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I love books, movies, and TV shows set in small towns.
They always seem to be full of intrigue and there are deep, dark secrets lurking just below the surface.
And today we’re about to get some real stories from these places.
Folks took to AskReddit to talk about the scandals that rocked their small towns.
Take a look.
1. Dr. Feelgood.
“There was an anesthetist, who worked at our local hospital and another hospital in a different town.
He was rather well known among other doctors and known to be good at what he was doing. He only had a small problem with being addicted to pain k**lers and anaesthetics.
So to feed his addiction without getting caught he shot up part of his patients’ drugs before injecting the same needle into his patient.
Thus went unnoticed until it was discovered that over 60 of his patients got infected with hepatitis. And that he was the source for it.
He was fired and his license revoked as far as I know. But the hospital’s image still suffered quite a bit.”
2. Bad idea.
“I’m from a small Oxfordshire village and one of the kids I went to school with was the son of a pilot for Virgin Atlantic.
He got caught trying to fly a plane d**nk.”
3. Tragic.
“College professor was found tied to a tree and burned months after he disappeared.
Police ruled it a s**cide.”
4. Something in the water…
“The mayor went to meet what he thought was an underage girl but was really the cops.
Around the same time, the son of the bazillionare owner of the biggest company in town also got caught with an underage girl. Somehow right before trial she recanted and declined to prosecute.
Something in the water down there.”
5. Terrible.
“Sherrif’s son a**aulted and beat his girlfriend to d**th before setting their house on fire.
Abandoned their two year old daughter (who had no doubt witnessed the whole horrible thing) in her aunt’s driveway without making contact, but her Ring Camera went off at 3 am. They caught him next state over two months later on a different violation.
There was no active manhunt from anyone. They knew who do it, and they just … didn’t care. It wasn’t an active cover up so much as a whole bunch of inactive lack of care. He was transferred back home and got off on a ridiculously low bail. They’ve pushed his case back to 2022.
He’s in protective custody somewhere, because people have been posting all over local Facebook’s about how they’d do the cop’s job for them if they found him.”
6. The body.
“In 2000, a girl’s body was found on the steps of the local middle school. She had been beaten, r**ed, strangled, and burned.
The officer that arrived at the scene was a rookie officer. Since he was the first in the scene the police department made him in charge of the case. The case was massively botched. The murder had shocked the community and a lot of people were talking. Several years later, the police marked it as a cold case. A local woman was doing her own detective work.
She reached out to a journalist from the UK. The journalist flew to meet the woman and investigate the murder and missteps by the police. They uncovered a massive cover-up. The local police department was hostile towards the journalist and local. To the point that the state FBI branch had to get involved to protect the investigation.
Due to the police departments terrorizing behavior, they ended up getting investigated by the FBI. Apparently they knew who had committed the crime. A local drug dealer, who was cozy with the police. He eventually was arrested and sent to prison for life. The police department got a slap on the wrist. The journalist went back to the UK and the local woman moved to a nearby city.”
7. Double jeopardy.
“A cop m**dered his wife and got away with it.
Shockingly he did it again to the next wife and now he gets to d** in jail for it.”
8. A town called Hyde.
“I’m originally from a town called Hyde, a few miles outside Manchester.
Unfortunately, Hyde is famous for Harold Shipman, the once trusted GP who ki**ed elderly patients by overdosing them with diamorphine.
My grandma’s neighbour (Jack) was one of his many victims.”
9. Wild.
“I’m from a very small town in Canada.
Very quiet, nothing big ever came up and it was a fairly tight-knit community. One day, and explosion went off in an apartment building. A 23 yr old, single mother (who also happens to be a quadriplegic) was k**led instantly.
The case was eventually solved, the explosion was a gift-wrapped piped bomb left by her former financial adviser. He squandered hundreds of thousands of dollars from her and was convicted for it, he was then released on bail and then left the bomb.
Wild s**t.”
10. Corruption.
“The mayor and several city councillors were taking kickbacks and bribes from demolition, construction, and cleaning companies for clean-up contracts after a hurricane, funded by FEMA.
The companies would give the mayor and city councillors like a couple grand, then the company would get FEMA funds in the tens of thousands to clean up/destroy a hurricane damaged property, only the address given to FEMA and listed on the contract were fake, or already cleared, so the companies got paid to do nothing.”
11. What is wrong with people?
“A few members of a scummy local family broke into a bar, stole money, beer and peanuts. When they went to leave, realized there was a d**nk patron sleeping out back on a picnic table.
They, thinking he was a potential witness, bashed his head in with a hammer, threw his body into the back of their truck, drove the truck through the old railroad trail and dump the body in a swamp. They were caught almost immediately because there was a trail of blood and their truck was covered in DNA.
All over some cash and beer.”
12. Wow.
“The local d**nk got into an argument with another regular at a popular bar, pulled out a gun, and shot the other guy to d**th.
But that’s not the scandal. The guy who d**d was apparently really nice and well liked in the community. The others in the bar were able to disarm and restrain the assailant until the police arrived. When the sheriff got there, he just said “looks like you all need a few more minutes with him. I’ll come back later.”
So everyone in the bar grabbed what they could find and ended up beating the shooter to d**th. The sheriff reported it as self defense and the security tapes disappeared.
But the bar was crowded, so the real story got out. There were a few attempts to reopen the case or charge the sheriff and some of the bar patrons, but they were all squashed pretty quickly.
The really interesting detail, in my opinion is that there were some pretty strong rumors that the d**nk had been sleeping with the wife of the man he k**led and that he’d been attacked first.
So the original shooting may have been in self-defense. But because there was no camera footage and all the witnesses were involved in ki**ing the d**nk, there’s no way of knowing the truth.”
What were the scandals that rocked your town?
Tell us some stories in the comments.
We look forward to it!
