MrBallen Podcast: Strange, Dark & Mysterious Stories - Fan Favorite - "Found Footage"

Episode Date: July 3, 2023

This story is a fan favorite that was previously published as Episode 40.Around 2:00 am on April 6th 2018, a mysterious person walked down a snowy suburban street in Wadsworth, Ohio. At some point, this person came to a stop in front of a modest two story home and then looked around to make sure no one was watching them. Feeling satisfied no one was, this mystery person turned away from the road and walked down the driveway toward the backyard of the property. What they did next was unspeakably cruel... and it was caught on camera.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 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. Hey fans of The Strange, Dark, and Mysterious, today's episode is a fan favorite. It comes from episode number 40, which is titled, Found Footage. Around 2 a.m. on April 6th, 2018, a mysterious person walked down a snowy suburban street in Wadsworth, Ohio. At some point, this person came to a stop in front of a modest two-story home. At that point, the mystery person looked around to make sure no one was watching them, and then they turned away from the road and walked down the driveway toward the backyard of the property.

What this person did next was unspeakably cruel, and it was caught on camera. This story includes graphic descriptions of violence, as well as sexual content. 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 invite the five-star review button to come on over for a fun pizza party, but when they get there, only serve fermented herring. Also, please subscribe to the Mr. Paulin Podcast wherever you listen to podcasts so you don't miss any of our weekly uploads.

Okay, let's get into today's story. I'm Peter Frankopan. And I'm Afua Hirsch. And we're here to tell you about our new season of Legacy, covering the iconic, troubled musical genius that was Nina Simone. Full disclosure, this is a big one for me. Nina Simone, one of my favourite artists of all time, somebody who's had a huge impact on me,

who I think objectively stands apart for the level of 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. Hello, I am Alice Levine and I am one of the hosts of Wondery's podcast, British Scandal. On our latest series, The Race to Ruin, we tell the story of a British man who took part in the first ever round-the-world sailing race. Good on him, I hear you say. But there is a problem, as there always is in this show.

The man in question hadn't actually sailed before. Oh, and his boat wasn't'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. Margaret Douglas loved sitting out on the front porch of her neat grey house in Wadsworth, Ohio. Settled comfortably into one of the white wicker chairs that overlooked her six-foot-high

rhododendron bushes with their clusters of purple flowers, she knew all of her neighbors by name. And she also knew by heart the daily rhythms of this quiet street in a town of fewer than 2,400 residents. Wadsworth was one of those tiny middle American towns that you could find pictured on a postcard. And since Margaret and her husband had arrived in this town back in 1959, not much had changed. Now, in the early spring of 2018, Margaret was 98 years old, and the chilly April air was still keeping her inside. But even though Margaret lived alone these days, she had plenty of wonderful memories to keep her company, along with regular visits

from a few close relatives and from a few of the neighbors who had become her good friends. Margaret had been born in 1919, just one year after World War I had come to a bloody close. By the time Margaret was just 25 years old, she had already lived through Prohibition, which was a 13-year-long ban on the production, sale, and consumption of alcohol in the United States, and she'd also lived through the Roaring Twenties and the Age of Jazz, which was a a 13 year long ban on the production sale and consumption of alcohol in the united states and she'd also lived through the roaring 20s and the age of jazz which was a period in the 1920s and the 1930s on december 6 1941 margaret and her family had listened in shock to the first news reports about the japanese attack on the u.s naval fleet in pearl Harbor that catapulted the United States into World War II. And it was

after World War II ended in 1945 that Margaret, at the age of 39, met and married her husband, Donald Douglas, a World War II U.S. Army veteran. For her whole life, Margaret had been a person who held firm opinions and wasn't afraid to share them with the world. And in her husband, Donald, Margaret had found the perfect match. Once they were married and settled into their three-bedroom house in Wadsworth, together they bucked convention. Instead of having children, they centered their lives around each other, on travel, and on their careers.

Margaret loved her job in nearby Akron, Ohio, where she worked at O'Neill's, which was one of the biggest and most glamorous department stores in the state. As for Donald, he proudly told people he worked at the Ohio Match Company, the world's largest producer of wooden and paper matches. And during the 41 years that the couple was married, they would live through the ups and downs of history together. The Civil Rights Movement, the First Moonwalk, the Korean and Vietnam Wars, the Hippie Movement of the 1960s, the Age of Rock and Roll, and the Gulf War in 1991. When Donald passed away in May of 2000 at the age of 80, Margaret, who would turn 81 that year, chose to carry on living the kind of life that she and Donald had enjoyed as a couple. Her first decision was to

remain right where she was, living in the house at 359 Portage Street in Wadsworth that held so many happy memories for her and her late husband. She might not have Donald by her side anymore, but, as her nephew Howard Leisure and his wife Cindy knew, Margaret had never been a quitter, and she'd always had this wonderful appetite for life. Over the next couple of decades, Margaret had never been a quitter, and she'd always had this wonderful appetite for life. Over the next couple of decades, Margaret, who was now a widow, spent most of her time socializing with friends or gardening or reading books or watching TV, and she also spent a lot of time watching from her front porch one procession after another of neighborhood kids growing from toddlers to teenagers. Even in 2018, when Margaret was 98

years old, she still kept busy and enjoyed good health. Despite spending more and more time inside of her home, she still cared very much about her physical appearance, she kept up with the news, and she still very much looked forward to her regularly scheduled appointments with her hairdresser. Margaret's philosophy on life was simple. The world changed, and so she needed to change right along with it. On the morning of Thursday, April 5th of 2018, Margaret woke up and made her way to the front door to collect her newspaper. When she opened the door, she saw gray clouds in the sky and felt the chilly spring air blow across her face. She could already tell she would not be spending any time outdoors that day. Her body just could not handle the cold anymore. So after getting dressed and eating her breakfast, Margaret sat in her favorite armchair in the living room and read a book and also watched

some TV. She made two more late meals for herself that day, taking her time after each one to wash and dry her dishes, and she also set aside a few bills and notices that she knew she would need to get to in the next couple of days as it grew dark outside Margaret climbed the steps to the second floor of her house and got herself ready for bed after washing up and putting on her night dress she went back down the stairs and curled up on the couch to read a bit more of her book and catch a little more TV before going to sleep. A little while later, as snowflakes fell outside of her window, Margaret decided that she was so cozy right there in her warm living room that she would just sleep down there on her couch that night. After turning off the TV and setting her book on the table nearby, Margaret snuggled down into her pillow and closed

her eyes. Before she actually fell asleep, it hadn't even crossed her mind to get up and go make sure the front and back doors of her house were locked. She had lived in that house for more than 70 years and had stopped locking the doors a long time ago. Three days later, at 9 a.m. on Monday, April 9th, the Wadsworth Police Department got a call from Margaret's nephew, Howard Leisure, who lived in a town just outside of Wadsworth, about 40 minutes away. Howard told police that the day before, one of Margaret's neighbors had noticed newspapers were piling up against her front door, and when he, Howard, had tried calling her, she had not picked up, and considering her age, he was concerned about her. So, police immediately sent a patrol officer to 359 Portage Street for a welfare check. When officers arrived at Margaret's house, they found the front door

was unlocked, so they stepped inside the residence and called out for Margaret, but the house was silent. They began searching the property, but there was no sign of a disturbance, nor was there any sign of Margaret, except that her walker, which she took everywhere with her, was still neatly tucked behind a well-used armchair in the living room. Finally, after searching the whole house and finding nothing, the police called back to their station and filed a missing person report. Then, the police who had done the search contacted Howard and his wife to inform them of the situation and to ask them to come to Wadsworth to assist in the search for Margaret. While police waited for Howard and Cindy to arrive at the house,

they spoke with some neighbors who had gathered outside, and they would tell the police that the last time they had actually physically seen Margaret was a few days earlier on Thursday, April 5th. By late afternoon, Howard and Cindy had arrived at Margaret's house, and after speaking with police, they quickly walked up the front stairs and into Margaret's home. Inside, the first thing that Howard noticed was that the small red wallet that his aunt always carried with her or left on the little table next to her favorite armchair was missing. And a few minutes later, Howard opened the small downstairs closet, thinking maybe Margaret had left the wallet inside of a coat pocket that was hung up inside of that closet. But instead of finding Margaret's clothes hung neatly on hangers like they would normally be, the closet was a jumble of clothes piled on top of his aunt's vacuum cleaner on the ground.

Peeking out from the bottom of the pile, Howard spotted one of the slippers his aunt often wore. Stooping down, Howard reached out and he grabbed it. Seconds later, the police and Cindy would hear Howard let out a scream of pure horror. They ran from the living room and found Howard on the ground, recoiling in shock and pointing at the open closet in front of him. Within minutes, there were dozens of police and emergency vehicles outside of 359 Portage Street. As neighbors looked out their windows to see what was happening on an otherwise cold and quiet Monday evening, a patrol officer was already blocking off the perimeter of Margaret's property with bright yellow crime scene tape. Inside,

other officers wearing gloves and crime scene gear were gathered around the open door of that tiny downstairs closet, while Howard sat in another room, his wife's arm wrapped around his shaking shoulders while she tried to comfort him. When Howard had tugged on his aunt's slipper, he had felt a foot still inside of it. Moments later, police would discover Margaret's body, all but naked, crammed inside of this little closet, underneath the pile of clothes. Her head, face down, was wedged into the back corner of the closet, while her backside was up in the air, her knees bent underneath her at a sharp angle. Margaret was deceased, and based on the condition of her body, it was obvious she had been the victim of a violent homicide. Within hours of discovering Margaret's body, investigators were combing Margaret's

property looking for clues, and it wasn't long before they found their first important piece of physical evidence. It was a single food service type plastic glove with small traces of blood on it, and it looked like someone had recently dropped it in Margaret's backyard. But other than this glove, which was quickly sent off for testing, the police did not find anything else on the property that could help explain what had happened to Margaret or who was responsible for the attack. While patrol officers spread out around Margaret's neighborhood to talk with residents about any unusual activity or people in the area, detectives began considering possible motives for the crime. At first, it seemed like this had been a robbery because Margaret's red wallet was missing,

but it would turn out that wallet was the only thing missing from Margaret's house, and it only contained a little bit of cash and some credit cards that had not even been used since Margaret was last spotted on Thursday, April 5th. So with robbery more or less ruled out, police began to wonder if, you know, Margaret had enemies that might want her dead. But everyone the police spoke with said the same thing. Margaret got along with everyone. No one would want to hurt her. And so with no obvious motive or suspect, the police simply began investigating everyone who was close to Margaret. They started with Howard and Cindy, but they were both quickly ruled out using their cell phone data. Police would also speak to other family members and friends, and they too would all be quickly ruled out as well. But when they

started interviewing neighbors and former neighbors, one person stood out. His name was David Klinkenbach, and even after moving from the house next to Margaret's to a new address two miles away, David had continued to be the person who checked up on Margaret most frequently. He'd stop by her house a couple of times a week, and he helped take care of her weekly trash collection, moving her garbage containers to and from the street on trash day. Right after Margaret's body had been discovered, police had actually called David's home because they had been told he was close with her and so they wanted to speak to him, but he had not answered. Instead, police found him right outside of her house, pacing around chain-smoking cigarettes and telling anyone who would listen

that he was very nervous about his fingerprints being all over the inside of Margaret's home. When police spoke to him, he obsessively asked them how was the investigation going so far and what had they discovered inside of the house. So, feeling very suspicious of David, the police would bring him into the station for questioning, and pretty much right away, David began looking more and more suspicious. David seemed to have information about details of Margaret's death that had not been widely shared, like where exactly in her house she had been found and what she was wearing, and when answering police questions about how well he knew Margaret,

David also surprised investigators with random comments on Margaret's appearance and the fact that especially earlier in her life, she had been a very attractive woman. But by the end of Wednesday, April 11th, so two days after the discovery of Margaret's body, David would be ruled out as a suspect. The DNA results from the bloody glove that had been found in Margaret's backyard had come back, and the blood on them did not belong to David, nor did it belong to anyone the police had spoken with thus far. Additionally, Margaret's autopsy had come back, and her time of death was listed as sometime around Friday, April 6th, and the data from David's cell phone showed he was not near her property at that time.

So now, with the residents of Wadsworth starting to press law enforcement for answers, police were forced to regroup and take a different approach to finding out who, in this quiet, pretty town, would have wanted to kill a seemingly harmless 98-year-old woman. The only thing that seemed even remotely promising as another possible lead were reports from neighbors that in the weeks leading up to Margaret's death, there had been a rash of minor car break-ins. Nothing very serious, just a few car owners who had told police that their unlocked vehicles had been rifled through and small items like change and dollar bills had been taken. But these crimes of opportunity made police wonder

if the perpetrator had started to check for unlocked homes as well as unlocked cars. Maybe they had tried Margaret's front door, they had found it open, and before long, what started as a robbery turned into a murder. And when police started looking right around Margaret's house to see if around the time

she was killed, had there been any car break-ins or had there been any other recent reports of suspicious or possibly criminal activity, they found something. A carjacking had been reported right near Margaret's house on April 8th. So this would have been one day before Margaret's body was found. So the police tracked down the person who owned the vehicle that had been stolen. The owner was a 50-year-old church worker named Paul Shalit. Police expected this interview to be fairly simple and straightforward, but it wasn't. Hello, I'm Emily, and I'm one of the hosts of Terribly Famous, the show that takes you inside

the lives of our biggest celebrities. And they don't get much bigger than the man who made badminton sexy. Okay, maybe that's a stretch. But if I say pop star and shuttlecocks, you know who I'm talking about. No? Short shorts? Free cocktails? Careless whispers? Okay, last one. It's not Andrew Ridgely. Yep, that's right. it's Stone Cold icon George Michael From teen pop sensation to one of the biggest solo artists on the planet Join us for our new series, George Michael's Fight for Freedom From the outside, it looks like he has it all But behind the trademark dark sunglasses is a man in turmoil

George is trapped in a lie of his own making, with a secret he feels would ruin him if the truth ever came out. Follow Terribly Famous wherever you listen to your podcasts, or listen early and ad-free on Wondery Plus on Apple Podcasts or the Wondery app. 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. When police visited Paul at his house and asked him to describe what happened, he came across as very nervous and evasive. He told investigators that he had been out driving and had seen a young man, maybe 18 or 19 years old, and he apparently was limping as he was walking down the sidewalk. And so Paul, being a good Samaritan, had slowed down and asked this young man if he needed help. And the young man had said, yes, he did need help. So Paul said he had pulled his suv over to the side of the curb and he had got out to help the injured young man but as soon as paul had climbed out of his vehicle

and had begun walking around the back of the vehicle to make his way over to the sidewalk apparently this young man had lunged and opened the passenger side door of paul's suv he had leapt across the middle console into the driver's seat and then had sped off, leaving Paul stranded. However, this story didn't really make sense to police because, according to the report, Paul's car had been found almost immediately and right down the street, totally undamaged. And after police wrapped up this first interview with Paul, they would review security footage of the carjacking that had been captured by cameras on a nearby building, and they saw firsthand that Paul's story was just not

lining up. The footage of the carjacking showed that there was this young man on the sidewalk near where Paul's car slowed and stopped, but the young man was not limping, and as soon as Paul had stopped his car next to the curb, he didn't get out of the vehicle. Instead, the young man approached the passenger side of the vehicle and appeared to be speaking into the window, presumably to Paul, and then after a couple of minutes, the young man climbed into the vehicle with Paul. And then a few minutes later, Paul would suddenly jump out of the car, and the car, with the young man still inside of it, would take off down the road. So the police went back to Paul's house to question him again, and when confronted with the security footage of the carjacking, Paul would eventually tell

police the truth. It would turn out the carjacking actually started as an encounter that Paul had set up using the social networking site Grindr that caters to people who identify as gay, bi, trans, and queer. According to Paul, he and the young man had met as planned and had begun a sexual encounter inside of Paul's SUV. But then, according to Paul, the young man, quote, snapped. And then a few moments later, the young man had overpowered Paul, forcing him out of the car onto the road, and then the young man sped off, leaving Paul standing there in the middle of the street. And then when the car was recovered later that day down the road, the young man was not found. When asked by detectives to provide

contact information for this young man slash carjacker, Paul would tell them that he was so embarrassed about what had happened that he had actually deleted all remnants of this young man from his phone, meaning he had completely deleted his Grindr account and so could not recover it, and he also had deleted the contact information for this young man that he had stored directly on his phone. So with no way of finding or identifying this carjacker, the police were forced to just wait and hope this mystery carjacker eventually turned up. A few days later, on Friday, April 13th, roughly one week after Margaret was killed, the Wadsworth police got a call from a local construction site reporting that someone had

broken into one of their trailers. When investigators arrived at the scene of the break-in, the first thing they did was search the area, and behind the trailer that had been broken into was a cell phone lying in the dirt. The police would quickly unlock the phone and discover that its owner was a teenage boy whose name was already very familiar to Wadsworth police, Zach Thronson. Zach was a troubled young man who had previously gotten in trouble for petty theft as well as breaking into people's cars. And so naturally, the police thought Zach not only must have robbed this construction site, but almost certainly had to be the mystery carjacker they were looking for. And if that was true, maybe Zach had something to do with

Margaret's murder. When police tracked Zach down, they found him asleep in his car in the parking lot at a local high school, and when they looked in the driver's window at him, police immediately noticed that his knees were all cut up, and these cuts looked recent. Waking up to see police tapping on his car window, Zach was nervous as well as startled, but he quickly agreed to come into the police station to answer a few questions. Initially, Zach denied that he had anything to do with the break-in at the construction site, but once police showed him his cell phone and they told him where they had found it, Zach's shoulders slumped and his head fell forward as he gripped his knees, and he took a deep breath

as he stared at the floor, and then when he looked up again at the detectives, Zachumped and his head fell forward as he gripped his knees. And he took a deep breath as he stared at the floor. And then when he looked up again at the detectives, Zach sighed and said, Okay, yes, I was at the construction site last night. But when investigators asked him if he had also committed the carjacking five days earlier, Zach seemed to perk up and said, No, I really have no idea about that. I definitely did not steal anyone's car.

And when police dug into this and really put him on the spot about it, because they didn't really believe him, Zach stuck to his story and said, look, I've committed other robberies, but not this one. The police eventually believed him and just asked him point blank, okay, well, did you have anything to do with Margaret's murder? And at this, Zach became extremely emphatic that of course he had heard about the murder. Everyone had, but no way. It had nothing to do with that. By this point, Zach was totally rattled by the

seriousness of the questions he was being asked. And so likely just as a way of making himself seem a little bit less guilty and less suspicious, Zach started to throw his 17-year-old friend, Gavin Ramsey, under the bus. Zach said that Gavin had not only participated in every crime that Zach had, including the construction site break-in the night before, but also, Gavin was the mastermind behind all of the crimes. And so if the police were thinking a local criminal had anything to do with the murder, well, they shouldn't talk to Zach.

They should talk to Gavin. And the police would do just that. And when Gavin came to the police station, he did not arrive alone. Sitting next to him in the interrogation room was his mother, Christine. Gavin was the second oldest of her four sons, and she knew he was a troublemaker. Over the last 10 years, she had, on several occasions, enrolled her son in counseling, but she wasn't really sure if it was having an effect. It wasn't long into Gavin's interview before Gavin, like Zach, admitted that he had done some

small stuff. He'd taken a little money from some cars recently, and he'd probably been the subject of a few noise complaints from neighbors, but that was it. When he was told that his friend Zach had placed him at the scene of the much more serious crime of breaking into the trailer at the construction site, Gavin hung his head momentarily, but then looked up and said, okay, yes, I was involved in that incident too. But when investigators asked Gavin if he had been involved in the carjacking on April 8th, Gavin's demeanor completely changed. He'd seemed almost comfortable talking about the petty theft and even the construction site break-in. But at the mention of this carjacking, he suddenly began shifting in his chair and he leaned forward and he put his face in his hands.

Gavin wasn't the only person in the room to have a strong reaction. After hearing about this carjacking, Gavin's mom looked at her son and said, Carjacking? Really? But once detectives began describing some of the details of the carjacking, how it had started with a sexual encounter between the carjacker and the victim, Paul, Christine suddenly became far less worried that her son had potentially committed a carjacking and now was just worried that he had been potentially sexually assaulted during the carjacking. It was at this point, when his mother was really starting to get upset, that Gavin actually asked one of the

investigators if he could just speak to them alone for a few minutes. And so, reluctantly, his mother and a patrol officer who had been in the room as well would leave the room, and then once Gavin was alone with the detectives, he would admit that, yes, he was the mystery carjacker. However, he wanted to correct a detail about that story, and he didn't want his mother to hear it. He told the detectives that he had agreed to meet Paul that night, but Gavin was not there to have sex with him. Instead, he had created a fake profile on Grindr to lure a gay man into meeting him so that he could rob them, and Paul was just the guy who had agreed to meet up. As far as Gavin was concerned, any man agreeing

to meet a young man like him deserved whatever they got. When police felt satisfied that they had all the information they could get about the carjacking, they asked Gavin point blank if he had anything to do with Margaret's murder. And Gavin was just as adamant as his friend Zach that of course he knew about the murder. Everybody did, but he had nothing to do with it. The carjacking was his worst crime. Eventually, the detectives felt like they had gotten all the information they could from Gavin, and so they called his mother back into the room so they could release him. When she came back inside, the police told her that she and her son were free to

leave for now, but before they left, the police would like to have a look at Gavin's cell phone. There was some information on there that could confirm some of the things he had told them, and so could she, his guardian, sign a consent form allowing them to do that. Gavin did not like this idea, but his mother did. She signed the form, and then moments later, the police had Gavin's phone, and the teenager and his mother were walking out of the station. A few hours later, the police would unlock Gavin's phone, and they and his mother were walking out of the station. A few hours later, the police would unlock Gavin's phone and they would somewhat unintentionally discover something

that shocked them to their core. Based on what they found on Gavin's phone and on evidence that police would uncover over the next 72 hours following their conversation with Gavin, here is a reconstruction of what happened to 98-year-old Margaret Douglas on the day she died, April 6th, 2018. At about 2 a.m. in the early morning hours of Friday, April 6th, Margaret's murderer walked the short distance from his house to her house. The temperature outside had dropped to about 30 degrees Fahrenheit, and it was snowing lightly. Margaret's street was a quiet one, each house separated from the curb by a wide strip of grass and a sidewalk, each house separated from its neighbor by a driveway leading to a detached garage. As the murderer reached the edge of Margaret's property,

he looked in all directions to make sure no one was watching him, and then he quickly slipped down her driveway around to her backyard. Once there, he stepped up to the back door and peered through the glass. Inside he could just make out the gleam of the metal sink set into the counter on the kitchen wall opposite him. Then he quietly turned the knob with a gloved hand. As he had hoped, the door was open, and a moment later, the intruder had stepped inside, out of the falling snow and the chilly air. After pausing for a minute to let his hands warm up and to look around and get his bearings,

the intruder pulled his cell phone out of his pocket. He tapped the screen and entered his password, then he opened his camera and began taking a video. With his phone out in front of him recording, he began walking noiselessly through the kitchen toward the dining room. As he walked, the began walking noiselessly through the kitchen toward the dining room. As he walked, the camera picked up how dimly lit the house was, with the only lights being from a few nightlights and from streetlights shining in through uncurtained windows. With the camera still rolling, he walked through the dining room and into the cozy living room in the front of the house. And there, fast asleep on her favorite sofa,

was Margaret. She was dressed in slippers, a nightgown, and robe, her white hair arranged in short neat curls around her face. The intruder stood there quietly for a few minutes, just drinking in the sight of her through the lens of his camera. Then, moving soundlessly around the blue-carpeted room, he began taking a series of videos of Margaret from different angles and different vantage points, listening all the while to her gentle steady breathing. He felt a rush of excitement as he imagined the moment when he would wake her up and she would see him standing there in her house in the dark for the first time. With that thought in mind, now standing off to the side behind a nearby armchair, the intruder made his first deliberate noise, a cough. He heard the rustle of fabric, and then, through the camera viewfinder of his phone, he saw Margaret wake up.

Staring ahead out into the darkness of her familiar living room, Margaret seemed instantly aware that suddenly she was not alone. The camera picked up her scratchy whisper. Is someone there? As she turned her head in his direction, the intruder stepped out of his hiding place. As he did, his camera caught an image of Margaret's face, the look of shock and fear as she realized that she'd been right, that she wasn't alone, that someone was in the room with her. But before Margaret could raise herself from the couch, the intruder stepped closer to her. He wished there was some way to capture what he was about

to do to her on camera, but for what he was about to do, he knew he needed two hands. And so he turned off his camera, he slipped his phone into his pocket, and then with both of his hands, he reached down and he grabbed Margaret and he pulled her off the couch and dumped her on the ground on her back. And then he stepped on top of her and then crouched down straddling her chest and then he reached down and he put two hands around her neck and he began to squeeze. He knew there were many other ways to kill someone but he didn't want to use a weapon that would put distance between him and his victim. He wanted to be there up close when they died. He wanted to feel them when they died and so with his hands wrapped around her neck, he began squeezing harder and

harder and harder. And as he did, Margaret began to fight back. Even at 98 years old, Margaret was still strong and sturdy, her hands reaching up to pull his fingers away as she rolled from side to side, trying to get out from under her attacker. But he was just too strong, and he kept squeezing harder and harder. As soon as Margaret started to go limp from a lack of oxygen, the killer released her neck. Barely alive and barely breathing, Margaret had no strength left to try to get away, so she just laid there on her back still. As she did, her killer, who was still straddling her chest, looked down at her with immense pleasure. Then he balled each of his gloved hands into fists

and began punching her face over and over and over again. It was only after it was obvious that Margaret was already dead that her murderer finally leaned back and let his arms drop to his sides while he tried to catch his breath. Once his heart rate had slowed, Margaret's killer got back up onto his feet and then he dug his phone back out of his pocket. He removed most of Margaret's clothing and arranged her in various suggestive poses, taking more pictures and videos as he went, and finally taking a video of himself sexually abusing her corpse. It was almost 4 a.m. when the murderer finally noticed the time. He had been in Margaret's house now for two hours, and he needed to be back at his own house before 5 a.m. But before he could leave, he needed to hide all the evidence that he had been there, and that meant hiding Margaret's body. Looking around the room, he spotted a small closet

just to the right of the front door. Dragging her body across the room, he opened the closet door, and pushing and shoving, he finally managed to cram her body into the tiny space. After covering her with clothes and the vacuum cleaner, the murderer shut the door on her. Before leaving, the killer looked around the house one more time and noticed Margaret's bright red wallet sitting on an end table. Moving quickly now, he stepped over to the table, he pocketed the wallet, and then he headed for the back door of the house. Once outside again, the killer pulled off his blood-smeared plastic gloves and stuffed them inside of his jacket pockets.

Just a few minutes later, the murderer was slipping quietly back into his own bedroom, just five houses away. What he didn't realize is that one of his bloody gloves that he had stuffed into his pockets had actually fallen out and was now laying in Margaret's backyard. pockets, had actually fallen out and was now laying in Margaret's backyard. One week later, on Friday, April 13th, after Gavin and his mother had left the police station, Wadsworth police would unlock Gavin's cell phone and as they began looking through it, they found a folder labeled Dark. And in this folder were all the horrific videos and pictures taken of Margaret and her home

on the night she was killed. The person who took those pictures and those videos and who killed Margaret was 17-year-old Gavin Ramsey. Three days later, on April 16th, Wadsworth police arrested Gavin and charged him with the murder. Inside Gavin's bedroom, investigators would find the other plastic glove that matched the one dropped at the crime scene, and forensic tests on both gloves would show that the DNA and bodily fluids on the gloves matched Gavin's. Police also found Margaret's red wallet, along with notebooks belonging to Gavin that detailed his desire to kill, along with his detailed handwritten research into the crimes and methods of famous serial killers.

Digging into Gavin's personal history, investigators also discovered that in the year preceding Margaret's murder, Gavin had applied for work at a local funeral home. This fact would be significant in light of a later court-ordered psychiatric report that showed that Gavin found sex with corpses exciting. Police theorized that Gavin, who had once gone to Margaret's house to ask if he could help her out with some yard work, which she didn't hire him for,

chose Margaret as his victim because of her advanced age and lack of home security. In November 2018, seven months after Margaret's murder, Ohio State prosecutors won a legal ruling that would allow the videos and images from Gavin's cell phone to be used as evidence against him in a public trial where Gavin would be charged as an adult. In response to this ruling, Gavin avoided a public trial by pleading no contest to nine charges that included aggravated murder, murder, aggravated burglary,

to nine charges that included aggravated murder, murder, aggravated burglary, kidnapping, and gross abuse of a corpse. Although Gavin's mother, Christine, told the judge at a sentencing hearing on January 4th, 2019 that Gavin's aggressive behavior and poor judgment were caused by his pediatrician misprescribing the antidepressant Zoloft that Gavin was taking at the time of the murder, the judge ultimately sentenced Gavin to life in prison at Grafton Correctional Institution, an adult facility located 40 minutes to the northwest of Wadsworth. On Monday, April 16th, the same day that Gavin was arrested and charged with the murder, 98-year-old Margaret Douglas was laid to rest right beside her husband Donald on a quiet, grassy slope in the Ohio Western Reserve National Cemetery. On her headstone, it just reads,

In God's Hands, In Our Hearts. Thank you for listening to the Mr. Ballin podcast. If you got something out of this episode and you haven't done this already, please invite the five-star review button to come on over for a fun pizza party, but when they get there, only serve fermented herring. 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.

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