MrBallen Podcast: Strange, Dark & Mysterious Stories - Blister Beetle Extract (PODCAST EXCLUSIVE EPISODE)

Episode Date: October 2, 2023

On the morning of June 14, 1929, two teenage boys walked through an open field outside of Columbus, Ohio. Suddenly, the boys stopped, because up ahead they saw a swarm of flies hovering over the tall grass. They couldn't see what was below the swarm, so the boys slowly walked a bit closer to get a better look.  When they finally could see what was on the ground, both boy instantly began screaming for help. When the police arrived, they were horrified by what they saw, but it seemed like a pretty straightforward crime of passion. However, their investigation would take a totally bizarre turn that would involve rare recreational drugs, hidden bank accounts, secret lovers, secret apartments, and an Olympic gold medalist.For 100s more stories like these, check out our main YouTube channel just called "MrBallen" -- https://www.youtube.com/c/MrBallenIf 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 @mrballenSee Privacy Policy at https://art19.com/privacy and California Privacy Notice at https://art19.com/privacy#do-not-sell-my-info.

Hey Prime members, you can binge eight new episodes of the Mr. Ballin podcast one month early and all episodes ad-free on Amazon Music. Download the Amazon Music app today. On the morning of June 14th, 1929, two teenage boys walked through an open field outside of Columbus, Ohio. Suddenly, the boys stopped because up ahead they saw a huge swarm of black flies hovering over the tall grass. The boys couldn't see what was below the swarm, so they slowly walked a bit closer to get a better look. When they finally got close enough to see what was on the ground, both boys instantly turned around and began screaming for help. When the police finally arrived,

they too were horrified by what they saw in that field. But as gruesome as it was, it did seem like a pretty straightforward crime of passion. However, their investigation would quickly take a totally bizarre turn that would involve rare recreational drugs, hidden bank accounts, secret lovers, secret apartments, and an Olympic gold medalist. But before we get into that story, if you're a fan of the strange, dark, and mysterious Deliberden's story format, then you've come to the right podcast because that's all we do and we upload twice a week, once on Monday and once on Thursday. So if that's of

interest to you, please swap out the white noise machine in the Amazon Music Follow Buttons bedroom for a speaker blasting Bedtime Stories, a brand new podcast from Ballin Studios, and my favorite new show. Just search for Ballin Studios and then look for Bedtime Stories on Amazon Music. Okay, let's get into today's story. I'm Peter Frankopan. And I'm Afua Hirsch. And we're here to tell you about our new season of Legacy, covering the iconic, troubled musical genius that was Nina Simone. Full disclosure, this is a big one for me. Nina Simone, one of my favourite artists of all time.

Somebody who's had a huge impact on me, who I think objectively stands apart for the level of her talent, the audacity of her message. If I was a first year at university, the first time I sat down and really listened to her and engaged with her message. If I was a first year at university, the first time I sat down and really listened to her and engaged with her message, it totally floored me. And the truth and pain and messiness of her struggle, that's all captured in unforgettable music that has stood the test of time. I think that's fair, Peter. I mean, the way in which her music comes across is so powerful,

no matter what song it is. So join us on Legacy for Nina Simone. Hello, I'm Emily, and I'm one of the hosts of Terribly Famous, the show that takes you inside the lives of our biggest celebrities. And they don't get much bigger than the man who made badminton sexy. Okay, maybe that's a stretch, but if I say pop star and shuttlecocks, you know who I'm talking about. No?

Short shorts? Free cocktails? Careless whispers? Okay, last one. It's not Andrew Ridgely. Yep, that's right. It's stone-cold icon George Michael. From teen pop sensation

to one of the biggest solo artists on the planet, join us for our new series, George Michael's Fight for Freedom. From the outside, it looks like he has it all. But behind the trademark dark sunglasses is a man in turmoil. George is trapped in a lie of his own making, with a secret he feels would ruin him if the truth ever came out. Follow Terribly Famous wherever you listen to your podcasts, or listen early and ad-free on Wondery Plus on Apple Podcasts or the Wondery app.

On a February evening in 1928, 23-year-old medical student Theora Hicks looked out from the passenger seat of her date's car and watched downtown Columbus, Ohio pass by. Theora was pale and pretty with cropped brown hair. She had on a fitted dress and wore her father's old watch on her wrist. She was wearing a dress that night to go out, but Theora often wore pants, dress shirts, and ties, a fashion trend that some women had embraced in the 1920s to show that certain types of clothes were not just for men. Theora's date turned his car onto a rural road that led out of the city, and Theora watched the buildings of Columbus give way to open fields and farmland. She turned to her date and smiled, and he smiled back.

Theora's date that night was a man named Marion Myers. He was significantly older than Theora, almost 35 years old at the time, and he was tall, skinny, and bald. Theora and Marion had met on campus at Ohio State University. Theora went to medical school there, and Marion worked in the university's agricultural department. They had been seeing each other off and on for over a year, but only Theora's closest friends even knew Marion existed, because Theora did not talk much about her personal life. Her best friends knew that Theora occasionally went on dates with Marion, but they thought she never took any of those dates too seriously. And unlike most of her friends,

Theora never talked about wanting to meet the right guy or getting married. In fact, some of Theora's friends had started to wonder if she even liked men at all, and they thought maybe seeing Marion was just a way for her to cover up the fact that she was actually interested in women. But her friends could never be sure, because when Theora talked to them about her life, she almost always focused on her dream of becoming a doctor, or on the social changes she wanted to fight for that would give women more rights in a society that was still heavily dominated by men. Her friends loved that Theora was passionate about important subjects, but most of them still thought the way she lived her life was kind of strange. Even the fact that Theora was going to medical school seemed totally out of the ordinary to them,

because in the late 1920s, women made up less than 5% of all medical students in the United States. than 5% of all medical students in the United States. In the car, Marion asked Theora how school was going, and she smiled again. One of the reasons she liked spending time with Marion was that he believed she had as much right to be in medical school and to become a doctor as any man did. Theora said school was going well, and that she was really busy with classes and work, but she didn't mind. Theora said school was going well and that she was really busy with classes and work, but she didn't mind. Theora had worked hard in school her entire life,

and she continued to work hard at medical school to achieve her goal of becoming a doctor. And so far, her commitment had paid off. While in school, Theora had spent time working in the veterinary department at Ohio State, alongside one of the most respected veterinarians in the country, Dr. James Snook, who invented a revolutionary technique for spaying cats and dogs. And soon, Theora was going to start working at the campus hospital. Theora believed that any work experience in a medical facility would help her in the future when she was looking for a job, and she thought that having connections like Dr. Snook would lend her credibility in a profession that a lot of people thought women had no business pursuing. Marion pulled his car onto a dirt road

that was almost hidden by the fields that surrounded them on both sides. The road was bumpy and the car shook a little. Theora laughed as she got tossed back and forth in the passenger seat and then she saw their destination ahead of them. They were going to a shooting range kind of in the middle of nowhere, a few miles outside of Columbus. The place was popular with amateur marksmen and hunters in the area, but Theora and Marian were not going there to shoot guns. The location of the shooting range, and the fact that it blocked the view of people driving

by on the main road, had made the open field near the range a popular spot for couples to go to have sex. The range had become so well known for this that people in Columbus had nicknamed it Shirttail Alley. Marion drove his car past the shooting range and a little way into the open field and parked. Theora leaned across the seat and kissed him, and then Theora slipped off her dress, Marion took off his clothes, and they climbed into the cramped back seat together.

But just a few minutes later, they heard someone pounding on the car door. Theora and Marion froze. Then they heard a policeman telling them both to get out of the car. Theora looked at Marion, and she almost started laughing. She reached into the front seat Marion and she almost started laughing. She reached into the front seat and she grabbed her dress. Outside, the policeman stepped away from the car, turned his

back, and allowed Theora and Marion to step outside and put their clothes back on. Then, after they were dressed, the officer issued them both a ticket for the crime of fornication, which was defined at the time as sexual intercourse between two unmarried people, and the officer told them they would each have to pay a $20 fine, which would have been over $350 in 2023. The policeman told Marion and Theora to go home, and then he got into his car and waited for them to leave. Theora and Marion climbed back into Marion's car, and right away, Marion apologized for putting Theora in that situation. Theora said she wasn't angry, and she wasn't ashamed or embarrassed. She believed part of achieving greater rights for women was getting

rid of the judgment and ridicule that young women her age often endured when they had sex before they were married. But Theora was not naive. She knew that a lot of people still frowned on things like premarital sex so much that it was technically against the law where she lived. And even though Theora did not agree with that law, she didn't want more incidents like the one she had just had to adversely affect her future. Theora knew the odds were stacked against her when it came to having a successful career as a doctor, so she didn't want to make her dream any harder to achieve than it already was, and she didn't want to give anybody an excuse not to take her seriously at med school.

So, in the months after she got caught with Marion, Theora talked even less about her personal life with her friends, and her friends noticed that Theora didn't go on dates at all anymore. Even when Theora went to parties with her friends and their boyfriends, she never brought a guy with her. But Theora's friends didn't worry about her because she seemed happy, and she seemed even more focused on medical school and her future. And by the beginning of 1929, a few months after Theora turned 24, she felt like her dream of becoming a doctor was actually within her reach. Her classes were still going well, she was training for a new position at the hospital on the Ohio State campus, and there was a chance that she was going to get to

help Dr. James Snook, the respected veterinarian she had worked with, on a book he was writing. And so, even a lot of Theora's friends and family, who had wondered why she had gone to medical school in the first place, started to believe that Theora was close to achieving her dreams. At about 7 p.m. on June 13th, 1929, over a year after the fornication incident at the shooting range, Theora stood in her small bedroom in her apartment in Columbus, Ohio. She was reading a letter, and she felt her heart beat a little faster. The letter started off, My dearie, I awakened early at about seven and of course thought of you at once. Theora read about how much the person who had written the letter

couldn't wait to see her again, and Theora smiled at the writer's signature at the bottom of the page. In big letters, it just said, Janet. Theora put the letter from Janet back into one of the drawers in her desk, and she got even more excited about her plans that night. Then, Theora looked in the mirror to check her makeup and clothes. She was wearing a sleepless brown dress with a white collar and a rhinestone belt, and she had her father's old watch on her wrist like she always did. Theora grabbed her purse, stepped out of her bedroom, and saw her two roommates sitting in the living room of their apartment. The two young women saw Theora, and a look of shock came across both their faces. They couldn't remember the last time Fiora had gotten dressed up to go out on a date, but they were sure that's what she was doing. Fiora told them she was going out with somebody

that night, but she didn't say who. Then she told her roommates she would see them when she got home and she went outside. She walked down to the end of the street and held a cab to take her to the Ohio State campus. On the drive, Theora asked the cab driver if she could have one of their cigarettes because Theora was nervous and she thought maybe it would calm her down. The driver reached into his pocket, pulled out a pack, and handed her a cigarette and matches.

Theora lit the cigarette, but only took two puffs before she put it out, and she still felt nervous and excited. When Theora got to Ohio State, the sun was just setting, and she thought the campus looked like it was glowing. She walked down a tree-lined sidewalk towards the parking lot by the student center, and she saw a blue Model A Ford Coupe parked in the lot. That was Janet's car. Theora looked around to make sure nobody was watching her and then she walked quickly to the blue coupe,

she hopped into the passenger seat, leaned over and gave Janet a kiss. And soon after, the car pulled out of the parking lot and headed out of Columbus. At 10.30 a.m. on Thursday, June 14th, so the morning after Theora had met Janet on campus, two teenage boys stepped out of a car and walked through the high grass in an open field near the shooting range outside of Columbus. The boys both loved shooting rifles at the range,

and that morning they had decided to have a contest to see who was the better shot. As they walked through the field, the boys laughed and talked, and each of them boasted about how they were going to win the competition. But then, one of the boys stopped and stared a few feet ahead of them into the field. His friend stopped behind him too, and asked what was going on. The boy pointed his finger to where a swarm of flies were buzzing around something on the ground that was hidden by the tall grass. Both of the boys squinted to get a better look and they wondered if maybe there was a dead animal that was attracting all the flies. So they walked a bit closer, the sound of the flies getting louder and louder as they approached.

Then the boys both stopped again because they thought they saw a pile of women's clothes on the ground. The boys looked at each other and laughed. They knew the reason couples came to this field by the shooting range, so they figured, you know, maybe a woman who was here with her date had been forced to run off without her clothes because the cops had shown up. But the boys were quickly more interested in the swarm of flies and whatever was below them, and so they took a few more steps forward, and when they got close enough to actually see what was on the ground, they both started screaming for help.

Pretty soon, the farmer who owned the land, and who had been working nearby, ran over to the boys. The farmer looked down at the ground where all the flies were swarming, and he told the boys to go get the police. The boys turned around and ran back through the field to their car. They got in and drove a few minutes down the main road to the small local police station. They ran inside and told the first cop they saw what they had found in the field. Two police officers ran out of the station, got into their car, and drove to the field where the boys had just come from.

About an hour later, Detective Otto Phillips of the Columbus Police sat at his desk going over some notes on a case he was working. Phillips's phone rang, and he answered it. A police officer from a small department outside of the city was on the line. He told Phillips that a body had been discovered in a field near the shooting range and the local police needed help. Phillips hung up the phone and put away his notes from the other case. He figured that case wasn't nearly as important as a dead body that was just found in a field. nearly as important as a dead body that was just found in a field. Phillips stood up, put on his jacket, grabbed his fedora hat, and headed out of the station. He drove a few miles outside of Columbus and saw several cars parked on the side of the road,

next to the open field by the shooting range. Phillips got out of his car and walked towards the small group of men that had already gathered in the field. Phillips saw there were two cops from the nearby station, the county coroner, and a police photographer. Phillips knew the coroner well, but he introduced himself to the others and then asked if they would all clear some space for him. All the men moved back and Phillips took a few steps forward, and right away the sound of the flies buzzing and the smell hit him first and then when he crouched down he saw the body of a young woman. Phillips took off his hat and tried to swat the flies away. Then he leaned in closer to the body. The victim was lying on her left side and her face was on the ground. Her right arm was stretched out in front of her and it was very badly bruised. Phillips knew this shooting range was like a lover's lane for young couples, so his first

thought was that this crime scene could be the horrible result of an argument that this poor girl had had with her boyfriend. Phillips stood up and called the coroner and the other officers back over. The other officers said they had not located a weapon of any kind in the area, and they also said they had not yet found any identification of any kind on or near the victim. The coroner pointed out to Phillips that the victim's watch had stopped at 9.58. He thought that was probably close to the time that she had been killed the night before. The victim's head, face, and neck were covered in blood, and so the coroner said he would run some blood tests when they did the autopsy. But in police investigations in 1929, blood tests were basically only used to determine two things.

If the blood belonged to a human or an animal, and what the blood type was if it was found to be human blood. But a lot of people share the same blood type, so Phillips knew a blood test could not identify a specific person. So as Phillips stood there in the middle of the field, he had no idea who he was looking at, and the test the coroner was going to run would not make that any clearer. But Phillips had to figure out who this young woman was before he could even start thinking about who might have killed her. Hello, I am Alice Levine,

and I am one of the hosts of Wondery's podcast, British Scandal. On our latest series, The Race to Ruin, we tell the story of a British man who took part in the first ever round-the-world sailing race. Good on him, I hear you say. But there is a problem, as there always is in this show. The man in question hadn't actually sailed before. Oh, and his boat wasn't seaworthy. Oh, and also, tiny little detail, almost didn't mention it.

He bet his family home on making it to the finish line. What ensued was one of the most complex cheating plots in British sporting history. To find out the full story, follow British Scandal wherever you listen to podcasts, or listen early and ad-free on Wondery Plus on Apple Podcasts or the Wondery app. Hey, Mr. Ballin fans. Did you know you can listen to episodes of this very show ad-free and one month early on Amazon Music

with your Prime membership? That's right. All your favorite Mr. Ballin episodes can be heard on Amazon Music ad-free, and you'll always be the first one to catch our new episodes. But that's not all. You get access to other amazing shows like Mr. Ballin's Medical Mysteries, Morbid, 48 Hours, and 2020, all ad-free too. And you know what that means, uninterrupted listening, so no more cliffhangers. Amazon Music is your home for all things true crime, and offers the most ad-free top podcasts, so we definitely have something for you. And it's already included in your Prime membership. To listen now, all you need to do is go to amazon.com slash ballin.

That's amazon.com slash ballin, or's amazon.com slash ballin or download the free Amazon Music app. It's just that easy. The news of the body found outside the city did not take long to spread, and that afternoon, two of Columbus's newspapers ran salacious headlines about the dead girl found at the infamous Lover's Lane, nicknamed Shirttail Alley. Normally, Detective Phillips hated those kinds of headlines, and he couldn't stand that newspapers often put wild theories in their articles before anything was even known about a case. But that afternoon, Phillips thought the attention-grabbing newspaper stories might actually help him figure out who the murder victim was, and Phillips would be right.

Not long after the newspapers went out that day, two young women arrived at the Columbus police station. They said they had seen the articles about the body found in the field, and they were worried it was their roommate, because she had gone out the night before, but never came home. roommate because she had gone out the night before but never came home. Phillips thanked the women for coming in. Then he asked them if they would go with him and another officer to the mortuary where the body had been taken to see if they could identify the victim, and the women agreed to go. So the women took a short drive with Phillips and the other police officer. Then they walked into a cold, quiet room in the mortuary. The officers led them to a table to see the body, and the women stood there in shock. They hugged each other and started crying. The victim's face was mangled and bloody, but they could still see it was their roommate, Theora Hicks. Phillips said he was sorry to put the women on the

spot when he knew how upset they were, but based on where police had found Theora's body, his instinct was that whoever had killed her was most likely a man she was seeing, so Phillips asked if they knew who that man might be. The women talked to each other for a second, and then one of them told Phillips that they knew Theora had gone out on a date the night before but that she was very private about her personal life and almost never talked about who she was actually seeing but the woman said there was one guy who Theora had always seemed to go back to in the past and that was an older man named Marion Myers Phillips thanked the women again for all their help and then he

and the other officer took them back to the station. Later that night, Phillips began looking into Marion's background, and it didn't take long for him to think this guy was the perfect suspect. Phillips learned from the officers at the small department outside of Columbus that a year earlier, Marion had paid a fine after he had been busted for fornication. Phillips also learned that Theora had been in the car with Marion when police found him and that the incident had taken place in the same field where the teenage boys had discovered Theora's body. Early the next morning, so June 15th, the county coroner was sitting in a small office at the mortuary putting together notes from Theora's autopsy.

Then he heard footsteps outside the office. The coroner put down his pen, got up from his desk, and walked out of his office. And he got startled when he saw a tall, skinny bald man pacing back and forth. The coroner asked why the man was there and the man looked at the coroner and said he wanted information about the dead girl police had found at the shooting range. The coroner asked who the man was and why he thought it was okay for him to be there, but the man just kept pacing and asking about the dead girl. So the coroner just turned and rushed back into his office and called the Columbus police to tell them what was going on.

rushed back into his office and called the Columbus police to tell them what was going on. But by the time the coroner hung up and walked back out of the office, the tall, skinny bald man had already disappeared. But when the coroner described this man to the police, they were certain it was Marion, and Detective Phillips was already planning to bring Marion into the station that day. Not long after the call from the coroner, Phillips sent officers to the house where Marion lived on the Ohio State campus to get him and bring him in for questioning. The police found Marion at the house and quickly drove him to the station.

Marion was already Phillips' prime suspect, and his bizarre behavior at the mortuary just made him seem even guiltier to Phillips. Phillips led Marion into a small interrogation room. It was a cool day, and it had been raining, but Marion looked hot and sweaty. Phillips asked Marion about his relationship with Theora. Marion said they had dated on and off for a couple of years, but they were not dating anymore. Marion said he loved Theora, but she did not love him, and he was sure that she was seeing someone

else even when they were together. Phillips asked Marion where he had been on the night of Theora's murder. Marion said he had nothing to do with what happened to Theora. Then he proceeded to stumble through a story about everything he had done on the day of the murder to prove that he had an alibi. Phillips felt like during his time as a detective, he'd learned how to read people pretty well, but there was something about Marion that he just couldn't quite figure out. Marion came off as a jealous, jilted lover, and there was a chance that he was making up his supposed alibi on the spot. But Phillips also got the sense that this was the kind of guy who would go into a panic and start rambling

even when he was asked a simple question like what he had eaten for dinner the night before. So by the end of the interview, Phillips still considered Marion a major suspect but he wanted to know if Marion was right about Theora seeing someone else. Because if Theora was dating someone else, and that was who she had gone out with the night she got murdered, Phillips needed to find out. Later that morning, Phillips and other members of the investigative team went to Theora's apartment and her roommates showed them to her bedroom. At first glance, Phillips thought it looked like the typical bedroom of a young single woman.

But when he opened one of the drawers of a small wooden desk, Phillips started to think there might not be anything typical about Theora at all. In the desk drawer, Phillips found a derringer, a small handgun that was easy to conceal. Next to the gun, Phillips found a couple of bank passbooks, which were savings account logs that people kept in the 1920s, and when Phillips looked at those passbooks, he was stunned. Fiora had at least two savings accounts with almost $2,500 between them. For reference, at the time, that was more than the average American family made in a year. Also, $2,500 then would have been equal to about $45,000 today in 2023. Phillips had talked to Theora's roommates and a few of her other friends after her body had

been identified, and they had all said that Theora worked on campus just to make enough money to get by at medical school. So Phillips was surprised that she had thousands of dollars in savings, and he started to wonder if Theora had been living some kind of a double life. Then Phillips opened another desk drawer, and he found something that immediately backed up that double life theory. Phillips pulled out a stack of letters that had been written to Theora, and they were all from someone named Janet. And once Phillips had read through the letters, it seemed clear to

him that Theora and Janet had been in a very serious romantic relationship. So Phillips needed to find out if Janet was the person Theora had gone out with on the night of her murder. But Phillips didn't have a last name for Janet, and when he asked Theora's roommates about Janet, they said they had no idea who Janet was. A few hours later, Phillips and his team met with Theora's classmates and people who she worked with at the campus hospital, but nobody they talked to knew anyone named Janet. And so the police went down their list of other people to talk to, and they saw there was a guy named Dr. James Snook, who Theora had worked with in the veterinary department.

And so they contacted James, and they asked him if he'd be willing to come to the police station and answer some questions about Theora. And James said fine. He came down to the station, and he sat down with Phillips and the other members of the investigative team. Phillips immediately thought James looked and talked exactly like a typical professor. He was 49 years old, he wore a nice suit and glasses, and whenever he talked, it sounded like he was explaining things to a big group of college kids. James told the police that Theora

had once worked in the veterinary department in the steno pool, which meant she took notes and shorthand in meetings and at lectures. And James said Theora had been great at her job, and so he thought she might be able to help him while he compiled stories for a book he wanted to write. Phillips asked what the book was about, and James got a little embarrassed and said he was working on a book about himself. Because not only had he been a pioneer in veterinary science and medicine, but also he'd won a gold medal at the 1920 Olympics in Belgium. Once that information came out, immediately the officers started asking James questions about what it was like to compete in the Olympic Games and what it felt like to win gold against amazing athletes from all around the world.

But eventually, Phillips got the conversation back on track and he asked if James knew of anyone named Janet who worked in his department at the university or who might be connected to the veterinary school in some way. James thought about it for a minute but said nobody came to mind. But he admitted that after being a professor for years, he was not great about remembering all the names of all of his students. They kind of blended together. And then at the end of the interview, Phillips thanked James for coming in and said they'd follow up with him if they needed to.

After that interview, Phillips was getting frustrated. He had figured that Janet, the person who wrote the love letters to Theora, had to be a classmate or co-worker or at least somebody Theora knew from school. But so far, the search for Janet had been a total dead end. And the team was still looking into Marion's alibi, so they couldn't rule him out as a suspect. They even decided to bring Marion back in and to keep him at the station until they were sure they knew where he had been on the night of the murder. But Phillips was having doubts that Marion was the

killer, and he was almost positive that Theora's secret lover, Janet, had something to do with Theora's death. Later that day, Phillips met with the coroner at the mortuary, and the results of Theora's autopsy threw Phillips for a loop. At the time of her death, Theora had traces of marijuana in her system, but it wasn't from smoking marijuana, which would be the most common way to ingest the drug. Instead, Theora had ingested a very uncommon type of marijuana in powder form. In addition to that, Theora had also ingested something even stranger. Blister beetle extract, more commonly called Spanish fly, which was a chemical substance taken from an insect. At the time, some people believed Spanish fly was an

aphrodisiac that heightened a person's sexual performance, but Spanish Fly was not exactly easy for anyone to just get. So by that evening, Phillips was starting to feel like this case that had seemed pretty straightforward at the beginning was just getting weirder and weirder and weirder. So by that evening, Phillips was starting to feel like this case, which had seemed pretty straightforward at first,

was now starting to seem really complicated and just totally weird. And then later that night, the case got even weirder because Phillips got a phone call from a woman who said she was a landlord and that she was sure she had rented a small apartment in the city to the dead girl she'd seen in the newspaper. Phillips hung up the phone with the landlord and just shook his head. In the course of about a day, he discovered Theora's gun,

her shocking bank accounts, her love letters, and her secret apartment. But he still didn't have the one piece of evidence he badly wanted. He didn't know who this Janet person was. On the same night that Phillips had spoken to that landlord, he and a few other officers drove across town to see the apartment Theora had supposedly rented. Phillips was exhausted, and he felt like that day might never end, but he hoped maybe something in this new apartment would either prove Marion was the murderer, or lead him to Janet.

The landlord walked Phillips and his team into the small one-room apartment. A large brass bed took up most of the space, and there was one wooden chair in the corner. Phillips also saw a back door that would allow people to come in and out of the apartment without being seen by anybody on the street in front. One look at the place, and Phillips knew this was a classic love nest where people would meet to have a secret affair. Phillips showed the landlord a photo of Theora and the landlord said that was definitely the woman who had rented this place,

but she'd used a different name. The landlord also said Theora had told her she would not be renting the apartment anymore and would move her things out that week. Phillips and his team searched the room for any piece of evidence that might help their investigation, but it looked like Theora had already moved out because all they found was a woman's brown hat lying on the hardwood floor. So when Phillips' long day finally ended, he still had Marion in custody at the police station, but he didn't really have anything new to go on. In the days following Detective Phillips' visit to Theora's secret

apartment, police were able to corroborate almost all of Marion's alibi for the night of Theora's murder. But there was still about 30 minutes that night that Marion could not account for, and nobody close to him had seen him during that time. 30 minutes was long enough for Marion to have driven Theora out to the field by the shooting range and to have killed her, so Marion remained a prime suspect. Then, even though the investigation into this case had only been going on for a few days, the county prosecutor started to put a lot of pressure on Phillips and his team. The county prosecutor was new, he was young, and so the police figured he

just wanted to make a name for himself by bringing a big-time murder case to trial. But the county prosecutor pointed to the continuing stories in the newspapers that were spreading wild rumors about a maniac roaming the streets of Columbus who wanted to hunt down more young women. So, the prosecutor said this case needed to be closed soon before there was complete panic across the city. Detective Phillips agreed with that, but Phillips was convinced he wouldn't be able to close the case until he found this Janet person,

the person he was sure was having an affair with Theora when she was killed. So, Phillips and his team kept interviewing new people connected to Theora, and they circled back around to talk to people they had already met with to see if maybe they had missed something the first time they spoke. Then, just after 11 a.m. on June 18th, so five days after Theora's murder, police brought a woman in who they hoped could move the investigation forward. The young county prosecutor would lead the interview. He asked the woman a series of questions over the course of four hours, and when the woman was tired and worn down, she said something that made Phillips and the prosecutor rethink the entire investigation.

What they heard in that interview would finally lead Phillips to his Janet and the police would discover who had killed Theora. Based on the interview led by the county prosecutor of that woman, evidence found at the crime scene, and interviews conducted throughout the investigation, here is a reconstruction of what police believe happened the night someone murdered Theora Hicks on June 13, 1929. On that day, at about 9 p.m. at night, Janet's blue coupe pulled into the parking lot near the student center on the Ohio State campus. Janet was wearing pants, a dress shirt, and a tie. Janet was nervous and kept glancing back and forth to make sure nobody was watching the car.

Then Janet saw Theora walking towards the parking lot. Theora got into the car, gave Janet a kiss, and they sped away from the university. A few minutes later, Theora found herself staring out at fields and farmland as they headed to the shooting range outside of the city. Theora knew this drive well, but something felt a little different that night. She felt a little lightheaded and maybe a bit confused. Still, she was excited to be going back to the shooting range she had avoided it ever since she got caught by the police there over a year earlier, but she figured with as dark

as it was going to be that night, the police wouldn't find them. Janet eased off the gas and turned onto the road that led past the shooting range and parked in the field nearby. Theora looked over at Janet and smiled, but Janet just looked away. Theora's head started to feel even lighter than it had on the drive over, and her face was starting to feel flushed and hot.

Then Janet turned to her and said something that made Theora very angry. Theora snapped a comment back, and then before long, the two were arguing. Theora was livid, and she shouted at Janet, and then Janet screamed even louder back, and before long, Theora just felt so lightheaded and so angry that she just wanted to get some air. So Theora grabbed the door handle, but before Theora could get out of the car, Janet leaned into the back seat, picked up a hammer, and smashed it into the back of Theora's head. Theora heard ringing in her ears, but she was still conscious, just totally stunned. The cramped car had not allowed Janet to really get a full swing before she hit Theora. Theora's head wavered back and forth, and she turned and just stared at Janet in stunned silence.

And Janet simply raised the hammer again and began striking Theora over and over again in the face. and began striking Theora over and over again in the face. Theora felt warm blood running over her eyes, her cheeks, and nose, but she managed somehow to open the car door, and she stumbled into the field outside. Janet flung the driver's side door open, rushed around the car, grabbed Theora by the arm, then Janet raised the hammer high and brought it down again on the back of Theora's head. Theora slumped forward onto the ground. Her arm hit the ground hard in front of her,

and her watch actually broke. Janet just stood there, staring down at Theora as blood began to pool around her, and Theora was still moaning and gasping for air. Janet thought that sound was absolutely horrible, so Janet dropped the hammer, took out a pocket knife, crouched down, and slit Theora's throat. Theora would die in that field. Then Janet grabbed the hammer off the ground,

ran to the car, tossed the hammer and knife into the passenger seat next to Theora's purse, and then Janet sped away from the field and back onto the main road. Early the next morning, Janet went to the secret love nest and almost completely cleaned it out. Then Janet drove the blue coupe to the Ohio State campus and got the car washed by the custodian who worked at the university's veterinary school, where Janet was a professor. Dr. James Snook, the Olympic gold medal winner and widely respected veterinarian, was Janet.

He had murdered Theora. It would turn out that James and Theora had been having an affair for years, but they had gone to great lengths to keep it secret. And so after Theora had gotten caught fornicating with Marion at the gun range, it really frightened James that they might get caught having their affair, and so she and James worked even harder from that point on to completely cover their tracks. That's why Theora almost never talked about her personal life. That's why James and Theora had rented an apartment they could sneak into through the back door. And that was why, in all of their correspondence, James used a fake name, Janet.

Ultimately, Theora wanted James to leave his wife for her, and she would get jealous and angry when he spent time with his family. And so sometimes, Theora would go out with Marion just to try to make James jealous. But Theora did always hope that she and James would somehow work out their problems and be happy together. And in the days leading up to the murder, James had said that he did not want them to rent that secret apartment anymore. So, Theora thought that meant maybe James was finally going to tell her that he was leaving his wife and that they could bring their relationship out into the open. But James had absolutely no intention of doing that. He was not about to leave his wife, he just wanted to stop renting the apartment with Theora.

And he worried that when he told Theora this, she would end up telling his wife everything he just wanted to stop renting the apartment with Theora, and he worried that when he told Theora this, she would end up telling his wife everything about their affair. So, James decided to kill Theora. It turned out James's gold medal in the Olympics was for pistol shooting, so he was very familiar with the shooting range outside the city and he would still go and practice there sometimes. He thought the shooting range's reputation as a sort of lover's lane would provide him cover and make it look like the murder was the result of an argument between a young couple. On the night of the murder, James was a little bit hesitant, but when he told Theora he was going to be going away for a while with his family, Theora snapped and got really mad.

And so James just reached back into the back seat, grabbed the hammer, and followed through with his family, Theora snapped and got really mad. And so James just reached back into the back seat, grabbed the hammer, and followed through with his plan. But James got caught because the woman who spoke to Detective Phillips and the county prosecutor at the police station was James's wife. The police had brought her in because they had begun to suspect that Theora was more to James than just someone who could help him with his book. And they wondered if maybe James's wife had killed Theora in a jealous rage. But after hours of being interviewed, James's wife revealed that James had left the house and been gone for a long time on the night of Theora's murder. And so police dug deeper into James's background,

and they discovered that James had been taking amounts of money out of his bank account that matched the amounts in Theora's passbooks. They also learned that James had easy access to the powdered marijuana and the Spanish fly that Theora had ingested, because at the time, both of those substances were used in veterinary medicine. But it was never determined if James had drugged Theora or if she had taken the substances willingly. When Phillips and the county prosecutor brought James in to be questioned again, he would first admit to being Theora's secret lover, Janet, and then he would ultimately confess to murdering Theora.

James was found guilty of murder and sentenced to death. In February of 1930, so less than a year after James had killed Theora, he was executed in Ohio in the electric chair. Thank you for listening to the Mr. Ballin Podcast. If you enjoyed today's episode, be sure to check out our YouTube channel, just called Mr. Ballin, where we have hundreds more stories just like this one, many of which are not available on this podcast. They are only on YouTube. Again, the YouTube channel is just called Mr. Ballin.

So that's going to do it. I really appreciate your support. Until next time, see ya. Hey, Prime members. You can binge eight new episodes of the Mr. Ballin podcast one month early and all episodes ad-free on Amazon Music. Download the Amazon Music app today. And before you go, please tell us about yourself by completing a short survey at wondery.com slash survey.

In May of 1980, near Anaheim, California, Dorothy Jane Scott noticed her friend had an inflamed red wound on his arm and he seemed really unwell. So she wound up taking him to the hospital right away so he could get treatment. While Dorothy's friend waited for his prescription, Dorothy went to grab her car to pick him up at the exit. But she would never be seen alive again, leaving us to wonder, decades later, what really happened to Dorothy Jane Scott? From Wondery, Generation Y is a podcast that covers notable true crime cases like this one and so many more. Every week, hosts Aaron and Justin sit down to discuss a new case covering every angle and theory, walking through the forensic evidence, and interviewing those close to the case to try and discover what really happened. And with over 450 episodes, there's a case for every true crime listener.

Follow the Generation Y podcast on Amazon Music or wherever you get your podcasts.