To ask if you’ve met an infamous criminal?

[Anon778833]

Did they seem ‘normal’? Or did you get a strange feeling about them?

@storminateacupagain wow, Tobin really is the definition of evil.

I used to support a chap who tried to kill the Yorkshire ripper when he was in broadmoor, I wish he had been successful tbh.

My Grandad was a GP in Manchester, he went to dinner with some other GPs at Harold Shipmans house. He said he was very controlling, everyone had to finish when he finished,

@DuesToTheDirt
@Gonnagetgoing

It was awful. Not sure if you’re familiar with the case but it was months before anyone even knew she was dead as he alienated her away from everyone she ever knew. They lived chaotic lives with drugs etc. and it wasn’t unusual to not hear them from them in months so no one rang alarm bells. He carried on sleeping in the blood soaked bed for months after her death with no attempt to clean up or hide what he had done and then he tried to argue that she was alive and had framed him. They never recovered her body but they had enough evidence of murder to convict him thankfully. I hadn’t seen her since school not often think about how sweet she was and what must have gone wrong in her life to end up with someone like him.

My Mum met Jimmy Saville through her girl guides as a child and before the truth came out she used to say what a brilliant, lovely man he was. Very charming and funny, was very animated with the children.

Obviously all a facade and he was a nasty benevolent little pervert. Had she been sixteen and not six I imagine it would have been a very different interlude.

Christopher Hunnisett, killed a priest was jailed got out then killed another bloke within months.
Cut off his own balls in prison before declaring himself a woman.
He was weird as fuck as a teenager obsessed with videos of executions but I never would have thought he could be dangerous. I last saw him when he was 15 and he did his first murder 2 years later

@TheDogsDuck a friend who I worked with at my Saturday job in Bradford was walked home by Peter Sutcliffe across the playing fields by Garden Lane to Heaton Park Road in about February 1980, so not long before his arrest, and just months after he'd murdered Barbara Leach in Bradford. She knew him vaguely as he lived one street down from her. She was in shock when he was arrested - she'd just turned 16 at the time and he'd actually said something like you can't be too careful these days, with all that's been going on. I presume she was safe because he was known to her. He also used to drink in a pub I used to go to (as did his brother), but I don't recall ever seeing him there.

My mum met Christopher Craig, who carried out the murder that Derek Bentley was hanged for. He was an amateur diver who had ‘acquired’ some artefacts from a sunken u boat, and she was interviewing him to give him the chance to ‘fess them up before she prosecuted him. He was living under an assumed name, but he was quite open about who he actually was.

Mum said she got the feeling he revelled in his ‘fame’.

@twilightcafe

Everything about Jimmy Savile looked and felt 'off' when I met him at 16. He visited a supermarket I worked in as part of a charity race around the country.

He was dressed in a filthy shell suit and string vest with his chest hair poking out, and behaved like someone who was used to being fawned over and could do exactly as he wished. He zeroed in on me an a colleague, eyed me up and down, then kissed my hand for longer than was necessary while the store managers fawned round him. 🤢

Someone worked with had been a nurse pre children. She said Savile visited her hospital regularly and they actually used to advise any attractive patients to pretend they were asleep when he visited! She also said he used to love to kiss and maul the female nurses around and he even tried to put his tongue down her throat. 🤢

Without turning this into. Savile thread, I’m gobsmacked that he was able to operate like he did for so long. Where I used to live in south London, we used to get free tickets for Top of the Pops recordings and it was an open secret that he was ‘handy’ We all used to warn each other about him.

My dad was on the Labour Party national executive in the 80’s and early 90’s, at the height of the ‘loony left’. He was quite well known as a bit of a firebrand and had a unite extreme views. This was in the days of analogue phones and mechanical exchanges, so you’d hear your call being connected if you phoned anyone. However, when I called Dad, or he called me, the click pattern always sounded strange, like it was connecting to another line.
Anyway, after he retired, we were talking about stuff, and he told me about how he used to meet up with ‘these lovely Arab guys in London. PLO they were called. We used to eat in some of their restaurants- amazing food. People said all manner of stuff about them, but it wasn’t really true about them being terrorists. Still, they’re all legal now…’
That’ll be why the phone sounded funny, Dad. I suspect Special Branch knew all about me failing my A levels and how disappointed you were…

[quote MrsCardone]@Astrak Denis Nielson killed my friend. I wonder if he was the person you were also referring to?

I shared accommodation with a Senior Staff Nurse on a Children's Ward who burnt her boyfriend's house down with his wife and their two DC inside. All three of them died . The strange thing is, I can find no record of this crime happening. It was in 1983. Does anybody remember it? Oh, and she seemed so normal. And I got to know her well.[/quote]
@MrsCardone, was she Filipina and in London? If so, I worked with her.

Interesting that you say you can find no record - I joined MN a few years back to advise someone who was being egged-on here to confront the OW at a flat owned by poster and her husband, not to do that as things can get out of hand and disasters happen.

I wanted to add a link but could find no record. It was reported on the local London TV news at the time.

*quite extreme views

Not met, but Rolf Harris nearly crashed his car ogling me down Putney Common road (puke)

Met the local big cheese gangster when I was a naive 24 yr old. I didn't twig straight away as he spun the 'loveable rogue' thing rather well. Turned out under the guise of selling used cars , he was into: guns, drugs, corrupt liaisons with local Police, illegal importing of cars, money laundering. I made a speedy departure when he got pissed & shot his 'hunting' rifle over the heads of local tourists on the river 'for a laugh'. His weakness was women & huge lack of IT knowledge. He wasn't quite as clever as he thought he was.

My DH is a re-enactor, artillery, Napoleonic. (If anybody else on MN is involved in black powder re-enactment they will know this story...)

So he has a whole raft of stories about how he and assorted cannon crews have had run ins with this Russian twat with an overinflated ego and a fuckton of money. Basically one of those who will buy aaallllll the things and swan about thinking he's God's gift by dint of being loaded, and absolutely could not bear to be challenged by those grubby lesser mortals.

Murdered his much younger girlfriend in a very horrible manner. General consensus was that no one was at all surprised and why the fuck had nobody taken that young woman on one side and TOLD her what a violent shitbag he was?

My choirmaster (bet you can see where this is leading to). We thought he was a lovely guy: he did loads for the church, the Choir was really popular too. He had a massive really old house, full of beautiful antiques, in the middle of nowhere (he had lots of land - forest/woodland and fields). He'd host these huge gatherings at his place, and invite the whole choir, often with their families, sometimes just the kids in the choir. No expense spared, and do lots to raise money for the Church. We always had such a lovely time. I was in the choir from age 10 til about 15. About 3yrs later, Mum and I swung by his place on the off chance of seeing him and to say hi (we'd not seen him in a long time - and we all got on with him). He was friendly enough but said he'd not been well. So we wished him well, said to keep in touch and left him to it.

Years later, I wanted to see if he'd be able to be the Organist at my wedding. I found out he'd committed suicide (I was gutted). I then did a search to read his obituary....there wasn't one, but there was a shit load of news articles about how he'd been convicted of heading a huge paedophile ring in the 80's (I was in the choir from 1990). Reading the testimonies of kids (from a different church choir) who, only a small number of years before I first met him, had been befriended and then hurt by this evil monster -who had taken them to the same house that I (and my younger brother, and all our friends) had gone to - made me physically sick. He was convicted around the time he committed suicide. Soon after we last saw him.

I can't believe how bloody lucky we were. Still makes me feel sick to this day.

@twilightcafe

Everything about Jimmy Savile looked and felt 'off' when I met him at 16. He visited a supermarket I worked in as part of a charity race around the country.

He was dressed in a filthy shell suit and string vest with his chest hair poking out, and behaved like someone who was used to being fawned over and could do exactly as he wished. He zeroed in on me an a colleague, eyed me up and down, then kissed my hand for longer than was necessary while the store managers fawned round him. 🤢

The whole business to do with JS is unbelievably gross.

I used t watch him on TV with my friends and we would laugh at how disgusting he appeared physically and how creepy his manner was. A half shudder, half laugh reaction.

The idea of writing in to Jim’s fix it was a bit of a joke and we would laugh and say ‘ugghhh no!! Imagine sitting near him!’ He was the really creepy adult figure. We would also watch it out of a kind of morbid curiosity... How weird would it be each week?!

Little did we know that our instincts were spot on.

TicTac80
Who was that?

Not notorious but a classmate of DS1 went to prison at 14 for murder, gang related. DS and the majority of the year group were shocked, DS spent a fair bit of time with him as they did the same sport and said he was one of the last kids you'd expect to be involved in gangs outside of school.

@SunShinesBrightly, initials were AB. I think he was also a funeral director.

It was in either 1979 or 1980 that I met a nurse in a wine bar in London. She worked at Stoke Mandeville. She got pretty drunk and starting talking about Saville and his visits to the hospital. I couldn't quite take in what she was saying as it seemed so unreal (I was young). I always remember her taking a big glug of wine and nearly crying when she said something along the lines of 'why do you think he likes Stoke Mandeville? Paralysed people can't run away'. She also made allegations regarding his behaviour in the mortuary (he had a key), not sure if that was at SM too. She was obviously tortured by it all, but had not spoken up, or reported him (but then neither did anyone else).

I used to follow Lostprophets on tour with my friends. A groupie I suppose but we never called ourselves that. We would go to every show on their tour, meet them afterwards etc. I did this with a lot of pop punk/emo bands back in the day! Ian Watkins was always a bit odd, I found him quirky but that was part of the charm. He made sexual comments a lot but most of us found it flattering. I thought he was normal for a 'rockstar'. I cringe when I think of it now. I have so many photos of myself with him and the rest of the band and my friends, they were great memories to have but it all feels tainted now.

@Madwife123

No, never heard of that case. There are some nasty bastards out there.

@steff13

My grandmother met Ted Bundy. It was one of the times he escaped from prison. She worked at a hotel at the time. She said he was nice.

I had absolutely no idea that Ted Bundy escaped from prison!

I taught a boy who was convicted of 2 murders at age 14. Definitely a troubled lad.