I want to preface this story by saying I have no idea who this was. At the time, there was no Long Island serial killer, so I had no point of reference when this occurred.

In 1992 – 93, I was living in my family home in West Islip, New York. I was working at McGraw-Hill in Manhattan and commuting on the Long Island Railroad. Normally I would park my car in Lindenhurst on the Babylon line. There was an old, abandoned supermarket on the north side of the tracks that had a large parking lot where everyone parked for free. If I parked in Babylon, I would have to pay for my daily parking.

During my career in book publishing, I have made many friends. When I was working at McMillan publishing in the mid to late 80s, we had a group of friends who always got together on Friday night. We had one watering hole that we frequented called Stingers on 52nd between second and third. Every Friday the same group of guys would meet up there and blow off steam from the previous workweek. Now some of my friends continued to work for McMillan and then Prentice-Hall when they moved to New Jersey. A couple of us ventured out into the book publishing jungle and started working for other publishers further downtown. No matter where we were in our working lives, Stingers was still the focal point on Friday night.

Now between the subway ride to Penn Station, and the train ride home, there was plenty of time to get your head back on straight when you reached your destination. On one Friday night, after a night out at Stingers, I missed the stop at Lindenhurst and ended up at the last stop which was Babylon. I got off the train, figured out my mistake of oversleeping, and knew that I had a long wait for a westbound train to take me the one-stop to Lindenhurst.

I decided to sit down on the platform and just wait for the next westbound train. The time was after midnight on a Saturday morning, and the trains would be running on a weekend schedule. This meant that either a train would come by quickly, or it could take an hour plus for a westbound train.

As I was sitting on the platform, a man started walking towards me from the end of the platform. He was dressed in a blue suit and my first impression was that he was a conductor. He got right up to me and started a conversation. He asked me how my night was going, and I told him that it was going great until I overslept my stop. He mentioned to me that the next train going west would be pulling into the station in about five or 10 minutes. I thought that was cool, I wasn’t going to have a huge wait to get home. After this small talk conversation, he meandered down the platform and I thought that was the end of it. A few moments later, he came walking back towards me and said that he was wrong, the next train going west was not for an hour and a half.

Now here is where I made my big mistake…

He asked me where I was going, and I told him that I had to get back to Lindenhurst, one-stop West. He said he was heading that way and offered to give me a ride. Now I had a friend from high school whose father was a conductor on the railroad.

I asked this person if they knew my friend’s father.

Of course, he said “oh yeah, sure he’s a great guy.”  Once he said this, my defenses dropped although they should have stayed up.

We got to his truck, a late model light colored truck, and started the drive back to Lindenhurst…

Along the way the conversation got creepy.   He started to tell me I was really drunk and maybe we should hang out for a while.  I was not drunk, more tired than anything.  He kept repeating this about hanging out more than once…

Then he asked me something that woke me up completely:  He started to ask me if I was armed with a knife or a gun!  At that question I thought: “What the hell did I get myself into??”

My fear now at this point was that he might not take me back to the Lindenhurst train station. I kept watching the road where we were going and praying to God he took me back to Lindenhurst.

My guardian angel must’ve been with me because he did drive back to the Lindenhurst train station. He stopped the truck, and then tried to reach over me to lock the door. Luckily, I was quicker and already had my hand on the door handle when the truck stopped, pulled it, pushed the door open, and jumped out. He got out.

Now I’m standing with my briefcase on the passenger side at the rear of the truck facing him diagonally next to the driver’s side door. He is staring at me. We stood there like that for what seemed like an eternity but was probably only a couple of minutes.

Finally, I said,” I don’t want any trouble.”  At this, I started walking away backwards keeping my eye on him. He crossed the street and went to the stairs for the elevated platform, I crossed the street went under the elevated platform and started heading up the block towards the parking lot where my car was parked. I kept my eyes looking behind me just to make sure that he did not follow me. What he did do was go to the top of the platform and watch me walk down the street. Once I got to the street, I needed to take a left towards the parking lot. I knew at this point I would lose eye contact with him on the platform, and I sprinted as fast as I could down the street into the parking lot to my car.

I only recently told my closest friends this story and the rest of the story because I was embarrassed by my own stupidity.

You never, ever take a ride from someone you do not know. That goes for adults as well as for children. There is evil in many different forms in this world, and you never know when evil will rear its ugly head.

The story doesn’t end here.

In 1993 I moved to a basement apartment on Jerusalem Avenue in Wantagh, New York. We continued our Friday night meet ups at Stingers, but maybe with less fervor on my part. On one Friday night I overslept my stop at Wantagh and ended up in Seaford. I was not drinking at all this night and was just very tired from a long week at work. I knew I had to wait for the next westbound train, and again sat on the platform to wait for the train going west.

As I am sitting on the platform, a figure starts walking towards me. As he gets closer, I recognize who it is. I am not sure that he recognizes me, but he was going to engage me in conversation.

I stood up, looked right at him, pointed at him and I said:

“I know who you are, I know what you did, and if you come near me I will F**king kill you!”

He looked at me, and again I said,” if you come near me, I will F**king kill you!”

It was him, and he walked away, and I never saw him again.

Was he the Gilgo serial killer? Probably not, but I cannot say for sure. It was a creepy encounter nonetheless and taught me a lesson.