‘He Seemed Like Such A Nice Guy’: 39 People Recall Knowing Someone Who Became A Murderer
1. I couldn’t believe that this was the same friendly, polite, intelligent guy my mom had hugged and fed at our home.
“In my freshman year at high school I made friends with a bunch of the upper-class guys. We played D&D and had a lot of fun being nerdy high school guys. One guy Eric and I became good friends and managed to get a few classes together. We spent most of that year hanging out. As in many friendships people sometimes have to move on so I wished him luck in college and told him to write if he had time (this was in the time before most people had home computers). 9 months later I’m reading in my room I hear my mother yell my name. She doesn’t usually yell so I run down stairs to see my friend Eric’s face on the news. He’s been arrested for murder and it’s bad. He killed an 8-year-old girl to ‘find out what it was like.’ I couldn’t believe that this was the same friendly, polite, intelligent guy my mom had hugged and fed at our home. He never seemed off or weird to anyone it was a shock to everyone.”
2. He didn’t seem like a person that would do something like that.
“My teammates (high school basketball) dad killed his mom and himself. He concluded that she had cheated on him, so in his kitchen, in front of my teammate and his little sister, he pulled the trigger on his mom. Then, he led police on a chase downtown and killed himself on the street. We were seniors at this time, and we all knew his father very well. He had coached our AAU team a couple of times, and was very active with the team. He didn’t seem like a person that would do something like that.”
3. He was really good with animals.
“My (adoptive) uncle is an attempted murderer but since the motive and the sentence is the same as an actual murderer’s, I think he counts. He was always a smart dude and a talented artist but ever since he was a small child, he had pretty bad anger management issues. He nearly took off my dad’s (his older brother) left foot with a lawn mower when they were elementary school because my dad pissed him off. He got expelled from most schools for getting into fights and was in and out of prison ever since he was 14. He got his GED when he was 16. Strangely enough, he was really good with animals and was never mad around them. By the time I was born, he was in prison for assault.
Before he attempted to beat a prison guard to death, he was learning to speak French by watching Radio Canada Télé, and was giving prisoners some really fucking great tattoos. He was incredibly knowledgeable about the news and very well read. From what I can tell, he’s still learning French, reading, and watching the news but now from a SuperMax prison, where he will most likely spend the rest of his life.”
4. Not someone I knew closely, but someone I deeply admired and respected.
“Not someone I knew closely, but someone I deeply admired and respected.
I had a professor that I thought completely had their act together. This person had a career and I life that I wanted for myself.
Years later, I heard the terrible news that my professor had died in a murder-suicide. She and her husband were going through an ugly divorce, and she shot him on the front lawn before turning the gun on herself. It made me realize that I likely had a completely shallow and incomplete view of her life, and how wrong we can be when we make assumptions about other people.”
5. I had a bit of a crush on him.
“Was friends with a guy in grade 9/10 (?), he’d always pick me up to hug me when I saw him. We weren’t super close but enough that we talked about once a week. We flirted on and off and I had a bit of a crush on him. One morning I woke up and checked Facebook and all of my friends are freaking out.
“I can’t believe you would do something like this”
“You sick bastard” etc. etc.
Turns out the night before he went on a coke binge, broke into a house, killed the 30-year-old woman there, raped her body and molested the 2-year-old.
He was charged as an adult and I believe he will be out next year.
Never imagined he could have done that.”
6. We were very close when I was very young.
“My dad murdered a man in 2006, we were very close when I was very young, up until he relapsed into his heroin addiction when I was 4/5 , then he became horrible and abusive to my mum.”
7. Nicest guy, kind that would give you the shirt off his back.
“One of my best friends from high school killed someone in a bar fight. Nicest guy, kind that would give you the shirt off his back. Several years in prison over a 50-cent pool game.”
8. He was kinda shy.
“There was a girl I knew in high school, we hung out most days and every few days I end up seeing her whole family. She had a younger brother who was kinda shy and would pop around every now and then. A few years after high school he became really good friends with a lot of my friends through college and so I’d still run into from time to time. Sometime during college, he got into a fight with his gf and ended up killing her. It hit the news a few times that he was on the run and I always said there was no way that was the same guy I knew. A few days later he shot himself in his truck while on his way back to town to see his parents. That’s when I knew for sure it was the same guy.”
9. He seemed nice and our family liked him a lot.
“My cousin married a guy she had dated for a long time. They had a decent relationship from my point of view. Any time I had talked to him, he seemed nice and our family liked him a lot.
Then in July 2015 she was found shot in her home. Her death was extremely questionable. It was ruled as an “undetermined case” for a while.
At her funeral and in the days directly before and after, I learned all this dirt about their relationship. Apparently he was having an affair and she was really depressed. He was acting really off when I saw him, and seemed to be faking some of his sadness.
My opinion is that he murdered her, but almost our entire family believes it was a suicide. So fucked up. She was only 27. Not even a year after her death, this dude was already with another woman, and has blocked a lot of our family on social media. He even blocked my cousin’s sister from my deceased cousin’s Facebook memorial page. He’s a scumbag.”
10. He was always skittish but kind.
“My friend who we will call Thomas, killed his two brothers at 13. I knew him from a very young age and he was always skittish but kind. One night he gets up and smothers one brother then stabs the other with a kitchen knife like 20 something times, then he just went back to bed covered in blood. He got out of the prison system at 22 and he still seems the exact same as he was before, which worries me. I had a beer with him yesterday.”
—Nqmy
11. He was generally good at heart but extremely misunderstood.
“An acquaintance/friend-ish (didn’t know him that well, he was in my extended group of friends) of mine that I partied and met randomly from time to time when I was about 15-18 ended up joining ISIS a couple years later. One day when I read the news online he was among Norway’s top 5 wanted people. It was surreal.
It was the seclusion, isolation and generally shitty people around him that made him join them because for the first time he felt he was heard, trusted and loved. Also the reason he’d do ANYTHING for them and was so easily manipulated into becoming the exact opposite of what I remember him as.
I think about him from time to time, how a dude who was generally good at heart but extremely misunderstood went from being an outsider that just wanted recognition from his peers to a wanted terrorist. I’m not even sure if he’s still alive or if he’s actually killed anyone but he most likely has at some point.”
12. He was one of the most popular guys in school.
“I knew a guy in high school who ended up killing his father (who was in a wheelchair), and a cable technician that was at his house.
When I knew him, he was one of the most popular guys in school. He was a stud baseball player, always had pretty girlfriends, and hung out with a lot of the popular crowd.
When he graduated high school, he signed with the minors and got a pretty big signing bonus, around 250K. That money ruined him. He bought a big house in town, and all his friends from high school lived there rent free and basically trashed the place. He was a year ahead of me, so while I was a senior we would go to parties there every weekend and it was the definition of a trap house. Drugs and alcohol were in endless supply, with no parental supervision or police intervention (the house was up in the hills, his nearest neighbor was probably a quarter mile away).
I lost touch with him after I graduated high school, but apparently he dived pretty deep into drug addiction and lost everything. He moved back in with his parents with a pretty serious meth addiction and I didn’t really hear anything about him for a few years.
I saw his name pop up on the news one day saying that he had killed two people at his parents’ home with an axe. He led the police on a manhunt for a while before they caught him. If I remember correctly he broke in to a few houses while he was on the run as well. Last I heard he’s mentally unfit to stand trial and was diagnosed with psychosis and BPD.
It’s really quite sad, that kid had so much going for him but his life turned out so tragic.”
13. He always seemed to be a nice guy to me.
“I used to work at Krispy Kreme and had a pretty cool shift leader that would give me rides home. A couple of times, we went to his house and hung out, and he would tell me about his past life selling drugs. I knew that he was kind of sketchy, but he always seemed to be a nice guy to me. He ended up getting fired for sexual harassment, and I never saw him again after that. About a month later I read in the news that he had killed a local football coach and dumped the body off of a bridge into the Tennessee River. I never once felt threatened around him, but it’s crazy to think that he knew where I lived.”
14. He was a super nice guy.
“One of the guys in my basic training class in the army was wanted for murder in Florida. none of us knew. He was a super nice guy, and he slept in the bunk next to mine. one day we are in formation for PT when our drill sergeants come running up with 3 military police and shout ‘Where is Private Smith?’ Somehow he had figured out they were on to him and gave everybody the slip and disappeared. nobody ever saw him again and I never found out what happened to him.”
15. I thought he was the nicest dude.
“I worked with a guy who would always bring me cigars. I thought he was the nicest dude. Other people who worked with him also said the same thing. Except for one person who said that he always mentions arguing with his wife a lot. Well one day he doesn’t show up for work and I get a notification on my phone from the local news saying that a man had stabbed his wife about 50 times in the middle of a Walmart. We were all floored!”
16. He was a quiet sort of guy.
“I didn’t know him that well, but a couple of years ago I lived next door to a girl who’s since become a very good friend. Through her I got to know her sister and said sister’s boyfriend: We weren’t best buddies but we’d end up chatting over a cup of tea if we were both invited over at the same time, and I helped them with some computer trouble once or twice and even gifted him my old hand-cranked coffee grinder so he could use it for his weed.
He was a quiet sort of guy, civil enough in conversation but never really friendly as such, at least not to me. Which was fine, because we didn’t really have much in common. I got the impression he’d had a few run-ins with the law, over and above the weed, but everyone makes mistakes and as far as I knew he was cleaning up his act, especially since he and his partner had a child.
Fast forward a few years, having moved house and not seen my friend for a while, and while we’re catching up over lunch I happen to ask about her sister… and she casually mentions he’s doing time for attempted murder. And apparently her most recent ex is also doing time for something similarly unpleasant, hopefully not in the same facility because that would be cruel and unusual for them, every other inmate and probably the guards as well.
The girl really knows how to pick ’em, that’s all I can say.”
17. He was a cool guy and was fun to joke around with.
“I worked with a 16-year-old guy at a McDonald’s who’s now in jail for Malice Murder. He was a cool guy and was fun to joke around with but it took an accusation of who had has his stolen cell phone for him to decide to come to work and headshot someone. I was there that day but left a few hours before the shooting happened. I don’t work there anymore though. Here’s an article.”
18. He was really bright, happy-go-lucky, athletic, and really cool.
“One was a popular kid, turned drug addict, went on a burglarizing spree of jewelry, electronics, and pills and stabbed a 91-year-old woman who was in one of the houses he broke into. Before he was really bright, happy-go-lucky, athletic, and really cool. He always talked to me and I actually admired him, at least til he started showing up high on Xanax all the time.
Another came from a broken home with his mom and 4 sisters from different fathers. He always had a short temper but was in sports and stuff so he had some promise. After graduation, he joined a “gang” of methheads, got addicted to meth, and stabbed another methhead in a fight.”
19. He was a smart guy and a good student, generally with a happy demeanor at all times.
“I was in several classes and an after-school club with a guy and a girl who started dating senior year of high school. Two years later I read in the news that he shot her point blank in the face with a shotgun, killing her, and then drove to the police station and calmly turned himself in. He was a smart guy and a good student, generally with a happy demeanor at all times. I can’t remember ever seeing him upset. It was very shocking to everyone.”
20. I looked up to him for his self-confidence.
“We went to middle school and high school together. I looked up to him for his self-confidence. He dated the undatable. He was confident as fuck. Senior year he goes to jail for shooting someone in a robbery, when asked why he was there, his response was ‘we went to rob a Mexican.’
Story: one time in 7th grade we’re in class, and I’m standing about 7 feet from him. I put my hand up and make a gun then ask him what he would do if someone did this to him. He said he’d take the gun so I move closer and I’m about 2 feet from him, and ask the same question, he replies with the same answer. So I’m at point blank range, hand in his face, and ask him what he would do if someone did this but pulled the trigger. I shit you not, he said ‘I’d dodge the bullet.’ The thing that was so admirable was that he actually believed it. He was so confident it made me start to think, maybe he could dodge the bullet.”
21. She was super nice and was a happy person.
“I knew this woman who murdered her husband. When I was in middle school, we would sometimes skip school at her house. She was super nice and was a happy person. She shot her husband with a shotgun while he slept. She’s still sitting in prison and will probably never get out. She said that he was abusive for years. Her two sons were understandably never the same.”
22. He was super nice to the kids with learning disabilities.
“Someone I went to school with.
He ran with a relatively bad crowd (as bad as kids at a school in suburban Ireland can be…). He would however always stand up against them bullying anyone and was super nice to the kids with learning disabilities that would come to our school every Wednesday. He was actually a nice enough guy—just ran with a bad crowd.
He raped a woman, murdered her then raped her again for good measure.”
23. He was very nice. Bought his mother and grandmother a bouquet of flowers for Mother’s Day including chocolates.
“He was very nice. Bought his mother and grandmother a bouquet of flowers for Mother’s Day including chocolates. He always shared his stuff and helped out if you needed it. He could be playfully aggressive at times but that was about it. About a week after Mother’s Day he took a hammer and murdered his grandmother with it.”
24. She is the last person you would ever think doing something like that.
“Yes, I dated a girl in high school who ended up a few years later convicted of killing 4 people by setting someone’s couch on fire on their porch. I don’t believe she meant to kill anyone, but the fire got out of hand and people died.
She is the last person you would ever think doing something like that. She was a bubbly, theatre person.”
25. He was a super nice guy.
“I worked with a guy who murdered his wife. She disappeared going to a dinner party or something and they found her body a few days later. He was a prime suspect but they couldn’t pin him on it.
He was arrested a few years later because of some crazy detective work and went to prison.
He was a super nice guy. We played golf a few times and talked about running and I had no idea he had that in him.”
26. He was a cool kid. Super nice and always down to share his weed/help out a friend in need.
“We weren’t super close but hung out a few times a week to smoke and do drugs when living in the dorms freshman year. The summer after that year he snapped and killed his entire foster family.
He was a cool kid. Super nice and always down to share his weed/help out a friend in need. Shredded on the guitar and we actually had a lot in common. You could see it in his eyes that he had some demons in him though. Anyone who stared into his eyes too long always said something made them feel off. Kids doing life w/o parole now :/”
27. He was a super intelligent guy.
“I knew a guy who was a friend of a friend. He was a super intelligent guy. He was a software engineer and learned code on his own. I felt like he was always a little off but not violent it dangerous. He was dating a girl and they had a tumultuous relationship. She disappeared. I was over at his house with my friend one day when people came by asking he had seen her it knew where she was and he denied that he knew anything about it. Turned out later, according to him, she came over and they got in a fight. She came at him with a knife from the kitchen. He wrestled it away from her and stabbed her. She died after a few minutes. What makes the story worse is instead of calling the cops and claiming self-defense or whatever he tried to burn the body. It didn’t work. So they have in on video surveillance at Lowe’s buying tarp, a chainsaw and black trash bags. He proceeded to cut her apart and place her body parts in 10 trash bags. He then placed those 10 trash bags in 10 different dumpsters around the city. He wore gloves and drive her car to a motel some distance away. He knew her social media account password and made posts from her saying that she needed to get away and things like that. He could have gotten away with it if he hadn’t confessed to his dad. There was no body. They never found any party of her.”
28. Guy was a really cool dude.
“My dad had a good friend (let’s call him Richard) when he was younger, he went to high school and later had him as a roommate for a little over 2 years. Guy was a really cool dude (not anymore), the type you’d love to have over and he was really good with women.
Jump to 5 years later, my dad is around 25 and he sees him at a party and he’s hanging out with a girl around 5 years younger. They both chat about the good times as roommates and Richard asks my dad if he wants to get with them for the night (as in a 3-way). My dad politely declines as he doesn’t like the idea and Richard and the girl leave some time after.
My dad doesn’t hear about the guy for a couple years until he sees him on TV. Richard had raped, killed 4 women and he buried them in his parent’s field.
He got 25 years (Canada yay) and he should be out in a couple years.”
29. He seemed to be a normal kid when I knew him.
“A guy who I carpooled with to middle and high school ended up going to jail after a conviction for dealing meth. When he got out in 2011, he moved in with another drug dealer. Early in 2012, the two got into a disagreement over how much money my classmate owed him for drugs, so he shot his roommate in the head. He then fled the scene and went into hiding with the assistance of several people. The cops arrested him a few weeks later. Last I heard, about half a dozen people were arrested as accomplices, and my classmate pled guilty to manslaughter to avoid a trial for second-degree murder.
I had no idea he was going to turn to a drug dealer and a murderer. He seemed to be a normal kid when I knew him. I was completely shocked when I saw his name in the news associated with a murder. LINK1 LINK2”
30. He never seemed to be a mean guy.
“I was friends with Gerri Belmonte of Pembroke Pines, who murdered his adoptive mother who was actually his aunt IIRC.
I was friends with him in the sense that I was close friends with some other kids in his neighborhood and he was just always there.
We all played football and ‘manhunt’frequently and so on. Gerri was always nice to me and while he did have a penchant for doing crazier stuff than everyone else, he never seemed to be a mean guy; at a gym near the same neighborhood he helped me learn how to lift some weights, one time.
This was all over a decade ago. A while back I stopped hanging out in that particular neighborhood and eventually lost contact with those guys, but I’d still see his ‘sister’—the daughter of the victim—because she hung out with people I knew.
I did not really believe it when I heard about it, but sure enough I even knew the cop that arrested him…
Apparently he had allegedly robbed his own family a few times too, but those are allegations, and so hearsay.”
31. He was always super nice to me, and we always joked around.
“My aunt dated a guy when I was a kid, that later ended up killing another girlfriend of his and attempted to have her daughter killed. Honestly, he was the only boyfriend of hers I’d ever liked. I spent a lot of time their house, and I got along really well with his daughters. He was always super nice to me, and we always joked around.
What I didn’t know as a kid was that he used to beat my aunt. When she found out that he’d murdered this other woman, she wasn’t too surprised. He had a violent temper, and tried to choke her to death a few times.
The last time I saw him was when he was on trial. I went with my aunt when she testified against him. He looked out at the audience, saw me, and did a double take(this was when I was in my teens and slightly ‘Gothed out’) and that was the clip the local news used during their coverage of the trial.
It’s weird to reconcile the awful things I’ve found out about him and the man I remember as a kid. I have absolutely zero doubt that he did murder his girlfriend, and there is an evil inside of him. But at the same time, I know there is a shred of humanity in there too, and even my aunt agrees with that. I know he’s written her a letter since he started his life sentence, and I think that she replied, and they’ve kind of forgiven each other in a weird way.”
32. He was nice and we were friends.
“I went to elementary school with someone who ended up killing a woman outside of her salon. When I went to school with him he was nice and we were friends. He didn’t show signs of actually doing such things. I know another guy who I went to high school with who attempted to murder his ex-girlfriend’s new boyfriend. This kid was something else. I went to this skating ring that would hold dances and he was there. I was 15 and this fool tries handing me a condom and when I looked horrified he said I’m just joking. Later on I saw him at a movie theater and he had like 15 bandanas of various colors tied to random parts of his body. He was also on an episode of Maury for a lie detector test. About 4 years later he was arrested for attempted murder.”
33. He was a star high school soccer player and was a really nice guy.
“One of my best friends’ brothers killed someone with an axe. I was in absolute shock when I heard it. He was my older sisters first boyfriend. He was a star high school soccer player and was a really nice guy. I don’t remember an interaction with him that was negative. He ended up getting Lyme disease and a huge drug user. Was under the influence during the murder and pleaded insanity. It’s still hard to believe such a good guy did that.”
34. The side of him I knew was kind and intelligent.
“I knew Quin Glover, he was a part of the murder in Mt. Vernon NH a while back. He was in my church group and we went on trips together. He came to youth group the night after the murder and had to leave because of an ‘emergency call.’ The side of him I knew was kind and intelligent, although I can’t say I didn’t see darkness in him occasionally. Still I mostly remember the time he saved a ladybug by bringing it back outside and the time he collected all of our groups bottles at a train station because he wanted to recycle them and there was no bin in the train station. Yet he and his friends killed a mother and tried to kill her daughter in the name of a band.”
35. Growing up he was a totally normal kid.
“Grew up with a friend who murdered his dad. Had really bad schizophrenia and believed his dad was Satan. He told the police that the character in American Pie told him to murder his dad. He turned himself in to a police officer and confessed to the murder about an hour after it happened. His body hadn’t even been found yet. The police found him lying on the kitchen floor with a knife stuck in his head. He told the police that ‘the world should rejoice because I killed Satan!’
Growing up he was a totally normal kid. We’re weren’t really friends anymore when it happened but he and his dad were over at my parents’ house for a Super Bowl party about a month before it happened. He was definitely pretty weird then but not like crazy weird. Mostly just socially awkward. For the record, too his dad was a great guy. His feeling about him were totally illogical and completely because of his schizophrenia.”
36. He was very quiet and was always really nice to me.
“My brother’s childhood best friend ended up killing his pregnant girlfriend a few years back. He was very quiet and was always really nice to me as we got older and started going to the same parties/hang with the same people. Some of my friends always thought he was creepy which I could see but since he was a friend of my brother and always really nice I just brushed it off. Turns out they were right.”
37. He was shy and kinda awkward to be around but was nice enough.
“Back in college I ran cross country and this guy who joined the team right before the school year started. He was shy and kinda awkward to be around but was nice enough. I even gave him rides home after practice sometimes since he didn’t drive. During practice, he would always run on the other side of the street from the rest of us and flat out ignore instructions from the coach. It got to the point where the coach just told him to stop coming because he just wouldn’t listen to anyone. About a year later we find out he got into a fight with his grandfather (early 80s) who he lived with since his parents weren’t in his life. Wrestled with him and ended up punching him in the head so hard he died. Last I saw he was up for a possible life sentence.”
38. He seemed like an ordinary guy.
“I live in a tiny town of around 50 people; basically a village and everyone knows everyone. One of my neighbors, we’ll call him D., had two children around my little brothers and sisters age, so they would go over to their house all the time. D. and my dad even discussed going duck hunting several times together. D. seemed like an ordinary guy.
My junior year of high school we woke up to the news reporting that a girl and guy around my age had been reported missing. A couple days later they were both found dead. Police arrested D. on solid evidence left behind at the crime scene.
The girl and guy had been out camping when D. stumbled upon them. D. wanted help getting a boat into the river but was a little drunk so he couldn’t do it by himself. When the couple refused to help him, he shot the guy and killed him. He started to kidnap the girl, but decided instead to rape her and then shoot her too. He dumped her body in the back of the truck the couple had driven in, parked it in the woods, and fled the scene. They were able to catch D. because a fender on his own truck was ripped off in the woods when he fled, and they were able to match the serial number to his truck, and the bullets found to his gun that he used.
It’s always so surreal to think about him. His parents also live in our tiny little village. The whole family seems so normal. I never would have guessed D. would do something like this. What would’ve happened had D. and my dad gone duck hunting together? Would it have been a normal hunting trip or could something have set him off? It’s scary to think of.
I also think of that poor girl a lot. I didn’t actually know the couple because they were just from around the area, but they were around my age. It’s sad to think that her life ended in the way it did. She watched her boyfriend get shot in front of her, then begged for her life before getting raped and killed.
There was a documentary made about this, but I cannot remember what it was called. It was heartbreaking to watch.”
39. We were pretty close friends and he was a really nice kid for the most part.
“I played soccer with a kid named Franz around 6-7 years ago. We were pretty close friends and he was a really nice kid for the most part. His parents were also incredibly nice individuals and sacrificed everything for him in order to ensure he lived a good life.
Fast forward to 2016 and he got caught out in a fight outside of a bar. Ended up killing someone and that was the end of his life…”
