So, I like to troll the internet for crime cases.  That’s how I roll, because I love me some crime.  Don’t take that the wrong way…

Speaking of taking crime the wrong way, I use my husband often as a source of ideas.  I like to bounce things off him at dinner.  So my husband, my mother and my three children were at dinner at a Chinese restaurant and I needed an attempted murder for an adult book, which I write under another name.  There was a rousing discussion about ways to make murder look like an accident.  My husband finally won with his suggestion of purposefully induced anaphylaxis.  I thanked and praised him and said that I would put it to good use the minute I had the chance.

It was at that point we realized the people behind us had been listening and had heard just enough to misunderstand what they were hearing and were literally discussing calling the police.  Oops.  That’s why you shouldn’t eavesdrop, you might hear something about yourself, or mistake a fictional crime for a real one.

At any rate, I read a lot about crime.  And today I picked up this little gem.  Out of respect for the people involved I’m going to leave out most of the information.

Five people were driving around in a car when the murderer, Timothy, got pissed, got out of the car, and started shooting.  These five lived together in a house.  All of them.  Together.  Here’s why this is weird.

Ruth M. was born in 1965.  That makes her 47.  She used to be married to Milton L., killed in this assault, who was born in 1942.  That made him around 70 when he died.  Despite being divorced, Ruth and Milton were still living in the same house.  But make no mistake that Ruth hadn’t moved on.  Because she had a new husband.  Before he was also murdered at the same time, George M. was born in 1993.  That made him approximately 19 at the time of death.

So Ruth moved on from someone 23 years her senior to someone about 18 years her junior.  And they were all living in the same house.  That had to have been awkward, all murder aside.  Also, wow.  Age is clearly just a number to this particular woman.

Also living in the house was Ruth’s daughter, Vallena T., aged 31.  The murderer in this case is Timothy H. who is married to Vallena.  Timothy also lived in the same house.  He’s 43.  So, clearly, Vallena takes after her mother in the whole ‘age is relative’ camp.

Whatever happened in this case to drive a man to kill his fathers-in-law (x2), it no doubt happened while they were all living together in the same house.  Can you imagine?  Yikes.  Families are enough of a pain when they make sense.  When you start piling people up in the same place with years of twisted history, someone is going to end up shot.  The moral of the story is…I don’t know, actually.  Maybe the last sentence.  Don’t live with a bunch of people all interrelated in not the best way.  Also, I’m totally going to find a way to use this kind of situation in a story.

Also, real life is much weirder than fiction is ever allowed to be.  Also, I’m dying to know what made this man so angry that he started shooting.  Also, I want some Chinese.

Amber