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Killer Without a Face (PODCAST EXCLUSIVE EPISODE)

October 26, 20260 comments♥ 0
00:00In the early evening of July 2,000, a local man from Glein, Michigan was walking slowly through a wooded area with about 30 other people by his sides.So a local woman had gone missing just a few days ago, and this man, along with the others, were part of a large volunteer search party that was now combing these woods looking for any sign of this woman.But so far, they hadn't found really much of anything.And actually, as it was, it was starting to get dark, and this particular man was thinking, you know what, I'm probably going to call it.soon and just head back home and I'll come out tomorrow if they need my help. And so he turned toleave and head back home. But when he looked, he noticed something on the ground that he hadn't seenbefore. It was like something blue poking out of the ground. He went over and he could just tellthat maybe this is something useful and he called some people over. And before long, they began digging.
00:51And what they uncovered would completely change the entire investigation. But before we get intothe story, if you're a fan of the Strange, Dark, and Mysterio,delivered in story format, then you've come to the right place because that's all we do,and we upload two, three, even four times every week. So, if that's of interest to you,please offer to make the follow button a nice hot cup of coffee. But instead of using water,use vinegar. Okay, let's get into today's story. Just after 5 p.m. on June 29, 2000,33-year-old Lisa Fine was cutting some vegetables at the kitchen counter of her home in the town of Galeen,Michigan. And as she did this, every now and again, she would look out her back window into the
01:51backyard, and she would see her two kids just playing and playing catch and goofing around. Lisa had herown biological son, Jake. He was out there. He was 11 years old. And then her other son was actuallyher stepson. And he was just a year younger, and his name was Shane. Lisa had married Shane's father,whose name was Ron, almost five years ago. And so their boys really had gotten to know each otherat a very young age and had effectively grown up together as real brothers.They felt super close the way biological brothers often do.And Lisa and Ron's house in Michigan really was like the perfect spot to raise these two very active boys.I mean, really their whole property, which was pretty sprawling, was just effectively all woods.
02:32Like they have this huge backyard that was cleared and then just like forest all around it.And there were like virtually no neighbors really anywhere nearby.Although Ron's grandmother, she did live next door, and so she often spent some time with the boys.But, you know, for the most part, these kids just kind of had like the wilderness to explore pretty much anytime they wanted.Just then, Lisa turned away from the window and saw her husband, Ron, coming into the kitchen.He clearly had come from the bedroom and had just gotten dressed for work.He did the night shift at the local power plant.So he always left around this time in the evening and he'd be up all night working.
03:08And so Ron, he comes into the kitchen.and he just sort of nodded to Lisa.And Lisa, she sort of smiled and nodded back and just said, you know, I hope you have a good shift.And then a moment later, Ron left out the front door and Lisa could hear him climb into his car.And he began pulling down the driveway.And as he was leaving, as Lisa could hear him leaving, she noticed that she just like felt so much better.It was like she was relieved that Ron was out of the house.Now, Lisa loved her husband and she was pretty confident.
03:39Her husband loved her too.but lately they just had not been getting along.There was quite a bit of stress in their household and their marriage,primarily because of money.They were just tight on money and it just seemed to sort of get in the way of everything in their lives.In fact, it had gotten so hard that Lisa had actually given some consideration to leaving Ronand just leaving with her son Jake or biological son Jake.But she loved her stepson, Shane.
04:06She really loved him like he was truly her son,and she couldn't imagine doing that to him.And when she really thought about it, she did care for Ron.This was just a difficult time in their lives.And also, you know, one thing that Lisa and Ron did knowis that Lisa actually had an ex-husband.His name was Frank Spagnola.And Lisa and Frank did not get along.
04:26And they continued to fight for years in the court system over child support.Basically, Frank did not want to pay all or any child support.And Lisa was, you know, constantly trying to get.get him to pay, at least pay something. And finally, a judge had actually ruled in Lisa's favorand had ordered Frank to pay her $14,000 in backpay, basically money that he should have alreadypaid her. And so Lisa was kind of holding on to hope here that as bad as it was right now withRon, as soon as I got that cash, things would be better. And then also, you know, after Ron had lefton this particular night, Lisa, she was thinking that part of the reason that she was relieved that he was
05:08gone was for something actually kind of unrelated. So Lisa actually had had an affair with Jake andShane's Little League coach about six months earlier. And both Lisa and the baseball coach, whose name wasJerry Good, they were both married. So it wasn't just, you know, her walking out on her marriage.It was also Jerry. And the two of them, they said, we got to stop this. We can't let our spousesknow we did this. It'll destroy our lives. And so they end this.affair six months earlier, but Lisa and Jerry clearly had chemistry and even though they stoppedthe affair, they continued staying in touch with each other. In fact, pretty much at least once aweek they were hopping on the phone and just like talking to each other. And so Lisa obviously
05:54knows these calls with Jerry are totally inappropriate, but she was still having them. And thatnight, she and Jerry had planned to have a call to just like catch up that night and they hadtimed it so the call would happen after Ron had left for work. And so Lisa finished making dinnerand she called in the boys and she got them fed and then she sent them off to do their homework.And while they were doing that, she actually made a phone call to Frank, her ex-husband, to doa quick call about some custody logistics. And then after that, she goes and confirms the boysare done with their homework. She sends them upstairs. They brush their teeth. They go to bed.And then before long, it's like the nighttime routine is done. And just before 11,
06:35as they had planned, she hears the phone ringing,and when she answers the phone,she hears Jerry's voice, and she just smiles.Like, this is the highlight of her day.About 25 minutes later, and Lisa and Jerry were done with their call,and she hung up, and she was still just, like, beaming.For Lisa, it was just really nice to speak to a grown manwho seemed to really value her and be really interested in her
06:59and care about her, and it just sort of a nice change of pace.You know, Lisa talked about how she was going to be the next day,going to a water park with the boys, and, you know, Ron talked about his family, and it was just likea, you know, just a simple conversation, but it was definitely, you know, very nice for Lisa.You know, and now it's late, she's tired, she's going to go to bed, and so she walks around thehouse, she shuts all the windows, she locks all the doors, she heads upstairs, she checksin the boys to make sure they were asleep, and they were, then she went into her bedroom,she climbed into bed, and she turned out the lights.
07:32The next morning at 6.20 a.m., Lisa's husband, Ron, waswas done with his shift and he finally got home and he had been up all night so he's like completelyexhausted and he went around to the back of the house he unlocked the back door that's how he came inin the mornings and as soon as he got in the house all he's thinking about is i just want to get in bedand go to sleep and then when he gets in the bedroom even though it's dark there was enoughlight coming in that that he immediately stopped because it just it just looked off like therewas an issue something's wrong here number one Lisa was not there which was odd he hadn't seen heranywhere in the house, the house is quiet.
08:08But more than that, the bedroom was a wreck.Like the sheets were like balled up and pulled off to the side of the bed.Like the actual mattress was exposed, the sheets had come off.Like it's a disaster in here.Out of instinct, he just runs into the boys' bedrooms to check on them to make sure they're okay.And he finds that they are also not in their beds.And so he instinctively after that runs around the whole house,shouting for Lisa, shouting for Jake and Shane, like looking for his family.
08:36they're not here. And so really just totally panicked, he grabs the phone and calls 911.About an hour and a half later, Detective Roland La Bombard with the Beryan County Sheriff's Department,parked his cruiser out in front of Ron and Lisa's house. And immediately, he looked out and hesaw several other officers already there walking in and out of the house and also around theproperty. And then a little ways away from Lisa and Ron's house was what appeared to be liketheir sole neighbor. There was like one smaller house that was their neighbor.And La Bombard, he saw a deputy was standing outside of the neighbor's house with what appeared to be the neighbor or neighbors.There was like this elderly woman who was standing with two young boys and then a guy who appeared to be maybe in his 30s or 40s.
09:23This really big guy was standing with the deputy.Now, La Bombard has not spoken to any of these people yet, but he had been sent out here because originally a man named Ron who lived in this house had reported that his wife Lisa and his two sons, Shane and his two sons.Jake were missing. But on the way over, La Bombard had gotten an update that Ron had located his twosons. Apparently they had turned up at his neighbor's house, and his neighbor was actually Ron'sgrandmother. And so La Bombard, he gets out of his car, he goes over to the group, and sure enough,he confirms that, yep, this is Ron, his grandmother, and his sons. And so La Bombard knew he likelywas going to speak to everybody here, but for now he just, he looked at Ron, because Ron is the onewho called 911, and he just said, you know, tell me what's going on here. Like, tell me what
10:09happened. And so Ron would tell La Bombard really the same story that had already been passed topolice, which is he had come home from work early that morning, gone in the house, and his wifeand sons are just inexplicably gone. And, you know, when he couldn't find him, he called911. And then shortly thereafter, he goes and speaks to his grandmother, his neighbor, anddiscovers that his sons are unhurt and they are there with their grandmother, who they adored.a safe place for them. But Ron would tell La Bombard that when he spoke to his grandmother thatshe said the boys showed up in the middle of the night. And apparently they were talking abouthow their mom had been fighting with someone, some masked person in the bedroom. And they had
10:51been scared and they had fled in the middle of the night and ran to their grandmother's house.And all La Bombard is thinking is like, wait a minute, in the middle of the night, these boyshave fled the house claiming their mother's being attacked. And grandma doesn'tcall the police? Grandma doesn't even think to tell her son, you know, Ron, like something's going onat your house. But La Bombard, he kept his suspicions to himself. He just sort of took the story onits face and said, okay, you know, we'll obviously need to speak to you guys more extensively herein a minute, but for now, I'm going to go take a look around. A few seconds later, La Bombard steppedinto Lisa and Ron's house. And right away, he saw there were a couple of crime scene technicians
11:29who were placing evidence markers down and also taking photographs. La Bombard, he started lookingat the doorframe of the front door to see if there was any signs of forced entry, but therewasn't any. And then he walked all around the house, and he didn't really see any damage anywhere,at least not on the first floor. You know, he didn't see any windows open or broken windowsor any sign that, like, there was a break in here. However, when La Bombard went into the boys' bedrooms,he actually did notice something. In one of the boys' rooms, there was a huge tear in the screen of thewindow. So theoretically, this could have already been there, or perhaps this is where the intruderbroke in. And so La Bombard called one of the crime scene techs to come over and take pictures of the
12:13cut in the screen and also dust for prints on the windowsill and in the vicinity. And then after that,you know, once the tech got to work, La Bombard left the boys' rooms and he headed over to the masterbedroom. And there, he saw exactly what Ron had seen earlier. The bed was a total mess and clearly it lookedlike a struggle had taken place here. But when Lubbombard walked around the bedroom, he noticedthere was some cash just sitting out in the open on a dresser. And so naturally he thinks,okay, well, based on this, I don't think whatever happened here was the result of a robbery,because this is something a robber very likely would have taken. And so after that,La Bombard, he left the bedroom and did another sweep of the entire house to see if there's
12:54anything else that, you know, he missed, and there wasn't really anything. And La Bombard,he goes outside and immediately he's called by some deputies in the back of the house.They're saying, hey, come over here and look at this.And so the bombardard, he gets to the backside of the house right outside of the basement doorand on the ground right outside of this door are these two parallel lines that sort of stretchaway from the house and appear to go off into the woods.And he realized this could easily be drag marks.Like two parallel lines could represent someone's legs, someone's feet in the ground as they're
13:27getting dragged.the lines were unbroken. They're just like two steady lines that went all the way out to the woods,so whoever was being dragged didn't appear to be trying to stop being dragged. Like they're notputting up a fight at all, which could suggest that they were limp, which meant they could beunconscious or worse, dead. On the morning of June 30, 2000, Detective Roland Lubbombard sat at a tablein Lisa Fine's kitchen, across from her two sons, Jake and Shane, as well as her husband,And the boys looked just incredibly nervous, and they kept glancing over at Ron, presumably for a reassurance.Now, Love Bombard did not want to stress these boys out more than he needed to.
14:19I mean, he would have loved it if he could just send them home to go sleep and go, you know, recover here.But as of right now, they were the only witnesses to whatever happened to Lisa the night before,and so he really needed to speak to them while their memory was still fresh.Also, at this point, La Bombard was not looking at this as, you know, potentially some sort of misunderstandingwhere Lisa is going to be, you know, found at a friend's house or something.Like, he thinks this is very likely at a minimum, an abduction case, and at worst, an abductionslash homicide case.In fact, minutes earlier, La Bombard and a few of his deputies had followed those two parallel
14:56supposed drag marks out into the woods, and they eventually reached a road where they stopped.Now La Bombard had this huge team of officers combing the woods around where that road wasto see if they could find any more tracks or any more evidence of Lisa or maybe even find her body.But for right now, La Bombard just wanted to hear directly from the boys,and he asked the boys to just tell him everything they could remember about that intruder.And Jake, who was Lisa's biological son, he was the first to speak.And he said that at about three in the morning, he had woken up in his son.bedroom to the sound of his mother screaming. And so, of course, he got up to go make sure she was okay.
15:38And he said when he looked into the bedroom, he saw what appeared to be this big man who waswearing all black and he had like a motorcycle helmet on, like a helmet with a visor on it.And clearly his mom and this man were fighting. They're having like a physical struggle. And so Jake saidat that point, he was just so scared that he ran down the hall and he told his stepbrother, Shane,about what was going on. And Jake would say that the two boys,they decided, like, their only chance now was just to try to escape the house and, you know,try to get help somewhere else.And so Jake and Shane, they ended up cutting the screen in Jake's bedroom, and they climbed
16:14out the window, down the house, and then ran next door to their great-grandmother's housewhere they effectively took shelter there.After he hears these details, Levin Bard, he's like, okay, you know, in his mind, he'sthinking, you know, the torn screen now makes sense in the boys' room.That was not an intruder breaking end.that was the boys fleeing the house to go to their great grandmother's house.But it also made him think, okay, well, then whoever attacked Lisa likely arrived around 3 a.m.And if they didn't break into the house, how did they get in?
16:45Did Lisa let them into the house at 3 in the morning?That seems unlikely.Or maybe they just had a key, which would suggest this is like a personal thing.La Bombardy looked at Jake and he said, do you have any idea who that masked person was?Like, did you recognize them?And Jake, he looked really uncomfortable.And he just said, I'm not really sure.And Jake, still looking really uncomfortable,
17:09he eventually turned and looked at his stepdad, Ron, who was sitting next to him.And instead of saying this to La Bombard, he said to Ron,I actually thought it was you.And immediately, La Bombard is like, whoa.He looked at Ron, and Ron is like, oh, my goodness.He looked over at Jake, and he's like, you thought it was me?That wasn't me?Like, I had nothing to do with this.
17:31I didn't hurt Lisa.I didn't do anything to her.And Ron, he quickly went from being sort of like really caught off guard or appearing to bevery caught off guard to then composing himself.And he leaned forward and sort of almost whispering he said to La Bombard, you know,if you want to look into someone who might have it out for Lisa, you should look into Jake's dad,Frank.About an hour later, Detective La Bombard knocked on the front door of a house, located about
18:0040 miles away from Lisa and Ron's home. He had a team of officers still searching the woodsfor signs of Lisa. And by this point, he'd also spoken to Ron's grandmother, Jeanette,so the boy's great-grandmother, who had said that Ron and Lisa fought a lot. That was actuallywhy when the boys had shown up in the middle of the night, claiming that, you know,there was some struggle happening in the bedroom between their mother and some person in all black,she had told La Bombard that her instincts were, that's got to be Ron. However,La Bombard had called the power plant where Ron worked and confirmed Ron's alibi.Ron's work record showed that he could not have been the one in the bedroom fighting with Lisa
18:41because he was at work the entire night.And so now La Bombard was here at this home to speak with Lisa's ex, Frank Spagnola.After speaking with Ron and several of Lisa's friends, La Bombaard had learned that Frank had a very strong motive to want to hurt Lisa.The two of them apparently had had a really chaotic relationship and had been fighting for years in court over custody of Jake and over child support.And in fact, recently, Frank had been ordered by a judge to write this big check like $14,000 to Lisa in unpaid child support.Just then, the door opened and a man who appeared to be in his 40s with some stubble on his face and a very worried expression,he came to the door and Labombard asked him if he was Frank's bagnola.And the man nodded.
19:32And then Lubbombard explained that he was there because Frank's ex-wife, Lisa, was currentlymissing.Now, Lubbombard didn't know Frank.He didn't really know what to expect with this guy.But he had expected Frank to be shocked when he heard that his ex-wife is missing.But Frank was not surprised.He just nodded solemnly and he looked sort of pained.And he said that he had heard because Ron had actually called him that morning.
19:59to see if he had seen or spoken to Lisa.And Frank said that he had offered to come over and help look for her,but apparently Ron just didn't want him there.And then a moment later, Frank was like,hey, you want to come in and we can talk inside?And so La Bombardy went in, and they sat down in the living room.And in the living room, there were some other people.There was an elderly couple who was sitting on the couch.
20:23And Frank quickly introduced them as his parentsand said that they all lived together.And so a few moments later, after LeBombard sort of introduced himself to the parents,Lubbombard looked back at Frank and he asked him about his relationship with Lisa.Frank sighed and said it actually was not great.Like he and Lisa did not get along.They fought over child support and custody when it came to their son Jake and they really justweren't nice to each other.
20:48And he also said that he had been pretty terrible about paying her child support in the past.But he said recently a judge had ordered him to pay some back pay for children.child support. So, you know, the child support thing, even though it was not really good for him,it was being sorted out. And so kind of out of nowhere, he just looked at Frank and said,okay, great, tell me where you were last night and what you were doing. La Bombard's hope was he wasgoing to, you know, catch Frank off guard and maybe ruffle his feathers a little bit.But really without any nervousness, he just said, you know, he had done a bunch of errands.He had picked up his mother's paycheck from the local hospital where she worked because she was
21:27actually recovering from surgery and couldn't pick it up herself. And then he had returned somemovies to a video store just before midnight. And he said he had gotten back home sometime aroundmaybe 1230. And he said he actually got a message, a phone message from Lisa. She'd called him.But he said he just didn't want to deal with it. It was late. So he didn't call her back. And thenshortly after that, he said he just went to sleep. And so La Bombard and Frank and his parents,They talked for a bit longer, but there really wasn't a whole lot else to say.The detective thanked the family for their time and said, you know, he'd be in touch as the investigation continued.And so LeBombardi got up and as he was leaving, he couldn't help but feel pretty discouraged.
22:08Because at this point, his two at least most obvious suspects in Ron and now Frank, they both seem to have really strong alibis.I mean, Ron literally was at work, at least according to work records.And Frank, I mean, the guy is being as forthcoming as you can be.He has his parents seconding.You know, the story he's telling.None of it feels contrived.So, you know, at first glance, it seemed like these guys probably didn't do it.But at the same time, LeBombard knew he couldn't just fully rule them out.
22:40They were still suspects, but maybe just lower down the list.On Sunday evening, July 2nd, so two days after Lisa Fine went missing,Detective Leibombard hurried through the woods about a mile away from Ron and Lisa's house.Up ahead, he could see in the tree line there was a group of volunteers that were just standing there by this large pile of dirt.And everybody seemed pretty anxious as he was running over to them.So for the last couple of days, there had been teams of volunteers and officers out here searching the woods,you know, looking for signs of Lisa.And they hadn't found anything until now.
23:15Love Bombard had just gotten the call that this particular group thought they had found something.They had found something blue poking out of the ground.It almost looked like cloth.And near the cloth poking out of the ground, the dirt apparently looked sort of like recently churned up.Like it was packed down, but looked like it had been churned up.Like somebody had buried something here.And so La Bombard, he's already got a sinking feeling about what he's going to find.But he rushes over and they show him what's in the ground.
23:45La Bombard, he just immediately reaches down and he begins tugging on, sure enough, this blue piece of fabric.And as he does this, the dirt begins kind of crumbling off.And before long, he's kind of pulled up this fabric.And he looks under the fabric, basically underground.And he realizes they had just found Lisa.The next day, La Bombard was sitting at his desk at the Beryn County Sheriff's Department.And he had his head in his hands.And in front of him on his desk were all of the case files for Lisa Fine, just kind of spread out in front of him.
24:14Love Bombard really was just completely exhausted.He had been in the woods all night last night, waiting for the technicians from the MichiganState Crime Lab to come out here and dig out the body that was buried there, which had beenpositively identified as Lisa Fine.Lisa was found still wearing her pajamas and her face was covered by a towel, and then therewas this blue pillowcase that had been pulled down over her whole head, and then someonehad wrapped duct tape really tightly around the pillow.And so at this point, La Bombard's case was officially a homicide investigation, and he was sure that the killer had to have known Lisa pretty well.
24:53They had likely used a key of their own to get into her home, and now he was sure that they also knew her property well enough to get around in the dark and find a place to bury her, you know, a mile away from the property.That fit both Ron and Frank, but again, both Ron and Frank, had pretty strong alibis.So La Bombard, he either needed to find new evidence to break one of those alibis, or he needed another suspect entirely.And so now La Bombard, he took a deep breath and sort of sat up, you know, determined to focus once again on the files on his desk.And after a few minutes of just kind of mindlessly shifting through the files, he actually grabbed a copy of Lisa's most recent phone records.And he had already looked at it before, but now he was looking a little bit more closely.and he noticed that most of the numbers that were on this phone log were familiar.They were Ron, they were Frank, they were her sister, her friends.
25:50But then he noticed there was actually one number that stood outbecause on the night that Lisa was killed,she received a call from an unknown number around 11 p.m.And they spoke for 25 minutes,which meant whoever had called Lisa potentially was the last person to speak to Lisa alive.A few hours later, La Bombard sat down across from a man named Jerry Good in a booth at a small coffee shop.So after a closer look at Lisa's phone records, La Bombard had noticed a pattern.In the weeks and months before her death, Lisa regularly received calls from an unknown number, usually late at night.
26:35And Lisa also regularly called a pager number, and they would find out that that pager belonged to Jerry Good,the Little League coach for Lisa's sons, Jake, and Shane.So this was a huge development.I mean, Blubumbard, just based on the phone records,was pretty confident that there was some kind of romantic relationship going on here,especially because when he had spoken to Jerry to request this interview,Jerry had immediately said that, like, yes, he would speak to him,but could we please meet away from my house so my wife does not overhear us?
27:10And so now, as the two men actually began to talk,Jerry just seemed really nervous, and he pretty much, without even any prompting, just launchedinto this somewhat frantic explanation.He said he'd heard about Lisa's death on the news, and he just wanted to be totally honest here.He said, they did have an affair last year.It ended months ago, but they had still stayed in touch, and they talked weekly.And when Labombard asked him about the night that Lisa had been attacked, like had you guysspoken that night, Jerry, he kind of looked down sheepishly and then looked up and said,
27:44that yes, they had spoken. He said he had called Lisa around 11 p.m. from a gas station payphone,just so that his wife wouldn't hear the conversation. But he swore after they hung up,after this, you know, 20-some-odd, totally normal-seeming phone call, he said he had just gonehome for the night. La Bombard could tell that Jerry really appeared to be trying very hard tocooperate. But as soon as Jerry actually told La Bombard which gas station he had called Lisa fromthat night, LeBombard, I mean, he nearly smiled. I mean, this is like so...so suspicious, because the gas station was extremely close to Lisa's house, like less than two milesaway.
28:21And so Jerry very easily could have, after that phone call, made his way over to Lisa'shouse.Maybe they got into some sort of fight.Maybe it turned violent.So Lubbombard basically was not convinced Jerry had nothing to hide here.He felt like Jerry had a lot to lose.And so Lubbombard told Jerry that for right now, he was free to go.But, Lubbombard was going to have to speak to Jerry's wife. And if Jerry wanted to stay out of jail,
28:48his wife was going to have to confirm his alibi. One afternoon in mid-July, so a little more than a weekafter Lisa Fine's body was found in the woods near her home, Detective Roland Lubbombardrushed down the hallway of the Baryon County Sheriff's Department toward his office. In hishands was Lisa's autopsy results. Now, the investigation was just a week old, but it had alreadystalled, and Lubbombard was getting frustrated. It would turn out.Lisa's affair partner, Jerry Good, he did have a solid alibi. His wife had confirmed that hehad gotten home around 11.30 p.m. on the night of Lisa's murder and that he had spent the entirenight in bed with her and their sick child. And Le Bombard did not get the impression that she was
29:30lying to protect him. Like she basically had heard the details and still was like, no. He was home.And so what this meant for Le Bombard was that basically all of his suspects had alibis,which meant he kind of didn't have any suspects, at least not good ones.And so now the detective was hoping that this autopsy would have some useful informationthat would maybe give him a new idea or a clue or just some new angle to explorebecause basically right now he felt like he had just several dead ends.However, when he sat down at his desk and opened up the report,the first thing he saw was something he had already guessed.
30:07Lisa had died for asphyxiation.So whoever had killed her had smothered her,probably with the towel and the pillowcase that were found wrapped around her face.And so this was not like big news.However, there was some good news pretty much right away as he's reading this file.The medical examiner had found some reddish-brown flakes under Lisa's nails that could be dried blood.And this possible blood had already been sent out to the lab,and Lubombard was very hopeful that it belonged to the killer.
30:34He knew from Lisa's son Jake that his mom apparently had been actively fighting back against her killer.So it seemed entirely possible that she might have scratched them and gotten their blood under her nails.But this was the year 2000, and DNA analysis at this time could take months.Plus, law enforcement didn't have the kind of extensive DNA databases that they have now.So while DNA, you know, might help to eventually confirm who the killer was,La Bombard still had to manually find them first.La Bombard continued reading the autopsy report, and he eventually got to this list that had all the other items that were found in the shallow grave with Lisa.And the items found were sort of mundane.
31:21It was like the pillowcase and the towel and the duct tape.But the way these items were described in this list was really technical.And at first, he just read the list and nothing really stood out.You know, he'd read plenty of autopsy reports before he had seen lists like these.But then he thought for a second, and he remembered something.He remembered a detail.And then he went back to the list, and he read it again, and he stopped on one particularitem, one very technical readout of the item in question here.
31:53And he's thinking to himself, oh, my goodness, I think I'm onto something.I might not need to wait for the DNA.I might have basically the clue I need to figure out who did this.However, to prove his new theory here, he needed to executeone more search warrant. Based on forensic evidence, including evidence found during that additionalsearch and witness testimony, here is a reconstruction of what police and forensic expertsbelieve happened to Lisa Fine on the morning of June 30, 2000. Just before 3 a.m., Lisa's killerparked on a road out in the woods, a short distance away from the Fine House. After they had
32:44parked, they grabbed a bag full of the things they knew they would need tonight, which included apillowcase, a towel, and duct tape. Then once they had their supplies, they put on a blackmotorcycle helmet with a visor, and then they began walking toward the house. When they got there,they pulled out their own house key, and they unlocked the front door, and then slipped quietlyinside and began walking down the hallway. Being careful not to wake the boys that they knew wereasleep in the house. They went down the hallway, they went up the stairs, and then they got tothe master bedroom. Before going into the bedroom,The killer pulled the towel out of the bag they had brought.
33:22So they had their towel in hand and then they walked into the bedroom and they climbed onto the bed on top of Lisa.And as soon as they did that, Lisa, she opened her eyes and she began to scream and she began fighting with the killer.And there's this really intense physical struggle between the killer and Lisa.Lisa is fighting for her life here.So at some point here the boys must have woken up and they saw what was happening and they obviously fled the house.And then at some point, the killer gained control of Lisa, and then they pulled that towel back out,and they pressed it over Lisa's nose and mouth cutting off her airway, and they held it there,and they smothered her until she stopped moving.
34:00Once the killer was sure that Lisa was dead, they climbed off her bed and they composed themselves,you know, this was an intense physical struggle, so they caught their breath,and then they reached into that bag they had brought where they had had the towel from before,and now they reached in and pulled out a pillowcase, a blue pillowcase,pillowcase. And then they climb back on the bed and they put the pillowcase over Lisa's head.She still had the towel on her nose and her mouth. And then they grab the duct tape from thatbag. And they use the duct tape to wrap it all the way around her head, sort of sealing herinside of this pillowcase. And then from there, the killer grabbed Lisa by the arms and they dragged
34:35her off the bed and they dragged her down the hallway, down the stairs, all the way down into thebasement and then out the basement door. And then they dragged her across the backyard all the wayout into the woods through the tree line all the way to the road out there where they had parkedtheir car. They loaded her body into the car. And then from there, they drove Lisa's body aboutmaybe a mile away into another section of the woods where they would bury her in that shallowgrave. And then after that, the killer went home. And when they got home, the first thing theydid is they went and checked on their elderly mother who was recovering from surgery and stillsound asleep. The killer was Lisa's ex-husband and Jake's biological father, Frank Spagnola,
35:18whose own parents had helped confirm his alibi. So the thing that it ultimately broke in the casewas that particular item on the autopsy report that had gotten Detective LeBombard's attention.And that item, which was really just a towel, had been described on that list as being thisreally specific kind of towel that was not sold commercially and was actuallyonly used in hospitals.And Lubbombard knew that Frank's mother, who he lived with, worked at a hospital.And Frank said he had gone to the hospital on the day Lisa was murdered to pick up his mother'spaycheck.
35:57He just as easily could have also grabbed a towel while he was there.And then beyond that, the DNA testing also confirmed that under Lisa's fingernails,that was blood, and it matched Frank's blood.And he was arrested on July 10, 2010.In 2003, Frank was found guilty of the first-degree premeditated murder of Lisa Fine and was sentenced to life in prison without parole.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.
36:44The 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 Lacassio. This episode was written by Heather Dundas. Story editing by Luke Baratz.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 StephenEar. Audio editing and post-produced by Whitlocasio and Jordan Stidham.Production support by Antonio Manata and Delana Corley. Artwork by Jessica Clogston Kiner,theme song, Something Wicked, by Ross Bugden.
37:21Thank 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.
37:51podcast plus to listen with Spotify or another app of your choice. So that's going to do it. I reallyappreciate your support. Until next time, see you.