The Craig’s List Killer

Alarming title for the post, I know. Rest assured, faithful readers, that I survived my close brush with certain death. But it was a harrowing experience to say the least.

It started innocently enough with the purchase of a new sofa. But with the pending delivery of said sofa, weeks ahead of schedule, we were pressed for a solution to rid ourselves of the old sofa. And some tables, while we were at it. Enter Craig’s List.

We snapped three dozen photos, kept two, and created an ad for a leather sectional and table set. Priced to sell, apparently, because within 30 minutes I had three offers. They kept coming in, and I had more than a dozen when I went to bed. Enter the scheduling complications: people wanted to come to my house the next day, but I was leaving for Detroit first thing in the morning, and my wife had to work that day.

I know better than to advertise my home’s vacancy to strangers on the Internet (NOTE: not like you, of course, my most respectable blog readers. The key’s under the mat and you are welcome any time). I used vague language to push my availability back to Thursday.

I returned from Detroit to find over 30 new emails plus two voice mails. One person was very excited. He really liked the way the couch looked in the pictures (NOTE: that meant he liked the other merchandise in my house, too). He wanted to come over Thursday afternoon. With some friends.

What if he’s The Craig’s List Killer? I thought. I had read many headlines about The Craig’s List Killer, but never clicked through to the articles, so at this stage I used my overactive story-telling imagination to fill in the gaps. Here’s what happened next…

We agreed that he would call me at 1:30pm, I would give him directions and he would come for the couch, ca$h in hand. And a gun in the other hand. He would murder me in cold blood, take the couch, tables, and whatever else he wanted. My kids would be surprised when I wasn’t at the bus stop, but they would think I was stuck on a conference call.  They know the garage code so they would just come home and find…

Luckily he never called, and someone else came over ca$h in hand and bought the couch and tables at our asking price. I can only assume that somewhere in Columbus there was a Dexter-style kill room where a minor complication delayed the killer and saved my life.

It was a very close call.

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