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Growing up in the SF Bay Area in the 70s and 80s I remember several high profile murderers. The one that hit closest to home though was the murder of Marcy Conrad. I kind of knew her in that we went to the same school but she was a year or so behind me. I remember the horrific media frenzy and all the teens in the area being tainted with the same brush as the murderer - we were compared to those who did nothing to help out in the Kitty Genovese murder in NYC in 1964. The media said we (meaning the teens of Milpitas) were just as guilty as those who committed the crime.
My vinyl supplier used to sell vinyl to Angelo Bono the hillside strangler. He went to the murder house many times because it was connected to his shop. He said he was just a ordinary guy but I heard Angelo hated women and was fine to men. He actually tortured his victims.
One of my workers was arrested for murder. He was in a gang and strung a guy up from garage beams and beat him to death. He was super nice to me and even brought cookies he did steal a power drill though I never got back.
Not a famous murderer sadly. But one time I was living some place, one day a wife had an altercation with her husband and he ended up running her over with a car. There were journalists and photographers out there for a while.
When I was a kid I would go over to my cousin's house in Mahwah, NJ, to play. Back then there was a cemetery down the street from their house, and behind the cemetery was a sandpit we were told not to go to because "a girl was murdered in there". Years later I realized it was the brutal 1957 murder of 15-year-old Victoria Zelinkski by Edgar Smith, who was sentenced to death, became a jailhouse lawyer, wrote a book Brief Against Death proclaiming his innocence, and got the conservative author William Buckley on his side
Buckley wrote about Smith, defended him, convinced people he was unfairly convicted, and helped Smith get his release after 14 years in prison. Smith was out for about five years and had moved to California, when he kidnapped and attempted to kill another woman, who managed to escape and get away with her life. He's still alive, in his 80s, and in a California prison.
My relative's friend was killed by the Night Stalker Richard Ramirez.
One of my co-workers is from LA. Before he moved to Phoenix he worked with a woman that was killed by Ramirez.
I also know a guy that was a close friend with John Wayne Gacy's nephew and met him and Pogo on many occasions. He said he felt so terrible for the friend who was treated horribly by other kids at school after JWG was captured.
My hometown, Coldwater, MI, had a killer that had 15 minutes of fame, Dennis Depue. He murdered his wife in '90 and went on the lamb. His story was aired on Unsolved Mysteries and my friends' dad appeared on the show because he was the sheriff's deputy that initially investigated the crime scene. DePue killed himself in '91 in Mississippi after cornered by police.
As a youngster I lived in the neighborhood location at the time of one of the "Gypsy Hill Killings", not the actual killer himself.
When I grew up I moved to Sonoma county and was looking into the number one Zodiac Killer suspect, Arthur Lee Allen, well, he happened to live directly across the street about 20 years earlier. When I found this out, I just could not believe it, but it is true.
Arthur Lee Allen was a suspect straight out of Central Casting. If you were producing a murder mystery movie, Allen is the type of suspect you would use — because he checks so many of the guilty boxes (and also looks the part) yet nothing substantive evidence wise sticks to him. But man — so much circumstantial evidence points to Allen being the Zodiac, right down to his wearing a Zodiac wristwatch to him just happening to be swimming at Lake Berryessa on the day that Zodiac knifed those two picnicking on the shoreline.
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