Have you ever liked someone then discovered something shocking about their past?

[Dappy777]

I like to think I'm a good judge of character, but I've been proved wrong so many times that I no longer trust myself.

For example, there was an elderly guy who lived on our estate with his wife. He was a lovely old school Londoner, very gentlemanly and polite. I later learned that he'd been a violent criminal in his youth and had spent 12 years in prison for robbing banks and security vans! (Still couldn't help liking him.)

They take a test when you get arrested, just like finger prints.

My friend was going out with a guy when we were about 19/20 (they’d met through some sort of hobby) and he was mid-30s. Really nice guy, funny, friendly, kind, generous, quite romantic - lovely all round. He told her after they’d been going out for a month or so that he’d murdered a catholic man (sectarian murder in Belfast) and had spent 15 years in prison. He was released on licence & had turned his life around. They went out for about a year in total before splitting.

It’s hard to reconcile the lovely guy we knew with someone who could commit such a heinous crime. He did a lot of youth work & visiting schools to tell his story & discourage sectarianism / criminality, which is all so worthwhile but it’s honestly hard to
imagine how he was in his youth!

Sadly, I imagine what @barskits wrote could apply to many, many people (men).

Yep. 😐

I was going to post an almost identical story. I'd been chatting to someone in the office, discussing a future work event and thinking what a nice person he was, next day he wasn't in, and he never reappeared. He'd been sent to prison for the same crime you described. He hadn't told anyone at work about his arrest, and the first most of us knew was when it made the local news.

@aquaforceI think you flatter our Teat & Trace organisation to imagine that they had the organisational ability to record our DNA anywhere!

My best friend at primary school in the 60s had a very quiet mum with a German accent. My mum and me were pretty much the only people who'd seen the inside of their house. Turned out she had been working for the Stasi as a spy, but had left East German and was terrified they'd find her and kill her. My mum didn't tell me that until very recently.

It was a delivery driver at a company I briefly worked for in the 90s. I thought he was a nice guy - I was a first-aider at the time, and I’d treated him for a couple of minor injuries. He was polite and grateful, and we got on well. One morning he didn’t turn up for work, which was unusual as he was always reliable. A colleague went to his house to check up on him, and to cut a long story short, he was found dead, having hanged himself from the banisters. He’d strangled his wife in their bedroom. The neighbours had heard an argument, but apparently it wasn’t unusual.

It didn’t surprise me because my 14 year old friend had confided in me that he tried to snog her at a village fete! I remember thinking it was hilarious and we laughed about it - years later it all came out.