MrBallen Podcast: Strange, Dark & Mysterious Stories - Fan Favorite - "Loves Makes You Do Crazy Things"

Episode Date: February 29, 2024

This story is a fan favorite that was previously published as Episode 58.In 1996, an 18 year old college freshman named Diane, began acting strangely. She would suddenly break down and start crying hysterically, and then a second later, she'd get extremely mad, and then a second after that, she'd be fine again, as if nothing had happened. For a while, her classmates thought her erratic behavior must be tied to her just really missing her boyfriend, who went to another school. But when Diane's classmates finally approached her and asked her what was going on, she gave them an answer that at first sounded so unbelievable, they assumed it was a joke. But Diane wasn't joking, and she had the scars to prove it. Horrified, Diane’s classmates left her bedroom and ran to tell school staff.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. Today's episode is a fan favorite. It's called Love Makes You Do Crazy Things. The audio in the story has been remastered for today's episode.

In 1996, an 18-year-old college freshman named Diane began acting strangely. She would suddenly break down and start crying hysterically, an 18-year-old college freshman named Diane began acting strangely. She would suddenly break down and start crying hysterically, and then a second later, she'd get extremely mad, and then a second after that, she'd be fine again, as if nothing had happened. For a while, her classmates thought her erratic behavior must be tied to her just really missing her boyfriend,

who went to another school. But when Diane's classmates finally approached her and asked her what was going on, she gave them an answer that at first sounded so unbelievable they assumed it had to be a joke. But Diane wasn't joking, and she had the scars to prove it. Horrified, Diane's classmates left her bedroom and ran to tell school staff.

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 ask to borrow the Amazon Music Follow Button's phone to make a quick call. But instead of making a quick call, just log on to their Facebook and change their relationship status from married to it's complicated. Okay, let's get into today's story. 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 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 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. 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. OK, 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? OK, 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 the fall of 1995, you would never know by looking at 17-year-old Diane Zamora that this high school senior from Crowley, Texas, had just made one of the most meaningful and important decisions of her young life. In fact, Diane, dressed in her modest t-shirt and plaid miniskirt and standing quietly in front of her locker at the end of the school day, drew a lot less attention to herself than many of the other teenagers who

were now spilling into the noisy hallway all around her. But spinning the numbers on her combination lock, Diane did not feel ordinary. Ever since she had started going out with David Graham two and a half months earlier, it was like Diane's carefully ordered world had suddenly been knocked into a new orbit. As Diane heard the click of the combination lock release, she tucked her chin down and let her dark curly hair fall forward so it covered her face, giving herself a minute of privacy to think about all that had happened starting back in the hot and sunny month of August when she and David had first become a couple. There was that moment when both of them looked across the room at one another and Diane had suddenly felt like they were the only two people in the whole world.

And then when David had walked over and casually touched her shoulder, Diane had felt this amazing thrill as she realized this person who she had known for years as just a friend had suddenly become something so much more. At first, the feelings that Diane had for David were almost as confusing as they were exciting. Up until that point in her life, having a boyfriend had never been part of Diane's life plan. Diane had spent most of her time over the last three years carving out a name for herself as a high academic achiever. Her classmates liked her just fine, but they never expected to see her out drinking or run into her at parties. Instead, Diane was known as a friendly but quiet person

who put all of her energy into her schoolwork and other activities that might bolster her academic resume. And that effort and focus had already helped her rack up an impressive list of accomplishments. She had been elected to serve in the student government. She played the flute in the school's marching band. She was a member of the community service organization called Key Club. And she was a member of the National Honor Society, an invitation-only organization made up of academically outstanding high schoolers. And for Diane, all her dedication and hard work had a single purpose. From the time she was nine

years old, Diane had one dream in life. She wanted to be an astronaut. In the fourth grade, she had sent a letter to NASA, which is the National Aeronautics and Space Administration, asking for brochures about their space program and what it took to become an astronaut. And in the years since, her focus on that ambition had never wavered. That is, until now. Almost unconsciously, Diane looked down at her left hand. It was still wrapped in bandages. Back in September, Diane had been driving David's pickup truck on a dark back road when she got into an accident. The truck had flipped over and crushed some of the bones in her left hand. And during the whole time she'd been laid up in the hospital, David had

been there for her. And he was there afterward too when Diane was back home, struggling with her schoolwork and with the temptation to take too much of her pain medication. Now, standing in the hallway of her high school, Diane wiggled the ring finger of her left hand. Soon, the bones would be fully healed and the swelling would go down. And then, Diane, feeling her heart start to race, she could start wearing the diamond ring that David had just bought for her. Because, despite having only been dating for four weeks, David had recently asked Diane to marry him. And Diane had not hesitated even a second before she said yes. Their wedding date was already set, but it was almost five years in the future, August 13, 2000. They chose this

date because it would be when both of them had graduated from college. But even though getting engaged was a big decision for Diane, it wasn't that decision that made Diane feel so different and so special. For Diane, the very meaningful and important decision she had made so very, very recently was to give up her virginity to David. As Diane started packing books into her backpack, she reminded herself that while it had been a very big decision, it had been the right decision. Meanwhile, 18 miles to the west in Mansfield, Texas, Diane's fiancé, David Graham, was also standing in front of his high school

locker, and he too was packing the stuff he would need to study that night into his backpack. Like Diane, David was known in his high school for his academic accomplishments, and he was also known for his military ambitions. Even now, at the end of a long day, and with cross-country practice still ahead of him, all six feet two inches of David's lean body stood ramrod straight. And when a fellow senior heading down the crowded hallway yelled out, sup Colonel Graham? David just grinned and raised a hand to his forehead in mock salute. He was not one of those aggressive G.I. Joe soldier types. In fact, David had given up football because it just seemed needlessly rough, and he'd taken up cross-country instead.

Like Diane at Crowley High School, David was not a part of the in-crowd social scene at his high school. But despite the teasing about his membership in the Junior ROTC and the Junior Civil Air Patrol, David was still known as a pretty cool guy and an all-around extremely high achiever with exceptionally good manners. Junior ROTC is the U.S. Army's high school equivalent of the Reserve Officer Training Corps, where students who are interested in a military career learn the core values of discipline, citizenship, leadership, character, and community service.

And while David was a Junior ROTC Battalion Commander, his real passion and commitment lay with the Junior Civil Air Patrol. This was a program supported by the U.S. Air Force that also trained teenagers for a military career, with an emphasis on flying and running search and rescue operations. But unlike ROTC, which is geared toward high school students, the Junior Civil Air Patrol accepts teenagers as young as 12 years old, which is how old David was when he first joined. Because like Diane, David had always had one ambition in his life. Ever since first grade, when his dad had taken David to a local air show where the public can go to see different kinds of aircraft and watch amazing displays of

aerial acrobatics, David had instantly become obsessed and knew that someday he would become a pilot. And also like Diane, David's dream had only strengthened with each passing year. By the time he was 14, he had his pilot's license. And now, as David headed into his last year of high school, his excellent grades, character references, and junior military service made it a sure bet that after high school, he would be accepted into the prestigious U.S. Air Force Academy out in Colorado Springs, Colorado. As David exchanged a few more greetings with friends and other ROTC members, he also reached into his locker to grab the duffel bag where he kept his cross-country running gear. But instead of going to practice,

what David really wanted to do right then was hop in his car and drive out to see Diane in Crowley. But he knew he couldn't. Leaving his school in a tide of other teenagers, David thought back to that evening in early August at a Civil Air Patrol meeting. Like David, Diane had joined the Civil Air Patrol years ago at the age of 14 because she knew that the military was a good way to get the training and qualifications she would need to become an astronaut. But in the first four years she had been a member alongside David, the two of them had only been friends, nothing more. But on that particular Tuesday night last August, David just happened to glance over at Diane as she just happened to be glancing over at him, and in this

brief moment, they locked eyes and they both instantly felt attracted to the other. David would later tell his friends that it was like he suddenly saw Diane for what she really was, incredibly smart, funny, principled, and gorgeous with her dark eyes, full lips, and olive skin. Not that David's fellow cadets needed any telling. They could see right away that something had changed, because that very night, David broke one of the first rules of the Civil Air Patrol command. As a senior commander in the Civil Air Patrol, David was forbidden to associate with junior cadets, let alone start a romantic relationship with one. But after randomly

locking eyes with Diane, David had walked right over to her, put his hand on her shoulder, and then leaned down, and with his mouth pressed close to her ear, he told her she looked very nice tonight. Because of his romantic involvement with Diane, David had to give up his command position in the Civil Air Patrol. But for David, that was a small price to pay in order to be with Diane, David had to give up his command position in the Civil Air Patrol. But for David, that was a small price to pay in order to be with Diane. And by the end of that month, David was head over heels in love with her. It didn't bother him at all that there was no sex in their relationship because he respected Diane's views on premarital sex. And even after they got engaged to be married, David had no expectations that Diane's

views on sex would suddenly change. However, they did. Diane's horrible accident in his pickup truck had cemented the bond between them. And for David, who had only ever had just one serious girlfriend, Diane's sudden decision to make love to him had led to one of the best experiences in his life. David also knew that their relationship had helped both of them cope with some very painful and difficult family problems. This past summer, David and his three siblings were shocked and devastated when their parents divorced, and David's mother had been the one to leave home and move away 250 miles south to Houston, Texas. And it was during that same time

that Diane had been the one in her family to confront her father about his longtime affair with his mistress. That affair had created so much financial and emotional chaos in the family that her father had lost his job and for a short but awful period in her life, Diane and her younger sister and brothers became homeless living out of the family car. But through it all, Diane and David had been there for one another. David had helped pay Diane's expenses, he gave her rides and bought her clothes, and when Diane's family was back on their feet, David practically began living in their new house. And as soon as cross-country practice was over that afternoon, that's exactly where David was headed, to Diane's house, where they would study together until it was dark,

and David's father called to tell David it was time for him to come home. When David arrived in Crowley two and a half hours later, Diane was waiting for him. She gave him one of her big shy smiles, and a few minutes later, they were both seated on her worn sofa, their school books spread out all around them. As David drove back home that night in the dark, he reminded himself that the cross-country season would be over in just a month or so. Mansfield High School's team had been good enough that they'd qualified for the regional meet that would be held in Lubbock, Texas on November 3rd and 4th. But David was not really looking forward to this meet. He had no chance of placing in any of the events. He'd have to stay overnight with his teammates in a cramped motel room.

Lubbock was more than 300 miles away. And since Diane's high school, Crowley High School, had not qualified for the regional meet, Diane would be staying home. David had friends on his team that he could spend time with during the meet, but he wished Diane was going to be there. A few weeks later, and the regional meet in Lubbock, Texas wound up happening pretty much as David had expected. But at least when it was all over, David and Diane had more time they could spend together. From that Thanksgiving onward, David and Diane's respective families both watched with pride as the young couple seemed to turn the last seven months of their final year at high school

into a victory lap that had them circling together around a shining future. By early spring, David had received word that he'd been selected as a candidate for the US Air Force Academy out in Colorado Springs. And on the same exact day, Diane received her letter of acceptance from the US Naval Academy in Annapolis, Maryland, along with a full scholarship that covered tuition and room and board

in exchange for four years of military service after she graduated. As high school graduation rolled around in May of 1996, Diane was recognized as one of the most accomplished seniors at Crowley High School, while David was one of the most celebrated seniors at Mansfield High School. And when the students at Mansfield stood up to give David a standing ovation, Diane was right there in the audience clapping as hard as she could, just as David was at Crowley High School when Diane received her awards and diploma.

For students and administrators at both schools, these award ceremonies were welcome moments of celebration because in the past several months, big city problems, drugs, gangs, and violence had started creeping into the once safe and secure borders of both Mansfield and Crowley. Ever since January, the residents of Dallas and Fort Worth, where Diane lived, had been following the tragic news of a child kidnapping that had led to the brutal murder of the nine-year-old hostage, a little girl with shoulder-length blonde hair whose missing person picture had been plastered all over the city. And five months into the investigation and the little girl's murderer had still not been caught.

Meanwhile, Mansfield had suffered its own very personal tragedy. In early December, a local farmer had found the body of a high school sophomore in his abandoned field. She had been murdered and her death had sent shockwaves through the 15,000 residents of Mansfield and the 2,500 high school students who had been her classmates. In the three weeks it took local detectives to make an arrest, the school and the town had buzzed with rumors as police tried to sort through the complicated and secret life of a popular and talented teenager. For Diane and David, the combined news of these tragedies made their own worries and problems, mostly their upcoming

separation as they headed off to opposite sides of the country for college, seem completely insignificant. So, after the high school awards ceremony when David and Diane were interviewed by local reporters about their accomplishments and future plans, they told them that there were a lot worse things in life than a long-distance relationship, especially given the strength of their commitment to one another. When the news article was published 10 days later in the Fort Worth Star-Telegram, the headline read, When the news article was published 10 days later in the Fort Worth Star-Telegram, the headline read, Couple to March to Military Drums, then Wedding Bells. And at the start of the summer of 1996, David and Diane put that commitment to the test.

On Friday, June 30th, David headed 700 miles northwest to the U.S. Air Force Academy, its 18,000-acre campus located in the remote foothills of the Rocky Mountains in Colorado Springs, Colorado. Two days later, on Sunday, July 2nd, Diane headed 1,400 miles east to the United States Naval Academy, its 338-acre campus perched on the edge of the Chesapeake River and fully enveloped by the historic city of Annapolis, Maryland. And from the very start of their military education and training, it was Diane who had the most trouble adjusting to the physical challenges and also to the emotional stress of being separated from David. Unlike David, who was actually motivated by the structure and discipline of the military,

who was actually motivated by the structure and discipline of the military, Diane struggled to fit in socially and to embrace the command structure that put freshmen like herself at the bottom of the totem pole. Meanwhile, that old injury to her left hand from the car accident had made the daily grind of endless push-ups, squats, bear crawls, and other calisthenics not only difficult, but very painful. Five weeks in, and David, out in Colorado, had become an official Air Force cadet, ready to start the four-year run to becoming an Air Force pilot. Five weeks in for Diane, and she was showing alarming and troubling signs of psychological strain. While her letters back home painted a very rosy picture of success and determination, the reality of her situation could not have been more different. Without David,

it was like Diane's life was falling apart. According to her squad leader, a freshman named Jason Guild, Diane was only barely making it through the six-week boot camp at the Naval Academy. She wrote constant emails to David, and when he didn't reply right away, she'd break down into uncontrollable fits of crying. In her required essay, where she was supposed to talk about herself and her ambitions, all she wrote about was David and their engagement. Diane was also starting to withdraw socially. She refused to participate in a program that matched new cadets with local families to help cadets adjust to the stresses

of being newcomers at the academy. Diane's supervising officers warned her that she was becoming way too much of a loner and that she was losing her focus and only just meeting the minimum expectations. And when Diane did engage with other people, all she talked about was David. But along with telling anyone who would listen how much she and David loved each other, Diane also talked about David like maybe she didn't fully trust him. But it was Diane, not David, who seemed open to getting involved with someone else, and who dangled that possibility in front of David like a red flag in front of a bull when she told him she was interested in her squad leader, Jason Gilt. And when Diane called David

to tell him that Jason had kissed her, David immediately sent Jason a threatening email telling him to leave Diane alone. Diane responded with a deluge of emails and letters and more phone calls to David that were equal parts lovesick and angry. Meanwhile, when she was with Jason and her friends, Diane veered back and forth between begging Jason to be her boyfriend and in the next breath declaring her undying devotion to David. At first, Diane's roommates assumed that Diane's erratic behavior was caused by the stress of

trying to maintain a long-distance relationship with her fiancé. But halfway through boot camp, Diane really seemed to come totally unhinged. It was at that point in early August that Diane took her roommates aside and began to point out all these small scars all over her body. And then she began to hint at something very dark in her relationship with David. And finally, in the early morning hours of Sunday, August 25th, one day after officially making it through her six-week boot camp, Diane didn't just hint at this dark thing. She came right out and told her roommates the whole 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 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, 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. You 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. 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

a 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.

Completely shocked by what they had just heard, Diane's fellow cadets knew they could not keep silent. But what Diane had said was also just so unbelievable that her roommates weren't sure if Diane had actually just made the whole thing up for some reason. So instead of reaching out directly to an academy officer, the cadets went to the academy chaplain whose job was to offer spiritual and moral guidance. They figured he could decide how to handle the information. Five days later, on Friday, August 30th, four investigators from the outer suburbs of Dallas and Fort Worth, Texas arrived in the main administration building of the U.S. Naval Academy. Surrounded by the naval officials

who had been contacted by the academy chaplain, the detectives had made the 1,400-mile trip for only one reason. They were there to talk with former Texas resident Diane Zamora. It would turn out all the stress Diane had felt since arriving at the Naval Academy was caused by something much more sinister and disturbing than just Diane's separation from David. Instead, Diane's strange and troubling behavior had been caused by a dark secret that Diane and David had been keeping for a very long time. But, to understand what this dark secret was, we have to go back almost nine months to late November of 1995 when David and Diane were both still seniors in high school. That was the weekend of the cross-country regional meet in Lubbock, Texas, the same

regional meet that David had been really bummed about because Diane would not be attending. During the long five-hour bus ride to and then from Lubbock, David had struck up a friendly conversation with a fellow Mansfield High School student, a young woman who was one of the best runners on the girls' team. And when the bus had finally returned to Mansfield after the meet was all over, this same girl asked David if he could give her a ride home from where they had just been dropped off, which was out front of Mansfield High School. David agreed, but instead of driving straight to her house, he and his new friend made an

unplanned detour to a parking lot behind a local elementary school, and not long after parking, the pair had climbed into the back seat of David's car, and they had sex. By then, it was a well-known fact at Mansfield High School, where David went to school, that he was engaged. And maybe if Diane had also been a student at Mansfield, she might have found out about David's infidelity. But she didn't, because no one at her school, Crowley High School, had heard about what David had done. So Diane had no idea he had cheated on her. And so over the course of the days that followed David's sexual encounter with the star runner, Diane just acted normal, talking endlessly to David about the purity and sanctity of their love for one another.

And day after day, David's guilt over what he had done felt heavier and heavier until he just couldn't stand it any longer. And so finally, on Friday, December 1st, 1995, a few days after spending Thanksgiving with Diane and her family, David told Diane that he had cheated on her. Diane was beyond devastated. Even though the thought of David with someone else was unbearable for Diane to think about, she couldn't stop herself from making David repeat over and over and over again all the little details of the sexual encounter. And the more Diane heard, the more wild and upset she became. To Diane, her virginity had been very precious, a gift that she could only ever give one time. And now David had repaid that gift by cheating on her. When crying

and screaming did nothing to make her feel any better, Diane grabbed a fireplace iron and tried to hit David. After David grabbed the iron and took it away from her, Diane turned away from him and just started banging her head against the wall. Over the next couple of days, David and Diane spent hours talking to one another about what happened, but especially for Diane, there was just no way to go back to how she used to feel about David. And for David, along with his sense of guilt, there was something else. He was starting to have conflicting emotions about his relationship with Diane. And so, on the night of Sunday, December 3rd, just 48 hours after coming clean to Diane,

David slowly picked up the family telephone in his home, and he dialed a phone number, and then put the receiver to his ear. A minute later, David heard the familiar voice of 16-year-old Adrian Jones, the smart, bubbly, blonde star runner of the Mansfield High School cross-country team that David had had sex with in the back of his car. After talking for only a few minutes, Adrian agreed to sneak out of her house later that night and meet up with David. Like David, Adrian was an excellent student who talked about becoming a veterinarian after she finished high school. But Adrian also had a rebellious streak and while she did not have a reputation as someone

who slept around, she did enjoy a little bit of flirting and attention from the opposite sex. And while she hadn't told any of her friends about her earlier hookup with David, she decided that if he ever asked her out again, she'd say yes. So by 1230 AM, Adrian was looking out her window, anxiously waiting for David to arrive. And even though David wound up being two hours late, pulling up the driveway close to 230 AM, Adrian was still wide awake and happy to see him. As soon as she heard the sound of his car engine on her street, Adrian turned on her light so she could give herself

one final quick look in the mirror. She was wearing her favorite plaid shorts and t-shirt. Then she switched off the light, made her way quietly down the stairs, and slipped out the back door. After Adrian climbed into the front passenger seat of the Mazda hatchback, David smiled and apologized for being late. Then he turned the car northwest and they drove along quiet, dark roads until they reached their destination, a large recreation center just over the Mansfield line in the small town of Grand Prairie. Once they arrived, David turned off the car engine. The night was clear and the moon was almost full.

To one side of the car, they could see the lake that was part of the recreation center. On the other side of the car, they could see a large empty field fenced off on all sides. Even though the night air was cool, Adrian had rolled down her window and a slight breeze ruffled her thick blonde hair. For just a minute, David sat in the driver's seat without moving. He knew what he was about to do was wrong. But before he could change his mind, he turned toward Adrian and reached across the space between them. As she began to lean toward David, he ran his hands along her arms and then up over her shoulders towards her neck. And then, taking a deep breath,

David suddenly closed his strong hands around Adrian's throat and gave her neck a violent jerk. For just a second, Adrian sat there stunned, and then her hands shot up to her neck as she tried to grab David's fingers and pull them away. But as she did this, David only tightened his grip, readjusting himself in his seat, and then he began twisting her neck first to one side and then to the other. Within seconds, Adrian's complete and total shock gave way to a massive rush of adrenaline. And with all of her strength, she grabbed his arms and stopped the violent side-to-side motion, and then began forcing her much larger attacker back away from her. And it was while she was grappling with David that Adrian heard a sudden noise coming from the backseat of the car. All at once, she felt David's hands loosen,

and they both turned towards the sound. Suddenly, there was a third person in the car with them, a small, slender girl with dark hair and dark eyes. Even as Adrian registered in some part of her brain that this must be David's fiancée, Diane Zamora, Adrian felt the blinding pain of a sudden blow to the side of her head. Dazed, but knowing she was in a fight for her life, Adrian twisted in her seat away from David, away from Diane, and somehow managed to open the car door and she fell out onto the ground. But as Adrian scrambled to her feet,

she felt another blow to her head in the same spot, this one even harder. Despite the pain, Adrian still managed to pull herself up onto her feet again, and seconds later she was half staggering, half running towards the open field ahead of her. But before Adrian made it to the fence, she could feel her strength starting to ebb. With one last lurch, Adrienne threw herself up and over the four strands of the barbed wire fence. But even as she made it to the other side, her sock caught on the barbs and she stumbled forward and kind of twisted and landed on her back, her bloody face looking up at the bright Texas moon.

Off in the distance, there was the sound of raised voices, and then a few minutes later, David stood in the field looking down at Adrian, a 9mm Russian-made Makarov pistol in one of his hands. David raised the gun and aimed it at Adrian's face, and then he fired it twice. One round hit Adrian just below her left eye, the other round hit her square in the forehead, right between her eyes. In the last moment of her life, Adrian's hand clutched convulsively into a fist, and her fingers wrapped themselves around a handful of stiff winter grass. Forty minutes later, in the town of Burleson, 20 miles to the west, 16-year-old Jay Green heard a knock on his bedroom window. It was long past midnight, but this was a routine that had played

out many times before between Jay and his best friend from the Junior Civil Air Patrol, David Graham. Except this time, when Jay removed the screen from the window to let his friend inside, it wasn't just David standing there. Instead, two people tumbled into the room, landing at Jay's feet. In the faint glow of green and red lights from the plastic Christmas tree set up in the corner of his bedroom, Jay looked down to see David and Diane lying together on the floor, arms wrapped tightly around each other. It looked like there was something dark and liquid spattered on their clothes and faces and hands. When Jay asked David what was going on, David looked up at him and said,

You don't want to know. Don't ask any questions. We were never here. This never happened. A few minutes later, David and Diane went into Jay's bathroom and spent 30 minutes cleaning up. When they came back out, David asked Jay if he could borrow some clean clothes. An hour after that, David and Diane made the four-mile drive from Jay's house back to Diane's house in Crowley. When David's father called the Zamora's house later that morning to make sure David was up and going to school, he asked his son if he'd heard about that girl from Mansfield that was just found dead in a local farmer's empty field. David said no, then he hung up the phone and stared at Diane in silence. It would turn out, a week earlier, when David confessed to Diane that he had had sex with

Adrian Jones, Diane had been so furious at David that when he asked her how he could make things between the two of them right again, Diane had told him there was only one way that was going to happen. David would have to kill Adrian. At first, David was stunned by her request, but feeling like he somehow had to avenge Diane's honor, he ultimately agreed to do it. So, beginning early on Sunday, December 3rd, as Diane watched and listened, David started placing calls to Adrienne. When he finally reached her, it was about 10.30pm that night. Adrienne was on the phone with her boyfriend at the time David called, and Adrienne's mother was waiting nearby to make sure Adrian did not stay

up too late talking on the phone. Adrian interrupted her call with her boyfriend, whose name was Tracy, to take the incoming call from David, and a few minutes later, she had agreed to meet David that night. Diane told David, in no uncertain terms, that there was no way she was going to let David meet with Adrian alone. So, after making their preparations, David got behind the wheel of the Zamora family car and Diane crawled into the trunk space of the car. And because this car was a hatchback, the trunk was not separated from the seating area. Meaning, if you were in the back seat of this car, you could just turn around and look into the trunk. David's plan was to kill Adrian by breaking her neck.

But, just in case that didn't work, he had brought along his 9mm pistol. Additionally, he had brought a set of heavy, round barbell weights that he would use to sink Adrian's dead body in the nearby lake out at the recreation center, where he planned to take Adrian. David packed both the gun and the weights in a duffel bag, and then he put that bag in the trunk next to where Diane was going to be hiding. But it turned out, in David's words, that snapping someone's neck was a lot harder than it looks in the movies. Within minutes of David stopping the car near the recreation center, nothing had gone

according to the plan that he had worked out with Diane. When Diane peeked her head up and over the back seat and saw David struggling to break Adrian's neck, Diane dug into the duffel bag next to her and pulled out one of David's weights. Then Diane climbed from the trunk space up and over the back row of seats until she was right behind the front seat where Adrian was fighting for her life. As Diane got into position, Adrian and David heard her and for a second they both just kind of stopped and turned around to look back toward her. And in this brief second that Adrian is registering that Diane is sitting in the car with them, Diane wound up with that weight and slammed it into the side of Adrian's head. But amazingly, this did not kill Adrian.

Adrian somehow managed to get out of the car despite her head being caved in on one side, and then she began running towards the field. But Diane leapt out of the car, chased her down, and slammed her again as she was running in the exact same spot on the side of her head, further crushing her skull. But still, amazingly, Adrian, probably just fueled by adrenaline, kept on moving towards the field. But when she tried to clear the fence, she had gotten stuck on one of the barbs and landed on her back and she couldn't move and she had no more strength left. And so she just lay there staring up at the moon, wondering what was going to happen to her.

By this point, Diane had gone back to the car, but David had grabbed his pistol and charged into the field after Adrian. But when he looked down at her and saw her on the ground with her head caved in and she wasn't moving, he just turned around and walked back to the car and told Diane that Adrian was dead. But Diane was taking no chances, and after kind of peering over David's shoulder in Adrian's direction, she thought she saw Adrian moving, and so she told David, go finish the job. A minute later, David had walked back over to the field and was looking down at Adrian, who was very much alive. Her breath was shallow, but she was laying there looking up at him, her eyes wide open,

and David just raised his gun and he fired it twice into her face. When Diane and David got back into the car to drive to Jay Green's house to wash the blood off of their clothes and bodies, the first words David said to Diane were, I love you, baby. Do you believe me now? In response, Diane answered, Yes, I believe you. I love you too. In the five weeks that followed Adrian's death, Adrian's mother, Linda Jones, told police that on the night before Adrian's body was

discovered, she overheard her daughter talking to two different boys. Adrian had been talking to her boyfriend, Tracy, who had a rock-solid alibi for the time of the murder, when Adrian had interrupted that conversation to take an incoming call from another boy before switching back to her call with her boyfriend. When Linda asked her daughter that night who the second caller was, Adrian had told her that it was a boy named David from the cross-country team. But even with that tidbit of information, detectives never seriously consider David as a possible suspect. Because, according to Adrian's boyfriend, Tracy, Adrian had told him

that that incoming call she had received was from a boy named Brian, a guy who sometimes followed Adrienne around and hung out at the Golden Fried Chicken drive-thru where Adrienne worked. What no one knew at the time was that Adrienne had lied to her boyfriend about the identity of the second caller, most likely because she didn't want her boyfriend to ask any questions about David. During the initial murder investigation, when police did ask David if he called Adrian the night of her murder, David simply lied and said, no, why would I do that? David then told police that he had an alibi for the night of the murder, that he and his fiancée Diane had spent December 3rd and 4th with one another at her house.

Diane, had spent December 3rd and 4th with one another at her house. Taking David at his word, detectives assumed that Linda must have misheard what her daughter had said, and so the police began operating on the idea that what Adrian's boyfriend had been told by Adrian, that Brian was the caller, was the truth. And before long, investigators had zeroed in on Brian as their main suspect, and once they found out that Brian had been paying a lot of unwanted attention to Adrian, they arrested him. But after holding Brian in jail for three weeks, police could not find any hard evidence that linked Brian to the killing. After failing to break Brian's alibi, and after Brian passed a lie detector test, police released the traumatized 17-year-old. And after that, the Adrian Jones murder case went cold.

But that would change in August of 1996, just two months after Diane and David got their standing ovations at their high school graduations and headed off to two of the most prestigious military academies in the world. Because there, at the U.S. Naval Academy, separated from David and consumed with guilt and also with suspicion that David might cheat on her again, Diane began to draw back the curtain on what her relationship with David had truly been like in the months after Adrian's gruesome murder. The scars on her body that she showed her classmates were from David. According to Diane, David had beat her and stabbed her and wrapped a belt around her neck and pulled it tight. And apparently, Diane had done similar things to David and he had marks all over

his body as well. While the image David and Diane presented to the world was that of a golden couple utterly devoted to one another. In private, they had started to physically as well as emotionally torture each other over this terrible secret they both shared. And finally, on August 14th, Diane came out and told her roommates exactly what that secret was. That almost nine months earlier, back in December of 1995, she and David had killed 16-year-old Adrian Jones. And as soon as Diane's roommates passed that information on to the military chaplain, he had informed the attorney for the Naval Academy, at which point naval officers had called the police department in Mansfield, Texas, and told them they needed to come out and talk to one of their students. When Texas investigators arrived in Annapolis on August 30th to question Diane about Adrian's murder, Diane denied everything, saying that the entire

story she had told her roommates was just a Texas tall tale, something she had made up in an effort to get her roommates' attention. But when investigators flew out to the U.S. Air Force Academy in Colorado to question David, David's initial denial that he had had anything to do with Adrian's death did not hold up for very long. By that time, investigators had tracked down Jay Green, who told them about the bizarre visit he'd received from Diane and David in the early hours of December 4th. And when he was ordered, not asked, by Air Force officials to take a lie detector test, David failed. A couple of days later, on the night of Thursday, September 5th, David sat down at a word processor in a small room at the U.S. Air Force Academy administration building and typed out and then signed a four and a half page confession. In it, he wrote that when his

quote, precious relationship with Diane was damaged by his quote, thoughtless actions, which is how he described his sexual encounter with Adrian, the only thing that could satisfy Diane's quote, womanly vengeance was for David to kill the girl who had, for an instant, taken Diane's place in David's life. Confronted with David's confession, Diane quickly responded with her own formal statement that corroborated much of what David had already told investigators. And immediately after both of them had been arrested and charged with capital murder, David and Diane continued to defend each other and declare their love for one another both publicly and through the many letters they wrote back and forth. But by the time Diane's case went to trial

a couple of years later, in early February of 1998, David and Diane had not only recanted their confessions, they had also turned on each other. Diane portrayed herself as an innocent party who had been abused and manipulated by David, and it was David who actually murdered Adrian Jones. The jury did not buy Diane's story, and on February 17, 1998, Diane was found guilty of capital murder and sentenced to life in prison. Five months later, when David's case came to trial, defense attorneys argued that David had been pressured by investigators to confess to Adrian's murder. But the jury disagreed, and on July 24, 1998, David was also found guilty of capital murder and sentenced to life in prison as well. Unlike Diane, David has expressed remorse for his role in the brutal murder of Adrian Jones, and he has said his punishment fits the crime.

Both David and Diane will be eligible for parole in 2036. Thank you for listening to the Mr. Ballin Podcast. If you enjoyed today's stories and you're looking for more bone-chilling content, be sure to check out all of our studios' podcasts, Mr. Ballin's Medical Mysteries, Bedtime Stories, and Run Full. Just search for Ballin Studios wherever you get your podcasts, and all of those shows will pop up. To watch hundreds more stories like the one you just heard today, head over to our YouTube channel, which is just called Mr. Ballin. So, that's going to do it. I really appreciate your support.

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