Survived the doomsday scenario of often occurring B-52 alert launches during my days in SAC during the Cold War. And so did all of you!

Worked with a guy one summer, who many years later killed his wife and kids, but didn't have the guts to kill himself.

Wow, amazing stories. Very interesting.

I have a friend who worked for Cantor Fitzgerald at the World Trade Center. They lost 658 employees on 9/11. My friend (who always started work early) went down several floors to get a bagel. While he was there, the plane hit above his location. He evacuated and exited the building. He doesn't remember doing it, but when he got home he found the half eaten bagel in his pocket. He had it laminated and mounted. The bagel saved his life.

quote:

Originally posted by bendable:
Stopped a carjacking and
Caught two thieves

Five people got felony convictions as a result.

Stopped an attempted carjacking. Mine. Right at the apartment's gate where I was living many years ago. The 2 motherfuckers ran off. Reported it to the two cops who were in the Stop-N-Go next door. They didn't care.

quote:

Originally posted by Fed161:
I have a friend who worked for Cantor Fitzgerald at the World Trade Center. They lost 658 employees on 9/11. My friend (who always started work early) went down several floors to get a bagel. While he was there, the plane hit above his location. He evacuated and exited the building. He doesn't remember doing it, but when he got home he found the half eaten bagel in his pocket. He had it laminated and mounted. The bagel saved his life.

A high school buddy AND his brother both worked for CF and perished that day.

We had a close friend an neighbor who perished in the north tower. Back then they were collecting DNA samples from the families of the missing. Then they were sorting all the debris and remains and found a bone fragment of our neighbor. When the NYC medical examiner met with the wife and kids, he said, if Mark was sitting in his office chair when the plane hit, it would have hit the back of his chair and he'd have not seen or felt anything. Our street was later renamed for him.

I watched 9-11 play out on tv and lived the Covid pandemic hoax of 2020.

When I was 5 years old, they opened a new KFC in our town. When we went, the Colonel was there greeting folks and I shook his hand.

When I was 14 years old, a car dealer 2 blocks from our home did a promotion with Colonel Klink (Werner Klemperer) from Hogans Heroes. I took my cassette recorder with me and recorded our conversation.

The first successful band I was in opened for Journey. All of the members were really cool and down to earth - except Steve Perry.

quote:

Originally posted by 12131:

quote:

Originally posted by bendable:
Stopped a carjacking and
Caught two thieves

Five people got felony convictions as a result.

Stopped an attempted carjacking. Mine. Right at the apartment's gate where I was living many years ago. The 2 motherfuckers ran off. Reported it to the two cops who were in the Stop-N-Go next door. They didn't care.

Just curious,
Did it take you 3 months to calm the "f" down ? Also

Not sure if this counts, but one of my first “big case” crime memories was when Ted Bundy was killing in the Seattle area.

I was 12 years old and had a morning paper route delivering the Seattle Post Intelligencer. The case was riveting to me and I remember reading the news reports in the papers I delivered. Fascinating stuff, and while it sounds wrong, I remember almost being upset (probably not the best word choice) when the murders stopped in my area and he moved on. It was like reading a good book and not wanting it to end.


When TB was identified and captured, I again followed the story through his escapes and other crimes until finally caught for good in Florida and sentenced to death. I remember celebrating the news of his execution and the case finally being “closed” for good. I had been “following” his case for about 15 of my 26 years of life at that point.


Overlapping with Bundy was Gary Ridgway, the “Green River Killer”. I had already left the area when his first victim was found in 1982. I was in the Marines but still kept up on the news “back home”. As the GRK body count grew, it reminded me of Bundy and I remember hearing how a King County Detective went to Florida to interview Bundy and discuss the Green River cases with him. I was intrigued that these two prolific and notorious murders were essentially from my “home town”.



Fast forward to 1992, I’d been out of the Marines for a couple years. Bundy was long gone and the Green River case seemed to have come to a dead end. No new victims were being found, leads had dried up. The Green River Task Force still existed, but had been severely reduced and the case was essentially relegated to “cold case” in status if not in name. It was at this time I was hired by the King County Sheriff’s Office to work in the 911 Communications Center.

As a Call Receiver in the early 90’s I took a number of “Tips” from callers on the Green River cases. While not frequent, such tips were not uncommon the first few years I was there. Some seemed legit, but never seems to pan out while others were clearly from folks not completely in control of their mental faculties. Regardless, every tip got written up and sent off to the task force. As time went on they became less frequent and those that did come in were increasingly hard to believe as the tipsters were more likely to have mental deficiencies than not.

In time, even the infrequent tips stopped. Lots of theories about why the GRK stopped. The killer died, he moved, he was arrested and incarcerated for something else, a would-be victim was able to kill him and never reported it. It all just became a mental exercise at some point.


It stayed that way until spring of 2001 when all of a sudden there was a lot of “secret squirrel”, hush-hush stuff going on. Rumors started spreading around the department, new evidence? New suspect? The Green River Task Force which had existed pretty much in name only for years was now getting additional staffing. Something big was going on. Everyone had heard something but no one knew anything.

Those in the know kept everything close to the chest better than anything I had experienced up to that point and in all the time since.

By 2001 I had been a Supervisor in the Comm Center for 5 years. I was one of the people who called out the Major Crimes folks and specialty units to respond to major events. Part of my job was giving initial info to the media on high profile, in-progress calls. My duties also included calling the Duty Officer and many times, even the Sheriff himself in the wee hours to advise of the really big stuff.


The Sheriff at that time was Dave Reichert, the same Dave Reichert who 15 years earlier was the young Detective who had travelled to Florida to discuss the Green River case with TB.

Rumors swirled for a few months, but then sort of died down. No new rumors and no one talking about it so it just drifted out of mind for most of us until November 2001 when things started buzzing again. On Nov 30, 2001 I was at work and running the Comm Center desk, I was one of very few non-commissioned folks that day to be let in on the secret - they had DNA evidence and they were going to make an arrest.

I picked the Dispatcher to be assigned the Tac Channel the team would be on when the Sheriff’s Detectives and Deputies went into the Kenworth paint plant in Renton WA to take Ridgway into custody. By the time the Major Crimes detective advised ”One in custody, code 4” everyone in the room knew what was going on and with that transmission the Comm center erupted in cheers and applause. We all witnessed history first hand that day.


In the aftermath of the arrest I read reams of probable cause statements, charging documents, etc. as the info became available. Some I was only privy to through my employment however much of this is available to the public. I will caution you that once read, it may haunt you. His crimes were documented in gruesome detail, his chilling confessions and statements, the brutality with which his victims suffered even after the release that death brings. From what I have read and heard from officers involved with the case, if ever there was a soulless demon unleashed by satan himself to bring suffering to the world it is Gary Ridgway.



Fast forward again to February of last year. I was finishing out my 30 year career with KCSO assigned to the records unit. We had been in a temporary work space while asbestos mitigation work was being done in the Records area of the King County Courthouse. With the work completed I was tasked with returning old paper case files from temporary storage and put them back into the Lektreiver storage unit. (Big mechanical rotating thing that holds records - looks like this )


While loading files, I came across a number of large 3-4” three ring binders with a case number and the name “Bundy”. I was able to spend almost an hour going through the original, handwritten notes and reports from the Ted Bundy investigation. I assumed in this day and age such documents would have been digitized and archived. Nope, still in the original binders and set for indefinite retention. I don’t know if I am weird, but it just made me awestruck to have those original documents in my hand.


It almost seemed like kind of an “alpha-omega” moment for me. Bundy gave me my first real understanding of the evil men do at a relatively early age and that awareness was reinforced with Ridgway’s crimes. It’s even possible these cases sparked my life long interest and support for law enforcement.

When my initial USMC enlistment was up, I was planning on becoming a police officer. I ended up re-enlisting for another 6 years instead and when I did get out being a cop wasn’t an option. The 911 gig however was a perfect fit and an extremely fulfilling career. Even having taken tips over the years, I would have never guessed I would be tangentially involved in the GRK conclusion.

Then as one of my last duties in a 30 year career, being able to hold the original documents from the case that opened my pre-teen eyes to the real world after spending nearly half my life in support of law enforcement, it just seems surreal to me at times.



Wow, this sure ended up being a lot longer than I expected it to. Seems like someone needs to chime in ”Ok grandpa, let’s get you to bed…”

My grandmother, my dad’s mom, heard the original, live radio broadcast of “war of the worlds”, and believed it was real.

I was working the night at a casino ,a few hundred yards away from Mandalay Bay when Paddock shot up the strip. There was a disturbance, a dealer and I ran out and I drove her to her apartment. Paddock had played in High Limit on one occasion prior to Oct 1st.

As a kid I knew a lady who had been a maid for Al Capone. Said he was nice and she had been gifted a Tiffany Lamp.... maybe she wasn't a maid afterall.

Not sure if most here would classify as a notorious event (though some might), grandfather on my dad's side was active duty and worked on the Manhattan Project to include being present at Trinity Site.

Grandfather on mom's side was a Ltjg during the Battle of Guadalcanal. (After I was 10 years in the USN and just before deploying for what would become Desert Storm, he opened up a bit about what it was like fighting ship-to-ship in pitch black and firing at any sound.

I worked 1 on 1 a few times with Roland Dow at the railroad. People from NH probably recognize his name from about a decade back.


https://www.bostonherald.com/2...aught-at-theme-park/

quote:

Originally posted by ryan81986:
I worked 1 on 1 a few times with Roland Dow at the railroad. People from NH probably recognize his name from about a decade back.


https://www.bostonherald.com/2...aught-at-theme-park/

I hope that prick falls feet first into a slow wood chipper. A bullet to the brain is too good for him.

quote:

Originally posted by JoseyWales2:
Worked with a guy one summer, who many years later killed his wife and kids, but didn't have the guts to kill himself.

That one reminds me - A month or so after transferring from one command to another while in the USN, I heard an article on the news about (not the real name) Joe Smith of PQ being a suspect in the killing his wife and kid and who's location is unknown (he was on the lamb).

"Joe Smith" was the same name of an a-hole Chief in my previous command. And the location was close enough to ask if same person. Called some friends in my previous command and the responses were not the same person, couldn't be the same person, just deployed to another part of the world.

Lo and behold - "Joe's" picture is in the news and it is the Chief.

He did the deed an hour-ish prior to his flight in hopes of it looking like a random killing after he was on a flight.

All the talk about 9/11 reminds me that about a hundred yards down our street, here in a little village in rural Cambridgeshire a couple were talking to their son, working in the North Tower, and saying goodbye to him forever - his voice cut off as the tower fell.

Utter heartbreak.

I was working at Laurel Race track and decided to head over to the shopping center to see George Wallace speak. This was where he got shot and spent the rest of his life in a wheelchair.

quote:

Originally posted by sigfreund:

quote:

Originally posted by architect:
I was also at the Pentagon and on the Mall during the anti-Nam protests in '67 and '68 ....

Me, too. I was in the middle of one demonstration when these guys showed up from the American Nazi Party (I believe that was their name). The big banner they had said “Nixon is a no-win swine.” One of the demonstrators charged the little group and got tear gas sprayed. The DC police quickly bundled the Nazi group into a van and drove them away.

One of the rites of passage at my HS was to visit the American Nazi Party headquarters. which ISTR was the home of George Lincoln Rockwell in Arlington, ring the doorbell and run away, or, for those really brave to ask the person who answered the door for party literature. Bold stuff for back then, the atrocities of the German Nazi party, and the depredations of WW2 were still painfully recent as most of our fathers had fought in that conflict. The (very few) Jewish kids who participated in these shenanigans got huge props.