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There are three types of people in this world, I think – those who relish walking outside the law, those who would never dream of it, and people who just need the right set of circumstances to push them over the line.
These 12 stories are a lot of the first kind and a few of the third, and they’re told by family members who just can’t believe who they’re related to – a recipe for fun!
12. Unfit, for sure.
It’s not a bad crime or anything, but it was illegal at the time.
So, in Germany, up until a few years ago, we still had a general draft for the army. And a generation ago it was very hard to get out of it.My uncle was a hardcore pacifist, so going to the army wasn’t an option for him. But being accepted as a conscientious objector at that time basically required you to be a devout Christian and use the bible as an argument for why you couldn’t kill another human. And my uncle was also atheist.
He couldn’t realistically object, didn’t want to go to the army and didn’t want to go to jail, too. So he waited…
He got sent his draft notice, passed the physical and got a letter telling him to report to X company under sergeant Y.
He wrote back a reply, on rose-colored paper, scented with perfume, about how much he was looking forward to serving under the strong leadership of Y, promising to obey every one of his orders, and that he can’t wait to experience life in the barracks together with so many strong and muscular men.
He was declared unfit for service shortly after.
11. What did he do to them?
My dad told me he once snuck into a tire warehouse, he cut the alarm and came in through a window on the roof, and stole a bunch of tires.
10. What is wrong with people?
My mom’s father was a Vietnam vet. He married my grandma he met while in Germany, adopted her oldest son and they had three daughters.
He physically, emotionally, and sexually abused all of them. When they were toddlers, he’d wake them up at 5am for PT (like basic training for adults). When they walked into a room he was in, he’d throw knives at them to “check their reflexes”.
When my Aunt graduated high school, she moved out and he lost his mind. He kept trying to convince her to move back in, and actually convinced her to come home to “talk” about it.
That day she was sitting on the couch and told him she would never come back. So, he pulled a gun shot her three times (once in the hand as she was trying to block her heart, once in the stomach as she stood up, and once in the ass as she turned to run). Then he walked to his back bedroom, and shot himself twice, once in the heart and once in the head.
I wasn’t alive but I read the newspaper article and it was horrible.
Side note, my family is really messed up bc my grandma would take us grandkids to his grave site and tell us what a great man he was….
9. There is nothing I like about this story.
My parents’ horse got loose, and somebody hit and killed it.
The horse disposal people wanted some relatively reasonable amount of money to come pick up the carcass, but my parents were like “fuck that. Hey, /u/hendergle – load that shit up on the flatbed and find somewhere to dump it.”
Me: “OK. Sure, pops.”
[calls stoner friend]
Me: “Hey, want to go dump a horse somewhere?”
Stoner Friend: “Sure. I have nachos.”
Me: “Cool”
Stoner Friend: “Cool”
So Stoner Friend and I got even more stoned than usual and took my parents’ flatbed truck out and tried to winch the horse up onto it. Turns out you really can’t winch a dead horse onto a flatbed. It’s not the winching that’s the problem so much as the 5ft lift up to the edge. We fucked up a lot of that horse trying, though.
Attempt #2: We went home and built a big-ass ramp out of plywood and 4x4s. It took most of a day and half a dime bag of weed. We argued a lot about whether or not we should bevel the part of the 4x4s that touched the ground. Final decision: neither of us knew how to do that, so we opted for no bevel.
Back at the horse, we wrapped the winch line around the head this time. Fun fact: Steel cable looped around a horse head in a slipknot arrangement is a good way to re-enact a famous scene from The Godfather. We didn’t quite decapitate Mr. Gooseberry (long may he gallop in the heavenly fields). But it wasn’t pretty. Nothing about a dead horse is pretty, but that bit in particular was remarkably not pretty.
We decided to go with our original idea: lash the front hooves together with rope. Small problem: We’d cut the rope at some point. Neither of us could remember why, or who did it. But nothing for it- we had to go home. Finding more rope required smoking half a joint, which I think is quite reasonable given the task we were set to.
Back at the horse again. Our engineering marvel worked. We had some initial worry that we would pull one or both of the horse’s forelegs out of its socket, but apparently dead horse sinew has quite a bit of tensile strength.
We used tiedown straps to lash the horse and ramp to the flatbed, initiating a discussion about why we hadn’t used those in place of rope, leading to an argument over whether or not that would have worked, leading to an awkward hostile silence as we drove around the ass end of South Dakota looking for a place where we could dump a dead horse.
I’m sure there were many places one could dump a dead horse in the middle of rural South Dakota. Strangely enough, though, we were both feeling a little paranoid. Every car that passed us was a plainclothes cop car. Every person standing out in their field was heading straight to their house to report us as soon as we went around the bend.
Finally, we found a field in the Black Hills National Forest that looked like a good spot. It had trees, which we thought the horse would like, and there was a nice parking area next to a snowmobile trailhead. Goose had never liked snowmobiles, so the idea of his skeletal carcass scaring the shit out of some Ski-dooer coming off the trail seemed like something that would have appealed to the old fella.
We backed the truck a little ways into the ferns next to the trail. Then we used a come-along to pull the dead horse off the flatbed.
About a mile into the way home, Stoner Friend said “Does your horse have tattoos?”
I was like “it’s a horse, not a fucking chief petty officer in the merchant marine. Why would it have fucking tattoos?”
Well apparently some horses have tattoos, according to Stoner Friend. It’s how they identify them if they’re stolen. (Note: Subsequent research revealed that this was usually only something done with thoroughbreds, which our horse was definitely not.)
Back at the horse again. “I think they put them on the lip, inside,” says Stoner Friend. Have you ever pulled back the lip of a dead horse to look for tattoos? Worst never-have-I-ever ever. There were no tattoos. But then Stoner Friend says “it’s probably one of those tattoos that only lights up under UV.”
By then, most of the weed had worn off, but there was that tiny bit of paranoia still holding on for dear life. “What if there’s a UV-light lip tattoo on your horse /u/hendergle? They’re going to catch you for sure!”
So there I was, in the early South Dakota summer evening, cutting the lips off of a day-old dead horse with a dull pocket knife. Bonus: we just threw the lips into the woods a little ways because:
“Nobody’s going to go looking for horse lips in the woods”
-Stoner FriendAnd that’s how “illegally dumping an animal carcass on federal property” is the craziest crime I or anybody in my family have ever committed.
8. A complicated man.
My dads side of the family grew up as New Hampshire hicks.
My grandfather was stabbed in two different bar fights and burned down an entire country club because he thought they were too stuck up.
He was never caught and went on to earn a bronze and silver star in the Korean War, but unfortunately lost his leg too.
7. What a dork.
An uncle robbed a bank (or was an accessory to the robbers, idk).
His brilliant escape when the police showed up was to go to the roof and jump off.
He didn’t do time, just had to go to the hospital for a broken leg.
I’ll have to ask my mom when I get a chance, she knows the story better than I do.
6. That took a turn.
My cousin in Youngstown, Oh used to rob people selling goods on facebook.
Got caught after him and accomplice murdered a man over a PS3.
Good times.
5. Freaking hero.
My aunt had a boyfriend – let’s call him Mike, cuz that was his name. He was always the life of the party, everyone loved him. Always holding my aunt from behind and kissing her neck. A little too much PDA but hey, they were happy.
Turns out Mike was abusive. Like, very abusive. Physically and mentally. The neck kissing was him whispering in her ear, berating my aunt for making a fool of herself dancing. My grandfather found out about the abuse.
Went over to Mike’s place, knocked on the door. When Mike answered, my grandfather put a gun to his head and said “if I find out you ever touch my daughter again I’ll fucking kill you.”
Welp, a few weeks later my aunt shows up with a black eye and a sling. Mike.
He was found dead on the roof of his apartment building the following weekend. We all have zero doubt it was my grandfather’s doing. As a successful lawyer I am sure he had connections who could help.
4. Kids, man.
My Dad (when he was much younger and infinitely more stupid) regularly used to drink drive with his friends. It was the early 70’s, and no-one really cared. To hear him speak about it now, he can’t believe how stupid he was.
One night, he and his friend were out drinking. They heard there was a party going on at a pub across town and decided to head over. On the way they go past a large club with a queue of people waiting to go in. My dad decides to show off a bit and pull a skid. He miscalculated, hit a curb and flipped the car, sliding down the road on his roof. The car stops, they get out and leg it, to the cheers of the people in the queue! They get the bus back home and immediately call the police to report the car as stolen.
The police knew what had happened, but couldn’t prove anything.
3. Who could prove it?
Not sure if it should be considered a crime, but one of my great aunts was in an abusive marriage with a war vet who took to beating her and forcing her to play Russian roulette when he drank.
One night she managed to rig the gun so when he took his turn he blew his brains out.
She wasn’t charged.
2. The dregs.
My uncle was a small drug lord in Northern California in the 90s. He had a compound out in gold country, had to drive through 3 gates with guards to get to his house. I like never questioned it as a kid, just enjoyed heading up so I could fish in the stocked bass pond (which also had snapping turtles (as a line of defense)). He’d take me out shopping at the mall with a film canister full of coke that he’d take hits off of occasionally, shadowed by some bodyguards. One time we were out for a ride in his corvette going well over a hundred and got tagged by highway patrol. He talked his way out of the ticket (told the officer he was showing off for his nephew and got carried away, the officer thought it was hilarious), and told me it was lucky since he had a ton of illegal guns and drugs in the trunk and would have made a run for it.
He got arrested when I was 15. It was a full blown; Feds descended upon the compound in helicopters and swung through the windows with flashbangs. The whole nine. He was arrested, and since if he snitched on anyone above him he was, very bluntly, a dead man, he took the rap, was extradited to Lee in VA to serve a bit over 10 years. All he asked for while he was there was protein powder, he got prison ripped, and apparently beat someone near to death with a sock full of quarters for cutting in front of him at the payphone.
At some point in my life all 4 of my uncles on both sides (+ my dad) have spent time in prison for drug related offenses, but this particular uncle takes the cake
1. That’s definitely terrible.
My uncle went to prison for chaining a cop to the back of his bike and driving down the highway
I feel like an edit is needed here because I want to say I am not glorifying what my uncle did, I simply answered the question asked.
This happened in the 1960s before I was born, so I do not have many details due to the timing and fact he married into the family (and that side of my family is not very close at all).
What I do know is my uncle was apart of a very violent gang, I know nothing about what led to the attempted murder (yes, the cop survived somehow), so I do not know if the cop was good or bad.
But, I do not believe very many people, if any, deserve to be tortured in such a manner (or any manner).
I’m glad I don’t have (t00 m)any stories like these to share about my family.
If you’ve got one to tell, our comments are open!
