People Share Eerie Encounters with Serial Killers Before They Were Caught

People Share Eerie Encounters with Serial Killers Before They Were Caught

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Episode Transcript

Speaker 1 (00:00):
Welcome back to the Channel to day, we're diving into
spine chilling real life encounters shared by Reddit users who
crossed paths with serial killers before anyone knew who they
really were. If you love true crime and mysterious encounters,
don't forget to like subscribe and drop your own eerie
story in the comments. A serial killer lived in the

(00:24):
street behind my aunt's house. We kids went to a
party next door to his house. We'd all seen the guy.
Seemed like a harmless old man, a bit scary, but harmless.
Then the police dug up his patio and found the
bodies of two young women buried underneath. He'd also killed
some women up north. That was an odd time. When
my mom was sixteen, she was sleeping and woke up

(00:46):
to someone trying to open her bedroom window. She ran
to my grandma's room and told her someone was trying
to break in. My grandma, being the crazy, awesome lady
she is, grabs a bat, runs outside, confronts this guy
and starts swinging. The guy runs off and they don't
think too much of it. Sometime later, my grandma sees
the guy on the news and it's Richard Ramirez. My

(01:08):
mom told this story over and over when I was
growing up. She easily could have been one of his victims.
I'm so grateful she wasn't, especially since she was pregnant
with me at the time. So this is third hand,
but an old boss went to the University of Utah
and was in a sorority. One day, she was waiting
for her date in front of her sorority house with
a girlfriend who was also waiting for her date. Her

(01:29):
girlfriend's date pulls up, but her girlfriend forgets something and
runs back in the house. My former boss chatted with
the man for a few minutes. She noted that he
was polite and handsome. Her girlfriend comes out and they
leave in his VW Beatle. My former boss gets picked
up by her date a short while later, and she
thinks nothing of it. The next day, she sees her
girlfriend and asks how the date was. The girlfriend says

(01:50):
that they started driving in her date's VW Beatle and
all of a sudden, she got a splitting headache. She
thought it was really strange, but she felt nauseous. She
apologized and asked him to take her home. He was
a little upset, but he dropped her back off. They
didn't go out again. Years pass and my former boss
is watching the news one night and sees a familiar
man on the screen. It was Ted Bundy, one of

(02:14):
my tutors at university, seemed to have a very short temper.
The first tutorial session was okay, but he spent five
minutes telling us how important attending his tutorials was. Tutorials
are kind of viewed as optional, as there to go
over stuff covered in the lectures. Second tutorial, a few
people didn't show up and he spent fifteen minutes ranting
about their absence. In the third tutorial, even more people

(02:36):
didn't turn up and he spent even longer ranting about it.
After that, my friends and I decided it wasn't worth
the hassle. Apparently he ranted about the absentees even more
at the next tutorial, and I'm not sure if anyone
managed to stick out the whole term of tutorials. He'd
also help out in lab sessions and various other course
related activities, but everyone found him slightly uncomfortable to deal with.

(02:57):
After the exams, we had a bit of a party
at time someone's house to celebrate. A casual invite was
extended to the lecturers, tutors and assistants who'd been involved
in getting us through the year. He turned up. None
of the other teaching staff did, and, although not entirely welcome,
hung around for a while. When things were winding down,
I headed off, but when I spoke to the host

(03:17):
of the party the next day, it turned out that
mister angry Tutor had ended up crashing on the living
room floor with a load of the others, except they'd
all arranged in advanced to stay over, but it headed
off about half six in the morning. We commented on
how audit slash he was, but didn't give it much
more thought until a few months later when he was
arrested for a violent murder involving dismemberment. He turned out

(03:38):
to have a history of violence and a lot of
predatory and stalkerish behaviors. None of that he was a
quiet man, kept himself to himself business. He had obvious
anger issues and made people uncomfortable, and it didn't come
as a complete surprise to find out how twisted he was.
I grew up in Fort Walton Beach, Florida, and in
the early nineteen eighties, my friend and I would bit

(03:58):
to the junior food store, convenient store to play Gallagher
every chance we could. There was a weird guy that
would come harass us, who was about two or three
years older than us. We were eleven or twelve. My
friend liked to get into fights, so he started calling
him Chalie to fluster him. The dude had a huge
knife in his boot every time we saw him, so
I decided to just ignore him. That was pretty much

(04:19):
how it went for the entire summer, and he'd even
play Galagha with us occasionally. It turns out the guy
was Frank Walls. My dad met Charles Manson in Yosemite.
He says that's where a lot of runaways in the
sixties went, so he was probably out there trying to
find vulnerable people. Was walking around with a guitar, offered
to sell. My dad and his buddy Weed also told

(04:40):
them that he sold his soul to the devil, and
that any man he pointed to right then and there
could be dead in a second if my dad and
his friend wanted them to be. They were a little
freaked out and were quick to get out of Yosemite entirely.
My dad says that they drove for a while and
saw Charles at a stop sign, and it made no
sense that he could have gotten there that fast. But
I'm not entirely convinced that my dad was and just

(05:00):
super bag tah. I will not reveal too much information
due to the sensitive nature of this topic. I am
a US citizen who lived and studied abroad in Egypt
during the late two thousands. I attended a large international
school there. Many of the local Egyptian students were quite
wealthy and came from very affluent families. There were several
similar schools around Cairo, and it wasn't uncommon for large

(05:22):
numbers of students to go out for nights on the
town together, mixing and mingling with students from other schools.
One evening, I found myself downtown at a fancy restaurant
with a very large group of strangers. There must have
been at least thirty of us crowded around a long
row of tables. For whatever reason, the topic of bodybuilding
eventually came up. I was quite scrawny at the time,

(05:43):
still am to some extent, and asked if anyone had
some tips for working out at Egyptian gyms. The guy
seated across from me said that he would go get
his friend, who was a devout bodybuilder. Met the guy
and we shook hands. He seemed nice enough, if not
a bit dense, talked a lot like soul Vester stallone,
fancy smartphone, nice clothes, fresh haircut a bro if you will,

(06:06):
gave me a few tips, and went on his way.
I remembered his face and name, but not much else.
The next time I saw him was several years later
in international newspapers. I recognized not only his face and name,
but also that most of the articles mentioned his passion
for bodybuilding. His style had changed completely. That man had
become one of the most brutal and feared terrorists working

(06:27):
with ISIS, having personally tortured and beheaded hundreds of individuals,
later posting the pictures online and bragging about it. Thankfully,
it is believed that he eventually blew himself up after
leaving a goodbye letter to his family. I was stunned.
The guy seemed perfectly normal when I had met him,
which makes it even more chilling. How did he end
up the way he did? I'll never know. My high

(06:50):
school girlfriend's dad ended up being a murderer, but not
a serial killer. His persona was basically cool dad. He'd
let my friends and me hang out at their house,
didn't bat an eye that I stayed there when he
and her mom went out of town, made drinks for us,
et cetera. But he also had a heart, sometimes sleazy
and definitely risk seeking edge. His wife ran a daycare,
and he kept between ten and fifteen loaded firearms in

(07:12):
the house, and at one point, when he'd had a
few drinks too many, he asked me how his daughter
was with a knowing smirk. Five or so years later,
her mom had divorced him for being abusive, and he'd
remarried someone much younger and had a daughter with her.
He made the news for unloading a clip into his
new wife, reloading and then unloading the second clip as well.
He then put their infant child in the car, drove

(07:34):
to the nearest airport, left the infant at the curb,
and hopped the first flight he could to Europe. He
was eventually extradited back, and I think is now serving
a life sentence, but only after the district attorney agreed
to drop the death penalty. Looking back, the only really
spooky moment was when her mom caught us in bed together.
They were home and we were decent, but she was

(07:54):
really frantic about getting me into the guest room before
he found us and freaked out. Something about the way
she used that phrase suggested it would be a lot
worse than just yelling. The dissonance of her reaction and
the questions about his daughter and my sex life was
what stuck with me, like he was asking a question
to justify a rage. One late summer night in two
thousand and two, my girlfriend called me crying. She ran

(08:16):
to the supermarket and had someone following her for a
few minutes on her winding trip home around the Lsu Lakes.
She was house sitting for her aunt in a large
home and got to the point where she did a
lap around the lake and her follower was still there.
My roommate and I jumped into his car and raced over.
She described the vehicle as a white pickup truck, and
when we got there, parked on the street one house

(08:36):
away from her aunt's home, was the vehicle. She was
still crying and recounted being followed the elaborate path, et cetera.
I looked and there was a man sitting in the vehicle.
My roommate snuck up in the bushes to back me up,
and I walked about twenty five feet from the vehicle,
standing up on the curb and shouted something I can
help you with and they cranked up, turned on headlights

(08:57):
and drove off, giving me a brief glance. He didn't
see him in person, but did see him again the
following year when he was arrested for a series of
murders in the Greater Baton Rouge area. And his name
was Derek Todd Lee. I worked with a guy who
is a sadistic sociopath and absolutely going to be a
serial killer one day. Over the past two years, he's
been escalating his violence against women, assaults, rapes, breaking into

(09:19):
their houses to assault them, fraud emptying their bank accounts,
and pathological line to everyone. He'll put on the charm
to attract a girlfriend and then systemically increase his abuse
until they have a breakdown, usually working two to three
targets at a time, some online while others are in person.
He managed to pull off a catfish marriage and when
the poor girl showed up, he beat her, threw out

(09:41):
her family heirlooms, sold her stuff on eBay, took her
car keys, emptied her bank accounts, and maxed out her
credit card slash line of credit, told her one day
she didn't live there anymore and if she came back
from work that night, he'd have her arrested as a trespasser,
and then fucking did it. He had already started seeing
his next girlfriend when she first arrived to move in.
She had to move to the other side of the

(10:02):
country after three months. He would go on to rape
another girl who reported it, and he then stalked and
threatened her until she had a breakdown, eventually breaking into
her house to assault her again. Although he is facing
charges for the breeches and b and E, nothing has
stopped him at all. He's moving on to new victims,
now convinced the upcoming trial is all a plot by
police because they are jealous of him and he's innocent.

(10:25):
His kids are right fucked up too. CPS must have
a dozen files on him and somewhere they get to
stay in that house. He's terrible at his job, but
this is the military, so he knows if he does
just the minimum, he won't get booted, at least not
until the trials are done with. Eventually, Yes, he will
go down for what he does, but I can't stand
that it won't be until there are many more victims

(10:47):
and one of them winds up murdered. I have no
doubt it is his goal to kill someone. My neighbor
was a serial rapist. Apparently he used to lure women
over for modeling shoots through Craigslist. He was also the
DJ at my local watering hole. I got pretty tuned
up one night and decided I wanted to hear Casey's
last ride. He responded, that's not really the type of

(11:07):
music we play here, so I called him a shitty DJ.
I was super embarrassed by my behavior. Later that week,
he got arrested, and I was left with a strange
sense of justification for my drunken antics. There was also
a shitload of child porn upskirt videos he would take
at the bar, and a jail cell in his basement.
Not me, but my mother. Back in nineteen seventy six,

(11:29):
my mom worked for the City of Pensacola, Florida. During
the graveyard shift, she worked with the computers that did
the utility billing and finances. One computer which handled the
utilities was in the main city hall building. But the
finance computer was in the finance office, which was in
a separate building across the parking lot. She would have
to cross the parking lot frequently to go from one

(11:49):
computer to another. As networking as we know it now
was just a pipe dream in those days, nobody parked
in the rear parking lot at night. She parked in
the front lot. One particular night, there was a VW
beetle part in the lot that she didn't recognize. She
saw the driver of the car sitting behind the wheel.
He appeared to be asleep, so she thought nothing of
it and headed on to the finance building. She came

(12:12):
out of the building an hour later and he was
still there. However, he noticed her as she was coming
out of the finance building. He got out of the
car and walked towards her. She noticed he had a
cast on his arm, like he'd been injured. He was
also limping. He called out to her and asked, can
you come help me with something. For a minute, she
had that feeling of dread. Her defenses went up. She

(12:33):
said she had to clock back in, but would come
right back out. She quickly went up the stairs to
City Hall, unlocked the door and got inside just as
he had approached the bottom of the stairs. She locked
the door back. When she looked out the window in
the door back at him, something seemed off about him.
He had this sinister glare on his face. He seemed
to catch himself and reset his facial muscles into a

(12:55):
more relaxed state and gave a big, friendly smile. He
just waved at her and said, take your time. I'll wait.
She got to a phone called the Sheriff's office and
reported a suspicious person outside of the city Hall building
in the back parking lot. She asked if they could
escort her to the other building and make him leave.
They obliged, and within a few minutes a deputy arrived

(13:16):
at the front door. They went out the back, and
when the guy saw my mom coming out with the
sheriff's deputy, he hauled us out of there. The next day,
that same VW was pulled over at a nearby popular
restaurant known for their pancakes, local place, not ihop, for
running a stop sign. And that's how my mom was
one of only two women who got away from Ted Bundy.

(13:37):
I really didn't understand what was happening until a couple
of years later, I got a bit older and understood
what kidnapping and murder really are, which is when I
remembered an incident that happened with my cousin and me.
We were really young at the time. My cousin was
a bit older than I was, and I believe she
is the reason I am still alive today. God knows
what may have happened back then. We were in a
small mall in our neighborhood. It was right across the

(13:59):
street from the building we lived in. The mall had
more than one entrance, and the back entrance was right
across from a school. My cousin and I were in
the play area where we usually go most of the
time in the mall, when a very old man came
to us and asked us if we saw his kid.
Being oblivious to the entire situation, we went walking around
the mall with him trying to find his kid. We
got close to the back entrance of the mall and

(14:21):
he asked us if we thought his child went out
from here. We said maybe, so we got out and
started looking for him. As soon as we got out
of the mall, the school was right in front of us.
Which had school buses parked outside. The old man said repeatedly,
I think I hear something behind the bus. Come with me. Luckily,
my cousin was very afraid and refused to go and
insisted we go back to the mall. After that incident happened,

(14:44):
I didn't think of it at all until an old
man was arrested for kidnapping children. The second I saw
his picture, I remembered it all like it was yesterday.
A little late, but my mother and her ex husband
met John Wayne Gacy, apparently, my mother's ex husband before
my father, was a very shady character. He was on
his way to becoming a junkie and was a big
time dealer. But Mom says that she isn't one hundred

(15:07):
percent that this story was concerning drugs. I digress Mom's
ex husband is an all around criminal and told Mom
that they were going to go collect on a debt.
They get to his house and no shit. He has
the basement blocked off in his concrete mix and construction
shit everywhere. They go into his office where he sits
behind his desk the whole time. Mom says he is
very stereotypically trying to stall her ex who was increasingly

(15:29):
growing impatient with the situation. Then John gets a phone
call and without hesitation, answers it and kind of starts
blowing off my mom and her ex. I should add
Mom's X was a super dangerous individual who was a
bouncer and bona fidees kicker, so from the jump, Mom
is worried that he is just going to beat the
fuck out of this guy. So Gasey is on the
phone looking away, and mom z X slowly walks up

(15:51):
and dramatically takes the phone out of Gacy's hand and
slams it on the receiver and says something cool but
I can't remember, along the lines of give me the
money now, motherfucker. Gacy is startled at first, but then
gets this really weird look on his face like he
was trying to look crazy, tilts his head down while
looking at ex husband, then, without saying anything, quickly grabs
a check book from a drawer and writes a check.

(16:13):
They leave without incident and seen, she says. After they left,
they were talking about how the guy gave them the creeps,
how they could tell he was dangerous even though he
didn't look or act like it. This didn't happen to me,
but it actually happened to my father during the seventies,
I believe, when he was in his late teens or
early twenties. He was walking home from work late at
night in the middle of winter in Chicago. A car

(16:35):
pulled up alongside him and with a very distinctive voice said, Hey,
do you need a ride somewhere? My dad replied no
and kept walking. He walked a few more steps, and
the car pulled up next to him again, and the
man inside said, are you sure you don't need a ride?
It's really cold out. I don't mind dropping you off somewhere.
My dad replied once again, no, but thank you anyway.

(16:59):
The car drove off, and my dad didn't think much
of it until a few months later when he was
watching the news and heard that very distinctive voice once again.
The man who offered him a ride was John Wayne Gacy,
one of the most notorious brutal serial killers of all time,
killing and sexually assaulting around thirty three young men in
the seventies. When my dad heard on the news that
they had caught the killer and that it was indeed

(17:19):
the man who offered him a ride that one night,
he couldn't believe it. He had literally looked in the
face of death. I and my mom lived in Park City,
Kansas through the nineties. B t K. Dennis Rader was
a compliance officer for the city. Basically wrote citations for
property compliance and handled animal control. He came to our
house to write us up for not having our front

(17:40):
lawn mode to city requirements. Of course, that was on me.
My chores included keeping the grass mode. Looking back, it
definitely seems odd as the front yard grass wasn't super
out of control or anything. At the time, it just
seemed like a guy who was serious about his job.
I know when he worked as a security installation professional
that he used those opera or tunities to scout for

(18:01):
potential victims. Not sure he used his position as compliance
officer to do the same sort of scouting, but my
guess is that he did. His last victim was in
Park City in ninety one, though his visit to us
was after that. Didn't think anything of it until he
was arrested, and my mom and I eventually realized that
he had come to our house when I was about
twelve in the nineties. A nice chap that lived in

(18:23):
our neighborhood would sometimes hang out with us teenagers. He
was about fifty at the time and worked for a
local paper writing on social events. He usually would tell
us histories from the dictatorship era here in Brazil and
some from his early life on the stage. I guess
he was not a serial, but simply a killer. A
few years later we discovered that he had been prosecuted
for the murder of his first wife. Sometime during the

(18:45):
seventies slash eighties. He requested a divorce and she denied it.
A few months later, they agreed to try to sort
things out by going on a romantic trip to a
desert beach well. He strangled and buried her, thinking no
one was watching them. The fact is that alone fishermen
saw the whole thing, but as far as I remember,
was either too afraid or distant to help. Sometime afterwards,

(19:06):
the fisherman was able to dig her out, but she
was already dead. The autopsy found a few pounds of
beach sand in her lungs, meaning she was buried alive.
This guy never showed any signs of being a killer,
and was actually quite funny at the time. Eventually he
was arrested but some time later was moved to a
prison hospital due to poor health and escaped after a
few days. He passed away after a couple of years,

(19:29):
and I am pretty sure he did not spend even
a whole year in prison. What scares me our total
inability to recognize him as a killer slash psycho, not
even a hint. Apparently my family just draws killers to them.
My aunt, when she was young, was in Florida on vacation.
She was walking through a parking lot between a car
and a van, and the van opened its door and

(19:51):
snagged her. Some crazy things happened that I don't think
need to be discussed, and somehow she ended up escaping.
Turns out this guy was abducting a lot of women
in the area, but my aunt was the first one
who survived. She still suffers from PTSD from it. I've
never asked what his name was or anything. I don't
want to bring up bad memories. There was a guy
who used to be known as a real hardass, ended

(20:12):
up getting mad at his wife over something, took her
to his pole barn, killed her, chopped her up, put
her in a barrel, took her down by the river,
and burned her. After he was done, he went to
my grandpa's house on his three wheeler with his girlfriend
to eat beans with my grams. When my grandpa was
alive and he cooked beans, he would cook a huge
cast iron pot full of them over a fire starting

(20:32):
at about six a m. That morning. They were delicious
and everyone would come over to have a couple of
bowls of his amazing beans, so it wasn't uncommon for
random people to show up. My grandpa said he acted
completely normal and never mentioned anything about his wife. There
is an episode of CSI based on this murder too.
They cut open the tree to see how long ago
a fire happened near the tree, or something along those lines.

(20:54):
Not a serial killer, but worth mentioning. When I was young,
my family doctor was Harold Shipman, who was the most
prolific serial killer in UK history. I was too young
to remember ever visiting him, but my parents always tell
stories of how he came across as a nice guy
and seemed a massive part of the community. He killed
elderly women, which was part of the reason he wasn't

(21:15):
caught for years, as the families didn't find it suspicious.
He was eventually caught as he altered the will of
one lady he murdered. Many people didn't believe it at
the time, and some believed he was doing it as
a form of euthanasia. He was a found guy, and
it's believed that he killed two fifty plus people over
his lifetime. Scary to think that I've been in the
same room as that man. Not me, but my grandma,

(21:37):
and she herself never met the man, but she grew
up in the place in time that Peter Manuel was killing.
Her parents knew the family, and a friend of her
own family was even frequently threatened by Manuel. Interestingly, apparently
everyone was very aware that Manuel was a serial killer.
For the record, Manuel was eventually caught when he was
found using money he had stolen from someone's home after

(21:58):
gunning down all the inhabitants, including one ten year old boy.
He had then stayed in their house for a week
and even gave a ride to a police officer who
was investigating one of Manuel's killings in the car of
the people he had just killed. During a family get
together some years back, my second cousins started talking about
their fortieth high school reunion. They bust out the pictures

(22:19):
that show themselves sitting next to this friendly looking guy.
The area had been on edge again this week, with
a serial killer's letters detailing some murders showing up at
the cop shop. As it turns out, they graduated in
the same class as Dennis Rader. The park official, who
dubbed himself BTK. My cousin said he was a friendly
and sociable man, a little awkward, but disarming. It was

(22:40):
not long after the reunion that his arrest made national
headlines for his thirty year killing spree. On another note,
a quick Google search a few months back turned up
that a childhood playmate is serving thirty five to life
for gun, drug and burglary charges. This came as less
of a surprise to me. I went to school with
a kid who ended up becoming a serial killer. To preface,

(23:02):
the kid's dad was the main drug and firearms dealer
in our small town. Someone decided to break into the
family's house, and the kid, Anthony, shot and killed the intruder.
I can't remember the type of gun used anymore, just
that it wasn't something you would find in the local
gun store. Police get involved in deem it self defense well.
A few months later, Anthony ended up murdering the town's

(23:23):
local barber same weapon as before. He ends up fleeing
the state. Last year, he was caught and arrested in Georgia.
Police in Florida and Georgia are currently figuring out how
many other murders there have been, but at the moment,
there are five confirmed in the last six years. Now.
This is a small town, so not only did I
grow up with Anthony, my current boyfriend fought him back

(23:44):
when we all were fifteen, and my best friend dated
his dad when we were sixteen. I was very good
friends in high school with a dim but popular football
player LJ. He rode my bus and we had a
couple of classes together. He asked me out and was
super cool about it. When I said I wasn't into
him like that, we stayed friends. He tried to teach
me how to drive, and I messed up his mom's

(24:05):
car wheel. He said he'd tell her he did it.
He went a prom as a part of my group,
and we had a cool time at the after party.
Graduated together. He swapped seats with the guy next to
me so we could be next to each other, not
in a creepy way. We legit were buds, saw each
other a couple of times on college breaks, but drifting
apart from high school friends like that happens when you
move away. Also, I should mention that I grew up

(24:27):
in Charlottesville, Virginia, and there was a serial killer and
also a serial rapist in the area growing up, the
Highway twenty nine killer in the nineties, and I don't
think they ever named the serial rapist that was hanging
around you Va n I guess the early os but whatever.
My point in saying that is that it was sort
of a weird thing growing up there in that time
because every so often a woman would go missing or

(24:49):
was attacked. It was a strange part of being a
local there hearing about a kidnapping and thinking, oh my god,
they never caught the twenty nine killer. Is it the
same guy? So when Morgan Harrington disappeared near my grandma's
house in two thousand and nine, everyone I knew locally
was talking about it and thinking it was the twenty
nine killer. Again, after a long period of quiet, never

(25:09):
caught the guy. And then Hannah Graham went missing in
twenty fourteen, and it was like, Okay, we've got a
new killer here. This is too close to town. So
living in another city, I'm watching the news like crazy
because it's so bizarre that my beautiful hometown is all
over the news for some terrible, terrible happenings. It's scary.
And they show video of the suspect caught on the

(25:29):
security cam of the local pizza joint. Nothing. A few
days later, they release a name for the suspect, Jesse Matthews,
and I'm like, shit, that's familiar. Then it hits like
a mack truck. Wait, what was Lj's real name? Fuck?
I call my husband at work. We went to high
school together, and I'm like, wasn't it Jesse Leroy? But

(25:50):
he wanted to be called LJ and not JL because
he liked how it sounded better. Look at the video
and it's M. The police were chasing him and it's M.
It broke my heart. At the time, I was super pregnant,
and I kept thinking how weird it was that he's
over and my life is just beginning. The evidence is
overwhelming and looks like he for sure did it. I
think about writing him. I won't. I can't connect the

(26:12):
person who I knew and cared about the person he
grew to be. When I see his mug shot on
the news, my heart sinks. When I see the beautiful
girls he destroyed. I can't understand how much pain he's
caused and why, and how would I ever cope if
something like that happened to my baby. It's awful, awful,
and I constantly wonder if I missed something big or
if his brain just went bad. A family friend was

(26:34):
a twenty something and living in Seattle in the mid
nineteen seventies. She and a friend were walking home from
a bar one night, and her friend had to run
back to grab his wallet, so she was waiting for
him on the sidewalk. She says, a man in an
old white VW beetle pulled up and tried to get
her to come in so he could give her a
ride home. It was dark and she didn't get a
good look at him, but she told me she had
a bad gut feeling about it and refused. Her friend

(26:57):
walked up and the guy in the car immediately spent away.
Apparently that encounter stuck out in her mind, and years
later she found out about Ted Bundy. Obviously, she can't
prove it, but she strongly suspects that she would have
been one of his earlier victims had she gotten in
that car. Not a serial killer, but too weird not
to tell. I worked at a private college as an

(27:18):
admissions counselor the tuition I'm from Quebec, where it's practically free,
is very high. But a lot of the time private
post secondary is people's only chance of getting any type
of diploma for various reasons. Anyway, it's right before Christmas
and this young guy comes into my office asking about
a bunch of different programs. He looked like a bit
of a thug, but was really desperate to find a career.

(27:39):
So usually these meetings last an hour because you try
to get to know the person in front of you.
He starts telling me he gets laid off from every
job he ever has because of his record. He keeps
bringing it up and eventually tells me he graduated high
school in jail, et cetera. I'm really trying not to
give off a judgy vibe because I'm getting that that's
how he usually feels. I figure it's a drug charge
or something dumb. Eventually he tells me he lives in

(28:01):
a half way house and is on parole. My curiosity
gets the better of me and I say, I'm sorry,
but I have to ask what you were charged with.
He says manslaughter, and he was under age at the time.
I didn't ask for details. We finished the interview and
he went home to think things over, and I said,
I'll need to talk to the campus director. My co
worker convinced me to look him up online. I thought

(28:23):
for sure it was vehicular manslaughter, and did look him up. Ah. No,
Not only did he and a group of guys murder someone,
it was someone I knew, the only person I've ever
known that was murdered. I knew the victim when he
was a little kid. They were trying to intimidate him
as they were both dealing drugs in the same area
and allegedly high on crack. They ended up beating him
so badly and left him in a field to die.

(28:45):
They only served a few years. That fucked me right up.
That did a bit late and also not my personal experience,
but my friend's mom. She was living in the Portland
area of Oregon at the time and was in a
rough patch during her life. She was hitch hiking and
she said that a man pulled over and asked if
she needed a ride. She hops in his car, and
during the trip he starts asking very weird questions and

(29:07):
just behaving oddly. After a while, she started to feel
very uncomfortable and then asked if he could pull over
and let her off. He then went ballistic and tried
locking the door, but my friend's mom escaped and ran
like hell. He didn't chase her, but instead drove off.
A few years later, she saw his name and picture
on the news. It turns out that she had narrowly
escaped being killed by Ted Bundy. The guy lived in

(29:30):
the apartment complex my mother managed and that we lived in.
I was a teenager at the time, and he was
the roommate of my friend's big sister. He was a
very charismatic, handsome guy who was always hanging out at
the pool. I would have been jealous of him because
all the teenaged girls were always following him around, but
he was too likable and cool to all of us kids,
and I never heard of him actually doing anything inappropriate

(29:51):
with the teen girls of the complex, though many of
them probably really wanted him to. This was East Texas
in the mid eighties, hardly anyone saw anything wrong with
adults having sex with teenage girls, so this alone seemed
kind of odd. One interesting detail is my nephew, who
was about eleven at the time, came to visit us
for a few days, met the guy and was so
impressed with his hairstyle. They called it a modified mohawk,

(30:13):
but it really was more of a flat top with
the side shaved high. That he got one of his own.
A few years later, long after he had moved away,
FBI agents came to ask my mom questions about him.
They had found clothes from his roommate, my friend's big
sister wrapped around pieces of human bodies. He had stolen
his roommate's clothes and for some reason always wrapped body

(30:34):
parts in women's clothing. When I was a kid, around
ten to eleven, my dad and I would go to
livestock auctions on weekends. We always saw a lot of
the same people, and I remember seeing this guy every
single time. I remember him because he was just so gross.
He had greasy looking hair that was balding on top,
and it was thin and shoulder length, dirt stained clothes,

(30:54):
and he sat in front of us all the time,
and he had plumbers butt. Sometimes he would make small
talk with my dad if he was near us in
line to pay or to get coffee, and I don't
remember any of the conversations, but I remember him just
being a creepy guy. Anyways, fast forward a few years
and we are watching the news and this guy's picture
shows up. My mom turned the TV up and she

(31:14):
was so baffled because she also recognized him. She went
to school with him and was good friends with his sister.
It was Robert Picton. For anyone who isn't familiar, he
is from Port Coquitlam, British Columbia, Canada, and he is
Canada's biggest serial killer. He admitted to killing forty nine
sex workers and feeding the remains to his pigs. I
hate to be this person, but I've never talked about this.

(31:37):
Really not a serial killer, but a serial rapist. I
completely blocked this memory out, I guess, but this made
me remember I and my sister were targets of a
serial rapist slash child molester when I was in elementary school. Luckily,
my parents aren't morons, so the guy didn't have a chance.
We went to church in our small town one thousand
people one Sunday and this guy who seemed to have

(31:59):
something similar to Down syndrome came up wanting to sit
next to us. Even at that age, I knew something
was up with the guy. I had been around people
with various disabilities, so it wasn't that, but I refused
to sit by him. He kept trying to talk to
us during the service and asked my parents if he
could spend the night. They told him, well, we will
have to ask your parents just to shut him up.

(32:20):
I guess my parents got a weird vibe too, from
what I remember. They talked to the guy's mom and
we left with no intention of the guy coming over.
A few weeks later, the guys in the paper or
in the news, I can't remember. Apparently he went around
to churches, targeting people with kids, acting like he had
a mental disability to gain their trust so he could
spend the night and molest the kids. I haven't thought

(32:41):
about that in years, but I'm glad my parents saw
the signs something was weird and Nope Down. I can't
imagine what would have happened had my parents not seen
some red flags. I've never brought up the subject to
them to get their side of the story and don't
really want to. Not a serial killer, but in a
very small town with one small grocery store. In two
thousand and two or so, so I and my girlfriend

(33:01):
from high school went to the local grocery store to
get a few snacks and went to her place to
watch movies after that shift. The cashier she had gone
to elementary school with him before. We both ended up
in the Catholic private school where we met well. The
cashier kid goes home and murders his parents with an axe.
A couple of hours before he rang up our sodas
and chips. My girlfriend chatted with him about having not

(33:22):
seen him in a while and how it's going and
all that, and that was it. No, it had nothing
to do with her. It was him just being a psychopath.
They never had a thing or anything, just a weird coincidence.
We talked to him that day. He just went home
and killed the dad first in the garage. The mother
was lying in bed. She just got an axe to
the skull and didn't likely even feel it. So I

(33:43):
have never encountered one first hand, but my parents have
come close to encountering one. According to them, way back
in the late nineties. They were walking a black lab
we used to have in an undeveloped woodsy area that's
now gone and full of houses. They saw a guy's
car park near by, still running. Making nothing of it,
they continued their walk. The dog we had at the

(34:03):
time kept trying to pull them in one direction. A
few weeks later, they found out on the news that
the bodies of three women had been uncovered in the
area they were walking. Somewhat related. A few years after
this event, I went trick or treating with the kids
of some family friends. We were walking in the area
of where this killer lived. One of the kids I
was brought up that we were near this guy's house.

(34:24):
Being young and stupid and at being Halloween, I was
afraid to go there. Eventually we stopped at the house
the killer used to live at, and I didn't find
out about it until after the fact. When this guy
was arrested. He had admitted to burying bodies in both
his back yard and outside his bedroom window. The house
has a different owner now, of course, but the whole
thing creeps me out. For those curious, here is a

(34:46):
link to the Wikipedia page of said killer. My granddad
was in the mines rescue, so they had to live
close to their center. One time, my dad was playing
football with his brother down an alley near where they live.
There was sort of an alley slash area covered in
some way by a roof next to where they were playing,
along with the backs of pubs and shops. So as
they were playing, my dad kicked the ball a little

(35:07):
too hard and it landed just outside this alleyway. The
door leading into it was slightly open. He went to
get the ball and out of curiosity, looked into the alley.
He says he remembers it was dark in there, so
he couldn't see anything, but got the distinct feeling of
being looked back upon. He remembered a weird smell, but
that could just be him making it up to fit,
if that makes sense. So cut to around a week

(35:29):
later and there's police tape everywhere around that alley. My
dad asked my grandparents what was going on, and they
told him that a serial killer slash rapist that the
police had been looking for was found in that alley
where my dad picked up that ball. We don't know
about the smell, but that could have been anything. Still,
a pretty creepy story. Though I was in elementary school

(35:49):
at the time, I was playing on my scooter outside
of where my sister was taking guitar lessons while my
mom was at the park down the road with my
little sister. Even though I was by myself, the area
was safe and my mom wasn't far away if I
needed her. I was waiting to cross a slightly busier
road when this guy pulled up in his car beside me.
He asked me if I wanted a ride. I knew

(36:10):
about stranger danger and all that at the time and
thought the dude was creepy, so I told him no.
He asked me again. I said no again. He asked
if I were sure. I was sure. Can't really remember
what he said after that, but it went something along
the lines of, oh, well, too bad if you get tired,
and then he sped off because another car was coming
up behind him. I was so shaken up after that

(36:31):
that it took me a while to cross the street
like I wanted. When I got back to my mom
at the park, I told her what happened. I remember
staying in the park with her and my little sister.
The next time we went to my older sister's guitar lessons.
Years later, this girl who went missing and was presumed
dead is found alive. I see the mugshot of the
man who was responsible for it, and holy shit, it's
that guy or his doppelganger. But either way, fuck dude.

(36:56):
I lived pretty close to where he was living at
the time, less than an hour and in the same
metro area, closer to him than where he kidnapped the
girl from. Based on the details, you might be able
to guess which case this was. It was all over
the news. I've almost gotten killed by a serial killer
in my city. He was the cousin of a high
school friend that I had met when I saw that

(37:17):
friend in my neighborhood. Initially, I and my friends thought
he was just a crazy ass gangster, but it turned
out to be way deeper than that. We all tried
our best to avoid him because he was always talking
about some form of crime and always about hurting somebody
in some form or fashion. Don't know why, but he
decided to fuck with me all the time, which led
to extortion and him pulling a gun on me three times.

(37:38):
The last straw was when he told me he'd kill
my grandma and Mom. I told her and the police
were called, but I was too scared to tell them
where he lived, so I said I didn't know much
about him. We moved soon after, and there was a
big case in the city about two executions, which I
didn't think much of until I googled the guy two
years later and found out it was in He was
related to other killings as well. When I told my

(37:59):
mom that was the guy, she cried and damn near
passed out.