He was hiding in the walls - The Daniel LaPante story

So one day, this girl and her sister start noticing weird things going on in their home. Like, whenever they leave the room, the TV channel randomly changes, or sometimes an item will randomly move, and it's not in the same place they left it. It's like their house is haunted.

The sisters—one's name is Tina, and the other we'll just call Sister—start to notice all this, and they go to their dad and tell him, "Hey Dad, some weird stuff is going on in this house. " Dad's like, "Whatever, kids, you're probably pranking each other or something. " But then Dad starts to notice weird stuff happening too.

Like, one day he comes home and sees that, even though no one had been home all day, someone had used the bathroom and didn't flush. So Dad knows something's up, and he starts searching the house for an intruder. He looks around in one room and another room, but he doesn't really find anything.

Then he opens the closet door, and suddenly, bam! A strange man is towering over him with his face painted, and the man has a hatchet in one hand and a wrench in the other. He orders everyone to get into the bedroom.

Now, Tina thinks fast, bounces out of a nearby window, and runs as fast as she can over to a neighbor's house. There, she calls the police. Minutes later, the police arrive, but by the time they get there, the weird man has already fled.

Luckily, he didn't hurt the family, but at this point, it doesn't really matter because Dad and his daughters are totally freaked out. They don't want to go back to the house until that man, who we'll just call Slasher, is captured. So, they go and stay in a hotel.

A few days later, Dad has to go back to the house to pick up a few of their things. As he pulls into the driveway, boom! He sees Slasher standing there, staring at him through the window.

He immediately calls the police, and once again, the police get there. They go inside and find a knife sticking through a picture of the family on the wall, with "I'm still here. Come and find me," written on it in magic marker.

Then they see another family picture with a knife sticking out of it that says, "I'm going to un-alive you. " So, the police get right to work and search the whole house, but they can't find anyone. Then one of them notices there's a fake wall in the bathroom.

It's a real wall, but it was just put there to hide some pipes, so it's not solid, and behind that fake wall, there's a crawl space. The officer looks through the space and sees a large pile of clothes back there and thinks, "I bet Slasher is hiding in those clothes. " He says, "I know you're back there!

Come out, or I'll shoot! " Of course, Slasher gives up and steps out. When he does, they notice he's not a scary Jason-type character; he's actually a tall 17-year-old teenager named Dany.

Dany had actually briefly gone on a date with Tina back in the day, but that's the extent of their relationship. I guess at some point, he had broken into the family's house one day and had been hiding, living in the walls for a couple of months. He had been moving stuff around and changing their TV channels randomly, and he had just been watching them the whole time.

Anyway, they arrest Dany and throw him in a youth detention center. Ten months later, his mom bails him out, thinking maybe he had learned his lesson. Spoiler alert: he didn't.

Once Dany is out, he immediately starts breaking into neighbors' houses again and stealing things. One day, he goes to rob a house for the second time, but this time he actually brings a gun that he had stolen. Once he's inside, he starts pocketing things here and there, but then he hears some keys trying to open the front door, so he freezes.

Usually, he would take this as his cue to leave, but this time he hears a woman's voice. It's a pregnant mom and her 5-year-old son coming home, and suddenly, boom! Dany rushes out at them with his gun, takes them both, forces them into the bedroom, locks the kid in the closet, ties the mom to the bed, assaults her, and then kills her.

Then he unlocks the closet, takes the 5-year-old out, and kills him in the bathtub. As Dany's leaving the house, in walks a seven-year-old daughter, and he takes her and kills her in a bathtub too. Later, when the husband gets home, he finds them and calls the police.

Of course, at this point, Dany has taken off; he's been on the run. But that same night, after a manhunt, police finally find him hiding out in a local dumpster, like the trash he is. So, they arrest him.

Here's a picture of him being arrested, and here's his mugshot. Here he is in court because he eventually goes to trial, and he's found guilty—guilty—and he's sentenced to life.