MrBallen Podcast: Strange, Dark & Mysterious Stories - Neighborhood Crime Watch (PODCAST EXCLUSIVE EPISODE)

Episode Date: November 28, 2022

One night in the spring of 1984, a woman living in Florida, was suddenly startled awake by a blood curdling scream. She sat there wondering what to do, but after hearing silence outside, she told herself it was probably nothing, and she went back to sleep. However, this woman would later find out that more than a dozen of her neighbors had also heard that terrible piercing scream, but, just like her, they all had decided to do nothing. This decision would end up haunting the citizens of Gulfport Florida for years to come, because that scream was that last desperate cry for help from someone who was about to be murdered.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 night in the spring of 1984, a woman living in Florida was suddenly startled awake by a blood-curdling scream. She sat there wondering what she should do, but after hearing silence outside, she told herself that the scream was probably nothing, maybe a cat or something, and then she went back to sleep. However, this woman would later find out that more than a dozen of her neighbors had also heard that terrible piercing scream, but just like her, they had all decided to do nothing.

would end up haunting the citizens of Gulfport, Florida for years to come because that scream was the last desperate cry for help from a person who was about to be murdered. This story includes sexual content and some graphic violence. As such, listener discretion is advised. 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 go into the Amazon Music Follow Buttons refrigerator and ever so slightly uncap all of their beer bottles so they all go flat. Okay, let's get into today's story.

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. 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? OK, last one. It's not Andrew Ridgely.

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

or listen early and ad-free on Wanderie Plus on Apple Podcasts or the Wondery app. 36-year-old Karen Gregory had always been a free spirit. From the time she was born in upstate New York back in 1948, Karen would become known among her family and friends as a person who challenged the conventional way of doing things. By the time Karen was enrolled in her local parochial high school, she was making her three younger siblings double over with laughter with inspired imitations of the elderly nuns who ruled their classrooms with iron fists. When it came time to go to college, Karen convinced her parents to let

her leave their small hometown and go to a college in Rochester, a city in western New York. And when it came time to graduate from that college, an especially proud moment for Karen's very elderly grandmother, Karen made a point of ignoring the school's strict dress code. Instead of wearing stockings and heels under her gown when she received her degree in art education, Karen clomped across the stage wearing massive hiking boots. When her grandmother in the crowd noticed them, she let out a gasp that was so loud that for a moment the entire ceremony came to a halt. And after college, Karen leaned hard into the hippie movement of the 1960s.

After Karen left home for good, her parents were horrified to pick up the newspaper one day and find a picture of their daughter's familiar smiling face peering out at them from the middle of a group of Vietnam War protesters. And even after the 1960s gave way to the less radical 1970s, Karen's choice of marriage and careers were no less shocking to her very conservative parents. When Karen got married in 1971 at the age of 23, she skipped the traditional Catholic wedding service, opting instead for a small ceremony that was not attended by any of her family members, and then she settled down in Fitzwilliam, a tiny and isolated

town in New Hampshire. There, Karen found a job teaching art to elementary school children, and she also got another job helping to care for the mentally ill. When she was home with her husband, Karen would tend to the couple's sprawling garden and make their vegetarian meals completely from scratch. But if Karen's style of marriage and careers were not exactly in line with what her parents had hoped for, her divorce a few years later was even more of a shock. Karen's family believed her marriage was solid. But according to Karen, she and her husband just kind of drifted apart and now just wanted to be friends. Then, after the divorce was finalized, Karen did not change her last name back to her maiden name, which was friends. Then, after the divorce was finalized, Karen did not change her last name

back to her maiden name, which was Marshall. Instead, she announced that she was formally changing her last name to her mother's maiden name, Gregory. And then, when love knocked again at Karen's door after her divorce, this time Karen just avoided marriage and moved in with her new boyfriend, who was a potter, someone who makes pottery. And before long, Karen just avoided marriage and moved in with her new boyfriend who was a potter, someone who makes pottery. And before long, Karen had also learned the craft of throwing clay on the potter's wheel while living in a big and drafty house and adopting a collection of stray cats. And through each of Karen's rebellions, her two younger brothers and her younger sister were always there to support her. They loved their sister, she was the family trailblazer. Her independence and sense of humor and ability

to tell wonderful stories had made all of their own passages to adulthood that much easier. Even Karen's mother, Sophia, who had fought so hard with Karen over some of her daughter's life choices, found herself reaching out to Karen when Sofia's own marriage to Karen's father ended in divorce. But it wasn't until January of 1983 that Karen, without any prompting at all from her family, suddenly decided to make her most radical lifestyle change yet. After spending her whole life, 35 years, in the cold northeast of the United States, living in the center of tightly knit towns and communities where like-minded people shared everything from tomato seeds

to granola recipes, Karen made a complete about-face. She was simply done with the cold, with the garden, with the cats, and with the Potter boyfriend. And so just when winter was hitting its stride in New Hampshire in January of 1983, Karen packed up her Volkswagen and headed south to Florida to start a brand new life. She had decided to join her sister, Kim, who was married and working as a nurse, in Pinellas County, a peninsula of land that hangs like a fishhook off the central west coast of Florida. While Kim and her husband

had made their home in the northern tip of the peninsula, Karen drove right down to the bottom of the fishhook, and within a few months, Karen was living in an apartment she shared with a roommate in the historic Florida beach town of Passa Grill. Picking up a waitressing job in nearby St. Petersburg, Karen luxuriated in the winter heat of her new home and spent hours of her spare time biking along the beautiful white sand Florida beaches. Pinellas County was bigger, sunnier, and in places, far more developed and paved over than anywhere else Karen had ever lived. But it didn't take long for her to make plenty of new friends, to cut her hair, and to dress in more stylish local attire. Karen's olive skin quickly picked up a deep tan that set off her dark brown hair and arresting blue eyes. Already fit and strong, the walking and biking added even

more tone to her slender five-foot, five-inch frame. And Karen soon became an expert at turning away the unwanted attention of patrons at The Garden, the popular restaurant bar in St. Petersburg where she worked. But in March, three months after Karen arrived in Paso Grill, Karen met the man who would become the love of her life. The administrator of a counseling program for Vietnam veterans, David Mackey was strikingly handsome and well-educated, and in a state where so many residents were transplants like Karen, David was a native Floridian and longtime resident of the nearby town of Gulfport, located just nine miles to the northeast of Paso Gril. And this time, it was Karen who was the one asking for a first date, not her would-be suitor, David. In 1984, interracial relationships were just not as common and socially acceptable as

they are today. It was just a different time. And Karen was Caucasian, and David was African American. Additionally, David was seven years younger than Karen, he was 29. But neither of those facts made the slightest difference to Karen, or, as it would turn out, to David. And before long, David and Karen were a certified couple, and together they went sailing, they went to movies, and to concerts that featured the popular Jamaican-style reggae music they both loved. loved. In March of 1984, so one year after Karen and David had met, David threw a surprise party for Karen on her 36th birthday. And it was clear to all of the partygoers that these two were deeply in love and practically living together in David's house in Gulfport. After that, things in Karen's life moved quickly. In May of that same year, just two months after Karen's surprise birthday party, Karen landed a good job as a graphic artist with a St. Petersburg company called Datacom that produced technical drawings and illustrations. And around that same time,

she and David decided to make their relationship more formal. Instead of just meeting up every night to spend time together, the couple decided Karen would move out of her apartment in Paso Gril and live full-time with David in his modest but very comfortable home in Gulfport. Although Karen was excited about this upcoming move, David's quiet neighborhood a few blocks away from the water would be a big change from the beachfront charm and laid-back vibes of Paso Gril. David's three-bedroom house, with its glassed-in front porch, sat right on a corner lot. There was a big oak tree that sat

on one side of the property that shaded half of the single-story white home, leaving the other half of the building to bake in the sun. Although the couple who lived across the street from David were young and lived in Gulfport year-round, many of David and Karen's other neighbors were older and some were retirees who only lived in Florida during the winter months. And while David had always felt welcome in Gulfport, he and Karen could both sense that as an interracial couple, they drew the occasional disapproving look or stare. But overall, one look around the neighborhood was enough to tell anyone passing through its tree-lined streets that what residents here really seemed to value the most was their

sense of safety and tranquility. Because peppered throughout her new community, Karen had seen the same sign posted in conspicuous places on many lawns. In big letters, the signs read, WARNING! THIS IS A CITIZEN'S CRIME WATCH AREA! And even if all those warnings seemed a little alarmist, given how sleepy the neighborhood was, Karen was okay with it. To her, Pinellas County was this huge metropolis compared to where she had moved from, Fitzwilliam, New Hampshire, and so she was naturally a little more paranoid about her safety. To celebrate all the good fortune in Karen's life, Karen and her sister Kim arranged a family day at the beach. And so on May 19th, Karen and David spent the day with Kim and her husband and their daughter.

It was a perfect spring day in central Florida, the hot air cooled by a breeze off the ocean, and a few clouds offered intervals of shade from the bright sun. And the adults had plenty to talk about, especially Karen and Kim. Karen was nearly fully moved in to David's house, she was happy about her new job, and she and Kim were both excited at the prospect of their mother, Sophia, potentially moving out to Florida as well. On the following Monday, Karen said that David was leaving for a work conference in Rhode Island that would last most of the week. After living with a roommate in Paso Grill or staying over at David's house, Karen was a bit out of practice

when it came to spending nights alone. But in spite of being a little nervous at the prospect of doing just that, Karen told Kim that she'd use the time to finish moving and unpacking. And on the upcoming Tuesday night, May 23rd, Karen said she had made plans to have dinner with her good girlfriend, Niverne Covington. Not only would that dinner be a chance for the friends to spend a fun evening together, but also Niverne would be leaving the next day to attend a wedding and Karen needed instructions on feeding Niverne's and watering Navern's plants while she was away. And by the time Tuesday night did roll around, Karen was glad for the dinner date she had made with Navern. After switching out of her work clothes into a sleeveless white t-shirt and baggy green shorts and tennis shoes,

Karen headed to pass a grill to make a few trips from her apartment to David's house with the last of her belongings. And at about 7.30pm, with the final box of her plants safely stowed in the back of her Volkswagen, she decided to go straight from Pas-a-Grille to Navern's house in Gulfport. A few hours later, as Karen left Navern's house not long after midnight, Karen smiled. The evening could not have gone any better, and after all the changes of the last several weeks, dinner with her close friend was exactly what Karen had needed. The two women had laughed and talked over their glasses of white wine and plates of vegetable stew that had filled Navern's cozy kitchen with the smell of herbs and garlic. And when the two friends

said goodnight, Karen had surprised Navern by pausing at the door and giving Navirn a quick, tight hug. Even though Navirn laughed and told Karen, I'm only going to be gone for a couple of days, Karen had suddenly wanted Navirn to know that Karen would miss her. Walking to her car and sliding into the driver's seat, Karen smiled again. She would now head back to the little house she shared with David, and she'd bring in her last few boxes of plants, and when David called the next day to check in, Karen wouldn't even tell him about how much progress she'd made unpacking and blending their furnishings and belongings together. Instead, she wanted him to be surprised when he returned from his trip. A few minutes later, Karen pulled her little car into the driveway of 27th Avenue South and Upton Street. After parking

her car next to David's car, he had left it behind for this business trip, Karen opened her door and climbed outside. After collecting her last few boxes of things from the trunk, Karen headed inside and locked the door behind her. Even though it was well past midnight, Karen wasn't quite ready to go straight to bed. She had been having trouble sleeping the last few nights, and so she decided she would just sit down and relax for a little while. Less than one hour later, a blood-curdling scream ripped through David and Karen's quiet neighborhood. Hearing it, several of Karen and David's neighbors sat bolt upright in their beds, wondering what was going on. One woman told herself that it must have been a cat or some other animal. Another woman remembered thinking that whoever had screamed had really strong lungs. And another woman pulled her husband back inside when he stepped out onto their front

step to investigate. One and a half days later, a woman named Amy Bressler was standing at her living room window talking to someone on the phone and looking out at David Mackey's house. At one point, she told the caller, yes, I can see Karen's car in the driveway. A minute later, Amy put the phone receiver down on the table, left her house, and walked across the road to knock on the side door of David's house. When she didn't get an answer, she walked around to the front door. There too, Amy's knock also went unanswered. But not before Amy noticed that some of the window panes in the front porch door had been broken. Walking again back toward the back of the house, Amy noticed curtains moving

in one of the bedroom windows. When she stopped to look more closely, she saw that the reason they were moving is because the window was wide open. Amy reached through the open window and pushed the curtains aside and looked into David's house. A minute later, crying hysterically, Amy had stumbled back inside of her own house. Reaching for the phone she had left on the table, she could picture David Mackey at the other end of the line, stuck at his work conference in Rhode Island and frantic with worry after all his calls to Karen during the last 30 hours had gone unanswered. other end of the line, stuck at his work conference in Rhode Island and frantic with worry after all his calls to Karen during the last 30 hours had gone unanswered. But before David could even ask

his neighbor if Karen was okay, all Amy could manage to tell him in a voice choked with tears was, David, it's something horrible. I need to get the police. 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. Hey, Mr. Ballin' fans. Did you know you can listen to episodes of this very show We'll see you next time. to catch our new episodes. But that's not all. You get access to other amazing shows like Mr. Ballin's Medical Mysteries, Morbid, 48 Hours, and 2020, all ad-free too.

And you know what that means, uninterrupted listening, so no more cliffhangers. Amazon Music is your home for all things true crime and offers the most ad-free top podcasts, so we definitely have something for you. And it's already included

in your Prime membership. To listen now, all you need to do is go to amazon.com slash ballin. That's amazon.com slash ballin. Or download the free Amazon Music app. It's just that easy. A few minutes later, at 8.39 a.m., 22-year-old Gulfport police officer Cheryl Falkenstein was climbing through that open bedroom window on the side of David's single-story house. Even if she had been on the police force for five years instead of just five months,

the young officer would not have been prepared for what she saw in the hallway just beyond the bedroom. When Amy's 911 call had come into the station a few minutes earlier, the dispatcher had told Officer Falkenstein and emergency medical personnel that they were responding to a report of a non-responsive person. But in fact, it was instantly clear to Officer Falkenstein that this person was not just non-responsive, they were dead. It was also instantly clear that the deceased, Karen Gregory, had been the victim of a gruesome and violent attack. And not only that, but from the small lake of dried blood that surrounded Karen's half-naked

body, the stiffness of her limbs, and the smell of decomposition, she had obviously been lying undiscovered in this hallway for some time, first injured and then, when no help came, dead. Within minutes of Officer Falkenstein reporting the murder, yellow crime scene tape surrounded David's Corner property and the quiet neighborhood of Gulfport was crowded with law enforcement and medical personnel. The last time the tiny Gulfport Police Department had processed a major murder scene had been 23 years earlier. And so, the Pinellas County Medical Examiner, who was among the first to arrive on the scene, immediately told local police that she was going to ask the Florida Department of Law Enforcement

to help out with the investigation because it was already clear from the doctor's preliminary examination of Karen's body that this could shape up to be a very difficult case. Dr. Joan Wood did not need to do a complete autopsy to see that Karen had been dead long enough for rigor mortis to set in and for the blood on her body and throughout the small house to dry. This also meant that any physical evidence left on or inside of Karen's body would likely have degraded during the time that Karen had gone undiscovered. So, even though police could clearly see bloody handprints on Karen's body and on the bedroom windowsill, those prints might or might not prove useful as evidence.

room windowsill, those prints might or might not prove useful as evidence. Compared to the large staff from the Florida Department of Law Enforcement, Gulfport only had three detectives, and all of them had arrived at the crime scene shortly after the 911 call to dispatch. By then, the first patrol officers on site had already begun to interview Karen and David's neighbors, contact Karen's family, and contact Karen's boyfriend, David, who was already arranging air travel to get from his conference in Rhode Island back to Florida. Reached by phone in Rhode Island, David told police that he had spent most of the day on Wednesday, May 23rd, the day after Karen's dinner with Nabern, reaching out to Karen's friends, family, and employers, as well as local hospitals and

police departments to try to figure out where Karen was and why she wasn't answering his calls. But it was only when he finally called his neighbor, Amy, who lived up the street from David, and asked her to please go check his house to see if Karen was okay, that David got his answer. Meanwhile, it hadn't taken local police long to realize that at least a dozen of David's neighbors had heard what police now assumed was Karen's scream for help at about 1.15am in the early morning hours of May 23rd. Even though they described this scream as being short, high-pitched, and agonizing, and so distressing that several neighbors had trouble falling back to sleep after

hearing it, no one in the Crimewatch neighborhood of Gulfport had bothered to pick up their phones and call the police. By late afternoon on May 24th, more than 30 hours after that scream, Gulfport investigators had already reached several conclusions about the murder of Karen Gregory. already reached several conclusions about the murder of Karen Gregory. Given the report of a scream at 1.15am on May 23rd, police assumed the time of death was also during the early morning hours of May 23rd. Since there was no sign of forced entry and items of any obvious value were still inside the house, this did not look like a crime that started as a break-in or robbery. What was clear was that even though Karen must have willingly opened the door to her attacker, she had later used every ounce of her strength to try to fight off that attacker.

Because from one end of the house to the other, Karen had left a trail of blood from stains on the unmade bed in the bedroom, where Karen's faded green shorts and tennis shoes lay scattered on the floor, to the blood spatter along the walls of the hallway and living room, right up to the smeared and stained bedroom windowsill and curtains that marked where the killer had exited the house after the attack. And Karen's willingness to fight back and cry out for help could have saved her life if anyone who heard her had called the police. Because, at some point in the struggle, it looked to investigators like Karen had almost escaped

from her attacker. After finding more blood and strands of Karen's hair on the glass inside the front porch, investigators theorized that at one point Karen had made it through the inner front porch all the way to that porch door where the screen was covered by angled slats of glass rather than solid wood, and it was probably there, as Karen had reached that outer door and opened it up, that she had let out that terrible scream. However, seconds later, her attacker had reached her again and yanked her back inside of the house, knocking most likely Karen's head against the door slats, causing them to shatter and leave glass fragments outside on the front walkway.

And then shortly after Karen was pulled back inside of the house, the killer finished her off. Police also assumed that Karen's attacker had forced her to wear the black lace lingerie that was pulled on over her white t-shirt and was now bunched up at Karen's waist. Aside from the brutality of the murder, two things about the crime scene stood out to detectives as potentially important pieces of physical evidence. Since there was no blood on Karen's bare feet, that meant that the bare footprints left in the blood-soaked carpet and the smudge of a heel print left on the bathroom tile just off the hallway where Karen was found must have both been left by her killer. And as the

crime scene texts would later confirm, the handprints on Karen's naked thigh and lower back were positioned in such a way that they could not have been made by Karen. So, like the footprints, the handprints also had to belong to Karen's attacker. Investigators got their first break in the case when one of the Gulfport officers doing door-to-door interviews realized that the neighbor who lived across the street from David's house was another public safety officer, St. Petersburg firefighter George Lewis. Although George was at work when Karen's body was discovered that morning, when contacted by phone, George immediately reported to the Gulfport Police Station

and wrote out a two-page statement. That statement contained all the information he could recall, at least right then, from the morning of and the days before Karen's murder. It turned out that George, in addition to being a firefighter, was also the unofficial head of the neighborhood crime watch, and he was also the only person in the neighborhood who had actually kind of reacted to the sound of that scream. To George, who had been inside of his garage working on his motorcycle with the radio turned on, the scream had actually sounded faint, and when he stepped outside and did not hear or see anything suspicious, he had assumed all was well before going back inside of his house and

reassuring his girlfriend, who had also heard the scream, that everything seemed okay. At that point, the couple had just gone to bed, and then for the next day and a half, like everyone else in the neighborhood, they had just gone about their daily lives as normal. George had known David and Karen by sight, but he had not met Karen and he had not seen her at any point on the day before she was killed. Even though George was not able to shed any light on circumstances surrounding the actual murder, the 22-year-old firefighter was able to give police some solid leads on possible suspects. One was a man who mowed the grass at David's house on Tuesday morning, the last day Karen was alive. The second tip helped explain a note that police had found shortly after discovering Karen's body that had

been left under the windshield wiper of David's car. Whoever had left the note had signed it Peter. At about 7 p.m. on May 23rd, the evening after the murder, George had seen a man drive up to David's house in a van, get out of the van, and walk up the front sidewalk to David's house where he knocked on the front porch door. When no one answered, the man went back to his van and a moment later emerged with a note that he left on David's car before driving away. By late that evening, hours after George had given his written statement to police, local investigators were close to crossing the man who had mowed David's lawn off of the suspect list. In addition to providing police

with his fingerprints and a DNA sample, the man could also confirm that he had a solid alibi for the night of Karen's murder. The same would be true when police had a chance to finally interview David Mackey, who reported to the police station as soon as he arrived back in Gulfport late on the day that Karen's body was discovered. David had been in Rhode Island since Monday, and other members of the conference were able to confirm that he had not left the conference for any significant stretch of time. But it was the third possible suspect, the mystery man named Peter, who had left that note on David's car, who the police really wanted to speak to. So, when an

officer inside of David's house answered a call from a man looking for Karen, who identified himself as Peter Cumble, the officer grabbed his notebook to take down all of the details. Yes, Peter said he was a friend of Karen and David's. He had stopped by to see them on May 23rd to give Karen a cassette tape of music, as well as to confirm a dinner date the three of them had planned for later in the week. And yes, when he'd walked to the front door, he had noticed broken glass right outside on the sidewalk. But before detectives could even make plans to interview Peter, Peter showed up at the county morgue with Karen's friend and former roommate to make a formal identification of Karen's body.

Afterward, Detective Larry Tosi invited Peter to the police station to question him about his movements at the time of Karen's murder and about his visit to Karen and David's house on May 24th. And even after Peter again told police that he really had only stopped by to drop off a cassette tape of music for Karen and to confirm dinner plans with the couple, Peter quickly went from possible suspect to prime suspect. First, there was the note that Peter, the host of a local radio program, had left on David's car. It was the last phrase of the note that raised the hairs on the back of

the investigator's necks. Hello, the note read, stopped by about 7.15 or so, but I saw no signs of life. In addition, during Peter's interview, Detective Tosi had noticed a scratch on Peter's hand. And while Peter insisted he'd gotten the scratch while playing with his dog, the investigator had to wonder if maybe Peter had gotten that scratch while struggling with Karen. And even though Peter's roommate said that as far as he knew, Peter had been at their apartment on the night and early morning that Karen was murdered, investigators thought Peter's alibi might be flimsy, especially when David and Karen's former roommate told police that they thought Peter had actually been romantically interested in Karen. If Peter had been jealous

or obsessed with Karen, that might be a motive for murder. In addition to Peter Cumble, police had plenty of other leads to follow too. A man Karen had met when she was a waitress in St. Petersburg who had repeatedly and unsuccessfully asked her to go out on dates, and a co-worker from Datacom who had also shown Karen a lot of unwanted attention and whose name was written on the bottom of a piece of bloodstained paper that David had found inside of his house after Karen's murder. By June 1st, when Detective Tosi, the most experienced of the three Gulfport detectives, left Florida for a month-long family vacation, he fully expected that by the time he got back, the Karen Gregory murder case would be

solved. But the 13-year veteran of the Gulfport Police Department was wrong. When Detective Tosi had returned at the beginning of July from four relaxing weeks in the smoky mountains of Tennessee, not only did the case file look disorganized, but all those promising first leads were starting to look like dead ends. But even after Sergeant Tosi had been assigned to replace the junior detective who had handled the case while Detective Tosi was on vacation, investigators still faced one disappointment after another. The man who had mowed David and Karen's lawn, along with the man who had hounded Karen for dates at work, both passed lie detector tests and the DNA samples they had given police did not match any prints that crime scene techs

had found at David's house. Peter Cumble, the man who had left that note on David's car the evening after her murder, had now hired a lawyer. But, like the other initial suspects in the case, Peter's fingerprints and DNA did not match any of the evidence taken from the crime scene. And the quality and handling of all that physical evidence had also turned out to be a huge problem for local investigators. As far as Detective Tosi was concerned, the Florida Department of Law Enforcement could have and should have done a better job securing and processing the crime scene. The state crime text told local law enforcement that the bloody finger and handprints on Karen's

body were too old and degraded by the time Karen's body was discovered for the text to match the prints they had collected against the prints of any possible suspects. The state crime unit said the same was true of the partial footprint they had found on the tile floor of the bathroom that opened out onto the hallway where Karen's body was found, and there had been no going back for a second look at any of that physical evidence. and there had been no going back for a second look at any of that physical evidence. On the same day that Karen's body was discovered and the Florida Department of Law Enforcement processed the scene, when the state crime techs left,

they allowed two of Karen and David's friends to completely clean and scrub and vacuum the house. The friends didn't want David to see any sign of the obvious horror that had surrounded Karen in her final minutes of life, but that decision by the state crime unit had also meant that within hours of the assault, all physical evidence of the crime had been literally wiped away. Meanwhile, the autopsy report from the county medical examiner was also disappointing. County Medical Examiner was also disappointing. A closer examination of Karen's body had revealed a wound that had not been immediately visible under all the blood that had covered Karen's face and torso, and the examination had also revealed the presence of semen inside of Karen's body,

which confirmed that Karen had likely been sexually assaulted before her murder. But by the time Karen's body had been found, the semen was too old and degraded to provide a useful DNA match to DNA samples collected from potential suspects. By late fall and early winter of 1984, seven months after Karen's murder, Detective Tosi felt like he was grabbing at straws. He'd asked the Florida Crime Unit to take another look at all the fingerprints and that footprint. He'd asked for a psychological workup of the possible murderer, and he'd also followed up on reports of a possible prowler in Gulfport, someone who was peering into windows and watching residents go about their nighttime rituals. He had also circled back to David Mackey,

who was repeatedly asking police about what progress they'd made on the case, as a prime suspect. Even though it appeared that David was in Rhode Island at the time of the murder, the investigator had not been able to rule out the possibility that David had made an overnight airplane trip back to Florida to murder Karen and then returned to Rhode Island by the next morning. But, like the detective's other prime suspects, David 100% passed a lie detector test, and by Thanksgiving of 1984, the detective felt like once again, he was back to square one. And even if he had a viable suspect, Detective Tosi had no physical evidence that he could use to link that person to the scene of the crime. It wasn't until Christmas of 1984 that police received the tip

that would help them uncover the identity of Karen's murderer. At a farewell party for Gulfport's departing town manager, a casual conversation between an off-duty police officer and one of the city's bus drivers resulted in a complete rethinking of the murder investigation. What Detective Tosi discovered

when he followed up on the story told by the bus driver, who lived three blocks away from Karen and David's house in Gulfport, would send shockwaves throughout Pinellas County and then all of Florida. Based on the follow-up investigation into that new information, here is a reconstruction of what law enforcement officials believe happened to Karen Gregory in the early morning hours of May 23rd, 1984. It was sometime after midnight when Karen gave her friend Navern a big hug and thanked her for the dinner and conversation. And it was not long after that that Karen pulled her little Volkswagen car into her driveway, and then after getting her last few boxes of things from her trunk, dinner and conversation. And it was not long after that that Karen pulled her little Volkswagen car

into her driveway, and then after getting her last few boxes of things from her trunk, she headed inside, locked the door, and sat down to relax. But just a few minutes later, she heard a knock on the front door. Given she was alone and it was the middle of the night, Karen was likely startled and maybe even a little scared by the sound. But she still stood up and made her way over to the door. When she got there, she called out to see who was knocking. When she heard the person reply, Karen was instantly put at ease, and she unlocked and opened the door. As the door in front of him opened, Karen's killer felt a rush of excitement.

For a while now, he had been watching Karen from a distance, and up close, looking at her now, Karen was even better looking than the killer had realized, with that dark brown hair and those eyes that were almost electric blue in her tanned face. The killer's first wife had hated his habit of staring at women, sizing them up as sexual partners. But tonight, the killer wasn't there just to look. He was there to actually have sex with Karen. Except when the killer had just casually stepped through Karen's open front doorway into her house before she had even invited him inside,

Karen did not look remotely interested in him. And when the killer reached out and touched Karen, she had practically slapped him, pushing him away from her. And right then, something in this man snapped. It was the same feeling the killer had had when he'd wrapped his hands around his first wife's neck and squeezed her throat and told her to shut up and stop nagging him. Only that time, he'd stopped himself. This time, he wouldn't.

The killer pulled out a knife and showed Karen, and then quickly began shoving and dragging her down the hallway toward her bedroom. Once inside, the killer ripped off Karen's shorts and underwear and then made her put on that black lingerie that he had found in one of her drawers, and then the killer flung himself on Karen and began to rape her. As he did, he began pressing the knife into Karen's chest, just below her collarbone, and when it finally broke the skin, Karen struck him to get him to stop. But instead of her blow causing the killer to stop,

it enraged him and he began stabbing Karen repeatedly around her neck. But just as he started to do this, Karen somehow managed to break free and make a run for the front door. And she had almost escaped. She'd gotten through the front door all the way to the front porch door with the slats of glass panes over the screen. It was then that Karen screamed that terrible piercing scream before the killer had caught up to her, grabbed her,

and pulled her back into the house, smashing her head into the glass panes, causing them to shatter out onto the walkway. It had taken all of the killer's strength to pull Karen back inside of the living room and then back down the hallway toward the bedroom. And even then, Karen somehow broke free a second time and lunged for the bathroom. The killer had had to step onto these slippery bathroom tiles to pull Karen out into the hallway again before wrestling her to

the floor. And that was where he finished his attack, beating and stabbing Karen until she was finally and completely still, lying on her side in the carpeted hallway. The medical examiner would later make a list of Karen's wounds. One of her hands was cut and scratched, one of her fingers broken, her face, head, and upper body covered with so much blood from 13 separate stab wounds to either side of her neck that it was impossible to see the slash the killer had also made straight across her throat. Finally, the killer stood up, his chest heaving and his bare feet pressing into the blood-soaked

carpet, and as he looked around the dim, blood-spattered hallway, the killer suddenly seemed to realize what he had done. Just a few minutes earlier, he'd seen Karen from his garage, watched her unpack the boxes from the back of her car, and suddenly, he'd thought of the perfect excuse to get into the house with her. A moment later, he'd been at her door, knocking, calling out his name so she wouldn't be scared, letting her know that he just wanted to make sure everything was fine because he'd noticed that she'd come home late. And as a firefighter and the unofficial head of the

neighborhood crime watch, George Lewis, the guy who lived just across the street from her and David, was just checking to make sure Karen was okay. Standing in the hallway now, George wasn't even sure how long he'd been inside of David Mackey's house, but George did know that he had to get out before anyone came, and before Glenda, his soon-to-be wife and soon-to-be mother of his first child, began to wonder where he'd gone and why he wasn't still in the garage working on his motorcycle. A moment later, George was climbing out the window of David and Karen's bedroom, leaving bloody marks on the sill and the curtain. Then he was running barefoot back to his house across the street, past the crime watch sign he'd posted so prominently on his property,

and around to the back of the garage where he would wash Karen's blood off under the outside faucet. From there, George would walk into the kitchen and tell Glenda not to worry that the scream she had just heard was nothing. He checked it out, there was no disturbance anywhere, they were safe. Later, after he had showered and was lying in bed with Glenda, George could not believe his luck. No one in the neighborhood had called to report Karen's scream, and Karen's body would go undiscovered for more than 30 hours. The medical examiner would later say that if someone had called the police after hearing the scream, there was a good chance that Karen could have survived her injuries. But by late summer, George's Luck began to run out. Detective Tosi kept coming back

to talk to George about the murder. The men were good friends, close enough that on December 15th, Larry Tosi would actually perform the wedding ceremony when George and his fiancée Glenda got married at the St. Petersburg fire station where George worked. And at first, the detective had come back to George in case the firefighter and leader of the neighborhood crime watch could remember anything new about the night that Karen was killed. After all, George had been the only neighbor who actually made any attempt to investigate the cause of that scream. And even when George began to slightly change his story, the detective just thought that George must be remembering additional details, not that George himself could be the murderer.

It wasn't until that farewell party in December that Detective Tosi realized there was a fatal flaw in what George had been telling the police. During that party, the Gulfport bus driver, who lived a full three blocks away from David and Karen's house, told that off-duty police officer that even from that far distance, three blocks, she had heard Karen's scream that night loud and clear. And if that was true, how was it possible that George, who lived literally right across the street from Karen and David, had only heard what he described as a, quote, faint scream? Even if George had had his radio on like he claimed, Karen's scream had to have been much louder than what George was reporting. And when Detective Tosi pressed

George to explain this discrepancy, George's story started to unravel. And as he kept offering new versions of events for the night of Karen's murder, he also began to fail lie detector tests as well. In his original statement to police given on May 24th, 1984, George had said he'd left his garage after hearing the scream and after looking up and down his street, he'd seen nothing. In February of 1985, George told police that his earlier statement had actually been inaccurate. He said that after hearing the scream, he had looked across the street and seen a man standing on David and Karen's front lawn. And even from that far away from the other side of the road in the dark, George said he had been able to see every detail of what the man was wearing and what he looked

like. When a police reconstruction of this scenario proved that it would have been impossible for George to see anyone that clearly from the door of his garage in the middle of the night, George just changed his story again, saying that, well, after he heard the scream, he had left his garage and walked closer to Karen and David's property, which is how he was able to see this mystery man on their property so clearly. And George said the reason he had not initially told police about this mystery man was because this man had threatened him that night, saying he would hurt him and his family if he ever reported seeing him. In George's final statement to police on March 15th, George told detectives that after

this mystery man had made this threat, he had left Karen and David's property, at which point George, being curious, went inside of Karen and David's home, and at that point he actually saw Karen dead on the floor. He told police he'd seen the slit across her throat, a detail that had not been publicly reported, and an injury that had been totally hidden by all the blood from Karen's other wounds. To police, the only way George would know that Karen had her throat slashed would be if he was the one slashing it. And even though the police had no actual proof that George had committed this murder, police suspicions deepened after they interviewed George's first wife. According to George's ex, during their year-long marriage, George

had at times been violent and aggressive, like the time he had locked his hands around her throat and started to strangle her. She also described his habit of leering at women and looking constantly at pornography, as well as his overtly racist observations about African Americans. But it wasn't until Detective Tosi asked the FBI to run an analysis of the partial footprint left on the bathroom tile near Karen's body that police finally had the physical evidence they needed to link George to Karen's murder. Where the state crime lab had failed to come up with an image clear enough to match prints from potential suspects, the FBI had succeeded. And the bloody heel print on the bathroom floor, as well as the bare footprints

left in the blood-soaked carpet, were an exact match to the footprint belonging to George Lewis, the man police now also suspected might be Gulfport's mystery prowler and peeping tom. On March 15th, 1985, Detective Tosi arrested George for the first-degree murder of Karen Gregory. After a lengthy trial and appeal, during which George testified on his own behalf that he had nothing to do with Karen's death, George was found guilty of both first-degree murder and sexual battery. And on June 2nd, 1989, five years after Karen Gregory's brutal rape and murder, 27-year-old George Lewis was sentenced to life in prison. One year later, in June of 1990, George's wife, Glenda, filed for divorce and sole custody of their two children. As for David Mackey,

he moved out of the home he had shared with Karen and settled in Tampa, Florida, where he continued his career providing assistance and counseling services to veterans. George Lewis would die in prison in 2015. He was 52 years old. We'd like to give a special thanks to author and journalist Thomas French, whose series of newspaper articles and his book, Unanswered Cries, A True Story of Friends, Neighbors, and Murder in a Small Town, were our main sources in creating this episode. 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 go into the Amazon Music Follow Buttons refrigerator

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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.