Have you ever known a murder victim?

I thought of two more, one of whom I've brought up around here, since it was newspaper-related. One of our delivery drivers at my first full-time gig (whom, it should be said, I had only met in passing) was sleeping in his car outside our office and was stabbed to death.

The other I didn't know well, either, but his sister was a decent friend of mine. He got in a drunken fight with his roommate, who stabbed him to death. The roommate claimed self defense and wound up being convicted of involuntary manslaughter. (Yeah, I guess this makes it technically not MURDER, but it fits the theme of the thread.)

 

An older guy I once worked with before newspapers, former military type, was always talking about how he couldn't reach his son, his son, his weirdo son. ... I figured it was the normal square parent/teenage son thing.

Ten years go by, and one day the guy comes home from work to find out the son had killed his mom, then dismembered her body, and was sitting next to her, drinking her blood. I can still picture the guy at work 30 years ago, worrying about how he couldn't get through to his kid.

 

My sister-in-law went to high school with one of the people killed in the Benghazi attacks.

 

I knew Kent Heitholt passingly from when he was at Shreveport, and I knew Steve McNair because his son played at one of the high schools I covered.

I've also had a couple of those inner-city kids that the OP talked about that were murdered and a couple who were/are charged as accessories after the fact in a couple of murders, including one who was involved in the double cop killing in Hattiesburg a few months ago.

And my best friend in high school was killed in a car crash early in our senior year, and his father swore until the day he died that the car had been tampered with.

 

Shit, it got weirder today. So my friend, he still lives in my hometown. He's good friends with another guy -- who was a couple of years behind us in school -- with whom he now sorta works (same state agency, different branches of the org. chart). This other guy's father (the retired longtime football coach at our high school) and a neighbor were gunned down today while getting their morning walk in. This is not a mean streets kind of place, mind you. Another neighbor has been charged with the murder.

 

OK, I need to un-see that visual.

Nice job story-telling and setting the scene, I guess?

 

Yeah, it was grotesque. But we've seen it all before. 'Murica.

 

I shared a press box a time or two with Kent Heitholt way back when. We weren't pals or anything. Still, very sad.

About five years ago, I took a side job working at a local grocery store. One of the women I worked with, who had since transferred to another store, was murdered by her husband. He also killed their five children before fleeing the country. He was captured within days and confessed immediately. His case is still in the court system, last time I checked.

I knew the family of a guy who went to prison for manslaughter. He was the brother of a girl I knew from our church. He was tossing rocks off of a highway overpass, one of which caused a fatal accident.

 

I didn't know his victims, but I knew this guy:

King of Prussia, Bridgeport serial killer’s death sentence upheld by state Supreme Court

He was always a little fucked up, but in what I thought was a harmless way. The last time I spoke to him was only about a year before his first murder.

 

At my first paper, the prep editor did a feature on the Menendez brothers, who were tennis stars at Beverly Hills High.

 

I know of some guys who almost committed murder when they saved a perfectly good handtruck.

 

Didn't know her, but my wife's paternal grandmother was killed by her lover in smalltown Missouri in the 1960s.

My wife never knew her and the family never talks about it. We once asked my MiL about it and got a matter-of-fact answer of "she was shot by her lover," like it's an everyday thing.