My favourite coworker mudered someone

I’ve been into true crime since I was very young. For some reason, I always believed that if I ever crossed paths with a murderer or a psychopath, I would know. I thought something inside me would warn me. Like I was "smarter than that". I was very, very wrong.

When I was 20, I worked as a waitress at a restaurant, and that was where I met him. He was the barista, in his mid to late twenties, a bit of a rocker type. He was funny and genuine, with a loud, beautiful laugh, and he had a very distinctive smile that made his eyes disappear completely. He had a wife and four children, which surprised me because he gave off such man child vibes. But he seemed like a great dad and husband. I still remember the day he bought matching Spiderman costumes for himself and his two sons and proudly showed them to us.

He knew I loved strawberry juice, so whenever someone ordered it, he would set some aside for me. After every shift, we would close up together and go out back for a cigarette. We always stood behind the shipping containers in the pitch dark, smoking, laughing, talking about customers. Thinking about that now sends shivers down my spine. Afterwards, he would drive me home, and I live in a very isolated area. Back then, he was the one person I genuinely looked forward to working with and trusted completely. Even when I hated the job, I used to think that at least I would get some laughs with him.

In June of this year, six years later, news broke about a waitress who had been murdered in my neighborhood. It shocked everyone. I did not know her personally, but I knew people who did, so it all felt very close. She was found half buried under concrete. They had tried burry her, but the heat in my country added to the natural decomposition process made it humid, and it never set properly. The neighbors noticed the smell and called the police. A few days later, the photos of the perpetrators were released.

At first, I didn't recognize him immediately. It had been six years, and I do not think about former coworkers often. But when I saw his mugshot, I knew how that man in the picture smiled. I knew the way he talked, the way you do when you know a friend. I knew how his eyes dissapeared when he laughed. And suddeny it clicked in my mind that it was him.

It crushed me. At first I went into denial. I kept thinking that it could not be him, that there must have been some mistake. But there was no mistake. He had murdered that poor girl because she called him out in front of their coworkers for doing a Nazi salute. He apparently thought it was funny, and when she called him out for it in front of others, he felt humiliated and it made him furious. He then teamed up with another coworker who owed her money, and for him it was a convenient opportunity. They lured her to their house with the promise of paying her back, and when she arrived they murdered her.

I felt absolutely terrible, not only for this beautiful young woman whose life was stolen, but also for the realization that it could have been me. I thought about all the times he could have done something to me, and I felt a strange kind of survivor’s guilt. It was awful to understand that if even one small thing had gone differently, I might not be here.

I have been working through this in therapy, but it has changed me deeply. I now understand that you cannot tell. A murderer can be someone you love, someone you trust, someone you would never even think to fear. And I feel like sharing this as a warning to everyone out there, especially young girls. Stay aware, and understand that danger does not always look like danger, there's no such thing as an "instinct". You can never be careful enough.