Leigh Buettler
I Am My Favorite Murder
I’m rewatching The Fall. You probably know it: a crime drama in which Gillian Anderson tries to apprehend a serial killer who has gone on a spree killing women in Belfast. I have to quiet the voice inside of me that wants to scream at the women to pay attention, or to call the police, or to listen to their instincts. That voice inside me is loud and judgemental and it has a very selective memory of who I am and who I have been.
I, like most everyone, fully believe I would evade the serial killer or fight back and win. Again, probably like most everyone else, have done enough dumb shit to be murdered in my life and cannot believe I’m not dead yet. I’m pretty certain at several points in my life, if I had been on screen, you’d be screaming at me to have some fucking common sense. You'd then be shaking your head as the camera cut to me lying dead in a morgue.
Halfway through episode one of the second season, a memory resurfaces. When I lived in Brooklyn, nearly a decade ago, I stumbled up the four flights of stairs to my apartment and drunkenly discovered my key wouldn’t go in the lock. I kept trying the lock by stabbing my key at it, but it wasn't cooperating. I looked down at the key, scowled at the lock, glanced down at all my keys to make sure I wasn’t trying to cram the wrong one into the hole, and eventually decided that a) I was evicted and this is how they were telling me, b) I was trying to get in the wrong apartment, or c) something weird was going on with my lock, obvs!! I bounced around in the hall, checking all of the other doors, and discovered that even while drunk, I still correctly located my apartment door the first time. I didn't think I was getting evicted because at least I paid my rent on time, so that left C.
This is where my memory blinks off.
I later learned my lock had been superglued shut, and that this is a tactic people use when they try to take items from your apartment. Back then, I barely had any furniture. I didn’t have a TV. I’m not even sure I had a functioning computer — or, if I did, its screen was definitely shattered. I know I still had a flip phone. I know that nothing was taken from my apartment because I had jack-all to take. The rest of what happened that night, I do not remember.
I began obsessively sifting through my email to find the answers. I had to have written about this, to someone, somewhere. Tonight, or today as a 41-year old, I cannot fathom simply getting my door unlocked, going into that apartment, and going to sleep by myself. I have watched too many true crime documentaries and listened to too many podcasts to even think of rolling the dice like that.
Well, 26-year-old Leigh did not give a fuck, everyone. I unearthed this gem in an email I wrote to someone who no longer speaks to me:
“I am really done with Brooklyn. To top it off, my apartment got broken into last night — and they superglued the lock, so I had to get my super to let me in and get a new key. They didn’t take anything, which is good, but slightly creepier. Sigh.”
This little nugget was just thrown in a longer email, surrounded by other mundane observations and the daily reportage of life at the time: details about the guy I was seeing, my job, how much I loved The Fantastic Mr. Fox, and Christmas. I wrote about all of it with the same tone I’d use to describe a trip to the grocery store. The last word in this paragraph is what really kills me — I wasn’t even that bothered about the break-in. I was just slightly inconvenienced at another wacky thing happening in my life, lol!
I sent this email on a Monday, meaning the break-in happened Sunday night. This means a few things: I was out late on a Sunday, which I would be very hard pressed to do now, and I had gotten drunk enough to not fully remember this event years later. I'm now going on five years of sobriety because shit like this used to happen and was apparently commonplace enough that I just punctuated it by writing the word “sigh,” so things have turned around for me in a lot of ways. It also means that after I discovered something was mysteriously wrong with my lock and key, I marched my drunk ass down to the super, had him let me into my apartment, and just … went to sleep. I went to sleep in the place I had just discovered other strangers had been in, where people I didn’t know had been looking at all of my stuff and debating whether or not there was anything worth taking. I flopped down on my futon and I slept. I probably didn’t even look in all of the rooms when I got inside. I didn’t ask the super to help or even keep an ear out in case he heard signs of a struggle or, I don’t know, my murder.
Another time, also when I lived in Brooklyn, I was walking to a bar in the afternoon. I walked past a white van with tinted windows parked on the side of Coney Island Avenue, its sliding door pushed open. Two middle aged men leaning against the van called after me as I walked by. They started proclaiming their love for me in heavy Eastern European accents and told me they wanted to marry me. I was definitely more polite than I would be today and smiled at them. One of them called after me, asking if I wanted a ride, but I shook my head and kept walking. Not a minute later, the van drove up slowly next to me, the side door still open, one of the men leaning out of the passenger window. “Come on, let us give you a ride,” he said, “wherever you need to go, free.”
The bar I was headed to was a mile and a half away and, for some reason, I thought, what the hell? and I jumped into the still moving van through its side door and slid it shut. It was filled with tool boxes and chains and boards and other heavy equipment and power tools — you know, all the stuff murderers take on the go under the guise of being contractors so they can torture and kill women who think it's a good idea to get in their van.
When I think about this now I almost black out from the weight of my own stupidity. I don’t want to even imagine the hundreds of vicious scenarios that I could have found myself in. I was riding in the quintessential murder van with two heavyset male strangers with not a care in the world. And I was old enough to know better. The fact that I haven’t been dismembered at some point in my life is truly shocking.
Instead of ending up in a murder room, we made pleasant chit chat and a few minutes later they dropped me off in front of the bar and told me if I ever changed my mind, I could marry either one of them. Nice fellas! I never saw them again.
Other notable incidents: I literally ran away from a bar in Brooklyn when the owner pushed me up against a wall, groped me, and stuck his tongue down my throat. Somehow I ducked under his arm, bolted past his bulky body, grabbed my bag, and ran as fast I could until I got to my apartment. I’ve willingly gone to complete strangers’ houses for a night of fun with nothing stronger in my purse than some Advil. I’ve hung out with people who had a pistol on the living room table and a shotgun propped up in the corner next to the front door because they were prepared to get an unpleasant not-so-surprise visit. I’ve snuck into an empty frat house holding a coffee table leg with rusty nails protruding from it, because my friend and I believed there were people in there stealing his stuff, and we thought we could catch them. He had a baseball bat clenched in his hand. He took the basement and I took the attic. The electricity had been shut off, so there were no lights and it was dusk. We didn’t have smartphones or flashlights but we did have the idiotic bravado of being twenty-two. We didn’t run into anyone in that house, thank god, but we were convinced we had probably just missed whoever we were looking for. On another afternoon, I was out for a run in Queens and a garbage truck blew through a stop sign, missing hitting me by what felt like inches; I had to sprint and the momentum carried me through the open door of a bodega, where all the men at the counter were staring at me, pale and wide-eyed, and hoarsely asked if I was okay.
I moved to the country at some point and bought a house on a relatively busy two lane road. I can see my neighbors’ houses but they are not close enough to notice any suspicious activity or hear blood-curdling screams for help. For years I never locked my front door, even when I lived here alone. Then one day I listened to a podcast series about Richard Chase, aka the Sacramento Vampire, who chose his murder victims based on whether or not they had an open door, which he interpreted as an invitation to let himself in. He then murdered them, perpetuated truly horrific acts of violence, and drank their blood. Before I listened to his story it had never once occurred to me that locking one’s door was just a typical safety precaution that could, oh I don’t know, add years onto my life.
Today, I am more cautious. When I tell these stories to my sister, she insists it doesn’t sound like me at all. That’s because it doesn’t. Now, I lock my door. We have a security system. I no longer make it a habit to hang out with strangers or get in vehicles belonging to strange men. I’ve been fortunate but maybe my luck is running out. I think about all the times I could have met much worse fates, and how I’m still here, writing about it all. I’m a different person, but I’m not. I’m the one who isn’t on the morgue slab but who could be. I’ve learned some lessons and I’ve yet to learn others. I will always be my favorite murder. But I will always be my favorite murder because my murder hasn’t happened — yet — and I’m finally trying to keep it that way.
I, like most everyone, fully believe I would evade the serial killer or fight back and win. Again, probably like most everyone else, have done enough dumb shit to be murdered in my life and cannot believe I’m not dead yet. I’m pretty certain at several points in my life, if I had been on screen, you’d be screaming at me to have some fucking common sense. You'd then be shaking your head as the camera cut to me lying dead in a morgue.
Halfway through episode one of the second season, a memory resurfaces. When I lived in Brooklyn, nearly a decade ago, I stumbled up the four flights of stairs to my apartment and drunkenly discovered my key wouldn’t go in the lock. I kept trying the lock by stabbing my key at it, but it wasn't cooperating. I looked down at the key, scowled at the lock, glanced down at all my keys to make sure I wasn’t trying to cram the wrong one into the hole, and eventually decided that a) I was evicted and this is how they were telling me, b) I was trying to get in the wrong apartment, or c) something weird was going on with my lock, obvs!! I bounced around in the hall, checking all of the other doors, and discovered that even while drunk, I still correctly located my apartment door the first time. I didn't think I was getting evicted because at least I paid my rent on time, so that left C.
This is where my memory blinks off.
I later learned my lock had been superglued shut, and that this is a tactic people use when they try to take items from your apartment. Back then, I barely had any furniture. I didn’t have a TV. I’m not even sure I had a functioning computer — or, if I did, its screen was definitely shattered. I know I still had a flip phone. I know that nothing was taken from my apartment because I had jack-all to take. The rest of what happened that night, I do not remember.
I began obsessively sifting through my email to find the answers. I had to have written about this, to someone, somewhere. Tonight, or today as a 41-year old, I cannot fathom simply getting my door unlocked, going into that apartment, and going to sleep by myself. I have watched too many true crime documentaries and listened to too many podcasts to even think of rolling the dice like that.
Well, 26-year-old Leigh did not give a fuck, everyone. I unearthed this gem in an email I wrote to someone who no longer speaks to me:
“I am really done with Brooklyn. To top it off, my apartment got broken into last night — and they superglued the lock, so I had to get my super to let me in and get a new key. They didn’t take anything, which is good, but slightly creepier. Sigh.”
This little nugget was just thrown in a longer email, surrounded by other mundane observations and the daily reportage of life at the time: details about the guy I was seeing, my job, how much I loved The Fantastic Mr. Fox, and Christmas. I wrote about all of it with the same tone I’d use to describe a trip to the grocery store. The last word in this paragraph is what really kills me — I wasn’t even that bothered about the break-in. I was just slightly inconvenienced at another wacky thing happening in my life, lol!
I sent this email on a Monday, meaning the break-in happened Sunday night. This means a few things: I was out late on a Sunday, which I would be very hard pressed to do now, and I had gotten drunk enough to not fully remember this event years later. I'm now going on five years of sobriety because shit like this used to happen and was apparently commonplace enough that I just punctuated it by writing the word “sigh,” so things have turned around for me in a lot of ways. It also means that after I discovered something was mysteriously wrong with my lock and key, I marched my drunk ass down to the super, had him let me into my apartment, and just … went to sleep. I went to sleep in the place I had just discovered other strangers had been in, where people I didn’t know had been looking at all of my stuff and debating whether or not there was anything worth taking. I flopped down on my futon and I slept. I probably didn’t even look in all of the rooms when I got inside. I didn’t ask the super to help or even keep an ear out in case he heard signs of a struggle or, I don’t know, my murder.
Another time, also when I lived in Brooklyn, I was walking to a bar in the afternoon. I walked past a white van with tinted windows parked on the side of Coney Island Avenue, its sliding door pushed open. Two middle aged men leaning against the van called after me as I walked by. They started proclaiming their love for me in heavy Eastern European accents and told me they wanted to marry me. I was definitely more polite than I would be today and smiled at them. One of them called after me, asking if I wanted a ride, but I shook my head and kept walking. Not a minute later, the van drove up slowly next to me, the side door still open, one of the men leaning out of the passenger window. “Come on, let us give you a ride,” he said, “wherever you need to go, free.”
The bar I was headed to was a mile and a half away and, for some reason, I thought, what the hell? and I jumped into the still moving van through its side door and slid it shut. It was filled with tool boxes and chains and boards and other heavy equipment and power tools — you know, all the stuff murderers take on the go under the guise of being contractors so they can torture and kill women who think it's a good idea to get in their van.
When I think about this now I almost black out from the weight of my own stupidity. I don’t want to even imagine the hundreds of vicious scenarios that I could have found myself in. I was riding in the quintessential murder van with two heavyset male strangers with not a care in the world. And I was old enough to know better. The fact that I haven’t been dismembered at some point in my life is truly shocking.
Instead of ending up in a murder room, we made pleasant chit chat and a few minutes later they dropped me off in front of the bar and told me if I ever changed my mind, I could marry either one of them. Nice fellas! I never saw them again.
Other notable incidents: I literally ran away from a bar in Brooklyn when the owner pushed me up against a wall, groped me, and stuck his tongue down my throat. Somehow I ducked under his arm, bolted past his bulky body, grabbed my bag, and ran as fast I could until I got to my apartment. I’ve willingly gone to complete strangers’ houses for a night of fun with nothing stronger in my purse than some Advil. I’ve hung out with people who had a pistol on the living room table and a shotgun propped up in the corner next to the front door because they were prepared to get an unpleasant not-so-surprise visit. I’ve snuck into an empty frat house holding a coffee table leg with rusty nails protruding from it, because my friend and I believed there were people in there stealing his stuff, and we thought we could catch them. He had a baseball bat clenched in his hand. He took the basement and I took the attic. The electricity had been shut off, so there were no lights and it was dusk. We didn’t have smartphones or flashlights but we did have the idiotic bravado of being twenty-two. We didn’t run into anyone in that house, thank god, but we were convinced we had probably just missed whoever we were looking for. On another afternoon, I was out for a run in Queens and a garbage truck blew through a stop sign, missing hitting me by what felt like inches; I had to sprint and the momentum carried me through the open door of a bodega, where all the men at the counter were staring at me, pale and wide-eyed, and hoarsely asked if I was okay.
I moved to the country at some point and bought a house on a relatively busy two lane road. I can see my neighbors’ houses but they are not close enough to notice any suspicious activity or hear blood-curdling screams for help. For years I never locked my front door, even when I lived here alone. Then one day I listened to a podcast series about Richard Chase, aka the Sacramento Vampire, who chose his murder victims based on whether or not they had an open door, which he interpreted as an invitation to let himself in. He then murdered them, perpetuated truly horrific acts of violence, and drank their blood. Before I listened to his story it had never once occurred to me that locking one’s door was just a typical safety precaution that could, oh I don’t know, add years onto my life.
Today, I am more cautious. When I tell these stories to my sister, she insists it doesn’t sound like me at all. That’s because it doesn’t. Now, I lock my door. We have a security system. I no longer make it a habit to hang out with strangers or get in vehicles belonging to strange men. I’ve been fortunate but maybe my luck is running out. I think about all the times I could have met much worse fates, and how I’m still here, writing about it all. I’m a different person, but I’m not. I’m the one who isn’t on the morgue slab but who could be. I’ve learned some lessons and I’ve yet to learn others. I will always be my favorite murder. But I will always be my favorite murder because my murder hasn’t happened — yet — and I’m finally trying to keep it that way.
Leigh Buettler lives in the Finger Lakes region of New York with her husband and two dogs in a little red house. She's queer, sober, and interested in everything strange and unusual. She enjoys reading, writing, knitting, and meditating.
Instagram: @leigh_martella
Instagram: @leigh_martella
