MrBallen Podcast: Strange, Dark & Mysterious Stories - The Figure in the Toy Store (PODCAST EXCLUSIVE EPISODE)

Episode Date: September 9, 2024

Just before dawn on the last Saturday of June 2013, an employee at a Toys ‘R’ Us store in upstate New York was working in the stock room, when suddenly he heard an alarm going off somewhere inside the store. He radioed his manager to turn off that alarm, but the manager didn’t respond. Another employee went to the front office to check on the manager, and they found him unconscious and bleeding from a hole in his chest. Police and paramedics responded and rushed the man to the hospital, but sadly, he was dead on arrival. The store had been locked all morning, and the four surviving employees had been working in separate parts of the store. Each of them claimed to have seen nothing out of the ordinary that morning. And all investigators had to help them find the manager’s killer was surveillance footage of a shadowy figure moving in and out of the security camera’s view, almost like they were toying with the police.For 100s more stories like these, check out our main YouTube channel just called "MrBallen" -- https://www.youtube.com/c/MrBallenIf you want to reach out to me, contact me on Instagram, Twitter or any other major social media platform, my username on all of them is @mrballenSee Privacy Policy at https://art19.com/privacy and California Privacy Notice at https://art19.com/privacy#do-not-sell-my-info.

Hey Prime members, you can binge 8 new episodes of the Mr. Ballin Podcast one month early and all episodes ad-free on Amazon Music. Download the Amazon Music app today. Just before dawn on the last Saturday of June 2013, an employee at a Toys R' Us store in upstate New York was working in the stockroom when suddenly he heard an alarm going off somewhere inside the store. And so he radioed his manager to turn off the alarm, but the manager didn't respond. And so another employee went to the front office to check on the manager. And when they went inside that office, they would find the manager unconscious

and bleeding from a hole in his chest. Meanwhile, the four surviving employees who had been there all morning said the store had been locked the whole time. And all four of these employees basically didn't see each other the whole time they were there. They were working in different parts of the store and each of them said they had nothing to do with this and didn't see anything out of the ordinary. But when investigators reviewed the security footage from inside the store that morning, they would find something that was very, very suspicious. 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 and we upload twice a week, once on Monday and once on Thursday. So if that's of interest to you, please sneak into the Follow Buttons office, break all the lead tips off their pencils, and steal their pencil sharpener. Okay, let's get into today's story. I'm Raza Jaffrey and in the latest season of The Spy Who we open the file on Willie Carlin, the spy who sold peace to the IRA. When Carlin quit the British army to return to Northern Ireland during the troubles, he received an unusual job offer to spy on his own community. He would quickly find himself deep within the Irish Republican movement, having to choose between preserving his cover or his conscience. For 30 years, paramilitary groups from both sides murdered, maimed

and bombed, while British intelligence waged a dirty war in the shadows. Follow the Spy Who on the Wandery app or wherever you listen to podcasts. Or you can binge the full season of The Spy Who Sold Peace to the IRA early and ad-free with Wandery Plus. I'm Ennis James. And I'm Colin Murray. And we are the hosts of Everything to Play For. with Wandery+. The odds, well, 5,000 to 1 to be precise. We're talking Mourinho versus Ranieri. We're talking Thai monks in the dressing room. We're talking dilly-dings and dilly-dongs. And let's not forget Andrea Bocelli singing Nessendorme

at the King Power Stadium. No word of a lie, my favorite part of the whole story. Better than anything a Leicester City player managed to do, and they managed to do a lot. None more so than Jamie Vardy and his infamous party. The crisps and dips were on him. Follow everything to play for in the Wondery app or wherever you get your podcasts. And you can binge seasons early and ad free right now on Wondery Plus. On June 29, 2013, 35-year-old Larry Wells woke up at 3 a.m. slipping out of his bed quietly so he wouldn't wake up his wife.

Larry's wife was three months pregnant, and raising their 4-year-old daughter was already a full-time job for her, so Larry wanted to be sure that she got all the sleep she needed. After climbing out of bed, Larry slipped into his work clothes that he had laid out the night before, and then he tiptoed through the house out to his car. Larry drove for about five minutes through the desolate streets of Hamburg, which is a quiet suburb just outside of Buffalo, New York. And at this hour, pretty much every business in town was closed, so it was very quiet and peaceful.

Larry eventually turned into a large parking lot and pulled into a parking space. He got out of his car and began walking toward the big, sprawling building at the center of the lot. And as he walked towards it, he glanced up at the sign above the entrance of the building, and as he looked, he smiled. This sign represented something that had deep roots in Larry's childhood, and also now an important place in Larry's adult life. That sign's multicolored letters spelled out, Toys R Us. Toys R Us was a very popular toy store chain in the United States at the time, and it's where Larry had worked for the last seven years.

Larry loved kids, and for a while he had wanted to become a teacher. He had actually studied education and even got a master's degree, but after graduate school he couldn't find a full-time teaching job, so he wound up working as a substitute teacher. But at the time, Larry and his wife wanted to start a family and move into a new house, so that's when Larry decided to get a job working at Toys R Us to supplement his income. At first, Larry thought of his job at Toys R Us as just being a sort of placeholder job, something to have until he got hired on as a full-time teacher somewhere. But it turned out Larry sort of loved working there. He got to regularly interact with children, which he loved doing, and also his fun-loving personality and solid work ethic just made him a perfect fit for

the company. And so pretty quickly, Larry took a lot of pride in his job at Toys R Us. And all of his coworkers there adored him, and by the time he and his wife had their first child in 2009, Larry had been promoted to store manager. This was his career. And because Larry cared so much about this job and about Toys R Us, he would often start work at 4am on Saturday mornings just to help the stockers unload the merchandise trucks, even though he didn't have to do that. And that's exactly what he was doing on this particular Saturday morning, showing up early to lend a helping hand.

And so Larry walked up to the front door of the Toys R Us building, and waiting outside were two of his employees, Cindy Barone and Isaac Mullet-Lloyd. The building was locked, so Larry pulled out his keys, unlocked the door, slid it open, and let the two workers inside. Larry walked in after them, and then slid the door shut, and locked it back up, because the store wasn't actually scheduled to open for another several hours. Cindy and Isaac made their way over to the time clock and punched in, then they picked up their walkie-talkies, which they clipped to their belts, and they began their shifts. As for Larry, he headed straight to the store room,

opened up the back door for the merchandise truck driver, and then began helping the driver unload the truck. And then at some point, Cindy and Isaac came over, and they grabbed pallets of this merchandise from the back, and then wheeled those pallets into the store on dollies. Isaac took his pallet to his section of the store while Cindy took her merchandise pallet to the next section over. And then both of them got to work restocking the shelves, which had been thinned out by

the Friday night rush. By 4.30am, the truck was fully unloaded, so Larry let the driver back out of the building and then locked the back door after him. At this point Larry, Cindy, and Isaac were now working in separate parts of the building and they couldn't see each other, but they could communicate using their walkie talkie radios. And you need to keep in mind that this particular Toys R Us store was massive, over 41,000 square feet, and so really it was normal if you were working in off-hour shifts to basically not see anybody else physically and just basically talk to them on your walkie

talkie. A little before 5 a.m., so about 30 minutes later, an employee named Anthony Armstrong stood outside the front entrance, pulled out his cell phone, and called his manager, Larry, and told him he was outside the store, ready to start his shift, and could he come over and unlock the door. And so Larry made his way to the front door, he opened it up, let Anthony inside, and then slid the door shut and locked it back up. About ten minutes after that, another employee, named Richard Shepard, approached the front door of the Toys R Us and also called Larry so he could be let in the building. But this

time Larry's phone just rang several times and went to voicemail. So Richard sent Larry a text message and then waited a minute for a reply, hoping he would reply soon, but he didn't. And so as Richard is just sort of standing there, he pressed his face against the glass and peered into the store to look for any movement, thinking maybe he could, you know, bang on the door and get one of the other employees' attention so they could let him in. But he didn't see anybody. So feeling sort of frustrated, Richard stepped away from the door and walked east towards the Baby's R Us side of the building, which had a separate entrance from

the main store, and when he got there, he found one of the sliding doors at Baby's R Us was wide open. Now this really surprised Richard because the company had very strict loss prevention policies that required all doors to remain locked during non-business hours. But this was actually kind of lucky for him because now he was able to just stroll right into the store without needing anyone to help him inside. So once he was in, Richard clocked in and began his shift stocking shelves in his section. Now at this point, Richard still hadn't seen anybody else, and he did think it was kind of eerie to be all alone in this vast florescent-lit store before the sun had even come up.

A few sections over from Richard, Isaac was still stocking his shelves, and he was taking his time as usual because Isaac was meticulous and took great pride in his work. He also really liked Larry as a manager, and so he always tried to do a really good job when Larry was around because he wanted to impress Larry. Cindy on the other hand was actually almost done stocking her section, but it wasn't because she was lazy, it was because she had worked at Toys R Us longer than a lot of the other employees, and so she knew the merchandise inside and out and she could basically make her way through the entire giant store with her eyes closed, and so she was just really

quick. As the hour wore on, all the employees kept plugging away sort of independent of each other, and outside, as the sky turned from pitch black to a pale blue as the sun rose, the lights in the parking lot switched off for the day. Isaac looked outside and noticed the sun coming up, and he knew the store was going to be opening in just a couple of hours, and he still had more merchandise that he would need to put out onto the shelves. So he wheeled his now empty pallet to the back of the store and to the stock room, and he was about to load up another full pallet of merchandise when he suddenly heard a noise

coming from inside the store. It was a repetitive noise, like a wailing sound, but sort of flat and robotic. At first, just because Isaac didn't know what the sound was, he simply tried to ignore it and just focus on his work. But the sound just kept going on and on and nobody seemed to be turning it off, and that's when Isaac realized this was actually an alarm going off inside the store. And so Isaac stopped what he was doing and he pulled out his radio, and he pressed the button and said, hey Larry, there's an alarm going off in the store, can you please turn it off? But a minute went by and the alarm still kept

going and there were no responses from Larry on the radio. And so Isaac turned the channel on his radio and radioed everyone in the store and asked for someone to please go find Larry and please get him to turn off that alarm. Cindy happened to be closest to the manager's office at the front of the store when Isaac made this radio call, and so Cindy replied into the radio that she would go see if Larry was in his office. Shortly after that, Isaac emerged from the stockroom, pulling behind him a pallet of merchandise, and as he did, suddenly a woman's scream echoed through the entire store, and then Isaac heard this woman sobbing and shouting, Oh my God, Oh my God.

Isaac had never heard Cindy scream or cry before, so at first, he wasn't even sure if it was her. He just felt completely disoriented. And then Isaac saw his coworker Anthony rushing towards the manager's office and so Isaac followed behind. Outside the office, both men saw Cindy crying and shaking, and in between sobs she said she needed to call 911, and then she rushed past them, picked up a phone from one of the checkout lanes, and dialed.

At this point, Richard, the employee who had shown up last, rushed up the aisle to where Isaac and Anthony were now standing, and the three men just sort of looked at each other, confused and frightened, and then without a better plan they just walked into the manager's office and immediately it became clear why Cindy was so upset. Their manager, Larry, was slumped over in his chair, bleeding profusely from a hole in his chest. Isaac reflexively called out to Larry, but Larry didn't respond. The only sound in the office was a loud pulsing screech from the phone receiver, which had been left off the hook. And so the three men just turned and ran out of the office over to Cindy, who by this point was on the phone with 911, totally hysterical, screaming into the phone that their manager had been shot and she wasn't sure if he was alive or dead.

The Hamburg Police Department received word from dispatch of a shooting with a possible active shooter scenario at the Toys R Us, and so every police unit in town busted a U-turn and sped in their cruisers straight for the store. Now the 911 operator had told Cindy that the police were going to be there soon and so everybody in the store needed to exit immediately and wait in the parking lot. So minutes later the police arrived at the store, they saw the four employees outside waiting for them and so after moving the employees across the street to a safe location, the police went inside the store ready to potentially engage with an active shooter because nobody knew for sure what the situation really was. Was there still an armed shooter inside somewhere?

Or maybe had they left the store and they were on the loose in the area? Nobody knew. Detective Sergeant Scott Cascino was still at home and barely awake when he got the call about the shooting, and he found himself feeling totally confused and wondering if he had even heard correctly. Like the idea that there was a shooting inside of a Toys R Us at 6 a.m. on a Saturday morning, in Hamburg of all places, just seemed impossible. Koshino was a veteran detective who knew that the town of Hamburg had very little violent crime. So as he quickly got dressed and hopped into his police-issued vehicle and drove to the Toys R Us, he really didn't know what to expect. police-issued vehicle and drove to the Toys R Us, he really didn't know what to expect.

When Cascino arrived at Toys R Us and parked his car in the lot, he watched as the other police officers who had already arrived began carefully advancing towards the building with their guns drawn. Those officers would slowly make their way through the store looking for anybody but finding no one before finally getting to the manager's office where they went inside and they saw what Cindy had seen. Larry, all alone inside, slumped over in his chair. The police called out Larry's name several times, but he was unresponsive. One of the officers walked over to him and pressed his fingers into Larry's wrist, and he turned to his colleagues and signaled that Larry did still have a pulse. But the officers saw all the blood on the floor and they could barely hear Larry's breathing, and so they agreed they basically had no time to waste here in getting this man medical attention. And so the officers

just grabbed Larry by the shoulders and dragged him out of his office, through the store, and out the front door, right to a waiting ambulance. Two EMTs lifted Larry onto a gurney, they strapped him down and then placed him into the back of the ambulance, and then the EMTs hopped in with him, closed the doors, and the ambulance sped off towards the hospital. And as that ambulance sped across town, the EMTs in the back worked on Larry, trying to compress the wound in his chest and get the bleeding to stop. The EMTs noticed that in addition to the huge hole in Larry's chest, there was another wound in his shoulder, but comparatively speaking it was not nearly as

big of a deal as the chest wound. And then as the EMTs continued doing their work, they realized, you know, these wounds were not gunshot wounds, they were knife wounds. Larry had been stabbed. However, despite all the efforts made by these EMTs to try to save Larry, he would unfortunately pass away from his wounds when they were only about halfway to the hospital. Back at the Toys R Us, police had set up a perimeter around the property and then the SWAT team arrived. The SWAT team then searched both inside and outside the building and then reported to Detective Koshino that they didn't find anything or anyone that was suspicious, and so at this point all investigators

were clear to now enter the building. It was also around this time that Detective Koshino and the rest of the first responders learned that the victim had died on the way to the hospital, and that contrary to what the initial theory had been, that he had not been shot, he had been stabbed to death. Cascino and crime scene investigators proceeded into the Toys R Us and headed directly into the manager's office, where Larry had been found. Once inside, everything was carefully swabbed for DNA and dusted for fingerprints, and as they did this, investigators were careful not to step in the long streak of Larry's

blood that had been left there on the ground when the police had dragged him out. There was also a security DVR on the table, it was where footage from all the store's security cameras was fed and recorded onto a hard drive, and very clearly the power cord to that security DVR had been unplugged and pulled away from the wall. Cascino had a hunch that one of the employees who had been working that morning was Larry's killer, and the footage from the surveillance cameras around the property may very well reveal which one it was. So getting this DVR connected and reviewing the footage on it from the surveillance cameras would be crucial. At this point, the four employees who had

been there that morning, Cindy, Isaac, Anthony, and Richard, were the primary suspects in this murder, and so Cascino and his team quickly separated them so they could all be interviewed individually. Investigators put Isaac in the passenger seat of one of the police cruisers, and Cascino sat in the car with him. And the first thing Cascino noticed was how Isaac was trembling and tripping over his words, and so Isaac's nervousness and his inability to answer questions clearly made him seem suspicious, and so did the behavior of Anthony Armstrong, who was the youngest member of the employee crew. He completely clammed up during his interview and refused

to answer questions. So that raised a red flag too. Then detectives questioned Cindy, who was the one who actually found Larry's body, and she was cooperative and helped investigators develop a timeline for the events of the morning. But critically, during her interview, she made it very clear that Anthony was the last person to see Larry alive. Then investigators learned that the final employee, Richard Shepard, was late for work that morning. And when detectives asked him why, Richard explained that he had stopped at the 24-hour grocery store to buy a drink and some snacks to help him get through his shift. Richard then recounted that when he had gotten to work that morning, he had tried calling Larry to open the door for him, but there was no response, and so he wound up entering

through another door, the Baby's R Us door, that just happened to be wide open. And then Richard explained that, you know, that in and of itself was very unusual, because they were all under strict orders to keep the doors locked at all times during non-business hours. And so the investigators finished up their initial interviews with the four Toys R Us employees who were there that morning, but they told them they would still need to stick around a bit longer. If you're listening to this podcast, then chances are good you are a fan of the Strange Dark and Mysterious.

And if that's the case, then I've got some good news. We just launched a brand new Strange Dark and Mysterious podcast called Mr. Bolland'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. Bolland'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. I'm Dan Tuberski. In 2011, something strange began to happen at the high school in Leroy, New York. I was like at my locker and she came up to me and she was like stuttering super bad. I'm like, stop f***ing around. She's like, I can't.

A mystery illness, bizarre symptoms, and spreading fast. It's like doubling and tripling and it's all these girls. With a diagnosis the state tried to keep on the down-low. Everybody thought I was holding something back. Well, you were holding something back. And tension, I... Yeah, yeah, well, yeah. No, it's hysteria.

It's all in your head. It's not physical. Oh my gosh, you're exaggerating. Is this the largest mass hysteria since the witches of Salem? Or is it something else entirely? Something's wrong here. Something's not right. Leroy was the new dateline and everyone was trying to solve the murder.

A new limited series from Wondery and Pineapple Street Studios. Hysterical. Follow Hysterical on the Wondery app or wherever you get your podcasts. You can binge all episodes of Hysterical early and ad free right now by joining Wondery Plus. At about noon, the Toys R Us regional manager of loss prevention for the area, Bernie Gruscia, came out to the store. Toys R Us corporate had contacted him and sent him out here to try to be as helpful as possible with the investigation.

Cascino saw Gruscia arrive, walked over and introduced himself, and then a few minutes later asked Gruscia to come into the manager's office to try to help the investigators view the store's security footage. Once inside the office, Gruscia just plugged the DVR back into the wall and then got the system up and running. Cascino looked at his notes and saw that Cindy said she had arrived at the store shortly before 4 a.m. So Cascino asked Gruscia to please wind the security footage back to about 3 45 a.m. And so Gruscia pulled wind the security footage back to about 3.45 a.m. And so Grusha pulled up the security video at 3.45 a.m. And then very slowly, the detectives began examining footage from each of the stores

more than a dozen security cameras from 3.45 onward. And as they did this, Koshino, who was right nearby, pulled out his notebook and began writing down the exact time at which he saw the employees show up at work on this video, and then he compared the security footage timestamp to the timelines that each of the employees had given him. And also, Cushino took note of where in the store specifically each employee was working during the first two hours of their shifts. On the video, Cushino saw Larry, Isaac, and Cindy all entering the store at 3.55am. And then a few minutes later, Larry could be seen in the back of the store letting that truck driver inside the building so they could offload merchandise.

And then, at exactly 4.24am, Cascino noticed some movement from the camera inside of the Baby's RS department that was pointed toward the front door of the building. And so Cascino asked Grusha to please bring that specific video into full frame. And once that video was maximized, the investigators saw a dark figure standing right outside the front door to Baby's R.S. for about 30 seconds. This figure appeared to struggle with the lock before the door suddenly opened and they walked inside and disappeared somewhere inside the store. Koshino turned to Grusha and said it sort of looked like the person in the video had

jimmied or pried the door open, and Gruscha agreed. Koshino directed Gruscha to pull up the global view, which would allow them to see all of the cameras at once. This would let them track this mysterious figure's movements through the store. The investigators watched on the global view as this figure disappeared from one camera's view and then popped up in another, but as they watched it became pretty clear that this person was doing their best to avoid being in front of the cameras. They were snaking and dodging their way through the store, hiding behind shelves wherever

they could, I mean they were acting really sketchy. But more than that, what seemed really apparent to Koshino and Grusha and the other investigators was that this person on the video camera clearly seemed to know the layout of the store and exactly where the hidden cameras inside the building were positioned. At one point, when the intruder walked across one of the cameras field of vision and was relatively easy to see, Koshino asked Grusha to pause the camera and zoom in on this person to get a better look. And as soon as Gruscia did this, it was clear to investigators that this person was trying very hard to disguise their identity.

The figure had this dark thing wrapped around their face like a scarf, they had all dark clothing on, including dark sweatpants with lettering down the left pant leg, and they were wearing a two-toned baseball cap. But by far the most chilling thing about this figure was what they appeared to be holding in their right hand. It looked very much like they were carrying a large knife. But despite all this, the security video was grainy and low resolution, especially zoomed in, so nobody in the room could make out any of the figure's facial features. The investigators couldn't even make out if this was a man or a woman, and it was also

impossible to tell what the lettering on the side of their sweatpants said. And so eventually, Grusha zoomed back out and resumed playing the footage, and everyone in the room watched as this mysterious figure made their way to the front of the store. They moved along the front wall, and then at exactly 4.32am, the figure entered the manager's office. And shortly after that, the security video cut out. And so the running assumption amongst the investigators was that, you know, this intruder must have pulled the plug on the DVR, and that's why it cut. Cascino asked Gruscia to rewind the surveillance footage and play it back from the point that

figure entered the store. They cycled through the video again, and then once more, slowing it down and zooming in on the intruder again, and eventually it dawned on one of the investigators that the two-tone baseball cap the figure was seen wearing in the footage looked an awful lot like the Florida Gators hat that had been left behind on the floor inside of the office. And so this confirmed for detectives that that hat they had found had very likely been worn by the killer, and it was, along with this surveillance footage, possibly the most valuable piece of evidence that they had.

Once they were finished viewing the surveillance footage, Koshino unplugged the power cord and then carefully bagged it into evidence, because he now knew that the killer had very likely yanked it from the wall. Then Cascino handed off the power cord along with that hat they had found to crime scene technicians who prepared these items to be transported back to the crime lab to be swabbed for DNA. Two days after Larry's murder, the whole community of Hamburg was still frightened because the killer had not been caught. But by this time, the yellow police tape had been pulled from the perimeter of the Toys R Us,

and the store was now open for business and crowded with customers. Police also released the surveillance video and images of the baseball cap to the news media on the off chance that somebody in the area might recognize the killer's walk or maybe the clothing they were wearing. Meanwhile, back at the crime lab, technicians had swabbed the DVR power cord and the Florida Gators baseball cap, and they were able to develop what they believed was the killer's DNA profile. They uploaded that DNA profile into CODIS, which is the federal DNA database with loads and loads of DNA profiles, however, after it was uploaded, there was no match.

So at this point, the investigators, which now included the FBI, made it their main objective to collect DNA samples from every employee of the Hamburg Toys R Us store. Both current employees and former employees, because many, if not all of these people, would not be in the CODIS database. And remember, the leading theory at this point is that, you know, Larry was killed by potentially an active employee or a former employee, somebody with access to this building and an understanding of where the cameras were. And so over the course of the next few weeks, investigators developed a list of Toys R Us past and present employees and also other people connected to Larry and began making

contact with them. Police interviewed literally hundreds of people and not one person they talked to could think of anyone who would have done this. Seemingly nobody had any issues with Larry Wells. And on top of that, it was like nobody had one unkind thing to say about him. He seemed universally loved. But there was one piece of information that surfaced from a witness who had been near the Toys R Us in the early hours of the morning that Larry was killed. And that person recalled seeing a black Chevy Impala sedan parked inside the toy store's parking lot at that time. Now this Toys R Us, despite having loads of cameras, did not have any dedicated exterior cameras,

so there were no images of this vehicle and this witness did not get a license plate number for the car. Police also could not immediately trace a black Chevy Impala to any of the Toys R Us employees. And so, while some members of the investigative team searched for this car without much to go on, others continued to track down and collect DNA swabs from current and former employees of the Hamburg Toys R Us, and they ended up with a total of 47 DNA samples. It would take several weeks for each DNA profile to be processed by the crime lab, but finally in mid-August, a month and a half after Larry's murder, the results from all 47 DNA tests came in.

And none were a match, meaning not one of those current or former employees had a DNA profile that matched the DNA profile from the hat and the power cord found inside of the crime scene. Detective Cascino and his team were frankly shocked. I mean, they expected there to be a match here, but now they just felt lost. It was like months of work had gotten them nowhere. And so once again, they turned to the FBI for help, and they asked the Bureau to draw up a psychological and personality profile of the killer. And so the FBI created that

profile and then began reviewing recent arrests in the upstate New York area, and they would find one person who matched their profile almost exactly. The man's name was Patrick Walden, and he had recently been arrested in a neighboring town and he had just been released from jail. And Cascino soon learned that the vehicle Patrick was driving when he was arrested was registered to his girlfriend's mother, who happened to be an employee at the Hamburg Toys R Us where Larry Wells was killed. And perhaps even more importantly, Cascino discovered that when police searched that vehicle at the time of Patrick's arrest, inside of the car, they found a very long

knife. Detective Cascino and the rest of the investigation now considered Patrick to be their primary suspect. He had a connection to the Toys R Us through his girlfriend's mother, he'd been in possession of a weapon that was at least similar to the one used to kill Larry, and he fit the FBI's profile of the killer. So Cascino quickly secured a warrant to put around-the-clock surveillance on Patrick, and on an afternoon not long after that, an undercover cop tailed Patrick as he drove through town.

The undercover cop made sure to stay far enough back not to draw any attention, and he followed Patrick for several minutes, almost at a leisurely pace. Then the cop noticed Patrick's driver's side window roll down, and so sensing an opportunity here, the cop sped up a bit and leaned forward in his car to get a better look inside of Patrick's car, and he saw Patrick throw something out of the open window onto the street. Now, the cop had no idea what it was, but there was no way he was going to miss this opportunity. And so instead of continuing to trail Patrick, the cop pulled over to the side of the road,

he got out, he walked into the middle of the road being careful of oncoming traffic, and he began looking at the ground for whatever it was Patrick threw, and he couldn't believe his luck. Because right there in the middle of the road was a still-smoldering cigarette butt, something Patrick had just been smoking. And so it would definitely have a sample of Patrick's DNA on it. And so the undercover cop slipped on a pair of gloves, he crouched down, picked up the butt, carefully extinguished it, dropped it into an evidence bag, and headed back to his vehicle.

The cigarette butt was sent to the crime lab for processing, and Detective Cascino and his team thought that was going to be a huge break in the case. But as with all the other DNA samples police had collected to that point, Cascino knew it would still take weeks before test results came back. And during that time, the local news started running stories about how the investigation still hadn't caught the killer and about how people in the community were tense, feeling as though anyone among them could be the killer. And on top of that, Larry's widow was now more than five months pregnant with the couple's second daughter, who would be born without a father. Larry's widow and the rest of Larry's family

feared that the investigation was really losing momentum. And so, Koshino was feeling a ton of pressure to crack this case. So, while he and his team waited for DNA results on the cigarette butt, they went back to the beginning, reviewing their case files and looking for anything they might have overlooked. And it was at that point that investigators realized there was still one Toys R Us employee went back to the beginning, reviewing their case files and looking for anything they might have overlooked. And it was at that point that investigators realized there was still one Toys R Us employee on their list that they actually had not obtained a DNA sample from. In fact, every time they had contacted this particular employee to request a sample, this

person had an excuse as to why it wasn't a good time. They were either out of town, attending a family event, or just feeling under the weather. And the more time that passed, the more it seemed like this employee was actually deliberately trying to avoid giving their DNA sample. So detectives reached out to this person again and said, hey, we got to do this sample. But once again, the employee said, no, it was not a good time. They said they were still very distraught over everything that had happened. And so for the time being, they had gone to stay at their father's house so they were not around to give the sample. Koshino and his team believed that they had already been patient enough with this employee and that the employee's evasiveness was really starting to look quite suspicious.

So the investigators located this employee's father's house and they drove out there hoping to basically force this employee to give a DNA sample. And so the investigators made their way out to this house, they parked outside, got out of their vehicles and began walking up towards the door. And as they passed by a car that was parked in the driveway, one of the investigators stopped in his tracks. He called out to the others and waved them over to the car he was next to and then he pointed to something on the rear bumper.

It was a Florida Gators bumper sticker. And remember, there was a Florida Gators hat found in the crime scene. That's where the DNA sample was being pulled from. When Cascino saw this, he felt a jolt of excitement. He felt like this could be a big break. And so he and the others walked up to the front door and they knocked, and the employee they were trying to get this DNA sample from answered, appearing very surprised to see the investigators at their father's house.

But Koshino was very disarming and he apologized for bothering them, and he said, look, I know this is not a good time, but the police department really needs to get their DNA right now just so they can eliminate them from the suspect pool. The employee nodded and said they understood, and then Cascino handed them a swab and asked them to please put it in their mouth and swab their cheek. The employee did that and handed the swab right back, and Cascino dropped it into a plastic vial and sealed it inside. The investigators thanked the employee, then they returned to their vehicles and drove

back to the station. Once there, they handed over the swab to the crime lab, but they knew, just like with the Patrick Walden swab and all the others, they would have to wait weeks before this result would come back. While they waited, no major new leads developed. The only thing that came up was investigators learned that Isaac, the employee whose anxiousness had raised suspicions right after the murder, quit his job at Toys R Us, but that didn't really lead the police anywhere. Then finally, in the middle of October, DNA test results came back for Patrick Walden, who had thrown that cigarette butt out the window that the undercover had found, and

also for the final Toys R Us employee that police had to go to his father's house to collect that swab for. And one of those two DNA profiles would be a match for the DNA that was found on the Florida Gator's hat and the security DVR power cord. And so, more than three months after Larry Wells was murdered, Detective Cascino and his team now knew what happened inside the Toys R Us on that Saturday morning in June, and they knew the identity of that figure in the grainy surveillance footage. Based on interviews, DNA samples, and evidence collected throughout the investigation, the following is a reconstruction of what police believe happened at the Toys R Us on June

29, 2013. In the dark early morning hours, the killer drove a black Chevy Impala into the Toys R Us parking lot, they parked the vehicle, and then just sat there, scoping out the closed store and planning their entry. After a few minutes, the killer pulled a scarf around their face to conceal their identity, they grabbed their knife off the passenger seat, and then got out of their car and walked up to the Baby Zara's entrance on the side of the store. The killer walked up to the entrance and then kind of jostled at the door for about 30 seconds until they got it open and then they went inside.

Once inside, they very carefully walked along the walls, ducking behind shelves and doing their best to hide from the store surveillance cameras. The killer eventually reached the manager's office and they walked inside and closed the door behind them. The killer then walked over to the DVR surveillance system and pulled the power cord out of the wall, disabling all the cameras in the store. Fifteen minutes later, store manager Larry Wells entered that very same office and right away saw the killer crouched over attempting to open up the store safe. The killer heard Larry enter and they wheeled around and immediately held up their knife and demanded Larry come

over here and open the safe. But Larry, instead of doing that, just reached for the phone to call for help. But at the same time, the killer lunged at Larry and the two men began to struggle. Larry tried desperately to push the killer off of him, but the killer began swinging their arms wildly, at one point stabbing Larry in the shoulder. And when that happened, Larry stumbled forward, and the killer at that point just raised the knife again and brought it down into Larry, stabbing him in the left side of his chest. Larry screamed out in pain and then collapsed into the chair. The killer just stood there for a second, shocked at the sight of Larry now bleeding profusely from the stab wound they had just inflicted on him. And so the killer, who was

starting to panic, just forgot about the safe and just turned and ran out of the office, not realizing their baseball cap had fallen off during the attack. Once out of the office, the killer slipped through the store unseen and rushed back outside. They got back into their impala, sped out of the parking lot, and tossed the knife into a dumpster as they fled the scene. into their impala, sped out of the parking lot, and tossed the knife into a dumpster as they fled the scene. Back in the manager's office, Larry Wells was slipping in and out of consciousness, but in one of his conscious moments, he did manage to trip the store alarm. However, despite that alarm going off, Larry would lay there bleeding for nearly an hour

before he was finally discovered and help was called. But unfortunately by that point, it was already too late. For months, detectives had dealt with one DNA test after another that did not match the hat or the DVR cord. But they did finally get a match from that last employee they had tested. And that employee was Bernie Gruscia, the regional vice president of loss prevention for Toys R Us, and the same man who had assisted investigators with the security footage. He literally watched himself maneuver through the store, eventually committing a murder, while he sat there with police.

On October 16, 2013, police arrested Gruscha and charged him with the murder of his friend and employee, Larry Wells. Investigators served a search warrant on Gruscha's home and what they found in the garage of the house brought them much closer to understanding his motives. Police found over $200,000 in stolen Toys R Us merchandise and what the investigation would soon uncover is that Bernie Gruscha, who had been hired to protect Toys R Us merchandise, and what the investigation would soon uncover is that Bernie Grusha, who had been hired to protect Toys R Us assets, was actually robbing Toys R Us blind. He had stolen merchandise from numerous Toys R Us stores in New York

and Pennsylvania, and he was then reselling this merchandise on eBay to help chip away at his mountain of debt while continuing to live a lifestyle that was way beyond his means. Investigators learned that his wife became fed up with Gruscia's reckless spending, and she also discovered that he was cheating on her, and so their marriage was falling apart. And just three weeks before Larry Wells' murder, Gruscia had had this argument with his wife, after which he had left the room, ran upstairs, entered the master bedroom, got out his 9mm Beretta pistol and fired it. And his wife ran upstairs and found her husband lying face down on the floor thinking he must have killed himself. And so she frantically ran to him and turned him over,

at which point he looked back at her, completely unharmed, and told her he just wanted to test her and see how she'd react. His wife reacted by calling the police, who quickly showed up, confiscated the gun, and placed Grusha under arrest on charges of criminal possession of a weapon and harassment. His wife then filed a protection order, and so Grusha could not return to the house that he shared with his family. So he went to live with his father as his life continued to fall apart. Grusha had reached a point of total desperation by the time he parked the Black Chevy Impala in the Toys R' Us parking lot that morning in late June before taking the life of a man

he had hired and considered his friend. It turned out Grusha had rented that Black Chevy Impala and when he arrived back at the store later to assist investigators, he was driving his own car. But police were able to trace that rental car back to him, which further solidified their case. Investigators also discovered that Grusha had actually used his key to unlock the Baby Zara store. He had simply pretended to be prying it open for the security cameras, because he figured

that would point investigators to a lower-ranking employee or someone who did not work at the store at all. Grusha eventually admitted to everything he had done in exchange for a reduced sentence. He claimed he did not intend to kill Larry Wells that morning, that he had gone in there to commit a robbery and then things had simply got out of control and he had stabbed Larry while flailing about with his knife in his hand. Prosecutors knew there was no way they could prove intent so they ended up reducing the murder charge to just first-degree manslaughter. And so Bernie Gruscia pled guilty and was sentenced to a minimum term of 25 years in prison.

Thank you for listening to the Mr. Bollin Podcast. If you enjoyed today's story and you're looking for more bone-chilling content, be sure to check out all of our studio's podcasts. Not just this one, but also Mr. Bollin's Medical Mysteries, Bedtime Stories, Run Fool, and Wartime Stories. To find them, all you have to do is look up Bollin Studios on any podcast platform and boom, you'll find them all. If you want to watch hundreds more stories just like the one you heard today head over to our YouTube channel which is just called Mr. Ballin. So that's gonna do it I really appreciate your support until next time see ya. Hey Prime members, you can binge 8 new episodes of the Mr. Ballin Podcast one month early

and all episodes ad free on Amazon Music. Download the Amazon Music app today. And before you go, please tell us about yourself by completing a short survey at wondery.com slash survey. She struck him with her motor vehicle. She had been under the influence that she left him there. In January 2022, local woman Karen Reed was implicated in the mysterious death of her boyfriend, Boston police officer John O'Keefe. It was alleged that after an innocent night out for drinks with friends,

Karen and John got into a lover's quarrel en route to the next location. What happens next depends on who you ask. Was it a crime of passion? If you believe the prosecution, it's because the evidence was so compelling. This was clearly an intentional act. And his cause of death was blunt force trauma

with hypothermia. Or a corrupt police cover-up. If you believe the defense theory, however, this was all a cover-up to prevent one of their own from going down. Everyone had an opinion, and after the 10-week trial, the jury could not come to a unanimous decision. To end in a mistrial, it's just a confirmation of just how complicated this case is.

Law and Crime presents the most in-depth analysis to date of this sensational case in Karen. You can listen to Karen exclusively with Wondery+. Join Wondery Plus in the Wondery app, Apple Podcasts, or Spotify.