MrBallen Podcast: Strange, Dark & Mysterious Stories - Life Is A Circus Podcast Exclusive Episode

Episode Date: January 11, 2026

On a chilly evening in early February 2010, a group of friends gathered around the table at a restaurant in a French ski resort. They had been out on the slopes all day and were warming up with mulled wine by the fire. A cell phone buzzed, and one of the friends looked down and frowned. They excused themselves and stepped away from the table to talk. When they came back, they were pale and their hands were shaking. The others asked what was wrong, but they just shook their head and grabbed their coat. They had to leave, right now. Someone they cared about very much needed their help. For 100s more stories like this one, check out my YouTube channel just called "MrBallen" -- https://www.youtube.com/c/MrBallenIf you want to reach out to me, contact me on Instagram, Twitter or any other major social media platform, my username on all of them is @MrBallen Hosted by Simplecast, an AdsWizz company. See pcm.adswizz.com for information about our collection and use of personal data for advertising.

Hello fans of the Strange, Dark, and Mysterious. I'm here today to tell you all about what it actually means now that we've moved over to the Sirius XM family. Big picture, it means we are going to make more content for you. Right now, you get one YouTube video a week on Saturday. Well, what we're going to do now is we're going to have the Saturday upload be the same, but then also the Mr. Ballin podcast. Well, we've begun already filming those episodes like a YouTube video.

So that's a second piece of content every week. then there's two other shows that you guys don't even know about yet, which means on any given week you could have up to four new video pieces of content on the Mr. Ballin channel. And also all these pieces of content will double as podcasts as well. This new content schedule is going to start early next year. Also, there's one other thing I want to clarify, which is the state of Mr. Ballin's medical mysteries and redacted.

Those shows were created in collaboration with Wondry, but now we're partnered with serious, and so we're not going to be making any new episodes of either of those shows. For now, if you want to hear my podcast episodes one week early and ad-free, make sure to 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. Keep on the lookout for more announcements in the coming weeks. Thank you. On a cold evening in early February of 2010, a group of A group of friends gathered around the table at a restaurant in a French ski resort.

They had spent their whole day out on the slope skiing and snowboarding, and they were now warming up by the fire with some warm drinks. Just then, one of their cell phones buzzed, and when this person looked down at their phone, they immediately frowned. Then they excused themselves from the group and stepped away to go talk. When this person came back from that conversation, they were visibly pale and their hands were shaking. And so the others who noticed this,

They asked them like what was wrong. But this person just shook their head, grabbed their coat, and said they had to leave right now. Someone they cared deeply about needed their help. But before we get into that story, if you're a fan of the Strange, Dark, and Mysterious delivered in story format, then you come to the right show because that's all we do. So if that's of interest to you, please sneak into the Follow Button's house and replace their foam in their mattress with rocks. Okay, let's get into today's story. On the afternoon of Saturday, February 6th, 2010, 61-year-old Alan Lelieu set up the ironing board behind the couch in the living room of a little house outside the town of Chartre in northern France.

From the kitchen, he could smell the beef bourgignon simmering on the stove, but Alan and the 37-year-old woman who was cooking the beef bourgignon were not talking. The woman's name was Alexandra Nicola, and Alan had actually bought this house for her. her and her 10-year-old daughter. Alexandra used to be Allen's assistant, but over the years, they had developed a really close relationship that was much more like father to daughter. Now, Alexandra had not worked for Alan in a number of years, but, you know, they remained close. And also, you know, remember, Alan literally bought her this house.

And so as a result of this bond they had, Alan found himself visiting her quite a bit at this house, you know, helping out where he could, and he also paid for her car and also for their vacations. And Alan could afford to be this generous because he was a very successful, high-powered producer of circus shows, which were a huge moneymaker in France. Lots of companies booked circus shows for end-of-the-year parties for their employees, and Alan had lots of major contracts. And so as a result, Alan's office was in this fancy chateau in the countryside, and his wife actually lived in this luxury ski town near the Swiss border, and Alan was constantly traveling all over Europe for work.

But this life could also be a grind. Just in the past 24 hours, Alan had traveled more than 1,200 miles, meeting with potential clients and scouting new performers. So he put a lot of value on the time where he could escape to Alexander's house, where he could recharge in the quiet of the suburbs, and obviously spend time with somebody he cared a lot about. Now, Alan knew all of his friends and coworkers thought that he and Alexandra were, you know, were blatantly having an affair here.

And he was sure that's what his own wife assumed, too. And this was fair, because after all, Alan did have lots of extramarital relationships. He also engaged with sex workers all the time, and he really didn't even try to hide any of it. He and his wife, Elizabeth, they lived in separate homes, and they sort of had this understanding that she can have this life and he can have this life in exchange. However, Alan's relationship with Alexandra really was different. It had always been platonic. They'd never even kissed or held hands.

Alan had no kids of his own, and he genuinely enjoyed playing the role of, you know, doting father and grandfather to Alexandra and her daughter, respectively. But now they were in this big fight, and Alan was anxious to repair it. Alexandra's daughter was out of the house for the weekend, so he and Alexandra had planned to have this nice, dinner tonight before Alan had to head out again on business on Sunday afternoon.

But Alan, somewhat stupidly, had brought up Alexandra's past, and that ended up getting into this horrible fight and just continued to yell at each other ever since. Alexandra was very defensive about her troubled history. When she was a young woman, she had moved to Paris and she had fallen in love and she had had a baby, but the baby had tragically died, and her relationship with her love had fallen apart. and so she had spiraled into very self-destructive behavior. By the time Alan finally met her in 2002, so this is eight years before they were in this house having this big fight,

you know, Alexander was really struggling. By this point, she had a two-year-old daughter, and she was really struggling to provide for her because all she could muster in terms of work was like this combination of minimum wage jobs and side hustles. And so when Alan had hired her as his, you know, full-time secretary, it had completely transformed her life. But, you know, deep down,

sometimes she seemed more resentful of Alan's power than grateful for his help. It's like he had total control over her well-being, and she didn't necessarily like that. And so with that as context, Alan left the ironing board and walked into the kitchen, hoping that Alexandra had cooled down enough that they could actually have a real conversation here.

And so once he was in the kitchen, he sort of looked over at Alexandra and couldn't really tell where she was at. And then he turned, opened up the fridge, and just kind of stared inside of it, not really looking for any food or drink or anything. You know, he was just hoping that Alexandra would say something to him. And to his relief, Alexandra did turn around and kind of playfully swung her dish towel at him, telling him that he had to wait for dinner.

She didn't seem mad at him anymore, so Alan felt very relieved, and he smiled and closed the fridge. And then he told her to come sit with him and have some wine, while they waited for the laundry to dry so she could iron it. A few minutes later, they both sat down on the sofa with their wine glasses, and Alexandra asked Alan how business was going. He told her it was good, which technically it was. His company was on track to bring in around 4 million euros that year,

which is the equivalent of about 5 million U.S. dollars. But despite how things looked on paper, Alan was pretty stressed. He made the majority of his money through contracts with companies. but he was not the only person competing for those lucrative contracts. His number one competitor was another circus owner whose name was Michel de la Ruele. And recently, Michel had been beating Alan on one contract after another. And it was starting to feel to Alan like Michelle was actually targeting Alan's contracts, trying to steal them from him, rather than trying to cultivate his own clients.

Alan told Alexandra that on Monday he had a very important meeting in Vichy, which is a city in central France about a four-hour drive south of Alexandra's house. At this meeting, Alan was hoping to win a big contract, as long as Michel didn't steal it out from under him. Alexandra put her hand on Alan's arm and told him, don't worry. She said she was sure his meeting on Monday would be a huge success and they could celebrate in a few weeks on the ski trip that he had booked for the two of them and her daughter.

Then she put down her now empty wineglass and went to go do the laundry. As Alexandra disappeared into the back of the house, Alan just kind of sat by himself for a minute. He was looking forward to the vacation that she had mentioned, in part because Alexandra had been a lot busier lately with her new boyfriend, a 42-year-old IT engineer from Paris named Eve Bernard. Now, Alan and Eve got along just fine. But he could tell that, you know, Alexandra and Eve were getting pretty serious. serious. They might even get married. And Alan couldn't help but worry that eventually, if that happened, Eve might start to resent him for sort of stepping in as this paternal figure in Alexander's life,

that perhaps he would come off as being sort of overbearing. But he was not going to let that fear wreck the evening. So as Alexandra came back now with the laundry, picked up a book from the coffee table, and took the last sip of his wine. The rest of the weekend passed by quickly and by Sunday afternoon, Alan was back in his car, headed back out of town. But what no one would realize until much later was there was actually a second car following closely behind him. The following day on the morning of Monday, February 8th, Alan Lelu's wife, Elizabeth, was drinking a coffee inside her home in the mountains when her phone rang. She picked it up, and she heard the voice of Alan's assistant, Sylvie. And Sylvie sounded very worried. And she said she was

was calling to see if Elizabeth had heard from her husband recently. And this was pretty strange, because Alan was not the type of person to just disappear from work without telling his secretary. So Elizabeth told Sylvie that, no, she hadn't heard from Alan in a few days. And then she asked Sylvie, like, why? What's going on here? And as Elizabeth listened to Sylvie's answer, she felt herself growing really nervous. Because apparently, Alan had this very important meeting in Vichy that morning, but he had not shown up for it. In fact, he'd never even checked into the hotel in Vichy where he was supposed to be staying. Sylvie said she had already reached out to several of Alan's friends and business contacts, but nobody had heard from him. And he was not answering

the repeated phone calls to both of his cell phones, which appeared to be turned off. None of this made any sense to Elizabeth. Alan was famous for spending entire days on his various phones. She couldn't even recall a time when he'd been unreachable even briefly. So Elizabeth told Sylvie she was glad she called, but she would take it from here. Then Elizabeth hung up the phone with Sylvie and called the police. A week and a half later, on February 19th, a young police officer knocked on the front door of a little house outside the town of Chartre in northern France. Now, up until this point, Allen's case had been treated as a simple missing person's case, with the local police in Allen's wife's hometown handling the inquiry, which was pretty basic.

But now, enough time had passed without Alan being found and no evidence coming in, that the original report had been kicked over to the crime division because they were thinking this could potentially be a kidnapping or something worse. This young officer was here at this home because it was the last place Alan was known to be before he went missing. The door of the home opened and a thin blonde woman looked out. The officer asked her if her name was Alexandra Nicola, and she said yes. When he explained to her why he was there, Alexandra looked immediately concerned and invited him inside. And as she led him into

her living room and offered him a seat on her couch, the officer looked around, taking stock of the space. It was clean, but a bit cluttered, with toys that appeared to belong to a young girl scattered about. The officer scanned for any signs of a physical fight or violence of some kind, like damage to the walls or the furniture, but there was nothing that stood out, nothing concerning. Alexandra began asking the officer pretty anxiously all these questions about, you know, what was going on with Alan? Was he hurt?

Was he in some kind of danger? Like, what do you know? But the young officer just shook his head and said, for now, they really didn't know much. He was just here to try to build a timeline of Alan's last known movements. And so speaking of that, he asked Alexandra to please walk him through what she remembered about her.

her last interaction with Alan. The officer took careful notes as Alexandra began to rattle off all the details she could remember. She said that Alan was like a surrogate father to her, and he had come over on the evening of Friday, February 5th. He had been there on Friday, also on Saturday and Sunday, and then he had taken off on that Sunday because he had to go to Vichy for this big meeting on Monday. She told the officer that after he left for that meeting, she hadn't heard from him, but that was pretty typical.

She said their relationship was not remotely romantic. It really was platonic. And, you know, he didn't always check in the way, you know, a spouse would. You know, this is more like really close friends. The officer nodded while he wrote down what she said. Alexandra seemed very helpful and appropriately worried. But he was suspicious of the idea that she and Alan were not romantically involved at all. So before he left, he asked to see the rest of her house, in part just to see what her reaction would be. If she said no, or got defensive, he would probe a bit more deeply. But she

immediately agreed, and she actually took him all around the house showing him anywhere he wanted to go. And what he found is the rest of the house seemed just as normal as the living room and the entryway. She eventually brought the officer back to the door and promised him she would call if Alan reached out. And so after leaving Alexandra's house, to be thorough, the officer actually went door to door up and down Alexandra's street, asking her neighbors what they remembered about that particular weekend and over the past several days, seeing if there was anything that contradicted what Alexandra had said. But everybody, more or less, confirmed Alexandra's story. Alan was indeed a regular visitor in the neighborhood, and several people did remember seeing him

on the weekend in question and said that really nothing had seemed off. So eventually, the officer just left and went back to the station, and when he got there, he wrote a report, highlighting Alan's last known destination of Vichy. Over the next week, police in Vichy, as well as in the ski town where Alan's wife lived, followed up on the loose threads of the investigation. They poured over Allen's cell phone history and his bank account and credit card transactions, which all showed no activity after he left Alexandra's house on February 7th. They also spoke to his business connections and his friends, but no one had heard anything. And they even put in a request to the car company, Audi, for the GPS data that was stored in Allen's car, which was an Audi Q7.

Now, the investigators knew it was entirely possible that Alan had chosen to disappear. I mean, he was very wealthy, he had lots of connections. You know, that was a possibility that he had basically chosen to be gone. And if that was the case, it would be pretty difficult to find him. However, it was a lot harder to hide a car that logged all of its travel data. And so whether Alan's disappearance was voluntary, accidental, or the result of foul play, the police knew finding his Audi was likely the best hope they had of knowing where to even look for Alan. On February 26, 2010, so 19 days since Alan was reported missing, a detective named Pierre Martan, stood in a security,

cure impound lot in the city of Orleone, France, looking at Allen's gray Audi Q7. The GPS data that police had requested from Audi had come back a few days earlier, and it had led detectives to a surprising place. So again, the last place where Alan was known to have been before he vanished was leaving the home of his surrogate daughter, Alexander Nicola, near Chartre, France, and heading to Vichy France for a business meeting. But his Audi had not been found in in Chartre or Vichy. Instead, it had been discovered in the parking lot of a train station in Orleone, which was in between those two cities.

And so to the police, it sort of looked like he'd gotten halfway to his destination and just stopped. Now, when they found this car, the first thing they did is they just put it under surveillance for two days to see if maybe Allen or somebody else would return to it. For context, the parking lot where this car was was in a pretty rough area where very rough area, where violent crime and sex work were pretty common. So, I mean, any number of people could potentially, you know, break into this car or who knows what. It just seemed like a seedy area where something might happen here if we keep watching.

But nobody had shown up. So finally, they just towed the car to the impound lot for forensic technicians to process it and look for evidence. And Detective Martan was here to watch that process. The forensic texts circled the vehicle and began taking photo photos of the outside and also dusting for fingerprints. There was no visible damage anywhere on the outside of the car, and there were no traces of any effort to try to break into the car.

Plus, Alan's briefcase and luggage were clearly still inside the car, which meant, you know, the fact the car was found where it was, was likely not a product of a robbery. This didn't seem like somebody just stole his car, it's here, and it has nothing to do with Alan's disappearance. It seems like how this car got here is connected, in some way to what happened to Allen. And, you know, sort of going down that path,

it seemed more and more likely that what happened to Alan probably fell into the category of foul play. However, when the technicians opened up the car doors and began dusting for prints inside, the upholstery was disappointingly clean, which doesn't exactly sort of enhance the idea that foul play happened here. It just sort of seems like what's going on.

But after a few, minutes after, you know, kind of thoroughly scanning the inside of the car, one of the techs pushed the button near the driver's side that opened up the trunk. And then after it was open, Detective Martin walked around to the back to look inside and see what was in there. And what he saw was this bulky object wrapped in a pink sheet. And right away, Martin had this sinking feeling in his chest, as one of the techs reached forward with a gloved hand and pulled the sheet back. And pretty much immediately, Martan's suspicions were confirmed. Underneath that pink sheet was a body, a man's body fully clothed and curled in the fetal position. There was no doubt this was Alan Lelue.

But there was no visible blood or wounds or bruises anywhere on his body, and there was no blood in the trunk. When Detective Martan reached in to try to move Alan's body to further examine him, he found his body was already incredibly rigid with brigger mortis. The coroner told Martan that she would hopefully have some answers for him after she did the autopsy. The weather over the past few weeks had been pretty cold, which was good for evidence collection, because it basically meant the trunk had sort of acted like a refrigerator and preserved Alan's soft tissue. As the coroner wheeled the body away, Martan just stood there staring at the now empty trunk. He had no theories about when or why.

or even how Alan had died. All he knew was that this was now officially a murder investigation. Detective Martan returned to his office at the police station and got to work. Since Alan's body was found in early on, he was now in charge of the murder investigation. His first step was to review all the witness statements and other evidence that had already been gathered by the other departments. And right away, the picture they painted told Martan

that this was going to be a very complex investigation with lots of suspects and multiple locations. Alan was a workaholic, who was always on the move, and he had no apparent connection to the city of Orleans, where he had ended up. In fact, he rarely seemed to spend more than a few days in the same place. He didn't live with his wife. Instead, he seemed to bounce between his office and a series of hotels,

with stops at the home of a woman named Alexandra Nicola in between. According to reports, Alexander had been interviewed, and she said that, Alan was at her house the weekend before he disappeared. And so this made her the last person to see Alan alive, which in Martan's mind clearly made her a suspect right off the bat. However, Alexandra's story about Alan leaving her house on Sunday, February 6th, matched up with

the data Martan had from Alan's car, cell phone, and credit card records, which all showed that Alan really did leave her house and went to Orleon on that day, and then for reasons unknown stopped communicating or spending money. Maybe that was the day he was killed. Right off the bat, like the police officer who originally visited Alexandra and took down her original story, Detective Martan found it pretty hard to believe that her relationship with Alan was not romantic. It just seemed like based on how frequently they apparently saw each other and the fact that

Alan was buying her things and, you know, bought her house and paid for vacations and things like that, it just seemed like there was more to the story than what. he had been told. But even though that did totally cast some level of suspicion on Alexandra, there was also just the logical side of it for Detective Martan, which is like, okay, the size difference between Alan and Alexandra was stark. I mean, Alan was 240 pounds, a really big guy, and Alexandra was just very small and petite. Now, is it impossible for her to kill him and put him in the trunk of the car in Orlean? No. But it just makes it sort of unlikely. And so that's just sort of floating in the background of Detective Martan's mind. But for now, what Martan found himself much more

interested in was some of the other information that Allen's business associates and wife had supplied. First off, Alan apparently had lots of affairs with lots of women. And so that meant every one of those women, and any husbands or boyfriends or other romantic partners of any kind connected to them were also suspects. It also meant that Alan's wife, Elizabeth, had a motive to want her husband dead. I mean, basically he's cheating on her openly all the time. That's got to be motivation for her to do something to him. Now, Martan didn't think that Elizabeth literally would have done the killing herself because she was actually 400 miles away at her home when her husband died. But she certainly had the financial means to hire a hit man. And the second thing,

that Detective Martan got from the associates and from Alan's wife was Allen's business dealings were both very high stakes and very ugly. Alan's employees and colleagues clearly respected him, but they also described him as a very tough boss and a ruthless business person. He could be very loud and abrasive, and he had already made his fair share of enemies in the circus business, which was already known to be a cutthroat industry where a lot of money was flying around. And so because Martan had been handed this murder investigation, and really there's like an overwhelming number of people that could have been involved here, instead of just, you know, not being sure where to start, Martan just assembled a team of his very best deputies, and they set to work

literally re-interviewing everybody, and from that, making a list of suspects that they deemed were appropriate. Three weeks later, on March 17th, Detective Martan walked into an interrogation room in the Orleans Police Station, and he sat down across from a relatively fit-looking 50-year-old man who was waiting for him quietly and apparently very calmly. The man's name was Michel de la Ruele, and he was Allen's biggest rival in the circus business. He was also, at this very moment, Detective Martan's number one suspect in this murder. Martan and his team had spent the last few weeks conducting dozens and dozens of interviews,

and Michelle's name had come up more times than that he was in the last time. than anybody else's. And this was because, immediately after Alan disappeared, Michel had begun contacting Alan's clients, trying to get them to all sign new contracts with him, sort of a pretty cutthroat and cold thing to do. And Detective Martan had done the math on these contracts Michelle was going for, and they added up to the equivalent of millions of dollars, which in the detective's mind was a very compelling motive for murder. You know, maybe Michelle killed this guy specifically to gobble up these contracts. And not only that, but the coroner had by this point come back with Alan's cause of death.

He had been strangled using some kind of ligature, like a rope or a belt, and it likely took between five and maybe ten minutes for Alan to actually be strangled to death. So like the idea, someone's actively strangling him for that long. That is a long time to be right there on top of somebody killing someone. And then the scratches that were found on Alan's legs suggested that his body had been lifted into the trunk after he was already dead. So the death struggle, the actual strangling clearly took place outside of the trunk. And so all that meant, whoever killed Alan had to be pretty strong. And looking at Michelle now, you know, Detective Martan thought that he did fit the description.

He seemed like a pretty fit, strong guy. However, as Martan began asking Michel questions and watching his face and body language for signs of anxiety or defensiveness that could suggest he was hiding something, what he found was Michel seemed pretty open and very straightforward, like he was not hiding a thing. Michel immediately acknowledged poaching Alan's clients. But he just shrugged as he explained it. You know, that was business.

He said he was sure if somehow the positions were reversed, Alan would do the same thing to him. And also, he said he had an airtight alibi. On the weekend, when the coroner believed Alan had been killed, Michel had been hundreds of miles away skiing. And then Michel produced this folder full of these receipts and all these phone numbers, and he handed it over to Martan, who took it, and he told Michel, okay, you know, sit tight.

And then the detective got up and he left the interrogation room and he handed over this folder to another detective to check out. But after that, Detective Martan did not go back into the interrogation room. Instead, he grabbed another detective and told them to take a shot. The idea was to sort of have a good cop, bad cop sort of dynamic to see if maybe that would rattle Michelle. And so Detective Martan watched from behind the two-way mirror as the next detective walked inside and took a stab at, you know, breaking Michelle.

But their conversation basically played out the same way that Martans had. So Martan signaled for another detective to go in there and have them take a shot. But they too had a sort of run-of-the-mill conversation with Michelle, and they didn't make any progress. And then finally, after basically hours of cycling different detectives into the room to try to catch Michelle in a lie, Detective Martan felt a tap on his shoulder. And when he turned around, it was one of his deputies who told Martan that, unfortunately, he had called all the people that Michelle had given them information for, all the witnesses from the ski resort, and he had also even called the manager of the ski lodge, and basically Michel's

alibi checked out. He clearly had not been physically able to kill Alan. He was at that ski resort at the time of the murder. At this point, Martan knew he could not just keep Michelle indefinitely and just keep trying to catch him in a lie, you know, even if there was some possibility here that he was involved in this murderer. At this point, there just wasn't enough evidence, and so he had to let Michelle go. A few days later, Martan was back at his desk combing through reports when a uniformed officer came up and told him there was somebody at the front desk who really wanted to talk to him. And this was exactly the kind of news that Martin had been hoping for. He had recently put out a statement to the local papers, basically saying, hey, if there are any witnesses out there, please come in and

talk to me. And he hoped that whoever this was was potentially a witness. And so Detective Martan followed the uniformed officer out to the lobby, and there, he saw the person who had come in to see him. It was this man who appeared to be in his early 50s, who was dressed all in black with these shiny black shoes and glasses. And Martan wondered if maybe this was a business contact of Alance. And as he went up to shake the man's hand, he sort of felt himself getting excited. But then this man introduced himself, and when he was a business contact of Alance, and he went up to shake the man's hand, he sort of When he did, Martan had to resist the urge to just turn around and walk away right there. Because the man said his name was Remy Saint-Turenne, and he was a professional psychic.

Martan did not believe in psychics, and he was annoyed with the police officer for even bringing him out here to meet this person. And so Martan was literally about to just tell Remy to, you know, thanks for coming in, but I don't have time for this, you need to go. But then he thought better of it, because Martan was really having no luck. with this case. There had been very little forensic evidence recovered from Allen's car. There were no usable fingerprints, and while the bed sheet Alan's body was wrapped in did have some DNA on it, they didn't match anything in their system. And then the business leads that

Merton had been pretty excited about hadn't panned out either, and he'd found no evidence that anyone in either Allen's personal or business circles took out a paid hit on him. Martan's team had also spoken at length to Alan's surrogate daughter, Alexandra, and all the women he was having affairs with, and all the sex workers he had engaged with, and none of them, nor any of their

boyfriends or husbands or partners made sense as the killer. So, out of a mixture of a little curiosity and a lot of desperation, Merton brought Remy the psychic back to an interrogation room and asked him what he thought. Remy explained

that he had heard a news bulletin about Alan while he was driving. And when he heard it, he had a vision that was so vivid that he actually had to pull over. He said he saw Alan Lelu as clear as day in this physical struggle with a woman. Remy didn't know her name, and he couldn't describe her, but he was certain that a woman was somehow involved in Alan's murder. Martin was disappointed because, unsurprisingly, this just sort of felt like a generic stab in the dark by somebody parading around as a psychic

who could see things that nobody else could. It just seemed like he threw this random generic thing out there as if it was some big revelation and it just didn't feel like it was. But, Remy wasn't done. He went on to say he was sure that Alan was not killed in Orleans, even though that's where his body had been found. He said Alan's body had been taken away from the murder scene and actually placed in the trunk after he was dead.

And this caught Martan's attention. because the coroner had been certain that Alan was strangled in one place and then placed into the trunk afterwards for transportation. But, critically, the police had not released that information to the press, specifically because they wanted to be able to weed out fake tips. And so for Remy to say that, I mean, how would he have access to that? Now, Martan knew this could have just been a lucky guest by Remy, but it just seemed so, you know, on the nose that he began considering

what else Remy had said, this idea that, okay, Alan was struggling with this woman. You know, that was something that, you know, Martan had not really considered. He had sort of ruled most women out as the potential suspect because of how big Alan had been and how physical this murder had to have been. So it just seemed more likely that a big, strong man was responsible for the killing. But now, Martan wasn't so sure. And suddenly it seemed entirely possible that, you know what? maybe a woman really did do this.

And so eventually, Detective Martan thanked Remi for coming in and sharing his ideas about the case, and then after walking him out of the station, Detective Martan sped back to his desk because Martan had an idea. Lots of people in Allen's life had told the police investigating his murder that Alan had had lots of extramarital affairs. Now, Detective Martan and his team had spoken to all the women they could possibly fine who had had these affairs with Alan, and basically all of them had been ruled out. However, now, after talking with Remy the psychic, something about the location where Alan's body was found was jumping out at Detective Martan.

The part of Orlean, where Alan's car had been parked, was pretty sketchy, you know, it was crime-ridden, and critically, it was known for being a hotbed for sex work. Now, Martan already knew, clearly, that Alton was... Allen engaged with sex workers. You know, it just seemed like that was one of the things that he did, and they spoke to numerous sex workers and ruled them out as being suspects. And so, for the most part, sex workers were not really on Detective Martan's radar

as, you know, primary suspect pool. However, now with fresh eyes, he was thinking, you know, maybe the reason Alan was in Orly on was because he was there to meet a sex worker. and while he was there, something went wrong, and it resulted in his death. So, Detective Martan spent the next few days absolutely scouring Alan's laptop. Now, the forensic text had already been through at once, looking at all of Alan's emails and business records, but Martan was looking at something different. He was using the laptop to search through all the websites where Alan had found sex workers to go visit.

Basically, what he was doing is making a true, exhaustive list of every single sex worker he had ever really engaged with. So this is an even bigger list than they had before. There were dozens of names and profiles to sift through, and as Martan found them, he would send members of his team out to speak to all the women he possibly could. But as he was doing this, Detective Martan discovered that really none of these sex workers that Alan was engaging with had any connection to Orleone,

and they also did not appear to have any real issues with Alan himself, at least based on the messages that were on his laptop. However, as Detective Martan dug deeper and deeper into this laptop, going further and further back in time, he eventually came to one new profile, this woman named Marie Eve. And when he took in who this woman was and got a picture of her and saw her information, he knew right then and there.

He had solved the case. based on the entire police investigation as well as a confession from the killer. The following is a reconstruction of what police believe happened to Alan Lelieu on the day he was murdered. The killer found themselves standing behind Alan and inside they were burning with rage. Alan seemed to think he was so much better than the killer, just because he was this powerful businessman and the killer was just a sex worker. and the killer had tolerated Alan's behavior because, you know, Alan had money. But now, Alan had pushed it too far, and the killer felt like they had to shut him up for good. Alan's belt lay nearby, and impulsively the killer grabbed it and lunged forward and looped the belt around Alan's throat.

And at first, Alan struggled. He reached up. He's trying to pull the belt off. He has no idea what's happening, but the killer just held on tight. and for several minutes there's this unbelievable death struggle going on, and Alan, he's fighting, he's a big guy and he's getting close to pulling this thing off, but then something sort of unbelievable happened. The killer had sort of braced themselves against an object behind them,

and so they're back us up against it, and they're pulling as hard as they can with this belt against Alan's throat, and as they're leaning back, the object they're up against suddenly broke, and because, you know, the killer didn't let go of the belt and is applying max pressure, when they fell backwards, it created almost like this whiplash effect. Their body tumbles and all that force is driven into Allen's throat.

And what happened is that sudden whiplash crushed Alan's larynx, and he immediately went still. And so just for good measure, the killer held on for a couple more minutes, pulling as tightly as they could across his throat, really ensuring that Alan was dead. And when Alan did not move at all, eventually, the killer let go of the belt and stood up, you know, their heart pounding, just sort of taking

in the scene. Then, as reality began to set in for the killer, they realized they needed help getting rid of this body. I mean, this is a huge guy. How are they going to get rid of it on their own? So the killer called their accomplice. And the accomplice was hundreds of miles away in a ski resort, but they immediately told the killer to wait and they would drive to them. Sure enough, the next day, the accomplice arrived, and they helped the killer load Alan's body into the trunk of Alan's car. Then the killer climbed into Alan's car and drove it to the train station in Orleans. Behind them, as they made this ride, police would realize much later there was a second car being driven by the killer's accomplice. The killer and the accomplice would abandon Alan's car and his body in Orleans, and then to

they would drive away, and shortly thereafter, they would actually get married. Because the killer was Allen's own surrogate daughter, Alexandra Nicola. Alexandra's troubled past that she was very defensive about included the fact that she was actually a sex worker under the name Marie Eve. Her accomplice was her new boyfriend, Eve Bernard. So Alexandra and Alan had fought previously about her, you know, troubled history, and she was especially mad that at one point, Alan had implied that Alexandra's daughter could sort of end up like her, as if that would be a horrible thing.

So on Saturday, February 6th, when Alan brought up Alexandra's daughter just sort of in conversation, for Alexandra something snapped. It just felt so disrespectful that he again was talking about her daughter, and sort of out of impulse, she grabbed the belt, wrapped it around Alan's neck, strangled him, and ultimately stumbled backwards and crushed his larynx and killed him. In a way, it was sort of true what Alexandra had told the police when they initially questioned her, that Alan had left her house in his car on February 7th and she had not seen him again. What she had left out was that Alan was already dead in the trunk of his car when he left. Alexander Nicola confessed to the murder of Alan Lelieu and was sentenced to 15 years,

in prison. Her boyfriend, Eve Bernard, was sentenced to two years for concealment of a dead body. The couple has since been released, and together they have a child who was born before Alexandra went to 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. Ballen. Our head of writing is Evan Allen. Our head of production is Zach Levitt.

Produced by Jeremy Bone. This episode was written by Margaret LeBron. Research and fact-checking by Shelley Shoe, Samantha Van Hoose, Evan Beamer, Abigail Shumway, and Camille Callahan. Research and fact-checking supervision by Stephen Ear. Audio editing and post-produced by Whit Lacassio and Cole Lacasio. Additional audio editing by Jordan Stidham. Mixed and mastered by Brendan Cain. production coordination by Samantha Collins

Production Support by Antonio Manada and Delana Corley artwork by Jessica Klogston Kiner theme song called Something Wicked by Ross Bugden Thank you for listening to the Mr. Ballin podcast If you enjoyed today's story and you want to hear more like it go ahead and check out our YouTube channel

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