I didn’t know where else to go to warn everyone, but men, I urge you to be careful this summer.
I feel like I need to warn you because last summer, a series of murders happened in my hometown, and now it’s becoming warmer out, it’s starting to happen again. To this day the police still haven’t found the person responsible for the murders, but the killings are something that’s on everybody’s mind 24/7.
Last year around the beginning of June, the weather started to become nicer and you’d see far more people in the local park lounging around, having picnics with their friends and having a drink over a nice conversation. You could see guys throwing a ball, girls frisbeeing, kids playing in the shallow end of the lake and moms going for a stroll, pushing their baby’s buggy while having a little chat with their friends they got out of touch with over the winter. I also really enjoyed the warm weather and would hang out with my friends a lot more as well. But the feeling of happiness that was in the air, soon washed away when the police got a call from a man who was walking his dog in the park at around 4:30AM, before heading to work. He had been walking for maybe five minutes when the man saw feet sticking out of a bush near the lake. Worried for someone’s health, he decided to approach the feet. The nice weather was accompanied by the youth drinking more and the man thought someone was sleeping off the buzz in a bush after not being able to make it back home. Upon getting closer to the person, the man felt like something was off: there were a lot of flies buzzing above the lush, green leaves. When he moved aside some branches, he stumbled back and held a hand over his mouth. The feet belonged to a boy, around 20-years-old, a boy who’d stay that age forever from that moment on. His eyes were glazy and were staring off in the distance. He had a slash across his chest and his torso was decorated with multiple stab wounds. The man immediately called in the murder and police arrived not much later. During the morning news, the entire town was able to hear how Daniel Reed was murdered around 1AM after going out with some friends. His friends were interrogated, but all of them had a strong alibi so the police ruled out their involvement in the murder. The general consensus was that it must’ve been someone who was passing through town. A lot of people went trough our hometown when visiting the bigger cities located nearby. My town was a quiet, peaceful town and crime rates were very low so the death of Daniel shocked us pretty badly. We didn’t get a lot of time to recover from his death either because not even three days later another body was found. This time it was a 47-year-old man by the name of John Wilkins, a father of two little kids and happily married to his wife. The murder of Wilkins had the same M.O. as the murder of Daniel so the “passing through murderer”-theory got put back on the shelf where it came from. Police were scratching their head as they had no clue who could have performed the murder, or why. Wilkins and Daniel were not related to each other apart from both living in our hometown, two streets from each other. The only other thing that matched, was that they were both found dead without a shirt on. The lack of clues didn’t stop the police from keeping the investigation going though, luckily for us, because people were starting to feel unsafe in our otherwise very safe town.
Peace returned for a little over a week before the next body was discovered by a girl who was worried about her boyfriend. Nathan was supposed to hang out with his friend over the course of the afternoon, but when the evening rolled around the corner, Beth hadn’t heard from him for over four hours. She had called him and texted him, asking where he was and when he would be home because they were planning on having dinner at her parent’s house and it wasn’t like him to not tell her he was running late. The couple always shared their location with each other so after looking up where he was and finding out he was still in the park, she grabbed her keys and started her car to go and look for him. She was quite worked up and annoyed because she couldn’t believe he would ditch her like that. The angriness she felt didn’t last for long when she discovered his lifeless body laying in the middle of the park, in plain sight. She called the cops and waited next to his body until they arrived. Again, the M.O. matched, but one thing was off compared to the previous murders. He wasn’t wearing a shirt, had a slash across his chest accompanied by multiple stab wounds, but there was also a sad face emoji carved into his chest. The police were starting to suspect that the bare torso had something to do with the motive of the killer but they weren’t quite sure what exactly it could mean, given there were no signs of sexual assault or anything, just the general signs of struggle a body would show after trying to keep someone from being able to come close enough to stab you with a knife.
Murders like this happened sporadically over the span of the summer, until it started getting colder again. Since all the victims were male, mothers told their boys to be careful when going out and girlfriends started fights with their boyfriends when they would want to go for a beer with the boys. I can’t blame them, I also got very concerned for my brother and father and would remind them to be careful whenever they had to go somewhere alone. Luckily, when the temperature went down and the rain started falling more frequently, the murder spree seemed to have come to an end. During the next season, the police kept looking into the cases and trying to find a DNA match or clues, but with the absence of new murders, the cases were pushed to the back of their minds a bit and were given less thought the longer ago they happened. That is until spring and then this summer came along. It’s the last day of May as I am writing this warning, but I felt like I needed to write it now because a new murder has happened yesterday. Lou Torres, a young entrepreneur, 27 years of age, didn’t show up for his sister’s dance rehearsal. Not that big of a deal you’d think, but Lou never missed any of her rehearsals for the life of him. He was her biggest supporter and made his colleagues come to her shows because he was so proud of her. His mother rang him a couple of times but was unable to get a hold of him. Later that evening his body was found close to the townhouse, again with no shirt on and with multiple stab wounds and a slash across the chest. The police apologized on TV for still not having caught the perpetrator and promised they’d get results soon. We hoped they would keep their promise, as it was starting to become more and more obvious that they had no idea what they should looking for. I can’t blame them though, they never had to deal with a situation like this before. But they had a new clue, and it was groundbreaking. Lou was found with a note on top of his chest. The note read: “for the love of God, wear a fucking shirt”. It’s safe to say the town was confused by this note, but it did reveal more about the motive of the killer. When the temperatures shoot up, a lot of the men in our town would go about their day not wearing a shirt. You’d see hairy dadbods on bikes, sixpacks in the park and sunburnt skinny men anywhere you looked. It also explained why the men were all found without a shirt on: they were not wearing one in the first place.
After the note was found, the constant presence of bare torsos around town went down. Women were less scared that the murderer would switch it up and kill a woman for a change, considering you don’t see a lot of women going around town without a shirt on. We couldn’t, even if we wanted to, because we’d get catcalled all the time. Especially since we don’t have the freedom to walk around without a shirt and a bra on, because the people would revolt against that. Free the nipple and all that, I know, I know, but when push comes to shove it’d be bad for women to walk around like that because naked women torsos are so sexualized. Anyway, back to the point of my warning. Although a lot of men refrained from going shirtless, some others insisted on going shirtless to provoke the killer. One of these men is my 23-year-old brother, George.
I’ve told him time and time again that it’s dangerous to go out like that given the killer obviously has a distaste for men showing their bare chest the second a warm day comes along, but he won’t listen to reason. It’s quite annoying, to be honest with you. I’ve given him multiple chances but he just won’t listen. Sigh. I really dread having to kill him the same way I did the others but God, I really hate when men walk around without a shirt on.