MrBallen Podcast: Strange, Dark & Mysterious Stories - Killer Profile (PODCAST EXCLUSIVE EPISODE)

Episode Date: June 15, 2026

One night in December 2011, a man sat in an internet cafe, anxiously staring at the words he’d just typed into a chat window. He was about to share his darkest secret with someone he’d only ever talked to online. It was the kind of secret that could destroy him, and he knew sending it was a mistake – but the loneliness was unbearable, and he had to tell someone. So after a long pause... he hit send.   You can WATCH all new & exclusive MrBallen podcast episodes on my YouTube channel, just called "MrBallen" - https://www.youtube.com/c/MrBallen If 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 @mrballen Hosted by Simplecast, an AdsWizz company. See pcm.adswizz.com for information about our collection and use of personal data for advertising.

One night in December of 2011, a man sat in front of his computer, anxiously staring at the words that he had just typed into a chat window. He was about to hit send and share his darkest secret with someone he'd only ever talked to online. And it was the kind of secret that could totally destroy him. And he knew sending it was probably a huge mistake. But the loneliness and the guilt he was feeling was just sort of unbearable. And he felt like he had to tell someone. So, after a long pause, he reached up and he had to. sent. 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 place because that's all we do. So, if that's of interest to you, please invite the follow button to go deep sea fishing with you, but don't tell them that they are going to be the bait. Okay, let's get into today's story. On the afternoon of Wednesday, November 17, 2010, a 54-year-old woman named Diane Zaleski pulled her car into her driveway in Union Township, New Jersey, which is a small suburb of New York City. Diane was just about to get out of her car and go inside when her cell phone inside of her purse began to ring. She opened it up and she looked at her phone, and the caller ID said it was her sister-in-law, Debbie. So Diane picked it up and she said hello, and immediately Debbie asked her for a favor.

She said that she needed someone to drive her to a doctor's appointment the next day, and she was wondering if Diane could do that. And Diane did not have to consult her calendar to know that her schedule tomorrow was wide open. Just a few months ago, she'd retired from her 17-year career as a legal secretary and then had moved to this particular neighborhood to be closer to her aging parents and her brother. And so her only job at the moment was helping out her family, which didn't take up all her time and tomorrow she was free. So Diane told Debbie, you know, that she'd see her tomorrow and then the pair hung up. After that, Diane gathered up her things and got out of her car, and then as she was about to walk inside of her home, she stopped and just turned around and looked out at her new neighborhood. And it was really nice here.

I mean, the block was full of all these beautiful homes and well-kept lawns. I mean, this was just a really nice place to live. And so as she was just, you know, staring out at the scene, she saw the woman who lived across the street. Her name was Mrs. Yearwood dragging her garbage cans down to the curb. And so Diane, you know, she waved to Mrs. Yearwood and smiled and also made. made a mental note to ask Mrs. Yearwood if her son, whose name was Arnell, was free to shovel her, Diane's walkway tomorrow, because that night it was supposed to snow. Later that same night, sometime after 10 p.m., Diane was in bed with her laptop open,

scrolling through messages on her online dating profile. Now, dating was sort of a normal part of Diane's life. She'd gone out with plenty of men over the years, and she still got hit on pretty aggressively at bars, and she'd even been proposed to once. but despite, you know, meeting lots of men and liking quite a few of them, she just had never gotten married. These days, Diane met most of the men that she went on dates with online, like on a dating site. And on these sites, men seemed to always be messaging her to ask her out. And so far, you know, of the men she actually wound up seeing, only a few had been creeps.

And so over time, Diane had sort of cultivated this small roster of men that she kept in touch with and, you know, would meet up with for dates. And so now Diane clicked on the profile for one of the men that was on her roster. It was a man named Kyle Porter, and she was just about to message him this very flirty message when she heard her doorbell downstairs ring. And when she heard this, she was sort of surprised because she definitely was not expecting anybody. But, you know, she still obviously got out of bed and got herself together and headed downstairs to see who it was. And when she unlocked and opened the door, the person standing outside in the cold was

somebody that she immediately recognized. Now, she really had no idea what they were doing here right now, but she told them to, you know, come inside and then ask them, you know, what's going on? And then this visitor started talking, and they would say something that Diane never expected. The following day around noon, Diane's 91-year-old father, Stanley Zaleski, was at home watching TV when his phone rang. He picked it up and he heard the voice of his daughter-in-law, Debbie. And Debbie sounded really worried. And she quickly explained to him that Diane had agreed to drive her to a doctor's appointment that morning. But she hadn't shown up. And now, you know, she was reaching out to Diane, but she wasn't answering and she also wasn't responding to texts.

And Stanley, much like Debbie, was very surprised by this, because this was not like Diane at all. So he told Debbie that he would go over to Diane's place right now and check on her, since after all, he lived a lot closer to Diane than Debbie did. And then they hung up and Stanley yelled for his wife to come on with him. 20 minutes later, Stanley and his wife, Diane's mom, walked up to the front door of Diane's house. As soon as they got there, Stanley began pounding on the door yelling for his daughter, but there was no answer. And so eventually, after looking at his wife and they both are like, what's going on here? He reached down and he tried the door handle to see if the door was unlocked and he found that it was. So he turned the handle and he just pushed the door open.

And immediately his eyes were drawn to the ground inside the house, like right in the foyer, because it was all red. There was blood everywhere. A wave of nausea came over Stanley and he had to grab the doorframe to steady himself. But then after a moment, he turned to his wife, who was right next to him, and he just said, stay right here. I'm going to go in and look around. And then he stepped inside. And as he moved further into the foyer, which again, I mean, there's just like blood splattered everywhere. he began to notice there were piles of strange white dust that he didn't recognize,

sort of amongst the blood. There's no sign of Diane, like it's silent in the house. But as Stanley's standing there, he sees that there's also what appears to be a pretty clear trail, like something had been dragged through the blood and was sort of pulled towards the back of the house. And so Stanley, you know, with his heart racing, he began walking, like following this trail of whatever got dragged through the house. and it made its way to the top of the stairs that led down into the basement.

And then when Stanley looked down into the basement, he saw something at the foot of the stairs, like a heap of something that was down there. And after a minute, once his eyes adjusted to the dark down there, he saw it was his daughter. And at that point, he sort of staggered back and he yelled out for his wife to call 911. Half an hour later, around one in the afternoon,

Detective Robert Henderson of the Union County Homicide Task Force drove his police cruiser into a very nice, quiet neighborhood. His partner, Detective Mike Monacchio, was sitting in the passenger seat. And at some point, Henderson, he pulled up to the snow-covered curb in front of a large house that was in the process of being roped off with crime scene tape. Henderson immediately noticed there was an elderly man and woman being interviewed by officers in the front yard of this house. And as soon as Detective Henderson and his partner got out of their cruiser, one of the officers

who was out and about ran over to brief them on what the police knew so far. He explained that the elderly man and woman were the parents of the victim, Diane Zaleski. Diane lived alone. This was her home. And her parents had come over earlier and found her foyer covered in blood. And Diane was found lying dead at the bottom of the stairs in the basement. Henderson asked if there were any signs of a break-in or a robbery. And the officer said no.

But he warned them that the scene inside the house was really unusual. It seemed like the killer, after killing Diane, had sort of. sort of been all over the house, clearly taking a lot of time to both clean up and also contaminate the scene to make it harder for investigators. And when Henderson heard this, he sort of raised an eyebrow because in his experience, most killers tried to get away from the crime scene as quickly as possible. They wouldn't just linger like that. And so at this point, Henderson turned to Monacoo and was like, you know, how do you want to split this up here? And Monacoio said he would stay and interview Diane's parents. That way Henderson could go inside

and inspect the rest of the crime scene. Moments later, Henderson stepped through the front door of Diane's house, and he saw the huge amount of blood in the foyer. There was so much that he assumed the murder must have taken place right here in the entryway. There was also a lot of white dust all over the floor that Henderson recognized as fire extinguisher powder. Henderson couldn't see any evidence of a fire, so he guessed that what must have happened here is the killer had sprayed down the area with a fire extinguisher in an effort just to contaminate the scene. Henderson noticed there was a trail of blood that sort of left the entryway

and headed towards the back of the house. And so he followed it through the hallway, into the kitchen, and in there he saw forensic texts standing around the kitchen sink, which was full of all the soapy water. And as he walked in, Henderson, one of the texts pulled a woman's wallet out of the sink and then set it open on the counter to dry. Henderson walked over to check the ID and saw that it was Diane's wallet. And so this was obviously very weird, but it got even weirder when the forensics tech reached back into the water and then fished out something else, a TV remote. And so at this point, Henderson and the techs realized that what must be going on here is the killer must have been dumping these items in the soapy water to try to clean off fingerprints or DNA. But after seeing all

this, it made Henderson really wonder, like, what state would the body be in when he found it? If the Killers going to these many lengths with just like ancillary evidence. What did they do to the body? And so after chatting with the text for a few minutes about how strange this whole thing was, Henderson turned and continued following that trail of blood on the ground. And it led him to the door that went down to the basement. And so he looked down into the basement and he saw at the foot of the stairs, there was a forensic specialist taking photos of Diane's body,

which was right at the foot of the stairs. When Henderson went down there and actually got a look at Diane's body. I mean, he had been bracing for, you know, her body to be in pretty rough shape, considering what he had seen upstairs, but he was still taken aback by just how violently Diane clearly had been attacked. Her torso, her neck, and her face were covered in literally more stab wounds than he could even count. And then as Henderson leaned in even closer, he saw there were additional bruises on Diane's face and pretty clear defensive marks on her limbs that told him that there had definitely been a pretty big struggle. Also, some of Diane's

clothes had been removed, which made Henderson wonder if Diane had been sexually assaulted. And as awful as that obviously is, if that was the case, the upshot was that there was a good chance the killer's DNA could be recovered from her body. However, at the same time Henderson is thinking this, he began to notice a very harsh chemical smell that was clearly coming from Diane's body. And that's when spotted a bottle of toilet cleaner that was right nearby, and he realized that the killer must have dragged Diane's body down here and then splashed it with chemicals in yet another attempt to destroy evidence. And so at this point, Henderson was getting pretty worried because the killer clearly had taken a lot of steps to cover their tracks. And if they had done a thorough enough job

and the police couldn't find any usable fingerprints or DNA, they'd be relying primarily on witnesses, which are not necessarily hugely reliable. So Henderson just really hoped that was not going to be the case here. But if it was, he just prayed that someone in the neighborhood had seen something. Ten minutes later, Henderson walked down the icy sidewalk canvassing the neighborhood with his partner, Detective Monaco. And as they walked, Monacchio filled Henderson in on the talk that he had just had with Diane's parents. What he'd learned was that Diane had recently moved to this neighborhood and that she also did. dated a lot, mostly men that she met online. And the fact that she dated a lot of people

certainly caught Henderson's attention because all the evidence that they had found so far in Diane's house suggested that she had been killed by somebody she knew. There were no signs of forced entry and there was evidence of a long, very deliberate cleanup. So the killer had clearly felt comfortable enough to stick around after the murderer and had probably known Diane was single, so they were not going to be interrupted. And so Henderson sort of filed these thoughts shots away as he and his partner arrived at the next house on the block. Henderson knocked, and a moment later, an elderly woman answered the door. And at that point, Henderson explained about Diane's murder, and then he asked her if she

had seen anything suspicious around Diane's place the previous day. Cars parked outside or, you know, strange people coming and going, anything. Now, this woman was immediately startled by the news of a murder in this neighborhood. That definitely was the primary reaction she had. But, you know, she quickly recovered and said, that no, she hadn't seen anything. However, she did remember seeing some kids playing in the yard across the street from Diane's, so maybe they had seen something. Moments later, Henderson and Monacchio stood on the front porch of the house that was directly across the street from Diane's,

and they were speaking to a woman in her 50s who'd introduced herself as Mrs. Yearwood. When Henderson explained about the murder across the street, Mrs. Yearwood gasped and said that, you know, she hadn't known Diane particularly well. I mean, she was new to the neighborhood, but she'd always been so friendly to her and her family. And in fact, Diane had even paid Mrs. Yearwood's son to help with some small chores around her house. At this point, Henderson sort of shifted the conversation and just got to the point.

He told her that he had heard that there had been some kids playing outside this house the previous day and were the kids home because he really wanted to speak to them to see if they had maybe heard or seen anything strange on Diane's property the day before. Mrs. Yearwood immediately nodded and turned around and walked into the back of the house, and then a moment later came back with an 11-year-old boy

who looked very nervous. And so Henderson, to disarm him, immediately knelt down and touched him on the shoulder and just said, look, we're trying to catch a bad guy. And then Henderson pointed across the street and asked the boy, had he seen anything strange at Diane's house the day before. The boy, at this point,

looked past Henderson over at Diane's house, and then back at Henderson, and he just shook his head and said, no. And at this point, Henderson, he felt his stomach sink because with a deeply contaminated crime scene and apparently no good witnesses, this case was already off to a horrible start. Around noon the following day, December 19th, Detective Henderson sat in his office reading through Diane

Zelensky's autopsy report. He'd been anxiously waiting for this file all morning, but unfortunately it did not contain much information that he had not already guessed. Diane's time of death was estimated to be between 10 p.m. and 1 a.m. so 11 to 14 hours before, her parents found her body. She had been strangled and beaten and also stabbed more than 40 times. The damage was so severe, the medical examiner couldn't actually say which injury killed her. And also the knife that was used in the attack had never been found. They also couldn't tell if Diane had been sexually assaulted because the chemicals that had been splashed on her body had destroyed any DNA the killer might have left behind. The forensics team also had not pulled any usable fingerprints

from the house thanks to the killer's cleanup efforts. But, they did find something that was even better. There were a few drops of fresh blood at the crime scene that did not match Diane's DNA. And early tests showed that they came from an adult male. Now, it was possible that this blood was from someone other than the killer, but Henderson didn't think so. There had clearly been some sort of a struggle between the killer and Diane. So it seemed likely that Diane had managed to wound the killer and maybe draw blood.

And maybe this was it. And so now, the game had changed. Henderson's next task would be to collect DNA samples from all the men closest to Diane and compare them to this fresh blood at the crime scene. Now, the digital forensics team had Diane's laptop, and they were working really hard to try to access her online dating profile to try to figure out who she'd been chatting with because those were definitely some people they might want to compare DNA with. But while Henderson, you know, thought that was great, he wasn't going to wait. He felt like he needed to move on this right now. and he figured if he wanted some answers about who Diane was potentially dating or seeing or maybe who some of her exes were, he actually knew where he could go to start.

Around 9.30 the next morning, Henderson was sitting in a coffee shop across from Diane's best friend, Joanne Govea. Joanne was clearly still processing the murder, and at the moment, she really seemed more angry than anything else. But she told Henderson that she would help any way she could and that she did know all about the men who were in Diane's life. But, of all her romantic partners, there was really only one who concerned her. His name was Mike Prunel. And according to Joanne, he'd been Diane's landlord years ago. After Diane had moved into his building, he'd started showering her with gifts and bugging her to go out with him. And they had ended up dating for a while.

But when Diane ended things, Mike had been furious. And Diane had actually had to move to a new place just to get away from him. Now, this obviously got Henderson's attention. and he made a mental note to find Mike as soon as possible. But there was another name that he wanted to ask Joanne about as well. During the search of Diane's house, detectives had found her wallet in the kitchen sink. You know, it had been sitting in the water. And inside of the wallet had been Diane's ID, some credit cards.

And then there was also this soggy business card for someone named Mark Baker. And so Henderson asked if Joanne recognized that name. And Joanne said, yeah, I do. She said Diane had met Mark Baker, at a bar, and they had talked and exchanged contact info, but Joanne didn't know if they'd ever actually followed up. And so Henderson and Joanne spoke for a bit longer, and then eventually they wrapped it up and Henderson thanked Joanne for the help. And then as he was leaving, he decided that, you know, he really needed to speak to both Mark and Mike, but he would start with Mark because he had his

business card. Later that afternoon, Henderson led Mark Baker into the police station's interview room. He offered Mark a seat and a bottle of water, which, Mark accepted before asking like, what's going on? What is this all about? Mark definitely was pretty annoyed to have been asked to come down here in the middle of the workday with, you know, virtually no explanation. So Henderson decided to just get straight to it. He explained that he was investigating a murder. Then he pulled out a photo of Diane, put it on the table, and slid it over to Mark. Now, as Henderson did this, he was sort of studying Mark for any sort of reaction when he saw Diane's picture. But Mark just sort of glanced at the photo and then back up at Henderson and he said,

am I supposed to know who this is? And this totally caught Henderson off guard. Henderson told him that the woman's name was Diane and he knew that Mark had met her at a bar not that long ago. But Mark just shook his head and insisted that that had not happened. He said he definitely didn't know Diane. And he also would not have chatted her up anywhere because she apparently was not the kind of, Target he usually went for. And that word, Target, sort of hung in the air very uneasily between them for a long time. And then eventually Henderson just sort of cleared his throat and asked if Mark would be willing to give a DNA sample. And Mark flat out refused. But this only made Henderson even more determined to get a sample. Now, he couldn't force it without a warrant, but he had another idea.

Mark had been drinking from that water bottle that he had given him when he first came in, and he just hoped if Mark left it behind, Henderson could scoop it up and send it off for testing. So he told Mark that he was free to go. But Henderson was disappointed when Mark did not throw the bottle away. Instead, he put the cap back on, pocketed the bottle, and he left. Now, Henderson obviously couldn't prove this, but just from the looks of it, the decision to take the bottle like that, it just felt deliberate. it. And it reminded him of just how careful Diane's killer had been to remove forensic evidence

from the crime scene. So he gave Mark a few seconds head start, and then eventually Henderson got up and actually followed Mark out of the station, but kept his distance so that he wouldn't notice he was behind him. And Henderson very carefully trailed Mark all the way down the block, and then at some point when Mark stopped and sort of looked around for a moment, Henderson froze until he realized Mark was just checking street signs. And then, you know, Mark just kept on walking and Henderson kept on trailing until eventually Mark pulled out that bottle and he chucked it onto the ground. And then as soon as Mark had walked down the road, turned the corner and disappeared, Henderson ran over, put on a rubber glove, picked up that bottle and went right back to the police station. And then as soon as he got there,

he put it inside of an evidence bag and he sent it off to the crime lab for testing. That evening, around 6 p.m., Henderson was sitting at his desk, staring at his computer screen in total frustration. He was reading the results of a database search for Diane's ex-boyfriend and former landlord, Mike Pernel, and he was running into a problem. Henderson could not find anybody with that name. A moment later, Henderson heard a knock at his door, and he called for whoever it was to come on in. And then when the door opened, he saw his partner, Detective Vinakio, standing there with a, middle-aged man. And Monacoa explained that this guy was Diane's brother, Ron Zaleski, and he was here to give whatever information he could about Diane's personal life. And Henderson

immediately perked up because he realized that, you know, Ron very likely knew Diane's ex-boyfriends and any current boyfriends. So as they sat down, Henderson asked him if he remembered a man named Mike Pranel. And Ron immediately paused and looked really surprised and then said, yeah, he knows exactly who Mike is. Because at one point, Mike had actually asked their father for his blessing to marry Diane. According to Ron, none of the family had been in love with that idea. Because Mike had seemed like a really shady guy. In fact, he had such a long rap sheet that he didn't even go by his real name. Two days later, on November 22nd, Detective Henderson sat in the interview room across from the man who called himself Mike Pranel. His real name was Lou Hubbard. And at this

point, Henderson knew that amongst his rap sheet was a conviction for domestic violence against his ex-wife. Apparently, he had savagely beaten her. And Henderson knew that obviously in this murder case, Diane had been savagely beaten. So there's, you know, a similarity there. Now, Henderson had not told Lou that they knew his real name. And he also hadn't told Lou why he was even here. And Lou hadn't asked. And at the moment, I mean, Lou was just sort of leaning back in his chair, sort of like making light of this whole thing like it was totally hilarious that he was being held inside of a police station. At some point, Henderson asked Lou where he had been on November 17th. And Lou just sort of shrugged and said he couldn't remember anything about that day, like it didn't stand out at all to him.

At this point, Henderson pulled out that photo of Diane and he slid it across the table to Lou. And Lou, he just glanced at it and then slid it back across the table and said he had no idea who that was. And to Henderson, this was just completely unbelievable, like literally. not believable. Because he knew that Lou had literally proposed to Diane, this woman in the photo. So there was no way he did not recognize her. He had to be lying. At this point, Henderson stood up from the table and he looked at Lou and said, if you want to keep playing dumb, that's fine. Then he stood up and he walked over to the door, he opened it up and he yelled out for his partner, Detective Benakio, to bring him the file on Lou. And then a moment later, Manacchio ran down

the hall, he handed over the file, and then Henderson went back to the table. Henderson, calm as could be, opened up the file and then began telling Lou that, I know your name's not Mike Pernel. It's Lou Hubbard. I know all about you. I know that at one point you were going to propose or did propose to this woman, Diane, the one in the photo, the one you claim not to know. We know all about it. We know about your criminal record, your domestic violence conviction. We know all about it. At this point, Lou's entire demeanor had changed. It was like he knew. he'd been caught. And he just nodded and said, yeah, he knows who she is. And he also said that he had seen on TV that she had been murdered, but he swore he didn't do it. Now, Henderson really didn't

believe the guy because he's just caught him lying. But he told him, you know, hey, if you really didn't do it, there's an easy way to prove that. Give us a DNA sample, like literally right now. And after a long pause, Lou agreed. Around 8 a.m. the next morning, November 23rd, Detective Henderson was working working at his desk when his phone rang. When he looked at the caller ID and he saw the extension, he knew it was the crime lab, and he assumed they must be calling to confirm receipt of Mark Baker and Lou Hubbard's DNA samples they had sent over. But when Henderson answered, the analyst on the line explained they were actually calling with an update from digital forensics. The digital team had finally accessed the browsing history on Diane's laptop,

and they'd found some activity from the hours after Diane was killed. It looked like the killer, while hanging around inside of Diane's house after the murder, had viewed some pornographic websites, and then they'd also used Diane's credit cards to try and order a MacBook and an iPhone, and they had set the delivery address for these items for Diane's house. Now Henderson was sort of taken aback by all of this, but what stood out was, well, if they're ordering these items to the scene of the crime, it means they planned on coming back to the scene of the crime. But there was also more. Apparently, the digital forensic, team had finally gotten into Diane's dating profile, so now they could see everyone that she had

messaged or gone out with in the past. And there were literally dozens and dozens of names. And so when Henderson heard that, I mean, he knew that now, you know, there were all these new suspects, dozens of them. They would have to swab and question every one of those men. And so now the case had just totally exploded. Around noon on December 2nd, 2010, so about two weeks after Diane's murderer. Detective Henderson sat in his car outside of an office building in Newark, New Jersey, watching the front entrance. He'd been there all morning, waiting for a worker whose name was Kyle Porter. Kyle was one of the men that Diane had been messaging with online before she was killed. Henderson had already spoken to him over the phone, and Kyle had actually confirmed that he had

been to Diane's house just a few weeks before the murder. But what really made Henderson suspicious of Kyle was just the fact that he had refused to submit a DNA sample, even after. Henderson explained that doing so would help clear him as a suspect. So now, as Henderson finally saw Kyle step out of the building and head for the parking lot, Henderson got out of his car and literally ran over to intercept him. And as he did, Henderson flashed his badge and Kyle for a second looked like he maybe wanted to run. But instead, he just sort of stammered that he was going to be late for his lunch meeting, sort of suggesting like, I can't talk to you right now.

But Henderson had not waited around all morning just to leave empty handed here. So he told Kyle that he could either give a sample right now and be on his way, or they could talk again when Henderson came back with a warrant for Kyle's arrest. And Kyle seemed terrified by that idea. So he sighed and said, okay, I'll give you a sample. Four days later, on the morning of December 6th, Henderson was out jogging before his shift when his cell phone rang. He saw that it was the crime lab calling, so he stopped what he was doing and he answered the call. A forensic analyst from the lab was on the line, and he explained,

that he was calling because they just finished with the first batch of Henderson's blood samples. This batch included the samples for Mark Baker, the man who Henderson had to secretly trail just to pick up his water bottle, as well as Diane's ex-boyfriend, Lou Hubbard, aka Mike Prunel, and also Kyle Porter, the man she had met through online dating, who only after being threatened with arrest, offered up his DNA swab. And so Henderson held his breath as this analyst read off the results. And not one of them matched the blood sample from the crime scene. For a moment, Henderson thought there really had to be a mistake here, because all three of those men had been so suspicious and so uncooperative. Now, he'd always known that, you know, the crime scene blood

that he had tested their samples against, maybe wasn't from the killer. But if that was true, then Henderson was really in trouble, because it meant that after all this, he had nothing. Now, the blood from the crime scene had already been tested against these states' DNA bank, and there had been no matches. And now he's got no matches here with these three suspects. And so Henderson knew he really had no choice, but to keep finding and testing more suspects. And in the next few weeks and then months, he went through this process over and over interviewing and obtaining DNA samples from the men in Diane's dating profile history and her email contacts, basically every man who had anything to do with her. He went out and interviewed and tested.

In fact, over the next year, the detectives conducted more than 100 interviews and took over 80 DNA samples. But one by one, they all turned into dead ends. One morning in December of 2011, Detective Henderson was at his desk on the phone following up about a tip about Diane's case. So a month earlier on the anniversary of Diane's death, the local news had aired a big special on the case. And then since then, the police station had been flooded with people calling in various tips. And so now, you know, Henderson and Minocchio had had their hands full following up on all these tips, but so far they had gone nowhere. And so Henderson thanked the person he was on the phone with,

even though he sort of knew that what they were telling him was not going to be useful. Then he hung up and let out a frustrated sigh. He was starting to think that he had been totally wrong at the start of this murder, that Diane's killer was not someone she knew, but maybe a random intruder, who would be even harder to catch. Or even worse would be, you know, maybe the blood they'd been testing all of the suspects against for the last year that that blood maybe didn't even belong to the killer. But just then, Monacoor burst into the office and he had a big grin on his face.

And he said he had just gotten a call from this woman who had a story that Henderson needed to hear. Monaco at this point just handed Henderson his cell phone. And so Henderson put the phone to his ear, and sure enough, there was a woman on the line. And this woman explained that she had an online friend that she spoke with all the time. Now, they'd never actually met in person, but they were still pretty close. And they told each other practically everything. And a few days ago, this online friend of hers had sent a very disturbing message, where they openly admitted that they had killed Diane Zaleski.

And when this woman told Henderson the actual name of this, online friend of hers. He was so confused. But then it was like all at once, the world came crashing down around him because he realized that over a year ago, on the very first day he'd begun investigating Diane's murder. He had made a huge mistake. Based on forensic evidence from the crime scene and the killer's eventual confession, this is what police believe happened to Diane Zaleski on the night of November 17th, 2010. The killer was very nervous as they they knocked on Diane's front door. Because even though they had been here before,

tonight was going to be different. Diane eventually came to the door, and she opened it up, and she seemed sort of surprised to see the killer there. But, you know, she let them inside and asked them, like, what's going on? What are you doing here? And the killer, you know, they hadn't really figured out how they were going to do this. And at some point, they just sort of blurted out the thing they wanted to tell her,

which was to tell Diane that they had really intense feelings about her. But as they were sort of like rambling on about all these things they wanted to do with her and how they really just wanted her, Diane stopped them and told them that what they wanted was totally inappropriate and that now they needed to leave. But the killer, after being rejected, refused to leave. And then the killer began to argue. And as they did, they got angrier and angrier until they reached over and grabbed a pair of scissors on the table by the door. and they began stabbing Diane. But Diane, she immediately fought back way harder than the killer had expected, thrashing and kicking until the killer's grip on the scissors slipped.

And at that point, the killer actually felt a flash of pain in their hand, and they looked down to see a bloody cut on their hand. But for the killer, this only made them more mad. They tossed the scissors away and then climbed on top of Diane, who's been stabbed repeatedly at this point, but she's still fighting, and the killer switched to just beating her over and over again with their fists. And then when they saw that Diane just wouldn't die, she was still alive on the ground, bleeding profusely, you know, battered but alive,

at that point, the killer began to strangle her until finally she stopped moving. Once Diane was still, the killer took their hands off of her and then just sort of looked around at the incredibly bloody mess they'd made in the front of the house. They'd watched enough TV to know that their DNA and fingerprints were probably all over, not just Diane's body, but all over the foyer right now. But they also knew that Diane, she lived alone, which meant that nobody was coming home anytime soon. And so they felt like they had plenty of time to clean up this mess. They started by dragging Diane's lifeless body down the hallway to the steps and then down into the basement. And then they cleaned her body with chemicals.

And then after that, they went back upstairs and stripped off their own bloody clothes and started a little bit of. laundry. And while they waited for their laundry to be done, the killer just sort of made themselves at home. They took a shower, they watched TV, they cooked and ate a bowl of pasta, and they used Diane's laptop to look at pornography and also do some online shopping with Diane's credit card. And then once the killer's clothes were clean and dry, they put them back on and then collected the items that they had handled, like Diane's wallet and her TV remote, and dumped them in the sink with a bunch of soapy water. Then they went around the house blasting everything with a fire extinguisher from under the sink to destroy trace evidence. And also they went ahead and wiped down the laptop to make sure

there was no DNA or fingerprints on that as well. And then finally, sometime in the early hours of the morning after the murderer, the killer, you know, after having done all they could, they just casually walked out the door into the falling snow and crossed the street and went into their mother's house. because the killer was Arnell Yearwood, Diane's neighbor's son. So the huge mistake that investigators made at the very beginning of this investigation was when they found out that the neighbor across the street, Mrs. Yearwood, that her son apparently did chores for Diane. Well, the mistake they made, in particular Detective Henderson,

was when Mrs. Yearwood went into the back of the house and came back with that 11-year-old boy that they spoke to that said he didn't see anything strange across the street the day before, for, they assumed that boy was Mrs. Yearwood's son and he was the one who was doing chores for Diane. And basically they're like looking at this kid who's totally innocent thinking, okay, clearly this kid who's been across the street in her house is not a person of interest. He did not kill anybody. And so the son of Mrs. Yearwood was just sort of forgotten about. What they didn't realize is that 11 year old boy was not Mrs. Yearwood's son. It was her grandson. Her actual son

was a 26-year-old man, Arnell Yearwood, who was actually inside the house on that day. He was hiding in her house. But they just never clarified. They assumed the kid was her son and just sort of rode off any chance that her son could be involved. And so Detective Henderson and Monaco didn't put it together until over a year later when they got that tip from that woman who said her online friend confessed to the murder. And his name was Arnell Yearwood. And so ultimately, Diane let Arnell into her house on the night she was killed because she knew and trusted him. He did chores at her house.

But he tried to initiate a sexual relationship with her. She rejected him. And so he killed her. Arnell Yearwood was ultimately arrested on April 7, 2012. So about a year and a half after killing Diane. He would confess to the murder and was sentenced to 30 years in prison. A quick note about our stories. They are all based on true events.

but we sometimes use pseudonyms to protect the people involved, and some details are fictionalized for dramatic purposes. The Mr. Ballin podcast, Strange, Dark and Mysterious Stories, is hosted and executive produced by me, Mr. Ballin. Our head of writing is Evan Allen, produced by Jeremy Bone and Cole Ocasio. This episode was written by Andrew Kelleher. Research and fact-checking by Shelley Shoe, Samantha Van Hoose, Evan Beamer, Abigail Schumway, Camille Callahan, Alex Paul, Ben Fasiano.

Research and fact-checking supervision, by Stephen Ear. Audio editing and post-produced by Whit Lacosio and Jordan Stidham. Production support by Antonio Manata and Delana Corley. Artwork by Jessica Clogston Kiner, theme song Something Wicked by Ross Bugden. Thank you for listening to the Mr. Ballin podcast. And just a reminder, every new and exclusive episode we put out on the Mr. Ballin podcast, you can also now watch on the Mr. Ballin YouTube channel that very same day.

And trust me, some of these stories you truly have to see to believe. Again, my YouTube channel is just called Mr. Ballin. If you want to listen to episodes one week early and ad free, you can subscribe to SiriusXM Podcast Plus on Apple Podcasts or visit seriousxm.com slash podcast plus to listen with Spotify or another app of your choice. So that's going to do it. I really appreciate your support. Until next time, see you.