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

I've sent you a PM @Nicknacky

Not a serial killer no.

But a Senior Police Officer I knew stabbed his wife and 3 kids, then himself. The two older ones survived the little one and his wife didn’t.

I went to school with Daniel Gonzalez who murdered 4 people then killed himself whilst in Broadmoor

Decades ago a good friend married a guy too hastily and it started to go wrong very early on. The 'friendship group' we were in were accepting of this guy, even though we knew the marriage was doomed, we were ok with him.

I worked shifts and shared a flat with a couple of friends on the top/3rd floor of a converted Victorian with an old cast-iron fire escape outside. I came home from work one night to an empty flat except this guy was in my room - he said he came in via the fire escape and wanted to know what did I think he should do about his marriage - stay or go.

Although I was a bit spooked by him being there I didn't freak out but told him the truth - the marriage would never work and he should leave and go go back to London.

He did and within weeks murdered his previous landlord/sexual abuser. I put away any thoughts about 'shit - that could have been me' until 20 years later he escaped from prison and randomly murdered someone else.

Then I remembered those cold, piercing eyes and thanked my instinct to not be afraid to tell him the truth about his doomed marriage. He struck me that he wouldn't take any more 'bullshit' and I feel that as I didn't, he was ok with me.

A relative was going out with a chemist who was a key player in a the major acid drugs ring in the 70s that was taken down by ‘operation julie’

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I went to school with a really nice lad, he lived in the same village as me, just an ordinary boy from a good family, never in any trouble and he even went out with one of my best friend's who said he was lovely. Years later he murdered his second wife - she was a few years younger than him -from what I heard, I don't think he meant to kill her but he put her body in the boot of his car and kept it there for a few days, he then rang a family member and confessed what he had done. Whist they were on the way to his house he killed himself. I could not believe it when I heard about it. It was terrible what he did to his wife and obviously, that poor woman should be alive today, there were no excuses for it, but I felt pity for the nice lad I knew at school, who would ever believe his life would turn out that way and I felt so, so, sorry for his family as they had to come to terms with not only losing him, but the fact that he had murdered his poor wife. Tragic all round.

My mum was on jury duty during the Moors Murders trials. She said even the hardy Yorkshire policemen were reduced to tears when they played the tapes of the kids calling for their mums, screaming in pain and fear, before being killed.

I think it traumatised my mum for life.

My uncle was murdered. He was stabbed by a man who was convinced that my uncle was his father who had abandoned him. He wasn’t, but my cousins were left fatherless, nonetheless.

I also gave evidence in a murder case, as I worked with the victim. He was a young man, in his early 20s: it was so sad.

TheLittleDog how awful. Was your mum offered any support after that, or are jurors just left to get on with it?

As a child/teen I was a friend of Mark Bridger, the guy who killed little April Jones in Wales. I hadn't seen or thought about him in many years, then when I heard the name of the man they'd arrested in connection with her disappearance, I randomly thought "I bet Mark is pissed off he shares the same name as a notorious murder suspect". (At that stage suspect, later convicted.) I nearly had a fit when I saw his photo in the paper next day and read where he was originally from (Croydon area, not Wales) and realised it was actually him.

My nan was in prison with Myra Hindley. She watched on as other inmates attacked her and tried to burn her with hot oil.

Someone i went to school with went on to torture and kill his neighbour in order to get money out of her for drugs. There was nothing fascinating about it, it was a wicked act and i can't imagine how you can repeatedly hit someone in tge facw with a hammer knowing that you are causing that person intolerable pain. Knowing something about this guy's background, severe neglect in childhood, no friends and parents who kicked him out at 16 and then ending up addixted to heroin it doesn't mitigate or excuse what he did, but it does explain some of the reasons for the path he went down. The sadest thing was i wasn't really shocked when i found out. But no excitement, no glamour, no fascination, just a story of absolute cruelty inflicted on and by someone who I'd shared a classroom with.

Ian Huntley, always weird and called 'womanbeater' behind his back.

I worked with a young lad who was being prosecuted for raping a male child. He was child himself (well 15 at the time of the offence). He had pleaded guilty, we were trying desperately to get him placed through the young offender system and not adult prison (by the time he was sentenced).

He had been horrifically abused himself and groomed this poor child. He openly admitted he would do it again and wanted help. He was put through the adult system in the end. I often think of him and wonder what happened. He seemed perfectly normal. Tragic all around.

These stories are so interesting but many of them have brought tears to my eyes.

Tenuous but a friends neighbour murdered his wife and left her body a roof box in the garden.

It was about 12 years ago, not sure if it made the national news.

My mum and dad were friendly with a couple from their schooldays (late 50's). As they grew up would meet couple of times a year with the children.
Elder boy started a life of crime, burglary then armed robbery.
One of which saw him murdering someone with a knife last year.

I was a juror on a recent case of a man convicted of murdering a woman by running her down.Evil fucker

Oratorio no support whatsoever. She said it was awful. Also seeing the parents of the murdered kids break down haunted her. She found Brady to be extremely chilly and heartless.

Not known anyone personally but my eldest son went to school with a lad whose dad killed his mum with a hammer. Dad sentenced to serve time but it was something daft like 6 years he got. He will be out now.

Lad was going through his gcse at the time, went on to do a levels and uni. So sad, he is an only child who effectively lost both his parents.

@ontario I used to work for the High Court. I don't know what it was like back then but these days you are offered/entitled to counselling after sitting on a jury in traumatic cases. I had a friend on a jury for something horrific and she was having nightmares for weeks but refused the counselling. if anyone finds themselves in this position please please take any counselling offered to you from the Court

I don't have any near misses to killers (that I know of) or any links to them.

This is a really interesting thread though, thanks OP

Any other suggestions for good podcasts on the subject? Going to look up at the few mentioned on here.

@Madonnaslonglostbeautyspot same 😞

A boy in my year at secondary school, we were in some classes together and I did dance with him once at a school disco, well he was convicted of the murder of a pensioner. The pensioner was the grandfather of a girl also in my year at school but I didn’t know her so well as we didn’t have any classes together.

He was sentenced along with his younger brother (I didn’t know the young brother at all) the guy I was at school with took the blame for everything, and his young brother is now out, the brother I went to school with got a heftier sentence but last I heard he was out but staying away from his old home town.

I also worked with him for a brief time when we left school, he asked me about my new baby son and said he would be so proud to be a dad.

He was a bit of the class clown but I liked him when we was at school and when I worked with him.

I didn't actually know this murderer but it was a high profile double murder (parent killed children). At the time my son was dating a girl who lived next door, she heard the arguments the night of the murders, and was woken by the police asking them to leave their house.