Life can take two people who start in almost the exact same place and send them into two completely different worlds. I know because it happened to me.

To tell this story, I have to go all the way back to 1987.

I was six years old, living in Washington state. My father was in the Army and stationed at Fort Lewis, and that was the year I played organized basketball for the first time. I had no idea where basketball would eventually take me. I was just a little kid who loved Michael Jordan. So naturally, I wore No. 23.

One of my teammates and childhood friends was John Passmore. John loved Magic Johnson, so he wore No. 32.

And I’m telling you right now: We terrorized that YMCA league in Tacoma. 23 and 32. John and I were better than the other kids in that league by a mile. That’s not me trying to exaggerate something that happened almost 40 years ago. I remember it because of how ridiculous some of those games were. We went undefeated.

I was the better scorer between us. John could really play, but scoring came naturally to me even back then. My first organized basketball game ever, I scored 30 points. At six years old.

John had somewhere in the 20s.

Imagine two little kids combining for more than 50 points in a YMCA game.

That was us. No. 23 and No. 32. Jordan and Magic. At least that’s who we thought we were. We would show up, destroy teams and do it again the next game.

Those are some of my earliest basketball memories. And when you’re that young, you assume the kids around you are just going to somehow remain part of your life.

But military life doesn’t work like that.

Eventually John’s family left the Army base. And that was it.

 

Before the Internet Changed Everything

People growing up today probably can’t fully understand this part.

There was no Instagram. No Facebook. No Google where you could type somebody’s name and instantly find out what happened to them. When somebody moved away in the 1980s, sometimes they really disappeared from your life.

That’s what happened with John.

Years passed. I continued playing basketball. And every once in a while, I wondered what happened to that kid who used to share the backcourt with me.

Because John had been good. Really good.

I figured maybe he kept playing. Maybe he became a great high school player somewhere. Maybe basketball took him somewhere too.

I had absolutely no idea.

Then, roughly 15 years after we’d played together, I finally saw John Passmore again.

And where I saw him still doesn’t seem real.

 

“Mom…..That’s John”

I was at West Virginia University by then. Basketball had taken me from that little YMCA gym in Tacoma all the way to Division I college basketball.

One day I was watching America’s Most Wanted with my mother. Then a familiar name and face appeared on the television.

John Passmore. The same John Passmore I remembered wearing No. 32. The same kid who used to run up and down the court with me.

Except this wasn’t a basketball story. He was being sought in connection with the killing of his former girlfriend, Melissa Chamberlain.

My mother and I couldn’t believe what we were watching.

Think about that feeling.

For years, I had occasionally wondered whatever happened to my childhood friend. Then suddenly there’s your answer. On America’s Most Wanted.

It was one of the strangest feelings I’ve ever experienced.

 

Two Completely Different Worlds

The public record tells a tragic story.

John F. Passmore III had met Melissa Chamberlain while they were students at Kutztown University. Their relationship became troubled and violent. Passmore had previously pleaded guilty to assaulting Chamberlain and another person and had been ordered not to contact her.

In July 2002, Chamberlain disappeared from her home in Levittown, Pennsylvania.

The Pennsylvania courts later concluded that Passmore kidnapped her in Pennsylvania, took her to the West Ocean City, Maryland area and killed her. He was ultimately convicted of second-degree murder and sentenced to life imprisonment without parole.

Melissa Chamberlain was only 21 years old.

That’s important to say because when somebody connected to your childhood commits something horrific, it’s easy to tell the story entirely through your own disbelief.

But somebody lost her life. A family lost a daughter. Nothing about my childhood memories changes the seriousness of what happened to her.

 

Then Came the Pittsburgh Connection

But there was another detail that made the entire situation almost impossible for me to wrap my head around.

John was caught in Pittsburgh.

According to the court record, police arrested him there on July 25, 2002. Contemporary reporting said he was captured at a homeless shelter in the city.

Pittsburgh. Of all places. The city that became home to me.

Think about the circle there.

We met as little kids thousands of miles away in Tacoma, Washington, because our families were connected to military life. We played basketball together. His family left. We lost contact. I eventually ended up becoming one of the top basketball players in Pennsylvania and playing at WVU. He went down an unimaginably darker road.

Then, approximately 15 years after we last saw each other, I learned what happened to him while watching a national crime show.

And while he was on the run, he ended up being captured in Pittsburgh.

What are the odds?

 

I Thought He’d Still Be Playing Basketball

That’s the part that has always stayed with me.

Whenever I wondered about John before all of this happened, basketball was what came to mind. Because that’s how I knew him.

I didn’t know the adult John Passmore. I knew the little boy in No. 32. I remembered Magic Johnson. I remembered us destroying teams. I remembered being mad if somebody else scored too much. I remembered being convinced we were the two best little basketball players anywhere around.

So somewhere in my mind, I assumed basketball would remain part of his story.

It didn’t.

And that’s what makes childhood memories strange. Sometimes the person frozen in your memory doesn’t resemble the person they eventually became.

 

Same Beginning. Different Roads.

When I think about that YMCA team today, I don’t look at it like some sign of what was coming.

It wasn’t.

We were children. Two little boys playing basketball. That’s it. Neither one of us knew anything about where life was going to take us.

That’s probably why this story has stayed with me for so long.

In 1987, if you walked into that YMCA gym in Tacoma, you would’ve seen No. 23 and No. 32 running up and down the floor together.

Two friends. Two talented little basketball players. Two kids with their entire lives ahead of them.

There was no way anyone in that gym could’ve imagined that years later one would be playing Division I basketball at West Virginia while the other would become the subject of a murder case and ultimately spend his life in prison.

And there definitely was no way I could’ve imagined that after wondering for years whatever happened to my childhood friend, I’d finally get my answer from a television screen.

I wish the answer had been different.

Most importantly, I wish Melissa Chamberlain had been allowed to live the life that was ahead of her.

Sometimes life doesn’t give you a neat lesson. Sometimes it just gives you a story so bizarre, tragic and unlikely that decades later you still find yourself thinking: How did two kids who once stood beside each other in the same little YMCA gym end up in two completely different worlds?