What’s the most shocking thing to happen in your neighbourhood/home town.

[Choclabratwatowner88]

Had the police around earlier to fill in a quick questionnaire in regard to a serious incident that just happened locally. As we live on the main road they wanted to know if we saw anything, the usual. My mum then pipes up that’s she’s been through this years ago when they were investigating a murder in our home town (not our current hometown) I was shocked as I’m 37 and never heard of this murder in my whole life, granted I was 3 at the time but still… things like that usually spread for years. I then went down a rabbit hole, turns out the murder happened right across the street from our old estate. The woman murdered was called Penny bell. She was found stabbed more than 50 times in her car, they still haven’t caught the killer. I never knew this whole time and it kinda threw me.
what’s the most shocking thing to happen in your hometown?

Don't live there now but the Steve Wright/Suffolk strangler murders. I actually lived fairly close to him and the red light district at the time.

A few years later a man decapitated himself in Asda car park, that was pretty shocking.

Can't actually think of anything in my current town

Exactly, ultimately the child is left with no parents and a lifetime of trauma most likely in the care of family who will forever have that grief hanging over them. It's baffling.

I posted this one too. I remember the police not connecting the deaths at first, and not even considering the last 3 to be murders.

Shows to me that it was never about the child, more the man's ego, sadly.

2 fatal family house fires in my street.

Local vicar arrested and imprisoned for child porn.

A couple who lived a few streets over bought a pair of twins online from America and triggered a controversy, before relinquishing the chilldren back.

That twat Mick Philpott setting fire to his house and killing his six children, then telling lies and crying crocodile tears at the press conference.

I had to look the suicide up (Thomas Anthony Hopkins RIP) as I'm baffled as to how you could do this?! There's no insight on the method - probably just as well - but, blimey. He must've rigged something up for the purpose, I guess. Hope it was quick & efficient 😕

School teacher killed the wife and baby of a colleague she was obsessed with. Left school at lunch time to do it apparently. Got 2 life sentences.

I grew up in Brighton so probably the IRA bombing the Grand Hotel and almost killing Thatcher. Obviously they missed their target, thank god, but sadly others died and some were severely injured.

It was about four years before I was born though so I didn’t live through it. My dad was talking about it the other day, apparently the blast noise woke him up and he stirred a bit, wondered what it could have been and fell back to sleep again. My mum was up in Essex at my grandads house with my two older brothers, middle brother was a new born so good job they were out of it.

My dad was actually trying to get an early night as he had a job interview for the head of department at a local comprehensive the next day, and all he and the other candidates sitting around the waiting room that morning could talk about was what had happened the night before. My dad didn’t get the job, but funnily enough no one interviewed at that time did. Possibly everyone had a lousy interview. Must have been a strange morning.

Yes, yes it was

Mostly young people wrapping performance cars around a lamppost, same lamppost every time. You would think they would hear about it and be more careful but no, so many lives lost in one particular place.

we had a couple of abductions but they ended up being people they knew so not strangers,

most shocking of all was out walking the dog hearing a helicopter crash (well a loud bang) and screaming sirens etc. alas all killed

Yes, the police blamed some of the later deaths on drugs first. They also missed evidence at the original crime scene.

There was a murder in our town, eerily though, it wasn't investigated as a murder until sometime later (body exhumed), around the time of the murder I was even parked right outside their house when I was attending an event across the road. It's been high-profile, lots of documentaries about it. Not saying though as it will give away my location/be outing.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Steven_Grieveson?wprov=sfti1

I went to the same school as the victims (though several years earlier) and lived very close to where the bodies were found.

A mass fight on Christmas eve in a neighbouring leisure facility that was hosting a party night. Ended up in the national press as lots of people were hurt and the screams were horrifying. Lots of cars and property smashed up. Lots of riot police charging through my garden at 1am, and helicopters landing in nearby fields after searching for perpetrators, or treating victims. Lots of knives, snooker cues and a pistol flying over the garden fence, and discovered on Xmas morning. Journalists banging on my door in the morning looking for a story to go to press. It was on the TV and in local and national papers. In an otherwise quiet rural location, this was the event that no one in this village will ever forget.

Local drug dealer who apparently was an arse to everyone, went missing never to be seen again.

The Lady who bought his house had to/decided to move which side their driveway was on as it was rumoured he buried his drug money in the garden and she was being watched by bikies parked up outside. Apparently he was selling for them and never paid ‘their’ share.

she was a keen gardener but never came across anything apart from junk his family had left behind in the roof. A builder has bought the property now.

That’s what I thought from the horrible circumstances but the original comment saying no one was caught for it felt weird.

Historically, Amelia Dyer

In my lifetime,
Mary-Ann Leneghan
Olly Stephens
The random fatal stabbing of 3 men in the Forburt Gardens. They were all gay but apparently that was a coincidence. There were more than 3 victims, but "only" 3 died.

Obvious NC…Yes, I remember going into school the next morning and the talk being of the boy killed down the road. The names of the perpetrators were known widely and people I knew knew them.
It was a factor in getting out of that postcode when I went off to university a few years later and never living there again. The racist attitudes were entrenched.

Huddersfield. My next door neighbour strangled his wife to death in 2004 ish. Totally normal couple so I thought.

Rachel Nickell murder in Wimbledon Common.
As a family we were in the common at the same time.
Devastating for her young Son

Sophie Hook

Worked as a Nanny on the same street as 'au pair' Sophie Lionnet was tortured and Murdered in Southfields SW19

Oooh i just wrote Rachel too.
I was at the common the day she died. And like you, we saw Colin Stagg alot. I remember sitting next to him at a Chelsea Game

partner and his sister knew the both of them was a very strange time as they used to hang out with them both