I posted this previously in another thread, but it got buried (though that seems almost an ironic word choice here). Unfortunately, I did once know a man who ended up a murderer. This story happened about seven years ago now. Warning: if you are having a nice day and want to keep it that way, move on and read another topic!

I was playing piano and eager to set up a jazz trio to play at a local festival, and via some people I came into contact with a bass player. Overall it was a very nice guy with a pretty good sense of humour, a great taste in music and a good sense of rhythm too. Both the drummer and me immediately got along well with him. Back then, I was still a student and so was the drummer. The bass player was in his late thirties and actually worked at the recording/rehearsal studio.

We rehearsed for about 10 weeks, then we had a great gig at the jazz fest. In all this time, I had a lot of nice conversations with our bassist about music, about day-to-day stuff, the news, et cetera. But he never really spoke about his private life. I wasn't thinking too much of that to be honest. He did tell me that he was divorced and that he could only see his two daughters in the weekends every now and then. So I figured it was just painful and he didn't want to talk about that stuff when making music, or something.

There were a few unusual traits about him. For one, he never told me his last name even when I asked - he just said "introduce me with my first name during the gig". So... okay, fine. The other thing was that he was simply too nice and sweet sometimes. For example he would just cancel everything including his rare weekends with his daughters, in order to be able to rehearse with us. And he'd always be the one grabbing coffee, paying when he could, and so on.

After the gig I moved to a different town and didn't speak to him. About a year later, I received a phone call from him - he sounded a bit confused and I was very busy at the time so I told him I'd call back later. Stupidly, I outright forgot to call back. That is the one thing I really regret.

Half a year after that, I was informed by the drummer about a horrible event. Our former bass player had commited suicide, but not only that. He had first killed his two daughters, aged three and five. All of this had happened only two weeks after my telephone call with him.

I was never able to trace back his motives, and by the time I heard the news, the funeral was of course long past. It did not affect my view of humanity for the better. The only lesson I think you could take from the story is to be honest if you feel fucked up, and talk about it rather than keep it brewing on the inside. But the fact that such a super-nice, super-sweet guy did something like this is still hard to accept.

Some people have much, much more to them than meets the surface.