6 True Scary First Date Horror Stories

[Music] i live here in new zealand and late in 2018 i was feeling sort of lonely so i decided to download the dating app tinder to try and find myself a nice guy to go on a few dates with maybe even find myself a long-term boyfriend out of it i ended up matching with this guy who'd come over from australia and we chatted for two weeks before we finally met up the conversation was quite light nothing too heavy and it was fun like i said it was from australia so we talked about aussie things and i remember telling him how much i wanted to visit melbourne he said that he'd been there once or twice and started making recommendations for some great coffee shops that he knew of he seemed like a nice normal guy and when we agreed to meet i was happy to do that but then maybe five days or so before we were due to meet he got really persistent and impatient he would text me multiple times in a day and if i didn't reply straight away he would ask if something was wrong i thought it was weird that he was being so clingy after starting off so confident he kept trying to bring the date forward so we could meet up sooner and would totally forget if i had told him i was busy on a particular day almost like he wasn't paying attention or didn't care about what i had to say it was honestly really unusual for someone to be that persistent with me i've had guys before who are maybe a bit persistent but only out of a nervous excitement a different kind of excited than this aussie guy seemed to be i just couldn't understand why it was that he could not possibly wait until the sunday that we'd arranged to meet it felt very narcissistic and i should have seen it as the red flag that it was and just not met up with him at all i had the messages saved on my phone for a while so i have a record of the exact dates and times that he sent some of his messages so on the 2nd of december he messaged me just after 9 am saying good morning how is you and again about an hour and a half later i didn't reply to the first message because i was asleep and i think he took it the wrong way because he said it was fine if i'd changed my mind and didn't feel like going on the date that was when i messaged him back and confirmed that i would meet him later on that day we met up and went to a place called revelry it's a very standard bar very popular and lots of people go there but it's definitely more of a nighttime bar i had never drunk there during the afternoon or the daytime but it was open seemed like it had a chill atmosphere and he wanted to go there so that's where we went he was a bit bigger than the pictures on his tinder profile showed and it was obvious that he had put on a little bit of weight he had big distinctive eyes and he was very very clean cut i mean like his clothes look freshly washed and ironed he was also very well groomed obviously took good care of his skin and stuff like that like he was really good looking i remember asking him a lot of different questions and he just sort of talked to me he tried to ask me a few questions but they weren't very in-depth ones i thought he was a bit nervous to be honest but that's not unusual for a first date but things started to sort of unravel at one point because he had said one thing in messages about where he worked and a different thing on the date i started to feel a bit uneasy like i wanted to trust him but as soon as he started to put on some inconsistencies i began to wonder if he was just lying about stuff to impress me because he was from australia i asked him the whereabouts that he had met his kiwi friends and he told me that all of his friends were police officers or somehow involved in law enforcement he said how he had met with them while out drinking in various bars how they got to know each other over time and they regularly invited him back to their places for barbecues and stuff like that he also mentioned that his best friend from australia was coming over to be a crown court prosecutor that's when i noticed that a lot of the stuff that he was talking about kind of had this running theme to it it kind of seemed like he was obsessed with that sort of thing which in hindsight explains an awful lot i think he was sort of trying to process some of the things that he had been up to over the previous few days and it came out in his conversation style he obviously thought an awful lot about policemen dead bodies and ways people can be killed prosecution justice and the court system and it just came out in a very strange way like that on our first date like i said before we talk quite a lot about him being friends with lots of different policemen and he went into quite a bit of depths regarding the details of certain investigations that they'd apparently shared with him he said they were having a really tough time around that time because of bodies going missing in the waitakere ranges he told me that police corp sniffing dogs can only detect decaying flesh about four feet deep under the soil so if the bodies are buried any deeper than that the police won't be able to find them i thought it was a bit of a morbid thing to talk about on a first date but it was an interesting fact nonetheless we also got into a conversation about all the different kinds of poisonous snakes in australia and he became quite animated about that he obviously had a passion for the natural world it was quite out there but i thought it was cute i love animals too so i was glad we had something in common and it made me feel a bit more relaxed again but then right as i started feeling comfortable with him again he started telling me this really bizarre and creepy story he told me how crazy it is that a guy can make one little mistake and then go to jail for the rest of his life for it he went on to tell me about this guy he knew back in oz who had consensual intimacy involving choking with his girlfriend and had ended up accidentally killing her in the process he assured me that the whole thing was a horrible tragic accident how things just went wrong suddenly and how the guy was really upset because he loved her and would never hurt her on purpose but still the guy got done for manslaughter and was sent to prison for a long long time what i know now is this could have been him testing out a story on me when he was able to see that i was a bit uncomfortable with what he was saying he tried to change the subject so we could talk about more mundane things i didn't try to make a swift exit or anything i am quite used to dealing with all sorts of people and i'm not saying people who talk about dark things on the first date are like bad people or anything but it was definitely weird we hung out for a while but after about three hours or so i made some excuse as to why i had to leave and we said goodbye as we were parting ways he said my car is this way and pointed off down a particular road my car was down that same road but by that stage i was feeling uneasy and my instincts had just kicked in telling me to walk a different way he was also a lot bigger than me so if something went wrong i knew i wouldn't be able to defend myself in hindsight it was a good decision it was my intuition sense my brain was saying this was strange that was strange and looking back on it now it is really strange to think of who he actually was i don't think it is in the realm of what normal human brains can comprehend but just the day before we met up the guy i was out on that first date with had murdered a girl in his hotel room a british girl called grace mullane the reason he brought up his friend accidentally strangling his girlfriend is because that's exactly how he'd killed her although whether or not it was on purpose is another question entirely also the reason he'd mention the waitakere mountain range is because that's where he ended up disposing of her body and all that other stuff about sniffer dogs was research that he'd been doing the previous night that was still sort of consuming his mind it is hard to look back and think that that had just happened to her from what i understand while we were on our date her body was still in that hotel room of his hidden under the bed or something wrapped in a blanket there's nothing i could have done and i know that now but it is still really hard to come to terms with that i do think if it had been a date in the evening potentially i could have been a victim i take a lot of solace in the fact that i do have my wits about me and do take safety and online dating quite seriously and that is nothing against any women who are willing to go home with someone on the first date but i do want to say to young women to take one more step in your thinking when you're on a date to see how well you know this person actually since then i have been on dates with lovely trustworthy men but think how well do i really know them it has made me go a little slower and divulge a little less personal information to them i know in modern dating it is quite common to give people your instagram handle but you are giving people access to a lot of personal information it is really dangerous and i just want to encourage people to take a step back and think before they do that there's nothing wrong with taking a step back taking it slow and pacing yourself a bit alcohol has a big effect it is a part of the social fabric of dating and part of life these days but it still comes with a massive risk women need to be really aware of how much they are drinking on dates and unfortunately drinks are sometimes spiked we live in this world where people are still idealistic about how things should be on dates but incidents like these take things back 10 or 20 years where women are still having to grip their keys between their fingers or can't leave a drink on the table we aren't as developed as we think we are in areas such as dating technology has got ahead of us i think people are as they always are i think with the advancement of technology we thought we would become more refined but we are just the same but with new technology i think the invention of dating apps is a wonderful thing and i wouldn't want to live in a world without that but i just wish for a world where women don't have to think about their safety all the time a few months back i decided i was pretty much over the breakup i'd had during the summer with my long-term girlfriend it took me months to be able to get over it as i was really heartbroken but at some point you just sort of have to get back on the horse don't you so i downloaded that dating app hinge and started swiping through profiles it's definitely the best dating app i've come across as it lets you actually message girls directly instead of just sort of hoping that they're going to see you and match with you so it definitely gave me a better chance at getting to talk to the kind of girls i'm into and and one of these was a persian girl named sirushay sirushay was honestly one of the most beautiful girls i'd ever laid eyes on she had this big mess of wild dark hair that was dip dyed blonde towards the ends really high cheekbones perfectly sculptured eyebrows and some of the deepest darkest most alluring brown eyes i'd ever seen she was simply stunning and because she'd grown up in tehran the capital of iran i had something of an edge you see i speak a little bit of farsi the language they speak there and i figured that might impress her if i told her as much which it did and boom only an hour or so later i sent her my opener and we were chatting she was an extremely busy person and i was flattered when she said that she would make time to see me so we arranged to meet for coffee over the weekend she showed up to our date and her gym gear and apologized for being so underdressed but could only make it after a scheduled workout with a personal trainer but i didn't care at all she looked absolutely smoking hot in her yoga pants and we were having coffee just kind of chatting about our lives our interests all that first aid kind of stuff when i look out of the big glass windows to see this dude leaning up against his car i thought it was my mind playing tricks on me at first but after a minute or two i realized that he was just straight up staring at us at one point cereuse noticed me looking over her shoulder and asked what i'm looking at and i make a comment about the bloke outside who seem to be proper eyeballing us she then turns around looking over her shoulder then spins back with this terrified look in her face before saying something like we have to leave now i'm all like why do you know that fella and she denies knowing him but i'm not a dope i knew what the score was like straight away either it was a controlling family member or something or it was a psycho ex-boyfriend i figured all he'd do was follow us to try and be intimidating or something but i never imagined he'd actually lay hands on me and the way that he did it absolutely scared the soil out of me you see where i live is built up along this big mile wide river and the coffee shop me and service had chosen to meet at was right on the docks so we're walking along the city's promenade when the guy cornered me grabbed me by the throat and started pushing me backwards so my back was leaning over the rails i tried to get him off but this bloke was an absolute unit and as much as i tried there was no getting him off of me and the thing about the river where i live is that it's got a really really strong current like if you fall off of a boat or over the side of the prom you can be in serious trouble as the current will suck you under the water drown you and then just drag you out into the irish sea so the whole time he's threatening me telling me to leave surahshay alone all this big macho masculine stuff sarah shea is smacking him around the head telling him to get off me and all the while i'm thinking if i go over the edge here i'm a dead man and i don't think he had any idea of it either like it didn't sound like he was from our city as we have a very particular accent which he just didn't have so he was probably thinking he could lash me in the water and embarrass me a wee bit and i'd just be fine but i'm telling you now i wouldn't have been and he'd have been done for manslaughter but thank god he didn't throw me over the railings he just sort of backed off and headed back the way that he'd come after he'd blown off a little bit of steam i mean the girl was gorgeous i don't blame him for being a bit sore after a breakup or jealous of another lad but jesus christ if he'd been angrier if he'd have lost his cool really lost control i legit wouldn't be here typing this i'd be floating in the irish sea somewhere maybe washing up as a rotten corpse on the beach in county cork all because of some idiot getting a bit jealous [Music] so before this whole lockdown thing happened and my dating life went to hell in a handbasket i used to swipe through tinder and bumble quite a lot looking for girls to hook up with so i'm bored in my silver-like apartment one day when i come across this absolute smoke show of a girl who was listed under the name lilith she had these big green eyes were pigtails a lot in her profile pictures and had absolutely no qualms of showing off this big peachy butt she had she also had this goth girl vibe going which was something i find really attractive i mean she was definitely not the kind of girl i'd bring home to mom but that's not really what i'm looking for when i'm swiping so naturally i swipe right boom we match i think i actually let out this involuntary no way when the old it's a match text appeared and kind of cynically told myself no she's a bot this isn't real but yup it was real and she was so cute to talk to at first anyway because things started to go a little different when we actually met up she worked at this coffee shop at the getty and asked me if i wanted to pick her up after her shift so she could take me somewhere real special which turned out to be the museum of death on hollywood boulevard i mean not my ideally romantic place to go on a first date but like i said she was a slam piece and it was basically impossible to say no to her so it was decided and after i picked her up she kept it the mystery for a while only telling me to drive her to hollywood boulevard before revealing where she actually wanted to go the area around the museum is kind of sketchy but again i'd have driven through way worse neighborhoods for a date with this girl so i just pushed all my concerns to the back of my mind despite the interior being as dark and dingy as it was looking like an over clustered basement the whole thing was actually kind of interesting at first but i'd be lying if i said my eyes stayed on the exhibits the whole time when they were pretty much glued to her butt whenever i wasn't going to get caught looking it most definitely wasn't particularly creepy either but the things that lilith started to say to me as we were walking around the place did in a big bad way too like i said the exhibits were interesting but that's all they were aside from being gross and spooky there were death masks body parts preserved and formaldehyde all the things you might come to expect from a place called the museum of death and then some but this lilith chick starts saying how pretty some of the stuff is looking at the way any other girl might look at a picture of a puppy or something she then starts asking me all these weird questions about how i'd like to die yeah how i'd like to die i tell her i wouldn't like to die at all i mean it was legit the creepiest question i think i'd ever been asked and she insists that everyone has a way they'd most want to die i don't want to screw up the date or anything she seemed crazy and crazy girls can be real fun if you catch my meaning so i give her some throwaway response like whatever way is most pain-free she starts telling me how that was a boring answer and how she'd like to die of hypothermia because it apparently makes you feel all warm and sleepy towards the end how some victims of hypothermia have even taken their clothes off before they died and just laid down the snow or whatever before their heart stops beating she also then gave me this long in-depth speech about how taking another person's life would be better than even getting intimate to catch my drift how that feeling of pure power must dwarf any feeling that drugs or alcohol have to offer she then tells me how hot she thought it would be to watch me drown at the bottom of a pool while there's an audience and i'm totally naked how it actually turned her on to see my final moments of desperation before my body went limp and floated around the tank then something about how the vikings would make wings out of the skin on a person's back by peeling it off and spreading it out calling it beautiful how it was like art or something when she's done telling me all that and i'm suitably freaked out she starts calling me pet and how she wanted me chained up at the end of her bed so she could do whatever she wanted with me now any other girl i'd think that was incredibly kinky but after what lilith had just talked about i really didn't think what she had in mind for me involved any kind of pleasure whatsoever when it came to driving her home she actually told me to stop a few blocks away from her house because she didn't want me to know exactly where it was that she lived at saying that you couldn't be too careful these days with all the psychos in the world who use dating apps yep she said that to me after she'd spent like an hour talking about all the ways she'd want to die or how she'd watch me die as soon as i got home i blocked her number i've never been more scared of anyone like that before let alone a girl i wanted to hook up with so lilith if you're reading this let's not meet again [Music] you might be able to describe seventeen-year-old david faraday as the all-american boy david was clean cut a good student and a member of the boy scouts of america he was also apparently something of a moral arbiter having once confronted a marijuana dealer outside of his high school when the man had apparently been attempting to peddle the drug to members of the student body after threatening to inform the police the dealer was said to never have hung around the high school again and although by today's standards we might consider this to be so-called snitch behavior david was clearly simply trying to protect his fellow students from something he was concerned would affect their academic performance he was a good person with a good heart and almost all of what he did came from a place of love but like many boys his age david found himself increasingly interested in the opposite gender and there was one particular young lady that caught his attention over all others betty lou jensen was 16 a year younger than david but she was incredibly popular and her reputation as a charming well-mannered young lady preceded her she was also a very talented artist who took a great deal of interest in all things creative it was at a local youth function that david got the chance to talk to betty lou and his affection for her seemed to be entirely reciprocated betty lou shared a great deal with him and even invited him to visit her after school so that he could walk her home after a few weeks of wholesome teenage dating something of a relationship began to blossom between the two bright-eyed young people but all was not entirely well is there was another boy who had his eye on betty lou one who was not about to let david have her all to himself he squared up to david when the young man was waiting outside of betty lou's high school and although the confrontation didn't become physical some pretty harsh insults were exchanged and david was warned to stay away from his new girlfriend other boys might have been deterred by such a display of possessiveness and aggression but not david he was determined to secure his place as the only boy in betty lou's life and so one afternoon on their way home from school david asked betty if she'd like to go on a date with him their first date and to his absolute elation betty lou said yes david racked his brain for a solid first date idea and given that it was late december decided that a great way to capture that festive romantic spirit would be to take betty lou to a local christmas event and being the gentleman that he was he made a promise to her parents to have her back home by 11 pm at the very latest rumor has it that david and betty were planning on attending the christmas theme party with a few other local high school students but perhaps this was simply a cover to reassure the young girls parents because what we know for certain is that they ended up driving over to lake hermann road and david's rambler station wagon parking it up in quite a well-known spot that was known to many as lover's lane the whole appeal of the spot near lake hermon is that it was quiet and unfrequented by members of the public hence why young couples might use it to gain some privacy for certain unsavory activities but it wasn't just infatuated lovebirds who noted the location seclusion because someone else wished to take advantage of the isolation for something that was considerably more malicious at some point during their stay up on lovers lane david and betty lou noticed another car pull into the spot one that parked up alongside them before turning its lights off at first david and betty were worried it was the cops come to arrest them for committing lewd acts in public but as they peered through the darkness to study the vehicle next to them it became increasingly obvious that it was not in fact the police all the young couple could do was watch growing increasingly scared as the shadowy silhouette in the front seat stayed statue still staring at them through the passenger's window betty lou told david she was spooked and asked him to see if he could get the person to leave but unlike previous encounters where david's bravery had shone through when confronted with a source of maliciousness he too was far too frightened to do anything but as he prepared to start up the rambler's engine so he could drive betty lou out of there the driver of the other vehicle got out and approached david's side of the rambler david was transfixed frozen in fear like a deer in a car's headlights but when he saw the mysterious stranger pull out a pistol and aim it at his window his flight response kicked into gear betty threw open the passenger side door throwing herself from the rambler before david followed suit but neither kid was fast enough to outrun a bullet the stranger fired once through the roof of the rambler then sprinted around the back to fire another shot at david through the vehicle's rear window both shots hit the young man and he crawled along the ground near the station wagon's back wheel on the passenger side trying and failing to escape betty lou however began to sprint away through the darkness as the first shots were fired but the stranger was fast he took aim and fired five shots at the right side of her back each bullet striking her torso before she fell as she lay dying in the darkness the killer turned his attentions back to david pointing the pistol towards his head and pulling the trigger one last time sending a bullet crashing into a skull just behind his left ear apparently the killer then simply got back into his car and drove away into the night some time later someone who drove past the spot on lover's lane must have seen the bodies lying in the dirt and then rushed to call the police david was still breathing when they arrived on the scene but was completely unresponsive and was dead on arrival when he was finally taken to a nearby hospital for treatment the double homicide stunned and horrified the local community and rumors abounded that there was a crazed firearm-wielding madman on the loose with it only being a matter of time before they struck again one of the first people contacted by the police as a potential suspect in the murders was the young man who had confronted david as a result of his own jealousies over his and betty lou's blossoming relationship but it was discovered that this young man had a strong alibi for his whereabouts meaning there was no way he could have been the mysterious blood-thirsty stranger who pulled into lover's lane that night as the summer of 1969 drew to a close journalists and law enforcement alike wondered if the teenage lover's killer would ever be found but little did they know that the nightmare just began and what would follow would continue to baffle all those involved for decades to come because the man who took david and betty lou's lives that evening the man who relentlessly fired bullet after bullet into the rambler station wagon would come to be known by a name that would echo through the annals of true crime all over the world the zodiac zodiac's identity remains a complete mystery even to this day the killer's nickname originated from a series of taunting letters and cards sent to the san francisco bay area press these letters included four cryptograms based around a number of ciphers one of which was recently solved by the fbi after over 50 years of research and study we know for certain that the zodiac murdered five people in benicia vallejo napa county and san francisco in the 11 months spanning december of 1968 in october of 1969 it seems he preferred to target young couples which is how he seemed to have come across david and betty lou while the pair were on their first date yet despite only five confirmed victims being attributed to the zodiac he once claimed to have murdered 32 other people bringing his total body count to 37 victims a killing spree that started with two young lovers so excited to finally have some time alone together on their first date never being able to imagine that it would end in such a brutal moment of painful finality so the next time you're on a first date don't be so quick to go somewhere secluded as you never know who might be watching or following just ready to turn a perfect romantic moment into a living nightmare [Music] ingrid marie lynn was born on august 2nd 1975 and spent the majority of her early years living in tucson arizona going on to graduate from canyon del oro high school ingrid later attended the university of arizona and received a bachelor of science in nursing during the year 1977. she then moved to washington state three years later gaining employment at the city's swedish medical center it was here that she met her husband phillip the couple dated for a short while before he proposed and for a while they were happily married and had three beautiful daughters together but like many modern marriages financial strain and conflicting personality types proved a burden on the young couple's relationship and in 2014 ingrid filed for a divorce it took two years for ingrid to be able to get back into the dating game being the mother of three young daughters does not leave much time at all to be able to indulge in such things so we can only imagine how smitten she was with 37 year old john charlton that she would actually make time for him with such an already busy schedule ingrid and john had met through the online dating website plenty of fish and had been chatting online on and off for around a month when they arranged to attend a seattle mariners baseball game together as an official first date to 40 year old ingrid john seemed like the perfect gentleman who could provide some much needed stability in her life but john was far from the perfect gentleman that he presented himself as and despite ingrid being attracted to the subtle bad boy tough guy vibes that john gave off the reality was much more dangerous he had a criminal record in six states including convictions for aggravated robbery felony theft grand theft auto and third degree larceny and in stark contrast to him claiming to receive a steady paycheck as a construction worker john was in fact a homeless day laborer john and ingrid's first date was scheduled for the evening of friday april 8 2016 with ingrid's friends reporting that she seemed very excited and nervous to meet her prospective mate she'd even managed to arrange for her three daughters to be taken care of over at their father's place giving her an entirely free evening to enjoy her new dates company she told a close friend that she would text her when the date was over to let her know how it went but as the evening grew later and later and ingrid's friend had still not received any text messages from her she began to worry she tried to call ingrid's cell phone time and time again but the call kept ringing out and only managed to calm herself down and cease her attempts at reaching her when she considered the fact that the lack of response might have meant that the date had gone a little too well and there might in fact be a good thing that she couldn't reach her friend however the next day on april 9th ingrid's ex-husband pulled up at her place in renton to drop off their three daughters he rang the doorbell multiple times but no one answered and it soon seemed apparent that there was no one home her ex was irritated but also concerned ingrid was mostly a very reliable person and it wasn't like her to not stick to her word over something especially when it involved the care of her daughters he too tried to call her cell phone but when he got no answer from it he proceeded to call up ingrid's mother her mother had no idea where ingrid was and apparently didn't know that she had been out on a date the previous evening so instead of making a fuss about the situation she simply drove over to ingrid's place with a spare key to allow ingrid's ex-husband to gain entry ingrid's mother then proceeded to take a quick look around the house just to make sure everything was in order but in doing so she found her daughter's wallet purse and cell phone all lying on a kitchen countertop she knew it would be very unlike her daughter to go out without taking all these items with her and it was only at this point that she began to worry for her daughter's safety at that point ingrid's mother calls the seattle police to report her daughter missing around the same time that ingrid is reported missing a homeowner who lived about 10 miles from ingrid's home also makes a call to the police the complaint details some bloody handprints on one of the recycling bins one that has a mass of large black flies buzzing around it they fear the worse but since they do not want to contaminate any potential crime scenes they thought it better to simply call the police than act on any of their own suspicions police arrived to check the scene out and to their horror found the bin contained several dismembered body parts including a severed head foot arm and leg some of which had been haphazardly wrapped in plastic trash bags the police who then arrived at ingrid's home searched the residence to find blood human tissue and a pruning saw in her bathroom as well as trash bags identical to those in the bloody recycling bin just 10 miles away it didn't take long for seattle pd to put two and two together and work out that ingrid had been violently murdered and cut up using the very pruning saw found in her bathroom according to ingrid's cell phone calls john charlton was one of the last people she had spoken to before going missing so he was an obvious person of interest in the case police then tracked him down and on april 11 2016 he was arrested and charged with first-degree murder due to overwhelming evidence against him his bail was set at a whopping 5 million dollars with a judge citing an overwhelming flight risk given his past convictions in his history of running from state to state to avoid court appearances during his interview with investigating police john opened with a statement i am not a normal person a dark prelude for the confession to come although he initially tried to shirk responsibility of the murder by saying that he had a severe drinking problem i previously dabbled in crack cocaine and that on the night in question he had blacked out on a downtown seattle sidewalk and woke up with facial injuries and cuts to his body having no memory of the evening's events yet john also said that he thought he remembered the two being intimate with each other and that he assumed that she had driven him back to seattle where he then slept on the sidewalk so the homicide detectives that questioned him none of what john was saying added up so it seemed like a no-brainer to push the case to be taken into a courtroom at this trial john initially pled not guilty to the charges put against him but in the course of being cross-examined by state prosecutors and in the face of overwhelming evidence he eventually changed his plea to that of guilty at one point the courtroom had heard that john's own parents had filed a restraining order against him 10 years prior stemming from an incident on march 2nd of 2006. john's parents had returned home to find their son drunk at the residence in thurston county washington where he allegedly acted physically threatening and verbally violent for a couple of hours his father raymond wrote up the request himself stating that during this time frame he removed a movie from the dvd shelf called hannibal set the case in front of my wife and told her she should watch it and beware the horrific details of ingrid's killing and dismemberment have fueled concern over the dangers of internet dating both experts in domestic violence and internet safety say the unfortunate truth is there's probably little that ingrid could have done differently she seemed to have kept john at arm's length for around a month before agreeing to meet but still she fell for his lies and his charm and ended up paying for it with her life in her case the online dating piece is really almost irrelevant in what happened said cindy southworth founder of the safety net technology project at the national network to end domestic violence they could have met through mutual friends and she could have still ended up dead it's a terrifying concept that no matter what ingrid could have done she still would have ended up a victim of john charlton's alcohol-fueled bloodlust even if she had ran a background check that fact that most of his convictions were for non-violent crimes might not have even put her off dating him that night in april of 2016 seemed like it could have been the beginning of the rest of her life with a man she could grow to love but instead ingrid ended up in pieces dumped in garbage bins all over the city of seattle [Music] ashley nicole pegram grew up in somerville a town of around 50 000 people in dorchester county south carolina ashley was the mother of three small children live with her mother and in 2015 she was just 28 years old when she met a guy named edward bonilla through a dating app known as meet me thirty-year-old edward used the screen name e-money bond and after he and ashley matched they began to use the messaging app kik to stay in touch they arranged to meet on april 3rd of 2015 and ashley was extremely excited at the prospect of getting herself a long-term boyfriend it wasn't easy finding men that were interested in a single mother of three and she knew her children needed stability a healthy father figure in their lives to give them the best chance possible in life but the few hours before her first date with edward were the last time she was ever seen alive she didn't return from her date that evening and she was reported missing shortly afterward the police officers who investigated her disappearance instantly honed in on edward as the number one suspect after obtaining and analyzing his cell phone records then during the subsequent police interview they found that the questions they posed had his account of the dates events sounding suspiciously inconsistent he tripped up so many times under the intense scrutiny that the police had the grounds to arrest him on initial charges of obstruction of justice which would buy them the time they needed to search for evidence that he had murdered ashley and disposed of her body during the searches that followed investigators managed to find traces of blood in the car that he owned as well as around the places that he was staying subsequent analysis showed that the blood contained dna that matched that of ashley's and edward was formally charged with a young woman's murder all that the police were lacking for an airtight case against him was ashley's body but while he was being held without bond in a local holding facility police who were using corpse sniffing dogs to scour an area of woodland just outside of summervale managed to find what remained of her she had been buried in a shallow grave with injuries that were consistent with that of homicidal violence ashley's neck and wrists have been bound with electrical tape and there were visible signs of blunt force trauma to the girl's face and head the electrical tape around her neck was tied painfully tight too suggesting edward had used it to strangle her before bashing in her skull with a heavy object a toxicology report found a large amount of alcohol and muscle relaxants in her bloodstream the latter suggesting that she had been drugged so that edward could have his way with her before he ended her life a coroner attempted to confirm the suspicions of indecent assault but ashley's body was in such an advanced state of decomposition already that it proved impossible yet despite so much evidence against him prosecutors were unable to establish a clear motive for the killing however they were able to establish his proximity to the victim on the night in question with edward's cell phone records placing him at ashley's mom's house and near harleyville on the night of their date investigators also looked at ashley's meet me profile as well as her kick messages and discover that she and edward had been chatting back and forth for months by that point prosecutors managed to find one of edward's ex-girlfriends who willingly told the courtroom at his trial that he was more than capable of being forceful and violent and how she had been forced to break up with him when he had physically threatened her on more than one occasion the evidence against him was so compelling that edward didn't dare deny that he'd murdered ashley and tried to fall back on a claim that it was simply an accident his defense attorney had the gall to admit that edward had a series of choices that makes this case look real bad but that ultimately ashley's death was purely accidental and that his client should be shown a degree of leniency based on that fact arguing for a conviction of involuntary manslaughter over first-degree murder it seems the prosecutors had the upper hand however and opted for the cold and callous move of showing the jury some extremely graphic photos taken of ashley's body in the hours after she was located and excavated they pointed out the binding the drugging and the state of undress she was in arguing that edward hard targeted a vulnerable desperate young mother to enact his sick depraved fantasies with a girl he cared so little for that he couldn't even be bothered to dig her a proper grave finally in a shocking display of desperation edward bonilla actually took the stand in an attempt to convince the jury of what actually happened that night that he and ashley had their first date according to him edward had been to a party at his brother's house on the evening in question where he had drank heavily to give him the dutch courage needed to actually meet the girl that had been talking to for at least a month somehow an argument had broken out when ashley accused him of having stolen her mother's cell phone one that was so intense that edward thought it best to leave the residence to drive back home he got back into his car before he found that he needed to use the bathroom and as he attempted to get back out he accidentally stepped on the gas lurched forward and hit ashley with his front bumper this made an already ferocious ashley explode with anger and she began to violently kick and punch at the car's chassis edward claimed all he was doing was trying to defend himself and his property when he put her in a chokehold that was a little too tight and was so scared that he didn't realize that he'd cut off her oxygen and killed her until it was way too late it was only then that he was filled with panic and remorse acting on pure animal instinct when he drove her body out into the woods and buried it in the shallow grave it was found in but edward also admitted under questioning that the electrical tape was present around ashley's neck because he had taped a plastic bag around her head because it was bleeding and he didn't want to get blood on his upholstery he also inexplicably told the jury that he had then dropped her off at a gas station before sending himself fake messages on the kick app using ashley's phone in a foolish attempt to create a kind of alibi for himself it never entered my mind to harm someone he told the courtroom it was an accident an accident influenced by the way she was acting but the jury saw through edward's sickeningly transparent attempt at diverting away the blame from himself and twisting the nature of ashley's death in order to save himself the harshest of sentences if all he had done was choke her why was she bleeding from her head why were there muscle relaxants in her system that evening and why was it that her wrists were bound just like edward's initial police interviews there were far too many inconsistencies and far too many unsubstantial explanations for the jury to give them the benefit of the doubt and they found him guilty of first-degree murder with a judge then sentencing him to life in prison without parole what edward and ashley's terrifying encounter proves is that there are people out there predators like edward who hunt those too weak and desperate to resist their entrapment edward spent an entire month learning about ashley discovering her need for a man in her life sniffing out her neediness like a shark smells a drop of blood and ocean waters and when he couldn't wait anymore he struck what's more edward was so narcissistic and sociopathic that he seemed to genuinely believe that he could talk his way out of it he actually seemed to convince himself that his peers would come to imagine the events of that date night and whatever way he painted them we can only thank god that they didn't and that they were able to see through his lies and put a violent sadistic and perverted predator where he belongs in a jail cell never to see the light of day again for as long as he lives hey friends thanks for listening click that notification bell to be alerted of all future narrations if you got a story be sure to submit them to my subreddit r let's read official and give and receive feedback from the community and maybe even hear your story featured on the next video and join my discord to interact with me and other listeners directly and if you want to support me even more grab early access to all future narrations for just one dollar a month on patreon and maybe even pick up some let's read merch on spreadshirt and check out the let's read podcast where you can hear all these stories in long compilation form and save huge on data located anywhere you listen to podcasts links in the bio thanks so much friends and remember not to get lost in the anals of time

Channel: Lets Read!

Views: 193,348

Rating: 4.8908668 out of 5

Keywords: first date stories, first date horror stories, scary first date, true scary stories, scary stories, scary true stories, true horror stories, horror stories, true stories, stories from reddit, asmr reading, lets not meet, true creepy stories, scary horror stories, reddit, true scary stories from reddit, true horror stories from reddit, subscriber submissions, reddit scary true stories, lets read, asmr sleep, ASMR, creepy stories, dating stories

Id: Pk-uyPZPpAE

Length: 48min 40sec (2920 seconds)

Published: Fri Dec 25 2020