MrBallen Podcast: Strange, Dark & Mysterious Stories - Death Row

Episode Date: March 10, 2022

Carol and Reggie Sumner were high school sweethearts in the late 1960s, but after graduation they broke up and went their separate ways. 40 years later, after both of their respective marriages ended in divorce, the pair reconnected through a random unintentional phone call. Within days of this chance encounter, the two were happily going on dates again as if they were picking up right where they left off in high school. The pair would get married and move to Florida where they planned to live out their days, relaxing on the beach and enjoying each other's company. However, shortly after moving to "The Sunshine State" a very unexpected guest would turn up at their front door, who would ultimately change their lives forever.DISCLAIMER: This podcast is the remastered audio from a popular video on my "MrBallen" YouTube channel. The video is called "Her evil plan put her on death row" (Here is the link to the video -- https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=-8gIahvAcas)For 100s more stories like this one, check out 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 @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 8 new episodes of the Mr. Ballin podcast one month early and all episodes ad-free on Amazon Music. Download the Amazon Music app today. Today's story is the remastered audio from Her Evil Plan, Put Her on Death Row, which is a very popular video on my YouTube channel. My telling of this story gained notoriety on YouTube largely because of the intimate detail I put into the death scene. It's like you're getting a front row seat to one of the most heinous crimes in recent history.

As such, listener discretion is advised. 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 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 go into the five-star review button's favorite music playlist and replace all of the songs with the Kidz Bop versions of them. Also, please subscribe to the Mr. Ballin podcast wherever you listen to podcasts so you don't miss any of our weekly uploads.

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

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Famous wherever you listen to your podcasts, or listen early and ad-free on Wondery Plus on Apple Podcasts or the Wondery app. Okay, let's get into today's story. In the early 1960s, two high school classmates in South Carolina named Carol and Reggie fell in love with each other. Every day in the halls, they'd hold hands and they'd laugh with each other and whisper to each other. And then outside of school, they were inseparable. But despite their seemingly perfect relationship, it didn't last long. They both had different ideas about what the future should hold, and so after graduation, they broke up. Reggie went on to join the U.S. Navy,

where he served for a number of years all over the world. He would at one point get married, but that marriage would end quickly, and then after he got out of the military, he got a job at a railroad back at his hometown in South Carolina. As for Carol, after graduation, she got married of the military, he got a job at a railroad back at his hometown in South Carolina. As for Carol, after graduation, she got married and divorced too, twice actually, but it was her second failed marriage that nearly killed her. On February 18th, 1987, Carol was living with her 10-year-old daughter Rhonda in South Carolina when her estranged second husband came up to the door and knocked.

Carol opened the door and her ex-husband drew a gun and shot her six times in front of her daughter before turning around and fleeing. The police would later find his body inside of his car on the side of the road. He had shot himself. As for Carol, the doctors were able to save her life, but the injuries she sustained from the attack were crippling. She was blind in one eye and she had chronic pain, and so her young daughter had to start taking care of her full-time. Over the next eight years, Carol steadily improved and regained some of her independence, but in 1995 she had a huge setback. She started feeling ill, and so she went in to see a doctor, and the doctor did a blood test and they discovered she had liver cancer. It would turn out the blood that was given to her after the attack that had been transfused into her body to save her life, it had been tainted with hepatitis C. And so she got

hepatitis C without realizing it, and because it had been untreated, it led to liver cancer. Rhonda remembers when her mother came home after being given this terrible news, she just sat down and was silent for a minute, and then she just kind of muttered to herself, I just can't get away from this man. He's killing me all over again. But despite being dealt such an unfair hand in life, Carol was determined to not let her injuries or her illness define her. And so she went out looking for a job that could accommodate her physical limitations, and she found it. She was hired as a part-time customer service rep for a television cable company. She was very happy about this job and very proud of it because it was the first time she was working after the attack, and so for once it felt like her life was going back to normal

again. A few years later in 2000, when Carol was working at the cable company, her phone rang and she answered it the way she answered every other call, but the voice she heard on the other end, she immediately recognized. He introduced himself as Reggie Sumner. And so Carol asked him, are you the Reggie Sumner from 1962 at Garrett High School in South Carolina? And he said, yeah, that's me. And Carol said, I'm your ex-girlfriend. We dated in high school.

And so it was this incredible reunion, this totally chance phone call. And for the next hour or so, they just chatted on the phone about everything from their kids to their relationships they've been in to what they're up to now. I mean, they had a lot to catch up on since they hadn't seen or heard from each other in nearly 40 years. And so before they hung up, they realized they lived near each other, and so they made plans to get together in person. Rhonda would say her mother, when she came home that night, was like a 16-year-old girl all over again. She talked endlessly about how great Reggie was and how good-looking he was and how excited she was about their upcoming date.

And so a couple of days later, Carol and Reggie have this date. And when Carol comes home, Rhonda would say it was obvious her mother had fallen head over heels in love with Reggie all over again. And luckily, Reggie had heels in love with Reggie all over again. And luckily, Reggie had fallen in love with Carol too, because less than six months later, they got married and became Mr. and Mrs. Sumner. Within a year of their marriage, they decided to sell their home in South Carolina and move to Jacksonville, Florida to retire. Even though caring for her mother for all those years had been quite difficult for Rhonda, she said she was very sad to see her

mother go, but at the same time, she was really happy for her because it seemed like she had found the one. Over the next couple of years, Rhonda stayed in touch with her mother, speaking to her almost every single day on the phone. But in July of 2005, Rhonda's mother stopped answering her phone. At first, Rhonda wasn't that concerned, but after 24 hours of not hearing from her mother or from Reggie, she did get concerned. Because even though Reggie was able to care for Carol, he wasn't in the best shape himself. He had debilitating diabetes, and he had recently broken his leg and so was largely confined to a wheelchair. And so if they were to leave their house for an extended period of time, they wouldn't

do it without asking for help from Rhonda. And so over the next couple of days, Rhonda incessantly called her mother and called Reggie, but she never got through to them. And so finally, after almost 72 hours of not hearing from them, she decides to just hop in her car and drive the four hours to Jacksonville to check on them personally. When she got there, she saw her mother and Reggie's car was not in the driveway like it normally would be. And so Rhonda went up to the front door and she knocked and she's yelling for her mom, but nobody's coming to the door, even though lights are on inside the house.

And so Rhonda eventually tries the handle of the door and it's open. And so she opens it up, she steps inside, she yells again for her mom and for Reggie, but no one yells back. And then she sees their beloved dog, Mikey, that they brought everywhere with them was still in the house. And so she's thinking, where would they have gone without bringing Mikey? And so Rhonda continues to walk through the house into the kitchen. And when she gets there, she sees on the table are two plates of food where the food looks like it's a couple of days old and it's just sitting on the plate like they had been eating it and then just abandoned it there. And then in the sink are all these dirty dishes, and then on the stove are half-cooked pots of food.

And Rhonda knows her mother is an extremely tidy person, and she never would have left her house with dirty dishes and food out on the table. And so red flags are going up for Rhonda. But what ultimately sealed the deal for her was when she turned and looked on one of the counters, she saw the cell phone that Reggie and Carol shared was still sitting there along with Carol's purse, and then next to that was both of their medications, which was Reggie's insulin and Carol's liver cancer medication, both of which were life-saving and needed to be taken

every single day. There's no way they would have left the house without those things. And so Rhonda immediately calls the Jacksonville Police Department and she files a missing person report, and before long the missing couple report. And before long, the missing couple's story is all over the news and all of the networks are asking people if they have information to come forward. But no one came forward. And so the only lead the police had was to track down the Sumner's car, which was missing from their driveway when Rhonda showed up at their house. So the police shared the description of their vehicle all across the state and very quickly they got a hit. The car had been found abandoned in a Florida town about one hour west of Jacksonville. It had been parked in this semi-forested, very secluded area off of a dirt road, and there was nothing inside of it,

but they saw the battery had been taken out, leading some of the officers to speculate that perhaps the Sumners really had just driven away from their home without telling anybody and then ran into car troubles. But that theory would quickly be thrown out the window when five hours later, the Jacksonville police received a very strange phone call. The man who called in said he was Reggie Sumner, and he said he had seen the news about him and his wife being missing and that that was just totally not true, that in reality they had left, but they were just fine and they'd be back soon. The police are immediately suspicious of this person. They don't think it's Reggie Sumner because for one, he sounds like a young man and Reggie is a 61 year old. And so the voice didn't really line up. And just the way he was talking about this disappearance, like it was no big deal, that also just didn't really make sense. And so one of the officers asked Reggie,

are you with your wife, Carol? And he said, yep, I'm with her. Here she sense. And so one of the officers asked Reggie, are you with your wife, Carol? And he said, yep, I'm with her. Here she is. And so a woman hops on the phone who says she's Carol Sumner, but she sounds far too young to be Carol Sumner, who's 61. This sounds like a 18, 19, 20 year old girl. And she too just reiterates that everything's just fine.

And they've gone out for a couple of days. There's nothing to worry about. And you know, you police can stop looking for us. And so after this call ends, the police at this point are convinced that this simply cannot be Carol and Reggie. But to make sure, they call in Rhonda and they have her listen to the recording of this conversation with the so-called Reggie and Carol. And right away, Rhonda says, that's not my mom and that's not Reggie. And so at this point, the police assumed that these two people who called in pretending to be the Sumners probably had something to do with the disappearance of the real Sumners.

And so while they waited for the trace on this phone call to come back, which would give them information about who was calling and from where, the police decided to investigate another angle. The police looked at the Sumners' bank statements, and they saw their bank card had been used at an ATM in South Carolina after the Sumners had been reported missing. And so they called that bank and they asked for the CCTV footage from that ATM and when they watched it they saw that it was not Carol or Reggie Sumner withdrawing funds, it was some unknown man in his early 20s. Right after this discovery of this unknown man, the trace from the phone conversation with the imposter Sumners came back, except it was tied to a fake name at a fake address. So that wasn't helpful to the police in their investigation. However, when they went through this cell phone's call logs, which they got with the phone trace, they saw whoever owned the cell phone had recently placed a call to a car rental company in South Carolina.

had recently placed a call to a car rental company in South Carolina. And so the police call this car rental company and they speak to the manager and they're able to figure out that somebody using this cell phone number had indeed called and had rented a car and the car they rented matched the description of the car the unknown man was driving in the ATM surveillance footage. But this car had been rented to a woman. Her name was Tiffany Cole. The rental company told police that all of their cars had satellite tracking information built into them. And so police were able to use that information

to track Tiffany's rental car to a motel in South Carolina. The initial thought was that maybe the Sumners are being held against their will in this motel. And so very quickly, a police force was organized. And on the morning of July 14th, so six days after the Sumners were listed as missing, they arrive at this motel, they go to the front desk, they find out what room Tiffany is in, they get the key and they go up and they open the door. 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, 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. 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. If you're listening to this podcast, then chances are good you are a fan of The Strange, Dark and Mysterious.

And if that's the case, then I've got some good news. We just launched a brand new Strange, Dark, and Mysterious podcast called Mr. Ballin's Medical Mysteries. And as the name suggests, it's a show about medical mysteries, a genre that many fans have been asking us to dive into for years. And we finally decided to take the plunge and the show is awesome. In this free weekly show, we explore bizarre unheard of diseases, strange medical mishaps, unexplainable deaths, and everything in between. Each story is totally true and totally terrifying. Go follow Mr. Ballin's Medical Mysteries wherever you get your podcasts. And if you're a Prime member, you can listen early and ad-free on Amazon Music. The Sumners were not inside.

Instead, there were three young adults sitting there. It was 24-year-old Tiffany Cole, her boyfriend, 23-year-old Michael James Jackson, and his friend, 19-year-old Alan Wade. Also in the room were dozens of bags of recently purchased merchandise, like computers and video games and clothes and perfume. And also, they discovered the key to the Sumners' vehicle purchased merchandise like computers and video games and clothes and perfume and also they

discovered the key to the Sumner's vehicle and Reggie Sumner's prized coin collection the police brought all three back to the police station and put them in separate rooms to be interrogated at this point it was obvious to police that these three had something to do with the Sumner's disappearance they had all these things in the room that tied them to the missing couple and so now the police as they interrogated them it was not so much about connecting them to the Sumner's disappearance. They had all these things in the room that tied them to the missing couple. And so now the police, as they interrogated them, it was not so much about connecting them to the Sumners as much as it was about helping them find the Sumners. At first, all three of them either didn't talk or were totally uncooperative. But under intense questioning, Tiffany cracked a little bit. She said that they had robbed the Sumners, but nothing more. They

didn't do anything else besides rob them, and there had been a fourth person involved in the robbery, 19-year-old Bruce Nixon, who was friends with Alan Wade. Bruce lived nearby, so the police quickly rounded him up and brought him in for questioning, and unlike the other three, Bruce immediately caved, and the story he told about what happened to the Sumners brought many of the police that were involved in this investigation to tears. He said it all started with Tiffany. Tiffany used to be neighbors with the Sumners back when they still lived in South Carolina. Tiffany had a pretty rough upbringing, and her father was permanently sick, and so the Sumners kind of took her under their wing and looked after her

and built a very close relationship with her and kind of treated her like she was one of their daughters. Anything she needed, if she needed money, food, anything, they would give it to her. For example, in 2001, right before they left for Florida, they sold a car to Tiffany, but they sold it for basically nothing because they knew she didn't have any money and she really needed a car. basically nothing because they knew she didn't have any money and she really needed a car. Four years later in June of 2005, Tiffany was partying in Jacksonville, Florida with her new boyfriend, Michael James Jackson, when they got kicked out of the house they planned on staying in for the night. And so now they don't have a place to stay. They don't have any money. And that's when Tiffany remembers the Sumners had moved to Jacksonville and they would always help

her out if she needed anything. And so the two of them drive to the Sumners house in the middle of the night they haven't called them and they just knock on the door totally uninvited and Carol comes to the door and when she opens it she sees Tiffany and immediately she's like oh my goodness I haven't seen you in so long come in come in who are you oh Michael great to meet you come on inside I'll get your food we'll get you fed what do you need what can we do for you And so that's when Tiffany explains to them that their plans had kind of fallen through and they didn't have a place to stay that night. And would it be possible to stay with them? And so Carol and Reggie right away say, absolutely no problem. Tiffany, Michael, you guys are guests here. You're welcome. Stay as long as you want. And so that night, Carol cooked a big meal for

them and they all sat down at the table. And at some point, Carol and Reggie talk about the sale of their house in South Carolina. And somehow it came up that they had made $99,000 in profit from the sale. And they were so happy about it because now they could really retire comfortably. And so as soon as they said that, Tiffany and Michael shot glances at each other because they knew they had to come back and rob them. The next morning, Carol and Reggie got up early. They made coffee and they made breakfast and they were hoping that Tiffany and Michael would stick around for the day and spend some more time with them. But Tiffany and Michael were very quick to want to leave. They said, thank you very much. We got to hit the road. And so they left. And as soon as they get in the car, they start planning how they're going to come back and rob the Sumners and get their hands on that $99,000.

One month later, on the evening of July 8th, after all robbery preparations have been made, Bruce Nixon and Alan Wade show up at the Sumner house and they knock on the door. When the door opens, it's Carol and she doesn't recognize either of them. But being as kind and generous as she was, she said, hey boys, you know, what can I do for you? How can I help you? And this was exactly what Bruce and Alan were expecting based on what Tiffany told them. She said this couple would be very easy to exploit. And they tell her that their car had broken down and they needed to use her phone. And so she's a little bit skeptical, but ultimately she says, sure, come on in. And so Bruce and Alan go inside the house, the door shuts behind them. And as soon as it does, one of them draws a fake gun that looks very real and pointed it at Carol, while the other one began tying her up with cord and with duct tape.

And so Carol begins screaming and making a bunch of noise, and Reggie, who's in the garage out of sight, he hears her. He comes running in to see what's going on, and he sees these two men who immediately attack him, and Reggie's got a broken leg, and he he's already pretty weak and frail and so he doesn't put up much of a fight and before long he and his wife were all taped up and restrained on the couch and they were having duct tape wrapped around their heads until everything was covered except for a slit underneath their nose so they could breathe. And so with the couple completely under control and at the mercy of their captors, one of the men texted Michael who was down the road with Tiffany inside of Tiffany's rental car and the text just said all clear. And what that meant was Michael could now come up and help them rob the house. And so Tiffany stays down the road in the rental car,

Michael makes his way up, he goes inside, and he, Bruce, and Alan proceeded to ransack the house. And while these three men are moving room to room, taking all of their valuables, Reggie and Carol are probably thinking to themselves that, you know what, this is awful, we're getting robbed, but after they take whatever they take and they leave, we'll be fine, we'll recover. But when these three men finished taking all of their valuable items, they decided that they would also take Reggie and Carol. So they stood the couple up and they marched them into the garage and they put them in the trunk of their own car. At this point, Bruce left the Sumner's house and went down the road and got in Tiffany's rental car. And Michael and Alan, they got into

the Sumner's car and the two cars met up on the road and then drove 40 minutes northwest just over the border into Georgia, where they found this access road and they went down it until they reached this very secluded section of forest. This was not just some random spot in the middle of the woods in Georgia. This was a pre-selected spot that Tiffany and the others had been out to two days earlier to prepare it. And what they had done to prepare was to dig a grave for the Sumners. Michael and Alan, in Sumners car drove up right next to the grave site while Tiffany and Bruce came up right behind them. And once they'd all stopped, they got out of the car and they went right behind the Sumners car and they popped open the trunk. It's believed the

temperature inside of that trunk was well over 100 degrees. And so Reggie and Carol were sweating profusely and the sweat had caused their restraints to slip off their wrists and slip down off their face. And so the two of them were found holding on to each other and crying and praying. Seeing how weak they already were, the group decided they did not need to put new tape around their wrists or their face. They weren't going to go anywhere. And so they grabbed the two and they pulled them out and dumped them on the ground. It was probably around this time that the Sumners realized Tiffany was one of these four people that was doing this horrible thing to them. And I can only imagine the

heartbreak they experienced. This girl that they took in under their wing that they thought of as a daughter was betraying them in such a heinous and horrible way. But there was no time to feel upset about it because as soon as they were dumped on the ground, Michael grabbed Reggie and kind of threw him over to the side and said, sit down, don't move or I'm going to kill you and your wife. And then the others grabbed Carol and dragged her away from her husband over to the edge of the grave where they literally ripped the jewelry off of her face and off of her body. And then after all the jewelry was gone, they pushed her into the grave. Then they walked over to Reggie and dragged him over and threw him in with his wife. As soon as the couple was in the grave together, they repositioned themselves so they

were both sitting up one in front of the other with Carol behind Reggie and she threw her legs and her arms around Reggie just kind of clutching onto him and she buried her head into his back and she began crying. The original plan apparently had been to take the Sumners and put them in this grave and pretend like you were going to do something to them to scare them into giving up all of their information, all of their banking information and anything else that was valuable. And it worked. And so as Carol is crying into Reggie's back, Reggie is pleading with the group. He's pleading to them. Let me give you everything I have, whatever you need.

It's yours. And so Michael said, give me all your ATM bank card numbers, give me your PIN numbers, everything. And so Reggie did. He gave him all the information he could possibly give to him. And then for some reason, despite the fact that at this point, the group has taken everything of value from this poor couple. They have extracted all the valuable information they could possibly get from them. Despite that, they decide that that's not enough. They need to kill the Sumners. And they need to kill them in the worst way imaginable. They need to bury them alive. For hours, the group slowly, shovelful by shovelful, filled in this hole with Reggie and Carol sitting at the bottom begging for their lives.

But the group didn't care at all. They just kept shoveling dirt down on top of them until the dirt and mud had gotten up to their necks and the weight of the dirt was pressing in on their chests and was making it really hard to breathe. And so as Carol and Reggie are feeling this happening to them, they can feel themselves being crushed under this weight. Their cries for help become more and more desperate, but more spaced apart because their breathing at this point is so labored, it's so hard to get a full breath, that they're conserving their air at this point. And then at some point, as the dirt crept closer and closer to their mouths, they had to tilt their heads up to try to get a good breath of air. But when they did that,

they began shoveling dirt directly onto their faces, causing them to choke and gag. They're inhaling this, and it's becoming nearly impossible to catch a breath. They're dying at this point. And so finally another layer of dirt was thrown on top of them and they disappeared under the soil. But their sounds didn't go away. They continued to whimper and make sounds as more and more dirt was put down until finally they had filled in the hole and they began packing the dirt down with the backs of their shovels and they could hear underneath the soil still the sounds of this couple dying. This was a slow and horrible death. After the killers were done, they left the site and they took the Sumner's car and they dumped it in Florida where it was ultimately found. And then they all piled into the rental car. They went to an ATM and pulled some of the Sumner's money out and then went on a spending spree. During that spending spree, Tiffany would

pose for several pictures in the back of the rental car. In these photos, Tiffany is all smiles and clearly having a wonderful time, despite the fact that literally just hours earlier, she had killed the very people who had taken her in and treated her like a daughter. If you want to see those pictures, just Google the words Tiffany Cole celebrating. After their autopsies, the medical examiner explained that both Reggie and Carol had dirt packed into their nose, into their mouths, in their throats, in their stomach, and in their lungs, meaning their actual cause of death was being buried alive. In exchange for telling investigators what happened and for leading them to the gravesite where the Sumners

were, Bruce Nixon was spared the death penalty and given a life sentence. As for Michael, Alan, and Tiffany, they were all sentenced to death. for listening to the Mr. Ballin Podcast. If you got something out of this episode and you haven't done this already, please go into the 5-star review button's favorite music playlist and replace all of the songs with the Kidz Bop versions of them. Also, please subscribe to the Mr. Ballin Podcast on Spotify, Apple Podcasts, Amazon,

Google, and everywhere else you get your podcasts. This podcast airs every Monday and Thursday morning, but in the meantime, you can always watch one of the hundreds of stories I have posted on my YouTube channel, which is just called Mr. Ballin. If you want to get in touch with me, please follow me on any major social media platform and then send me a direct message. My username on all these platforms is just at Mr. Ballin. Lastly, we have some really cool merchandise, so head on over to shopmrballin.com

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