MrBallen Podcast: Strange, Dark & Mysterious Stories - Family Secrets

Episode Date: June 2, 2022

Today’s podcast features two separate, unique, stories that are both themed around the same thing, family secrets. The first story you will hear is called, “The Most Terrifying Family You’ve Never Heard Of," and it’s about an obscure cult who admitted to performing a heinous ritual in the 1970's. The second story you will hear is called, “Someone in This Family Has a Secret,” and it’s about a family in Ohio who started noticing some very strange people lurking around the outside of their house at night.DISCLAIMER: This podcast is the remastered audio from two popular videos on my "MrBallen" YouTube channel. The first story, "The Most Terrifying Family You’ve Never Heard Of" is from a video of the same name. (Here is the link to that video -- https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Pyj8FKZaW0A). The second story, "Someone in this family has a secret" is from a video called, "Someone in this photo has an EVIL SECRET." (Link to that video -- https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=MC8ZfyNBPu0)For 100s more stories like these, 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.

Today's podcast features two separate, unique stories that are both themed around the same thing, family secrets. The audio from both of these stories has been pulled from my YouTube channel and has been remastered for this episode. The links to the original YouTube videos are in the description. The first story you'll hear is called The Most Terrifying Family You've Never Heard Of, and it's about an obscure cult who admitted to performing a heinous ritual in the 1970s. The second story you'll hear is called Someone

in This Family Has a Secret, and it's about a family in Ohio who started noticing some very strange people lurking around the outside of their house at night. Both of these stories contain graphic content, but it is the first story about the cult ritual that needs a special warning. It contains extreme graphic violence and sexual content. As such, listener discretion is advised. But before we get into today's stories, 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 offer to curl the five-star review button's hair for their wedding, but then repeatedly touch

the top of their ear with the curling iron. Also, please subscribe to the Mr. Boland podcast wherever you listen to podcasts so you don't miss any of our weekly uploads. Hello, I'm Emily, and I'm one of the hosts of Terribly Famous, the show that takes you inside the lives of our biggest celebrities. And they don't get much bigger than the man who made badminton sexy.

Okay, maybe that's a stretch, but if I say pop star and shuttlecocks, you know who I'm talking about. No? Short shorts? Free cocktails? Careless whispers? Okay, last one. It's not Andrew Ridgely. Yep, that's right. It's Stone Cold icon George Michael. From teen pop sensation to one of the

biggest solo artists on the planet, join us for our new series, George Michael's Fight for Freedom. From the outside, it looks like he has it all. But behind the trademark dark sunglasses is a man in turmoil. George is trapped in a lie of his own making with a secret he feels would ruin him if the truth ever came out. Follow Terribly Famous wherever you listen to your podcasts or listen early and ad-free on Wanderie Plus on Apple Podcasts or the Wanderie app. Wondery Plus on Apple Podcasts or the Wondery app. 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 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. Okay, let's get into our first story called The Most Terrifying Family You've Never Heard Of. In the early 1950s, Harold Alexander, who was a young stonemason living in Hamburg, Germany, came in contact with an old man named George Reel. George was the leader of a small religious group called the Lorber Society. This group, which never had a large membership at any point in their short history, was rooted in the Christian faith, but their views were far more extreme than the average Christian congregation. For example, many Christians believe in the concept of self-denial, which in layman's

terms means to deny oneself some personal human pleasures, like certain sexual practices or the overindulgence of food or drinking, and all of this is done to gain favor with God. But George and the other members of the Lorber society took this concept of self-denial to the extreme. They practiced it so aggressively and so literally that nobody in the society could really have a life of their own. All they could do to adhere to their society's very strict rules was to worship God 24-7. In addition to their very severe lifestyles, members of the Lorber

society also believed that anybody outside of their small society was basically evil. So Harold meets George. It's unclear exactly how he meets George, but he does. And immediately, Harold is blown away by George. He thinks he's totally incredible. He's so charismatic. And apparently, George felt equally highly about Harold. And so right away, they have this friendship. They strike up. And Harold and his wife, Drogma, they end up joining the Lorber society, and they completely give themselves over to this very intense lifestyle, and they listen to everything George tells them to do. And then very quickly after Harold and his wife had joined this society, their leader George became very ill, and it became clear he was going to die soon. When George was on his deathbed, Harold went

to visit him, and after speaking with him privately in this room, Harold emerges and he tells his wife that George has told him that he is going to be the next leader of the Lorber society once George passes away. And so his wife accepts this, as does the rest of the society members, and then after George actually does die, everyone in the society just turns towards Harold and begins listening to him and following him. It's worth noting that we don't know for sure if George really did tell Harold that he was going to be the next leader of the Lorber society, or if Harold just made that up because he knew George was going to die soon, and he could kind of get away with stealing that title. Over the next few years that Harold

was in charge of the Lorber Society, he began introducing a new concept to the members. He would continuously tell them that they needed to be ready for when the next prophet of God returned to the earth. Harold told his members that when this happened, one, Harold would know immediately and he would tell them, and two, whatever this prophet wanted, no matter how confusing or crazy or terrible, they had to do it without question because this was God's will. In 1953, so roughly a year or two after Harold has taken over the Lorber society, he and his wife, Dragma, have their second child.

It's their first boy and they name him Frank. And as soon as this child is born, Harold looks at him and determines that this boy, his son, is the prophet they have all been waiting for. And so he tells his wife, and he tells the members of the Lorber society, that his son, Frank, is the prophet of God, and everyone across the board completely accepts it. As the prophet, Frank grew up. He was shamelessly worshipped and waited on 24-7 by the members of the Lorber society and his own family. And so naturally, this had a profound impact on the way Frank thought and how he behaved. By the time Frank was at the age of grade school children, he fully believed that he was the prophet of God,

and he began using that authority to kind of boss his family around more than he really needed to, especially his three sisters and his mother. But no one ever intervened, because again, this is the prophet of God, and he can do whatever he wants. When Frank turned 16, he started thinking about girls and sex, but he was conflicted because he had been taught everybody outside of this society he was a part of were evil. And so he didn't want to pollute himself by having sex with these evil women. And so he went to his father and told him that he wants to start having sex with his mother and his sisters in order to stay pure.

And his father, Harold, not only embraced the idea, he encouraged it. And in fact, he would often join in with his son during the sexual intercourse. As for the four Alexander women, they completely accepted their new roles as sexual objects because they believed by doing whatever Frank the prophet wanted, they were serving God. Eventually one of the sisters began talking to some of her very few friends at school about how she was kind of jealous of her other sisters for all the attention they were getting from Frank. And so the friends kind of picked up on this strange relationship between the siblings, and before long, rumors had started about there

being some incestuous relations inside of this family, and those rumors eventually made their way to the parents of students, and then from the parents, that made its way to the police, and before long, Harold had discovered that the Hamburg police were about to launch an investigation into his family. And at the same time, Harold also discovered that members of the Lorber Society, they had heard about these incest rumors as well, and they had their own suspicions already, and they were not on board with incest. And so they were very clearly starting to distance themselves from Harold and his family. And so it was pretty clear to Harold that the

writing was on the wall. He and his family were no longer welcome in Hamburg. And so he goes to the Lorber Society and kind of retires and says, you know, I'm leaving. You need to find yourself a new leader of this society. And then he and his family completely broke ties with the Lorber Society and kind of retires and says, you know, I'm leaving, you need to find yourself a new leader of this society. And then he and his family completely broke ties with the Lorber Society. They left Hamburg and fled south to Santa Cruz, which is a city on the Canary Islands in Spain. And so they settle into this little apartment inside of this busy city, and very quickly they fell back into their old routines of constantly worshipping Frank, the prophet of God, despite the fact that they were no longer affiliated with the Lorber society, and so their actions were now being driven by their own personal belief system.

Ten months later, on December 22, 1970, a wealthy doctor named Walter Trankler was at his villa, which was located not far from where the Alexanders lived, when he heard a knock at his front door. When he opened the front door, he saw there were these two men who he didn't recognize, who were covered head to toe in what looked like mud, and at first he was totally taken aback by their appearance and almost wanted to just shut the door, but in order to be polite, he kept the door slightly open and said, you know, hey, how can I help you guys? And the two men would introduce themselves as Harold and Frank Alexander, and they were there to speak with one of their family members, Sabine. Sabine was one of Frank's two younger sisters, and she worked for the doctor as a housemaid. And so the doctor, he didn't know any of Sabine's family members, so he just kind of took their

request at face value and said, hold on, let me go get her. And so he leaves the front door, he goes into the kitchen, and he finds Sabine, this 15-year-old girl, and he tells her that your father and your brother are waiting for you outside, they want to talk to you. And so Sabine, without saying a word, puts her knife and the food down, she walks out of the kitchen with the doctor, and as they're walking towards the front door, the doctor stops about 10 or 15 feet away from the front door to kind of allow Sabine to walk up and have a semi-private conversation with her relatives, although they're still inside of his house, so he didn't want to go too far. And so the doctor is standing maybe 15 feet away, wondering if he should just turn

around or maybe just go into the other room to let them speak, when he overhears the father, Harold, say something truly horrific to his daughter. It was so shocking that the doctor stopped what he was doing, turned, and looked directly at Sabine to see how she was going to react to what she just heard. But to the doctor's absolute shock, Sabine didn't break down and start crying or start screaming out in pain or anguish. Instead, she reached out and grabbed her father's muddy hand and pressed it to her cheek and said, I'm sure you did what was necessary. And then the two embraced. The doctor stood there totally shocked, staring at these people wondering what the heck they're doing. Why are they here? What are they talking about? Is this

really happening? And then he just kind of blurts out, hey, I'll be right back. Stay right there. And then the doctor turned around and darted out of the front hall into another room where he barricaded himself inside. And then he called called the police when the police showed up just a few minutes later they rolled into the front lot and they saw Harold Frank and Sabine were still just casually standing in the front doorway of the doctor's Villa seemingly not really trying to go anywhere or do anything and so the police get out of their car they walk walk up to the trio, and they say, you know, what's going on? What are you doing here? And Harold, very calmly and casually, tells one of the officers the same horrible thing that the doctor overheard him saying to Sabine. Except this time, Harold specified to the officers where this horrible thing took place.

He said it happened inside of their apartment. happened inside of their apartment. The police were shocked at Harold's candidness and the fact that his two kids were standing right next to him and they're hearing what their father is saying. They too are just totally detached and very calm as if nothing their father is saying is having any effect on them. It's just totally business as usual. And so the police asked Harold to repeat the story a few times to make sure they were hearing him correctly, and then they just arrested Harold and his two kids. After the three Alexanders were brought to the police station, three other police officers were sent over to the Alexander's apartment in Santa Cruz to see if what Harold had said was actually true. And when these officers opened the front door to that apartment, they immediately could tell it was all true.

The following is the story of what happened inside of that apartment based on the testimony given by Frank and Harold. On December 21st, 1970, so that's one day before Frank and Harold arrived on the doorstep of the doctor's villa, the father and son were home in their apartment with the mother, Dragma, as well as two of the three sisters. It was 18-year-old Marina and 15-year-old Petra. The other sister, Sabine, she was over at the doctor's villa. She was staying with him for a couple of days while she worked there. At some point that afternoon, Dragma and Harold left the living room and went into one of the bedrooms to lie down and take a nap. And after they lie down, Frank, for some reason, gets up from the living room and walks into the bedroom and sits down on the edge of the bed and just stares down at his mother. And when his mother rolls over and

looks up at her son, Frank would later tell police that the look she gave him was suggestive and it was offensive to Frank and he believed she was not permitted to look at him that way. And so in this moment that she's looking at him, he said he instinctively knew that the killing hour was upon them. The killing hour was not a Lorber society concept. It was something that Frank and most likely Harold had come up with, and the rest of the family, the mother and the three sisters, had totally accepted. According to Frank and Harold, women were unpure, and the only way to purify them, i.e. send them to heaven and not hell, was to murder them. And so it was just fundamentally understood in the Alexander household that at some point, Frank was going to declare that the killing hour was upon

them. And when that happened, all the women in the household were told to stop what they were doing and wait for Frank to sacrifice them. Meaning, wait for Frank to ritualistically kill them. So after Frank has seen this offensive look on his mother's face. He now feels like the killing hour is upon them, and so he literally announces it to his mother and to his father, who's right next to her. And then Frank grabs a nearby wooden coat hanger and strikes his mother on the top of her head. Now, his mother, she's heard that the killing hour is upon them, and he's starting to beat her. And so what does she do?

She follows the rules. She flips herself over onto her stomach, puts her hands down by her side, and lays flat and still so Frank can more easily kill her. And so Frank begins wailing on the back of his mother's head with this wooden coat hanger while his father, Harold, excitedly leaps out of the bed, doesn't try to stop what's going on. He runs into the living room and he begins very enthusiastically playing the organ. An organ is like a piano that's played a lot of times inside of Christian churches. And so with all this commotion going on in the house, the other two sisters that were there, Marina and Petra, they come out of their bedrooms into the

living room. They see their father playing the organ and they look into the bedroom where they hear all this noise and it's Frank murdering their mother and they're looking at this happening. They're not doing anything, they're just staring at it and then their father says to them, the killing hour is upon us, you need to get ready. And so the girls, when they hear this, they know the rules and so they stop watching this attack and they make their way over to the center of the living room and they sit down cross-legged and they begin to patiently wait their turn. After a while, Frank stopped beating his mother, who was now unconscious or perhaps even dead, and he walked out of the bedroom into the living room, where he saw his father on the organ, and he saw his two sisters sitting on the ground. And so without any hesitation, he walks

over to Marina, the older one, the 18-year-old, and he begins hitting her on the top of the head until she slouches over onto the ground motionless. And then he turns to the younger one, Petra, the 15 year old, and he does the same thing to her until she's laying on the ground motionless. After this, Frank stands up and he leaves the living room and goes into the kitchen where he retrieves a small knife, pruning shears, and a hammer. At this point, it's likely that one or two of the Alexander women were still alive. And so Frank, he comes back into the living room with these tools in hand, and with the organs blaring in the background, he begins to systematically hack off the breasts and genitals of his two sisters and his mother. And apparently this was a very slow and physically difficult task,

and so he and his father Harold began switching off. One person would be on the organs while the other was mutilating, and they would switch back and forth until all of the offending parts on these three women had been removed and nailed to the wall. The last mutilation this father and son committed was to cut the heart out of the mother, Dragma, and they wrapped it up in a cord and then nailed this cord to the wall as well. Then, with the three Alexander women either dead or close to death, the father and son began running around the apartment yelling and singing and rejoicing. They were extremely proud of what they had just done. Later that night, they left

the apartment and slept in another property that they owned. And then the following day, December 22nd, they went to the doctor's villa to tell Sabine the good news. And so they knock on the door. The doctor answers. He goes back and gets Sabine. Sabine walks up. And Harold, her father, says to her, Sabine, we wanted to tell you right away that Frank and I have just finished killing your mother and your sisters. To which Sabine walks up to him, takes her father's hand, presses it to her cheek, and says, I'm sure you did what was necessary. This, of course, is what the doctor saw and overheard that was so horrible and prompted him to call the police. It was also the moment when he realized that was not mud all over these two men, that was their family member's blood.

Psychiatrists would ultimately determine that Frank and Harold were not mentally fit to stand trial, and so they were both committed to an asylum for the criminally insane. Both men never showed any remorse or regret about what they had done. In fact, they continued to justify their actions by saying, because of them, these three women got to go to heaven. As for the one surviving daughter, Sabine, she pleaded with authorities to let her go live with her brother and her father in this asylum, but they rejected this request and sent her to live in a convent, which is a building that nuns live in, and no one really knows what happened to her after that. Shockingly, in 1990, so roughly 20 years after Frank and Harold were put into this asylum,

they managed to escape, and they were never caught. To this day, their whereabouts remain unknown. The End But there is a problem, as there always is in this show. The man in question hadn't actually sailed before. Oh, and his boat wasn't seaworthy. Oh, and also tiny little detail, almost didn't mention it. He bet his family home on making it to the finish line. What ensued was one of the most complex cheating plots in British sporting history. To find out the full story, follow British Scandal wherever you listen to podcasts. Or listen early and ad-free on Wondery Plus on Apple Podcasts or the Wondery app. 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. The next and final story of today's episode is called Someone in this Family Has a Secret. Strongsville, Ohio used to be just another typical quiet American suburb. Nice homes,

nice families, nice restaurants, and a mall. But in late 2017, a discovery was made in Strongsville that put this town on the map in the worst way possible. To understand this discovery, we need to go back to early 2016 when this town's nightmare began. In early 2016, two longtime Strongsville residents, Bruce and Melinda Pleskoicz, received some very exciting news. Their 20-year-old daughter named Anna and her 20-year-old fiance named Jeff had just told them they were expecting a baby, a baby girl. And so Bruce and Melinda were totally excited about the prospect of finally becoming grandparents, but at the same time, they knew Anna and Jeff did not have very much money. Anna still lived at home with Bruce and Melinda. She did have a job, but she made very little money. She was a waitress at a local Applebee's restaurant.

And as for Jeff, he had a better job working as a service technician for a heating and air company, but he didn't have enough money to support him and Anna. In fact, he didn't even have enough money to move out of his parents' home. He was still living with them on the other side of Strongsville. And so this couple, they're really excited about their baby, but Bruce and Melinda are thinking, you know, we really got to find a way to support them because they're just not prepared for this first child. And so Bruce and Melinda, they talked it over,

and they decided the best way to support this young couple was to tell their daughter if she wanted to, she could invite Jeff to come stay at their house. That way, the two of them could be together, and once they had their daughter, Bruce and Melinda could be the great-grandparents and help take care of the baby. And in general, this would allow the couple to just continue to save money and move out when they were ready. And so when they told Anna they were willing to do this, Anna was so happy, she was so grateful. She called Jeff, and Jeff was equally happy and grateful and said, yes, I would love to move in with you guys.

So it took several months, but finally in June of 2016, which was the same month that Jeff and Anna welcomed their daughter to the world, Jeff would leave his parents' home and move into Bruce and Melinda's home. And almost immediately after he moved in, he and the rest of Anna's family began experiencing some very strange and disturbing things around their property. Just a few days after Jeff had moved in, he and Anna were home alone. They were on the main floor of the house and they were having dinner at the kitchen table. And at some point, Jeff just happened to glance out one of the back windows that looked out into their backyard. And now this property had this huge sprawling backyard. Basically, they had all these houses kind of in a row and they all had almost like a communal

backyard, this big open space. And so Jeff is looking out into this huge backyard and he sees off in the distance something strange. He doesn't really know what he's looking at because it's nighttime, it's dark, but he stands up and he walks over to the window something strange. He doesn't really know what he's looking at because it's nighttime, it's dark, but he stands up and he walks over to the window. And as he's looking out, he sees way off on the backside of their property are these four strangers just standing there appearing to be smoking something.

And they're just kind of looking up at the Pleskivik house. And so Jeff is looking out the window at these four, not really sure what to make of them. And he calls Anna over. And so Anna walks over and the two of them are looking out, not really sure what to do. I mean, on the one hand, these four people who they clearly didn't know or they believed they didn't know were definitely trespassing.

But at the same time, they weren't really doing anything. They were just kind of standing there smoking. But as they're watching these four people, one of them begins walking up the property towards their home and then stops alongside the Pleskovec trampoline, which was in their backyard. And this person begins fiddling with the trampoline. And so at this, Anna's like, you know what, I don't know what they're doing. I feel totally uncomfortable. And so Anna would actually call the police. And so the police, they come out.

But by the time the squad car arrived in front of the Peleskovic house, the four people in back must have seen the car, and they took off running. And so when the police officer went in the backyard and looked around, there was no one there, and there was also no sign they were there. There was no dropped cigarette butts or anything. They just kind of vanished. And so the police officer told Jeff and Anna, if they come back, you know, let us know. And so the officer left, and then a little while later, when Bruce and Melinda came home, Jeff and Anna would tell them about what happened. And they would agree that that was totally strange that in all the decades they had lived in Strongsville, they had never had anybody stroll onto their property and just loiter in the middle of the

night. And so for the next couple of days, the family was definitely on edge. But after a little while, this whole incident was largely forgotten about. Fast forward about five months to November 2016, and Anna was home alone with her young daughter, and she's playing with her daughter on the first floor of the house towards the front of the house. And as she's playing with her daughter, she suddenly hears what sounds like someone trying to open the back sliding glass door on the back of the house. And so instinctively, Anna thinks, okay, you know, Jeff must be out there or my parents must be out there and they don't have a key or something. And so she scoops up her daughter and she begins

walking towards the back of the house to open the store for them. And when she walks into one of the back rooms, before she reaches the back door, she happens to look out one of the windows that looked out into the backyard and standing right up against the glass is this unknown male figure with his face pressed up against the glass and so anna just freezes and stares at this guy and then this guy he notices anna and he ducks down out of view and now anna's thinking to herself this is the guy he must have been trying to break in my back door i'm home alone i don't know what's going on here I don't know if he's going to try to break in again and so she just turns and runs back towards the front of the house she runs upstairs she goes in a bedroom she locks the door

and she calls the police but by the time the police come out there and they look around they can't find this unknown figure that was at the back of the house and there's no sign of an attempted forced entry and so, they told her, look, you know, I'm sure this was very traumatic for you, but there's really nothing we can do here. There's no evidence to suggest who did this. And so please just, you know, keep your house locked. And if you see anybody suspicious on your property, call us back.

And so naturally, after the police left and Anna had a chance to contact Jeff and her parents, they were horrified and they rushed home to comfort her. And then after the initial shock of this incident had worn off, the family began to speculate, you know, do you think this might be connected to those four strangers we saw on our property a few months ago? It just seems odd that those two things would happen so close together. And then the family began to think, okay, well then who is this person? Who are these people? What do they want? Why are they targeting us? What's going on? Because as it was, the Peleskovic family, they didn't have any enemies, at least none that they knew of. If anything, the people of Strongsville adored this family, especially Melinda, the mother. For the past 20 plus years,

she had been a middle school teacher in town and her students adored her. She was also a big-time soccer coach in the community because she had played in college and she was still very passionate about it. So she was this amazing coach. And in the eyes of many parents in the Strongsville community, Melinda was a bit of an inspiration because she was not only the mother to Anna, she was also the mother of an 18-year-old boy named Kyle who had Down syndrome and was non-verbal. And Melinda just had this unbelievable way with him where she was so good to him, she incorporated him in everything, she got him so involved, she gave him the best life he could

possibly have. And so anytime you saw Kyle with his mother, Kyle would be all smiles. Even though Kyle couldn't speak, it was so obvious his mother made him incredibly happy. But regardless of the reason for these strangers to be lurking around their property, the Pleskovich family was now totally on edge and found themselves constantly looking out the windows, especially at night, in fear these strangers were going to come back and might try to break in again. And unfortunately, these strangers would come back. In January of 2017, so two months after Anna saw that unknown figure at the window and heard the back door sliding around, Bruce's car was broken into. It was sitting in the driveway of their property. Someone got inside of it and stole his laptop.

And so Bruce, he calls the police and he says, you know, I've got to believe this has to do with the people that are harassing my family. And the police believed him and they began looking around and asking around, but they could never track down the laptop or the thief. And so once again, the family was kind of left on their own. And the police said, look, you know, if you see anything else, let us know. But there's not much we can do here. we can do here. A few months later in July of that year, Anna, Jeff, and their daughter were all home together one night when Anna happened to look out one of the back windows on their first floor and out on the very back of the property were three strangers just standing in that same spot

where they saw those four strangers smoking the year before. And these three strangers are just standing there looking up at the house. And so horrified, Anna calls out to Jeff and says, look, there are three people in the back of our property. And so Anna, she pulls out her phone and she's calling the police. And as she's calling the police, Jeff, who's totally upset that there are these people harassing him and his family and making them feel unsafe, he just grabs a flashlight and storms out the back door to go confront these people. But as soon as Jeff went out the back door, before he could even shine the light on them, the three people had turned and ran and

vanished. And so finally, when the police did show up, they were aware of all the calls they had gotten from this family. And so they went out there and they did a serious search for these three strangers. But like always, nothing was found. And so the family once again was told, if you see anything else, let us know. The following month, nothing was found, and so the family once again was told, if you see anything else, let us know. The following month, which was August, Anna was home with her daughter, along with her mother who was upstairs, and as Anna is in the front of the house in the playroom with her daughter, she hears the sound of somebody trying to open that backsliding door.

And now immediately her radar is up, because she knows what happened the last time she heard the sound. There was that person in the window. But she's thinking, okay, I can't just immediately call the police. I need to at least look and see if there's someone that I know at the back door. And so she scoops her daughter up. She stands up and she walks around to the edge of the room she's in. And she kind of peeks her head down this hallway that will give her a clear view of this back sliding glass door. And once she finally has a full view of whoever is there, she screams because there are two large adults,

as she would say, standing at the back door trying to force open this door. And so when she screams, these two strangers, they hear it, they turn around and they run. And Melinda, she was upstairs, she hears her daughter screaming, she comes flying downstairs. She's trying to figure out what's going on. Anna is hysterical. The baby's crying. And so Melinda actually calls the police about what her daughter has just seen. The police come out. They search the property. They can't find anyone. And so again, the police leave and they tell the family, look, you know, I'm sorry this is happening to you, but we can't do anything. So please just let us know if anything else happens and we'll be out here as soon as we can. You know, we're bound to catch these people.

But, you know, right now we just don't have much to operate on. The following month, which was September, one of Melinda's car keys would go missing. And whoever had these keys, whoever had stolen these keys, would use it to randomly start Melinda's car in the middle of the night. And they also used it to set off her's car in the middle of the night, and they also used it to set off her car alarm at odd hours of the night. And then also during this time frame that her keys were missing, they also discovered that there were nails jammed into the tires of Bruce's car. And so of course, you know, the family calls the police and tells them about what's going on,

but the police can't do anything. And so very frustrated, Melinda actually takes to Facebook and posts that someone's stolen her keys and please just give them back. And just overall, she's pleading with whoever is harassing her family to just leave them alone. But unfortunately, this post would not do anything. The harassment would continue. A month later, on October 19th, Jeff was home alone when he heard the sound of the back sliding glass door rattling. And now he knows that every time this has been heard by Anna, that there's always some stranger at the back door. And so Jeff grabs the family dog and he very carefully turns and looks down that hallway towards the back door to see who this is. And right as he pokes his head out, he sees there's this large adult figure with a hood up trying to open this back door. And so the dog sees this person and starts barking and

running towards the door. Jeff runs after the dog and this big person outside who's trying to break in. He sees the dog, he sees Jeff running and he turns and he runs away. And so Jeff and the dog, they stay inside the house and they watch this guy just take off across the property and disappear into the trees. And Jeff would call the police. But like always, the police came out and there just was nothing they could do. Four days later, on October 23rd, Jeff, along with his young daughter and Bruce, they went to the local Applebee's where Anna worked to have dinner there and have Anna wait on them.

And then after they were done eating, they said their goodbyes to Anna. They left the restaurant. They hopped in their cars and they drove back to their house. When they got there, Bruce was the first up the steps and he got to the front door and it was locked. And so he knocked and Kyle, his son, he came and unlocked the door. Bruce went inside, followed closely behind by Jeff, who was holding his daughter. They get inside and Bruce walks through the house to the back of the house where the kitchen is. He flips on the lights and there's something on the kitchen floor. And when Jeff sees it, he immediately turns around and runs out of the house carrying his

daughter. He grabs Kyle along the way and just takes them straight out of the house. And then once Jeff was outside, he called 911. And when you listen to his 911 call, it sounds like Jeff is unable to process what he has just seen. Who was attacked? Mel Pleskiewicz. Mel Pleskiewicz was attacked. He was attacked by whom? Do you know? No, we just came home. She's on the kitchen floor. Jeff and Bruce had just discovered Melinda lying on the kitchen floor. She'd been stabbed over 35 times and shot three times. She would be rushed to the hospital, but she would die that night.

Although the family was in shock and couldn't even begin to process what had just happened, they were all acutely aware that whoever had done this to Melinda had to be connected to all of these strange and suspicious people that had been lurking around their property for the better part of two years. years. In fact, literally after Jeff had called 911, Bruce was inside in the kitchen kneeling next to his dying wife. And he called 911 and he would tell the dispatcher that the Strongsville Police Department really dropped the ball. Four Blazing Star, I think my wife's dead. Someone... Tell me... We've had people breaking into our f***ing house. Sir. And now someone f***ing killed her. Sir, tell me the city you need to talk to. Strongsville, Ohio. Okay, you need to be transferred.

Don't hang up. 911, what's the city of your emergency? Strongsville, Ohio. We have people on the way already. What's the address? Four Blazing Star. I think someone killed my wife. You think someone killed your wife? Yeah, it looks like she has stab wounds on her back. The Strongsville Police Department would come out in force for this case, and they would solve it in just four days.

And when they went public with who killed Melinda, no one could believe it. Back on October 23rd, so this was the night Melinda was discovered, Jeff, along with his young daughter and Melinda and her son Kyle, they were all together in the house. And at some point, Jeff had put his daughter down in her playpen and then went into the kitchen where Melinda was.

And he walked up to her, pulled out a knife, and stabbed her over 35 times. And then when Melinda fell to the ground, Jeff drew a gun and shot her three additional times to make sure she was dead. Now, while he was doing this, his daughter is literally just a few feet away, and Kyle, presumably, is also right nearby, but he has no way of understanding what's happening to his mother. And so with these two totally innocent lives just right nearby, Jeff would clean off his weapons, and he'd take off his bloody clothes, and he would hide them inside of his car. And then he would just scoop up his daughter and he would leave the house, leaving Kyle alone in the house with his dying mother in the kitchen, just leaves him

there, shuts the door, locks it. And then Jeff and his daughter would drive to Applebee's to have dinner with Melinda's husband and her daughter. And then after several hours, when they got back to the property, Jeff knew what was waiting for them inside, and he still allowed Bruce to go inside first and discover his dying wife on the kitchen floor. Very little is known about why Jeff did this, because Jeff has actually never come out and given his motive for the crime. The running theory is that Jeff actually was not going to be able to pay for the wedding,

which was coming up in a couple of days, and the wedding venue had actually contacted Melinda and said, hey, you know, we're canceling the wedding because your future son-in-law can't pay for it, and so Melinda apparently confronted Jeff about his financial troubles and the theory is he snapped and killed her. However, that can't possibly be the entire story for why he did this because it would turn out Jeff was found to be responsible for literally every single suspicious event that had taken place around the Pleskavik property leading up to the attack. Meaning every time they had seen strangers lurking around their property

or people trying to break into their house, that had been because of Jeff. Either it was literally Jeff outside being one of these suspicious people, or he had asked friends or hired someone or groups of people to pretend to be suspicious people on the property, or Jeff had been the only person to see

these suspicious people. And then miraculously, when other people attempted to look outside, you know, they were gone. And so obviously Jeff was lying. And so I actually had the opportunity to speak with one of Jeff's childhood friends who was actually living roughly in the Strongsville area when this horrible murder took place. And what this person told me is that what is kind of generally accepted as why Jeff did this, according to the people in Strongsville, is that Jeff apparently loathed Melinda. Even though she had opened her house to him, he loathed her. And as soon as he moved in in 2016, he began plotting to kill her. And so all of these suspicious events were Jeff's attempt at building this really intricate alibi

that they had these strangers out there that were targeting this family, and so that when she would ultimately be killed by him, it would look like these strangers had done it. And at first, it totally worked. Everybody believed, the police, the family, friends, that strangers had broken into the house and killed Melinda. In fact, there was so little suspicion on Jeff after her murder that Jeff actually served as a pallbearer in Melinda's funeral. But ultimately, the police would discover the knife and some

bloody clothes in the back of Jeff's car, and so they would arrest him, and they would present this mountain of evidence against him, and Jeff would confess to killing Melinda. However, he wouldn't give any additional information about the crime. He would just basically say, yes, I did kill her. He would also never give an apology or explanation to the family. He would ultimately be sentenced to life in prison with the opportunity for parole after 33 years. During Jeff's trial, there was this totally heartbreaking moment when Bruce, Melinda's husband, spoke. And he would say their son, Kyle, does not understand that his mother is gone. And so now, every time they go out to eat, which is something Kyle really likes to do, and he used to love doing with his mother, he'll just sit and stare out the window,

eagerly expecting his mother to show up any minute. But of course, she never does. star review buttons hair for their wedding, but then repeatedly touch the top of their ear with the curling iron. Also, please subscribe to the Mr. Ballin podcast on Spotify, Apple Podcasts, Amazon, Google, and anywhere 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 is just at Mr ballin and I really do read the majority of my DMS lastly we have some really cool merchandise so head on over to shopmrballin.com to have a look

so that's going to do it I I really appreciate your support. Until next time, see ya. Hey Prime members. You can binge eight new episodes of the Mr. Ballin podcast one month early and all episodes ad-free on Amazon Music. Download the Amazon Music app today. And before you go, please tell us about yourself by completing a short survey at wondery.com slash survey. In May of 1980, near Anaheim, California,

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

a case for every true crime listener. Follow the Generation Y podcast on Amazon Music or wherever you get your podcasts.