Not just uncaught murderers, there are a lot of people who have killed without legally being considered murderers.

People who killed people in accidents such as driving accidents or hunting accidents

People who killed in self defense

Soldiers who killed enemy soldiers

Executioners

Police officers who have killed on duty

Doctors and nurses who have made mistakes that accidentally killed patients

  • ragebutt@lemmy.dbzer0.com
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    7 days ago

    If you’re old enough you’ve definitely met someone who has done at least one murder. The question is intent as you’ve said: did you meet the drunk driver or the serial killer with 50 bodies in the basement who hasn’t been caught.

    Also this applies to rape and that is far more common because it is simply less reported. One of your buddies might be a person that has straight up forced a person to have sex, maybe violently

    • BoredGamer@lemmy.world
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      7 days ago

      Let’s not forget the more obvious, most veterans or military have killed people but. We usually don’t count them because they were killing “bad people” that just happened to be from a different country.

  • lowflyingduck@lemmy.world
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    7 days ago

    I wonder how many people who have themselves unknowingly caused a death, though some thoughtless or innocuous action. E.g. a discarded banana peel causes another person to later slip and fall with a fatal result.

    • mrgoosmoos@lemmy.ca
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      7 days ago

      the number of people who fall into this category through their use of stock LED headlights is non-zero

    • orbitz@lemmy.ca
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      7 days ago

      There’s an early Robot Chicken bit where he dies and asks silly questions to a book that can give him an answer like how many times did I listen to this song, or how much of a wall could my poop make. This question sounds like an interesting one to ask that book though. Actually I’d probably prefer not to know the chaotic randomness that is our lives but guess the lives part would be redundant at that point anyways.

    • ReachMinusOne@lemmy.zip
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      7 days ago

      I frequently have this thought, but take it one step further. Like, what if something I did, intentionally or not, greatly angers or pisses off someone that they get riled up, and it leads to them having a heart attack or lashing out in a way that causes them mortal harm?

      Am I wholly responsible? No. But am I somewhat indirectly involved in their demise? Debatable. Yes, it gets very convoluted quickly, but it’s something that pops up in my head whenever I’ve got some idle time.

      • RememberTheApollo_@lemmy.world
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        7 days ago

        You are not responsible. Even if you argued with someone, you couldn’t have known what the outcome would be. Heart attack or they spent a bunch of time pissed and got in a fistfight later that resulted in someone’s death. You cannot control what they choose to do as long as your actions weren’t intentionally leading the other person to make those choices.

    • ɔiƚoxɘup@infosec.pub
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      7 days ago

      I would think not if you’re a good engineer.

      Even the code of Hammurabi had the death penalty for engineers that caused the death of another through poor design.

      • uncouple9831@lemmy.zip
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        6 days ago

        Well something tells me Hammurabi wasn’t aware of drone bombs, so forgive me if I skip over that asshole’s opinion on things.

        There’s a lot of industries out there, most of them are bad. Whether it’s oil&gas, aerospace, automotive, even basic scientific research…pretty much always ends up doing harm. Pure software engineering isn’t any better off – I mean every engineer who worked at Facebook in the 2010s has their hands bloodied with a genocide they facilitated. Or people who work on ring, or other doorbells, being used by ICE to hunt, torture, and in some cases kill, immigrants. A DOORBELL.

        Humans do terrible things, engineers enable humans. You can easily claim there was no way to predict the path from doorbells to murder, but…wait, no, the EFF predicted this from the moment go. So you have engineers warned their work would do harm, they keep working, their work does harm. That’s meaningful contribution from my pov.

  • blockheadjt@sh.itjust.works
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    7 days ago

    I once gave a friend of a friend a condescending chewing-out after they did something hurtful.

    Some time later our mutual friend informed me that they had died, but declined to tell me the cause of death.

    Much later I discovered it was self-caused.

    … Were my words too much? We spend our lives trying to be more effective communicators. What if we’re too effective when it matters most?

  • BartyDeCanter@lemmy.sdf.org
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    7 days ago

    My ex-brother-in-law killed a family of four while DUI. The cops really screwed up the investigation so he was able to get the charges down to a minor moving violation. He never saw the inside of a jail.

    When I was in high school a friend of a friend that I knew and had hung out with at a couple of times was a serial killer/rapist. He was one of the last people executed by that state.

    Edit: My grandfather killed some Nazis in WW2. Several former coworkers killed people in the line of duty as soldiers. And, I worked as a records clerk at a nursing home, so I knew several doctors and nurses that had taken people off life support.

  • HelterSkeletor@lemmy.world
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    7 days ago

    I work in healthcare, I’ve removed… so many people from life support. I often wonder if that’s, not the same, but…

  • boonhet@sopuli.xyz
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    6 days ago

    It is quite likely that someone I knew either killed a person, or had them killed.

    Said potential murderer is dead for a few years now and tbh I don’t think anyone wants to uncover this mystery anymore. Since the whole thing was very long ago, it’s easier to just ignore it instead of ruining everyone’s memory of a person. The other person who could’ve done it has been dead for a decade or 2 too.

      • boonhet@sopuli.xyz
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        Let’s just say some people I know lost their mother at a very early age and when one of them finally asked the father about it 30 years later, his explanation was “well person X was at work that night, ask him”. Person X being a business partner of his, somewhat of a low-end organized crime guy. Dead for like 10-15 years at that point.

        When I say lost, I mean she hasn’t been found decades later. Not even a body.

        Early 90s were a crazy ass time here in Estonia.

        There’s more details I know, but honestly if I go too into detail and the story makes its way out of our tiny community here, people who know about the whole thing will instantly figure out who I am and who I’m talking about and I don’t want that. Not because I’m in any danger from anyone - just because I don’t want it to happen.

  • Furbag@lemmy.world
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    5 days ago

    Two people, in fact. First was a Hell’s Angels enforcer. Had lunch at a Chinese restaurant with him and a few other people from my former Kung Fu school. Apparently he was a former student and credibly accused of murdering a rival biker gang member, but the jury was hung and couldn’t convict.

    Second was none other than Shrimp Boy, after he got released from prison for the murders he committed but before he got locked up again for the racketeering charges. Met in in Chinatown literally a few days before the feds closed in on him. Shared a cup of tea with him without knowing his identity and didn’t find out until someone present told me who he was days later.

  • SaveTheTuaHawk@lemmy.ca
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    6 days ago

    I took a flight back from Europe with a colleague years ago, we talked for hours. A year later he was found guilty of killing his wife with cyanide.

    People do a great job of hiding their demons in a professional setting.

  • BanMe@lemmy.world
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    7 days ago

    If you want to test this, start up conversations with the combat vets around you. You might not like the answers. That’s the vast majority of killers I’ve known (that I’ve known).

  • halfeatenpotato@sh.itjust.works
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    6 days ago

    When I was 18/19 in college, I met a guy through my brother’s work that was in his mid 40’s. We hung out with him and his girlfriend a lot and he was pretty good friends with my brother. He even met my mom and family, helped her with some construction projects she needed done (dad died when I was 15, so she didn’t have that extra help), and was invited to her wedding to my step dad.

    Now we knew that this guy was an ex-con (the restaurant my brother worked at hired a lot of ex-cons), but we never really judged or pried into what happened. Honestly, this guy was always just chill, giving, funny, helpful, and respectful. I never got creeped out by him, and i never felt like he was inappropriate with me. We found out through a mutual friend later that this guy used to get paid to bleach the bodies of girls/women that had been raped and killed by others. To this mutual friend’s knowledge, our friend hadn’t actually done any raping/killing, but I was really struggling to feel much comfort in the fact that he “only” helped guys get away with it. Especially because I was a young, petite college girl at the time.

    Anyways, I dont directly know of anybody ive met that has killed someone, but the fact that I know of somebody that did this horrible thing makes me think that you’re correct.

  • IngeniousRocks (They/She) @lemmy.dbzer0.com
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    6 days ago

    I knew a guy who got imprisoned for murder, really nice guy, the way he described it was an armed robbery where the armed person got spooked and fired off a shot. They were arrested on the road while taking the victim to the hospital (they weren’t trying to hurt anyone) and ended up getting booked for murder and kidnapping.

    I met him a few years after he got out on probation.

    Edit: fixed a typo