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

A couple more I remembered. I was friends at uni with a girl who's mum killed her dad while we were friends. He was abusive and she snapped one day. Also, I taught a girl who's mum was murdered in a particularly horrible way. I felt for her so much she was a lovely girl.

nichelette I think we must've gone to the same school. SE England? I don't remember her but he was a bit uptight

Someone a couple of years below me in school killed his dad with a hammer. The dad was a nasty abusive piece of work apparently. My mum recently found out that her ex-manager had killed his wife with a hammer after he retired. No other links with murderers but I have come into contact with a lot of sex offenders.

A friend was stabbed to death while working abroad. The killing made international news because her killer went on the run.

DH was questioned in relation to a notorious Scottish murder as he fitted the description of the suspect (he's a few years older than the guilty party but looked similar and lived on the next street). Luckily he had a cast iron alibi with CCTV and about 100 witnesses (gig at a local pub)

Gosh! A lot of people know a lot of killers!!

I've met many in my line of work, but never in my personal life (I don't think!) And I don't know anyone that has met any killers in their personal life! :)

[santa]

I work with them.

@NicoandtheNiners

That was her! Yes, my mum spoke to her the day she went missing, I think it was when she was visiting there with my brother rather than when she had moved there.

A bit tenuous, childhood home had been a wedding present to the previous owners from an aunt and uncle from the channel islands. The aunt and uncle were murdered by their son's. They were caught in a sting with the previous owners and the police.

www.bbc.co.uk/jersey/content/articles/2007/10/22/newell_20_years_feature.shtml

I worked with a nurse that worked with one of the doctors that tried to drive the car into Glasgow Airport.

Goldilocks Colin Pitchfork?

I went to school with someone who's child was murdered by her new husband. I hadn't seen her since she was pregnant and couldn't believe it when i saw her making an appeal on TV.

@Slaymill

Did you Dad mention what he thought of Frankie ? I met him years ago and he was very charming but, you could see he had two sides of him.

Sadly no. I have a photo of him with my dad though. I can remember the photo in my mum and dad's box of photos when I was growing up. I didn't know who it was and unfortunately wasn't inquisitive enough when I was younger to find out more about it. It was only when my dad died 3 years ago my mum gave me the photo and said who it was. That's all she knew about it though. I think my dad and fellow officer may have taken him to the pub for a beer as he asked to go for a pint saying it would be his last chance to have one as he was going to prison for a long time! A different era!

I was chatting to my dad about this thread and he told me that a fella he worked with at the time of the murders was married to Harold Shipman's receptionist. They said he was a lovely man and a good Dr.

@x2boys @tetrapanex remember it well. Poor lady. I always remember those toilets were creepy before hand but they were even worse after it happened

@1stTimeMama the case I was involved in resulted in a minimum 34 year sentence. Did it involve cats?

My dad worked at a company that Peter Sutcliffe made deliveries to. One day he turned up as they were talking about the murders and he joined in saying how awful it was good they get him etc. My dad said there was always something odd about him.

My mum trained to be a nurse. Her colleague worked with Harold shipman on qualifying.

@MyNameIsArthur I can totally see that being true and he would have turned on the charm for your Dad and his colleague I'm sure.

Still a great story and a little iconic memento of times past.

Goldilocks, I think I lived in the same area as you. I remember how scared everyone was. I was definitely restricted on going out and about at the time.

I remember driving past the footpath (pad?) years later and thinking it looked as creepy as hell.

I think it's very unprofessional to name someone in this kind of thread you know through work....especially when it involves something as sensitive as the James Bulger case.

I've worked in prisons and medium secure units, but the only link I'm going to admit to was that my grandparents lived in Melrose Ave in the 70s and 80s. Melrose Ave was the first address that Dennis Nilsen lived in and where he started his killing career during the 70s and 80s. We would have walked past his house dozens of times, without knowing what was going on behind closed doors. I now live in a different part of London, and surprisingly live close to Cranley Gardens, where he was arrested.

Not personally, but my gt grandfather made headlines when he shot the butler while drunk/high on opium. Charged with murder initially, reduced to manslaughter because he was alleged to be suffering nervous prostration from his exertions at Oxford. It appears hush money was paid to the widow and he went free

This was in the 1870s.

I am related through my paternal grandmother to Ruth Ellis, the last woman to be hanged in Britain.

This is such an interesting thread. I've been fascinated by serial killers and true crime from an early age, and have often felt like I'm the only one I know... and possibly a bit weird. There's loads of us!

Forgot two more tenuous links.

My old flatmate worked with the William Begg limbs in the loch victim.

My best friend was friendly with a lad who was murdered in a homophobic attack.

Our neighbours when I was a teenager. I didn't know him but my DM said he was a lovely bloke. Before she found out what he did obviously. She really liked his wife. She was so bubbly and friendly.

He strangled her, ran her over a couple of times on the drive and took her body out to a layby on the main road close to us and ran her over multiple times. He was apparently hoping that she'd be thought of as a hit and run victim. Apart from the facts that she was already very dead by strangulation, was wearing her nightie and lived a couple of miles away. And a hit and run victim doesn't usually get reversed over several times.

It was apparently a life insurance job. She was worth more dead than alive. It took about 15 minutes for the police to arrest her husband and about another 10 minutes for him to plead guilty. He was released a few years back and is now dead. It was horrible. She was lovely. I still remember seeing her walking up our street.

RJ where was the homophobia murder?

I am friend with someone who was charged for participating and (unknowingly at the time) erasing evidence of her friend's father murder. She was 15. From what she said it was all an accident and they didn't actually try to kill him (I believe that) but things went wrong and the man died. Must have been awful for everyone involved and my friend has felt forever guilty ever since.

My great grandfather (who is still alive but have met only once) tried to kill his second wife, shot her in the neck with a gun, but she thankfully survived (he surprisingly wasn't jailed). I met him on my 13th birthday and he seemed a lovely old man, was shocked when I found out what a horrible human being he is.

My father tried to kill my mum, she was rescued by a neighbour, again my father was never jailed and is still happily living his life. (The French justice system is a bit crap I believe)

Apart from that, my hometown got famous because a guy who had recently left jail had raped and killed a girl and scattered her body parts around the city. Leading to drastic changes to the justice system and stricter sentencing. And because a man killed his wife and 5 (adults) children and burried them under the patio before telling his family they were immigrating to the US and that they probably wouldn't hear back from them for a while (he is still on the run).

My aunt also found body parts in a plastic back while on a romantic getaway to a lake. She never found out who the body belonged to or anything, but this story totally gives me the creeps and I feel oddly weirded out everytime I go to forest/lake areas.

I find all those stories quite depressing as it makes me even more cautious of how unsafe the world is and how no one can really be trusted.