MrBallen Podcast: Strange, Dark & Mysterious Stories - The Confession Podcast Exclusive Episode

Episode Date: January 11, 2026

On April 29, 2002, in the small town of Pataskala, Ohio, a social worker sat on the floor with a two-year-old girl. The little girl's mother had been murdered in their kitchen the night before, and police thought she might have witnessed the crime. The girl clutched a stuffed animal to her chest while the social worker asked her if anyone else had been in her house the night before. The girl nodded – and uttered a name that would turn her family's lives upside down. 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 @MrBallen Hosted by Simplecast, an AdsWizz company. See pcm.adswizz.com for information about our collection and use of personal data for advertising.

Hello, fans of the Strange, Dark, and Mysterious. I'm here today to tell you all about what it actually means now that we've moved over to the Sirius XM family. Big picture, it means we are going to make more content for you. Right now, you get one YouTube video a week on Saturday. Well, what we're going to do now is we're going to have the Saturday upload be the same, but then also the Mr. Ballin podcast. Well, we've begun already filming those episodes like a YouTube video.

So that's a second piece of content every week. then there's two other shows that you guys don't even know about yet, which means on any given week you could have up to four new video pieces of content on the Mr. Ballin channel. And also all these pieces of content will double as podcasts as well. This new content schedule is going to start early next year. Also, there's one other thing I want to clarify, which is the state of Mr. Ballin's medical mysteries and redacted. Those shows were created in collaboration with Wondry, but now we're partnered with

serious, and so we're not going to be making any new episodes of either of those shows. For now, if you want to hear my podcast episodes one week early and ad-free, make sure to 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. Keep on the lookout for more announcements in the coming weeks. Thank you. On April 29, 2002, in the small town of Potastas, Ascalo, Ohio, a social worker was sitting on the floor with a two-year-old girl. And this little girl's mother had actually been murdered in their kitchen the night before.

And police thought, you know, this little girl might have witnessed the crime. The girl clutched her stuffed animal to her chest, while the social worker asked her if anybody else had been in the house the night before. And at some point, the little girl nodded. And she uttered a name that would turn her family's lives upside down. But before we get into that story, if you're a fan of the strange, dark, and mysterious, delivered in story format, then you've come to the right podcast because that's all we do. So, if that's of interest to you, please ask the follow button if you could just quickly borrow

their car. And when they let you, you know, responsibly use their car, but when you turn it back over to them, secretly remove the battery in their keyfob. Okay, let's get into today's story. On the evening of April 28, 2002, 38-year-old Rhonda Boggs sat on the couch of her mother-in-law's house in the quiet city of Patascula, Ohio, nervously watching the clock. At her feet, her two-and-a-half-year-old daughter, Amanda, was playing with a stuffed animal. It was 6.30 p.m., and Rhonda's husband, Dave, was supposed to call any minute. Dave was currently being incarcerated at the county jail. Dave had been sentenced to two weeks behind bars for failing to pay child support to one of his exes.

And while Rhonda was obviously not thrilled about this, she also knew she should not be surprised. When Rhonda had first met Dave about 12 years earlier, it was his carefree personality that she had really fallen in love with. He was in a rock band and she had loved going to his shows and dancing in the front row. It all felt glamorous and exciting and like they were going to stay young forever. But now they were both 38 with a toddler to look after and bills to pay. And Dave, he really just kept on partying and playing rock star while all their responsibilities sort of fell to Rhonda. She had barely been to any of his shows since Amanda had made. born, you know, in part because it wasn't really the kind of scene you could bring a baby to.

A lot of the guys Dave hung around with were hard drinkers and drug addicts and ex-cons. And so now, after almost four years of marriage, Ronda was finally starting to see Dave for what he was, which was not carefree. Dave was really just kind of reckless. The phone rang and Rhonda picked it up. And as expected, it was Dave. And what Ronda really wanted to say to him was that she was upset and seriously considering divorce, and that in fact she'd already taken his name off her retirement plan. But at the same time,

she saw her mother-in-law standing in the doorway, clearly listening. And so instead of saying what she really wanted to say, she just said, hey Dave, how are you doing? An hour later, back at her own home, Rhonda put a casserole into the oven, and then she turned on cartoons for Amanda, and then went outside to mow the lawn before it got too dark. Rhonda was used to doing almost everything around the house herself, since Dave was practically never home anyway. but now that he was, you know, in jail, she had to literally do everything, including, you know, mowing the grass on a Sunday night. So Rhonda wheeled the lawnmower out of the garage and into the yard,

and then she pulled the cord to start the engine. But like everything else in their little house, the lawnmower was on the verge of breaking down, and it kept shutting off. While Rhonda struggled, she noticed her neighbor coming out of the house across the street. And he waved to Rhonda as he came down his own driveway, sort of telling her like, hey, you know, turn off that lawnmower. And once she did, and once it was quiet enough to actually hear each other, he shouted from across the street and asked if she wanted to borrow his lawnmower that did work. Rhonda found herself looking around the yard at all the tall grass and saw how dark it was already getting.

And then she checked her watch and saw that, you know, her casserole was going to be done in just a minute here. And so she said to her neighbor that she really appreciated the offer, but it didn't really matter because, you know what, she doesn't have time to do this anyways. She has to go back inside. So Rhonda said by to her neighbor and then pushed her to her. effective lawnmower back inside the garage, and then she made a mental note to call Dave's cousin, Nick, the following day, to see if maybe he could come by and fix her lawnmower. Nick worked as a maintenance man at a big apartment complex, and even though he lived 45 minutes away, he'd been helping Rhonda around the house while Dave was behind bars. Just last week,

he had fixed up her washing machine, and he called all the time just to check in. And so now, Rhonda went back inside the house, into the kitchen, and took the casserole out of the oven just before the timer rang. She cut the casserole into two pieces and brought those pieces into the dining room and set them on the table. Then she walked over and turned out the TB, scooped up her daughter and brought her over to the table. It was getting late and all Rhonda really wanted to do here was just eat quickly and go to bed. But for every bite that made it into Amanda's mouth, another wound up on the floor. And so Rhonda knew that, you know, at the end of dinner, she would have to do another round of cleanup before she could finally go to sleep.

But Rhonda knew, you know, Amanda couldn't help it. she was a little kid, and so she reached over and took her daughter's fork and began helping her eat, you know, to not only minimize the mess, but also to help her kid out. And in reality, Amanda was actually the thing preventing Rhonda from just pulling the trigger on a divorce. She didn't know if she could handle being a single mother. It was hard enough having Dave gone for a few weeks, you know, that she couldn't even imagine doing this all alone by herself forever. And since she already knew Dave was bad at paying child support, as that is the reason he was in jail right now. She figured if she was a single mom, even if he was ordered to pay her, she would likely

have to rely on paying the bills herself. She would need to get a job and make money. Now, Rhonda did have a job now as an office assistant, but she wasn't sure if that would be enough to fully support herself and her daughter without any additional financial help. But just then, as Rhonda was scooping up another bite of casserole for her daughter, she heard a noise outside that almost sounded like heavy footsteps. She turned around and through the curtains she could see the silhouette of a person clearly coming up her driveway. The next morning, Monday, April 29th, Rhonda's co-worker, Gary Polowski, noticed that Rhonda was running late for her shift in the office at Hamilton Home Products, which was a heating equipment company. And this was strange

because Rhonda had actually never been late before in the entire time that she had worked there. So Gary began asking around to see if anybody knew where Rhonda was or if maybe she'd called in or something, but his co-workers all shrugged and said they hadn't heard from her since she left the office on Friday night. And so eventually, Gary tried calling Rhonda's landline at her house to see if she was home. But after calling several times, Rhonda never picked up. He waited for a while to see if maybe she would call back, but when he still hadn't heard from her after an hour, he started to worry that, you know, she might have run into car trouble.

Like maybe she was stranded somewhere with her car. He knew it was about a 15-mile drive from her house in Patascula to the office here, just outside of Columbus. And back in 2002, not everyone had a cell phone, and he didn't know if she did. So if her car had broken down, you know, she might be stranded without a way to call for help. And so Gary decided he would just get in his own car and drive the route from the office back to her house to literally see if he could find Rhonda on the side of the road. Gary drove all the way out to Patasgla, keeping his eyes peeled for Rhonda's car on the side of the road,

but there was no sign of it. It was not until he finally turned the corner onto Rhonda's street that he saw her car, and her car was parked in the driveway of her white-paneled one-story house. And at this, Gary's stomach kind of balled up into a knot, because he realized that, you know, Ronda had clearly not left for work at all. And he knew that if she had just stayed home this whole time without calling in or calling anybody back that something bad had to have happened. And so Gary pulled up to her house and he got out of his car and walked up to the front door and he knocked, but there was no answer. So after a minute, he went

around and knocked on the back door and there was still no answer back there either. So he walked back around to the front of the house and he was about to leave when he saw the drapes rustling in one of the front windows. He squinted at the window and he saw, you know, what was causing the movement into the drapes was Rhonda's toddler daughter, Amanda, looking out the window. And her face was red like she'd been crying for a long time. And so now Gary started to panic. But he tried to keep his voice calm as he ran over and shouted through the window and told Amanda he was a friend of her mother's and convinced her to open the door so he could help her. It took a minute for Amanda to figure out what Gary was asking, but eventually she got it. And she disappeared from the window,

and a moment later, the front door opened. And so Gary walked over and he stepped through the front door, and the first thing he saw were bloody footprints on the living room carpet. Gary instinctively scooped Amanda up in his arms, and he ran across the street, banged on the neighbor's door, and told them to call the police. Not long after, Patascula police would arrive at Rhonda's house, and they would search the inside, and they would find Rhonda, and she was found stabbed to death in her own kitchen. This was the first homicide in Patascula in six years, and there were only 17 officers in the whole police department, and the crime scene unit was run out of a refurbished ambulance. So police chief, Chris Forci, didn't have a ton of resources to

throw at this case, but he called in all available officers and sent them to the crime scene, and then he headed out there himself to make sure they did the job right. By the time Forci pulled up to the house, his officers had already sealed off the perimeter. He ducked under the crime scene tape, walked inside the house, and followed the sound of footsteps and clicking cameras into the kitchen, where a woman was lying in a pool of blood on the tile floor. An officer told for she that the victim had been identified as Rhonda Boggs, and it was her co-worker who had come to check on her when she hadn't shown up for work that morning that ultimately prompted a 911 call that led to the discovery of the body. The officer also told for she that Ronda's toddler

daughter had been found, uninjured, in the house with her body. And so Forcii knelt down to examine the body. And right away, he saw at least, you know, more than a dozen stab wounds on Rhonda's head, her neck, her chest, and her shoulders. The sheer number of wounds and the blood all over the kitchen suggested there had to have been a struggle. And that from the looks of it, Rhonda had fought very hard with her attacker. The remnants of what appeared to be a casserole were sitting on the stove, and Rhonda was fully dressed. So for she figured, the crime must have happened sometime before she went to bed, so between dinner and bedtime. And then, For she wondered if, you know, her poor daughter had been awake, or maybe even in the room, when this happened.

After the scene had been photographed, Forcii gave the green light for the coroner to actually physically lift Rhonda's body up off the ground onto a stretcher. And when the coroner's staff hoisted her up, for she noticed something lying underneath her body. It was a steak knife with blood all over the blade. Forcii looked around the kitchen and realized the black handle on that knife matched the set of knives on the countertop. It appeared that Rhonda had been killed with a knife from her own kitchen, which meant her killer did not show up to the house with their murder weapon. This suggested that this murder was likely a heat-of-the-moment crime rather than something that had been planned out. While Forci's officers finished collecting forensic evidence in the kitchen,

Fosci himself walked through the rest of the house. it looked like it had been completely ransacked. The jewelry box in the bedroom was empty, and the dresser drawers were open, and piles of Ronda's clothes were strewn all over the floor. And then in the dining room, they found a purse that had been overturned, with all of its contents spilled out.

And clearly, it looked like somebody had been sifting through it. And so for she thought that, you know, between the sort of ransacked appearance of the house and also the weapon of opportunity, that it seemed like this could have been a robbery gone wrong. However, there was one factor that did seem to complicate things, or at least make it seem like this could have been something else, and that was that there was no sign of forced entry.

Just then, Forci heard a commotion near the front door, and so he walked over, and he saw there was a woman trying to push her way into the house, and her face was all red, and she was crying, and she was shouting at the officers demanding to know what happened. Forci took this woman outside and tried to calm her down, and she would eventually tell him that her name was Kim Davis, and she was Rhonda's sister. Once she'd caught her breath,

before she explained to her what he already knew, which was that unfortunately, her sister Rhonda had been found stabbed to death inside of her home, and the running theory at this point, at least his theory, was this was a robbery gone wrong. And potentially, because there was no sign of forced entry,

it could indicate that it was somebody that, you know, Rhonda potentially knew and who she would have, you know, let into the house if she saw them. Now, Kim was obviously extremely upset by this, and so for a minute, four she just consoled her, but he really needed to kind of press this investigation, and so once she had kind of calmed down a little bit,

he asked her if she knew of anybody who might have wanted to hurt Rhonda. And Kim immediately said no. She couldn't imagine her sister having any enemies. But after sitting with that question for a moment, Kim said that actually there was one person who might have had a problem with Rhonda, and that was her husband, Dave. Kim said that Rhonda and Dave's marriage had been on the rocks for a while, and in fact, Rhonda had told her recently that she was thinking about getting a divorce.

But Kim said, you know, Dave actually is currently in jail, so I don't see how he could have done this. He was literally in jail at the time this happened. Still, though, she thought it was possible that, you know, Dave could have been involved one way or another. You know, he might have paid somebody to come here and do this or maybe put one of his friends up to it. Forcii promised Kim he would look into this, but he was already feeling pretty skeptical.

I mean, if Dave couldn't even pay child support, you know, what was the likelihood that he was able to afford a hitman? And also, the murder weapon appeared to come from Ronda's kitchen, and so that didn't really suggest that the suspect had been planning to kill her when they got there. So again, sort of takes away from the idea that a hitman was used in this murder. But at this point, Forcii thought their best chance to figure out what actually happened to her, was actually to speak to the only other person who was at the scene of the crime that they knew about. And that was Rhonda's own two-year-old daughter, Amanda. Later that day, a social worker

from Child Services pulled up outside the house and four she walked out to greet her. And he said to her that before she took custody of Amanda, he was hoping that, you know, she could help him talk to this girl and see what she knew about the murder because she was here, you know, when it happened. And there was nobody else who witnessed it but her. The social worker nodded, and so Forshe took her across the street to the neighbor's house, where Amanda had been staying all morning. Now, Forci didn't know if this little girl would be able to tell them anything at all. I mean, of course, she could be in complete shock, she's also two, and he also knew that even if she did tell them stuff, they wouldn't necessarily be reliable, because again, she's two years old, and she very likely is in shock. But regardless,

for she knew he had to try. So he stood in the corner of the living, room, while the social worker sat down on the floor with Amanda and asked her what she had seen the night before. And to Forci's surprise, the little girl looked up at the social worker and she jerked her little hand toward her neck in what looked very much like a stabbing motion. And then in a quiet voice, she said her mother had fallen down and gone to sleep. Then the social worker asked her if anybody else had been there. And for she felt himself holding his breath waiting for Amanda to answer. And there was a moment of silence before Amanda said, Uncle Nick. A few hours later, Chief Forchie was still at the crime scene when two officers pulled up in a cruiser and took this

grungy-looking man out of the back seat and escorted him into the house. This was not the Uncle Nick that Amanda had named. It was Amanda's own father, Dave Box, who had been in jail when his wife was murdered. Now, Forci was absolutely planning to speak to this Uncle Nick, but first, he wanted to gather as much information as possible about him. During Amanda's conversation with the social worker, she had said repeatedly that Uncle Nick had hurt Mommy. But even though this two-year-old girl seemed very definitive about this, for she needed an adult perspective before he acted.

A judge had let Dave Boggs out of jail early because of his wife's murder, and for she had ensured that Dave was escorted to the crime scene so for she could speak to him before Dave got a chance to speak to anybody else. And so now, Forchie met Dave and the officers at the door and then guided them into the living room where they sat Dave down on the couch. They filled him in on what had happened to his wife,

but really before he could react to that, they also told him that they needed him to do a walkthrough of the house with them to try to identify what might have been stolen, which could help them figure out who did this. But first, Forci said he had a very important question. He asked Dave, who is Uncle Nick? And at this, Dave, who to this point had just looked completely shocked by what he was being told, began to look more confused.

And he told Forci that Uncle Nick was what his daughter called his second cousin. He said his real name was Richard Nicholas Robinson, and he had been helping Ronda out while Dave was in jail. Dave said Nick had probably been at the house almost every day, fixing one thing or another. But he said he didn't understand why Forcii was asking about him, because, you know, there's no way he would have hurt Rhonda. I mean, he really looked out for her and also for Amanda. But for now, Forshey was not going to answer that question.

Dave's information was enough for him to go outside, get on his radio, and broadcast a bulletin asking all police departments in the area to be on the lookout for Nick Robinson. Less than an hour later, a police cruiser found Nick Robinson's SUV on State Route 37 just outside of Patascula, and they pulled him over and they ordered him out of the vehicle. and as soon as he was out, they pushed him to the ground with a gun to the back of his head and cuffed him. And as they did this, they noticed a dark spot on Nick's baseball cap that looked a lot like blood.

As they put Nick in the back of the cruiser, he kept asking them what was going on, but they didn't tell him. Instead, they searched his SUV. And there was cardboard laid out in the back with reddish-brown smears all over it, which also appeared to be blood. and then when the officers got back into their cruiser, Nick asked them, is this about Rhonda? By the time this arrest happened, Chief Forchie was at Nick Robinson's house, questioning his wife, Debbie. So while he did that, he dispatched one of his best and only detectives,

Bruce Brooks, to go down to police headquarters to handle Nick's interrogation. When Detective Brooks walked into the interview room, immediately he could see that Nick, who was resting his head in his hands, looked very pale and nauseous. When he asked him if he was okay, Nick said he was just hung over from a long night of drinking. He said he had been at a bar in Columbus until around 10.30 p.m.,

and then he had gone to another bar in Lancaster, which was a town nearby where he lived, and then he had finally come home around 1.30 a.m. and passed out on his couch. Nick swore he didn't know anything about what happened to Rhonda and only found out she was dead when he saw it on the news. And as for the blood, the police found in his SUV, He said it was just animal blood from a hunting trip.

But Brooks was not buying this because he had heard Amanda, Rhonda's daughter, say Uncle Nick hurts mom. And while, of course, you know, you can't take a two-year-old's testimony as absolutely reliable, but when she had said it, she said it very definitively and even gestured at her neck like she was stabbing herself. And Rhonda was found stabbed to death. So he asked Nick, you know, if his alibi essentially was that he was too drunk to have committed this murder? Well, then how could he be sure, you know, given he was too drunk, that he hadn't killed Rhonda in an alcohol-fueled blackout? You know, if he can't remember, you know, it's just as likely that he could have done it. But Nick just shook his head and said no. And no seemed to be

Nick's answer to just about every question Brooks asked him. And eventually, the detective got frustrated, you know, because basically everything he asked Nick, he denied. And so eventually he told Nick that Ronda's daughter had seen the whole thing. And he was a little thing. And he was a he told him to imagine that little girl on the witness stand, having some defense lawyer poke and prod her about the most traumatic event she had ever experienced, the murder of her own mother. And when he said that, a crack seemed to appear in Nick's sort of outward demeanor of denial. Like, clearly he saw how awful this thing really was. And then finally, a little after midnight, so six hours into this interrogation,

Nick just agreed to take a lie detector test. and when the results came back, it showed very clearly that Nick had failed. He had lied. But instead of confessing at this point, Nick dug in and swore up and down that he really was innocent. So Brooks pulled out the last threat he could think of, which was that if Nick didn't confess now, he could be looking at the death penalty. And at that point, it was very clear. Nick cracked, like that absolutely affected him.

And so after a long silence following this threat of, the death penalty. Nick said that, you know, maybe he did have something to do with what happened, but he just couldn't remember it. From there on, Brooks kept on pushing and pushing until around 5 a.m., when Nick finally completely broke down and confessed to the murder. He said he had gone to Ronda's house in between the two bars that he had visited and he tried to kiss her. She pulled away and she grabbed a knife, and when Nick tried to take the knife from her, he said he accidentally stabbed her. As the sun came up, officers drove Nick to the Licking County jail and officially booked him for Rhonda's murder. Later that morning, Chief Forchie stood in front

of a group of reporters outside the police station and praised his officers for catching Rhonda Boggs' killer and getting a confession in less than 24 hours. But later that week, Detective Brooks was in his office wrapping up paperwork when a secretary stuck her head in the door and said there was somebody on the phone for him. Brooks picked it up, and the man on the other end of the line introduced himself as Bob Sisko. And he said he was the bandmate of Rhonda's husband, Dave Boggs, and he did not think Nick was guilty of this murder. Bob said on the evening that Rhonda was killed, another one of their former bandmates, a guy named Chris Williams, had stopped by his house. And Chris had seemed very nervous and sort of keyed up. He was pacing around and smoking cigarette

after cigarette, and it just seemed like he was very mentally preoccupied with something. Now, Bob said Chris had actually, in the past, already robbed Rhonda and Dave's house. He had stolen a bunch of band equipment and sold it for drug money. And so when Bob Cisco saw on the news that, you know, Rhonda was dead and her house appeared to have been robbed, he couldn't shake this feeling that Chris might have been involved. It just seemed too similar to be a coincidence. Brooks wrote all this down and thanked Bob for the information, but he wasn't sure how seriously to take this tip,

since they already had a confession from their primary suspect. But he spoke to Forci, and the chief decided to go ahead and re-interview Rhonda's two-year-old daughter, just to cover their bases. A few days later, so about two weeks after Ronda's murder, Chief Forci waited by the phone in his office, anxiously watching the clock. He knew that the social worker who had spoken to a man at the first time was in the process of interviewing her a second time.

And any minute now, this social worker should be calling him with an update. Now, Forci was hopeful that the little girl would just repeat the same story that she had told on the day of her mother's murder. But when his phone finally rang and for she picked it up, he learned that that is not what happened. The social worker said that this time, when she asked Amanda who she saw on the night of the murder, she did not say anything about Uncle Nick. Instead, she said, Bob did it. When four she heard this, he immediately got a pretty anxious feeling.

He'd been afraid from the beginning that, you know, a toddler was not a reliable eyewitness, and she could just be throwing out whatever names popped into her head. But he also thought it was a very strange coincidence that of all the people she could have named other than Uncle Nick, she said Bob. The same guy who had just called the station trying to, you know, cast blame onto some other guy the police had never even heard of. Something just felt off. But as for she thought about it,

he decided, you know, it didn't really change anything. Nick had already confessed like he said he did this. So they didn't really need Amanda as a witness to make the charges against Nick stick. Five days later, a grand jury officially indicted Nick on murder charges. And to the huge surprise of investigators, Nick pled not guilty. So he was now claiming he had given a false confession.

and that he was not Ron DeBoggs' killer. About seven months later, in December of 2002, a man named Matt Sauer stepped into a bar called Merry Melodies in Columbus, Ohio. He went up to the counter and pulled a manila folder out of his messenger bag, and he asked the bartender if he recognized the man in the photograph inside. The bartender looked down at the photo for a second, and then looked back up at Sauer and nodded and said, yes. That's Nick Robinson.

He was here eight months ago, you know, on the night of the murder, and I've been waiting for you guys to come here and talk to me about it, because I know he was here on the night of the murder. Sauer was kind of caught off guard by how sure the bartender was, and so he asked them, like, how can you be so sure it was him? And how do you know he was here on the night of the murder? How can you remember that? But the bartender had a quick answer.

He said the reason he remembered Nick is he had been wearing this very unique, unforgettable t-shirt that night with this obscene joke on it about women's bodies. So he just remembered it. Bartender said Nick had stayed there on the night of the murder until 1015 or maybe 1030. The bartender was absolutely certain. And so again, the bartender said to Sauer, like, I'm just pretty surprised it took this long for you all to come here and confirm his whereabouts. Like, I've known this. Sauer closed his folder and thanked the bartender and then just set his business guard down on the counter. And when the bartender picked it up, he looked surprised. Because Matt Sauer was not actually a police officer. He was a private investigator, and he'd been hired by Nick Robinson

to clear his name. Sauer knew this was going to be a tough job, because Nick had already confessed to Ronda Boggs's murder. But Sauer was hoping that this interview with the bartender would help him poke a massive hole in the case against him. And so now that Sauer had gotten this testimony from the bartender that did appear to poke this hole in the case, Sauer left the bar, got in his car, and drove to the second bar Nick had claimed to be at on the night of Rhonda's murder. It was called the Fairview Inn in Lancaster. And when he got there, he showed that staff the same photo. And just like the first bartender, they all remembered Nick as well.

They said he was there on the night of April 28th, the night of the murder, and they remembered because of his distinctive t-shirt. And so now Sauer knew he was on to something. something because the prosecution's case said that Nick had left Mary Melody's bar that first bar Sauer had gone to, driven to Rhonda's house and killed her, and then went to this bar, the Fairview Inn. But the staff at both bars said Nick was wearing this same distinctive t-shirt. And Sauer knew that if Nick had stabbed Rhonda to death in between these two bars, wouldn't that shirt have been covered in blood and wouldn't, you know, the Fairview Inn staff?

have not just remembered that it was this distinctive shirt, but the distinctive shirt that had blood all over it. Like, that would also be a detail they would recall. But they didn't. They just said he had that shirt on, nothing else. A few days later, Sauer drove back to Mary Melody's bar, but this time he didn't go inside. Instead, he just pulled his car into their parking lot

and started his stopwatch. And then once it was going, he pulled out of the parking lot, turned down the street, and drove all the way to Fairview Inn. and when he reached their parking lot, he checked a stopwatch, and the drive had taken, you know, about 45 minutes. The prosecution's case against Nick had him leaving Mary Melody's bar, murdering Rhonda, and driving all the way to the Fairview,

all within 30 to 45 minutes. But Sowers' experiment here with his stopwatch proved there was simply no way for Nick to have driven all the way to Rhonda's house, committed the murder, and then made it back to the Fairview Inn in that same window of time. It just wasn't possible, which meant Nick's alibi was airtight and he could not have been the killer. Now, Sauer just had to figure out who actually was. Matt Sauer showed the evidence he had found to Nick's defense attorney, who then brought that evidence to the judge in the case,

and they also asked the judge for an order to test a key piece of evidence that the Patascula police had never even sent to the crime lab, the murder weapon. And so the judge agreed to test the knife, and a month later, in January of 2003, the evidence came back from the lab, and they discovered there was DNA on the knife from someone other than Rhonda. Investigators were not sure who the DNA belonged to,

because back in 2003, it isn't like you had this huge bank to test it against. You basically had to test DNA one to one. But they were able to do that with Nick's DNA, and were able to confirm that it was not his DNA on the murder weapon. And so this cast serious doubt on Nick as a suspect, but it wasn't enough to clear his name, not until Sauer could figure out who that other set of DNA belonged to.

And so Sauer dug through the police files on the case, and he realized there were a lot of potential suspects the police had never even bothered to look at closely or at all. There was Ronda's soon-to-be ex-husband, Dave, who'd been flagged by Rhonda's sister on day one. You know, Dave obviously could not have committed the murder himself because he was in jail. But, you know, like the sister suggested, it's possible he could have recruited somebody else to do it. And so all of Dave's friends, his acquaintances, the people he met in jail potentially, were suspects too.

There was also Chris Williams, the former bandmate who had previously robbed Dave and Rhonda's house once before and sold Dave's guitars for drug money. And of course, there was Bob Sisker. the man who had actually called in the tip about Chris. And at one point, Ronda's own daughter had said, Bob had been in the house during the murder. And so maybe that was Bob Cisco. Any of those people could have been Ronda's killer.

But since there was so little investigation done, Sauer was essentially starting over from square one, almost nine months after the crime. The killer could even be somebody who the police never even knew about because they had never really even bothered to focus on anybody but Nick. And so with little concrete to go off of, Sauer decided that, you know, before he began investigating 87 different people, he would start with the sort of one concrete thing he had, which is they knew what items had been taken from Ronda's house during the murder. And so what he

decided he would do is try to track down those items and hopefully they would lead him to the actual killer. A few days later, Sauer stepped into a pawn shop in Columbus, and walk slowly down the aisle, scanning the shelves for some of the items that he knew had been taken from Rhonda and Dave's house. But like all the other pawn shops he'd been to that day, he hadn't found anything, and when he got to the end of this aisle, he knew this pawn shop as well, did not have any of these missing items. Now, it was entirely possible that the items that had been stolen had not been pawned off yet, or maybe they had been pawned off in some other part of the country or something, but it just seemed kind of likely that if they had been pawned off,

they might be sort of roughly in the area. But so far, he had not found anything promising. And so after leaving this pawn shop and going to another and then another, and still not finding any of the stolen items, Sauer finally decided to call it a day and head back home. However, on his ride back home, Sauer found himself stopped at a stoplight. And as he was idling there, he just happened to look out the window, and on the other side of the road, he saw a Bureau of Motor Vehicles,

a DMV. And when he saw the DMV, it was like something kind of rattled loose in his mind. He remembered that one of the persons of interest on his list had been arrested for car theft about a week after Rhonda's murder. But according to the police files, that suspect owned a car of their own, a blue Cadillac. So why would they need to steal another car if they already owned one? And so on a whim, Sauer pulled into the parking lot of this DMV. He went inside and he went up to one of the clerks and he asked them to look into this particular blue Cadillac. He gave the clerk the license plate number and he quickly found out that on April 30th, 2002, so one day after Rhonda's body had been found, that blue Cadillac had been sold to a woman in Columbus whose name was Letitia Gordon.

And so Sauer left the DMV and drove straight to Letitia's house. house, and he knocked on the door. And the woman who opened it looked a bit scared when he introduced himself as an investigator, but she also did not seem surprised. Latisha told Sauer that she knew why he was there. It was because of the blue Cadillac that she had bought. She said that she had bought that car off a stranger right off the street who had offered to sell it to her for just $300, something she couldn't pass up. However, when she got home with this new car, she looked inside of it, and she found there was all the stuff piled up in the back of the car, which included clothes, jewelry, and a purse with somebody's photo ID inside.

And the name on that ID was Rhonda Boggs. And so, with his suspicions now confirmed, Sauer was finally able to reconstruct what really happened to Rhonda Boggs on the night of April 28, 2002. On that night, while Rhonda Boggs was finishing up dinner with her two-year-old daughter, her killer was parking their blue Cadillac just down the place. block. They eventually got out and stormed over to Rhonda's house in a total fury with their heart pounding and their heads swimming and they stomped up her driveway and they rang the doorbell. And when Rhonda opened up the door, she looked confused and a bit scared to see this person.

She asked them what they were doing there, but the killer just brushed past her and stormed into her house, into the kitchen and began digging through her purse right on the counter. Rhonda tried to stop them, but when she put her hands on them, the killer without her house, any hesitation, grabbed a nearby steak knife and stabbed Rhonda in the chest. Rhonda, she fell to the ground and tried to stand back up and tried to defend herself, but the killer was on top of her, stabbing her over and over and over again until Rhonda was no longer moving. The killer at that point stood up and backed away from Ronda's body, which was now lying there in a pool of blood on the kitchen tile, and then they just proceeded

to ransack the house and stole whatever money and valuables they could find, and Then as they were about to leave, they saw a toddler just standing in the hallway, watching them. The killer paid the child no mind and just hurried right past them out of the house, got back into their blue Cadillac, and spent the rest of the night on a massive drug binge. And then the next morning, they sold that Blue Cadillac to a woman in Columbus on the street, accidentally leaving Rhonda's stolen purse, her ID, and jewelry in the back of that car. And nearly a year later, those items would lead investigators to the kids. killer. The killer was Chris Williams, Dave Boggs' former bandmate who had robbed him and Rhonda once

before. On the night of the murder, he was high on crack and needed money for his next hit, and Rhonda unfortunately got in the way. Chris was charged with Ronda's murder, and on March 28, 2005, he was found guilty on all counts. He was sentenced to 20 years to life for Ronda's murder, and a total of 28 years for aggravated robbery, burglary, and escape. from a halfway house. After Chris Williams was charged, all the charges against Nick Robinson were dropped. And for Nick Robinson, this completely changed his life, not just because now he was free. But once he came back home, he stopped drinking and he returned to work.

And he sued the city of Patascula for $3 million in damages. 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. Ballen. Our head of writing is Evan Allen.

Our head of production is Zach Levitt. Produced by Jeremy Bone. This episode was written by Kate Murdoch. Story editing by Karas Pash Cooper. Research and fact-checking by Shelley Shoe, Samantha Van Hoose, Evan Beamer, Abigail Shumway, and Camille Callahan. Research and fact-checking supervision by Stephen Ear. Audio editing and post-produced by Wit Lacasio and Cole Lacasio.

Additional audio editing by Jordan Stidham. Mixed and mastered by Brendan Cain. Production coordination by Samantha Collins. Production support by Antonio Manata and Delana Corley. Artwork by Jessica Klugston Kiner. Theme song called Something Wicked by Ross Bugden. Thank you for listening to the Mr. Ballin podcast. If you enjoyed today's story and you're looking for more bone-chilling content,

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