This is one of the true but weird occurrences that I have lived through in my life on this planet.
It was June of 1999 in Hollywood California on a Saturday night. I was in the band Madareus and we were recording the drum tracks for our upcoming 5 song EP demo available to buy on my merchandise page. The bassist Keith had been renting a house in Hollywood and it had a garage in the rear of the property. Keith sound proofed the garage and set up a rehearsal and mini recording studio, it was quite a nice set up.
Keith also had 2 roommates in the house, as living in California especially Hollywood is extremely expensive. His one roommate Chris had been there for a while, but they just had a new guy move in a month earlier. The house had 2 bedrooms, a kitchen, a front living room and 2 bath rooms. The new guy Greg had rented the living room (it wasn’t a large space). Greg seemed to be a strange guy and now I know why and so will you.
Greg was doing different types of drugs acid, heroin, you name apparently he abused it and he had a mental disorder because of this. Well what comes on Saturday nights after “Cops” (@ 8pm) that’s right (@ 9pm) “Americas Most Wanted”! This genius who had on multiple occasions talked to me and saw me around the studio for a month apparently forgot who I was. Well on “Americas Most Wanted” there was an escaped murderer on the loose last seen in Iowa (I think it was). This escaped happened one week before, other wise the guy had been in an Idaho prison for 3 or 4 years. Greg calls LAPD and tells them that the escaped murderer is ME!
Around 10 pm we stopped playing in the garage / studio and Keith (bassist) and Mark
(guitarist/vocalist) and myself were talking about how the recording was going and other stuff related to the band. This was my first night off from work in about 3 weeks so I wanted to leave and go home. I opened the door to the studio and was talking to Mark as I was leaving so my back was facing outward to the driveway and my front was still looking in the studio. Now when I used to leave the studio I always would take my stick bag with me. A drum stick bag is about 8 inches wide and 12 inches long almost like a soft shelled hand gun case. So I finishing saying whatever it was I was saying close the door and as I turn around there are about 15 LAPD officers with guns drawn pointed at me. They were not quite yelling but just a few decibels lower telling me to drop the bag and put my hands on the wall. I did what they said, and asked what was going on in the garage. They had me the open the door to the studio/garage and back up; to stay the least Keith and Mark were surprised as well.
Once the cops looked inside the room, around the yard, and in the house the tension lifted. When the one cop looked in my stick bag he started laughing a little, he turned to me and asked if I knew what was going on. I looked at him and asked if the music we were playing was that bad. A couple of the cops started laughing then and he said “no, actually we were outside enjoying the free concert”. The cops told us that Greg called LAPD after seeing me profiled on Americas Most Wanted, and told the tip line that the “RED HEADED murderer just profiled was in his garage playing a stolen stereo way to loud”. The cops seemed to be relieved when all was clear and so were we (wouldn’t you have been?).
The only thing I had in common with the escaped murderer was red hair…. The cops showed me the description of the guy he was 6’4″ stocky with tattoos all over his arms and back, and a buzz cut. I had hair to the middle of my back among the multiple other differences.
Of course Greg left for the night after calling the cops to go score some drugs. NICE GUY HUH? Needless to say Greg was kicked out of the house the next day!
Source by Don Murphy
