We all went to school with at least one weirdo... but did any of your former classmates bludgeon their mum to death with a sledgehammer then try and set the family home on fire? This man's did...
A poster on Reddit claims that he went to school with Zachary Davis, aka the Sledgehammer Killer, and the scariest Dr. Phil guest ever.
User u/innocentacquaintance posted an AMA titled I went to school and had class with Zachary Davis, the 17 year old recently convicted of killing is mother in her sleep with a sledgehammer, and shared some chilling insights about his time as the murderous teen's closest pal.
He explained that they were not really friends, but that of all the pupils at Station Camp High School in Tennessee, he was most likely to have been the person he interacted with the most as their mums were friends.
innocentacquaintance wrote: "Zach and I were both freshman together in algebra one class, I remember him quite well. While we were not friends, I believe I was one of the people whom interacted the most with him. His mother and my mother were both friends and knew each other well."
On August 10 2012, Zachary, 15, killed his mum Melanie, 45, by hitting her over the head with a sledgehammer twelve times. Then, to destroy the evidence and hoping to kill his older brother Josh, he set the family home on fire. He admitted to the murder and arson, and then made unsubstantiated claims that he performed the sickening acts as he had been raped by his brother and their mum had failed to act.
But according to the former classmate, he thinks it is highly unlikely that Zach was telling the truth about being sexually abused.
"I believe that his brother might have been mean to him at times, but I never could believe that Josh would rape him. I think that Zach is 'show ponying' on that one," he wrote.
Zachary told the court in his 2015 trial that he had used a sledgehammer "in case he missed" his mum's head, and his only regret was not also killing his brother in the same way. He was sentenced to 71 years in prison for his crimes.
The school pal shared some skin crawling details of what he was like at school, writing: "He was very very far from normal, he would whisper every word he would speak as if trying to cover his real voice.
"I noticed he would play on his phone a lot and never smiled, the face you see in the mugshot is the same one I saw everyday in class.
"He was/is 100% mentally ill nothing about him changed in a creepy way, he always walked the same, talked(whispered) the same, and sat the same.
"I wasn't scared of him though, our school has a very open CDC program for the special kids (though he was not in it) so we are all very used to some crazy characters walking aimlessly around, but I do believe he made some teachers uncomfortable, we were all too young to be threatened by him."
The poster adds that the chilling way that Zachary moves his head and speaks in a strange drawl in the Dr. Phil interview wasn't exactly as he was when he knew him.
He writes: "The head bobbing is something I have never seen and the 'sling blade' voice is also new, I personally believe he is putting that on to seem more intimidating. When I knew him he only spoke in a loud whisper as if trying to cover his voice.
"He wore the same hoodie everyday no matter the heat, though that is normal for most of the kids my age at the time. I never did smell him like I could smell some other kids but his jacket may have covered this up, I have never heard from any of my friends or teachers that he had bad hygiene, again I think there was a possibility that Zach was bluffing on that fact.
"He was viewed as a social outcast, from what I saw nobody made fun of him. You either ignored him or you tried and tried again to connect with him which nobody ever managed to do. I talked to him once, asked him to play Minecraft with me (I was a freshman). He said he would and I opened a sever and he never joined."
