The Lets Read Podcast - 237: I WAS ALMOST TAKEN | 30 True Scary Stories | EP 225

Episode Date: April 30, 2024

This episode includes narrations of true creepy encounters submitted by normal folks just like yourself. Today you'll experience horrifying stories about Being Taken, Bartenders & Evil Men... HAVE A STORY TO SUBMIT?► www.Reddit.com/r/LetsReadOfficial FOLLOW ME ON - ►YouTube - https://www.youtube.com/c/letsreadofficial ► Instagram - https://www.instagram.com/letsread.official/ ► Twitter - https://twitter.com/LetsRead ♫ Background Music & Audio Remastering: INEKT https://www.instagram.com/_inekt/

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Find your pro at your local Tread Experts. From tires to auto repair, we're always there. TreadExperts.ca Music Music Born in East Grand Forks, Minnesota, on June 28th of 1891, Carl Pansram was the sixth of seven children born to Eastern German immigrants Johann and Matilda Pansram. The children were often forced to work on the farm from a very young age, and the practice only stopped when the first anti-truancy bill was signed into law. The bill was designed to protect children from being exploited, but only by confirming them to the schoolhouse during daylight hours, and in the mind of Carl's father, his children needed to work to earn their keep. It's said that the Panzram children sometimes slept for only two hours a night on

account of how hard their father worked them on the family farm, and we can't possibly overstate the damage that this will have on their mental and physical development. What's more, Carl's father was a brutal disciplinarian, and employed a wide range of cruel punishments for even the most minor of infractions. Carl remembered being chained to a bed and starved for poor behavior at school and how extensive beatings were commonplace. As a result, Carl retreated in a world of fantasy and regularly stole from his siblings and classmates. Such behavior made him deeply unpopular

and the social exclusion made the boy cold and callous. In 1897, when Carl was just six years old, his father packed his things and abandoned the family. The fear, the beatings, and the forced labor were no more, yet the absence of such a domineering patriarch left a serious power vacuum. Carl's mother was completely unable to control her seven children, and his behavior deteriorated drastically over the years that followed. By age eight, he was discovered wandering around town being drunk and belligerent, and was promptly arrested. This behavior continued for the next four years and included dozens of brushes with the law,

until finally, his mother sent him to the Minnesota State Training School in October of 1903. Training school ostensibly meant reformatory school, and Carl's time there was supposed to rid him of his self-destructive tendencies. But later it was revealed that Carl had been beaten, psychologically tortured, and abused by several staff members. Many of the reformatory students would recall a room that they dubbed the paint shop, because after a visit, you always left painted with bruises and blood. Carl often threatened to burn the whole rotten place to the ground,

but his fellow students assumed this was nothing but bluster. Yet on the night of July 7th, 1905, Carl made good on his threats and set fire to a curtain in an empty wing. The training school was evacuated and the local fire department was summoned, but they arrived far too late to control the blaze. Hundreds watched as the building was overcome by flames and began to collapse, and many were forced to stifle tears of joy. Although Carl had taken credit for it, it's not exactly clear how the school caught fire that evening, but the fact remains that he was soon transferred to the Red Wing Training School, where he completed the remainder of his so-called training. Now at age 14, Carl finally walked out on his long-suffering mother and ran

away to live on the streets. His preferred method of travel involved illegally stowing away on train cars, a method which proved popular with many others at the time. Hobos, vagrants, drunks, and criminals all utilized the illicit method of fast travel to evade a variety of legal issues, meaning train cars could be very dangerous places indeed, especially for a 14-year-old boy. Carl later spoke of an incident in which he was cornered by a group of liquored-up

travelers. They proceeded to beat him, strip him, and violate him in turns. Even with all the abuse that he'd already suffered, the horrific ordeal seems to have especially traumatized him. After that, any trace of waning innocence was snuck out forever. Carl spent the next few years in and out of jail for crimes like burglary, larceny, and arson. But at 18, it seems he had a change of heart. He enlisted in the U.S. Army, believing the rigorous training to be the antidote to his lack of discipline. The decision was a catastrophic error on his part, and seemingly unaware of the military's draconian sentencing guidelines, he stole the equivalent of $1,500 worth of food and liquor in just a few short weeks.

After being identified as the culprit, Carl was sentenced to two years in the United States Disciplinary Barracks at Fort Leavenworth. Carl later claimed that while he had simply been a rotten egg, for his time at Leavenworth, being there had smashed any shred of goodness left out of me. Leavenworth had taught him discipline, but it also made him tough, shrewd, and very dangerous. Following his discharge, Carl resumed his regular criminal activities. Only this time, to quote the man himself, he was rage personified. Years of hard labor at Leavenworth had given him a large stature and immense physical strength, making it considerably easier to overpower those he stole from.

But now it wasn't good enough to simply take people's belongings. Carl wanted other things too. He wanted to take from others what had been taken from him so many years before. Safety, security, autonomy. He stole to put food on the table, but for recreation, he inflicted harrowing acts of violent, venal abuse upon his hapless victims. Carl was so fond of violating his victims that he developed quite a reputation for it, and he was feared and despised in equal measure by his criminal peers.

When they began to threaten his life, Carl signed on as a steward on a passenger ship in order to escape, but only got as far as Texas before being fired for drinking on the job. He was later jailed in Rust, Texas for some petty crime, but escaped a chain gang before fleeing to Mexico in the winter of 1910. He then hopped back over the border by train a few months later, ending up in a small town about 50 miles east of El Paso named Del Rio. It was there that he met a man out walking on the road. Carl walked with him for a while, giving him a fake name and a false story to reassure him. Then, when the man least expected it, Carl shoved him into a ditch at the side of the road with the force of the landing knocking the wind out of him.

Carl then stepped down into the ditch, strangled the man unconscious, and then began to violate him. Every time the man woke up, Carl would choke him unconscious again before resuming the assault. Once he was bored, Carl simply crushed the lifeless man's larynx, killing him almost instantly with nothing but his bare hands. The following year, in the summer of 1911, Carl was arrested in Central California for the crime of stealing a bicycle. He was sentenced to six months, but escaped after just 30 days. He then rode a boxcar in a bid to escape north to Oregon, sharing a car with a fellow homeless man whom he intimidated and stole from.

At one point in the journey, Carl and his unwitting companion were ambushed by a so-called Railroad Bull. These were men hired by railroad companies to protect their trains and cargo from those who rode the rails, and they were infamous for their brutal lack of compassion. The Railroad Bull attempted to violently eject Carl from the train car, but was quickly overpowered and disarmed. Carl beat the snot out of the man with his own billy club, only to discover that he had a small pistol tuckered into his britches. The Railroad Bull begged for his life after his pistol was taken from him, yet Carl had other plans for his new prisoner. At gunpoint, Carl forced the railroad bull to beat his homeless traveling partner half to death and then toss them both from the moving train.

Upon arriving in Oregon, Carl used the assumed name of Jack Allen to find work as a logger, but was unable to resist his basest urges. He was soon arrested for a variety of recent crimes, including highway robbery, assault, and sodomy, but spent only a year in prison before being released on March 3rd of 1915. With nothing but a new suit of clothing, five dollars, and a rail ticket to the next town six miles away, Carl rode the rails through Washington, Idaho, Nebraska, and South Dakota. And at this point, he needed to steal in order to survive, but was soon apprehended and sent back to prison. Carl spent a grand total of 61 days in solitary confinement before finally escaping prison on

May 12th of 1918, sawing through the bars of his cell before jumping on a freight train heading east. He ended up in New York City, finding his way onto a steamship heading for Panama. Carl spent the next 18 months at sea, apparently in an effort to lie low and avoid the authorities, but returned to Newport, Rhode Island during the early fall of 1920. It was here that Carl purposely burglarized the home of former President William Howard Taft, apparently as a means of revenge for Carl's time at Fort Leavenworth, due to his personal involvement in the military judiciary process. Taft had personally approved Carl's sentence, so, to even the score, Carl stole a large amount

of jewelry, thousands of dollars in bonds, and perhaps sweetest of all, President Taft's prized.45 caliber handgun. After cashing in the stolen bonds, Carl went from a penniless vagrant to impressively rich and was able to purchase a small sailing yacht dubbed the Akista. The purchase marked the beginning of an eight-year-long murder spree, spanning multiple countries and multiple victims. Carl's first kills occurred after sailing south for New York City. He moored up in a harbor for a small fee then set about luring sailors onto his yacht with the promise of free food and booze. Once they were alone and vulnerable, Carl would attack the men, brutally violating and executing them with the former president's prized pistol. Carl later claimed to have murdered ten men this way, and only his

sheer arrogance put an end to it. One night, after taking not one but two inebriated sailors captive, Carl ran his yacht aground near Atlantic City, New Jersey, as he attempted to out-sail the waning tide. As the yacht sank, his two captives managed to escape. Carl was then picked up by the authorities, arrested, and jailed for possession of a loaded handgun. After serving just six months, Carl caught a ship to southern Africa, landing on the Angolan capital of Luanda in 1921. He landed a job as a foreman on an oil rig, but it wasn't long before his yearning for atrocity returned. After a hunt for potential victims,

Carl discovered an Angolan man who promised to sell him a child for just 8 US dollars. The horrors that little boy was subjected to are far too disturbing, even for a channel such as this, but it's safe to say that when death finally came, it was a mercy. Quote, his brains were coming out of his ears when I left him, Carl said. He will never be any deader. Carl also claimed that at one point during his stay in Angola, he hired a boat and several oarsmen to take him on a water safari. He professed a particular interest in crocodiles and insisted that the men row him to a section of the river that was teeming with them. The men were extremely anxious, but Carl threatened to withhold pay,

unless they complied with his wishes and rowed closer to the crocodiles. Then, when the prehistoric beasts were just within arm's length, Carl produced a hidden pistol and shot the team of rowers execution style. One by one, their bodies were shoved out of the boat and into the crocodile-infested river. Then Carl watched as the huge amphibious beast tore apart and devoured his victims. Upon his return to the United States, Carl found himself in Salem, Massachusetts, where he violated and murdered two boys in July of 1922. The following summer, he made his way to New Rochelle, New York, where he stole a yacht belonging to none other than the city's chief of police. Carl then lured a 15-year-old boy named George Wallison onto the yacht under the guise of offering him a job on the boat.

Instead, Carl violated him, then threatened to kill him unless he kept his mouth shut. However, after docking at the small riverside town of Newburgh, young George slipped away from the yacht, found a police officer, and then reported Carl for his crimes. Unable to return to his yacht for fear of immediate arrest, Carl attempted to flee on foot. But he was tracked down, arrested, and then sentenced to five years in Clinton Prison. While he was an inmate, he made a daring escape attempt, but ended up with an injured spine and broken ankles.

He was discharged in July of 1928, his sentence reduced by almost three years on account of his grievous injuries. Some believed Carl would have trouble walking for the rest of his life, and he did indeed have a slight limp well into his later years, but his injury didn't prevent him from sating his bloodlust. Upon his release, it was only a matter of weeks before Carl killed again, and this time, it was in Baltimore, Maryland. In the late summer of 1928, Carl was arrested in Baltimore on charge of burglary. Yet while he was in the custody of the police, Carl wasn't told specifics of what he was being charged with. As a result, when he was put under a large amount of pressure by the interrogating detectives,

he didn't confess to stealing a little jewelry. He confessed to murdering three young boys just weeks prior. The arresting officers were stunned. They expected to lock Carl up for a matter of months, but instead, he had doomed himself to life in prison. Upon his arrival for what would be his final stretch in prison, Karl reportedly told the warden, I'll kill the first man that bothers me. Naturally, he was considered far too dangerous to be kept among the general prison population and was forced to work alone in the prison's laundry room under the foreman Robert Warnke. Warnka was warned that Carl was extremely violent and could not be antagonized in the same way as other prisoners. Warnka ignored the warnings and made the mistake

of belittling Carl after a particularly slow work session. Carl beat the foreman to death with an iron bar and was promptly given the death penalty. Human rights activists and other opponents of the death penalty attempted to lodge an appeal on Carl's behalf, but were confounded when he repeatedly denied them the right to. They reached out to him through an attorney who met with Carl in Leavenworth Prison in early 1930. He walked away with the following statement,

addressed to those who wished to help him. Quote, The only thanks you and your kind will ever get from me for your efforts on my behalf is that I wish you all had one neck and that I had my hands on it. It was only in the final months of his life that Carl made any meaningful connection with another human being. A death row correctional officer named Henry Philip Lesser took pity on the now condemned man and occasionally bought him cigarettes or writing materials. Carl used them to write a detailed but ultimately unverified account of his life and crimes, and often wrote down his inner thoughts and feelings.

One passage read, In my lifetime I have murdered 21 human beings. I have committed thousands of burglaries, robberies, larcenies, arsons, and last but not least, Carl also wrote that he frequently contemplated acts of mass murder, such as bombing public places on busy holidays, poisoning a city's water supply with arsenic, or scuttling a warship in New York Harbor to provoke a war between the United States and a foreign nation. Carl was hanged on September 5th of 1930, and he was just 39 years old. As officers placed the customary black hood over his head, he spat in the executioner's face, and when asked if he had any last words, he simply responded, Hurry it up.

He was buried in a nameless grave at the Leavenworth Penitentiary Cemetery, where his grave is marked only with his prison number, 31614. His final manuscript, still available today, provides an insight into the mind of a truly evil man. We can have sympathy and compassion for the severely abused young boy that Carl was, but the monster he became is not to be pitied. Any trace of that innocent young boy growing up on his daddy's Minnesota farm was long gone. All that was left was darkness. In the summer of 1996, police in the English city of Manchester announced that a 17-year-old girl had been murdered. The loss of any life is an undeniable tragedy and news was met with the usual solemnity from the British public.

Yet behind closed doors in the hallways and offices of the Greater Manchester Police, there were whispers that the girl's murder had been particularly gruesome. Even the most hardened police officers walked away shaken and ashen after witnessing the crime scene, and before the truth set a blaze of outrage among the British people, the GMP decided to issue a statement. I have been in the police force for 15 years, stated Detective Sergeant Joseph Monaghan, and have never seen a case as horrific as this. Monaghan went on to quote the pathologist who examined the girl's body and how her injuries were the worst he'd ever seen on a murder victim.

To this day, the name of the girl's killer has sent chills down the spines of those familiar with the case, but even the most ardent of true crime aficionados might shudder at the mention of it. This is the story of James Patterson Smith. Smith was once described as house-proud and well-groomed, avoiding lesser vices such as alcohol or tobacco. He lived in the Manchester suburb of Gordon and had a marriage that had lasted many happy years. Yet one day, something changed in him. He remained a teetotaler but developed a vicious temper and began mercilessly beating his horrified young wife. She stuck around for a while, trying to bring back the man that she fell in love with,

but by 1980 it was clear that he was never coming back. One morning she packed her things, took a taxi to a nearby train terminal and then disappeared forever. 32-year-old Smith wasted no time in finding another partner and began dating 20-year-old Tina Watson just months after his wife walked out on him. Those who knew the couple later said he used her as a punching bag, even when she was pregnant with his child. Tina only escaped the relationship following an incident where Smith attempted to drown her in the bathtub while she was bathing. Around a year later, Smith began grooming 15-year-old Wendy Motorshead, repeating the act of trying to drown her after she dared defy his will. Smith only backed off after Wendy

threatened to file a police report, and although it was effective, it seems that she was still too afraid of him to make good on her ultimatum. Finally, in 1993, Smith met 14-year-old Kelly Bates. He had learned from his previous mistakes and waited until he could properly socially isolate his victim before ramping up the psychopathy. He bought her gifts and gave her rides home from school, slowly building a relationship with her until she was legally old enough to date. Two years later, once Kelly was 16 years of age, Smith pressured her into moving in with him at his home on Fernival Road.

He had forced her to conceal their relationship until that moment, with Kelly's mother later saying that the move horrified her. When I first met James Smith, the hairs on the back of my neck went up as soon as I saw him. I tried everything I could to get Kellyanne away from him, but it was too late. Smith had gotten his claws into her and after just a few short months, the physical and mental abuse began. When her parents noticed bruising, Kellyanne explained it away with all the classic excuses. She was clumsy, accident prone, anything but the truth. She quit her job, became increasingly withdrawn, and before long she was subject to Smith's every whim.

But then came March of 1996 when Kelly's parents received an anniversary card from Smith and their daughter. The previous year, Kelly made a point of signing the card herself, but that year, only Smith had signed the card. This small detail triggered a deep of signing the card herself, but that year, only Smith had signed the card. This small detail triggered a deep anxiety in Kelly's parents, who drove over to Smith's Furnival Road home to demand a meeting with her. Upon opening the door, Smith told them that their daughter wasn't home, but Kelly's parents were certain they'd spotted her peeking from behind an upstairs curtain. Demands to see her turned to threats, and by April of 1996, Kelly's parents threatened to contact the police if Smith continued to withhold contact.

The threats seemed to work, and Smith assured them that Kelly would call them as soon as possible. Yet the very next day, the unthinkable occurred. On the morning of April 17th, 1996, James Patterson Smith walked into Gordon Police Station to make a shocking confession. After being taken to an interview room, he told a police officer that he drowned his girlfriend in their bathtub not 24 hours previous. He said it was a crime of passion, brought on by a particularly intense argument, and despite attempts to resuscitate her, she asphyxiated and passed away.

The police were suitably horrified by the admission, but such things were the nature of their work. People do terrible things when they're angry, things they come to regret, but even so, they must be punished. Smith had it sound like he was a good man who'd made a terrible mistake. But the reality was quite different. When officers arrived at Smith's home, they found Kelly Bates' dead body naked on the bedroom floor. They had expected to find her body in the bathtub, cold and lifeless but otherwise pristine.

Yet her blood was in every room in the house. A post-mortem revealed almost 200 separate injuries, some up to a month old, with bruising around her wrists, neck, and ankles, suggesting that she had been continually restrained for long periods of time. Other injuries included burns to her left thigh and buttocks, most probably caused by the application of a red-hot clothing iron, and there were defensive wounds in the form of a fractured arm and crush injuries to both hands. Kelly had also been stabbed with a variety of sharp implements, including knives, forks, and scissors, with some wounds being present in odd places, such as the inside of her mouth. These were most likely

sustained when Smith tried to carve Kelly's face off. He also attempted to scalp her in the style of an old Comanche warrior, but apparently gave up during the process. It's not clear if it was before or after she was dead, but at one point, Smith attempted to decapitate Kelly with a garden shovel, then switched to a pair of pruning shears when the former proved ineffective. Yet perhaps the most hauntingly gruesome of the injuries inflicted involved the removal of Kelly's eyes. The presiding pathologist had determined that her eyes had been removed, quote, not less than five days and not more than three weeks before her death.

Meaning Kelly had spent the final days of her life robbed of sight and wracked with pain. In just a few short months, she'd lost almost 50 pounds in weight due to being starved for long stretches of time, and there was evidence that she'd been denied access to water for several days before her eventual death. At his trial, Smith denied murder, claiming the 16-year-old Kelly had provoked him to violence. She'd put me through hell winding me up, he claimed, taunting me about my dead mother or hurting herself to make me look bad. When the prosecution asked why he'd beaten, blinded, and stabbed his young girlfriend to death, Smith simply replied, she dared me to do it. In the transcripts to Smith's trial, the public prosecutor is quoted as saying, It was as if he deliberately disfigured her, causing her the utmost pain, distress, and degradation.

The injuries were not the result of one sudden eruption of violence. They must have been caused over a long period and were so extensive and so terrible that the defendant must have deliberately and systematically tortured the girl. Her death must have been a merciful end to her torment. At the trial's conclusion, the jury took just one hour to find a then 49-year-old Smith guilty of murder. They were provided with free professional counseling to help them cope with seeing evidence of Kelly's wounds, with one later describing them as sickening. The judge then recommended that he serve a minimum 20 years of a life sentence, stating, you are a highly dangerous

person, an abuser of women, and I intend, so far as it is in my power, that you will abuse no more. Born in the ancient city of Hong Kong in 1975, Fan Man Yee's life was rough from the get-go. Abandoned by her family, she was raised in an orphanage until she was 15 years old, at which point she was thrown out due to age restrictions. She became homeless, became addicted to drugs, and turned to selling her body to feed her habit. At age 21, Fan Man Yi began working at a Kowloon brothel named Romance Villa, marrying a client and fellow drug addict in 1996. She gave birth to their only child two years later, but the birth came in an extremely

fraught period in their relationship. Taking care of her child meant that Fawn was unable to sell herself, which left a considerable gap in the family's finances. Neighbors complained that the couple would argue late into the night, a single word punctuating their barks, money. To protect their son, Fawn left her abusive husband, put drugs and prostitution behind her, and got a job as a nightclub hostess at the Empress Karaoke Club. Yet she still struggled with her finances, and she sometimes stole in order to feed and clothe her tiny baby. Yet in early 1999, Fawn stole from the wrong man and, in retribution, he committed one of the single grisliest crimes in human history. Chan Man Lok was a 34-year-old member of the Wo Shing

Wo Triad, one of the most feared criminal organizations in all East Asia. He had previous convictions for assault, weapons possession, and drug trafficking, and happened to be one of Fon's old clients from her days at the Romance Villa. It's not clear how he came to learn of Fon's whereabouts, or how they came to interact after so long apart, but it's likely that either financial interests or pure infatuation brought them together again. Whatever the reason, Fon made the biggest and final mistake of her life, stealing the equivalent of 500 US dollars from his wallet. When John realized what had happened, he was furious, but also saw an opportunity to profit from Fon's mistake. He demanded she repay what she owed, but with 250% interest and although

Fon was able to immediately return the amount stolen, she needed time to secure the punitive interest. Weeks went by, but Phan was unable to pay off the interest. A deadline of March 16th was announced, but the day came and went with Phan failing to repay her debt. The next morning, three men broke into Phan Man Yee's apartment in the Fuyu district of Hong Kong. She was berated, beaten, dragged outside into a waiting car,

then imprisoned in a triad safe house at 31 Granville Road. Chan planned to force Fan to work off her debt as a prostitute, but she quickly became the object of his sick and twisted fantasies. He beat her with metal bars, strung her up and used her as a literal punching bag, and on one occasion, chili powder was rubbed into her eyes, along with any open wounds that she had on her body. One of Chan's favorite activities was dripping bubbling hot, melted plastic into Phan's feet in order to restrict her mobility, forcing her to smile under threat of further torture. If she cried out

too loud or struggled too much, she was forced to consume Chan's own urine and feces, and some believe it was this that ultimately caused her death. After surviving nearly a month of torture, Phan succumbed to her wounds on either April 14th or April 15th of 1999. Upon discovering that she'd passed away, Chan began dismembering her corpse, boiling individual pieces until the flesh was soft enough to flush down the apartment's toilet. Phan's flesh-stripped skull was later found stuffed inside the head of a large Hello Kitty doll, a detail which gave rise to the moniker of the Hello Kitty Murders. By the time the Hong Kong police raided the Triad safe house,

the only traces of Fan Mang Yi were her doll-entombed skull, one tooth, and a plastic bag full of her internal organs. Chan was promptly arrested and detained without bail. At the conclusion of Chan's trial in December of the year 2000, Hong Kongers were stunned when the jury returned an innocent verdict in relation to the murder charges and a guilty on charge of manslaughter. According to them, it wasn't clear if Fan had died as a result of the horrific abuse she'd endured or from an accidental drug overdose.

However, in response to violent public outrage, the judiciary intervened to ensure that Chan received a suitable sentence. Never in recent years has a court heard of such cruelty, depravity, callousness, brutality, violence, and viciousness, said Justice Peter Nguyen, who announced a sentence of life in prison with the possibility of parole. When the news broke, the city openly celebrated and the special sentence was vindicated when psychiatric reports described Chan as, quote, remorseless.

He now resides in Hong Kong's Stanley Prison and is unlikely to be released anytime soon. Fon Skal was cremated on March 26th of 2004. After her birth, family was tracked down and notified of her death. Three Buddha portraits now stand at the site of her murder in the hopes that such a tortured soul might finally find peace. Discover the exciting action of BetMGM Casino. Check out a wide variety of table games with a live dealer

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please contact Connex Ontario at 1-866-531-2600 to speak to an advisor free of charge. BetMGM operates pursuant to an operating agreement with iGamingOntario at 1-866-53195 in a small village about 100 miles east of Moscow. He was just 19 years old at the outbreak of World War I and soon found himself conscripted into the Imperial Russian Army for the coming fight against Germany and her allies. Although morale was initially high, the under-equipped and poorly organized Russians suffered numerous bitter losses at the hands of well-trained Austro-Hungarians. By late 1917, the Central Powers had captured huge portions of Ukraine and Belarus, and the Russians were in complete disarray. Yet just as it seemed like things couldn't get any worse, Vladimir Lenin's Communist Party seized power. Lenin struck an almost immediate peace with the Central Powers, then turned his ire on

his own people and what has become known as the Russian Civil War. Vasily Blokhin suddenly found himself a soldier of no nation and was forced to make a choice for his survival. Die for a dying master or kill for a new one. Vasily chose the latter. He became a member of the Russian Communist Party before enlisting in the New Red Army, an army of the people that would clear away the rubble of the old world so that paradise could be built. Given his year of prior military service, as well as his strict adherence to Marxist-Leninism, Vasily quickly rose through the ranks until singled out for service in the Soviet's new state security agency, known as the Cheka. Established in late 1917, the Cheka was given a mandate to protect the revolution from reactionary forces. The language is deliberately vague, and the Cheka's secret police soon found themselves targeting a wide variety of political dissidents. Priests and

other clergymen were detained, as was just about anyone who spoke out against the so-called Red Terror. The Cheka often performed mass arrests, detaining hundreds of artists, journalists, and former comrades in one fell swoop. Sometimes these people would never be heard from again, and if they were lucky enough to return, they were never quite the same. By 1921, it's estimated that the Cheka had murdered at least 200,000 people, often on completely concocted charges. They also operated the Soviet's infamous system of gulag, labor camps, and were often entrusted to shoot their own comrades should they fail to obey orders. It was this monstrous organization that Vasily Blokin was selected for in early 1921, and after a series of preliminary interviews,

it was decided that he was best suited for what's known in Russia as Chernaya Robota. The term literally translates to the black work, and is a euphemism for all kinds of sinister tasks. Clandestine assassinations, torture, intimidation, and executions all fall in this category, with Vasily proving so efficient that he was soon assigned command of his unit. Throughout Stalin's lifetime, almost a million people were executed as political prisoners, with the Cheka and its future incarcerations playing a huge role. The then-Major General Blokin sometimes personally pulled the trigger

on some of the more high-profile executions that took place during the bloody purges of Stalin's regime. Yet perhaps the most infamous act of mass murder that Blokin presided over came to be known as the Katynia Massacre. In 1990, as part of the USSR's shift towards political transparency, Soviet Premier Mikhail Gorbachev handed over a stack of once classified documents to the newly independent Republic of Poland. What they contained was nothing short of horrifying. The documents constituted an in-depth inquiry into NKVD Order No. 00485, an ambiguous name given to the planned ethnic cleansing of Poles in the Soviet Union.

One such document detailed Vasily Blokin's involvement in the 1940 Katynia massacre, in which around 7,000 Polish prisoners were executed over the course of two weeks. When Blokin was given certain a number of prisoners, and a date by which they had to be liquidated, he simply went about the process of coldly calculating how many had to be killed per day. He decided on 300. Blokin and his thugs then set about engineering an efficient mass murder machine, whereby each prisoner was led to a small chamber for identification. The prisoners were led to believe that they were simply being moved elsewhere and needed to be catalogued prior to transportation.

Once the stage was complete, they were taken to another chamber, one with soundproofed walls and a drain set into the slopping floor. Blokin would be waiting with a small German pistol. Most prisoners were shot before they could even scream. Blokin had selected to use German armaments for plausible deniability, and he worked continuously and rapidly without interruption, all night, every night. The prisoners' dead bodies were continuously loaded onto trucks through a secretive back door that had been built into the execution chamber. Then twice nightly, they were driven to a secluded spot and dumped into mass, unmarked graves. It's said that Bloken and his team worked nightly, ten-hour shifts, for just over three weeks straight, and that on average, they executed one prisoner every three minutes.

They ended each shift with a bottle of vodka each, drinking themselves into oblivion before doing it all over again the following night. Blokin was officially rewarded for his work on April 27th of 1940 when Joseph Stalin himself awarded him the Order of the Red Banner. The medal citation claimed Blokin had received the award for skill and organization and the effective carrying out of special tasks. Blokin's personal kill count of 7,000, executed in less than 28 days, is unrivaled by any other individual in recorded history. Not even the busiest Nazi

gas chamber operators could boast of those kinds of numbers while murdering on an industrial scale. But Blokin killed hundreds, night after night, for just shy of a month. The sheer scale of his crimes makes Blokin the single most prolific executioner in recorded history, and for a time, he lived in relative comfort, enjoying all the special privileges afforded to him by his rank. But thankfully, following Stalin's death, Blokin faced at least a sliver of justice, in that he was stripped of his rank, socially excluded, and robbed of the relative luxury that he had become accustomed to. The alcoholism he'd carried with him since his days at Cotinia Forest eventually got the better of him,

and he died of a heart attack on February 3rd of 1955, age 60. Even in death, the state chose to rob Blokin of what little dignity he had left, and told the public that he'd taken his own life instead. He became a victim of the very society that he'd helped create, one where the truth is twisted to fit the narrative. Dean Arnold Corll was born on Christmas Eve of 1939 in Fort Wayne, Indiana. He was the first child of Mary and Arnold Corll, a bickering couple who divorced when he was seven, and was a shy, serious child who rarely socialized with other children. He was further isolated from his peers shortly after his parents' divorce, when a heart murmur diagnosis barred him from taking part in the school's physical education classes. A boy who had once displayed concern for the well-being of others

became increasingly withdrawn and antisocial. In high school, he was regarded as a well-behaved student who achieved satisfactory grades, but also as something of a loner, whose only major interest was playing the trombone in his school's brass band. After graduating high school in the summer of 1958, Dean and his family moved to the northern suburbs of Houston, Texas, where they opened up a small handmade candy shop. Dean later moved into the apartment above the shop, his first real taste of freedom, and he

soon became vice president of the family firm. While his mother mostly dealt with the procurement and shipping, Dean was trusted with overseeing their small team of employees and he often spent long stretches of time alone with them. One day, one of the candy shop's employees approached Dean's mother to lodge a complaint. He claimed that Dean had cornered him in the stockroom on a quiet shift before making aggressive advances towards him. Dean's mother listened intently, made sure that she understood the situation, and then fired the employee on the spot. She knew her boy would never do anything like that, but she was also in a deep state of denial.

In 1965, Dean and the Coral Candy Company relocated to 22nd Street, directly across the street from Helms Elementary School. It was prime real estate and Dean was known to give free candy to local children. He earned himself the nickname of the Candyman and was a popular figure in the neighborhood. But over time, people began to notice something about him. Dean seemed to be fond of boys in their early teens, particularly a bespeckled 12-year-old named David Owen Brooks. They'd first met during one of Dean's regular Pied Piper sessions, handing out candy, and before long, they established an unlikely friendship. Dean gave David money and took him to the beach, outwardly presenting himself as a kind of father figure to the boy. The reality was quite different. Dean was slowly grooming David, and it wasn't long

before he started to do terrible, abusive things to him. Dean's foray into such disgusting deeds preceded the sharp decline of his business. His mother had since retired and his former stepfather was operating a rival business just blocks away. June of 1968 saw the official closure of the Coral Candy Company, a disaster that Dean never fully recovered from. To pay the bills, he took a job as an electrician at the Houston Lighting and Power Company where he tested electrical relay systems. The job kept Dean afloat, but his mental health was in shambles, and around a year after he lost his family business, he took his first victim. Between 1970 and 1973, Dean murdered a minimum of 28 victims, just short of one a month. All were between the ages of 13 to 20

and mostly from the low-income neighborhood of Houston Heights. He was occasionally assisted by his teenage grooming victim, David Owen Brooks, but was also joined on occasion by Elmer Wayne Henley, another lesser-known serial killer who could have easily had his own segment in this video. Some of Dean's victims were friends of David Owen Brooks, and two were former employees of the Coral Candy Company, suggesting that he took a deep satisfaction in killing people he knew well. His favored tactic involved luring his victim into his vehicle, usually by offering them alcohol. Then he'd encourage them to drink more

and more until they were too intoxicated to defend themselves. In targeting teenagers, the tactic proved shockingly effective, hence Dean's alarmingly high murder count for a killer who was only active for three years. After passing out or being knocked out, the victim would often wake up tied to Dean's bed, where they would be violated, beaten, and then eventually executed. Dean was also known to take trophies from his victims, usually house or car keys as a way of remembering their slaughter. In several instances, he forced his victims to either call or write to their parents with explanations for their absences in an effort to discourage searches or missing persons reports. His first victim was an 18-year-old college freshman named Jeffrey Conan,

who vanished while hitchhiking in September of 1970. His body was later found buried at High Island Beach with a dirty rag stuffed down his throat. After Dean promised young David $200 for any young boys that he could deliver to his apartment, he lured two 14-year-olds named James Glass and Danny Yates away from a religious rally held in Houston Heights and directly in the hands of their killer. Both boys were later tied to makeshift wooden torture boards before being beaten, violated, then buried alive in a boat shed Dean had rented for the sole purpose of corpse disposal. Six weeks later, on January 30th of 1971, Dean encountered two teenage brothers, Donald and Jerry Waldrop, walking home to their parents' house. He enticed them into his van, then drove them to a rented apartment where they were violated, strangled, and then buried in the same boat shed as James Glass and Danny Yates.

That spring, Dean murdered three more teenage boys, all of whom lived in Houston Heights, and all of whom were buried toward the rear of the rented boat shed. These were the first murders that included the act of participation of his then 15-year-old grooming victim, David Brooks. 15-year-old Randall Harvey was last seen by his family on the afternoon of March 9th, cycling off to his part-time job as a gas station attendant. On his journey, he was spotted by Dean Corll, who turned his car around, knocked the boy off his bike, and then threw him into the back of his van. Randall was later shot execution style and then buried in the boat shed.

In the winter of 1971, David Brooks introduced Dean to 15-year-old Elmer Wayne Henley. Elmer was most likely lured there as a potential victim, but Dean took a liking to him and decided to make him an accomplice. He offered the same deal as David, $200 for any boy that he could lure to the apartment. But to mask his true intentions, Elmer was told that they were operating a human trafficking ring. A few months later, Elmer decided to accept Dean's offer, partly due to dire personal finances, but also due to a perverse personal interest. During their first abduction, Elmer tricked another boy into locking himself into handcuffs under the guise of teaching him a magic trick. The boy was then left alone with Dean, the last hours of his life saturated by terror.

Discovering the truth about Dean's victims didn't seem to deter Elmer, who continued to participate in abductions. In fact, David Brooks later recalled that Elmer was especially sadistic in his participation in the murders, and seemed to have become fascinated with how much stamina people have when being tortured and murdered. On the afternoon of October 2nd of 1972, Elmer and David ran into two teenagers named Wally J. Simineau and Richard Hembree. That evening, Wally is known to have phoned his mother's home and to have shouted the word mama into the receiver before the connection was terminated. He was never seen again. By this stage, Dean Corll wasn't even an active participant in the murders.

He had simply inspired the boys to kill on his behalf. These victims aren't counted towards Dean's overall kill count, but it's important to keep in mind that the damage Dean inflicted goes further than the physical or tangible. Finally, on the evening of August 7th, 1973, a then 17-year-old Elmer Henley invited 19-year-old Tim Curley over to Dean's Place in Pasadena, Texas. They sniffed paint fumes and drank alcohol until midnight, at which point they picked up 15-year-old Rhonda Louise Williams, then drove her back to Dean's Place. Upon his return home at around 3am, Dean was furious at the presence of uninvited guests, but was convinced to allow them to stay overnight on account of the abusive nature of Rhonda's father. After that, Dean seemed to calm down and permitted his young guests to drink and smoke until the early hours of the morning.

Elmer later recalled that the trio each passed out at around 5 o'clock in the morning, believing themselves to be safe. But they were dead wrong. Just a few hours later, Elmer awoke to find himself lying on his stomach, with Dean snapping handcuffs around his wrists. His mouth had been taped shut and his ankles had been bound together while both Rhonda and Tim lay nearby, each securely bounded with nylon rope gagged with a adhesive tape. Dean then told Elmer, man you blew it bringing that girl. I'm gonna kill you all, but first I'm gonna have my fun. Elmer begged for his life and somehow convinced Dean to untie him so he could join in the slaughter. Dean then handed Elmer a hunting knife and ordered him to cut away Rhonda's clothes. He obeyed as Dean undressed the now conscious Tim and began to assault him. At this point, Elmer Henley appeared to have something of an epiphany. He grabbed Dean's pistol and aimed it

square at his head and then screamed, you've gone far enough. I can't go on any longer. I can't have you kill all my friends. Dean dared him to do it and screaming back, Do it then. Shoot me. The brazen move caused Elmer to back up a few steps. Dean advanced on him, calling the boy's bluff. Then right as he screeched out, You haven't got the balls to shoot me. Elmer fired.

With the pistol in question being a pocket.22 caliber, the bullet failed to fully penetrate Coral's skull. He was severely stunned, and blood cascaded down his rage-twisted features, but he continued to lurch forward toward a terrified Elmer. The boy fired another five rounds into Dean's torso. The wounded predator slid down the wall in the hallway outside and he died where he fell. Once Dean was dead, Elmer freed Tim and Rhonda from the torture board and the trio agreed to call the police. Minutes after the call was placed, a patrol car arrived at Dean's place to find all three teenagers sitting on the porch outside. Once in custody, Elmer explained

that he'd shot Dean in self-defense, a statement which was corroborated by his companions. Elmer could have just walked away there and then, but he chose to fully confess to his and Dean's awful crimes. He explained that for almost three years, David Brooks and he had helped procure teenage boys for Dean, who were subsequently violated and murdered. Police initially were skeptical of Elmer's claims, but when he began reeling off the names of known missing persons, they realized that the boy was deadly serious. After being charged with six counts of murder, a jury took just 90 minutes to find Elmer guilty of all six counts, and a judge handed him a sentence of 594 years.

David Brooks was brought to trial on four counts of murder and was also found guilty in a similarly swift manner. He showed no emotion as the sentence was passed. Elmer is serving his life sentence at the Mark Stiles Unit in Jefferson County, Texas, and is next eligible for parole on October of 2025. David died of COVID-19-related complications at a Galveston hospital on May 28th of 2020 at the age of 65. Elmer is the only member of the murderer's trio that is still alive, and at almost 67 years old, he's certainly no spring chicken. It won't be long before he too slips away into oblivion. But unlike so many of his victims who died in terror and agony,

his death will be peaceful. I worked as a bartender in pubs and nightclubs for the better part of 11 years, and I loved and hated it in equal measure. I fell into it when I was 19, simply as a way of getting access to beer and the money to buy it, and through a mix of comfort and apathy I just sort of stayed there until I really found my passion in life. Bartending is a difficult and sometimes dangerous profession. There's a lot of stuff that can either burn or cut you, and then you just got to carry on working with a bunch of salt, citrus juice, and hard liquor. Needless to say, bartending significantly increases your pain threshold, and that's just one of the many things that sucks about it. But then there's a lot of good that comes with it too.

The hours might be antisocial, but if you're working with a good team, it's basically getting to party with some of your best friends every night, with the only real work being the cleanup at the end. It also turned me from something of a shrinking violet into a full-on social butterfly, and for that, I owe a great deal to my time behind the bar. It's also given me a lot of funny stories to tell at parties, but also a whole bunch of stories that are more suited to some creepy campfires on Halloween night, if you catch my drift. There's the guy who set himself on fire messing around with flaming cocktails. I don't just mean his hands or his arm either. I mean his face and neck were just on fire before someone ran to throw some water on him. When we finally put the flames out and got him sat down somewhere, he started to have a seizure from how bad the pain was.

Then there was the time I had to perform surgery on myself after I got a chunk of glass in my hand. I don't deserve too much pity here, as I probably could have gone to a doctor, but money was tight and I was real cheap back then, so it is what it is. The worst part was thinking that I'd gotten all the glass out, going home, taking a shower, and then being able to feel that something else was in there once the initial swelling went down. I used a pair of pliers to dig into the wound, take a grip of this little small chunk of glass and I pulled it out. And I felt that tug dude. I felt it smooshing up against raw flesh and muscle as I tugged on it and the pain was just on another level completely.

There was the guy who lost his ear. I repeat, lost his ear when he fell down a set of stairs that just so happened to have broken glass on it. Being told that I had to clear the area so I could search for a severed human ear was definitely one of the lower points of my career in bartending. Another fun fact, no one ever found it, meaning it either fell into a crack somewhere and just dried up, I guess, or somebody found it, picked it up, and took it home with them. But I think the scariest thing I came up against was a man who ignored the smoking ban. I was working in a country pub at the time, which amounted to me taking a break from the heavier but better paying nightclub work for

about a year the venue was incredible a 300 year old inn that's recently been renovated so all the decor had this ancient feel to it all the fittings were good as new the only trouble was it was very quiet in the early week to the point where i had to close early on more than one occasion, just to keep the overheads down. There was this great old horseshoe-shaped bar with stained glass fixtures, with one side facing the back rooms, with the other side facing the front. The front bar was definitely the nicer of the two, and the room it faced had these big open windows which looked out onto the front car park. The punters were lovely, the shifts never got crazy busy, the management was really, really chill. It was just an overall great place to work. I suppose then that it's Sod's law that the nicest place I ever worked was the place I

suffered through one of the most bone-chilling events I've ever experienced. But life just has to work that way sometimes, doesn't it? It was one of those quiet weeknights I was telling you about. A Tuesday, actually, and by about nine-ish, the last that the regulars had finished their pints, said goodnight and walked out the door. It was coming up on the end of June, so I remember the sky still being a hazy blue when I considered locking up for the night. The likelihood of anyone else stopping in was extremely low, but in all honesty, I was really getting sick of losing out on the extra hours pay just to save management a few quid in wages.

I decided to stay open, but to get most of the breakdown done so that when it finally came time to close the doors, I'd be 90% ready to clock out. And then lo and behold, just as I'm breaking down the front bar, a car rolls into the car park out front. Two people were in it, a man and a woman, but only the man got out and walked towards the pub. He was on the phone, talking as he walked towards our front doors, while the woman I presumed was his wife just laid snoozing in the passenger seat. It's worth noting at this point that I only got a brief look at the guy and his missus when they first appeared. Moments after I saw them, I rushed to put the nozzles back on the dropped beer pumps, thinking the bloke might want a quick half pint before carrying on with his

drive. I know drink driving is a bit of a taboo subject in the city, but out in the country, you'd be surprised what people try and get away with. Anyways, the bloke comes up, walks up to the bar, hanging up his phone call as he does so. I give him a big smile, ask him when I can get him, and his reply just about knocks my socks off. Bearing in mind I'm expecting a half pint, maybe a bottle of beer, then something non-alcoholic for the wife to drink when she wakes up. So when he replies,

two double scotch and a pint of your strongest ale, I was quite obviously very surprised. I asked him very politely if he thought that was a good idea, what with him being behind the wheel and everything. From the look of him, I was a bit worried that he'd take offense to my challenge, but to my relief, he just smiled and said, I'm not doing any more driving tonight, mate. If that was the case and his wife was switching over as designated driver, then fair play.

But if he got behind the wheel after I closed up, I was most definitely calling police. So I give the guy his drinks and he goes fishing in his pocket for his wallet. But instead of taking his money, I told him that he could just settle up at closing time, as by that point, we only had about 20 minutes of service left. He agrees, then I go off to do something on the back bar. I return a few minutes later. Both glasses of scotch are empty and the pint is half-drank, but the second I catch the guy's eye, he orders another round. Another pint, another round of whiskey and beer, presumably all for himself. I remember asking him something like, bloody hell, Mac, how long day is it?

It was a rhetorical question, really, you could just see it on his face that he'd had a long, bloody day, and he just gave me this muted grunt in reply. I got him his drinks, tabbed up his second order, then unsuccessfully tried making a bit of small talk. It's force of habit, really, trying to talk my way into a bit of gratuity, but this bloke didn't fancy it at all. I asked him where he was coming from, then where he was going. Both of his replies were one-word answers. I then asked just to confirm if it was his wife that would be driving on the next leg of their journey. He only replied with, X.

As in it was his ex-wife. I apologized to him, mostly for assuming, but also because it might have brought back some painful memories of their divorce. But strangely, for the first time since he'd walked in, he actually gave something resembling a smile. I walked off feeling very awkward, as anyone would do if they'd broached on a touchy subject. But then moments later, I started to smell cigarette smoke. I think smoking in pubs was banned back in like 2007 here in the UK, and this was a few years after that. So especially as a non-smoker, the smell hit me like a ton of bricks. I walked around to the front bar only to see the guy just sitting there,

more empty glasses in front of him just puffing on a cigarette like it was the most normal thing in the world. I'll be honest, I was a bit annoyed with him. I thought that he was just an alright bloke having a horror of a day, but he knew damned well that he shouldn't have been lighting up inside like that, and the position it put me in as the only member of staff present. I asked him to put the cigarette out, again trying to sound as non-confrontational as possible. and the position it put me in as the only member of staff present. I asked him to put the cigarette out, again trying to sound as non-confrontational as possible, and that's when I spotted it. The white part of his cigarette was a deep red,

as were the fingers that held it. I realized the same red smears were covering his empty glasses too. I was taken aback, but more concerned for the man's health than anything else. I asked him if he was okay and if he needed me to grab the first aid kit or call an ambulance. He just shook his head, carried on smoking his cigarette for a moment

and then said, it's not my blood. I must have instinctually backed off when he said that because he was quick to follow up with, Don't worry, the police are on their way. I wanted to ask him what had happened, but I was raised to recognize that there are some questions you just don't ask. Whatever had happened, he was okay and if his wife was well enough to take a nap, then...

And that's the point that I realized that his wife wasn't napping. If something serious had just happened to them, serious enough that blood had been spilled, then there's no way that she'd be in the mood for a quick snooze. No sooner had I realized it had the blue flashing lights appeared in the car park in front of us, then as six officers emerged from three cars and headed towards the pub, the man pulled out his wallet and placed a trio of blood-smeared 20s on the bar top. I didn't say a word of thanks. I was in a state of complete shock.

I simply watched the guy walk out to meet the policeman. Then I watched them put the handcuffs on him and take him away. Obviously I had to hang around to talk to the police, but I took the time to call the pub's landlord who lived in a village nearby. She drove down right away and was great help because I could finally drive back home to decompress. The worst part, without a shadow of a doubt, was having to walk past the couple's parked car as I walked to my own. I try not to look at the woman's body, but I couldn't help myself and it was only when I was up close that I saw the blood that had soaked into the shredded piece of clothing she was wearing.

I remember getting to my car, reaching for my keys and finding that my hands were shaking too much to get them into the ignition. It all seemed like a bad dream I just hadn't woken up from yet. I'd been staring at a dead body, then trying to make small talk with the man who'd made it. He could have just as easily decided he didn't want to go to jail, and that he needed to eliminate me as a witness. Only he didn't, and the phone call that he'd been on as he walked into the pub had been with the police, arranging to turn himself in. It turned out that the wife had been subjected to some serious domestic abuse over the years,

and the husband had a habit of hitting her in front of the kids. So, she talks him into going for a drive one day, and when they're far away from their kids, she drops it on him that she's going to leave him and take the kids too. But then instead of accepting it or vowing to fight her in court, the guy takes a screwdriver from a toolbox from his boot and stabs his wife to death with it. Then, before turning himself in to the police, he drives to some little country pub

and has one last pint before the police come to take him away. If I'd had any idea I'd never have served him those drinks but that also reminds me the money he dropped onto the bar the stuff with the blood on it I asked the officers if they needed to take it as evidence or something. One of them took me aside and told me that officially speaking

he should take it but they had plenty of evidence in the aside and told me that officially speaking, he should take it, but they had plenty of evidence in the car and on the bloke's clothes, so as much as it might seem in bad taste, I could just wash it off, ring it up, and keep the change. The bill only came to over 40 quid, so it was a lot of change to keep, but in words of that one policeman, I imagine he appreciated the pint of lager, as it'll be the last one he has for quite some time. Back in the early 90s, I used to work at this really sketchy bar down in Nogales, Arizona. For those of you unfamiliar with the place, Nogales is a town of two nations. About two-thirds of the town lies south of the border in Mexico, while the upper third is in the United States. The border cuts right through the town where North Grand Avenue meets the Mexican Highway 15, and while there are the usual checks and searches, it's almost like the border doesn't even exist at all for some people. They move to Nogales del Sur, apply for a green card,

then just hop over the border to Nogales del Norte to find work. Sure, it could mean being stuck in some pretty heavy traffic sometimes, but trabajar in the U.S. in the morning and be back in Mexico for la cena con la familia in the evening? That's like every migrant worker's dream. Not everyone wants to move to the U.S. For some people down here, it's all about the money. For me personally, I didn't see a future for myself in Nogales. It's a good step up for some people.

Migrant work makes a lot of people very wealthy, but it also comes with a serious downside. I can't speak for every town that straddles the US-Mexican border, and there are a few, but Nogales is a very popular spot for narco-traffickers. That means anything from intimidation to having your painful death posted online if you so much as dare to step on their toes. Most people just turn a blind eye, do as they're told, and reap the benefits of working in a place so flush with commerce. But me, I wanted to get a nice stack of US dollars, then move further north to try to

make a life for myself up in Denver or maybe in California. But to do that, I needed a job. I don't know what the rules are these days, but back then, you had much better chances of securing a green card if you landed a job and a work permit first. But that meant having to find someone to employ you, which was way harder than it sounded. Because of the super high demand, almost every job north of the border, no matter how menial, is snatched up almost as soon as it's posted. It also became obvious very quickly to me that it wasn't about the skills that you had,

it was about who you knew. And in the end, that's how I landed a job at this little bar and cantina called El Comanchero. I had a friend who told me about it but he also warned me not to take it unless I was desperate. It was night work, meaning I was much more likely to be stopped and searched by border patrol when I drove home late at night. It was also an extremely sketchy place and a bunch of rumors were flying around about it being a front for narcos. These days, I'd lock my kids in a closet before I let them work in a place like that. But I was that dangerous combination of young, extremely dumb, and very ambitious. It makes me cringe to think about it, but I pictured it being like Goodfellas or something. I'd make a few drinks, bus a few tortas, then

get tipped in hundreds by all these cash-rich drug smugglers. That wasn't strictly true, but I did make enough money to just get the hell out of there once things turned bad, and boy did they ever turn bad. I was almost 20 years old when I started bartending at El Comonchero, and by 21, I was the GM, the general manager. But understand that sort of rise to power, I have to introduce you to someone called Paco. Paco was a complete degenerate coke addict. He did absolutely nothing for the business and simply taught me to do everything instead. He was a total pain in the butt, got in the way more than he helped anything and was probably the reason why the place had problems retaining employees.

I knew the place had a sketchy history and a lot of guys who visited the place were some really scary looking hombres, but there's no doubt that Paco was the only part of the job that ever made me want to quit. But then one day, Paco was gone. I turned up for work one late afternoon only to find the place was locked and shut. I gave Paco's home phone and pager a call from a payphone then waited for like an hour afterwards but he didn't respond to either message. I didn't really want to have to drive back south only to have him call me like yo where the f are you? So I figured I just could go grab some food then hang out outside the bar just in case Paco decided to show up. Maybe 40 or 45 minutes go by, I get a bite to eat but there's

still no sign of Paco. Then literally right as I'm about to start my engine and begin the journey back home, this pristine 1973 AMC Javelin pulls up outside the bar. This thing is definitely narco. And the tattooed tank of a Mexican guy who got out of it was every bit as intimidating as you might expect. But what was even more unnerving is how he got out, looked around, saw me, and then walked straight over to my car like he knew exactly who I was. When he confirmed who I was, the guy tossed the keys of the bar through the open window and just said, you're the manager now. Paco won't be coming around here no more. And then with me still struggling to comprehend my sudden promotion, I guess, he got back into his vehicle and drove off.

Now my starting salary as a GM was just over 36 grand a year, which from what I understand was a lot less than what Paco was getting. But honestly, I didn't care. I'd gone from a few bucks an hour to $700 a week and all I had to do was keep the place running and just not ask questions. I hired another bartender, a second cook, and we had taco Tuesdays and two-for-one Wednesdays. I was halfway to turning that place into a legitimate business before everything went to crap, and if there hadn't been a clear and present threat to mine and my family's lives, I would have been sadder about having to move on. So we closed up one night, and I was almost at the border crossing on North Grand when

I realized I'd left my wallet on the bar. The same wallet that had my weekly wages in it, all in cash. Anything else and I've just waited until the next day to pick it up in the morning, but I wasn't about to leave 700 bucks plus tips for our cleaning lady to potentially swipe. Not that I didn't trust her, it's just, you know, that's a lot of cash. I turned off as quickly as I could, then circled back towards the bar to grab my wallet, bearing in mind that I'd stopped at a 24-hour taco place after work, so I arrived back maybe 20 to 30 minutes after I'd first locked up, only to find that someone else had come by to open up the bar's front door.

When I first saw it, I felt like I was going crazy because in spite of having a vivid memory of lowering the steel shutters over the door, I had obviously forgotten to do it. It didn't really occur to me that someone else had come by, not until I unlocked the doors, walked inside and heard this sort of faint sound of music coming from somewhere in the building. It's only a few feet from the front door to the bar so I can see my wallet the moment that I walk in there. I walk over, start thumbing through the cash and it looks like it's all there but then who's in the building and where's that music coming from? It was very very creepy. The only other person who had a key to the building was the owner, so it made sense that it was him if there were no signs of breaking and entering, I guess.

But then I also just wanted to make sure that no one had sort of jiggled the padlock, got into our liquor storage, and was now just playing music while drinking themselves to death. I had to walk all the way into the back to find where that music was actually coming from, and when I did, I realized that it was coming from the basement where we had a cold storage unit for all of our perishables. What the hell someone would be down there for after closing time was definitely a mystery to me, but the music made the whole thing even more confusing. I was actually pretty nervous as I approached cold storage so the sound of some muted scream coming from inside just about scared me half to death. Someone was in there and by the

sounds of things they were hurt pretty bad. I know the place had a bad rep but what would you do honestly? If you have something that even resembles a soul, you go check it out. Regular people just don't listen to each other hurting, then turn and run the other way. Or if they do, that certainly wasn't me at the time. So I did what I did. I rushed forward, opened up the door to the storage, and after that, everything changed. So I won't dress this up. This is real talk, so I'm not going to give some disgusting and detailed description of what I saw. There were three guys inside the cold storage and one

was being tortured. There was a video camera too, set up on a tripod, and there was blood all over these plastic sheets that they hung up to contain the mess. I just ran all the way out to my car, drove home, and then returned in the morning like nothing had ever happened. Well, not quite like nothing had happened. I went down to that basement feeling my palms getting sweaty as I sort of descended the stairs and went to check the storage. The plastic sheets were gone, everything had been cleaned out. It was like nothing had ever happened. I tried to go on working as normal that day, but I couldn't. Not really.

It wasn't just the fact that I'd seen something so awful. I barely slept wondering what was going to happen to the bar, which would also probably determine what happened to me, too. I knew early on that I didn't have a choice. Mexico isn't a land of choice. Your options are given to you by those in power and you just pick the one that hurts the least. And long story short, my options came down to two. Stay on as manager and get a huge pay bump or leave Nogales forever. If I stayed, I was in, and I was in for life. But leave and my whole family would be killed if the federales even cruised past their house. I chose leave, not

because I wasn't afraid of putting my family in danger, but because I knew that I could use it to apply for asylum instead of a green card and the same applied to my family. Moving up to Colorado literally the next day, not being able to tell my family what had happened or why I'd quit such a great job, that was a really scary time for me. But ironically being threatened by the cartel was what got me and my family settled in the US even faster than we would have otherwise. It took a while for the paperwork to process and I had to talk to a whole bunch of different officials but in the end it all worked out for the best. My family slipped away in the night,

joined me up in Denver and we've been living here ever since. I think I was only allowed to leave Nogales and Cartel Association because I wasn't involved in anything too heavy. I think they appreciated what I'd done for the bar and knew I'd be too scared to do anything but disappear. But that was the cartel then, not the cartel now. I'm almost certain that if that had gone down these days, I would not have been allowed to just walk away. I know I've been lucky, unbelievably lucky, and that good fortune has enriched my whole family too. But I only gotta watch a news channel to be reminded that there are so many other families that never get to

share in that same good fortune. Some people live their entire lives with the cartel's boot on their neck, and they never find a way out from under it. Back when I was a student I used to work in this really flashy bar down in London called La Maison. It's not there anymore, which is a shame, really, because I've got a lot of happy memories of that place. But I've also got one decidedly unhappy memory of the place, too. Downright terrifying, in fact. I was working a Sunday evening shift after a very heavy Saturday night and the whole team was just absolutely knackered. Thankfully so was the rest of London

after the night before so the Sunday ended up being quite an easy shift. Our general manager ended up sending two or three members of staff home and we ran the place on a skeleton crew until it came close to closing time. Now I can't emphasize this enough. This place was fancy. We did bottle service, had a VIP section, people queued up for ages to get in during peak hours, and we even had a few footballers drop in every so often which made the place even more popular with punters. The point is, we made an obscene amount of money over the weekend, so on a Sunday, we had easily had 30 to 40 grand in cash just sitting in the safe upstairs. It's kind of crazy to actually see it, and knowing that amount of money is there makes you think some wild thoughts sometimes, but obviously you never act

on them. However, we weren't the only ones who knew that there was a lot of cash there, and they very much were prepared to act on it. At closing time, our two bouncers walk into the men's toilet to check if there's anyone left over. All I heard was shouting, and then the bouncers walked out again, hands in the air. Behind them walked two blokes who had been lurking in one of our corner booths, mostly with their hoods up for the final hour of service. They had their faces covered by that time, and both were holding handguns. They asked who the managers were, which was me and my boss, and they separated us from the rest of the team.

Everyone else had their wrists and ankles tied at gunpoint, then the armed men told me and my boss to lead them to wherever the safe was. We did as we were told, but there was a massive problem. The safe in our office was on a time lock, and it was set for half past midnight, meaning the robbers would have to wait about 25 minutes if they wanted their money. Meanwhile, there are five people downstairs, two of whom are bloody great bouncers and they're all lying on the floor tied up.

The robbers wanted the money and they wanted it right then. Waiting around wasn't part of their plan at all. It went down as you might imagine. I mean, it's a scene that's been in more bank robbery films than I could count. The robbers want the money out of the safe, but the person can't open it. Some of the time I suppose it's a bluff, and the person can open the safe whenever they want, but ours really was on a time lock, and although there was an emergency override built in, the code was only known to company directors, not GMs. My boss told that to the robbers but they didn't believe him and neither were they prepared to just sit around for the better part of half an hour so they could wait for the safe

to open. At first they threatened to shoot my boss and he begged for his life. They thought it was funny. They didn't shoot him, they just slapped him around a bit trying to get him to crack but all he'd say was guys I can't open't open it, you have to wait, please, just wait. And his pleading only earned him more punches and kicks than one of the robbers started to choke him, saying he could only breathe again if he agreed to open the safe. No matter what they did, he couldn't do as they asked, but instead of understanding that, they just took it as my boss being brave. They were asking him, why are you protecting someone else's money? And all this stuff, saying that he should just give it up and save himself the pain. He wanted to just give them some money, I know he did.

We're always told just to hand over any cash in a robbery situation and he'd already given them what we had in the cash drawers. But those guys wanted the safe money and they weren't going to leave without it. Members of the management team often spent long periods of time in the office. You've got orders to send off, Radas to organize, and dozens of little data input programs on the computer to work with. It gets very boring very quickly, and in a job where you might finish at 3am and be back to work at 2pm for the next day, a lot of tea and coffee is needed both upstairs and behind the bar. To make things easier for us, we kept our own tea and coffee station in the office, and as one of the robbers tried to come up with more and more painful methods of getting my boss to open the safe, his eyes finally fell on the kettle. As our bad luck would have it,

we'd only just filled it up only minutes before, as we'd been planning on having a couple while we completed the end of night office stuff. The robber just flicked the kettle's switch to reboil the water, picked it up as steam rose from the spout, and then held it over my boss. He asked him one more time to open the safe and my boss begged him not to, but he poured the water anyway. I'd never heard anyone scream like that before and I couldn't watch.

I don't know how much of the boiling water the robber poured over my boss or where I touched him, but I knew it must have been more painful than anything I could possibly imagine. I just kept my head down and cried until one of the robbers grabbed me by the hair, slapped me across the face and told me to open my eyes. He told me I needed to watch what was happening because if we didn't get the safe

open in the next couple of minutes, it was going to happen to me too. I'm not proud of how I acted and I know that they were giving me an easier ride because I just look like some little barmaid, but I begged and wailed and screamed for them not to hurt me. I repeated all the stuff about the time lock and how if they wanted the money that they'd just have to wait. I finished off by begging them not to hurt anyone. It would only make things worse, and they'd just have to wait. I think by that time they had only had a couple of more minutes to wait anyway so after going back down to the bar to check on the people they'd tied up, they returned to the office for the safe money. My boss was in so much pain that he couldn't do it so he had to tell me the codes and things I'd need to do to unlock the

big safe. My hands were shaking but I did did it, and when I opened it up, there it all was. My boss later said that since we'd had a particularly good Friday and Saturday that there was probably upwards of 50 grand in there. The two robbers shoved me out of the way, lashed the cash bags into rucksacks that they were carrying, then simply let themselves out. We rushed to call the police, but it was too late. The people downstairs said they heard a motorbike revving shortly after the robbers left, so they were probably miles away by the time the police and ambulance arrived. With the bar now being a crime scene, we couldn't do any of our usual clean-down duties, but as you can probably guess, we weren't exactly in the mood

to carry on working after what we've just been through especially me i was the first to go downstairs to try and untie my colleagues and i think they knew something terrible had happened to our boss just from the way i was acting they kept asking where's jamie is he all right but i just couldn't say anything. I knew if I did, I just wouldn't be able to function. I'd seen the damage the scalding hot water had done to his face and hands, and it was absolutely horrendous. I knew if I tried to tell them, I just wouldn't be able to function anymore. Jamie was off work for two months afterward, and right when we thought that he'd return,

he decided that he couldn't work at La Maison anymore. And in the end, I decided that I couldn't either. Sitting in that office brought back so many bad memories. And I know sometimes the best thing to do is to fight for what's yours and not allow trauma to change your life. But some other times, it really is better to just move on and start again somewhere else. In the early hours of October 30th, 2004, 37-year-old David Morley and his friend Alistair Whitside were sitting on a bench near London's Hungerford Bridge. Known to his close friends as Cinders, David was a pillar of London's gay community, and while some might not be familiar with his name, they're familiar with the event he played a central role in. Having moved to London from his native Watford in the late 1980s,

David found work as a bartender in the city's Soho district. He was like a duck to water. Gregarious and competent, but more than able to handle himself, David not only proved a natural bartender, but a natural leader too. By 1999, he was the assistant manager of the Admiral Duncan Pub on Soho's Old Compton Street. The almost 200-year-old pub had become one of the most prominent gay bars in all of London, and it was David who was acting as head bartender on the evening of April 30th, 1999. Just after 6pm, one of the pub's regular patrons reported a piece of lost property near one of the

tables. The Admiral Nelson's policy on such items was to keep hold of them for a few weeks, just in case the owner returned to collect them. If not, it was down to the nearest charity store with whatever had been left behind. General Manager Mark Taylor had to wade through the Friday evening's crowd to just get to the bag's location, but when he reached down to pick it up, it exploded. Unbeknownst to the pub's occupants, the bag had contained an explosive device made up of firecrackers, pressurized flammable material, and hundreds of three-inch steel nails. The percussive force of the explosion sent flame and shrapnel through the unsuspecting revelers,

killing three and injuring more than 80 others. David himself suffered extensive burns during the attack, but even so, he was one of the lucky ones. Many of the wounded required amputations, meaning they simply blacked out in the middle of a well earned pint, only to wake up later in a hospital bed with legs or arms missing. At the time of the explosion, the man who planted the bomb was close enough to hear its detonation, and then with a sense of sick satisfaction, he simply disappeared into the London crowds. The bomber must have believed that he was untouchable. The Admiral Duncan bombing was his third in thirteen days, and to his knowledge,

the police were nowhere near close to catching him. He returned to a rented room on Sunnybank Road in the ancient village of Cove, Hampshire, and began to plan his next attack. Yet in the wee small hours of the morning, a team of black-clad police officers crept up Sunnybank Road, and in the pitch darkness, they surrounded the suspect's home. When the officer burst into the bedroom of 22-year-old David James Copeland, they were greeted by an eerie sight. Two giant swastika flags covered the entirety of one wall, and on a corner desk, there was clear evidence of bomb making. As the heavily armed officers dragged Copeland out of bed and announced that he was being arrested under the Terrorism Act,

he told them, Yeah, it was all me. I did them. Copeland was discovered to be a member of the UK's ultra-far-right British National Party and was further radicalized after a fellow party member gave him a copy of The Turner Diaries. The Turner Diaries is a 1978 novel by William Luther Pierce, which depicts a violent revolution in the United States which leads to the overthrow of the federal government, a nuclear war, and ultimately, genocide.

Copeland left the British National Party in 1998, believing them to be liberal in policy and practice. To him, politics was pointless. Direct action was required. He downloaded a series of bomb-making pamphlets from the Wild West that was the internet in the late 90s, then began constructing rudimentary test devices in his small one-bedroom apartment. By 1999, just as David Morley had risen to the rank of assistant manager, David Copeland had risen to the rank of regional leader in the UK's underground Nazi movement. But when its membership seemed reluctant to take up arms, Copeland took matters into his own hands. Following his arrest, he admitted being a die-hard neo-Nazi, but medical records showed

that he was heavily dependent on antidepressive medications and had a history of mental illness. A group of five psychiatrists agreed that Copeland displayed numerous symptoms of paranoid schizophrenia. Yet while there was no dispute that he was mentally ill, but the extent to which he was able to take responsibility for his actions became a matter of serious legal contention. In the end, it was crime writer Bernard O. Mahoney who helped secure a conviction, and he did so in a rather unorthodox manner. Bernard assumed the persona of a young woman named Patsy Scanlon and wrote a letter to Copeland in which Patsy professed a romantic interest in him. His chillingly coherent replies were later used as evidence of his sanity, resulting in Copeland's plea of diminished

responsibility being rejected. He was convicted of three counts of murder and planting bombs on June 30th of 2000, and was handed six life sentences by the presiding judge, saying he doubted that it would ever be safe to release Copeland back into society. Meanwhile, as Copeland's long and drawn-out trial captured the attention of the national media, David Morley was keeping busy. His own wounds had healed, but his work wasn't over. He'd known many of those killed and wounded by the explosion, and spent a great deal of time comforting and consoling fellow survivors in the months that followed. David was a source of strength for those that needed it,

at a time when they needed it most, and for that he was greatly admired and deeply loved. The Admiral Duncan pub remains open to this day, but sadly, David had to move on. There were simply too many bad memories and too many absent friends. Five years after the Soho pub bombing, David was working in another gay bar named Brompton's in Earl's Court. On the night he was sharing a bench with his friend Alistair Whitside, there's a good chance that he'd been working and was simply enjoying a quiet drink with a co-worker. As any city center bartender will tell you, there's nothing good chance that he'd been working and was simply enjoying a quiet drink with a co-worker. As any city center bartender will tell you,

there's nothing quite like a moment of peace and quiet after a night of strong drink and loud music. But for David, that peace was soon shattered by the approach of four youths. The group consisted of 14-year-old Chelsea O. Mahoney, 21-year-old Reese Sargent, 18-year-old Darren Case, and 17-year-old David Blenman. They approached David and Alistair at around 3.10am, intending to perform a prank involving what was referred to at the time as happy slapping. The term happy slapping refers to a fad originating in the UK during the early 2000s. It involved one or more people attacking a victim for the purpose of recording the assault, usually with a camera phone or smartphone.

For the most part, the victim would be viciously slapped, but the attacks quickly escalated into brutal asymmetrical assaults involving stomping and multiple attackers. The young Chelsea O'Mahoney was the first to approach David and Alistair, directing them to the smile for the camera as she pointed to one of the teenage boys who was filming the encounter on his phone. The two other boys then proceeded to ambush the older men from behind, punching and kicking them as they fell from the bench. After stealing Alistair Whitside's phone, the group continued to attack David Morley, with witness testimony stating that it was the youngest of the group, 14-year-old Chelsea O'Mahoney, who delivered the fatal blows. Once he was unconscious, she began kicking David's head like it was a football. After that, he remained silent and still.

Alistair Woodside rushed to contact emergency services, and once an ambulance had been dispatched to their location, David was taken to St. Thomas' Hospital in Lambeth. Emergency surgery was performed, but the surgeons were faced with an uphill battle. David had received a total of 44 separate injuries, including five fractured ribs and a ruptured spleen. One surgeon noted that his wounds were more consistent with those seen after a car accident or someone who had fallen from a great height and was stunned when he heard that David was the victim of an assault. An extensive police

manhunt resulted in the arrests of all four suspects, but police failed to find pictures or videos of the attacks on any of the assailants' mobile phones. They denied recording the attack and swore that they didn't mean to kill anyone, but when the full picture of the group's evening activities came to light, it was clear that they were no ordinary children. Between the hours of 2.30 a.m. and 3.20 a.m., the group assaulted eight different people in a spree of violence. They set upon drunks, homeless people, anyone who provided or who appeared remotely vulnerable.

The rampage left several hospitalized, with one of the victims succumbing to their injuries following emergency surgery, and that person was David Morley. Medical staff did everything they could to keep him alive, but tragically, David was pronounced dead at exactly 7.40pm. A man who survived a neo-Nazi bomb attack, snatched away by a pack of feral children. At their trial in January of 2006, a then 15-year-old Chelsea O'Mahoney was sentenced to eight years in prison, while her male accomplices were sentenced to 12 years each.

The British public were horrified to learn that such a young girl could have been central to such a horrifying attack, yet the causes of her delinquency were obvious. The daughter of two heroin addicts, Chelsea had experienced what one social worker described as a particularly chaotic and fragmented life, but it was no excuse for the horror she helped inflict on some of London's most vulnerable denizens. On November 5th of 2004, over a thousand people piled into Soho's St. Anne's Church to commemorate David's life and legacy. Those who couldn't get inside would surround the church in a solemn display of respect and solidarity. Several prominent figures gave deeply moving eulogies or speeches, including the Mayor of London,

who professed to be well aware of David's well-known and well-loved status in the city's LGBT community. But perhaps the most poignant point was made by a close, personal friend. Quote, This is the second time he was in the wrong place at the wrong time, they said. But for so many of us here today, we found David in the right place at the right time, and he'll always have a place, a very special place, in all our hearts. On the afternoon of Tuesday, February 9th of 1988, 22-year-old Helen McCourt was finishing up her shift at a branch of a prominent British insurance firm. Prior to her departure from the office,

Helen spoke to her mother by telephone and mentioned having a date that night. It was to be the first with a young man that she'd met over the weekend, and naturally, she was as excited as she was nervous. She caught a bus back to her home of Billinch, a small village of just a few thousand people, nestled in the English county of Lancashire. The route home from the bus stop she alighted at should have taken her just a few thousand people, nestled in the English county of Lancashire. The route home from the bus stop she alighted at should have taken her just a few minutes,

yet Helen was never seen again. To get home, Helen had to walk past a pub known as George and Dragon. A witness later claimed to have heard a scream coming from the pub's vicinity, right around the same time that Helen would have been walking past it. They ran out of their home, searching for the source of the scream, but found nothing. Then later that night, after failing to return home, Helen McCourt was reported missing. Two detectives from the Regional Missing Persons Unit arrived in Billinge

and, despite its quaint appearance, they discovered the village had a distinctly sleazy underbelly. Violence, affairs, and bitter inter-family rivalries were commonplace, meaning Helen had many enemies, but none so spiteful as 31-year-old Ian Sims. Ian was the Georgian dragon's landlord and primary bartender, and had recently barred Helen from drinking there following a minor disagreement with another patron. According to Village Gossip, Ian had plenty of reason to despise Helen McCourt, as she'd reportedly rejected his romantic advance

in a rather humiliating fashion. Helen was also thought to be the source of several nasty rumors regarding Ian, one of which involved an alleged affair with one of the George and Dragons barmaids. Ian was married with two young children at the time and naturally took great offense at the accusation, but the more the detectives dug, the more they realized that the rumors were true. Ian Sims was indeed conducting an extramarital affair and although it wasn't clear how Helen McCourt became aware of it, it certainly provided an ample reason to question him in relation to her disappearance. When he was invited to attend an interview with a local constabulary, Ian seemed only too happy to

answer their questions. Yet on the day itself, when subjected to the most basic of questions, Ian Sims became visibly nervous. His reaction was not the indignation of an innocent man, but the white-knuckle anxiety of one with something to hide. Ian's car was promptly seized by the police and following an in-depth forensic examination, tiny drops of dried blood were discovered on the rubber sill of the vehicle's trunk, as well as on the carpet inside of it. Investigators also found an opal and pearl earring hidden away in one of the trunk's corners, an earring that had once belonged to the missing Helen McCourt. A matching butterfly clip from this earring was discovered during a search of Ian Simms' apartment,

and a deeper forensic examination revealed yet more bloodstains on the floors and walls. Given that the incident occurred prior to the advent of DNA identification techniques, there was no definitive way of determining who the blood belonged to, but there was strong reason to believe that it was Helen McCourt's. A few weeks later, a trash bag containing blood-stained female clothing was found on a riverbank around 20 miles away. The bag contained another item of clothing, a similarly gore-soaked cotton jacket with the name stitched into the collar, I. Sims, it read. The female clothes were confirmed to have belonged to Helen McCourt,

with the evidence gaining further significance once fibers from Ian's carpet were discovered on it. Damage to the fabric suggested that Helen's killer had dragged her for a considerable distance, most likely while she was either dead or unconscious. A length of electrical cord was also found among the clothing, meaning in all likelihood, strangulation had been the method of execution. Initially, when confronted with the evidence, Ian Sims denied all involvement, but after his wife confirmed that the blood-stained clothing did indeed belong to him, he was forced to radically change his story. The inconsistency was enough for him to be formally charged with Helen's murder and the following year his trial went underway.

When questioned in court Ian once again denied all involvement in Helen's presumed murder. To the disbelief of those in attendance his defense team claimed that someone had broken into Ian's flat to steal his clothes knowing that fining them would throw the police off their scent. The same person had then stolen her car, used it to dispose of Helen's body, and then disappeared into the ether.

Under cross-examination, Ian admitted he'd been in the vicinity of Helen's disappearance and could not explain how his clothes had become stained with blood. He maintained his innocence in spite of that, but it didn't wash with the jury. Helen's disappearance and could not explain how his clothes had become stained with blood. He maintained his innocence in spite of that, but it didn't wash with the jury. It returned a verdict of guilty when the time came to do so. Ian appealed the verdict, but it was swiftly rejected and he was sentenced to prison for a minimum of 16 years. Sims might have been in prison, but the McCourt family had yet to bring home their daughter's remains. Helen's mother, Marie McCourt, had since devoted herself to the charity Support After Murder and Manslaughter, which helps the relatives of murder victims come to

terms with their loss. She also spent a great deal of time reaching out to Ian Sims, publicly and privately pressuring him to reveal the location of her daughter's body. Sadly, it was a secret that Sims would take to his grave. He was released in early 2019 but died on June 24th of 2022, having never confessed to Helen's murder. In July 2008, a marble bench was placed on the grounds of Billings' Catholic Church to mark what would have been Helen McCourt's 43rd birthday. It's a small gesture, but one that ensures that she'll never be forgotten. This happened probably five or six years ago, and I think I was 18 at the time. For starters, I lived in a city where neighborhoods and forests kind of blend together. There are plenty of wooded areas where people go to have bonfires and parties.

One night, after discovering that all of our usual spots were crowded with people, I suggested that we go to a spot that I had been to a few times nearby. I had been there multiple times times but only during the day. The street where we park is maybe 200 feet from the tree line. It's your average middle class neighborhood and nothing crazy is really known to happen there. So we walk in, start a bonfire and we're all having a good time. Some of us are drinking and smoking a bit, myself included. About 45 minutes pass and I'm a little intoxicated but nothing major. And over the sound of our quiet music and friends talking, I hear something odd. I can't make out what it is so I figured maybe I'm just hearing things.

Maybe another 10 minutes go by and I hear it again, a little better this time. It still sounds relatively far away but it sounds like Velcro tearing. I stop and just kind of sit there trying to listen while my friends carry away laughing and talking. They didn't seem to notice and that's when I heard a sound that I was very familiar with. A zapping noise, like one you might hear from a taser. Very brief, but very unmistakable. My stomach drops and I started looking around a little frantically. My girlfriend at the time was the first to notice my distress.

She asked me what's wrong and I explained and she immediately starts worrying. She gets my friends to quiet down and we all just sit there and listen for a bit. And then we all hear it. An electric zap. Brief again, but we all know that sound. We all start panicking a bit and we quickly put out the fire while asking each other what in God's name that was or where exactly it was coming from. We're all scared to walk out. It's only maybe a five minute walk to the street, but it's dark. We all muster the courage to finally walk the path out and we don't run into anyone. We finally get to the street and start walking to our cars, nervously laughing and

relishing being under street lamps again. I see him first. He's walking towards us, not at us, just walking in the direction we just came from. Slightly to the right of us, and he's holding a stick of some sort. It scared me at first, but for a brief second I calmed myself, and it was a pretty safe neighborhood that I knew really well, and it was really common to see people out walking at night. But then I notice that he's looking right at us and that stare is burned into my mind. We pass each other. My friends and I are all silent as we're having this stare down with this random man and that's when it happens. He doesn't break eye contact, holds up the pole and smiles this creepy smile. His eyes are open so wide and the end of the stick lights up bright and that same zapping sound happens again, much louder this time. He's holding a cattle prod.

We live in a city, no farmland nearby and no reason to have a cattle prod. My friends and I are just silently soiling ourselves and suddenly we just make a break for it and start running. We look back and he's just standing there, the electrical sound of the zapper still going, we can see it brightly shine and as we start to create some distance I look back and I just see his silhouette go into the woods without a flashlight or anything. We all just got into our cars and just peeled out of there. We never went back to that spot. This happened years ago when I was around 19 or 20 and worked retail part-time at the mall. I was the closing shift that night and retail part-time at the mall.

I was the closing shift that night and left at around 10.30pm to head home. I often took the inside streets versus the freeway, which included a small stretch of back road that was usually pretty empty, especially during that time of night. Now this particular night, I noticed a car about 10 minutes into my 30-minute drive going the same way as me, but I really didn't think much of it. As we're approaching the stretch of back road that's usually deserted at that time, the driver behind me starts flashing their high beams and slowing down and speeding up while tailgating me. I remember feeling panic that they might hit my car. Eventually, the car pulls up beside me and now I can see a middle-aged man who was pointing towards the back of my car and then motioning me to roll down my window. I roll my window down about halfway and he says something about how my tire looks like

it's flattening and it's going to damage the rim if I don't pull over soon. I tell him I don't know how to change a tire but I'm not too far from home so I should be fine but he's pretty insistent about how I'll only take a few minutes and he is happy to help. I know something is off because my car seems to be driving fine. I just politely say that I'm fine but thanks anyway and roll up my window. He drives next to me for what feels like forever but it couldn't have been more than maybe a minute or so. At this point something feels so off that I'm afraid to even physically look in his direction. I focus on the road the best I can and eventually he slows down and moves behind me again.

After a few minutes we reach a more populated, well-lit part of town and I see him make a U-turn. I get home and take a look and my tire is perfectly fine. I have no idea if he followed me from the mall or what that man's intentions were but I think it's safe to say that they weren't anything good. I even had my dad check all my tires the next morning and the tire pressure on them was in the normal range. I still think of this night from time to time and it makes me nauseous to think about how different things might be today if I had decided to pull over that night. So this happened almost 20 years ago, when I was a young 15-year-old girl.

I had an older neighbor who taught drums and was a friend of my family's, and I would take drum lessons from him once a week. He only lived like two and a half blocks away, so I would always walk and he and his family lived at the end of a cul-de-sac. Well, one summery day when I was walking home at like 4pm, broad daylight in a quiet neighborhood, there was a strange man standing across from the end of the cul-de-sac. He had on a big cowboy hat, which was odd for my area, and some facial hair. I don't know, he was maybe in his thirties perhaps, and he was just staring at me. He was watching me unabashedly as I walked down the cul-de-sac and across the street, and once my back was to him, I could hear that he began following me. My heart sped up.

My drumstick seemed like weak protection and I was wearing these little thin flip-flops and I remember thinking that if I had to kick him, they weren't going to help me at all. Less than half a block away from me was a more busy street and I remember thinking that I could just get to the street where people would see and he'd be sure to back off. But his steps sounded closer and I could taste my panic knowing that I wasn't going to make it. I ended up running up a house where I kind of knew the family and I knew a mom with young kids was probably there and pounded on the door, tried to open it myself even in my panic. She opened it and I spilled into her house and locked the door, told her what had happened and let my heart calm down a little bit. After being inside for like 15 minutes I asked if I could just hop her back fence to go home and

since it would cut out a block of travel but when we slid back the drapes of her back door, the dude was leaning against the fence right outside her house where he could see both the front and back door. She ended up loading her kids in the car and driving me home and later had her husband ask around. It turned out the dude was living with his mother and had just gotten out of jail. I don't know what the charges were specifically. All I know is that my stomach had been twisted into knots and it was the first time I'd tasted true fear like that. I don't know what would have happened if he caught me. I, a 21-year-old male and my girlfriend, a 20-year-old female, rented an apartment for a month. The area was secluded and after dark, everybody would mind their own business.

Neighbors would hardly talk to each other or even be outside in the evening. Our apartment was in a building with four floors, and each floor had a single apartment. All the apartments were very compact and built to be rented to students. The night we moved in, our taps ran out of water, so I went upstairs hoping to borrow some from the people living upstairs. I realized that two out of the four apartments were vacant and locked. The apartment on the fourth floor was lit from the inside, so I decided to ring the bell, but to my disappointment, nobody answered. Over the next week, we used to hear the sound of someone

whacking a rod or some sort of metal on maybe the floor or some other object. This would start late at night after 1.30am and continue for hours. Initially, we didn't care about it, but after some time, it just got us intrigued. The sound was clearly from one of the apartments above us, but as I already mentioned, two of the three were vacant for sure, and the third one seemed vacant but was lit from the inside. I knocked on its door many times, but no one answered. The whacking sound was a daily occurrence, and on some very late nights we would hear someone climbing in the building stairs. It seemed as if, though, we were the only ones living in this building, especially during the day and until the very late nights. We made

up theories to convince ourselves that it was nothing, but the pattern of the whacking was too irregular for it to be made by wind or something other than a person. It would start almost daily at around the same time. We asked people around but didn't get any satisfactory answer. No one knew if anyone lived there. Toward the end of our stay, I saw a shady-looking man going upstairs during the day. I asked him if he was the owner of the apartments upstairs, and he said he was, also including the one on the fourth floor. I asked him if anyone lived upstairs, and also about the whacking sound. He told me no one did, and that he's looking for tenants. He said that he had no idea about the sound.

To my surprise, he then asked me, So how long are you going to stay here? Four more days or so. We leave on the 30th of this month. I replied. He asked me if anyone else had rented the place for the next month and I told him that I didn't know. So the strangest part is that for the next four days, there was neither the whacking sound nor the sound of someone climbing up the stairs late at night. However, my girlfriend's internship got extended by two days and we decided to stay there and just as I had anticipated, the whacking sound resumed after the 30th, the day that we were supposed to leave. I don't know what it was.

I will never know, but I'm just happy that we got out of that place without any consequences. It really scared me sometimes and feels weird thinking about it, even now. so this happened maybe around march 2021 i was 15 and my sister was 17 my sister wanted to take some shrooms because it was nice and sunny out and I decided to tag along and just hang out with her. Me and my sister went across the street because it was like a big grass trail that leads into another yard plus our family members can see us from the windows. We live in a two-story. The left side of our house there is an actual alleyway that's made of gravel. We're just having a regular conversation talking about random stuff and my sister is sitting in

front of me which means my back is facing my house. All of a sudden I see a man who is just standing and staring at me. Mind you he's like 30 to 45 feet away from us so the chance of seeing us from there is low because the grass is pretty overgrown. We'd have to really look and walk back and forth. I'm watching him and he's just walking towards us. It freaked me out the way he noticed me. I had seen him walking and looking forward like any other regular person on a walk but he randomly stopped. He stopped and he looked right at me, bruh. Like how? I look at my sister and I'm like, hey, we gotta go like right now. She was so confused because she was obviously tripping.

I said that there's a man who's coming over and we gotta go now. He starts hiding behind a car that belongs to a neighbor. It's right in front of the tall grass. I could see his dirty dusty boots so I knew for sure that he wanted to do neighbor. It's right in front of the tall grass. I could see his dirty dusty boots so I knew for sure that he wanted to do something. So now at this point he's on the grass and we're already getting into our gate. We just ran upstairs into my aunt's room because there's a window on the left side of the house. We watched him walk down the alleyway and I noticed that he had something in his hand and as we began to look closer we could see that it was a knife. He then turned around and walked towards the direction he came from and we never saw that guy again but I always wonder what could have happened

and I'm thanking God that I trusted my intuition. Just a quick backstory. I grew up in Providence, Rhode Island, and everyone who's lived there knows it's very busy and noisy all day. The rip-a-buses, traffic, businesses everywhere, but at night it gets very quiet and very eerie sometimes. This story is about an incident that happened to me when I was 15 and got my first job at McDonald's. This gives me chills every time I think about it. I was 15 and just got hired at McDonald's down the street from where I live. It was perfect because I could get to and from work without worrying about getting a ride from my parents.

While working there, I met some kids my age that I became close with. Unfortunately, they weren't the greatest of kids, they were very rebellious, and they would clown around at work, act disrespectful towards customers, and they were your typical 90's punks. I slowly started to become like them. I began disrespecting my parents, which was totally not like me, but I was always the nerd that didn't have many friends so I just wanted to fit in. Now side note, I was very sheltered growing up and didn't really get around much because my parents were very overprotective of me. One night at around 10pm I finished watching Monday Night Raw and went downstairs to grab something to eat. I opened the fridge and heard my dad's footsteps.

He wore those slippers that sort of tap loudly on the floor. Chris, I've asked you all day to take out the trash. They come tomorrow, so just do it now. Now, normally I would have taken it out the first time he asked me, but now that I was getting older and becoming, you know, sort of a smart aleck, I didn't think that it should be my responsibility anymore. I work now and I go to school. You take it out. I replied. My dad's eyes got wider as I've never spoke to him this way before and he leaned in and said softly, as long as you live here, you will help out. Now take out the trash or leave.

I called his bluff and rather than just simply taking the trash out, I rebelled like some dumb teen that I was. Fine, I'll leave. If you're going to kick me out for that, don't bother looking for me. I'm done living in this stupid house. I said as I opened the door and slammed it. I walked towards McDonald's to see if any of my friends were there, and they weren't. Just the maintenance guy finishing up the cleaning. Of course of all nights it was raining so I had to find somewhere to go and stay dry. There was a bridge with an overpass a little ways down the street so I started walking towards it. The whole time I'm regretting what I did and I wish that I just took the freaking trash out. I finally get to the bridge and I climbed up the hill to the little section in the corner to stay out of view. I remember in school learning to go here in case of a tornado,

so I knew it was safe. I patiently and stubbornly waited, assuming that my parents would call the cops, which in my mind would show me that they cared. An hour goes by, nothing. No sirens, no cars were even on the road. It was getting pretty cold, but I promised myself that I wouldn't give in. I crossed my arms over my legs and just fell asleep. I woke up violently from a semi wailing on his horn over the overpass. I looked all around confused. How long was I off for?

I looked towards McDonald's and saw an old man in a grey suit sitting at the bus stop. It was weird, he was sitting still facing forward and I assumed it must be like 5am since he was waiting for the bus. I stood up very upset that my parents never tried to find me and began walking to the bus stop. Now I'm a very outgoing person and I trust my gut. As I walked closer to the old guy I didn't get any negative vibes as I approached him. He slowly turned his head and looked at me and smiled. Not a creepy or uncomfortable smile, a genuinely peaceful smile. I smiled back and decided instead of going home maybe I can vent to this guy and just get some advice.

I asked if he minded if I sat down. He smiled again and gestured toward the seat. Is everything okay? He said with concern. Yeah, I just ran away from home. My parents don't respect me anymore and how much I do all day. I said. I began telling him the story and I noticed as the time went by that he was becoming more and more anxious and his smile began turning into a frown. He began to start breathing loud and he cut me off, dead sentence, and said, You need to go home. Now. With a stern voice. I was confused. I figured maybe his bus was coming soon and he wanted to say that before I left.

I looked down in frustration because that's not what I wanted to hear. Suddenly I felt a strong grasp on my arm. He grabbed me and looked me dead in the eyes. His eyes were terrifying at this point, bloodshot and wide and I was shaking in fear, totally thrown off guard by his complete switch and persona. He was literally shaking like he was afraid of something. He kept looking down the street and then back into my eyes. You need to go home, now! He screamed at me. At this point, this guy was starting to scare me,

so I stood up and nodded and he let go of my arm. Nervously, I started walking back to my house. I figured my mom was already up making coffee so my plan of sneaking back into the house and hiding in the basement was not going to happen. Just to see if she'd be up, I looked at my watch. It was 1.30am. My heart stopped and my throat became dry. Why was the man at the bus stop at 1.30am when the buses aren't running? I turned back towards him to look at him, and he was gone. Now I'm scared, confused, and I needed to get home.

I used my spare key to get into the house. I opened the door quietly, and everyone was asleep. I slowly opened the basement door and made my way downstairs to the storage area in the back. I buried myself under bags of clothes so they wouldn't find me. Figured I could get some sleep. The image of that guy kept popping up in my head and I was so freaked out it just didn't make any sense. Just then I heard loud sirens passing by and not just one. Multiple bursts of sirens coming every ten seconds or so.

I smiled, thinking, I've won. My parents called the police to look for me. My plan worked. And now I'll make them worry until the morning and regret kicking me out. I made myself a little bed and covered myself up to stay hidden and fell asleep. I woke up to hearing my mother sobbing upstairs. I looked outside the little basement window and saw daylight, so I figured I'd go upstairs and get my apology. I opened the basement door and walked into the kitchen.

My mother was sitting at the dining room table with her head in her arms. She immediately looked up at me and gasped. She stood up and ran over to me and hugged me so tight. I thought you were dead. She muffled into my jacket. I slowly pulled away and looked at her confused. Why did you think that? I asked.

What she said next sent chills throughout my entire body. She said that last night at around 1.40am, a drunk driver crashed into the bus stop in front of the McDonald's. It was completely destroyed. I started breathing heavy and realized, that man saved my life. If he didn't tell me to leave when he did, I would have been sitting there and would have been killed. And so many emotions were running through me I didn't know how to handle it, so I just hugged my mother and immediately began to cry. I apologized and realized that I missed the old me.

I almost got myself killed for my own stubborn stupidity. I dropped those friends and got into a new crowded school, and from that point on, any time the trash was full, I just took it out. I don't know who or what was at that bus stop, but thank you for saving my life. Whether it was just a lucky coincidence or right place, right time kind of thing, but no matter what, all I know is if it wasn't for him telling me to go home, I would have been sitting on that bench for the rest of the night. So, this happened quite a long time ago when I was just 20 years old. At the time, I was living alone in an apartment in a notorious building near the center of my city. It was a Saturday night and I had been going out with friends and my now partner.

Because it was past 4am already, he and his friend drove me and my close friend back to my building. She lived near me, so she only had to walk about a minute home but it was difficult to get to by car. We said our goodbyes and my friend started walking towards her place while his friend stayed in the car. We made out for a few minutes until some guy started hollering from one of the balconies in my building. I felt a bit embarrassed by being publicly shamed like that so for me that was the cue to say goodbye and go inside. I walked to the entrance and as I entered the building, a guy walked down the stairs. I didn't think much of it, so I pressed the button for the elevator simply because I didn't feel like taking the stairs to the sixth floor where I lived.

The man, maybe a few years older than me, asked if I had a cigarette. I told him no, sorry, to keep it short and simple. He just nodded, kept staring at me, and stood next to me waiting on the elevator. I felt creeped out by this, but decided to still wait for the elevator and just get home as fast as possible. At this point, I naively thought maybe he would just leave once the elevator arrived. However, he didn't. Once the elevator door was open, he stepped in and once the elevator arrived. However, he didn't. Once the elevator doors opened, he stepped in and just waited for me. I got inside the elevator and noticed he didn't press any button. I got a weird gut feeling, so I excused myself and told him I needed to call my friend.

He grabbed my arm and tried to pull me back inside the elevator, saying, no, no, come here. I told him louder, let go. I really need to make this call. I pulled my arm hard to free myself. I almost ran outside, but I didn't know where to go. I was afraid to go back inside, but it was so late and I didn't feel safe outside either. I just started walking away from my complex and called my friend. She asked where I was so she could come to me, but her phone died before I could answer. I didn't know my partner well back then, so I felt really uncomfortable and also embarrassed to reach out to him, but I did anyways. The need to get somewhere safe was bigger than my embarrassment, and I didn't know anyone else who would still be up at this time. I texted him, and once he got to know what was going on,

he and his friend came racing towards me. They were there within five minutes, parked the car and escorted me back home. By the time we got to the building, the guy was nowhere to be found anymore. They still decided to escort me back to my apartment and stayed with me for a while until the sun came up and I felt comfortable enough to go to sleep. I had three locks on my doors so as soon as I left I locked myself in and went to bed. I reported it to my landlord but he couldn't help me since the security cameras often didn't work and happened to be offline that evening. I told him about the guys on the balcony as well because I didn't know if he was one of them and therefore saw me going back alone,

but the landlord told me no one with that description lived on that side of the floor. Looking back, I'm so grateful for trusting my gut instinct and just getting out of there. I don't know if he would have done anything, but it was a weird situation regardless and it could have ended very badly. This happened about five years ago when I was attending college in a small rural town. I, a female, was 21 at the time and I lived in a duplex with two roommates in a neighborhood. We had two houses on either side of us and we never really saw our neighbors much or talked to them. Until it was maybe 3 or 4am. I was just getting home from my boyfriend's house. I pull into the driveway and start walking up to my door when I hear, help me, please help me. At first I was so startled that I bolted towards my door but then

I realized someone might actually need help. So I slowly walk back out front and notice an older woman laying in my neighbor's yard. She calls out to me again. Please help me. I think I broke my hip. I fell off my porch. I walk over to her and ask if I can call an ambulance and she says, no, no, can you please go inside and get Dr. Jones? I don't remember the exact name she said, but I do remember her saying Dr. something. I'm't remember the exact name she said, but I do remember her saying Dr. something. I'm going to preface this by saying I know my next actions were not smart, but I wasn't thinking clearly at the time. So I walk inside the house and start calling out for this Dr. Jones. While inside, I notice an open bedroom door with a light on and a mattress on the floor,

which I assumed was the woman's room. I walk further back into the house calling out for this Dr. Jones and this guy eventually comes out of a back bedroom. He looks just as startled as I was. I tell him the situation and he follows me outside and he helps her up. They thank me and I go back inside my house. The rest of the time I've lived there I never saw either of those people again my house. The rest of the time I've lived there, I never saw either of those people again, and it's still one of the weirdest things that's ever happened to me. To be continued... something worse. Every day when I got home from school, I would head upstairs and use the bathroom up there since my room was up there as well. Being on the second floor, I never had a shade or curtain on this bathroom window. It was a routine I would just do without giving it much thought.

I would go up, do my business, and glance out the window. And from the window, I could see the backyard and over our fence to a parking lot of some nearby apartments. One day when I happened to glance out the window I noticed a car sitting at the far end of the parking lot with the driver's side window down. This was odd to me as it had just snowed heavily the night before and the snow covered the car completely except for the open window. I laughed to myself thinking that maybe it was just an older car and the window was either broken or didn't work or someone who parked it there might have been drunk and forgot to roll it up. Many thoughts went through my mind about all the possible reasons it would be wide open like that during the middle of winter. I eventually put it out of my mind. After several days I noticed the car had not moved and the window was still open.

I sensed something was off and had the idea that the car had not moved and the window was still open. I sensed something was off and had the idea that the car had been stolen and just dumped there. Deciding to be a good Samaritan, I wrote down the make, model, and license plate number and I brought it to my high school police liaison officer. The office of the liaison officer was nothing more than a custodian's closet with a windowed door. The window had been covered in black construction paper for the privacy of the students or staff that needed to discuss matters with the officer. When I brought the information about the car to him, I remembered having to wait as he was in some meeting with a student at the time

and didn't answer my knocks. I had to go to class, so I handed the information off to a friend who said they could get it to the officer later. Later that day, I was called to the foyer and was met by the liaison officer and a uniformed officer. It turned out the car was reported stolen and the uniformed officer was there so I could go with him to show him where the car was. I was excused from school and rode with the officer to my neighborhood and showed him the car. After filling out my information with the officer, I was then brought back to school by the police liaison officer who met up with us later. And this is when things could have gone bad for me.

For some background context, I will tell you that I always had some suspicions about this liaison officer. Well, before I brought the stolen car information in, I witnessed the school's officer overly friendly with students, and many liked him and joked around with him. He would say things like, if you went camping and you just woke up with your butt hurting, would you tell anyone? At this, and other so-called jokes, students who really liked him would just laugh it off like he was just one of the guys joking around and having a good time even if the jokes were clearly inappropriate. I just felt that there was something off about him. Since many students liked him and seemed to vouch for him, I just shrugged this off. So, what do you got planned this weekend? He asked me when driving me back to the school. I remember being nervous as I'm usually a

shy person and I gave him a serious but ridiculous answer. I told him I was getting an oil change done on my car. He laughed at this and said that I must have more fun things planned other than that. I laughed too but didn't really have any plans that weekend and didn't want to elaborate. He then offered to buy me lunch from a fast food place a block away from school many high schoolers like the flock to when they have off-campus lunch. At the time I thought that it was maybe some kind of reward for finding the stolen car and reporting it. I think he was trying to groom me with the offer of food and being friendly that day. Several months after reporting the car,

news broke out that the liaison officer had been caught abusing a couple of male students on campus. Word had gotten out that he paid the students to do certain acts and that there were VHS tapes involved. I heard that he had tried to hand over the evidence to his brother to destroy, but his brother looked at one of the tapes and immediately turned him over to the authorities. Regardless of the facts, he was found guilty on several counts and sentenced to prison. My instincts of being suspicious of him were right, and thinking back on the car ride to school with him, I can't help but think that he could have done something to me. What if he did try something and I refused? Would he have threatened to arrest me for something? Blame the stolen car on me? Force me to do something at gunpoint? The black construction paper over the window of his office door might have been put up to hide the criminal acts

happening on the other side. In any case, I'm glad that nothing happened to me. I feel bad for the students who were abused and hope that they are doing okay these days. But this goes to show you that sometimes you never really know a person and sometimes people that are supposed to protect you are not as they seem. I met a guy in college and ran one lap with him. He asked my name and I told him. He was hitting on me, but I said no. Anyways, I was going through my emails a day later and he sent me a schedule of when we will run together. I was shocked because to find my email in the college email system, he had to have gone through everyone who has my first name in the system.

He would watch me so intensely whenever I ran or shot basketballs at the rec center. It was so intense because people actually noticed and told me. He would hide behind equipment and stare. That part was a little funny to me at least. His hiding was terrible, and he kept hitting on me in person and wouldn't take no for an answer. He grabbed me by the arm forcefully on one occasion and another and said that he was my boyfriend. Obviously he wasn't. It's funny because I told my best friend and she didn't think anything of it. But one day my best friend, we went to the same college, texts me and says come to the dining hall. I did.

There was another girl, and I found out this guy had a restraining order placed against him by the entire girls' soccer team. The restraining order was because he would use the same tactics against them. There is more that'll happen, but honestly, I'll just stop there. This took place a couple of years ago in Hollywood, Florida. I was in the middle of school at the time. Myself, my sister, my mom both were on our front porch unlocking the door after coming home from school. We noticed something was off right away because our alarm didn't go off, and mom always made it a point to set the alarm before we leave the house.

Although that was weird, we also noticed and commented about it. It was very possible that we just forgot to set it. Because of that possibility, we just ignored it and moved on. As we entered the house and were beginning to set our backpacks and other stuff down, I heard a drawer close in my bedroom. I thought I was just hearing things, so I looked at my mom and was about to ask her if she heard something. My mom looked at me at the same time, and her look of horror was enough for me to realize that she had heard the same thing. My sister didn't seem to notice because she had her earphones in. That sound and the fact that the alarm was off was enough for my mom to decide to just get us out of there.

She loudly said, I want to show you guys something in the backyard. Because she didn't want anyone in the house to know that we had heard them and that's why we were leaving the house. My sister looked confused but I knew exactly why my mom said this. As we entered the backyard and shut the door behind us, we speed walked towards the alley behind her house. The only thing that separated us from it was a wooden fence and once we reached the fence, we opened the gate and began to exit into the alley. I was the last to exit through the gate and before I shut the gate, I looked at the house one last time. To my horror, I saw someone looking at me through our

curtains. We called the police and they found no one and nothing was stolen. This happened about five years ago. I was around 16 to 17 years old, and I always enjoyed walking. I would spend at least one hour a day walking the roads around where I lived. One day I was out doing my normal route, walking down my street that my house was on, taking a right out to the main street and following it until I got to the end. There I would cross the crosswalk and retrace my steps to go home. On this particular day I was about 20 feet from where I would leave the main road on my journey back home. I had my headphones in, blasting music as always, which can be a bad habit as I am

a young female that has been put in some sketchy situations while going out for walks, men chasing me, following me, etc. But since it was daylight and the roads were pretty busy, I figured I was safe. But man, I was ever off with that assumption. As I was about to pass the entrance of a side street before leaving this main road, a black Ford F-150 pulled up and he stopped and gestures for me to walk in front of him so I do so. I was about to go on my merry way when I barely heard someone trying to talk to me. I turned down my music, taking out my headphones as I looked to see the man in the black Ford, still stopped at the

entrance of the side road. I looked at him puzzled, trying to figure out if he was talking to me. I pointed at myself, and he grinned, nodding. What's a beautiful girl like you doing out here? He asked. I laughed awkwardly. Uh, walking? I replied, seeing as the answer should have been obvious. It's a beautiful day for that, he commented, just seeming to make small talk. Yeah, I stated before going to turn around and continue my route home. Wait, wait, wait, the man called. I stopped and turned around just trying to be polite even though the encounter was odd. I didn't see too many red flags yet.

The man then went off saying things such as, You're so beautiful. You know, you got a really nice body. This hot weather is nice for a hot girl. I grew incredibly uncomfortable at this point, seeing as this man had to be in his mid-forties. He had a bit of a receding hairline with black hair, a nose with a protruding bridge, blue eyes that were surrounded by slight wrinkles, and was dressed in a dress shirt. So I instantly brought up my age, saying,

I'm a minor. There has been multiple times that I've been mistaken for being older than I was and I was hoping saying this would get this fully grown adult man to back off. But he didn't. Oh, that's okay. Come on, sweetheart, get in the truck. And that's when I started panicking. Red flags shooting up everywhere. Stranger danger. I just laughed nervously, looking at the cars around me to see if anyone was noticing what was happening. But nobody did. No, that's fine. My house isn't far. Oh really? Get in the truck. I'll bring you home. No. Come on. Just get in here with me. He called as I turned and started walking away. I was hoping he'd just drive off somewhere else, but he didn't. Instead, he drove extremely slow,

following me, complimenting me and trying to pressure me into his truck. I thought fast of multiple options for different scenarios, but I chose on a simple one. I pulled out my phone. While still talking, I lifted it up to different scenarios, but I chose on a simple one. I pulled out my phone. While still talking, I lifted it up to my ear, pretending to loudly answer a call. Hey, Dad. Yeah, no, I'm just... I'm on the street here, so I'll be home in ten minutes. I stopped pretending to listen to a reply.

Okay. You're outside waiting for me? Awesome. Yeah, yeah. Yeah, we can do that when I get back. Alright, love you. After he heard me say that, he just took off, tires screeching and all. I ran back home and made it back within about six minutes, actually calling my dad on the way who had made a call to the police who showed up shortly after and took my statement and description. It turns out that there was a man on the loose in my area who was exposing himself to kids and trying to pick them up for who knows what, but they never actually found out who

exactly it was. This happened almost four years ago. My parents and my husband were visiting my mom's family in Indianapolis. I used to go all the time as a child, but I wouldn't know my way around. I was drinking a lot because my husband had an emotional affair with his ex that lasted four months. She tried to break us up, essentially. Honestly, I could write a whole post about how she tried to ruin our relationship. So we saw my family and then went back to the hotel. I was upset, so I said I was just going to go smoke.

In reality, I was going to the hotel bar. I got multiple double vodka shots with a splash of orange juice, and I was feeling good. The bar was closing, so I asked the bartender where there was another another bar and she told me to go to TGIFs. It was a 10 minute walk. Remember this was after 10pm so I was already drunk. I went inside and got more drinks. I don't remember how I got outside but I was smoking and there were people outside in the parking lot with me. Suddenly I was being dragged into a car. I don't know how long it had been. I was so drunk I couldn't do anything or even realize how screwed I was being dragged into a car. I don't know how long it had been. I was so drunk I couldn't do anything or even realize how screwed I was. During this time my husband realized that

I was missing and woke up my mom in my parents room. He tracked my phone to the TGIF parking lot. My mom and husband got to my phone but I wasn't there. Then my mom saw this man trying to get me in his car. She got out of the Uber they were in and started screaming to let me go. And this monster thought my mom was just some stranger trying to save me. He didn't believe her and I remember the yelling. I only remember him saying, how do I know she's your daughter? Something like that. He had grabbed me so hard that I had bruises, and my mom threatened to call 911, which I was told later, since I was almost in his car. He let go of me and drove

off with his back passenger door open. I am convinced that I would have been violated at the very least. I was unfamiliar with the area, I was drunk, and I was barely realizing how bad the situation was. I was taken to the hospital and catheterized. I was also strapped down and I was released the next day. I didn't hear about what my mom and my husband saw until we got home since we were driving home that day. To the creep who tried to take me while I was drunk, let's never meet again. No one with good intentions just grabs a girl. Plus, I don't know if I dropped my phone

or if the guy did. This happened last night. I worked late at a retail shop. We close at 5pm except for six weeks during the summer where there are street dances from 7 and 9 right out in front of our place. We're one of the sponsors and we give two $25 gift certificates as prizes for each of the weeks. Since many folks who attend are on vacation here, I like to stay open during the street dance. If someone wins, they can walk 50 feet over to spend their prize, even if it's the late night of their trip. Plus, the music is cool. They always have a good band. So after closing and doing the books, I got home at about 10-ish. It's pretty normal. It's just my

wife and me, plus the dog and four cats. We tend to go to bed and get up early. It's a rural area. We have neighbors, but we're on a quiet lake, and it was all quiet and dark by the time I rolled in. The wife and I are often sleeping in separate bedrooms because she has trouble getting to sleep and I do not at all. I trained myself to go to sleep fast decades ago and it has stayed with me. I can often get to sleep in two or three minutes. And I snore. We both do, but I definitely take the laurels for volume. I have woken myself up with loud snoring more than a few times,

so I was unsurprised and unbothered to see a note asking me to sleep in one of the spare bedrooms when I entered the dark and quiet house. Our main bedroom is in the finished basement and she was there. So I settled into place I usually choose on the upper level. It's a double bed in a small bedroom that also hosts my laptop, the dog's feeding station, and a water fountain for all the pets. I like the flowing water sound. I recently washed this set of bedding and reinstalled it back on this bed instead of changing it out for another set. Just part of the normal household chores, but I know I'm the one who handled it the last several times in a row.

It's pretty fresh and has been used three nights since then. About 4am or so, by my estimate, I woke up feeling something odd and blocky on the edge of the bed nearest the wall, away from me. And it wasn't just something loose. It was a hard, squared-off lump underneath the sheet. Not very small, bigger than my hand, just a little. Really weird thing to feel at my hand, just a little. Really weird thing to feel at that time, in that place. I told myself it was a weird dream and just went to sleep.

I woke up at my normal time of 6am, feeling a bit groggy. I felt over to the side of the bed where the blocky object had been, and it was still there. I pulled to the sheets and was able to remove it. It was a piece of 2x4, 6 or 7 inches long. Really, really odd. Convinced I was clearly still dreaming, I rolled over and went back to sleep and I woke up at about 6.30 feeling a bit closer to normal. I got up, had coffee, breakfast, did chores, tended critters and plants and headed off to the shop. I got in this evening at about 6, watched Prey on Hulu with the wife, agreed to sleep in the same places, ate dinner, did normal evening at home stuff, came into the room and began disrobing for bed. Sitting on the cedar chest across from the bed is a 6-7 inch piece of 2x4. We haven't had any chunks of two by four sitting around this

place in six years since I finished the basement. I burned all the leftovers in a fire pit by the lake years ago. There have been no visitors. There was no lumber stored here, period, scrap or otherwise. I'm stumped as to how this piece of wood appeared where and when it did. It's enough out of place as to have me thinking I dreamed it when I encountered it first. I don't have any known enemies and it's not like waking up to a horse head in bed, but what's the message to a piece of wood? It's just a bit of wood. Yet I am a bit creeped out at how it could have got where it is. Are the trees sending me a message.

Anyone know? The Seven Years Ago much faster than I expected and before I could get back to my car. Once the sun was gone and all you could see was darkness, I was walking slowly through a field when, out of nowhere, I had to this day the most gut-wrenching, undeniable feeling I was being watched. I turned around and in the distance, I saw a figure standing there, darker than the night sky around us. The instant I saw him, my stomach dropped and my body literally froze. I knew in that moment somehow, he was coming for me. I grab my dog's leash and we book it. I mean, sprinting.

Full bore, up and down hills, around trees, down embankments. I was running so fast as if my life was dependent on it, and to this day, I'm sure it was. I make the 30 to 45 minute trip in 10, and all that stands before me in my car is this switchback you have to go back and forth up if you want to reach the top. So once again, I'm giving it all I got, running up this switchback as fast as I possibly can and once I reach the top and look back down, who else but this person chasing me. And he doesn't go up the switchback like how any sane person would, of course not. He starts sprinting right up the middle of the switchback, headed straight for me. I scream at him to screw off and he doesn't say anything, not a single word, just continues running right at me.

I'm so lucky my car was at the top of that hill because as I ran towards it, just like in the horror movies, I dropped my keys and fiddling with them trying to open the door. Just in time, I get the door open, throw my dog in and shut the door behind me just as this guy reaches us. Best part is, there were no other vehicles parked anywhere around us. But where did this person park? Yeah, right next to me of all places. Now this guy literally jumps into his truck so fast and to this day I've never seen a better example of speeds out of there like a bat out of hell. He guns the engine so hard, black smoke is blasting out of the back as he swerves out of there,

leaving skid marks behind him. I sat in the back of my vehicle for hours afterwards, just shaking and crying. I know I was this close to whatever he had planned for me. And that's why I'm sharing this story, in hopes that people won't ignore that gut feeling, the little voice in the back of your head that tells you to run. If I did that day, I never would have noticed him in time, and would not have had the head start that I needed to escape. Always trust your gut feelings and intuition. It might really be the deciding factor if this is your final day on Earth or not. To be continued... every Monday, Wednesday, and Friday at 7pm EST. If you get a story, be sure to submit them to my subreddit, r slash let's read official, and maybe even hear your story featured on the next video. And if you want to support me even more, grab early access to all future narrations for just $1 a month on Patreon, and maybe even pick up some Let's Read merch on Spreadshirt.

And check out the Let's Read podcast, where you can hear all of these stories in big compilations and save huge on data. Located anywhere you listen to podcasts. Links in the description below. Thanks so much, friends. And I'll see you again soon.