Famous crime scenes

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When I first lived in L.A. I worked as a courier, delivering tapes and such to peoples' homes. My first week in L.A. I was over in Los Feliz and I dropped something off on Waverly Drive and chatted with the guy who lived there. I told him I was new in town and still finding my way around, sorry if I was late, etc. He asked me if I knew about the house across the street from him, I said no, he said Charles Manson and his friends killed some people there. I nodded and thought "bullshit, that happened in Beverly Hills" and didn't think anything more of it until I just happened across an article talking about how Charles Manson himself and a couple others killed two people in a house on Waverly Dr. a couple of nights after going to the Tate-Polanski house. That sort of gave me a retroactive chill.

In L.A. of course any street seems to have had some famous crime occur (hell, half a block north of the Bourgeois Pig on Tamarind is where one of the Hillside Stranglers lived).

Anyone else have any morbid crime tales, like "I was there when..." or "I lived where..." etc...

― Gear! (Gear!), Thursday, 29 July 2004 21:00 (twenty-one years ago)

I just found out the Unabomber used to live a few blocks away.

― AdamL :') (nordicskilla), Thursday, 29 July 2004 21:02 (twenty-one years ago)

my mom saw OJ drive down the 405 in his white Pathfinder

― JaXoN (JasonD), Thursday, 29 July 2004 21:04 (twenty-one years ago)

I went to grade school with Robert "Preppy Murderer" Chambers (he was a grade ahead of me....and actually a pretty nice guy at the time).

― Alex in NYC (vassifer), Thursday, 29 July 2004 21:18 (twenty-one years ago)

He owns a Pathfinder now? (xp)

― dean? (deangulberry), Thursday, 29 July 2004 21:20 (twenty-one years ago)

My grandmother grew up on the north side of Chicago and lived two blocks from the garage on Clark St. where the St. Valentine's Day Massacre went down. She was 14 at the time, I believe.

― Gear! (Gear!), Thursday, 29 July 2004 21:22 (twenty-one years ago)

When I was fourteen I was mowing the lawn for one of my father's listings (he was in residential real estate). The listing was a little barn waaaay deep in the woods, and sometime around sunset I got really, incredibly, creeped out. My father came back and found me sitting on the edge of the road, refusing to finish mowing. Afterward, he told me that the place I'd just mowed was (a) a colonial coffin factory and (b) the last tenent had beat his wife into a coma. I was also riding a train on the plain in Spain - through La Mancha - when I looked to my right and realized that the passenger seated two chairs away from me had died some time prior. Not exactly crime, but certainly grisly to watch the MPs remove her stiffened body from the traincar.

― x j e r e m y (x Jeremy), Thursday, 29 July 2004 21:26 (twenty-one years ago)

Not to make light of what must have been traumatic, but that last story reminds me of 'Airplane!'.

― Spencer Chow (spencermfi), Thursday, 29 July 2004 21:28 (twenty-one years ago)

One of the pubs near the flat I had in Edinburgh - the World's End - was the scene of a double murder about 25 years ago. The murderer was never caught; every year or so the Scottish tabloids come up with another "was this man the World's End Murderer?" story.

― caitlin (caitlin), Thursday, 29 July 2004 21:31 (twenty-one years ago)

Wow, Jeremy's lawn mowing anecdote just gave me the shivers.

― Alex in NYC (vassifer), Thursday, 29 July 2004 21:47 (twenty-one years ago)

Nicole Simpson lived off Bundy a couple blocks southeast of Montana.

― gygax! (gygax!), Thursday, 29 July 2004 21:50 (twenty-one years ago)

oh yeah, i drove by her house one time

and what kind of car did OJ have? it wasn't a pathfinder? i dunno nothing

― JaXoN (JasonD), Thursday, 29 July 2004 22:00 (twenty-one years ago)

it was a ford bronco and it was his buddy AC's and they were driving north on the 405 from san diego with OJ in the back seat whimpering in a fetal position with about $25k on his person.

― gygax! (gygax!), Thursday, 29 July 2004 22:06 (twenty-one years ago)

How could anyone have thought he was guilty?

― Gear! (Gear!), Thursday, 29 July 2004 22:07 (twenty-one years ago)

I wish i had $25K right now.

― AdamL :') (nordicskilla), Thursday, 29 July 2004 22:08 (twenty-one years ago)

cf: scott peterson (dyed hair, $15k cash, literally 5 minutes from the san ysidro/tijuana crossing).

― gygax! (gygax!), Thursday, 29 July 2004 22:09 (twenty-one years ago)

Oh and I used to live two blocks from where Robert Blake allegedly killed his wife.

― Gear! (Gear!), Thursday, 29 July 2004 22:10 (twenty-one years ago)

Charles Manson himself and a couple others killed two people in a house on Waverly Dr. a couple of nights after going to the Tate-Polanski house

Do you mean the Lo Biancos?

― tokyo rosemary (rosemary), Thursday, 29 July 2004 22:22 (twenty-one years ago)

yep! I wasn't aware until a couple hours ago that all these killings were sort of spread out geographically and over the course of a week or so.

― Gear! (Gear!), Thursday, 29 July 2004 22:23 (twenty-one years ago)

Oh, that's right! I live 5 mins drive from where Laci Peterson and child were found.

― AdamL :') (nordicskilla), Thursday, 29 July 2004 22:23 (twenty-one years ago)

I found out at a DA's conference last month that one THIRD of American felons live in California. Amazing, huh?

― AdamL :') (nordicskilla), Thursday, 29 July 2004 22:24 (twenty-one years ago)

Lorraine Motel in Memphis. Go to the Peabody, get drunk and hang out in the lobby and watch the high rollers and Japanese tourists, then go over to the Lorraine and think dark thoughts about the city.

― eddie hurt (ddduncan), Thursday, 29 July 2004 23:52 (twenty-one years ago)

I grew up near the apartment complex where the Speck murders took place. I still pass the place from time to time. Would you believe it is still standing? Eight women were killed there. One of them was the sister of my neighbor, too. I think another one's family was known to my family. It was a pretty closely knit neighborhood.

― Kerry (dymaxia), Friday, 30 July 2004 01:27 (twenty-one years ago)

I live about a mile from the site of what was the WTC.

― Alex in NYC (vassifer), Friday, 30 July 2004 01:30 (twenty-one years ago)

I can't top that one, Alex, but one sunny afternoon I was walking downtown in Concord, NH past the police station and there was a mob scene with a woman being rushed inside. Later I found out it was one of Manson's family. Linda Kasabian, I believe. She served a short sentence for cooperating and contributing evidence.

― jim wentworth (wench), Friday, 30 July 2004 01:48 (twenty-one years ago)

not so famous, but within the last three years, four people have met early deaths within half a block of my apt. 2 within the last two months, as well as two near misses.

― Huck, Friday, 30 July 2004 06:03 (twenty-one years ago)

kerry that's freaky as hell.

― cinniblount (James Blount), Friday, 30 July 2004 06:39 (twenty-one years ago)

Hmm, I guess I live fairly close to where Dennis Nielsen lived, near Muswell Hill, London.

(serial killer who preyed on young homosexual men around late 70s/early 80s I think)

― marvin wang (marvin wang), Friday, 30 July 2004 08:59 (twenty-one years ago)

I live about a mile from the site of what was the WTC.

i was gonna post "my friend worked in the WTC," but you beat me to that one.

― Maneating Leopards of India (Jody Beth Rosen), Friday, 30 July 2004 09:30 (twenty-one years ago)

We have a little hut on a gorgeous property in a small town outside of Vienna. In the same town, walking distance from our place, about 1,800 (mostly political) prisoners were kept at a concentration camp during the last year of WWII and forced to work at an underground airplane factory located in an old mining site (which is now a tourist attraction -- the concentration camp is not). On the night of Easter Saturday, as the Russian army approached Vienna from the south, most of the inmates were force-marched to the larger KZ at Mathausen -- most of them died underway.

51 inmates were judged too sick to march, and the camp commanders ordered inmates to kill them -- the inmates refused, so they got the camp doctor liquored up and had him administer shots of gasoline into the sick inmates' hearts. He was only able to do this a few times before the screams of the dying inmates (gasoline injections to the heart are reportedly an unbearable way to die) got to him and he broke down and refused to do any more, so the guards strangled the rest.

I only heard this story this past winter, after the small memorial to the concentration camp inmates was vandalized, spraypainted with the word "LIES!" This is, by the way, the only privately-owned concentration camp memorial in the former Nazi territories -- the town itself doesn't want anything to do with it.

― Colin Meeder (Mert), Friday, 30 July 2004 09:52 (twenty-one years ago)

(I'm sorry if my Nazis killed this thread.)

― Colin Meeder (Mert), Friday, 30 July 2004 15:26 (twenty-one years ago)

I live about two blocks away from where Notorious B.I.G. sold drugs.

In Chicago I lived a block away from Dan Rostenkowski, who committed mail fraud as a U.S. Representative (and I believe had some work done on that house with illegal funds or something). A few blocks away was a Burger King where, during the summer when they were filming "The Real World," a grisly murder (dude got shot in the head) took place. A friend of mine lived in Pilsen that same summer next to an alley where a Chicago policeman got capped.

I currently work two blocks from Ground Zero. My old job was in the same building where TYCO INTERNATIONAL had their NYC headquarters, which was also around the corner from Dennis Kozlowski's 5th Avenue apartment.

I can think of a few major crimes from Louisville, but not near where I lived. The dude who inspired that Al Pacino movie about the tobacco whistleblower was my friend's substitute high school english teacher, though.

― hstencil (hstencil), Friday, 30 July 2004 15:36 (twenty-one years ago)

My cousin lives in Palatine IL, about half a mile away from one of the more vicious murders in recent memory, wherein two ex-employees of a Brown's Chicken went in after hours and killed the seven people working there and made off with a handful of cash. The crime wasn't solved for something like 7-8 years, until the ex-girlfriend of one of the murderers spilled the beans. A prison guard got fired for punching one of the guys out. I think he was immediately offered all sorts of other jobs around town. The two guys who committed the crime lived in Indiana and near Crystal Lake (not far from where I lived). They had wives at this point, I think.

That story was one of the more despicable things I've ever heard about, since the guys just wanted to do it for "thrills".

― Gear! (Gear!), Friday, 30 July 2004 17:56 (twenty-one years ago)

wasn't the actual Brown's Chicken (which had turned into some other fast food restaurants) demolished only a few years ago?

Which makes me wonder about that Wendy's in Flushing.

― hstencil (hstencil), Friday, 30 July 2004 17:59 (twenty-one years ago)

Yeah that place was a laundromat for awhile but then it was razed. It was spooky to drive by it, and I think that strip mall there is still a little dodgy.

― Gear! (Gear!), Friday, 30 July 2004 18:02 (twenty-one years ago)

not very famous but across the street and about 2 blocks up from our place:

http://www.bookfinder.us/bookimages/jpgxl/1581820135.jpg

some union boss who supported the wrong candidate.

― otto midnight (otto midnight), Friday, 30 July 2004 18:20 (twenty-one years ago)

More chicken franchise chills: John Gacy (later killer of many young men in the Chicago area) owned the Kentucky Fried Chicken joint in my hometown. We definitely went there when I was a kid. Lots of people around here have stories about their Gacy encounters, including a few who were molested as kids.

― briania (briania), Friday, 30 July 2004 18:21 (twenty-one years ago)

UC Irvine (where I work) was referred to as "Invasion Of The Body Snatchers" because of constant misconduct at the Medical Center

Irvine was also home to Charles Keating's Lincoln Savings & Loan - probably the most infamous of failed S&Ls from the big S&L crisis and is still the record holder (unless surpassed by Enron) for white collar crime.

― Elvis Telecom (Chris Barrus), Friday, 30 July 2004 18:43 (twenty-one years ago)

In 1999, I lived about a half-mile away from where Denise Huber's car was found on the CA-73 freeway (it's right next to the overpass on the cover of Bowery Electric's Beat album). She was missing for several years until her body was found in a freezer in Arizona.

― Elvis Telecom (Chris Barrus), Friday, 30 July 2004 18:58 (twenty-one years ago)

1994 was a banner year for Orange County crime

― Elvis Telecom (Chris Barrus), Friday, 30 July 2004 18:59 (twenty-one years ago)

Also, this took place in the building where I work (and the guy involved is a co-worker)

― Elvis Telecom (Chris Barrus), Friday, 30 July 2004 22:30 (twenty-one years ago)

Man, I knew Chicago would be big on this thread.

I was really disappointed by the Biograph theater. It's... you know... a shitty old movie theater with bad sound. I was hoping for, like, a wall mural of John Dillinger's killing.

― Kenan (kenan), Saturday, 31 July 2004 01:26 (twenty-one years ago)

John Muhammad and Lee Malvo, the two D.C. snipers, made a stop during their killing spree at a gas station/Subway in Baltimore about a block away from where I lived at the time. Baltimore police even stopped them and checked them out there for some minor infraction but let them go (fucking asswipes). Oddly enough, this was when the search was still going out for the red herring "white box truck", one of which was parked just around the corner from me and freaked me out enough at the time to report it to the sniper hotline number. Also, one of their victims was a bus driver in Aspen Hill, MD which is really close to where I grew up.

― Joseph Pot (STINKOR™), Saturday, 31 July 2004 06:27 (twenty-one years ago)

One of my tutors at university was the "limbs in the loch" murderer William Beggs - a local teenager was murdered a couple of years back, with his arms and legs found in Loch Lomond and his head found on Barassie beach in Troon.

― ailsa (ailsa), Saturday, 31 July 2004 09:37 (twenty-one years ago)

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