I went to a serial killer's lair.
I am completely aware that this story involves me being very stupid and careless. I'm not going to inject these acknowledgements into the story, but rest assured that in hindsight I am aware of the foolishness that took place, and I don't need to be chided on that topic.
Now, where to begin....
The year was approximately 1998-1999. I was a young gay man in my early 20s, living in a medium-sized city in the Midwestern U.S. This was sort of an in-between, transitional time for gay people, where in most populous areas we had enough respect to live openly but there were still plenty of people who did not like us.
It was well before the invention of smart phones, and the internet was still in the early stages of mass adoption. There were large communities online, but it was not yet at the point where "most" Americans were online. Online socialization consisted of chat rooms, hosted by various services like AOL, Yahoo, or IRC servers, and message boards were still in use by large numbers of people. For gay men at that time, it was nothing short of revolutionary. Prior to the internet, and to the broader cultural changes, gay men had been stuck looking for "fun" in secretive and/or shady places due to the inability to freely express ourselves. In the 90s it was still somewhat risky, but the internet offered a way to talk freely and relatively anonymously, without the risk of being outed or worse. For this reason it really took off in the gay communities, and gay men were a very large part of the userbases for these social platforms. It was suddenly very easy and (relatively) safe to find dates, friends, or just sex, and it quickly became the norm for a lot of gay men.
On the other hand, being such a new communication tool for most people, we were sometimes blind to the risks....
Being an attractive young man in my prime, I made liberal use of online communities to find "dates." That is to say, I had plenty of hookups. My city had a decent number of chat rooms and personals message boards, and I had mostly great experiences. I met the typical assortment of good guys, closet cases, and weirdos that you'd expect. I wasn't an absolute "ho" by most standards, but suffice to say that a cute gay gay at that time could generally have a lot more "dates" than your typical straight person, lol.
At some point during this time, I'd had some brief chat on a message board with a guy from my city, I forget his screen name (it's been over 20 years) so let's call him... SlimGuy65. This back-and-forth had happened on a general thread in the gay section, not in private messages, so it was visible to anyone who chose to read that thread. Nothing had come of it, but about a week later, I received an email from an unrecognized address. The email basically said, "hey I'm not gay, and I don't agree with the gay lifestyle. I'm here because my friend met this SlimGuy65 person from this message board, and the guy really hurt him. I don't want this to happen to anyone else. My friend tried to tell the police but they wouldn't do anything. I see you were talking to SlimGuy65 so just be careful and stay away from him."
OK. That's strange. What does this person mean by "really hurt him?" Was his heart broken? Did he get beaten up or verbally abused or what? I responded to the email asking for clarification on what exactly happened. I never recieved a response. I was slightly weirded out by it, but on the other hand it's an anonymous email from someone who doesn't respond and is vague about their warning. This could be anything. It could be some disgruntled ex trying to mess with the guy, it could be a real warning about someone gay bashing, it could be someone trolling who doesn't have anything to do with anyone. I kept it in the back of my mind but pretty much shrugged it off.
Several weeks later, I had a weekday off work and decided to take to the internet to fish for some d***, as was my custom. Lo and behold, I had an email response to a personal ad... it was SlimGuy65. He was offering to meet at his place to hang out and just have a good time. Wink wink, nudge nudge. I won't go into details, and as I recall there weren't really many details discussed other than the small talk and intros we'd done previously. Nothing about this guy was really sounding interesting to me, but I had no other offers on this day, so I decided why not. I'll go see what this dude is about.
As I typed my reply, I suddenly remembered the strange email I'd recieved warning about this person. I went back and re-read it.... still vague, still presenting more questions and no answers. Should I take this anonymous warning at face value and just ignore SG65? ... .... ..... .... ... I decided to go check him out anyway. His address was on a rather busy street in the middle of a dense residential area, not some shack out in the woods, and I can handle myself. If he's weird, I can just fuck out of there.
Before long, I arrived at the house at the agreed time. It was a duplex-style house, with one apartment on the ground floor and one on the second floor, part of a row of several identical duplexes. It was the middle of the afternoon, there was plenty of traffic on the street and the occasional person out on their porch or in their back yard. I pulled up the driveway to the parking area behind the house, got out and knocked on the door.
The guy that answered was a pretty normal, kind of mousy looking man, probably in his 40s. Slight, slim build, soft-spoken, looked like any guy working in an office cubicle somewhere. Not really my type but honestly my curiosity was piqued and I had nothing better to do, so I stepped inside to take a look around and gauge the situation, with the warning email fresh in my mind.
I stepped into the back door, into the kitchen. It was very clean and there was nothing out on the counters, and no table and chairs or anything. That is to say, it did not look like someone was living there. It had been kept up and cleaned, but looked empty. Looking out into the apartment I could see that it was not set up as a living space. A large window with sliding glass was between the kitchen and living room, and I could see what looked like a large table out in the living room area. SG65 said something like this isn't where I live, a friend of mine used to run a doctor's office here, I maintain the building for him. It's private though, we have the place to ourselves. (Weird. OK...)
He shut the back door and locked it. With a keyed deadbolt... the kind that you need a key to open, even from the inside, and put his keys back in his pocket, saying "So, what do you want to do?"
At this point, my danger sense spiked. This is not a normal home, and why is he locking the door like that? It's not necessarily suspect, a lot of people have that sort of lock on their door, and the door has a window so it even makes sense. Still, something is not right here, I can tell, and now I'm locked in.
I asked him why he was locking the door like that, which immediately flustered him. He was looking rather nervous, and his voice was a little wavery and halting, not quite stuttering but almost. He said "uhhm um well, we don't want someone... to come in and... interrupt us, right?" flashing a weak, unconvincing smile. His demeanor and body language were all I needed to confirm that this guy was up to no good, or at least there was something he was hiding.
However, I could tell that I was intimidating him. I was not a particularly muscular kid, but I have a larger frame. Like, even when I'm at my very thinnest I will still wear size L tops, and 36-waist pants, so I look big, which people tend to interpret as me being stronger than I really am. Also I'm not a tough guy at all, but I have a resting facial expression that makes me look like a bad ass thug. People who don't know me often assume that I'm rough or something. I sometimes use this to my advantage while I can, because before long a new acquaintance will eventually figure out that I'm a total wimp, lol. But, this was definitely an occasion to play up the tough-guy appearance, and I did exactly that.
I put on my best steely face and told him to unlock the door, and that I don't want to be locked in here. He looked for a moment like he was going to pee his pants, then he said, "Okay... alright I'll unlock this..." (he unlocked the deadbolt) "and I'll just lock the knob here..." and he turned the little dial that locks the doorknob. That was fine with me. I continued to stare at him until he said "I'll leave the keys on the counter right here..." and he set his keys down near the sink. I was relatively satisfied with that answer. At this point, though, my adrenaline was flowing, I was almost in full fight-or-flight mode, but I was kind of stuck in place. The guy was between me and the door, I was freaked out, but this little weasel did not appear to pose any immediate physical threat to me. I could tell that his pant pockets were empty, and that I was intimidating the living hell out of him. I didn't know yet exactly what to do.
Now keep in mind that despite my wordy descriptions, this all happened very quickly, without any really long pauses. It had only been maybe one to two minutes since I had stepped in the door. This all happened at the pace of a conversation.
The guy was obviously nervous and trying not to appear so. He said "well, let's go in," and walked a wide path around me through the kitchen into what would normally be the living room, and toward the hall to the right from there. I was familiar with this floor layout, it is very common in this area. The hallway would lead to two small bedrooms, with a bathroom in between them. I hesitated, thinking I should just walk out that back door and take off. But really... now I was super curious, I knew there's no way in hell I'm doing anything with this guy, but I kinda want to see what's going on in here. Also I'm confident that he can't take me if it comes to a fight, so, I slowly headed toward the living room.
It felt like I was walking in slow motion. From the kitchen entrance I could see a large rectangular stainless steel table taking up a lot of the living room. I remember thinking this looks like a surgical table. It looked like it could rise and tilt, and it had a recessed channel running all the way around the edge. In hindsight, I now know what that was. It was 100% a mortician's table. Dude had a mortician's table in there. But at that time, I thought it looked like a medical table of some sort. There was some other office-type cabinets and stuff around, I think, but now all I really remember is the table in that room. The large front window looking out onto the street was covered by vertical blinds that were closed.
SG65 said something like "This used to be a doctor's office, like I said. Come on back here."
The hallway revealed the room setup that I expected. The first bedroom door was closed; the second door was open to a small, very clean bathroom. At the end of the hall was the other bedroom, which looked like, if the doctor's office story was true, had at one time been converted to an exam room. He said "we can go in that room if you want, go ahead take a look," and he stayed by the other closed bedroom door. The back bedroom door was open, and I could see that the walls were covered in a honey-colored wood paneling, the type you might see in a den or office that hasn't been updated since the early 1970's. I slowly took a few steps down to that door, trying to be very aware of what Mr. Creepy was doing behind me. He didn't move.
When I got up to that room, the first thing I noticed was the door had a keyed deadbolt lock, like the back door. This room locked from the outside. I wondered if there was a lever on the inside, but, I pretty much knew the answer to that question without needing to check. I also saw... a chair. A non-swiveling, plastic desk chair with thin metal legs, sitting near the center of the room. The room had old, dark carpet, and those wood paneled walls. I noticed that the walls were completely paneled with no windows... and I know that room had at least one window, probably two, so whoever did that paneling went over the windows. There was also a phone in there, plugged in, and sitting on the floor. It was an old office phone, probably from around the 80s or early 90s, dingy beige plastic with several buttons to manage different phone lines. Just sitting on the carpet near the wall, with the chair at a slight distance facing the phone. There was nothing else in that room.
I was standing at the threshold of that room, with one foot slightly in, absolutely NOT going past that door. I looked back at dude, he was still standing by that other door, just nervously smiling at me, trying hard to look casual, but obviously very nervous or... something. He said something like "well... what do you... want to do?"
Instead of answering, I felt around the back side of the deabolt lock. Sure enough, nothing there but the smooth wood of the door. It also dawned on me that I did not see a light switch anywhere for the ceiling lamp. Where was the switch? Who knows. It should have been just inside the door, of course, but that original switch was covered up by the paneling. He mumbled something about not having the key to that lock, don't worry about it.
I turned back to face the guy and just said... "What is it that YOU want to do here?" My skin had gone ice cold as I realized that I was way, way, WAY too far into this apartment. I was running through my options in my head. What is this guy going to do? He doesn't appear to have any weapon or anything in reach, but... who the fuck knows what goes on in this place? "What are YOU trying to do?"
He was almost totally derailed by that. He stammered out.... "Some..... hot.... man to man.. fun?" with the weakest smile I've ever seen, looking like he was just a hair's breadth away from panicking.
That sounds comical. But really, that sentence was probably the most chilling part of the entire experience for me. It was the way he said it. Like he had to come up with something on the fly, something that would sound plausible, and he failed. Who says that in real life? Hey, do you want to have some hot man to man fun? Nobody. It's something you'd see on an advertisement for a cheesy porn site or something.
"Some..... hot.... man to man.. fun?" *smile* *quivering lips*
That was it. I said, "nope, I want to go. I'm leaving." He said, uh... ok. I quickly walked past him as he flattened himself against the wall to avoid me, and I noped right out through the living room dissection area and through the kitchen to the back door, which was thankfully still not deadbolted. The keys were still on the counter. I let myself out of the door, and didn't bother closing that, as I saw him slowly coming to the door behind me. I deliberately walked, not ran, to my car. Looking back at the building I could see that indeed there was a window facing the back yard area from that paneled room, but of course it was covered up from the inside. Dude was shutting and locking the back door.
And I left, heart pounding, skin icy cold, thinking HOLY FUCK. What was that.
So... was this guy some kind of killer? Or was he just an awkward, closeted gay guy... with access to a sterile-looking apartment with an autopsy/mortuary table? ... and a windowless room that locks from the outside. With a chair and a phone, and no light switch. It's clear to me that the poor soul who walks into that room gets locked in, he probably shuts off the light from somewhere, and calls the phone. Other than that, it's anyone's guess what happens. I assume the friend of the judgemental person who emailed me must have been some kid that got locked in for whatever game ensues.
Driving home, at first I thought of course I have to call the police and tell them what's in that place. But, thinking it through, I realized I didn't really have any crime to tell them about. I went to meet a man for casual sex, and what? He has a room with a chair in it? He has (as I thought at the time) an exam table? The police aren't going to do anything with that story. The guy didn't touch me or do anything to me, and I left. I considered calling an anonymous tip line, but again, what exactly would I report? There was no actionable crime. Also keep in mind that at that time, while the local police in this city were pretty decent, they weren't especially interested in getting involved with helping the gays. They'd prosecute actual crimes if it was cut and dry, but I'd heard plenty of accounts of them not choosing to follow up on cases where there was not an easy arrest to be made.
I decided not to report anything because nothing would come of it except drawing unwanted attention to myself. Even in retrospect, I think that was probably the most rational choice to make. If this happened today in 2020, the law enforcement would probably be a lot more interested in it. But back then, not so much. So, live and learn.
I still drove past that house once in a while in the normal course of life for several years, and I'd pay attention to how it looked. The vertical blinds were closed for maybe 5 or 6 years whever I went past. Then eventually the blinds were down and there were decorative curtains in the window, so I assume the place was eventually sold to someone who actually lived in it.
Around 2002, maybe 2003, there was a murder of a young man on the news, he'd been found in the next state (which borders on my city, so it's not very far away). I recognized the guy from the gay community, but didn't know him personally. A friend mentioned to me something about the local serial killer. I said WHAT? He explained that a few young men had gone missing over the past year, each after being at one specific dive bar, and each being found several miles to the north past the state line, and out in the country. The case on the news matched up with that MO; my friend told me the young guy had been at that bar and left with someone the night that he disappeared. The news report didn't mention anything about a gay bar or similar recent cases (of course). I had to wonder if my acquaintance from the internet had anything to do with it. The location of the murders apparently was nowhere near that duplex, at least according to the story I was told. I never heard of a resolution to that murder on the news, or any official mention of a suspected serial killer, other then some gossip.
