People Share Horrific Crimes That Took Place In Their 'Safe' Town
Even the safest seeming places aren't immune from crime. Sometimes the quiet, upscale neighborhoods are the ones hiding the darkest secrets.
*Content Warning: This article contains mention/descriptions of heinous crimes including murder, school shootings, animal abuse, and assault.*
Reddit user u/eluey asked:
"What horrifying crime took place in the 'safe,' 'quiet,' or 'upscale' part of your town?"
20.
Man kills his wife, drives a couple of hundred miles (UK so a long distance) to a massive lake, gets a boat, rows out with the body wrapped up with weights and dumps her over the side. Goes back home and reports her missing saying she had run off with her lover. Man was a upstanding citizen, got lots of sympathy and the police accepted his word on the events.
A couple of years later some divers find the body on a underwater ledge, tell the police who investigate and the man is convicted of the killing.
If he had dumped the body over the other side of the boat it would have missed the ledge and sunk further than normal recreational divers go, so it probably would never have been found.
This was only the second recorded murder in the village, the first was 600 years ago and the murderer escaped by climbing out the church window into the arms of the devil who carried him off to safety, as the legend goes.
-TheNewHobbes
19.
A father (whos wife was divorcing him) went over to the apartment where his wife and two teenage girls lived. He shot and killed both of his daughters, shot his wife then killed himself. The mother survived the shot and called the police. I went to highschool with the girls. It was crazy. Stuff like that never happens where i live
-Maroczy-Bind
18.
Several years ago, a doctor my wife worked with invited us to Thanksgiving dinner. The doctor lived about 8 blocks away from us, and had overheard her mentioning that we had no plans.
The next day, my sister called and told us she wanted to get all of my siblings and I together for a big Thanksgiving, so my wife let the doctor know we couldn't make it.
On Thanksgiving day, we found out by watching the news that the doctors nephew -who had been struggling with substance abuse and mental health issues for years- showed up and killed 4 people with a shotgun, the doctor's wife and 4 year old daughter and the nephew's parents.
The doctor had been shot himself, but survived. He managed to wrestle the gun away and had his nephew in a choke hold when the police arrived.
Needless to say he took quite a lot of time off work. Since he lived so close to us, me and my wife made sure to check in on him from time to time.
The next year, we invited him to Thanksgiving dinner with my family. He later said that seeing my enormous clan (there were about 40 people there, which was actually a pretty low headcount for one of my family gatherings) all together and laughing and loving each other was one of the things that really made him realize that his own life wasn't over.
He got married again a few years later, and he has two sons with his new wife. The oldest is the same age as my youngest, so we still see each other. He loves those boys to death, and is a great dad. He's a really good guy, and it still choked me up to think about what he went through.
-MjolnirPants
17.
I live in a small town (like 20.000 inhabitants) but one guy killed his FIL in their own home because he kept harassing his wife/gf. Turned out this has been going on since she was like 10, and now she was ~30. He then brought the body to the police station, and drove back home. It all happened in my neighborhood.
I found a news article, this is what happened: the guy strangled his FIL after he made jokes about abusing his daughter (the guy's wife). The guy was there with his wife and kids, and they all witnessed it. They then drove together to another town (~15 minute drive) and brought the body to the police station. The guy had to stay but his family went back home.
The guy got 8 years, so he's in jail until 2026.
-guywithanusername
16.
Someone poisoned like 20% of the dogs in my neighborhood. Injected gasoline into hotdogs then threw it over fences. Almost got my neighbor’s dog but they got it out of their system before it was completely digested.
-Exho_Foxtrot_123
15.
Woman asked for divorce, which enraged the husband, so he slit her Achilles tendons and dumped her in the lawn to watch as he burned the house down with himself and their 5 year old daughter inside.
-Vaisbeau
14.
A guy on my street was tied to a chair and tortured by gang members over drugs. My street is 3 blocks, he was single, same race and in the same decade of age as I. Only my banker called to check on me when it made front page of paper.
-bluesun68
13.
A girl around 10 years old was kidnapped and murdered by her neighbor. Tossed into a dumpster. It was almost two, because there was another girl with her at the time, but the guy couldn’t get to her.
-ten-bears
12.
Here’s the back story: I managed a security team at a hotel across from the building that this incident occurred. I remember the prior night, Chris Mohan was at my place for a get together, having drinks and what not, just a friendly few drinks with other buddies.
Chris is employed with me at the hotel and during that time he was my partner at work (a buddy system), the next day when he did not show up for his shift I began calling him but to no avail. But what I saw that day was there were a lot of cops around, literally the whole force. When I spoke to one of the officers he said that there was some sort of gas leak and had casualties.
Later I was informed that there had been a murder at the same building that Chris lived at, a total of 6 bodies in one apartment, my heart sank when I heard the news and I was worried for Chris and I wanted to go check on him but the whole block was cordoned off, no one was to enter and ppl got questioned as they leave the property.
The next day was confirmed that Chris was one of the casualties, he was amongst one of the two innocent people that had been murdered. A lot of of his colleagues at work were devastated and I can’t even imagine what his parents were going through.
I remembered going to his funeral and it was an open casket, I saw a hole (exit wound) on Chris’s check it was unbearable seeing him like that. I’ll just stop here and suggest that if some people here would like to know more, google the surrey six and go down that rabbit hole. https://www.ottawacitizen.com/news/surrey+victim+co...
-maesterz
11.
Not really a crime, but horrifying nonetheless. 17 year old kid in a nice neighborhood of a rich college town designed and 3D printed a miniature guillotine with a rope, a weight, and a box cutter blade and used it to cut his tongue nearly off. Called an ambulance before doing it. Being treated for schizophrenia now.
-thisisfelix_
10.
The Dupont de Ligonnès murders and disappearance
Very bourgeois family of five goes missing in a quiet neighbourhood of Nantes, France. A few days later, police finally digs under the terrace and finds the body of the wife plus the four kids. Father is missing.
This was one of the top crime stories in France in 2011, mostly because of the family's background--catholic, private school, old money, etc. I must have walked past the house a hundred of times and I'm still shocked no one heard anything. It's a city house, so semi-detached, and it's a busy street.
The father, obviously the top suspect, is still missing by the way.
9.
Someone poisoned like 20% of the dogs in my neighborhood. Injected gasoline into hotdogs then threw it over fences. Almost got my neighbor's dog but they got it out of their system before it was completely digested.
8.
The Abbotsford killer. He kidnapped two girls, beat and killed one of them, and the other one barely escaped with her life. He remained unidentified for months, while taunting the police with his crime, but was caught through voice recognition. His mom heard the voice tapes, and called the police on her own son.
7.
The school shooting today. A mile from my house. Nice safe neighborhood.
A follow up-Last night our kids were released from the meet-up point (Central Park) and are home safely. I can't imagine being the parent of one of the kids that won't be coming home.
Same, Saugus was my high school too. F*cked up.
Me too neighbor. Our town really is super safe so this was a shocker.
6.
Maybe a year or two ago, a body was found buried in the backyard of a house on the nice side of town. The victim was in his early 20s, didn't have a record, and according to close family/friends no one knew why this would have happened. Turns out, he had gotten hooked on meth. He was with his friend and his friend's girlfriend when he overdosed and instead of calling an ambulance or the cops, they decided to burn the body and bury him in the yard to hide the evidence. Weirdly enough, my dad is coworkers with the girlfriend's mom.
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Have you ever worked one of those jobs that paid you to kinda sit there? If you have, you know the joy that comes with watching the entirety of Breaking Bad ...God I know several people who've died from overdoses because people were too scared to call 911. In fact I one time had to make that decision while giving mouth to mouth to my friend. I thankfully did call and he was Narcaned and saved. Now it's possible he would've been fine, the situation was chaotic enough it's been unclear if he would've died without first responders, but I'd do it again in a heartbeat. It was a real decision though because I was in a state I was unfamiliar with and with the laws there as well. Thankfully it was a state that won't prosecute you for calling 911 and the cops were very nice about it. But we really need to stop prosecuting people for accidental ODs and then publicize that fact heavily. You can't get help for your addiction if you're dead.
5.
Another one, a girl I went to high school with was taken from a bar in her college town, assaulted, beaten, and choked by a guy. He shoved her into a container and took a Lyft to his grandparent's house to stow the body away in a shed. She wasn't dead when he left the body. She slowly suffocated to death in the container. Sadly, she had tried to text her friends beforehand to ask for help but of the two people she chose, one was asleep and the other's phone had died.
Did I mention he had his cousin help move the container? He had no clue there was a body in it. Imagine hearing about that after the fact, that you helped a murderer. Messed up. And an addition, for everyone asking, the murderer was sentenced to life in prison without the possibility of parole. He pleaded guilty to tampering with evidence and transporting a body, but not the murder. The jury took less than 2 hours to come to the conclusion that he was guilty on all counts.
This is the organization that the family created in her name. They go around cities and give out these things called Blessing Bags. They give them out to the homeless, something that she used to do in her free time. Feel free to donate or volunteer at a city near you! I'm not sure if they go much farther west than Ohio, but when I volunteered, it was the best time of my life.
4.
There was a double homicide and suicide in a house 2 blocks away from my house and across from the public library. Bad stuff, an axe and shotgun were used.
The weirder part is that house recently sold for 4 times as much as any other house around it.
3.
Double homicide. All the kids in the neighborhood walked by the house to the school bus stop while the killer was still inside and the daughter was on death's door.
Early weekday morning, neighbor goes out to get the newspaper and comes back but doesn't quite shut the door behind her. A man, who lives in the neighborhood with his parents, walks in with a knife and stabs and slashes her throat. He surprises the husband coming down the stairs to her gurgling and stabs him several times before slicing his throat. Their daughter is at the top of the stairs getting ready for school. He slashes her throat. Almost an hour passes as he searches for money in the house and keys to the nightclub the couple own.
Outside, kids are walking by to the school bus stop at the front of the neighborhood, including myself and my brother. Everyone finds it a bit strange that the obnoxious yellow hummer that is too big for the garage is still there. It's always gone this time of day. He waits until the school bus picks up kids and then takes the hummer to the nightclub.
School tries to call wondering why the daughter hasn't shown up. Girl picks up the phone but she can't talk. Someone checks and finds the scene. The mother and father are dead. But the girl survives.
The guy is easily caught (he's driving an easily identifiable yellow hummer 2 ffs as his getaway) and tries to say he was forced to do it by a gang. Suddenly almost everyone in the neighborhood has a story about how big a creep he had been, started random arguments, never cleaned up after his dog when taking it for walks in the morning in the neighborhood.
The girl came back to school to visit her friends a few months later, but moved in with her uncle and aunt out of town. The killer's parents were mortified and were a wreck about it.
2.
My school town, small population, touristy and famed for being a beautiful destination, full of old people who retired and families raising kids in the countryside, has the record of the longest prison sentence served before the 'perpetrator' was found innocent. That fancy house and clifftop shots in Pride and Prejudice? That's the area.
A young woman was found beaten with an axe handle in a churchyard, dying later, in the mid seventies. A seventeen year old groundskeeper, with a reading age of eleven and severe learning difficulties was found covered in blood after finding her and shaking her. In a nine hour interrogation, without any legal aid or his parents, he signed a confession of murder, aided by an eyewitness and a forensic believing the blood patterns matched him being the attacker. He moved prison eight times, facing assault from other inmates for his 'crime'.
27 years later, the teenage eyewitness also revealed she saw the victim unharmed at the same time, couldn't have seen anything behind a bank of trees, and was very short sighted. A journalist claimed evidence was burned, buried, linking the case to the yorkshire ripper, and a bloody palm print on the murder weapon was found not to match the perpetrator.
Thirty years and he's out with a new life and a wad of cash, but learning this in secondary school was a huge shock to me, our town is so peaceful, kind and friendly.
1.
Lived in a safe and quiet neighborhood in rural Arkansas.
I mowed lawns for money and played with the other neighborhood kids.
One day I came home from school, and my mother wouldn't let me leave the yard.
Turns out, a man four houses up from ours murdered his wife and buried her in the back yard.
They only found her because neighborhood dogs kept digging at the same spot in his back yard, where the corpse was.