Ruin My Week
The life of a private investigator has got to be incredibly exciting.
We know this because so many movies, TV shows, and books tell us so and they would never ever lie to us, right?
It’s one of those professions that you fantasize about when you’re a kid—Sherlock Holmes, Nancy Drew, Veronica Mars—I mean come on!
Who didn’t want to use their keen intuition and clever wit to track, trick, and catch bad guys? It must be the most thrilling line of work out there.
Unfortunately, like most things, you grow up to find out that being a PI ain’t all it’s cracked up to be. Insurance scams and cheating spouses mostly.
But luckily, once you’re over the disappointment of what adult life is, you can appreciate how even a wife having their cheating husband tailed can end up a pretty wild story.
Redditor u/edgeworth_ asked: “Redditors who have hired a private investigator… what did you find out?”
Here are the 18 most popular answers.
1. Sister, sister.
“My sister (mid 30s) is adopted and hired one to find her estranged biological father. They came back saying that not only was he still alive and nearby, but he had a daughter. Meaning she also had a biological sibling!
Further digging from the PI uncovered that they weren’t just similar ages either, they were exactly the same age. The evidence suggested that my sister had a twin and her birth father had taken the twin and vanished. Huge, life-changing news.
Eventually, through more incredible detective work, the PI realized that the daughter was actually just my sister. There was no other sibling and they had just been investigating my sister the whole time accidentally. Needless to say, we asked for the money back.” –grzzlybr
2. Isn’t one wife enough?
“When I met my wife, she seemed to have a normal modern family. Two moms, two dads. Over time it became apparent her step-dad wasn’t around much. Holidays, birthdays, you name it, he’d pop in to say hi, grab a nap, whatever, then take off again. My wife’s family thought this was normal, just the way it had always been since they were teenagers. He claimed to have a job following FedEx trucks around the state to prevent theft and drug trafficking. But I thought it strange and started making jokes about him having another family.
Well, I guess it got my sister-in-law thinking because she gets a favor from the PI at her law firm. Sure enough, he has not two but THREE wives around the state, and five other (step)children between them. My sister-in-law breaks the news to her mother who immediately changes the locks and files for divorce. They never speak again. Cold turkey. Divorce is even uncontested. As a FU they also send the report to his other wives.” –barcodez1
3. Dark and awkward.
“A woman who was close friends with my mother suspected her husband was cheating on her and hired a PI. After a week or so of following her husband, the PI discovered that he WAS cheating on her… With my dad. My father was always a huge homophobe, so it was just delightful watching him squirm until he admitted the affair.” –heavenhelpyou
4. Ok, I didn’t see that coming, but somehow I did?
“My parents hired a private investigator to find out who my online bf was when I was 13. The PI came back and told us he was just a fat ass 13 year old.” –hm_ellie
5. Isn’t there a Steve Martin movie about this?
“My grandmothers first “boyfriend” after my grandfather died said he was a retired cop and a veteran. They enjoyed dancing to country music together, and bought a new car, in her name though, even though she can’t drive anymore. My uncles hired a PI. Turns out, that old bastard had a habit of shacking up with widows and bleeding them dry. ” –SimonSaysx
6. Divorce papers to follow.
“I used to work for an insurance defense firm years ago. Best PI story I have is where we hired one to tail a guy who was suing our client for an injury that wasn’t entirely our client’s fault. The guy was refusing to settle, and was insisting on going to trial even though we offered a fair sum that would’ve paid his medical bills. The PI we hired got some good pics that showed the plaintiff was nowhere near as “injured” as he claimed, but the crown jewel of the photos was one where the guy was walking on a pier with a woman who wasn’t his wife. Had his hand on her ass and everything.
Later in a deposition, the attorney slid the picture to the plaintiff and said something like “Mr. Smith (obviously not his real name), who is the woman in this picture? We would like to schedule a deposition with her as well.” The guy went ghost white and told his attorney he wanted to settle.
At least he was smart enough to realize that if his wife found out the other woman was gonna be deposed, he was gonna have to get a family law attorney as well, because the divorce papers would soon follow.” –Liberi_Fatali561
7. Aww.
“My mother’s dad walked out on mom, my aunt, and my grandmother when mom was just 5. A few years later, my grandmother died of a grand mal seizure. Mom was taken in by her grandparents, but she always wondered why her dad left and what became of him. In her 40’s, she saved up a bit and hired a PI to track him down. Turns out he moved over time from Pittsburg to California where he wound up in prison for armed robbery and so e other violent crimes. He died in San Quentin penitentiary.
I think mom got a lot of closure out of that. She was able to see that life would have most likely been even worse had he stayed. At least living with her grandparents, she was loved and raised to fulfill her potential.” –antisocialoctopus
8. I’m the PI now.
“My mom’s best friend. She divorced her husband and was awarded full custody of their daughter. His family was a shit-show. He kidnapped his daughter, and he and his parents just disappeared. (This was easier in 1977 than it is now.) She tried hiring a PI, but couldn’t afford one. So she started learning how to trace people on her own. In the days before the Internet. She spent years doing this whenever she wasn’t waitressing.
She did find her daughter in ’81, but by this time her daughter was poisoned against her. Mom’s friend went on to get her PI license, and was a PI specializing in woman’s issues for the next two decades. I don’t know what happened to her after that. If she’s alive, she would be in her ’80s I think.” –calladus
10. Rich people, amiright?
“I was a private investigator for a little bit. Most work PIs do is searching financial/court records and serving documents. But one time I was paid by wealthy parents to stake out their college senior who had stopped returning their calls. They were worried about her. These parents paid like $40k for round the clock monitoring just to find out their daughter dropped out of school and was a full time ski bum..” –KenComesInABox
