Warning: The following entries contain disturbing material and may not be suitable for everyone.
Detective work isn't all fun and games. While many are entertained by a good mystery book, movie, or show, real life crime can be extremely disturbing. Some detective are unlucky enough to be faced with cases so violent and scary that it stays with them forever.
Redditor u/ThunderPheonix21 asked detectives to share the creepiest cases they've worked on, and professionals in the field did not disappoint.
20. A whole new warrant
"A lot of my work is actually based on cell phone dumps. I once got a request from a Detective to dump a guys phone because he was attempting to sell our county jail jumpsuit...
Problem was, there was way more on the phone that what we had bargained for. Turns out the guy was REALLY into under-aged girls. To the point that he had thousands of images of CP on the device. So I called the detective up and informed him that he was going to need another warrant to cover the CP for the device. So he did, and began creating a CP case against the guy."
19. A love triangle
"I once got a case spying on a lady's husband. She thought he is cheating on her. Wanted the proof to present before judge in court. While investigating I found the husband cheating on the wife with HER boyfriend! Both were having an affair with the same guy. Needless to say I minted money from all the three. PS. The boyfriend was also their divorce attorney!"
18. A crazy fetish
"Some guy was killing women by making them explode just right so he could keep the hands, he had a fetish with them."
17. This poor woman...
"Not a detective... but my uncle was a cop... Essentially they got a call to a house... the neighbour's had called the police and told them there was a strong Odour coming from the apartment next door. They got a little worried... as this was an older woman, who only really left her home for essentials...
Police get there... after many times knocking and calling... no answer. So they had the landlord unlock her door... they weren't necessarily thinking she was dead initially.... not sure how.. it's seems fairly obvious...
hey get inside, and the odour is just awful.. like burnt hair and cooked meat..."
"The woman was taking a shower... she went to adjust the heat to be more hot... she slipped and fell on a loofah that was on the floor of the bath. And hit her head on the tap... somehow in the fall she managed to turn the heat tap WAY to much.
Essentially... she passed out. And then died from brain hemorrhaging... and then the hot shower boiled her.... the hot water was running on her for about a day and a half."
16. Life is so short...
"Girl stopped breathing in her bed, potential suffocation murder.
Turned out to just be a lung failure but it still creeped me out."
15. The mole people
"Insurance adjuster here. I'm not a detective, but I do lots of fraud investigations. The ones that aren't fraudulent sometimes just turn out to be really weird. The winner for me hands down is the man who claimed he was terrorized by mole people...
My in-person interview was about two hours. I had more than enough in the first five minutes and was trying to leave for most of it, but he kept blocking the door or directing me to wrong way to keep the mole people off my scent. It was kind of sweet in a twisted way; he genuinely thought the mole people would come after me if I didn't follow his rules.
He directed me to park ye olde company car about a mile away on a concrete parking flat he had made. We couldn't walk on the dirt road there; the mole people constantly changed where it went. The claims he filed were all in similar veins.
We decided there was no fraud, but a call to adult protective services was merited."
14. A terrible accident
"Detective here, attached to a coastal town with a fishing wharf. Started work one day when we get a call from the water police who have responded to a abandoned boat floating off the coast. They have towed it into the bay where they requested our assistance and they would advise us further on arrival.
We head down thinking someone had stolen the boat or something else routine. When we get there we are told that no one went further than the enterance before it was sealed off as a crime scene. We have a quick look below the deck and see why..."
"3 people, clearly dead with one slumped over the wheel one on the floor and the other in a chair. No struggle, no injuries and nothing out of place. Completely silent other than the water on the hull and the fenders squeaking against the police launch.
Turned out to be an accident. Lack of upkeep on the very old engine meant fumes leaked in and the 3 were poisoned, at which point the engine just ran until the diesel was gone."
13. This close call
"Someone dumped a body in an alley right by the PD, but in a spot that no one frequented. So after a few days in mid-summer heat the body melted so bad they couldn't ID by looks or tattoos, just the clothes and hair, and DNA once they figured out who she was.
Long story short it was a serial killer who had dumped her, and they found CCTV of him stalking people at the local shopping center right after he dumped the body. They watched him spend over four hours walking around, leaving to his car and changing clothes/hat and going back in, following women for a bit, changing his mind... He left empty handed, and ended up getting caught a couple states away the following week.
Creepiest part for me was that I went shopping there the same day."
12. A story from Michigan
"My teacher was a detective and he told our class that one case that he wish he got but his partner or friend or something like that did it was called jack in the box and this guys wife killed her husband with help from some dude and then they put him in a locker and burnt him if your in Michigan you've probably heard of it"
11. This is horrifying
"I was working midnights in a neighborhood with a high violent crime rate, and we got sent to a dispute at a bar... We make our way through the bar systematically booting people out, and get to the bathrooms. I open the door to the men's room and it's empty (single stall bathrooms). My female partner goes to open the women's bathroom door but it's locked. She knocks on the door and a female says, 'I'll be out in a minute.'... Female partner knocks on the door again and the female agrees to open the door. When she comes out, we ask her what took so long..."
"She's not providing any substance in her answers. She's wearing tight yoga pants, and we notice that she has a large bulge in the back of her pants/crotch... When we question her about it, she's very evasive and won't answer us. Female partner begins to search her. As she pulls back the female's pants and shines her flashlight down to look, my partner says, '****!' She sees a baby arm sticking out from the female's vagina and up through her ass cheeks. This chick had been drinking and smoking crack all day. She had a stillborn and continued to stay at the bar and drink/smoke crack."
10. That's not a turtle...
"A buddy of mine worked on this
He said there was this guy who liked to shoot turtles on a pond on his property. He sees a turtle and shoots it 2 times with a .22 rifle. He had a hunting dog that would go fetch the turtles. He would make turtle soup with them
The dog goes out and gets the turtle and an arm pops up. The 'turtle' he shot was the back of the mans head who was dead in the pond."
9. Someone was watching
"My brother, not me. I usually tell this long and dramatic, but here is the quick to the punch version.
Schizophrenic woman reported being watched by ghosts at the abandoned funeral home...
Turned out when investigating, someone (or something. dum dum dum) was actually watching the people in her building and keeping crude log books of their coming and goings and left some of them in the place. My brother's theory was that they were discovered / almost discovered and fled."
8. That's a ton of money for cartoon porn
"I had a client whose employee had used the company account for payments to a graphic designer. Except instead of marketing materials, he had commissioned $15k worth of Loli and Sonic porn."
7. Sounds like an Alfred Hitchcock movie
"My boyfriend was the detective in this case. An officer doing a wellness check on an elderly woman spoke with her son. He said she was out at the moment, but she was doing well. He spoke in detail about what she was up to lately and all that. The officer noticed a strong smell coming from the yard though. I'm sure you see where this is going, as I don't think pretending a deceased relative alive to keep receiving their benefits is uncommon..."
"The officer turned the case over to a detective (my boyfriend), who returned with a warrant. There were two houses. A main house, and a small apartment-style house in the back yard where the mother once lived. When they entered, the son seemed calm. Showed them right to the mother. Continued to speak as if she was still alive and well. In the bed, they found the body, that had clearly been there for a long time. It was like a putrid puddle. The stench was unbearable. The son adamantly refused that she was dead. Insisting she had just been up and around the main house yesterday."
6. A surprise in the basement
"They were undercover in a mob and gathered enough evidence to search a house the guys used a lot - the search led them to a basement filled with water halfway up the stairs. They shone flashlights and didn't see anything at first, then saw something glinting in the water. They turned to go up the stairs to get a brighter light and along the walls and the door frame were gouges, the back of the door too. They got their bright lights and went back down and it turns out the bad guys had 2 crocodiles in there and when someone pissed them off they put them in the basement and locked the door. Gouges had skin particles in them."
5. A mystery tenant
"A friend of mine grew up in a big family house with her immediate family plus an uncle and grandparents. Sometimes her and her brother would wake up with things written on their faces in permanent text. Just random phrases nothing too shocking. The kids were about 8 or 9 years old, they both denied doing it and no one looked any further into it.
Anyway eventually the uncle is killed in his bed, stabbed to death. The police investigate and it turns out there's a dude living in their roof."
4. Cannibalism on the lawn
"We had a case where a guy killed 5 -6 members of his family and when the police came to the scene he was eating one of his family members on the front lawn, I suppose to get their strength."
3. How was this not in the news?
"I used to work with a retired LAPD beatcop of 30 years in his retirement funmoney gig working on an ambulance. He told me this story that sent chills down my spine.
He pulls over this sedan for expired tags, and neither the driver or passenger has any paperwork, driving illegally and they're both acting shady as ****, so he calls for backup, detains them, and searches the car....
He finds two dead young teenage girls in the trunk. They're naked, bound, and gagged and had been mutilated, and there was tons of devices obviously meant for torture..."
"He calls in the homicide detectives, and the cavalry comes, the two guys are hauled away to jail, and his day wraps up after all the normal procedures and paperwork has been filed.
And he says that was the last he ever heard of that case. Nothing. No subpoenas. No testimony to a grand jury. No interviews for the homicide detectives. No stories in the paper. NOTHING."
2. This killer wanted to be Dr. Frankenstein
"My dad was a detective and told me and my siblings briefly about a case where a killer would take a different part of each body. He had collected two legs, a torso, and one arm. His motive was that he wanted someone to play with."
1. A psycho with big plans
"Private investigator here. Looking into a liability stabbing case. They were blaming the apartment complex for the resident getting stabbed by another resident. Turns out the dude was planning a mass shooting and was part of multiple right wing white supremacist groups, Trump 2020 guy, wanted to attach a gun to a drone and kill a ton of people. Instead, he was so racist he couldn't help but stab his black neighbor before he pulled it off. His social media was essentially a manifesto and the cops found a bunch of firearms laid out, fully loaded and ready to go. I feel bad for the neighbor but their getting stabbed likely saved multiple people's lives."
Do you have something to confess to George? Text "Secrets" or "
" to +1 (310) 299-9390 to talk to him about it.
But we should also be prepared and ready to ask the right questions to have a leg up on the competition.
"What is THE best question to ask on a job interview?"
A company's history or information about a past employee were suggested subjects appropriate for questioning.
Prior Knowledge
"When you were interviewing here, what would you have liked to know before you joined?"
"This worked for me. I asked my interviewer a question about how she had personally dealt with a company policy she had just explained. She bragged about her stellar adherence to the policy. I nodded my approval. I got the job."
A Previous Employee
"One that has always gone over well for me:"
"What were some qualities that the previous employee in this role brought to the job that you would like to see carried forward?"
"Another good thing to do is research the company you are interviewing with and you can ask things about what they may be involved in or you could drop that while reading about the company, you wondered this."
Hypothetical questions were suggested as helpful examples of inquiry.
Indicators Of How Companies Treat Employees
"A question that landed me a job once was: 'If I asked your direct reports about your management style, what do you think they'd tell me?' Stumped a hiring manager and he emailed me personally to tell me about it, no one ever asked him that question but got the job.
"In my current interviews I'm asking 'what did your company do for its employees during [the virus] to improve their day to day, work life balance, etc.' and I ask 'Is there anything your company adopted during [the virus] that they plan to keep post [the virus]?"
"These questions give a lot of insight into whether a company treated their employees well."
Past Performance & Adjustments
"If we were currently sitting in my 1 year review, what would I have done in this year for you to say I excelled in my role?"
"If I could snap my finger right now and change anything about your job or the company, what would it be and why?"
The following questions about a prospective company may not be answered from initial digging on their website.
Measure Of Success & Career Trajectories
"How is success measured in this role?"
"What are some possible career trajectories within the company that could stem from this position?"
Being A Solution
"Ask them what is the biggest problem you can solve for them in your first six months with the company. Similar to 'don't think of a purple hippo,' this forces them to imagine you succeeding in the position."
Simply The Best
"Who is your best employee and why is he/she the best?"
"You will then face 2 situations mostly:"
"panicking CEO who can't answer you 'Bob who works 17 hours a day for a slice of bread' so the fear in their faces must be a big nono for you"
"entusiast CEO who actually follow their business and can tell you who is an added value for the company and why."
– ThePiz91
My experiences with job interviews are different than others seeking work in office environments.
Having had a years-long career as a dancer, my "interview" was the dance audition, where hopefuls dance in small groups of people at a time after learning a routine and then awaiting their fate after the panel evaluates their performances.
The question I may or may not have asked in such a scenario earlier in my career was: "Did I make the cut?"
I did not make the cut. And I learned never to ask that again.
I remember the worst date I ever had. My biggest regret is that I stayed for the entire thing. I should've left as soon as I realized this was not going well, which was basically at hello. But he was paying so I drank, a lot. I'll keep names and dates to myself to protect the innocent.
0/10
Big Brother Reaction GIF by Big Brother After DarkGiphy"Went to brewery, date said I had hairy arms and that meant I was horny, said "you look really awful in this light" and then tried to dig out of that hole by saying in his native language that was a term of endearment long term couples said to each other. 0/10 did not date again."
Lucky 13?
"My wife wanted to plan our 13th wedding anniversary. I was excited because usually, I plan it. She bought us some new disc golf discs and after a quick supper, we went to play. We hadn't played in forever. We were laughing and I had a great time. She served me with divorce papers and told me that the date was a test to see if she still had feelings for me. I also learned that she was having an affair that started well before our anniversary."
- rmorlock
Two Hours from Home
"Not necessarily a date but a person I was dating invited me to his parent's house for the afternoon. He wanted to introduce me to them and show me the house he grew up in. I thought it was super sweet and had no problems going. He was also in the middle of moving and needed to pick up a few things, so it really didn't seem that unusual."
"Yeah, we got there and it was awful. His entire family was there. They traveled from hours away too. This was not just meeting the parents, it was meeting the ENTIRE family. Even worse? At some point, this idiot told his parents that he had proposed. We had been dating TWO months. I spent the entire afternoon dumbfounded and just playing along."
"We were two hours from home and I had no cell service, no way to leave at all. We ended up spending the afternoon brainstorming wedding ideas and planning an Alaskan honeymoon that his parents planned to gift us. His brother even called to say congratulations! We drove back to his apartment in silence. When we got there, I got in my car and left, didn't even bother grabbing my stuff. Weirdest experience ever. I have no idea how he broke it to his parents that we weren't getting married."
You're Cut Off!
"Got set up on a blind date once between mutual friends. She shows up to the restaurant already a little tipsy, orders multiple appetizers and only takes like one or two bites from each one. Then she proceeds to order 3 or 4 more drinks and is visibly drunk at this point. She gets up and says she's going to the bathroom and staggers off. About 15-20 minutes go by so I try to call her several times but no answer."
"Finally I decide to pay the check and just leave. About 2 hours later I'm sitting at home and I get a call from an unknown number. It's the police department. She was picked up on a DUI on her way home after she ditched me and gave the cops my number to see if I could go bail her out!"
- mox44ah
Sorry?
Bbc Three Idk GIF by BBCGiphy"Well, I gave this answer on a different topic, but it ties in with this. We were out on a date, we had been seeing each other for a while, close to a year maybe. She gets a phone call. Suddenly she looks destroyed. Her fiancé had just died in a motorcycle accident."
What in the world? I mean how can we ever expect to pair off with the dating pool being inundated with liars and nut jobs? I'm going to delete my apps.
Girl, Bye.
Sassy Beyonce GIFGiphy"Had a girl openly flirt with the bartender in front of me. She says she wasn't. But handing him her own phone and asking for his contact info in front of her date seems like it to me."
Crazy!
"Came out from a movie, late at night, and date's Camaro was stolen. Apparently, he called his WIFE (that I did not know he had) and let her know where he was and what happened. She showed up and realized he was on a date! She started chasing ME around the parking lot telling me she was going to kill me. Saved by the cops who showed up just in time to take the auto theft report."
Hey Mom
"Met a girl at a country bar one night in my 20s. We were both pretty drunk but hit it off pretty good. Ended up getting her number and we agreed we'd go on a real date. Fast forward to the date, she gets in my vehicle and... she looks almost identical to my mom. I was mortified. I was polite and we went for lunch where I found out she also had a boyfriend she "wasn't sure if she was into". Never talked to her again."
- SgtGo
Liars...
"When I was in college many years ago, before the advancement of cell phones and social media, I was chatting with a girl I met on a BBS who lived on Long Island, NY. I was 18 at the time, but lied and said I was 22 because she said she was 25. We spent a few weeks emailing each other, as well as calling each other."
"We even exchanged pics. When we finally met up, things blew up. Turns out we both lied about our ages: She was really 33, and lied because she thought she looked younger. She admitted she sent a college photo to me. We still had dinner together, but it was awkward as hell. We never spoke again."
Doubles
Kill Me Now Season 1 GIF by FriendsGiphy"It was a double date. She was more interested talking to the other girl throughout the whole thing. Found out later from the other guy that his girl cheated on him with my date."
Ummm... I think I'm just going to stay single. That is a handful of crazy. Why can't people just be honest? I swear the search for love warps people's brains. Be careful out there people.
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