MrBallen Podcast: Strange, Dark & Mysterious Stories - The Black Sheep

Episode Date: April 20, 2023

Today’s podcast features 2 stories about “dysfunctional families.” The audio from both of these stories has been pulled from our main YouTube channel and has been remastered for today's... episode.Story names, previews & links to original YouTube videos:#2 -- "Morning Routine" -- One of the most brutal true crime cases ever (Original YouTube link -- https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ZUOehfFdj1Y)#1 -- "Lost Cause" -- 70 year old man makes a SHOCKING confession on Reddit that quickly goes viral (Original YouTube link -- https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=p3e2NQdki-8)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.

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Starting point is 00:00:00 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. Today's podcast features two stories about dysfunctional families. The audio from both of these stories has been pulled from our main YouTube channel and has been remastered for today's episode. The links to the original YouTube videos are in the description. The first story
Starting point is 00:00:25 you'll hear is called Morning Routine, and it's about one of the most brutal true crime cases we have ever covered. The second story you'll hear is called Lost Cause, and it's about a 70-year-old man who made a shocking confession on Reddit that quickly went viral. But before we get into today's stories, 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 deliver a strange, dark, or mysterious story to the Amazon Music Follow button, but in PDF format. Okay, let's get into our first story called Morning Routine.
Starting point is 00:01:28 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?
Starting point is 00:01:45 Careless whispers? Okay, last one. It's not Andrew Ridgely. Yep, that's right. It's Stone Cold icon George Michael. From teen pop sensation to one of the biggest solo artists on the planet, join us for our new series, George Michael's Fight for Freedom. From the outside, it looks like he has it all. But behind the trademark
Starting point is 00:02:06 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. Add free on Wondery Plus on Apple Podcasts or the Wondery app. 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.
Starting point is 00:02:45 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. In November of 2004, 52-year-old Peter Porco and his wife, 54-year-old Joan Porco, were like so many other middle-aged, middle-class Americansold Peter Porco and his wife, 54-year-old Joan Porco, were like so many other middle-aged, middle-class Americans. They lived in Del Mar, New York, in a comfortable two-story
Starting point is 00:03:31 home, and they worked for a living. Peter was an appellate court clerk, and Joan was a speech pathologist. They had been married for over 30 years, and they had two sons. Christopher was a 21-year-old student at the University of Rochester, and his brother, Jonathan, was a 23-year-old naval officer stationed at a submarine base in Groton, Connecticut. On Monday, November 15, 2004, Peter woke up to start his typical Monday morning work routine. He got up, he got out of bed, he went to the bathroom, he relieved himself, he looked in the mirror, he shaved, he got dressed in his work clothes. He went downstairs. He put on a pot of coffee. While the coffee was brewing, he unloaded the dishwasher and then put the dirty dishes into the dishwasher and started it. He wanted to get his newspaper. So he went outside. He got his newspaper, but he realized he locked himself out of the front door. So he got the spare key out from underneath the mat, opened the front door, went inside. He sat down, had some coffee, read
Starting point is 00:04:22 the newspaper. After a few minutes, he put his coffee cup in the sink, he packed himself a lunch in his lunchbox, and then he headed for the door to head for work. Peter was known as a very reliable employee who was also very punctual and rarely missed work. So when he didn't get to work that Monday morning, the court was a little bit confused. They called him to see if he was okay. He didn't pick up. So they dispatched a court officer to go make sure he was okay. And so the officer arrives at his house. He sees cars in the driveway. The front door's shut.
Starting point is 00:04:50 He goes up. He knocks on the door. Nobody answers. He tries the handle of the front door. He realizes it's open. So he opens the door and he yells out, hey, I'm just looking for Peter. And the door hits something on the ground. Pokes his head inside and looks down.
Starting point is 00:05:02 And there on the ground, the thing blocking the door is Peter Porco's body. He's clearly deceased and he clearly has a massive head wound. The court officer steps outside immediately, calls 911. Local police show up. They go inside and sure enough, Peter is dead. They go upstairs and they find his wife, Joan, in bed, also with a massive head wound, but she was still alive. Joan was rushed to a hospital where she underwent emergency surgery and then was put into a medically induced coma. Meanwhile, the police began their investigation into who could have done this. They quickly discovered that the home's alarm system had been smashed and a phone line, because there still was landlines at the time, had been cut from the outside, and a screen in one of the windows had been slashed that looked like the way someone climbed into the house.
Starting point is 00:05:49 However, nothing appeared to have been stolen, because police almost immediately found Peter's wallet with money inside of it still sitting in the house, as well as very expensive jewelry that belonged to Joan still sitting in the house. As they continued to search the house, they discovered a fireman's axe that belonged to the Porcos hidden inside of one of the bedroom closets. And it was very clear this was the murder weapon. The Porco sons had been away during this attack. John was on his submarine in Connecticut and Chris was at the University of Rochester. And in fact, Chris found out about the attack on his parents when he saw a news report. Because this story of this innocent, typical-seeming
Starting point is 00:06:25 American couple in a quiet suburb getting struck down by some axe-wielding maniac had gone totally viral, and it was all over the news. And so Chris called the police to get more information about his parents' death. Here's the recording. My name is Chris Borgo. I was just called by the Times Union saying that my parents were found dead this afternoon. I was wondering if you had any information on me. Hey Chris, whereabouts are you? I'm at school in Rochester, New York. Okay, you're in Rochester? Yes.
Starting point is 00:06:58 Okay, and you're hearing from the Times Union? Yeah, they said my parents were found, I guess, I don't know, they didn't say how or anything. So you will be here probably, you're going to go right to Albany Med? I don't know, I don't even know where my mom is. Yeah, she is at Albany Med. Okay, do you know her condition? No, because I haven't talked to her. Let me give you my pager number. As you can tell, Chris is extremely emotional. He's beside himself, he can barely speak,
Starting point is 00:07:25 he's so upset about what's happened to his parents No Actually, he sounds as calm as if he's ordering a pizza because Chris Porco was actually a psychopath and he was the one who attacked his parents with the axe As it turns out Chris was failing at school and taking out huge loans in his father's name by forging his signature His father found out about it So mr. And mrs. Porco write their son a strongly worded email where they tell him this behavior has to stop and they're very disappointed in him, but they love him and they will help him get back on his feet. Chris responded by driving home in the middle of the night, sneaking into his house and attacking his parents with an axe.
Starting point is 00:08:00 While this case is already disturbing and horrific and tragic, it's what happens to Chris's father after the attack that makes it one of the most brutal cases of all time. After being struck 16 times in the head and laying unconsciously in his bed as his son snuck out of his house, Peter suddenly sat up and began his morning routine. He got dressed. He went to the bathroom. He shaved. He went downstairs. He made coffee. He did his chores. He went outside to get the newspaper. He got locked out. He got the key from under the mat. Went back inside. He packed his own lunch.
Starting point is 00:08:31 When he was finally ready to go, he headed for the door, and then he collapsed, and he died. Due to the severity of Peter's head wound, his brain was basically broken, and it was unable to recognize he had been gravely injured. So in his final moments, he believed it was just a typical Monday morning going about his work routine when in reality, he had a gaping head wound and he was basically dead after the 16th blow to his head. One of the more surprising and heart-wrenching details of this case is that Joan Porco, she did survive the attack. And after she came out of that medically induced coma, she said she forgot all the details of the attack, even though when she
Starting point is 00:09:10 was discovered in her bed, she did indicate that Chris, her son, was the attacker. Nonetheless, she got together $250,000 to post Chris's bail, and she allowed him to come stay with her during his trial. And the two attended the trial together, walking into the courthouse hand in hand. Chris was very quickly found guilty of killing his father and attempting to kill his mother, and he was sentenced to 50 years to life in prison. Despite the verdict, Joan Porco still speaks to Christopher over the phone and frequently visits him in prison. It's unclear if she still believes he is innocent. It's unclear if she still believes he is innocent. I'm Peter Frankopan.
Starting point is 00:09:51 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?
Starting point is 00:10:36 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. So join us on Legacy for Nina Simone. podcast called Mr. Ballin's Medical Mysteries. And as the name suggests, it's a show about medical mysteries, a genre that many fans have been asking us to dive into for years, and we finally decided to take the plunge, and the show is awesome. In this free weekly show, we explore bizarre unheard of diseases, strange medical mishaps, unexplainable deaths, and everything in between. Each story is totally true and totally terrifying. Go follow Mr. Ballin's Medical Mysteries wherever you get your podcasts, and if you're a Prime member, you can listen early and ad-free on Amazon Music. Our next and final story is called Lost Cause On the advice of his longtime therapist, a 70-year-old man named Art began writing about
Starting point is 00:11:55 what happened to him and his family 30 years earlier in 1989. His therapist only knew Art had lost a child and felt very guilty about it. But the conditions under which the child was lost was always very gray. Even though Art had been his patient for years, and the therapist had repeatedly tried to get more information. You know, was this a child that was lost in pregnancy? Was it a child that was born and died or ran away? Those details never emerged. And every time the therapist tried to dig in,
Starting point is 00:12:25 Art would back off, close up, and he would not talk about it. And so finally, his therapist said, Art, you just need to find a way to talk about this stuff. If you're not going to talk about it with me, then perhaps you should write it all down in a private journal. It'll be a very cathartic experience and it might help you get over that guilt you're feeling. So Art reluctantly agrees. He goes home, he gets out a piece of of paper and he begins writing all the details of everything that happened leading up to that day in 1989 and what actually happened on that day in 1989. And when he was done and he had a chance to look at what he had written, he didn't feel better. He felt worse. He felt more guilty. But that's because Art had a secret that the therapist didn't know about.
Starting point is 00:13:05 And now that it was out on paper, Art suddenly felt like, you know what, before I die, I have to tell the world what me and my wife did. So in 2019, he took all of those notes that he had written down about what had happened and he posted it to Reddit. This is his confession story. Art's son was very, very troubled. Art would say, if you've seen the movie, we need to talk about Kevin, where a couple's son turns out to be a total psychopath. Art says, that's a pretty good representation of what home life was like with our son. From the day Art's son was born in 1971, it was like something was off about him. Art and his wife Lisa had planned this pregnancy and they were ecstatic when their baby boy was welcomed to the world and they showered him with
Starting point is 00:13:51 affection and love and did everything they possibly could to give him a warm loving environment. But no matter what they did, it just seemed like he was always miserable. Their son cried constantly for the first 13 months of his life. Now Art and Lisa understood that when you bring a baby home there's a good chance they're going to cry but his crying was so constant and he could not be calmed down that they grew concerned that this was more than just a colicky baby that there could be some underlying issue and so they brought their son to doctors and specialists and they tried every treatment under the sun. They changed his diet. They changed his room. They sang him songs. They changed everything they could, but it never stopped. And so 13 months of grinding, grating, no sleep hell.
Starting point is 00:14:37 Finally, in the 14th month of his life, he seemed to get over the incessant crying stage. And Art and Lisa were so relieved. It seemed like, finally, they could just be loving parents and not be so frustrated with their child all the time. But it seemed like, now that he wasn't crying, he still was just totally unhappy. His body language and everything about him said, I'm not happy. Always. Art said that he never saw his son ever have a genuine, joyous smile. The only time he saw something resembling a smile was when his son would grin after causing someone pain, or breaking a rule, or in some way being bad. And then once his son started walking,
Starting point is 00:15:16 all he wanted to do was just destroy everything in front of him. But again, Art and Lisa, they realized that this is all pretty typical child behavior, albeit maybe on the more extreme end of bad behavior, but it's still in the realm of normal child. And they're thinking that they are the reason this is happening. And so they're not blaming their son at this point. They're still doing everything they can to take care of him and love him to the best of their ability. When their son was about two years old, he learned how to take off his diaper and he began sneaking around the house and emptying the contents of his diaper into corners of the house, underneath carpets, grinding it into the carpet, smearing
Starting point is 00:15:54 it on the walls. But again, Art and Lisa are looking inward and saying, our child is only two years old. It can't be his fault he's acting this way. It's our fault for not finding a way to correct this behavior. But Art and Lisa started to drift away from that opinion when their son got a little bit older, got potty trained, and wasn't using diapers anymore, and still was going around the house and squatting down and going to the bathroom all over the house, making a mess at every possible chance he could. And not just when he was four, five, six years old. All the way up until he was 15 years old, he was doing this. And he stopped doing it in random corners,
Starting point is 00:16:32 and he began only going into his parents' bedroom every chance he got, opening up the sheets, going inside, going to the bathroom, shutting it back up, and leaving. It got to the point where Art and Lisa literally could not stop their son from doing this. He was absolutely determined to do this. So anytime they were away he would even sneak in the windows to do this. I mean he was totally hell-bent on going to the bathroom in their bed and so they had to start putting locks on the windows and the doors of their bedroom. But when they had finally secured that room to where he really couldn't get in anymore, he began going to the bathroom right outside
Starting point is 00:17:07 their door and in the other beds in the house. And so they began investing in locks on all of the doors. They even replaced the doors themselves because they were too flimsy and they thought there's a good chance he might kick these doors in to try to get them open. So they put these big thick doors up all through their house and put these big locks with key locks all over the house to keep their son from going in and going to the bathroom all over their bedsheets. As their son grew older he became more and more unmanageable well beyond just going to the bathroom in different places. He became violent and
Starting point is 00:17:42 he would bite and kick and scratch and spit on anybody that came near him. He was like a wild animal. Before he was nine years old, he had been kicked out of school two separate times. And they let him back in a third time. He apparently did something that was so bad that they effectively expelled him. A nine-year-old is getting expelled from school. So they had to enroll him at this other special school that would accept him with his history. But part of the deal with this school is you don't have any interaction with other students. He was considered too dangerous to be around other kids. So he was totally isolated at school and it ultimately made him a lot worse. Once he was enrolled in the school, he became really violent at home. He would come home from school and he would go right to the kitchen and get a knife out and he would start threatening his parents to the point where they
Starting point is 00:18:28 had to lock all the drawers in the kitchen. Once all of the knives were under lock and key in Art's house, his son began stealing knives from the neighbor's house, smuggling them back into the house, and at night he would pull them out and try to stab Art. And on two different occasions he was successful and Art still has scars on his leg from it. And Art's son was not just attacking his parents. He was also turning on local animals that were helpless. He blinded one of the local dogs that was running around the area by just stabbing it in the eye one day. He went after one of the stray cats and he lit its tail on fire. And honestly, Art doesn't even know the other damages he had done to other animals or even other people. Even though Art and Lisa massively resented their son for how badly he treated them
Starting point is 00:19:12 and how difficult he was making their lives, they recognized that this was a child that needed help. And so they tried everything they could to help him by enrolling him in that special school that ultimately was isolating, but it was an attempt to try to help him. Or bringing him to different therapists and psychologists and doctors, putting him on different medications and bringing him to meditation consultants. I mean, you name it, they tried everything they could to try to help this kid, but nothing worked. He only got angrier
Starting point is 00:19:39 and angrier and got bigger and stronger and more aggressive and violent. And eventually Art and Lisa are like, what do we do about this? What ultimately started happening over the following years is Art and Lisa became prisoners of their own home. But every time their son was around, they felt unsafe around him. He was such a wild card and he had these crazy angry outbursts and he was clearly prone to extreme violence and so they began using those heavy doors and locks to lock themselves away from their son. It was the only way they felt safe. And so with that in mind, fast forward to 1988 when Art's son is now 16 years old and Art and Lisa find out they're pregnant again. It was a surprise and they were not happy about it. In fact, because of how badly it had
Starting point is 00:20:25 gone with their son, they were really scared that another child was going to be just as bad and they couldn't possibly go through this again. And so they decided that they weren't going to terminate. But if they noticed early on this child was a huge problem child, as horrible as they felt about it, they knew they would give it up for adoption. They simply couldn't do this again. they felt about it, they knew they would give it up for adoption. They simply couldn't do this again. This time they had a daughter and she was normal. She was nothing like their son. She didn't come home and cry constantly. She smiled and laughed and after a few months she was sleeping through the night and she was hitting her milestones and she just seemed happy and she was easy. And it was around this time that Art and Lisa began to realize just how bad their son was.
Starting point is 00:21:07 Seeing how wonderful their daughter was just amplified all of their son's atrocious behavior over the first 16 years of his life. And so Art and Lisa really began to look at their son as more of a lost cause. And they were less invested in going through the motions to try to find some way to help him when they knew it wasn't going to work. It had never worked. And he's only a couple years away from being 18, and he can go out on his own and figure it out for himself. And now, since they didn't really care as much about him, suddenly his behavior was intolerable. And anytime he acted up, they would never lay a hand on him, but they were not afraid to tell him to basically get the F out of here. We are not putting up with this. Leave. And so regularly, Art and Lisa would have these horrific screaming
Starting point is 00:21:51 matches with their son until their son would basically run away in a rage and then come back hours later or even a couple days later. And Art said he began to look forward to fighting with his son because every time they fought, it meant his son would be gone for a little while afterwards and there would be a little bit of peace and calm inside the house. But at the same time Art and Lisa were concerned one of these days he's going to come back in after one of these fights and he's going to kill us. So it went on like this for about a year until a rainy day in 1989 when their son was almost 18 and their daughter was almost one years old. Now the house they lived in was a single story bungalow and their daughter's room was against a side wall
Starting point is 00:22:32 where there was a window leading to the outside. That morning Art and Lisa had got into one of the worst screaming matches with their son they'd ever had and he left in a rage and they slammed and locked the door behind him. After a couple of hours, their son is still gone and they don't expect to see him anytime soon. And their daughter is starting to get fussy. She seems tired. And so they walk into her bedroom, they put her in a
Starting point is 00:22:53 crib for a nap, and then Art and Lisa leave her room, shut the door behind them and go sit down in the kitchen. A couple minutes later, they hear their daughter screaming at the top of her lungs and Art and Lisa immediately recognize this is not an ordinary cry. This sounds like something is terribly wrong. They get up and sprint down the hall to a room and they try the door handle but it's locked. They run back out to the kitchen, they get the keys, they go back, they're fumbling with the keys, they finally open it up and there in the back of the room standing next to the crib is their son. He's holding a knife and he's poking it into her face and Art said he looked at a knife and he's poking it into her face.
Starting point is 00:23:27 And Art said he looked at his daughter and he could see blood on her stomach and blood on her arm and she's screaming. And so he thinks to himself, thank God she's still alive. And instinctively Art starts running to try to put himself between his son and his daughter. But before he could even get there, his wife had moved much faster
Starting point is 00:23:41 and she charged over and smashes her son's hand. The knife falls to the ground. She pushes him as hard as she possibly can and he goes slamming into the wall and falls on the ground. Art immediately reaches into the crib, picks his daughter up and runs to the other side of the room and he kind of looks her over. She's crying. She's in pain. She's scared but he can see the cuts on her are superficial. He turns back around and he can see his wife is standing there with her fist balled standing in front of her son. Her son stands up and he's looking at her, no emotion on his face. Art would even say that it was like he was looking at an alien. This person wasn't human. How could they do this to their own sister, to a baby?
Starting point is 00:24:18 And he stared at him and then he noticed his wife was moving towards her son like she was going to attack him. And this is where Art says he knew he was supposed to go over there and stop whatever was about to happen. But he didn't. And this is the part of the story where Art reveals his wife, she's this amazing boxer. And he knew that she could beat the living crap out of just about anybody. The son is so stunned by how quickly this has happened that he's not doing anything. He's not positioning himself to fight back or to even preemptively attack his mother. He's just kind of standing there looking at his mother with no expression on his face.
Starting point is 00:24:54 And that's when Art's wife winds up and blasts him across the face, knocking his head back. And Art said immediately he could tell his nose was broken, blood squirts all over his face, and he falls to the ground. Until this moment, neither Lisa nor Art had ever laid a hand on their son. Even when he stabbed Art twice in the legs, they never physically struck their son. But this was different. Their son had crossed the line, and he could never come back. And so even though Art knew if he doesn't step in, his wife is going to beat their son to death, even though he knew that was going to happen. He remembers thinking, good. He turns around and he leaves the room with his daughter. As Art cleans up his daughter and puts band-aids on each of the cuts that were inflicted on her, he hears in the other room, his son is yelling and screaming at their mother saying, I'm going to kill you. And she is just ruthlessly punching, kicking, and smashing him. It is not
Starting point is 00:25:50 slowing down at all. And Art remembers by the time he picked his daughter back up after putting all her band-aids on and she'd kind of calmed down, he still heard his wife punching, kicking, and smashing their son, who's now unconscious. Again, Art knows, if I don't go in there now, my unconscious son is getting his head kicked in by his mother. If I don't go in there now, he's gonna die, for sure. But Art wants that to happen, so he doesn't go in there. Instead, he just rocks his daughter until she falls asleep, and by the time she's snoring in his arms, his wife is still punching, kicking, and smashing their son who hasn't made a sound in a long time. Art just sits down at the kitchen table, hoists his daughter onto his shoulder,
Starting point is 00:26:33 and just listens for his wife to finish what she's doing. And finally it does go quiet in there and his wife emerges from the room and she's covered in blood. Her hands are swollen and red and her chest is heaving like she's been running a race. She comes into the kitchen and sits down at the table next to Art and looks at him, and he looks back at her, and he just says, is he dead? She says, I hope so, and he just goes, yeah, me too. Art and Lisa sat at the kitchen table for a long time. There was no sound coming from the room where their son was, and eventually Lisa starts crying and goes and takes a shower. At which point Art stands up and he goes into the bedroom where his son was. And this is when he can tell his son is actually still alive. He walks in and he can see his son still breathing, but he's covered in blood. He's got vomit on him. He's clearly wet his pants.
Starting point is 00:27:18 His teeth have been knocked out. His whole face is bloodied and bruised and swollen. And he goes up to him and he thinks there's no way he's going to live through this. But Art has kind of an internal crisis because he wants him to die. He doesn't want him to live. And so that decision of should I call an ambulance or should I call police was a really difficult one to make because really neither served the purpose that he or his wife wanted. And so as he's standing there wondering what to do, he hears his wife come out of the shower. And so he leaves the room and he confers with his wife and they decide, we're not going to
Starting point is 00:27:49 call the police. We're not going to call an ambulance. We're going to do nothing. And so right then and there, they walked around their house, they gathered up a couple of things and they headed downstairs into the basement where they had an in-law suite, which basically was a little apartment that they didn't really use, but it had everything they needed. And they moved down there and they locked the one door that led down there and they locked the side door as well. They figured if he lived, there would be enough food to get him through a few weeks upstairs. There's water up there, bedrooms, bathrooms. He had all of that. And at some point he would run out of food and he would have to leave or he would die upstairs. And in a couple
Starting point is 00:28:22 weeks they would go up and they would deal with it. Over the next week, they began to hear movement upstairs, which signaled to them he was alive, but he wasn't moving around much. It was just enough to know somebody was up there. They figured that, okay, he's probably laying down most of the time recovering. And so Art began going back to work. He would go out the side door and every time he went outside and he was on the driveway, he was expecting his son to come out and attack him, but he never did. And his wife, Lisa, she stayed with their daughter 24-7, stayed in the house. And at no point did the son ever try to come downstairs and try to attack her or them at any point, probably because he was afraid of his mother.
Starting point is 00:29:00 About three weeks after the attack, they were in bed in the basement and they heard him going absolutely ballistic upstairs, screaming, punching walls, breaking things. And they decided, you know what, whatever he does up there, it's not worth going up there and confronting him. Let him do whatever he wants. And then the next day it was totally quiet. And for the next couple of days, Art and Lisa would listen really intently to see if they could hear him moving around upstairs, but they couldn't. And so finally Art and Lisa decide to go up into the main floor and see if he's up there. When they open the door, they find their entire upstairs has been absolutely wrecked. Every piece of furniture is ruined. Every window's broken. There's glass all over
Starting point is 00:29:37 the place. There's brown smears all over the walls, but their son isn't there. And so they figured that night when they heard him going crazy upstairs, he already knew he was going to leave. He just wanted to ruin their house before he did. Even though their son was gone, they had no idea if he was going to come back or not. And so for days and weeks and months, they lived in fear that their son was just going to show up one day and kill them. But he never did. And then three years after the incident, they moved and they weren't in contact with their son. They hadn't seen him. And so he had no idea where they were going and they have no way to contact him. So that was it.
Starting point is 00:30:09 They just restarted somewhere else. Fast forward to 2019 when Art is making this Reddit post and he says, I haven't seen my son since 1989 and I don't want to see him again. And Art goes on to say that while he hopes his son was able to overcome his demons and live a normal life, he said if he wasn't able to do that, if he was out there still causing pain and misery to other people, Art says he hopes that whoever was on the receiving end of that finished the job and killed him. 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 deliver a strange, dark, or mysterious story to the Amazon Music Follow button,
Starting point is 00:30:57 but in PDF format. This podcast airs every Monday and Thursday morning, but in the meantime, you can always watch one of the hundreds of stories we have posted on our main YouTube channel, which is just called Mr. Ballin. We have a registered 501c3 charitable organization called the Mr. Ballin Foundation that honors and supports victims of violent crime as well as their families. Monthly donors to the Mr. Ballin Foundation Honor Them Society will receive free gifts and exclusive invites to special live events. Go to mrballin.foundation and click get involved to join the Honor Them Society today. If you want to get in touch with me, please follow me on any major
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Starting point is 00:32:30 a short survey at wondery.com slash survey. In May of 1980, near Anaheim, California, Dorothy Jane Scott noticed her friend had an inflamed red wound on his arm and he seemed really unwell. So she wound up taking him to the hospital right away so he could get treatment. While Dorothy's friend waited for his prescription, Dorothy went to grab her car to pick him up at the exit. But she would never be seen alive again, leaving us to wonder, decades later, what really happened to Dorothy Jane Scott. From Wondery, Generation Y is a podcast that covers notable true crime cases like this one and so many more. Every week, hosts Aaron and Justin sit down to discuss a new case covering
Starting point is 00:33:12 every angle and theory, walking through the forensic evidence, and interviewing those close to the case to try and discover what really happened. And with over 450 episodes, there's a case for every true crime listener. Follow the Generation Y podcast on Amazon Music or wherever you get your podcasts.

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