MrBallen Podcast: Strange, Dark & Mysterious Stories - Night Shift (PODCAST EXCLUSIVE EPISODE)

Episode Date: January 9, 2023

On a cold morning in the winter of 1984, the manager of a popular fast food joint in eastern Pennsylvania, slowly made his way up to the front door of the restaurant to unlock it. But when he grabbed the handle of the door, he found it was already unlocked. The manager was instantly worried, but he told himself that it was probably just one of the workers from the night before. They must have just forgot to lock up. So the man stepped through the door and headed past the cash registers towards the back office. But before he got to the back office, he stopped... because there was something blocking his way. Something absolutely horrible...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. On a cold morning in the winter of 1984, the manager of a popular fast food joint in Eastern Pennsylvania slowly made his way up to the front door of the restaurant to unlock it.

But when he grabbed the handle of the door, he found it was already unlocked. The manager was instantly worried, but then told himself that most likely one of his workers the night before must have just forgot to lock up. So the man just stepped through the door and headed past the cash registers towards the back office. But before he got to the back office, he stopped, because there was something blocking his way. Something absolutely horrible. 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 in to the Amazon Music Follow Buttons JavaScript code and replace semicolons with Greek question marks. 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. It was February of 1984, and 25-year-old Terry Brooks had just landed her perfect job. As the young woman with bright blue eyes and shoulder-length blonde hair backed her car out of her parents' driveway and headed west towards the Oxford Valley Mall, she glanced at her watch. Terry had always made a point of being on time, but as the brand

new assistant manager of a busy and popular fast food restaurant, she now made a point of arriving a little bit early. Not so early that she got underfoot of the waitstaff or appeared to be that over-eager manager who was looking over everybody's shoulders at how they were doing their jobs, but Terry had only been assigned to this Roy Rogers restaurant in Bucks County, Pennsylvania one week before, and so she wanted to make sure that she set a positive example as a capable, reliable manager who was friendly, but also very professional. As Terry drove the 13 miles from her parents' neat house in the quiet suburb of Warminster to the busy intersection of Route 1 and Oxford Valley Road

in Fairless Hills, she hardly noticed the unusually warm weather, even though it was a surprising and welcome change from eastern Pennsylvania's typical chilly winter afternoons. In fact, Terry's life recently had been so busy and so full of changes and plans that the only remarkable thing about her commute to work was that it offered her a rare 30 minutes of quiet where she could try to organize her thoughts and prepare herself for the 10-hour shift ahead of her. It wasn't the actual work that Terri worried about. She already knew from past experience a lot about what went on inside of a restaurant. Ever since high school and right through the summers that she had spent home from college, Terry had done what most of her friends had also done,

gotten summer jobs and part-time jobs as servers at local eateries. But once Terry had graduated from the University of Maryland almost four years ago with a degree in personnel management, she had decided to parlay that real-life work experience into a corporate job that would be a step closer to a professional career in the food service industry or in human resources. So, about seven months earlier, back in July of 1983, Terry had left her longtime job as manager at a local Italian restaurant called Cucci's in her hometown of Warminster and taken a job with Roy Rogers, a chain of fast food

restaurants that was owned by the Marriott Corporation, one of the country's giants in the hospitality industry. Even though the move meant that Terry would be taking an initial pay cut, and that she would start with the Roy Rogers team not as a manager, but as an assistant manager, Terry did not for a minute second-guess her decision to leave Coochie's. Because for Terry, taking charge of her life was something that came naturally. When her parents divorced back when Terry was in the eighth grade, the four Brooks children had gone to live with their father, George Brooks. Older than her two younger sisters and their youngest brother, Terry had immediately taken

on more responsibility for her siblings. And even after her father had remarried, Terry was known to her family and friends for her dependability and her unwavering sense of purpose. As Terry's good friend Cindy Bradney, who was a bartender at Coochie's Restaurant, put it, Terry was one of the few people in their circle of friends in Warminster who had gone to college and who had come back home with a plan for going on to bigger and better things. But Terry's good looks and outstanding academic performance, along with her ambition and intelligence, was coupled with such genuine friendliness and kindness that she was more likely to inspire affection and trust than she was to inspire envy. And that was saying a lot,

because in the early winter of 1984, it looked like Terry was living the kind of charmed life that everybody wants to have. After finishing college, Terry had made the difficult but very smart decision to end a serious relationship that had become strained and even physically abusive. And when Terry had fallen in love again, almost a year ago, it was with a 22-year-old local man who was a cook at Coochie's where she used to work. Unlike Terry or her ex-boyfriend, Albert Scott Keefe, who went by his middle name, Scott, had not gone to college. But he was a hard worker and he appreciated that combination of warmth and competence that made Terry really stand out from the crowd. Turning

her attention away from the road just for a moment, Terry glanced down at the engagement ring on her left hand. She and Scott had known within weeks of meeting each other at Coochie's that their mutual attraction would lead to more than just a casual workplace romance. And sure enough, three months later, Scott had asked Terry to marry him. And with a radiant smile, Terry had said yes. Since then, the couple had been busy working and saving money for their upcoming wedding, which was planned for July 14th. With Scott living at his mom's house just three miles from where

Terry was living with her parents, the two of them had just decided the week before that they could afford to put money down on a 10-day honeymoon to Hawaii. The moment the two of them had walked into the travel agency in nearby Doylestown, Pennsylvania three days ago, it had been both exciting and nerve-wracking. For Terry, the sight of the brochures that described Hawaii's sandy beaches, rugged coastlines, waterfalls, rainforests, and volcanoes suddenly made both the honeymoon and the wedding seem not only very real

but also very close as terry passed by the shops and strip malls and slices of farmland and corn fields that stretched out along either side of route 132 east she suddenly felt overwhelmed there was so much to do and plan over the next five and a half weeks starting with the shopping trip she and her stepmother would make tomorrow to see if they could find a wedding gown for Terry. For Scott, Terry's career change also meant a few adjustments. Mostly, that Terry's new job with Roy Rogers meant that they would no longer see each other every day at Coochie's, where they both used to work. every day at Coochie's, where they both used to work. But Terry and her family had appreciated the effort Scott made to check in on her now that she was working the night shift at a restaurant much further away from her home in Warminster. Although the Fairless Hills Roy Rogers was not located in a high-crime area, the clientele and overall vibe of the restaurant were very different

from that of Coochie's. Instead of a local customer base and quiet location, Terry's Roy Rogers was stationed right at the intersection of two heavily used major roadways. By design, the fast food restaurant, with its western theme and signature roast beef sandwiches, was a brightly lit glass-sided cube of warmth and invitation that was intended to entice an endless stream of hungry travelers, many of whom would never return. But so far, any trouble that Terry had experienced at work had not come from customers. Instead, it had come from Roy Rogers' staff.

Two months earlier, while training at a different Roy Rogers, Terry had had a very nasty confrontation with an employee who outright refused to follow a simple order she had given him. Instead, Steve Daley blew up at her, called her terrible names, and became physically aggressive. Management had immediately fired this guy, but for a while, he still came back to the restaurant as a customer and sat glowering at Terry and her staff from one of the tables. More recently, at the Roy Rogers in Fairless Hills, her Roy Rogers, as she liked to remind herself,

there had been an issue with one of the cash registers coming up $40 short at the end of a shift. Terry had had her suspicions about an employee named Barb who worked at her location, but soon after Terry had confronted her staff, the missing money had turned up, returned to the safe in an unmarked envelope. So it was probably no wonder, Terry thought to herself as she approached the intersection of North Oxford Road and US Route 1, that Scott was concerned about her safety, and often came to sit in the restaurant after closing to make sure she and any other late-night staff were not left there alone. Seeing the Roy Rogers sign in the distance, Terry reminded herself to call Scott later that evening

and tell him that she'd be later than usual that night since she had to catch up on some important paperwork. As Terry turned on her car blinker and prepared to enter the Roy Rogers parking lot, she also made a mental note to let Scott know that she'd be fine. There was no need for him to come by and sit with her. It was Friday, February 3rd, and Terry knew Scott had an early shift the next morning and there would be two teenagers staying there with her in the restaurant cleaning until about 1.30 a.m. So Scott didn't need to worry. Terry would not be alone. A minute later, and Terry had parked the car and turned off the engine. As she gathered her brown purse and

slipped her car keys into the pocket of her light purple jacket, she glanced at herself in the rear view mirror. Straightening the collar of her Roy Rogers maroon dress shirt, Terry felt a thrill of accomplishment and hope. She'd only been working for the Marriott Corporation less than a year, but already Terry had learned so much about running a business and being a supervisor. And even the recent challenges had given her a chance to apply some of what she had learned in college about personnel management. And those conflicts had also been good practice on how to stand up for herself and be authoritative when it came to expressing expectations and consequences. A few minutes later, her blonde hair glowing under the light spilling out of the big glass windows of the wood-framed restaurant, Terry stepped up to the outer door leading into her Roy Rogers.

At 6.45 a.m. the next morning, Saturday, February 4th, 1984, Scott was passing by Terry's parents' house on his way to work when he noticed that Terry's car was not parked in its usual spot in the Brooks' driveway. Puzzled, Scott slowed down. At 10 p.m. the night before, Terry had called him to say she'd be working late. Terry had been very busy, so their conversation was short, but Scott was sure he remembered every word correctly. Honey, don't worry about me, Terry had told him. I have some paperwork to finish tonight, but there are two other people that will be here with me.

Coming to a sudden decision, Scott pulled his truck up to the curb. Despite the early hour, he decided to check in with Terry's parents just to make sure Terry had made it home okay the night before. Hopping out of his truck and heading for the front door of the house, Scott glanced at his watch. He was probably worrying for no reason and he'd be back on the road in just a minute. And besides, even with the unplanned stop he was making, he'd still have enough time before his shift even started to enjoy a cigarette and a cup of coffee once he arrived at work. But a few minutes later, Scott was sitting down inside the Brooks kitchen,

staring at Terry's parents with a stunned look on his face. Both Elizabeth and George Brooks had just checked Terry's bedroom and found that it was empty. The bed was made and there was no sign anywhere in the house of their oldest daughter. As Terry's 51-year-old father stepped to the kitchen phone and dialed the number of the Fairless Hills Roy Rogers restaurant 30 minutes away, Scott pushed himself slowly to his feet, and he and Terry's mother, Elizabeth, leaned forward, straining to hear the voice on the other end of the line. The call was answered by a police officer. One hour earlier,

at about 6 a.m., the manager of the Fairless Hills, Roy Rogers, had arrived, as he always did on Saturday mornings, to open up the restaurant and get things ready for the breakfast shift. It wasn't until Joseph Hampton reached the front door and found it unlocked that he had the first inkling that something might be wrong. There was a second inner door to the restaurant that stayed open during business hours, but locked automatically when staff closed it behind them and left for the night. But this outer door had to be locked using a key, and obviously someone had failed to do that. Suddenly alert, the manager stepped inside, unlocked the second door,

and turned to look at the tables and booths in the dining area. Seeing that nothing appeared to be out of order, he relaxed slightly as he stepped behind the counter with its bank of cash registers into the small rectangular prep area in the entryway to the kitchen. That's when he stopped. In a faint glow of light shining out from the partially closed office door ahead of him, the manager could just make out the shape of a human body. Terry Brooks lay on her back on the red tiled floor. Dressed in her short purple winter coat, her purse and keys and shoes were all scattered in the space around her. Standing there in the semi-darkness, it took Joseph a moment to recognize who she was, because Terry's head was completely wrapped in one of the big plastic bags that should have been

lining the nearby trash can, and just below the bag there was the wooden handle of a butcher knife sticking out of Terry's throat. Within minutes of receiving Joseph's frantic 911 call at 6.12 a.m., the first officers and emergency medical personnel from the Falls Township Police Department were rolling into the Roy Rogers parking lot, lights flashing and officers already preparing to close off the perimeter of the restaurant with yellow crime scene tape. When Terry's father called Roy Rogers' restaurant that morning at about 7 a.m., his wife Elizabeth would later remember every word of the short exchange. This is George Brooks, Terry Brooks' father. Terry didn't come home last night. Is she okay? George's wife and Terry's fiancee did not have to strain to hear the police officer's answer. No, she's not. She's been

murdered. It did not take the lead detectives on the case very long to form a theory of what had happened inside the Fairless Hills Roy Rogers restaurant in the early hours of Saturday, February 4th. Because not only was Terry Brooks dead with no sign that she had been sexually assaulted, but also the store safe had been left wide open and more than $2,700 was missing. Two detectives, George Mitchell and Tim Stefan, that and everything else about the scene and the likely time of the murder pointed to a robbery homicide. According to early interviews with restaurant staff, Terry had sent two teenagers, who had given the restaurant its final cleaning, home at about 1.30 a.m. And even though restaurant protocol required a minimum of two staff in the restaurant at closing, Terry had decided to stay

a little longer by herself to finish her paperwork. Then, dressed to leave work in her coat with her purse and keys in hand, police theorized that Terry's attacker may have waited for her outside and gained entry to the safe and money by pushing Terry back inside the restaurant as she was leaving. If Terry had fought back, the robber may have panicked and killed her. Police also considered the possibility that someone had entered the restaurant before it closed and had hidden somewhere inside with the intent of robbing the safe. In either scenario, robbery and money were the primary motives, and Terry, tragically, was just in the wrong place at the wrong time. And it wasn't just the crime scene that suggested this had been a robbery gone wrong, it was this particular robbery

against a backdrop of other recent robberies in the same region. During the last several months, law enforcement in and around Bucks County, Pennsylvania had received so many reports of restaurants being burglarized that police and the media had nicknamed the perpetrator or perpetrators the freezer bandits. But given the brutality of Terry's murder, police also considered the possibility that there was a personal element to the crime and that one of Terry's co-workers was the robber and they had disliked her enough that finding her inside the restaurant, they decided to kill her. Even as crime scene techs were busy gathering physical evidence at Roy Rogers,

and the deputy coroner was collecting evidence from Terry's body, police investigators were at the Brooks residence out in Warminster taking statements from Scott and Terry's parents. Since the majority of homicides are committed by a spouse or partner, Scott was an obvious person of interest, but there was nothing in Scott's story or in statements from Terry's friends and family that suggested he had a motive or connection to the crime. Terry's mother confirmed that her daughter had called Scott at about 10 p.m. the night before to say she was working late and he didn't need to stop by, and according to Elizabeth, there was nothing to indicate that the couple had quarreled or that the phone conversation was anything other than affectionate.

And there was nothing in the couple's recent behavior that suggested trouble. Just three days earlier, Scott and Terry had paid for their honeymoon to Hawaii, and on the day of her murder, Terry and her stepmom had been looking forward to going shopping together for Terry's wedding gown. Where police did see red flags was in the description they heard from family and friends about Terry's relationship with her ex-boyfriend. And at the same time that investigators were tracking down that lead and corroborating the statements of Scott and Terry's family and friends, detectives interviewing Terry's co-workers quickly learned about Terry's confrontation two months ago with Steve Daly that had led to him being fired. And they also heard

about the more recent incident involving the $40 missing from one of the Roy Rogers cash registers. But it wasn't long before Township Falls investigators pursuing all of these various leads began running into one dead end after another. In quick succession, they eliminated Terry's old boyfriend as well as Steve Daly from the suspect list. The ex-boyfriend had moved to California and had an airtight alibi. As for Steve Daly, he also had an alibi and he passed a lie detector test. Another Roy Rogers employee whose fingerprints were found on the sill of the drive-thru window that Terry's attacker had almost certainly used as an escape route, as well as on the plastic bag that was wrapped around Terry's head, also passed a lie detector test.

And in addition to having an alibi, the presence of that employee's fingerprints was explained by the fact that he had worked at the drive-thru window and that he had also placed the bag wrapped around Terry's head into the trash can from which the bag had later been removed. It wasn't until late February and early March that the investigation suddenly regained momentum. That's when two more female workers at fast food restaurants within a 100 mile radius of Fairless Hills were attacked in separate incidents. Both crimes appeared to be robberies, and at one of the restaurants, the young woman was stabbed to death. But the man arrested for that murder turned out to have no connection to Terry's death. And by the end of

March, police had also captured the so-called freezer bandits and determined that they too had no connection to Terry's death. By July 14th, 1984, the date set for Terry and Scott to get married, the investigation into the murder of Terry Brooks had gone cold. Despite a $5,000 reward from the Marriott Corporation for information that would lead to the arrest of Terry's murderer, and despite asking for help from law enforcement in other states, as well as from the FBI, and at the request of Terry's family, even consulting three psychics, the Falls Township Police Department had run out of leads, suspects, and the resources necessary to continue the investigation.

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. Okay, 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. of the Strange, Dark, and Mysterious. And if that's the case, then I've got some good news. We just launched a brand new Strange, Dark, and Mysterious podcast called Mr. Ballin's Medical Mysteries. And as the name suggests, it's a show about medical mysteries, a genre that many

fans have been asking us to dive into for years, and we finally decided to take the plunge and the show is awesome. In this free weekly show, we explore bizarre, unheard of diseases, strange medical mishaps, unexplainable deaths, and everything in between. Each story is totally true and totally terrifying. Go follow Mr. Ballin's Medical Mysteries wherever you get your podcasts, and if you're a Prime member, you can listen early and ad-free on Amazon Music. Over the next 10 years, Terry's family suffered. George Brooks' hair turned white, his cheeks lost their fullness, and his smile, so like his daughter Terry's, rarely appeared on his face.

George had bought Scott a new suit to wear to Terry's funeral, which was held on February 8th, 1984, when there were still so many leads in the investigation into Terry's murder that police were practically working around the clock. But after that service, as the investigation stalled, the Brooks family lost touch with Scott. And a decade later, Scott would eventually marry and go on to have a child. With Terry's three siblings to take care of, George and Elizabeth Brooks also did their best to move forward. But they never stopped checking in with investigators

to see if there was any new information about their daughter's murder. Finally, in 1990, the Brooks hired a lawyer to file a wrongful death lawsuit against the Marriott Corporation. This kind of lawsuit seeks compensation for the emotional loss of a victim's family or survivors, like lost companionship, and these kinds of lawsuits are also very hard to win. But for the Brooks, the purpose of this lawsuit was not to get money. It was to get investigators for both sides to do their own digging into Terry's murder to see if the wrongful death claim had any legal merit. In 1990,

investigators for the Brooks attorney handed their report over to local law enforcement, and at some point, that report was added to the stack of documents marked Terry Brooks that sat gathering dust in the Township Falls Police Storage Unit. But on May 22, 1998, 14 years after Terry's body had been discovered on the floor in the Fairless Hills Roy Rogers restaurant, the investigation into her murder was back in the media spotlight. The day before, on the third Thursday of the month, 82 well-dressed men and women could all be seen climbing the stone steps of a large Victorian brownstone located in the heart of downtown Philadelphia, Pennsylvania. Each person entering the Old City Tavern wore a distinctive red, white, and blue rosette pinned to their chest, and each one was a member of a very select group of crime

investigators who were well-known in law enforcement circles, but unknown to the general public. This was a regular meeting of the V-Duck Society, a unique crime-fighting organization co-founded eight years earlier by three nationally recognized forensic investigators. Named after Eugene Vidocq, a French detective who is considered the father of modern crime investigation, its members select and review cold cases brought to them by law enforcement agencies, offering fresh perspectives that might help kickstart a stalled investigation. On the agenda for that cool and cloudy Thursday afternoon was a one-hour slideshow by Falls Township Police Sergeant Wynn Cloud that would present all the evidence police had gathered during their failed 1984 investigation into the death of 25-year-old Terry Brooks.

Sergeant Cloud had recently been promoted by the township's new police chief to head up the department's detective division. At the same time, Chief Arnie Coneline had also ordered Sergeant Cloud to start reviewing cold cases, and the first case on that list was Terry Brooks. So, after the VDUX Society members, one for every 82 years of Eugene VDUX's life, had finished their formal lunch and were waiting for dessert, a very nervous Detective Cloud stepped up to the podium at the front of the grand dining room, a slide projector on the table next to him, and a large silver projection screen behind him. And over the next 60 minutes, V-Duck Society investigators saw images of the 90 pieces of physical evidence and pictures that had

been collected from the Fairless Hills Roy Rogers where Terry had been killed. The slides included fingerprints, Terry's bloodied purple jacket, the butcher knife sticking out of her throat, the contents of her purse scattered across the floor around her, the defensive wounds on Terry's hands and arms, the drive-thru window where the murderer had fled the scene of the crime, and a picture of the blood and tissue, assumed to be that of her attacker, that had been scraped from underneath Terry's fingernails. Back in 1984, when Terry was killed, an examination of that blood and tissue would not have revealed the identity of the killer.

But since then, a lot had changed in forensic science. And now, in 1998, if police could find a suspect whose DNA profile matched a DNA analysis of those samples, police would have the breakthrough on this case that they needed. But first, they needed to find that suspect. When the presentation was over, members of the VDUX society had harsh words for the original team that investigated Terry's murder. It wasn't that the detectives back in 1984 weren't working night and day to solve a case that had produced enough statements to fill three large cardboard boxes. The problem, according to forensic psychologist Richard Walter, was that investigators had misinterpreted the crime scene. Instead of focusing on the robbery angle, right from the start,

detectives should have been focusing on the extreme violence of the murder itself. Putting down his fork and pushing aside his plate of thick-crusted apple pie, one of the three founders of the V-Duck Society went on to tell Sergeant Cloud that even though the case was 14 years old, the murder itself had already revealed a great deal of information about the killer. But police would need to begin the whole investigation over from scratch, starting with a DNA analysis of the tissue sample collected from under Terry's fingernails. And then Dr. Walters told police the two key questions that would lead them to discover the identity of Terry's murderer. Over the next four months,

32-year-old Falls Township detective Nelson Whitney took the lead on the new investigation into the Terry Brooks homicide, ordering a complete DNA analysis of blood, hair, and tissue samples found at the crime scene. Then, with the help of the V-Duck Society and a profile of the killer developed by Richard Walter, investigators re-interviewed Terry's parents, former co-workers, and friends of Terry who had not been interviewed during the first investigation. Investigators also combed through the funeral register that listed the names of people who had attended Terry's memorial service back on February 8, 1984, trying to track down the phone numbers and addresses of possible witnesses or suspects. And then,

buried in the old files, Detective Whitney discovered the report that had been done eight years earlier by the investigators who had been hired to look into the wrongful death lawsuit Terry's parents had filed back in 1990. That report, along with an interview with Terry's friend, Sydney Bradney, the bartender at Coochie's restaurant, where Terry and she had worked before Terry took the job at Roy Rogers, eventually led investigators to the suspect they'd been looking for. The challenge now was how to link this person to the crime and get a written confession. written confession. One month later, early one morning in October of 1998, Detective Nelson sat in an unmarked police car staking out a modest home that had become as familiar to him as his own house. It was trash day and Detective Whitney had already seen the residents of this particular house put their bag of trash out at the curb. The detective also knew that the moment they dropped it there by the street, whatever was

inside that bag was no longer considered their own private property. Instead, anyone who wanted to rummage around in that trash or take something out of the trash and keep it was legally free to do so. The investigator tensed when he heard the rumble of the garbage collection truck coming down the road behind him. Watching the truck in his rearview mirror, the young detective put his hand on the inside handle of the driver's side car door. And as soon as the garbage truck slowed to a stop and one of the workers hopped down

and picked up that bag of trash in front of the house that Detective Whitney had been watching, the detective was out of his car and across the street. By prior arrangement with the garbage collection company, the detective took the bag directly from the gloved hand of the sanitation worker, carried it back to his car, tossed it into the trunk, jumped inside the car, and drove off to the Falls Township Police Station. With any luck, that bag of trash would contain a DNA sample from their suspect that would line up with the DNA of the tissue collected 14 years earlier from Terry's dead body. And sure enough, a smear of saliva scraped off the butt of one of the discarded cigarettes inside

that trash bag would turn out to be a solid match. And on the evening of February 4th, 1998, on the 14th anniversary of Terry's murder, police knocked on the door of the house where the suspect lived. Based on the new information police had learned from Terry's friend, Cindy, coupled with the information the police would learn directly from the suspect over the course of the next six hours, here is a reconstruction of what happened to Terry Brooks in the early morning hours of that Saturday 14 years ago in the minutes just before she left work at her Roy Rogers restaurant in Fairless Hills. As Terry drove to work on the evening of Friday, February 3rd, 1984, she thought about her conversation the week before with her good friend, Cindy.

At the time they had talked, Terry had been so distressed that she practically broke down in tears. But now, a few days later, while Terry still felt upset, she also felt like she knew what she had to do to make things right. she also felt like she knew what she had to do to make things right. It wouldn't be easy, but as Terry was learning very quickly, she just needed to accept that other people were not always going to agree with or welcome every decision she made. By the time Terry had pulled into the parking lot of the Fairless Hills Roy Rogers, she told herself it was time to stop worrying and turn her attention instead to the work shift ahead of her. A few minutes later, and Terry was stepping out of the foggy darkness into the brightly lit and cheerful interior of the restaurant. And after that, Terry didn't have

time to worry even if she wanted to, because the next eight hours flew by. First in a rush of food orders and the clatter of plates and silverware, and then, after the restaurant closed to the public, in the bustle of staff cleaning up and getting ready to leave for the night. By the time Terry had locked the glass doors behind the two-person cleaning crew that left at 1.30 a.m., she had almost finished with her paperwork. And a half hour after that, and Terry was more than ready to go home. It had been a long day and night, and she was looking forward to sleeping

late that morning. Pulling on her short winter jacket and reaching for her brown purse, Terry glanced around the office to make sure everything was in its place for the next day. But just when Terry was about to turn out the office light and leave, she stopped, sure that she had just heard a knock on the front door of the restaurant. Slipping her purse over her shoulder and gripping her set of keys in her free hand, Terri stepped through the kitchen prep area so she could peek out into the parking lot. Recognizing the person standing outside, Terry relaxed, but only slightly. Letting out a deep breath, she walked forward to open the doors for her unexpected visitor.

Half an hour earlier, when the two-person cleaning crew had left Roy Rogers, Terry's killer had already been watching the restaurant from the parking lot next door for 30 minutes. Even without the car engine and heater running, the night was so unseasonably warm that inside of the car was still comfortable. Not that the killer would have noticed anyway. There were more important things to think about, like how Terry deserved everything that she had coming to her. Seeing her lock the door behind the two teenagers and disappear back into the dimly lit kitchen area, the killer reached over to the pack of Newports lying on the passenger seat. There was just enough time for one more

cigarette. At 2 a.m., the killer had left their vehicle and was knocking on the front door of Roy Rogers. A few minutes later, the killer had followed Terry towards the back of the restaurant until they were both standing on the red tiled floor just outside of the kitchen. Only now, the two of them weren't just talking, they were arguing. And this time, Terry was not backing down. And in response to what Terry had to say, Terry's killer suddenly stepped forward and hit Terry in the face. The blow was so hard, it literally lifted Terry out of her moccasin-style shoes and sent her flying. She landed flat on her back, her keys and the contents of her purse

skittering off in every direction. And that was just the beginning. Once Terry was on the floor, her attacker straddled her body and began choking her and pounding her head against the floor. Then, the killer reached up to grab a seven-inch long butcher knife from one of the tables above them. The autopsy report later showed that Terry would suffer not one but several fatal injuries. In addition to brain hemorrhage, a broken bone in her throat, and a crushed voice box, Terry would be stabbed 20 times in the face, neck, and torso, as well as beaten with a length of lead pipe. But even as she was dying, Terry fought back. After her attacker had stabbed the knife once through her neck, Terry threw her hands and arms up to protect herself,

and in doing that, her fingernails dragged along the surface of the attacker's skin. It wasn't until the second knife strike severed Terry's spinal cord and left her paralyzed that she finally lay still, her arms falling outstretched to either side of her body. The tip of the knife had dug so deeply into the floor that Terry's throat was pinned to the hard red tiles. Unable to scream or move, Terry stared up into the face of her killer. Still, it wasn't over. Breathing heavily with excitement, Terry's killer got up off the floor

and stepping to the nearby trash can, pulled out the clear plastic bag that lined the bin. Returning to where Terry lay trapped, her killer bent down and wrapped the bag around her head, and then watched as Terry's final breaths created a film of condensation inside the suffocating layers of plastic. A minute later, the killer had turned away, cracked open the door of the safe, and gathered up all the bills inside. Then, with a last look around, the killer pushed open the

drive-thru window, climbed over the sill, and dropped down onto the pavement below before running at a crouch back to the adjacent parking lot. There was the sound of a car engine starting, and then the killer was turning out onto Route 1 to head home. 14 years later, these two questions that forensic psychologist Richard Walter asked at the May 21st meeting of the VDUX Society would in fact lead police straight to Terry's killer. The first question was, who would Terry trust and know well enough to let into the restaurant at 2am the morning she died? at 2 a.m. the morning she died. And the second question was, who had such intense feelings for Terry that their attack would have been brutal enough

to kill her several times over? There was only one answer. Terry's devoted fiancé, Albert Scott Keefe. It would turn out that when police reopened the investigation into Terry's death, Terry's friend, Cindy Bradney, would tell investigators that just the week before Terry was killed, Terry had confided that she was thinking of calling off her July 14th wedding. Eight months into her engagement, Terry had begun

to have serious second thoughts about spending her life with Scott. It turned out he had a bad temper and he was jealous and very possessive of Terry. Terry had begun to feel that the real reason he came to sit with her at Roy Rogers while she closed the restaurant had less to do with concern over her safety and more to do with ungrounded suspicions that she might be seeing other people. Scott also had money problems and so he was angry when Terry left Coochie's restaurant where they both worked for a lower-paying job at Roy Rogers. When Terry had walked into the Doylestown travel agency with Scott three days before she was killed and paid for the couple's

honeymoon, Terry may have realized that the time had come to end her engagement or delay the wedding before it was too late. And according to Dr. Walter and other VDuck Society members who would later review the investigation into Terry's murder, the safe at Roy Rogers may have been robbed, but the real motive for Terry's death had never been money. Instead, this had been a complex and personal murder committed by someone driven by both anger and retaliation. Someone who would rather kill Terry many times over than allow her to walk away from their relationship. Everything else about the crime, the robbery, jumping out of the drive-thru window, Scott appearing later that morning at the Brooks' house full of concern over not seeing Terry's car in the driveway, all of that had been pure misdirection.

But now, 14 years later, on February 4th, 1998, armed with the DNA from one of Scott's discarded Newport cigarette butts that was tied to the hair and tissue found at the crime scene, investigators finally had the physical evidence they needed to bring Scott into the police station for questioning. By then, Scott and his wife were divorced, and Scott's life seemed to have come full circle. He was once again living with his mother in Warminster and working at an Italian pizzeria the next town over. Confronted with the new DNA evidence, new witness statements that described serious tensions in Scott's relationship with Terry,

and the fact that he had failed a lie detector test, in the early hours of February 5, 1998, Scott confessed to the murder of Terry Brooks. In a final twist to a case that had now captured national attention, a case that had now captured national attention, police also revealed that the report filed by investigators looking into the wrongful death lawsuit the Brooks had filed back in 1990 had also listed Scott Keefe as the most likely person to have murdered Terry. The report also included the witness statement that placed Scott in the parking lot adjacent to Roy Rogers about an hour before Terry was killed. Almost two years later, on Monday, June 5, 2000, 37-year-old Scott Keefe was convicted of first-degree murder and sentenced to life in prison without parole. Terry's father, George Brooks, died before Scott's trial, succumbing to a long illness just 15 months after he was informed

that Scott had been arrested for killing his daughter. In February of 2000, four months before Scott's trial, Terry's family won its wrongful death lawsuit against Marriott Corporation. The $675,000 settlement was divided between attorneys and Terry's estate. 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 in to the Amazon Music Follow Button's JavaScript code and replace semicolons with Greek question marks. This podcast airs every Monday and Thursday morning, but in the meantime, you can always watch one of the hundreds of stories we have posted

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