This is unfortunately a true story from my childhood some of you may have heard about in the news already. I grew up in a small town in a neighborhood where everyone knew everyone. My great grandparents bought their home on the same street my grandparents would also buy their home on and eventually my mother as well. There was a feeling of comfort in our small community that left us all leaving our doors unlocked without a second thought and kids staying out playing tag or riding our bikes around even slightly after the streetlights came on. We felt safe and sound for years until the day we found out the news that shattered not only hearts, but the belief that things like that don’t happen in our neighborhood.
Directly across the street from my grandparents lived a man named John. He went by the name Bud and he was a kind, generous man who I vividly remember approaching my lemonade stands I had as a little girl with a large mug that had his favorite football teams logo on asking if I could fill it for him. He always had his mug ready when I had the urge to hustle for some money to spend when the ice cream truck came around. I charged 50 cents a glass, yet he always gave me a $10 or $20 which made him by far my number one customer. When I was many years younger, Bud’s wife Rose, moved across the country to be with her mother as she came down with cancer. I never met Rose that I can remember but my family all knew and loved her. She was said to be a pure joy to have in our neighborhood and with how sweet her husband was, that didn’t surprise me.
Bud was adored by my mother and both grandparents and great grandparents, but they gossiped about how odd they thought it was that he walked alone sometimes for hours around the surrounding blocks during the middle of the night. He did it almost every night, rain or cold didn’t stop him. As well liked as he was, he was seen as a bit of an odd ball. One day when us kids were all outside playing, a few police cars stopped at his house. The details of this visual are vague to me, but I remember other vehicles showing up as well shortly after and my mother calling for me to come inside which I did. Eventually the local news van was there and my mother went outside to speak with one of the officers. When she came back, she looked to be in shock. She cried and I began to cry knowing there was now a reason to be upset but not knowing exactly why.
My grandparents was a short walk a few houses down that my mother and I made and when we walked in, everyone was sharing the same look she had. I asked what was going on and finally my mother gave me the blunt truth she knew if she didn’t tell me, I would just find out from a neighbor kid anyways. She sat down and said “Bud called the police to confess that he murdered his wife Rose and put her under the floor in his house.” I was about 11 years old so this information was the most horrific thing I had ever heard of happening outside a scary movie. Rose never went to be with her mother. She had been under that house all these years.
We later found out he beat and strangled her during a fight and killed her, or so he thought, but when they removed her body, there was claw marks on the wood above where she laid. She was alive but barely for long enough to realize where she was and left those marks as her last attempt at escaping. The absolutely horrifying last moment’s this poor woman endured still turn my stomach, break my heart and remind me that no matter how kind you think someone is, they can have an evil deep inside them you could never imagine. It taught me that monsters don’t have to look scary. They can look like your friendly mailman who always smiles and waves at you, your favorite teacher at school, your friends parent or your sweet neighbor who comes to your lemonade stand’s with a very generous tip. We all started locking our doors and coming home before the streetlights came on after that. Our quiet, “safe” neighborhood never felt the same again. The loss of innocence was instant and irreparable.
Bud went off to rot in prison, and months later his son he had from a previous marriage before Rose, moved into the home with his wife, son and daughter temporarily to fix it up and sell it. The daughter was my age and we became friends. My mother became friends with her parent’s and allowed me to sleepover one night. As I laid down on the couch in the living room above the same floors Rose laid under for years, I found it very difficult to sleep. It was in that moment I realized the chilling reason why Bud walked the streets all night.