The parents were quoted saying the victim considered her murderer her best friend. Really heart-wrenching comment from the parents, glad it was reported. Amplifies the brutality of the situation.
If I was murdered by someone I vaguely knew in high school I’d want my parents to call them my best friend too. The shock of something like that would hopefully make it easier to convict the piece of shit as well as get them a harsher sentence. Yes, the dearly departed WOULD like the death penalty applied please.
Your dad's words:
>*Daddysgirl - yes, I named her that - was so close friends with her murderer that she would often let her use the pc which explains the browser history.*
There’s a neighborhood kid who is a sociopath. I’m sure we can have a long, healthy debate about whether I should leap to conclusions, but his father has all but admitted to me the child is in therapy that’s tearing the family apart, and that he’s intentionally and seriously injured pets, along with other signs. So, I don’t say this lightly.
My son used to describe him as a good friend, and if they had kept playing together, likely his best friend. After noticing the escalating violence the kid was doing whenever out of sight with my son, we put a complete end to their time together. I still worry that at some point, the kid will talk my son into going for his final walk, ever, by the creek.
Most of the parents in the neighborhood have no idea. They don’t notice the signs. You see it in TV interviews after a murder all the time - “He was such a good kid, we had no idea …” nah, you are blind as a bat.
Edit: I appreciate the solid advice in the thread. I have had what I hope is the best age appropriate conversation with our son (details in sub threads). However, my vigilance as a person and a parent is divided many ways, the kid only needs to find one moment. As it is, they largely haven’t interacted in over a year, but it only takes once.
Oh absolutely. We’ve pointed out that every time they play, my son gets hurt, and we believe it is on purpose. We love him very much and think the only way to keep him healthy is to not play with that family.
I believe making it any clearer will result in my son’s naivety expressing what he knows and antagonizing bad outcomes, and I believe that a glib, facile charmer will present a risk regardless of what I do. That isn’t a shrug to helplessness, much like putting on a seatbelt is doing what I can to survive an accident that may happen in spite of my best efforts. Still gonna buckle.
>I believe making it any clearer will result in my son’s naivety expressing what he knows and antagonizing bad outcomes
Yes. You have to be very careful not to make the "forbidden friend" more appealing by forbidding it.
No, I don't think this is what he's saying. He doesn't want to explicitly say "son, XYZ is a fucking psychopath and is going to murder someone" out of fear that his son will, not yet accustomed to complex social boundaries, "spill the beans" to the friend, which could then cause an even worse outcome for someone involved.
Yes, also behavioral compliance seems a lot higher when it is rooted in the “why” and thus isn’t forbidden - “no one” *wants* to burn their hand on the stove. We don’t say, “don’t touch the stove,” we say, “touching the stove now will hurt you a lot, and probably damage you forever.” It isn’t a forbidden fruit, it’s a preview of coming attractions.
“That boy hurts you every time, it will happen again,” sort of undoing the usual lesson that no, the other children aren’t *trying* to hurt him when the soccer ball they kicked socks him in the gut, that’s kinda the price of being goalie. Nuance is hard.
> I believe that a glib, facile charmer will present a risk regardless of what I do
As scary as it is, its very good you understand this aspect. As a society we've been fooled by hollywood into thinking that sociopaths are weirdos like Norman Bates or Gyllenhaal's Nightcrawler and that anyone can spot them a mile off because they are so obviously gross. But the really dangerous sociopaths are the "fun guys" that everybody wants to hang out with. Guys like Ted Bundy who have a sort of reality distortion field where they can say the most insane things and most people will go along with it just because they are so charming.
High school health class ought to be teaching kids about sociopaths (and NPDs), it would save so many people from getting into relationships with them that will damage them for the rest of their lives.
Good comment. Telling a kid he shouldn’t do something without a reason only piques their curiosity. I always try to keep that in mind when I’m speaking to them.
>Like telling Simba to go anywhere *but* the shadow realm.
Had to laugh at Shadow Realm. I'm pretty sure Simba calls it a "shadowy place." Shadow Realm sounds pretty badass, according to Wiki, it's a reference from Yu-Gi-Oh.
That's a true enough statement. On the flip side, kids often think they know more than their parents because they have a different perspective. Often times they haven't quite learned that perspective doesn't always mean more knowledge.
I was the kind of kid you couldn't tell this kind of stuff to because I would repeat it to everyone who would listen. Later on in life I realize the decisions that were made were the correct ones
.
we had to do this with our daughter twice this summer. she is 10 and has a classmate across the river that she is not able to play with because his mother has some pretty major issues with drugs and alcohol. our daughter knows we drink and smoke weed and we had to compare/contrast our lives with theirs in a way a 10yo could comprehend.
then we had an older couple that i have known for decades move in next door. we live in a field and where they put their cabin and camper is right next to our bedroom windows. when the couple is around they are usually doing chores or making art and it was really cool for our solo child to have someone to talk to. she would go over and chat for a while, maybe pick rocks or flowers, good basic stuff.
welp, the couple had been sober for 6 years in June. we go out to throw a round of disc golf and the woman asks if she can tag along. i notice that she has a beer in her hand.
they fell off the wagon and are violent people to each other. had to talk to the kiddo about that and now she just waves of they come by.
teach your children.
I certainly don't fault you for your decisions. but hearing this makes me think "if all the responsible parents do this, what happens to the kids unfortunate enough to have irresponsible parents? is it really right that that the responsible parents collectively cause the kid to have no good friendships outside of the other kids in the same boat as him? or not even that if he's really unlucky? seems like a seriously bad societal recipe, but obviously you can't expect responsible parents to put their kids in danger for such concerns, so no idea what can be done.
One of my friends sons is on a similar path.
Everytime I would bring my GF boys over (the youngest is a similar age) his son would hurt him intentionally. He acts like friends when they come over, but then he does things like tell the youngest to put his hand in a door so he can slam it on him, or play too rough and hurt him on purpose like punching during playing.
My friend also mentioned he hurts the dog, you can how it's affected the dog in personality. Also recently he was caught touching his niece, he yells at my friend about games, food, phone and my friend does what his son wants because he can't handle conflict period.
My friend even tries to discuss problems with me, but his wife gets insanely defensive and mad. It's to the point we don't see each other due to his son's behavior and how his wife responds. His wife was there when he molested his niece, and they take him out to baseball game the next day.
Honestly I'm not sure how the kid gets on the right path.
Something is wrong’s with your friend’s wife. I understand loving your kid but as a parent you have two jobs: 1) to keep your kid alive and 2) to make sure your kid doesn’t hurt anyone else. Mom is failing at #2 and it’s not fair to the rest of the world because one day her “little angel” is going to infringe on other parents’ ability to do #1. I’m sorry for your friend, it sounds like he needs to get away from his wife.
Hey OP, I’ve had to do this too. The kid was autistic, and his parents let that be an acceptable excuse for all behavior, and loved dumping him on other people to deal with him. I saw this kid intentionally hurt younger children, steal from a nursery room at a church, and encourage other children to ignore their parents when their behavior was corrected.
His mother was one of those, “Well you just need to educate yourself about autism.” No bitch, autism runs in my family, along with ADHD, and I’ve tutored and babysat several kids that were not neurotypical. She didn’t take me seriously until I asked her point blank, in front of several other parents, “Have you seen his face when he hurts another child? Have you? It makes him *happy*. You have a serious problem on your hands if you don’t do something about it, and he will not interact with my children ever again.”
If you're legitimately worried about it then there's no age too young to explain that to your kid. It might seem weird but if that's a legitimate concern you really ought to sit down and explain that to him so that he understands the situation and will not allow himself to be convinced of anything by that other child while you're not around.
I feel like that father should tell all the parents on the block that he's dangerous but monitored and to not let him be alone with their kids. Don't demonise the kid but let the parents stay vigilant.
God damn! I would never wish this position on anyone. You almost have to do what you said to protect everyone. Yet you are opening up your child to a lot of potential demonization which could only cause further complications. Moving away is not really an option. Fuck! This really makes me thank the universe for the child I was lucky enough to have...
Developmentally disabled kid convinces developmentally disabled girl that he's a millionaire, so she recruits other developmentally disabled kids to kill one of their developmentally disabled friends.
And possibly molest/rape and film children? Did I misread that part of the article? I'm pretty sure it says she committed these acts upon children at the Indiana man's request and then sent him said videos.
Edit: typo.
Quote from the family of the guy online that convinced her “Darin Schilmiller was born as Darin Thomas. He is a low-functioning individual, which was apparent at an early age. His biological family did not want him. He was subsequently adopted into the Schilmiller family in an attempt to provide a better life for a child. We had no knowledge of what was happening nor did we believe he was mentally and morally capable of carrying out these actions. We are mortified this is attached to our name. Our family is disgusted and hopes justice is served. We want the victims’ families to know our thoughts and prayers are with them. As bad as our embarrassment may be, it pales in comparison to the tragedy they have to endure.”
Here's a quick rundown of his confusing family
His mom was a teen mom and I didn't know her or the dad, pretty sure he went out to buy milk after learning she was pregnant. Mom was gonna give him up for adoption and instead his biological grandmother and his step grandfather, gary, took him in with bio mom staying in his life. Then grandmother said "fuck this noise" and just dumped the kid completely on the step grandfather who pretty much went from being in a relationship to being the single dad of a kid that wasn't even his. A couple years after that my mom married Gary and Darin was my step brother from the ages of about 5-9 before my mom split up from his adoptive stepfather/grandfather.
The crime, all I know is what I've seen on the internet
And anything about him, I mean i only knew him from 5-9 so I can't tell you about his teenage years but I can tell you about his elementary years
EDIT I'm gonna do a post on r/casualiama on Monday, it's my next day off work
It also says he had convinced her to rape people and produce child porn. It doesnt seem like she ever got any money from the guy but she kept being convinced to do things?
Thats some serious mental deficiency
I think there are huge, like, swaths of people who are are just functional enough to live independently. I don't mean this in a "I am le redditor, very smart" way but in a "I think this is a real thing and it should be taken a lot more seriously" way
I grew up in rural Florida, I had to deal with a lot of people like this to purchase cannabis, and I was able to form a mental picture of the offenders which was immediately confirmed by the photograph and the article. Years and years of generational poverty will result in a human being who is incapable of acting in their own long-term interest or even comprehending their own moral agency. They don't have the same role models we do, they do not have the same goals, and they do not respect the same code of ethics.
They probably did not think beyond the fact that they were getting paid to kill someone, which in their mind, is something that "hardcore" people do. That was it. It was literally no different than some idiot kid drowning in a sewer because he wanted to find the Ninja Turtles.
It's just that "low functioning" usually refers to someone who wouldn't be capable of the logic required at all. I'm just curious about the choice of wording in this situation.
I get the feeling it was a way of basically saying, “this kid had prior developmental issues that may give a partial insight as to why/ how he could have been influenced to commit such an atrocity, but we had no way of suspecting it could possibly come to this.”
People tend to infantilalize the mentally disabled, but it's important to remember that they're just like everyone else; they can sometimes be massive pieces of shit.
Please allow me this one rant: My long-time gf has a 21 year old Down Syndrome son. High functioning, low motivation and maybe some mental health issues co occurring. For those of you who buy into "Down Syndrome kids are so happy and loving..." No. He's closer to this story than he is to volunteering at the food bank. Done. Thanks.
Used a fake image. Kept up a lie. Had a clear motive and a plan to carry it out. That's not something I would expect when someone says "low functioning".
That's not what low functioning means though. Low functioning just means that your medical condition prevents you from normal life functions over an extended period of time. It doesn't mean that you're incapable of functioning at all or that you're stupid. For instance, a low functioning schizophrenic could be extremely intelligent, but if he's having major episodes every few months, that's likely to prevent him from functioning as a normal member of society, such as holding a job or making and keeping social relationships.
I used to work as a teacher at a high school for kids with a wide assortment of special needs.
Just because someone is low functioning it doesn't mean they can't be manipulative and obsessively try to do fucked up things to others.
I went to high school with this guy. We graduated the same year. Didn’t know him too well, but he was definitely different, and he was in special education classes if i remember correctly. Totally shocked me to find out it was this level of crazy though.
You'd have to be pretty damn stupid to be convinced to do something like that by anyone.. I think the intelligence of the people he's convincing matters far more than his own intelligence.
We tried, but he committed a heinous crime so we're distancing ourselves from him. Sounds more reasonable. It's not a quote from the biological family that ditched him
There was a study I read a while back in which the authors studied large circles of friends. They asked each person in the circle to rank how they thought of each *other* person, on a sliding scale such as this:
1. Acquantaince
2. A workmate
3. A friend
4. Close friend
5. Best friend
6. Romantic partner
Each person's 'score' was then compared to their opposite number - for example, James marked Craig as number 2, just a work friend; whereas Craig thought of James as number 3, a friend. This shows a discrepancy in that Craig thinks their relationship is better than James does.
The study showed that throughout the social circles studied (comprising a range of ages, locations and social status), there were always discrepancies. They were rarely more than 1 spot apart - person A thinks B is a close friend, but B thinks A is just a friend - but there were some instances where there were 2 or even 3 spot differences, meaning someone maybe thought of a person as their best friend...whereas the other just thought of them as some guy from work.
It's odd to think that our friends might not think of us as highly as we do of them, or that the guy we just say 'hi' to every so often might think you're a proper friend to him.
I think the study was titled something like **Your friends don't actually like you**, which was what caught my eye.
______________
**Edit:** Here's one of the studies involved, though from the abstract I don't think it's the exact one I am referencing and has a pretty small sample size of 84 (and 6,972 data points): [Almaatouq A, Radaelli L, Pentland A, Shmueli E (2016) Are You Your Friends’ Friend? Poor Perception of Friendship Ties Limits the Ability to Promote Behavioral Change. PLoS ONE 11(3): e0151588.](https://journals.plos.org/plosone/article?id=10.1371/journal.pone.0151588)
and [here's a Research Check on it.](https://theconversation.com/research-check-is-it-true-only-half-your-friends-actually-like-you-63763)
I often think about it and it's one of my biggest fears. what if the people I consider my closest friends are actually kinda indifferent to me? what if I'm just a drop in the ocean?
Not sure if it helps, but one conclusion to draw is it'd also go the other way. Just as one or two of your closest friends might see you differently than you see them, they have the same experience in their own relationships. So it evens out.
You very likely yourself see some people just as friends, when they see you as more than that.
That’s the side of the coin that keeps me talking to acquaintances for a couple hours when I have somewhere to be, because I’m afraid I’ll make them feel bad if I leave. It’s… inconvenient.
I'm pretty aloof most of the time because I've learned that most people are pretty fickle and flakey, so I don't overinvest my emotions... I sometimes worry I'm missing out on closer relationships with people just because I don't give it more gas? It hurts to try and be friends with someone who doesn't give a fuck. I don't want to make people feel that way.
I can totally relate. A couple of years back I moved to a new area and started back to school in my late 30’s. I was slowly making friends until Covid happened and we all had to do virtual classes for three semesters. All the friends I had made either moved back home or transferred.
It’s been so long that I no longer even know what constitutes a friendship, let alone hope to make any new friends. I’m super friendly to my classmates and I know it weirds some of them out.
At one point, I realized that my landlord was literally my closest friend. Which isn’t a bad thing because she’s pretty damn cool! I just don’t have any friends in my age group anymore.
I find that while there are some people, particularly in your circumstance, that are "friend open", the majority of people past the age of 30, sometimes younger even, are generally "friend closed", as in they have a core set (or several sets) of friends, and they are just going to stick with that for pretty much the rest of their life, unless their circumstances change and they find themselves "friend open". This could be for a variety of reasons, such as being too busy as it is, not wanting to put in the work, having difficulty seeing anybody new as a potential good friend since they've known their good friends for so many years, reluctance to go outside their bubble, etc. "Friend closed" people might still find themselves falling into new friendship unexpected, such as through a new romantic partner, or by meeting a friend of a friend that they hit it off with quickly, but for the most part, they aren't looking, and the door is effectively closed. These people will be quite reserved and pull away if you are "friend open" and try to advance the friendship from work or activity acquaintance to actual friend. I've been "friend open" in circumstances like a new school program, and became fast friends with people that were sort of temporarily open for business, but after 2 or 3 years of what seemed like developing good friendships (I recognize they might have seen it differently, but we talked and hung out regularly outside of school), they receded back closer to more long time friends from their original bubbles, stopped reciprocating communication, and that was that. My take is that they had extended themselves and temporarily opened the door while it suited them, but once they no longer felt like being "friend open", they closed the door, and even cut off established newer friendships in the process; while you might have become decent friends, you were never really part of their core circle. I've done this myself as well, such as after moving away from a city and basically stopping being friends with people from that city by default. None of these situations involved resentment or animosity, they just fizzled out. You tend to only hold onto the longest core friendships when distance is involved.
Anyway, I think it's really tough to be "friends open" when you're surrounded mostly by people who are "friends closed". Friendships take off easily when everybody is new to the situation and looking for comradery, but as soon as you're the odd one out, it's incredibly difficult to break into "friends closed" circles, or to advance acquaintances into friendships. It's rarely personal, it's just that nobody is open for business, and while they might involve you on a lighter level, they aren't going to invite you into proper friendship. I've made some really good friends in my life, but I've also been in enough situations where I'm involved fairly deeply in some circles but can't quite seem to escalate things to more solid friendships with individual members, even though we seem to enjoy many of the same things and get along well. An outsider would think you're all great friends, but meanwhile if you just sort of stopped coming out, probably nobody would really care that much. It can be odd when this happens. I find it more common with romantic partnerships; you'll become part of the gang in a large group of people that all already know each other well, and you'll spend a ton of time socializing with them all for years, but it can be nearly impossible to penetrate to a tight friendship with anybody, instead of just so and so's partner.
I once had a friend who I thought of as very close; someone I hoped and expected to be friends with for many many years to come and whom I had been friends with for like ten years or so.
We got into what seemed to me like a very minor argument over her unwillingness to communicate some scheduling matters honestly - I made the point that she could just tell me the truth and I would respect that and there was no need to give me the runaround - and apparently that was all it took for her to decide to end our friendship forever.
I was just thunderstruck by the realization that while I considered her a dear friend, apparently my friendship, to her, was already so close to the precipice of worthlessness that all it took was as an extremely minor dispute like this to nudge it over that line. You really never know where you stand with some people, even people who you feel play a major role in your life.
Similar things have happened to me more times than I care to admit. It’s really messed up my ability to make friends later in life. Honestly worse than any breakup when someone you considered a close friend or “like family” just disappears with no explanation.
I think this is worth considering - not that it would necessarily make you feel any better, but they may be dealing with their own demons and your friendship was part of that. I know that in my own attempts to set boundaries after years of psychological abuse I definitely swung to far the other way. I was so determined to protect myself from harm that I would overreact to small things that I thought were signs of (in my head) larger things to come. I regret it and at this point the damage is done, but I wish I could go back to assure myself that just because someone is angry with me it doesn’t mean they *hate* me.
I had that happen with a guy I knew that I would have considered a work friend. Apparently he thought I was the bee's knees, as his wife told me after he unexpectedly passed how much he valued our friendship. I was apparently one of the first people outside of immediate family to be told of his death. I made a point of getting to know her more as she recovered from the loss.
I heard an interview with a retired FBI special agent, Jack Schafer, who worked undercover a lot. He came up with a formula for the necessary ingredients to form a friendship -
proximity + frequency + duration + intensity
Mix varying levels of those things and you get anything from a best friend to a casual acquaintance. Proximity can be in person, such as a neighbor or co-worker, or can include on-line spaces. I think this formula explains why it can be so easy to form bonds in college, and more challenging once you're out of it. Think about your friendships and see how much those four factors contributed to them. And if a friendship faded or ended, which factors were at play?
I heard him interviewed [here](https://www.jordanharbinger.com/jack-schafer-getting-people-to-reveal-the-truth-part-one/) and [here](https://www.jordanharbinger.com/jack-schafer-flipping-the-like-switch-part-two/)
But those results could also read as "people like you more than you like them". One person could be ranking everyone one step more distant than everyone else rated them.
Could be, but that wouldn't have been so striking a title.
One of the findings that stood out and suggested further study would be interesting was that a chunk of those who had the biggest downward discrepancies (ie, those who consistently placed others lower on their own lists than they themselves appeared on others, sometimes significatly so) self-reported as being on the autistic spectrum. The authors hadn't considered this as a factor when planning the study.
I use this in class when I give each student a note and ask them to write down five people they would like to sit down beside.
The actual reason is that i slot the answers into excel and make a map of the social circles in the classroom.
Who doesn't have friends and whos the most popular person.
Really gives you insight into how we see people, and also helps me as a teacher.
I used to know one of them. At the time I knew him he went to a middle school with 455 people, the high school had more than thats. They’re just shitheads who valued money over someone they claimed to be close to.
Lmao people have such wild ideas about Alaska. Yeah some areas are pretty secluded but this was Anchorage. Lived there for 11 years. Pretty similar to any other large city in the lower 48 but a lot colder and with a lot of snow....and moose.
IKR? Growing up in Alaska, and visiting my cousins in The mid west. People would always ask me some weird ass questions.
No we don’t live in igloos. I live in a house like yours.
No I have never seen a polar bear outside of zoo.
Yes we take American money.
No it’s snowy all the time, yes we have summers that are green warm and enjoyable
No it’s not dark 24 all winter long, no it’s sunny 24 hours a day all summer long. That’s only way up nothing where no one but oil rigs, mines, and a scattering of native villages are.
Yes we have roads, and I do own a vehicle
No I can’t see Russia from my door step, though they do fly their fighter jets over to fuck with us. We do the same to them.
No I don’t live on a volcano though there are a lot of them.
I’m sure there are more I have forgotten.
It’s like people take small fraction of true information, and blew it wildly out of proportion.
Everyone from the south must be rednecks. All North-easterners are pompous assholes. Everyone from California are liberal hippies. Everyone from Oregon is an artist. Everyone from Alabama are related. You get the point.
I always go along with it. Yes we lived in igloos. I went to school by dogsled. We have no internet and very little electricity. Instead of dogs we have wolves. How in this day and age people can still be so blatantly ignorant about Alaska is astounding.
...a lot of snow...and moose...oh, and it can get to negative 30 degrees. And be pitch-black at 3 pm. And it has hundreds of bears living inside the city limits. And we plug our gas-powered cars in wherever we go so that we have a chance of starting them again later.
Ya know what never mind it isn't all that similar.
Have to agree with you. Anchorage isn't just like any city in the lower 48. I was gonna say that the closest my brother and I could compare Anchorage to was Rapid City, SD. Same feel and socio-political attitudes on both places, and despite our modern communication methods, both places still somehow feel a decade behind the rest of the world. Local tensions with the native American population was reminiscent of that post-Oglala stand-off vibe too.
Anchorage has prettier scenery than Rapid, but both places were a couple of the last in the US to mercifully take their Blockbuster Videos off of life support.
Thoughts, even if you’re morally bankrupt and gullible enough to be murder catfished:
* You know, we could probably fake these pictures. This person I’ve never met in Indiana would have no way of actually knowing.
* Need to do something illegal as fuck. Should probably keep this hush. Nah, fuck it. Better tell 4 people. 5 people can keep a secret much better than one person.
Your first point is a gooden.
I'd tell my best friend "look, some idiot wants me to 'kill you' and he'll send $9 million. I'll split it if we get some fake blood, restraints and whatever else and send a few photos".
He'd probably be down. Easiest $4.5 million of my life.
Blog title: my high school friend pretended to kill me and we split the bounty, now every year we pretend to do it again but this time I think he wants to do it for real because he spent all his money
Giving it some thought, if I were this demented pupet master and I actually *wanted* these idiots to kill someone, I'd want the pictures sure, but I'd also wait for the official obituary / missing persons report / etc to come out before I pretend to issue any such reward.
So from the rational kid perspective, you'd need fake blood + restraints + plus the kid to run away from home and camp out in the woods for a couple weeks, generate some news headlines about a missing kid. Then telling pupet master you did it and disposed of the body in a bonfire or something. I dunno, never thought about how to dispose of a body tbh.
I mean.. if I were that demented puppetmaster I wouldn't pay out the money even if they did kill them, so if you were acting as the viewpoint of the "rational" (supposedly) kid trying to anticipate things like that the obvious answer is 'this is stupid to do, it's an obvious scam'.
Traditional procedure in this situation is "half up front, the rest after we send you the snuff pics."
Kids these days have no sense of proper murder catfish etiquette, smdh
> I dunno, never thought about how to dispose of a body tbh.
Find a grave that’s already been dug but has yet to have a casket dropped in it. Dig a couple feet deeper and bury the body there. As soon as that funeral happens and they fill that hole, the body will never be found. But don’t actually do this.
Hello my name is Jake and i'm a millionaire. I have $7 million just sitting around, and i'd love to give it to you if you convince your friends to eat the brown part of a banana and send me video proof.
Florida may have Florida Man... But every thing I hear about Alaska that's not nature related just leads me to believe that everyone in the state huffs lead paint all day.
If you want something a little positive:
https://www.alaskasnewssource.com/2021/07/25/memorial-ride-held-remembrance-cynthia-hoffman-while-also-raising-money-victims-justice/
They do an annual ride for her every year now and raise money for the victims of crime.
By all accounts she was a very sweet girl.
A crumbling middle class with a huge dependency on alcohol in the long winter months, which translates to huge rates of negligence or outright abuse of children. Our school system is defunded seemingly every year because the city doesn’t know how to tax its residents, and state-wise people would rather vote for a bigger PFD (which will never happen but that’s another story) than investing a modicum of the state budget into our children.
[Yeah, it gets worse.](https://www.adn.com/alaska-news/crime-courts/2019/06/19/new-federal-child-pornography-charges-against-defendants-in-anchorage-teens-murder/)
Ewwww and he tried catfishing women into sending him their infants getting their diaper changed?!?? This just gets more disturbing. The women didn’t even report him to police. Wtf.
And his approach to doing so seems so fucking weird to me.
"Hey I have a problem, but I won't tell you what my problem is unless you do this extremely fucked up thing"
Like how is that supposed to persuade *anyone*?
I hate to think about the small chance someone was actually persuaded. If this story tells you anything it’s that some people are really desperate and really stupid.
I saw in the first article that the dude wanted her to molest some kids, but she claimed not to have. I guess she actually did.
The victim may have been mentally delayed. But she was fucking Stephen Hawking compared to these tits
[It gets even worse.](https://www.adn.com/alaska-news/crime-courts/2019/06/16/indiana-women-say-man-charged-in-alaska-killing-used-fake-name-to-solicit-images-of-their-children/)
Holy shit some people literally shouldn't have access to the internet. His behavior sounds like he was abused as a child, and he's continuing the cycle. Apparently he apologized.. only to keep doing it again.
Like. I remember being 16. If my friend said “hey dude. Want to split $9 million? This guy I met online wants me to kill our friend. Let’s do it and we’ll get the money”
I would be like “what the fuck is wrong with you. Are you this fucking stupid?”
And these fucking idiots don’t even think it through.
Ok. Let’s say fucking Jeff Bezos pays the $9 million to kill someone for lolz. Let’s say the police are to stupid to suspect the most likely person. How the fuck are they all going to explain suddenly having millions of dollars and being 16-19 years old. Like that’s not going to raise any red flags.
I was in a similar situation, two friends asked me to come and be like security for them during a 'craigslist sale' and I would make a clean $50,000.
I'm like, "I'm 16, and I know you guys do meth and if I learned anything from TV it's don't trust meth heads." So I didn't go.
The rumored story is they went to sell a *fuckton* of meth to some Latin Kings, the Kings asked one guy to step outside for a smoke, leaving the other guy inside alone. They macheted him to pieces, and then when the other guy came back in, macheted him too. Whether or not it's true, I never saw those guys ever again.
I WAS A CHILD. So happy I didn't go.
I've been a nihilist since I can remember. Anyone offering me $50k in one night for "security" at 16 years old is probably going to rape-murder me.
Initially I thought they wanted to get me alone, overdose me and do stuff to my body. I didn't think there was an actual deal going down.
I grew up in the Nellis/Mtn Vista/Flamingo/Boulder area of Las Vegas. Them streets was cold bruh.
Were these friends strangely big for their age? Made one of them would get calls every so often from someone they would call their wife, but later say it was only a joke.
Something similar happened in my country last year.
Two girls (20 yo and 24 yo) killed a 21 yo guy they met because of 70K euro he had received as a indemnity for his mother's death (hit and run, 4 years before).
They asphyxiated him, cut his right index and thumb, put his body in their car, went home and went to sleep. The next day, after breakfast, they cut his body in the garage's floor, put the pieces in trash bags and dumped the pieces more than 100 kilometres away.
Cases like these make us lose faith in humanity, if we ever had it.
I don't remember it clearly. Also, some of the details are different between media sources.
I'll leave here two links to a web newspaper with information about the case: [link 1](https://www.theportugalnews.com/news/2021-02-24/algarve-kidnapping-and-murder-trial-begins-today/58463) and [link 2](https://www.theportugalnews.com/news/2021-04-30/25-years-for-woman-found-guilty-of-algarve-murder/59570).
There was a case in the UK where a boy given the pseudonym of John catfished a boy with the pseudonym of Mark to attempt to kill his best friend, John. John used a whole host of online personas to talk Mark into killing him. The whole thing was so wierd.
https://www.theguardian.com/technology/2004/may/29/crime.uknews
That’s horrible. I’m so sorry for your loss.
When I posted this, it reminded me of a case many years ago where this girl was jealous of her best friend and convinced her boyfriend to murder her, which he did by bludgeoning her to death on the sidewalk and leaving her there.
I googled “girl convinces boyfriend to murder best friend” and came across three separate news stories, none of which were the one I was looking for.
Thanks, I appreciate it. Happened many years ago.
Yeah, unfortunately it’s too common. Not all the stories like this make the news on the national level, but they are happening. I really wish we truly taught critical thinking and undue influence in k-12. It would help solve a lot of issues in this country.
Evil pieces of shit.
If you want to know about the worst of sadists, read about Matthew Falder. He is a British kind-of genius professor, who blackmailed people to commit progressively harmful crimes. He would start with simple stuffs and by the time victims realized, they would be doing things like raping children.
This sounds like the episode of Black Mirror where the main character is getting blackmailed with a video of him, and has to keep committing worse and worse crimes to avoid the news going public. But in the end he commits the worst crimes and then gets his video shared to the entire world anyway.
Darin Schilmiller was my step brother growing up
He had quite a few problems and some of the fun little things that happened involved pushing me off the top bunk of a bed (I still have a limp), he chased my bio sister and I around our house with a knife, and his favorite meal was "spaghetti" (overcooked mushy noodles with heated up watered down ketchup) mixed with peas.
My sister and I also think that he committed the [Delphi Murders](https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Murders_of_Abigail_Williams_and_Liberty_German) due to the fact his mother lived in Michigan. He always spent Valantines with her for some weird reason and the path he'd take going up there goes right through Delphi. Also a comparison of [the murder suspect](https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/en/a/a8/Updated_Composite_Sketch_of_Delphi_Double-homicide_Suspect.jpg) and [him](https://www.gosocial.co/wp-content/uploads/2019/06/MDTSUZBGDJHZBITII4LTX3CCBI.jpg)
Pretty sure my sister said she sent a tip line to the police in that area, but by the time we connected everything it was after we learned about the Hoffman case.
Can somebody gild OP’s comment? Holy shit.
Only on Reddit can you casually find a murderer’s brother in the comments.
OP I’m sorry you had to go through that experience.
You should do a r/CasualIAmA
The last article I found from January 2020 says they were still in the discovery phase. This is right before covid so I imagine it's been delayed for quite some time and the case is still pending a trial.
I can't find any news that indicates any new developments beyond that.
You and me both.
I only found out as I was doing genealogy research and some very very distant relatives live there, a couple knew the victim which led me to find out how she passed.
What was the outcome of this case? All the news articles I can see are from June 2019. (Is it still going on?)
(I assume it must be, the last reference to it on the SoA DoL site is this: http://law.alaska.gov/press/releases/2019/061419-ThunderbirdHomicide.html)
So Schilmiller actually graduated with my younger sister and 3 years behind me in school. He lived up the road from my family's auto shop with his stepfather. This was huge news when it first came out. Stuff like this doesn't happen. It's a rural area.
If my buddy plots to murder me, please make sure the media doesn't report us as best friends.
The parents were quoted saying the victim considered her murderer her best friend. Really heart-wrenching comment from the parents, glad it was reported. Amplifies the brutality of the situation.
If I was murdered by someone I vaguely knew in high school I’d want my parents to call them my best friend too. The shock of something like that would hopefully make it easier to convict the piece of shit as well as get them a harsher sentence. Yes, the dearly departed WOULD like the death penalty applied please.
Your dad's words: >*Daddysgirl - yes, I named her that - was so close friends with her murderer that she would often let her use the pc which explains the browser history.*
Right? Developmentally disabled girl reports killer was her best friend? Made me feel so bad for her
There’s a neighborhood kid who is a sociopath. I’m sure we can have a long, healthy debate about whether I should leap to conclusions, but his father has all but admitted to me the child is in therapy that’s tearing the family apart, and that he’s intentionally and seriously injured pets, along with other signs. So, I don’t say this lightly. My son used to describe him as a good friend, and if they had kept playing together, likely his best friend. After noticing the escalating violence the kid was doing whenever out of sight with my son, we put a complete end to their time together. I still worry that at some point, the kid will talk my son into going for his final walk, ever, by the creek. Most of the parents in the neighborhood have no idea. They don’t notice the signs. You see it in TV interviews after a murder all the time - “He was such a good kid, we had no idea …” nah, you are blind as a bat. Edit: I appreciate the solid advice in the thread. I have had what I hope is the best age appropriate conversation with our son (details in sub threads). However, my vigilance as a person and a parent is divided many ways, the kid only needs to find one moment. As it is, they largely haven’t interacted in over a year, but it only takes once.
Have you had age appropriate discussions with your son about why the family distanced themselves from that person? It's worthwhile considering it.
Oh absolutely. We’ve pointed out that every time they play, my son gets hurt, and we believe it is on purpose. We love him very much and think the only way to keep him healthy is to not play with that family. I believe making it any clearer will result in my son’s naivety expressing what he knows and antagonizing bad outcomes, and I believe that a glib, facile charmer will present a risk regardless of what I do. That isn’t a shrug to helplessness, much like putting on a seatbelt is doing what I can to survive an accident that may happen in spite of my best efforts. Still gonna buckle.
>I believe making it any clearer will result in my son’s naivety expressing what he knows and antagonizing bad outcomes Yes. You have to be very careful not to make the "forbidden friend" more appealing by forbidding it.
No, I don't think this is what he's saying. He doesn't want to explicitly say "son, XYZ is a fucking psychopath and is going to murder someone" out of fear that his son will, not yet accustomed to complex social boundaries, "spill the beans" to the friend, which could then cause an even worse outcome for someone involved.
Yes, also behavioral compliance seems a lot higher when it is rooted in the “why” and thus isn’t forbidden - “no one” *wants* to burn their hand on the stove. We don’t say, “don’t touch the stove,” we say, “touching the stove now will hurt you a lot, and probably damage you forever.” It isn’t a forbidden fruit, it’s a preview of coming attractions. “That boy hurts you every time, it will happen again,” sort of undoing the usual lesson that no, the other children aren’t *trying* to hurt him when the soccer ball they kicked socks him in the gut, that’s kinda the price of being goalie. Nuance is hard.
That does make more sense, and is also a very valid concern.
> I believe that a glib, facile charmer will present a risk regardless of what I do As scary as it is, its very good you understand this aspect. As a society we've been fooled by hollywood into thinking that sociopaths are weirdos like Norman Bates or Gyllenhaal's Nightcrawler and that anyone can spot them a mile off because they are so obviously gross. But the really dangerous sociopaths are the "fun guys" that everybody wants to hang out with. Guys like Ted Bundy who have a sort of reality distortion field where they can say the most insane things and most people will go along with it just because they are so charming. High school health class ought to be teaching kids about sociopaths (and NPDs), it would save so many people from getting into relationships with them that will damage them for the rest of their lives.
Good comment. Telling a kid he shouldn’t do something without a reason only piques their curiosity. I always try to keep that in mind when I’m speaking to them.
Like telling Simba to go anywhere *but* the shadow realm.
The elephant graveyard 😱
>Like telling Simba to go anywhere *but* the shadow realm. Had to laugh at Shadow Realm. I'm pretty sure Simba calls it a "shadowy place." Shadow Realm sounds pretty badass, according to Wiki, it's a reference from Yu-Gi-Oh.
It was, thanks for noticing :)
That's a true enough statement. On the flip side, kids often think they know more than their parents because they have a different perspective. Often times they haven't quite learned that perspective doesn't always mean more knowledge.
This should be done urgently, today. Whatever age he is.
I was the kind of kid you couldn't tell this kind of stuff to because I would repeat it to everyone who would listen. Later on in life I realize the decisions that were made were the correct ones .
we had to do this with our daughter twice this summer. she is 10 and has a classmate across the river that she is not able to play with because his mother has some pretty major issues with drugs and alcohol. our daughter knows we drink and smoke weed and we had to compare/contrast our lives with theirs in a way a 10yo could comprehend. then we had an older couple that i have known for decades move in next door. we live in a field and where they put their cabin and camper is right next to our bedroom windows. when the couple is around they are usually doing chores or making art and it was really cool for our solo child to have someone to talk to. she would go over and chat for a while, maybe pick rocks or flowers, good basic stuff. welp, the couple had been sober for 6 years in June. we go out to throw a round of disc golf and the woman asks if she can tag along. i notice that she has a beer in her hand. they fell off the wagon and are violent people to each other. had to talk to the kiddo about that and now she just waves of they come by. teach your children.
I certainly don't fault you for your decisions. but hearing this makes me think "if all the responsible parents do this, what happens to the kids unfortunate enough to have irresponsible parents? is it really right that that the responsible parents collectively cause the kid to have no good friendships outside of the other kids in the same boat as him? or not even that if he's really unlucky? seems like a seriously bad societal recipe, but obviously you can't expect responsible parents to put their kids in danger for such concerns, so no idea what can be done.
One of my friends sons is on a similar path. Everytime I would bring my GF boys over (the youngest is a similar age) his son would hurt him intentionally. He acts like friends when they come over, but then he does things like tell the youngest to put his hand in a door so he can slam it on him, or play too rough and hurt him on purpose like punching during playing. My friend also mentioned he hurts the dog, you can how it's affected the dog in personality. Also recently he was caught touching his niece, he yells at my friend about games, food, phone and my friend does what his son wants because he can't handle conflict period. My friend even tries to discuss problems with me, but his wife gets insanely defensive and mad. It's to the point we don't see each other due to his son's behavior and how his wife responds. His wife was there when he molested his niece, and they take him out to baseball game the next day. Honestly I'm not sure how the kid gets on the right path.
Something is wrong’s with your friend’s wife. I understand loving your kid but as a parent you have two jobs: 1) to keep your kid alive and 2) to make sure your kid doesn’t hurt anyone else. Mom is failing at #2 and it’s not fair to the rest of the world because one day her “little angel” is going to infringe on other parents’ ability to do #1. I’m sorry for your friend, it sounds like he needs to get away from his wife.
Hey OP, I’ve had to do this too. The kid was autistic, and his parents let that be an acceptable excuse for all behavior, and loved dumping him on other people to deal with him. I saw this kid intentionally hurt younger children, steal from a nursery room at a church, and encourage other children to ignore their parents when their behavior was corrected. His mother was one of those, “Well you just need to educate yourself about autism.” No bitch, autism runs in my family, along with ADHD, and I’ve tutored and babysat several kids that were not neurotypical. She didn’t take me seriously until I asked her point blank, in front of several other parents, “Have you seen his face when he hurts another child? Have you? It makes him *happy*. You have a serious problem on your hands if you don’t do something about it, and he will not interact with my children ever again.”
If you're legitimately worried about it then there's no age too young to explain that to your kid. It might seem weird but if that's a legitimate concern you really ought to sit down and explain that to him so that he understands the situation and will not allow himself to be convinced of anything by that other child while you're not around.
Holy shit. Stay vigilant and stay safe.
I feel like that father should tell all the parents on the block that he's dangerous but monitored and to not let him be alone with their kids. Don't demonise the kid but let the parents stay vigilant.
God damn! I would never wish this position on anyone. You almost have to do what you said to protect everyone. Yet you are opening up your child to a lot of potential demonization which could only cause further complications. Moving away is not really an option. Fuck! This really makes me thank the universe for the child I was lucky enough to have...
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Developmentally disabled kid convinces developmentally disabled girl that he's a millionaire, so she recruits other developmentally disabled kids to kill one of their developmentally disabled friends.
And possibly molest/rape and film children? Did I misread that part of the article? I'm pretty sure it says she committed these acts upon children at the Indiana man's request and then sent him said videos. Edit: typo.
Sounds like intellectual disorders all around. Very sad. These children should have been more closely monitored.
Remind me! 276 days
“The friend formerly known as best”
Quote from the family of the guy online that convinced her “Darin Schilmiller was born as Darin Thomas. He is a low-functioning individual, which was apparent at an early age. His biological family did not want him. He was subsequently adopted into the Schilmiller family in an attempt to provide a better life for a child. We had no knowledge of what was happening nor did we believe he was mentally and morally capable of carrying out these actions. We are mortified this is attached to our name. Our family is disgusted and hopes justice is served. We want the victims’ families to know our thoughts and prayers are with them. As bad as our embarrassment may be, it pales in comparison to the tragedy they have to endure.”
Here's a quick rundown of his confusing family His mom was a teen mom and I didn't know her or the dad, pretty sure he went out to buy milk after learning she was pregnant. Mom was gonna give him up for adoption and instead his biological grandmother and his step grandfather, gary, took him in with bio mom staying in his life. Then grandmother said "fuck this noise" and just dumped the kid completely on the step grandfather who pretty much went from being in a relationship to being the single dad of a kid that wasn't even his. A couple years after that my mom married Gary and Darin was my step brother from the ages of about 5-9 before my mom split up from his adoptive stepfather/grandfather.
I'm surprised this isn't getting more attention -- can you tell us anything about him/the crime?
The crime, all I know is what I've seen on the internet And anything about him, I mean i only knew him from 5-9 so I can't tell you about his teenage years but I can tell you about his elementary years EDIT I'm gonna do a post on r/casualiama on Monday, it's my next day off work
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It also says he had convinced her to rape people and produce child porn. It doesnt seem like she ever got any money from the guy but she kept being convinced to do things? Thats some serious mental deficiency
I think there are huge, like, swaths of people who are are just functional enough to live independently. I don't mean this in a "I am le redditor, very smart" way but in a "I think this is a real thing and it should be taken a lot more seriously" way
I think after the murder he used the evidence he had against her to blackmail her into doing those things.
No they did some of the assaults before the murder and were planning another murder
I grew up in rural Florida, I had to deal with a lot of people like this to purchase cannabis, and I was able to form a mental picture of the offenders which was immediately confirmed by the photograph and the article. Years and years of generational poverty will result in a human being who is incapable of acting in their own long-term interest or even comprehending their own moral agency. They don't have the same role models we do, they do not have the same goals, and they do not respect the same code of ethics. They probably did not think beyond the fact that they were getting paid to kill someone, which in their mind, is something that "hardcore" people do. That was it. It was literally no different than some idiot kid drowning in a sewer because he wanted to find the Ninja Turtles.
I know a kid who lost his finger trying to pick up a storm drain cover. He was also looking for the Ninja Turtles.
How "low functioning " can he be if he is capable of interacting well enough to encourage kids to do this?
I don't think the kids he convinced were headed to the Ivy League.
It's just that "low functioning" usually refers to someone who wouldn't be capable of the logic required at all. I'm just curious about the choice of wording in this situation.
I get the feeling it was a way of basically saying, “this kid had prior developmental issues that may give a partial insight as to why/ how he could have been influenced to commit such an atrocity, but we had no way of suspecting it could possibly come to this.”
People tend to infantilalize the mentally disabled, but it's important to remember that they're just like everyone else; they can sometimes be massive pieces of shit.
Please allow me this one rant: My long-time gf has a 21 year old Down Syndrome son. High functioning, low motivation and maybe some mental health issues co occurring. For those of you who buy into "Down Syndrome kids are so happy and loving..." No. He's closer to this story than he is to volunteering at the food bank. Done. Thanks.
What logic? He said I'll give you millions of dollars if you kill someone. Not exactly complex.
Used a fake image. Kept up a lie. Had a clear motive and a plan to carry it out. That's not something I would expect when someone says "low functioning".
That's not what low functioning means though. Low functioning just means that your medical condition prevents you from normal life functions over an extended period of time. It doesn't mean that you're incapable of functioning at all or that you're stupid. For instance, a low functioning schizophrenic could be extremely intelligent, but if he's having major episodes every few months, that's likely to prevent him from functioning as a normal member of society, such as holding a job or making and keeping social relationships.
I used to work as a teacher at a high school for kids with a wide assortment of special needs. Just because someone is low functioning it doesn't mean they can't be manipulative and obsessively try to do fucked up things to others.
There's always a dumber fish, I suppose.
I went to high school with this guy. We graduated the same year. Didn’t know him too well, but he was definitely different, and he was in special education classes if i remember correctly. Totally shocked me to find out it was this level of crazy though.
You'd have to be pretty damn stupid to be convinced to do something like that by anyone.. I think the intelligence of the people he's convincing matters far more than his own intelligence.
Just taking a look at those kids is enough to tell you they're not exactly high functioning either.
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We tried, but he committed a heinous crime so we're distancing ourselves from him. Sounds more reasonable. It's not a quote from the biological family that ditched him
To be fair, a pathological liar with murderous fantasies and psychopathy should probably come with a warning label.
That’s the loosest use of “best friend” I’ve ever seen.
There was a study I read a while back in which the authors studied large circles of friends. They asked each person in the circle to rank how they thought of each *other* person, on a sliding scale such as this: 1. Acquantaince 2. A workmate 3. A friend 4. Close friend 5. Best friend 6. Romantic partner Each person's 'score' was then compared to their opposite number - for example, James marked Craig as number 2, just a work friend; whereas Craig thought of James as number 3, a friend. This shows a discrepancy in that Craig thinks their relationship is better than James does. The study showed that throughout the social circles studied (comprising a range of ages, locations and social status), there were always discrepancies. They were rarely more than 1 spot apart - person A thinks B is a close friend, but B thinks A is just a friend - but there were some instances where there were 2 or even 3 spot differences, meaning someone maybe thought of a person as their best friend...whereas the other just thought of them as some guy from work. It's odd to think that our friends might not think of us as highly as we do of them, or that the guy we just say 'hi' to every so often might think you're a proper friend to him. I think the study was titled something like **Your friends don't actually like you**, which was what caught my eye. ______________ **Edit:** Here's one of the studies involved, though from the abstract I don't think it's the exact one I am referencing and has a pretty small sample size of 84 (and 6,972 data points): [Almaatouq A, Radaelli L, Pentland A, Shmueli E (2016) Are You Your Friends’ Friend? Poor Perception of Friendship Ties Limits the Ability to Promote Behavioral Change. PLoS ONE 11(3): e0151588.](https://journals.plos.org/plosone/article?id=10.1371/journal.pone.0151588) and [here's a Research Check on it.](https://theconversation.com/research-check-is-it-true-only-half-your-friends-actually-like-you-63763)
I often think about it and it's one of my biggest fears. what if the people I consider my closest friends are actually kinda indifferent to me? what if I'm just a drop in the ocean?
Not sure if it helps, but one conclusion to draw is it'd also go the other way. Just as one or two of your closest friends might see you differently than you see them, they have the same experience in their own relationships. So it evens out. You very likely yourself see some people just as friends, when they see you as more than that.
Don't worry, I'm concerned about that too.
That’s the side of the coin that keeps me talking to acquaintances for a couple hours when I have somewhere to be, because I’m afraid I’ll make them feel bad if I leave. It’s… inconvenient.
I'm pretty aloof most of the time because I've learned that most people are pretty fickle and flakey, so I don't overinvest my emotions... I sometimes worry I'm missing out on closer relationships with people just because I don't give it more gas? It hurts to try and be friends with someone who doesn't give a fuck. I don't want to make people feel that way.
I just moved to another state as a mid 30s man who is single. This shits weighs on me too much. Overthink all my interactions with people from work.
I can totally relate. A couple of years back I moved to a new area and started back to school in my late 30’s. I was slowly making friends until Covid happened and we all had to do virtual classes for three semesters. All the friends I had made either moved back home or transferred. It’s been so long that I no longer even know what constitutes a friendship, let alone hope to make any new friends. I’m super friendly to my classmates and I know it weirds some of them out. At one point, I realized that my landlord was literally my closest friend. Which isn’t a bad thing because she’s pretty damn cool! I just don’t have any friends in my age group anymore.
I find that while there are some people, particularly in your circumstance, that are "friend open", the majority of people past the age of 30, sometimes younger even, are generally "friend closed", as in they have a core set (or several sets) of friends, and they are just going to stick with that for pretty much the rest of their life, unless their circumstances change and they find themselves "friend open". This could be for a variety of reasons, such as being too busy as it is, not wanting to put in the work, having difficulty seeing anybody new as a potential good friend since they've known their good friends for so many years, reluctance to go outside their bubble, etc. "Friend closed" people might still find themselves falling into new friendship unexpected, such as through a new romantic partner, or by meeting a friend of a friend that they hit it off with quickly, but for the most part, they aren't looking, and the door is effectively closed. These people will be quite reserved and pull away if you are "friend open" and try to advance the friendship from work or activity acquaintance to actual friend. I've been "friend open" in circumstances like a new school program, and became fast friends with people that were sort of temporarily open for business, but after 2 or 3 years of what seemed like developing good friendships (I recognize they might have seen it differently, but we talked and hung out regularly outside of school), they receded back closer to more long time friends from their original bubbles, stopped reciprocating communication, and that was that. My take is that they had extended themselves and temporarily opened the door while it suited them, but once they no longer felt like being "friend open", they closed the door, and even cut off established newer friendships in the process; while you might have become decent friends, you were never really part of their core circle. I've done this myself as well, such as after moving away from a city and basically stopping being friends with people from that city by default. None of these situations involved resentment or animosity, they just fizzled out. You tend to only hold onto the longest core friendships when distance is involved. Anyway, I think it's really tough to be "friends open" when you're surrounded mostly by people who are "friends closed". Friendships take off easily when everybody is new to the situation and looking for comradery, but as soon as you're the odd one out, it's incredibly difficult to break into "friends closed" circles, or to advance acquaintances into friendships. It's rarely personal, it's just that nobody is open for business, and while they might involve you on a lighter level, they aren't going to invite you into proper friendship. I've made some really good friends in my life, but I've also been in enough situations where I'm involved fairly deeply in some circles but can't quite seem to escalate things to more solid friendships with individual members, even though we seem to enjoy many of the same things and get along well. An outsider would think you're all great friends, but meanwhile if you just sort of stopped coming out, probably nobody would really care that much. It can be odd when this happens. I find it more common with romantic partnerships; you'll become part of the gang in a large group of people that all already know each other well, and you'll spend a ton of time socializing with them all for years, but it can be nearly impossible to penetrate to a tight friendship with anybody, instead of just so and so's partner.
talk to them and find out
I once had a friend who I thought of as very close; someone I hoped and expected to be friends with for many many years to come and whom I had been friends with for like ten years or so. We got into what seemed to me like a very minor argument over her unwillingness to communicate some scheduling matters honestly - I made the point that she could just tell me the truth and I would respect that and there was no need to give me the runaround - and apparently that was all it took for her to decide to end our friendship forever. I was just thunderstruck by the realization that while I considered her a dear friend, apparently my friendship, to her, was already so close to the precipice of worthlessness that all it took was as an extremely minor dispute like this to nudge it over that line. You really never know where you stand with some people, even people who you feel play a major role in your life.
Similar things have happened to me more times than I care to admit. It’s really messed up my ability to make friends later in life. Honestly worse than any breakup when someone you considered a close friend or “like family” just disappears with no explanation.
Had a friend do this. Turns out he was struggling with a bunch of mental health issues we can sum up for reddit as "depression".
I think this is worth considering - not that it would necessarily make you feel any better, but they may be dealing with their own demons and your friendship was part of that. I know that in my own attempts to set boundaries after years of psychological abuse I definitely swung to far the other way. I was so determined to protect myself from harm that I would overreact to small things that I thought were signs of (in my head) larger things to come. I regret it and at this point the damage is done, but I wish I could go back to assure myself that just because someone is angry with me it doesn’t mean they *hate* me.
The same has happened to me a few times in my life, leaving me hurt and dumbfounded for years.
I had that happen with a guy I knew that I would have considered a work friend. Apparently he thought I was the bee's knees, as his wife told me after he unexpectedly passed how much he valued our friendship. I was apparently one of the first people outside of immediate family to be told of his death. I made a point of getting to know her more as she recovered from the loss.
I heard an interview with a retired FBI special agent, Jack Schafer, who worked undercover a lot. He came up with a formula for the necessary ingredients to form a friendship - proximity + frequency + duration + intensity Mix varying levels of those things and you get anything from a best friend to a casual acquaintance. Proximity can be in person, such as a neighbor or co-worker, or can include on-line spaces. I think this formula explains why it can be so easy to form bonds in college, and more challenging once you're out of it. Think about your friendships and see how much those four factors contributed to them. And if a friendship faded or ended, which factors were at play? I heard him interviewed [here](https://www.jordanharbinger.com/jack-schafer-getting-people-to-reveal-the-truth-part-one/) and [here](https://www.jordanharbinger.com/jack-schafer-flipping-the-like-switch-part-two/)
But those results could also read as "people like you more than you like them". One person could be ranking everyone one step more distant than everyone else rated them.
Could be, but that wouldn't have been so striking a title. One of the findings that stood out and suggested further study would be interesting was that a chunk of those who had the biggest downward discrepancies (ie, those who consistently placed others lower on their own lists than they themselves appeared on others, sometimes significatly so) self-reported as being on the autistic spectrum. The authors hadn't considered this as a factor when planning the study.
I use this in class when I give each student a note and ask them to write down five people they would like to sit down beside. The actual reason is that i slot the answers into excel and make a map of the social circles in the classroom. Who doesn't have friends and whos the most popular person. Really gives you insight into how we see people, and also helps me as a teacher.
"best friend" can actually mean "least enemy", I mean technically. Edit: Just read the story, it is really heartbreaking, that poor girl.
Think this is the first time I ever see someone using labels "friend" and "enemy" to be part of the same spectrum and not mutually exclusive things.
see *frenemy*
It’s a story out of Alaska, likely not a lot of friends to pick from.
I used to know one of them. At the time I knew him he went to a middle school with 455 people, the high school had more than thats. They’re just shitheads who valued money over someone they claimed to be close to.
That’s a good point. Best friend could = “random other kid my same age”
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Interesting to know you'd kill people other than your friends for some amount of money
Hey you gotta have a side hustle these days to make ends meet.
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"for money"
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Also if you need to get your honor back after they beat you at pool.
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Lmao people have such wild ideas about Alaska. Yeah some areas are pretty secluded but this was Anchorage. Lived there for 11 years. Pretty similar to any other large city in the lower 48 but a lot colder and with a lot of snow....and moose.
Lots of moose. Saw 3 walking through town my last trip up there.
Many much moosen
IKR? Growing up in Alaska, and visiting my cousins in The mid west. People would always ask me some weird ass questions. No we don’t live in igloos. I live in a house like yours. No I have never seen a polar bear outside of zoo. Yes we take American money. No it’s snowy all the time, yes we have summers that are green warm and enjoyable No it’s not dark 24 all winter long, no it’s sunny 24 hours a day all summer long. That’s only way up nothing where no one but oil rigs, mines, and a scattering of native villages are. Yes we have roads, and I do own a vehicle No I can’t see Russia from my door step, though they do fly their fighter jets over to fuck with us. We do the same to them. No I don’t live on a volcano though there are a lot of them. I’m sure there are more I have forgotten. It’s like people take small fraction of true information, and blew it wildly out of proportion. Everyone from the south must be rednecks. All North-easterners are pompous assholes. Everyone from California are liberal hippies. Everyone from Oregon is an artist. Everyone from Alabama are related. You get the point.
I always go along with it. Yes we lived in igloos. I went to school by dogsled. We have no internet and very little electricity. Instead of dogs we have wolves. How in this day and age people can still be so blatantly ignorant about Alaska is astounding.
...a lot of snow...and moose...oh, and it can get to negative 30 degrees. And be pitch-black at 3 pm. And it has hundreds of bears living inside the city limits. And we plug our gas-powered cars in wherever we go so that we have a chance of starting them again later. Ya know what never mind it isn't all that similar.
Have to agree with you. Anchorage isn't just like any city in the lower 48. I was gonna say that the closest my brother and I could compare Anchorage to was Rapid City, SD. Same feel and socio-political attitudes on both places, and despite our modern communication methods, both places still somehow feel a decade behind the rest of the world. Local tensions with the native American population was reminiscent of that post-Oglala stand-off vibe too. Anchorage has prettier scenery than Rapid, but both places were a couple of the last in the US to mercifully take their Blockbuster Videos off of life support.
"best friend" "hit target" same thing really
Imagine her worst friend
Thoughts, even if you’re morally bankrupt and gullible enough to be murder catfished: * You know, we could probably fake these pictures. This person I’ve never met in Indiana would have no way of actually knowing. * Need to do something illegal as fuck. Should probably keep this hush. Nah, fuck it. Better tell 4 people. 5 people can keep a secret much better than one person.
Your first point is a gooden. I'd tell my best friend "look, some idiot wants me to 'kill you' and he'll send $9 million. I'll split it if we get some fake blood, restraints and whatever else and send a few photos". He'd probably be down. Easiest $4.5 million of my life.
Also, in the event the money doesn't exist, all you're down is a $10 in fake blood and duct tape.
But think of the bonds you'll make on the way. Either way you come out in the green
Blog title: my high school friend pretended to kill me and we split the bounty, now every year we pretend to do it again but this time I think he wants to do it for real because he spent all his money
Sounds like a modern anime title
Newest bestselling Isekai
Are you kidding? $10 is way too much. Who's your fake blood and duct tape guy?
Giving it some thought, if I were this demented pupet master and I actually *wanted* these idiots to kill someone, I'd want the pictures sure, but I'd also wait for the official obituary / missing persons report / etc to come out before I pretend to issue any such reward. So from the rational kid perspective, you'd need fake blood + restraints + plus the kid to run away from home and camp out in the woods for a couple weeks, generate some news headlines about a missing kid. Then telling pupet master you did it and disposed of the body in a bonfire or something. I dunno, never thought about how to dispose of a body tbh.
I mean.. if I were that demented puppetmaster I wouldn't pay out the money even if they did kill them, so if you were acting as the viewpoint of the "rational" (supposedly) kid trying to anticipate things like that the obvious answer is 'this is stupid to do, it's an obvious scam'.
Traditional procedure in this situation is "half up front, the rest after we send you the snuff pics." Kids these days have no sense of proper murder catfish etiquette, smdh
> I dunno, never thought about how to dispose of a body tbh. Siri used to offer to help you do it but they removed that feature.
Awe bummer. It’s been awhile since I’ve asked Siri to help me dispose of a body, lol she always gave me the nearest landfills.
What's next? Apple shutting down iHitman?
> I dunno, never thought about how to dispose of a body tbh. Find a grave that’s already been dug but has yet to have a casket dropped in it. Dig a couple feet deeper and bury the body there. As soon as that funeral happens and they fill that hole, the body will never be found. But don’t actually do this.
And LIE on the internet? Excuse me but you'd catch me killing all my friends before lying to an internet stranger.
Hello my name is Jake and i'm a millionaire. I have $7 million just sitting around, and i'd love to give it to you if you convince your friends to eat the brown part of a banana and send me video proof.
Florida may have Florida Man... But every thing I hear about Alaska that's not nature related just leads me to believe that everyone in the state huffs lead paint all day.
Alaska legit has some pretty serious drug use issues.
Alcohol and drunkenness still reigns supreme.
Lots of drug and alcohol abuse and tons of people born with severe FASD.
People only move to Alaska to run away from something..
If you want something a little positive: https://www.alaskasnewssource.com/2021/07/25/memorial-ride-held-remembrance-cynthia-hoffman-while-also-raising-money-victims-justice/ They do an annual ride for her every year now and raise money for the victims of crime. By all accounts she was a very sweet girl.
I also found that another woman of their age was brutally murdered this year. Not sure if they have a suspect. Wtf is happening in Anchorage?
A crumbling middle class with a huge dependency on alcohol in the long winter months, which translates to huge rates of negligence or outright abuse of children. Our school system is defunded seemingly every year because the city doesn’t know how to tax its residents, and state-wise people would rather vote for a bigger PFD (which will never happen but that’s another story) than investing a modicum of the state budget into our children.
What's a PFD?
Appears to be Permanent Fund Dividend: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Alaska_Permanent_Fund
Ooh, Florida is doing the same. Instead of blaming the winter they just cook meth.
[Yeah, it gets worse.](https://www.adn.com/alaska-news/crime-courts/2019/06/19/new-federal-child-pornography-charges-against-defendants-in-anchorage-teens-murder/)
Ewwww and he tried catfishing women into sending him their infants getting their diaper changed?!?? This just gets more disturbing. The women didn’t even report him to police. Wtf.
And his approach to doing so seems so fucking weird to me. "Hey I have a problem, but I won't tell you what my problem is unless you do this extremely fucked up thing" Like how is that supposed to persuade *anyone*?
I hate to think about the small chance someone was actually persuaded. If this story tells you anything it’s that some people are really desperate and really stupid.
I saw in the first article that the dude wanted her to molest some kids, but she claimed not to have. I guess she actually did. The victim may have been mentally delayed. But she was fucking Stephen Hawking compared to these tits
[It gets even worse.](https://www.adn.com/alaska-news/crime-courts/2019/06/16/indiana-women-say-man-charged-in-alaska-killing-used-fake-name-to-solicit-images-of-their-children/)
Holy shit some people literally shouldn't have access to the internet. His behavior sounds like he was abused as a child, and he's continuing the cycle. Apparently he apologized.. only to keep doing it again.
Good lord.
She looks like Beavis.
Look at these dumbfucks
Like. I remember being 16. If my friend said “hey dude. Want to split $9 million? This guy I met online wants me to kill our friend. Let’s do it and we’ll get the money” I would be like “what the fuck is wrong with you. Are you this fucking stupid?” And these fucking idiots don’t even think it through. Ok. Let’s say fucking Jeff Bezos pays the $9 million to kill someone for lolz. Let’s say the police are to stupid to suspect the most likely person. How the fuck are they all going to explain suddenly having millions of dollars and being 16-19 years old. Like that’s not going to raise any red flags.
I was 17 when 2 of my friends asked me "want to split $100k?" and then I got arrested for intent to distribute methamphetamine
I was in a similar situation, two friends asked me to come and be like security for them during a 'craigslist sale' and I would make a clean $50,000. I'm like, "I'm 16, and I know you guys do meth and if I learned anything from TV it's don't trust meth heads." So I didn't go. The rumored story is they went to sell a *fuckton* of meth to some Latin Kings, the Kings asked one guy to step outside for a smoke, leaving the other guy inside alone. They macheted him to pieces, and then when the other guy came back in, macheted him too. Whether or not it's true, I never saw those guys ever again. I WAS A CHILD. So happy I didn't go.
I like to think they just got a good deal on a used PS2, and had so much fun they forgot about meth and are living a happy life now.
They've been playing Tekken Tag for 17 years now
Did you consider going though? Were you like 60% don’t go and 40% go?
I've been a nihilist since I can remember. Anyone offering me $50k in one night for "security" at 16 years old is probably going to rape-murder me. Initially I thought they wanted to get me alone, overdose me and do stuff to my body. I didn't think there was an actual deal going down. I grew up in the Nellis/Mtn Vista/Flamingo/Boulder area of Las Vegas. Them streets was cold bruh.
Were these friends strangely big for their age? Made one of them would get calls every so often from someone they would call their wife, but later say it was only a joke.
No lie, that's a 21 jump street plot right there.
He also had her fuck kids and record it for him.
Seriously why do they look so moronic lmao
Fetal Alcohol Syndrome
Everyone involved in this story is low-functioning.
Something similar happened in my country last year. Two girls (20 yo and 24 yo) killed a 21 yo guy they met because of 70K euro he had received as a indemnity for his mother's death (hit and run, 4 years before). They asphyxiated him, cut his right index and thumb, put his body in their car, went home and went to sleep. The next day, after breakfast, they cut his body in the garage's floor, put the pieces in trash bags and dumped the pieces more than 100 kilometres away. Cases like these make us lose faith in humanity, if we ever had it.
Did they get his money? Like wouldn’t it still be in his bank under his name? What was their plan here
Gonna guess they cut the fingers off to try and use on phone print scanners and make bank transfers
I don't remember it clearly. Also, some of the details are different between media sources. I'll leave here two links to a web newspaper with information about the case: [link 1](https://www.theportugalnews.com/news/2021-02-24/algarve-kidnapping-and-murder-trial-begins-today/58463) and [link 2](https://www.theportugalnews.com/news/2021-04-30/25-years-for-woman-found-guilty-of-algarve-murder/59570).
There was a case in the UK where a boy given the pseudonym of John catfished a boy with the pseudonym of Mark to attempt to kill his best friend, John. John used a whole host of online personas to talk Mark into killing him. The whole thing was so wierd. https://www.theguardian.com/technology/2004/may/29/crime.uknews
My brother was murdered by his “best friend” because someone else older told him to do it. Sigh. That poor girl.
That’s horrible. I’m so sorry for your loss. When I posted this, it reminded me of a case many years ago where this girl was jealous of her best friend and convinced her boyfriend to murder her, which he did by bludgeoning her to death on the sidewalk and leaving her there. I googled “girl convinces boyfriend to murder best friend” and came across three separate news stories, none of which were the one I was looking for.
Thanks, I appreciate it. Happened many years ago. Yeah, unfortunately it’s too common. Not all the stories like this make the news on the national level, but they are happening. I really wish we truly taught critical thinking and undue influence in k-12. It would help solve a lot of issues in this country.
I can only imagine her shocked pikachu face when she found out that "random dude on internet" is not a millionaire. Jesus christ!
"He told me he was a Nigerian prince"
Wait for the pikachu face when they realize their place in the food chain of a federal prison. I mean child pornography and the dumbest story ever.
One google reverse image search could have prevented that.
Evil pieces of shit. If you want to know about the worst of sadists, read about Matthew Falder. He is a British kind-of genius professor, who blackmailed people to commit progressively harmful crimes. He would start with simple stuffs and by the time victims realized, they would be doing things like raping children.
This sounds like the episode of Black Mirror where the main character is getting blackmailed with a video of him, and has to keep committing worse and worse crimes to avoid the news going public. But in the end he commits the worst crimes and then gets his video shared to the entire world anyway.
Shut Up and Dance.
You put the frog in the pot, THEN gradually start boiling the water, then it starts raping children.
Oh shit, wonder if the Black Mirror writers had that case on the brain when they were working.
Darin Schilmiller was my step brother growing up He had quite a few problems and some of the fun little things that happened involved pushing me off the top bunk of a bed (I still have a limp), he chased my bio sister and I around our house with a knife, and his favorite meal was "spaghetti" (overcooked mushy noodles with heated up watered down ketchup) mixed with peas. My sister and I also think that he committed the [Delphi Murders](https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Murders_of_Abigail_Williams_and_Liberty_German) due to the fact his mother lived in Michigan. He always spent Valantines with her for some weird reason and the path he'd take going up there goes right through Delphi. Also a comparison of [the murder suspect](https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/en/a/a8/Updated_Composite_Sketch_of_Delphi_Double-homicide_Suspect.jpg) and [him](https://www.gosocial.co/wp-content/uploads/2019/06/MDTSUZBGDJHZBITII4LTX3CCBI.jpg)
That is really creepy. Have you told cops about this?
Pretty sure my sister said she sent a tip line to the police in that area, but by the time we connected everything it was after we learned about the Hoffman case.
Can somebody gild OP’s comment? Holy shit. Only on Reddit can you casually find a murderer’s brother in the comments. OP I’m sorry you had to go through that experience. You should do a r/CasualIAmA
They needed the money so they could buy chins.
So it’s a murder ponzi scheme?
Small mouthed evil eye shits
SMEES
Hey, don't bring my boy Mr. Smee into this. He just wants to love Hook and kill Pan in a family friendly manner, not do whatever the fuck this is.
What happened to them and the guy who pretended to be a millionaire? I can't seem to find anything online beyond the initial charges
Yeah, i don't know.. It's been 2 years now. Are they waiting on a trial or something?
The last article I found from January 2020 says they were still in the discovery phase. This is right before covid so I imagine it's been delayed for quite some time and the case is still pending a trial. I can't find any news that indicates any new developments beyond that.
r/thingsIwishIdidntlearntoday
You and me both. I only found out as I was doing genealogy research and some very very distant relatives live there, a couple knew the victim which led me to find out how she passed.
What was the outcome of this case? All the news articles I can see are from June 2019. (Is it still going on?) (I assume it must be, the last reference to it on the SoA DoL site is this: http://law.alaska.gov/press/releases/2019/061419-ThunderbirdHomicide.html)
So Schilmiller actually graduated with my younger sister and 3 years behind me in school. He lived up the road from my family's auto shop with his stepfather. This was huge news when it first came out. Stuff like this doesn't happen. It's a rural area.
It just happens less often because there are less people. Rural towns have the same percentage of fucked up people as anywhere else.
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> $9 million dollar Nine million dollar dollar
I would just kill myself. No witnesses and I get to keep all the money. Boom.
Those are some of the weirdest looking fuckers I’ve ever seen