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?

Scary thing is, absolutely everyone is born with the capacity to murder. It's having that control isn't it, to not act on it if you feel the impulse. I always say you'd have to be very stupid nowadays to think you can get away with murder due to the advancement of DNA, CCTV and computers everywhere, you'd have to be a genius not to leave a trail. Sadly in dear old Fred's case, he most certainly was no genius!

Yes, I know two men who sexually abused a child (one his own daughter). Yes, I definitely thought there was something off about them, but I couldn’t put my finger on it.

One of them, because he was very close to my family and my children, I actually spent years googling his name with all different combinations of search terms to try to find something about his past that would explain why my sixth sense was telling me something wasn’t right.

In retrospect, it made sense. His family was NC with him and he had weird obsessions with the idea of incarceration, like very opinionated about who should go to prison and for what crimes and how prison was a violation of human rights, blah, blah, blah. Opinions that struck me as quite unusual for a wealthy conservative white man in his 60s, who held quite contrary opinions on every other social issue.

I googled him literally for like 5+ years. I actually assumed that what I would find would be DV related. I totally didn’t expect to find what I did. But it made sense looking back.

Other people around both of them though literally did not care that they are paedophiles. 🤷🏻‍♀️ With the exception of us and the children they abused (we’re all NC), it didn’t seem to shock or concern anyone. Both found women after the fact who were perfectly comfortable knowing they are paedophiles and having them around their young grandchildren. The family generally has been fine with it and everyone is very happy to invite them to everything (they don’t invite us though 🤣).

They don’t really have any friends, so I think they did lose some friends, but tbf neither of them are the sort of people you’d want to be friends with, because they’re kinda obnoxious and unpleasant. So I’m not really sure they had many friends to begin with.

I believe the number of men currently serving prison sentences in the UK for sexual offences is about 4000, which is more than all the women in prison for all offences, which of course rarely include any sexual offending. Almost all sexual offences are committed by men and boys. At least 80% of violent crime is committed by men and boys and the outcomes tend to be worse than crimes of violence committed by women because in any attack involving physical strength men have a big advantage. It's not all men, but it's a lot of men.

I was reading one of those crappy true life magazines (Take a Break or something similar) years ago. There was a story about 2 men who had murdered a third guy in the woods. One of them had been the security guard when I worked in retail as a teenager. My then DP and I went on nights out etc with him.

It was a shock tbh. He was a nice enough guy, although had actually been sacked from the retail place for stealing

A boy my daughter was friends with at school stabbed another boy to death - both late teens. He'd been to our house a few times and just seemed a nice lad . Really shocked me but apparently he'd got involved with drug dealing after leaving school

School bursar where I worked years ago - state school. Her and her husband caretaker both at the same school. She was very 1980s shoulder pads, fake huge gold necklace and earrings and perm. With staff a difficult character. I once tried to claim £1.50 for car parking back when I went on a school trip and had to meet at the train station. She refused as it was slightly sun bleached and the 5 wasn’t clear, but wouldn’t give me £1.00 and I never ever claimed anything. School in financial difficulty never ever money for books for anything. I left and a few years later she was caught defrauding the school with her husband. Sheer chance. They managed to find some fraud but could only go back 6 years and she only got charged for what they could prove so a fraction of the fraud. She split up from her husband (allegedly) and went to prison - he didn’t go to prison. She was out in 18 months and back to living in her huge house and designer stuff and holidays. She walked around with her head held high in the local community and claimed to various people at times it was a ‘misunderstanding’ and she actually hadn’t done anything. A friend said a few years ago she was on a local restaurant claiming that her case was similar to the post office. I know the person that caught her out. She was 100% guilty as was her husband. Still don’t know how or why he wasn’t convicted. We are talking about serious serious amounts of money.

Not close friends. Pub acquaintances 30yrs ago.
Two blokes done for football hooliganism. Last time I saw they seemed to be grown up, employed dads.
And another lad done for armed robbery. He'd been a junkie for years and went down a very stupid path. He'd been moved to our area by his parents who wanted to get him away from his bad influences.

Someone I was at school with was a gas engineer who went to prison for providing fraudulent gas safety certificates to a lettings agency with forged tenants' signatures. He'd been doing it for four years before he was caught - just not bothering to go to the properties to do the gas safety checks. He was a bit of a class clown at school but he seemed like a decent lad, so I was quite shocked to see him in the local news.

A friend murdered someone close to them, it was a total shock to all. I really struggle to believe they were capable of it.

When I was younger I knew the man (he was a boy then) that killed the young woman named Claire that had the law named after her. He was a friend of my brother's. I see his family now, all very normal. He seemed fine when he was younger.
My cousin been inside twice for selling/ making drugs. All the family very law abiding.
I know of several others that have been in prison. I wouldn't be frightened of any of them. I also know others that haven't been to prison but are really terrible people.

A family friend is currently on remand and due to be sentenced soon for conspiracy to supply class A drugs. Plead not guilty but jury found him guilty at trial. Looking at a 20 year stretch.

A few lads I went to school with got caught up in the hotel “protests” off the back off the Southport murders last year. Tried to set a hotel on fire, threw bricks and wooden planks at police officers and police horses.

Another lad I went to school with got sent down for manslaughter. Had a fight outside a pub and the other lad ended up dying from hitting his head.

A girl I went to school with got sent to a young offenders unit for stabbing another girl in the arm when she was 17.

Oh, and not quite 'serious crime', but I had a Saturday job in a big, well-known shop over Christmas when I was in 6th form and my then-boyfriend, who was from the next town, came in to pick me up one day, saw my manager, and his jaw dropped. He worked in a shop in his town, and my manager was barred from it for being a serial shoplifter to the point of kleptomania - he showed me his photo on the staff notice-board and it was definitely him. He was a very well-heeled, officious stuffed suit of a man and incredibly strict, so I was gobsmacked.

@TheGhostsOfMeAndYou yes - a chap who used to work for me was convicted of murdering his wife. He was always 'intense' and the court case revealed controlling behaviour which I can't say surprised me. He has never admitted it was him (there was compelling evidence and motive) and was recently denied parole. The wife was lovely. I often think about their children who suffered the loss of both Parents that day.

My old beautician was married to a drug dealer who was convicted. Tbf to him, he used his time in prison to educate himself and agreed that had he been shown the value of education when he was younger, he'd have made better choices.

In both cases I wasn't overly surprised by either conviction. I was properly shocked by the first thought.

We know the parents of a man who killed his grandma.
Parents are decent people so it was a shock.

Just thought of a couple more.

A man who was a member of the AmDram group I was in was found to have CSA images on his computer. This was in the early 2000s long before DBS checks. Theatre laws meant that we'd always had a chaperone backstage, but it was still a horrible feeling.

And a bit DS was at school with is (apparently, it can't be confirmed due to his age) in prison for murder of a fairly well known case. School made it clear that DC were not allowed to discuss this. But the boy in questioned disappeared. Sadly not a surprise , he was a vile little bully who had been picking on my son for years.

When I was 19 one of my colleagues was convicted of fraud. It came to light during a routine audit and they waited until he was due to go off on paternity leave a couple of months later to get the investigators in so he didn't get wind of the fact that they were onto him. The police were waiting for him on his first day back in the office after a month off and he missed a large chunk of his daughter's early life after he was imprisoned.

We were a close knit team and everyone was very shocked. But he had tried to feel me up on multiple occasions over the previous few months, despite him being a married father whose wife was pregnant, and me being ten years younger than him and fresh out of school.

Not the same type of behaviour, but in retrospect it was a sign of his dishonesty and lack of respect for those around him, and someone who will cheat in one way will probably cheat in other ways too.

Yes, my DP. About 35 years ago.

CRB checks started in 2002, that seems ridiculously recent.

Do crimes against fashion count?

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Yes. And I've watched the lives it ruined too. Which in a different way is as unforgivable as the crime itself.

I have a friend who has been to prison four times for fraud, two times before I met her. Charming, elegant rich family who bully her. She spent the lot and is skint. Can never work locally as it's all over the Internet.

I worked with a murderer. A broken man. Same story as a pp re a fight and cracking his head.

The vicar who married us was a paedophile. He was very rude to my mum (a copper). He did a flit leaving a room full of images.

A landlord with a drug habit who was a solicitor and stalked me. Cautioned and issued with a non molest.

My last boss was a ex military person. He had killed many people after he left the service and he threatened to kill me if I exposed his money laundering.
I never went back to work or near the office.

If they do then I should have received a life sentence before I was out of my teens.

Yes girl i worked with stole thousands of pounds from a resturant we worked for including wedding gifts including a coworkers wedding pressent money and gift cards all found under her bed