[0:07]It was summer of 2004. My family was supposed to vacation to Kennebunkport, Maine. My father was stuck in meetings, so he was going to come up from Manhattan a few days after us. My mom wanted to drive up there to Maine before my dad got there, which was super annoying to me at the time, but we didn't have a choice. And my brother, sister, and I loaded into the car and started to drive. I was about 14 at the time. The drive was uneventful, but there were various delays, and we ended up getting there a lot later than originally planned. Because of this, the owners of the house we were renting had turned in for the night, and we weren't able to get a hold of them to get the keys. Sounds like horrible planning, but apparently they were pretty strict about the time frame to pick up the keys. My mom, unfazed, decided she wanted lobster, so we went to one of our favorite spots. She called my dad to see if he could make us reservations at a hotel in Kennebunkport from New York City while we ate. We were enjoying the lobster while a guy came up and started chatting with my mom. I figured it was just a friendly local making conversation. During this, my dad calls my mom and my mom excuses herself to speak to him. Apparently, all hotels were booked for the night. Go figure. Height of vacation season in Kennebunkport. The plan was for us to drive to the nearest town and just find somewhere to stay until we could pick up the keys for our vacation home. Apparently, the local had been listening into my mom's conversation and came back over when she got off the phone. I want to say, there was nothing outwardly off about him. He was preppy looking, clean cut, unassuming, and he fit in with the clientele. He told my mom that he had a big home with a big guest house that we were more than welcome to stay at and that his wife wouldn't mind. Immediately my reaction was screw that. No way in the world I was staying in a random dude's house in creepy Maine in the dark. No offense to anyone from Maine, but the streets get creepy. My mom, unfazed, determined this guy was legit.
[2:13]Said he was in finance. My mom was an investment banker and they chatted enough for my mom to determine that he wasn't totally full of it. I called my dad pretty hysterical, but he said I was overreacting and that I needed to get out of the city more and accept that sometimes people are just nice. So my brother, sister, and I got into our car and followed him back to his house. The guest house was actually really nice, fully furnished, but the beds were oddly placed. It had two bedrooms, and instead of the beds being located in the middle or centered, imagine a symmetrical room layout. They were right under the window in each room. It just seemed out of place to me. Anyway, fast forward, we are all getting ready to go to bed. My mom hears a knock on the door and it's the guy. He said he just wanted to check to make sure we got settled. Cool. Nice thing to do. About 30 minutes later, he comes back to check in again. At this point, my mom was like thanks, we're good. We'll stop by the house in the morning to say thank you, etc.. Okay, so fast forward another 30 or 45 minutes, I can't sleep. I'm feeling terrified. We hear this rustling, which is odd because the guest house was nowhere around trees or even close proximity to bushes that might cause such a noise. At this point, I see my mom wide awake and look up at the window, like motioning towards the window with her eyes. Let me add real quick. None of the windows had curtains. The guy said it was because his wife was in the process of redecorating. When I looked up, there was a male figure just standing. I thought I was going to have a heart attack. I don't know how long he was there for. When he walked away, my mom waited a bit and then told us to get our stuff together. She wasn't messing around. We had my dad on the phone at this point and he was pretty much flipping out at my mom about something, but I didn't hear what. My mom said she was going to put stuff in the car and to follow her out. This was around 2:00 AM. When we got into the car, we pulled around to the front of the main house, so we could get the hell out of there. However, when we got to the front, all the lights were off. Not just all the lights, but it looked like no one had been home. Porch light, table lamp in front windows, like everything black. Also the two cars were gone. The local's car and what we presumed to be his wife's car. After seeing this, my mom at this point pretty unsettled, said we were leaving and we proceeded to drive to the gate. The gate at the end of the driveway had been deadbolted and padlock shut from the inside. It wasn't a super strong gate, so my dad said rev it and we were in a big SUV, we just smashed right through it. We drove back straight to New York City, not speaking the entire time. We have never returned back to Maine and my parents refuse to speak about it. I asked a family member one night about it when he was drunk and all he said was, they didn't tell you? The actual owners of that house were on vacation. I'm assuming my mom or dad followed up with local authorities and figured that out, but never told us. I don't know who that man was or what was planned that evening. I was curious as to whether there were any known serial killers or murderers who were in that area at that time.
[5:36]I was living in Asheville, North Carolina at the time. I hung out at a local coffee shop all the time. The day I met this guy was just like any other. I went into the shop, ordered my coffee, and sat down to read the local paper when an older man came up to me and asked if he could sit down. I had gone in there to meet new people and usually I went for the younger guys, but I thought what the heck. I said yes and he sat down and started to ask me questions, like where did I work? Where did I live? Did I have any relatives, etc.? Of course, during our talk, I asked him questions and I found out that he was a traveling salesman who traveled I-40 from Ohio to Asheville. The last question he asked me was how old I was. When I told him, he barely believed me. I looked a lot younger than I was. At the time, I was 29, but I guess I looked like a teenager. Part of my catch was to show people my ID and I showed it to him too. As soon as he saw it, he said, thanks for the chat and got up and left. I didn't think anything of it until I got another cup of coffee. The guy behind the coffee bar asked me if the old man was bothering me and I told him that it wasn't anything I couldn't handle. I thanked him for his concern. The next night, I went to a strip club with my on again off again boyfriend that had just opened up a town over. My boyfriend asked me if I wanted to strip because someone had offered the manager $500 for me to do it. I didn't really want to, but I was pretty interested to find out who it was that was going to pay me that much to strip. Coincidence or no, it was the same guy from the coffee shop. I was extremely creeped out. He came up to me later on that night and started talking to me about how many people he had killed in Vietnam, especially young women and children. I was really creeped out then and edged away from him, and I found another group of friends to hang out with. And I made sure I was never alone. He didn't try anything with me though, he just left. I was kind of freaking out inside, but I really didn't do anything about it. I just went to work the next day like normal and one of the girls I worked with came up and asked if I'd heard about that girl who had been stabbed in the neck from behind as she came out of one of the bars. The girl went on saying that her dad was a cop and they were looking for a serial killer who was killing young girls from Ohio to Asheville off of I-40. They weren't sure, but they thought he was an older guy who was probably a traveling salesman. The cops thought he had a thing for women who had my characteristics and were 18 and under. I freaked out and told her about the guy. She called her dad, but I don't know if they didn't believe me or what, but they didn't question me. I really think that the only thing that saved me was the fact that I was much older.
[8:27]This happened to me and my wife a few months after we moved into a new place. This took place back in November of 2018 and actually wasn't even fully resolved until just recently. So back at this point in time, me and my wife were going through some hard times. I was making money through some slightly illegal means and had actually gone to jail for 9 months. I got out in September of 2018 and I had a job in the city waiting for me when I got home. Now when I got out of jail, my wife was living with her mom about an hour away from the city. But she knew we had to find somewhere to live close to both of our jobs that were downtown in the city that we were moving to. Since we were starting all over after the legal fees, lawyers, fines, and other assorted debts, we knew we could only afford something super cheap. That would let us pay week to week instead of having to pay security deposits and monthly rent upfront. We found a boarding house in our city and checked it out. There were four rooms in the house with a shared kitchen and bathroom for everyone. We moved into one of the rooms. Our neighbors on the first floor were a 30-year-old lady and her mom, and then upstairs, there was a young guy who moved in the same week as us. And lastly, a young couple that lived in the room next to the other young guy. In the three months that we lived there, the only people we talked to was the young couple upstairs. They seemed similar to us in age and interests, and we just usually talked to them in passing or maybe on the front porch when we were all out there having a cigarette.
[10:13]They were nice enough and they also smoked weed, which me and my wife did as well. And we smoked on the porch together a couple of times. Things were just AOK until the month of November came and shit just started to hit the fan, left and right with this couple who we'll name Jim and Sierra. It started off small. Things like hearing them get into short shouting matches, or one or both of them asking me and my wife to borrow money, or constantly trying to bump cigarettes.
[10:46]One day I came home and Sierra was walking into the house at the same time as me with three guys that I've never seen before and a case of beer. They party all night and keep me and my wife up, but we end up going to bed around 5:00 AM. A few days later, we are woken up on a Sunday. Me and my wife's only day off to Jim screaming at Sierra, throwing all of her stuff into the front yard. He was calling her everything in the book, you can imagine. And told her to get out of his life, yada yada yada. They argued for like 3 hours and eventually someone picked Sierra up. We had a week of peace and quiet, but by the next week, she was moved back in and the fights and screaming were constant. Until one night. It was a Tuesday night, the day before my birthday. Me and my wife worked that day and just kind of lounged around after work. My wife and I ended up smoking some weed around 1:00 AM and we put in a movie to giggle at all night. The whole time we were watching this movie, we could hear Jim and Sierra screaming at each other. We could hear them stomping around as they moved around upstairs in the room right above our ceiling. It went on the whole movie it seemed like. After actually making it through the movie without falling asleep from smoking too much, we both noticed that Jim and Sierra had finally stopped fighting. We both wanted to take advantage of the quiet and we laid down and cuddled up to sleep until we had to go to work in the morning. I was woken up in the middle of the night by my wife, who was shaking me and looking off toward my side of the bed. I was so tired and out of it that I thought maybe she saw a big bug and wanted me to kill it. I turned over to get up and when I did, there was a man standing next to my bed, hunched over my nightstand going through my drawer, and the man has an empty milk gallon in his hand. After rolling over and us locking eyes, he stood up from his hunched position and was just staring at me. I kicked my feet out onto the floor and I sat up on the bed as he started backing up slowly, one step at a time. At this point, I finally realized that it's Jim in our room going through my stuff, holding an empty milk gallon.
[13:29]Now like I said, I was still pretty out of it and just calmly said to him, what's up, Jim? Why the hell are you in our room, bud? After a few seconds, Jim asks, can I borrow your guys car, man? Or can one of you take me down to the gas station and back real quick? Thank goodness for my wife, who was finally fully awake, unlike me, who said, what? You broke in our room to borrow our car? No, you cannot borrow our car after you broke into our room at 4:00 AM. Now get the hell out of here, you freaking weirdo. Surprisingly, Jim leaves, but he doesn't just leave. He sprints out the front door and starts running down the street towards the gas station that he asked us to take him to. I looked at my wife and before we can even say anything to each other, our other neighbor from upstairs comes down and says that Jim and Sierra were fighting worse than he had ever heard or saw, that he hadn't heard any noise coming from the room for about an hour. My wife, who was feeling protective of a fellow female, who had to endure similar abuse in the past, told me and our neighbor to go upstairs and check on her. So we go upstairs and the door to Jim and Sierra's room is shut, but not locked. I knocked and shouted for someone and there was no answer. Standing side by side, me and my neighbor turned the doorknob and pushed the door open. On the back wall of the room, Sierra was laying on the couch face up, and we also noticed that the floor and ceiling had been hacked up. Almost like someone was trying to get inside of the floor and ceiling for some reason. Me and my neighbor walked over to the couch, thinking that Jim had knocked her unconscious, but when we made it to her, we realized there was blood on the couch and thin blood streaks on the wall and blood all over her. I can't speak for my neighbor, but as soon as I looked at her, I thought, she doesn't have a face. The neighbor called the cops immediately and I was just standing there dumbfounded. I heard him tell the police that Jim had smashed his girlfriend's face in with a sledgehammer, and the weapon was still there, but Jim had run off. The police told us to leave the room and wait outside if we felt safe doing so. The cops came and they put a APB out on Jim, and they found him about an hour later running down the street. After talking to the cops, they said it looked like Jim was trying to find the gas line in the house, and he probably wanted me to take him to the gas station to get fuel to help him burn down the house with Sierra inside. After all the cops left and everything calmed down, me and my wife looked at each other like, what the hell. We had to call into work the next day because there were two news vans out front all morning, and every time we stepped out for a smoke or anything, they were badgering us for an interview. It ended up being a small blip in the news with a short paragraph in the newspaper and a one minute segment on the local news channel. But yeah, that's how I was face to face with a murderer right after he killed his girlfriend in the same house I was in.
[17:26]This is a combination of very short stories that I heard after this guy was caught. I'll start with my own. I live in a very small town and it is surrounded by woods and lakes and rivers. One day I had gone to a mom and pop gas station and grocery store, made my purchases, and returned to my car to leave. As I pulled out the driveway, there was a white van driven by an older gentleman pulling into the store as I waited to pull out on the road. I was staring as he drove right past me because I was going to wave at him. I thought it was my friend's uncle, who had a van just like it, and from a distance, it looked like him. But as I stared, the guy turned to look at me, and I realized that it was not my friend's uncle at all, but I looked into the coldest, meanest-looking eyes that I have ever encountered. I drove home that day thinking of serial killers, murderers, and weirdos, before convincing myself that my imagination was seriously running wild. But later in '08, a lady from our town met this guy with his van at another gas station a few miles outside of town. He said he was looking for a campsite that was free and he did not have to register anything. She assumed that he was homeless and down on his luck, so she gave him directions to one and told him to just follow her. She would eventually turn at her house, but if he kept going a few miles, he would find the place. Later on that year, she was really freaked out when it came out who this guy was and that she showed him where she lived. Another time, some college girls were hanging out at the beach. One of them said, after this guy was caught, that she and her friends had seen and talked to him several times at the beach during the summer of '08, and that he seemed really nice. But of course, they were freaked out too when they later learned on what he was capable of. Once again, in December of '08, a lady from our area went missing. I'm not going to go into details about that here. You can Google and read about this. The way this individual was caught was after he committed a horrible act of kidnapping and murder here. He went to Georgia and kidnapped and murdered a young girl. And a hint of who this was, if you Google the murder at Blood Mountain in Georgia, you will know who I'm talking about. At least I think you will anyway, cuz I have not Googled it, but it is real. Anyway, it was really freaky to know that I had actually seen him once after everything happened, and that he was living so close by and probably driving past my house many times before he kidnapped and murdered this lady from our area. This encounter happened in the summer of 2006, when I was 20 years old. I didn't get my driver's license until January of that year, and driving opened up so many doors for me that I took a lot of solo road trips to my friend's houses. I also look pretty young for my age, and I was often mistaken for a high school student in my early twenties. I was driving alone on I-78 on a random July day on my way to visit my friend in Southern Pennsylvania for a long weekend. Her parents were away, and we had the house to ourselves, and we were planning on drinking and hot tubbing, and watching Planet Earth drunk. It had just came out. Maybe run around some cornfields at night. I was so excited and I had a great drive, listening to good music, and it was a beautiful day for driving. Right after I crossed the border from New Jersey into Pennsylvania, I stopped at one of the first rest stops to get gas and snacks for the last part of my drive. I've tried to figure out which rest stop this was, and I can't identify it, but it was a gas station with a large mini mart. Opposite of the gas station was the on ramp back to I-78 West, and parallel to the on ramp was a dirt road, which comes into play later.
[22:04]I was heading into the store when a man in his late 30s or early 40s approached me. He was a stocky guy, decently tall. I'm 5'1. He had on a plain black T and jeans with dark brown hair and a mustache and goatee. He had just come out of a black pickup truck parked a few spaces away from my car. He had a super intense gaze and immediately creeped me out. He just had a crazy energy about him. I don't really get bad vibes from people that often, but this was just strange.
[22:44]He stood too close with his gaze crazy and direct and focused. His word choice was strange. He immediately set off all of my alarms. He asked if I was from the area, despite my Connecticut license plate. He even asked where I was headed and if I knew of anything fun to do because he had plans later and time to kill beforehand. He invited me to go play mini golf or watch a movie with him. I truthfully didn't answer any of his questions and I declined his invitation to hang out with him. And I told him that I didn't know the area that well, and I walked away towards the store. I was blown away that he asked me to go somewhere with him. It was so random and uncomfortable. As I was walking away, he actually screamed out, you're gorgeous. And the volume and tone made my hair stand on end. It was super aggressive and inappropriate, and he even startled a family that was walking out of the store. It was that loud. He came into the store shortly after and he was just staring at me, so I went to use the bathroom, and I stayed in there for at least 10 minutes, texting my friend about this creep. When I came out, he wasn't in the store anymore, thankfully, so I took my time buying drinks and snacks. Sour Brite Crawlers and trail mix, being my obligatory road trip food, and I went out to gas up my car. I was relieved his car was gone, and I started thinking about the rest of my drive and getting excited to see my friend. When I pull up to the road to get back on the highway though, I hear someone persistently honking his horn. And I see this creep show on the dirt road parallel to the on ramp in his truck, honking and shouting and waving at me to drive over to him. He was directly facing the gas station and had been waiting for me to pull up. I immediately freaked out and jumped on the on ramp back to I-78. He pulled onto the highway after me and I called my friend extremely scared. I drove so fast and probably dangerously, and looking back, I am lucky that I didn't get into an accident, but I just didn't know what to do. He didn't follow me for that long, and I think after a few exits, he finally pulled off. My friend and I had a backup plan that if I saw his car again, she would direct me to a police station the next town over from her house instead of me going directly there and leading some freak to us. I didn't see the car again and went to my friend's, but the last hours of my drive, I was extremely tense and anxious. I remember checking my mirrors often for this black pickup truck.
[26:14]It all ended well. I got to my friend's house safely and we had a nice weekend. The encounter was definitely creepy, but over the years, I didn't put much thought into it. A few years ago, though, in 2014, I was talking with another friend who is big into serial killers and I mentioned my encounter jokingly, suggesting that this was a serial killer I'd met and told her my experience. She was fascinated and she wanted to Google active serial killers in Pennsylvania area at the time. The first hit was for Adam Leroy Lane, and he looked almost exactly like the man I met back in 2006. It could have been my mind filling in the blanks, but the basic characteristics, 40s, tall but stocky, brown hair with mustache and goatee, and the time and area, all matched. And in my memory, he was a little bit slimmer than the pictures and it was 2006, not 2007, when he was actually convicted of murdering women. Still, it's an odd coincidence and one I've never forgotten. So this part of the story starts in 2009, and I was a junior in high school. I lived in a small town in Ohio. In the fall, I started to date my first real boyfriend, John. He was a senior and many of his friends were dating my friends, and he was well-liked and funny at school. I'm thrilled about the relationship, especially because my strict parents even seemed to like him as well. He was pretty quiet around them, but always polite and appreciative in their presence. Since it's a small town, John lived literally down the street, and we hung out all the time. My parents were actually getting divorced at the time, so I liked spending time at his place more than mine. John lived with Chris, a man who wasn't his biological dad, but somehow he had lived with since around the age of 13 and often called him Dad. Chris was an adolescence counselor who knew John because he had been in the foster care system, and he had taken John in. Chris was an amazing human who was fun to be around, and it was just the two of them and their pug Murphy at the house. I don't know much about John's childhood at first, other than it had clearly been rough enough for him to be involved with Children's Services. Anyways, we spent a lot of time together and always had a good time with Chris as well. Eventually, John confided in me that he often had really bad depression and would get really bad thoughts. I was shocked by this and I even told Chris about it as well. Regardless, we continued to date, and I did my best to support him. So the next year, I'm a senior and John has graduated, but he's not really doing anything. He didn't go to college, and his plans to join the military weren't working out, so he's just living with Chris and working a part-time job that my dad had gotten for him. I've always been into school and extracurriculars, and I felt like John was holding me back. Our relationship was going downhill in many ways, but I was scared if I broke it off that he might really do something drastic. He had threatened to do so when I tried. In May 2011, I graduated high school and decided I had to leave the relationship behind. I was having my own depression issues, and John was having a detrimental effect on my mental health. I finally told him that we had to break up and he needed to stop contacting me with these threats. I mostly cut off all contact, and a couple of months later, I got an apartment with a friend, about 30 minutes away from home, beside the college I was attending. One Friday night in April 2012, I'm in my hometown to see a friend, and I pass John's house where I see police cars everywhere. I'm shocked and I didn't know what to think, so I immediately call our mutual friend, Kyle. Kyle said he has no clue what was going on with John, and he says that John had hung out at his house a few days before. Kyle said John seemed like he was in a good mood, especially because he was driving Chris's BMW at the time, which he loved to do. Anyways, Kyle was actually hanging out at my apartment with my roommate. This was normal as he had a crush on her, so I just keep driving that way. When I get to my place, Kyle hasn't heard anything, but my mom calls me with the scoop. She's friends with cop wives and stuff, small town stuff. It turns out that John murdered Chris, and he was on the run somewhere. Someone had called for a wellness check after not hearing from Chris for a while, and the cops found his body at home. I was shocked and a little bit scared, as were Kyle and my roomy. So we all decided to stay at my roommate's parents' house for the night.
[32:14]By morning, the cops had luckily found and arrested John. He had taken the BMW, so it was easily spotted at a rundown motel about 15 miles from his home. And about 12 miles from our apartment. When the details came out, the whole thing was even more terrifying.
[32:41]It was a brutal homicide and it occurred days before the body was found, which means that John was just hanging out at Kyle's house between committing this act and getting arrested. Just nonchalantly playing video games and telling jokes to Kyle's little sister, acting like everything was just fine. Meanwhile, he had stuffed Chris's body in their freezer at home. It's insane to think about how someone could be such a psychopath. There was really no explanation given. John initially tried to plead insanity, but he was eventually deemed competent and then pleaded guilty. He got 30 to life in prison. I've obviously told this story from my perspective, but the person who really matters the most in this is of course the victim. Chris was truly a saint of a human being. He had been my role model for so many years and you just wonder, how could something so horrific happen to someone so good? And at the hands of someone who they had given everything to. Someone they had loved, trusted, and seen as a son. It's horrifying. Chris spent his life advocating for kids like John, and the local center he worked at is actually named after him now, as is the street that it is on. I often wonder about the why of it all. Chris and John got along almost all the time, and though John clearly had mental health issues, no one thought he would really hurt anyone. But clearly, something was very wrong with John that we missed. They say hindsight is 20/20, and I can definitely look back and think about a few strange instances with him.
[34:58]Sneaky, manipulative, and angry. He eventually showed all of those traits, but I was lucky enough to not experience any violence at his hands. I wish I could say the same for Chris. I'm thankful for the time that I did get to spend with him, though, and the positive impact he had on my life during that time. I know he had a positive effect on so many other lives as well. May he rest in peace.
