Disclaimer - Keeping this as vague as possible so apologies if it doesn’t make sense. Have changed a couple details so it’s not revealing, before anyone goes through to try ‘catch me out’. Sadly this is my life. I do not give permission for any news articles to use this post.
I became friends with a women (call her A) 3 years ago through school pick ups, she had a child the year below mine. I’m a single mum, and she had a partner (let’s call him J) who she’d been with 6 months when we met and they lived together and he treated the kids as his own. We lived very close to each other so we’re always meeting up, I’m self employed and she was a SAHM
so we had lots of time in the day to pop round each other’s houses for tea etc, we’d go shopping together and we got quite close. The friendship ended after a few months for reasons that aren’t relevant, nothing big we just drifted apart but still said hi at school pick up. Both kids are now in different high schools so I haven’t seen her for a long time.
During the friendship, A’s partner J was unemployed, I was a single mum who didn’t have a man around. J was good at DIY so I hired him to do a few jobs round my house. It worked out well for all of us, I got my house done at a reasonable rate and they got an income, A would come round a lot too while he was working so they were still able to spend time with each other. J ended up renovating the whole house for me over the next few months - paint, wallpaper, flooring, garden. The majority of the time he was in my home alone with me and my DS. He was good at what I paid him to do, but as it progressed I started to feel a bit uncomfortable as he displayed some odd behaviour. He was friendly, never inappropriate, but he would get very stressed out about little things. not angry but he would get quite panicky and wouldn’t know what to do with himself. The jobs ended because there were no more left to do, and the friendship died out (100% not linked to the work)
3 years later and I’ve just found out through a mutual friend that J is a convicted killer. I don’t want to sound too recognisable so I’ll keep it vague. He murdered a family member because they owed him money, it was violent and deeply disturbing. I’ve worked out he must have been out of prison for less than a year before we met. I’m also sure A must have known. He changed his name, but a news article is still online with his picture on it.
I feel sick. I’m supposed to protect my child. Instead I invited a murderer into our home alone with us. How could I not have been more careful???? I should have asked for a dbs check as he was around my DS. My anxiety is through the roof and I cannot believe I was that close to someone who did something so evil. The craziest thing is he was a friendly guy.
He could have killed us, what if his work ended up being shit and I had to fire him and he got angry. I neglected my DS.
I don’t know what I want from posting on here I just needed to tell someone, I can’t tell my family or friends. I’m so disturbed by it. Am I overreacting?