salami_swami 
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Wow, how interesting; the story and the topic both.
Can't think of any who made the news, not even anyone who was interviewed or anything... I'll ask around and see what I come up with. Perhaps I just have forgotten. ;)
Reply #1. Jul 11 12, 8:53 AM
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| AntonLaVey
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A cop kills someone and doesn't do time? Yeah, that sounds about right. It's stuff like this that remind me to never help a cop.
"To protect and serve... but only if you're one of us."
Reply #2. Jul 14 12, 12:31 AM
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| lesley153
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And they all believed that he really only wanted to play a trick on her? Very neat.
Old schoolfriends? Probably the most newsworthy is the one who went into teaching and then into politics, is active in all sorts of other things, got knighted for services to local government, and is now mayor of his adopted home town.
One always wanted to be a singer and went on to be the first singer for Fairport Convention. One was a successful record producer, and I've just found out that he died in June last year. :( The third is in the news because she makes a point of being in the news. She went from school to fashion journalism to PR, but her finest hour was probably her appearance in I'm a Celebrity.
More recently I've met a man who was convicted of stealing from customers of a wine investment company. People paid the company to store wine for them, and three directors took less than a year to turn 12,000 cases of customers' wines into 5,000. The stolen wine was worth about £2m, so it was probably better than the bottle most of us buy to take to a party. (I don't suppose the customers would know how to form a sentence containing the words A Bottle.) He got five years. He would have got less for killing a policewoman!
Reply #3. Jul 14 12, 4:55 AM
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| lesley153
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Just remembered another local man who did time. His business folded, and he got a job in charge of about thirty people. He was probably lucky to get a job at all, let alone such a senior one, but he made the mistake of thinking that reporting to a senior staff member puts you in line for their job. He dressed the part and tried to fit in with senior management, but they weren't fooled. The senior job has traditionally been done by posh ex-army people, and he had no chance. The senior man retired, and another posh ex-army man came in to replace him.
He was stealing materials and using them to do private work. It went beyond straight theft, though, into fraud and conspiracy, because he was also buying in supplies, putting them through an imaginary company with a bank account he and a mate set up in false names, and doubling the price that was charged to his employer.
When he got caught, he offered the defence that he was underpaid and under-appreciated, and was doing it to boost his pay.
His wife said he shouldn't have done time. She said he was sent down on a technicality. Really? :)
Reply #4. Jul 14 12, 6:45 AM
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satguru
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I think mine are pretty obscure and tenuous, someone I knew from our early holidays has just used his influence as a top journalist to single handedly create free schools from a plan within a year and get them approved by parliament. Considering most changes in Britain take 10 years plus this was a far greater achievement than it first seems. I also had a school friend in the papers after he'd left as he worked for a debt collectors who made him cover his clothes with rubbish and sit in the debtor's office stinking it out until they got fed up and paid. It worked as well.
Reply #5. Jul 14 12, 4:37 PM
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tezza1551
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Being a state politician, my sister in law regularly makes the news. At a recent family occasion, someone blew up a photo of her with Colin Barnett (State Premier)and Kevin Rudd (when he was Australia's PM) and captioned it "WANTED FOR HIGHWAY ROBBERY"...
My late husband also had a mate who featured in the West Australian news as "Greybeard, the gentleman bandit"..
Reply #6. Jul 14 12, 6:48 PM
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agony
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Hmm... An old school friend went on to become an expert in the study and treatment of pedophiles, so she is fairly often quoted whenever there is an article about the subject.
I once worked with a girl who was murdered on her way home from work.
And my brother ran for city council once - didn't win his election, though.
Reply #7. Jul 15 12, 8:46 AM
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george48
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I once was room mate of a guy who was in training to be a police officer, and a couple of years later was involved in a car crash that killed a family, while in pursuit of a criminal. Rules of engagement regarding chases, i believe were changed after that tragedy.
Reply #8. Jul 15 12, 4:49 PM
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jabb5076
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This is extremely creepy, but true. In the summer before my last year of high school my father retired from the military and we moved back to California. Around the time we moved, two teen girls were stabbed to death in the hills above our suburb. When school started I became a quasi-friend to one of those misfit boys who don't really fit in and whom the other kids tease. I sometimes walked home from school with him because we lived near one another. The spring of the following year another teen girl was found stabbed to death in a manner similar to the murder of the girls killed the year before. About a week after the spring murder, I was in my car when a report came over the radio that an arrest had been made for all three homicides. I think I almost drove my car off the road when I heard the announcer state the name of the suspect--it was the boy I knew in HS. To my knowledge, he's still in prison in California (I think Atascadero, a state prison with a special section for the mentally ill.)
Reply #9. Jul 15 12, 6:16 PM
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wyambezi
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Wow jabb, we're lucky you're still with us--not as lucky as you've been, of course! :)
Reply #11. Jul 16 12, 8:08 PM
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wyambezi
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I had a school friend who was killed in an ambulance while working as an EMT, one of the nicest people you could know. It was a traffic accident that garnered much attention. Another school friend moved to Georgia and eventually became mayor of his city. When I was a teen I knew Nils Lofgren. I know a few people who write newspaper columns but I guess that's not really 'making the news'.
Reply #12. Jul 16 12, 8:47 PM
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| ITSOUNO11
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A former employer of mine has just qualified for the "2012 Ernest Hemingway lookalike contest". He received the most votes on face-book, and gets a free trip to Key West to compete in the finals.
I'm also friends with someone who survived a pickle barrel ride down Niagara Falls - twice.
Reply #13. Jul 16 12, 9:39 PM
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jolana
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I have though long hours if to post this or not, finally I decided to do it.
 http://www.thesun.co.uk/sol/homepage/news/3446755/Miss-Czech-2011-girls-sex-toy-rap.html
This is a girl from my class who made it to the Miss Czech Republic 2011. The photos are true, the text is ONE BIG LIE.
It wasn´t the entire group of finalists in the Miss Czech 2011, but only her, her friends, classmates and family. No restaurant-goers saw them staggering around, as the party was at Aneta´s garden. Noone was drunk, as the parents were there. Yes, they were plaing games with the kinky toy - plush pink handcuffs - it was her male classmates´ idea of a good fun (they were 17/18). Aneta is a nice girl, so she didn´t want to spoil the fun and posed with the handcuffs to make her classmates happy.
Unfortunately, she was too naive and didn´t realize that being a "celebrity" means losing your personal life and posted photos of her birthday party on facebook. Someone downloaded them and sold them to the press. So she made it to the Sun. Here I can see how tabloids work!
Reply #14. Jul 17 12, 5:55 PM
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| lesley153
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The way journalists work, and I don't think it's just tabloids, is to think of a story and write it. As long as names and places are more or less right, they really don't care about genuine stories, or the people forced to appear in them.
Years ago, a colleague of mine in London died unexpectedly. It was reported in the papers, with a final line mentioning that another employee of the company, in an office a few hundred miles away, was being tried for fraud. Of course it was intended to hint at a connection, but my colleague didn't die of suicide by guilt: it was a very obvious accident.
I mentioned it to a new friend from Wales, simply because we were talking about the nastiness of the press, and then I remembered that he was from Wales too. She said the scenario was familiar, and gasped when I remembered his name. Her brother had gone to school with him. Coincidence!
Reply #15. Jul 17 12, 6:54 PM
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| hansdelbruk
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I was in charge of a truck repair shop in Washington State and one of my crew had to be picked up from work every evening by his first cousin. I had spent time talking with this character as he waited for the employee to get done with his shift. In my many conversations with him I had come to the conclusion that he was "a little off" and left it at that. It's not like I was worried about him, I wasn't hangin out with him fer beers after work. A while down the road I noticed my employee was not gittin picked up by the same guy and asked him what happened to his regular driver. He told me he had been arrested and said nothin more about it. It wasn't but a couple weeks later I noticed on the evening news, there in front of all the lights and cameras that follow a high profile arrest was my employees cousin Gary Ridgeway aka "The Green River Killer".
Reply #16. Sep 28 12, 5:21 PM
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SisterSeagull
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I don't know whether or not this will qualify, but a very good friend of mine used to share a room with the serial killer, Dennis Nilson?
Reply #17. Sep 28 12, 6:14 PM
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