Have you ever known a murder victim?

Know a couple of attempted murderers:

-The FSU campus shooter, an attorney with obvious mental health issues, was a well-liked Resident Assistant during my sophomore year of college.

-A high school student I taught during his frosh and sophomore years got 15 years for shooting his friend in the head in what he claimed was an accident during his junior year. The victim survived and even got a hospital visit from his idol, Tim Tebow.

 

If you count suicide (I suppose there are arguments both ways), I've known two.

The first was a girl I went to school with. We were in the ninth grade and her boyfriend shot her. All kinds of wild stories came out of it. Hard to separate truth from fiction now. I've seen him twice since. Once in an elevator when I was in college. One of the weirder feelings I've ever had. The other was a couple years ago when my job put me in a place to cross paths with him. Again, weird.

The suicide was a guy I got to know in my current city. Real type A control freak. Found out his wife was cheating on him and when she filed for divorce he couldn't take it and shot himself. Left behind two kids.

 

Yeah ... a girl I went through school with -- from first grade all the way through high school graduation ... she was stabbed 30-plus times by her neighbor's teenaged son while she was sunbathing in the backyard of her parents' home ...

 

This thread seems like a statistical anomaly. Violent crime, including murder, has been declining for a long time.
There were 14,827 homicides in 2012. How do you people personally know so many murder victims?

 

Not really. Let's take your numbers (I'll assume they're accurate) and let's assume you know 200 people. The probability you'll go through the year without anyone you know getting murdered is a little more than 0.99. But the probability you'll go 10 years without anyone you know getting murdered is only about 0.90. Stretch the time horizon out to 20 years, and there's close to a one-in-five chance.

 

I was thinking about that.

If we put murders at 20k per year (they're less than that but for math ease), that means they should be 1.6 million murders in the US during the average male life (rounding up to 80 years).

That's o.5% of the current population, right?

However, murders tend to cluster based on area and socio-economics.

 

More probable to know a murder victim or be six degrees from Kevin Bacon?

 

We're both doing a lot of rounding, but your mindset isn't wrong. Let's say a man lives 80 years and knows 200 people. That's 16,000 person-years. Maybe we should be surprised more people don't know someone who was murdered.

But, as you rightly point out, it's not remotely a random process. Some poor souls are trapped in places/lives in which almost everyone knows several people who've been murdered.

 

I sold a really easy transitional home I owned. To cut my costs even more I hired a closing lawyer with a coupon from the penny saver. $150. Hey, i was new in town and didnt know anybody. The original Saul Goodman. Very likable. Disorganized, but got the job done.
In the ensuing housing boom he took on a partner. Deals went sour and shady partner hired a hitman and off'd in a Chinese restaurant parking lot. Easy conviction. Partner in jail for 30+...

 

The daughter of one of my dad's best friends was murdered in 2007.

Yesterday, the murderer was finally convicted, and will likely face life in prison:

A Cook County jury convicted Reginald Potts Jr. of first-degree murder Tuesday night in the killing of a 28-year-old pharmaceutical sales representative whose disappearance sparked widespread attention eight years ago.

In closing arguments earlier Tuesday, prosecutors had said that Nailah Franklin left her Chicago condo and fell into a "deadly ambush" set by Potts, a man she had once casually dated and who had been stalking her for days.

But Potts' lawyers told jurors there were too many unanswered questions — including where, when and how she died — and that no physical evidence tied Potts to her killing.

Jurors deliberated just two hours before convicting Potts following a trial that had stretched into a third week at the Leighton Criminal Court Building. They also found Potts, now 38, had planned the murder, a decision that means he will face up to life in prison. No date was set for sentencing.

A Tribune front-page story last year detailed the maddeningly slow journey through Cook County criminal court that the case had taken, compounding the heartbreak of Franklin's family. The case has lagged for years as Potts decided to represent himself, then asked for help from the public defender before deciding to represent himself again. When he switched tactics again last year, Judge Thomas Gainer Jr. reappointed assistant public defenders and finally set the case for trial.

Jury convicts Reginald Potts Jr. in 2007 murder of Nailah Franklin

The last time I saw my dad's friend, his weight was way down. He barely ate, and was incredibly sad. He admitted that he had basically lost the will to live after the death of his daughter. He died not long after, which the Trib mentions:

Assistant State's Attorney Maria McCarthy said Franklin's family blamed the death of her father four years ago on a "broken heart" from the violent loss of his successful daughter.

 

Day before my senior year in high school, a classmate was killed over a girl.

 

How did the girl turn out? Did she talk about it years later?