"Dahmer Was In The Photos, Clear As Day:" Everyday People Are Sharing Their Shocking Run Ins With Real Life Serial Killers

WARNING: This post contains mentions of violence, killing of children, and murder. Please proceed with caution.

A couple weeks ago, I shared some stories from BuzzFeed readers just like you who've had real-life run-ins with serial killers. Well, I am back once again because in a simultaneously horrifying and fascinating turn of events, y'all had even more serial killer encounters to share. So, without further ado, here are 15 more tales of everyday people who had unexpected encounters with real-life murderers:

1."My husband was a Chicago cop. While sitting with other cops in a restaurant, a guy walked over and handed out cards saying he was a clown and did lots of kid's parties. My husband thought he was 'creepy' and threw the card away without thinking much about it. A few months later, I ended up in the hospital and my roommate there was the mother of one of John Wayne Gacy's victims. John Wayne Gacy...the Killer Clown. We learned he lived only two blocks from our house. We were there when they dug up his basement and found the rest of the bodies of those poor boys he had killed. It was heartbreaking."

2."Roger Kibbe, California’s I-5 Killer, was a weekend skydiver who jumped with us during the day, but never stayed at the drop zone for our Saturday night BBQs. As we learned later, would head off for the highways of the Central Valley to pickup hitchhikers and strangle them. When he was finally apprehended in the early '90s, I got a call from the distraught wife of a customer of mine who worked with Roger in the evenings restoring the interiors of vintage cars. She couldn’t believe she had been that close to a psychopath who was believed to have murdered so many women."

—Anonymous

3."My aunt went to FSU when Ted Bundy attacked and killed the girls in the sorority house. She knew the girls who died, I believe. She lived in another sorority house just a few doors down from the one that he went into. After the attacks, the police sealed off the entire area and were looking for evidence of him breaking in anywhere else or any evidence at all to add more charges and whatnot. He had escaped prison prior to this, so they had his prints and everything. On the door of my aunt’s sorority house, they found his fingerprints on the door knob and his handprint on the door. Which means he probably went to her house FIRST, found that the door was locked, pushed off the door, and then went to the other house he got into."

"She said they didn’t always lock their door so residents could come home late, but they just happened to that night. That decision saved their lives. The door to the house he did get into wasn’t locked, so he went in and started his vicious assaults. But my aunt’s was, so she lived to see another day. ALWAYS LOCK YOUR DOORS PEOPLE! You don’t know who could be outside!"

—lalalace1640

4."Ted Bundy killed my mom's best friend from high school. Her name was Denise Naslund, and she was one of the girls from Sammamish State Park. My uncle was questioned at the time the police were looking for Bundy, because he was also tall, had wavy hair, drove a tan VW bug, and went to the University of Washington."

5."I moved to Chicago a few months after Jeffrey Dahmer was caught. The next summer, I started dating a guy in Milwaukee. I didn't know a lot about Dahmer because I was newly out and fresh home from Desert Storm. My boyfriend was telling me about him. He said he thought he encountered Dahmer one night at a party, as a younger guy had come up to him and his friends, asking them to pretend like they knew him because some creepy white guy wouldn't leave him alone. He always thought it was Dahmer. Then we were looking through photos from a party at the bar that summer, and Dahmer was in the photos, clear as day."

6."When I was 14 years old (1991), my family moved across town. A coworker of my father's who I'd known since I was little, Dan, was helping us move. He brought along his childhood friend, John, from Quincy, Illinois to give us a hand, too. John's brother Mike was in town to visit his family, but didn’t want to come help out (thankfully). I remember my mom telling me to stay close by my dad, because something about John creeped her out. For example, John didn’t use deodorant because he was convinced that the aluminum sulfates in it would allow the government to track you. He was weird but harmless. As the day went on, John mentioned to my dad that his brother was getting his life back on track after 'the incident,' so he changed his name to get a fresh start. I had no clue what they were talking about, so I ignored it."

"Fast forward to 1997. My dad’s friend Dan called my dad and told him to turn on the news. There on the screen was John being interviewed about the arrest of his brother. John’s brother was Michael Swango, the so-called 'Nurse of Death' who poisoned and killed anywhere between 10 to 60 people while working as a nurse. The 'incident' his brother spoke of was him receiving five years in prison for poisoning his coworkers, almost killing them."

—Anonymous

7."I (briefly) worked at a bakery right down the street from the St. Lucie County Courthouse in Ft. Pierce, FL in 2012. Omar Mateen — the 2016 Orlando nightclub shooter — worked at said courthouse as a security guard and would frequently come in with another security guard, Torres (who I had a slight thing for) to order coffee, a fruit, and vanilla yogurt parfait. He was always very quiet and polite. I only lived in Orlando for about five months in 2012, but I went to high school with a lot of people who would go to the clubs in Orlando. Although I was no longer in there during 2016, the day of the shooting I kept getting alerts from Facebook that friends were 'checking in' to confirm they were safe."

"After probably the 10th notification, I finally reached out to one of the friends who was still living in Orlando and asked what was going on and why my phone was blowing up. They immediately sent me a link to a live news report covering the shooting and the subsequent stand off with police, in which Omar was eventually killed. I was floored, but thankfully no one I knew was killed or injured during the shooting. Things of this nature are just reminders that you truly never know what people are capable of."

—Anonymous

8."I used to work at a private cigar lounge in NYC in my early 20s. This was a members only club, so we had very high profile men coming in. There were some regulars who were cool, nice people. One member in particular usually brought in his friend, who was a bigger man with glasses. He was an architect and an avid hunter. When he came, he would talk about his African Safari trips and he showed me pictures of all the wild animals he hunted. I wasn't exactly impressed because they were lions and zebras, but of course, I had to listen and be engaged. He came in at least two or three times a month with his friend, and I usually chatted with him when he did. Fast forward about eight years later, and I find out that he's being charged with the Gilgo Beach serial killings."

"They found the first body in 2010 when I first moved to NYC, and I continued to follow the case along the years. I never would've thought that I would have encountered the actual Long Island Serial Killer, not just ONCE but numerous times for a year."

—T

9."My Uncle was transferred to the submarine base in Washington in the early '80s. My Aunt got a job in the paint department at the Kenworth factory. She said that she spoke daily to a truck painter when he would come to get his paint. He was quiet and nice, but she couldn't shake the nagging feeling that he was off. She was creeped out by him and she told my Uncle about it. My Uncle told her if she was that uncomfortable, then she should quit. She did and thought nothing of it for 16 years. Then one day when she was watching the the news, there was a story on the arrest of the Green River killer. She froze when the picture of Gary Ridgeway came across the screen. She was looking at the man who creeped her out in the paint shop many years ago. It still creeps her out to this day!"

—Anonymous

10."A roommate I lived with in my 20s grew up next door to Gary Ridgeway, aka the Green River Killer, as a kid and used to play with his son. My ex-husband worked with him at Kenworth. Gary's nickname was "Green River Gary" there, because in the early '80s, he was questioned and his house was searched. When I was a cashier in hardware store not far from where he lived before he was caught, he came through my line many a time."

11."A couple of years ago, I was riding my bike for a food delivery service in downtown Chicago. I'd stopped at 7/11 for a soda and a cigarette. While I was smoking, a guy and a girl walked up. The girl went inside and the young dude — with tattoos all up his arm and neck (he was a scrawny little white dude, so they stood out) — came up and started asking me about the area. He asked if I worked in the neighborhood, if it was busy, if people were nice, if I liked it, etc. I asked about his tattoos and he said he was a rapper on Instagram and that I would hear of him. Turns out he was Bobby Crimo, who murdered all of those people in Highland Park a year later. I think he was actually scouting downtown Chicago when I met him, and that I maybe talked him out of it."

—Anonymous

Robert "Bobby" E. Crimo III was detained as the suspect of a mass shooting at Highland Park during a Fourth of July parade in 2022. He killed seven people and injured over 30 others. Bobby, aka "Awake the Rapper," is believed to have planned the attack for weeks.

12."My dad went to school with Micheal Ross, a small-town Connecticut serial killer. When I was an infant, Micheal held me. Shortly after that, it came out that he was being convicted of several murders, including two girls that attended the same church as my parents. Those girls were picked up by him just off the highway in front of my parents's house. I've never been more creeped out by something I don't even remember."

13."My old neighbor is the wife of a serial killer who stalked sex workers. I remember meeting her family when we moved in. Only a few months prior, I had done a report on this serial killer for class. She said her name while introducing herself and I was like, 'No shit I just did a report on [insert husband's name] for my criminal justice course!' Well, talk about an awkward introduction."

—toomanykidsnotenoughtime

14."I was walking home alone the night Son of Sam was caught. A car slowed down across the street from me — I got bad vibes and was thinking of going to ring the doorbell of someone nearby's house when suddenly a car full of young people drove up beside us. They yelled out, 'Stop following her, leave her alone!' and, thank God, it made the car take off. I’m sure those people saved my life from Son of Sam that night. I was not far from where he was caught, and the car that followed me was the same car that he had."

15.And finally, "In law school, I worked with my school's innocence project. One of the cases I was assigned to was that of a young man who had been convicted of the murder of a teenage runaway. My partner on the case and I were pretty convinced he was innocent (he never confessed, had an alibi, had no criminal record, and the people implicating him were trying to avoid prison sentences of their own), but we needed DNA evidence to exonerate him. We knew his DNA did not match the DNA found on the victim, but since the state had dropped the sexual assault charge, we couldn't prove he hadn't murdered her *after* she had been assaulted (wild, I know). We interviewed as many witnesses as we could find, and obtained DNA samples from those who would willingly provide them."

"One of the witnesses we had talked to, Walter, was one of the last people to see the victim alive. We spoke to him at length on the phone, and he seemed genuinely interested in finding out what happened to the girl, but he would not provide us with a DNA sample. So, the case went quiet for a couple years.

Then, the DNA database found a match for the DNA found on the girl. A man named Walter Ellis had been arrested for sexually assaulting and murdering seven women in the Milwaukee area. This was the same man we had spoken with about the young woman's murder. The police had interviewed him after her murder and had cleared him of any wrongdoing. Instead, an innocent man was convicted of the murder that Ellis had committed. After this murder, he went on to commit three more murders. Ellis was responsible for 10 total murders in Milwaukee. He was charged with seven. Three different men were charged with the remaining three of the murders, with two of those men being wrongfully convicted."

—Anonymous

Have you ever had an encounter with a serial killer? If so, tell us about it in the comments below or via this completely anonymous form. You can read more serial killer run-in stories like these right here.

Note: Submissions have been edited for length, clarity, and/or accuracy.