All the murderers I know

All the murderers I know

I was recently reflecting on how many murderers I have known and dealt with before they murdered someone. I can't remember the number I came up with but it was more than I can count on one hand. There are a couple that stand out in my mind though. One was a young man who's family I had dealt with many times. I used to arrest this guys dad all the time. I was always catching him driving drunk or with a revoked license. A few times I caught him passed out in his car at the side of the road with his marijuana and pipes either sitting in his lap or in the passenger seat. I remember I used to tell him he was going to wreck and kill himself or someone else, but he never seemed to believe me. He ended up driving a motorcycle while he was drunk wearing a bicycle helmet and wrecked. The accident paralyzed him from the neck down and he now lives in a health care facility. I saw him and his wife at the mall one day when I was off and stopped to talk to him. Before I left he became teary eyed and told me that he wished he had listened to me all those times. Anyway, back to his son. I used to have fatherly talks with him when I would deal with him. He had been arrested a few times for breaking into homes and stealing things. I used to talk to him about going to college and moving away from the area. I really hoped as young as he was he would do it, he always acted like he wanted to. I remember one time he was accused by one of his criminal buddies of shooting up their house. I caught up with him shortly after taking the report (I could find no shell casings or see anything that had actually been shot at the scene). I stopped his truck and saw a pistol lying in the passenger seat, I removed and unloaded the weapon, then checked to make sure it wasn't stolen. I talked to him about the incident and that he was being investigated. I told him to sell the gun before he killed somebody or himself. He assured me that wasn't going to happen. He kept out of trouble for several months and then he, his mother and one of his friends murdered a man, stuffed his body into the man's car and drove it just over our county line into the adjoining county.
All three were convicted of the murder. The irony is that the victim hadn't been shot, but rather had been beaten to death with a set of golf clubs. I wonder what the scene was like. How they could beat him repeatedly while he screamed in agony. Blood spewing out onto everything with every swing of the club, until finally the frenzy was over and the man lie dead. The three of them sitting down to figure out what to do with the body. One of them actually driving the car with the body in it to the spot where they left it to be found. Then going on about their lives the next day as if nothing had happened.
There is another that springs to mind also. I had arrested a drunk man one night who was in the road threatening people. He cussed at me, urinated on himself and the back seat of my car. A very nasty man. I charged him with disorderly conduct. He served eighteen days in the jail pre-trial and at court the judge gave him time served and let him go. He left the courthouse, went to a house that was in the same area I had arrested him at and murdered an elderly man in his home. The suspect fled the area and it took several weeks to find him and bring him to justice. There are more, but these two seem to jump to mind for some reason I can't explain. Sometimes I think about these guys while I am on night shift stopping cars or patrolling high crime areas and I wonder if that car I'm about to stop for not having a tag light is being driven by someone transporting the body of a person they have just murdered and I get nervous for a moment. It all passes.