life

Creepy Number 2

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My first “creepy story” dealt with the unexplained and the mysterious. After mulling it over a little bit, I realized I had another “creepy” story to share, though this deals more with “real world” events. Rather than “creepy,” this might be better defined as “scary.”

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Several years ago I delivered pizzas for a major chain, and I don’t mind saying that it’s a position that attracts a lot of interesting characters. There’s no drug testing, little to no supervision, a very small skill set required, and it offers quick and easy cash, most of which goes unreported. Most of these guys were harmless enough, though some had some colorful pasts…and as it would turn out, some of them went on to have colorful futures.

This story starts a few weeks after I started working there. My then-girlfriend (let’s call her C) had already been working there a few weeks and encouraged me to do so as well for some extra spending money. (I was a full time college student at the time as well, and the two of us had just started living together, along with her 6 – 9 month old daughter.) Having this whole new life in front of us, we probably appeared pretty eager to make new friends. Over the next few months we both got to know this one guy (we’ll call him J) both separately and together. He was a little strange; we figured he was probably a closeted homosexual. But he was decent enough to talk to. J was maybe 10 to 15 years older than us (not unusual at the restaurant, we were among the youngest delivery drivers) and he had this childlike quality about it that simultaneously added to his strangeness and made him appear 100% non-threatening and trustworthy.

Time wore on, and though he wasn’t really the kind of guy we though much about hanging out with, having a friend at the workplace made C and I both a little more comfortable. In fact, one night he was hanging around the restaurant after work while C and I were still on the clock when the babysitter called C to say that she had an emergency and would need to leave as soon as possible. As we discussed the problem, J overheard us and offered his help until one of us finished our shift. This was kind of a big deal for us: no one but my parents had ever been in the apartment and no one but family members and two paid babysitters had ever watched over C’s young daughter. But J really didn’t seem like he’d hurt a fly, and once the baby was down for the night, there usually wasn’t much to be done. I slipped the key off my keyring, C handed him some cash for the sitter, we told him the address (it was less than 5 minutes down the road) and that was it.

It turned out to be a good decision, because even though I was scheduled to get out of their within the hour, business picked up and I was there for over another two hours. I was getting ready to leave when the manager told C she could get out as well. So I waited for her a few more minutes and we went home. We found J calmly sitting on the couch, watching TV. Despite how much later we’d been than we thought he was totally cool; he hadn’t even taken us up on our offer to raid the fridge or cabinets if he wanted something to eat or drink. C offered him a few bucks for his time but he politely declined and after some parting words he left.

Within the next few months, he began talking about a girlfriend (we’re calling her R), though C, myself, and pretty much everyone else at the restaurant found the claim dubious. However, he did seem more cheerful and he was much less clingy at work. Another couple of months passed and lo and behold, he swung by the restaurant with her one night and introduced us.  She was partially deaf so we had a hard time communicating with her and she appeared to be closer to our age than J’s.  J brought her by several more times during the next 6 months and although it was clear that his co-workers were the closest thing he had to friends, he seemed intent on having us to get to know R, there was a serious barrier.  She could read lips, but we had a hard time understanding her.  Plus we were right in the middle of our shift and we couldn’t just drop what we were doing for her to see our lips, assuming we were even in the store to begin with.

Eventually J got into some nasty argument with one of our managers and was transferred to a new store.  He pretty much quit coming by the restaurant after that, and we all more or less forgot about him.

The story doesn’t pick back up until 1, maybe even 2 years and some change later.  C and I had gotten married, had a baby of our own, moved out of the apartment and into a house, moved out of that house and into another house, built up a circle of friends, and so on; in short, those early days where J was one of the few people we interacted with socially were a distant memory.

I was still driving for the pizza company, though I’d worked my way up to a covetous 33 hours per week.  C was still with the company too, but had taken on some sort of experimental promotions position.  I remember it was January, and I was driving around with my pack of Marlboro’s in the company of Queen or Abba or The Killers or whoever, delivering pizzas like normal.  I was down in the “nouveau riche” area of the city when I ran across a conspicuous scene at one of these 2-3 million dollar homes: there were 4 or 5 police cruisers in the driveway, in the yard, on the curb, all with their flashing lights on; an enormous “CRIME SCENE INVESTIGATION” van out front; a goddamn battalion of officers and support staff swarming around the road and the front of the house; miles of caution tape that obviously spilled beyond the property lines;  and to top it off, two giant spotlights positioned somewhere nearby that lit up the place like high noon.

This wasn’t a normal sight at all. From the looks of things I was almost sure that someone – or several people – had been killed…either that or some kind of very elaborate, high volume drug distribution or manufacture.  We had a lot of customers down in this area, and the scene persisted for several weeks.  Naturally I was a little bit curious about it but I never went out of my want to find out what happened.  Some time later I remember talking to another late night driver and the incident came up.  He said that he’d heard something about a lawyer’s kid getting killed around that time, and he personally wondered if it might’ve been connected to that same crime scene.  (He had also noticed how serious and elaborate the area around that house looked.)

By March of that same year, C and I were living in our third residence together (second house).  One afternoon like any other we decided to order some Chinese food.  I answered the door, and who could it be…it was J!  He looked exactly the same as he had and remembered me instantly as well.  I told C to come to the door and we spent a few minutes chatting.  He didn’t really seem any different than he ever had, and the only thing I remember him talking about specifically was about how he was going to move up to Michigan or Wisconsin in a few weeks.  We said our goodbyes, and though I’m almost positive we ordered more Chinese food from that place, we never saw him again.

Skipping ahead to late June or July of that same year, we were just sitting around one day and suddenly C is like, “holy shit, do you remember J?  He was just arrested!  There’s a mug shot and everything!”  The mug shot was definitely him.  “Arrested for what?” I asked.  C didn’t yet know; she was still getting information from whoever had first told her and I hopped on the computer to see what I could find.  I’m not sure what information came from where, but within 10 minutes, we had the facts:

• J had been arrested and charged with murder
• He was charged with the murder of R (his old girlfriend), the daughter of some marginally well-known lawyer who lived in that nouveau riche neighborhood (the neighborhood was unmistakenly mentioned by name)
• The investigation had been ongoing since January while the investigators built a case based on DNA evidence found at the scene

Of course our jaws hit the floor when all that came out.  A couple of days later we learned a little bit more:

• R, who was twenty-something at the time, had been home while her parents were away
• R and J were broken up at the time, but J had been pestering her for some time about a reconciliation
• He went over to her house, and it was believed that his advances were rebuffed, triggering the attack
• J strangled R to death

Have you figured out the creepy part yet?  He murdered her in January, wasn’t arrested until June or July, and he delivered us Chinese food in March.  Sure, it’s weird enough knowing that someone you know became a murderer or perpetuated some other sort of violent crime, but the part that’s actually sort of scary about is that after the murder but before he was caught we had an encounter with him!

I don’t think that J would’ve tried to hurt C or myself, at least not within the limited context that we knew him, but just knowing I was standing so close to someone who strangled his girlfriend/ex to death not more than 2 months prior was just eerie.

I haven’t been using real names, but that’s kind of pointless as it’s all a matter of public record.  It seems like I remember reading some different stuff about it back when it happened, but here’s an actual newspaper article written post-trial about the incident.  It also describes some strange stuff he did after the murder but before he was caught.  Here’s another piece with some pictures, I assume which was written immediately following the arrest.

Creepy, huh?

Written by The Cubist