MrBallen Podcast: Strange, Dark & Mysterious Stories - Take Out (PODCAST EXCLUSIVE EPISODE)

Episode Date: March 9, 2026

On June 20th, 2004 a restaurant manager stood at the host stand of a seafood spot in Orange County, California. It was the dinner rush, and he was on take-out duty. So when a customer came in to ask about their to-go order, the manager hurried off to grab it. He found the order, and carried it back out. And as he rang the customer up, he could tell they were in a hurry. They kept looking over their shoulder and tapping their fingers on the counter. So the manager tried to finish up the sale quickly, and ran their credit card. And after everything was done, the customer basically ran out – which was a little strange, but the manager quickly got distracted again with another order coming in, and shoved the signed card receipt into the register like he always did. He had no idea that he’d have to find it again in just a few days… and hand it over to the police.   You can WATCH all new & exclusive MrBallen podcast episodes on my YouTube channel, just called "MrBallen" - https://www.youtube.com/c/MrBallen If 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 @mrballen Hosted by Simplecast, an AdsWizz company. See pcm.adswizz.com for information about our collection and use of personal data for advertising.

On June 20th, 2004, a restaurant manager stood at the host stand of a seafood spot in Orange County, California. It was the dinner rush, and he was on takeout duty. So when a fairly frantic customer came in asking about their to-go order, the manager quickly hurried off to grab it. He found the order, and he carried it back. And as he rang this customer up, he could tell this customer was in a huge hurry. They kept looking over their shoulder and tapping their fingers on the counter. And after everything was done, the customer basically took them. the food and literally ran out. Now, the manager definitely thought this customer was acting

really strange. He had never seen anybody sprint out of the restaurant before. But quickly, he got distracted with another order and kind of forgot about the whole thing. That is, until a few days later, when police showed up, asking the manager to tell them everything they could remember about that strange customer. 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 come to the right place because that's all we do. So if that's of interest to you, the next time the follow button has a blinding headache, offer them some aspirin. But don't tell them, it's not really aspirin. It's just really strong laxatives. Okay, let's get into today's story. On Monday,

June 21st, 2004, 72-year-old Jane Thompson drove her car down a road through the city of Laguna Nigel, California. She was on her way home from a weekend trip through Los Angeles, which was about 50 miles north of Laguna Nigel. And because L.A. was so chaotic and full of activity and constant stimulation, Jane actually really appreciated this commute back home, you know, this 50-mile drive. It was a time to be by herself and sort of decompress from being in the city. So Jane used to live in Los Angeles, where she had worked for decades in the film industry. But she had retired and moved to Laguna Nogal seven years earlier.

And this move had been like a total lifestyle change for Jane, because her career in L.A. had been fast-paced and exciting. You know, she'd been an assistant to some really important people in Hollywood, and then also she was an award-winning producer, and then a decorator for various Hollywood celebrities. I mean, it was sort of very glamorous what she was doing. So even though Jane was generally a pretty quiet person who appreciated her alone time, like driving in the car right now,

it still had actually been really hard to completely transition to the slow pace of life outside the glitz and glamour of Hollywood, especially because her girlfriend, Marion Reese, still lived in L.A. Jane had known Marion for decades at this point. They'd started out as co-workers because Marion owned a production company and Jane had produced a lot of projects for her. Then at some point, years ago, their relationship turned from a, you know, working friendship into a full-blown romance and they'd been involved ever since.

And even though now they lived over an hour's drive apart, they still spent a lot of time together. Jane was actually going back to L.A. again on Friday because they had tickets to the opera, and then also Marion was going to be joining Jane on a cruise to Europe the following week. But for right now, Jane just kind of looked out her window as she drove by a cluster of houses. And she noticed outside one of those houses she saw her friend, Mary Larkin, gardening in her front yard. Jane had known Mary for years, and she was really Jane's closest friend in town. They'd spent countless nights talking and drinking wine together, sometimes with Mary's other next-door neighbor.

Karen, who had also become a close friend. So naturally, Jane slowed down in her car and she rolled down her window and she called out to Mary to say hello and to remind her that they were due for a wine night sometime soon, you know, before she left for her cruise. And Mary, after hearing this, you know, nodded enthusiastically and said she would for sure give Jane a call. After that, the two women said the goodbyes and then Jane kept on driving. And a few minutes later, Jane saw her condo complex's entrance up ahead and so she threw on her blinker and turned in. And pretty soon, She was surrounded by mostly identical units with orange-tiled roofs that were all packed really close together. But Jane loved her neighborhood. It was on this quiet hillside and less than four miles from the ocean,

and she just felt completely comfortable there. It was the kind of place where people left their doors unlocked and everybody seemed so warm and welcoming. And this meant a lot to Jane, because she didn't have any kids or living relatives. She was kind of on her own. So it was nice to feel like her neighbors were all looking out for her. As Jane pulled her car into the garage and got out, she looked across the street and saw her teenage neighbor, Sam Nelson, playing basketball in his driveway. Jane tried to get his attention and waved to him just to say hi. But when he looked over and saw her doing that, he kind of put his head down and quickly rushed inside his home. And Jane, you know, she understood why. Clearly he was embarrassed. So Sam was kind of a troubled kid.

He had actually broken into Jane's house just this past Friday while she was out. and he took some of her jewelry. But he wasn't as clever as he thought he was, and Jane had quickly figured out it was him. So, before leaving for her recent L.A. trip, she'd confronted him about it and told him to never do it again. And he was obviously mortified. But she had also told Sam that, you know,

she was not going to call the police here. After all, Sam was 15 years old, and he had just made a really dumb mistake. And in Jane's mind, you know, Sam was a part of her beloved community. And so even though he had done something bad to her, she still wanted to look out for him. Plus, really, he hadn't taken anything that was particularly valuable or anything she really cared

about, so she felt like she was just giving him a second chance, and this was no big deal. Now, Sam was obviously very appreciative at the time after realizing he was not going to get in any real trouble here, but it was also clear now that he really didn't want anything to do with Jane. I mean, he was just embarrassed at the sight of her waving to him. But, you know, for Jane, she figured maybe that was just as well. And so, after seeing Sam disappear into his house, Jane just shrugged, turned around, and headed inside her own house. Jane spent the next few days doing things around town, volunteering at the library and taking walks with her weekly walking group.

And before she knew it, it was almost time to head back to L.A. On Thursday evening, June 24th, so the night before she was set to go to L.A., Jane stood in her kitchen, making some pasta, and thinking about what outfit she was going to wear for the opera in L.A. the next night. And then after she cooked and ate her dinner, she laid on the couch to watch some TV. Now, she had planned to only watch a little bit and then get some packing done. But pretty quickly, she felt her eyelids get heavy, and soon she was fast asleep. Three days later, on Sunday afternoon, Jane's friend and neighbor Mary Larkin, the woman she had seen when she was driving home from L.A., drove up to Jane's house with their other friend, Karen Hamara, and they jumped right out of the car.

Mary had an undeniable knot in her stomach, which had only been getting tighter by the minute, ever since Jane's girlfriend, Marian Reese, had called earlier to say that Jane had never showed up in L.A. for their trip to the opera, and now she was not answering her phone. And when she heard this, Mary immediately became very worried, because, you know, Jane just didn't flake on people without calling. And so given Jane's age, it seemed entirely possible that maybe she had an accident or medical emergency at home. and needed help, and that's why nobody could get in touch with her. So after she, herself, tried calling Jane a few times, but with no luck, Mary had gone over to her neighbor Karen's

house and asked her if she would come with her to go to Jane's house, just to make sure Jane was okay. And on their drive over, Mary had convinced herself, despite that feeling in her gut, that, you know, everything would be okay. But now, as she went up Jane's driveway, she could see there were a few newspapers piled up at the end of it, which made her even more anxious that something was wrong here. And so Mary hurried right up the driveway, went to the front door, and began knocking. But as she and Karen stood there, you know, they couldn't hear anything inside the house. Nobody was coming to the door. And so finally they left the porch and went around to the back of Jane's house to try her back door. And when the two women got into Jane's backyard, Mary froze.

Because she could see the sliding glass door that led into Jane's living room was clearly wide open. And so Mary and Karen, from right there in the yard, just began yelling, through the open door for Jane. But there was no answer. Eventually, Karen began to walk towards the open door like she was going to go inside, but Mary instinctively grabbed her and just said, don't. You know, she was shaking and could barely think straight, but Mary felt like they just should not go in there, that it was not safe. And so instead, the two women ultimately backed away and went to go call the police. A few minutes later, Mary and Karen stood out on the street in front of Jane's house, watching as a police cruiser pulled up.

The women immediately went over to the two deputies that got out and they tried to explain the situation, you know, that their friend was not responding to phone calls and that their back door was wide open, which just seemed really strange and nobody knows what's going on. And so the officers asked Mary and Karen to take them to the back of the house where this open door was. And so they walked around the side yard, they went back there. And when they got there, Mary watched as one of the officers just walked up to the open door and stuck his head inside and began to look around. And as soon as he did that, Mary could see his body began to tense up like he had seen something inside. Mary blurted out like, hey, what's going on? What's wrong? But the officer, looking in the home, he didn't respond. Instead, he turned to his partner and told him to secure the scene and call for backup. There was someone inside, and he could already tell they were deceased.

Just about an hour later, at around 6 p.m. on June 27, 2004, Detective Daniel Salcedo stopped his cruiser in front of a condo. in Laguna Nigel, California. Dispatch hadn't told him much, just that an older woman had been found dead in her condo. When Salcedo got out of his car, he could see that there was police tape all over the condo's front door and the driveway. And just inside the perimeter,

there was an officer speaking to two women who were crying and seemed very visibly upset. Dozens of other officers and crime scene technicians were also scattered around the area collecting evidence. And one deputy saw Salcedo and hurried over to give him an update. So the deceased woman had been identified as the owner of the condo, 72-year-old Jane Thompson. And at first glance, it very much appeared like she had been attacked. She had been murdered.

Her two friends, the two women who were very upset talking to police, had called the police for a wellness check. And the officers who responded had found Jane lying in the living room. They've been able to get through her sliding back door because the door was already open. Salcedo glanced back over at the two women in the driveway who were still talking. into the police, and Salcedo told the deputy to make sure they stuck around, because after he took a look inside, he wanted to speak to them as well. As the deputy hurried off to do what he was told, Salcedo walked around to the back of the house. And when he got there, he saw that not only was the sliding door open, but there really weren't any signs of forced entry around it, which could mean that it had been

left unlocked, or that maybe Jane knew her attacker and let them in. And so Salcedo stepped inside the condo. And right away, he saw there were all these technicians all over the place working hard to gather evidence and process the scene. And also what he saw was blood spatter all over the walls and all over the furniture. And then when he looked down at the floor, he saw Jane's body. She was lying face down between her couch and coffee table with a large pool of blood around her head. Salcedo crouched down next to her to get a better look, and he saw her wounds were just brutal. Her head had been so badly pulverized that Solcedo could not only see her skull, the actual bone, but he could actually see the brakes in her skull. Her skull was shattered. Now, Salcedo would have to wait for the autopsy

to be sure, but to Salcedo, it was very clear that somebody must have beaten this woman with some kind of heavy object over and over and over again. A couple of minutes later, Salcedo stood back up. based on the extent of Jane's wounds, it seemed pretty obvious to him that this was a frenzied, rage-filled attack, and that it likely had happened really quickly, or maybe, you know, the attack happened in such a way that Jane was completely caught off guard. Because aside from the awful trauma to Jane's head, Jane didn't appear to have really any other wounds. So it didn't seem like she tried to fight back or defend herself. And aside from the blood spatter, the room around her didn't show any signs of a struggle. It's like she just got destroyed right here and blood went everywhere.

Salcedo left Jane's body and searched the rest of her condo. He went in her bedroom, searched her closets, went in the office, went in her kitchen, but there were no signs of anybody ransacking the condo. There was no obvious theft that had taken place, at least at first glance. You know, there were expensive electronics that were still out and not claimed. So to Salcedo, at least right now, he was pretty sure this was not a robbery gone wrong. As he wrapped up his initial walkthrough of the condo, an officer called Salcedo back into the kitchen. And when Salcedo went over,

he saw the officer was standing by the landline's answering machine. The officer told Salcedo there were a bunch of new messages on there, and they started the morning of Friday, June 25th. Now, Salcedo was very excited to hear that because that gave them something of a timeline to work off of. Because if Jane had stopped answering her phone by, you know, Friday morning, then that means she could have died maybe overnight on that Thursday the 24th or maybe even in the morning before that first message came through on the 25th. At least that would be the latest she could have died based on the message. So Salcedo told the officer to be sure to log the tape into evidence. Then Salcedo went back to the living room where Jane's body was and all the texts were. And he just stood there with his arms crossed thinking about, you know, what's he going to do next? Considering the attack had all the signs of being highly emotional, Salcedo felt confident that Jane's killer was someone who knew her and was deeply angry with her. So the first people he wanted to speak to were those that Jane was closest to, like family, friends, or maybe even romantic partners.

Jane appeared to live alone, so he hoped other people in the neighborhood, or maybe those two women who called the police, could tell him more about Jane's personal life, her relationships, and give him a place to start. So Salcedo grabbed a few officers and they headed outside to begin asking some questions. When he got outside, Salcedo could see there was now an audience of people, a crowd of who Salcedo assumed were residents of this complex that were gathered at the edge of the police perimeter. And Salcedo understood why. Brutal homicides like this one rarely happened in this area, if ever. There was probably going to be a lot of panic and rumors in this community because of it. And based on the literal layout of this complex, the fact that all these condos are basically on top of each other,

he knew that those rumors would likely spread really quickly. But also, you know, the fact these condos were tightly packed together gave Salcedo an advantage. You know, very likely because people are living on top of each other, somebody might have heard or seen something that could help break this case wide open. Just then, another police cruiser pulled up in front of the house, and a detective named Brian Sutton stepped out of the car. And when Salcedo saw who it was, he immediately felt relieved. Salcedo worked extremely well with Detective Sutton.

And interviews were sort of like their specialty. As a duo, they had an instinct for asking the right questions that got people talking. So Salcedo hurried over to Sutton and quickly told him everything he'd learned so far. And once Sutton was up to speed, they went right over to the two women who would call 911. Salcedo was eager to interview them as witnesses, but he also was not ruling out the idea that they could also be suspects. He was sure this had to be a personal crime, and they clearly had some kind of relationship with Jane since they'd come over to check on her. When Salcedo reached the women, he could tell they had calmed down quite a bit from when he had first seen them when he first arrived.

And the women, you know, they were composed enough to tell him their names, Mary and Karen. They then explained that they were good friends with Jane and they'd come over to check on her. Because recently, Mary had gotten a call from Jane's girlfriend, Mary and Reese, who lived in L.A., and Marion had been worried because Jane had not shown up in L.A. for plans they had. And so she was trying to find out where she was, was she okay? And so Mary and Karen had gone to see if she was okay. This made Salcedo immediately perk up, and he asked Mary for Marion's information. As he jotted down Marion's phone number, Sutton asked the two women where they were on the night of the 24th or early morning of the 25th.

So that was two nights ago and then also yesterday morning. and both of them said they had alibis. Now, the detectives would have to confirm their alibes because anybody can make up an alibi. But for right now, Salcedo was comfortable ruling Mary and Karen out as suspects. They both seemed genuinely stunned by Jane's murder. And while it did seem like they were good friends with Jane, he wasn't sure they had the kind of intense closeness

that might have led to such a vicious attack. So he told the two women they could go home. And then Salcedo nodded to Sutton, and the two of them, left the women and headed towards the crowd of neighbors to ask some more questions. The next morning, Monday, June 28th, and Salcedo was behind the wheel of his cruiser with Sutton in the passenger seat. They were almost at the end of their long drive up to Los Angeles to interview Jane's girlfriend, Marian Reese. Solcedo was eager to get her statement, because right now,

they didn't have that many other leads. The forensics team hadn't found any DNA or fingerprints at the scene to test against future suspects. And the canvas of Jane's condo complex the night before really hadn't yielded much either. They'd learned that no one had seen Jane since Thursday, which backed up the timeline they'd already gotten from the answering machine. But none of the neighbors heard or saw anything strange on that Thursday night. And according to her neighbors, Jane did not have any obvious tension with anybody in the community. She generally kept to herself, but was really well liked by every.

everyone who met her. But Salcedo, you know, again, from what he had just seen at the crime scene, felt sure that someone out there had to have had a problem with Jane. He'd seen the autopsy that morning, and it confirmed that Jane, unsurprisingly, had died from the wounds to her head. But it also told him something else. She'd been hit more than a dozen times. It was complete overkill. And to Salcedo, it meant the killer had to have been driven by some kind of intense emotion, like rage or maybe greed, which was why they were now making this drive out to L.A. to speak with Marion, who Salcedo felt, you know, based on her relationship to Jane, she was the strongest suspect they had because romance can make you do crazy things. Also, Salcedo had done some digging into Jane's finances

the night before, and he found out she had a life insurance policy worth $100,000, and Marion Reese was the sole beneficiary, which meant Marion definitely had something to gain financially, at least, from Jane's death. So as they pulled up to Marion's house, Salceda was thinking, you know, maybe, maybe we found our killer. A few minutes later, the detective sat on a couch in Marion Reese's living room.

The home was on the small side, even by L.A. standards, but it was very tastefully decorated. Marion sat down across from them in an armchair, and when they looked at her, they could see her eyes were very red and puffy, like she'd been crying. She also had a glass of water in her hand

that she kept lifting up like she was going to take a sip, but then she would just place it back down again without taking a sip. It was like she didn't know what she was doing. Marion had clearly already heard about Jane's death. And to Salcedo, she really was showing every sign of genuinely being in shock. So he wanted to be very careful with his line of questions and make sure, you know, he didn't overwhelm her. If she just shut down, he might not get the information that he really needed.

So after a minute, Salcedo began by just asking Marion how she knew Jane. And Marion, she took a deep breath. And then with a very shaky voice, she explained that they had known each other for almost 50 years. They used to work together. Jane had done a lot of producing for Marion's production company. As Marion went on to describe more about how they met each other and how it kind of transitioned from working together to romance, Salcedo could sense that Marion was kind of calming down. And she was calming down to the point where he felt like now he could introduce the tough stuff.

So he turned and he nodded to Sutton. And at that point, Sutton asked Marion if she knew that Jane had named her, Marion, as the sole beneficiary on her life insurance policy. And Marion immediately gasped, and she said she had no idea Jane had done that. But she also said it did sort of make sense. She said that Jane really didn't have any family, and in some ways, Marion was her family, or at least was her closest relationship. Now, Salcedo felt like Marion's reaction to this was very earnest, but he couldn't be sure. So we pressed her some more, and he asked her where she was last Thursday night when presumably, you know, Jane was killed. But Marianne just said she was with friends all night in L.A.

And she gave Salcedo all the phone numbers of these friends so he and his partner could confirm it. They talked for a while longer as Marion went over the details of how Jane missed their opera date on Friday and then stopped returning her calls. And it all lined up with what Jane's friend Mary had told them. So eventually, Salcedo and Sutton stood up to leave. Over an hour later, Detective Salcedo and Sutton were back in Laguna Nigel, California, and they parked their cruiser in front of Jane's condo. On their drive back from Marion's house in L.A., the detectives had called some of Marion's friends to confirm her alibi, and they all confirmed that on the night Jane was killed, they were with her,

and she was in L.A. And so now Salcedo had to admit that Marion was looking less and less like a suspect. So now the detectives were back at Jane's condo to look into a number. working theory about what might have happened here. Maybe Jane's murder was a hate crime. So remember, this was back in 2004 when being a homosexual was just not as widely accepted as it is today. And so their theory was, you know, maybe one of Jane's neighbors had seen Marion, Jane's girlfriend, visiting, or maybe heard about their relationship, and they didn't like it, and so they lashed out. And then also strengthening the idea that, you know, one of the neighbors could have done this, was the fact that it was sort of common knowledge in this neighborhood that

most people left their doors unlocked. And so it sort of strengthened the idea that maybe a neighbor did this, you know, maybe because of their hate towards Jane and her way of life. However, Sutton and Salcedo knew that actually investigating this theory was going to be extremely challenging. There were 144 houses in the complex. And so conducting a thorough investigation of every resident of all those houses was just going to take a lot of. of time. But they didn't have any other options, so the detectives got to work, and they went to the first house next to Jane's and knocked. A few hours later, Salcedo and Sutton returned to the Orange County Sheriff's Department. They had spent most of the afternoon talking to people who lived in Jane's

condo complex, and while they hadn't talked to everyone, they already had to admit that their hate crime theory was looking sort of like a wash. Most people didn't even know Jane was in a relationship at all, since her girlfriend, Marion, lived in a different city. so they didn't see her. And also, there was just nothing anybody in the neighborhood said that made the detectives think that Jane was being targeted really for any reason. But a few people had mentioned that recently there had been some burglaries in the complex, which was completely unheard of in a place like Laguna Nigel. Still, there was a huge difference between somebody breaking in and stealing some stuff and breaking in and bludgeoning someone to

death. But it was a lead. And that's what Solceda was thinking about as he was. he and Sutton walked towards their desks. But before they got there, Salcedo had this epiphany. And he just stopped in his tracks and he turned to Sutton and said, turn around, we have to go back to the evidence room. I think everything we need to solve this case might be in the building with them right now. The following day, Salcedo and Sutton pulled up in front of a restaurant called the Beach House. The previous afternoon, Salcedo had suggested that he and Sutton go back to the evidence room

and listen to Jane's answering machine tapes. Now, to be clear, they had already listened to the tapes before, but none of the messages had seemed particularly important. But now, based on what they'd learned over the course of their investigation, they realized that those messages actually told them a lot. And so Salcedo and Sutton had spent hours re-listening to the tapes and gathering even more evidence to confirm what was on it. And even though they were pretty sure all this evidence they were getting told them who killed Jane, they still needed one more person. piece to fall into place. Now they had a book of photos with them, and they knew for a fact that one of these photographs was of their killer, and they just needed somebody in this restaurant to verify it. So as soon as they got inside, they found the manager and explained why they were there,

and then they asked him, hey, would you mind looking at these photos to see if you recognize anyone? The manager looked a bit alarmed, but he ultimately agreed and said he would. So they went into the back room, they opened up their book of photos, and the manager looked, and pretty, you much immediately, he pointed to one picture. And when Salcedo saw the person the manager was pointing to, he knew they'd crack the case. Based on forensic evidence and also a confession, here is what investigators believe happened to Jane Thompson in the early morning hours of June 25th, 2004. The killer, clad in dark clothes and gloves and also holding a hammer, stood in the darkness right outside of Jane's back sliding glass doors. Now, the killer had already been to Jane's house a few

times that night. But each time they had come earlier, they had ultimately chickened out and left, because when they would get there, they would look in the back door and they would see Jane asleep on the couch in front of the TV. But that was a problem. They needed Jane to leave the room and go to her bedroom to go sleep in there. But she wasn't doing that. But this time, as they stood outside the glass doors, they knew they had to go in there or they would never get what they wanted from Jane, even if she was right there on the couch. So the killer took a deep breath. So the killer took a deep breath, and then reach forward and tried to open the back door. And it slid right open just as they expected.

It was unlocked. Once it was open, the killer very carefully, very quietly, stepped inside and made their way over to the couch where Jane was. They wanted to check to make sure Jane was still asleep. But as the killer is hovering over Jane looking down at her, she's on her back on the couch, the killer practically fainted when Jane opened her eyes and looked right at them. And the killer was so surprised and so scared that they instinctively lifted up their hammer and brought it down on Jane's head.

And the blow was so vicious that it sent Jane tumbling down onto the floor, and it also sent blood flying into the air, some of which landed in the killer's mouth. And to the killer, it tasted so bad. And in fact, it infuriated them, this bad taste. It infuriated them so much that it was like their mind. just went blank. And they just began slamming her head with the hammer over and over again. And when the killer finally stopped and kind of calmed down for a second, they just stared at Jane's destroyed body in total shock. Then they backed away and realized the hammer, the murder weapon, was dripping blood everywhere. So they grabbed the head of the hammer with their gloved hand to

kind of stop it from dripping and then ran right back out the sliding door. The killer hurried across the street outside, tossing the hammer into the trash as they went. And when they finally got to their home, they stripped off their clothes, balled them up, and then tried to decide where to hide them. And as they thought about that, they looked out their bedroom window at the house across the street, where they'd just killed the one person who had given them a second chance. It would turn out, Jane was murdered by a child, her 15-year-old neighbor, Sam Nelson. Sam had actually broken into Jane's house more than once. He'd broken in repeatedly and stolen a lot of things from her, including her credit cards.

That was what the phone messages had been about. Jane's credit card company had called her back after she had reported a series of fraudulent charges. And one of those charges was at that restaurant that the investigators visited with the photo lineup, and the manager, when he looked at the photos, recognized Sam, because Sam had been in there recently. The reason Sam was stealing from Jane and also from other people in the neighborhood was ultimately just because he was trying to keep up with his appearance. He used the stolen credit cards and money to buy food and items that would, in his mind, impress his wealthy classmates.

On the night of Jane's murder, Sam did not go in there with the intention of killing her. He went in there with the intention of robbing her. But for whatever reason, when she opened her eyes and saw him, he sort of panicked, hit her once with a hammer, the blood went in his mouth, his mind went blank, and then suddenly he's beating her to death. Sam was arrested and eventually sentenced to 25 years to life in prison for Jane's murder and also for multiple counts of burglary. His earliest eligible release date is in 27. 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. Ballin podcast, Strange, Dark and Mysterious Stories, is hosted and executive produced by me, Mr. Ballin. Our head of writing is Evan Allen, produced by Jeremy Bone. This episode was written by Kate Murdoch. 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 Whit Lacassio and Cole Licassio. Additional audio editing by Jordan Stidham. Production Coordination by Samantha Collins,

production support by Antonio Manada and Delana Corley, artwork by Jessica Klogstenkiner, theme song called Something Wicked by Ross Bugden. Thank you for listening to the Mr. Ballin podcast. And just a reminder, every new and exclusive episode we put out on the Mr. Ballin podcast, you can also now watch on the Mr. Ballin YouTube channel that very same day. And trust me, some of these stories you truly have to see to believe. Again, my YouTube channel is just called Mr.

ballin. If you want to listen to episodes one week early and ad free, you can subscribe to SiriusXM Podcast Plus on Apple Podcasts or visit seriousxm.com slash podcast plus to listen with Spotify or another app of your choice. So that's going to do it. I really appreciate your support. Until next time, see ya.