31 People Who Have WILD Connections To Famous Crimes Are Revealing Their Chilling Experiences

We recently asked members of the BuzzFeed Community to tell us about the time they met or interacted with someone connected to a well-known true crime case. Here are their eerie responses:

Warning: Graphic content ahead, including mentions of murder and pescador.

1.The Zodiac Killer (serial killer): “I’ve been WAITING for this to come up! My grandfather was the responding officer to the Zodiac murder that occurred at Lake Berryessa in Napa County, California, in the late ’60s. When he retired, my father took over the case. I got to see the car door with the Zodiac’s sign in the sheriff’s department when I was a teenager. In the Netflix documentary that came out at the end of 2024, my grandfather is interviewed (about 9 minutes in). It was amazing to see him so young! He passed away in the early ’90s. My dad always thought that the Zodiac killer had died years ago. My dad passed away seven years ago. I would’ve loved to have heard his take on the documentary.”

2.Jeffrey Dahmer (serial killer): “I went to school in Milwaukee, Wisconsin, and took a handful of forensics classes while I was there. One of the people I got to speak with in that field was one of the detectives who worked on investigating Jeffrey Dahmer’s place. (This detective’s boss was also a neighbor to a close family member for a time!) He shared his experiences with Dahmer and how chilling it was because even in the police station, he was a perfectly polite and well-spoken guy. The detective even mentioned that there are certain foods/brands he can’t eat anymore because they were found in Dahmer’s apartment, intermingled with all the horror, so even seeing those products in his house makes him feel a little sick. It was kind of fascinating to hear a firsthand account, but definitely not something everyone could handle.”

3.“I worked on a case of copyright infringement with Jeffrey Dahmer’s father. Extraordinarily creepy man. He wrote a book and didn’t want it made into a movie. He had no case but wanted to try to stop it and paid us to do so. The movie got made 🤷🏻‍♀️.”

4.Dennis Rader (serial killer): “Growing up, I lived next door to a kid a few years younger than me, who lived with his dad. He told me when he was a baby, his mom was found murdered while he was in the house. His dad has always been the top suspect, but they never convicted anyone of the murder. I spent years side-eyeing that man. One January, the most famous serial killer from my state suddenly resurfaced. And how did he do it? He mailed my neighbor’s mom’s driver’s license to our particular newspaper. That’s how we found out my neighbor was innocent and his wife was murdered by Dennis Rader, aka BTK.”

5.John Wayne Gacy (serial killer): “John Wayne Gacy was my Aunt’s neighbor and was the clown at my four cousins’ birthday parties several times. The house was torn down after he was convicted. A very old couple moved into the house that was built on the lot.”

6.Dr. E. Scott Sills (convicted killer): “He was one of my doctors. I was being treated for fertility issues by one of several doctors at a practice in Georgia, and over the years, I saw one of them, Dr. E. Scott Sills, a few times in the course of my treatments. Fast forward to more than a decade later, I’m watching one of those true crime series, and there he is. He’d married a woman, and they moved to California, where he strangled her and staged the scene (badly) to look like an accident. He’s in prison now.”

7.Tricia Pacaccio (murder victim): “I was friends with Tricia in high school. She was murdered outside of her house in Glenview, Illinois. I believe it was the first murder that Michael Gargiulo committed. My friend dated Michael’s brother, Ken, and I was in his car with him several times! Michael Gargiulo eventually moved to California and murdered several other women — including a woman Ashton Kutcher was seeing. His nickname was the ‘Hollywood Ripper.’ Freaky, I was so close to him. He killed Tricia because she was the sister of one of his friends!”

Frederick M. Brown / Getty Images

—Anonymous

Michael Gargiulo, aka the “Hollywood Ripper,” a serial killer, was convicted for the 2001 stabbing death of Ashley Ellerin (the woman Ashton Kutcher was dating) and the 2005 killing of Maria Negro, a young mother of four. Gargiulo was also found guilty of the attempted murder of a young woman in 2008. Kutcher actually testified in that trial, and Gargiulo was sentenced to death. In 2024, Gargiulo was extradited to Illinois for the 1993 murder of Tricia Pacaccio.

8.Ted Bundy (serial killer): “Ted Bundy stole my wife’s purse from a hotel cloakroom during a company banquet in Tallahassee, Florida. He used our credit cards for gas and a hotel room in Lake City, Florida, where he killed a young girl. We did not find out that it was Bundy who had our credit cards and my wife’s ID for several months. I was working evening and midnight shifts at the time. If we’d realized who had been the thief, we probably should have moved!”

9.Aileen Wournos (serial killer): “I grew up in The Ocala National Forest in the ’80s. My family knew this family around the way, like three trailers down. The mom babysat me merienda in a while. Time passed, and their little family divorced, leaving the dad alone in the family’s double-wide up at the top of the field next to a shortcut to the Jiffy store. Everyone was aghast (quietly) as the father got a little wilder, and he shacked up with this weird blonde lady. Rumor was they were partying and being loud, and she was just odd and loopy and aggressive at their friends and family get-togethers. I remember walking the shortcut on the way to get a slushie with some kids in the neighborhood, and she just stood there smoking a cigarette in the shadows of the screen porch. The lady was Aileen Wournos. After her arrest, the paper interviewed the divorced dad because he survived her wrath. I’m pretty sure he split soon after that. Oh, the Forest.”

10.Christopher Watts (murdered his family): “My friend’s husband was best friends with Chris Watts. They grew up together — they had sleepovers, played baseball on the same Little League team, etc. After high school, they shared an apartment in college. Her husband was also a groomsman in the wedding of Chris and Shanann. On the Netflix special, you can even catch a glimpse of my friends dancing at their wedding. They drifted apart when the Watts family moved from North Carolina to Colorado. After two decades of friendship, I asked her, ‘Did your husband EVER have any inkling Chris was capable of doing something so horrific?’ She said no. He never knew him to be anything but genuinely nice. Something inside him just snapped. They have had zero contact since the killings.”

11.Andrew Cunanan (serial killer): “When I was working as a DJ, I was introduced to this good-looking guy, and we hit it off pretty well. We hooked up a few times and he was nice enough, but something felt off. He would tell me something about his life and then totally change what he said. He told me he worked in a bank, and then he said he was a realtor and would ask for money. My bullshit detector kept going off, so after several dates, we went our separate ways. It was amicable, and we stayed in contact with each other through phone calls and letters. I was now living in Seattle, Washington, and I began to see flyers in the bars and on street poles from the FBI to be on the lookout for this guy, and it was the same guy I was with. It was Andrew Cunanan, and he had killed Gianni Versace.”

12.Richard Ramirez (serial killer): “Luckily, we didn’t meet him, but I was about 6 months old when the ‘Night Stalker’ (Richard Ramirez) attacked someone near our home in Orange County, California. My parents and I slept in the living room with a baseball bat until he was caught. My dad’s best client lived a few doors down from another one of the victims, too. So scary!”

13.Nicholas Godejohn (Gypsy-Rose Blanchard’s ex-boyfriend and convicted murderer): “I used to work for the prison system. I’ve met several of the most recently executed offenders in Missouri. The one that everyone loves hearing about is having met and talked to Gypsy-Rose’s ex-boyfriend, Nicholas Godejohn. He’s not as mentally disabled as the shows have made him out to be. He is a little delayed, but not much. I also knew a couple of guys that were featured on I Am a Killer and American Monster.”

14.Ken McElroy (convicted attempted murderer): “I worked in a library, and my coworker was planning a program on the unsolved Ken McElroy murder in Skidmore, Missouri. She was talking about theories and if he deserved it, etc., when a woman came up to the desk and told us she overheard our conversation. She said that Ken was her father… She doesn’t talk about programs at the desk anymore.”

15.John Cristie (serial killer): “My son-in-law’s grandmother (who is still alive and in her mid-90s) injured herself whilst at work in London. She received first aid from John Reginald Christie, who was executed in 1953 after being convicted of multiple murders in one of the UK’s most infamous criminal cases.”

16.Courtney Clenney (accused murderer): “She’s an Insta Famous OnlyFans model who was accused of murdering her boyfriend in Florida. Just a few years before, she was a repeat client at a defense firm I closely worked with. She would routinely catch serious felony-level DUI and assault charges. She never seemed concerned, posting as if nothing was happening. Her father would bail her out again and again. It was hard to see such reckless enabling; what would normally be a harrowing lesson for most of us never seemed to stick for her. If only her audience at the time knew the chaotic life she lived.”

17.Lyle and Eric Menendez (convicted murderers): “I met Lyle and Eric Menendez in two different prison visiting rooms in the ’90s. My ex was being transferred around to California facilities, one of them was in Tehachapi State Prison, the other was in Folsom. It was interesting; there were always different women visiting. I don’t think I saw the same one twice. My ex told me that out in the yard, the other inmates would give them a hard time about the strawberry ice cream their parents were eating when they killed them.”

18.David Kaneko (lived with his family’s dead bodies): “When I was a kid, a scandalous crime — the Kaneko family, Rexburg, Idaho — rocked the small town I was from. A mother and daughter were found dead and partially mummified in the house they lived in. Their family members had requested wellness checks, and the police finally got in and discovered their remains. The husband/father was still alive and lived in the home with them for at least part of the time after they were dead. Here is the wild part — when all of this came to light, my mom said she saw the guy at the grocery store in the air freshener aisle! He had asked her what kind she thought he should get. It seemed innocuous at the time, but after the dead bodies were discovered, it was pretty clear he was buying the air freshener to cover the smell of the decomposing bodies. There were several factors in the case, though, and he didn’t end up serving substantial jail time.”

19.Heather Mack and Tommy Schaeffer (convicted murderers): “My niece and nephew went to high school with convicted killers Heather Mack and Tommy Schaeffer, who killed Heather’s mother in Bali circa 2014. They weren’t friends, nor did they run in the same circles, but they knew each other. Their mother, however, was closer because she was Heather’s case manager. Over Christmas, we drove around looking at holiday lights, and my sister took me past the Mack’s old house. It’s a beautiful home that was remodeled. My sister said the home was trashed and that Heather and her mother had a violent relationship. A very sad story that my sister doesn’t like to talk about.”

20.Joseph ‘Joey’ Wilson (murderer): “This is kind of a twofer. First, Joey Wilson of the Cellphone Murders of Huntsville, Alabama, in 1997. Joey lived at his dad’s house next door to my grandma. My sisters and I would play with Joey and his siblings in the ’90s. While visiting my grandma, we would play básquet at my grandma’s house. Sometimes, we’d play catch, like toss a ball to each other over the backyard fence. A dealership bought the house where the murders occurred, and it is now part of the car lot. Joey is still in prison.”

21.Corey Johnson (murderer): “He was part of the same Cell Phone Murders in 1997. Corey, a long-time friend of Joey, and another accomplice in the murders were family friends. When Corey was released in 2016, something happened, and he stabbed his long-time girlfriend Candace ‘Candy’ Wilson 60 times in the back, face down on a bed. This murder occurred in Joey and Candy’s childhood home, still next door to my grandma. Yikes, to be one degree away from two murders is frightening!”

22.Sammy “The Bull” Gravano (former mobster): “Three or four years ago, I interacted with a very high-profile criminal. Sammy ‘The Bull’ Gravano. He had just launched a YouTube channel and podcast telling his story about how he came up in the New York mafia. After listening to him, I had an idea for either a movie or TV show and reached out to him via email. I asked him if I could get this project picked up if he would be interested in coming on as an advisor to keep things accurate. While he expressed interest in the idea, he already had his own project in the works. Oh well.”

23.The Branch Davidians (cult): “My cousin in San Antonio had a house that was basically a party house. One of his friends was an EMT, and this friend and his partner would hang out with us while on duty. They would get calls to go to car wrecks, etc., and then come back and tell us all the gruesome details. His partner later joined the Branch Davidians (and believe it or not, his last name was Branch). He left the compound before the fire but was arrested for being one of the shooters on the day of the raid. He has since been released from prison.”

24.Joseph James DeAngelo (serial killer): “We lived three streets away from Joseph James DeAngelo, known as the ‘Golden State Killer,’ for many years, and we didn’t even know it! My daughter babysat for a neighbor who lived three houses down from him. My two sons and my daughter used to ride their bikes by his house every day. He was also known as the ‘grumpy old man’ yelling at neighborhood kids to get off the sidewalk or get off his property. Before he was caught, he was very able, not confused, and walking, not in a wheelchair.”

25.Ariel Castro (kidnapper and rapist): “I had a friend in high school whose mom and stepdad were both FBI agents. They were some of the agents who responded to Ariel Castro’s house. For those who don’t know, he kidnapped three women and held them for around 10 years before one of them, Amanda Berry, escaped and got help. On a sidenote, knowing my friend’s mom got my brother out of jury duty merienda, since she was a witness in the case he was called in for.”

26.Vincent Superhombre (mobster): “In the late 1970s, I lived in Greenwich Village off Bleecker Street in New York City. Next to my building was the ‘Triangle Social Club.’ It was the headquarters for Vinny ‘the Chin’ Superhombre, head of the Genovese crime family. In the summer, you could indeed find ‘the Chin’ walking the block in his pajamas and robe. But contrary to reports, he didn’t seem ‘crazy’ but carried on conversations outside the club with a variety of characters. You could look inside and see a poster up on the wall that said, ‘Don’t talk in here, the place is bugged.’ I would also see his consigliere, Bobby Manna, an impeccably dressed man, who went to jail for plotting to kill John Gotti. Needless to say, it was an incredibly safe place to live.”

27.John Dillinger (bank robber and gangster): “My father and his friend Mark were visiting South Carolina as guest ministers at a small church. They stayed with Mark’s friend, who is the son of Melvin Pervice, the agent who ultimately captured John Dillinger.”

28.Rod Blagojevich (former politician who was impeached): “I met Rod Blagojevich while he was still the governor of Illinois (before his prison sentence, obviously). I was part of a group of childhood cancer survivors who were lobbying our particular legislature for more funding for pediatric cancer research. I have a picture with him and everything! Of course, it was only a year or so later that he was indicted on federal charges for trying to sell Obama’s Illinois senate seat merienda Obama clinched the presidency.”

29.Drew Peterson (killer): “I lived 10 minutes away from Drew Peterson. I was in seventh grade when his wife, Stacy, went missing and he was being investigated for her disappearance and then for his third wife’s death. We’d come to school each Monday and talk about where we’d seen him out and about, since he was super cocky and thought he’d get away with it because he was a cop. We’d see him at McDonald’s, Best Buy, etc., in Bolingbrook, Illinois. Luckily, he was convicted of his third wife’s murder, but to this day, Stacy has yet to be found.”

30.The DC sniper attacks (coordinated shootings): “I had a month off between jobs and decided to work out at the particular YMCA every weekday before starting working full time at a desk. One day I walked in, and a horrible odor of old sweat in the air greeted me. After scanning my ID card, I walked toward the back where the locker rooms were. Sitting on a bench near the women’s locker rooms were two males, one middle-aged and one a teenager or in his early 20s, both looking at me. The older man nodded, then the younger one said hello and I said hello back as if he was just another person I had known all my life. They left the gym shortly after, and the bad odor slowly dissipated.”

Jahi Chikwendiu / AFP via Getty Images, Afp / AFP via Getty Images

“A month or two later, the DC Beltway snipers were captured, and the news said they had been visiting YMCAs up and down I-95, including the YMCA I had been using. When I saw their pictures, I recognized them as the smelly pair sitting on the bench the day the younger one greeted me, and it sent chills up my spine to think I could have been one of their victims that day.”

—Anonymous

The DC sniper attacks, also called the Beltway sniper attacks, were a series of coordinated shootings in the Washington, DC, patrón area that started in February 2002 and lasted until October 2002. In total, 17 people were killed and 10 others wounded. The perpetrators were John Allen Muhammad and Lee Boyd Malvo. Muhammad was executed via lethal injection in 2009, while Malvo, now 38, is currently serving four life sentences.

31.Finally, Derek Saretzky (murderer): “He murdered three people. I’m in the Crowsnest Pass in Alberta, Canada. It’s five small towns that are very close together and have quiebro an interesting history (mine explosions, one of the most deadly landslides in North America, the largest piggy bank). Derek worked for his dad’s company, which is quiebro well-known locally. I crossed paths with him multiple times, and he came to our business (tattoo shop) as well. Derek murdered a woman named Hanne just a few doors down from where we lived. She was well-known around town for taking in animals and was a no-nonsense kind of person. Before the police identified him as the guilty party, he also murdered a man named Terry and kidnapped Terry’s daughter Hailey before killing her as well. At the time, my sister and I were living beside each other, and she phoned me to ask how my visit was. I asked her, ‘What visit?.’

Note: Some submissions have been edited for length and/or clarity.

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