Reddit user grailknight1632 asked, “People who grew up in a small town, what is that incident everyone knows about, but no one talks about?” prompting folks to share the wildest and most tragic scandals that rattled their small towns. BuzzFeed Community members then submitted their own stories of the infamous incidents from their hometowns. Here’s what they revealed:
Note: Disturbing and graphic content ahead, including stories of murder, suicide, child abuse, and domestic violence.
1. “In the early ’80s, a local pastor and the church secretary had an affair. Their spouses both ended up murdered a few months apart. The pastor and secretary have served over 20 years in jail for the murders. She runs a nonprofit, and the pastor is a marriage counselor.”
2. “A boy I went to high school with brutally murdered another classmate (post-graduation) over a video game. The murderer cut off the victim’s thumb before dumping the body in a river so he could unlock the phone and act like the person was still alive by texting the girlfriend and family.”
3. “In the town where I grew up, the local newspaper was owned by a family. There was an incident in 1987 where one member of that family was kidnapped and buried alive in a box with air tubes to keep him alive for ransom. Apparently, the tubing was not large enough for adequate airflow, and the person died of suffocation. They brought the kidnappers to trial, and they were sentenced to death, but one of our governors (who was also from the same town and went to prison on other charges) commuted their sentence to life in prison. It was a huge deal at the time.”
—Anonymous
4. “One summer, several mysterious fires broke out in the hills around town. Always buildings, always unoccupied. Fires are normal here during the summer, but investigators had trouble finding a cause. Usually, it’s lightning or accidental human causes, like a spark from a car. One day, a house occupied by an older couple was set on fire, and they died. This time, however, someone had been caught on a few trail cams around the property, starting the fire. Turns out one of the property owners was trying to commit insurance fraud by burning down a house he owned and rented out in the hills, and to cover it up, he was burning other homes, too. He thought the old couple’s house was vacant. He got charged with murder and arson and is still in prison, as far as I know.”
—Anonymous
Pawel Wewiorski / Getty Images
5. “When I first moved to this small town in Arkansas, a man was fooling around with several married women in the area. One of the women was married to a local sheriff. The man was warned by the sheriff and several of the husbands, but he continued the affairs. He was found in the front yard of his house with his hands tied behind his back, his manhood had been removed in the bathroom of the house, and the back of his head was gone from a shotgun blast. The shotgun was over 20 feet away from the body. No one was ever charged, and it was called the most determined case of suicide anyone had ever seen!”
—Anonymous
6. “When I was in high school, we got a new priest at our Catholic church. He gave many of us the creeps. Several months later, the FBI was in town investigating him for the double murder of a funeral home director and his assistant in another part of the state. He proclaimed his innocence but later hung himself from the rectory of the church, a mortal sin. It later came out that his motive for the murders was that he was having inappropriate relationships with corpses, and they threatened to expose him.”
—Anonymous
7. “A guy I went to high school with…his father put out a hit on his mother. He was a chiropractor and was soliciting people in his office. The first person took the money and skipped town. The next guy hid outside their house and shot this woman in the hand. The woman was a substitute teacher at my school. She was someone everyone loved — me personally, because her son was a good friend of mine. Many people didn’t like my friend or his brother, but they were always good to me. The father, though, used to drive us to Eagles games, chain-smoking the entire time, leaving the window maybe an inch cracked. Everyone, including his children, hated him. He got like 25 years. He might be out now, actually. This happened in 2004.”
8. “In my first year of high school (1995 to 1996), a friend asked me to homecoming. He was a nice kid, and I didn’t have a date, thanks to my brother, who scared off most guys, so I said sure. We had fun and stayed friends all through high school. In 2013, he was arrested, tried, and found guilty of bludgeoning his parents to death. My brother is a retired detective. While the trial was going on, he told me about the possibility of this guy being acquitted due to a technicality. When he was convicted, I breathed a sigh of relief.”
Chris Ryan / Getty Images
9. “Back in 2019, a six-year-old boy went missing in my town. It was horrible, and everyone rallied around the parents and younger brother, including creating GoFundMes, building little shrines outside their home, and hosting candlelit vigils. It wasn’t a HUGE story, but it made some national news networks. This went on for about two weeks before everything came crashing down. It came out that Child Protective Services had visited their house over a dozen times before the little boy’s disappearance. Then, the parents stopped cooperating with the police and quickly became the main suspects.”
“His body was found a few days after these developments. I won’t get into the details because they’re sickening, but the parents did it. They were eventually found guilty and given lengthy sentences (although, in my opinion, the mom’s isn’t long enough). The little boy is still honored regularly, but no one talks about those two weeks before the truth came out.”
—Anonymous
10. “In the small town where I went to high school, a local pastor abducted a 15-year-old girl in my class and took her across several state lines. Her parents found a note that said she was going off to get married. Anyway, the authorities found her, brought her back to her parents, and put the pastor in prison. The whole thing was instantly swept under the rug. It’s like I’m the only one who remembers it. In the same small town, some 20-odd years later, a man and his wife were found dead in a murder-suicide. A week later, the local paper had a joint obituary for the murderer and his victim. They had a joint funeral and were buried side-by-side.”
11. “In eighth grade, one of my classmates died of a ‘hunting accident,’ but no one in school believed it was an accident. The way the other person described how it happened sounded too made-up. Apparently, he was walking by a gun on a table, and his jacket zipper somehow caught the trigger and just happened to pull with enough force to shoot the other guy in the head, the exact moment he bent over to pick up a shell. The kid who died was very popular and genuinely a nice guy. The guy who shot him was very much not. There were never any charges, but that kid didn’t stay at school much longer, and I don’t think it was just because he was a bit ostracized. He always had a bad vibe about him, and I’d honestly be surprised if he didn’t end up in prison for at least a bit.”
12. “A fairly newly licensed RN who came from an old family in our town a few years ago was busted for ‘checking up’ on post-op patients in their homes and stealing their pain meds. He went through a felony diversion program and had his license suspended. During that time, he was promoted to a leadership administrative position and is now the mayor. He had someone fired from their position due to a ‘lack of transparency.’ There was a news article about it online, but it was deleted from the site within a couple of hours.”
—Anonymous
Kinga Krzeminska / Getty Images
13. “My mom was the scandal. This was the late 1980s, and I was a little kid. My mom was the high school English teacher and got caught having an affair with a female student. When it came out, more local girls came forward with similar stories. My mom ended up leaving in the middle of the night in fear of being arrested and never came back. She occasionally called or sent money for our birthdays, but we never saw her again.”
—Anonymous
14. “This happened a few years ago. It was a normal night until suddenly, we got the news that multiple people had been stabbed in a house in my town. We learned that the mom, grandmother, a 5-year-old girl, and I believe her older brother were in the home at the time. The mom’s ex-boyfriend (the little girl’s father) had either negotiated his way in or forced his way into the house and stabbed everyone. The grandmother and the brother survived, but the little girl and her mother died. Someone I knew lived two houses down from the family, and she said a helicopter was on the street. This was only a few roads away from my home. I knew the teacher whose class the child was in. I can’t imagine the trauma and pain the teacher and students, as well as family and friends, went through.”
—Anonymous
15. “There’s this married guy who’s also had several girlfriends on the side, and all have ended up dead of mysterious causes — house fires, ‘suicides,’ etc. He is always the primary beneficiary of their assets when they die. Three women have died this way now. He hasn’t been arrested, and people just sort of accept it. It’s very odd.”
16. “The wife of the sheriff’s deputy was cheating on him with some guy. The guy ends up dead from a shotgun wound to the head. The sheriff’s deputy is somehow first on the scene. The sheriff’s department rules it as self-inflicted. The shotgun that the guy supposedly shot himself with was never found.”
Sheila Paras / Getty Images
17. “It didn’t happen to me, but a buddy of mine grew up in a small farming community in rural Montana. This all happened about 15 years ago. A man in his neighborhood was known as a really friendly guy. He’d wave to people while sitting on his porch and hand out the big-size candy bars to trick-or-treaters on Halloween. He was just a ‘friendly old man.’ He had to have been in his late ’80s or early ’90s; nothing seemed off about him. From the way my friend tells it, one day, out of nowhere, a bunch of police cars, including an FBI van, pulled up to this old man’s house. They went inside, and a few minutes later, this ‘harmless’ old man was being taken away in handcuffs. It drew a pretty big crowd because this is a small farming community in Montana, and news travels fast.”
“It turns out this old man everyone loved had a really dark secret. In the 1960s, he was a member of the Ku Klux Klan, specifically the infamous Mississippi White Knights, and he was connected to over a dozen unsolved murders of civil rights activists. It shocked everyone. And no one has really spoken of it since.”
18. “I grew up in a tiny town of no more than 600 people in upstate NY, the kind of place where everyone knew each other. In August 1993, my mom — an RN — took the day off on a whim to spend time with my little sister and me. I was a little bummed because it meant I wouldn’t see my best friend, our babysitter’s son. We were supposed to go to our summer program and practice walking to school together. I was entering first grade, and he was about to start kindergarten. He was so excited to practice with me. But he never made it. He was found dead in a field just a few hundred feet away from his house. What was done to him was horrific — things no one should ever have to imagine, let alone a 5-year-old kid. The entire neighborhood was devastated.”
“The adults pulled together to support his parents, doing everything they could to keep us kids distracted, shielding us from the worst of it. It took a few days before they figured out who did it — a 13-year-old boy who had been part of our little group. He had been bullied and abused by his own family. The police found a violently smashed banana near my friend’s body, and the boy’s grandfather eventually tipped them off when he overheard him furiously saying that he hated bananas. Odd, but he was right. He was convicted, but he was granted parole recently. Last I heard, he’s living down in the city. I’m 37 now, and I still think about my friend all the time. I wonder who he would’ve become, what kind of life he would have had. I still miss him.”
—Anonymous
19. “All the kids of the people involved went to the same small school and lived in the same neighborhoods. First, one mother passed away, and all of the other (mostly married) mothers mysteriously started getting close to the recently widowed father. They took food to the family and stayed over to care for the kids. The recently widowed guy had about seven girlfriends — all mothers of his children’s friends. And that is not all. A couple of years went by, and a bunch of parents started divorcing. They were horrible divorces that took a toll on everyone. We found out (I was about 13) that there was a group of swinger parents and a group of people who were cheating on their partners with another neighbor. The town started to become famous because it was where everyone was sleeping with each other.’ Again, all the children of the involved parents went to the same small school and were around the same age.”
—Anonymous
20. “The daughter of the police chief got arrested for abusing a child at the daycare where she worked. Coincidentally, that was the week her police chief father suddenly realized that being able to go to the county jail website and look up the mugshot of anyone booked into the jail was ‘wrong’ and shut it down.”
Zoka74 / Getty Images/iStockphoto
21. “I live in a tiny Kansas town. The police chief was caught so many times breaking into businesses and stealing. The local Dollar General staff had to follow him around whenever he was in the store. One night, our local pharmacy was broken into, and the story was that whoever did it never really had time to steal the drugs, or so the police stated. Shortly after that, our grocery store was broken into, and a good-sized amount of cash was taken. When he was caught, he told the deputies that he was checking the security in the building. This man also sold several items online. I found out through a friend of mine who worked in the sheriff’s office in the next town over. He was being investigated for missing items from the evidence room. They were able to prove he had sold them. Charges were never filed because our prosecutor’s son was a big drug dealer in town, and guess where the missing drugs went? The chief was allowed to retire quietly and receive all his benefits.”
—Anonymous
22. “Our local physical therapist was committing insurance fraud by doing things like billing patients for multiple visits when they only came once per week. Well, the police got involved and interviewed him. He stopped paying his employees and just vanished. Turns out he fled to his house in Florida and murdered his entire family and the dog. Very shocking for our small town in Connecticut. He’s serving life in prison in Florida now.”
23. “A high school history teacher exposed himself in the park and was arrested. He was ‘on leave’ for six months and then returned and taught like nothing happened. For the senior slideshow, students put up a picture of him and played the Police song ‘Don’t Stand So Close to Me.'”
24. “The college football coach’s wife blew through a red light and slammed into an older couple. They both had major injuries and surgeries and were hospitalized for months. The husband ended up dying in a rehab center a few months later from his injuries. The rumor is that the coach’s wife had been day-drinking at lunch. However, she wasn’t arrested. Supposedly, they didn’t have a breathalyzer done at the scene, and she was only ticketed months later for running a red light. They didn’t end up charging her for anything because the death was more than 30 days after the accident. This coach is now a US senator.”
Philippe Gerber / Getty Images
25. “There was a pretty big natural disaster, and many people were left homeless with no clothes or possessions. When the donations started pouring in, some locals who were volunteering to sort out the donations kept some of the best items themselves. Clothes, blankets, food. A lot of them were unaffected by said disaster.”
26. “A guy was hired to burn down a bakery for the insurance money, realized he burned the wrong one down, then went and burned the right one the same night.”
27. “A kid in my grade was the son of the circuit court judge. Throughout the duration of my high school years, there were several suicides in this small town amongst the student population — enough to really be atypical of such a small community. Then they mysteriously stopped, and there haven’t been any in the last 30 years. Rumor is that the judge’s kid was a murderer and knew he could get away with pretty much anything. Details were always sketchy. I’m glad I was on his good side.”
28. “My best friend’s brother turned out to be a serial killer.”
Steven Puetzer / Getty Images
29. “My congressman was caught with a sex worker, so his wife divorced him. He keeps getting elected. Oh, and he’s one of those ‘family values’ politicians.”
30. “The sweetest older front desk secretary at our high school and her husband were brutally murdered. Turns out they were drug dealers.”
31. “The owner of a private wetland (really wealthy) tried to kill his wife with blowfish poison in her food. She survived because he was a fool. He killed himself while waiting for trial. Now his name is off the wetlands, and no one asks why anymore.”
32. “There was a very old hotel in my town — old enough that I have a picture of my great uncle and Babe Ruth inside that hotel together. It was a local bar for years, but it wasn’t doing well. As the owner attempted to sell, it was clear he would have issues finding a buyer. One night, it mysteriously all went up in flames. The owner sat across the street on a stoop, smoking a cigarette and watching it burn. They never found out how it burned to the ground, and no one’s really talked about it since.”
Simonkr / Getty Images
33. “I went to college in a small town. It was a conservative, Christian college. There was this one professor who always gave me the creeps. One spring semester, he was suddenly not there, even though he was supposed to be. Turns out he inappropriately touched a first-year girl, and as ‘punishment,’ instead of jail time, he had to go to in-house therapy at a Christian counseling rehab place. Fast-forward a few years. My college roommate and I went to the small-town carnival. There were some police officers there doing PSAs, and McGruff the Crime Dog (a local costumed character who worked with the police force) was there, being all handsy with the little kids. I saw him on break later with his costume head removed, and it was that same sketchy professor we had in college!”
—Anonymous
34. “A girl and her beau went for a night on the town and were seen arguing with a man at the end of the night. The next morning, the guy was found dead from gunshots in one location, and the girl was found a couple of days later in another location. No one was ever arrested, and the main suspect was the woman’s married chief of police ex. They dug the man up 40 years later to try and run some tests as part of a cold-case investigation. When they opened his casket, his head had been removed and replaced with someone else’s head. We in the town don’t talk about it much, but that show The Dead Files did an episode about it.”
35. “About eight years ago, the house I am renting was used as a place for growing weed (this is illegal in our country). They had every room filled with equipment and saplings. A couple of weeks before the saplings were ready, something in the house caught fire, and they got busted. If people ask where I live, I just say the weed house, and everybody knows.”
36. “There was a thrift shop that opened and closed very suddenly (maybe open for six months), and we discovered it was a police sting operation to catch drug dealers. A police officer was caught/identified as a major dealer. He was the former D.A.R.E. officer who went to the schools and is now the police chief. I think they even said he was selling old seized drugs.”
Zabelin / Getty Images
37. “I grew up in the 1990s in a SUPER Catholic, Midwest town. Two of our best basketball players/most popular girls were inseparable sisters. Apparently, they were in a throuple with the young, single girls’ basketball coach. One of the sisters started to feel guilty and confessed to the priest. The priest decided to tell their parents for the girls’ safety. The coach was asked to resign, but then he went on to coach a few towns over. The girls were both forced to quit basketball. The oldest lost her scholarship and the ability to go out of state for college, and the younger left to go to a boarding school. Finally, the priest was relocated for breaking the confession rules or something. It was a major scandal that many people thought was made up. When I was older, however, my dad, the local police chief, confirmed it was true.”
—Anonymous
38. “My brother was the nicest guy, a great teacher, a union representative, and a hardworking village trustee in a suburb of Buffalo, NY. On the night of June 21, he killed himself. His ex-girlfriend was present at the time at their shared residence, and that night either assisted in his demise by pushing him to the brink or stood idly by while he spiraled out of control and ended his life. She did not call the authorities or any family members to help; she did not try to stop him or try to get him out of the house. She told a friend she told him to do it. The day after, she stole his cellphone (that the police did not secure) and deleted all her texts. She then held his possessions hostage, demanding money from my parents until lawyers got involved. She had his personal safe, which she did not have the combination to, opened by a locksmith and took god only knows what out of it.”
“He had broken up with her months prior, and they were working on selling the residence they co-owned. With a clause on the deed of ‘right to survivorship,’ she figured it better to have a dead ex and whole ownership of the house than a living ex and only 50% of the sale of the house.”
—Anonymous
39. “Our DA is currently on the hook for felony gun charges and is no longer allowed to prosecute the big murder case in our county because, for some reason, he was in the neighboring county with the police department in ‘law enforcement capacity’ when they went to arrest the suspect and bring him to our county. There were Homeland Security officers there, so there was no need for him to be present, and there was especially no need for him to shoot a gun in the middle of a neighborhood. He shot into an apartment that was occupied by a woman and her three young children, one of whom was less than a few feet away from being shot.”
40. “An heir to a huge fortune from a now 150-year-old major brewery ran his sports car off a notorious curve in my hometown, killing his girlfriend, and was arrested for DUI. He was never charged, as he and his insurance paid off the girl’s family, and he threatened to sue the county for millions of dollars for knowing that the curve, called ‘Deadman’s Curve,’ was unsafe. He was never charged. He later took over his family’s company and was even featured in some of their commercials before selling it to a multinational more than a decade ago.”
Thomas Winz / Getty Images
41. “Two high school friends saved money for four years in a joint banking account for a backpacking trip through Europe. One of them cleaned out the account of $20k and disappeared after an older man in the neighborhood ‘befriended’ him and talked him into it. Everyone said he went to the nearest big city to blow the cash partying, but I don’t think they ever saw or heard from him again. I always wondered if something else happened to him.”
42. “A famous murderer grew up in our town and killed someone in the next town over. My town quietly pretends they didn’t live here and lets the other town take the spotlight. Having worked in the town where the murder happened, they also don’t like to talk about it.”
43. And: “There were two kids in my (Illinois) high school (mid-’90s) who ran away together. Local news broke the story, and I remember being absolutely shocked to see someone I knew on the ‘Missing Persons’ segment. Authorities found their bodies in Florida a couple of weeks later. First and only murder victims I’ve ever known personally.”
—Anonymous
Are there any infamous incidents from your small hometown? Tell us in the comments or share anonymously using this form.
Dial 988 in the United States to reach the National Suicide Prevention Lifeline. The 988 Lifeline is available 24/7/365. Your conversations are free and confidential. Other international suicide helplines can be found at befrienders.org. The Trevor Project, which provides help and suicide-prevention resources for LGBTQ youth, is 1-866-488-7386.
If you or someone you know is in immediate danger as a result of domestic violence, call 911. For anonymous, confidential help, you can call the 24/7 National Domestic Violence Hotline at 1-800-799-7233 (SAFE) or chat with an advocate via the website.
The National Alliance on Mental Illness helpline is 1-800-950-6264 (NAMI) and provides information and referral services; GoodTherapy.org is an association of mental health professionals from more than 25 countries who support efforts to reduce harm in therapy.
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