Who is the most infamous person you have ever met?

[Mr. McD]

My 1st wife and were invited to attend a meeting of Jim Jones at his church in Ukiah CA. This was about five years before the Guyana suicides November 18, 1978, where 913 of his followers died.

We got there early and were introduced to him though it was brief. Not much more than a hand shake. About an hour or so into the service my wife and I decided this guy was screwy and left. Members at the door tried to keep us from leaving but we left any way. I am not a religious person but even I thought is unusual for some one to tell people to take down their pictures of Jesus and replace them with his.

[kmla]

1. Ummmmm.... Heidi Fleiss.

Met her at her 'Heidi-wear' botique, before she served her time ('95 or so...).

[Archae]

2. Jeffrey Dahmer. (I think.)

On a Milwaukee city bus I talked to a guy who said his name was Jeff, but he was really quiet and didn't want to talk.

He may have been Dahmer, he looked much like the later news report images.

[truebrit71]

3. Michael Jackson. Margaret Thatcher.

Not at the same of course....

[drumwolf]

4. Rush Limbaugh.

I actually dealt with the guy when I was working at Tower Records in NYC in the mid-'90s and he was a customer.

He was polite and cordial, and he wasn't a particularly loud individual at all in person. In fact, at first it was his bodyguard who asked me for assistance, and he approached me himself only because his bodyguard didn't get his request right.

He came in several times as a customer when I was working, each time accompanied by his bodyguard and his wife. He always gave off the impression that he didn't want to attract any more attention to himself than he already did. And he never paid with a credit card in his name.

[Flaxbee]

5. Richard Nixon, G. Gordon Liddy and Oliver North!

Wooo Hoo!

I hid from Nixon, I stuffed myself as far down in the back seat of the car as I could get -- he'd moved back to San Clemente and was golfing and my mom and I drove by through the golf course for some reason (we lived in San Juan Capistrano then) and stopped to let him and his bodyguard (or friend, whomever) walk through the crosswalk. My mom said "hi" realizing who it was, I said "hi" and he said hello back and then I stuffed myself down in the seat. I was a shy child.

G.Gordon Liddy many years later when I was 19 or so, attending a lecture by various politicos. He walked up and introduced himself after the lectures. I was a hottie in college, that must have been why. ;-)

Oliver North at the Winchester, Virginia CostCo. Losts of people shaking his hand, I had a very hard time not spitting on him. He looked so damn smug. He was shopping and had bought about 10 plats (whatever you call them) of Perrier. We stood behind him in line when he checked out, and my husband, who takes all opportunities to bash * in public, was on a tear about something (this was only 2 years ago) and Ollie was really quite mellow about it all, didn't rise to the bait.

[tridim]

6. I met Jeff Smith (The Frugal Gourmet) in Chicago

a few weeks before he was arrested for child molestation. I was crushed because he was one of my favorites. Good thing I wasn't a child.

[sui generis]

7. Oh my my my

this isn't the most infamous one but merely the most infamous one I can say here without causing myself endless reams of trouble:

Adnan Kashoggi was in my social circle for a few years in New York about 19 years ago, oh, and let's throw in Malcolm Forbes too, but neither for any scandalous reasons.

But I do have some absolutely SCANDALOUS personal stories about "in"famous people not mentioned here! I'll never tell. Neener neener neeener.

Scandal is in the eye of the beholder. If one of us "ordinary" mortals does it, it's pretty passe, but someone in the public eye, well, those itty bitty pedestals we put them on have the side effect of being really easy to fall off of.

[dolo amber]

8. Marge Schott

Sat next to her at a restaurant...she was exactly as you'd expect; loud, rude, chainsmoking. I'm ashamed to admit the whole spectacle was highly amusing. :D

[KurtNYC]

9. Rudy Giuliani

before he was elected. His handlers ambushed me in the breakfast line at Zabars and pretty soon I was shaking the devil's hand.

Rudy: "Do they always play classical music in here?"

Me: "yes"

Rudy: "It's a nice touch."

[blueknight]

10. john gotti,

john madden, marge schott,bill and hillary! (got their autographs),and a TON of country music stars

[datasuspect]

11. my cousin

who was released from the custody of the state of illinois last month and transferred to a INS-shared facility in Kenosha, WI pending deportation and removal to the UK.

numerous counts of attempt murder/injury/great bodily harm/3 time felon.

[Magrittes Pipe]

12. My father's aunt's husband's sister's daughter stayed at my house once...

...when I was but a wee lad.

Mary Kay Schmitz (later to marry some chap named LeTorneau).

I don't think I ever met her dad, though (prominent Bircher John Schmitz).

And NO, she did not try to have sex with me.

[DelawareValleyDem]

13. Linda Tripp

before she was tripp - can't remember her maiden name exactly - carrot something.

[Bluzmann57]

14. Ted Nugent

OK so technically he's not a criminal, but he's still an asshole. In fact, I nearly got into a fight with one of his bodyguards when the gorilla manhandled my wife at a local outdoor show. She was stating an opinion and it was not a favorable one towards Nugent. I earlier called him a total tool(or something like that) after I refused to shake his hand. He also told me to get the f***away from him. Now admittedly, there was alcohol involved, but I we thought we were still entitled to an opinion. We probably did handle it wrong though by being belligerent. There will be no next time to make amends though. Where he goes, we don't.

[bettyellen]

15. Ron Jeremy followed me around a sleazy x mas party i crashed

once......and yes, he's a scary hairy bastard.

[johnnie]

16. Ronnie Shelton

My sister hung out with this guy and he even drove her home alone from a bar one night when she couldn't get in. I met him at a bar one night and only talked for a few minutes. My sister said they thought it was weird that he would leave the clubs for a few hours and then come back. They thought he was out getting some coke or something...little did they know what he was really doing.

"
From Publishers Weekly
Between 1983 and 1988, Ronnie Shelton raped at least 30 women in the Cleveland area. Neff (Mobbed Up), a senior editor of Cleveland magazine, discovered, after Shelton's conviction, that he had committed rapes before 1983 and estimates the total number of his victims at nearly 100. In the course of his spree, Shelton was stopped or picked up by the police 15 times for offenses like peeping into windows, but the connection to the rapes was never made. In faulting the police, Neff's chief target is Lt. Lucie Duvall, head of the Sex Crimes Unit. Yet the book is less about the rapist or inept police work than about the phenomenon of 30 victims bonding together to support one another and to testify in court about their experiences. As an outcome of their action, the judge determined that Shelton should never be released and sentenced him to 3198 years in prison. For this vivid and memorable account, the author interviewed survivors, the police and Shelton himself. "

http://www.amazon.ca/exec/obidos/ASIN/0671731866/701-5039366-1926740

[gwhit715]

17. Newt Gingrich...

...when he was the speaker at an event that my father was doing the arrangements for. I got to ride with and pick him up, and then have dinner with him afterwards and ride back to the airport and wait with him for his flight.

The shocker (perhaps) is that he was animated and openminded and warm and extremely well-informed. It was one of the most fascinating conversations of my life, and there was virtually nothing he said that fit in the "conservative" box. That said, it was all the more unforgivable what he did that year and the next with the "Contract for/on America" and his HardRight extremism. If he truly believed the things he said and then did this, it would be contemptable but somehow understandable. To KNOW better and do this purely for political gain is unforgivable, IMHO.

[drumwolf]

19. Howdy gwhit715! Welcome to DU!

:hi:

Oh, and one more thing... an acquaintance of mine is pretty sure he once met Joel Rifkin, the serial killer who murdered a bunch of prostitutes in Long Island in the early '90s. My friend was at a local diner when Rifkin came in, and the guy just totally emitted this creepy, "I'm a loser" vibe. Obviously, my friend didn't recognize him at the time, but after Rifkin was caught my friend saw him and was positive it was the same guy he saw in the diner.

Edited to add this link about Joel Rifkin: http://www.crimelibrary.com/serial_killers/predators/rifkin/1.html

[TlalocW]

18. One of my hobbies

Is getting pictures taken with conservatives (and making a face) so I have photos of me with Oklahoma Senator Jim Inhofe, Pat Buchanan, and Ted Nugent.

I had to buy Pat and Ted's latest books to get the picture (which is fine - I have conservative friends I can give the autographed books to). Ted signed his (Kill It and Grill It) and said, "Enjoy. There's a lot of wisdom in that book." I actually hurt myself from holding back and not laughing.

I gave that book to my conservative brother-in-law who's a hunter (both gun and crossbow), and after reading it, he said the recipes looked good, but he thought the rest of it was some sort of bad humor until he saw Ted on a hunting show and decided that he was a damn moron who was more talk than walk.

TlalocW