reason suicide checks are now more frequent. All the children were taken into care following it and she never got them back-very sad overall.

I went through a stage of online dating. One woman I met (I'm gay) told me on our second date that she'd done life in prison for manslaughter-she was in her mid forties when I met her and this had happened in her twenties-she had driven home from the pub drunk, crashed the car and killed her best friend. She'd done ten years. I put it down to being an idiotic mistake in her younger years and I did see her again however we parted ways for other reasons. She recently got back in touch (9 years ish later) and confessed that while she were seeing me, she was heavily into alcoholism. We'd only had a few dates, it wasn't obvious at all. We'd met for drinks and/or food and drinks anyway as things often go, and I had no idea that she would then carry on once we'd said goodbye, and when I had stayed over she'd got up in the night and carried on once I was asleep. She's in recovery now, has been for over five years and we've become friendly.

As I have said earlier in the thread, you do meet some unsavoury characters in strip clubs and I have learned that I (unknowingly, obviously) have danced for two men who have now been convicted of crimes against children.

Yes. Know two people who were convicted of serious crimes.

One lad was a foster kid a couple years ahead of me in school. Came from a chaotic background and went back to chaotic home when he aged out of foster care. Is in prison for murder now after killing someone during an argument. Honestly wasn’t shocked.

Anothet man I babysat his child when I was a teen. Then one day years later I was reading the paper saw he was convicted for being a peeping Tom and then awhile later sexual assault. Didn’t see it coming. I liked his wife and didn’t like him much but didn’t think sexual predator about him.

@Heebeebee feel sick reading that. The poor little boy.

I assume people who'd been found guilty of crimes would be in the local newspapers, @Stripperyone & never seen anyone I know..

Local newspapers don't have enough people to cover every case, especially sexual abuse ones which fill the courts. So there's no guarantee you wouldn't know a serious criminal.

Some current ones, yes but (by far!) not all of them. And historical ones aren't often mentioned unless they're particularly heinous and/or high profile. A lot of things are just quickly forgotten and/or swept under the carpet depending on who someone is as well as what they did. The woman I mention for instance who I dated, I can google her name and nothing comes up.

Definitely the majority are not picked up and covered by the newspapers. Ours does have a court round up bit, but you’d only see if they were included in that and went to look for it.

A friend of mine is married to a New York City police detective. He and another detective were called to the scene of a bank robbery. The robber had handed the bank teller a note demanding all of the cash in her drawer. After he left, she looked at the other side of the note. It was written on the back of a parol hearing notice that included the robbers name and address.

The address was a short walk from the bank. When the detectives got to his flat, the robber was counting the cash at his kitchen table. He was shocked to have been caught so quickly.

Most criminals aren’t very bright.

My mums best friend was murdered bh her husband when i was 18. He was the village police man and I babysat their 2 kids regularly. None of us had any idea he was capable of it. It was premeditated.

My current next door neighbour moved in when he got out of prison. He did 3 years for GBH. He was already on a suspended sentence for GBH at the time of the second offence. He attacked 3 men with glasses and bottles outside a pub and bit part of a man's ear off before stabbing him. The men he attacked looked at him "funny 9th

Neighbour on the other side until he died in 2022, I had a man who raped me in 2020, He only moved in 2 months before and served 6 months on remand before getting out 2 weeks after pleading guilty. According to probation he had served his time but was on sex offenders list for 5 years. He died from a bad batch of heroin.

I actually have some lovely neighbours but my house is like fort knox did to gbh neighbour

Was she American?