MrBallen Podcast: Strange, Dark & Mysterious Stories - Look Again (PODCAST EXCLUSIVE EPISODE)

Episode Date: March 30, 2023

One evening in February of 1992, a newly married man who lived in a quiet, peaceful neighborhood in Minnesota returned home from work. When he walked inside, he saw his young son was working on some homework at the table, and his 8-month-old baby daughter was crying in her playpen, but the man's wife was nowhere to be found. He asked his son if he had seen his mother, and the boy said "no." So, the husband began walking around the house looking for his wife and calling out to her. But he couldn't find her, and she never called back. Eventually, during his search, the man reached the master bedroom. And when he opened the door and saw what was inside, he fell to his knees in horror. Moments later, the police were screaming to his residence, sirens blaring.For 100s more stories like this one, check out our main YouTube channel just called "MrBallen" -- https://www.youtube.com/c/MrBallenIf you want to reach out to me, contact me on Instagram, Twitter or any other major social media platform, my username on all of them is @MrBallenSee Privacy Policy at https://art19.com/privacy and California Privacy Notice at https://art19.com/privacy#do-not-sell-my-info.

Hey, Prime members, you can binge eight new episodes of the Mr. Ballin podcast one month early and all episodes ad-free on Amazon Music. Download the Amazon Music app today. One evening in February of 1992, a newly married man who lived in a quiet, peaceful neighborhood in Minnesota returned home from work. When he walked inside, he saw his young son

was working on some homework at the table and his eight-month-old baby daughter was crying in her playpen. But the man's wife was nowhere to be found. He asked his son if he had seen his mother and the boy said no. So the husband began walking around the house looking for his wife and calling out to her. But he couldn't find her and she never called back. Eventually, during his search, the man reached the master bedroom. And when he opened the door and saw what was inside, he fell to his knees in horror. Moments later, the police were screaming to his residence, sirens blaring. But before we get into that story, if you're a fan of the Strange, Dark, and Mysterious delivered

in story format, then you've come to the right podcast because that's all we do and we upload twice a week, once on Monday and once on Thursday. So if that's of interest to you, please remove the rubber lip from the Amazon Music Follow Buttons dustpan so they can never quite get everything up when they're sweeping. Okay, let's get into today's story. I'm Peter Frankopan. And I'm Afua Hirsch. And we're here to tell you about our new season of Legacy, covering the iconic, troubled musical genius that was Nina Simone. Full disclosure, this is a big one for me.

Nina Simone, one of my favourite artists of all time. Somebody who's had a huge impact on me, who I think objectively stands apart for the level of her talent, the audacity of her message. If I was a first year at university, the first time I sat down and really listened to her and engaged with her message, it totally floored me. And the truth and pain and messiness of her struggle, that's all captured in unforgettable music that has stood the test of time. Think that's fair, Peter? I mean, the way in which her music comes across is so powerful,

no matter what song it is. So join us on Legacy for Nina Simone. Hello, I am Alice Levine, and I am one of the hosts of Wondery's podcast, British Scandal. On our latest series, The Race to Ruin, we tell the story of a British man who took part in the first ever round-the-world sailing race. Good on him, I hear you say. But there is a problem, as there always is in this show. The man in question hadn't actually sailed before. Oh, and his boat wasn't seaworthy. Oh, and also, tiny little detail, almost didn't mention it.

He bet his family home on making it to the finish line. What ensued was one of the most complex cheating plots in British sporting history. To find out the full story, follow British Scandal wherever you listen to podcasts. Or listen early and ad-free on Wondery Plus on Apple Podcasts or the Wondery app. 38-year-old Linda Jensen could not believe how lucky she was. As she and her husband Charlie looked down at the beautiful face of their brand new baby daughter, Linda could not stop smiling. And when Charlie leaned down and gave Linda's cheek a gentle kiss and told her how much he loved her, Linda felt like her heart might burst

with happiness. For both Linda and Charlie, this moment and this new addition to their family was something neither of them could have imagined when they first met almost 27 years earlier. That's when Linda, age 8, had gone on a summer vacation with her family to Spicer, Minnesota, where they stayed in a lakefront cabin that had been owned by one of Charlie's relatives. Charlie, who had been 12 at the time, had spent most of his time at the lake playing with Linda's two brothers. But as summers went by, and Linda and Charlie both grew out of their awkward teenage years, the childhood friends had eventually become childhood sweethearts. And after Charlie came back home to Minnesota after serving in the U.S. Army as a combat soldier

in Vietnam, everyone in both their families knew that Charlie and Linda would get married. Charlie in his dress military uniform and Linda looking beautiful and radiant in her white bridal gown. Four years later, on January 27th, 1974, the couple had their first child, a little boy named Andrew. But by the time Andrew was just four years old, his parents' marriage had fallen apart. Like a lot of other Vietnam veterans, Charlie had come back from the war with a psychological condition called post-traumatic stress disorder. Symptoms included feelings of irritability and edginess that had been triggered by his combat experience. And over the years, Charlie's drug

of choice for treating his PTSD was alcohol. Lots and lots of alcohol. Finally, in 1978, after nearly seven years of marriage, Linda had filed for divorce. Not because she didn't love Charlie, but because his constant drinking had made their life together impossible. And after that divorce, Linda would spend the next 12 years of her life never quite able to forget Charlie, and also never quite able to find any relationship that didn't end in one kind of a disaster or another. There had been a long-term relationship that had produced another son, a little boy named Joey, but that relationship ended without Linda marrying Joey's father. Not long after that,

there had been one more failed marriage, which had taken Linda and Joey first to Colorado and then to California. In both relationships, the breakups had left very bad feelings. Linda's ex-boyfriend and Joey's father had been a partner with anger and substance abuse issues who refused to pay child support for Joey. Linda's ex-husband, who still lived out in California, had adopted Joey, but he'd never forgiven Linda for not having any children with him. And things had only gotten messier

during the divorce proceedings when her ex-husband, John Silliman, was ordered to pay Linda $300 a month in child support for Joey. Finally, with no place left to go, Linda had accepted the offer from her older sister, Sandy, that Linda and Joey should just come back home to Minneapolis and live with Sandy until Linda could pick up the pieces of her broken life. Now, as Linda looked up at Charlie from her bed in the hospital maternity ward, she could not even see the smallest trace of the angry and damaged-seeming young man

she had left behind 13 years earlier. Because, for Charlie, the divorce from Linda had been a wake-up call. And once he realized just how much his drinking had cost him in terms of his marriage, family, friendships, money, and work, Charlie had made a promise to himself and to his son, Andrew, that he would get clean and sober. And that's exactly what Charlie did. And by the time Linda had returned to Minnesota, settled herself and her eight-year-old Joey into her sister Sandy's cozy little wood-paneled bungalow and started looking for a job, bumping into Charlie again was like meeting up with the man of her dreams. No longer a drinker, Charlie was now a successful

carpenter and contractor who had taught those carpentry skills to their son Andrew. And like Linda, Charlie was unattached, and the same attraction and feeling of friendship that had drawn them together back when they were childhood sweethearts was still very much there. In fact, the hard life experience they both had gained in the years they'd spent apart seemed to make that attraction even stronger and deeper. And before long, Linda was slipping out of the house she shared with her sister a few evenings a week after Joey was in bed and coming home later in the evening looking like she just won the lottery Sandy and Linda had always been very close and Sandy had been the one person Linda had confided in over the course of the last 12 stormy years and Sandy knew her sister well enough

to know that there was only one man who had ever made Linda look that happy and that man was Charlie Jensen so it came as no surprise to Sandy when Linda and Charlie had announced that they would be getting married again. And the date they chose for their wedding, April 3rd, 1991, was exactly 20 years to the day that they had gotten married the first time,

20 years earlier. What had been a surprise had been the fact that shortly after moving in with Charlie, Linda had gotten pregnant. And by the time the couple had said I do to one another for the second time in their lives, Linda was already seven months along. And now, two months later, on June 12th, 1991, Charlie, who was 42 at the time,

and Linda, who was four days shy of her 39th birthday, were once again brand new parents. And for Linda, the was four days shy of her 39th birthday, were once again brand new parents. And for Linda, the arrival of baby Lisa marked the beginning of the life she had spent the last 12 years looking for. By late February 1992, when baby Lisa was eight months old, Linda, Charlie, Joey, and Lisa had all settled into a comfortable routine. The roomy three-bedroom house that Charlie had just finished building two summers ago had a deep wooden porch out front that overlooked the yard and driveway and the trees that shaded the house from the sun. It was one of Linda's favorite places, and it also became a gathering spot for Andrew, who now had a son of his own,

and for Linda's sister, Sandy, who visited as much as she could to see Linda and the kids. Linda had taken time off from her job working at a local school with disabled children. Charlie had plenty of construction jobs, but he still managed to spend as much time as he could with Linda and their grandson, as well as with Lisa, Joey, and Andrew. And by late summer, Linda had gotten back to her regular exercise routine. In addition to dropping in at the local health club, Linda had also started running again, and it wasn't long before she was a very familiar sight in the nearby neighborhoods that were part of her daily five-mile loop. And it wasn't just Linda, Charlie, and baby Lisa who were all thriving.

And it wasn't just Linda, Charlie, and baby Lisa who were all thriving. Linda's son, Joey, who had been disabled by a severe stroke when he was just six weeks old, had also settled happily into his new life in Minnesota. He enjoyed being part of a close and loving family, and he enjoyed his role as big brother, and now that he was about to turn 10 years old, Joey was also looking forward to joining the local Boy Scout troop. It wasn't until the last weekend in February, on Saturday, February 22nd, that Linda had given her sister, Sandy, the most recent update on the one dark cloud that had drifted into the Jensen's

otherwise very sunny life. The sisters were sitting on the sofa in the living room, catching up on family news. Linda had talked to the local Boy Scout troop leader about signing Joey up for Boy Scouts, Charlie was working on a construction site all the way out in Maplewood 50 miles away, and that after a long Minnesota winter, March and spring were finally not too far away. But when the ring of the telephone interrupted their conversation, Sandy immediately noticed the look of strain that flashed across Linda's face. Sandy knew that

sometime within the last two weeks, Linda had gotten two calls from Joey's biological father, Robert Beard. Despite having given up custody of Joey and not paying child support, Robert was now insisting on having longer and more frequent visitation with his nine-year-old son. Linda had left Robert after he had become physically abusive, so Robert's calls and escalating demands had felt very threatening as well as upsetting. But a moment later Linda's face had relaxed and she had insisted to Sandy that she, Linda, and Charlie had the situation under control. And by the time Sandy was ready to go, the conversation had veered into memories of the past and Linda's announcement that Charlie had

always been the only man Linda had ever loved. By the time Sandy was hugging Linda goodbye, Linda was joking that the only real problem in her life now were the painful shin splints she had gotten from all of her recent running. And two days later, on the morning of Monday, February 24th, that was absolutely true. When Linda woke up that morning and took her first few steps across the cold bedroom floor, she winced as the sudden pain flared up along her shin bones. But glancing at her watch, Linda actually welcomed how fast the pain had cleared her mind because, once again, she had managed to oversleep. After pulling on her sweatsuit over her t-shirt and

underwear and checking that baby Lisa was still asleep, Linda hurried into Joey's room to wake him up. Linda had meant to get out of bed when Charlie had kissed her goodbye and left for work at 6 45 a.m. but the last thing she remembered was hearing Charlie tell her that he'd changed baby Lisa's diaper and that he'd see Linda that evening after he got back from Maplewood. Peeking out the window now, Linda saw that it had snowed the night before, which meant that Andrew's outdoor carpentry job would be canceled and Linda would not be watching her grandson that day. Linda was glad that Charlie's job out in Maplewood was indoors, but she also couldn't help thinking

how nice it would have been if today had been a snow day for them too. By 7 45 a.m., baby Lisa was awake and had her morning feeding and Joey, his breakfast toast still clutched in his hand, was climbing onto the school bus and waving back to Linda and his eight-month-old sister. After watching the bus drive off down County Road 15, Linda turned back to the house and walked on sore legs to the front door. had told Charlie before he left for work and before she fell asleep instead of getting up that her shins hurt too much to go running that day, so her plan for the day was just to hang out with the children and enjoy the view through the sliding glass door that led out onto the front deck. Now standing at baby Lisa's changing table, Linda unwrapped Lisa from her cocoon of blankets but decided to leave the baby in her pajamas in the playpen while Linda cleaned up the breakfast dishes. But just as Linda was ready to go back out to the living room and get Lisa

dressed for the day, Linda was surprised by the sound of a knock on the front door. The Jensen house was set far enough away from the road, with a long enough driveway, that the family did not get that many unexpected visitors. But this was Big Lake, Minnesota, population just over 3,000 people, and most people here never even bothered to lock their doors, let alone think twice about opening that door to a neighbor who might need help or a favor. So after leaving baby Lisa right where she was, in the playpen in the living room,

Linda dried her hands on a kitchen towel, and with a smile, she walked to the front door. At least she'd have something interesting to talk to Charlie about when he called, as he always did, sometime during the morning from any job site where he was working. It was 9.30 a.m. when Charlie made his first call home to Linda. She usually picked up right away, eager to find out how he was doing and tell him about something wonderful that Lisa had just accomplished. Now, frowning a little, he drummed his fingers on the telephone receiver while he waited for Linda to pick up. Instead,

the answering machine came on and so Charlie left a message for his wife telling her he'd try again later. But after the third unanswered call of the day, Charlie decided to leave work early. Linda sometimes screened telephone calls by letting them go to the answering machine, but if that was the case today, she would have picked up as soon as she heard his voice leaving a message. As he hopped into his truck and drove northwest from Maplewood towards Big Lake, Charlie told himself not to worry. Maybe Linda had decided to take a nap at the same time she had put Lisa down for a nap. Maybe she'd stepped outside onto the front deck to look at the snowfall. And besides, school had let out, so by now,

Joey should be home with his mom and baby sister. By the time Charlie walked into his house, it was 4.05 p.m., and the first thing he noticed was the sound of eight-month-old Lisa crying. Charlie immediately yelled out for Linda, but Linda didn't yell back. Dropping his coat onto the nearest chair, Charlie followed the sound of Lisa's crying through the dining room, where he saw Joey doing his homework at a small table near the wall, dining room where he saw Joey doing his homework at a small table near the wall and into the living room where he saw baby Lisa in her playpen still in her pajamas her face red and wet with tears. Even as Charlie picked Lisa out of the playpen and stepped over to the foot of the stairs to call his wife's name again he knew something was wrong. Linda would never have let Lisa stay in

last night's pajamas for the entire day. And again, when Charlie did not get a response from Linda, he put Lisa back down inside of the playpen and automatically began a search of the house for his wife. Joey had seemed uncertain when Charlie asked whether Joey had seen his mom. So, telling Joey not to worry, Charlie started his search in the laundry room in the basement where Linda would have been out of Joey's sight. But by the time Charlie left the empty basement to check the upstairs bedrooms, he wasn't even trying to act calm.

Taking the stairs two at a time, the question went round and round in his mind. What on earth could have happened to his wife? But not even Charlie's worst nightmares could have prepared him for what was inside of the bedroom that he and Linda shared. When he pushed open the bedroom door, the first thing he saw was a bundled up white quilt on the floor at the foot of the bed. Only it wasn't just a quilt. Peeking out from the folds of the material, Charlie could see Linda's shiny dark curls and her long, bare, slender legs. And in the middle of the quilt, at the center of a dark

red stain, Charlie saw the wooden handle of one of the kitchen knives he and Linda kept in a butcher's block on their kitchen counter. Falling to his knees on the floor next to Linda's body, Charlie reached out and pushed a fold of the quilt down so he could see Linda's face. And that's when Charlie knew that the woman he had loved ever since they were both children was dead. A few minutes later and the circular drive in front of the Jensen's two-story house

had started filling with emergency medical vehicles and deputies from the Sherbourne County Sheriff's Department. Charlie's 911 call had summarized everything the newly widowed husband would be able to tell police about his wife's murder. Quote, My wife is dead. I just got home and my little boy is here, and I checked in the bedroom and she's been stabbed.

I've got two kids here. My God, what's happened? As medics entered the house and confirmed that Linda was dead, deputies from the sheriff's department got busy putting yellow crime scene tape up around the perimeter of the Jensen's house. They also began spreading out into the rural neighborhood to see if anyone in the area might have seen or heard anything unusual that day. Knowing they had a homicide on their hands, the Sherbourne Sheriff's Department immediately contacted the Minnesota Bureau of Criminal Apprehension, located 47 miles southeast in the city of St. Paul. Soon, along with state investigators, the Sherbourne Sheriff's Department

would also get help from law enforcement in Benton and Stearns counties, along with help from the nearby cities of St. Cloud and Elk River. But even before those outside agencies had arrived in Big Lake to help conduct interviews and process the crime scene, investigators with the Sheriff's Department had already come to some of their own conclusions about the murder. Hello, I'm Emily, and I'm one of the hosts of Terribly Famous, the show that takes you inside the lives of our biggest celebrities. And they don't get much bigger than the man who made badminton sexy.

OK, maybe that's a stretch, but if I say pop star and shuttlecocks, you know who I'm talking about. No? Short shorts? Free cocktails? Careless whispers? Okay, last one. It's not Andrew Ridgely.

Yep, that's right. It's Stone Cold icon George Michael. From teen pop sensation to one of the biggest solo artists on the planet, join us for our new series, George Michael's Fight for Freedom. From the outside, it looks like he has it all. But behind the trademark dark sunglasses is a man in turmoil. George is trapped in a lie of his own making, with a secret he feels would ruin him if the truth ever came out. Follow Terribly Famous wherever you listen to your podcasts, or listen early and ad-free on Wondery Plus on Apple Podcasts or the Wondery app.

In May of 1980, near Anaheim, California, Dorothy Jane Scott noticed her friend had an inflamed red wound on his arm and he seemed really unwell. So she wound up taking him to the hospital right away so he could get treatment. While Dorothy's friend waited for his prescription, Dorothy went to grab her car to pick him up at the exit. But she would never be seen alive again, leaving us to wonder, decades later, what really happened to Dorothy Jane Scott. From Wondery, Generation Y is a podcast that covers notable true crime cases like this one and so many more. Every week, hosts Aaron and Justin sit down to discuss a new case covering every angle and theory,

walking through the forensic evidence, and interviewing those close to the case to try and discover what really happened. And with over 450 episodes, there's a case for every true crime listener. Follow the Generation Y podcast on Amazon Music or wherever you get your podcasts. on music, or wherever you get your podcasts. After doing an informal interview with Charlie, who had described his entire day and all his interactions with his wife, from the time he woke up and left for work, to the series of unanswered phone calls, right up until the moment he dialed 911, police were working on the assumption that Linda had probably been murdered sometime that morning. That guess would later be confirmed by the autopsy report on Linda's body, which would further narrow the time of the crime to sometime between 8 and 10 a.m.

Based on the brutality of the crime and the fact that there was no sign of forced entry and nothing of value appeared to be missing, police also assumed that this crime was personal, not the result of a robbery gone wrong. And finally, given that Linda was naked when she was wrapped into the white quilt and then stabbed, police also believed that what they were looking at was not just a murder, but a violent sexual assault. And this assumption would also be confirmed when the medical examiner found traces of semen on Linda's ankle and inside of her body, along with defensive wounds that suggested

that she had struggled with all her might against her attacker. The medical examiner would also discover that the actual cause of Linda's death was strangulation and that she had likely been dead even before the killer had plunged the 10-inch long blade of the butcher's knife so deeply into her chest that the fabric of the quilt had become embedded in the wound. According to one investigator, it looked to the police like someone had actually tried to carve Linda's heart out of her chest.

And Linda's sister, Sandy, would later remember the medical examiner telling her that along with the surface bruises, scratches, and deeper bruising to her sister's body, there was a single dried tear on Linda's cheek. But unfortunately for investigators, even though they had lots of details about how Linda had died, they did not have many clues about who might have committed the crime. It would also turn out that aside from the semen samples that the medical examiner would find in and on Linda's body, there just wasn't much physical and forensic evidence that crime scene techs were able to recover from inside of the Jensen house. Whoever had raped and

killed Linda had stripped the sheets, which may have contained hair, blood, and skin tissues, and taken them away with them. According to Charlie, the only other items that appeared to be missing might also have contained DNA evidence, the t-shirt and underwear that Linda had been wearing that morning and that she was probably still wearing when she was attacked. The first obvious suspect in Linda's murder was her husband, Charlie Jensen. It hadn't taken police long to learn that the couple had been married back in 1971 but had divorced because of Charlie's post-traumatic stress disorder which made him prone to anger and irritability coupled with his alcohol abuse. But over the next 72 hours, the police would confirm Charlie's work alibi.

Charlie would also pass a lie detector test and volunteer a DNA sample that would eventually rule him out as Linda's killer. But even as Charlie was being cleared from the suspect list, police were already following what they believed was a very promising lead provided by the mail carrier who delivered mail along the rural route where Charlie and Linda lived. According to the mail carrier, when she had arrived at the Jensen house at 11 30 a.m. on Monday, February 24th, the day of the murder, she saw a white male in a copper-colored pickup truck pulling out of the Jensen's driveway. The mail carrier's description was detailed enough that police artists were able to put together a

sketch that showed a man in his 30s or maybe 40s with scraggly brown hair and a gray flecked beard who had what looked to the mail carrier like red scratches on his hands. Less than an hour after the sketch was released to the media and featured in print and TV news, the tips from the public started to pour in, and soon police were interviewing anyone in Big Lake Township who had reported seeing the copper-colored 1970s Ford pickup truck or its alleged driver. On March 2nd, six days after Linda's murder and two days after her funeral service, a heartbroken Charlie Jensen packed up the home he had built for himself and Linda and moved his little family into an apartment building. As Charlie would tell his adult son

Andrew and Linda's sister Sandy, it was just too hard for Charlie to walk into that bedroom where Linda had been killed. 11 days later and 17 days after Linda's death, police saw their only solid lead in the Linda Jensen homicide go up in smoke. The mail carrier, who had helped police draw a sketch of a possible suspect she saw driving away from the Jensen's property on the morning of the murder, began to change her story. She now thought that instead of being copper colored, the truck she saw might have been light green with white panels and snowplow brackets on the front, and instead of having a scraggly beard, the driver may have been wearing a coat with a fur-lined collar. Meanwhile, police investigating

other men in Linda's life were also running into dead ends. After learning that Joey's biological father, Robert Beard, had been arguing with Linda in the two weeks before her death about visitation with Joey, they didn't waste any time bringing Robert in for questioning. Police also knew from conversations with Linda's family that Linda had said that Robert had been physically abusive and had a bad temper as well as substance abuse issues. And at first, Robert Beard looked like he could become the new number one murder suspect. In conversations with police, he was angry and defensive. He lied to investigators denying that he had recently spoken with Linda on the phone.

His alibi that he was home alone at the time of the murder was weak, but Robert also pointed out that since he did not have a car or driver's license, there was no way he could have gotten undetected to Linda's house and killed her. Once Robert lawyered up and refused to give police a DNA sample, the only thing police could do was keep him on the suspect list and move on to the next man in Linda's life, her ex-husband John Silliman, who lived in California. Although John's alibi that he was working at a local elementary school on the day of Linda's murder turned out to be airtight, there was something about John that just made police suspicious. He clearly had a volatile

relationship with Linda, and he told police that Linda had pressured him into adopting Joey instead of having children of their own. It wasn't until police went through John's financial records with a fine-tooth comb to rule out any murder-for-hire scheme that police crossed John off their list of suspects. By the end of May, 1992, nine weeks after Linda had been found brutally raped and murdered in her own bedroom, the investigation into her death had ground to a halt. Police from three different jurisdictions had followed up on more than 1,000 tips.

They had interviewed hundreds of friends, coworkers, family members, neighbors, and possible suspects. They had searched but failed to find any trace of the sheets and clothing that had been taken from the Jensen house on the morning of Monday, February 24th. They had also collected and stored more than 80 DNA samples from men who had any connection to Linda, from a trainer at her gym who had once given her a bouquet of flowers, to her ex-lover and husbands, none of them would match the semen sample collected from Linda's body.

But while investigators may have quietly and reluctantly shelved the murder book on Linda Jensen, there were three people in Linda's life who absolutely refused to let the case go completely cold. At least twice a week for the next seven years, Linda's older sister, Sandy, called the Sherbourne County Sheriff's Department asking if there had been any developments in the case. Charlie also remained in touch with police, and he and Sandy made an appearance together on a popular TV show that featured true crime, hoping that the publicity might result in someone coming forward with new evidence. The third person who would not let the case go was one of its lead investigators. Bruce Anderson had made a promise to the Jensen family

that he would not retire from the Sherbourne County Sheriff's Department until law enforcement had found the person who had killed Linda Jensen. Like Sandy, Deputy Anderson was convinced that someone out in Big Lake Township held the key to solving this homicide, that someone had information that they might be holding back or that they didn't realize was important. Even after all the leads seemed to dry up,

Sandy, Charlie, and Deputy Anderson had one strategy left. They all urged law enforcement and the media to ask again if anyone could remember anything that might turn out to be related to the murder. But it wasn't until the early summer of 2000, more than eight years after Linda Jensen's murder, that police finally got the tip they needed to break Linda's unsolved homicide case wide open. By then, Bruce Anderson had been elected sheriff of the Sherbourne County Sheriff's Department, a position that gave him the authority

to call for the creation of a special cold case task force of state and local law enforcement whose job would be to reopen the investigation into Linda's murder. The new round of publicity, along with a $20,000 reward for information leading to the arrest and conviction of Linda's killer, was enough to get people, once again, talking and thinking about the unsolved homicide that had terrified the residents of Big Lake back in 1992. And on a mild day in June of 2000, the Sherbourne County Sheriff's Department got a visit from a woman named Angela Hennon. The renewed interest in Linda Jensen's murder and Sandy's pleas through the newspapers for everyone to search their memory for anything that might shed light on her sister's murder, had finally struck a chord. And after eight years, Angela was finally ready to give police the man that she had

long suspected of hiding a very dark secret. What police found out when they followed up on Angela's tip would send shockwaves throughout the state of Minnesota. And based on that information, here is a reconstruction of what investigators believe really happened to Linda Jensen on the morning of Monday, February 24th, 1992. The knock on the front door of Charlie and Linda's house was so not expected that Linda almost dropped the plate she was holding into the open dishwasher. But even though she was surprised to have a visitor this early in the morning, it never occurred to Linda not to answer the door,

especially since another loud knock might wake up 8-month-old baby Lisa, who had fallen asleep in the playpen in the living room. So, after wiping her hands dry on a kitchen towel and zipping the top of her tracksuit all the way up to her chin, Linda pushed her hair back from her face and walked out to see who was coming to call. Even as she started to peer out one of the front windows, Linda recognized the voice calling to her from outside. A moment later, and Linda's visitor was stamping the snow off his boots before stepping through the open door. But even as Linda closed the door

behind her visitor and apologized for how untidy her house was, Linda's killer was hardly listening. Instead, he was drinking in every detail of Linda's appearance. He had been watching Linda for such a long time, but until now, he had never really been alone with her, never really had a chance to let her know how he felt about her. He wanted to ask her if she was planning to go for a run that day, and he wanted to tell her how much he always looked forward to seeing her jog past the house where he lived with his wife and four kids. But before he could even find a way to put his proposal to Linda, he could see that she had stopped smiling and had even taken a few steps backward, and now she was asking him what he was doing there, because now really wasn't a great time after all for her to have any company, and if this was about Joey, she'd rather talk some other time

when Charlie was there too. But before Linda could get any further away from him, the killer reached out his hand and grabbed her arm, and as soon as he did that, he knew it didn't matter how Linda felt about him or what Linda wanted. What mattered was what he wanted. And after a short but violent struggle, the killer had Linda right where he wanted her. Upstairs in the master bedroom, all her clothes stripped off, her dark curly hair spread out on the bed under him, looking just as she looked in all of his fantasies, right down to having his hands wrapped around her slender throat, squeezing as hard as he could until finally she stopped struggling and lay still. Once Linda's killer was finished, he bundled her body inside of a clean white quilt and pushed her down onto the floor at the foot of the bed. Still breathing heavily, the killer straightened his own clothing, then left the bedroom and went down to the kitchen.

On the counter, next to a jar of red and white candy canes, he saw the butcher's block with its collection of kitchen knives. Grabbing the wooden handle of the largest knife, Linda's killer hurried back upstairs to the bedroom. Looking down at Linda, lying on her back with the quilt wrapped around her, all he could see of her body was the top of her head, and her slim legs from the knees down, her heels resting lightly on the floorboards. Straddling Linda's midsection, the killer raised the knife and began stabbing at Linda's heart, over and over again, until finally plunging the knife through the center of her ribcage with so much force that it pinned the

quilt into Linda's chest. After hauling himself back up onto his feet, the killer turned to the bed and stripped off the sheets and gathered up Linda's torn t-shirt and underwear. Rolling everything into a ball, the killer took one last look around and then left the bedroom, hurried down the steps, picked up his coat from where he had dropped it near the door, and just a few minutes later, Charlie and Linda's neighbor and the leader of the local Boy Scout troop, 28-year-old Kent Jones, was already halfway back to his own house less than half a mile away.

In the weeks after Linda's murder, local police would interview Kent Jones after hearing a report that he had seen the copper-colored truck police were looking for driving around Big Lake Township. But during that routine interview, not only did Kent deny knowing Linda Jensen, Kent's wife gave her husband an alibi for the day of Linda's murder.

It wasn't until eight years later that Angela Hennin, who had had an affair with Kent sometime after Linda's death, would tell police that whenever she had brought up the subject of Linda's death, a crime that everyone at the time was talking about, Kent reacted violently. When Angela had asked if Kent had ever met Linda, at first he insisted really aggressively that he had not, but later Kent brought up the subject himself and told Angela that in fact he had known Linda. Kent's violent reaction and the way he talked about Linda Jensen had always made Angela wonder in the very back of her mind if Kent might have somehow been involved in Linda's death. It would turn out that Angela's

suspicions were 100% correct. Not only did Kent Jones know Linda from her inquiries to him about getting Joey signed up for Boy Scouts, he had become obsessed with the beautiful dark-haired woman he'd seen out running several times a week, and he had begun to watch her closely and learn her routines and fantasize about her constantly. When police re-interviewed Kent in June of 2000, Kent's wife contradicted Kent's claim that he had never met Linda. In front of investigators, Deborah Jones reminded Kent that Linda had actually come by their house to pick up a Boy Scout application for her 9-year-old son. Police also discovered that Kent had a criminal record. Kent had a criminal record. He had been convicted of insurance fraud and in 1995, three years after Linda's murder, Kent had been convicted of domestic violence. That charge stemmed from an incident in which Kent's wife was hospitalized for four days after suffering a stab wound to her stomach and

two puncture wounds on her forearm. Debra would later tell police that the stab wound was the result of an accident that she had slipped and fallen onto the knife, which was resting blade up in the family's open dishwasher. Although Kent refused to voluntarily give up a sample of his DNA, investigators quickly came back with a search warrant that forced him to provide a DNA sample. Less than one month later, the DNA analysis came back with a search warrant that forced him to provide a DNA sample. Less than one month later, the DNA analysis came back with a match. Kent Jones's DNA matched the DNA found in the semen

that the medical examiner had collected from Linda's body. On July 25, 2000, eight years and five months after Linda Jensen's brutal murder, police arrested Kent Jones for first-degree murder and sexual assault. 17 months after his arrest on December 8th, 2001, and then again at a new trial five years later, Kent Jones was found guilty of those charges and sentenced to life in prison. In 2009, 17 years after Linda's murder,

Angela Hennin would collect $18,000 in reward money for giving police the tip that led to the arrest and conviction of Kent Jones. For Charlie Jensen, Linda's death at the hands of Kent Jones has left some scars that will just never go away. Quote, he took a mother away from her children, a wife from her husband, and a beautiful person away from the world. End quote. Thank you for listening to the Mr. Ballin Podcast. If you got something out of this episode and you haven't done this already, please remove the rubber lip from the Amazon Music Follow Button's dustpan

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