MrBallen Podcast: Strange, Dark & Mysterious Stories - As Seen on TV (PODCAST EXCLUSIVE EPISODE)

Episode Date: March 30, 2026

One night in March of 2016, two friends sat on a couch in Lunel, France, watching a true crime show on TV. The episode hit close to home – literally – because it was about a missing person who had vanished just miles from where they lived. Suddenly, in the middle of the show, one of the friends stood up and started pacing around the room, muttering to themselves. The other friend asked what was wrong… and they were not ready for the answer.   You can WATCH all new & exclusive MrBallen podcast episodes on my YouTube channel, just called "MrBallen" - https://www.youtube.com/c/MrBallen If you want to reach out to me, contact me on Instagram, Twitter or any other major social media platform, my username on all of them is @mrballen Hosted by Simplecast, an AdsWizz company. See pcm.adswizz.com for information about our collection and use of personal data for advertising.

One night in March of 2016, two friends sat on a couch in Lunelle France watching a true crime show on TV. And the episode really hit close to home, literally, because it was about a missing person who had vanished just miles away from where they lived. And so they're watching this show, and then all of the sudden, in the middle of it, one of the friends suddenly stood up and began pacing around the room, muttering to themselves. And when the other friend, who was still sitting on the couch, watching this, asked them what was wrong. they were not ready for the answer. But before we get into today's story, if you're a fan of the Strange, dark, and Mysterious, delivered in story format,

then you've come to the right place because that's all we do. So, if that's of interest to you, please offer the follow button a really nice, really expensive steak dinner. But make sure you first significantly dull their steak knife. Okay? Let's get into today's story. At 4.30 p.m. on June 23, 2014,

49-year-old Patrique Izwar hurried out the side door of a hospital in set France, buttoning a fresh-collared shirt as he ran to the parking lot. He climbed onto his scooter and then quickly checked his watch, and then he lifted the kickstand and sped off into traffic, ignoring honks from all the other drivers as he swerved between the cars. Patric did not care who he was annoying right now. Because he was running late for a date, and then right after the date he had to rush over to his daughter's dance recital.

And he desperately wanted to make sure he made. made both of these events, because they were some of the only things he'd had to look forward to in ages. So things in Patric's life had not been good for a really long time. Eight years earlier, he had slipped into a rut of serious binge drinking and gambling. And one day, when he was drunk, he had actually struck his wife. Following that, his wife had divorced him, and he'd lost custody of his daughter, Alabama, who was now 12 years old. After that, Patric's life really did not get any better. He had moved in with his elderly mother and his drinking had only gotten worse and his gambling continued to the point where he basically gambled away most of what he made by working as a

hospital janitor. And then after that, he'd gotten involved with a married co-worker and then when her husband found out about this affair, she died of an apparent suicide. Her death had been five years earlier and it had been so traumatic that Patric had barely dated since. He had just about resigned himself to a life of bachelorhood when actually a few weeks earlier he had gotten a call from the woman he was now going to meet, Audrey LeVay. But Patric was now running so late for his date that he worried Audrey might not wait around for him. So he twisted the throttle of his scooter and shot across an intersection ignoring more honks from more cars. Patric had actually met Audrey a long time ago, right after his divorce. And they'd gone out a handful of times before they

ultimately lost touch. She was a lot younger than he was, and she'd stood him up more. more than once in the past. But she was also a lot of fun, and it had been a while since Patric had been on a date, so when she called him up saying she wanted to go out again, Patric had said, sure. They'd made plans to meet this afternoon at a park near Patric's work that had this big rocky hill rising behind it,

and the place had some of the best views in the whole city, with the ocean on one side and dramatic cliffs dotted with all these old caves on the other. Now, they were not going to have a whole lot of time together, probably just enough for a short walk before Patric would have to rush off for his daughter's dance recital later that night. But he hoped that the romantic setting might help spark something between them again. A few minutes later, Patric pulled up to the park entrance and to his relief, Audrey was still there waiting for him. So he parked his scooter and locked his cell phone

in the scooter's underseat compartment and he walked over to her. And from her nervous smile, he got the sense that she was almost as excited about the date as he was, which gets gave him a nice boost of confidence. So he took her hand and they started down the path. Around 8 a.m. the next morning, 10 miles up the coastline from where Patric and Audrey had been walking at that park, Patrique's older brother, Mark Iswar, stood on the deck of his boat, pulling a big oyster trap out of the water. As he was doing this, his phone rang, so he stopped and he answered it. But before he could even say hello, his mother's very worried voice came across the line asking if he knew where Patric was. Mark frowned because Petriek,

Patrick lived with their mother, so she should know better than he would. But his mother explained that Patric hadn't come home last night. He also wasn't answering his phone. He hadn't shown up to work that morning. And perhaps most concerning of all, he'd missed his daughter's dance recital the previous evening. And it was this last fact that made Mark think that something might actually be wrong here, because he knew how much Patricque loved his daughter and how much he was looking forward to that recital. So he promised his mother he would get to the bottom of it.

Then he hung up and began calling Patric's friends. However, with each conversation he had, Mark got more worried because nobody had heard from Patrique since yesterday afternoon. He'd apparently left work around 4 p.m., but he hadn't told anybody where he was going. Now for Mark, he felt like this was at least somewhere to start, Patrique's work. So he steered his boat to the dock, tied it off, and then jumped in his car and started heading that direction. Four hours later, Mark stood on a rocky lookout point scanning the city below. Patric's hospital stood in the middle of Set's business. district, which was packed with canals and cafes and tourist spots, and Mark and a handful of

Patrique's friends had spent all morning checking them one by one looking for Patricke. But they hadn't found him or any sign of him. And so now Mark had turned his focus to some of the more remote areas around the city, like the hill behind the park where he now stood. But there was still no sign of Patric anywhere. And so Mark was trying to think of anywhere else his brother might have gone when his phone rang. It was one of Patric's friends from the search party, and he just found Patric's scooter outside the park at the bottom of the hill, just a short drive from where Mark was. And so Mark told him not to touch anything, and he sprinted back to his car, and he sped down the hill, and he left the park, and he stopped in the parking lot right outside. And sure enough, there in the

lot was Patric's scooter. And as Mark looked at the scooter and at the quiet park all around him, he felt a cold weight settle in his stomach because he really couldn't think of any reason why Patric would leave his scooter here overnight. In the back of his mind all day, Mark had been worried that something bad could have happened to his little brother. But now, after seeing this scooter, he felt sure of it. Almost two weeks later, at 8 a.m. on July 5, 2014, Detective Boris Ferrier took the exit ramp toward the French town of Set. And as the sunlight hit his windshield, he had to squint as he looked out at the long stretch. of beaches and canals framed by these beautiful rocky cliffs in a small, dense urban center.

Verrier was a senior investigator from the nearby city of Montpellier, but he had just been called in to take over a missing person's case that had stumped the local police in set. About two weeks earlier, 49-year-old Patricique Eswar had disappeared after going on a date with a woman whose name was Audrey Louvre. The local police had already spoken to Audrey, who said she didn't know what had happened to Patricke. She said they had gone for a walk and then he had escorted her to her bus. And then after that, she'd assumed that Patric just sort of went back to his scooter and carried on with his night. But the scooter had been found the next day, still parked where he and Audrey had met up for

their date, with no sign of Patricque anywhere nearby. And now, almost two weeks later, Patric had still not turned up. Since then, Patric's brother, Mark, had been helping the investigation. Ferrier had spoken to Mark on the phone and Mark had talked about Patric like he was a saint, a guy who would drop everything to help out somebody in a jam who never got into fights and had really no enemies. But Varyer didn't necessarily believe this, because in his experience, people who inexplicably vanished oftentimes were kidnapped or murdered. Now, he had no reason to actually suspect that around Patricque. You know, he could have just as easily gotten into an accident, you know, falling off a cliff, or maybe he chose to vanish. But at this point, what Varyer really needed to do was, on his own, dig into who.

who Patricque was and figure out if there was a reason why he wasn't here right now. A few minutes later, Verrier followed Patric's ex-wife, whose name was Claude Ozzy, into her living room, and they both sat down. Verier switched on his recording device, and he asked Claude where she was on the day Patricque went missing. Claude said it was just an ordinary Monday for her, and that after work, she had picked up their daughter, Alabama, from school, and driven her to her dance recital. She had expected to meet Patric there at the recital. And it really surprised her when he didn't show up, because even though Patric had plenty of flaws, he was a good dad.

And at that, Marriere sort of leaned forward because Patric's flaws were actually what he wanted to know about. Now, he didn't think Claude was guilty of anything here, since she had a pretty strong alibi and didn't really stand to benefit from Patrique's disappearance. But he hoped she could maybe tell him about any old habits or current habits that could have gotten Patric into trouble. And so when he asked her about this, Claude hesitated before saying she really didn't want a bad mouth Patric. But he drank and gambled a lot more than he should. At this point, Varyer pressed her for more details. But Claude just insisted that Petriek had really always kept that part of his life away from her.

But after she thought about it for a moment, she said there was someone who might be able to tell Verrier more. And then she called their 12-year-old daughter, Alabama, into the room. Alabama appeared very visibly nervous and shaken up by everything going on with her dad, but her mother, Claude, took her hand and encouraged her to share her story. And slowly, the girl began to speak. She said that about a week before her dad disappeared, he'd brought her along on a very strange errand. They'd parked outside of a tunnel, and he'd told her to wait in the car.

And then he got out and walked into this tunnel to meet with someone. It was a man. But it was too dark in the tunnel for Alabama to make out the man's feet. features, but she definitely saw her father, Patric, hand this man some kind of package before he quickly turned and ran back to the car. And then afterwards, her father wouldn't tell her who this man was. He just said that he'd done something really stupid and because of it, he now owed some people a lot of money. After Alabama finished talking, her mother, Claude, thanked her and sent her back out of the room. And then once she was gone, Verrier asked

Claude if she knew who this man in the tunnel might be. But Claude said she had no idea. But she said she did have one name that was worth looking into. Now, this was not someone who would have lent Patrick any money, but instead it was a man who held a personal grudge against him. His name was Remy Shen, and he was a local hairstylist. An hour later, Verrier sat in a cramped cubicle of the set police station scrolling through a file on his laptop. Based on Claude's tip, he'd looked up the hairstylist's name in the police database and had immediately found a connection to Patricke. Back in 2009, so a few years after Patrigue's divorce, Patric had been questioned as a witness in the suicide of Remy Shen's wife,

a woman named Nadez Shen, who had worked with Patric at the hospital. Apparently, Nadegh had come home after a work party and confessed to Remy that she'd been having this affair with Patrique. The couple argued for hours about it, and Nadegh ended up sleeping on the couch while Remy went upstairs to their bedroom. And then the next day, Remy found Nadez in their garage hanging by the neck. As soon as Verrier was done reading this, he knew he finally had a suspect, and so he looked up Remy's last known address and contact information. At around 10 a.m. the next day, so July 7th, Verier followed Remy Shen into an interrogation room at the SEP police station and shut the door behind them.

Remy was a short, wiry man with a very obvious scowl on his face that made it clear he thought he was being very inconvenienced here. Verrier immediately got the feeling that Remy would likely only only only be able to be. crack under intense pressure. So right away, he tried to shake Remy by saying they knew he was involved in the kidnapping of Patric Iswar. Now, this was a total bluff because Verrier did not actually have any evidence, but he wanted to see how Remy would react. And to his surprise and irritation, Remy just laughed. Remy acted like he literally had no idea who Verrier was even talking about. And when Verrier brought up his late wife and sort of insinuated that obviously Patric had had an affair and was a witness when she had died, Remy just scoffed and reminded him that it had been five years since her passing.

He said he had moved on and begun dating other people. And anyways, it was sort of absurd to think that he would hold a grudge for five years without doing anything, but then suddenly now decide to take some sort of revenge out of the blue. It just didn't add up. But Vareer didn't really know what to make of this. It seemed like Remy was really confident, almost too confident. And so he pivoted and just asked Remy where he was on June 23rd, the day Patricque went missing. And after thinking for a moment, Remy just said that he had spent the whole afternoon alone

cleaning out a storage unit that he had rented. This was obviously not a great alibi at all. But at this point, Varyer had no choice but to let Remy go. As Varyer watched Remy leave, he knew he was running out of time here. I mean, two weeks had already passed since Patric's disappearance, and every day the odds of finding him alive got worse. So out of desperation, Verrier decided to circle back to the very start and speak again to Audrey Louvre. I mean, being the last person to see Patrice before he went missing, Audrey was an obvious person of interest. But Verrier wasn't sure what more he could learn from her.

The local police had already questioned her at the very beginning of the investigation, and Verier had already watched that interview tape a number of times. But Verrier knew he just had to take a shot. So he picked up the phone and he called Audrey into the station. Later that same afternoon, around 2 p.m. Verier sat across from Audrey in the same room where he just interviewed Remy. He said hello to her and he started the recorder. And then he asked her to explain her history with Patricke again. And at first, her answers were all just like they'd been on the tape. She said they had met eight years ago in 2006 and they dated casually, for a while before losing contact. And then, just a few weeks ago, she happened to pass the bar where they first met,

and it made her think of Patric. So she'd called him up out of the blue to ask how he was doing, and they'd ultimately made plans to see each other again. She described their date as being a short walk around the park, after which Patric had walked her to the bus stop and then headed off, presumably to go back to his scooter and to head off to his daughter's dance recital. And that's when Verrier interrupted, and he asked Audrey to tell him specifically which direction Patricie.

had headed off after dropping her off at the bus stop. And Audrey sat there for a minute, and then she said, you know, I can't remember. And this really bothered Verrier, because here was this person who should be able to tell him the most about Patric's last moves, and she had basically nothing useful to offer the investigation. So Verier just sort of dropped the polite tone and really went after her. He told her he wasn't buying her act and that she needed to tell him everything she knew right now, or this was all going to get much, much worse for her. Audrey's eyes went wide and her voice began to shake as she insisted that she'd already told them everything.

But Ferrier didn't let up. He kept demanding that she just admit what she'd done until he was practically shouting at her. And Audrey was in tears and she was repeating over and over that Patric had been fine when she left him. She just didn't remember all the details. And finally, Verrier backed off. He'd run countless interrogations throughout his career. and his gut was starting to tell him that Audrey's fragility was not really an act here. He'd pushed her as hard as he could, and he had to admit that maybe she was just telling the truth.

A little while later, after Audrey was gone, Verrier sat alone inside the interrogation room thinking about the case. He hadn't managed to rule out any suspects yet, and he still had no idea who that mysterious man in the tunnel might be. And on top of all that, there was still the possibility that no crime had been committed here, since they had no body. I mean, who knows what really happened to Patric at this point. And Varyer knew that there were just too many unknowns. And Varyer knew that if the case was ever going to gain real traction, they needed to find Patricke, dead or alive. Around 11 a.m. on July 17th,

so three and a half weeks after Patric Iswar disappeared. Detective Boris Ferrier parked along the shoulder of a winding roadside in the French town of Set. He got out of his car, he stooped beneath a strip of yellow police tape, and he headed across the long strip of dry grass leading up to a sheer cliff wall. A dozen yards ahead of him, barely visible in the rock face, was the dark round opening of a cave. A few hours earlier, a group of teenagers had shown up at the police station, seeming very frazzled, saying they had found a human body inside of that cave.

And as soon as Verrier had heard about this, he had rushed to the scene, because the cave was less than a half a mile away from where Patric's scooter had been abandoned. And so now, Verrier turned on his flashlight and he stepped into the cave. And as soon as he did, a forensics team fell into step right behind him. And together, they began making their way into the darkness. Thanks to his flashlight, Verrier could see that the walls were covered in graffiti and that there were empty bottles and other garbage everywhere. So it seemed like this was probably a popular party spot for young people. As they move deeper, the cave split off into a maze of all these different narrow tunnels. And just as Verrier was about to direct his team to spread out and begin searching

all of them, he passed by one of these tunnels that absolutely reeked. And so Verrier stopped what he was doing and just aimed his flashlight down this particular tunnel. And he saw there was a shallow pit dug into the floor. And lying at the bottom of this pit was what looked like a ragged lump of black fabric. until Verrier stepped closer. The smell was overpowering now, and Verier knew he was standing over the charred remains of a human body. Verrier bent down to examine it, and he saw right away there was what appeared to be a bullet hole in the skull

and a bullet hole to the torso. And those details, one to the head, one to the stomach, and then, you know, the body being burnt afterwards, likely to get rid of evidence, felt very familiar to Verrier. It felt like this could have been a mom. hop hit. A year and a half later, so just before Christmas of 2015, Detective Verrier was in his office in Montpellier when his phone rang. It was Patric's older brother, Mark, calling to ask for

updates on his brother's case again. And Verier sighed because the truth was he had nothing new to report. The body in the cave had been confirmed to be Patricke, and so Verier had hoped that that discovery would lead to all these new leads. But after scouring the cave for clues and testing the cigarettes from the scene for DNA and speaking to the teenagers who reported the body, the case just hit a dead end. Now, the mob-like execution style did line up with a theory that Verrier had that, you know, maybe Patricke had been killed over a gambling debt, you know, by the mob, basically, or someone who was affiliated with, you know, organized crime.

But Verrier had never been able to actually uncover any trace of Patric having any sort of debt that would get him killed. Also, he still had not been able to identify that. that mysterious man in the tunnel that Patrique's daughter had mentioned. And so that left Remy and also Audrey as his only suspects. And Varyer had placed both of them under surveillance. But so far, neither of them had done anything suspicious. So the investigation was now stuck.

And Varyer understood that Patric's family was really out of patience here. So he was not surprised that when he admitted he still was not ready to make an arrest, Mark snapped. He told Varyer that if the police weren't capable, of solving this, he was going to take matters into his own hands. Three months later, on a night in March of 2016, Detective Villiers sat down on his couch in his living room to watch something that he'd been warned was coming. Mark had convinced the producers of a national true-crime TV show to do an episode on his brother's case. And the episode

was airing tonight. And as the show started, Verier felt a nod of anxiety, because Mark knew details about the investigation that were not meant for the public. And if he shared them on this show, it could seriously compromise the case. But obviously, Verrier was also just curious to see how the episode had turned out. And part of him hoped that maybe renewed public attention might actually help the case.

And as Verier watched the show, he was relieved to see that Mark wasn't there to talk about case specifics. He was there to talk about Patricke. Mark described his brother as this hardworking father who never seemed to catch a break in life. and who at the very least deserved justice. And at the end, he put out a simple plea for anyone with information to please come forward.

When the show ended, Verrier did not really feel worried anymore that anything that had been revealed on the show was sensitive or that it could negatively impact the actual investigation. But he also knew that, you know, the impact the show was going to have was probably going to be pretty small. Like, he didn't expect anything to come of this plea for help from the public. However, he would be wrong because the next morning, Verrier's phone would ring. And an hour after that call came in, Verrier was ringing the doorbell of an apartment building in Lunell,

which is a town close to set. A woman would answer the door, and when Verrier flashed his badge, she invited him inside. The woman, whose name was Sophie, had reached out to the police after watching Mark's interview on TV, saying she did have information about Patrique's case. And so Verier followed her into her kitchen. and he sat down across the table from her, and he turned on his recorder, and he told her to just

start from the beginning. And the moment the story began to spell out, Barrier knew he'd solved the case. Based on the evidence collected at the crime scene and witness testimony, the following is a reconstruction of what police believe happened to Patrick Iswar on the afternoon of Monday, June 23, 2014. At 4.30 p.m., the killer stood on a rocky hill overlooking a park and set, watching through a pair of binoculars while Patric and Audrey walked hand in hand down a paved path below. The couple was taking their time, clearly enjoying the scenery and each other's company, and then at some point Audrey stopped and pointed across the road at a cave in the nearby cliffs, the entrance to a cave.

And when the killer saw this, their heart began to race, and they watched intently as the couple actually crossed the road and went into the cave and vanished. At this point, the killer lowered their binoculars, and put them inside of the large duffel bag they had brought with them. Then, after slinging this bag, they hustled down the hill and went right to the entrance of the cave. When they reached the entrance to the cave, they stopped, and they put that bag on the ground. They unzipped it, and out of it they pulled a large rifle, a roll of duct tape, and also a white mask. The killer put the mask on, and with the rifle and tape in hand, they entered the cave.

And they could hear the sound of Patric and Audrey inside. They had not gone far, and they clearly had not clocked the killer coming in. They were sort of wrapped up in their date. However, when the killer got close enough, the couple heard their footsteps, and they turned around. When Audrey saw the killer in their mask with the gun, she began to scream, and Patricke, he just went white as a ghost. Before the couple could even react, the killer threw the duct tape at Audrey and told her that if she wanted to live, she would do exactly as instructed. Then the killer told Audrey to use this tape and bind Patric's wrists and ankles. And at first, Audrey just stood there in stunned silence, but eventually she composed herself and she obeyed.

And as she was binding Patric, Patric just also stood there in stunned silence, not really sure what to even do. When Audrey was done, the killer told her to leave the cave and to not say anything about what had happened here. She hesitated just long enough to glance back at Patric, but then she turned and she ran. Once her footsteps had faded and it was just the killer and Patric inside of this cave. Patric just stared wondering what was going to happen to him. And the killer, after making really intense eye contact with Patricke, raised his rifle and shot Patric in the head and also once in the chest. And Patric crumpled to the ground.

At that point, the killer slung his rifle and then he grabbed Patric by the ankles and he dragged his body down a nearby tunnel and dumped him in that shallow pit. Then the killer doused the body with lighter fluid from a can. they'd brought in that bag, they lit a match and tossed it in. As Patrick's body began to burn, the killer walked out of the cave and pulled off their mask as soon as they stepped into the light. They now had only one thing left to do. Go find Audrey and explain everything and convince her not to go to the police. Because the killer was Remy Shen, the hairstylist who hated Patric for having an affair with his late wife, and he had just successfully tricked Audrey into helping

him pull this murder off. It would turn out, Audrey was actually Remy's ex-girlfriend. They had met and begun dating in 2009, shortly after the death of Remy's wife. And Remy had realized that because of Audrey's history with Patricke, because they had also dated, he could use her to lure Patric into a trap and finally take his revenge. But even though Audrey was clearly a key part of this plan, she didn't actually know that Remy was going to kill Patrique. Remy had told her a sob story about Patricne owing him a lot of money, and she thought they were just going to scare him into paying up.

It was not until she got into the cave and Remy showed up with a mask on and a rifle that she realized he had something way more sinister in his mind. After the murder, Remy convinced Audrey to stay silent by threatening to kill her and her children. And for over a year, she kept his secret, lying to the police the whole time. But when she watched that true crime episode about the case and saw Mark's plea, for information? She finally just cracked and confessed to her friend Sophie, who was watching the show with her, who then went on to call the police the very next day. On March 31st, 2016, Remy Shen and Audrey Louvre were arrested for their roles in Patric's death. Remy received 30 years in prison for murder, and Audrey was sentenced to 12 years for acting as an accessory to the kidnapping. A quick note about

our stories. They are all based on true events, but we sometimes use pseudonyms to protect the people involved, and some details are fictionalized for dramatic purposes. The Mr. Ballin podcast, Strange, Dark and Mysterious Stories, is hosted and executive produced by me, Mr. Ballin. Our head of writing is Evan Allen, produced by Jeremy Bone. This episode was written by Andrew Kelleher. Research and fact-checking by Shelley Shoe, Samantha Van Hoose, Evan Beamer, Abigail Shumway, and Camille Callahan.

Research and fact-checking supervision by Stephen Ear. Audio editing and post-produced by Whit Lacassio and Cole Lacassie. Additional audio editing by Jordan Stidham. Production Coordination by Samantha Collins. Production support by Antonio Manada and Delana Corley. Artwork by Jessica Klogstenkiner. Theme song called Something Wicked by Ross Bugden. Thank you for listening to the Mr. Ballin podcast.

And just a reminder, every new and exclusive episode we put out on the Mr. Ballin podcast, you can also now watch on the Mr. Ballin YouTube channel that very same day. And trust me, some of these stories you truly have to see. to believe. Again, my YouTube channel is just called Mr. Ballin. If you want to listen to episodes one week early and ad free, you can subscribe to SiriusXM Podcast Plus on Apple Podcasts, or visit seriousxm.com slash podcast plus to listen with Spotify or another app of your choice. So that's going to do it. I really appreciate your support. Until next time, see you.