I Lived With a Serial Killer for 10 Years and Didn’t Know it

Recounting the scariest part of my childhood

Dec 05, 2021

He preferred to be called T. He’d get immediately soured if you referred to him by anything else. But we all loved him nonetheless.

T loved listening to 90s grunge music, binge eating on Friday nights, and having long conversations with friends who didn’t always listen to what he’d have to say. His friends called him a ‘chill cat’ and loved partying with him.

But some people ignored him on the regular, much to T’s disappointed chagrin. He still loved them nonetheless.

Roommates With a Serial Killer

T was just one of my many roommates while I was flexing out my angsty teenage years. Our house always had these interesting fellows. They’d come and go. Some would move in or out depending on the time of year or season.

You’d be forgiven for thinking my parents let these strangers stay with us for money, but I don’t think that was possible. A few years later I went on to train in the exciting field of accounting — and I did the math.

These roommates, in reality, were very likely costing my parents financially rather than rewarding them.

So why on earth would they let them stay? Or even allow new ones on the odd years to enter into our lovely sacred home and abode?

A small part of me cringes and thinks it was love — a kind of love that my siblings and I weren’t able to provide my parents. But I know this to not be true.

Another part of me suspects it was a different kind of love. No, not the dirty threesome-love that would plague my dreams for a lifetime — Kinship. Camaraderie. Companionship. That kind of love.

No matter how much my parents fawned over my roommates, I knew they loved me and my siblings. And we loved them nonetheless.

Workaholics

My parents were both workaholics who didn’t have the time of day to hang out with each other often. Their varied work schedules — one was on night shifts and the other a manager of an overworked office — didn’t align with each other.

But the roommates — seemingly unemployed — were always there to greet my folks with a smile, night or day.

But they never loved any of them as much as T.

T was loud, outspoken, and annoying at times. If you began preparing dinner, whether the light outside was by moon or sun, you could be sure the mooch would show up.

He was also in incredibly good shape. Large, muscular, with a little too much hair. My aging jello-ish body is jealous even to this day. He was incessantly hungry, yet he never became fat. We loved him nonetheless.

But years later, I figured out the terrifying reason he was in such good shape.

When he wasn’t at home, T was out hunting.

The Warning Signs

Looking back, I should’ve seen the early warning signs. At some point, which I’ve long since forgotten, I remember hearing the shock of my parents the first time T didn’t come rushing to eat for dinner.

My parents called out to him to no avail.

This slowly started occurring more and more for months on end. And then it stopped. Winter had arrived and with it so did T’s appetite.

And sure enough, as spring started rolling in, T’s hunger started rolling out. I was almost scared at the time. Having lost a roommate before, I knew the pain it would cause my young fragile mentality.

But this pattern occurred again. And again. And again.

Every time the cool Canadian weather would turn down the mercury, T would once again start joining us for meals.

Year after year.

My parents didn’t know why. T certainly couldn’t or wouldn’t tell us. I remember one winter when this was happening, I came across my first psychology book. One of the chapters reached out and slapped me square in my young face.

It was called S.A.D. — Seasonal Affective Disorder.

An affliction common in Canada due to its cold, cloudy, dark winter nights. A lack of sun means a lack of melatonin, which is an incredibly important sleep and mood regulator.

But T had the exact opposite of S.A.D.

He was happy during the dark winter and S.A.D. during the bright days of summer. It didn’t make sense, and none of my teachers had the answer as to why.

He was just uniquely screwed up.

I loved him nonetheless.

The Truth Comes Out

Then the day came when it all made sense. One of the summers, while I was roaming around, I came across a trail of blood in my small neighborhood.

Instinctively curious for a non-vampire, I followed the trail.

It led to the garage door on the side of our house. Something was amiss.

Another summer, I saw tufts of strange bloodied white fur strewn around our lawn. At the time, we had a bit of a whacky neighbor who was always up to strange shenanigans. It was, of course, blamed on him.

But T was the real culprit.

The signs continued popping up for years. A neighbor went missing one year, never to be found. Perhaps this would be a common occurrence in the rough streets of San Francisco, but for small-town Canada — it was all we could talk about.

Of course, we later realized T was responsible.

Not a long time later — a day which stands out forever in my mind — T was behaving extremely irrationally. He brought a wild feral animal into our house. When questioned about it, he ran upstairs to my parent's room and let it go inside, then sprinted out of the house without a word of apology.

Little did he know, my mother was in there sleeping. The blood-curdling scream will forever haunt my soul as she threw the chipmunk off her face.

We started seeing more animal abductions. Some were even killed. Many showed evidence of their bodies being half-eaten. But this was our family secret now; because T was family.

When my neighbor slowly lost baby bunny after baby bunny over the course of one sunny spring — we couldn’t help but mourn with him. Even though we were safe harboring the party responsible for their murder.

It was our dark family secret.

Countless birds, bunnies, chipmunks, and even squirrels fell to T over the years. The amount of humans remains unknown, but probably for the best.

And yet, even after we had a bloodline-only family meeting to discuss the matter, we chose to protect him. We chose to love T for what he was, and not what society needed him to be.

Yes, we knowingly harbored a serial killer for more than a decade. And I am truly, deeply ashamed of that fact.

T stood for Tigger. He was our cat. And he was a serial killer.