MrBallen Podcast: Strange, Dark & Mysterious Stories - Shenandoah on Fire (PODCAST EXCLUSIVE EPISODE)

Episode Date: June 13, 2022

On September 6th, 1988, a middle aged woman named Cindy Borton, was washing dishes in her little house in Shenandoah, Iowa. As she did this, she heard a knock on her back door. She glanced at her watch and saw that she only had a few minutes before she had to get ready for work, and so she just hoped that whoever was there, was not expecting a long visit.… A few hours later, the police would arrive at Cindy’s house and they would discover a crime scene so gruesome, that they had to call in a special investigative unit just to process it.For 100s more stories like this one, check out my YouTube channel just called "MrBallen" -- https://www.youtube.com/c/MrBallenIf you want to reach out to me, contact me on Instagram, Twitter or any other major social media platform, my username on all of them is @MrBallenSee Privacy Policy at https://art19.com/privacy and California Privacy Notice at https://art19.com/privacy#do-not-sell-my-info.

On September 6th, 1988, a middle-aged woman named Cindy Borton was washing dishes in her little house in Shenandoah, Iowa. As she did this, she heard a knock on her back door. She glanced at her watch and saw she only had a few minutes before she had to get ready for work, and so she hoped whoever was out there was not expecting a long visit. A few hours later, the Shenandoah police would arrive at Cindy's house, and they would discover a crime scene so gruesome that they had to call in a special investigative unit just to process it. This story includes graphic descriptions of violence. As such, listener discretion is advised. But before we get into today's 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 offer to water the five-star review button's favorite flowers while they're gone on vacation. But instead of watering them,

give them no water and leave them in the blazing sun. Also, please subscribe to the Mr. Ballin podcast wherever you listen to podcasts so you don't miss any of our weekly uploads. 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. Hello, I'm Emily, and I'm one of the hosts of Terribly Famous, the show that takes you inside the lives of our biggest celebrities. And they don't get much bigger than the man who made badminton sexy. OK, maybe that's a stretch, but if I say pop star and shuttlecocks, you know who I'm talking about. No? Short shorts? Free cocktails?

Careless whispers? 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 Wondery Plus on Apple Podcasts or the Wondery app. Okay, let's get into today's story. The state of Iowa is known as the corn capital of the world, The state of Iowa is known as the corn capital of the world, but Iowa's 3 million residents do a lot more than produce billions of bushels of corn every year. They also personify some of the best qualities that America has to offer. Located in the midwestern part of the country and surrounded by two rivers and six other states, the people of Iowa take pride in being friendly, considerate, law-abiding, hardworking, and just plain nice. The state is one of the safest in the country, and every year, national surveys show that Iowa residents are among the most polite Americans you will ever

meet. And if there's one place in Iowa where you are guaranteed to be treated, quote, Iowa nice, it's the little town in the southwest corner of the state called Shenandoah. At one time, Shenandoah was considered the seed and nursery capital of the entire world. They no longer hold that title, but residents of this town are still surrounded by some of the most beautiful flowers and trees on the planet, along with some of the best tasting fruits and vegetables. on the planet, along with some of the best tasting fruits and vegetables. And back in 1988, if there was one person in Shenandoah who absolutely embodied the town's spirit of friendliness, hospitality, and local pride, it was 39-year-old Cindy Borton. If you were a visitor to Shenandoah back in the late 1980s, Cindy would be one of the first people to run right up to you

to introduce herself and to you to introduce herself and offer you directions or recommendations of where to go in her little town. And if you were one of Cindy's friends or neighbors, she would drop anything she was doing to help you, and it didn't matter if it was day or night. Unlike many of the town's 5,500 residents whose family had been living in the town for generations, Cindy and her husband Robert and their son John had moved to Shenandoah later in life. Cindy was born on May 22, 1949, in another small Iowa town called Garwin that was located three and a half hours to the northeast of Shenandoah. There, she and her brother had grown up playing outside and helping their parents with

daily chores. After high school, Cindy went to work at a local restaurant, which is where she met her future husband, Robert. He had grown up in another Iowa town about 30 minutes away from her. Robert was a stocky young man with horn-rimmed glasses and brown hair that he swept back from his receding hairline, and when he met Cindy, he was instantly charmed by the smiling and laughing waitress with thick dark hair and shining eyes. A year after meeting, Cindy and Robert got married, and one year after that, they welcomed their first and only child, a baby boy named John. Early on in their marriage, Robert enlisted in the U.S. Navy, and so he was gone a lot of the time. As a result, Cindy stepped up and became the anchor of the family, As a result, Cindy stepped up and became

the anchor of the family, always putting the needs of her husband and her son over her own. She also began working multiple part-time jobs to supplement Robert's military income, which was just not that much. However, she only took jobs that did not interfere with her ability to spend quality time with her son, John. In 1977, after Robert left the military, the Bortons moved to a town in Illinois called Evanston. There, Robert enrolled in a private seminary so that he could fulfill his lifelong dream of becoming an ordained pastor. In 1981, Robert graduated from the seminary and a year later, he got an offer from a little church in Shenandoah asking him to come be their pastor. Robert and Cindy were thrilled, and so after Robert accepted

the offer, the little family packed up their belongings and then made the eight-hour trip west back to their home state of Iowa and into the pretty little town of Shenandoah. Once in Shenandoah, Cindy immediately threw herself into her new role as the pastor's wife. She was naturally outgoing and empathetic, and so she pretty much instantly became a favorite, not just with Robert's congregation, but with the rest of the town as well. Even though Robert had landed his dream job, it was not a high-paying job, and so like Cindy, he needed to go out and pick up some extra work to make ends meet. Robert would get a part-time job at a car dealership where he washed and cleaned cars,

and Cindy, after arriving in Shenandoah, worked as many as three part-time jobs, including her main one at a donut shop. But despite how much Cindy and Robert were forced to work every week, they were very happy people. In fact, when most people described Cindy when she was living in Shenandoah, they would talk about her laughter because, one, she seemed to always be laughing and smiling, and two, because her laughter was incredibly infectious and anyone who heard it couldn't help but laugh themselves. But the Bortons' seemingly perfect life would go off the rails in 1987, five years after the Bortons had arrived in Shenandoah.

That summer, Robert's church, which had been struggling financially for years, was finally forced to shut their doors, and so Robert's job was gone, and so too was his main source of income. This loss was devastating both emotionally and financially for the Borton family. By September of the following year, 1988, Robert had not had any luck finding another pastor gig in town or nearby, and the income they were making between Robert's car dealership work and Cindy's various part-time jobs was just not enough, and so the couple began talking about relocating. However, they both loved Shenandoah, it was their home,

and John, who was 18 at the time, he was about to start his senior year in high school, and so they really didn't want to pull him out until he was done. And so Cindy and Robert decided that they would just stay in Shenandoah and they would weather the financial storm they were in, and then maybe after John graduated from high school, they would think about moving. But when John's senior year actually began that September, the Bortons' 18-year-old son suddenly developed a serious case of senioritis, meaning he didn't want to go to school. And on the morning of Tuesday, September 6th, just a few days into the new school year, John walked into the family kitchen and

announced to his mother that he did not want to go to school ever. Cindy had to argue with John all by herself because Robert had already left that morning for work. But luckily, John eventually just gave up because he knew his mother was not going to budge. She wanted him to go to school, and so begrudgingly John ate his breakfast, he gathered up his backpack, and he followed his mother out to her car that was parked in the driveway. On the drive to school, Cindy reminded her son that she'd be working at the donut shop that afternoon, and so he'd have to walk home. When they arrived at Shenandoah High School a few minutes later, John, who was still very annoyed with his mother for forcing him to go to school

that day, he got out and he slammed the car door before mumbling a barely audible goodbye to his mother. As Cindy drove the short distance back to their house, she tried to tell herself that, you know, John's behavior was just typical teenage behavior, and once the school year really got going, John's attitude would surely improve. Still, it was something she intended to talk to Robert about when he came home that afternoon for his lunch break. Once Cindy was back at their home, she parked the car in the driveway and walked through the back door and down the short hallway into the kitchen. After cleaning up the breakfast dishes, she caught up on a few household chores and made sure that the clothes she planned to wear to work that afternoon were clean and ready to go.

Then she glanced at her watch and headed back into the kitchen to heat up some spaghetti sauce and pasta for lunch with Robert. Right at 12 p.m. that afternoon, just a half mile away, Robert would tell his boss that he was headed home for his one-hour-long lunch break. A few minutes later, Robert pulled his pickup truck into the driveway of his modest little house, he turned off the engine, and he walked up the steps to the front door. As he stepped into their small living room, he called out to let Cindy know that he was home. After she called back to him from the kitchen, Robert went to the first-floor bathroom to wash

up before he too headed into the kitchen to join his wife. As Cindy served him a hot plate of spaghetti, Robert listened as Cindy told him about how John had not wanted to go to school that morning and how upset he was when she dropped him off. And Robert would agree with his wife that, you know, this did seem like typical teenage behavior and that, yeah, probably as the school year wore on, his attitude would change. The pair would chat about John's behavior for the bulk of their meal, and then at about 12.45, Robert put his dishes in the sink, he thanked Cindy for his lunch, and then he told her he'd see her that afternoon after she got home from her shift at the donut

shop. A few minutes after Robert had left the house to return to work, Cindy was already washing the lunch dishes when she heard a knock on the back door. She glanced at her watch and wondered A few minutes after Robert had left the house to return to work, Cindy was already washing the lunch dishes when she heard a knock on the back door. She glanced at her watch and wondered who would be visiting her in the middle of the day. A little over an hour later, at around 2 p.m., Robert received a call at the car dealership where he worked. When his boss handed him the phone, Robert heard the voice of Cindy's coworker at the

donut shop. Sue Rogers told him that Cindy had not shown up for work, which was unlike her since she usually arrived for her shift early. Sue had tried calling the Borton house, but no one had picked up. Robert told Sue that, you know, maybe Cindy had taken a nap after lunch and she's just overslept. An hour later, at 3 p.m., Robert got another call from the donut shop. This time, Sue sounded worried. Cindy still had not shown up for work, and a co-worker who went by the Borton house had stopped at the back door to call out for Cindy, but didn't get an answer.

And they noticed that the door was open, but this co-worker didn't want to go inside without being invited, and so they left. Robert called home, and when Cindy did not pick up the phone, he asked his boss if he could leave work to go check on his wife. Just after 3.30 p.m., Robert pulled up to his house, and the first thing he noticed was that Cindy's car was still in the driveway. After parking his truck just behind her car, Robert walked up to the front door and let himself in, calling out his wife's name as soon as he stepped inside. When there was no answer, Robert began walking from the living room where he came in at the front of the house

toward the back of the house where the kitchen was. As he walked, he kept yelling out for Cindy, but it was silent. When Robert finally reached the kitchen and got a view of the kitchen, he came to a complete and sudden stop. Backing slowly away, Robert reached for a nearby phone on the wall and he called 911. When they picked up, he would tell police to come to his house right away because his wife had had a terrible accident. After hanging up the phone, Robert grabbed the family dog's collar off of a nearby hook, and he put it on the dog and led the dog outside to the backyard where he tied the dog up,

and then Robert walked around the outside of the house to the driveway in front, where he leaned against the side of Cindy's car, and there he waited patiently for the police to arrive. When the local police and ambulance arrived at the Borton house a few minutes later, Robert stepped forward to meet them. Then he stayed outside while the police and the medical technicians entered the front door and made their way into the kitchen and back. What they saw inside was so shocking and so gruesome that the chief of police, Richard Hunt, he knew this was not a crime or a crime scene that his local police force could handle.

He needed serious help from the state, and he needed that help right away. The kitchen was covered in blood, and lying on her back in the middle of the floor was Cindy Borton. She had been stabbed 29 times with various bloody weapons that were found near her body on the ground. Based on the sheer violence of the attack and the fact that the back door had been unlocked and undamaged, Chief Hunt was sure that this crime had been personal. He knew the crime statistics in Iowa. 85% of all homicides in the state were committed by people and family members who were close to the victim, which meant that

right away, Cindy's husband, Robert, and her son, John, were at the top of the list of potential suspects. And so as Chief Hunt and the rest of the local police force more or less waited for the state law enforcement to arrive so they could actually begin processing the scene, Chief Hunt decided to just go outside and speak with Robert. And so he went outside, he walked down the front steps, and he made his way over to Robert, who was still near Cindy's car, and Chief Hunt would ask him, Robert, do you have any idea who could have done this to your wife?

After Robert said, no, he didn't, the police chief was shocked when Cindy's husband went on to insist that his wife's death must have been an accident. But before the chief could continue questioning Robert, they were interrupted by the arrival of the Borton family's son, John, who was walking down the road towards the family house on his way home from school. John slowed down as he approached the house and took in the sight of the police cars and an ambulance parked along the curb and the yellow crime scene tape along the perimeter of their yard. When John reached his father,

Robert told him that something bad had happened to his mother and that she was dead. But as Robert reached out to put his hands on his son's shoulders, John dropped his backpack and just turned around and started running. Later, he would tell law enforcement that the news was so shocking he just couldn't handle it, and so that's why he ran. When John did return to his house almost two hours later, personnel from the state's Division of Criminal Investigation had finally arrived, and they were dusting for fingerprints and gathering evidence inside of the Borton house. And local law enforcement had fanned out around the neighborhood to ask the Borton's neighbors if they had seen anything unusual or suspicious that

day. By then, Robert had also told police exactly what he had done that day, starting with him leaving the house at 6.45am to go to work, and then arriving at work at 7am, and then coming home again at noon for lunch with Cindy and then leaving again and getting back to the car dealership at 1 p.m. Robert also described the calls he got from the donut shop saying that Cindy had not shown up for her 2 p.m. shift and he would describe to police what it was like when he arrived at his house at 3 30 p.m. to check to see if Cindy was okay. After John was back at the house, he would tell police that he had been at school from the time his mother had dropped him off in the morning until school let

out at 3.30 and then he had walked home. When the state investigators asked John if anything about that morning had seemed out of the ordinary, at first John said no, but then after a few seconds, he changed his answer to yes. He said that he and his mother had been arguing that morning because John didn't want to go to school that day, but he told police this was not anything serious. By the time John and Robert left the Borton property to go stay that night with friends that they knew from Robert's old church, word had spread throughout Shenandoah

that something unspeakable had happened to one of the town's most popular residents. Early the next morning on September 7th, there were police officers waiting at Robert's car dealership to check on Robert's alibi. And while Robert's timesheet confirmed the timeline Robert had given them, Robert's boss added one detail about that day that Robert had left out. 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. So join us on Legacy for Nina Simone. on Amazon Music ad-free, and you'll always be the first one 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. When Robert arrived back at the dealership after his lunch break, he had apparently changed his clothes. When asked if that was unusual, his boss would say, not really. Robert's boss would say that on Tuesdays, the car dealership's commercial cleaning service would come by to pick up dirty uniforms and rags. And so Robert's boss thought that, you know, maybe Robert had come to work that day in his work clothes. He had gotten a full morning of work in. And then when he went home for lunch, he had changed. And then when he had come back, maybe he had dropped off those dirty clothes from the morning with the cleaning service. While this seemed totally plausible, investigators couldn't help

but think that if Robert was involved in the murder of his wife, and if there was any evidence from the murder on those work clothes, well, that evidence was now being destroyed by a commercial washing machine. Meanwhile, investigators who had arrived at Shenandoah High School early that morning to check John's alibi also had some questions. It would turn out John's alibi was not as straightforward as he had made it seem. His teachers at his high school told police that yes, John had come to school the previous day, but he did not have any classes between 1 and 3 p.m., and no one could really verify his whereabouts at that time, and it just so happens that that was likely the

time frame when his mother was killed. And later that afternoon, a neighbor would tell police that they had seen a teenager running through the Bortons' backyard around the time that Cindy would have been killed. The neighbor couldn't give police much of a description of this teenager, except to say that the teenager was a boy, and that he had a thin build, and it looked like his hair was brown, which was basically a perfect description of John. And so, two days after Cindy's death, detectives brought John into the police station for questioning. When pressed about the 1 to 3 p.m. gap in his alibi, John would adamantly state that he never

left school grounds during that time period. He said he had been at school all day from the time his mother dropped him off until he walked home and discovered the police and ambulances in front of his house. When asked about his parents' relationship, John admitted that there was some tension there and that sometimes he heard his parents arguing mostly about money. But John also told police that his mother and father were very committed to each other and had been quite happy in the past. And so no matter what problems they might be having,

John was confident that his parents were not even close to getting divorced. He believed they would look to find a solution that kept them together. As for his own relationship with his mother, John told police that his mother had been everything to him and that it totally crushed him that his last interaction with her was that stupid fight about him not wanting to go to school. Despite Robert and John continuing to deny that they had anything to do with the murder, 48 hours into the investigation, the father and son were still the prime suspects. Three days after Cindy's murder, on September 9th, the results of her autopsy came back. Based on the fact that the spaghetti she had eaten for lunch on the day of her murder was completely undigested, police were able to narrow the time of her death

down to about 1 p.m. Meanwhile, investigators questioning teachers and students at Shenandoah High School were starting to believe that John had been telling the truth, that he really had been on school grounds on the day of the murder from 1 to 3 p.m. At Cindy's memorial service on September 13th, six days after her murder, investigators were waiting outside the church. Before scratching John off of their suspect list, they wanted to talk with John's best friend, Jim Bettis, to see if he could offer any additional insights into John's relationship with his mother. Jim had been a frequent visitor at the Borton household, and since Cindy's death, he had been spending a lot of time with John, comforting him. And so police were hopeful that if John was involved, you know,

maybe Jim would have picked up on it, and maybe Jim would be willing to talk about it. But according to Jim, there really were no problems between John and his mother. He said John loved his mother and that he would never hurt her. And as for that fight that they got in over John going to school or not that morning, Jim said that was totally insignificant and not a reflection of John and Cindy's actual relationship. After speaking with Jim and a few other friends of John's that came out of the memorial service, investigators felt satisfied that John really was not involved, and so they crossed his name off the suspect list. So with no other new leads,

and no further information on any teenager running across the Bortons' yard on the afternoon of the murder, investigators were now sure that the killer had to be Cindy's husband, Robert. So, about one week after the murder, investigators brought Robert into the interrogation room in the basement of the local police station, and then once he was sitting down, a special agent from the state's

Division of Criminal Investigation leaned in close to Robert and said, "'Bob, let's quit playing games. "'We both know Cindy was dead when you went back to work. But for the next three hours, Robert, who showed very little emotion and no signs of grief, refused to change his story. He said he had nothing to do with his wife's murder. He said that Cindy had seemed totally normal when he left for work early on the morning of the day she died, and when he came home for lunch that day at noon, she was alive. And she was also still alive when he left to go back to work

at 12.45 p.m. Before leaving the police station, Robert agreed to have his fingerprints collected, and he agreed to take a lie detector test. So, the very next day, a special agent drove Robert 150 miles northeast to Des Moines, where Robert was hooked up to a polygraph machine that would measure his physical reactions to a series of key questions. Questions like, did you hurt your wife? Or, did you kill your wife? And Robert would answer these questions the same way he had the day before in the basement interrogation room at the police station. No, I didn't hurt my wife. No, I didn't kill my wife. But this time, the polygraph machine showed that Robert was not being truthful. He didn't fail his test by much, but the results convinced investigators that despite Robert's denials, he must be the killer. And so the agent who had

administered the lie detector test pulled Robert aside for another round of intense questioning, telling him, hey, you failed this test, so you got to tell us the truth now. But Robert continued to say that he had nothing to do with it, and he even fell asleep during this interrogation. Even with this failed lie detector test, the police lacked hard evidence that linked Robert to the murder. And so even though they wanted to keep him, they couldn't. They had to let him go. And so a special agent drove Robert back to Shenandoah,

and on the drive, he turned to Robert and he said, You know, Bob, when this is all over and you've been arrested, charged, tried, and convicted, I would be honored if you confessed to me. But a week later, two and a half weeks after Cindy's murder, investigators got another piece of bad news when the state's crime lab reported that they had not been able to lift any fingerprints from the various murder weapons that had been found in Cindy's kitchen. They also were unable to pull any prints off of any other physical evidence that had been sent off for testing. As September inched towards October, and police had still not made any arrests, the residents of Shenandoah were

outraged and scared. Every day they called the police station and the mayor's office seeking updates, and local gun stores reported a serious uptick in sales. And in November, Robert, who was being questioned by police nearly every day and was being shunned by residents who now walked across the street to avoid talking with him, he packed up the family's belongings and moved with John to the town of Gladbrook, just outside of Des Moines, where he and Cindy had actually gotten married. Around this time, local reporters began asking the question that was on everyone's mind. How was it possible that in a town as small as Shenandoah, police could not figure out who had committed such a heinous crime? And on top of having a murderer on the loose, Shenandoah also

had an arsonist on the loose. Around the time Cindy was killed, someone had been intentionally setting fires around town, damaging an elementary school, as well as destroying a pickup truck. And while the arson attacks didn't appear to be connected to Cindy's murder, it did seem odd that there would be two violent crimes happening at the same time in a town that saw almost zero violent crime. And so some investigators began to suspect, just because of the rarity of violent crime, that the arson attacks and the murder had to be connected. And on November 30th of that year, their suspicions seemed to be confirmed. On that day, there was an arson attack at Shenandoah City Hall, except this time the arsonist left behind a note. On this

note, the arsonist warned police that the school fire and the truck fire and the murder of Cindy Borton were nothing compared to what was coming next. At the end of this note, the arsonist identified themselves as, quote, the Night Stalker. The Night Stalker was the name of a notorious murderer in California who had been captured three years earlier. But what really caught the attention of law enforcement was the fact that whoever had signed the note also left behind a fingerprint at the very bottom of the piece of paper the note was written on. While investigators waited on the results of the fingerprint analysis,

they returned to the scenes of the earlier arson attacks, and on a bridge near the school fire, police had found the letters NS painted on a concrete support. They believed these had to be the initials of the Night Stalker. By early December, the mayor of Shenandoah had received more than 200 calls from terrified residents demanding that the police find the arsonist slash killer before they murdered anyone else. But the Night Stalker lead came to an abrupt end a few weeks later when the fingerprint analysis not only failed to match Richard Borton's fingerprints, it didn't match any prints on file in any local, state, or federal law enforcement database. So unfortunately, both the arson cases and the murder case began to grow cold. It wasn't until five months after Cindy Borton's murder that local and state investigators would get the tip they needed to break the murder and arson cases wide

open. Around dinnertime on the cloudy, cool night of January 30th, 1989, the Shenandoah police chief, Richard Hunt, got a call from one of his officers. There was a teenager who had just walked into the police station and he wanted to talk with someone about the murder of Cindy Borton. A few minutes later, Chief Hunt was sitting in his office looking across his desk at 18-year-old Jack Johnson, one of John Borton's best friends and classmates, and one of the boys investigators had talked with back in September when they were confirming John's alibi for the time of his mother's murder. Jack told Chief Hunt that a few days earlier, on January 26th, Jack had been talking to someone, and during their conversation, Jack had asked this person what was the worst thing they had ever done. And this person paused for a moment, and then they said to Jack, I've done something that I'm pretty sure God will never forgive me for. Jack would go on to tell police all the awful details of what this person claimed to have done

that God would not forgive them for. Based on Jack's testimony, this is a reconstruction of what really happened to Cindy Borden. Back on the day that Cindy died, September 6th, 1988, she and her husband Robert were sitting in the kitchen eating spaghetti and talking about their son's recent bad behavior. After Robert was done eating, he put his dirty dishes in the sink, he thanked his wife for the food, and then he headed out the door to go back to work. As Cindy began washing the dishes, she heard a knock on the back door. Glancing at her watch, she saw it was already almost 1 p.m., which meant she didn't really have a lot of time

to visit with whoever this was before she had to step away and get ready for her 2 p.m. shift at the donut shop. And so feeling a little bit flustered, Cindy turned off the faucet and she dried her hands. Then she walked around the counter and she walked down the very short hallway that led to the back door of the house. And as she walked down this hallway, she looked through the glass of the back door and she saw who her visitor was. And even though she was pressed for time, she couldn't help herself. She smiled.

She was happy to see him. However, she was a little bit concerned that her visitor was not in school. But she opened the door and as soon as the door was open, her visitor immediately reassured her that he understood he was supposed to be in school, and he'd be there soon. He was just stopping by because he was hoping that Cindy wouldn't mind being a reference for a job that he was going to be applying for. And so Cindy said, yeah, of course I'll be a reference for your new job.

I'd love to hear about your new job. Come inside. Let's talk about it. And so her visitor stepped inside. And as they walked down the little hallway towards the kitchen, the visitor asked Cindy if it was okay if she got him a glass of water because he was really thirsty. And so Cindy said, yeah, no problem. Come in the kitchen. I'll get you water and we can talk about this new job. And so they start walking down this hallway and the visitor reaches into his pocket and he unfolds his pocket knife. And right as Cindy is stepping into the kitchen with her back to him,

he walks up behind her, he reaches around the front of her neck and he digs the blade into the front of her throat, cutting her neck wide open. Cindy instinctively reached up and tried to grab her neck to protect herself, but her attacker grabbed her hands, pulled them away, and then with the knife, he dug another trench across her throat.

And then the attacker backed up a couple of steps. Cindy, who was now pouring blood out of her neck, stumbled forward into the kitchen, and then she whipped around, clutching her throat, looking at her attacker. It was 18-year-old Jim Bettis, her son's best friend. But she didn't have time to process who was attacking her, because before long, as she was staring at him, he lunged at her again, slashing and cutting her.

And so she put her hands up over her face to protect herself, and he was digging the knife over and over again into her forearms and her hands and all over her body. And eventually she kind of slumped onto the kitchen counter after being stabbed and cut so many times. At which point Jim walked away from her and he walked over to a drawer that he knew from all of the visits he had made to this household to visit with John, he knew that in this drawer were kitchen knives and other utensils. And so as Cindy is laying right near him up against the counter pleading with him to stop and she's bleeding everywhere, he reaches into this drawer and he pulls out two of Cindy's sharpest knives and he sets them on the counter and then he pulls out two long serving forks that each had very pointed prongs at the end.

And so he turns around to look at Cindy and Cindy sees what he's doing. And so she tries to make a run for the phone to call 911. But before she could get there, Jim grabbed the two knives that he had just taken out of the drawer and he leapt in front of Cindy and began stabbing her over and over and over again on her sides, her front, her face, her hands, her legs, anywhere he could, he would stab her. And Cindy the whole time is trying to hit him and push him back, but there's nothing she can do. She's helpless. And then at some point, she kind of falls to the ground, but she's not dead yet. And so at that point, Jim put down the two knives he had just taken out of that drawer,

and he went back and he got the two serving forks. And then he went back over to Cindy, who was now crawling across the ground trying to get to the phone. And he began stabbing her in the back, in the back of the neck, on the side, over and over and over again. Despite multiple puncture wounds to her vital organs, Cindy was not dying. She was bleeding profusely. She was likely mortally wounded at this point. But she kept trying to move forward. She kept trying profusely. She was likely mortally wounded at this point. But she kept trying to move forward. She kept trying to fight back. She was doing anything she could to save herself.

But eventually, Jim overpowered her. He flipped her over onto her back. And then kneeling next to her, he got his tools lined up next to him. The two knives, his own knife, and the two serving forks, and systematically he began using these tools to begin cutting and slashing and digging into the front of her torso. And he would continue to do that until Cindy finally stopped moving. And when she did stop moving, he picked up one of the serving forks, he raised it up over his head, and then he brought it straight down into her neck, plunging it deep inside of her. And then he let go of the handle leaving the fork stuck into her neck then he

wiped off the handle of that fork as well as the other handles of the other murder weapons which he just left on the floor next to cindy with the exception of his folding knife he would take that then jim stood up and walked into the small bathroom near the kitchen, and he washed his hands and face, leaving faint traces of blood in the sink, but wiping his fingerprints from the faucet handles. Then Jim retraced his steps to the back door. He stepped outside, and he paused for just a minute before taking off at a run across the Bortons' yard. He would be seen by that neighbor, except the neighbor would only be able to describe him as a thin teenager with brown hair. Three hours later, Jim and his parents would be out driving around when they passed John, who had just bolted from the scene and the news of his mother's death.

Jim's parents slowed the car down, and Jim leaned out the window, and he comforted his friend, asking him if he wanted to come into the car and talk about what happened, you know, did he need a ride anywhere? But John, who was in a state of shock, would just shake his head and keep on running. Five months after killing his best friend's mother, Jim would confess his crime to his other best friend, Jack Johnson. Not only would Jim tell Jack exactly where he had disposed of his pocket knife, he would also draw a diagram for Jack showing him exactly where Jim had left Cindy's body inside the Bortons' kitchen. On the night of January 30th, which was the day that Jack Johnson had gone to police to tell them about Jim, he presented Jim's hand-drawn diagram and pushed it across the

desk to Chief Hunt. On February 2nd, 1989, police asked Jim Bettis to come to the police station for an interview. Once inside the interrogation room, Jim denied everything, saying he had never had that conversation with Jack Johnson. But after agreeing to let police collect his fingerprints, police determined Jim's prints matched the one found on the note left by the Night Stalker. After another round of questioning, Jim eventually admitted to being the arsonist, but it wasn't until he conclusively and massively failed his polygraph test that he would admit

to police that, yes, he had killed Cindy Borden. It would turn out Jim had nothing against Cindy. The person he really hated was his own father. According to Jim, his father had spent years deriding and criticizing him. For a while, Jim had taken out his anger by setting fires around town, but for the last several months, he'd come to despise his father so much that all Jim could think about was killing him. But Jim was afraid of his father and couldn't really imagine himself besting his father in any kind of physical confrontation. And Jim wasn't even sure he could go through with killing anyone. So he decided what he needed to do was practice. He needed to find someone who would be

easy to kill, someone vulnerable, someone who trusted him, someone who loved him. And the one person who fit that bill was his best friend's mother, Cindy Borton. As far back as Jim could remember, Cindy had been the one person he knew who was always glad to see him, and who always had time to talk with him, and who always offered him encouragement. She would be the last person to suspect that he could ever hurt her. And so he told himself, if he could kill Cindy, maybe he could also kill his father. The police were able to finally prove their case against Jim when they found his pocket knife that he had tossed under a local bridge. The knife still had Cindy's blood on it, along with Jim's fingerprints.

On November 13th, 1989, Jim Bettis, who was 19 years old at the time, was convicted of first-degree murder and sentenced to life in prison without parole. In a letter Jim wrote from prison, he told a relative that when he, quote, killed that lady, I guess I went too far and pretended that she was my dad. By 1990, two years after Cindy's murder, Robert and John had moved again, this time to Eldora, Iowa, a town of 3,000 residents located about three and a half hours northeast of Shenandoah. Robert would remarry, and he would find work at a plastics recycling plant. State and local law enforcement in Shenandoah defended the intensive investigation techniques they used with Robert, saying that from the start, he was their only viable suspect. Now 52 years old, Cindy's son John wants people to

remember his mother for her life, not her death. He would tell reporters in April of 2022 that she was a wonderful, wonderful person, and I only miss her on days that end in the letter Y. 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 offer to water the 5 Star Review Button's favorite flowers while they're gone on vacation. But instead of watering them, give them no water and leave them in the blazing sun. Also, please subscribe to the Mr. Ballin Podcast on Spotify, Apple Podcasts, Amazon, Google, and anywhere else you get your podcasts.

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