this happened to me and my wife a few months after we moved into a new place this took place back in November of 2018 and actually wasn't even fully resolved until just recently so back at this point in time me and my wife were going through some hard times I was making money through some slightly illegal means and had actually gone to jail for 9 months I got out in September of 2018 and I had a job in the city waiting for me when I got home now when I got out of jail my wife was living with her mom about an hour away from the city but she knew we had to find somewhere to live close to both of our jobs that were downtown in the city that we were moving to since we were starting all over after the legal fees lawyers fines and other assorted debts we knew we could only afford something super cheap that would let us pay week to week instead of having to pay security deposits and monthly rent upfront we found a boarding house in our city and checked it out there were four rooms in the house with a shared kitchen and bathroom for everyone we moved into one of the rooms our neighbors on the first floor were a 30-year-old lady and her mom and then upstairs there was a young guy who moved in the same week as us and lastly a young couple that lived in the room next to the other young guy in the 3 months that we lived there the only people we talked to was the young couple upstairs they seem similar to us in age and interests and we just usually talk to them in passing or maybe on the front porch when we were all out there having a cigarette there were nice enough and they also smoked weed which me and my wife did as well and we smoked on the porch together a couple of times things were just AOK until the month of November came and [ __ ] just started to hit the fan left and right with this couple who will Nam Jim and Sierra it started off small things like hearing them get into short shouting matches or one or both of them asking me and my wife to borrow money or constantly trying to bum cigarettes one day I came home and Sierra was walking into the house the same time as me with three guys that I've never seen before and a case of beer they party all night and keep me and my wife up but we end up going to bed around 5:00 a. m. a few days later we are woken up on a Sunday me and my wife's only day off to gym screaming at Sierra throwing all of her stuff into the front yard he was calling her everything in the book you can imagine and told her to get out of his life yada yada yada they argue for like three hours and eventually someone picks Sierra up we had a week of peace and quiet but by the next week she was moved back in and the fights and screaming were constant until one night it was a Tuesday night the day before my birthday me and my wife worked that day and just kind of lounged around after work my wife and I ended up smoking some weed around 1:00 a.
m. and we put in a movie to giggle at all night the whole time we were watching this movie we could hear Jim and Sierra screaming at each other we could hear them stomping around as they moved around up upstairs in the room right above our ceiling it went on the whole movie it seemed like after actually making it through the movie without falling asleep from smoking too much we both noticed that Jim and Sierra had finally stopped fighting we both wanted to take advantage of the quiet and we laid down and cuddled up to sleep until we had to go to work in the morning I was woken up in the middle of the night by my wife who was shaking me and looking off toward my side of the bed I was so tired and out of it that I thought maybe she saw a big bug and wanted me to kill it I turn over to get up and when I do there is a man standing next to my bed punched over my nightstand going through my drawer and the man has an empty milk gallon in his hand after rolling over and US locking eyes he stood up from his hunch position and was just staring at me I kicked my feet out onto the floor and I sat up on the bed as he started backing up slowly one step at a time at this point I finally realized that it's Jim in our room going through my stuff holding an empty milk gallon now like I said I was still pretty out of it and just calmly said to him what's up Jim why the hell are you in our room Bud after a few seconds Jim asks can I borrow your guys car man or can one of you take me down to the gas station and back real quick thank goodness for my wife who was finally fully awake unlike me who said what you broke in our room to borrow our car no you cannot borrow our car after you broke into our room at 4:00 a. m.
him now get the hell out of here you freaking weirdo surprisingly Jim leaves but he doesn't just leave he Sprints out the front door and starts running down the street towards the gas station that he asked us to take him to I looked at my wife and before we can even say anything to each other our other neighbor from upstairs comes down and says that Jim and Sierra were fighting worse than he had ever heard or saw that he hadn't heard any noise coming from the room for about an hour my wife who was feeling protective of a fellow female who had to endure a similar abuse in the past told me and our neighbor to go upstairs and check on her so we go upstairs and the door to Jim and Sierra's room is shut but not locked I knocked and shouted for someone and there was no answer standing side by side me and my neighbor turned the door knob and pushed the door open on the back wall of the room Sierra was laying on the couch face up and we also noticed that the floor and ceiling had been hacked up almost like someone was trying to get inside of the floor and ceiling for some reason me and my neighbor walked over to the couch thinking that Jim had knocked her unconscious but when we made it to her we realized there was blood on the couch and thin blood streaks on the wall and blood all over her I can't speak for my neighbor but as soon as I looked at her I thought she doesn't have a face the neighbor called the cops immediately and I was just standing there dumbfounded I heard him tell the police that Jim had smashed his girlfriend's face in with a sledgehammer and the weapon was still there but Jim had run off the police told us to leave the room and wait outside if we felt safe doing so the cops came and they put a APB out on Jim they found him about an hour later running down the street after talking to the cops they said it looked like Jim was trying to find the gas line in the house and he probably wanted me to take him to the gas station to get fuel to help him burn down the house with Sierra inside after all the cops left and everything calmed down me and my wife looked at each other like what the hell we had to call into work the next day because there were two news Vans out front all morning and every time we stepped out for a smoke or anything they were badgering us for an interview it ended up being a small blip in the news with a short paragraph in the newspaper and a 1 minute segment on the local news channel but yeah that's how I was face Toof face with a murderer right after he killed his girlfriend in the same house I was in so this part of the story starts in 2009 and I was a junior in high school I lived in a small town in Ohio in the fall I started to date my first real boyfriend John he was a senior and many of his friends were dating my friends and he was well-liked and funny at school I'm thrilled about the relationship especially because my strict parents even seemed to like him as well he was pretty quiet around them but always polite and appreciative in their presence since it's a small town John lived literally down the street and we hung out all the time my parents were actually getting divorced at the time so I like spending time at his place more than mine John lived with Chris a man who wasn't his biological dad but somehow he had lived with since around the age of 13 and often called him Dad Chris was an adolescence counselor who knew John because he had been in the foster care system and he had taken John in Chris was an amazing human who was fun to be around and it was just the two of them in their pug Murphy at the house I don't know much about John's childhood at first other than it had clearly been rough enough for him to be involved with Children's Services anyways we spent a lot of time together and always had a good time with Chris as well eventually John confided to me that he often had really bad depression and would get really bad thoughts I was shook by this and I even told Chris about it as well regardless we continue today and I did my best to support him so the next year I'm a senior and John has graduated but he's not really doing anything he didn't go to college and his plans to join the military weren't working out so he's just living with Chris and working a part-time job that my dad had gotten for him I've always been into school and extracurriculars and I felt like John was holding me back our relationship was going downhill in many ways but I was scared if I broke it off that he might really do something drastic he had threatened to do so when I tried in May 2011 I graduated high school and decided I had to leave the relationship behind I was having my own depression issues and John was having a detrimental effect on my mental health I finally told him that we had to break up and he needed to stop contacting me with these threats I mostly cut off all contact and a couple of months later I got an apartment with a friend about 30 minutes away from home beside the college I was attending one Friday night in April 2012 I'm in my hometown to see a friend and I passed John's house where I see police cars everywhere I'm shocked and I didn't know what to think so I immediately call our mutual friend Kyle Kyle said he has no clue what was going on with JN and he says that Jon had hung out at his house a few days before Kyle said Jon seemed like he was in a good mood especially because he was driving Chris's Beamer at the time which he loved to do anyways Kyle was actually hanging out at my apartment with my roommate this was normal as he had to crush on her so I just keep driving that way when I get to my place Kyle hasn't heard anything but my mom calls me with the scoop she's friends with cop wives and stuff small town stuff it turns out that John murdered Chris and he was on the run somewhere someone had called for a wellness check after not hearing from Chris for a while the cops found his body at home I was shocked and a little bit scared as were Kyle and my roomie so we all decided to stay at my roommate's parents house for the night by morning the cops had luckily found and arrested John he had taken the Beamer so it was easily spotted at a rundown Motel about 15 mi from his home and about 12 mil from our apartment when the details came out the whole thing was even more terrifying it was a brutal homicide and it occurred days before the body was found which means that John was just hanging out at Kyle's house between committing this act and getting arrested just nonchalantly playing video games and telling jokes to Kyle's little sister acting like every was just fine meanwhile he had stuffed Chris's body in their freezer at home it's insane to think about how someone could be such a psychopath there was really no explanation given John initially tried to plead insanity but he was eventually deemed competent and then pleaded guilty he got 30 to life in prison I've obviously told this story from my perspective but the person who really matters the most in this is of course the victim Chris was truly a saint of a human being he had been my role model for so many years you just wonder how could something so horrific happen to someone so good and at the hands of someone who they had given everything to someone they had loved trusted and seen as a son it's horrifying Chris spent his life advocating for kids like John the local Center he worked at is actually named after him now as is the street that it is on I often wonder about the why of it all Chris and John got along almost all the time and though Jon clearly had mental health issues no one thought he would really hurt anyone but clearly something was very wrong with John that we missed they say hindsight is 2020 and I can definitely look back and think of a few strange instances with him sneaky manipulative and angry he eventually showed all of those traits but I was lucky enough to not experience any violence at his hands I wish I could say the same for Chris I'm thankful for the time that I did get to spend with him though and the positive impact he had on my life during that time I know he had a positive effect on so many other lives as well may he rest in peace it was summer of 2004 my family was supposed to vacation to Kennebunk Port Maine my father was stuck in meeting so he was going to come up from Manhattan a few days after us my mom wanted to drive up there to Maine before my dad got there which was super annoying to me at the time but we did didn't have a choice and my brother sister and I loaded into the car and started the drive I was about 14 at the time the drive was uneventful but there were various delays and we ended up getting there a lot later than originally planned because of this the owners of the house we were renting had turned in for the night and we weren't able to get a hold of them to get the keys sounds like horrible planning but apparently they were pretty strict about the time frame to pick up the keys my mom unfed decided she wanted Lobster so we went to one of our favorite spots she called my dad to see if he could make us reservations at a hotel in kab buunk Port from New York City while we ate we were enjoying the lobster while a guy came up and started chatting with my mom I figured it was just a friendly local making conversation during this my dad calls my mom and my mom excuses herself to speak to him apparently all hotels were booked for the night go figure height of vacation season in kibuk Port the plan was for us to drive to the nearest town and just find somewhere to stay until we could pick up the keys for our vacation home apparently the local had been listening into my mom's conversation and came back over when she got off the phone I want to say there was nothing outwardly off about him he was preppy looking cleancut unassuming and he fed in with the client tell he told my mom that he had a big home with a big guest house that we were more than welcome to stay at and that his wife wouldn't mind immediately my reaction was screw that no way in the world I was staying in a random dude's house in creepy Maine in the dark no offense to anyone from Maine but the streets get creepy my mom doing her due diligence determined this guy was legit said he was in finance my mom was an investment banker and they chatted enough for my mom to determine that he wasn't totally full of it I called my dad pretty hysterical but he said I was was overreacting that I need to get out of the city more and except that sometimes people are just nice so my brother sister and I got into our car and followed him back to his house the guest house was actually really nice fully furnished but the beds were oddly placed it had two bedrooms and instead of the beds being located in the middle or centered imagine a symmetrical room layout they were right under the window in each room it just seemed out of place to me anyway fast forward we're all getting ready to go to bed my mom hears a knock on the door and it's the guy he said he just wanted to check to make sure we got settled cool nice thing to do about 30 minutes later he comes back to check in again at this point my mom is like thanks we're good we'll stop by the house in the morning to say thank you Etc okay so fast forward another 30 or 45 minutes I can't sleep I'm feeling terrified we hear this rustling which is odd because the guest house was nowhere around trees or even close proximity to bushes that might cause such a noise at this point I see my mom wide awake and look up at the window like motioning towards the window with her eyes let me add real quick none of the windows had curtains the guy said it was because his wife was in the process of redecorating when I looked up there was a male figure just standing I thought I was going to have a heart attack I don't know how long he was there for when he walked away my mom waited a bit and then told us to get our stuff together she wasn't messing around we had my dad on the phone at this point and he was pretty much flipping out at my mom about something but I didn't hear what my mom said she was going to put stuff in the car and to follow her out this was around 2: a. m.