Loading summary
Transcript2 lines
- [00:00]
A
What's the difference between DIY and doing it yourself? It's the difference between a part time passion and a full time business. WIX gives you the power to turn your passion into a moneymaker with a website that fits your unique vision and the business tools you need to succeed. Let your ideas flow with AI that guides you but keeps you in the driver's seat. Manage your business from one dashboard and keep it growing with built in marketing features. It's time to turn your daydream into your dream job. Do it yourself. Go to wix.com no offense but your brain is a terrible place to keep your big idea. It belongs in the world but you know that already. You have a calling, a voice that says this is what I'm meant to do. Create the website your big idea deserves with wix. Make it your own with top to bottom customization, AI to help realize your vision and built in business tools to turn your daydream into your dream job. WIX supports every stage of the business journey except one. Your decision to begin ready? Go to Wix.com.
- [01:11]
B
Hey everyone, welcome back. Before we get started I just wanted to give a warning. These stories are much darker than what I usually cover. The stories involve murder, murder of a child and overall just very dark stories. I really want to convey that here. So if you don't want to listen to stories like that, go ahead and skip this one or listen to something else. You've officially been warned on how dark today's stories are. If you're ready to continue, let's get started. And oh yeah, remember to always stay hungry. This seems like the right place to tell this story. It happened back in 2013. It was about 8, 9 o'clock and I was on my way home from my pals. I sat up at the back of the bus. There was only me and one other person on the bus and he was sat near the front on the opposite side. When I got up to get off the bus and walked from the bag towards the stairs, he called me. I don't remember exactly how he asked, but he was asking for a lighter. I walked up to him going through my pockets and told him I had matches and then handed them to him. He took them off of me and just stared at them for a good few seconds and then he handed them back to me saying something along the lines of don't worry. The time it took him to decide not to use them felt very strange and the eye contact before and after just felt intense. I got walking down the stairs thinking what the hell was up with that? And then got off the bus. I told a couple of people how weird it felt and described what he was A zip up black hoodie with a knockoff Hardy style tiger on the chest. Fast forward about a week and there's a fatal stabbing on a bus in my city. A young girl on her way to school was stabbed to death on the top deck of a bus. Stabbings were pretty common in my city, but a young girl being killed on her way to school? That's big news anywhere. They show a photo of the suspect being arrested but you can only see the back of his hoodie straight away. I think it's the exact same Ed Hardy knockoff and started wondering if it was the same guy that I'd seen before. When they released more photos of him from the front, I knew it was him. The scary thing is it transpired that he had recently been let out of a mental health facility. He hadn't been given any support and had been sleeping rough on buses. I've had many interactions with mentally ill people and dangerous individuals, but this is the one that stays with me. Even though the interaction wasn't much, it felt so strange. I wonder if he was seeing how I reacted when he asked me. Hence why he didn't use those matches. Who knows. It's just a really sad story. Rest in peace to the poor girl who was murdered. Her name was Christina Edkins and she was only 16 years old. This happened to my dad back when he was stationed at Offutt Air Force Base in Nebraska in the early 80s. He lived in the dorm not too far down from a guy named John, a radar tech who was the same age as him. Dad had never really talked to him but had seen him around. Dad said he was no one special, didn't particularly stand out to him, just another young guy like himself. Then In January of 1984 there was a lot of activity in the dorm with John and my dad saw him leaving with the authorities. Didn't take long to learn why. John had murdered three boys, one while living in Maine and two while stationed in Nebraska. Other names for the men Johnbert are the Nebraska Boy Snatcher and the Woodford Slasher. Turns out he was a screwed up guy for a while, having first stabbed someone when he was 13 years old and had attacked several others before he had first killed. Yet he got in the military at the same time as my dad. It just goes to show you how ordinary everyone seems when you don't truly know the people working around you. I've always been really interested in crime solving forensic TV shows. I worked in a hospital as a night charge nurse for years. I had a certain housekeeper who was a male that was regularly assigned to my area. He was not particularly conscientious or good at his job. He often wore his work shirt unbuttoned with a dinky grayish hued white T shirt underneath. He appeared to wear a hairpiece. We'll call him M. M had always seemed a bit off to me. He looked at everyone as if we could be insects to be studied. I always treated him kindly, just like I treated everyone else. I would often notice him secretly watching or listening to conversations of myself and the other staff from behind doors and around Cor. He just seemed to lurk everywhere. I once mentioned to another staff member who worked in a lab down the hall that M seemed like a serial killer to me and that he was spying on us constantly. The other staff member said, well, first impressions are often correct. Once someone was talking about a negative girlfriend situation and he went off saying how once that his girlfriend made him so mad. Then his face contorted and demeanor seemed scary and super loud and menacing, barely controlling himself. One day M approached me and he asked if I would submit a positive review about his work to a supervisor so he could get a monetary bonus. I said sure, no problem. I submitted his positive review for him and he did get the bonus. My co worker said, how could you do that when he's barely mediocre? I just said, I think he's a serial killer that just hasn't been found yet. So I know when he picks his next victim, I'm giving him no reason to kill me. I live in Denver, Colorado and I'm a sex worker. Last year a girl went missing in Thornton, Colorado and she was shot to death. This year, a few months ago, another girl went missing and was found stabbed to death. And now a girl my friend is close with has been missing since last week and we still haven't heard from her. They are all sex workers and I'm starting to worry that this girl could be dead because of the other two. I've contacted the police already but nothing's been done and they still have no suspect for the shooting in Thornton. Could it be a serial killer or am I just overthinking it? In November of last year, the first girl went missing for a few days and then she was found dead in Thornton, Colorado, not far out from Denver. Then in February, another one of our girls was found stabbed. She went missing for almost a week before she was found dead. Last week another girl went missing and we still haven't heard from her at all and we don't know if she's safe or not. We strictly work in Denver and refuse to go out of a certain vicinity. The girls are all in their 20s and they had brown hair and the girl who's currently missing has browned hair with two blonde streaks in the front. We also know to beware of who we get into the cars with and meet up with. My friend and I went to the police when the third girl went missing and we mentioned the other murder so they could see if it's connected at all and that it's urgent and she needs to be found. I'll be sure to leave an update if I hear anything new and I'll let you all know. This is an occurrence that takes me pretty far from the setting of most of my other encounters and finds me in good old Ohio. You see, I was hiatus from my life in general at the time, debating a fresh start in a new corner of the country. I'd been in Ohio before, though only for a short time and my memories of it were quite fond. I decided to go back there and see if I still felt the same way about it. I was not employed at the time, but I had a substantial source of income due to the fact that I do tattoo work. It was my tattoo work that allowed me to rent an extended stay motel room for the time being and was unfortunately also the reason that this encounter came to pass. I'm going to cover this now to save questions later. I am not a licensed tattoo artist, though that is soon going to be changing and I was not licensed at this time in the state. I am, however, a good artist with excellent sanitation practices as two people in my life are professional licensed artists and taught me everything I know. Back to the story. I got a text from somebody who had seen a post about my work. She said her name was Kimberly and she was interested in getting something done. We talked a bit and compared schedules, all that fun stuff. We were at odds with our timing and decided that I would meet her at her job to further discuss it and she could see my portfolio. Kimberly worked at a small deli not too far from my motel and I headed over there at the appointed time. It seemed as if it was empty with only one car in the lot other than my own. I grabbed my equipment, went inside and the little bell dinged and then a little Asian man came out to the counter and asked me how he could help Me. I said that I was looking for Kimberly and explained that I had business with her. Sure, hold on, he told me and came out into the lobby area of the deli. He then went over to the front door, pulled out his keys and locked was one of those doors that had no other locking mechanism, only the key. I couldn't have left without the key. It was needed both ways. Then he turned to me and he told me that he was Kimberly and he told me to sit down. I reached into my pocket for my phone and of course I realized that I had left it in my car. Then I went to the door and tried it anyway and of course it wouldn't open. The whole time Kimberly staring at me with a smile. He told me again to sit down, so I did. I asked him why he locked me in and he said it was for our safety. I gave him the benefit of the doubt. He looked harmless and we were in a bad part of town. He started talking about the tattoo, asking questions. He wanted to know if I could do portrait work and I explained that I could and that some of my portrait work was shown in the post that he'd gotten my info from. He said that he needed seven faces and he wanted it to be a whole sleeve. This was beyond the scope of anything we discussed and I told him it could be done but it would take a while and have to be more than one session. This seemed to make him uncomfortable. He asked how long and I said I didn't know. It's hard to estimate portrait work as each pic presents its own unique challenges. He asked how many sessions it would take and I said ideally one for each face, but that I might be able to do two at a time. Then I asked him who the people were, if they were family. He didn't answer me right away, just got this spacey look in his eyes and seemed to stare right through me. After a while he did start talking. The first one he wanted, he said, was a woman that he'd known in high school. I found it strange the way he said it. Like you don't just get casual acquaintances portraits tattooed on you. You just don't. So I asked why he wanted her tattooed on him and he told me it was because she had been his first kill. I just sat there in disbelief and didn't even know what to say. He started talking again. After a few minutes he said that all of the people he wanted portraits of were people that he'd killed. He also said he'd killed more than that, many more, but that These were his favorite ones. I didn't know whether or not to believe him, but given the situation I was in, I didn't really want to find out. I asked him why I should tattoo these people on him when he'd probably just kill me afterwards, too, and he looked legitimately surprised. And he told me he'd never even considered it odd, especially knowing that I knew where he worked. He went on to tell me some really horrific things about what he'd done, things that I won't even repeat here. He gave me names and locations and was going to give me pictures of his victims for the tattoos. He said that before long he would get caught and that he wanted these tats on his arms so they'd never forget their faces while he was in prison. I don't think that this man felt that I could be any kind of threat to him. He was just so casual about everything and wasn't even really defensive in the least. But I grew up in the hood and had done several years in prison myself, and I knew how to handle myself. I didn't really even need to know how, as it turned out, because I stood up, hit him once, and he fell down, seeming to be unconscious. I took the key from him and unlocked the door, and then ran to my car and left in a hurry. I called the police to report everything as I drove, and this is where it really gets scary, in my opinion. They dispatched officers to this deli and sent one to my motel room so I could file a report about everything. The officer that showed up looked puzzled when I told him where it had happened, and he asked if I was sure. I said I was, and he told me that the deli had been closed for a few weeks now because the owner had disappeared. The owner's family apparently believed that the owner had gone to Hawaii for whatever reason. I guess he'd told them that before he was thinking about it, but he hadn't been in touch, so they had reported him missing. I told him I was sure and that I had proof. I still had the keys to the place. The cop went pale, looked pretty disturbed, but wouldn't say anything more about it. I gave him the keys and he left. Later on, though, I found out a few things that were pretty disturbing to me. One of them was that the owner's family hadn't been able to access the deli at all because it was locked up, and they had told the police that the owner had been the only one with the keys. I never heard any more about it, but I did A little investigating of my own. I searched all of the names that he told me and I got a few things from it. I can't be certain of these things as they were unrelated to what happened. I got hits on two of the names. The first was a prostitute with several arrests for the prostitution. The arrests weren't in this area, but they hadn't been too far away either. The second was a similar story but several drug charges and no prostitution. And like the other, she wasn't in the area but wasn't far off either. No hits for missing people under those names at all, but a prostitute might not have anyone who would report them missing. Same with the narcotics woman. That or the people that would possibly report her missing assumed she was on a using bench somewhere and neglected to report her missing. I found nothing at all about the rest that seemed to be related. I don't know what I believe about all this, but I leaned towards the possibility that this guy was dead serious. His demeanor, the vacant stare of his him locking the deli up. His behavior practically screamed that something was wrong. I left Ohio very shortly after this happened and I went home. I haven't been back there since. I forgot to mention that the police found the deli completely empty, but it was now suddenly unlocked. Throughout this story, I would like for you all to please keep in mind that I was 20 years old and very naive. You're going to think I'm stupid and I was. I'm probably lucky to be alive and God do I know that I kick myself whenever I think about this day. I just wanted to get some other opinions. Maybe I'm wrong about him. Okay, so about 20 years ago I was walking down the road in a not so great area. It was summertime and I was dressed appropriately for the heat. Shorts and a tank. I'm very thin and I was downright skinny then and I got mistaken for a sex worker more times than I care to admit. This may or may not be important to the story. So anyways, I was walking to pick up my son from daycare. As I was going about my way, a truck full of men had started to catcall and follow me. They turned around several times to yell at me out the window and I was getting nervous about it. I was passing a gas station parking lot and a man not much older than myself stopped in a nice car and asked if I would like a ride. He didn't seem scary and he was attractive so I said OK and got in his car. Sheesh. I really wish I could smack Myself. So I get into the car with him, and he asks where I'm going. I tell him it's about a mile straight down the road I'm on. He starts going the wrong way and he just tells me he needs to turn around. I pay a little mind. He starts to ask me a little bit about myself. So I tell him I was escaping a domestic violence situation and I was staying in a women's shelter that was nearby. I was telling him how closely my activities were monitored and that I was due to pick up my son any minute. I think this may actually be what saved me. At this point, I notice that he takes another wrong turn, but I don't know the area at all. So when I point it down, he says he's taken a shortcut or something. And I just go back to talking like an idiot. I then get a whiff of something. I now know that the smell was death. I know this for sure now. I didn't back then. I turn around and look in the backseat, looking for spoiled food or something. The car is absolutely spotless. I bring up the smell, and he just brushes it off and changes the subject. But for some reason, the smell just started getting stronger. Well, me being dumb, I bring it up again. What is that smell? He says he doesn't know. Probably something he forgot to take out and has gone bad. When I tell you guys that there is not a crumb in the vehicle, I mean it. I'm baffled by this. But eventually he drops me off safely to my destination. He doesn't tell me his name, ask for my number, or give me his. And I don't think much of it until much later when I smell that same smell again. But this time I know what it is. And it triggers the memory of the guy in the car. This was probably 2005 in Covington, Kentucky. And I'm very sure that he was aware that not only would I be missed, I would be missed quickly, and my movements would be tracked very specifically. Was probably the only reason that I made it back out of that car that day. I'm really lucky to be alive. I was living in Tampa, Florida, in 2018, right when there was a serial killer announcement. The news reported they caught the guy a few weeks later. But to this day, my gun tells me they got the wrong guy. So here's my story. It was April 20, 2018. So you know what I was doing, and a lot of it. But keep in mind, at this point in my life, I was a constant stoner for seven years. Weed didn't affect me the same way. My boyfriend at the time and I agreed to start the night off at different friends houses since his friends didn't smoke and mine did top with the fact that I was about to move to a different state and it would be the last time I would see my friends for a while. So around 10:11pm I would take an Uber to get to his friend's house. The night was highly normal up until this point so I ordered the Uber and the Uber driver drops off my other friends at their houses along the way. So being the person I am, I strike up a conversation for the 30 minute ride. How are you doing tonight? Are you seeing a lot of people hide tonight? My normal questions I really hate silence and this is just who I am as a person. After we get through some small talk he starts asking where I'm going and I explain everything above asks why I'm not partying with my boyfriend at the time and me being dumb, I explain I'm not sure if we're going to make it with the move and that he doesn't love me anymore. Then he starts asking if my mom knows where I am, if people know I'm coming and when my friends we just dropped off expect me to be home, do I live with them? And thankfully I caught on that these were really weird questions to ask someone traveling alone. So I started lying, saying my mom expected me to call as soon as I arrive and how I was getting texts in the group chat to tell them when I was at the other party safe once we arrived. Of course. Like a freaking horror movie, this night was feeling like the other friend's house was in the woods on the edge of Tampa and my high self was in overdrive trying to figure out how to get out of this one. We can finally see my friend's house in a little bonfire about 300ft away when he stops and then he says this is where he'll drop me off. I ran out of that car ASAP and he hightailed it right as I closed the door. Thank God I didn't leave anything in the Uber. I know it's not the craziest encounter, but my gut is rarely wrong about these things. I didn't think about this again until I saw the news when they announced they caught the guy. Do you guys remember the early days of the web? AOL software upgrades arrived in the mail on a CD rom? Family members shouted across the house at one another if an incoming call on the landline interrupted the painstaking 10 minutes it took to get from the American online signing screen to hearing you've got mail reverberate throughout the room. Recipients of multicolored chain emails, a serial killer camping out in a young girl's shower and killing her guard dog truly pondered the threat against their luck for the next seven years if they didn't abide by the message's command to forward it on to seven of their friends. Better not risk it, we told ourselves as we quickly typed out seven email addresses in the recipient field. And finding everything there was to know about a person online something anyone can do today with a few keystrokes and a credit card was a lot harder to do back then. But not for Corey. I was 15 years old at the time. Ambiguous and exotic usernames like Pinacotta33 or Brunettebaby87 were all the ray Naive as we early screen name pioneers were, this anonymity was smart. Social media was in its infancy. Xanga was the go to haven for teens and tweens to vence their angst while informing the world. They were currently listening to screaming infidelities by Dashboard Confessional. Everyone, of course, was friends with Tom on MySpace. AOL Instant messenger didn't exist as a standalone messenger service just yet. So was MSN messenger or bust. But if you had a true AOL account like I did, you were set up with all you needed to discover this new hyperconnected, free for all world of the early 2000s World Wide Web. Your own email inbox. A new page to create a personal profile. Access to chat rooms on just about any topic or hobby you could possibly imagine. It was exhilarating. Until it was terrifying, that is. One afternoon I jumped into one of these chat rooms ASL 16, Boston. I watched the usual exchange between total strangers scroll across my screen for several minutes, hoping to find my opportunity to finally chime in and introduce myself. Ultimately, I got bored and left the chat without typing a word. An instant message appeared on my screen. You didn't say anything, the message read. Why not? Who is this? I responded, confused by the username that I didn't recognize. I'm Corey, he responded. I'm 16, 8th grade, Lake Charles, Louisiana. What about you? 16 and in 8th grade. Yikes. And yet I was intrigued. So you got held back twice or what? I teased. And so the conversation began. We struck up a brief online friendship that afternoon. He shared a photo. Freckled face, brown hair. Nothing I'd rate above a 5 on hot or not yet. Despite the friendliness, I refused to tell him where I was from or anything personal about me beyond my first name and age. I knew a little about the dangers of the Internet, but I wasn't dumb either. My username was a fruity drink and some numbers. Right? Safe enough, I figured. For background, I did have one of those AOL user profiles. It's standard pictures, including a profile picture and a questionnaire to fill out fun facts about yourself. My photo was one of me with several friends, with no indication of which one was me whatsoever. A few days later, Corey had messaged me out of the blue. You're beautiful. Um, what? Brunettes with green eyes, man, he responded. Somehow, despite my photo containing three of my other friends, he had accurately identified me. I'd love to see you sometime, he said. I felt my skin prick. I politely told him something to the effect of that not being possible and quickly logged off. Friday the following week I was sleeping over at my best friend's house. I was logged into my account in the background as we thirstily browse cute guys on Hot or Not. Who's messaging you? My friend asked. I knew that it was Corey. Hey, you live in Houston. Your parents are James and Sarah Miller, and you live at 1655 South Grand. You know that feeling when you're on a roller coaster during a sharp drop and your heart jumps into your throat? That was that moment. Fortunately, we managed to find that AOL did in fact have a block user feature that night. That was it. So long creepy 16 year old middle schooler with scarily good online sleuthing skills. It didn't last long. The next day, a screen name similar to Corey's had messaged me. He had another account. I quickly blocked it. This happened five more times. I finally went dark for a while. Sure, I missed the thrill of seeing the yellow envelope appear in my virtual mailbox, but it was much better than the threat of being harassed by Corey. A few weeks later, I got home from school. My little sister was a baby at the time, 14 years my junior, so she had a nanny who had stayed with her during the day while my parents were at work. When I walked through the door of the kitchen, she handed the phone to me. It's for you, she said with a quizzical look on her face. Who is it? I really don't know. Some boy with a twang in his voice. Sounds like he's from East Texas or Louisiana, she told me. Oh God, I thought. Um, hello? I finally muttered into the phone. Hey, pretty thing, it's Corey. Hey. So my friends are all into that show Jackass we're thinking of making your trip over to Houston and doing some pranks around town next week. How hilarious would it be if we surprised you at your front door? I choked out a nervous laugh. I mumbled an excuse about having a quiz the next day and then quickly hung up. For the next few weeks, I slept with a knife under my mattress. I was absolutely terrified I'd wake up to this late Charles stranger boy on the balcony outside my window. How did he get my phone number? But just as soon as he invaded my sense of security, it seemingly disappeared. No instant messages. No uninvited calls to my home. The knife finally went back into its respective kitchen drawer. Two months passed, and it felt gloriously safe until the phone rang the first week of summer break. Hi, the voice said curtly. Who is this? I politely demanded. It's me, Corey. Let me be clear. This wasn't the same voice that I'd just heard two months ago. That voice was dripping in Southern syrup. It was young and full of mischief. This new voice was different. It was cold. It lacked any discernible accent. It was older. I was speaking to a grown man. I'm sorry I haven't been able to talk to you, he hurriedly blurted. Why did he sound rushed? I feel terrible, but the police came to my house. They took my computers away from me. I can't say why, but don't worry, I'll come to Houston soon. Click. That was the last day I used that fruity username. I deleted that account and created a new one. I embarrassingly told my parents that I'd made a huge mistake, despite having shared nothing that could have easily revealed my personal identity. Even if I had, the threat back then wasn't what it is now. This was nearly 20 years ago. People simply didn't have the online presences that they do today. As a teenager with no social media yet, I was virtually a ghost. But still, I was convinced I was somehow culpable for this stranger. This man, a predator who clearly had advanced knowledge of computers and the Internet, sankling me out and making it his mission to learn everything about me through whatever means possible. He was determined to get to me. I'm only grateful that even at 15, I knew better than to trust that this freckle faced kid from an online chat room had fully benign intentions. Two decades later, and I still wonder where Corey ended up. Hopefully behind bars. When I was 8 years old, my family moved into a lower income part of town. The good thing about it was my aunt, my mom's sister, and older brother who's on my dad's side and lived in the same neighborhood as us. There was an old small building from what I've been told was a church. I used to come there to play a lot as I didn't have many friends. My father kept my family really isolated the majority of my life. There was a girl who used to always come and play with me. Her name was Henrietta. I always liked Henrietta. We always played together. She was like the best friend I'd ever have. Considering I hadn't had many. Henry and his family stayed about two houses down from an older man named Mr. Herbert. I'd say he was maybe in his early 40s. During the time he was always very creepy looking if you ask me. He would always stare at me and Henrietta through his bushes. Or he'd be peeking out of the windows at us. Mr. Herbert gave me the worst feeling ever. I used to tell Henrietta to not talk to him because he seemed like he was kinda weird. But she was always as a child, tried to see the good in people. But I just couldn't shake the feeling of something sinister about him. I remember one night looking out of my bedroom window and seeing him across the street in the bushes just staring at my house. I closed the curtain for what seemed like 10 minutes. And when I opened the curtains back up, he was walking through the field back to his house. The next morning the police were everywhere. It seemed like Henrietta had gone missing and no one could find her. I remember her parents being really hysterical about it because Henrietta was their only child. Because I was her friend at the time. The police along with my parents went to the station and I told them that I had last seen Henrietta at the old church that we always played at. I was heading home and she said that she was waiting on a great friend to come by with candy. I had no clue who she was talking about. But I did mention the creepy neighbor Mr. Herbert. How he was always following us and staring at us. And how he had also made some comments about our bodies. My parents just told me to stop telling stories as they called it. Anyways, they apparently ruled Mr. Herbert out as a suspect in her disappearance. Henrietta never came home again. Mr. Herbert skipped town about six months later and still no Henrietta. It's been 24 years now since her disappearance. One day I cut on the news in our town and lo and behold Mr. Herbert, who is much older, was on there. Apparently the police came up with testing and they found new evidence that was overlooked linked to Mr. Herbert. They found Henrietta's body or dismembered parts, I should say, buried in a shallow grave. Mr. Herbert had violated her and then murdered her. He buried her beneath the old church floor. Apparently he was wanted in other places as well. The police said he had a long list of young girls that he was going to kill or had killed. He marked them out after each death. The police said that he had my photo and my name in a list. I was after Henrietta on the list. Apparently he was going to kill me next at some point. They ended up giving him life with no parole and he's currently still incarcerated. Every time I think of what happened, I get the chills. Because it could have been me next Foreign When I was in college, mid-20s, I went through it to Catch a Predator phase. The cops and robbers, hutzpah, the bravery of the young bad actors, and of course the simpering whining freaks who would get taken down by camouflage SWAT cops. But not before awkwardly equivocating over lemonade and cookies with Chris Hansen's turtleneck for 20 minutes. The show was the epitome of entertainment. Shad and Fruda cringe before we had a word for it. One night I'm going through YouTube clips and I start thinking and talking out loud to myself. Man, what did these predators do before the Internet? How did they find victims? How did they groom kids? I guess they probably just drove around the neighborhood and looked out for kids walking around. And then a memory popped into my head. I was reminded of a memory from 11 years earlier that I'd legitimately completely forgot about. It was summer, mid-90s before school started up. I was a 9 year old boy and my family had just moved to a new town, a fairly residential suburb of a larger American metropolis. We had probably been in the new zip code for two weeks max. One afternoon I had gone to the nearby sporting goods store to pick up a hockey stick and hockey tape, as roller hockey was my obsession at the time. This sporting goods store was literally two blocks away from our new house and I'd been walking to and from school in our old town for a couple of years, so it was no big deal that my parents let me make this trip alone. Some much sought after autonomy for a literal friendless kid in a brand new town. As I'm walking home a block from our house, a completely average mid-90s sedan cruises up next to me. Maybe like One of those late 80s Oldsmobiles, I don't know. I was on the right side of the street and this vehicle pulled over to the right side. It Was a wide, quiet two way street with plenty of space for this car to roll right up just a few feet of suburban lawns separating me on the sidewalk from the vehicle on the street, A completely average, nondescript white dude leans over from the driver's side and speaks to me. Hey, you know why they cork baseball bats? Uh, what I think I may have said. I stopped dead in my tracks. Do you know why they cork baseball bats? He turned his car off and hopped out walking towards me. I saw your hockey stick there and it got me thinking. Do you know why they cork baseball bats? He was probably in his 30s, thin or average build, curly short brown hair. I can't remember what he was wearing. I can't remember our verbatim conversation obviously, but basically his whole schtick was telling me that baseball bats aren't corked because the cork is springy and it helps the ball bounce more off the bat. Baseball bats are corked because it makes the bats lighter and easier to swing for the batter. My general thought process at this point is, uh, okay, cool man. If I had been a casual cusser at that point in my life, I definitely would have been thinking, what the hell is going on here? But he did all the talking and I just awkwardly, politely nodded and kind of just smiled here and there. It was like one of those adult conversations where the loudest person in the room ends every sentence with you know what I mean? Oh gosh. There's something that I really wish I could show you. I wish there was an adult around. Now, in retrospect, this is already completely freaking inappropriate behavior, but this comment should have been a big alarm bell for me. It wasn't. Are your parents home? I would love to show you something if your parents are home so that they can watch. My dad is a bit strict and I knew me bringing Bill Strangeman home from the sporting goods store would not go over well. So I think I lied and said no. Again. This is already freaking insane. But I still wasn't really scared or concerned about corked back guy. I was more concerned with getting dressed down by my dad for taking too long at the sporting goods store. However, even my naivety and total absent mindedness knew that something was amiss. When court bad guy asked his next question, where do you live? Maybe I can take you home and we can wait for your parents. Now, as I said, I had just moved to this neighborhood, but for whatever reason, maybe just the way I'm wired, I had already taken to memorizing the street grid of my new neighborhood. So without thinking, I lied and told the guy we lived on the street several blocks away from where we actually lived. Where we actually lived was within sight of this entire encounter and I began to grow more aware that I was gone at the sports store for a long time and would probably get yelled at when I got home. Do you want a ride home? He asked. I declined, and I'm not really sure how many times the guy asked, but I was smart enough to not get into his car. I sometimes wonder what my life would have been like if I hadn't stood firm. He was nice, he seemed to know a thing or two about sports, he was just offering to help me out, and I was a very well behaved boy who was respectful to everyone and I generally liked speaking with adults in a somewhat adult manner. I was mature beyond my years, but my fear of what my dad would do if I didn't make it home soon and my dad's parenting style probably saved my life or at least several thousands of dollars in therapy that afternoon. Aw man, I just really wish there was another adult around. The guy really kept harping on this caveat. Finally, after what may have been half an hour, he finally backed away and got back into his car after giving me an entire physics lecture on action and reaction, corked baseball bats, and how frustrating it was that there weren't any adults around. I still wasn't scared, nor did I understand any of what was going on, but I was definitely physically relieved when this freaking weirdo had started his engine back up and took off down the block. Like I said, I was a block from home and I couldn't wait to get home because even I could feel a suspicious amount of time it elapsed and my dad would be grumpy. But I also knew that something wasn't right about this dude. So I kept an eye on his car, just waiting for him to make a turn out of sight before booking it to my new house. He got one block away, two blocks away, three blocks away. I walked extra slowly just in case he was keeping an eye on me in his rearview mirror. Then he freaking turned around and came right back towards me. Court bad guy's dream had come true. An elderly neighbor was outside, even closer to my house, mowing his lawn and doing some yard work. Annoyance more than dread percolated up through my veins as the car came back and now parked. As I slowly got closer to the random old man. I still remember the old guy wearing standard old man attire of nice 40 year old brown slacks and a pit Stained white V neck undershirt. Quirk. Bad guy parks again and hops out of his car again. And then he strolls back towards me with that same oblivious confidence. Although this time he hollers at the old guy. Hey Pops, you got a minute? I want to show this kid something. Old guy is just as confused and inconvenienced as I was. He doesn't say a word one way or the other, but he's already there watering his lawn, so by default he's now the long sought after adult witness this freaking knob in the Oldsmobile was hoping for. The guy then walked me through this absurd demonstration where he held the palms of his hands flat and upright in front of him and invited me to slap them. Some sort of demonstration about the speed and the physics and the whole freaking corked baseball bat thing. Again, just a reminder, I was walking around with a hockey stick. Don't ask. I honestly can't tell you why I put up with this guy's bullcrap. I must have been timid and scared to come off as ruse or just completely confused by the attention. Maybe I was stupid. I mean I was 9 years old so there's that. But I will admit that I recall laughing and actually having a fun time as this guy kept telling me to punch his hands over and over and over again. Please don't ask. I don't know. Finally this guy realizes his grand plans are not going to pan out today. Maybe the old man being there backfired on him, or maybe I was being more obstinate than I recall. But the dude finally packed up his physics lecture, got back in his sedan and drove off. Once again. I made sure he was out of sight before I sprinted back to my parents house, exchanging a mutual look of pure disorientation with the old man who just wanted to water his lawn. Sure enough, when I got home, my dad was prickly that I'd been gone for so long, probably an hour, when my errand should have only taken about 20 or 30 minutes. I lied and I said I just spent a long time at the sporting goods store wandering around and even though I could tell my dad didn't buy it, he didn't have much else to go on challenging my story than a hunch. Like I said earlier, I got yelled at a lot for all sorts of little crap kids shouldn't get yelled at for. So admitting I entertained a random on the sidewalk for 40 minutes wasn't going to go over well. Since ultimately nothing happened to me, I literally forgot all about this encounter until years later when I was watching other desperate pederasts getting their comeuppance on Dateline. But I mean, it was definitely a predator trying to abduct me or groom me, right? He rolls up on me totally out of nowhere, completely uninvited. He starts off by talking about sports with me. I'm a young boy with a piece of sports equipment, so he immediately goes into some spiel about something vaguely sports related, just so we have something in common. He was oddly fascinated with the idea of whether or not there were adults around watching, which may have been a cover for him to ask me where I live and offer me a ride home. Ultimately, he escalated his bullcrap quirked baseball bat thing into a game where physical touching was initiated, where he was giving me orders to keep touching him. Once again, I was ultimately unharmed and I wasn't even aware of that sort of thing when I was 9. So I don't have any trauma or anything like that. I don't even wonder about the guy very much. Like if I had said something, would he have gotten taken off the streets? I just didn't know back then. And I thought at the time he was very, very strange, but not dangerous. Years later, after this memory resurfaced, I checked the Megan's Law website for my hometown and sifted through some of the pictures of registered offenders. I saw a few generic Y guys among the mugshots, but can't say for sure whether one was the guy or not, so who knows? Years later, I had finally told this story to my parents at a Christmas dinner. I think, yeah, I know. And my dad, who's not emotional, very stoic, kind of self centered and self sustaining and just really a tough book to read, got really upset at the guy. My dad was asking all sorts of questions as if it had all just happened, like what the guy looked like, which way he drove, that sort of thing. My dad had also grilled me over and over again to make sure something worse hadn't happened to me that day. I assured him nothing had. In a perverse way, it was kind of touching to see my dad suddenly fulfill that masculine stereotype of I'll kill whoever touches my kid. A sort of strange happy ending to a weird story that could have ended much more tragically. Ra.