MrBallen Podcast: Strange, Dark & Mysterious Stories - Closing Time (PODCAST EXCLUSIVE EPISODE)

Episode Date: June 1, 2026

On an evening in September 2017, a woman in Massachusetts came home from work to an empty house. Her boyfriend was gone, but she saw that his wallet and phone were still right there on the counter. And on the kitchen table were three envelopes. She opened them. One was his last will and testament. The second was a note for her. And the third... was a letter addressed to the family of a woman who'd been murdered 25 years ago.   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.

On an evening in September of 2017, a woman living in Massachusetts came home from work to an empty house. Her boyfriend was gone, but she saw that his wallet and his phone were still right there on the counter, and also on the kitchen table were three fairly conspicuous envelopes. Confused, she walked over to the envelopes and she began to open them. One of them was her boyfriend's last will and testament. Another was a note that was for her. And the third was a letter that was addressed to the family of a woman who had. had been murdered 25 years earlier. 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 to do the follow button's taxes for them. But don't actually do their taxes. Just take all their documentation and throw it in the trash. Okay, let's get into today's story. On the afternoon of April 15, 1992, a 24-year-old woman named Lisa Ziegert, drove through the quiet suburban streets of Agawam, Massachusetts. And eventually, she pulled into a shopping plaza in the center of town, which was full of shops and restaurants and bars. So Lisa was a teacher's aide at the local middle school. And while teaching was definitely her passion, the reality was being a teacher's aide did not pay very well.

So to earn some extra money, she also worked the evening shift at a store called Brittany's Card and Gift Shop, which sold things like birthday cards and stuffed animals and music box. As she drove through the lot looking for a parking space, she passed by a chicken restaurant where her friend Ed Borgotti worked. So Ed shared a house with Lisa's boyfriend, Blair Masoya, as well as Lisa's sister, Lynn. So the four of them were all pretty close. And so as Lisa found her spot and parked her car and got out, she thought about popping into the restaurant to say hi to Ed, who was also working that day. But when she checked her time, she thought better of it, and instead she just walked straight to the gift store to start her shift. A few hours later, around 7 p.m., Lisa sat behind the counter at the gift store, humming along to the song that was playing on the overhead speakers.

Lisa was the only employee on duty during the evening shifts, and she was there until the store closed at 9 p.m. And working alone so late at night, definitely made her a little bit anxious. And, you know, she did every now and again have issues with problem customers. And so she was just always kind of a bit on edge, especially considering, you know, some rowdy people often came out of the pool. hall that was just a few doors down and they sometimes came in the shop and were just kind of a handful. And on top of all that, there was something else going on that Lisa actually couldn't quite explain. Lately, she'd been having this weird feeling that somebody was watching her through the windows of the store. So as Lisa is sitting behind the counter, feeling, you know, very anxious and sort of stressed about the night,

she hears the sound of the door to the shop opening. There was a bell above the door that jingled every time the door opened. And so she whipped around to see who it was, and she was very relieved to see that it was actually just her older sister Lynn, not some random customer who might be a problem. Lisa was really close with Lynn, and sometimes her sister would just stop by to chat and keep Lisa company, especially during her evening shifts. So Lynn walked in and asked Lisa how things were going, and Lisa said it was fine, and then eventually she sort of shifted the conversation to how Lisa was still sort of upset that she had not been able to land a full-time teacher. job yet. She told Lynn that what she really wanted here was just, you know, a teaching job that paid better than what she had now so that she could quit this gift store job. Not only because this late night shift really creeped her out, but also because she'd be able to spend more time with

her boyfriend Blair if she just had this full-time teaching job instead of splitting these two jobs. And so the two sisters continued to chat for about a half an hour and then Lisa walked Lynn to the door and wave goodbye. And as Lisa watched her sister drive away in her car, Lisa suddenly became aware of the fact that the parking lot of this plaza was really full tonight. And there were lines of cars, you know, people honking at each other, trying to get, you know, the few remaining spots. And as Lisa stood there in the gift shop storeway, she looked over and saw that the owner of the carpet shop next door, James Dent, was closing up. And James, he looked over, saw Lisa, and he made a comment about how crazy the parking lot was tonight. And Lisa was like,

yeah, it gets pretty busy at night, but this is even, you know, crazier than usual. After that, the two said goodbye and they went their separate ways. And Lisa, she turned right around and went back inside the gift store. About an hour later, around 8.20 p.m., Lisa rang up a customer at the counter. She handed the customer his change in his receipt and told him to have a good night. And then once he was gone, she went into the back room to take inventory before closing. After such a long and stressful day, Lisa was really glad that her shift was nearly over. In about 40 minutes, she was going to close up the shop and then maybe walk over to see if Ed was still working at the restaurant. chat with him for a bit, and then head home. But just then, Lisa heard the sound of that bell on the door,

which meant somebody was coming in. So she stepped out of the back to see who it was. The next morning, so April 16, 1992, Detective Wayne Macy of the Agawam Police Department stepped into Brittany's card and gift shop. When he got in there, he saw that there were already officers from his department, putting up crime scene tape and taking photos of the scene. One of the officers came over to Macy to fill them in. And they explained that that morning, one of the employees from this gift shop had called 911.

And what she said is she got to work that morning to start her shift at the gift shop. And right away when she arrived, she noticed something odd. She saw one of her co-workers, Lisa Ziegert, who normally worked at the night shift and closed the shop down, she saw her car was out in the parking lot.

And so that was odd because she shouldn't be here. She works at night. And then this woman who ultimately called 911, her name is Sophia, she went up to the storefront and found the door was unlocked. And also when she stepped inside, all the lights were on and the overhead speakers were still playing. And so, you know, Sophia's thinking, that's odd. Like, is Lisa working this morning or something? But she searched the whole store and Lisa was nowhere to be found, even though all her belongings were still in the store.

And so ultimately, she called the police. The officer also told Macy that they had already spoken to the man who owned the shop right next door, the carpet shop. the carpet shop. And the owner of that store said he had actually spoken to Lisa the night before around maybe 7.30 p.m. And at the time, she was acting totally normal, seemed very happy. They were just talking about, you know, how hectic the parking lot was that night. Detective Macy asked the officer if anyone had been in touch with any of Lisa's family or friends to see if anybody had heard from her or seen her. And the officer said that they had been in touch with those people and that no, no one had seen or heard from her since last night.

Additionally, the officer said that Lisa's roommate had said Lisa never came home, and she also had not shown up to her other job at the middle school that morning where she was a teacher's aide. At this point, the officer told Macy that, hey, you just got to come in the back of the store because what we found in there make it really obvious that what we're dealing with here is foul play. So Macy said, all right, you know, lead the way, and he followed this officer into the back room of the shop, and as soon as he looked inside, his heart sank. There were all these cardboard boxes in the back room that had been sort of flattened, like one or maybe multiple people were laying on all these boxes, and there was blood all over the boxes.

And so based on this, you know, it seemed pretty apparent to Macy and the other officers that, you know, if Lisa is not here right now, but her things are here, her car is here, like, she didn't disappear voluntarily. Like, all the initial evidence suggests that she was taken away by force. As Macy was walking around this small back room, he noticed there was actually a back door that had been left partially open that no officers had touched. So this is how it was left. And he walked over and he opened this door and he saw this door led to this narrow back alley that ran behind the building. Also, as Macy was looking at this back door, he looked down and he saw what appeared to be, you know, pretty obvious scuff marks across the ground. As if maybe somebody had been dragged and their shoes had sort of. of scuffed the ground on the way out. And so Macy stepped into this back alleyway to see if there was any

nearby security cameras that could have potentially captured whatever happened back here the night before, but he didn't see any. So he left the alley and he went to the front and he began going to the other stores in this plaza to see if any of them had cameras that potentially faced like the front of the shop. But Macy was very disappointed to learn that none of these shops had security cameras. So there was going to be no footage of whatever happened here. And so at this point, Macy knew this was going to be a really challenging case to solve. Because he had no eyewitnesses, at least not right now, and no security camera footage, it meant there was no clear, easy way to try to figure out what the assailant looked like or, you know, what their car could have looked like,

or even what direction they might have gone. Like he had nothing. And so Macy went right to his car, he grabbed his radio and he called dispatch, and he told them to right now send out search teams, police dogs, and scour every inch of this area for any sign of Lisa. After that, Macy went back inside the shop to check the cash register. He figured if this was a robbery, that very likely the money would be missing. But when he got in there and he opened it up, the cash was still inside. But Macy knew that violent attacks by random strangers was pretty rare. More often than not, people who get kids.

killed or people who get kidnapped, their perpetrator or perpetrators are people they know. At some point, Macy pressed a few buttons on the cash register, and it began to spit out this paper log of all the most recent transactions. And Macy saw that the last purchase, at least as reflected on this register, was made with cash at 8.20 p.m. the night before. And for the first time, Macy actually felt a surge of optimism about this case, because this was a very helpful clue. Since the gift store closed at 9 p.m., this narrowed down the time window significantly.

It meant the attack likely happened in the 40 minutes between that transaction at 8.20 and closing at 9 p.m. A time when very few of the other businesses in the plaza were open, except for the restaurants and pool hall. That afternoon, Detective Macy knocked on the door of Lisa's parents' house. The search at the shopping plaza was now fully underway, and a team of officers was already searching Lisa's apartment across town for clues. And in the meantime, Macy wanted to speak to Lisa's family and see if they knew anything. When Lisa's mother opened the door, she looked frantic, but she also seemed relieved that a police officer was finally there to fill her in on what was happening. And so she told Macy to come in, and Macy stepped into a house that was absolutely buzzing with activity. As the detective entered the

dining room, he saw that at least a dozen people, most of them around Lisa's age, were gathered around the table. They had this big, this big. map spread out on the table and were talking about maybe organizing their own search effort. And then when they saw Detective Macy, they all sort of flocked around him and began peppering him with questions about what happened to Lisa. You know, where is she? Macy told the group, which consisted mainly of friends and some family, that he would speak to all of them one by one, but in an orderly fashion.

And he would start with Lisa's mother. The group seemed to understand this and kind of naturally throttled back. And then at that point, Macy took Lisa's mother, they went into the living room, and they sat down to talk. The first question he asked her was, you know, do you know of anybody out there who might have wanted to harm your daughter? And Lisa's mother immediately said, like, no, no way. You know, Lisa did not have any enemies. She was quite friendly, very hardworking, and really just stayed out of trouble. And for the rest of this interview, which lasted, you know, another 30 minutes or so, I mean, that really was the sentiment that Lisa's mother communicated, that this was like totally unheard of, that anything would happen to Lisa.

Like, she never did anything wrong. She had no problems. She had no enemies. Like, I don't know what happened. And so Macy, after speaking to the mother, would also speak to Lisa's father, her two sisters and her roommate. And then also, he would speak to her boyfriend Blair

and Blair's roommate, Ed Borgatti. Blair seemed really broken up about his girlfriend's disappearance. When Macy asked where he had been the night before, Blair said he was at his mother's home for most of the night, except for a quick trip to CBS. He said he didn't remember the exact time he went there. but he definitely had the receipt back at home. And when Macy spoke to Ed, so Blair's roommate,

Ed also seemed really upset about what happened to Lisa. He told Macy that he and Lisa were definitely good friends, and they worked near each other in that shopping plaza. And he said he'd actually been working at the chicken restaurant around the same time of Lisa's disappearance. Again, most violent attacks are not committed by strangers. They're committed by people who know their victims. And like here was a potential suspect who not only,

knew Lisa very well, but was also just a few hundred feet away when she was attacked and potentially abducted. It just seemed like almost too obvious. So Macy made a note to be sure to look into Ed very thoroughly and see if any of Lisa's friends knew about maybe any tension between those two. However, as Macy would go around and question all of Lisa's friends who were at the house, none of them had anything negative to say about Ed or Blair. And none of them had anything negative to say about Ed or Blair. them knew anything useful about Lisa's disappearance. However, one of Lisa's friends did say that about a week earlier, Lisa had told her about this feeling she had of being watched while she was at the store. But Lisa hadn't actually said anything about why she felt that way or who she thought

was watching her. So even though it was an interesting lead, Macy knew it would be virtually impossible to actually follow up on. And at this point, he was just getting a little frustrated. Because not only did he have no eyewitness or security footage of Lisa's abduction, it seemed absolutely no one even had a motive to harm Lisa. In fact, the only useful piece of information he got from all the interviews was from Lisa's sister, Lynn, who said she had stopped by the store about an hour or two before Lisa disappeared. She was able to give Macy a very detailed description of what Lisa was wearing, a denim skirt, boots, and a charm bracelet. And so by the time Macy was leaving the home, he felt really disappointed by how little he had uncovered. He just hoped that the

officers in charge of the search effort were maybe having more luck. Three days later, on the afternoon of Sunday, April 19th, Detective Macy parked at the edge of the woods off Route 75, less than a mile from the gift store. Seconds later, another police cruiser pulled up right behind him. So earlier that afternoon, a man had been out walking his dog in these woods, and he had unfortunately come across a dead body and had called it in. And so Macy, when he heard this, had driven straight over here, you know, thinking this could be Lisa's body. And now, as he got out of his cruiser, he saw there were tire tracks that the man who had called in the body had said he had also seen. He said there were tracks near the body. And so Macy's thinking, okay, I got to follow these tracks and it will likely bring me to this

body. And so Macy, along with three other officers, began following these tracks into the trees. But Macy, who was at the front of this group, only took a few steps before his feet, literally sank down into the mud to the point where it was up to his ankles. This area would turn out to be extremely swampy to the point where the officers actually had to walk in each other's footprints in a single file line just to try to navigate this mud. And so into the woods they went, carefully walking in this straight line until the tire tracks began to fade. At this point, Macy and the others looked around and there was no body where they were and there was no sign of any body or anything unusual.

But the man who had found the body had said, these tracks sort of aimed in the direction of where the body was found. And so Macy and the others just continued in that single file line, sort of just trudging directly into the woods for hours, until finally they did reach this small out-of-the-way clearing. And in the clearing, Macy and the others saw clothing items scattered all over the place. At this point, it was starting to get done. dark, and so Macy pulled out his flashlight and he shined it around in this clearing, and at some point

his beam of light landed on a woman's body lying right next to a tree. She was partially naked, and some of her clothes that she still had on had been pulled down, so it seemed fairly obvious that she had been sexually assaulted before she died. Also, there were clearly multiple stab wounds all over her body, including one to her throat. And then when Macy crouched down next to her to get a better look, his flashlight reflected off of a charm bracelet on her wrist. Less than an hour later, Detective Macy had to shield his eyes as a floodlight clicked on and threw blinding light all over this clearing he was in. A forensics team had just arrived and fired up their generators so they could work through

the night with lights. And also overhead, a helicopter now circled the woods, taking aerial photos of the scene. These woods, at least from Macy's perspective, were such a maze that it seemed very likely that the killer must be a local who knew this area well. And also, if they'd driven through all that mud, Macy figured that whoever they were looking for likely was driving a vehicle with four-wheel drive, like a truck or a Jeep.

So he told the forensics team to make a cast of the tire tracks that were left behind near the edge of the road to see if there was anything else that could find out about the vehicle. And then Macy also, quietly, was sort of crossing his fingers that this forensics team would also be able to hopefully find a trace of the killer's DNA on Lisa's body. A few days later, Macy was sitting at his desk at the police station. The phones in the bullpen were ringing more than usual that day,

but Macy was doing his best to shut the noise out and just focus on the reports that were on his desk. The forensics team had found DNA on Lisa's body, and so now Macy had to make a list of all the potential suspects that he would need to collect DNA samples from to see if any of them were a match to the DNA found on Lisa's body. Lisa's boyfriend Blair seemed like an obvious suspect, even though none of Lisa's friends or family had known about any problems in their relationship. Blair also had handed over

that receipt from CVS that confirmed he was there around the same time that Lisa was abducted. But it would have only taken about, you know, maybe three minutes to drive from the CVS to the gift store. So it seemed, you know, completely possible to Macy that, you know, Blair could have attacked Lisa while he was out and just also grabbed this CBS receipt to sort of build an alibi, but a shaky one. Another strong suspect was actually Blair's roommate, Ed. His alibi was that he'd been working at a restaurant right next to the gift store when Lisa was kidnapped, which just seemed way too convenient. And so Macy thought, you know, it was entirely possible that Ed, during his shift, could have

snuck over to the shop, you know, maybe killed Lisa right there in the store and then left her there and then, you know, after his shift was over, because he knows no one's going to be back in that gift shop. He could have gone back over, grabbed the body, disposed of her in the woods, and nobody knows. And on top of that, Ed just so happened to own a Jeep.

So now Macy clearly needed to get DNA samples from both Blair and Ed, and also Macy planned to analyze the tires of both of their vehicles to see if either of them match the tracks from the woods. Suddenly, though, the constant ringing of the bullpen phones just became too much

for Macy to ignore. And so he stood up from his work, sort of annoyed, and he walked over to see, you know, what was going on. You know, why are there so many calls happening right now? And one of the officers that was out there said all these calls were for the Lisa Ziegert tip line. Macy was sort of surprised to hear that. He knew the tip line had been set up, but for the past few days, there really hadn't been many calls. But the officer told Macy that, you know, the floodlights in the forest and the helicopters flying over the woods the night before had really caught the attention of the local news. And as soon as word got out that, you know, Lisa's body had been found out there. Almost everyone in Agawam seemed to have a theory about what had happened and now they

were calling in their theory. But he said that these tips were sort of all over the map. And there were already dozens of different descriptions of suspicious vehicles or suspicious people that, you know, could be suspects. Macy told the officer to, you know, keep doing his job and to make sure you log all the tips that come in and that Macy and his team would look through them one by one when they had a chance. And as Macy turned and walked back towards his office and he continued to hear all these phones ringing, he realized his team might have to do a whole lot more DNA comparisons than he'd originally planned on. Because this was the early 90s, there was no way to have one DNA sample like you would find on a body, let's say, and then just put it into a bank and see what turns up.

That didn't exist. And so what he's saying is he needs to compare this sample during. directly to basically all these potential people and hope one of them lines up. One full year later, on a morning in 1993, Detective Macy dug through a cardboard box full of police reports and interview notes. There were dozens of boxes just like this one stacked all over his office, and they were all full of files on the Lisa Ziegert investigation. Macy and his team of detectives had spent the entire past year,

basically working around the clock on this case, digging into one lead after another, and it had been exhausting. Since Agawam was such a small town, Lisa's murder was all anyone could talk about, and the detectives had received hundreds of tips on Lisa's case. The police station even had to install extra phones to handle all the calls. And no matter how far-fetched the tips seemed, Macy's team looked into each and everyone. For example, there was a woman who worked at the all-female gym that Lisa used to go to,

who had called in and said there was this man who showed up at their gym every day at 3 p.m. And he would buy frozen yogurt from the juice park. But while he ate the yogurt, he would just stand there and eat it, sort of staring out at all the women. And to this woman, this employee, she felt like he could be the killer. Another tipster had called in and said they actually had seen a police car parked right near the gift store around the time Lisa was abducted. And when Macy heard this, he ordered a DNA test from every single officer in the department. apartment, but none matched. There was also another wild theory that Lisa's boyfriend, Blair, apparently had a secret romance with his roommate Ed, and Ed had apparently killed Lisa because

Lisa found out about it. Somebody else had called in and said that their friend had borrowed their car on the day Lisa was killed, and when they returned the car, apparently there were bloodstains in it, so they were basically saying, look into my friend. And then also, there were all these women who called in basically saying their husbands did it. You know, whether or not there was merit there. You know, it wasn't clear, but lots of husbands were getting accused. There were also dozens of tips that were just too vague to do anything with, like people saying that they saw a man in a dark coat or a guy at a bar who looked suspicious. And so at the end of the first year of this investigation, Detective Macy had looked into 400 people of interest. But none of those leads went

anywhere. To Macy's disappointment, Blair and Ed, who were really the two most obvious suspects, were actually ruled out very quickly. Their tires from their vehicles ultimately didn't match the tracks found in the woods, and they'd both given DNA samples, which did not match the DNA found on Lisa's body. And it was hard to get samples from all, you know, the rest of the 400 other suspects, especially because in 1993, you needed a pretty significant amount of DNA to run a test. So the police typically made suspects come in and get their blood drawn. And a lot of the suspects just said no to that because they just didn't want to go through the hassle. And since most of the tips that had led to these people of interest were pretty flimsy, Macy didn't have probable cause to get a warrant to force

them to do the blood draw. But of the hundreds of suspects who did give their DNA, none matched the DNA found on Lisa's body. And again, there's no bank to just run the sample through to see who else it could be, like if you don't have somebody to compare it to, you couldn't do it in the early 90s. So, as Macy stood there looking at all those boxes of files that he'd spent months pouring over, he had the sinking feeling that maybe the answer was not in there after all. At this point, it was like every tip he had gotten had let him down like an entirely different path than he was on, and he was just more lost and confused than ever. And so he felt like if he was going to actually find Lisa's killer, he needed new evidence,

where he needed an eyewitness to help point him in the right direction. And so as daunting as it was for Macy to think of this, he knew what he really needed now was actually even more tips. Six months later, in the fall of 1993, so now we are about a year and a half after Lisa Ziegert's murder. Detective Macy stood in the corner of a massive call center in Burbank, California. All around him, dozens of workers sat in cubicles with computers and headsets. And Macy waited with nervous anticipation as well.

one by one, their phones began to ring. Macy knew that the very popular TV show, Unsolved Mysteries, which told real stories of unsolved cold cases, was actually airing a segment about Lisa's murder at that very moment. But he wasn't actually watching the show. Instead, he was in the studio's call center to monitor the tip line in case any viewers at home called in with valuable information on Lisa's case. And sure enough, within a few minutes, every single phone in the call center was ringing off the hook. Macy began to walk around the room and peek over the shoulders of the workers as they

took notes on these calls that were coming in. And Macy admittedly was frustrated by what he was seeing. Most of the callers were just repeating this old rumor that Ed Borgotti was the killer and that more than that, the police knew about it and were covering it up. So the reason for that is Ed actually had been ruled out by DNA evidence pretty early on in the investigation. But the police had decided not to announce that publicly until the case was closed. So the locals came up with a conspiracy theory to explain why Ed, who looked so suspicious from the outside, had never been arrested, that somehow the police were covering it up. Macy had hoped that by having this case be on unsolved mysteries, that it would lead to a fresh tip from a credible witness who maybe hadn't

come forward yet. But instead, all he was getting was just more rumor and more speculation. In the end, the show generated 212 tips, and none of them led anywhere. And so as the years went on and still no new information came in, Lisa's case just continued to get colder and colder. By the time Detective Macy actually retired in 2003, it had been 11 years since her murder. Yet still, the murder was unsolved. Almost 23 years later, in January of 2015, Anthony Galuni, the newly elected district attorney, walked down the hallway at the Agawam Police headquarters. He found the door he was looking for, and he knocked. And a few seconds later, a detective named Mark Fowe opened the door.

Galuni introduced himself and then asked to see all the files on the Lisa Ziegert investigation. Galuni told the detective that he had grown up near Agawam, and he vividly remembered watching the news coverage of Lisa's murder when he was just 12 years old. And now that he was the DA, solving the cold case was one of his top priorities. Forensic technology had advanced a lot since the early 90s when this case was in its full swing. So Galuni suggested they just send the DNA sample from Lisa's killer to the lab for phenotyping, which is basically using DNA markers to figure out what a person could look like. So this is not the same thing as putting the DNA into a huge bank and getting an exact matchback.

It's sort of like building a profile of who this belongs to. And so the DA was very confident that through this process, if they could, could build a really accurate physical profile of the suspect and cross-reference it against the hundreds of names they had collected over the years in this case, maybe they could finally close in on Lisa's killer. It would take over a year and a half for this process to be completed, but in September of 2016, DA Galuni held a press conference to announce the results of the phenotyping. And so, during this press conference, a composite sketch of the killer appeared on the screen behind the DA.

And all it showed was a Caucasian man with dark hair and either brown or hazel eyes. Which does seem like not a whole lot of new information. But remember, this is sort of like definitely this person looks this way. This is not like a we think he looks this way. This is what he looks like. And even though none of the investigators on the case actually recognize the face in the sketch, Galuni hope that somebody in the public, you know, from this press release, would recognize him.

So after the press conference, Galuni went back to the police station, and with the help of a state trooper, they began sorting through the massive cabinets full of files on Lisa's case. They put together a list of every person of interest who had previously refused to give a DNA sample, and they were able to narrow it down to 11 suspects

who fit the phenotype profile who didn't give their DNA sample. At that point, Galuni pulled together all the evidence that he had, against those 11 people, and he used it to secure warrants, forcing each of them to actually give their DNA. But before those DNA results even came back, Galuni got a very unexpected phone call. And as he listened to the voice on the other end, his heart began to pound because he knew, after, you know, two and a half decades here, he finally knew exactly who had killed Lisa Ziegert. Based on a written confession and DNA evidence, this is what police

believe happened to Lisa Ziegert on April 15, 1992. Around 8.30 p.m., the killer parked in the alley behind Brittany's card and gift shop. Then they walked around to the front of the store and hid behind a car and stared in the window and just watched Lisa. The killer had always been fascinated by abduction and bondage ever since they were young. And they had done their best to try to keep those fantasies inside and not act on them. But when they had met Lisa, it was like, their urges became just too powerful to control. So on this night, when they saw Lisa disappear into the store's back room, the killer, you know,

stealed themselves, then took a deep breath, and stormed into the shop. Just as they had imagined doing for so long, they had thought about this and fantasized about what this would be like, and now it was actually happening. And so they ambushed Lisa with a knife right as she was walking out of that back room, and they kind of grabbed her and wrapped her and wrapped their arm around her neck, and they sort of stumbled into the back room, and Lisa, she began fighting back. And so they're struggling, and they knocked over that huge pile of cardboard boxes.

And at some point, Lisa tried to wrestle the knife out of the killer's grip. But after this intense struggle, the killer gained the upper hand and dragged her out the back door and into the alley. They shoved her into their vehicle and then drove a mile down the road and turned onto a dirt path that led into the woods. And then after they drove for a while, they reached a secluded spot in the forest, at which point they stopped,

they pulled Lisa out of the back of the car, they threw her to the ground, and then they sexually assaulted her, and then after they were done, they stabbed her to death, and then they just left her, and they got back in their vehicle, and they drove away.

By the time the killer got back to their own home, they were still buzzing with adrenaline. I mean, this was every bit as incredible as they thought it would be. However, when they actually walked into their house, and they heard a familiar female voice, calling out from the other room asking where they'd been, the killer looked down and suddenly realized there were cuts all over their hands. But at this point, you know, it was too late to do anything about these cuts. Like if they left to go clean up, they would just seem really suspicious

to the woman in the next room. So the killer just took a deep breath and continued into their own house, hoping, you know, she wouldn't notice the cuts and pieced together the awful truth. The killer's name was Gary Shera. And he was a year. And he was a little bit of a little bit of a young man whose only connection to Lisa was that he had been a customer at the gift store where she worked. And so, you know, the police had sort of begun the investigation with this idea that this really couldn't have been a random attack of sorts. But in reality, it sort of was. Police believed that just a few weeks before the murder, Shara had visited the shop just to buy a music box for his wife. Like, that actually was the reason he was going. It was not to scout for a

victim. He just went into the store to buy this gift. But when he saw Lisa work there, he sort of immediately became obsessed with her. And then that obsession ultimately turned into murder. In January of 1993, Shara's wife, who was the woman in the other room, who called out to him asking where he had been on the night of Lisa's murder, she, the wife, ultimately called in a tip suggesting that her husband might have been involved in this murder, but the police decided the tip was not credible. Because Shara's wife was, one, a alcoholic, and two, Shara and his wife were in the middle of this heated divorce. And so it seemed like this could be revenge.

And then also remember, there were all these other women calling in, basically suggesting their husband was the killer. So this is like one of many, and they had to filter some of them out. This one got filtered out. So ultimately, Shara's name sort of got buried amid the hundreds of other suspects until 25 years later when police served him a warrant for a DNA sample. He was one of those 11 people who fit the phenotype who had, not given a sample. And realizing he was about to get caught, he left his girlfriend a letter

confessing to the murder and actually tried to end his own life, but he survived. Following his failed attempt to take his own life, Gary Shera was tracked down at the hospital and arrested on September 16, 2017. Two years later, he pleaded guilty to first-degree murder and was sentenced to life in prison without parole. A quick note about our stories, they are all based on true events. But we sometimes use pseudonym 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 Kate Gallagher. 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 Witt Lacassio and Cole Lacassio. Additional audio editing by Jordan Stidham. Production coordination by Samantha Collins. Production support by Antonio Manata 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 SiriusXM.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 ya.