MrBallen Podcast: Strange, Dark & Mysterious Stories - Dancer in the Dark (PODCAST EXCLUSIVE EPISODE)

Episode Date: February 2, 2026

In December 2005, a young woman walked down a sidewalk in New York City. There were Christmas decorations on all the buildings she passed – but as she walked by a newspaper stand, she saw something that was so shocking, she literally stopped in her tracks. Because right there, on the front page of multiple newspapers — was a picture of the one thing in her life, that she’d hoped she would never see again. Looking at it now, she knew she had to call the police right away. You can WATCH all new & exclusive MrBallen podcast episodes on my 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 @mrballen Hosted by Simplecast, an AdsWizz company. See pcm.adswizz.com for information about our collection and use of personal data for advertising.

In December of 2005, a young woman walked down a sidewalk in New York City. There were Christmas decorations on all the buildings and Christmas lights. I mean, it was very festive. But as she walked along, she glanced over at a newspaper stand. And she saw something on the front page of that paper that literally made her stop in her tracks, and not because it was festive. It was awful. Right there on the front page was a picture of the one thing in her life

that she'd hoped she would never, ever see again. 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, on the next extremely hot day, sneak into the follow button's house

and jack their thermostat all the way up to the highest possible setting, then go ahead and just rip the thermostat out of the wall, and then leave. Okay, let's get into today's story. early on the evening of Sunday, November 27, 2005, a 21-year-old woman named Catherine Woods leaned towards the mirror to put on her eyeliner inside the bathroom of her small apartment in New York City. Catherine's phone was sitting on the bathroom counter and she heard it buzzed, but she didn't even look to see who was calling. She didn't have time to talk to anyone because she had to finish getting ready for her 7 o'clock shift at work. So Catherine had moved to New York City from Ohio three years earlier to pursue her dream of becoming a dancer on Broadway.

But everything here was so expensive that in addition to chasing her dream, she also had to work three different jobs just to make ends meet. Now, two of those jobs were pretty standard. She worked as a waitress and also taught children's dance classes. But tonight, she was getting ready to go to her third job. And this job was not really standard at all. In fact, to her, she was sort of embarrassed about it. And because of that, she was keeping it a secret from almost everybody in her life.

Her third job was working as a topless dancer at a self. strip club near Times Square called Flash Dancers. Catherine honestly hated the work, but it paid really well, and if she wanted to have her shot at Broadway, she needed to pay for voice lessons and dance classes. Now, she did live in Manhattan, which was the most expensive part of the already very expensive city, and she knew that she could save some money if she just moved to a neighborhood where rent was cheaper. But when she had first moved to New York, she had lived in a less expensive neighborhood for

that reason. and unfortunately her landlord had sexually assaulted her. The experience had been so traumatic that Catherine had at the time considered just leaving New York and going back to Ohio and just being done with this place. But in the end, she had decided to stay in New York and continue chasing her dream. Now, she did move within New York.

She'd gotten this apartment in Manhattan because it was a lot safer. And she also got a roommate to help with the cost. His name was David Hahn. He was 23, and he was one of Catherine's friends from back home in Ohio. But at this very moment, David was not inside the apartment. He'd gone outside to get his car so he could drive Catherine to work. Catherine finished her makeup and left the bathroom. And as she walked through the living room, she stepped over a black dog that was sleeping

on the floor. The dog was not Catherine's, and it actually was not David's either. David was a part-time dog sitter. So this dog was just staying with them while its owners were out of town. Just like Catherine, David also had a bunch of part-time jobs to help make ends meet. When he wasn't dog-sitting, he worked as a doorman at a hotel just up the street from their apartment. Now, Catherine and David had actually been romantic at one point. They had dated for a little while. But these days, they were just roommates, living together to split the bills. Although, secretly, Catherine did sometimes wonder if, you know, maybe they should give it another shot to try being a couple again.

Thanksgiving had been a few days ago. And instead of going home to Ohio, like she usually did, Catherine had stayed in New York and celebrated with David. And it had been a really nice time. Plus, David knew about Catherine's third job of working at flash dancers, and he didn't judge her for it. And Catherine felt like a lot of people did. So she liked that about him. But the biggest hurdle that Catherine could see to potentially rekindling their relationship was the fact that David disliked basically every man she met, whether she was dating them or not.

He just did not like them. Now, some of these guys, she could understand why David, you know, didn't like them. Like there was this guy, Joe, that she had dated briefly, who really she had only met because he was a patron. of her strip club. But then there were people like Paul, who was a personal trainer at Catherine's gym, who she'd only seen off and on and who was nothing but nice to David. And even though Paul and Catherine were not dating now and mostly just spoke on the phone periodically, David still insisted that Paul was a creep. He just did not like the guy. But for now, Catherine figured, you know what, I'm not going to figure out my entire romantic life. I just need to finish getting ready and go

downstairs so she wouldn't keep David waiting. So Catherine went into her bedroom and began getting dressed. And that's when she heard that dog start barking at something in the living room. And so, curious, Catherine walked in that direction to see what was going on. A little while later, Catherine's roommate, David, walked quickly along the sidewalk to get his car, which was parked a ways up the street. He was out of breath by the time he reached it. He knew he had to hurry, so he jumped in, and he drove back to the apartment building, and he called Catherine as he pulled up out front. When she didn't answer, he threw on his hazards, and he climbed back out to go into the building to go get her. And he had just made it up the flight of stairs that led to his second floor

apartment, and he was going down the hallway when he saw something that made him come to an abrupt stop. It was that black dog that he was dog sitting. Somehow it had gotten out of the apartment and was just standing there in the shared hallway outside of his apartment door. David blinked and then realized that his neighbor, a man he rarely interacted with named Brad Stewart, was standing right behind the dog. And Brad was holding a leash that was clearly clipped onto the dog's collar. For a second, Brad looked surprised. And David was just completely confused about why this guy had the dog that he was dog sitting on a leash.

But then Brad told David that he had found the dog wandering around, recognized it as David's, and brought it back to his apartment. Brad said he had just knocked on David's apartment door, but so far nobody had answered. So at this point, David understood, you know, why Brad has the dog. but he didn't know why the dog was out of the apartment in the first place. But he kept that to himself and just thanked Brad, took the leash, and then stepped over to the door of his apartment, number 2D. The apartment door was shut, but when he turned the handle, he found that it was unlocked.

David couldn't remember if he had left it unlocked or not, so he just opened it, and he called out Catherine's name. But there was no answer, which was weird. So he stepped inside. Now, he didn't see Catherine, but he did see the door to her bedroom was slightly cracked open. So he walked over to it and he called out to her again. And then when she didn't call back, he tried pushing her door open. But the door didn't really open.

It instead swung maybe a few inches and then stopped. And David felt resistance on the other side, like something maybe on the ground was holding the door from opening all the way. And so now with all these strange things happening, David's starting to feel pretty worried. And so the surge of adrenaline came over him and he just shoved the door open and he stuck his head in and he looked inside. and when he saw what was in there, he immediately pulled back, turned around, ran into the hallway,

and he called the police. A half an hour later, around 7.30 p.m., an NYPD detective named Stephen Getz, walked up a flight of stairs at an apartment building in Manhattan. This part of the city was known to be extremely safe. Homicides never really happened here. But if the 911 caller had been telling the truth, Gets knew that a potential grisly murder scene was in fact waiting for, for him in Apartment 2D. When he reached the second floor landing, he saw there were already a few other NYPD officers on the scene, and one of them was speaking to this young skinny guy standing in the hallway,

who looked really upset, and he was holding a leash that was connected to a black dog. Another officer walked over to Gets and filled him in. He said the man that was being spoken to was the victim's roommate, David Hahn, and he was the one who had found the body and called 911. The victim, Catherine Woods, was inside the apartment in the back bedroom. Gets nodded and then walked down the hallway past David and the dog toward the apartment door. His plan was to look at the scene himself before he began questioning anyone.

Gets put on some disposable rubber gloves and checked out the doorframe to the actual apartment. And then he also looked at the door itself. But he didn't see any damage that could signify forced entry. So he stepped into the apartment. And he saw that the small living room was a little bit messy. But it wasn't like it had been ransacked or something. You know, the futon was pulled out. and there were some men's clothes strewn around,

but it sort of looked like a typical place that people lived. And so Gets walked through the living room, being careful not to disturb anything, and he went towards what he assumed was the bedroom, where the body was. The door was open just wide enough that Gets was able to get through. And when he stepped through and was inside the room, he saw blood everywhere.

It was all over the walls and the furniture, and the room itself looked like it had been completely torn apart. One of the dresser drawers was open, and lots of women's clothing was scattered all over the place, and the mattress had been completely taken off the bed frame and was now lying on the floor. And that's actually what was blocking the door from opening all the way. And then in the middle of the room, in a pool of blood,

lay the body of a young woman. Gets knew from the 911 call that her name was Catherine Woods. He walked over and squatted down next to her for a closer look. She was wearing a t-shirt and underwear. And the t-shirt had a very obvious shoe print on it, like whoever had killed Catherine had stepped on her. And there were at least a dozen stab wounds all over her body. There were also what appeared to be defensive wounds on her hands and arms,

which Gets knew meant she must have fought back against her attacker. But the worst injuries she sustained were definitely to her neck. Whoever had killed her had slid her throat so deeply that they had almost decapitated her. And so to Gets, right away, it seemed like whoever killed Catherine had been in an absolute rage. At that point, Gets heard footsteps coming from behind him. And he stood up and he turned around to see that the NYPD Forensics team had arrived. Now, the blocked door was making maneuvering in and out of this bedroom pretty difficult. So one of the first things the forensics team did was to pick up the mattress and carefully lean it against the wall.

So the bedroom door could now swing open all the way. Then Detective Gets just stepped back and let the forensics team get to work. He watched as they pulled that shoe print off the T-shirt Catherine was wearing. And then also there was a second identical shoe print that was on her bed sheets that they also grabbed. To Gets, both of these prints did appear to be from the exact same shoe, and to the naked eye, these prints appeared, at least to Gads, to belong to very likely an average-sized man. Detective Gets was immediately curious about something.

So he stepped out of the bedroom into the living room, and he quickly found a couple pairs of men's shoes lying on the floor. And although the tread of these shoes did not match the prints he had just seen in the bedroom, They did appear to be the exact same size. An hour later, at about 8.30 p.m. on November 27, 2005, Detective Gets sat down at a table inside of an interview room at the NYPD's 19th precinct. And once he did, he handed a bottle of water across the table to David Hahn, the roommate of the murder victim. And Detective Gets, current number one suspect. There had been no sign of forced entry at the apartment that David and Catherine shared, which meant that Catherine's

killer either had access to the apartment or was let inside by somebody who did. And the murder had been committed with a knife in a really savage way that struck Gets as being a personally motivated attack. Even though Catherine's bedroom had been trashed, nothing seemed to have been stolen. And because Catherine had been found partially undressed, there was potentially a sexual motive at play as well. So Gets' working theory here was that this murder was committed by a man who knew the victim well and had easy access to her living space. And David fit that profile to a T. Plus, he apparently wore the same-sized shoe as the killer.

Although, as Detective Gets settled into his chair and brought out his notepad, he did a quick scan of David's forearms in his hands, and he saw that David had no visible cuts, scrapes, or bruises. The detective thought that Catherine's killer likely would have some injuries there because she had obviously been fighting for her life. She would have left a mark on them. But Gets didn't say anything about this to David. Instead, he just leaned forward and he asked David to walk him through what had happened that day.

David's hands were shaking a bit, but he took a deep breath to calm himself, and he said that he had been at the apartment with Catherine that night until about 6.40 p.m. That was when he had left to go get his car so he could come back and drive Catherine to her 7 o'clock shift at Flash Dancers. But he said retrieving his car had taken longer than he expected, because on the way he had run into some of his co-workers from his doorman job, and he had stopped to chat with him. He said after he had done that and he had gotten his car and he went back to the apartment, he had expected Catherine to be waiting outside by the curb. But when he got there, there was no sign of her. And she didn't answer when he called her. So David said he'd ultimately

gone inside and ran upstairs to the apartment. And in the hallway, he had found his neighbor, Brad, who was oddly holding the leash of the black dog that David was supposed to be looking after, and then David said he went into his apartment, and that's when he found Catherine's body. David said he had called 911 right away. It was right around 7 p.m. And at this, get stopped writing on the notepad and just looked up at David. He couldn't believe what he was hearing. David was claiming that he'd only been out of the apartment for 20 minutes, and that in that narrow window of time, Catherine had been brutally murdered and the killer had also escaped. It honestly sounded like one of the worst alibis Gets had ever heard.

But he didn't want David to know just how close he was to getting arrested for murder. Because he didn't want David to get scared and stop talking. So Gets kept his tone very sympathetic as he asked how long David had known Catherine for. David said they had met back in Ohio a few years ago while Catherine was visiting her hometown. They'd begun dating and he had ultimately moved out to New York to live with her. But it wasn't long before Catherine broke up with him and then asked him to move out. But David said he had not been able to afford his own place, so he had started sleeping in his car. And Catherine had felt bad about that.

So she had ultimately let him move back in on the condition that he slept on the futon out in the living room. By now, Detective Gets' pen was flying across the page because David was not just Catherine's roommate. He was her ex-boyfriend, an ex-boyfriend who was the last person to see Catherine alive and discovered her body. Gets was more confident than ever that he was sitting across from Catherine's killer. He told David that everything he was saying was incredibly helpful. But right now, he needed to go check on something. David agreed to wait and Gets stood up to leave. But he stopped at the door and he asked David for one last thing before he left.

He asked what his shoe size was. And without missing a beat, David answered that he wore a 10 and a half. Gets jotted this down and then he left. What he hadn't told David was the reason he was stepping out of the room was to go get some information from the NYPD's forensics team and the uniformed officers who were currently questioning David's neighbors. And once Gets had that information, he was going to use it to try to catch David in a lie. About 19 hours later, so about 3 p.m. the next day, Gets was sitting at his desk, feeling completely exhausted, but was pounding yet another cup of coffee. He'd been up all

night interrogating David, who was still literally sitting right down the hall in the interrogation room. And also, Gets have been going back and forth with the forensics team and other officers and detectives who were out in the neighborhood, and he still had loads more to do before he could finally go to sleep. Right now, Gets was going over a new batch of reports from the uniformed officers who had gone door to door in Catherine and David's apartment building, asking the neighbors if they'd seen or heard anything unusual. And just like Gets had hoped, the information they were getting did contradict pieces of David's story. David claimed that he had left the apartment at about 6.40 p.m. and said that at that time, Catherine was fine. But two neighbors said they heard

screams coming from the apartment before 6.40 p.m. The man in the unit directly above David and Catherine said he had heard three screams at 6.28 p.m. And the people in the unit next door to David and Catherine said they'd heard screaming, barking, and the sound of furniture moving around even earlier, between 5.45 and 6 p.m. Now, none of these neighbors had done anything about these noises because the noises had stopped pretty quickly. And then there was Brad Stewart, the neighbor who had said he had found the black dog. Brad told police that when he ran into David in the hallway, it was sometime between 6 and 630. But David had said that he went back up to the apartment and found Catherine's body at about 7 p.m. a full half hour later. Now, Gets knew witnesses were often

bad with time. And in a dense New York City apartment building, there were lots of noises coming from lots of units. But still, it looked to him like David's alibi had six. serious problems. And so the detective sat back and had some more coffee, and then his phone rang. He picked it up, and it was the forensics team with an update about those shoe prints that were on Catherine's shirt and the bed sheets. And the prints were indeed left behind by a roughly average-sized man. They were a men's size 10 and a half. And this was the exact size, gets new David wore. Gets thanked them, hung up the phone, and then rushed back to the interrogation room to have yet another chat with David Hahn. This time, though, Gets did not offer David a water.

He just sat down and he confronted him with all these new facts. He told David that the killer shoe prints were exactly his shoe size, that his neighbors had heard screams before David had supposedly left the building, and that Brad said he'd seen David in the hallway at least a half an hour earlier than David had claimed he was there. Gets leaned in and told David that there were also security cameras in the apartment building, and his officers were already in the process of getting access to that footage. So if David had anything to say, you better say it now. Gets watched as David's expression went from exhausted to clearly afraid. It seemed like this might be the first time that David realized the police truly did not believe his story. And after a second

of just stunned silence, David insisted that he had not killed Catherine and he begged Gets to believe him. But when Gets just glared back at him, completely unmoved, David launched into a whole new story. one he had not mentioned at all over the last 20 hours of interrogation. David said Catherine knew this guy named Paul Cortez. She had dated him, but David had always thought he was kind of a creep. And David said Catherine had told him that Paul was obsessed with her. So David said the police really ought to go investigate Paul, not him. To Gets, this seemed like a desperate last-minute attempt to cast suspicion on somebody else.

but he knew he did have to follow every lead, so he did write down Paul's name and told David they'd look into it. When Gets finally left the station for the evening, David was still in the interrogation room, and reporters from all the daily papers were beginning to assemble right outside. The following morning, the story of Catherine's murder and pictures of her smiling face were all over the news. The front page of the New York Daily News carried a headline that made Gets grimace. It read, stripper. Inside, the article reported that Catherine's family hadn't known she was working as a topless dancer until they literally flew to the city from Ohio to collect her body. Get skim the

article at his desk. He wasn't convinced that Catherine's line of work had anything to do with her murder, but the papers seemed intent on running with it. And a media circus was like the last thing gets wanted. His team was already under enough pressure to make an arrest as it was. And it was going to be even harder to do their jobs now that a bunch of tips were going to be flooding in from the public from all this media. Gets put down the newspaper, got up from his desk, and walked down the hall to the interrogation room. He'd finished the day yesterday, feeling pretty confident that David was his murderer. So when he'd sent David home, he had given him instructions not to leave the city, because he intended to arrest David and soon. But first, Gets did need to follow up

on the other leads he had, to hopefully rule them out. And one of those leads was sitting in the interrogation room right now waiting for him. It was Paul Cortez. The man that David had named, who officers had tracked down and brought in, the man who supposedly was obsessed with Catherine. As soon as Gets entered the room, the first thing he did was look at Paul's shoes, and he could see that they were a pretty typical size, too. At a glance, they looked like they could also be a ten and a half. Gets also looked for scratches or bruises on Paul's skin, in particular on his forearms and his hands. And he did see one. There was a small injury on one of Paul's fingertips. Gatz asked about it, and Paul said his finger had just gotten pinched between a couple of

weights at the gym. Paul was very calm and soft-spoken, and he said he'd heard all about Catherine's death in the papers, and he just wanted to help if he could. When Gets told him that they'd gotten his name from David Hahn, Paul just kind of rolled his eyes and said, you know, David had always been jealous of his relationship with Catherine. Paul explained that he had met Catherine at the gym about a year ago, and they'd been dating off and on ever since. At the time of Catherine's death, he said they had been off, But Paul said he still cared about her and had hoped that maybe one day they might get back together. Paul told Gets that he hadn't actually seen Catherine on the day of her death, but that he had actually spoken to her on the phone earlier that afternoon,

which was not unusual. The two did speak on the phone from time to time. That's all it was. Paul said he actually had tried calling her a second time that day, but she didn't answer her. But Paul said he really didn't think much of it. And then Paul said that night, he wound up going shopping with some friends and then also to a local bar to watch the Jets game at about 8.30. Gets made a note to follow up on Paul's alibi.

Then he asked Paul if he had any idea who might have killed Catherine. Paul thought for a moment, and then his eyes lit up. And he said there had been some stalker guy named Joe, who'd been one of Catherine's regulars at the strip club. You know, months ago, he'd somehow gotten Catherine's phone number and had reached out to her outside of the club. And around that same time, Catherine had actually gotten roofied during one of her strip club shifts.

A roofie is called the date rape drug. It basically makes you incapacitated, and effectively unconscious. He don't remember anything. People will be given a roofy and then be sexually assaulted. That's often its use. And even though he'd never been able to prove this, Paul always suspected it had been Joe who gave Catherine that roofie. Catherine had cut off contact with Joe, but the whole incident had bothered Paul so much that he'd tried to convince Catherine to just quit the exotic dancing scene. But she refused. Paul admitted that he actually went on to call Catherine's father to tell him how worried he was about her. And,

Catherine had been so mad about that that she stopped talking to Paul for weeks. And so Gets jotted all this down and then asked Paul if he knew how to get in touch with this guy, Joe. Paul said he didn't have Joe's number, but it was definitely in Catherine's phone. Because the last time Paul ever spoke on the phone with Catherine on the afternoon of her death, she had mentioned something that really surprised him. She said that after months of silence, Joe had started calling her again, completely out of the blue. And at this, gets studied Paul's face, looking for any hint. of deception. This whole Joe's story seemed like it might just be a way to deflect suspicion from

Paul himself. But it really didn't feel like Paul was lying here. And besides, Catherine's phone records would be simple enough to verify. Gets hated to admit it, but maybe the newspapers were right. Maybe it was time he started looking seriously into some of Catherine's customers at the strip club. The following afternoon, on Wednesday, November 30th, Detective Gets was feeling really annoyed as he hung up the phone at his desk. It had been a call from another reporter, but Gets hadn't made an arrest yet, so he was staying tight-lipped. But for now, he just turned his focus back to the stack of papers on his desk. They were Catherine's cell phone records, which he'd subpoenaed yesterday, and they showed that Paul had been telling the truth. Both he and Joe had called Catherine shortly before

she died. So he'd brought in Joe for an interview, and he asked him to explain why, after months of silence, he had called Catherine right before she turned up dead. And Joe had replied he'd only called her to check in, to say he hoped she had a nice Thanksgiving. He had claimed that he was really just trying to be friendly. But then Gets just asked Joe point blank if he had ever roofied anyone's drink before. And at this, Joe's eyes went wide and he kind of sputtered out that he would never dream of doing anything like that. But based on Joe's tone, Gets really felt like He was lying. And so now, Gets felt like the entire investigation was wide open. A few days ago, he had been absolutely confident that David was the killer.

But men from Catherine's life just kept coming out of the woodwork. He now had three main suspects instead of just one. In fact, at this point, his original suspect, David, was actually looking more innocent. Gets' officers had spoken to David's coworkers at the hotel where he worked as a doorman, and they confirmed that he really had stopped and talked to them on the evening of Catherine's death, just like he had claimed. And while Gets had hoped that the security camera footage from the apartment building would prove David was lying about his alibi, at least in terms of when he was there, it actually showed David leaving the front entrance of the building at 6.38 p.m.,

which lined up with David's story because he said he left around 640. Now, this did not prove that David was innocent. Based on what the neighbors had heard, she could have been killed before 638, But there weren't a lot of cameras in the apartment building, and no angle covered the hallway outside of apartment 2D. So the footage couldn't prove one way or another, you know, whether Brad Stewart or anybody else for that matter had gone into the apartment while David was gone. Just then, his phone rang. Gets reached for it, expecting it to be another reporter, but this time he was pleasantly surprised. It was a member of the forensics team, and there was this obvious excitement in their voice. He told Gatz that they'd just discovered something big, something they

completely missed during their first sweep of Catherine's apartment. The forensics team member explained that when they'd first entered Catherine's bedroom, they had taken that mattress that was stuck behind the door and propped it up against the wall to get it out of the way. But when they'd done that, the mattress had actually covered up something that was right there on the wall all along. A bloody handprint. It was not until a couple of days later, after they'd carefully gone over everything else in the room, that they moved the mattress back down onto the floor, and that's when they found the handprint. Gets his face lit up when he heard this news, because now he knew all he had to do was go get handprints from all of his suspects, which seemed like that would be pretty easy to

do. But he quickly realized he had a problem, because some of his suspects had already lawyered up at this point, and they were refusing to speak with police, let alone hand over their prince. And Gets really could not force them to give their prince unless he arrested them. And so that meant Gets was now in this weird catch-22, because he needed the suspect's prince in order to make the arrest, but he also couldn't get their prints unless he arrested them. So at this point, the investigation kind of stalled out. Weeks went by, and Detective Getz started to get really frustrated because there was just nothing he could legally do to push the case forward. However, the case was still receiving a ton of coverage in the press, and to a lot of people, it looked like the NYPD was just sort of dropping the

ball here. But then on December 16th, so three weeks after Catherine's murder, the news coverage that had annoyed Gets so much actually ended up giving him exactly what he needed. That day, a woman called the NYPD because of something she had seen on the front page of one of the newspapers in New York. And what this woman said led gets directly to Catherine's killer. Based on forensic evidence and numerous interviews, this is what police believe happened to Catherine Woods on the evening of November 27, 2005. Shortly after 6.40 p.m., the killer climbed the stairs inside of Catherine's apartment building. They knew that at that very moment, she'd be getting ready for another shift at flash dancers. And the fact that she even worked there secretly

really bothered the killer way more than they would ever let on. The idea of Catherine dancing and giving her attention to other men made the killer so jealous. They couldn't even stand it. Now, the killer had tried to talk with Catherine and win her over, but she had rejected him. So the time for talking was over. And so the killer quietly walked up to the door of apartment 2D and reached down and turned the handle, which was unlocked. As they slipped silently into the apartment,

the killer brought out the knife. that they had hidden inside of their sweatshirt. But then something they had not anticipated happened. There was this dog lying on the apartment floor that got up and began to bark at them. For a moment, the killer thought about just abandoning the plan and leaving. But then Catherine, alerted by the dog, came out of the bedroom and looked right at the killer

and saw the knife in their hand. Catherine screamed and ran right back into her bedroom, the very bedroom that she had made explicitly off limits to the killer, And just thinking about that, this surge of anger suddenly overtook them. And the killer charged into the room after her. Catherine was already on the other side of the bed, lifting up the mattress as a sort of barricade. But the killer just forced their way past it,

and they grabbed Catherine from behind. But Catherine, she fought back. She began thrashing around, doing everything she could to break free. But she couldn't. And so they struggled and began smashing into the furniture and knocking things down all over the room. and it was around this point that the killer lifted up that knife they had brought, and they slit her neck as deep as they could.

But even then, even with this fatal wound, Catherine kept on fighting. And she was so vicious that the killer actually had to brace themselves against a wall just to keep their balance. And in the chaos, the killer didn't realize, you know, as they're fighting off Catherine, that they had placed a bloody hand on the wall, leaving a print behind. Finally, when Catherine fell to the floor, the killer was still blinded with their rage, and they just got down there and began stabbing her over and over again. And then finally, when Catherine stopped moving, the killer just jumped up and ran out of the apartment.

But when they got into the hallway, they realized that black dog that had barked at them had gotten out. Now, the killer wanted the dog back in the apartment, but the dog was clearly on edge. They were still barking at the killer. and so instead the killer just shut the apartment door, trapping the dog in the hallway, and then the killer fled the apartment building out the back door where there was no security camera. And for weeks, the killer was not caught until their violent past came back to bite them. Several weeks after Catherine's murder, a young woman who didn't know Catherine was walking down the streets of New York when she noticed a newspaper.

And on the cover of this newspaper was plastered the face of the killer. who was currently a suspect in a murder case. And this woman was horrified because she knew this person. They, the killer, had sexually assaulted her about a year earlier, but she had never filed a police report. But after seeing that this horrible person was being actively accused of murder, she called the NYPD and she told them what she knew. And the NYPD's Special Victims Unit used this woman's accusation as the basis to arrest the killer.

And finally, once they were under arrest, Gets was able to get their handprint. And those prints did in fact match the bloody handprint found on Catherine's wall. They belonged to Catherine's on-again, off-again boyfriend, Paul Cortez. David's suspicions of Paul had been right all along. Paul was a creep who had assaulted at least one other woman before he killed Catherine. Data collected from nearby cell towers would prove that Paul was near Catherine's apartment building immediately before her murder, and he had been calling her over and over again. When she ignored his calls, Paul waited until he saw David leave the apartment to go get his car,

and then he hustled upstairs to the apartment knowing Catherine would be alone. Even though David was only gone for 20 minutes, that was still long enough for Paul to get inside the apartment, murder Catherine, and slip away unnoticed. Paul was arrested about a month after Catherine's murder on Wednesday, December 23, 2003, 2005. He was found guilty of second-degree murder and sentenced to 25 years to life. 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. Our head of production is Zach Levitt, Produced by Jeremy Bone. This episode was written by Zeth Lundy. 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 Lacasio and Cole Lacasio. Additional audio editing by Jordan Stidham. Mixed and mastered by Brendan Cain. Production coordination by Samantha Collins.

Production support by Antonio Manata and Delana Corley. artwork by Jessica Klogsten Kiner, 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 SeriousXM 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 ya.