My friend the murderer

So I'd like to talk about an old friend of mine. Not really a very close friend mind, but one I've literally known all of my life. In so doing I'll be telling you quite a bit about myself as well, things I never intended to talk about here. But they're part of his story, or what I know of it anyway, so they belong.

We're the same age, and our mothers were friends. So we were playing together before we started school, and when we did start school we were in the same class. So he was one of my best friends during my first years in school, and we spent a lot of time together. After the third grade however, they moved. Not very far, but far enough that he now was in a different school district. And definitely too far for me to go visit at that age. But due to our mother's friendship, we did meet on occasion. But not nearly enough to remain steady friends.

His father was an alcoholic. And as most of them had a violent temper. So my friend ran away from home a lot allready before he was a teenager. This area he now lived in was also home to a notorious band of hooligans in those days, and due to the way he had learned to deal with problems from his father it didn't take long before he was making the wrong sort of friends. I don't know much from this period as I wasn't in regular contact with him myself, but I do know he refused to stay at home. He lived with his grandmother for some years, who lived much closer to us. But he kept going to his new school (when he bothered) and hang out with his new friends, so I didn't see that much more of him. But I did run into him more often now, and for a little while there we hung out as buddies again. We were in our early teens at this point I think.

Eventually his parents divorced but the damage was allready done. He refused to stay at home, and didn't get along with his grandmother either. So he was still disappearing from them a lot, staying with friends and god knows where. Child Care put him in an institution at one point, but that just made matters worse. They couldn't keep him there so he never stayed for long.

Sometime around then his mother asked my mother for help. It was impossible for her to talk to him and make him listen. That's when my father and my older brother literally kidnapped him off a pier by the local river. I don't know if they happened upon him by chance or if they somehow knew he was there, but he was hanging out with his friends there. My dad backed the boat they were driving close to him and my brother just yanked him aboard as my father headed outwards again. We have a cabin further out in the fjord, and I was out there at the time. So I was surprised to see him with my father and brother when they came out there. I had no idea what was going on with him at the time. And I still don't know what was said and what was done after that, but he did move home to his mom and straigthened up a little. But it wouldn't last.

Shortly after this my parents divorced. Reasons are unrelated and has nothing to do with this so I'll leave that be. But my father moved, and us kids stayed with mom. My older brother soon moved out to go to a university. Mom couldn't afford to keep the house, so we all moved to my grandmother's. Which left me living with her, my mom and my two sisters. We didn't get along. So when I was around 16-17 I had turned into quite the rebellious little shit myself, but far from as bad as my friend though. But I did nothing but argue with those I lived with, among other things. It just didn't work out, so I ended up moving to my dad. He on the other hand, I've always gotten along with. And so I'd always respected him. I do get along with the rest of my family today, and love being together with them. But I am still convinced I can never ever live together with any of them. Ever.

My dad and I moved closer to where my friend lived. Not very close, but by this time we were driving around on mopeds and had friends with cars so distances wasn't much of a problem anymore. So I ran into my friend again before long, who started to stop by my place regularily. He was back to never staying at home anymore, going wherever and doing whatever he wanted. He also stayed with me for a few days at one point. And I got introduced to more and more of the gang of pals he had. Great guys, most of them. You have to remember that for all his flaws, my friend was a great pal and cool buddy to have at the time. At this age we had long since discovered the merits of consuming alcohol in vast quantities, so we did a lot of partying together. This was a pretty crazy time for me. These new people I was seeing now were a lot wilder than what I was used to. Some were allready trying mild drugs like hash, while the older people were experienced with things like speed and acid. Every now and then we'd hear about someone having gone "over the edge" and become a true drug addict, but it hadn't happened to any of us. Yet.

I personally never did any kind of illegal drug whatsoever, knock on wood. I had plenty of fun with the legal one anyway. Never even tried smoking a joint. A personal principle I inherited from my dad. Like I said, I had a lot of respect for that man in those days. It didn't take too long before just about everyone in that group were regular hash-smokers though. Hash has the same status here as marihuana has in f. ex. the US. I don't know about Britain and such, but you hardly ever hear about anyone smoking pot here. But hash is quite common. Don't know why that is, but it is. They all respected my stance on it, which basically was and still is "I don't care what you do, but I don't". You hear a lot about peer-pressure when it comes to trying out narcotics. I find that odd, as I never experienced it. Nobody tried to force anything on me, they were rather "Cool, more for us!".

I had a lot fun in those days. Some of the parties and things we did were pretty crazy, and I have some great memories from them. But I remember things that were done that weren't so good as well. There are stories I tell people, and there are stories I don't. But everybody has some of those I expect. Anyway it was all spiralling out of control, my friend was in particular. He always was easily influenced, and he always had a need to show that he was not afraid of doing anything. He was among those who started trying the harder drugs and commit serious crimes. You started seeing the effects it had on people, especially the older guys. Most of them were known by the police allready, and several of the younger ones were too now. You'd hear about someone having been raided and arrested every so often. Many of the people I knew were having serious problems with the way their lives were headed. Things weren't horribly bad yet for most, but they were definitely bad and getting worse.

It was around then when I was 19 that I got called in to serve my year of duty in the norwegian military. All males have to do this here, in theory. It isn't that hard to get out of if you don't want to. But I just thought "what the hell". I wasn't working or going to school. It was something to do. I got to do some thinking while I was there. I saw that the people in that gang would always have trouble walking in their footsteps. They always had crap happening to them or around them, even if they never meant it to. It just does with those kind of people. And I thought of the other people I knew, people I haven't talked about yet like the guy who always was and still is my very best friend, and some other great guys I know who didn't have all this happening around them all the time. And I decided that's what I wanted. So when I was home on leave I concentrated on staying in touch with them, and not the others. And after my term was over, I never got in touch with those people again, including my old friend. And I never heard from any of them again either. Which isn't very strange, these kind of people tend to live in the moment, yesterday forgotten and very little care for tomorrow. I had been gone for a year, so to them I was gone allready.

But over the years and up until now I've ran into some of them from time to time. And I hear stories about some of the others. Most haven't changed, some are petty criminals to this day, some became hard drug addicts and are still. And I hear one of those who became an addict is now clean and has found Jesus. Well, good for him. Personally I don't know if one is really better than the other..

My friend is one of those who hit the bottom and is still there. Whenever I've thought of him I've wondered if he's still alive at all. I've met him a couple of times. Last time was four-five years ago. Said he lived in Denmark then, and was doing great. I didn't press exactly how great he was doing, but.. I met him at half past eleven in the evening on my way to a 24-hour store near here to get something I needed, don't remember what exactly. He was on a bicycle, on his way to visit a friend who he said where lived and that was another hour's bicycle ride off at least. Says it all.

It was probably around this time, or some time later that the first guy died at the "farm of death" as the newspapers like to call it. This place was a nest of drug addicts, owned and ran by a fifty years old woman. The people who lived there then had decided they needed to get rid of one of them. Some guy who didn't pull his own weight around the place, kept begging for money and drugs from the others, and also told the police a lot of things whenever he was arrested to get out of trouble himself. They kept trying to make him move away from there, but he refused. So they decided to kill him, by giving him a heroin overdose and put him in an empty building some distance away. They figured it'd be ruled an accidental overdose whenever he was found. But they ran into problems. First, he didn't die from the overdose, just fell unconscious. Probably in a coma. Second, the guy who drove him to the abandoned house just didn't have the strength to drag him in there, so he took him back to the farm where they eventually dropped him into the well. And tried to cover him up by throwing a lawnmower and a washingmachine in after him. This worked, allthough the nature of the place made the police raid it frequently they never discovered what the well contained.

And then another troublemaker shows up at the farm. Acts threatening, causes trouble and won't leave. I don't know how, why or when my friend came to this place, but what is certain is that it was he who took a rifle, got the troublemaker to come to the barn with him to hunt for stray cats, and then shot him in the back of the head. Then twice in the chest, and finally once in the forehead.

They tried hiding him in the hay, but the police discovered him during one of their raids. Which prompted a more thorough search of the place which revealed what the well contained. This was december '07.

I thought I would hear about it if anything serious had happened to him. But no, I knew nothing of this before I saw it in the news last week when the trial began. And as I said in the other topic it was an immediate shock to discover, but not really all that surprising in the end. It was the kind of life he lead. And I've been half-expecting to hear bad news about him for the last ten years. I just always thought it'd be that he had died. It's strange to think of that he's murdered someone. I think of that kid I used to play with and wonder how he came to be who he is. But I know how that happened, I saw a lot of it myself. And have been told a lot of the things I wasn't told back then. I have no idea what he's really been doing over the last ten years, but still, I didn't expect he'd go and do something like that. Something foolish, definitely. But not that.