The Lets Read Podcast - 288: THIS CYBERSTALKER RUINED MY LIFE | Rain Ambience / 15 True Scary Stories | EP 276

Episode Date: April 22, 2025

This episode includes narrations of true creepy encounters submitted by normal folks just like yourself. Today you'll experience horrifying stories about crazy neighbors, internet psychos & cold cases HAVE A STORY TO SUBMIT? [e-mail] FOLLOW ME ON - ►YouTube - https://www.youtube.com/c/letsreadofficial ► Instagram - https://www.instagram.com/letsread.official/ ► Twitter - https://twitter.com/LetsRead ♫ Music & Cover art: INEKT https://www.youtube.com/@inekt Today's episode is sponsored by: - Soul - Betterhelp

If it's a flat or a squeal, a wobble or peel, your tread's worn down or you need a new wheel, wherever you go, you can get it from our Tread Experts. Until May 30th, purchase four new Michelin passenger or light truck tires and receive up to $70 by prepaid MasterCard. Conditions apply. Details at Michelin.ca. Find a Michelin Tread Experts dealer near you at TreadExperts.ca slash locations. From tires to auto repair, we're always there at TreadExperts.ca slash locations. From tires to auto repair, we're always there. TreadExperts.ca Craig, Alaska is a small fishing town located just over 700 miles south of Anchorage. It has a rich fishing history dating back to the 19th century and continuing into the present.

However, for over 40 years, a dark cloud has loomed over this quaint village and the state of Alaska as a whole. Born on September 5, 1954 in Blaine, Washington, Mark Colthurst was a bright young salmon fisherman with an incredible work ethic. Colthurst had been working in the fishing industry since he was 16 and was driven by a goal to retire before the age of 50. His sisters, Lori and Lisa, described him as an entrepreneur, constantly diversifying his fishing experience while working his way from boat to boat. This ambition netted Colthurst $105,000 worth of salmon in a single week in 1979, an amount typically earned an entire season. In the winter of 1981, Colthurst purchased his first boat, Investor, a 58-foot, $850,000 saner at just 27 years old. Colthurst traveled around the Pacific Northwest fishing with his

five-year-old daughter, Kimberly, four-year-old son, John, and his high school sweetheart and wife, Irene, who was pregnant with their third child. The Colthursts were joined by four deckhands, 17-year-old Chris Heyman, 19-year-olds Dean Moon, Jerome Keown, and Michael Stewart. After arriving in Craig on September 5th, 1982, the crew of the Investor went ashore to celebrate Mark's 28th birthday at a local restaurant. Larry Demert, Jr., captain of the Libby 8, which was docked next to the Investor, wished Mark a happy birthday as the crew went into town. The next day, the entire crew was dead, their bodies charred within 48 hours. As night turned into early morning, a thick fog rolled into the harbor of Craig, reducing visibility to the point where one could hardly see objects just outside their windows. At roughly 2 a.m., Demert awoke to popping noises coming from the investor.

Through the darkness of the Alaskan night, compounded by fog, Demert could only make out a dark figure walking across the deck of the investor, and not thinking much of it, he closed the porthole window and went back to sleep. When the residents of Craig awoke on September 6th, they noticed something strange. The investor had become unmoored and was drifting into open water with no apparent movement on board. This attracted the attention of many fishermen, who remained glued to the port for most of the day. Suddenly, an explosion tore through the investor, engulfing the vessel in flames that shot several feet into the air. Many locals attempted to fight the blaze, but the heat was so intense that they could not get close enough to make an impact.

After the fire consumed the boat, the investor was towed to shore by the then chief of police, Ray Sharpley. As the scorched wreckage was sifted through, officials discovered four charred bodies. Initially, investigators believed the crew had been the victim of an accidental boat fire. However, bullet holes were found in the deceased, and indications of arson involving white gas were discovered. Unlike additive-filled gasoline for cars, white gas is pure gasoline that burns much hotter and faster. Authorities then began the painstaking process of sifting through

the ashes in the hall of the investor. After countless hours of meticulous searching, teeth and bone fragments were found. These pieces were separated from the larger scene and sent to the coroner along with the other four intact bodies for autopsy. And aside from numerous.22 caliber bullet wounds, there was little evidence for investigators to go on. After much scrutiny, it was determined that Mark, Irene, daughter Kimberly, and Michael Stewart were the four intact bodies on board. Authorities were now in a race against time to identify the perpetrator.

Salmon fishing season had just ended and the killer could have been on their way out of Craig. Rumors swirled that robbery might have been the motive, as it was alleged that Mark kept over $30,000 in cash on board the investor. This was later debunked by police after a restaurant patron came forward saying that Mark had borrowed $100 from him to pay for his birthday dinner. A couple named Bruce Anderson and Jan Kittleson provided police with their first break in the case. The duo had witnessed the immediate aftermath of the fire.

As the investor ignited, Anderson and Kittleson raced over to see if they could lend assistance. They saw a small gray skiff departing from the blaze as they arrived. Kittleson asked the man if there were people on board, to which he replied that there were. The driver of the skiff then continued back toward Craig. Kittleson assumed the driver was going to get help. He was described as a young white male in his late teens or early twenties, with brown hair, glasses, and a baseball cap. What struck Kittleson and Anderson as odd was that they did not recognize the driver. Something unusual in a small fishing community with a population of about 3,000 in 1982. Later,

two more witnesses came forward reporting that they had seen a gray skiff dock and that its driver matched the earlier descriptions. As time passed, police concluded that the skiff driver had left Craig with the end of the season. A few days later, Jerry Mackey, a friend of Mark, was having a few beers at a local bar when he noticed a man matching the witness descriptions. Mackey called state troopers, who arrived with Kittleson and Anderson in hopes of identifying the man. However, when asked, the witnesses said that they did not recognize him.

And despite this, police remained suspicious and brought the young man in for questioning. The man was identified as 24-year-old John Peel, a native of Washington State. Peel stated that he was a deckhand on Larry Demert Jr.'s Libby 8 next to the investor. It was also revealed that Peel was well acquainted with Mark, having previously dated Mark's sister Lisa.

This immediately raised alarm bells for the police. Peel had been a friend of the family and had previously worked as a deckhand for Mark on a prior boat, and police then questioned Demert, a lifelong friend of Peel's since the age of seven. Demert explained that he had not seen Peel in a few days and could not verify whether Peel was on the Libby 8 the night of the murders. Chief sharply felt that Demert was holding back, while Demert insisted that he was wary of the police due to his involvement in illegal drug use. Whatever the case may have been, the police continued their search for suspects. The arduous task of identifying the four

missing people remained. These included Mark's four-year-old son, John, Dean Moon, Jerome Keown, and Chris Heyman. Twelve days after the murders, a memorial service was held for all eight crew members, and the coroner faced difficulty identifying any other bodies due to the lack of tissue and the scarcity of bone fragments. Dental records were instrumental in identifying Heyman and Keown's remains, but the whereabouts of Moon and young John Colthurst were still unknown. Six months after the murders, the Craig Police Department received a series of baffling calls claiming that Dean Moon had been seen alive in San Francisco. Investigators, who had believed all eight of the investors' crew had died, were forced to consider Moon as a potential suspect.

A group was sent to San Francisco to search for him, while other officers visited Moon's family in Blaine. The Moon family vehemently denied his involvement in the murders, and Moon was later ruled out as a suspect when part of his jawbone was found in the ashes. John's body was never found. A year after the murders, Larry Demert Jr. changed his story, giving police new information that blew the case wide open. This time, Demert claimed to have seen Peel crossing from the Libby 8 to the Investor at 10pm on the night of the murders while the crew of the Investor was hanging out. Demert also revealed that Peel did not spend the night on the Libby 8, adding that Peel was not on the Libby 8 when he woke up the following morning.

Demert told People Magazine investigates in 2017, I was the only person on the boat that night when I went down and when I woke up in the morning. During his second interview, it also emerged that Demert had guns on his boat, which were unaccounted for for the night of the murder. These guns, a.22 caliber revolver and a.22 caliber single-shot rifle, were later found by Demert in the wheelhouse as the boat was being prepped for storage. Demert claimed that he had initially withheld this information because he, quote, did not know Peel was the focus of the investigation. As the investigation progressed, Demert felt that he needed to be truthful. After speaking with Demert, police interviewed a second member of the Libby Eight, Brian Palinkas. For the first time, Palinkas mentioned drugs in the investigation,

stating that Peel had sold marijuana to Keown and Moon after bringing them on to the Libby Eight the Sunday evening before the murders. Police brought John Peel in for questioning, where he had admitted to selling marijuana to Moon and Keown that Sunday. Peel also revealed his tense relationship with Mark, who had fired him for smoking pot and drinking on the job. Despite working for Mark for over two years, Peel had been banned from coming aboard the boat after repeated instances of showing up intoxicated. After publishing a composite sketch of Peel had been banned from coming aboard the boat after repeated instances of showing up intoxicated. After publishing a composite sketch of Peel in the press, police received another lead. An additional witness came forward, claiming they saw the skiff pull up to the dock

and picked Peel out of a photo lineup as the driver. And just over two years after the crime, on September 10th, 1984, John Peel was charged with eight counts of first-degree murder. Peel was brought to his arraignment the following January wearing a ski mask to avoid tainting the jury pool in a trial based entirely on circumstantial witness testimony. Peel's defense attorney argued that even if Peel had been angry at Mark for firing him, that was not sufficient reason to kill eight people. The cornerstone of the prosecution's case was the testimony of Larry Demert Jr., captain of the Libby Eight. On the stand, Demert provided even more new information, claiming that he saw a peel on the deck with a rifle and heard a woman scream.

Demert said that he was so frightened that he locked himself in his room and went back to sleep. The defense harshly criticized Demert's testimony, questioning why he had withheld information. In 2017, Demert explained, Unless you've actually been there and tried to remember every little detail of what you did on a given night, when you're not trying to remember every little detail at the time it was going on, nobody would have the ability to do that. I'm not trying to lie. I was trying to be as honest as I could. However, it was revealed under cross-examination that Demert had been addicted to Valium at the time,

although he claimed that this was a brief stint and that he was sober during the trial. In July 1986, the jury was unable to reach a verdict, resulting in a mistrial. Two years later, the state of Alaska retried the case. The prosecution produced two additional witnesses, a pair of brothers who had fished with Peel in Kodiak, Alaska, and these brothers claimed that Peel had confessed to the killings. However, the defense was able to cast doubt on the story, pointing out that one of the brothers, Sam Wasso, had been offered a plea bargain to testify in exchange for a misdemeanor conviction

in a separate case. This development was the final blow to the prosecution's case, and after four days of deliberation, the jury found John Peel not guilty on all charges. In 2016, Lisa and Lori Colthurst sat down with John Peel in an attempt to find some semblance of closure. After talking with him, Lori believes that while Peel might not have pulled the trigger, he had a significant role in the murders. John Peel later sued the state of Alaska and was awarded an out-of-court settlement reported to be $900,000. Somebody out there knows what happened, Peel said in a 2017 interview. Somebody was responsible for this, but I'm not going to waste any more of my life on it.

The coldest reality of this case comes from Ava Goodman, Dean Moon's sister, who reflected on the second trial. When he was declared not guilty, you're incredibly let down. You're sad. And then you realize that it doesn't change anything. It doesn't change that my brother is gone. The antagonist from the Friday the 13th saga, Jason Voorhees, has been immortalized in pop culture. Although Jason is a fictional character, the best stories often have parallels with reality. In Jason's case, these routes take us to Lake Bodum in Espo, Finland. Lake Bodum is a serene body of water located outside the capital city of Helsinki. In the summer of 1960, four teenagers embarked on a camping trip to Lake Bodum, a popular destination for hikers, campers, and outdoor enthusiasts.

18-year-olds Nils Gustafsson and Sempo Boisman, along with their 15-year-old girlfriends, Myla Bjorklund and Anja Maki, set out on June 4th for a night of fun. The group spent the evening drinking, swimming, and socializing before turning in for the night at around 10.30pm. The following morning, two boys out birdwatching noticed a tent that appeared to have been slashed open, with a blonde man seen leaving the area. They paid little attention to the scene and continued their birdwatching. Later that day, a local resident discovered a gruesome sight at the tent.

Bjorklund and Gustafsson were found lying inside, bloodied, while Boisman and Marquis were found dead inside the tent. The girls had been stabbed multiple times, and the boys had been both bludgeoned and stabbed. Miraculously, Nils Gustafsson survived, though he suffered a broken jaw. He claimed to have no memory of the previous night, recalling only a figure dressed in black

with red eyes committing the crimes. Locals immediately suspected Waldemar Geilstrom, a kiosk operator near Lake Bodum's southern shore, who was known for his dislike of campers. Initially, Geilstrom was ruled out as a suspect thanks to an alibi provided by his wife, though this alibi had been questioned in recent years. In a 2019 Swedish news article,

Olf Johansson, a 35-year member of the Espoo City Council, strongly asserted that Gylström was responsible for the massacre. He said, No Espoo or local resident would have camped in that place. The people of Ors knew that the kiosk man cut the tent cords so that the tent would fall down. He'd laugh loudly and leave. And this is what the kiosk man always did if someone dared to camp there. He thought he was the boss of the place and chased everyone away. Johansson also believed Gilstrom suffered from mental illness, explaining,

during the war, World War II, he was admitted to a mental hospital. He exhibited symptoms of impulsiveness and mindless violence, alternating with calm, manipulative periods consistent with psychopathic traits. Gijlström reportedly confessed to the murders in a drunken state in 1969, before drowning himself. Another suspect was Pentti Soininen, who had a criminal record and allegedly boasted in prison about killing the three campers. However, police were doubtful, as Soininen would have only been 14 at the time of the murders, and they found it unlikely that

he could have overpowered four older teenagers. Strangely, Soynanen hanged himself on the anniversary of the murders in 1969. A former National Socialist and suspected KGB spy, Hans Osman, was also investigated but was eventually cleared due to his alibi. However, doubts lingered due to his alleged connections to the KGB. Despite these persons of interest, the police had little forensic evidence and the case soon went cold. Then, in 2005, 45 years after the murders, a bombshell hit the Finnish news media. Nils Gustafsson, the sole survivor, was arrested for the crime. According to an article in The Guardian, authorities pointed to new DNA evidence,

which found the blood of the other three victims on Gustafsson's shoes, but not his own. Additionally, Detective Chief Inspector Marko Tuminen stated that Gustafsson had remarked, what's done is done, after being arrested. The police theorized that Gustafsson had killed his companions and then inflicted his injuries on himself to cover up his actions. However, Gustafsson maintained his story of memory loss and denied the accusations in court. A jury ultimately sided with him and on October 7th, 2005, he was found not guilty.

Under Finnish law, the prosecution did not appeal the acquittal, and there have been no new developments in the case since. Nearly 65 years later, the mystery of the Lake Bodum murders continues to intrigue amateur and professional detectives worldwide. In the Friday the 13th movies, someone survives, and Jason is eventually banished or killed. But in reality, the story is much murkier and darker. What remains clear is that an all-too-real Jason Voorhees committed one of the most heinous crimes in Finnish history, and will likely get away with it. What if? Two of the most intriguing words when you pair them together.

When we look back on history, these two words often come to mind. The tragedy of the Rwandan genocide is known worldwide. In just 100 days, an estimated 800,000 to 1 million Tutsi and moderate Hutus were massacred, while hundreds of thousands more innocents suffered unspeakable atrocities. The situation is made even more horrifying by the fact that it almost didn't happen. Peace in the region was nearly secured until April 6, 1994. And this brings us to one of history's greatest what-ifs. The Rwandan Civil War directly led to the genocide. In 1990, ethnic tensions between the Tutsi-led Rwandan Patriotic Front, RPF, and the Hutu-majority Rwandan government erupted when the RPF invaded Rwanda

from Uganda. Many RPF rebels had served in the Ugandan army to escape persecution, before deserting to fight in the civil war. By February 20th, 1993, the war had reached a stalemate, with both sides vying for control of Kigali, the capital city. The RPF declared a ceasefire, which led to the signing of the Arusha Accords on August 4th, 1993. This fragile peace lasted until April 6th, 1994, when two missiles shattered the uneasy truce. Linda Melvern, a renowned British journalist, interviewed a Rwandan soldier for her book, A People Betrayed, The Role of the West in Rwanda's Genocide. The soldier vividly recalled that fateful April evening, saying,

Its engine sounded different from other planes, that is, the president's engine. We were looking toward where the plane was coming from, and we saw a projectile, then a ball of flame, and we saw the plane go down. I saw it. At around 8.15 p.m. local time, Burundian President Saipiram Antari Amira and Rwandan President Yuvenal Haibariamana were on a flight back to Kigali from Zaire. The two Hutu leaders, along with several government officials and three French crew members, were returning from discussions about the Arusha Accords. Two surface-to-air missiles struck their Dassault Falcon 50 presidential plane,

crashing it into the presidential palace garden and killing everyone on board. This assassination triggered the Rwandan genocide, which began that very night. The perpetrators have never been officially identified, but three major theories exist. The Tutsis, the Hutus, and the French. Many Hutus believe that the Tutsis arranged the assassination. Some have accused Paul Kagame, and former RPF commander and current president of Rwanda, of orchestrating the attack. Kagame was thought to have had a significant interest in seizing power. In 2006, Mark Doyle, former BBC World Affairs correspondent, stated, Kagame's soldiers took control after the genocide. I have no doubt that if he wanted to down the plane,

he would have had the technical and military capacity to do so. Kagame has shown little concern for his international reputation. Ever since the genocide, he has made it clear that he has no respect for an international community that largely stood by while hundreds of thousands were killed. On July 5th, 2004, former RPF Second Lieutenant Alois Ruyenzi spoke in Norway after fleeing Rwanda. Lieutenant Ruyenzi claimed, let me be crystal clear. I attended the last meeting where the plan was hatched. I was there physically, and I even know the names of those who carried out the shooting. The allegations against Kagame were so significant that in 2007,

a French judge accused him of orchestrating the attack and called for him to stand trial. This led to Rwanda severing all diplomatic ties with France on August 9th, 2007, a stance that was reversed two years later. In 2011, while visiting France, Kagame said it was time to leave history behind. In 2018, France dropped the charges, though Cyprian Untari Amira's widow appealed the decision, which was upheld in 2020. Another theory is that extremist Hutu politicians and military members were responsible for the assassination. Declassified CIA documents reveal that former U.S. ambassador to Rwanda, David Rawson, was told by a source that rogue Hutu elements of the

military, possibly the elite presidential guard, were responsible. These ultra-conservative Hutu leaders were fiercely opposed to the Arusha records, and multiple reports suggest that some government officials were calling for a final solution to eliminate all Tutsis. This sentiment was further propagated during the genocide by radio-television RTLM, a station allegedly run by the Hutu government. According to the same CIA source, the Rwandan military tried to rein in those rogue elements but failed. Meanwhile, the RPF denied any involvement in the attack. The third theory implicates the French government in shooting down the plane. Kagame has remained steadfast in his belief that

France was involved. Linda Melvern has written about the extent of French knowledge during the genocide, noting that at the time of the genocide's planning, the French government had 47 senior officials embedded in the Rwandan army, which later played a significant role in the atrocities. Despite this, the United Nations locked away the Flight Data Recorder, or Black Box, for ten years before it resurfaced in 2004. After investigation, the UN claimed the Black Box contained no relevant information about the crash. Two French presidents have acknowledged France's role in the genocide. In 2010, Nicolas Sarkozy visited Rwanda and admitted that France made mistakes in 1994, calling it an error of judgment, though he stopped short of offering an apology.

In 2021, Emmanuel Macron formally apologized during his visit to Kigali, stating that France valued silence over the examination of the truth. Macron reiterated this in April 2024, during the 30th anniversary of the genocide, noting that France, which could have stopped the genocide with its Western and African allies, lacked the will to do so. As of June 2024, the United Nations has refrained from naming an official culprit. The investigation has been closed. The true horror of this unsolved mystery lies in the lingering question, what if?

What if the plane had never been shot down? What if the genocide had been averted? These are questions that will never have concrete answers. Tired of packing on the calories with drinks and waking up with a headache? I totally get it. Enjoying a few beverages can be a blast, but I'm really excited to share my find. Out of office gummies from Sol. They keep the fun going without the hangover on the next day.

Sol is a wellness brand that believes feeling good should be fun and easy. Sol specializes in delicious hemp-derived THC and CBD products designed to boost your mood and help you unwind. Their best-selling out-of-office gummies were designed to provide a mild, relaxing buzz, boost your mood, and enhance creativity and relaxation. The out-of-office gummies offer four strengths to match your vibe perfectly. Whether you're looking for a light microdose, a nice buzz, a noticeable high, or you want to feel fully lit, there's an option just for you. When you prioritize wellness, you can feel really good about what you're putting in your body. All of Sol's products come from USA-grown, organically farmed hemp and are vegan, gluten-free, and low in sugar, making them a great choice for a healthier

lifestyle. If you enjoyed their out-of-office gummies, you'll definitely want to check out their new out-of-office beverage. It's a super refreshing, alcohol-free drink that's just perfect for those summer days. Bring on the good vibes and treat yourself to Soul today. Right now, Soul is offering my audience 30% off your entire order. Go to GetSoul.com and use the code READ. That's GetSoul.com. Promo code READ for 30% off. One of the most important and often underappreciated jobs in today's society is that of investigative journalists. They work to hold everyone accountable while shining a light on things that happen in the dark.

It's common for them to travel to far-flung regions of the world to get first-hand accounts of relevant events for a story. Unfortunately, investigating dark areas of the world can often have fatal consequences, as was the case with Ilaria Alpi in Inmiran Hrovatin. Born in Rome on May 24th, 1961, Ilaria Alpi was a bright young star in Italian journalism. Alpi was accepted into the prestigious Sapienza University of Rome, one of the oldest universities in the world, founded in 1301. The quadrilingual student graduated with a degree in literature and languages and received a scholarship to work in Cairo for their newspapers. In December 1992, Alpi was sent to Somalia with Ray 3, an Italian TV station. She and her cameraman, Miran Khorovatin, were in Mogadishu covering Operation Restoring Hope, a United Nations task force responsible for providing humanitarian aid to the people of Somalia who were enduring mass starvation as a result of the civil war.

Simultaneously, Alpi was investigating whether the aid was being used appropriately or if it had any ties to arms and waste trafficking in Somalia. Italy was known to have sold arms to Somali leader Said Barth before the civil war, who stockpiled them in warehouses. It was not just the Italian government. Many European businesses also provided weapons to local warlords and clans as payment for disposing of toxic waste in Somalia. By March 1994, Alpi's investigation was

gaining momentum, though it is unclear what she and Hovartin uncovered. On the 20th of that month, the duo was headed back to Mogadishu from Bosaso after interviewing a local warlord when seven masked men wielding AK-47 rifles, ambushed them and their driver as they were returning to the Italian embassy. Their vehicle was riddled with bullets, killing both Rovatin and Alpi almost instantly. Their driver and his companions survived the ordeal. At first, the killings were thought to be retaliation for Italian skirmishes with local Somali tribesmen. However, as the investigation progressed, Alpi's work became public knowledge, leading to speculation. In 1999, Alpi's mother, Luciana Alpi, wrote a book titled The Execution, The Killing of Valeria Alpi and Miran Hrovatin. In her book, Luciana alleged that the Italian government was directly responsible for her daughter's murder

and that it was orchestrated by the Italian Secret Service. The following year, Hashi Omar Hassan, a Somali native, was convicted of the murders and sentenced to life in prison. Despite the conviction, doubts about Hassan's guilt arose almost immediately. Suspicion grew when, in October 2001, his life sentence was commuted to 26 years in prison after a court ruled that the murders were not premeditated. In 2004, the Italian parliament finally launched a commission

to investigate whether the deaths of Alpi and Rovattin were connected to arms and waste trafficking between Italy and Somalia. Reporters Without Borders Secretary General Robert Menard wrote to Commission Head Carlo Taramina saying, You have the authority, the means, and the duty to find out the truth. The commission is the last chance to do so. Teoramina's conduct during the commission appeared to derail the investigation. He controversially concluded in 2006, in Somalia, she, Alpi, was on vacation. The objectivity of Ray 3 is always the communist one. All the claims in the study and for the commission asserted the truth no one speaks. I have respect and sorrow for the killing of Taramina later reiterated his stance on Twitter, saying, It is the truth. Menard strongly refuted these allegations, stating,

The files from the 2004 inquiry were declassified in 2014. Francesco Fonti, a former member of the Ungdrrangheta Calabrian Mafia turned informant, supported Menard's claims in 2009, asserting that Alpi and Rovatin were killed after witnessing toxic waste being dumped in Bosaso, the port city that they were leaving at the time of their deaths. The case gained renewed attention in 2016 when Hashi Omar Hassan had his conviction overturned by appeals court and was rewarded 3.2 million, approximately 3.5 million USD in compensation. Luciana Alpi supported Hassan's appeal, expressing happiness at his release but also feeling bitter and depressed. It's as if she and Miran Robatin died of the heat in Mogadishu, Luciana said. We don't have the truth, and I don't think we ever will. A year later, the Rome Public Prosecutor's Office sought to close the case,

citing the impossibility of identifying the motive and perpetrators of the murders and lack of evidence of alleged misdirection. However, the request was denied by General Prosecutor Andrea Finelli in 2019. After his legal proceedings were completed, Hassan returned to Somalia, where he lived in relative peace until July 6, 2022, when he was killed by a car bomb placed under his seat. Hassan's longtime attorney, Antonio Morricone, did not believe his client's death was connected to the 1994 murders, stating,

It was the Islamic terrorists, no doubt. They killed him for the purpose of extortion over the money he received for his unjust detention in Italy. They are people looking for money, and if you don't agree with them, they will kill you. The legacy of Alari Alpi and Miran Rovatin have left an immeasurable impact on Italian journalism. In 1995, the Alari Alpi Award was created in their honor, and from 1995 until 2014, it stood as one of the highest Italian awards for investigative journalism. In its place, the DIG Awards were established, a five-day festival celebrating investigative journalism. Its 10th annual celebration is scheduled for September 18th to the 22nd.

To date, no one else has been arrested, tried, or convicted for the murders of Alpi and Rovatin. President Sergio Mattarella of Italy perhaps said it best on the 30th anniversary of their murders on March 20th, 2024. The memory of Alpi and Rovatin calls for a commitment to remove obstacles to freedom of information, wherever they may be. Since the time of Roman rule in AD 48, Thanhari have been known as a key source of Welsh iron. This rich history of iron mining has persisted through the Elizabethan era and into modern times. However, since 1993, the villagers of Thanhari have been searching for something equally valuable but far less tangible. Truth. Truth behind one of the United Kingdom's most bizarre unsolved murders. Harry and Meghan Tooze, aged 64 and 67 respectively, were enjoying their golden years in Thonharie.

Harry, a prolific cabbage farmer, had retired from his gardening business in 1986 when the couple's daughter moved out. Although retired from agriculture, Harry continued to grow cabbage on his remote farm and used his trusty 12-gauge shotgun to ward off rabbits. In 1992, however, the shotgun mysteriously disappeared and Harry replaced it. On July 26, 1993, the day began like any other for the Tuzas. They went into downtown Thanhari to collect their pensions and later visit a Tesco grocery store, as they had done every Monday for nearly 15 years. In the parking lot, Harry unexpectedly bumped into one of his sisters. We met them at Tesco and had a little chat about the family, she told Crimewatch UK in 1993. They were very quiet and a very devoted couple. Around 11am, a neighbor saw Harry and Meghan arriving home from the supermarket.

Later, neighbors heard two gunshots at 1.30 p.m. but dismissed them, assuming Harry was shooting rabbits in the cabbage garden. That evening, when the Tuzas didn't answer their nightly phone call from their daughter Cheryl, the community grew concerned and contacted the local police. Authorities discovered the couple's bodies under hay in their barn, both having been shot execution style with a 12-gauge shotgun. Strangely, the house was immaculate and nothing appeared to have been stolen. In fact, Megan's china had been laid out and tea had been prepared. South Wales Police Detective Superintendent Colin Jones

remarked in a Crimewatch UK interview that this particular china was only used for important visitors. A thumbprint belonged to Jonathan Jones, Cheryl's fiancé, was found on one of the china cups, leading to his arrest in December 1993. Prosecutors argued that Jonathan's motive was financial, an inheritance of £150,000, about $200,000. After a grueling 55-day trial, Jonathan was found guilty by 10-2 majority verdict and sentenced to life imprisonment, the harshest penalty in the UK.

However, almost immediately after the conviction, the presiding judge, Sir Richard George Rougier, expressed doubts about the trial. He remarked that the prosecution had fallen decidedly flat and that if he were a juror, he would be conscious of significant doubt. He also highlighted the contrast between the ruthlessness of the killer and the man who sat before them. Throughout the ordeal, Cheryl stood by Jonathan even offering a £25,000 reward from her inheritance to find the real killer. In 1996, the Court of Appeal of England and Wales re-examined the case and found significant flaws in the prosecution's evidence. Forensic analysis revealed no biological material linking Jonathan to the crime, and it was noted that he had no experience with guns. In April 25th, 1996, nearly a year after his conviction, Jonathan Jones was freed, with Sherrill calling it a victory for love and truth. With Jonathan exonerated, the police were

back to square one, and the case went cold and was scaled down in 2008. And then in 2011, John Cooper was convicted of two double murders, as well as 30 burglaries and was sentenced to two whole life terms. Cooper had first been investigated due to his appearance on a British reality TV show, Bullseye, where he resembled composite sketches of the burglar. Investigators were particularly interested in him because he used a shotgun in his double murders, where all four victims were shot at point-blank range. However, unlike the Tuzzi's case, Cooper always stole from his victims, and nothing had been stolen from the Tuz home. Additionally, Cooper kept his shotgun between murders, whereas a shotgun barrel was found in a quarry a quarter of a mile from the two's farm. These inconsistencies, along with the fact that the two's table had been set for a visitor, suggested that Harry and Meghan may have known their killer. Cooper was never charged in connection with the two's murders. In July 2023, the 30th anniversary of the murders,

South Wales police announced a forensic review of the case, hoping that new DNA testing might finally solve one of the most chilling unsolved murders in Welsh history. Jonathan Jones, now married to Cheryl for over 25 years, spoke to the Daily Mail on July 30th, 2023 about the forensic review saying, Without wanting to raise expectations too high, I have high hopes that the new technology will yield some results. It would lift a weight that both Cheryl and I have been carrying for 30 years, and we will be delighted when and if that happens. Good night. I love you. We say these words each time we go to sleep, fully expecting to see our loved ones when the sun rises again. For Cynthia DeWallaby, those were the last words she ever spoke to her daughter.

Born on May 17th, 1981, in Chicago, Illinois, Jacqueline Dwalaby was the only child of Jimmy and Cynthia Guess. After Cynthia and Jimmy split, Cynthia married David Dwalaby when Jacqueline was just two years old. David adopted Jacqueline as his own daughter six months after their wedding in 1983. The following year, Jacqueline's half-brother, David Jr., was born at the couple's home in Midlothian, Illinois, a suburb of Chicago. They lived in a ranch-style home with David's mother, Anna, who owned the property. And one neighbor, Holly Deck, described the positivity radiating from the household. They were a loving family. They were always hugging their kids, and they never yelled at them.

Another neighbor, Robert Tolbert, added that the Diwalabis had a gentle parenting style. They never even spanked them. They'd send them to the rooms and take away their bikes. They didn't believe in corporal punishment. On September 9th, 1988, Cynthia took David Jr. and Jacqueline to a Kentucky Fried Chicken for dinner. David Sr. was out bowling with friends, but returned home by 9.30 to be with his family. An hour later, Jacqueline kissed her mother goodnight, told Cynthia she loved her, and went to bed. At roughly 11pm.m., Cynthia checked on her daughter,

who was peacefully asleep. It was the last time Jacqueline was seen alive. The following morning, David Sr. woke up at around 8 a.m. and was surprised that Jacqueline had not yet turned on the television for Saturday morning cartoons. He checked her room and found it ransacked. Nothing had appeared to be missing except Jacqueline and her blanket. David later told police that he waited an hour for Cynthia to wake up, assuming Jacqueline was out playing with a friend. Cynthia immediately sensed something was wrong and began searching the house and neighborhood.

She discovered that their screen door, usually locked and closed, was slightly open. On her way to a neighbor's house, Cynthia made a chilling discovery. The basement window had been smashed and the screen was cut. The Diwalubis rushed to the Midlothian Police Department to report Jacqueline missing. Initially, Jacqueline's biological father, Jimmy, was considered a person of interest, as he had once attempted to kidnap Jacqueline after losing custody. However, Jimmy was cleared of any involvement as he was serving a seven-year sentence on unrelated charges in Florida. The Midlothian Police Department swiftly began their search

for Jacqueline, employing various resources, including ATVs and underwater search teams. Aside from the forced entry through the basement, only a single foreign hair and a few smudges were recovered as forensic evidence. Tracker dogs on site were unable to pick up any scent. As hours passed with no ransom note, the FBI joined the investigation. David Sr. and Cynthia fully cooperated with the authorities and David Sr. passed a polygraph test administered by the FBI. Despite the extensive efforts of local state and federal law enforcement, the worst-case scenario unfolded four days later. On September 14th, Jacqueline DeWallaby's body was discovered near a dumpster at an apartment complex in Blue Island, Illinois, over six miles from her home. The Cook County Medical Examiner's

office identified Jacqueline through dental records and determined that she had been strangled. Blood found under Jacqueline's nails was type O positive, matching everyone in her family except David Sr. However, due to the presence of maggots and decomposition, further forensic evidence could not be recovered. Dr. Robert Stein, the medical examiner, believed Jacqueline was killed on the morning of September 10th, the day she disappeared. During the investigation, police interviewed a supposed eyewitness named Everett Mann, a 37-year-old transit ticket taker with a history of mental illness.

Mann told police that he saw a man with a large, straight nose near the dumpsters at around 2 a.m. on the morning of mental illness. Mann told police that he saw a man with a large straight nose near the dumpsters at around 2 a.m. on the morning of the murder. His description of the suspect's car changed multiple times before he settled on identifying it as about a 1979 Chevy Malibu. David Sr. owned a light blue 1980 Chevy Malibu. In a police lineup, Mann picked out David Sr. as having a nose structure closest to the person he saw. However, it should be noted that David Sr.'s picture was a larger frontal view, while the other photos were smaller side views. The head of the Cook County State's Attorney's Office South Suburban Prosecutions, Robert Clifford, expressed doubts about the accuracy of Mann's identification.

Still, Patrick O'Brien, head of the Felony Trial Division, proceeded with grand jury indictments based on the theory that the basement window had been broken from the inside and staged. Cynthia and David Sr. were arrested on November 22, 1988, and held without bond. O'Brien pressed forward despite new forensic evidence showing that the window had been broken from the outside. During cross-examination, Mann seemed far less certain about his identification, saying, it seemed like a man, it appeared to be a large nose, while adding that the parking lot lighting was poor. He also retracted his earlier statement about the car,

saying it mostly resembled a Chevy Malibu. At the conclusion of the prosecution's case in the joint trial of David Sr. and Cynthia, Circuit Court Judge Richard E. Neville ruled Cynthia not guilty due to a lack of evidence. However, David Sr. was convicted after just 14 hours of jury deliberation and sentenced to 45 years in prison for first-degree murder and concealing a homicide. Cynthia and David Sr. sought the help of Professor David Protess from Northwestern University's

Medal School of Journalism. His investigation raised serious questions about the prosecution's case, particularly regarding the credibility of Everett Mann, who had been diagnosed with bipolar disorder before his interview. On October 30, 1991, David Sr.'s conviction was unanimously overturned by the Illinois Appalachian Court. The court stated, We note that the probative evidence against David is no greater than the probative evidence against co-defendant Cynthia. The trial court determined that there was insufficient evidence to convict Cynthia and direct a verdict in her favor. We conclude that the trial erred in denying David's motion for a directed verdict. The only other potential suspect, Timothy Guess,

a paranoid schizophrenic and brother of Jacqueline's biological father, was dismissed by police. Guess had provided a fictitious alibi for the night of the murder, but subsequent interviews with restaurant staff refuted his claim. In Questioned, Timothy offered bizarre explanations, including that the spirit made him invisible. He was never charged and died of bladder cancer in 2002 at the age of 41. won. Professor Protest published a book about the case, Gone in the Night, in 1993, and CBS aired a two-part television movie of the same title in 1996. In 2016, ABC7 Chicago revisited the case, interviewing David Sr. and Cynthia's former defense lawyers. David's attorney, Ralph Metchick, suggested his client had been an emotional scapegoat, saying, I don't think they had a very strong case, but because it was such an emotionally

charged case, they needed a defendant. As of June 2024, police have not made any further arrests. The most heartbreaking part of this case isn't the lack of a conviction, but the fact that one was needed at all. A seven-year-old girl never got the chance to grow up. David Sr. will carry the legacy of his adopted stepdaughter forever, encapsulated in his final words at her eulogy. You will still be a cheerleader, and anything you ever wanted to be in life, in my heart. This episode is sponsored by BetterHelp. Let's break it down. While traditional in-person therapy can really hit the wallet at around $100 to $250 per session, BetterHelp's online therapy can help you save a friendly 50% on average for each session,

making it a way more budget-friendly option. With BetterHelp, you get the convenience of weekly sessions for a simple flat fee, which means you can save both money and time. Therapy should be something everyone can reach for, not just a luxury. And with online options, you can get excellent care without breaking the bank, helping you tackle everything from anxiety to everyday stress. Your mental health really matters and guess what? It's totally within your grasp now. Why not take that first step that empowers you to be the best version of yourself? BetterHelp is the world's largest online therapy platform, boasting more than 30,000 therapists and successfully helping over 5 million people around the globe find the support

they need. It's super convenient too. You can hop into a therapy session with just a click, making it easy to squeeze it into your busy schedule, and you can even change therapists whenever you want. Your well-being is worth it. Visit betterhelp.com slash read today to get 10% off your first month. That's BetterHelp. H-E-L-P dot com slash read. I've been a subscriber for about a year now, and I've been meaning to write to you for quite some time, but it's taken me months to finally put pen to paper, so to speak, and write this. You see, I used to be a YouTuber, and I had quite a lot of subscribers too, and since this story is about some of the perils of being a big YouTuber, I think you're the perfect person to tell it. One rainy summer's evening back in 2012, I was browsing YouTube to combat some pretty severe boredom

when I came across a video that was called something like Hellboy Comic Book Page Turning. And the user who uploaded the video was named Ephemeral Rift, and it consisted of him doing something incredibly boring, or so I thought. He did nothing more than exhibit a hardback compendium of Hellboy issues, and if memory serves me well, he didn't say a single word throughout the entire video. He also delicately turned the pages of the book at a rate which, while not fast by any means, was too quick to read what was written. And under any other circumstances, I might have been asking myself, why in God's name did this person feel the need to upload this? But under those particular

circumstances, I got an immediate sense of the video's purpose. The man's slow, graceful movements and the sounds of the pages gently being turned was somehow phenomenally relaxing. I sat there, practically mesmerized with my headphones turned up to 100 for the entire 15 minute duration of the video, and when it was done, I actually wanted more. And that's how I discovered Autonomous Sensory Meridian Response, or you might know it as ASMR for short. The light, almost tingly sensation certain people feel whenever they're experiencing an instance of relaxing interaction with someone or something. And from that day forward, I was hooked. I soon discovered Gentle Whispering ASMR, or Maria as she's known to her many legions of fans, and then I moved on to ASMR Requests and Heather Feather ASMR. But Ephemeral Rift was and remains my all-time number one favorite, and it's crazy to think that I still watch his videos more than a decade

after I first discovered them. I enjoyed his videos so much that he inspired me to create my own channel, but anyone who wants to start a serious ASMR channel will tell you, it's not easy, and it's not really cheap. A fairly decent camera is obviously important, but by far the most important piece of kit that you need is a top ofof-the-line microphone. And for that, I had to wait until my 18th birthday. My mom thought that it was a rather odd gift request, but being the wonderfully generous mother she is, she honored it and I was in business. I made my first video in mid-January of 2013, and then with the help of all my ASMR Twitter mutuals, my account had a few dozen subscribers by the end of that week. My first video was a very simple, softly spoken poetry read, but I tried to get more and more

creative with each upload, and after a while, one video in particular seemed to get way more views than any of my others. It was something like Sleep Fairy Conjures Pleasant Dreams or something. And the video was 17 minutes and 14 seconds long or so and consisted of me suggesting pleasant, relaxing things for the viewers to dream about. I put quite a lot of effort into the script and my costume and I was over the moon to dream about. I put quite a lot of effort into the script and my costume and I was over the moon to see that the video was actually getting some traction. But then came the night when that view count of my video was around 2,000 and I woke up the next morning to see that it had a grand total of over just 15,000 views. And not only that, but the number of subscribers I had jumped from a few hundred to

several thousand and my new viewers had left dozens upon dozens of comments. Love the video, one said. This video helped me finally get some sleep, another read. And the flattering comments went on and on and on until finally, I found one that wasn't so flattering. How am I supposed to relax when someone so ugly is talking, said one person. You're so annoying. Delete your account and apologize for thinking anyone wants to look at you, said another. And I was definitely a bit taken aback, as I wasn't expecting anything so rude or confrontational. But I was also very aware of the internet phenomenon known as trolling. And for anybody unfamiliar with the term, and I'm using an official definition here,

trolling is when someone posts deliberately offensive or provocative messages online to incite emotional responses, which can adversely affect the target's well-being. Essentially, they don't mean the things they say. Their only goal is to hurt your feelings and ultimately demoralize you. The trouble is, it can be very difficult to discern genuine criticism from the so-called trolling. I thought encountering the trolls marked my first big test as an online creator or ASM artist, as we sometimes call ourselves. In reality, it was nothing compared to what I would eventually face. The sad fact of being a female creator online, especially if you choose to show

your face on camera, is that you're going to get all kinds of horrible comments from both men and women alike. The female trolls will say things to undermine your confidence and self-esteem, and they can be viciously effective at it too. But the male trolls say things that make you afraid for your physical well-being. And at first, it can be very alarming to realize just how many sad and nasty people there are out there. But like most things in life, you can get used to anything if you remain headstrong. And over time, the negative comments bothered me less and less, until by the time I was on the verge of hitting 100,000 subscribers, I could read venom-filled comments and emails all day and not feel a thing.

People talk about haters so much because they're easy to address, and most of them find a way of letting you know that they're not to be taken seriously. If someone puts, you suck, I hate you, in the subject line of an email, you learn not to read it and just delete it right away. If someone emails you a JPEG file and then you learn not to open it unless you want your entire day ruined. But what no one warns you about, before you wade into these online spaces as a forward-facing creator is your fans. You can plaster F the Haters on your timeline all day every day and no one will bat an eye. But complain about people calling themselves your fans and you might as well delete your videos and burn your channel. I think that's why so many trolls masquerade as fans, because then you never really know who has actual concerns or who's merely concern trolling, as it's called. But even then, they're just trolls, and for the most part their commitment to harassing you starts and ends at their keyboard. especially the less mentally stable ones, rather frequently cross that very fine line that

separates supporters, who are more than welcome, from stalkers, who are anything but welcome. Just over a year after I'd started my channel, my subscriber count was sitting pretty at around a quarter of a million, and I was producing videos at a rate of roughly one per week. I had literally thousands of regular viewers, all of whom would leave delightful words of encouragement, and I'd even rented myself a dropbox down at the local post office so that fans could send me gifts and letters and such without me giving away my actual address. And at first, I was a little bit apprehensive about what people might send me. But as I said earlier, trolls tend to favor methods which require minimal effort.

They're also not committed enough to pay the massive shipping fees, and since the vast majority of my viewers were in the US, they needed to be willing to pay exorbitant amounts of money in order to post things to me. That meant that all I received was the odd postcard or package of foreign snacks and, in one case, a handmade knitted octopus and a very flattering shade of purple. Things went on like that for quite some time, and I don't mean to sound too proud of myself, but it really was one of the happiest times of my life. I was getting paid for doing something I loved, not quite enough to really live on excessively, but I didn't really give a monkey's bottom.

It was the people who said that I helped them sleep or calm down or feel less depressed, and that's what made it so worthwhile. I started to wonder just how far I could take things, in terms of turning my channel into something that I did full-time. Things were moving fast at that stage. PewDiePie was starting to make some serious money, so it was an exciting time in more ways than one. I felt like I had this actual big, bright future ahead of me,

and then I got a letter from Will. You see, Will, who said he was 37 and also from the UK, wrote me the most beautiful letter, waxing lyrically about how much I helped him in his day-to-day life. He said that I helped him with his anxiety, that I'd helped him get a good night's sleep for the first time in years, and that he was so grateful that he wasn't sure how he could ever repay me. I always made a point of replying to people who had taken the time to write to me, so I wrote Will a brief response, thanking him for all of his love and support. It wasn't like a long letter or anything, not by any means, which made me feel a bit guilty considering that he'd written an entire page of A4 along with the postscriptum that's spilled into the reserve, but at the risk of sounding a bit cold, I didn't want him to think that I was interested in having a pen pal.

It might sound ungrateful to some, but being so heavily followed and scrutinized by people you not only don't know, but can't see, it can be rather nerve-wracking sometimes. I wanted to grow my following and interact more with my viewers, but at the same time, I didn't want a Stan sort of fan who was going to obsess over and then turn on me. Again, that probably sounds a bit arrogant, assuming that anyone would become obsessed with me. But the longer I operated my channel, the more I became acutely aware that there are some very loose cannons out there. And Will was one of them. I posted my reply to Will on a Monday morning on my way to work, and the vast majority of the people that I wrote return letters to didn't reply to them.

Some wrote comments on my videos like, I got your letter. It means the world to me. But most were socially adept enough to understand that I wasn't looking, like I said, for a pen pal. Will on the other hand didn't seem to understand that, and I got a written reply from him in my PO box early the following week. It was another long letter, thanking me for my reply and what a pleasant surprise it had been to hear back from me, and he went on to say that so many YouTubers simply see their audience as a means of just making money and that I must have a pretty good heart if I take the time out of my busy day

to indulge those who, and I quote, worship me. When he used the word worship, I started to feel this creepy feeling of discomfort. I really dislike the idea of people worshipping me. Being grateful that I helped them relax or sleep was one thing, but the idea that people felt anything more extreme than gratitude or affection made me feel severely uncomfortable. Yet thankfully, an attached drawing made me feel a hell of a lot better. Will had drawn a picture of me with a small note on the

back saying that he was completing an art course for the Open University and that he couldn't possibly think of a more beautiful subject to practice his sketching with. Credit where credit is due, it was a very good drawing. Maybe that's just my ego talking, but I found it so touching that it washed away all the discomfort his use of the word worship brought on. I know that might sound a bit hypocritical, not wanting to be scrutinized, but then being flattered someone had drawn a picture of me. But it was just such a beautiful sketch from such an obviously talented artist that I couldn't help but be overwhelmed with gratitude. No one had ever drawn a picture of me before, or been

nearly so flattering, and so against my better judgment I wrote Will a very short reply, thanking him for the picture and then posting it the following morning. I knew to expect a reply, I'm not totally naive, but I didn't expect it to be so unhinged. Curiosity drove me to open this letter when it showed up in my PO box. I knew his handwriting from the very peculiar ways that he'd write the A and the I in my username, so I knew who it was from before I even opened it. It was even more flattering this time, and he talked at length about all the art projects that he was working on and all the artists who inspired him. But then towards the end, Will wrote that he had a confession to make. He told me that since we'd started exchanging letters, his feelings for me had grown stronger than those he might feel for a friend or sister.

He said that he had to face facts, and the biggest fact facing him at that current moment was the fact that he was more in love with me than he ever thought possible. The final two or three paragraphs were all about that love, how it had started, how it had developed, and how it burned up inside of him until he couldn't contain it anymore. I started to skim read, feeling this horrible kind of sinking feeling as I realized just how unwell Will really was. But then toward the end, I read that he'd included another picture of me, one I was quite frankly dreading to look at, but I did, and this is what I saw. Will had drawn me again, only this time, I was naked, and I had a very large and very round pregnancy protrusion

around my tummy. And then standing behind me, with his hand cupping my pregnant stomach, was a person Will claimed was him, and then at the bottom of the page he'd simply titled it Our Future. I threw both the picture and the letter in my parents' kitchen bin as I was still living there at the time, and then I sat down at the table and cried. My mom came to see what the matter was, and we had a big heart-to-heart about the whole situation. Her advice was to not allow people like that to ruin a good thing that I had, and that I shouldn't read any more letters from this Will character who, quite obviously, belonged in a bloody loony bin. Famous people attract weirdos, she said.

They always have and they always will. It's just something you gotta get used to while you keep yourself as safe as possible. And so, that's what I did. I just carried on with what I was doing and kept uploading roughly once a week. I didn't reply to Will's letter, I didn't reply to his comments either, I just tried to move on and hope that things would turn out for the best. Well, they didn't, and this is why. One day, I noticed that Will had commented on my latest video, and that his comment had gotten more than two dozen replies from various other users.

Will was complaining that I hadn't replied to a letter he'd written me, how he'd included a sketch of me that he'd worked very hard on, and that he was upset that I hadn't even bothered to express my gratitude for his effort and support. Some of my other subscribers had jumped in to actually defend me, saying that they'd personally received replies to letters or gifts, and that he should just be patient because I was probably busy. Will was replying to every single one, highlighting how long it had been since he'd wrote to me, and that it was unfair that other people should get replies and thank yous, but not him. And he was doing it in a way that was not so subtly designed to cause conflict. I say that because not once had he mentioned the fact that I'd written letters of thanks to him.

Not once, but twice. He also neglected to mention that he'd sent me a naked, pregnant drawing of myself with him cupping my belly and smiling as we stared into each other's eyes. Just thinking about it at that moment made my skin crawl, and knowing what Will was up to then made me really angry. But instead of replying to his comments to correct him and my many other subscribers, I consulted an ASMR creators group that I was a part of and discovered that I could just simply and obviously block him. You can't ever really completely block people from seeing your videos, at least not that I know of on YouTube at that time, but what you can do is restrict people

from commenting on them. And they're not informed of the restriction and from their point of view it looks like their comments are just showing up like everyone else's are, but in reality they don't even make it into the comments section and they're filtered out before they can even appear. All I had to do was find Will's username, click the little icon by it, and then select hide user from channel, and he was gone. It was actually kind of stunning how quickly I was able to deal with that problem, or at least things seemed that way at first. Will kept on commenting from time to time but he seemed oblivious to his shadow ban and then one day I noticed that he hadn't commented in a while.

A few days stretched out into one week and then two and since I'd already blocked his email address on the account connected to my YouTube, his only means of contacting me directly became that PO box. I thought that he was either over me and my channel and had moved on to someone else, or I'd eventually get another letter in that box. It turns out it was the second option, and it wasn't a letter this time. It was just a postcard. Since he wasn't in the habit of sending them, it was the first thing that I'd picked up and read, mainly because the picture was so pretty. But when I turned it over and read the message, I felt a

shiver run through me. All it said in Will's telltale handwriting was, I know what you did. And as you can imagine, it made for a very deeply unpleasant discovery. But it wasn't remotely surprising, I guess. Like I said earlier, I'd already theorized that I might receive some further correspondence with this guy. I just didn't think that he had it in him to be so direct. It was mildly intimidating and frustrating, I won't lie. But it was also only a matter of time before Will figured out that I'd filtered his comments from my channel, so I was mentally prepared for some fallout. And I was actually quite relieved that all he'd chosen to do was send me a postcard with a mildly menacing message on it. He could have sent me another letter, or another creepy drawing.

I mean, he could have sent me a nail bomb if he really wanted to, but he didn't. He sent a simple five-word message, and that was that. And to be honest, I thought I'd gotten off lightly. He could make a new YouTube account, maybe create a new email account, and along with my PO box, he could harass me to his heart's content. But I knew his handwriting. I could block his comments, and I could block every single email address that he could possibly create with nothing but a click of a button. I was a mix of scared, angry, and tired, but I felt safe, and I thought things were pretty much over. But they weren't over.

Not by a long shot. About a month later, I'd been to check my PO box a few times, and when each time I saw that there was nothing from Will, I assumed that he really had moved on. A little bit more time went by, and I'm still making my videos, doing my thing, and planning on starting an actual Patreon account, much like the one that you have on here, let's read, as I wasn't making a ton of money in the advertising revenue side of things as ASMR doesn't really run a lot of advertisements. And my subscriber base was actually growing though, and I was discussing collaborations

with some big ASMRtists that would give my channel the boost it needed to actually grow, and rather adorably, one of my subscribers had knitted me another toy before sending it off to my P.O. Box. Remember I mentioned that girl who knitted me the purple octopus? Well, she knitted me another one, an orange one this time, so the purple one would have a friend. It had taken a few weeks to get to my box, but I also got text alerts for delivery, so I'd know exactly when it arrived so I could collect it the same day. Eventually the day comes when I get a little text alert saying a package had arrived for me. I hadn't heard from Will in about seven to eight weeks at this point.

There's been no comments, no letters, and certainly no emails, so I haven't heard from Will in about seven to eight weeks at this point. No comments, no letters, and certainly no emails, so I didn't have a reason to think that he'd sent me any packages like the one described. I had to run errands that day, so I zipped around town picking up a few bits and bobs and then walked over to the post office my P.O. box was in to collect my orange octopus. I walked up to the counter, said hello to the lady behind it, and then gave her my P.O. box number while showing her my ID. Normally the person would just walk off and retrieve my post, and then that was that. But on this occasion, the woman gave me

a very nervous look and then asked to confirm my P.O. box number. I'd never had to do that before and I was pretty sure that she'd heard me okay, but I didn't want to make a fuss so I just simply repeated the number. The woman had a big smile when I walked up to greet her, but after just a few brief words, she looked very serious, almost frightened, and then asked if she could have a quiet word in private. I just knew that it had something to do with Will. But my first thought was that he'd sent me some kind of, and I don't really know how to put this, a disgusting letter or package. They'd received something intended for my PO box,

and that something then started leaking or something, and they'd been forced to have it destroyed due to health and safety regulations. But that wasn't what she had to tell me, and by the time me and the lady had finished talking, getting a box of poop sounded like a considerably more favorable alternative. The nice postmistress told me how, not even a few hours before, a man had walked up to the counter and asked about my PO Box number. He had a letter to deposit into it, but after handing it to her, he started asking questions. He wanted to know the name of the person renting it, how frequently they came in to collect their post, and what days of the week they usually did so. And the postmistress said

that she told the man that it was against Royal Mail's policy to divulge their customers' personal information, but the man had insisted. He said something about how the person who owned the box was a close friend of his and that he needed to find them. When the woman pointed out that, if they were a close friend, he should know their name and the man became aggressive. He only chose to leave after she threatened to call the police. Then instead of putting his letter in my P.O. box, she put it aside to give to the police since it most probably had his fingerprints on it. I remember feeling sick as I realized what had happened and who had visited her that day. I also felt like a complete moron for not realizing that the PO Box numbers

can be tracked to a location. Just for reference, it's only private companies that offer that kind of security and you pay a premium for the privilege too. I found that out when I was looking into opening one but in the end, there's still a shred of shame that flares up when I say this. I gave up. I decided I wasn't cut out for it, but I wasn't cut out for dealing with psychos like that, even if it was on an infrequent basis. I deleted my videos, deleted my channel, and although in the moment it felt like a great weight had been lifted from my shoulders, I still harbor a little bit of regret that I just

gave up, burned my channel, and went back to working my normal 9-5. I thought about getting back into it from time to time, and I could start a new channel, keep my face and location off-camera and offline, kind of like this channel. But every time I think about it, I inevitably end up remembering that picture Will drew of me, the one where I was pregnant, and each and every time, that snuffs out any desire I have in an instant. During the winter of 2015, 34-year-old Lenny Royal was living in Brighton, a vibrant metropolitan city on the southern coast of England. Lenny was originally from New York City, but after falling in love with an Englishman over a decade before,

had been splitting his time between Britain and America while engaging in his lifelong passion of hairstyling. Yet Lenny was no regular hairstylist, and continues to hold a reputation as one of the most talented professionals on the planet. His clients have included the likes of Haley Baldwin and Sigourney Weaver, and since he could easily find work on either side of the pond, his transatlantic lifestyle was both viable and profitable. But towards the end of 2015, the breakdown of his 12-year relationship became the catalyst for a harrowing series of events. It's not exactly clear how Lenny's relationship came to an end, but by his own admission, it sent him into a deep and debilitating depression. Lenny was prone to such bouts of melancholy, having already suffered his fair

share of personal tragedy. When he was just a boy, both of his parents passed away after contracting HIV, which led to the exceptionally deadly Acquired Immune Deficiency Syndrome, more commonly known as AIDS. Lenny's father was a heroin addict and contracted HIV through sharing used needles. He then unwittingly passed it on to Lenny's mother. When young Lenny learned that his parents were going to die, it terrified him. Then watching them slowly slip away had a profoundly terrible effect on him. Separating from his boyfriend during the winter of 2015 resulted in similar feelings of grief and loss, which in turn brought back terrible memories of his parents' passing.

Lenny knew that he had to do something to shake the depression that he was feeling, so after a period of contemplation, he downloaded a dating app known as Grindr. Lenny was no doubt looking for what is commonly referred to as a rebound, a brief love affair believed to boost the recently rejected self-esteem, and in doing so, he matched with a 24-year-old Scottish man by the name of Daryl Rowe. Daryl, originally from the Scottish capital of Edinburgh, had himself suffered a rough upbringing. Although the details of his early childhood are murky, we know that Daryl was adopted by two foster parents named Jackie and Harry,

when he was still just a boy. His foster mother once described him as a really lovable boy, who was good company. Yet what's painfully clear is that they adopted an extremely damaged child. Upon arriving at their home in the nearby seaside town of North Berwick, Jackie and Harry noticed that little Daryl's body was covered in scars. They were also rather concerned that Daryl had traveled with not one, not two, but 120 Barbie dolls, over which he displayed a fierce protectiveness.

Jackie and Harry tried to raise Darrow as best they could, and they spared no expense in the pursuit of turning the young man's life around. Then one day, when Darrow was in his early twenties, he announced that he was leaving Edinburgh and moving all the way down to Brighton in England. Although an educated guess, it's easy to assume that Darrow moved to Brighton due to it being a historical haven for young gay men. Oscar Wilde was a frequent visitor to the city, with one local historian explaining that Brighton has long been a refuge for those seeking freedom from the strictures of conventional society. He thanked his foster parents for everything they'd done for him,

promised to stay in touch, and then ultimately relocated in April of 2015. Around eight months later, Daryl and Lenny formed a connection on Grindr. Then after an initial period of flirtatious conversation, Daryl proposed they meet. At first, the prospect of meeting him excited Lenny. Daryl was ten years his junior, and knowing that he could attract someone so young and handsome made the older Lenny feel much, much better regarding his recently dissolved relationship. In fact, Daryl seemed to be in awe of his new match's age, experience, and glamorous profession. But the pride Daryl's charm allowed Lenny to rekindle may have seriously clouded his judgment when it came to what happened

next. Daryl and Lenny texted back and forth for a few days, toying with the idea of meeting up for a date. But then one day, Daryl made a suggestion which made Lenny feel deeply uncomfortable. When the subject of physical intimacy arose, Daryl seemed to flippantly eschew the idea of using a prophylactic. Or in other words, he flat out refused to wear any kind of protection. For Lenny, this was a definitive red line, and although he and Daryl had already swapped telephone numbers, he'd taken such offense that he began the process of blocking him on various social media platforms. It was only at the very last second that Daryl managed to salvage his attempt at romance when he gave a categorical promise to wear protection in the event that they became intimate. Daryl might have saved himself from Lenny's blocked profile section,

but he was still on thin ice. So over the next few days, he worked to regain Lenny's trust by swapping a series of innocuous selfies with him. His efforts paid off, and it was around this time that Daryl convinced Lenny to share his home address. He later said the exchange of information was simply part of getting to know his prospective date, but just hours later, Daryl showed up on his doorstep. Naturally, Lenny was surprised by Daryl's sudden appearance, especially since he called his cell

phone using a withheld number before announcing, I'm outside your door. But somehow, Daryl managed to talk his way into Lenny's home, most likely through sheer force of flattery and possibly with a dash of emotional blackmail. Perhaps there was talk of a miscommunication, with Daryl saying how he'd come an awful long way just to turn around and go home again. There's no doubt that Lenny made a sizable error of judgment in allowing a near

stranger into his home, and by his own admission, it was an extremely regrettable decision. Yet the price he paid is the stuff of nightmares. After a few hours of drinking and flirting, the two men climbed into bed together and, at Lenny's insistence, Daryl swore that he'd wear a prophylactic. Then once their lovemaking had concluded, the prospective couple engaged in deep conversation, with Daryl sharing his passion for veganism and juicing. Lenny then attempted to share some of his own passions, but shockingly, Daryl tried to convince him of the benefits of drinking your own urine.

Things got a little weird, as Lenny later put it. Then I was like, okay, this was nice, but you need to go now. Lenny made it clear that he wasn't rude to Daryl. He simply informed him of some very real dinner plans that he'd made for that evening, thanked him for a lovely time, then politely asked him to leave. On the surface level, Daryl respected Lenny's wishes, but in the days that followed, he made it clear that he'd felt deeply disrespected. Daryl not only complained bitterly to Lenny, but he became increasingly erratic when he felt that he wasn't being given the proper amount of attention. To Lenny, it was clear their budding relationship had no future whatsoever,

so after informing Daryl of his wish to part ways, Lenny blocked his number, preventing him from calling or texting. About a week went by when Lenny received a call on his cell phone from an unknown number. Curious, he answered the call only to hear Daryl Rowe's voice on the other end. How dare you block me, he demanded. Do you honestly think that you can get rid of me so easily? You'll never get rid of me, ever. You're going to burn, Lenny. You're going to burn. And once it was clear that the sole purpose of the call was to unleash a torrent of abuse,

Lenny Royal ended the call, then blocked the number. He believed it was nothing more than the work of a bitter former lover lashing out in spite. Little did he know, Daryl's words had a horrifying significance. Two weeks later, Lenny woke up one morning feeling a little under the weather. He figured that he'd simply caught a cold and with a proper rest, would most likely recover in a matter of days. But when a matter of days turned into an entire week's worth of malaise, Lenny visited a pharmacist to purchase antibiotics. However, after describing his symptoms, the pharmacist stringently recommended that he visit a hospital for a more in-depth diagnosis.

Lenny did as he was asked and underwent a full checkup following a visit to his local GP. Then, when the results of various tests came in, Lenny received a call from his doctor. It was one that would change his life forever. Lenny, who believed that he was suffering from little more than a stubborn strain of influenza, was told that he was HIV positive. I felt like that was it. My life was over, he later said. I was crushed. Following the death of his parents, Lenny had moved in with an older cousin, who he later came to regard as his adoptive father. He was devastated, Lenny said.

He felt like he'd failed to protect me from the very same thing that killed my parents, and he'd promised my mom I'd never suffer like she did. I had to tell him it wasn't his fault, over and over, but he still cried. He still said he felt like a failure. In the weeks following his diagnosis, Lenny made repeated trips to a local medical clinic to receive medication and examinations. Being the social butterfly that he is, Lenny often engaged the clinic's nurses in casual and sometimes not-so-casual conversation, as in one case where he shared intimate details regarding the events leading up to his diagnosis. As he spoke, the nurse Lenny was talking to turned ashen-faced, and at first appeared hesitant to speak before saying,

I really shouldn't be telling you this, but you're the fourth person that this has happened to in the last six months alone. Lenny couldn't believe his ears. Assuming there had been some kind of miscommunication, Lenny reiterated that in his deepest, darkest thoughts, he wondered if a former lover had deliberately infected him with HIV. There had been no miscommunication. The nurse confirmed that in the recent past, three additional men had reported being deliberately infected with HIV by a recent lover. But not only that, the same malevolent person had actually taunted them

via phone call following their infection, hinting cryptically at the ordeals that awaited them. The first was a man in his early 30s, Stuart Roger, who made contact with Daryl using the dating app Grindr back in July of 2015. In a very similar fashion to his interaction with Lenny, Daryl was insistent that he and Stuart meet at the first available opportunity. He insisted that Stuart stop by his Brighton apartment, and when he did so, Stuart found the front door open and unlocked.

Just come on in, Daryl said via text message. I'm waiting for you. Shortly after Stuart's arrival, he and Daryl became intimate, and as far as Stuart knew, Daryl had worn the appropriate protection. However, once their intimacy had concluded, Stuart noticed that a prophylactic device had been removed from his packet, yet appeared completely unused. Concerned that Daryl had somehow deceived him, Stuart sought assurance that the prophylactic had been employed. Daryl flippantly dismissed his concerns by asking, Are you one of these paranoid people? Yes, I wore protection, so chill out. Once sufficiently reassured that Daryl had complied with his wishes,

Stuart began attempting to engage his new lover in conversation. Yet when Daryl seemed much more interested in showing Stuart his favorite Pokemon videos on YouTube, Stuart suggested that they part ways and arrange to see each other again soon. Again, Daryl seemed to take the polite dismissal in stride, but not long after his departure, he called Stuart on his cell phone. Stuart assumed the purpose of the call was to arrange a second meeting, but when he answered his phone, Daryl remained silent. Stewart asked if he was okay, but again, Daryl chose to stay silent until he eventually ended the call without so much as saying a word. Having demonstrated himself unsuitable for a mature relationship,

Stewart opted for no further contact with the increasingly erratic Daryl. But just eight days later, he received a flurry of text messages from an unrecognized cell number. You're a revolting jackass, one message read. Ha ha ha ha, I'd taken the protection off. Stuart was stunned, but he didn't understand the message's true significance until a few weeks later when he began to feel gravely ill. The second of Daryl's more recent victims was a man named Peter, who matched with the young Scotsman after realizing they frequented the same gym. He was a good-looking guy, Peter later said. He was also very charming at first, but that all changed very quickly. Daryl repeated the pattern of insisting he and Peter meet as soon as possible, and then when they did so,

he told Peter that he would not be wearing any protection during the physical intimacy, and Peter was hesitant. He knew the risks involved, but Daryl swore on all that he held dear that he was clean and that any intimacy they shared would be safe. But afterwards, the same post-coital pattern played out. After displaying a shocking level of immaturity, Peter proposed that they part ways. Yet just days later, Daryl sent him a text message informing him of some utterly terrifying news. I lied, the message said. I'm HIV positive. Peter was horrified and asked Daryl if he was serious or was merely attempting to psychologically terrorize him in revenge for discontinuing their tryst. He's making this up, Peter told himself. He's just being childish. But Daryl was not making things up. He had deliberately infected Peter with HIV.

A third man named Andrew shared a similar story. He matched with Daryl via the same dating app as the others, and at first, there was a great deal of chemistry. He was hot and seemed like a nice person, Andrew later recalled, and at the same time I didn't have any reason to question that. When Andrew and Daryl met for the first time, neither of them were carrying any kind of protection, but decided to become intimate regardless. Andrew ended up staying overnight at Daryl's place and later claimed that at that point he believed that they might kindle a long-term relationship. But this time, it took less than 24 hours for Daryl to turn on him.

The following morning, as Andrew traveled by bus to his home address, he decided to check for any new messages on the Grindr dating app. However, when a user activates the app in order to peruse messages, it notifies connected users of their activity. And this is how Daryl discovered Andrew was still using the dating app, and less than an hour after they parted ways. The discovery sent him into a rage. I can't believe you're online already, Daryl told Andrew via text message. Andrew later said that he believed Daryl was kidding, and that the message constituted nothing more than flirtatious banter.

Yet when it became evident that Daryl was genuinely furious and that his show of possessiveness was not an attempt at humor, Andrew blocked him on all platforms and then resigned himself to move on. Yet just over a month later, Andrew was out drinking with a co-worker when a series of text messages were sent to his cell phone. I hope you enjoyed yourself, the first message read, while the second came with a smiley emoji and said, I have HIV, and now you do too. It should be noted that the timing of Daryl's text messages is extremely significant. These days, if someone is exposed to HIV, they can obtain a drug known as post-exposure prophylaxis, which has the power to stop an infection if taken within 72 hours.

Daryl could have quite easily informed his lovers of his status as a sufferer of HIV, but deliberately waited weeks to drop the bombshell that he had knowingly and deliberately exposed them to one of the deadliest diseases in modern history. Obviously, when each of Darrow's four victims realized his claims of infecting them were legitimate, they experienced a mixture of disbelief, confusion, and fear before rushing to the appropriate medical services for testing. In some cases, the wait was just 24 hours, but every second of gnawing uncertainty was nothing short of psychological torture. Andrew sat alone, guzzling a bottle of wine and praying the results would come back negative. The next day, when the call from the doctor came, he trembled with fear as he went through the formalities of confirming his identity.

Andrew had almost resigned himself to the prospect of living out what little time he had left as a carrier of HIV and eventually a sufferer of AIDS. Yet once the security formalities were out of the way, the doctor told Andrew that his test results were negative. He almost collapsed with relief, and the same could be said for Peter, who also received the all-clear after a brief but agonizing wait. Stuart Roger, on the other hand, was not so fortunate. When informed by his doctor that he contracted HIV, Stuart was devastated, but he swiftly informed the police of Daryl Rowe's actions. Stewart provided them with a detailed description of Daryl, along with his cell phone number,

his home address, and several screenshots of the text message exchange they'd shared. From the moment I got my diagnosis, I was acutely aware that I would have to report this, he later said, before adding that Drell was obviously an exceptionally dangerous person who urgently needed to be stopped.

Thanks to the information provided by Stuart Roger, the police were able to track Darrell to the nearby town of Salt Dean before placing him under arrest. But to ensure that he couldn't escape, police opted to execute a dawn raid rather than a regular door knock. After smashing their way into his apartment, officers discovered Daryl in bed with another man, later revealed to be his eighth known victim of deliberate transmission. Yet after seizing Daryl's phone and attempting to get to grips with the extent of his criminality, police discovered hundreds of potential victims spread across his multiple social media accounts, many of which had been established under false identities. Each and every one of these men had to be contacted by police and informed of their potential diagnosis.

Following his arrest, police officers interviewed Darrell under caution, with the number of charges rapidly ballooning from one to four to seven in the space of just a few hours. The police made a recording of the interview in which Darrell explains that he wasn't aware of his status as a carrier of HIV, but it was an outright lie. By the time he was interviewed under caution, he had been explicitly aware of his own dire diagnosis for almost 12 months. The police were well aware that Daryl was attempting to deceive them, and on paper, he could have been held and tried in England. But since the majority of his known offenses had been committed in Scotland prior to his relocation to Brighton, he was transferred into the custody of Scottish police

and then transported to Edinburgh. For some reason, once he was safely across the border, Scottish police chose to release Darrow on bail and into the custody of his foster parents. But almost immediately after the emotional reunion, he attempted to escape justice by hiding among the Pentland Hills which loom over the city of Edinburgh. When he heard Darrow had escaped police custody, Lenny was furious. I couldn't believe they released him, he said, especially since he kept saying that he was going to do it to other men.

He was obviously sick in the head. I used to wonder, with all that time that he spent in Edinburgh and Brighton, how many more victims could be there. During a search of the Edinburgh countryside, police eventually found an abandoned tent containing a carton of prescription medication. It was an antiviral medication used by the carriers of HIV, and the name written on it was Daryl Rowe. Police already had an idea that Daryl was hiding among the Pentland Hills, but what was particularly alarming

about the discovery was how all of the pills remained untouched in their blister packets. The medicine's purpose was to make his infection less contagious, and refusing to take it, his intention to recommence the infection of others was chillingly evident. And by November of 2016, the hunt for Darryl Rowe had entered its 11th month, and around 25 additional victims had come forward to report physical interactions with him. Naturally, the police focused their searches around the cities of Brighton and Edinburgh, yet little did they know, Daryl had made his way to Newcastle. Using the pseudonym Gary Cole, Daryl attempted to keep a low profile, but continued to use dating apps as a way to infect

additional victims, The first of whom was a man named Tom. It's always been nearly impossible for me to approach a man, Tom later confessed. I guess that's probably why I've been quite gullible. Daryl managed to convince Tom that he was in love with him, and then spent a grand total of three months living under his roof, completely rent-free. He said that I had nice eyes and that he liked older men. I was very flattered, Tom admitted. I would have maybe fallen in love with the guy.

But Daryl's behavior soon shifted from charming and thoughtful to manipulative and malevolent. Let's just say that he was able to control me in a way that I won't ever allow again, said Tom. Meanwhile, police forces in both Scotland and England were busy trawling the internet for any trace of Daryl Rowe. Their search led them to an escort website, where a detective noticed stark similarities between the body of an advertised subject and the body of Daryl. They also had a cell phone number connected to it, and when police attempted to triangulate its signal, it was determined to be in the home of Daryl's unsuspecting lover, Tom. Officers rushed to Tom's home, but when he realized that he'd once again been tracked down by the police, Daryl attempted to escape. Trapped on the home's upper floors, he leapt from a third-story window into the garden of one of Tom's neighbors.

But when he landed on the wet grass of the lawn, he slipped and landed on his back so hard, he smashed several vertebrae in his spine. The police found him lying in a lot of pain, Tom says. He couldn't move or walk properly. Assuming he was an accomplice who'd knowingly harbored a criminal, Tom was taken into custody for around five hours. However, once he discovered who Gary Cole really was, his arrest became the least of his worries. Thankfully, the police were able to issue him a 30-minute HIV test, and he breathed a sigh of relief when the results came back negative. That was obviously good news, Tom said, but I didn't really feel any better. I felt used.

As Darrell was brought to trial, it marked a watershed in British legal history, as never before had anyone been tried for the crime of spreading a dangerous pathogen. After viewing a catalogue of extremely damning evidence, including the texts in which he taunted his victims, a jury of his peers found Darrell guilty on five counts of causing grievous bodily harm and five of attempted grievous bodily harm. The presiding judge then sentenced him to five years in prison and told Darrell, you waged a determined and hateful campaign of violence.

The messages you sent make it crystal clear you knew exactly what you were doing. As well as the physical offenses, it is clear that the psychological effects upon the victims are immense, the judge declared. Before adding, It's reassuring to think Daryl was jailed for his actions, even if it was for a mere five years. But what he inflicted on his victims will stay with them for the rest of their lives. I was pretty worried when I got my diagnosis, Lenny later said. I thought I was going to be that person no one is ever going to want to be with. But while there's still some prejudice in the gay community, a lot of people don't really care.

I had one negative experience with somebody I was dating, but it really didn't affect me. It's no longer a death sentence, not even remotely, Lenny continued. But it's messed up when somebody makes that choice for you. When they take that right away from you. That's what's difficult to get over. It really is a harsh reality when you think about it, and that's the cruel thing that I struggle with on a day-to-day basis. How can somebody be so cruel? I was raised in a place called Marblehead, on the north shore of Massachusetts. Overall, it was a pretty nice place to grow up.

I got to play a lot of baseball, me and my friends had a grand total of five public beaches to ride our bikes over to in the summer, and in terms of school and family life, everything was relatively stable for me. But then, when I tell people I work with that I actually had something of a nice, healthy childhood, they can hardly believe their ears. You see, although I grew up in Massachusetts, I ended up moving to New York and eventually to Los Angeles after finding work as a comedy writer. And I'm not going to drop any names, that isn't what this piece is about, but there's certain writer's rooms where I become known for my very dark

and sometimes very bleak sense of humor. Everyone I wrote with during my first major gig assumed that I'd suffered some kind of terrible hardship at a young age. You know, something like losing a parent in a fiery car crash or getting passed around by lonely priests. So when I told them that in reality my childhood looked more like a Norman Rockwell painting than an after-school special. They were kind of shocked. And one night, over a few beers after work, one of the other writing staff ended up asking me where my sense of humor comes from, if not from some deep-seated trauma.

Now, at first, I told him I wasn't sure. But then as I thought about it, I remembered something that had happened back in Marblehead when I was real young. Not to me, but to these other kids. It wasn't like it unlocked some repressed memory or anything. It was more like I realized that I might have severely underestimated the impact it had on my psyche. I remember how he laughed when I said, actually, there was this one time when, because to him, it was like, oh, here it comes. Here comes the repressed trauma. Kind of dark to laugh at, I know, but that's just how we were. But then once we were done yucking it up, he asked me to tell him the story that I was about to launch into when he cut me off. And this is what I told him.

Back when I was in the fourth grade, there was a girl in our neighborhood named Sarah. She was a couple of years older than us, in seventh or maybe eighth grade, and I had the biggest crush on her. But then, everyone had a crush on Sarah, or at least wanted to be friends with her because she was nothing short of a goddamned saint. She volunteered at the local church and was involved in a bunch of after-school clubs, but she wasn't some square. She hung out with us neighborhood kids too, and although her and I weren't exactly close, she was a lot of fun to be around. She was kind too, and boy was she kind. While that manifested in a couple of different ways, it was never more evident than when she befriended the new kid, Bobo.

Bobo, whose real name was like Robert or Bobby, showed up in the neighborhood when I was a third grader. He was around the same age as Sarah, so maybe two or three years older than myself. He was super tall and wide for his age, so he looked even older than he was. But right away we could tell that he had, and I'll put this as delicately as I can, severe learning difficulties. I suppose that these days his parents would have taken him to a doctor, gotten referred to a psychologist, and they'd have a name for whatever Bobo had. But back then, we all just said that Bobo was a little slow, or touched was the word some of our moms used. I think if this happened today, his parents would have kept a closer eye

on him, but this was the 70s, so his folks let him play outside like any other kid. When we were first meeting him, we asked what his name was, and when he said Bobo, we were like, you mean Bob or Bobby? And he just sort of looked at us sort of blankly and said, yeah, Bobo. And that's when we realized that he was a little different, but we didn't hold it against him. Now, kids can be cruel, and you can bet your ass that we made fun of Bobo from time to time, but it wasn't like we excluded him or anything like that. If Bobo showed up while we were playing street hockey, we didn't tell him to buzz off.

We just made him goalie and watched him laugh whenever the ball hit his pads or helmet cage. He was just happy to be included, I guess, and we were happy to include him. But none of us took to Bobo in the way that Sarah did and he adored her for that. Like the rest of us, Sarah must have realized Bobo was a little slow and since not all of the kids in the neighborhood were as nice as we were, Sarah took it upon herself to be Bobo's best friend. Whenever Bobo was about to go get himself into some trouble, Sarah would be there to get him out of it. And whenever any of the neighborhood bullies came around to give him a hard time, it was Sarah who usually leapt to his defense. When this first happened, no one was particularly surprised that it was Sarah who was brave

enough to do the right thing and stand up to the bullies, but Bobo sure was. I don't think he'd ever had anyone fight his corner so hard, and afterwards, him and Sarah were almost inseparable. Bobo didn't go to a regular school so it wasn't like a 24-7 thing, but if Sarah showed up to hang out on a weekend, you could bet that he was close behind. Bobo and his family moved into the neighborhood right after the holidays of about 71 or 72, and then I remember he and Sarah became super close around St. Patrick's Day, and after that, they were almost always together, but especially during summer vacation of 72. Every single day, Bobo would either be hanging with Sarah or walking

around the neighborhood asking everyone where she was. Sometimes he'd hang with us if she wasn't around, but whenever she showed up, Bobo forgot about whatever he was doing and would follow her around like a lost puppy. But then, three big things happened that summer and the first was the entrance of a kid called Jackson. Jackson had already started high school, and like a lot of boys around Marblehead, he had a huge crush on Sarah. Now, side note, I guess that it sounds like there was a gross age gap here, but I think Jackson was about to turn 15 that summer, and Sarah had already turned 13 that spring. So, as much as this guy was a total douche, it wasn't like he was 18 trying to hit on middle schoolers or anything like that. Now anyways, Jackson started asking Sarah if she wanted to go to the movies with him,

but she kept turning him down. She was polite at first, but Jackson wasn't the type of kid to take no for an answer. He kept on coming around, trying to hang out with us, but it was all very disingenuous, you know. We could all tell that he was faking an interest in us to get closer to Sarah, and so could she. See, until Jackson started wanting to date Sarah, he'd been a total butthole to almost each and every one of us. He was a few years older, which already gave him a superiority complex, but you could tell that he thought he was too good for us, and that Sarah was too good for us too. And so he keeps coming around, hanging out, and trying to cozy up to Sarah, but instead of warming up to him, she's disliking him more and more as she sees just how fake he can be. He came around for maybe two weeks or so, seeming like he was willing to play the long game,

but then one day, I guess he just sort of ran out of patience, and the mask finally slipped. From what I heard, it started with him asking Sarah why she wouldn't go to the movies with him, or at least hang out, just the two of them sometimes so they could actually talk. She kept saying that she didn't like him like that, and they should hang out as a group since she saw him as a friend. And to that, Jackson responded with something like, Oh, so what? You got a crush on that goddamn R-word? That's why you hang out with him alone all the time.

I didn't hear him say it, but I sure heard Sarah's reaction, and everyone did. She just about went through him for a shortcut, as my old Irish grandma used to say, or tore him a new one, as we might say today. She absolutely, positively, utterly, and completely eviscerated Jackson, and she did it in front of everyone. First off, Sarah never yelled, so to hear her suddenly shriek, what the hell did you just say, got everyone's attention in an instant. But then, instead of giving him the old what for with maybe

one or two lines, Sarah went off like an artillery battery. In fact, scratch that, she straight up carpet bombed him. She told him how shallow he was, how his breath smelled, how he was fake, a phony, a fraud. She told him she'd never be interested in him, never, not as long as either of them lived, not even if he was the last man on earth. And she went off like that for maybe two or three minutes straight, and by the time Jackson turned around to walk home, he was completely white as a sheet. He'd been utterly humiliated in front of the whole of Maple Street, and I do mean the entirety of the street. Folks were coming out of their houses to see what all the commotion was about. So old and young, everyone saw Jackson getting spectacularly humiliated by his crush,

and we didn't see much of Jackson anymore after that. And good riddance to bad trash, you know. But it didn't take long for word to filter down that, just like he wouldn't take no for an answer, he wasn't about to take such a humiliation lying down. Jackson wanted revenge. And the word on the street was, he was going to get it by the end of the summer.

Anyway, so a few weeks went by and we were all feeling very protective of Sarah and we were terrified that Jackson and his buddies were going to get her, whatever that meant as a kid. But when one week went by, then two, and Jackson stayed the hell away. We figured things might have blown over. But then one day, Sarah announced that she had some bad news and at first, we thought it was regarding that whole spat that she had with Jackson. Well, it turns out it wasn't anything to do with that at all and arguably it was way worse. At the end of the summer, in just a few short weeks, she and her family were leaving town for good. Her dad had been offered a very well-paying job someplace in another state, and to try and get her placed in a new school, they were moving towards the end of August, which was only like a week away when she told us. Hearing the news so suddenly sucked very hard. I mean, absolutely everyone was sad to see her go.

Right after informing us of this bad news, Sarah announced that she also had a big favor to ask of us. Under no circumstances were we to tell Bobo that she was leaving. If he was going to find out, it needed to be face to face. She knew that he was going to be incredibly upset and hearing it through the grapevine would only upset him even more. If he was going to find out, it had to be from her and it had to be at the right time and in the right place. We all understood why Sarah was approaching things that way. We were all sad to hear that she was leaving and if we were sad, then Bobo would be inconsolable. The only question was, how was she going to tell him? In the end, Sarah decided that she was going to take Bobo for a walk somewhere private on the night before she was due to leave.

She delivered the news in as gentle a manner as possible, in private, as close to the date as possible. And that way they got to spend as much time as possible together, just being happy, before a nice goodbye and a clean break. We all thought that was a good idea, and somehow we managed to stay tight-lipped around Bobo so that he didn't find out that she was leaving until the date of Sarah's choosing, which seems like a minor miracle now that I think about it with kids. Or maybe someone did let it slip, and he either didn't pick up on it or didn't believe it, who knows. And so about a week goes by, and it comes to the day before Sarah's departure, which, if you're following, is also the day that she'd chosen to say goodbye to Bobo. I'm guessing her plan was to walk him down to the beach, a small stretch of sand just up the street from where we lived.

I didn't know where she was taking him at the time. I just saw the two of them walking off while saying a whole mix of things. While a handful of us were like, well, hope he takes it well, most of us knew that he was going to be completely devastated. The only thing that had stopped him being completely heartbroken was Sarah's method of delivery because if anyone could sufficiently soften that blow, it was going to be her. But then maybe 20 to 30 minutes later, way before we expected Sarah and Bobo to return, a kid comes running up the street with a bloody nose and looking scared out of his mind. He'd just run into Jackson and his buddies who had just heard the news that Sarah was leaving that very next morning. And he must have heard the news somehow gathered up two buddies of his and then they jumped on their bikes and rode across town to look for her.

But then on the ride over, they see the kid who came running up the street and knowing that he was a friend of Sarah's, they beat the crap out of him until he told them where she was. They were riding over to the beach right at that very moment, and Jackson was apparently carrying a pocket knife. Obviously hearing that sends all of us into a panic, and then anyone who had parents who lived nearby ran off to tell them so they could call the cops. And since my parents' place was just a block away, one of those kids obviously was me. I told my mom and she grabbed the phone and called the authorities but when I told my dad, who was working on his car with my uncle, they jumped in my uncle's car and drove off in the direction of that beach.

I wanted so badly to go with him, but my dad told me to stay with mom while they went off to try and get there before the cops did so, so they could stop things from escalating. They didn't have the whole story. They basically just heard some high school kid is about to stab Sarah down at the beach and then they took off like hell on wheels to try and stop it from happening. It sounds kind of crazy to think about it now because at the time, once the cops and my uncle and dad were involved, I figured everything would be okay. Grownups had power to fix every other kind of problem, so why not that one too? It was only when my dad and uncle returned home a few hours later that I realized that things hadn't gone according to plan. They didn't give

me any real details, they just told me that two kids had gotten hurt really bad at the beach, and that they were really sorry because two of them were kids that I hung out with. And in my mind, my dad and uncle and the cops had gotten there too late and Jackson had stabbed Bobo and Sarah with that knife that he was carrying. I later overheard that a third kid had been taken away by the cops and I figured that that kid could probably be none other than Jackson. But as it turns out, that wasn't the case at all and my best guess of what happened had been almost completely off. Jackson had arrived at the beach, presumably with plans to scare, hurt, or maybe even kill Sarah as revenge for publicly humiliating him.

But what Jackson hadn't planned on was Bobo not being even remotely scared of the knife that he was carrying. Jackson approached, took out the knife, and then according to Jackson's friends, Bobo just sort of rage-rushed him, if that makes sense. He got all cut up in the process, but he somehow got control of Jackson's knife hand and then wrapped his free hand around the guy's throat and squeezed with all his might. Jackson's friends freaked out and ran off when they saw Jackson get taken down like that

and they didn't even try to save him. I'm guessing Sarah did, at least that's what Bobo said happened, but instead of listening to her, he just kept squeezing Jackson's neck until he stopped squirming and fighting for air. I heard that Bobo later said that after Jackson stopped fighting, a very distraught Sarah had asked him why he did it, why he'd killed Jackson instead of just stopping him. Bobo said it was because Jackson would have never left her alone. And that's when Sarah tells Bobo how that wasn't true, how she wouldn't have had to worry about Jackson after that day because she was leaving town in the morning. I guess Bobo was still kind of berserk because instead of getting sad when he heard the news or feeling bad about what he'd done, he turned his rage onto Sarah

and did to her the exact same thing that he'd just done to Jackson. Took her down, wrapped a hand around her throat, and squeezed. We didn't find all that stuff out until much later on. It wasn't until the end of high school that we were able to sort of dredge through all the rumor and hearsay and finally get to the actual truth. But by then, I guess it was far too late. The whole community had already gone through the horror and grief of learning what Bobo had done, but at the time, at least the adults had the whys and hows, and us kids really had nothing to go on.

Many of us were still under the impression that Sarah's death had somehow been an accident, that Jackson had stabbed or cut her which, in turn, had sent Bobo into a murderous rage. But then to learn that Bobo had killed Jackson before turning on Sarah in some sort of blackout rage, that was just far too much for people to handle. I still know people who think Jackson's rich parents tried to pin the murder on Bobo because they couldn't deal with what an asshole their kid was. And while he was most definitely a total goddamn prick, he wasn't the one who hurt Sarah. Hell, he didn't even get near her. There's no doubt that he contributed to the whole situation.

I mean, I don't think Bobo would have reacted the way that he did if he hadn't been in such a keyed up state of mind. But that doesn't change the fact that it was Bobo who killed his best friend in the world, not Jackson. I mean, he said it himself at the police station after he was arrested at that scene. And as a result, I guess they took him off to some home someplace where he might still be living all these years later. And when I was done telling that story, I remember my co-worker saying something like, Yeah, I knew something was lurking behind that dead-eyed smile and there it is. There's your childhood trauma. And you know something?

I guess he was right. I think that whole episode had a profound effect on me as a kid. But after pushing it to the back of my mind for many years, I could barely even remember it, let alone acknowledge that it was probably one of the most formative events of my entire childhood. I mean, half the reason I think my own childhood was so peachy was the fact that neither me nor any of my family were murdered in such a horrible, tragic fashion. It's just crazy to think that having a few beers after work led to me unlocking a part of my psyche that I never even knew was there. But the effect that it had the most was that I'm now planning on reaching out to Sarah's surviving relatives. I feel like I should reach out and let them know that even all these years later, there's people outside her family

that still remember her with affection. But I'm not even sure if that'll be of any help, now that the damage has long been done. I'm a recent subscriber from Germany, and this is a story that happened many years ago in my hometown. It's quite an old story, but it's something that you can most certainly verify via news stories, because this was a very famous story in Germany at the time of its occurrence. And so a few houses down from me in the street where I grew up, there was this old guy who lived with his wife and dog in a big detached house. He was a bit of a shut-in as you might say and I never saw him talking to anyone and the only reason you ever saw him leave his house was just to go walk his dog. We lived on the same street in peace

for the longest time and although he seemed very anti-social, everything appeared to be regular. Then one day, things started to go downhill. At some point, people started to notice how the car belonging to the man's wife was no longer in the driveway, and then later on, it was confirmed that she had divorced him and moved away. This was only discovered because the lady's former work colleague just so happened to have bumped into a neighbor, so it took two weeks for people to realize that she was gone for good. We were sad for him, but it is a fact of life that marriages do fall apart and he seemed to be acting like his usual self so no alarms were raised. One morning sometime later, I left my house at the usual time to catch the school bus. Our street is relatively quiet and normally there isn't much stuff going on, but on this particular morning, things were looking very different. There were a few neighbors on the street and my parents said that there's something wrong with the old guy,

which lived on the end of the street, but nothing specific was known at that time. Everyone seemed very worried because apparently he'd gotten into an argument with someone while walking his dog. And this neighbor was shocked that he was even talking to them, so when the man started screaming about something, people were shocked enough to come out of their houses to see what was going on. You can just imagine, this man has not talked to anyone for quite literally years, and then all of a sudden he decides to begin screaming in the street, and it made for quite a spectacle. I wanted to stay and see what was going on, but my mother and father insisted that I make my way to school and avoid being late. And so off I went, and for the whole day, I thought about it every so often. I wasn't obsessed, but I was curious to see if the man had been arrested or taken away, or if there'd been any further confrontations. I was actually

quite excited to hear from my mother and father what had happened, but to think of that feeling now makes me feel a deep shame in myself, because what I arrived home to was not entertaining. As I returned and exited the bus at the bus stop, I saw that the whole street was completely blocked off and evacuated. Police cars and officers were everywhere, and even a SWAT team was there. I had no idea what was going on, so I rushed to the house, met with my parents, and they explained to me that the old guy tried to destroy the entire street in some kind of manic episode. He flooded his entire basement with gas and had an improvised bomb in his garden shed,

which was essentially a big pile of propane gas tanks tied together. A timer clock and a toaster served as the fuse mechanism for both the bomb and the basement, and the whole thing was rigged to explode between 7 to 8 a.m. in the morning, with a smaller version of this explosive being placed in the recycling bin of the neighbors directly next to him. Before the old man triggered the bomb, he wrecked the entire interior of his house by smashing and breaking everything. He then went to the garage and carried on the destruction, which is strangely how he got caught. The neighbor then heard all the noise and became suspicious. He looked through the garage window, and the fumes were so strong that he noticed the distinctive smell of gasoline. He broke the door to enter the house and discovered

the mess the old guy had created. And that's what started the so-called argument that everyone had heard that morning. The neighbor immediately called the cops after the screaming had finished, and that's when everyone was waiting outside. But right at the same time my parents scolded me and told me to hurry along to school, our neighbor was trying his best to activate the explosive devices and blow us all to kingdom come, as they say. The bomb squad from the city police force later said it was a miracle that the device did not detonate. It was well put together, with the only parts that were suboptimal being the timer and detonator.

If our neighbor had taken just a little more care when putting together these two aspects of his device, I would most certainly not be around to write this to you. The police arrived not long after I departed and after gaining entry to the home, they arrested the man before he could correct his mistakes and detonate the device. And for a while, it looked like we were going to have to stay in a hotel overnight, but the bomb squad managed to remove the device around an hour after I arrived home from school, and we were able to re-enter our houses once the police truck had departed. I heard that after he was arrested, the man was deemed unfit to stand trial,

and basically went straight from the courtroom to a psychiatric hospital, where he has remained ever since. From what I understand, he is very unlikely to ever be discharged, as his psychological condition has not improved and he still harbors a very deep hatred of the world around him. From the ages of around 6 to 11, my family and I lived in a very rough neighborhood. One night it was just my mom, myself, and my two siblings at home. My dad used to drive truck for a living, which obviously meant that he was away and awful locked, meaning a lot of the time it was just our mom taking care of us. That night at around midnight, someone started ringing our apartment's buzzer. My mom woke up and went to the little intercom to ask who it was, and no one answered.

She thought that maybe it was some kids playing ding-dong-ditch or something juvenile like that, so instead of being scared, she was just annoyed as she went back to bed. But then about 30 minutes later, someone starts buzzing for a second time. Mom gets up again and peers through the side window to see if she can spot anyone out there, but she can't see a single living soul, and that's when she started to freak out. She goes back to the room and grabs my dad's gun, and then sits in the living room in the dark just waiting for someone to try and break in. After God knows how long, there was another buzz. This time, mom said she very calmly explained that if they carried on harassing us, she was going to call the cops, and if they tried to break in,

she would shoot them. Again, there was no response, so she went back to the window to see if she could spot anyone in that time. She did. She said that there were three guys out there, faces covered, all looking up at the window, all looking right at her. Mom said she rushed to call the cops, all the while me and my two siblings were asleep in our bedroom. No one tried to break in right away, but my mom had to wait for an hour for the cops to finally show up and when they did, they buzzed our buzzer, causing her to freak out one more time thinking that the masked men were outside again. Thankfully, it was the cops and she invited them up to do a quick look and around the outside of the apartment building to make sure no one was hanging around.

After their search, they tell my mom that they had found a piece of barbed wire about four feet long next to the front door and asked if it belonged to my mom. She said that it wasn't hers and asked why. The cop then told her that there was a chance that it belonged to whoever was knocking at the door. Mom asked if they thought that people were planning on using it, and although they assured her that there was no way of knowing that, she is convinced to this day that they were planning on torturing us. However, what the cops did confirm is that she was very smart not to open the door to see who was there, otherwise it could have cost her her life.

They also said that they'd patrol the neighborhood until morning and do a thorough investigation once there was daylight. And later on that morning, once my siblings and I were at school, they called back to talk to her about something. They said that when they were searching around the house, they found footprints leading around to the back of the home, leading up to my bedroom window. We see our apartment was on the second floor, so scarily accessible to anyone with a fairly long ladder. They also found nicks in the window seal where the person, or persons, were trying to pry open the window to break in,

but failed. My mom always suspected that one of our neighbors had been involved, because he would always stare very creepily at my mom whenever they crossed paths. He also knew when my dad wasn't home since he knows what vehicle he drives. Mom said that was the final straw of wanting to get the hell out of that place. And as soon as my dad came home, she gave him a very strong ultimatum. Find us some place else to live or she was leaving him and taking us kids with her. And so within six months we were living somewhere else and I celebrated my 12th birthday someplace where she actually felt safe, and not in a neighborhood where she felt like she needed to sleep with one eye open. This account pertains to my current upstairs neighbor. He disappears for weeks at a time,

and then we'll suddenly hear what sounds like a slaughterhouse happening at 11pm on a weeknight, announcing that he's now home. There's been a lot of things that have happened, but the top two that pretty much sum up everything you need to know about just how creepy this guy is, is this. One day I was bringing up groceries and he offered to help. I told him thank you and assumed that he would just take the bags to the second floor landing, place them outside the door and then continue up to his apartment like our other neighbor who has done this exact thing before. He follows me back out to my car and then stands about four inches behind me as I lean

into the trunk of my car to get the last two bags. He takes all of the bags and then walks upstairs. As I finish saying the, oh thank you, you really didn't have to do that, lines and unlock my door, he goes, oh, it's no problem. I know your old man leaves for work early and you're home alone. I barely open the door enough to walk into my apartment before I can turn around and he's walked in. He opened up my fridge and puts the milk in and he starts looking around our apartment and into our bedroom. And now just for context of why I didn't flip out and start screaming, it was eight in the morning

and the two other people who live in our building were gone so literally no one would have heard me. He's probably 6'2 and I'm 5'5 if I have on some thick shoes and I say, okay, thanks for the help. I'll see you around. And he continues to dig through the fridge and looking towards my bed. Then he turns and starts stepping towards me and then he realizes that I have a very large butcher knife four inches away from my hand. And then he chooses to leave. I call my husband who's at work an hour away crying and tell him what just happened. That night he goes to confront the guy and he won't answer the door. And so my husband goes up the next day and the guy breaks down crying and tells my husband he doesn't remember anything and he's so sorry and he was

just trying to be very neighborly. And my husband just tells him my wife's a tough girl and she can carry the groceries up herself. Sometime later we woke up one night hearing someone yelling and screaming outside. When we look out our living room window we see the upstairs creeper with blood streaming down his face. He could barely stand screaming at the police, I'm not going to the damn hospital. Apparently he had gotten into a fight at the pool hall down the street with four or five other guys and gotten his ass kicked. Eventually, the cops got a hold of him and took him to the hospital in cuffs. And the next morning, I went to go get groceries alone and my husband didn't have to work that day.

When I came home, he was standing outside smoking a cigarette and you could tell that he was still messed up from whatever he was on the night before. This time, he walked straight up to the car and acted like he was waiting for me to get out, but he stood by the trunk. This was also the first time that I had seen him since the initial incident that he could have thought my husband wasn't home. I called my husband and when he saw that I was on the phone and heard my husband coming down the stairs to the building, he took off running around the corner. My husband took me to the store that day and got me a gun. And now anytime he sees me alone, he just stares, but if my husband is around, he acts like he doesn't even see us. Now I know this might come across as a sort of dumb idiot just whining about her antisocial neighbors, but sometimes I get really scared being here whenever my husband isn't around,

and since writing all of this down has made me feel just a little bit less alone, I guess it was worth it. This is a real story that has absolutely traumatized my boyfriend and I. Just over two years ago, I moved to the UK to study at Leeds University. I always wanted to go there and get away from my parents, as the situation at home was beginning to become too toxic for me, and so moving away to study seemed like an ideal solution. During my first year at university, I moved into student accommodation and met some really nice people. It was a good year, one in which I met my boyfriend and I greatly enjoyed my time away

from my family and discovering what independence really meant. As second year came by, I decided with some friends to move into a house rented by student accommodations. It wasn't as nice as the university accommodations, but at least we had our own house and weren't restricted as much with noise, which meant that we could throw parties and all of that. I had a ground floor room and my window gave into a small backyard in which I could go smoke every day as I am a smoker, and in which there would be a very thin wooden door giving into the other side of the street where you would put your bins. The door could only be closed and locked from inside the backyard, but since it was an old door, we had to attach some strings to keep it closed for good. I hid neighbors on each side of the house so we were surrounded by families and some other student accommodations. The neighbors on the right

of us were five boys who looked way over the age of being in university and they seemed very strange and at one point I happened to run into one of them outside of our house one day because of a police intervention. He said one of his flatmates attacked him and the others with a kitchen knife and afterwards had tried to burn the kitchen down. I heard some screams and so I went outside with my flatmates and saw one of them. He was covered in blood and cuts with many on his arm and a wound on his head inflicted by the kitchen knife. My flatmates and I didn't know what to do, so we offered him our

help to clean himself up, and then gave him an old t-shirt to change out of his bloody clothes. We then saw the guy who hurt his flatmates being escorted out by police and into a van, presumably after being arrested for attacking his flatmates. I don't know anything more about the story, and the police didn't really tell us anything either. But anyway, the guy who we helped was quite weird. He said a lot of BS and kept trying to flirt with me. I didn't really care in the moment as we just wanted to make sure that it was okay because seeing him in such a sorry state was very shocking. And after some time had passed, I would be coming back home from uni and see him

quite often in the street. I never said a word to him, but he'd always be looking at me. One day, he came up to me in the street while I went to the corner shop and started talking to me weirdly, in such a way that I really didn't feel comfortable. I told him I was too busy to talk to him in the street and he replied, oh that's okay, I'll just wait for you at the front of the house then. We can get to know each other better when you come back. And needless to say, I was exceptionally creeped out by this. I bought my drink at the shop and headed back to my street and as I turned onto the street where my house was, I saw him with his flatmate sitting on my doorstep, waiting for me. And I panicked. I went back next to the corner shop and called my only guy

flatmate to ask him to open the door and tell those guys to go away. But Saad's law applied in this case, as the English might say, and not only was he not home when he answered my call, but no one else was either. I literally waited for an hour walking up and down the high street before I went back to check if the coast was clear, and then when I saw that it was, I sprinted back home and locked the front door. After this already pretty scary encounter, I just tried to avoid the guy and mostly succeeded for a while. But then one day, as I went smoking in the backyard, I noticed that the wooden door, which is always closed, was open and the strings that we put there to keep it closed were cut off. For whatever reason, I didn't think anything of it and just closed the door again and put a new string on it, thinking it was one of my flatmates who took the bins out and just didn't tie it back. The weird neighbors would very often scream and yell and fight in their house and it would wake me and my flatmates up

in the middle of the night, but we kind of got used to it after a while. But one evening, my boyfriend slept over like he usually did and he, who usually never ever wakes up because of a noise, woke up in the middle of the night because of a bang and some whispering. I was sound asleep, so he very silently woke me up, and we both just waited in the dark and listened for any noises. Suddenly we heard the wooden door just bang, just shot open in some footsteps next to my window. I always had my window open because it would get really warm inside so we both just froze there. And then we heard the door leading to the backyard get shaken softly as if they were trying to get inside and then they stopped. Luckily we had the curtains closed so they couldn't see us, but we were ready to get dressed and get the F out of that room and lock them in if they came in from the window. Then we just heard my window move and get more open

and one of the guys saying something in a different language that we didn't understand and started to hear them trying to get in. My boyfriend and I just shot up out of bed, took my phone and put clothes on and ran out of the room and out of the house. I then called my flatmates and told them to lock themselves in their rooms and then the police, very luckily, came in less than five minutes as the headquarters were a couple of streets down from us. I don't remember anything after the police came.

I think my boyfriend and I were in shock. They ended up catching one guy. The other fled and was later found a few streets up smoking weed. The police told us that they went inside their house and found a lot of cocaine and heroin and that they were carrying a massive kitchen knife with them. I was so confused as I had never done anything to offend or do anything wrong to my neighbors, so the idea of them breaking in with God knows what intentions with a kitchen knife terrorized me and my boyfriend.

The two guys ended up being arrested and one of them was put in prison for two years for carrying a weapon with intention to harm. I never heard anything else from the police and I moved back home a few months later as I was so scared and it tormented me for months on end not knowing what would have happened if my boyfriend didn't wake up. I'm now still coping with it and finding it really tough to get over it of always asking myself what if and what would have happened. I now very often wake up because of the slightest noise and get horrible nightmares because of it. But hey, at least I'm still with my boyfriend and we but to this day, I feel almost sick thinking about that night.

When I was in my very early 20s, I lived in a very cheap and very crappy apartment block that was known for being extremely sketchy. There was this neighbor that always seemed to be listening to James Brown and Motown, so even though he seemed a bit off, I thought, how could he be that weird if he's just chilling to some old school music? I'd heard him blast his music and have louder conversations, but then again, we both had studio apartments that were touching, so I would just play music to not hear him so loudly. Now one night, he was drinking a lot and had his girlfriend around. You could hear him being belligerent, but nothing that seemed out of the ordinary for him, I suppose. It wasn't too late, so I headed out for the night with some friends while my boyfriend stayed in. I got dropped off at around 1am or so as we were driving into the parking lot from afar,

and we saw my neighbor outside in between cars in the apartment looking sort of odd. Okay, weird. Whatever, this guy is kind of just creepy anyways. And at that point my friends were more weirded out than I was, but I didn't think much of it and had them drop me off near the entrance because it was easier for them to leave. And that was until they drove away and I walked up to go into my apartment, which I had to pass him first. I swear my heart dropped because he was standing still by then with his body hidden by the bush that is between our apartments, like the funny Simpsons meme, but actually not funny whatsoever

because as I approached, it seemed like he thought maybe I didn't see him because it was so dark out and he was still as a statue. I waved and mumbled hi because I freaking see you and I'm not going to pretend that I don't at this point so don't even try anything since no one was out on a weekday at this hour. And at that point after acknowledging that he was there, he stepped out of the side of the bush and came into the dim porch light and never in my life have I looked into eyes like that. My heart is racing as I type this. They were widened, dark, fully dilated just like a wild animal, almost lunatic if I were to express his energy as well. He didn't say anything but gave

me a bone-chilling look and I ran into my apartment immediately. My boyfriend was drowsy since it was late but he did say my neighbor's music was loud and continued for some time and he heard a ton of noise and arguing earlier but didn't think anything of it. And that night, all night we heard thumps and it sounded like furniture was moving. Now it just weirded me out knowing that he was awake in that state that I viewed him in which seemed almost primal. The next morning, I heard the cops outside banging on his door and was partially relieved to see them but then super scared of why they were there in the first place. They took him away in handcuffs shortly after demanding to be let in and asked me when was the last time I talked to or seen him and I told him about that night, the arguing noises, frightening

encounter and thumping all night. What I found out during the next day will make my stomach turn forever. I was told by this groundskeeper, details I will keep simple since it was horrendous, that James Brown's listening neighbor brutally murdered his girlfriend that night, dismembered parts of her and dragged the rest of her body near the train tracks which was directly behind our apartments. It hit me that the cold, primal, and wide-eyed look that I had seen in that man was that of a person who just took another human being's life in such a vicious and disgusting way. I felt so sad for this woman who didn't deserve to go like that. She was always quiet, sweet, and seemed a bit down on her luck, usually asking for cigarettes when I encountered her.

And to this day my stomach still turns thinking about how close I was to death quite literally and how he could have ambushed me out of insanity since he was just waiting in the darkness when I walked up. Basically to all of you who follow their intuition and gut feeling, listen to it. If you have a bad feeling about someone, even if they seem harmless, stay a safe distance the hell away from them. I moved into a different apartment right after because it was just too much thinking about what had happened.

That neighbor went to jail and I saw his booking photo. So damn scary to see him again. And I just hope that he's staying in jail, where he belongs. To be continued... that notification bell to be alerted of all future narrations. 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.