MrBallen Podcast: Strange, Dark & Mysterious Stories - One Foot Out The Door (PODCAST EXCLUSIVE EPISODE)

Episode Date: September 1, 2025

Just after 7 p.m. on June 16th, 2010, an employee at the Palmdale, California Sheriff’s Department tapped his fingers on his desk and sighed. The department was usually pretty busy, but it had been slow that night, so the shift was dragging. As the employee aimlessly moved around some paperwork, he heard something that made him look up at the front doors of the department. The sound came from outside, and it was muffled, but it sounded like someone yelling. Seconds later, a young woman charged through the front doors. She was frantically screaming for help… and she was covered in blood. For 100s more stories like these, 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. Just after 7 p.m. on June 16, 2010, an employee at the Palmdale, California Sheriff's Department tapped his fingers on the desk inside. The department was usually pretty busy, but this night had been very slow, and so the shift was totally dragging. But as the employee aimlessly moved around some paperwork and shifted in his seat, he

suddenly heard something that made him look up. The sound was coming from outside the front doors and it was muffled, but it sounded like somebody yelling. And then seconds later, a young woman charged through the front doors, she was frantically screaming for help and she was covered in blood. But before we get into that story, if you're a fan of the strange, dark, and mysterious delivered in story format, then you come to the right 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, on the next really hot day, please offer the follow button a nice ice-cold lemonade, but only offer them a soggy, crumpled up paper straw to drink it with. Okay,

let's get into today's story. Around 9.30 a.m. on June 16th, 2010, a.m., a.m. named Linell Varsok, lay in bed in her house in Palmdale, California. It was a Wednesday, and Lennel had the day off from her job at a health center in Los Angeles. But she didn't really have time to relax, because she was also a college student. She was working on becoming a registered nurse, and she knew she had to get up and go study, but she just didn't feel like it. Plus, she could hear her boyfriend Lewis moving around in the kitchen downstairs, and just knowing Lewis was down there was another reason to stay put. So Linnell and Lewis had been together for about four years. They'd met in college

and immediately hit it off. Now they own this house together, a five-bedroom home that they had scraped together all their savings to make a down payment on. At the beginning of their relationship, Linnell and Lewis had been completely in love and on the same page about building a life together. But over time, Lewis had become this incredibly jealous and possessive person that was just really volatile, and it really just kind of scared Linnell and was beginning to drive her away. And then, just a few months ago, they'd gotten into this huge screaming fight when he had heard her talking to another guy on the phone. That fight had gotten so bad that she had tried to drive away, but Lewis had literally chased her in his truck, which led to both of them crashing.

Even now, as she laid in bed months later, Linnell still felt traumatized by that whole thing. They had eventually made up, but it was hard to look at Lewis in the same way. It was like she couldn't see a future with him anymore. All she saw now was this volatile, controlling guy. And so lately, Linnell was seriously considering ending things with him. But just then, Linnell's phone buzzed on the nightstand, interrupting her thoughts. It was a message from her friend Lorraine asking if she was up, And as soon as she saw it, Linnell just kind of sighed because she actually had forgotten that she had plans with Lorraine, who would offer to do Linnell's hair that day.

So, resigned. She texted Lorraine to come on over. Then Linnell got out of bed. About 30 minutes later, Lunell sat on a bar stool and ate breakfast at the Kitchen Island with Lewis. The stools were actually some of the only furniture in the whole house. It had already been a year since they'd moved in, but Linnell so far had not had time to decorate. As she ate, Linnell tried to keep her chit-chat with Lewis to a minimum. They'd been fighting so much lately that she didn't want to accidentally start an argument. But Linnell was a naturally bubbly and talkative person, and so just sitting here being quiet was kind of awkward. So she was actually relieved when she heard the front door open and her friend Lorraine walked in. Linnell smiled.

Lorraine lived right in Palmdale, and so it was nice for Linnell to have a friend so close by. The rest of Linnell's friends and family were in L.A., about an hour and a half away. Lorraine walked over and gave Linnell a hug, and the two of them began talking while Lewis got ready to leave. He was going to have his truck worked on actually by Lorraine's boyfriend, who lived near L.A., and would do the work for a low price. It was a long drive, but it was worth it for the savings. Lewis ultimately left without even saying goodbye, and then at that point, Lorraine worked on Linnell's hair while Linell vented about Lewis and how tense things had gotten. And just talking about everything actually made her feel better,

though she had no idea how she was actually going to solve any of these big problems in her relationship. But about an hour later, Linnell suddenly heard tires screech into the driveway outside. Seconds later, Lewis burst into the house looking absolutely furious. He was holding a cell phone above his head and waving it around in the air. And Linnell immediately recognized this phone because it was her secret phone that she'd actually gotten from her other boyfriend. That guy she'd been talking to on the phone with, the day she and Lewis got in that big fight about it that ended with the car crash? Well, the truth was, you know, Lewis had a reason to be upset because she was talking to another guy who she was involved with. It was this other boyfriend.

That other boyfriend's name was Ike, and Linnell had met him about four months ago on a dating website. Both of them were seeking careers in nursing, and they had a ton in common. Ike was also way calmer, more successful, and more motivated than Lewis. He lived over 300, miles away in northern California, but whenever he had time off and Lewis wasn't home, he came down to Palmdale to see Linnell. On the day of Linnell and Lewis's huge fight, Linnell had promised Lewis that she would never talk to Ike again. But that had been a lie, and now Lewis had caught her. And so Lewis started yelling, demanding to know if Linnell was still cheating on him, and Linnell felt her heart start racing. The last time Lewis had gotten like this, their fight ended

with a literal car crash. She didn't want that to happen again, so she decided. She decided to the best way to handle this was to just remove herself from this situation. So she just walked over and grabbed the secret phone out of Lewis's hand and then ran out the door with Lorraine while Lewis kept on screaming at her. Linnell and Lorraine jumped into Linnell's car and sped out of the neighborhood. Linnell couldn't stop shaking because she knew Lewis was furious and she didn't really know what was going to happen next. And so she and Lorraine decided that they would just go kill some time by going to a beauty

store to get some more products, and hopefully by the time they got home, Lewis would be gone. The two of them got to the store around noon. Linnell and Lorraine went inside, and Linnell walked around the aisles, grabbing products. Her heart was still hammering in her chest, and when she checked out at the counter, she found herself just staring into space, trying her best to not think about Lewis, but she couldn't help herself. But by the time, she actually had her products paid for and put in a bag, she was starting to calm down just a little bit.

Then she headed outside with Lorraine. However, as soon as she stepped out of the shop, she gasped because right there on the sidewalk was Lewis. He was waiting for her. Lewis demanded to know if she was still seeing Ike, and at first, Lonell was just super defensive, like she always was when they fought. But as Lewis continued to rant and accuse her, her head just started to pound, and then suddenly, it was like all of her fear and stress about this relationship just disappeared. This weird sense of calm came over her, and she knew this was it.

this was the last draw. She was done, and she just wanted Lewis out of her life. So she exhaled, handed Lewis her second phone, and then just stormed back over to the car with Lorraine. About 15 minutes later, Linnell parked her car in the driveway at home. When she'd gotten into her car and driven away, she'd thought that maybe she had lost Lewis, and she'd hoped that he had just driven somewhere far away to cool down. But apparently, that hadn't happened, because his truck was parked right outside the house, which meant Lewis was inside waiting for her. Linnell wanted to scream. She glanced at Lorraine, who just reached over and squeezed her hand, trying to give her a bit of encouragement. Then Linnell just took a deep breath. She knew what she was doing

with Ike was wrong, but she was sick of all the fights and of Lewis trying to control everything about her. I mean, the relationship had died months ago. She just needed to end it now, officially. She wished she had more time to plan out how to do this, but after today, she felt like she had no choice. She just had to go in there and tell him this was done. So, Linnell got out of her car and headed towards the house. Over six hours later, around 6.45 p.m., Linnell's friend Lorraine was staring down at her silent cell phone and starting to feel nervous. Lanelle hadn't called her after whatever final fight she had had with Lewis, and Lorraine had a bad feeling about the whole thing. She knew that Lewis and Linnell's fights had the possibility of getting completely out of hand.

I mean, they had before. So now, Lorraine was back at Linnell's house, just making sure her friend was okay. But as she walked through the living room, she noticed their house was unnaturally quiet. Lewis was not there, and it didn't seem like Linnell was there either. That morning, Lorraine had been afraid, you know, when Lewis was chasing them all around town, Now she was starting to get that same nervous sense that maybe Lewis was nearby, about to spring out at her. But she told herself to just settle down and focus. However, when she passed by the laundry room, she felt this wave of panic so intense come over her that she had to grasp the wall just to steady herself, because there on the laundry room floor was a pile of bloody towels.

And then beyond the laundry room, there was a door that led into the garage, and it was partially open. And so Lorraine was very nervous, but still she felt like she had to. investigate and so she walked over to the door and she pushed it all the way open. Now it was dark in the garage so she couldn't see much and so she just stepped forward and when she did she stepped onto this plastic bag that was slick and it caused her to trip and fall to the ground and then when she looked at what she had fallen in she realized it was blood. She stood up as quick as she could and then just stood there staring at the garage like waiting for movement but there was no one in there and then as her eyes slowly adjusted she saw Linnell's car.

It had been backed into the garage and was now sitting there with its trunk open. And when she looked at the ground by its back wheels, she saw something sticking out from behind the car. And the longer she stared at it, the more the image clarified. It was a pair of feet. At this point, Lorraine turned and ran. A few minutes later, Lorraine sped into the parking lot at the Palmdale Sheriff's Department. Once she parked, she stumbled out of her car and began running towards the front doors. Once she got inside, she charged up to the employee at the front desk and just started yelling about how there was blood, so much blood, and how she had slipped in it when she tried to find her friend, and her friend was just lying there, and she knew she wasn't making a lot of sense, but it was like it was impossible to think.

Finally, though, she was able to calm down enough that she just blurted out. My friend Linnell was murdered. that the crime of the century is the one being waged on our planet. Introducing Lawless Planet, Wondry's new podcast exploring the dark side of the climate crisis. Uncover shocking tales of crime and corruption threatening our world's future. Follow Lawless Planet on the Wondry app or wherever you get your podcasts. Hey listeners, big news for true crime lovers. You can now enjoy this podcast ad-free on Amazon Music with your prime membership.

Listen to all episodes of my podcasts, Mr. Ballin's Medical Mystery, and Mr. Ballin's strange, dark, and mysterious stories, along with a huge collection of top true crime podcasts, completely ad-free. No more waiting through cliffhangers or dealing with ads, because let's be honest, ads shouldn't be the most nerve-wracking part of true crime. To start your ad-free listening journey, download the Amazon music app for free, or head to Amazon.com slash balin. That's Amazon.com slash b-a-l-l-l-en. Dive into uninterrupted true crime stories today. Later that night, around 11 p.m., two homicide detectives stood in the driveway of Lennel's home,

looking up at the two-story house. Their names were Bob Kenny and Joe Espino, and they were veteran detectives who worked together all the time. They'd come all the way from the Los Angeles County Sheriff's Homicide Bureau, which meant they'd just driven about an hour and a half to get the Palmdale. But this actually wasn't out of the ordinary. Detective Kenny had been called to Palmdale more than a few times to investigate. homicides there. Palmdale had gotten safer in recent years, but the murder rate was still higher than both the state and the national average. But as Kenny looked at his surroundings,

this trip to Palmdale felt different. They were in an upscale neighborhood, and the house they were standing in front of looked nice. The detectives walked inside, and right away, Kenny noticed that the front door was undamaged, and a uniform police officer who was standing in the entryway told them that there were no signs of forced entry at the back door either. Kenny had already been briefed that this home was owned by a 29-year-old woman named Linnell Barsock, who was found dead in her garage by a friend right after what sounded like a pretty intense fight with her boyfriend. Linnell shared the home with that boyfriend, Louis Bonnair, and Lewis was nowhere to be found. So to Kenny, this was starting to look like

a pretty straightforward case. Romantic partners, especially angry ones, were always the first suspects, and the fact that Lewis had apparently taken off made him look even more suspicious. There were already officers out canvassing the neighborhood and calling Lewis's friends and family trying to track him down. The uniformed officer led Kenny and Espino through the house towards the garage. As they walked, Kenny noted the strange emptiness of all the rooms. Some didn't even have furniture in them, but this didn't feel like robbers would come in and removed all the furniture. It just sort of seemed like the house was vacant. And on top of that, there really were no signs of robbery in general. I mean, the TV was there and nothing had been

rifled through, but Kenny was more struck by the fact that there was so little to steal in the first place. To get to the garage, the detectives had to pass through a laundry room, and when he stepped inside that area, Detective Kenny saw bloody towels everywhere and smears of blood on the floor. It was immediately obvious that whoever had killed Linnell had tried and failed to clean up their mess. When Kenny and Espino stepped into the garage, they found there was a car there that had been backed in and had its trunk open. Next to it on the ground were more bloody towels, along with large plastic sheets, and most of them were shoved to the side and in a big pile. But there was some bloody plastic sheeting that was up by the door to the laundry room

where they were standing. Detective Kenny stepped into the garage around the bloody towels to the far side of the car, where he saw a pair of feet on the floor. It was Linnell. Her face was covered by a black plastic bag. And so Detective Kenny knelt down and peeled back the plastic. He found her face and head were covered in blood, and when he tipped her head to the side, he saw the source, a bullet hole right in the back of her skull. He wondered if the killer had wrapped her head in plastic to try to clean up or contain the blood, or if they had felt some kind of remorse and couldn't bear to look at Linnell's face. Detective Kenny stood and moved over to the trunk of the car. When he looked inside, he saw that it was full.

of garbage bags, which were packed with bloody sheets and bedding. It looked like the killer must have been trying to put all this evidence into the car and drive away with it, except they hadn't actually done that. Instead, they left the car behind, along with everything else, which just didn't make any sense. Kenny wondered if maybe something like, you know, the arrival of Linnell's friend, Lorraine, had interrupted the killer before they could escape. But just then, a deputy stuck his head in the garage and excitedly told the detectives

that they just found something. moments later, detectives Kenny and Espino were standing in the kitchen. They were leaning over a piece of paper that lay on the floor right beside a yellow evidence marker the crime scene text had placed. This piece of paper had messy handwriting on it. Kenny made sure it was photographed before he picked it up with his gloved hand to look closer. It was a letter, signed by Linnell and addressed to Lewis, her boyfriend.

The letter said she was leaving him for her other boyfriend, Ike. At this, Kenny raised his eye. The missing boyfriend, Lewis, was already suspect number one, and this note certainly gave him a motive for murder. But it also gave Kenny a second suspect, this other boyfriend, Ike. Maybe he thought this case was going to be more complicated than he first expected. He looked around at the bare kitchen and the empty rooms beyond it, and it looked to him like neither of the people living in the house had actually committed to settling in and staying together. Linnell apparently had one foot out the door already. As he read the note,

one more time, Kenny wondered what other secrets his victim might have been keeping. Detectives Kenny and Espino were still on scene when a uniformed officer came to tell them that they had gotten a lead on the missing boyfriend, Lewis. Apparently, he had gone to Los Angeles, and he often stayed at Linnell's mom's house when he was there, since the drive back to Palmdale was so long. It was the middle of the night by this point, but that didn't matter. Kenny dispatched in L.A. police officer to wait outside of Linnell's mother's house as backup, and then he dialed the phone number for Linnell's mom. After a few rings, a woman answered. When Detective Kenny introduced himself, she confirmed she was Linnell's mother, Bobby Barsock. She sounded concerned and asked what was going

on, but Kenny didn't tell her. Instead, he needed to speak to Lewis. His decision not to explain himself was strategic. Neither Bobby nor Lewis had been told explicitly that, that Linnell was dead, and Detective Kenny wanted to hold back that information for as long as possible. When he talked to Lewis, he wanted to see if Lewis would act confused, which would be the natural reaction if you really hadn't done anything, or if he would behave like a guilty person who knew exactly why the police were calling him in the middle of the night. Detective Kenny heard Bobby hand over the phone, and then a man came on the line and said he was Lewis, and right away, Lewis said, this is about Linnell. When Kenny finished

the phone call a few minutes later, he was feeling good, because now he had a definite number one suspect. Lewis had brought up Linnell without being told she was dead, and then he had been surprisingly cooperative when Kenny responded by giving him no information at all and just told him to go outside and get into the squad car in front of the house that's waiting for him. To Kenny, it seemed like Lewis had been waiting for this call, and maybe even feeling guilty. He thought of the plastic that had been pulled over Linnell's face, like whoever had killed her, couldn't bear to look at what they had done. After Kenny had told Lewis over the phone to go get into the squad car, he had spoken to Linnell's mom, Bobby Barsock again. And when he told her that her daughter was

dead, Bobby just wailed in anguish into the phone. And then eventually, she told Kenny how controlling and jealous Lewis was, and she said she was coming to the sheriff's department to talk to them too. It would take more than an hour and a half for Lewis and Bobby to get to Palmdale, but that was fine by Kenny. He and his partner still needed to go talk to their first eyewitness, the friend Lorraine, who had reported the murder in the first place, who was waiting for them at the Sheriff's Department. Around 6 a.m., detectives Kenny and Espino walked through the same Sheriff's Department doors that Lorraine had burst through 11 hours earlier, saying that she had found her friend dead. Lorraine had already told her story

to uniformed officers, but Kenny wanted to hear her story directly. He had read, better statement, and it was clear that she had been in a state of pure panic when she had first arrived at the department. When Kenny and his partner walked into the interview room and sat down across from Lorraine, Kenny thought she seemed a lot calmer than her statement made her out to be, although she did still have blood in her clothes and looked exhausted and clearly shaken up. He started slowly, with general questions about her relationship to Linnell. Lorraine said they were really good friends, and they hung out a few times a week since they lived so close to each other. Then she went over what had happened the day before, how she'd gone to Linnell's that morning to do her hair,

but then Linnell and Lewis had gotten into a big fight, and he, Lewis, had ended up chasing them all around town. Lorraine said that she and Linnell had gone back to Linnell's house at about 12.30 p.m. And Lewis was there waiting for them. She said that she decided to leave and give the couple some space. Lorraine said the couple's fighting was typical, and that whole relationship honestly was toxic. But this fight in particular did seem worse. because Linnell was cheating on Lewis with a man named Ike, and Lewis had found out about it. Kenny and Espino looked at each other.

This information lined up exactly with that letter they had found at the scene. Lorraine said after she had left Linnell's, she had gone to a nearby park, and there she just waited to hear from Linnell. But by early evening, she still had not heard, and she was starting to get worried. So around 6.45 p.m., she went back to Linnell's to make sure her friend was okay, and that's when she found Linnell's body. As Lorraine told this part of the story, her calm affect changed and she became much more emotional.

Lorraine looked down at her stained clothes and just began to cry. Detective Kenny pushed a box of tissues across the table. He felt for Lorraine because no matter what, it was a trauma she would carry for the rest of her life to have found her friend dead. But there was one thing about her story that just kind of didn't sit right. And that was Lorraine's claim that she had been sitting in the park

for five hours. just waiting for her friend to call her back or text her. Kenny wasn't sure he believed that. It had been very hot out all day, almost 90 degrees, and that whole time, what, Lorraine is just sitting on a bench, people watching, waiting for Linnell the whole time? It just seemed sort of unrealistic. But that was her story, and she hadn't changed it once.

And anyways, the crime itself did really seem like textbook domestic violence, and Linnell's boyfriend, Lewis, was acting like a man with a very guilty conscience. But regardless, at this point, it was a very guilty conscience. At this point, it was obvious to Kenny that Lorraine was no longer in any condition to answer any more questions. So they would just have to talk to her again later. And so he and Detective Espino told Lorraine she could go. And then when the detective stepped out of the interview room, an officer was waiting for them. The boyfriend, Louis Bonnair, had arrived.

Now, Lewis still had not been told what happened to Linnell, like he didn't know she was dead. And suspiciously, he had not asked anybody why he had been summoned to the sheriff's department. And he still didn't ask when detectives Kenny and Espino sat down across from him in an interrogation room. As soon as the door closed behind the detectives, they asked Lewis about his relationship with Linnell. And right away, Lewis launched into a story about Linnell that, as far as Kenny could tell, was full of lies. Lewis said he and Linnell had a great relationship and were deeply in love. He said they'd had a couple of minor fights, but nothing that would lead to a breakup. Just normal relationship stuff.

And he said, neither of them was seeing anyone else. Both Kenny and Espino knew this was false, not just because of the letter they found and the things that Lorraine and Bobby had told them, but because they had checked the police record of calls to Linnell and Lewis's home and found that at least twice, officers had been called to break up a domestic disturbance that started because Linnell was speaking to another man. The detectives asked Lewis to walk them through everything he did on June 16th, the day Linnell was murdered. Lewis admitted that he and Linnell had gotten into a fight that morning because he'd found Linnell's secret cell phone. He also admitted to following Linnell and Lorraine

around town trying to get answers from his girlfriend about why she was using this secret phone. But Lewis said they'd only fought until about 1240 p.m. At that point, He said he had gone to L.A. and gotten his truck repaired by Lorraine's boyfriend. He said he'd got into Lorraine's boyfriend's place around 2 p.m., and then spent the rest of the day going to auto supply shops in the area to buy car parts. And then after that, around 6 p.m., he'd arrived at Linnell's mother's house for the night. And while Lewis was sitting there telling the detectives this very far-fetched story, all the detectives could think about was the long, thin scratch on the side of Lewis's face.

When Lewis finished his story about what he'd done the day before, Detective Espino asked him about the scratch. And this kicked up a whole other story by Lewis. He talked fast explaining that Linnell had scratched him a few days ago, but he just said it was a misunderstanding. However, the detectives did not buy it. And so Kenny decided it was time to go on the offensive. He had a folder in front of him,

and from it he took out the letter that police had found at Linnell and Lewis's home that said Linnell was breaking up with Lewis to go be with. with her other boyfriend, Ike. And Kenny slid that letter across the table to Lewis, and then sat back silently while Lewis read it. Now, Kenny was expecting Lewis to read this letter with some level of recognition, and then after that he would likely crumble.

After all, Lewis had just sat here lying to their faces for a full half hour, and now they were showing him that they had known he was lying to them the whole time. I mean, if nothing else, it was clear they were not in a loving relationship, and his girlfriend was seeing other people. Kenny actually wondered if, when confronted with this letter, if Lewis might actually just confess right then and there. But instead, after Lewis finished reading it, he just frowned and looked up in confusion and said he had never seen it before.

He did admit that he knew who Ike was, but he said that, you know, Linnell and Ike were just friends. Kenny had to stop himself from shaking his head and disgust. These lies were shameless, and he couldn't stand to listen to them anymore. So he leaned across the table and he told Lewis the real. reason he had been brought to this interview room. The letter, he said, had been found at his house, and his girlfriend, Linnell, had been murdered. At this, Lewis did lose his composure. He started stammering incoherently and then broke down into hysterical sobs. Detectives Kenny and Espino

just watched him for a minute. They didn't feel sorry for him at all. All they actually thought was this guy is a really good actor. Without waiting for him to stop crying, they told him they were going to need his fingerprints and samples of his DNA. And then they dropped one final bombshell. They said they were going to continue their investigation into Linnell's murder, but Lewis was not leaving the Sheriff's Department. Between the record of domestic disturbances, the scratch in his face, the huge fight the day of the murder, his lies during the interview, and his so-far unconfirmed alibi, the detectives told Lewis they had enough to arrest him on suspicion of murder. The detectives left the interrogation room as a crime tech went in to collect Lewis's DNA samples

and a uniform police officer stood by to start the booking procedure as soon as they were done. The detectives were not even one full day into their investigation, and they already had taken a suspect into custody. And so they were both feeling pretty good and very much like they needed to take a break for at least a few hours and go get some sleep. However, as they walked back into the lobby, they saw a woman with a puffy, tear-strigged face walk in the door, looking lost and bewildered. At the same time, the detectives realized this had to be Bobby Barsock, Lonell's mother.

And so sleep would have to wait. They ushered Bobby into a private room and got all three of them cups of coffee. What Kenny and Espino needed from Bobby, first and foremost, was a timeline of the evening of the murder, because Bobby was part of Lewis's alibi. So, as they sipped their coffee, they asked her to walk them through what happened, when Lewis showed up. What time, what he said, everything. In a shaky voice, Bobby said Lewis had gotten to her house a little after 6 p.m. She was sure of the time because family feud had just started on TV when he walked in the door. Kenny furrowed his eyebrows. This was exactly what

Lewis had said, which was a little disappointing, because if Lewis had lied about when he got to Bobby's house, it would have made the case simpler. Still, though, this detail didn't mean Lewis was innocent. Linnell had to have been killed sometime between about 1230 p.m. after she got home from the beauty store and 6.45 p.m. when Lorraine discovered her body. It would have taken Lewis about an hour and a half to drive from Palmdale to Bobby's house, which meant that to arrive by six, he had to leave no later than about 4.30 p.m. So Bobby's timeline left Lewis approximately three to four hours before he had left when he claimed he was just walking around shopping for car parts, but he actually could have been killing Linnell. But before Detective Kenny could follow that thought

any further, Bobby told the detectives that there was something important she had to show them. It was part of the reason she had driven all the way up here. She pulled out her phone and the detectives leaned forward to look. On the screen, she pulled up a text message. It was from Linnell's other boyfriend, Ike. On the night of the murder, Ike had messaged Bobby to say he spoke to Linnell that day and she sounded scared. He said he was worried that Lewis was going to hurt her. As Bobby put her phone away, Kenny thought that message made Lewis look really bad. However, Kenny was a veteran homicide detective, and he knew that finding a killer was as much about ruling the right suspect in as it was about ruling the wrong suspects out.

The victim's romantic partner was almost always the first suspect, but in this case, Linnell had two of them. Lewis and Ike were both part of this love triangle, so by default they were both suspects. To prove that Lewis was guilty, the detectives also needed to prove that Ike was innocent. After speaking with Linnell's mother, detectives Kenny and Espino had both been awake for more than 24 hours. So they decided to get some sleep. Then they regrouped on the afternoon of June 17th, the day after the murder. Their case was moving fast. Linnell's boyfriend Lewis was in custody, and they were hoping the evidence would continue to line up and continue to point straight at him. But Linnell was living a more complicated life than it looked like from

the outside. And now they needed to rule her second boyfriend, Ike, out as a suspect. So their first step when they returned to the sheriff's department was to track Ike down. And because Bobby had given them his number, it wasn't that difficult. They just called him up on the phone. Ike's full name was Ike Umuna, and he lived in Northern California. And he readily admitted to having a relationship with Linnell. And he said he had given her that secret cell phone because Lewis was unpredictable and scary. When Kenny told Ike that Linnell was dead, Ike broke down. This was exactly what he said he'd been afraid of when he had texted Linnell's mom.

Ike said he had an alibi for the entire day of the murder. He said he had been at a job interview at the University of California, Davis, which was a six-hour drive from Palmdale. And this was exactly the kind of thing Kenny had hoped to hear. Because if this was true, then Kenny knew it was not physically possible for Ike to have killed Linnell himself. That didn't mean he hadn't hired a hitman, but to Kenny, the crime scene looked like a murder committed by an amateur, not a professional. Yes, Linnell had been shot in the back of the head, which was sort of execution style and maybe hitman style,

but the bloody, messy scene suggested a level of panic after the fact that didn't make sense for a stranger, killing for money. So it was looking very likely that they would be able to rule Ike out as a suspect. Kenny told Ike they would be in touch, and then he hung up the phone. Kenny and Espino looked at each other. They would run down both boyfriend's alibis at the same time, and whoever's didn't check out, was very likely their murderer. Now, the breakneck pace of the investigation slowed, as Kenny and Espino began the painstaking work of finding every person that Lewis and Ike mentioned interacting with on the day of the murder. Both detectives were leaning towards Lewis as their guy, and initially their interviews seemed to confirm their suspicions, ruling Ike out, and ruling Lewis in.

Ike's alibi was basically airtight. Administrators at the University of California Davis confirmed that he had been there right in the middle of the day, which meant he definitely was not in Palmdale. And as the detectives talked to more of Linnell's friends, Ike's warning about Lewis's violence started to look less extraordinary. Because basically everyone in Linnell's life seemed to have been worried about her relationship with Lewis. But as the days went by and Kenny and Espino leaned into tracking each and every one of

Lewis's movements on the day of the murderer, they found something surprising. Lewis's alibi also checked out. The detectives searched Lewis's truck and found receipts from June 16th, which was the day of the murderer. Lewis had claimed he was shopping for car parts that afternoon, but the detectives had not believed him. However, the receipt showed that he was, in fact, near L.A., an hour and a half away from Palmdale, starting a little before 3 p.m.

And so suddenly, the window of time that Lewis had to murder Lonell shrunk from around three or four hours to only about one hour. Of course, it was still possible that he killed Linnell in that hour, but when the detectives pulled surveillance footage from the auto shops, they saw Lewis walking calmly through the aisles and paying at the registers. There was no blood, no nervous behavior that would suggest he had just shot and killed his girlfriend. But the final blow to their case against Lewis came when Kenny and Espino tracked down Lorraine's boyfriend, who was the one who actually worked on Lewis's car. He told them that on the day of the murder, Lewis had shown up at his house in L.A. at 2 p.m. This meant that Lewis had apparently been telling the

truth when he said he left his house at 12.40 p.m., which meant Lewis could not have killed Lonell. So, in the middle of July, one month after Kenny and Espino had picked up what they thought would be an open-and-shut murder case, they were forced to release their primary suspect, Lewis, from jail. Now they were back to square one. detectives Kenny and Espino could have just waited for the forensic evidence to come back. The crime scene text had collected so much DNA evidence that it had taken multiple days to process the scene and would take months to return results. But whoever had killed Linnell had tried and failed to clean it up and in the process

had left fingerprints and maybe even their own DNA behind. But there was something bothering both of the detectives about the timeline they'd spent weeks constructing so methodically. They had a precise question. chronology of the movements of Linnell, Lorraine, Bobby, Lewis, and Ike, as well as all of Linnell's friends and family, but the only thing this chronology really showed was that no one had been able to kill Linnell. So somebody was lying. They just didn't know who. Now, the detectives had already pulled Linnell's phone records from the day she was killed, but now

they decided to get new search warrants. They didn't just want suspect and victim phone records anymore. They wanted to know who their witnesses had spoken to, too. It would take the detective about four months to get their hands on all the records they needed. But when they did, everything suddenly made sense. It turned out that Linnell had been keeping one more secret that Kenny and Espino had not been able to uncover until they discovered a single phone call made at 4.44 p.m. on the day of the murder

that explained everything. Based on evidence collected by investigators, the following is a reconstruction of what police believe happened to Linnell Barsock on June 16th, 2010. That afternoon, sometime before 4 p.m., the killer stood in the living room at Linnell's house right behind Linnell, staring at the back of her head. Even though they both had moved on from the fight earlier in the day, the killer could tell Linnell was still upset. But truthfully, they weren't really concerned about how Linnell felt.

Linnell had so much, a great personality, a loving family, a growing career, but the killer only had Linnell, who they still had deep feelings for. And now that Linnell didn't want them, they decided Linnell shouldn't have anything. Slowly and silently, the killer lifted the gun they had brought with them, aimed it at the back of Linnell's head, and pulled the trigger. Linnell immediately slumped to the floor, and seconds later, blood was pooling all around her. Step one of the plan was complete. Now, the killer just had to clean up, and then after that, they would drive to the desert where they would bury her body and everything that had blood on it.

They quickly wrapped Linel's head in a plastic bag to keep more blood from spreading. Then they dragged Linnell to the garage where the car was. After that, the killer sopped up all the blood in the living room with towels, and so far it seemed like everything was going great. the floor was clean. But then at 4.44 p.m., they heard their phone ring. And on the other end was a person who had some bad news. Somebody was on their way to the house. The killer knew if they didn't hurry, they'd be caught. This made the killer panic, and instead of finishing the cleanup, they decided to make sure that the evidence left behind didn't lead to them, but to somebody else. So they quickly wrote a fake letter and left that behind, then they ran out of the house, got in their car,

and sped off to the sheriff's department to report the crime they had just committed. Because the killer was Linnell's so-called close friend, Lorraine Austin. She executed her friend in cold blood while she was standing right behind her doing her hair. It would turn out, these two women were not just friends. They actually had a romantic relationship that they both had kept a secret. it. They had met online just a month earlier and briefly dated. However, five days before her murder, Linnell suggested they'd just be friends. And Lorraine had been devastated, because not only was she in love with Linnell, she also wanted to be Linnell. Lorraine was extremely jealous of her.

Linnell had a career, she had a big house, while Lorraine was in debt and living at her mom's place. And so being dumped by her made her bitter and furious. Lorraine's phone records revealed her romantic relationship with Linnell and their breakup. And most critically, the records also showed what interrupted Lorraine while she was cleaning up the crime scene. It was a phone call from her boyfriend, the same one who had been with Lewis all afternoon fixing his truck. The boyfriend told her that Lewis had just left, and that made Lorraine think Lewis was

coming home, when in reality Lewis was going to Linnell's mother's house for the night. But since Lorraine thought he'd be there soon, she pivoted from cleaning up the crime scene to framing Lewis. When the forensic evidence was finally processed, it revealed Lorraine's DNA and fingerprints at the scene, but that was to be expected because she was friends with Linnell. However, her DNA and fingerprints were found in areas that tied her directly to the crime. By the time police solved the case, Lorraine had gone on the run. She wasn't captured until a year and a half after the murder, after authorities put the

case on America's Most Wanted, and a tipster spotted her in Belize. Lorraine Austin was convicted of first-degree murder and sentenced to two consecutive 25 years-to-life prison terms. She'll be eligible for parole in 2032. A quick note about our stories, they are all based on true events, but we sometimes use pseudonyms to protect the people involved and some details are fictionalized for dramatic purposes. The Mr. Bollin podcast, Strange, Dark and Mysterious Stories, is hosted and executive produced by me, Mr. Bollin. Our head of writing is Evan Allen. Our head of production is Zach Levitt, produced by Jeremy Bone. This episode was written by Kate Murdoch. Story editing by Karras Pash Cooper.

Research and fact-checking by Shelley Shoe, Samantha Van Hoose, Evan Beamer, Abigail Shumway, and Camille Callahan. Research and fact-checking supervision by Stephen Ear. Audio editing and post-produced by Wit Lacasio and Cole LaCasio. Additional audio editing by Jordan Stidham. Mixed and mastered by Brendan Cain. Production coordination by Samantha Collins. Production support by Antonio Manata and Delana Corley. Artwork by Jessica Klugston Kiner.

Theme song called Something Wicked by Ross Bugden. Thank you for listening to the Mr. Ballin podcast. If you enjoyed today's story and you're looking for more bone-chilling content, be sure to check out all of our studios podcast. There's this one, the Mr. Ballin podcast, as well as Mr. Ballin's medical mysteries, bedtime stories, wartime stories, run-fool, redacted, late nights with Nexpo, and a twist of history. All you have to do is search for Ballin Studios wherever you get your podcasts. To watch hundreds more stories just like this one, head over to our YouTube channel, which is just called Mr. Ballin. So that's going to do it. I really appreciate your support. Until next time, see you.

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