To ask if you've ever personally known an infamous killer/serial killer/

[gentlyscented]

I'm fascinated with true crime and was having a conversation with my Grandad once. He told me that one of his brothers mates was friends with peter sutcliffe,and that he had met him a couple of times.

Interested to know if others have have had encounters or known a serial killer

Have remembered two more.
My mum worked with dr Linda Astor, the bogus doc who released a dangerously unwell patient who went on to decapitate his partner. Mum ,wntioned to a colleague that she thought Dr Astor was odd and potentially not a woman, but was told not to be silly! Link won’t paste for me but google Linda Astor and it will come up.

I also handled correspondence for years in my job with an obsessive man who was later convicted of the most horrendous abuse of his wife and kids. He was well known in my professional circle and none of us were surprised when he was convicted. We knew he was off but had no idea how bad he actually was.

Dh’s best mate is from Yorkshire and went to crossley heath school at the time when one of sutcliff’s victims was found at saville Park, just next to the school.

Have throughly outed myself now.

Living in Northern Ireland I know quite a lot of people who would have been serial killers but in the terrorist sense. Some were caught & served time, some never were. These people would have been a generation above me, but looking at them now you would never suspect what they had done.

I went to uni with a girl who went on to kill her mother with her boyfriend. I spent an afternoon with her helping at a freshers event, think we were filling up packs or something. I thought she was a bit odd and intense. I also thought her boyfriend was a tad controlling. I couldnt believe it when a year or so later my mate sent me a pic from the front of a tabloid. I personally think her boyfriend made her do it.

@Adversecamber22 I have the same ancestor as your DH- as does the writer Christopher Isherwood.

My DH is a CO at a maximum security prison so knows quite a few. He never discusses them and I don't want to know anyway.

I had a woman who worked for me whose best friend was approached by Ted Bundy while she worked in a beer garden in California. He asked her out on date on the spot, but she couldn't get out of work. Her job and work ethic saved her life.

Richard Ramirez "The Night Stalker" climbed once up a tree, and another time on the roof of a friends house as a teenager and masturbated. Fortunately, for my friend, but unfortunately, for the state of California, he moved there and she never saw him again until he appeared in the papers proclaiming that he was the Night Stalker.

Peter Sutcliffe was arrested by the school that I went to and where my mother was a teacher.
That's me outed.

My husband's aunty taught Osama Bin Laden English when he was a child.

My neighbour was stabbed to death by her fiance who claimed an intruder had broken in. Police followed that line of enquiry for quite some time before his arrest and subsequent conviction. She was the barmaid at our local. Seemed lovely. We knew all the details that first night as the police sat on our garden wall talking about it . We put our house on the market 5 months later (unrelated) and prospective buyers noticed the massive "can you help with this murder" poster in the window.

A lad in the group we hung around with went on to kill his brother, then almost kill someone else. Left them with life Changing injuries.

I also went to the same school as Jon Venables. He was a couple of years below me.

Oh and my Dad worked for Brian Blackwells parents doing a job in their house the week before he killed them.

I was best friends with a guy for two years! He used to come to my house everyday when I still lived with my parents. He used the shower etc, I'd always found it weird as did my folks.

I went to his house and it was huge but there was no furniture in it. We used to hang around and do stuff daily. It turns out, he was hiding in his fathers holiday house (which is why he couldn't use electricity) after he killed his own father and was wanted by the police!! That was why he was always with me at my house.

What I cant get over is that the rest of his family forgave him. How do you possibly Forgive something like that!

I don't really get this either, but then again CSA survivors for example are often told they "have to" forgive their abusers "for their own sakes" or something else trite.

The man I mentioned earlier (waiting trial for possible third murder) had killed his mum and step-dad when he was young. Sentenced and served his sentence quite a while back now (young age meant a shorter sentence, I think), and while none of his older siblings ever talked to him again, as far as I know, his younger sister did try to keep in contact and had forgiven. I wonder if it's because she was kind of left without much family, so was trying to hang onto the people she had left? Also a very religious area (this all happened outside of UK), so maybe it was the idea that one should always try to forgive?

As a professional I spent a lot of time in a small room at the top of a narrow flight of stairs out of earshot of anyone, with no windows or other means of escape, with a very large and volatile man who only months later did a colleague tell me 'in secret' that the client had in fact killed someone and was convicted on diminished responsibility due to mental health issues.

Due to 'confidentiality' we as staff were not allowed to know. As this client had a history of being non-compliant with medication he frequently became volatile and we had to get police and social services to do welfare checks.

Not long after I finished supporting him he attacked a passer-by in the street who had upset him in some minor way.

It was a valuable lesson in how to risk assess where you see clients because you never know who you might be sitting next to. I'm much more savvy now.

Just found this thread and can't stop reading it, partly due to the fact that through my work I have met several men who I subsequently found out via the newspapers were murderers. One gentleman and I would definitely describe him as a gentleman used to bring his son to the hospital where I worked, he was a doting father and husband, courteous and charming at each of his sons many appointments, on one appointment I was particularly sad as my exh had recently left me, he offered to 'pay him a visit' obviously I declined as I thought he was joking, 2 months later he was in the press as his brother had been murdered and he (my patients dad) was the head of a very notorious and violent local crime family.

@ThanosSavedMe and me 🙈

I don't know if anyone remembers the "Limbs in the Loch" case where a young guy was lured back to the flat of William Beggs back in December 1999 and then his limbs were discovered in Loch Lomon and his head was washed up on a beach somewhere? I knew William Beggs. He seemed like a really lovely guy, always nice and and pleasant and just seemed really lovely. It was such a shock when he was arrested and it turned out he'd already been in prison before for a razor attack and I think he'd already killed someone else. Scary stuff.

Grr Loch Lomond not Loch Lomon. Stupid autocorrect!

I don't really get this either, but then again CSA survivors for example are often told they "have to" forgive their abusers "for their own sakes" or something else trite.

I don’t think it’s trite. Attachment, belonging... so intrinsic to our identity and sense of self.

My late grandad was friends with the guy who was the lead detective on the Fred and Rose West case and my uncle lived opposite their house (after it had been demolished) and I was always scared to go to his flat when I was a kid

I used to live in a nice village, and worked on a Friday/Sat night in the local very nice pub. One of the regular customers came in frequently, very nicely spoken chap was a company director, lived with his wife and 20 something daughter in a very nice house in the next village, they often all came in, a really nice family.
One day he had some sort of complete mental breakdown - I believe the company was under severe financial problems and for some reason he turned on and bludgeoned the wife and daughter and tried to hang himself, I know he pleaded on grounds of diminished responsibility and sentenced, not sure if to Broadmoor but certainly some mental institution can't remember it was almost 40 years ago. Shocked the village, nobody in the pub who knew him could believe it.

@Handsoffmysweets
A family member worked at Ashworth and recommended it as they thought I could use it in my studies. All I got back were hate filled rants about everything he could think of. I stopped writing.

No serial killers but at least 6 boys I went to school with are in prison for gun crime, some of which were fatal shootings. Inner city school, and I am not surprised by any of them, sadly.

My mum lived in California for a while as a teen and she was friends with one of Lawrence Bittaker and Roy Norris’s victims (The Tool Box Murderers). Very gruesome murders that happened around 40 years ago. The written transcript of one of the murders is available to read on the internet (the killers recorded it and the police found the tape). I’ve never read it as I’ve heard it’s beyond horrific