To ask for stories of people you knew who turned out to be criminals?

[QuackPorridgeBacon]

Ok so I knew this guy at school and also at a club type thing (think scouts but different). He always annoyed me, I hated having to take orders from him as he was 'higher up' I would argue and get told off.. anyway, I moved away and a few years later it's in the news that he has committed crimes against under aged girls, between the ages of 14 and 16. I was shocked but I always thought he was creepy.

My father was convicted of fraud. Not at all surprised, he was a serial liar. I was already NC with him for a few years, I didn't find out till much later. The people he stole from were ill and vulnerable. I just can't ever get past what he did, plus he was able to convince the judge it was out of character (it wasn't). He just had never been caught before. There's many other reasons I'm NC with him, but I just can't ever ever trust him so there's no way to rebuild a relationship.

When I was about 8, a girl with red hair (I remember her vividly) in the class above me was shot dead (along with her mother and sister) by her father, who then turned the gun on himself. My parents let me read the newspaper report!!

The male IT technician at my 3-18yrs all girls school turned out to be a paedophile, this was the early 00s. We saw him around the IT lab occasionally and a few girls in my class (yr6) thought he was cute (he was young and seemed cool), a couple of people outright didn't like him and a few of us had no opinion beyond he was always kind and a bit bland.

A teacher at my next school (but before my time) was falsely accused of sex offences (the claimant admitted making it up and encouraging friends), but it was too late. The very highly strung music master threw himself off Beachy Head.

My first boss was also lucky to escape prosecution for repeatedly thieving out of our tills. She's still employed in retail although not for that chain. Apparently she's been fired for thieving before, too.

As a boy, my dad lived across the road from someone who was arrested, tried and hanged for serial murder. Dad remembers the day of the hanging and how sorry they all felt for his perfectly nice parents. He'd seemed so normal, apparently.

Oh and another church family the father was arrested and charged for interfering with his own children. And I viewed a house built by Fred west (I didn't know at the time) the vibe was awful I still have nightmares now.

DSHathaway How awful. That poor man. I always say you can never take allegations of that kind of crime at face value. I don't doubt that teachers do abuse children but I find it hard to believe there are that many people who are genuine victims tbh.

I had a school friend I was quite close to. One day she told me she had been emotionally abused by her DF. It was a shock. I really liked him. Am not sure that really counts as a crime though.

I wish she hadn't told me. I still think about it and I feel it was a huge burden for me to carry. I don't even know if she was telling the truth. I gave her the benefit of th edoubt though. Sometimes as children we misinterpret things our parents say and do. I know there are times when I thought i was hard done by as a child but it turned out i had misread the situation.
Awful for her if it was true though. really sad.

nomad5 I can't imagine how that must feel.

Music teacher at my school got 2 years in the clink for sexual abuse but that was after he left my school. My school was all girls and he always flirted with the 6th form girls. So you can imagine the shock when it turned out that he liked to groom little boys. I never would have guessed he was like that. He was a good teacher and I am shocked and saddened taht he might have something so gross and stupid

Watching one of these programs where rigue tradesmen were watched and this guy turns up with a ladder and comes down from the chimney with a huge nest saying the chimney needs load of work. Camera closes on him and its someone I went to school with . He was always a sly little shit good to see him done

Someone i desperately tried to be mates with at 18 who borrowed money from me then blanked me has gone on to defraud 50k out of his own disabled dad, who refused to press charges. He was on deal or no deal but his actual game never aired after his arrest. Think he won 18k and had to give it all to his dad. One of the mates who stood by him lived to regret it when he nicked her debit card, ended up on judge rinder over that one. His dad refused to press charges so only spent few months in prison. He was well known to still go for 13-15 year old girls even in his early 20s round the local towns emo/goth/scene community. From what i hear from a few mutual friends even now hes 29 he still will take any girl he can get interested despite drunkness or age. And hes on all sorts of dating apps claiming to be about 23 going for younger women than that.

A man i used to walk my dogs with is a an infamous serial rapist. You would have never have guessed it - he was lovely. I was absolutely flabbergasted when I heard he was convicted.

The catholic priest who used to organise the teenage discos when I was a teenager, was later discovered to be a paedophile (boys). My sister and I didn't like him and told our parents about our feelings because we were asked why we didn't want to go back. He was moved to the arse end of nowhere in the Rep of Ireland to do it again

The CEO of a company I used to work for was imprisoned in an open jail for tax evasion. He was an incredibly charming man.

Forgot to add, the hairdresser who coloured my hair was murdered by her boyfriend. He came in when she was doing my hair and I instantly took a dislike to him (a weird feeling). I was so sad to hear that she had been murdered. She had left him by this stage, but he tracked her down.

Elendon I remember that being in the news if it's the same case I'm thinking of. Did he go into her salon? Awful case, she seemed such a lovely lass.

No, it wasn't that although that was sad too.

He killed her at her new home, new life, new start and new partner (who was stabbed too). The children were asleep upstairs.

My mum always raved about her lovely handsome dentist (she is a nervous patient). Said how kind and sensitive he was. One appointment he just wasn't there anymore. Turns out he handed himself into the police for murdering his wife and wife's lover from years ago. He had staged the murder as a double suicide and got away with it.
It was shocking. The story was made into a TV series. James Nesbit played the dentist.
My mum is still in shock even now when she talks about it, can't believe it's actually real. The poor family, it's quite a small community where they are from.

I saw that TV series! He also sexually assaulted patients.

Yes! I don't think he touched my 70 year old mum tho!!

I was at school with a lad who, when we were in our early 20s, came home from a shift at work one day to find his entire large family murdered and his dad was later found hanging in the garage, having killed them all first. I barely remember the rest of his family, maybe a sister - or the dad, but I'd have seen them around a lot as it was a village. When it happened I lived a couple of hundred miles away but saw it on the national evening news...

My ex was done for harrassment (three times - got away with it once as it was a small, Hertfordshire court who were so naive and provincial he managed to totally pull the wool over the magistrates' eyes. He went on to be convicted later in other courts, with proper judges, twice. I often wonder if those magistrates read it in the papers and realised they'd been made idiots of).

My brother had a close friend in childhood, who he lost contact with. Years later, some kind of sinister services police come knocking to ask if he knew where his long lost friend was (He didn't). Apparently he'd joined the navy, done some sort of crime and gone on the run. How they tracked down his childhood friends, I dread to think. We never found out if they caught up with him or not, or precisely what he'd done.

My kids' IT teacher was convicted of having and distributing child pR0n. Worse still, some of the pR0n was about animals. If you'd asked me after any parents' evening who was the nicest and most caring teacher - I'd have said him. He had a wife and a young child and I think they lost their house and everything.

The 'road rage' killer Tracie Andrews' victim was the bus driver on the bus route that went past my house. We used to call him 'the handsome bus driver' and everyone on the route knew him and liked him. Never knew her but it was shocking knowing the victim in a high profile case - the second we saw his picture on the news, we recognised him.

When we first moved to our current house, we got on well with our nextdoor neighbours. They were a bit 'rough' but polite and friendly. The bloke was genuinely funny, he had a really dry sense of humour and used to have us in stitches.

About 6 months after we moved in, a local pub was involved in an incident. Fighting had kicked off and then someone had open fired with a sawn off shotgun at the optics behind the bar. No one hurt, just the pub wrecked.

The morning after, I heard about this at the corner shop. I saw the neighbour in the back garden and we said hello. I asked if he had heard about the pub and he said casually, and looking a little downcast 'yeah, not one of my brightest moments. It was my mates gun, I was stupid to stop in the pub with it. But then [Landlord of pub] was a complete arsehole to me and I just lost it so shot up their optics. I'm waiting to be picked up any time so just trying to enjoy the morning before the coppers get told it was me and get here'.

It was exactly the sort of dry humour he came out with and I laughed and said that I hoped he managed to evade capture for at least the morning and went in.

An hour later there was a huge commotion outside and his house was surrounded by police cars and vans, with police marksmen trained on the house and a megaphone telling him to come out. It was like something out of an American cop drama. And it turned out it was actually him and he was deadly serious when he was telling me what happened in the back garden

Growing up in the 80's, we had a boy live nearby. He was pretty horrible and my sister and I never got on with him.
In his late teens, he raped and murdered a young woman with SN. He had a younger brother with SN too.

She was pregnant too. I've googled the story and he has been released even though the police have described him as particularly cold and calculating. He also refused to take any sex offenders courses in prison. He is evil

The murdering bastard that violently killed one of my closest friends. May he find nothing but agony as he rots in prison.

An old gymnastics teacher that was abusing some of his students (I was about 6, I think they were about 9-11 at the time, the poor poor girls). I'm not sure what actually happened to him.

I also found out last year that someone I used to work with got drunk and glassed someone on a night out.

Apparently I manage to meet some disgusting examples of humanity.

@sparechange - not the same story, this was only last year. ive just looked it up to double check and the details are virtually the same.

Ilovecoleslaw I'm so sorry about your friend. I went through the same, I was always so terrified of getting pregnant to be told "just tell everyone a stranger raped you" I'm guessing I wouldn't have been allowed to abort it.

I hope your friend is ok, I couldn't imagine having my abusers baby 😔

Honeybee I have a friend in NI who says the dentist case was the biggest non-political cause Celebrex in NI since Partition and i can believe it.

In the end he pleaded and gave evidenc against the OW who is also serving s long stretch for her part in it. If he had not chosen to come clean they would both have gone to their graves in freedom. The dentist's second wife stayed with him after he owned up to her (years before he handed himself in) and you'd have to wonder whether she worried if the tea ever tasted a bit off . . .

stabby oh so you wouldn't really think he'd go much lower in age but he did.

That poor elderly lady, I really feel for her she must have been so frightened.

Another music master one, from years ago..
Ds's boarding prep school aged 8 , feeder to a major Public School at 12 yrs.
Music master suddenly left. Thanks for his 'work' in the newsletter.
Music master, years later,front page in the DT(a bit fatter but still wearing the fair isle pullover I remember) up in court on paedophilia charges from years of abuse.
Sent clipping to DS then in the USA...???!!!
DS told me, yeah, he 'fiddled', was known for it... Not me, cos I hated piano so you let it drop...but Parents complained so he was sacked...

My question = so why was he given references so good he was allowed to carry on, moving from school to school?

And, does this 'tradition' of omertà and cover up still continue?

Hope to Christ it doesn't.