Girl on Twitter Met a Serial Killer and Lived to Tell the Tale | 22 Words

It's nice to imagine that your chances of ever running into a serial killer are pretty slim, right?

I for one, take a very blazé attitude to that kind of thing, always shrugging off my parents' concern about me walking home alone at night with an "it won't ever happen to me" type of response... I'm an idiot, I know.

Anyway, one woman has shared her spectacular story about how she met the notorious serial killer, Andrew Cunanan, when she was just a child.

Jamilah King shared her spooky tale with a lengthy Twitter thread, which detailed how she had interacted with the killer shortly before his suicide back in 1997.

And, needless to say, her brush with death is seriously creepy.

 

Andrew Cunanan was one of our countries most wanted serial killers.

via: Biography

 Spanning over 3 months in 1997, Cunanan rampaged across the country and murdered a total of 5 people. The Italian fashion designer, Gianni Versace, is his most famous victim.

He had become a San Fransisco local.

via: Shutterstock

 Though he was a San Diego native, he settled in San Francisco’s Castro district and socialized with older, wealthy gay men while indulging in a lavish lifestyle of drugs and alcohol.

But he became a notoriously dangerous man...

via: Getty

 Cunanan's first 2 kills were in Minnesota; one was a friend and the other an ex-boyfriend. According to Vanity Fair, Cunanan's relationships with these men had soured in the weeks and months leading up to the murders, which may explain why he ended up murdering the pair.

Though he became more famous after his final kill...

via: Getty

 Over the years, Cunanan had developed somewhat of an obsession with Italian fashion designer, Gianni Versace. In Miami, Florida, in July 1997, Cunanan shot the designer twice outside of his home. Andrew had already been hunted for his last 4 murders, and this high-profile kill only spurred the police to catch him even more.

He committed suicide shortly after.

via: Getty

 On July 23, 1997, less than two weeks after shooting Versace, Andrew Cunanan's body was found in a houseboat off Miami Beach. He’d shot himself in the head with the same gun that he used to take the lives of 3 of his victims, including Versace. His motives for the murders were never uncovered.

And one woman is claiming to have encountered the mass murderer...

Just months before his killing spree. Jamilah King, from San Fransisco and a reporter for Mother Jones, went viral last year when she told her tale.

The story starts here...

Last year, Jamilah opened up about a chilling encounter that she had as a child in a Twitter thread which instantly went viral.

The encounter apparently took place in the Spring of 1997.

via: Twitter

 Jamilah was only in sixth grade, which would have made her either eleven or twelve years old.

For a little bit of context...

Here is Jamilah (far left) pictured around the time of the incident.

She would frequently play basketball after school.

And for those who are curious, the Panhandle is a large park in San Fransisco which forms a panhandle with the Golden Gate Bridge.

One day, she found the park to be empty.

Which, when you're a kid, is pretty exciting.

This is when things get dark.

Jamilah took the empty park as an opportunity to brush up on her basketball moves. However, she wasn't entirely alone.

There was a mysterious man watching her from the sidelines.

Though Jamilah recalled that the man didn't actually look too intimidating and looked relatively young. Not your stereotypical serial killer, is it?

It wasn't uncommon to encounter slightly odd people in the park.

So Jamilah, clearly used to people lurking along the sidelines, tried to ignore the man and continued playing basketball.

However, the man soon approached her.

Instead of staying put along the sidelines, the mysterious man eventually walked into the court and stood directly under the basket where Jamilah was playing. She remembered how upset the man appeared.

This is when Jamilah knew that things were getting weird.

And, like any sensible kid, she gathered her things in a bid to leave.

However, the man stopped her.

Warning bells began to ring. Though he complimented her on her basketball skills, Jamilah knew that something was off.

He continued talking to her while she went to get her bike.

And something made her turn around to face him.

He offered her money.

Yep, creepy-guy move 101.

Jamilah knew all about stranger-danger.

But, as children often are, she was enticed all the same.

A dollar can go a long way when you're a kid.

As Jamilah pointed out, it could get you 2 Baby Ruths.

She faced a dilemma...

Does she run for her life, or does she take the money from the mysterious man?

She figured that the chances of her being murdered were pretty slim.

Because what're the chances of the guy actually being a serial killer?

And sugary sweets are very important when you're a kid.

So important, in fact, that you'd be willing to accept money from creepy strangers to get them.

Jamilah weighed up her options...

Surely someone in the surrounding areas would hear her scream if the guy tried anything?

She took her chances.

She ran up to the guy, snatched the dollar bill from his hands, and hastily cycled away.

Content with her Baby Ruths, Jamilah thought nothing more of the incident...

... Until a few months later, when news of a serial killer on the loose hit the headlines.

And she finally realized the magnitude of her encounter.

When his name and mugshot were released to the public, Jamilah realized that she had taken money off the deadly Andrew Cunanan, who had embarked on a cross-country killing spree that same month.

The news left her shaken.

And, naturally, she was quick to tell all of her friends about her terrifying, yet slightly cool, encounter.

Because it is a pretty cool story...

Especially when your basketball skills were complimented, too.

Though no one believed Jamilah's extravagant tale.

Her brush with death didn't go down with all of her friends.

And to this day, her best friend still doesn't believe her.

As she demonstrated with a text message exchange from earlier this year. Though I'm not sure whether I'd believe my best friend if they told me that they'd met a serial killer...

The moral of her story?

Nope, it isn't to not talk to strange men in the park. It's to always believe your besties, or they'll put you on blast online.

Despite getting free candy out of her encounter...

Jamilah was quick to clarify that she hasn't by any means forgotten about Cunanan's victims.

Though people seemed more concerned about a different detail in the story...

Baby Ruths or Poser Candy Bars?! Yep, because encountering a crazed serial killer isn't as interesting as her candy bar choice, apparently. 10,000 twitter users took part in a poll to vote which candy bar she should have picked. Wow.

Twitter users relished in Jamilah's tale.

Because we all love a good, grizzly crime story, don't we?

It seems as though meeting serial killers is more common than you'd think...

Because hundreds of people on Twitter responded to Jamilah's thread with their own chilling encounters.

Twitter users replied with their own chilling tales.

Okay, running into the Manson family sounds like a fun tale to tell...

One woman even dated a serial killer...

Yep, and you thought that your ex was bad.

Though some people questioned what his motives really were that day...

Would he have murdered an innocent little girl? Or was he experiencing a moment of compassion? Just like the motives for his murders, the reasoning behind his actions that day died with him in Miami. We can only wonder.