MrBallen Podcast: Strange, Dark & Mysterious Stories - The Green Monster (PODCAST EXCLUSIVE EPISODE)

Episode Date: February 9, 2026

In the early morning hours of March 27, 2003, a four-year-old boy was lying in bed in rural Ohio, when he suddenly heard his door open. He assumed it was just his great-grandparents checking in on him, and he pretended to be asleep. He heard the floorboards creaking as someone stepped into his room, and approached his bed. The boy peeked his eyes open just a tiny bit... and he saw a huge, green monster standing over his bed – pointing a shotgun at him. You can WATCH all new & exclusive MrBallen podcast episodes on 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.

In the early morning hours of March 27, 2003, a four-year-old boy was lying in bed in rural Ohio when he suddenly heard his door open. Now, he assumed it was just his great-grandparents coming in to check on him, and so, you know, he's a kid, he just pretended to be asleep. But he heard whoever this was make their way across the bedroom, because he heard the floorboards creaking, and at some point they were standing right next to his bed. And so curious, the little boy opened his eyes. And what he saw standing next to his bed was not his great-grandparents. It was a huge green monster. But before we get into today's story, if you're a fan of the strange, dark, and mysterious delivered in story format, then you've come to the right place because

that's all we do. So if that's of interest to you, the next time the follow button goes on vacation, do them a favor and paint the entire exterior of their house a blinding neon yellow. Okay, let's get into today's story. On the evening of Wednesday, March 26, 2003, a 55-year-old woman named Linda Myers drove down a secluded two-lane road in Dark County, Ohio. Dark County was very rural. It was basically just very small towns and farmland. And so as Linda drove down the road, you know, kind of in the middle of nowhere, she looked at her window and she saw the sun setting over a field. She was coming home from the pizza shop that she and her husband Jack owned in a town nearby. Linda eventually turned down a gravel road and onto the sprawling 40-acre farm where she and her husband lived.

She parked outside their old farmhouse, and then she grabbed a deposit bag with money from the pizza shop out of the back seat, and then she got out of her car. Their farm was so isolated that she couldn't hear any cars on the road or anything from the neighbor's houses, so it was completely quiet except for the sheep that were bleeding in the field and the occasional sound of power tools coming from the barn. She walked around to the back of the barn, and she found Jack, hunched over the engine of a beat-up old car. The two of them had been married for about seven years. And even though this was actually Linda's third marriage,

she really felt like Jack was her soulmate. In addition to owning the shop with Linda, the pizza shop, Jack also had a full-time job at a manufacturing plant, and he also had a side business for storing cars. And so Linda often found him out here behind the barn working on a car around the time the sun was going down. And sitting in the grass beside the car, playing with a wrench, was Linda's four-year-old great-grandson, Damien. And the second Damien saw Linda,

he smiled and he got up and he rushed over to her to give her a big hug. And Damien's smile made Linda feel sort of bittersweet. Damien was the son of Linda's granddaughter, Amber. But Amber had gotten pregnant at just 14 years old. And so as a result had not been in any position to take care of a baby. So Linda and Jack had offered to take Damien in and raise him for a few years while Amber finished high school and got on her feet. However, this was definitely not a perfect arrangement for many reasons, but one of those reasons was because Damien's father was furious about being cut out of the custody agreement. Even now, four years after, you know, Damien's situation had been decided, the father still argued with Linda about how she wouldn't let him see his son.

But Linda felt like as much as he was saying he wanted to be in Damien's life, she felt like at some point he was going to abandon this child, and so she really didn't want him to be around Damien at all. She didn't want her great-grandson to be abandoned like that. And besides, Damien would have another father figure in his life soon enough, because in the past few years, Amber had finished school, she had met a new man and gotten married. And as soon as Damien finished up this year of preschool in a couple of months, Amber and her new husband were planning to take him in and raise him on their own. Linda was proud of Amber, how she had turned her life around. But she also felt a little sad, you know, bittersweet,

because she and Jack were going to miss having Damien around. They loved him. He was basically their son. Linda knew that Jack clearly was busy with this car and kind of didn't want to be interrupted. So she just said a quick hello and then scooped Damien up and carried him over to the farmhouse. She opened up the door and she set him down and told him to go wash up before dinner. Then she went into the kitchen and she dropped the deposit bag from the pizza shop into a chair in the dining room. The bag was full of cash, and her plan was to drop it off at the bank in the morning.

Linda got out of pan and began cooking dinner, and pretty soon her husband Jack came inside, covered in car grease. While Jack washed his hands at the kitchen sink, Linda asked him about his day. And Jack kind of grumbled about this customer that he had sold a car to on a payment plan the previous year, who had now missed three payments in a row. Jack said he was going to have to drive out there to the person's house tomorrow and repossess the car. Linda could see, you know, Jack is obviously pretty tense here, but Linda knew it wasn't really that missed car payment that was bothering him. The truth was Jack had been sort of tense really for the past

week, ever since he had had this big argument with his 25-year-old son, Greg. Greg had always been very shy and mild-mannered and really close with his dad. In fact, he was the best man at Jack and and Linda's wedding. But recently, Greg's life had been falling off the rails. He was in the middle of a divorce, he was struggling with drinking and drug abuse, and he'd been missing ships at work. And so earlier that month, he'd come by to ask Jack for money because his house was about to be foreclosed on. And Jack had drawn a line and said no. He told Greg that if you wanted to keep his house, he'd have to clean up his act and get back to work. And so that had led to a very big fight. And so now Linda had a feeling that Jack was genuinely worried that he'd done real damage to his

relationship with Greg, perhaps irreparably, because something pretty similar had also happened with Jack's other son, Travis. About seven years earlier, when Travis was 21, he and Jack had gotten into this big argument that was so bad, Travis moved out, and then the two of them had not spoken since for seven years. So Linda thought Jack must be worried that that would be the same thing that would happen with him and Greg. So while Jack washed his hands, Linda rubbed his shoulders and told him not to worry about Greg, He had a good head on his shoulders, and he just needed a little nudge to get back on track, and that's all Jack had done. She reassured him that he'd made the right call, and Greg would get through this rough patch sooner or later.

Then Linda set the table and called the family to dinner. A little while later, after they'd eaten and cleaned up, Linda looked up at the clock and realized it was getting kind of late. Damien had preschool in the morning, and she didn't want him to be tired and grumpy. So she scooped him up and took him to his room upstairs to get ready for bed. She helped him change into his PJs. She brushed his teeth, then tucked him in, gave him a kiss good night, and closed the door. Linda went back downstairs, and before long, she and Jack were getting ready for bed too. Before long, Linda was in her bedroom. She had turned on a lamp. She had changed into her PJs and crawled under the covers. And then once Jack was settled in next to her, she turned off the light, and they fell asleep.

But several hours later, Linda was suddenly woken up by this horribly loud noise, and she sat up and looked around. and when her eyes finally adjusted to the darkness, she gasped. The next morning, at a church a mile away from Linda and Jack's house, a preschool teacher was getting ready to start class, but she noticed there was an empty chair in her classroom. One of her students, four-year-old Damien Huffman, was late. She knew Damien's great-grandparents led busy lives and had several different jobs and businesses,

so she figured they must just be running late. So she began class and hoped they would just drop Damien off before he missed too much. And about an hour later, at 9.30 a.m., she was leading the class in morning sing-alongs when Damien suddenly came sprinting into the classroom. Now, at first, the teacher was relieved that Damien had shown up. But then she realized Damien looked frazzled and out of breath and he didn't have his backpack and he was wearing PJs and there was the smear of something brown on his shirt. She ran over to him and knelt down next to him and realized the brown spot was dried blood. The teacher asked Damien what was going on, and he looked at her with this scared, confused expression, and he told her his great-grandparents' faces were melting.

About 15 minutes later, a police sergeant named Mark Whitaker, along with his partner, drove down a secluded road toward a farmhouse in rural Ohio. Sergeant Whitaker had been a detective for the Dark County Sheriff's Department for five years, and he was in charge of the investigative unit. So when the department had gotten a very strange 911 call that morning from a local preschool, he was sent out to investigate. According to the preschool teacher, a four-year-old student named Damien Huffman had come into school, covered in blood, out of breath, saying something about his great-grandparents' faces being,

you know, melting. The teacher identified the great-grandparents as Linda and Jack Myers. Now, Whitaker had no idea what Damien meant when he had said that their faces were melting. Or what kind of situation, you know, Whitaker and his partner would be walking into it. to when they got to the farm. But he had a feeling it would not be good. They pulled up to the farm and parked at the end of the long gravel road. And when Whitaker got out of his car, he immediately noticed how eerily quiet it was. There was another farmhouse just across the road and a few more on the horizon, but otherwise they were surrounded by empty fields in every direction. Whitaker

began walking towards the front door when he saw the front door was already wide open, but there was no clear sign of forced entry. But nonetheless, Whitaker and his partner reflexively drew their weapons, and they stepped inside the house. Whitaker began calling out to see if anybody was home, but there was no response. From where he was standing, he saw there was another open door in the house that led to a set of stairs that went down presumably to the basement. Whitaker ignored the basement for now and instead continued clearing the first floor. So he went into the kitchen, and once he was sure it was clear, he continued down the hallway until he found a doorway that led into a bedroom.

And when he went inside that bedroom, he found Damien's great-grandparents, Jack and Linda Myers. And they were lying in their bed side by side, and he could tell immediately they were both dead. Now Jack was actually lying on his stomach, and he could tell right away there was a big bullet wound on the back of Jack's neck. As for Linda, she was on her back, and she had gunshot wounds to her face and her hand, as if she had raised her hand to defend herself before she was shot. And so at this point, Whitaker and his partner did a full search. of the house just to make sure nobody else was there and it was empty. And so the two went back to the bedroom to begin investigating the bodies. Whitaker put on a pair of latex gloves and touched the wound on Linda's face. And the blood was still warm and wet. So he figured likely they'd only been dead for

maybe a few hours at most. He looked around the floor and he didn't see any bullet casings, which meant the killer had gone through the trouble of picking them up afterwards to cover their tracks. Then, Whitaker's partner called his attention to this weird, plasticy bundle that was lying on a pillow near Jack's head. Whitaker picked it up, and he saw it was a piece of quilting fabric that was balled up and covered in masking tape. His best guess was that it was a homemade gun silencer. The killer likely taped it to the end of their gun to muffle the sound of the blast, and it must have, you know, blown off at some point when they actually began shooting. Immediately, Whitaker wondered, if this was a silencer, why the killer would need to be.

one so far out in the middle of nowhere. But when Whitaker left the bedroom and went up a flight of stairs to the room right above where the murders had taken place, he found another bedroom that was full of stuffed animals and toy trucks. It was obviously Damien's room. And it was at this point that Whitaker realized, you know, very likely the killer must have known there was going to be a toddler sleeping right upstairs when they did this. And so they needed the silencer in order to not wake the child when they committed this murder. And so this meant that the killer almost certainly knew Jack and Linda personally. Within minutes, more officers from the Dark County Sheriff's Office swarmed the property.

Whitaker went outside to supervise them, and pretty quickly, a forensics officer called him over to look at a set of footprints that they had found in the mud. Whitaker followed the trail of footprints around the side of the house to a basement window. The window pane had been pried off, leaving an open hole that was just big enough for a person to squeeze through. Whitaker crouched down and looked through the open space, and he could see inside there was a set of stairs leading up to the main part of the house. And so he realized this must have been how the killer got inside. And it was also why when they had first gone inside that they had seen the door to the basement standing wide open. And so this only made Whitaker more sure that this crime had to have been committed by somebody close to this couple,

because the killer obviously knew the layout of Linda and Jack's house. Whitaker told the forensics officer to make a cast of the footprints so they could figure out what type and size of shoe the killer was wearing. And then as Whitaker stood back up, he noticed something else. The phone lines that were running along the side of the house had clearly been severed. The killer clearly had planned ahead and made sure that nobody in this house could call for help. Just then, a truck pulled up at the end of the road, and a woman got out and started walking toward the house.

Whitaker quickly went over to stop her from getting too close to the crime scene, and he asked her what she needed. And she said she was a neighbor who lived at the next property over. She said that she had seen the police cars coming down the road and she didn't really know what was going on, but she felt like she had information that they might want. The neighbor said that around 4.30 that morning, she'd seen a minivan leaving the Myers farm.

It had been so dark that she hadn't been able to see what color it was, but it had stuck out to her because as far as she knew, the Myers did not own a minivan. And so hearing this, Whitaker realized, you know, this woman may have seen the killer leaving the property. And if that was true, it meant the murders most likely happened before 4.30 in the morning. And so this was potentially quite useful. And so he thanked the neighbor.

And after she left, he went back inside the house to look for more clues. He really wanted to piece together a motive. You know, he felt strongly that whoever had done this knew Linda and Jack. But that doesn't mean that the motive is clear. You know, there could be any number of reasons they would attack them. Maybe it was a robbery. Maybe they were just, you know, getting revenge or something. He didn't know.

But as he began walking around the house, he found a literal deposit bag full of cash in the living room, which certainly suggested that this was not a robbery, because that would certainly have been taken. And also, there were some pretty expensive electronics in the living room that also had not been touched. So robbery seemed to be out the door. But when Whitaker went back upstairs to take a closer look at the toddler's bedroom, he noticed something odd. There was a little red stain on the bedding that looked like dried blood.

While forensics teams were still combing over the farmhouse, another investigator assigned to the case, a guy named Detective Mike Burns, went to the local preschool to speak to four-year-old Damien. Burns was a father himself, and he felt an immediate connection to this little boy, who at this point looked scared and very confused. Now, he knew it was going to be very difficult for Damien to rehash something that was so traumatic. But Damien was the the only potential witness in the house when his great-grandparents were killed. So speaking to him was the police's best bet at figuring out what happened. And so Byrne sat down on the floor with Damien inside of a private room and he asked him to explain what had happened that morning. Damien, in a

four-year-old way, said he'd woken up around 8.45 and the house had been very quiet. So he'd gotten out of bed and went into his great-grandparents' bedroom. And then he said that both of them had been in bed, and he thought they were sleeping. But when he tried to wake them up, they wouldn't move. And then he realized there was blood on their face. And he said he had tried to wipe the blood off with Kleenex wipes. But there was so much of it that he realized something was very wrong. He thought for a second that their faces were melting. And so to save his great-grandparents, he had run the full mile down the road to was preschool to get help. Burns was surprised that this four-year-old could remember and articulate so much about such an awful experience. But he was very grateful because the child's story explained

why there was blood on Damien's shirt. However, it did not explain why they'd also found blood on Damien's bed. So he asked Damien if he had gone back into his own room after finding his great grandparents. But Damien said no. He'd gone straight out the front door and gone to his school. Burns thought there had to be more to the story, though, because otherwise he just couldn't explain how blood wound up in Damien's room. So he brought over a dollhouse and he asked Damien to go ahead and act out everything that had happened the night before, using toys to represent himself and his great-grandparents. Damien put the toy that represented himself into bed in one room, and then he put Jack and Linda into the bed in the other room. And he said everybody went to sleep at their normal bedtimes.

But later, in the middle of the night, he heard his bedroom door open and he said somebody came inside. Burns asked Damien who it was, and Damien paused. And then he said, the green monster. At first, Burns wasn't really sure what to make of this. He wondered if Damien was just imagining things or describing a nightmare or something. But then Damien set the toys down and then to represent this green monster, he used his fingers to crawl across the floor of the dollhouse towards. Damien's bed. Damien said he had heard the door open in his room and he had opened his eyes just a little

bit, but he didn't want to give away that he was fully awake, so he was just squinting his eyes. And he said, when he did that, he saw the green monster right next to his bed. And the green monster was pointing a gun at him. And Damien was so terrified, he said he shut his eyes and just pretended to be asleep. And then he said when he opened his eyes again, the green monster was gone. After hearing this, Burns realized that Damien's recollection was almost most certainly not a dream. More likely than not, Damien had come face to face with his grandparents' killer. They were the green monster. After leaving the preschool, the next priority for Detective Burns was to speak to Damien's mother, 19-year-old Amber Holcher. And so the detective

drove out to Amber's house, which was in a nearby town, and when he rang the doorbell, she answered right away. Now, at this point, nobody in the family had been notified yet about the murders. So Amber seemed to have no idea why a detective was now standing on her doorstep. Now, Burns knew this, and so he said to her, can I please come inside? We need to speak. And so confused, Amber said, okay, and she let him inside and they sat down in the living room. And then Burns said to her, you know, very gently, that her grandparents, Linda and Jack Myers, were no longer with them. But when Amber heard this, she just looked confused and asked what he meant, like, where are they?

So Burns took a deep breath and he clarified that they were deceased. Amber looked completely shocked and immediately asked, is Damien dead too? But Burns said no, no, he's alive, but he's going to be kept in protective custody for a while in case whoever killed Jack and Linda try to hurt him too. And until they narrowed down the suspects, Damien would not be allowed to see anybody in the family, including her, his own mother. At this point, Amber just began to cry. Burns felt horrible for her, but really really,

he was thinking about Damien. He knew he had to solve this case as quickly as possible because every day that he didn't would be another day that Damien would have to spend alone without any family to comfort him. Based both on Amber's reaction to the news and the fact that Damien did not mention seeing his mother on the night of the murder, Burns thought it was highly unlikely that Amber was a suspect, but she could know something that might help the investigation. So, once she calmed down, Burns asked her if she knew anyone who might have wanted to be a suspect. to hurt her grandparents. And right away, she nodded and she mentioned Damien's father, Andrew Huffman. She said Andrew hated Linda because she wouldn't let him see Damien. In fact, just recently,

Andrew had come to Linda's pizza shop and started a fight with her about custody. And it had escalated to the point where Andrew had publicly threatened to kill her. This obviously caught Burns his attention because it made perfect sense as a motive. If Linda and Jack were out of the way, well, Andrew would have an easier time getting custody of Damien. And so he thanked Amber and promised he would be in touch soon. And then as soon as he was back in his car, he called Sergeant Whitaker and he told him what he'd learned. Later that day, Whitaker and his partner made the two-hour drive to Andrew's address in Newport,

Kentucky. When they got there, Andrew quickly came to the door and he let them inside and they sat down and Andrew looked at them like, what's going on? And they told him that Linda and Jack had been murdered. and they watched Andrew for his reaction. And he seemed very surprised, but he definitely did not seem upset. Andrew would then admit that he did not get along with Amber's family. And when Whitaker asked him about that big argument at the pizza shop,

Andrew did not deny that he had literally threatened to kill Linda. But he swore he would never actually do it. He said it was just an empty thread he made in the heat of the moment. Still, Whitaker thought Andrew looked very suspicious. So he asked him for an alibi. And Andrew said he'd stayed over to girls. house on the night of the murder, and in the morning he'd stopped by his dad's house and then gone straight to work. And you could ask all those people and that's where he was. Whitaker wrote all this down

and then asked Andrew a few more questions and then thanked him for his time. And then as soon as the detectives left, they immediately went to go check on Andrew's alibi. They went to that girl's house, then they went to Andrew's dad's house, and then they also went to his place of work. And everybody at those three locations all confirmed Andrew's alibi. So unless someone was lying, it left no window of time where Andrew could have driven two hours away to Ohio to murder Jack and Linda. Whitaker was disappointed that they basically wasted most of the day on this lead that now looked like it wouldn't go anywhere, especially knowing that again, every moment in this case that it went unsolved was another moment that Damien would have to spend away from his family

all alone. The following morning, Detective Burns, the same officer who had spoken to Damien and also his mother Amber, sat inside of his office feeling very frustrated. He had one goal for the day. He wanted to interview Jack's estranged son, 28-year-old Travis Myers. But it was looking like that was going to be harder than he had anticipated. So the day before, a bunch of sheriff's deputies had interviewed Linda and Jack's family and friends, and family members in particular had mentioned that Travis and Jack had some bad blood. And when Burns had dug through the files on Travis, he found out that Travis also had a criminal record. But there was a problem. It appeared that Travis hadn't even been in Ohio in seven years.

The last anybody in the family had heard, he'd moved to Arizona to live with his mother. But when Burns had called the mother that morning, she said that she actually didn't know where Travis was at all. And there was no other address on record for Travis. So Burns basically had no idea where he was. And so he began to wonder, like, how was he going to track Travis down? And he decided he should start by visiting Travis' younger brother and Jack's other son, whose name was Greg. Burns knew Greg lived only a few towns over, and even though he really wasn't sure how close the brothers might be, it was the only lead he really had. A little while later, Burns showed up at Greg's house and he knocked on the front door.

In a moment later, a young man and a baseball cap answered, and he looked very much like he'd been crying. Burns asked if he was Greg Myers, and the young man nodded and stepped aside to let him in. Greg did not seem remotely surprised by this visit. He said the police had already contacted him the night before to tell him about his father and stepmother's murder, and since then, he said he'd just been waiting for somebody to come by and talk to him, because he'd seen enough TV to know that family members were always the first suspects. But when they got into the living room, Burns stopped in his tracks because there was another young man standing in the doorway, and he looked a lot like Greg.

Burns asked who it was, and Greg said, oh, that's my brother, Travis. Burns couldn't believe his luck. He'd come here hoping to figure out where Travis might be, but he never imagined he would just find Travis standing in Greg's house. And this was a big development because really until now, Burns had no idea if Travis was even in the state at the time of the murders. But Greg would actually tell him that Travis had been in Ohio for the past several weeks staying in an apartment that he had rented right nearby. Burns did think the timing seemed very suspicious. It just seemed way too convenient that Travis had come back into town for the first time in almost a decade right before

Jack and Linda were killed. It just seemed too poor. perfect. And also at this point, it just seemed really suspicious that these two brothers are just standing here waiting for police to come question them. It just something felled off. So Burns, operating on a gut instinct, told them both that in order to question them, they actually had to come with him to the station and do it formally down there. Less than an hour later, Detective Burns opened the door of the Dark County Sheriff's Office, and he showed Greg and Travis Myers inside. Now, neither of the brothers were under arrest yet. But Burns had a feeling that by the end of their interviews, one or both of them could be. Burns took Greg into

his office for questioning, while Burns' partner took Travis into a room down the hall. As soon as Greg sat down in front of the desk, Burns noticed that he wasn't making eye contact with him. He was sort of acting shifty. But pretty quickly, Greg said he was perfectly willing to tell the detectives anything they wanted if it could help solve his dad and stepmother's murders. And so Burns immediately began asking questions. He asked Greg what he was doing in the early hours. hours of Thursday morning when Jack and Linda were killed. And Greg told him that mostly he was just asleep. That is, until about 4.30 when he got up to go to his job at a factory that was a few towns over. He also said his girlfriend was at home with him the whole night and she could confirm that.

He then said he drove to work in his minivan and he clocked in at 523 a.m. And he even had a signed time card back home that would prove it. And Burns was immediately very interested to learn that Greg drove a minivan. Because remember, that neighbor had said she saw a minivan leaving the Myers farm around 4.30 on the morning of the murders, suggesting the killer drove a minivan. However, Burns was starting to realize that even if Greg's alibi were shaky or didn't check out, the timing alone likely ruled him out. It basically was impossible to drive from Greg's house at 4.30 a.m. when he left, go all the way to the farm, commit the murders, then drive to the factory, and be able to clock in at 523 a.m. when he had his time card stamped.

That just wasn't enough time to do all that. And also, pretty much everybody in the family had told Burns that Greg was quite close with Jack and Linda. Now, he was having some problems with drugs and alcohol, but he had no history of crime or violence, and none of his family members thought he seemed capable of being a killer. So even though Greg remained a suspect, Burns decided he would shift his focus to Travis. So Burns asked Gray, how had Travis reacted when he heard about Jack and Linda's murders? And he said Travis had been upset, but he'd mostly been concerned about how Greg was coping

because Greg was the one who was much closer to Jack and Linda. You know, Travis was estranged. Greg went on to say that it had been at least seven years since Travis and his father had spoken and that those two did not get along at all. Burns asked Greg about that falling out between Jack and Travis, and Greg said it just came down to business disagreements on the farm. He said Travis had felt like his father was cheating him out of money, and they had this big argument that got really ugly, so Travis had just quit the business and moved away. Burns thought about this, and he wondered if maybe Travis stood to inherit any money if his father died.

Because if so, that would definitely be a solid motive for murder. And so Burns made two mental notes. One was to look into Greg's alibi, and the other was to look into Jack's will to see how his assets were going to be divided up. After that, he thanked Greg for his cooperation, told him to wait in his office, and then Burns left. And he went right down the hall, and he waited outside the door while his partner finished questioning Travis. Burns' partner would say that Travis had seemed really nervous from the very moment he stepped inside the room. The detective had asked him what he was doing in Ohio, and Travis said he'd just been reevaluating his life recently. And he'd realized that he'd never actually met his brother Greg's children.

So he'd come back to Ohio to do just that and spend some time with them. Then the detective asked him what he was doing when Jack and Linda were killed. And Travis stuttered out that he was sleeping in his apartment. The detective asked him if he had anybody who could confirm that. And Travis kind of hesitated and then shook his head and said no. Then the detective asked Travis if he had a car. And Travis said that at the moment he was driving his mother's car, a white minivan. After getting debriefed by his partner about this interview with Travis, Burns went back into his office.

By this point, Greg had been moved out and put in a different room, and Burns sat down at his desk, and he began going over the evidence they'd collected so far. Now, the investigation to this point had been moving really quickly, and so there actually wasn't a whole lot of evidence yet. In fact, it had only been 24 hours since the forensics were sent to the crime lab, so they were still waiting for results on pretty much everything. Burns knew that at this point, the best thing he could do while he waited for more evidence was go follow up on Travis and Greg's alibis. After all, they are the victim's children, and he already thought that the killer had to be

connected personally to the victims, and they both drove minivans. So really, either of them could be the killer. But just then, Burns' phone rang. He picked it up, and it was a local man who said he had seen a news report about Jack and Linda's murders, and he had some information that just might help. The man said that a few days earlier, his friend had called him to see if he knew where they could buy a gun. And when this man who's talking to Burns, you know, asked this friend why they needed the gun, the friend said it was because they, quote, wanted to shoot Jack Myers.

The man told Burns the name of his friend who said this. And as soon as Burns heard that name, he knew exactly who his murderer was. Based on this phone call, as well as forensic evidence from the crime scene, this is what police, police believe happened to Jack and Linda Myers on the morning of March 27, 2003. Early on the morning of the murders, the killer woke up and got out of bed and right away put on a green hunting jumpsuit, and they also packed a bag with duct tape, trash bags, and a roll of masking tape. Then they put on a pair of latex gloves and loaded the 12-gauge shotgun that they had purchased from a classified ad two days earlier, and they carried all their supplies out to their

minivan. After they were ready, they hopped in the driver's seat. turned on the car and then drove a familiar route through the dark open fields. They were calm at first until they turned on to the gravel road that led to Jack and Linda's farm. At that point, their heart began to race. Now, the killer felt like they had planned all of this out and prepared for anything that could go wrong. So now really all they had to do was just control themselves and just stick to the plan. And so the killer parked right outside the farmhouse, and then while staying in the car, they climbed into the back seat of the minivan, and they grabbed their shotgun. Then they grabbed this thick quilting fabric and they wrapped it around the barrel of the shotgun

and they used masking tape to secure it. That was their DIY silencer. But as they went through this plan, the killer's hands were shaking. They were nervous because as much as they had planned for this, it really was not something they actually wanted to do. But they felt like they had to. So after their gun had its silencer on it, they slung it over their shoulder, then they got out of the van and crept around to the side of the house. And once they were there, they cut the

phone lines so nobody inside would be able to call for help. Then they knelt down in the dirt, and they pried open the basement window, and they climbed inside. Once inside, the killer walked to the stairs, they went up to the first floor, and they walked straight to the bedroom where they knew Jack and Linda would be asleep. They went inside, and there they were sleeping in their beds, and the killer took a deep breath, and then raised their shotgun, and they fired a single round into the back of Jack's neck. But the force of the gunshot had blasted off the homemade silencer, and so basically it wasn't silent at all. It was extremely loud, and that homemade silencer landed on the pillow right next to Jack's head. And almost immediately, from the chaos,

Linda sat up, and she looked straight at the killer, and she saw what was happening, and she just raised a hand to try to defend herself. And in a moment, moment of panic, the killer just turned the shotgun on her and they fired twice. And one blast went through her hand and the other struck her right in the face. At this point, the killer just paused and waited. The silencer had sort of muffled the first shot, but the second two were so loud. They knew that noise easily could have woken up the third person who they knew was in this house, someone they really didn't want to hurt. But if they had to, they would. So just to make sure they didn't have any loose ends. They left Linda and Jack's bedroom, confident they were dead, and they crept

upstairs to little Damien's room. And they went inside, and they carefully walked over right next to the boy's bed, and they raised their shotgun and aimed it at this child, waiting to see if they were awake. But the little boy appeared to be asleep, and so the killer spared him. They lowered their shotgun, and they walked out of the room. Once they were out in the hallway, they shut Damien's door, and then hurried right out of the house. And from there, they got back in their minivan, and they sped off. A few miles away, they stopped on a bridge and tossed their gun, their supplies, and their clothes into a river, and then they changed into their work clothes, and they drove to the factory, where they would clock in at precisely 5.23 a.m.

The killer was Jack's younger son, Greg Myers. Greg had been having problems with money and drug abuse, and his father, Jack, had refused to help him, and they were fighting about it. But Greg knew he would inherit the farm if his father died. and he was so desperate, he decided murder was his best option. When police timed the drive from Jack and Linda's farm to Greg's workplace, they found that he would have actually had just enough time to commit the horrible double murder and then drive straight to work and clock in by 523. Greg was ultimately arrested about 48 hours after the crime so quickly that police were actually

still gathering evidence to use against him. They later found the gun, other supplies, and shoes that matched the prints found outside the house in a river right near the farm. And fingerprints and receipts tied all the items back to Greg. He was convicted of murder and sentenced to life in prison without parole. As for Damien, following the murders, he would go to live with his mother Amber. Despite everything he witnessed at just four years old, Amber said in a 2021 documentary that he is now doing very well. A quick note about our stories, they are all based on true events. But we sometimes use pseudonyms to protect the people involved, and some details are fictionalized for dramatic purposes.

The Mr. Ballin podcast, Strange, Dark and Mysterious Stories, is hosted and executive produced by me, Mr. Ballin. Our head of writing is Evan Allen. Our head of production is Zach Levitt. Produced by Jeremy Bone. This episode was written by Kate Gallagher. 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 Witt Lacassio 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 Klogstenkiner. Theme song called Something Wicked by Ross Bugden.

Thank you for listening to the Mr. Ballin podcast. And just a reminder, every new and exclusive episode we put out on the Mr. Ballin podcast, you can also now watch on the Mr. Ballin YouTube channel that very same day. And trust me, some of these stories you truly have to see to believe. Again, my YouTube channel is just called Mr. Ballen. If you want to listen to episodes one week early and ad free, you can subscribe to SiriusXM Podcast Plus on Apple Podcasts or visit seriousxm.com slash podcast plus to listen with Spotify or another app of your choice.

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