MrBallen Podcast: Strange, Dark & Mysterious Stories - Fava Beans and Chianti

Episode Date: March 9, 2023

Today’s podcast features 3 stories about "cannibals." The audio from all three of these stories has been pulled from our main YouTube channel and has been remastered for today's episode.Story names, previews & links to original YouTube videos:#3 -- "Kentucky Fried Chicken" -- A plumber found a strange substance in the pipes (Original YouTube link -- https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=XUXHUjsb6O4)#2 -- "Reluctant Cannibals" -- A rugby team was forced into an unthinkable position (Original YouTube link -- https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=7tgiVW9mSL8)#1 -- "Piggy Palace" -- One of the most heinous crimes in Canadian history (Original YouTube link -- https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Rj4Tl850GxA)For 100s more stories like these, check out our main 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 podcast features three stories about cannibals. The audio from all three of these stories has been pulled from our main YouTube channel and has been remastered for today's episode.

The links to the original YouTube videos are in the description. The first story you'll hear is called Kentucky Fried Chicken and it's about a plumber who finds a strange substance inside of a pipe. The second story you'll hear is called Reluctant Cannibals, and it's about a rugby team who was forced into an unthinkable position. And the third and final story you'll hear is called Piggy Palace, and it's about one of the most heinous crimes in Canadian history. 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 remove a single puzzle piece from all of the Amazon Music Follow Button's puzzles. Okay, let's get into our first story called Kentucky Fried Chicken. 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? 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 Wondery app. 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, or listen early and ad-free on Wondery Plus on Apple Podcasts or the Wondery app. In early 1983, residents of the Cranley Gardens apartment complex in North London began complaining about their drains being clogged up. Initially, their landlord was dismissive and said, oh, it's just an old building, it's old plumbing, and that's why it's slow. But eventually, the landlord conceded and asked a plumber to come out and have a look. And so, on the evening of

February 8th, an experienced plumber named Mike came out to Cranley Gardens and after learning what the complaints were, he went around to the side of the building and he opened up a drain cover to have a look inside. As expected, when he shined his light down, he saw wads of hair and napkins and other things kind of mashed together, clogging up the pipes. And so he reached in and began pulling the stuff out and putting it in a bucket right next to him. And then after he had cleared the majority of the obstruction, he reached his arm all the way into this pipe to feel around to see if there was anything in there that he just couldn't see. And at some point as he was reaching, when his arm was almost completely into this pipe, his hand hit a major blockage. And so he moved his fingers around to try to feel what it was, but he couldn't tell.

It was something that was fairly soft, but there were some hard things inside of it, like sticks or rods. So he grabbed a handful of this blockage and he pulled his arm back out of the pipe. He opened his hand and what he was holding looked like ground meat, but it wasn't any meat he'd ever seen before. And inside of this fleshy substance

looked like little bits of bone. Now, Mike had cleared many pipes before and he had never seen meat be the reason for a blockage and so this whole situation just seemed really strange and he decided you know it's late i'll just come back tomorrow with my supervisor so he can see what this is too so mike puts the cat back on the drain pipe and he walks out from behind the building back out towards his truck parked on the road and as he's walking two of the residents of this complex come out and they say hey did you fix the blockage you know what was it and mike would say no he hadn't and then he just kind of blurted out that there was meat in the pipes that

was what was causing the blockage and then one of these two residents says well i bet people are just flushing their kentucky fried chicken down the drains that's what's causing it and mike looked at him and he was like yeah maybe and then he turned around, got in his truck and he drove away. Early the next morning, Mike and his supervisor came back to Cranley Gardens and they went around to the side of the building. They undid that cap and then Mike reached down inside expecting to feel this blockage. But where it should have been, there was nothing. Somebody had cleared the pipes. And so mike and his supervisor are looking at each other and mike is like there's no way that cleared on its own

someone had to have come out here and cleared it but i don't know why they would have done that and still had us come out but the men decide you know what maybe by chance it did just kind of slip through and cleared itself so let's just continue the process and make sure each of the apartment buildings their individual pipe is unobstructed and when they checked these pipes they found all of them were clear except for one apartment number 23 whose pipe was blocked up with more of this meaty substance Mike and his partner were already very suspicious of the fact that someone had snuck out here in the middle of the night and cleared the pipe probably they didn't know if that happened but it seemed likely and now they're finding more of this weird meat substance coming from a particular apartment

and so the whole situation just seemed off and so they told the landlord that they were not going to touch this somebody else had to come out and deal with this and the landlord after finding out there was meat jammed in the pipes got really freaked out and called the police the police showed up they pulled this meat substance out of the pipes and they sent it to a mortuary where a pathologist looked at it and said, this is meat. It's human meat. And in particular, the stuff that was pulled out of apartment number 23's pipes is that of a human neck. So the police go back to Cranley Gardens, they go up to apartment number 23, they knock on the door, and when the door opens, they're hit with this overwhelming stench of just rotting flesh. And standing in the doorway of this apartment, the owner of the apartment,

is this guy who's in his late 30s, early 40s, who introduces himself as Dennis Nielsen. And they say, hey, Dennis, can we have a look around your apartment? And he says, you know, why? And they say, well, we found human remains in your pipes. And Dennis immediately says, oh my goodness, I can't believe that, that's horrible. But the police are not buying it and they say, you know what, Dennis, tell us where the rest of the body is.

And at this, Dennis suddenly went expressionless, emotionless, and he just turns around and he points into his bedroom and he says, it's in two plastic bags in my closet. And so before the police go into his apartment to go inspect these bags, they say, Dennis, are there any other bodies in your apartment that we should know about? And Dennis sighs and he looks up to the ceiling and says, yeah, there's about 15 or 16 here. It's a long

story. It goes way back. I'd love to tell it to you, get this off my chest and I'll do it at the police station. So after Dennis was arrested and brought to the station, he told them his horrible story. It had all started five years earlier in 1978 when Dennis was 33. He was at a pub having some drinks by himself when a teenager came into the bar and attempted to buy an alcoholic drink, and he was denied service. And so Dennis pulled him aside and said, hey, I'd be happy to give you a drink at my apartment. It's right down the road. And the young man, whose name was Stephen, was very excited about this and said, great, let's go. Once they arrived back and they were up in Dennis's apartment, the pair had lots of drinks and they were having fun and laughing. And then at some point, the pair

climbed into bed together. The next morning when Dennis got up, his new friend, Stephen, was still sleeping right next to him. And he had this sudden, overwhelming sense of dread because he knew as soon as Stephen woke up, he would see this as a one-night stand, and he would just leave. He would not stick around and remain friends with Dennis. And Dennis just did not like that idea. He wanted Stephen to stay. And so he looked on the ground next to the bed, and he saw the necktie that Stephen had been wearing was on the ground. And so he got on the ground, he grabbed the necktie, he fashioned it into a noose, and then he climbed back on the bed and he saw the necktie that Stephen had been wearing was on the ground. And so he got on the ground, he grabbed the necktie, he fashioned it into a noose, and then he climbed back on the bed, got on top of Stephen's chest, and he looped the tie around his neck and then he pulled it as tight as he could. And as soon as it was tight, Dennis would tell police that Stephen came alive

and he began reaching for his neck and kicking Dennis as hard as he could, but he just can't get it off. And at some point, Dennis said Stephen just seemed to give up. He looked up at Dennis and knew he wasn't going to get this off and that Dennis was determined to kill him. And so Stephen just allowed himself to go limp and then he slouched over. And as soon as that happened, Dennis said he relaxed. But as he's looking at Stephen, he realized he wasn't dead. He was just unconscious. And so Dennis goes into the kitchen and he gets this huge plastic bucket and he fills it up with water and he sets it in the middle of his kitchen floor. And then he gets a bunch of kitchen chairs and he lines them up like a table

right in front of this bucket of water. And then he dragged Stephen's body into the kitchen and he lays him on his back on these chairs, but make sure his head is not resting on the chair. His head is kind of dangling off the back of these chairs. And then he grabbed that bucket of water and he slid it right underneath Stephen's head. And then Dennis got on top of the chairs, on top of Stephen, and then he pressed the young man's face straight down so his head went backwards

until his mouth and his nose were under the water. And Dennis held him like that until Stephen regained consciousness. But again, he didn't fight it. He knew he was doomed. And after several minutes, the bubble stopped coming to the surface and Stephen was dead. Dennis pulled his victim off of the chairs. He brought him into the living room and he sat him on a chair. And then Dennis went into the kitchen and he made himself a cup of coffee and he smoked

some cigarettes. And then he just stood in the doorway and looked at Stephen's body. And he would tell police it was a very bizarre experience because Stephen still looked like he was alive. In fact, Dennis would try talking to him as if he was going to talk back, but obviously he didn't. At some point, Dennis realized, you know, the life he had before he killed Stephen was now over. He had a new life and he didn't really know how to handle it. And so the first thing he thought to do was to clean Stephen. So he took Stephen's body and he brought him into the bathroom and he gave him a very long bath, cleaned his body, cleaned his hair. And then afterwards, he got him out, he dressed him and put him into his bed. And then Dennis climbed into bed with him and laid with him.

And he would tell police as he laid there, he suddenly felt overjoyed. Stephen was not going to leave him. He was going to stay here as long as Dennis wanted him to. Stephen was not going to leave him. He was going to stay here as long as Dennis wanted him to. After laying with him for some time, Dennis realized he had to find a way to hide Stephen's body in his apartment so no one could find him. And so he left his apartment and he went to a hardware store where he got an electric knife and a big storage bin. He brought them back to his apartment and as he was about to cut Stephen up, he just couldn't go through with it. So instead, he just climbed into bed and took a nap next to Stephen's body.

When he got up again, he moved Stephen's body onto the ground in his living room and covered him with a blanket. And then he went and made dinner and then sat in his chair in the living room right next to this body on the ground and watched TV for a while. When he was done watching TV and eating, he looked at the body on the floor and realized, you know, he really hadn't made any progress in terms of hiding him somewhere in his apartment. And that's when he remembered he had a loose floorboard in his apartment. And so he went over to the loose floorboard, he pulled it up, and he saw there was a space under the floors.

And so he pulled a couple more boards up, and then he grabbed Stephen's body, and he attempted to force him down into the space. But by now, Stephen's body had begun to stiffen up from rigor mortis. Specifically, his arms were outstretched like a Y over his head. And so as Dennis is trying to force him down in there, his arms were not allowing him to go down into that small space. So Dennis took Stephen's body and he propped him up against the wall in his bedroom. So the body is against the wall, rigid, standing up with its arms up over its head, and Stephen's eyes were still open. And then after that, Dennis just got in bed and fell asleep. So all night, this corpse is staring at Dennis in his bed. And then the next morning when Dennis got up, there was Stephen still up against the wall with his hands in the air looking down at him.

Dennis grabbed Stephen's body and put it on the ground, and he began yanking and jerking and pulling on each of Stephen's arms until they were pinned down by his side. And then after that, Dennis started working on his legs and his hips and he began contorting him until he was small enough that he could pack him down under his floor. And then once he was under there, he just put the boards on top and went about his daily life. And for the next couple of days, he totally forgot about Stephen. But a week after putting him under the floor, Dennis decided he missed Stephen and he wanted to see him again. And so one night, he opened up the floorboards, he looked down, and there was Stephen. And Dennis would say it looked

like he was dirty. So he pulled him out of the floor and he gave him another bath. And then after he had cleaned Stephen, he pulled him out of the water, he dried him off, and he put him in the chair. And then Dennis took a bath himself in the same water he had just used to clean Stephen, he pulled him out of the water, he dried him off, and he put him in the chair, and then Dennis took a bath himself in the same water he had just used to clean Stephen. After a long soak in this tub, Dennis finally got out, he toweled himself off, he redressed Stephen, and then he forced him back onto the floorboards and covered him up again. And he would remain there for the next seven months until Dennis finally decided to dispose of him by burning him in a bonfire outside of their apartment building. And then after the body was completely incinerated and gone, Dennis remembered thinking, I can't believe I just got away with murder. And so he would do it again

and again and again, killing at least 15 young men from North London, all by strangulation or by drowning or a combination of the two. And after he killed them, he would keep them stashed in his apartment for months at a time, in his closet, in his cabinets, in his bed, under the floors, all over his apartment he had these bodies. And while these bodies were in his apartment, he liked to periodically take them out to spend time with them. He would tell police he found corpses to be beautiful. He was fascinated by them. But eventually, in 1983, he had so many bodies stashed all over his apartment that he knew he really needed to expedite getting rid of them. And so he began cutting them up and trying to force them down his drain,

which eventually clogged the pipes. And so when Mike the plumber showed up and discovered this meaty substance in the pipes and Dennis overheard him talking about it, that night after Mike was gone, Dennis had gone outside and attempted to clear the rest of the remains from the pipes. But he wasn't aware there were still remains stuck in the pipe that led to his specific apartment. Dennis Nielsen confessed to killing 15 young men, and attempting to kill at least 7 others,

and he was sentenced to life in prison. Dennis never showed any remorse nor did he show any desire to want to be free again. He actually said he deserved to be in jail for what he did. In 2018 Dennis Nilsson would die in prison at the age of 72. I'm Peter Frankapern and I'm Afua Hirsch And we're here to tell you about our new season of Legacy, covering the iconic, troubled musical genius that was Nina Simone. Full disclosure, this is a big one for me. Nina Simone, one of my favourite artists of all time,

somebody who's had a huge impact on me, who I think objectively stands apart for the level of her talent, the audacity of her message. If I was a first year at university, the first time I sat down and really listened to her and engaged with her message, it totally floored me. And the truth and pain and messiness of her struggle that's all captured in unforgettable music that has stood the test of time. Think that's fair, Peter? I mean, the way in which her music comes across is so powerful, no matter what song it is.

So join us on Legacy for Nina Simone. Hey, Mr. Ballin' fans. Did you know you can listen to episodes of this very show ad-free and one month early on Amazon Music with your Prime membership? That's right. All your favorite Mr. Ballin episodes can be heard on Amazon Music ad-free, and you'll always be the first one to catch our new episodes. But that's not all. You get access to other amazing shows like Mr. Ballin's Medical Mysteries, Morbid, 48 Hours, and 2020, all ad-free too. And you know what that means, uninterrupted listening, so no more cliffhangers. Amazon

Music is your home for all things true crime and offers the most ad-free top podcasts, so we definitely have something for you. And it's already included in your Prime membership. To listen now, all you need to do is go to amazon.com slash ballin. That's amazon.com slash ballin or download the free Amazon Music app. It's just that easy. Our next story is called Reluctant Cannibals.

On October 13th, 1972, Uruguayan flight 571 was flying from Uruguay to Chile for a rugby game. On board were 45 people. There was five pilots and crew. The other 40 were the rugby team and their friends and relatives. So they take off and they're making their way to Chile and the pilot was relatively inexperienced and he made a fatal mistake. He believed it was time to make their descent into Chile, but he was actually about 70 kilometers early. So as he's descending through the clouds, he believes he's going to see a runway and land this plane. Instead, he sees the Andes Mountains, and it's too late to pull up out of the way.

He basically nicked the mountain, causing the plane to start tumbling down at breakneck speeds, 350 kilometers per hour. As it's tumbling down the mountain, the tail breaks off, and seven people are sucked out immediately that all perish. It's blazing down this mountain, and then it comes to a crashing stop where on impact it kills the two pilots.

But miraculously, of the 45 people on board, 33 were still alive when all the dust settled. But that night, five more people would perish from the freezing temperatures, and within a couple days of this crash landing, another person would die. Those who were still alive that weren't in a coma or critically injured used luggage and debris from the plane and seats to create shelter and they actually started pulling out lipstick from inside of some

of the the passengers luggage and they tried to write SOS on the outside of the plane because the fuselage was still pretty clearly intact, but they didn't have enough lipstick. They didn't have any medical supplies and they didn't have proper clothing for the temperatures they were in. They did not anticipate being in minus 30 degrees Celsius temperatures for extended periods of time.

They also had very, very little food and it was running out very quickly. In a very cruel twist of fate, they actually found a working radio that allowed them to tune in and listen to the media as they tried to find them. And so they had to listen in horror after about a week when search was called off because no one knew where they were. And the assumption was they must have all died in the crash. When the food finally ran out, survivors began eating the seats inside the plane, the leather and the cotton.

But as they're doing this, they know what the next step has to be if they're going to survive. They need to eat the dead. And so on day nine of the ordeal, the survivors ate the pilots. And they chose the pilots because they were the only people amongst the dead that they didn't personally know. The rest of the dead that they would ultimately eat were their friends and loved ones. Now naturally these people did not want to become cannibals but virtually everyone out of a need to survive was able to make the adjustment. There were some people that couldn't including one woman who didn't eat and ultimately died of starvation on day 60 because she just was

not prepared to do what was necessary to survive. As if this situation wasn't bad enough, an avalanche would eventually strike the landing site, killing eight more of these people that are doing everything they can to survive. But at the time of the avalanche, their food source had effectively run out, and so those eight people who perished in the avalanche ultimately replenished their food source had effectively run out. And so those eight people who perished in the avalanche ultimately replenished their food source. From day one, the survivors discussed climbing up and over the mountains and walking towards Chile to try to search for help. But the attempts so far had all failed due to extreme cold, malnutrition, altitude sickness. It was like they knew as soon as they walked over that mountain, they were going to die. And so many of them decided early on that they would rather just

stay with the group because at least that way they would die as a group, or maybe by some stroke of luck, they could still be discovered and they might be easier to discover as a big group. But two months after the crash, and with no help in sight, they know the search has been called off. Two of the survivors basically say, screw it. I'm going to make the trek over the Andes Mountains. We have no supplies. We have nothing, no map, no compass, no anything. We're just going to walk roughly in the direction of Chile. And you know what? We're either going to die here or we're going to die out there. And so the two take off. They somehow survive for nine days walking over the Andes Mountains with no equipment. They've been out for 60 plus days at this point.

And they manage to walk into this valley and they see that there are people living in this valley. There's actually a couple of fishermen right on the other side of this river. And so they go down to the edge of the river and they're yelling out to these people on the other side. The fishermen couldn't make out what they were saying. And so the fishermen, they got a piece of paper and they put a pencil in it and balled it up with a rock and threw it across the river. And they were able to write down that they had survived a plane crash. They were located back in that direction. There was 14 other survivors and they desperately needed help, balled it up, threw it back. Three Chilean helicopters were spun up and sent off in their direction, and the 14 other

survivors were able to be picked up, brought to safety, and all 16 would make a full physical recovery. However, the most difficult thing they would ever have to recover from was becoming reluctant cannibals, which is something that haunts all of them to this day. The next and final story of today's episode is called Piggy Palace. Robert Picton was born in 1949 in Port Coquitlam in British Columbia, which is about 15 miles to the east of Vancouver. He, along with his brother and sister, were raised by their parents on a big pig farm. In the 1970s, their parents passed away, and so the property was handed down to them. Robert and his brother took over the daily operations of the farm, and their sister decided to just move away. Over the next couple of decades, Robert and his brother attempted to run the pig

farm, but pretty quickly they stopped taking care of it and it fell into decline. Neighbors and visitors recalled seeing the pigs that were still there free roaming the property. And as for the brothers, it appeared they had just stopped bathing and despite walking all day in mud and pig feces, it seemed like they never took off their boots when they went inside. One of the few farm workers that stayed with the Pictons through the farm's decline was a guy by the name of Bill Hiscox, and he said the farm was a really creepy place. And he also said Robert was a really creepy guy that was prone to just totally bizarre behavior, even though he didn't smoke or drink or use any substances.

Eventually, the Picton brothers realized they were not cut out to run the pig farm like their family had for generations before them, and they decided their best move was just to sell portions of their land. But neither of them could have guessed just how much their land was worth. From 1994 to 1995, they managed to sell off almost all of their property to an urban developer for over five million dollars. And so suddenly these filthy failed pig farmers had become millionaires and neither of them knew what to do with the money. After a year of just sitting on the money and not doing much with it, they decided they wanted to do some good with their money. And so they established an official charity in 1996 called the Piggy Palace

Good Time Society. Their charity's purpose, at least on paper, was to help raise money for various organizations that they deemed worthy by running events like dances and shows. And while that might have been their original intention for this charity, what it ultimately became was a guise to host these wild drug and alcohol-fueled parties inside of their slaughterhouse, which even though it wasn't being used anymore because they were no longer really doing any pig farming, it still conspicuously had big hooks coming down from the ceiling and bloodstains all over the ground underneath them. These piggy palace parties became infamous in Coquitlam, drawing crowds of up to 2,000 people, predominantly bikers, drug addicts, and prostitutes from the poverty-stricken downtown east side of Vancouver. Robert had become familiar with that part of Vancouver

because he used to go through there all the time to dispose of animal waste products at their rendering plant. Once the Piggy Palace charity was in full swing, Robert started going back into that neighborhood where he would cruise down the 10-block strip called the Low Track and would attempt to recruit people to come to his parties. Most of the people he recruited were down-on-their-luck women who only agreed to go because he was offering them food and money and drugs and alcohol.

At the same time Robert was running this recruiting campaign, women from the downtown east side began disappearing in droves. These disappearances were noticed by the men and women in the downtown east side, but they didn't report them because they had a general distrust of the police and of authority figures in general. But as more and more and more women disappeared from the downtown east side, rumors of a serial killer operating in that area started to circulate. Residents began only going outside if they could walk around in a big group of people, and everybody was just totally on edge,

keeping careful lookout for anything odd about the neighborhood, people that shouldn't be there, cars that shouldn't be there. But despite this heightened security, women continued to go missing at a rapid rate and nobody knew why. When the police were finally contacted about all these missing women, their response was lacking to say the least. Since there were no bodies of these missing women, the police said it to say the least. Since there were no bodies of these missing women, the police said it was reasonable to assume that the women were to blame, that their lifestyles must have caught up with them and they either ran off somewhere or perhaps they overdosed somewhere and their bodies just haven't been found yet. Despite residents of the downtown Eastside

saying, no, this is different, there's something wrong here, the police basically said, we're not getting involved. When the newspapers found out about this totally apathetic response from the police, they criticized them for intentionally deprioritizing these missing women because the majority of them were drug addicts and prostitutes and so therefore weren't worthy of a full investigation. The police rejected this claim. On the evening of March 22nd, 1997, so one year after the Piggy Palace had been stood up and they started throwing all these parties, and one year after dozens of women have gone missing from the downtown east side, the Picton's neighbor heard a frantic knock on their front door. They ran over, they opened it up, and what they saw was this woman who was hunched over with one hand on her bleeding stomach and dangling from her wrist was a handcuff. The neighbor was obviously shocked at what they were seeing,

but they quickly ushered the woman in and they called her an ambulance. The woman was rushed to the hospital where she immediately was put into emergency surgery. Afterwards, while she was in recovery, she told her nurses that her name was Wendy and she had been at one of those Piggy Palace parties and one of the owners of the farm, Robert Pickton, had tried to put a handcuff on her and when he did she fought back. He drew a knife, he stabbed her in the stomach, she was able to get the knife back, she stabbed him in the face before turning and running out the door and making it to the neighbor's house. Right after she told this story, Robert Pickton actually showed up at the exact same hospital with a serious laceration on his face that was consistent with being stabbed. The medical staff had already called the police who showed up minutes later

and when they went inside, they searched Robert and they found in one of his pockets a handcuff key. And that handcuff key opened the handcuff that was still on Wendy's wrist. And so when the police saw that, they arrested Robert on attempted murder. While Robert was in custody, he explained to officers that Wendy was lying. She was a drug addict and she had come to one of their Piggy Palace parties and he had caught her trying to rob them. He had confronted her. She drew a knife. And that's when a struggle ensued and both of them got stabbed. And Robert said he was just lucky to be alive. The police believed him and dropped all of his charges and let him go.

When Robert got back to the farm, Bill Hiscox, the one worker who still worked for the Pictons, he grew very suspicious of Robert. He had read all about the missing women from the downtown east side and he knew Robert regularly went over there to pick up women and brought them back to his parties. And Bill just always had that gut feeling that something was off about Robert. And so he sat on this gut feeling for a couple of months until finally he decided he had to tell someone. And so he called the Crime Stoppers tip line and he told them that he thought Robert had actually attacked Wendy, not the other way around, and that actually Robert was most likely behind some or all of these missing women from the downtown east side.

Bill also said that a recent female party guest at the farm had seen a pile of women's clothing inside of Robert's trailer, along with at least 10 purses and women's ID cards. of Robert's trailer, along with at least 10 purses and women's ID cards. The police followed up with Lisa to confirm what she saw, but she was scared of Robert and said she wasn't going to cooperate, and so the police, without this testimony, were unable to secure a search warrant to investigate this further, and so they kind of just forgot about it and moved on to other cases. Over the next few years, the Pictons continued to throw these huge Piggy Palace parties until the city finally shut them down, and dozens more women disappeared from the downtown east side without a significant police investigation, despite the fact that Bill was calling them all the time to say he believed Robert Picton was behind all of these disappearances,

but they weren't taking him seriously. disappearances, but they weren't taking him seriously. Finally, in 2002, a former employee of the Picton Farm came forward to police and said that he personally had seen illegal weapons inside of Robert's trailer, and this was enough information for the police to get a search warrant and raid the pig farm. And in February of that year, they did just that, and they found inside of Robert's trailer the illegal guns, as well as several items directly connected to some of the missing women from the downtown east side. Robert was arrested but let out on bail. He was put under surveillance and told he could not go back to the farm until they were done conducting a more thorough search. And during that more thorough search, they found blood from one of the missing women inside of Robert's trailer.

And so Robert was re-arrested and charged with murder. While he was being held in jail, he shared his cell with another man who he believed was just another detainee. But he wasn't a detainee, he was actually an undercover police officer, and their entire interaction was being recorded. And on this recording, Robert makes a few shocking statements. He killed 49 people, who would turn out to be the majority of the missing women from the downtown Eastside. After a lengthy investigation, it was determined Robert's killing spree began in 1991, but it really kicked up a notch in 1996 when he and his brother started Piggy Palace

because he was able to use their huge parties to lure more victims to his farm faster. And once they were to his farm faster. And once they were at his farm, he would lure them into his trailer, where he would handcuff them, tell them, it's over now, and he would inject antifreeze into them, or he would strangle them to death. Afterwards, he would move the victim's body to the slaughterhouse, where he would butcher them like a pig. A large portion of his victim's remains would be fed to his pigs, and the parts he didn't feed to his pigs, he would bring to the rendering plant in the downtown Eastside,

which is not far from where the victim was most likely picked up. A rendering plant takes animal waste products, crushes them up, and turns them into a gelatin. This gelatin is used in many everyday products from candy to cosmetics, which means Robert's victims wound up in things like lipstick and gummy bears. Also, sometimes while Robert was going through this horrific disposal process, he would set aside some of the best cuts of meat and grind them up with pork and turn them into sausage. This sausage was served at Piggy Palace parties. It was also given to neighbors and food banks and orphanages. After sifting through 300,000 cubic meters of soil and pig feces underneath the Picton farm,

investigators were only ever able to find little bits of remains of 26 women. Robert was charged with all 26 murders, but only six turned into convictions due to a lack of evidence. He was sentenced to life in prison and is still alive today. His brother and sister were never charged in connection with the crimes. 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 remove a single puzzle piece from all of the Amazon Music Follow Buttons puzzles. This podcast airs every Monday and Thursday morning, but in the meantime, you can always watch one of the hundreds of stories we have posted

on our main YouTube channel, which is just called Mr. Ballin. stories we have posted on our main YouTube channel, which is just called Mr. Ballin. We have a registered 501c3 charitable organization called the Mr. Ballin Foundation that honors and supports victims of violent crime as well as their families. Monthly donors to the Mr. Ballin Foundation Honor Them Society will receive free gifts and exclusive invites to special live events. Go to mrballin.foundation and click Get Involved to join the Honor Them Society today. If you want to get in touch with me, please follow me on any major social media platform

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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.