My biological father was murdered, and the killer was never found.
TRIGGER WARNING: true crime details.
For many years, my biological father was a mystery to me. My mother wasn’t married to him, and soon after I was born, my father dumped her. A few short months later, my mother had a new boyfriend.
My father refused to see me (or so I was told) and didn’t want me. My mother would often drag him to court because he refused to pay child support.
I remember as a little child, my mom would sit me down on her bed and say, “Your real father doesn’t want you, but your stepfather does, so he’s your father now. Can you say that he’s your father?”
Back then, at age 4-6 (it’s hard to remember exactly when, but I was a preschooler), of course I would agree. My stepfather became my “real” father, and that was that.
Then one day, my mother sat me down again. With a somber tone I’d never heard before, she told me my biological father had died.
I very specifically remember shrugging and going, “okay.”
By then I was 8 years old, and had only seen my father once. In passing. At a court hearing for child support. He looked at me with a serious look, then looked away again.
So, I literally felt nothing when I heard the news. How could I? The man had become a total stranger, especially because my mother refused to talk about him. She had no photos to show me. No stories to tell.
But my father didn’t just die. He was murdered. He was shot at a store. Rumor was, he refused to do what the gunman demanded, and the man shot him. Shotgun. At close range.
At the time, my grandmother (his mother) blamed me… because, supposedly, he was at that store to get money out to pay for my child support.
My grandmother from my father’s side blamed me, an 8 year old child, for the murder of my father. It was strange to hear that (why did my mother tell me??) but I was used to abuse by then. My stepfather had been abusive, and as a child, you get used to that kind of thing.
The mystery is that no one knows who shot him. The man was never caught.
Family Secrets
I was told my real father abandoned me as a baby, but was that the full story? Did my mother keep him from me? If she didn’t, she certainly kept any information about him from me (stories, photos, any other details).
And then he died, so I couldn’t know more.
Questions about him haunted me for many years: Why did he abandon me? Why didn’t he want to see me on the weekends? What was he like that he would rebel against the demands of a man who was holding a shotgun to his face?
Who was he? What was he like?
Eventually, I had a life of my own and was too busy to wonder about him. And one day, I found his death certificate.
Details have been blacked out to protect everyone’s identity.
Translation: 1 means he worked in construction for 10 years. That’s something I didn’t know. 2 means “shotgun wound.” 3 means “Inside the business, he was wounded by gunfire.”
My mother used to have the newspaper clipping of his murder, and I’ve asked for it, but she’s said she doesn’t know where it is. I also asked her for photos of me as a child, and she said she doesn’t have any, so…
I should probably just forget about my clouded, confusing past and live the life I have today.
I guess some things will just remain a mystery.
Take care,
Dear Quiet
signal.log: 5.5.2026
uploaded… unsolved_mystery
memory/trace _ unclear
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