MrBallen Podcast: Strange, Dark & Mysterious Stories - The Lipstick on the Wall (PODCAST EXCLUSIVE EPISODE)

Episode Date: November 25, 2024

On a summer morning in 2001, a woman in Alabama woke up in a cold sweat – like she’d just had a nightmare. But the woman knew what she saw while she was sleeping was not a bad dream – it was real. So she grabbed her phone and made a frantic call. Later that morning, police arrived at an old wooden house on the outskirts of a small rural town. They stepped inside, and they were absolutely shocked, because the woman really had led them to a horrifying crime scene.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. On a summer morning in 2001, a woman in Alabama woke up in a cold sweat like she just had a nightmare. But the woman knew what she saw while she was sleeping was not a bad dream. It was real. So she grabbed her phone and made a frantic call.

Later that morning, police arrived at an old wooden house on the outskirts of a small rural town. They stepped inside and they were absolutely shocked because the woman really had led them to a horrifying crime scene. 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 go to the follow buttons medicine cabinet and replace everything with laxatives. Okay, let's get into today's story. Get ready for Las Vegas-style action at Bet MGM, the king of online casinos. Enjoy casino games at your fingertips with the same Vegas strip excitement MGM is famous for when you play classics like MGM Grand Millions or popular games like Blackjack, Baccarat, and Roulette. With their ever-growing library of digital slot games, a large selection of online table games, and signature Bet MGM service, there is no better

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Join the millions of small businesses that trust Constant Contact with their marketing success. So get going and growing with Constant Contact today. Ready, set, grow. Go to constantcontact.ca and start your free trial today. Go to constantcontact.ca for your free trial. Constantcontact.ca. On the afternoon of June 19th, 2001, 44-year-old Debbie Triplett and her husband Billy were stocking shelves in the small country grocery store that they owned in Clay County, Alabama. Billy and Debbie had run the store together for almost 20 years and they had stocking shelves down to a science. They barely even had to look while they were doing it. So today, like most days, they spent the time talking and joking with each other.

For as long as they'd been doing this, Billy and Debbie never got bored working at the store together. In fact, they didn't understand how anyone would get bored working with the person they loved. Because the two of them had been pretty much inseparable from the moment they met back in 1982. At the time, Billy, who was 8 years older than Debbie, already owned the grocery store, but he'd been having trouble running it by himself. So, when Debbie came in looking for a job, he'd hired her right away, and it didn't take long for them to discover that they had a lot in common.

They were both single parents, they loved living in a small town where they knew their kids would be safe, and they could talk to each other for hours without ever running out of things to say. Billy and Debbie's relationship had quickly gone from boss and employee, to boyfriend and girlfriend, to husband and wife. And their children from their previous marriages ended up loving each other as much as Debbie and Billy did. So, they had all quickly formed this really tight-knit blended family. Now, almost 20 years later, the kids had grown up and moved out, but they all lived close by, so the blended family was still together.

In the store, Billy kept stocking the shelves, but Debbie glanced up at the clock hanging over the counter and said that maybe they should call it a day. Billy was supposed to meet up with their son Randy, and if he wanted to do that and still get home in time for the first pitch of the Atlanta Braves baseball game, he needed to head out now. Everyone who knew Billy assumed he must have been born in an Atlanta Braves baseball cap, because he wore one pretty much every day. They also knew he absolutely hated to miss a Braves game. But today, Billy wasn't sure if he should just take off, because he really didn't like the idea of leaving Debbie alone at the store.

The couple didn't like to talk about it, but on a night about three months earlier, when Billy was closing the store on his own, three men wearing ski masks had burst in, duct-taped Billy's mouth, shoved him into the walk-in cooler, and then robbed the cash register. By the time Billy had gotten out of the cooler, the men were long gone, but all he could think was, thank God Debbie was not here. Debbie could see the look of concern on her husband's face, and she told him not to worry. Those robbers had not been seen again. Besides, their daughter Michelle was coming by to keep her company for a while, and then she'd close the store because she had dinner plans.

Billy thought about it for a second, and then said she was right. So he gave gave Debbie a kiss and said he would see her at home when she was finished with dinner. Later that afternoon, Debbie's daughter Michelle walked into the store and the two women immediately started talking like they were best friends. Debbie had Michelle and her brother Michael with her first husband, but they had treated Billy as their dad since they were young, just like Billy's son, Randy, saw Debbie as his mother. Still, Debbie shared a bond with Michelle that was special, even among the kids. They saw or talked to each other every single day.

Time always flew by when it was just the two of them, and today at the store was no different. They talked about everything that was going on in their lives, and when Michelle finally caught a glimpse of the clock, she said she needed to head out. But Michelle hesitated, because like Billy, she wanted to make sure her mom would be okay on her own. Despite Billy and Debbie rarely talking about the robbery, Michelle and her brothers knew all about it, and they worried about their parents constantly. Debbie said she'd be fine, she could take care of herself, and after all, she'd been closing up the store for two decades. Michelle knew better than to argue with her mother, so she told her that she loved her,

and then she left. Debbie worked a while longer on her own, then started closing the store. She emptied the cash register and put all the money into a metal lock box, she turned off the lights, and walked outside with the box under her arm. Then she locked the door behind her and climbed into her minivan that was parked out front. And as she drove down the secluded country road outside the store, Debbie felt excited about her dinner plans and she hoped the Braves were winning so Billy would be in a really good mood when she got home.

Early the next morning, Debbie's daughter Michelle sat straight up in bed. Sweat dripped down her forehead, and she could feel her heart pounding. She was terrified, like she'd just had a nightmare. But Michelle knew the fear she was feeling was not because of a dream. Michelle believed that her connection to her mother was something way stronger than a typical bond between mom and daughter. It was almost psychic, like they shared a sixth sense or something. It was like they always knew when the other one was upset or in trouble. And right now, Michelle knew something really bad had happened.

She reached over and grabbed her phone off the bedside table and called her mom. When she didn't get an answer, she immediately hung up and called her brother Michael. The second she heard Michael's voice, she said something was wrong with their mom and since he could get there faster, he needed to get over to her house right away. Michael never doubted the intense connection between his sister and his mom, so he said he was on his way out the door. Michelle hung up the phone, got dressed, and ran out to her car. She sped down the road that cut through most of the small rural towns in Clay County, and then a few minutes later

she turned onto a dirt road that led to her parents' house. As Michelle pulled up in front of the house, she saw her brother pacing back and forth in the yard, and she heard the sound of a police siren in the distance. Michelle got out and ran straight to Michael. He wrapped his arms around her tight and just said, Sister, they're gone. Early that afternoon, Agent Todd Wheels of the Alabama Bureau of Investigation drove down a two-lane road lined by acres of trees on one side and a river on the other. This landscape that would cause most people to feel like they were stranded in the middle

of nowhere felt completely familiar to Agent Wheels. He'd grown up in Clay County, which was not too far from here, so for him, it was like he was coming home. That morning, a call had come into the Bureau from the Clay County Sheriff's Department. County deputies had responded to a 911 call at Debbie and Billy Triplett's house. The second they walked inside, they knew the Sheriff's Department did not have the resources to handle this case, so they had asked the state police for help. Agent Wheels turned onto a dirt road and slowed down as he approached an old white wooden house that sat on a large piece of land that backed up to dense green woods. County police officers had already set up crime scene tape around the perimeter of the house,

and a couple of deputies stood out front with a man and a woman in their 20s. Wheels parked his car and looked out at the man and woman, and he felt his heart sink, because he had known both of them since they were little kids. Wills had grown up in a town not too far from where Michelle, Michael, and their brother Randy lived with their parents, and they had always attended rival schools. So Wills had seen the entire family at football games, academic competitions, parties, and church functions for most of his life. Wiels took a breath, stepped out of the car, and walked over to Michelle and Michael.

He said he hated seeing them under these circumstances, but he needed to look inside the house and then he would come back out to talk to them. They both nodded like they barely heard what he said, and Wiels ducked under the crime scene tape, put on a pair of gloves, and headed inside. But before he could even take a few steps, he saw Debbie's body lying on the floor. She was surrounded by a huge pool of dried blood, and there was blood spatter all over the walls. Wheels had worked homicides in much bigger places than this, cities that had reputations for violence, but this attack on Debbie looked as gruesome as anything he'd ever seen.

He crouched down and found Debbie's purse beside her. He noticed blood stains inside the purse, and it looked like somebody had rifled through it. Wheels thought this could be a sign that this was a robbery gone bad, that somebody had broken in and then when they heard Debbie come home, they rushed over and killed her as soon as she walked inside. Wheels left Debbie's body and walked down a short hallway into the family room, and there on the couch he saw Billy's body, covered in blood as well.

This was the first reported double homicide in Clay County in over 40 years, and Agent Wheels could not believe he knew the victims. Wheels approached Billy's body when something on the wall right above caught his attention. When he'd first walked into the room, he thought it was blood spatter, but now he could see it was red lipstick. And someone had used this lipstick to leave a message for the police. It was a single word. NARC. At 4pm, several hours after Agent Wiels arrived at the scene, he was back in the family room,

staring at the lipstick on the wall for what felt like the 10th time that day. But now, he was with members of a state forensics team that had just arrived. Wheels had gone outside earlier to check on Michelle and Michael, and to ask them if they knew what their parents had been doing the night before. Michael said that he and his wife had met his mom for dinner after she closed the store, and then as far as he knew, she went straight home. And both siblings assumed that their dad had watched the Braves game and then just stayed in for the night. Back in the family room, Wheels and the forensics technicians could

still not get over the violence that was inflicted on Billy. This was even more brutal than the attack on Debbie. This kind of rage made Wheels think that the attack must have been carried out by someone who had a close emotional connection to Billy, or by someone who was out for revenge. And the word narc also had strong connections to the drug world. As Wills stood there, fixated on the wall, he heard people shouting outside, and he snapped out of his trance. He immediately turned around and ran out of the house.

In the front yard, Wills saw a man physically struggling with two deputies and yelling that he and his siblings needed to get inside. Their parents were in there. Wheels recognized this man as Billy's son, Randy. Back when they were teenagers, Wheels and Randy had been on their respective high school scholar bowl teams, and they had developed a friendly rivalry with each other at academic competitions. Wheels darted across the yard, joined the deputies, and in his calm southern accent, told Randy he needed to back off.

Randy stopped struggling and looked up at Wheels, and this look came across Randy's face like he didn't understand why this man was standing there. Randy squinted a little and then just said, Tom? Agent Wheels said he wished this was not how they were seeing each other for the first time in a while, but he needed Randy to calm down and step back. Randy took a deep breath and apologized to the deputies. He told Wheels he had lashed out because he was mad at himself.

He'd missed the messages he'd gotten from Michelle and Michael, and he felt like he'd let his brother and sister down by not getting here earlier. Wills said he understood. While the two men talked, Wills heard someone shouting his name from across the yard. He looked over and saw a forensics tech standing by a minivan that was parked near the side of the house. Wills told Randy to go wait with his siblings, and then he walked over to the van. The front passenger door was open, and the forensics tech said the van had been unlocked. He pointed to the passenger seat, and Wheels saw the keys to the van sitting there. But Wheels also saw something in the passenger side floorboard. It was an open, empty metal box turned over on its side. Wheels called out to the deputies to bring Randy, Michelle, and Michael

over to the van, and when the three siblings got there, they didn't look surprised at all. Wheels asked them what the container was, and they told them it was the money box their parents put the cash from the register in every night when they closed the store, and their mom had a terrible habit of just leaving the box in her van when she got home. This clue definitely played into the idea that these murders were connected to a robbery, but maybe it was not a home robbery that got interrupted. Wills asked the siblings if it was common knowledge around town that their parents put their money from the store in the box every night. Would someone have known Debbie had all that cash and maybe followed her home? The kids looked at each other for a moment

like they were talking without saying anything. And then, Michelle said a few months earlier, their parents' store had been robbed by some men at closing time, so these men might have known exactly where their parents put the money from the cash register. Wills got a few more details about that robbery, and then he told the siblings they could go. They should have some time to grieve together in private. Wills spent the whole day at the house, and it was dark outside when he met the members of the forensics team to get a final report for the day. They believed that Debbie and Billy had been killed the previous night.

The team had also pulled blood samples from both bodies and from the rooms where they were found, and they had done a thorough sweep of the minivan. But the van appeared to have been completely wiped down before any investigators had even touched it. However, investigators were confident that with all the blood and all the fingerprints found inside the house, that they would still likely be able to get the print and DNA samples that belonged to the killer. At the time, DNA testing in Alabama was still a relatively slow process.

It could take several weeks or even months to get results. Still, Wills had a lot of faith in DNA testing, so he was willing to be patient. In the meantime, he had two distinct theories about the case. This was either a robbery gone bad, or Billy really had ratted somebody out to the authorities, likely over something having to do with the drug trade. having to do with the drug trade. From covert government experiments to bizarre assassination attempts, Redacted dives deep into the astonishing true stories of uncovered secrets, lies, and deception within the world's most powerful institutions. Stories like the mind-bending truth behind Operation Paperclip, where former Nazi scientists were smuggled into America to advance US technology and intelligence during the Cold War. Or the shocking story of Charles Manson and the CIA, revealing how a notorious cult leader

might have been entangled in a web of covert operations. Trust me when I tell you, the stories are real and the secrets are shocking. Be sure to follow Redacted Declassified Mysteries with Luke Lamanna on the Wondery app or wherever else you get your podcasts. 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. On June 21st, so the day after the bodies had been discovered, Agent Wheels followed Michelle into her house, which was just a few miles away from her parents, and they sat down together in the small front

room. Wheels spoke in the calm voice he almost always used on the job. He said he didn't want to imply that anybody was lying, but he had met with county police and they had no record whatsoever of a robbery that took place at Billy and Debbie's store. So, Wheels wanted to know what Michelle and her brothers had been talking about. Michelle sighed. She and her brothers were telling the truth. There had been a robbery.

Their parents had just never reported it. Wheels looked totally confused by this. Why on earth would they keep something like that to themselves? Michelle laughed a little and said it was stupid, but her dad had been illegally selling wine and beer, and even a little moonshine was stupid, but her dad had been illegally selling wine and beer, and even a little moonshine out of the back of the store. And he thought if he reported the robbery, the cops would find out about it. In 2001, Clay County, Alabama was what's known as a dry county.

This meant it was illegal to sell any alcohol within county limits. When Agent Wheels heard this news about Billy, he laughed just like Michelle had. This was the kind of thing he'd heard about his whole life growing up in Clay County. He knew Billy wasn't running some major bootlegging operation like people had done back during Prohibition. Instead, he was most likely just selling booze to his friends and to some people from town. But at the same time, Wheels could not shake the image of the word NARC written on the wall above Billy's body.

So he told Michelle he was not worried about Billy selling alcohol to his friends, but he needed to know if Billy was selling anything else illegal. Was Billy mixed up in the local drug trade? This question absolutely floored Michelle. She said there was no way her dad was dealing drugs. Wheels listened and he didn't say anything, but he agreed with her. And not just because he had known Billy and the family. Wheels was familiar with the growing methamphetamine problem in the area, and he knew from working with colleagues in the state narcotics unit that a lot of the drugs

were coming in from out of state. And that Billy did not fit the profile of most local meth dealers and users, who were often younger guys who didn't have steady jobs. So, Wills stood up and told Michelle that was all he needed for now. He said he'd check him with her as often as he could. But before he made it to the door, Michelle told him to wait. Wills turned and walked back toward her. Michelle said again there was no way her dad was mixed up with drugs, but she did know somebody who was. It was a guy named Leonard Sothers, and he happened to be one of Billy and Debbie's closest neighbors.

Later that day, so still just one day after the discovery of the bodies, Agent Wheels pulled up to a house over a mile away from Billy and Debbie's. Michelle had been right, everything was so isolated and spread out around here that this was definitely one of the closest homes to her parents. Wheels stepped out of his car and he saw the lawn was completely overgrown and there were tools and a bunch of other stuff piled up all around. He took a few steps towards the house, and the screen door flew open. A skinny man in baggy jeans and a t-shirt rushed outside,

demanding to know who Wills was and what he was doing here. Wills said everything was okay and then asked the man if he was Leonard. The man nodded and said, who's asking? Wills introduced himself and said he was with the state police, but Leonard was not in any trouble. In fact, he needed Leonard's help. Wills took a few more steps towards Leonard, and as he did, he could see track marks on both of his arms, clearly from injecting drugs, and the way Leonard fidgeted and picked at his skin made Wills think he likely was a meth addict. Looking at Leonard, Wills mostly just felt pity.

This man obviously needed help, but that's not why Wills mostly just felt pity. This man obviously needed help, but that's not why Wills was here right now. All of a sudden, Leonard raised both hands into the air to show he was not carrying a weapon and then he moved towards Wills. He leaned in really close and then pointed to the trees surrounding his house, and in a hushed voice, he asked if Wills could see the men up there. Wills turned and looked up at the trees, and as he did, Leonard started laughing. He said the men were in camouflage, so they were almost invisible, but he knew they were there, and he knew they were men like Wiels, agents that the

government sent to watch him all the time. As calm as Wiels was, and as genuinely sympathetic as he tried to be whenever he was working a case, he knew he could change his personality on a dime when he needed to. It was like there was a switch in his head. And in that moment, Wheels flipped the switch. He stood up to his full height, raised his voice, and said Leonard was absolutely right. There were agents hiding in the trees. And if Leonard didn't tell him everything he knew about the deaths of Billy and Debbie Triplett, these agents in the trees would swarm. They would take Leonard away and he would no longer be a free man.

Leonard suddenly looked scared, but he quickly said he did want to help. He had heard Billy and Debbie got killed and he was sad about it. They were nice people, both of them. Wheels flipped the switch again and his calm voice came back. He told Leonard if he wanted to help, he needed to tell the truth and admit if he had gone over to Billy and Debbie's house to rob them, maybe for drug money. Leonard shook his head. He would never steal from them or try to hurt them. Weill spoke with Leonard a while longer in the front yard, and by the time he left, he had a primary suspect. Leonard was a drug addict and he was extremely paranoid. There was even a chance

Leonard had convinced himself that his neighbor Billy was going to turn him in to the police for buying and using drugs, which in Leonard's mind would make Billy a narc. In the days following the murders, Agent Wheels had his team dig into Leonard's background and his history of drug use. Still, Wheels did not want to overlook anything, especially if it was because of a personal bias. He did not believe that Billy or Debbie had any connection to the local drug trade, but he needed to make sure. He asked for help from the state narcotics unit, and they said they would search their records to see if Billy or Debbie ever appeared as suspects or informants or if any agents knew anything about them. In the meantime, Wheels was still waiting on the results of the DNA tests from the blood samples taken at the crime scene,

but he did get an update on the fingerprints found throughout the house. At this point, all of the prints that had been pulled matched Billy, Debbie, and their kids, who had provided prints to the county police. So investigators figured the killer must have worn gloves, which probably meant they would not find any useful prints on the cash box either. This was not surprising, but Wheels still got frustrated. The investigation was in its early days, but he had hoped he might get lucky with the fingerprints and find a clear piece of evidence that pointed to the killer. Wheels always felt a real responsibility when investigating a murder to try to bring the

killer to justice as quickly as possible, but he knew this case was something different. He had never worked a homicide where he actually knew the victims and their family, and so every day that he didn't find the killer made him feel like he was letting Michelle, Michael, and Randy down. About a week after the murders, Wiels got word from the Narcotics Unit that they didn't find anything on Billy or Debbie. It seemed pretty clear they had no connection to illegal drugs. In addition to that, because Billy and Debbie never filed a report about that store robbery, there were no leads on the men who had committed that crime.

So Wiels was basically where he'd been a week earlier, with the drug addict Leonard as his primary suspect. Still, Leonard being an addict and being paranoid about men in the trees did not automatically make him a killer. Wiels had to find something concrete to tie him to the murders. And about one week later, Wiels was going back over his notes when he got a phone call. And as soon as he heard the caller's nervous shaky voice, he knew it was Leonard. And Leonard said that Wheels needed to come to his house right away because he had found

blood on his money. Not long after this call, Agent Wheels found himself back in Leonard's front yard, not really knowing what to expect or what Leonard finding blood on his money even meant. Leonard stepped outside, walked over to Wheels, and showed him a stack of one and five dollar bills he had in a shoebox. Wheels put on his gloves and picked up a few of the bills, and this didn't look like regular cash. The bills were faded, and there were these weird white spots on them, almost like bleach or something.

And in that moment, Wheels understood what was going on, and he just stood there dumbfounded for a second. Because he realized someone had put all of this money in a washing machine. They had literally tried to launder the money. This did seem like something Leonard might try, not understanding that money laundering was actually a complex illegal financial process that had nothing to do with detergent or bleach. But as ridiculous as all of this seemed to wheels, a couple of things about these bills did look like major clues. Leonard's money, even after the laundering process, was grouped together in 1s and 5s,

like it would be in a cash register. In addition to that, Leonard had not been using some kind of code or metaphor when he said he found blood on his money, because even though these bills were fated, Wheels saw several brownish red spots that he believed were blood stains. To Wheels, this looked like it had to be the money stolen from the cash box that Debbie brought home from the store, and he assumed the blood on the bills either belonged to Debbie or the killer. Leonard must have sensed what Wheels was thinking because he got really jittery and blurted out that this was not his money, he had gotten it from another drug

addict that he knew. Agent Wheels chose not to flip the switch in his demeanor. He stayed totally calm and said to Leonard, boy, that sounds like a pretty convenient excuse. But Leonard swore he was telling the truth and he even told Wheels the name of this other drug addict. Wheels said he'd look into it, but he told Leonard he'd better not leave town. Wills confiscated Leonard's cash, bagged it as evidence, and brought it to the county sheriff's station. Over the next few days, Wills and his team dug into the background of this other drug addict that Leonard had mentioned, and then Wills brought them in for an interview.

At first, when Wills asked about the night of the murders, he felt like he'd been right about Leonard lying. This interview was not going anywhere. But wheels shifted his focus, and the interview suddenly took a complete turn. Because when wheels brought up the money with the blood on it, this drug addict shouted that money you got from Leonard, that's my goddamn money. Wheels just sat there. He couldn't even think of what to say next. He had dealt with a lot of different types of criminals over his career, but he had never heard a suspect just shout out something so potentially damning before. After the interview was over, Wills let the drug addict go, but he quickly secured a search

warrant for the addict's house and he had the addict's car impounded. And when forensics experts searched the car, they found a faded bloody fingerprint on the driver's side door handle. The sample was sent off to the state lab for testing, and this time the lab expedited the test. So on July 26th, a little over a month after the murders, Agent Wiels got back those test results, along with the results from the initial DNA samples taken from the house. And wheels knew he had found Billy and Debbie's killer.

Based on DNA testing, interviews, and evidence found throughout the investigation, the following is a reconstruction of what state police believe happened to Billy and Debbie Triplett on June 19, 2001. That night, the killer quietly walked into Billy and Debbie's kitchen. They could hear the Braves' game coming from the TV in the family room. The killer opened a drawer and pulled out a sharp knife. They carefully slid the knife into their back pocket and then walked into the family room. Billy sat up on the couch and the killer immediately started shouting at him. Billy shouted back and was about to get off the couch, but the killer ran across the room and leapt on top of him. They struggled, but the killer ran across the room and leapt on top of him. They struggled, but the killer pinned Billy down and without even looking, grabbed something

heavy off the coffee table and started wildly slamming it into the side of Billy's head. Blood sprayed on the walls and all over the couch as Billy stopped moving. The killer got up, drew the knife from their pocket, grabbed Billy, and slit his throat. But the killer didn't stop. They kept digging the knife deeper into Billy's neck until they had almost decapitated him. Finally, the killer stepped back, walked away, and went to the kitchen. They washed the knife off, rinsed their hands and face, and set out some cleaning supplies. Then they picked the knife back up, went to the family room, sat down,

and waited, while the baseball game kept playing on TV. At 10pm, a few hours after the killer had arrived at the house, they heard a car pull up outside. They quickly turned off the TV and ran toward the front of the house, carrying the knife and the blunt object they'd attacked Billy with. They flipped off the light in the entryway and crouched down against the wall, not far from the door. The killer heard footsteps just outside and they clutched the knife tight.

The door unlocked and the killer saw it swing open. And before Debbie could even turn on the light or call to her husband, the killer leapt out of the darkness, grabbed her, slammed the blunt object into her head, and cut her throat too. Debbie's body collapsed just inside the door. The killer flipped on the light, put the knife back in their pocket, and grabbed Debbie's purse.

They took out Debbie's car keys, and they saw a tube of lipstick. They walked into the family room, and with the the lipstick they scrawled the word NARC on the wall over Billy's body. After that they walked through the house, got the cleaning supplies they'd laid out in the kitchen and then stepped over Debbie's body and went outside to her minivan. The killer opened the passenger door and saw the metal cash box on the floorboard. They found the key for the box on Debbie's key ring they'd stolen, opened the box, and stuffed the money from it into their pockets, getting blood from their hands all over the

cash. The killer quickly wiped down the van with the cleaning supplies and tossed Debbie's keys onto the passenger seat. Then they ran to their car with their hands in pockets filled with cash, cleaning supplies, lipstick, and the murder weapons and they drove straight home. The following morning the killer woke up and saw several messages but they ignored them and waited until later in the afternoon to go back to their parents house. The bloody cash that Leonard had in his possession was the money from the cash box, but Leonard had told the truth. Another drug addict had given him that money.

And this drug addict was Billy's son from his first marriage, Randy. And Randy was the killer. It turned out, Randy's drug habit had been going on for years. He struggled to get work and he almost never had any money. Billy had continually bailed his son out financially, but recently, Billy and especially Debbie had just had enough, and Billy had met with his son more than once to tell him they were cutting him off. On the night of the murder, Randy already felt angry and betrayed by Billy and Debbie, and so when he got to the house and saw his dad on the couch, he begged him to give him more money.

But Billy said no way, he needed to get his act together and clean up his life. After that, Randy got the knife, argued with his dad again, and then attacked him on the couch with a blunt object, and then slit his throat. Hours later, Randy used the same weapons to kill Debbie. After murdering his dad and stepmom, Randy had the idea to try to make it look like a drug-related murder, so he wrote, NARC on the wall in lipstick. And he figured if that didn't work, police would assume this crime was connected to the earlier robbery at his parents' store. And Randy was right. Investigators focused on both of these theories.

But during the investigation, Randy started to panic. And at one point, he literally tried to clean the blood off the cash he had stole in the laundry machine, but when that didn't work, he just gave the bloodstained cash to Leonard, assuming Leonard would hold onto it for him and keep quiet, until the investigation died down. But Leonard called Agent Wheels and told him that Randy, who he'd known for a long time and who he did drugs with, was the person who gave him this money. Then, when Randy came in for questioning, he inexplicably shouted out that the blood-stained money was his. Wheels then moved in on Randy, his former Scholar Bowl rival, and had his car impounded. And the DNA sample that was taken from Randy's car door handle would match DNA samples from the

crime scene. The blood belonged to Debbie. And Randy had just gotten some of it on his car after killing her. Randy was sentenced to life in prison without parole, but in 2016, he hanged himself in his prison cell. Michelle still thinks about her mother all the time, and she continually reminds people to hug the ones they love because nobody, no matter how deep a connection they share, knows how much time they have together. Thank you for listening to the Mr. Ballin Podcast. If you liked today's story and you're looking for more strange, dark and mysterious content,

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