Some of these connections are just coincidences... others are genuinely hard to shake.
Hi, I’m Crystal, a Senior Editor based in Los Angeles and creator of BuzzFeed’s “That Got Dark” newsletter.to tell us about the time they met or interacted with someone connected to a well-known true crime case.
Here are their jaw-dropping responses:Gary Ridgway :"My father was friends with the brother of Constance Naon, one of the Green River Killer victims. My dad went on a double date with his girlfriend, his friend, and Constance. He didn't know her super well, but was friends with her brother and spent at least that night as a part of her friend group."Gary Ridgway, known as the Green River Killer, was an American serial killer who murdered dozens of young women — many of them vulnerable or involved in sex work — in Washington State during the 1980s and 1990s. He earned his nickname after several victims were discovered near the Green River. Ridgway often lured victims with promises of money, then strangled them and left their bodies in remote areas. In 2003, he, the 1982 murder of 20-year-old Rebecca"Becky" Marrero. He is considered one of the most prolific convicted serial killers in US history.was a 20-year-old victim of Gary Ridgway, the Green River Killer. She vanished on June 8, 1983. Her remains were discovered four months later, on Oct. 27, 1983, in a vacant lot south of the Seattle-Tacoma International Airport — a location where Ridgway left multiple victims.John Wayne Gacy :"My mom told me a story from when she was in college studying pre-law. She knew someone in the courtroom with connections, and they asked my mom if she would like to meet the man on trial. The man on trial? John Wayne Gacy. She said she went into a big room with a large cage-like box in the center, and there he was. She talked to him and remembers that if he hadn’t gotten caught, you never would have suspected him because he was so polite and pleasant. She then got to sit in on the trial, and when Gacy walked out, he waved at my mom and addressed her by name. My mom was mortified because she was seated right in front of the parents of Gacy’s victims."Known as the Killer Clown — a moniker given because of his public appearances as a clown before the discovery of his crimes — Gacy was a serial killer active in the Chicago area in the 1970s, with at least 33. He would rape and torture his victims — young men and boys — before killing them either by asphyxiation or strangulation. Gacy wasDennis Rader :"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 local newspaper. That's how we found out my neighbor was innocent and his wife was murdered by Dennis Rader, aka BTK."killed his victims. Rader was responsible for a series of murders that took place over a long period of time, from 1974 to 1991. However, Rader was not caught until three decades later, in 2005. In total, he killed 10 people and was known for staging self-bondage photos inspired by victims and taking photographs of himself that way. Rader is currently serving 10 consecutive life sentences in a maximum security prison in Kansas.Patsy Ramsey :"My mom worked at a high-end department store, in the children's clothing department, during the '90s in Denver. Years later, she was donating old suits she used to wear to work when she found Patsy Ramsey's business card in a pocket. Creepy."was a 6-year-old girl who was killed in her family's home in Boulder, Colorado, on Dec. 25 or 26, 1996. Herwas attributed to a skull fracture from a blow to the head and strangulation by a garrote that was found around her neck. The case became a media circus, largely because Ramsey was a child beauty pageant contestant, and it received constant coverage worldwide.The case is widely viewed as suspicious because many details contradict the typical patterns of a kidnapping, which is what her parents initially claimed happened. The 2.5-page ransom note is the most suspicious element; it was written on a notepad found inside the house, included"practice drafts," and demanded a specific dollar amount thatJohn Ramsey's work bonus. Furthermore, the note's dramatic, cinematic language felt more like a staged distraction than a genuine demand from aThe discovery of JonBenét's body in her own basement hours after the note was found — and her father’s subsequent— further complicated the investigation by contaminating the crime scene. These anomalies, combined with the public's unease over her highly sexualized pageant image and the fact that there were no signs of forced entry into the home, have fueled decades of debate over whether the crime was an outside job or an internal family tragedy that was staged to look like a kidnapping. It is still considered aStewart Weldon :"Growing up and into my early adulthood, I lived next door to the serial killer Stewart Weldon's grandmother, aunt, and cousin for YEARS. Our doors were less than 20 feet apart. They were close enough to us to be invited for Thanksgiving dinner, and things like that, and the cousin still hangs out with one of my extended cousins. The grandmother was really sweet. She was elderly with a bit of dementia and couldn't be alone, so their extended family was always coming over to visit and spend time with her. There's pretty much no chance our paths never crossed. Let me tell you, when the information about him came out, our family was SHOOK."is a convicted American serial killer and rapist from Springfield, Massachusetts. He was caught in May 2018 following a police chase, during which officers rescued a woman he had kidnapped and been torturing for a month. A subsequent search of his home uncovered the bodies of three missing women — America Lyden, Ernestine Ryans, and Kayla Escalante — buried or hidden on his property.In September 2021, Weldon pleaded guilty to 39 charges, including three counts of first-degree murder, kidnapping, and aggravated rape. He was sentenced to three consecutive life terms without the possibility of parole and is currently serving his sentence at the Old Colony Correctional Center. Kendall Francois :"Kendall Francois murdered multiple sex workers and kept their bodies in his home along with his living mother and little brother in Poughkeepsie, New York. He was the hall monitor in my middle school; ironically, the rumor was that he was an undercover cop. He was enormous and smelled awful — now we know what the smell was.", known as the"Poughkeepsie Killer," was an American serial killer who murdered eight women in Poughkeepsie, New York, between 1996 and 1998. During this period, while in his 20s, he worked as a student monitor at Arlington Middle School, where he had previously been a janitor. While holding this position and attending classes off and on at Dutchess Community College, Francois targeted local sex workers, whom he strangled and hid in the attic and crawl spaces of the home he shared with his family.His crimes went undetected for nearly two years until September 1998, when a woman he attempted to kill escaped and led police to his residence. To avoid the death penalty, he pleaded guilty to eight counts of first-degree murder and was sentenced to life in prison without parole. He died in 2014 at the age of 43 from AIDS-related complications while serving his sentence.St. Valentine’s Day Massacre :"The Tommy guns used in the St. Valentine's Day massacre were found at a house in my town. It's now a real estate office."was a mass shooting that took place in Chicago on Feb. 14, 1929, when seven men were lined up inside a garage and shot to death. Witnesses reported seeing men dressed like police leading others out afterward, which helped fuel the theory that the killers used disguises to get close and control the scene.The murders were widely linked to the Prohibition-era war between Al Capone’s organization and the North Side Gang, but despite the notoriety, no one was ever convicted. Nearly a century later, it remains one of the most infamous unsolved crimes in American history.David Milgaard :"While he was briefly on the run, I spent some time in the early '80s with the number one man on Canada's Most Wanted list, David Milgaard. He ended up spending 23 years in jail for a murder he didn't commit. When he was finally freed via DNA evidence, The Tragically Hip wrote a beautiful song about him,"Wheat Kings." While he was in jail, we wrote for a while, but when my mother found out, she tossed them. He ended up married with two kids. A community support worker, he'd also talk about justice to high schools. A year after he died, The Miscarriage of Justice Review Commission Act was passed into law . He was a beautiful man, inside and out, and will always have a place in my heart."was a Canadian man who became a national symbol for the wrongfully convicted after spending 23 years in prison for a 1969 murder he did not commit. Convicted as a teenager based on coerced testimony, he was only released in 1992 following a tireless campaign by his mother, Joyce Milgaard. In 1997, DNA evidence finally exonerated him and identified the actual killer, leading to a $10 million settlement and a formal apology from the government. Until he died in 2022, Milgaard used his experience to advocate for legal reform, ultimately inspiring theTed Bundy :"My distant family member was Ted Bundy’s former fiancée! The one who broke up with him and went to the police early on, not the one who got together with him after his arrest and conviction. I think it was a second- or third-cousin once or twice removed?? I can never remember, but my family always said they would never bring it up for her and her child’s sake."was a serial killer who kidnapped, raped, and murdered at least 30 young women and girls in the '70s. However, many believe there may have been over 100 victims. After several years in prison, Bundy was executed by electric chair in January 1989.Atlanta child murders :"Before I was born, my older cousin served as the forensic psychologist for the defense. They were trying to plead guilty by reason of insanity as an option. My cousin said, 'That guy is not crazy.” He went on to open his own practice. I didn’t learn until after he died. When I mention it to my parents, they just roll it off their shoulders; they are very impassive about it. I was blown away. The things you learn, right?"were a series of at least 29 killings targeting primarily Black children and adolescents in Atlanta between 1979 and 1981. The spree created a climate of terror, leading to citywide curfews and a massive FBI investigation. In 1982, Wayne Williams was convicted of the murders of two adults and subsequently linked to 22 of the child cases, which were then closed. However, Williams was never tried for the children's deaths, and the case remains controversial, with many families and skeptics questioning his sole responsibility. In 2019, city officials reopened the evidence for modern DNA testing to provide more definitive answers.Jean Pierre"JP" Orlewicz :"I went to high school with JP, who decapitated a dude in his grandfather's garage. He's doing life without parole. My mom's friend lived next door to the grandfather and got called by the defense as a character witness."of 26-year-old Daniel Sorensen. At age 17, Orlewicz lured Sorensen to a garage where he stabbed him to death, subsequently beheading and burning the body to hide the victim's identity. While Orlewicz claimed he acted in self-defense during an extortion attempt, prosecutors proved the murder was a premeditated act driven by a desire to experience killing. He remains incarcerated at the Lakeland Correctional Facility after multiple failed appeals. Patty Hearst and Sam Bankman-Fried :"I have two separate ones! Both Patty Hearst and Sam Bankman-Fried went to my high school . We would joke about our 'infamous alums' and laugh about them as a 'career idea' post-graduation. Never met them, but we have plaques with everyone's name in each graduating class, and the free book table was right underneath SBF's name. As an avid reader, I'd see his name a lot."is an American heiress who became a 1970s media sensation after being kidnapped from her Berkeley apartment by the radical Symbionese Liberation Army . During her 19 months in captivity, she was allegedly brainwashed and joined the group under the name"Tania," famously participating in an armed bank robbery. Though her lawyers argued she suffered from Stockholm syndrome, she was convicted of robbery in 1976. Her sentence was lateris the disgraced co-founder of the cryptocurrency exchange FTX and its sister trading firm, Alameda Research. Once a billionaire celebrated as the"king of crypto" and a major political donor, his empire collapsed inwhen it was revealed he had used billions in customer deposits to cover risky investments and personal expenses. In late 2023, he was convicted of seven counts of fraud and money laundering, and he is currently serving a 25-year federal prison sentence.Lorna Anderson :"In high school , my parenting class took a field trip to a prison to talk to inmates about the challenges of being an incarcerated parent . Our tour guide was absolutely the nicest, sweetest lady. Later, we had a Q&A session with her, and someone asked her what she was in for. She said simply, 'Murder.' It turns out she was Lorna Anderson, and they'd made a TV movie about her! was a central figure in a 1983 Kansas murder case involving an affair with Lutheran minister Thomas “Tom” Bird. The two conspired to kill their spouses so they could be together. In, Anderson lured her husband, Martin, out of their vehicle on a rural highway by pretending to feel ill and claiming she had lost her keys; he was then shot by a masked assailant in front of their children.Investigators later uncovered a broader plot linking Martin’s death to the earlier killing of Bird’s wife, Sandra, initially staged as an accident. Anderson eventually confessed and implicated Bird. She pleaded guilty to solicitation of both murders and later to second-degree murder in her husband’s death. Highland Park parade shooting :"One of the people that survived the 4th of July Highland Park parade shooting had the same phlebotomy class as I did. He had some PTSD from that event, but was uninjured otherwise, since he managed to run into a building to get away from the shooting, but ended up witnessing other people getting shot. So, I ended up knowing a guy that must have literally been lucky enough to dodge multiple bullets during that."was a mass shooting that occurred on July 4, 2022, in a suburb of Chicago. During an Independence Day parade, a gunman positioned on a rooftop fired more than 70 rounds into the crowd, killing seven people and injuring 48 others. The shooter, Robert Crimo III, fled the scene disguised in women’s clothing but was captured later that day following a brief manhunt.In April 2025, Crimo was sentenced to seven consecutive life sentences without the possibility of parole — one for each person killed — plus thousands of additional years for dozens of counts of attempted murder. The judge described him as “irreparably corrupt” and “beyond any rehabilitation.” His father, Robert Crimo Jr., also served jail time after pleading guilty to reckless conduct for sponsoring his son’s gun license application despite prior warning signs.Joseph Banis and Jeffrey Mundt :"Lived next to two guys I always thought were kind of creepy. Six months later, cops and news vans were out front, and the two were arrested and tried for murder. They had found a guy buried in their basement wine cellar. It’s the case at the heart of, and his body was later buried in a plastic storage container beneath the basement floor. The crime went undiscovered for months until a domestic dispute between homeowners and partners Joseph Banis and Jeffrey Mundt led police to the remains.of murder after a video surfaced in which Banis claimed sole responsibility, but he was convicted of charges related to evidence tampering and abuse of a corpse and served a reduced sentence. The case remains well known in true crime media for its disturbing details and conflicting accounts. Timothy McVeigh :"My cousin graduated with McVeigh. She said he was quiet but not awkward or withdrawn, just not outgoing. He was polite, and for lack of a better term, normal. My aunt served at some school functions with his mother. She felt horrible for his family. They were all very nice people and well-liked in the community. Churchgoing. There were no signs, and nothing stood out that could have been a red flag. The area they lived in is pretty much farm country. How or why a pretty regular kid from rural WNY ended up the deadliest domestic terrorist in US history is baffling."The Oklahoma City bombing, one of the deadliest acts of domestic terrorism in US history, occurred on April 19, 1995. The perpetrator, Timothy McVeigh, detonated a truck bomb outside the Alfred P. Murrah Federal Building, killing 168 people, including 19 children who were in a daycare center in the building, and injuring hundreds more. McVeigh died by lethal injection onPaul Bernardo :"I knew a psychologist who worked at Kingston Penitentiary before it shut down, and I was starting a criminal psychology degree at the time and was very interested, so he offered to take me on a tour, which of course I jumped at the chance. I figured we wouldn’t go to the cells where the worst of the worst are, but nope. We walked down a cell block, and he’s talking to me about the prisoners who have life sentences , and we pass Paul Bernardo. Paul Bernardo is infamous in Canada because he really was pure evil. He’s lying on his bed watching his TV, but as we pass, he makes eye contact with me, and I swear it sent a chill down my spine. I wanted to look away, but it was like a morbid curiosity. I should’ve looked away because a second later, he winks at me before going back to his TV.""Oh my god, I wanted to throw up. This experience really made me question if I wanted to go into criminal psychology, but I did anyway and have never ever had an experience that unsettled me as much as that did."is a notorious Canadian serial killer and rapist who, alongside his former wife Karla Homolka, committed a series of brutal crimes in Ontario during the late 1980s and early 1990s. Initially known as the"Scarborough Rapist," he was later convicted of the kidnapping, torture, and murder of teenagers Leslie Mahaffy and Kristen French, as well as the death of Homolka's younger sister, Tammy. His 1995 trial gained international infamy due to the discovery of horrific videotapes he filmed of the assaults. Designated a"Dangerous Offender," Bernardo is currently serving a life sentence in a medium-security prison in Quebec and has been repeatedly denied parole, most recently in late 2024.Dorothea Puente :"My sister and I spent the weekend at our grandparents' house north of Sacramento, California. My grandfather was driving us through downtown Sacramento towards our home, but traffic was moving slowly and was backed up by cops, news crews, and onlookers. We passed this old two-story house and saw an older woman handcuffed and being led towards a police cruiser. My grandmother, in Spanish, asked what they were doing to that poor viejita . When we arrived at my parents' house, my grandmother told my mother the details, and my mother proclaimed that she was watching the news earlier and that it was the 'Boarding House Killer,' Dorothea Puente, who had been arrested."Dorothea Puente ran a boarding house in Sacramento, California where she killed various elderly people and people with mental disabilities in the '80s. The total victim count reached nine confirmed murders and six unconfirmed. Puente waswith a total of nine murders and convicted of three of those. She received two life sentences without the possibility of parole and died in prison at Chowchilla on March 27, 2011, from natural causes.Finally, Rachel Rachlin :"My Spanish teacher was the mother of Rachel. She was a teacher who was killed by her own roommate in the 1990s."was a 29-year-old teacher who moved into an apartment in Westmont, Illinois, in July 1993 after responding to a newspaper ad for a roommate placed by a man named Donald Kalwa. About a month later, she disappeared after telling friends she wanted to move out. On Sept. 1, 1993, her car was found in a parking lot at O’Hare International Airport, with her body in the trunk buried under dirt. She had been shot three times in the head. Kalwa was later convicted of her murder and sentenced to
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