MrBallen Podcast: Strange, Dark & Mysterious Stories - The Pale Horse

Episode Date: March 16, 2023

In 1988, a waitress who was living in central Florida had just begun her shift at a local diner when she’s standing in the middle of the restaurant, and her heart just starts racing like mad. Now she had not been running around or doing any heavy lifting, so it didn’t make any sense. So, kind of startled by what was happening, she just turned around and went straight into the bathroom and sat down in a stall, waiting for this sensation to pass. But as she sat there, her heart just continued to beat like mad, and then she began to feel tingling in her feet and in her arms. And it was at that moment that she realized she was having a heart attack. Except she wasn’t. Something much, much worse was happening to her.The audio from this story has been pulled from our main YouTube channel, which is just called “MrBallen,” and has been remastered for today’s podcast.Story name, preview & link to original YouTube video:#1 -- "The Pale Horse" -- A waitress comes down with a mystery illness (Original YouTube link -- https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=9TOPwYjnkKU)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 eight new episodes of the Mr. Ballin podcast one month early and all episodes ad-free on Amazon Music. Download the Amazon Music app today. In 1988, a waitress who was living in Central Florida had just begun her shift at a local diner when, as she's standing in the middle of the restaurant, her heart just started racing like mad. Now, she had not been running around or doing any heavy lifting, so it didn't make any sense. And so feeling kind of startled by what was happening,

she instinctively just turned around and ran for the bathroom and sat down in a stall, waiting for this heart racing to stop. But as she sat there, her heart only started to beat faster and faster, and then she began to feel tingling in her feet and in her arms. And it was at that moment that she realized she must be having a heart attack. Except she wasn't. Something much, much worse was happening to her. 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 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 ask the Amazon Music Follow button to go out dancing with you, but when you reach the dance floor,

repeatedly step on their feet without acknowledging it. Okay, let's get into today's story. Hello, I am Alice Levine and I am one of the hosts of Wondery's podcast British Scandal. On our latest series, The Race to Ruin, we tell the story of a British man who took part in the first ever round-the-world sailing race. Good on him, I hear you say. But there is a problem, as there always is in this show. The man in question hadn't actually sailed before. Oh, and his boat wasn't seaworthy.

Oh, and also, tiny little detail, almost didn't mention it. He bet his family home on making it to the finish line. What ensued was one of the most complex cheating plots in British sporting history. To find out the full story, follow British Scandal wherever you listen to podcasts or listen early and ad free on Wondery Plus on Apple Podcasts or the Wondery app. or the Wondery app. But if I say pop star and shuttlecocks, you know who I'm talking about. No? Short shorts? Free cocktails? Careless whispers?

OK, last one. It's not Andrew Ridgely. Yep, that's right. It's Stone Cold icon George Michael. From teen pop sensation to one of the biggest solo artists on the planet, join us for our new series, George Michael's Fight for Freedom. From the outside, it looks like he has it all but behind the trademark dark sunglasses is a man in turmoil george is trapped in a lie of his own making with a secret he feels would ruin him if the truth ever came out follow terribly famous

wherever you listen to your podcasts or listen early and ad free on wandery plus on apple podcasts or the early and ad-free on Wondery Plus on Apple Podcasts or the Wondery app. Peggy Carr's life had never been very easy. She was born in 1947 in a very small rural town in Central Florida to parents who were deaf and who had almost no money. So from a young age, Peggy had to go to work. Except the only jobs she could land were either extremely low paying or they were just outright dangerous, like overnight shifts at isolated truck stops on deserted highways where she would waitress there all by herself. But Peggy never complained about her job prospects. Instead, she just took whatever jobs were available because she knew that she and her family needed the money. And whenever she was

working in a dangerous environment, she would intentionally put on this very tough exterior to make sure no one attempted to take advantage of her. And despite her small stature, she quickly developed a reputation amongst her co-workers as somebody you did not want to mess with. Peggy didn't take crap from anybody. But while this kind of prickly outer shell protected her from potential predators, it also warded off potential romantic partners that might have been interested in her, but were kind of intimidated when they interacted with her. But eventually, one man would

cut through Peggy's defenses, and they would fall in love, and they would get married, and they would have three kids together, and everything was great until it wasn't. The marriage would crash and burn, and so by the mid-1980s, Peggy was a mid-30-somethings divorced mother of three teenage children who had to work overtime at a local diner just to barely make ends meet. And while she still acted very tough and composed when she was working or when she was out in public, when she was behind closed doors at her home with her kids, they saw the real side of Peggy. And that side was just kind of sad. I mean, life had just been kind of hard on her and she had tried so hard to provide a safe

and happy home for her kids, and she felt like she had kind of let them down. But her kids, on the other hand, were not bitter towards their mother for the divorce. It just pained them to see her so upset. And so her kids really hoped that one day their mom would meet somebody new, she would fall in love all over again, and maybe that would put a smile back on her face. And in late 1987, that is exactly what happened. That year, Peggy met a man named Perry Ellen Carr. Perry Ellen, who just went by his nickname, Pie, was a lot like Peggy. He was a recently divorced single father of two teenage children, He didn't take crap from anyone. And like Peggy, he had been kind of forced to start working at a fairly young age. When Peggy met him, he was living with his two kids in another tiny central Floridian rural town called Alturas,

and he was the foreman of a local phosphate mining company there. Phosphate is a chemical that has a number of industrial and consumer uses. So Peggy and Pi, they start dating, and right away, Peggy's kids notice this huge shift in their mother. I mean, now she's all smiles, she's so happy. It seems like Pi is the knight in shining armor that's come to save the day. And then, just a couple of months later, in April of 1988, Pi and Peggy would get get married much to their children's excitement and then after the marriage was finalized peggy and her three kids moved in with pie and his two kids in his home in alturas florida and for a while this newly blended family

worked out perfectly even though they were living in a fairly small house and so all five of them were kind of all over each other but they got great, and it was kind of fun to have so many people in this house all the time. It was kind of crazy and hectic, and overall the house just felt like it was bursting with life. But within a few months of Peggy and her kids moving in with Pi and his kids, Peggy and Pi started to have marital issues. It was like all their early chemistry had just totally vanished and in its place was nothing. They basically completely resented each other and everything they did upset the other person. And then adding fuel to the fire were rumors that began spreading around this small town where everybody knows each other that Pi was apparently

back together with an ex-girlfriend and so he was having an affair and so pie he denied these accusations but debbie totally believed them and so their fights got worse and worse and worse and the more they fought the more a wedge was kind of driven down the center of this blended family where peggy's kids automatically took their mother's side and pie's kids automatically took their dad's side and so's kids automatically took their dad's side. And so from the outside looking in, it seemed plainly obvious that Pi and Peggy's marriage was not going to last. But before their marriage could fall apart, something totally unexpected happened that would link these two families together forever. In late October of 1988, so seven months into Peggy and Pi's now very rocky marriage, Pi suddenly got up one morning and just told Peggy he was leaving for the whole day to go hunting. This was not a planned trip. He just wanted to get away. And at this point,

neither of them wanted to spend any time with each other, so Peggy didn't care. She said, go ahead, enjoy your trip. I'll see you later. And so Pi, he leaves the house, he gets in his truck, he drives off. And then a little while later, Peggy and her daughter, Sissy, they both get their things together and they head out and they get in Peggy's car and they drive into town. Both Peggy and her daughter worked at the same diner as waitresses

and they both had a shift that morning. And so they arrive at the diner, they both get out, they go inside, they get their things on, and they begin their shift like normal. But not long into the shift, Peggy was about to walk up to one of her tables when she noticed her heart was racing. And she had not been running around the restaurant, she had not done any heavy lifting, there was no reason for her heart to suddenly be beating at a really fast clip. And so initially, Peggy tried to just ignore it, thinking that her heart would slow down and she would go back to normal. But when her racing heart persisted, she walked away from the table she was waiting on and snuck off into the staff bathroom. And she sat in one of the

stalls, she shut the door, and she just sat on the toilet waiting for her heart to stop racing. But as she sat there, not only did her heart only continue to thump like mad, but she started to notice her legs were tingling and so were her arms. Now, Peggy was a no-nonsense person. She was not prone to panicking or overreacting or anything like that. And so as she's sitting there feeling these symptoms, it dawns on her that maybe I'm having a heart attack. And so she decides, OK, I'm going to deal with this.

She stands up. She opens the stall door. She goes to the sink. She washes her hands. She washes her face. She kind of calms herself down and then she walks out of the bathroom. She goes right into the staff break room and she tells her daughter, I think I'm having a heart attack. But don't worry, I'm just going to go home. I'm going to lay down. If this gets worse, I will go to the hospital. But for right now, I don't really know what it is, but I want to take it seriously. So I'm going to leave for the day.

And so Sissy is looking at her mom really concerned, but Sissy knows what her mom is like. Her mom is tough as nails. She is the type of person that's going to sleep off a heart attack. And so she says to her mom okay you know go home i'll be sure to check on you as soon as i get back and please call me if anything changes and so peggy whose heart was still racing and her arms and her legs were still tingling she told her daughter you know everything's going to be fine and then she told her

manager that she was leaving and then peggy slipped out the back door she got in her car and she drove back home when she got there the car, and she drove back home. When she got there, the house was empty, so she just went inside, she made her way to her bedroom, and she lied down in her bed to try to get some rest. That afternoon, Peggy's son, Dwayne, came home from high school, and when he walked inside, he found his mother laying down in her bed. This was very unusual for Dwaynene because his mother never took naps. In fact, he could not recall a time ever that he saw his mom napping, even when she was sick. And so concerned, he went into her bedroom and she was facing away from him. And so he kind of jostled her awake. And when his mom rolled over to face him, her face was pale. She was sweating. She obviously had not been sleeping. She was gritting her teeth and it looked like she was in a lot of pain or some sort of discomfort.

And he said, mom, geez, are you okay? And she would say to him, oh no, I'm fine. I'm just sleeping something off. I got, I got something going on. I think I have a flu or something. I don't know. I took off from work, so I'm just sleeping it off. And so Dwayne, he knows his mom is tough as nails. And if she says she's going's gonna sleep something off then she'll be just fine and so Dwayne said okay well you know let me know if you need anything and so Dwayne began to walk away but his mother would actually flag him back and she would level with him and she would tell him that actually something is wrong here I feel like someone has poured fire down my veins in my arms and in legs, and it is excruciatingly painful. And so Dwayne is hearing his mother say this, and he knows his mother is not the type of person to

complain or exaggerate or anything. She is just straight, no-nonsense. And so for her to say, this is the most excruciating pain she's ever been in, and she's laying in bed unable to move, he knew this was really serious. And so Dwayne began telling his mom that you got to go to the hospital. We need to get Pi here to drive you to the hospital or we need to call an ambulance, but something needs to be done here. But despite the pain she was in, Peggy was still a little bit reserved about it. She thought maybe she could just sleep it off. But as they're having this kind of back and forth about what to do, Pi would return from his hunting trip. He would come in the house and right away, Dwayne would run over to him. He would explain to Pi, hey, this is not normal. My mom never,

ever acts this way. She never complains. This is really serious. You got to take her to the hospital. But Pi would actually say, nah, she's fine. I'm sure she just has a fever or maybe the flu. Nah, she'll sleep it off. But'm sure she just has a fever or maybe the flu. Nah, she'll sleep it off. But when he walked into the bedroom and he saw his wife looking so horrible and literally squirming in pain, he relented and said, okay, I'll take her to the hospital. And so Pi would have to literally carry Peggy out of the house, put her in his truck. He drove her to the hospital and then had to carry her into the hospital.

And by the time Peggy was under doctor's care at the hospital, she no longer could talk. She was just moaning in agony from this excruciating pain in her limbs, and her heart was still racing, and she was nauseous, and she was vomiting. I mean, she was really spiraling quickly. And so after she's been admitted, the doctors turned to Pi and to Dwayne and to Sissy and to the other family members that had assembled. And they asked them, do you have any idea what could have caused this? And they all said, no, she just suddenly started feeling this way. And so the doctors who were unable to ask Peggy, she was in such blinding pain, she couldn't even talk. They just began running her through a wide-ranging series of tests to try to figure out what was going on. But when these results began coming in, either she was negative

for the thing they were testing for, or it just came back that everything was normal. And so they're looking at Peggy, seeing her completely falling apart. None of their tests have revealed anything is wrong with her. And so they're at a loss. They don't know what's wrong with her. And so without a better option, they just put Peggy into a hospital room and begin monitoring her. And sure enough, after being in the hospital for three days, Peggy's symptoms would come down. While she wasn't back completely to strength,

she was able to speak again. She was able to eat and drink water and move around. She was still very uncomfortable. Her heart would still race periodically and she would get fits of pain in all of her extremities. But overall, she felt like she was really improving. And so after three days, she was discharged from the hospital. And so Peggy and her family, they drive back to their home and initially everything's okay. It seems like she's on the mend, but within 24 hours, Peggy's heart starts to race again. And before long, her arms and legs feel like they are on fire. Now, Peggy and her family, they know that the

doctors don't know what this condition is. And so their immediate reaction was huge concern that Peggy again was suffering from this horrible thing. But going to the hospital didn't really feel like the obvious first choice. In fact, the obvious first choice, at least for Peggy, was just to sit at the house and wait it out the same way she had waited it out at the hospital. But over the next several days, despite laying in bed and resting as much as she could, her symptoms did not get any better. They got worse and worse and worse, to the point where she literally was completely bedridden and all she could do was just shake and periodically scream into her pillow from all the pain she was experiencing in her extremities. And so finally, on October 30th, which was 10 days from the first day that Peggy felt these strange symptoms when she was at the diner, her family decided, you know what, enough is enough.

She obviously is not able to just sleep off whatever this is and so they called an ambulance which rushed her to the hospital and when she got there the doctors they remembered her from the week before so they understood this was a bit of a mystery but just in case they ran the exact same battery of tests on her to see if maybe now there was some other indication of what this was but again all of the tests came back and they either came back negative or inconclusive or just showed that you know nothing was wrong with her the doctors even ran her through some tests for poison thinking you know maybe she accidentally ingested something toxic and that's what's causing all of this but those tests as well came back negative. And so totally stumped, the doctors decided the only thing they could do was, once again,

put her in a hospital room and just monitor her. And so that night, Peggy was wheeled into a room. And all night, up and down that hospital wing, people listened to the sound of Peggy screaming at the top of her lungs from the pain she was experiencing. And then the next morning, the whole situation got even worse, not only for Peggy, who by now was dipping in and out of consciousness, but also for the rest of her family. Because that morning, Peggy's son, Dwayne, and Peggy's stepson, so Pi's son, Travis, they were both admitted to the same hospital for exhibiting these same symptoms as Peggy.

Their heart was racing, they were nauseous, they were vomiting, and their arms and legs were starting to tingle. And so the doctors, with nothing else to do, just ran Dwayne and Travis through all the same tests they had put Peggy through, and they all came back negative or they came back normal. However, shortly after Dwayne and Travis had been admitted to the hospital, a neurologist who was looking after Peggy, he noticed something about her condition. And suddenly it was like his medical training from back in college kicked in and he remembered something very specific that lined up exactly with what he was seeing in Peggy. And he suddenly realized that he knew what was going on. And so he told his colleagues, they ran out and they got

this very specialized testing kit that doctors very rarely use. It's only for this one really specific and very rare condition. And they tested Dwayne and Travis and Peggy. And sure enough, the next day the results came back and all three tested positive for this condition that the neurologist had guessed. And even though there was a cure for this condition, for Peggy, it was too late. Her body had been so completely ravaged that even if they administered the cure, it would not work fast enough to save her life. And so that day, the doctors went to Peggy, who despite being on all these painkillers is still squirming and writhing in pain and streaming into her pillow. They would tell her, you're gonna die. The only

thing we can do is try to make you as comfortable as possible and then try to save your boys. Not long after being told this terrible news, Peggy would slip into a coma and then four months later on March 3rd, 1989, Peggy's family had to make the heart-wrenching decision to pull her off life support, and then at that point, she passed away. As for her two boys, Dwayne would remain hospitalized for two months and would make a full recovery. As for Travis, he would remain hospitalized for six months, and while he would recover, he would never walk normally again even though the actual medical condition that killed Peggy and nearly killed Dwayne and Travis was

completely known at this point everybody knew what it was what nobody could figure out was why this happened why in the world did this happen to these people? It made no sense. However, shortly after Peggy's death, that mystery would actually begin to unravel in the most bizarre and totally roundabout way. I'm Peter Frankopan. And I'm Afua Hirsch. And we're here to tell you about our new season of Legacy, covering the iconic, troubled musical genius that was Nina Simone. Full disclosure, this is a big one for me. Nina Simone, one of my favourite artists of all time. Somebody who's had a huge impact on me,

who I think objectively stands apart for the level of her talent, the audacity of her message. If I was a first year at university, the first time I sat down and really listened to her and engaged with her message, it totally floored me. And the truth and pain and messiness of her struggle, that's all captured in unforgettable music that has stood the test of time. Think that's fair, Peter? I mean, the way in which her music comes across is so powerful, no matter what song it is. So join us on Legacy for Nina Simone. Hey, Mr. Ballin' fans.

Did you know you can listen to episodes of this very show ad-free and one month early on Amazon Music with your Prime membership? That's right. All your favorite Mr. Ballin episodes can be heard on Amazon Music ad-free, and you'll always be the first one to catch our new episodes. But that's not all. You get access to other amazing shows like Mr. Ballin's Medical Mysteries, Morbid, 48 Hours, and 2020, all ad-free too. And you know what that means, uninterrupted listening, so no more cliffhangers. Amazon Music is your home for all things true crime, and offers the most ad-free top podcasts, so we definitely have something for you. And it's already included in your Prime membership. To listen now, all you need to do is go to amazon.com slash ballin.

That's amazon.com slash ballin or download the free Amazon Music app. It's just that easy. There is an international organization called Mensa. That's not an acronym. It's a Latin word that roughly translates to table or mind. And this organization is a highly exclusive society for the ultra intelligent. You literally have to prove that your IQ, which is an intelligence test, ranks in the top 2% out of everybody in the entire world. And even then, you may not be smart enough to get in. And in the same town that Peggy and Pi had lived,

in Alturas, Florida, there was a chapter of Mensa. And the way some of these chapters worked is they would just get together every month and do some sort of intellectually stimulating activity. And in Alturas, that Mensa chapter, what they would do is they would get together at some private location once a month, and they would put on what they called a murder mystery weekend. The members of this chapter would head off to some private location like an inn or a hotel or a cabin or something, and they would all role play a murder

investigation. So one or two of the Mensa members would come up with a very elaborate murder and subsequent investigation, and they would assign different fake characters to each of the real Mensa members. And so once they got there, they'd all find out what character they were and what they were responsible for. And then once they got into character, which included dressing up in costumes, they would remain in character until the killer was revealed. And so this activity was meant to be extremely intellectually challenging, but also it was extremely fun. The group loved these murder mystery weekends. And so with that in mind, just a couple of weeks after Peggy had passed away,

so this is sometime in April of 1989, a new genius was accepted into the ranks of the Alturas Mensa Chapter. Her name was Sherry Gwynn and she was a middle-aged woman who had recently fled from Texas to Central Florida to get away from her abusive husband who still lived in Texas. After she was accepted into the Mensa Chapter, it became abundantly clear to the members that Sherry was eager to make friends. But not just any friends. She wanted to make friends with two very specific members of the Alturas Mensa chapter. And they were Diana Carr, who had no relationship to Pi Carr or his family, and Diana's husband, whose name was George Trapal. Diana was a very successful orthopedic surgeon who had her own practice

in Alturas, Florida. And George was this computer programmer who had more advanced degrees than you could count. And critically, Diana and George just so happened to live right next door to Peggy and Pie's house. Even though Sherry came on really strong right away to try to become friends with Diana and George, neither of them were phased. The couple just figured, you know, here's a woman who's living by herself, she's moved to a brand new area, she's run away from an abusive husband, you know, it's no wonder she wants friends, and so she probably just needs some support. And so Diana and George were happy to just become her friend. The same month that Sherry was accepted into the Altura Smenza chapter, George and Diana happened to be chosen

as the people responsible for coming up with the complicated scenario that the group would act out during their murder mystery weekend that month. So George and Diana very diligently sat down and went over how to make the case as complicated as they could, and George took on the responsibility of really focusing on exactly how the victim in their fake scenario would be killed, because he was really trying to make it as difficult as he possibly could, and he was trying to find the perfect murder that would be nearly impossible to solve. And so he came up with this very elaborate murder scene, and then between him and what his wife was creating,

they put together this really intense and very complicated scenario that they were both very happy about. And so a couple of days later, it was time to head out for the murder mystery weekend that George and Diana had worked so hard on. And so they went and printed off a whole bunch of those cards that would have all the information about who each of the Mensa members were going to be in this role-playing game. And there was some initial information about the murder that was committed,

the so-called perfect crime that George had come up with. And so they printed all those cards out, they grabbed their costumes, they packed their stuff up, they hopped in the car, and they drove to the nearby inn where they met up with the rest of the Mensa members, which included Sherry. And so they get to this inn, everybody checks in, and then afterwards they all meet up in the lobby where George and Diana hand out their cards that have the information about the role-playing game. And so everybody's reading it and figuring out what they're going to do with their character, and everyone's also looking at the so-called perfect crime that George had come up with, that he was also very proud about. And he was kind of boasting to the audience about how difficult this weekend was going to be. He really came up with the perfect

crime. And so as all the members are reading their cards, Sherry would see the murder weapon used in this game, and she would become fascinated with it. And she would make a point of going over to George and asking him lots and lots of questions about how he came up with this particular choice of a murder weapon and what actually happens when this is used on a person, not just in the game, but in real life. It was like Sherry had become obsessed with this exact form of murder. She was so interested in it. And George, he was immediately aware that Sherry was kind of unnaturally interested in exactly how he had come up with the scheme. But in a way, it was kind of flattering for George because he had spent a lot of time constructing it to make it as complicated

as he could. And so he indulged Sherry and he sat there and told her everything about this particular weapon and what it does to the human body and you know how you can get it and what the history of this weapon was and the whole time sherry is just totally locked in i mean she's really focused on this particular style of murder and so that murder mystery weekend would eventually come to an end and all the mensa members would think it was great and they would head home and then over the course of nearly a year after that, Sherry would be a near constant in George and Diana's lives. I mean, she was always around them. She always wanted to meet up with them. She was always talking to them and asking them questions and calling. And anytime she was with

them, she always wanted to be with George. And when she was with George, a lot of times she would bring up that very particular murder method that he had come up with for the murder mystery weekend. And George just continued to think this was just the greatest thing. It was so flattering that she thought he was so smart that he had come up with the perfect crime. And so anytime she wanted to talk about it, he would just indulge her because it made him feel really good. And if George and Diana had seen any red flags in Sherry with her behavior towards them, they certainly about it he would just indulge her because it made him feel really good and if george and diana had seen any red flags in sherry with her behavior towards them they certainly didn't show it they basically were operating under the assumption that sherry no matter what was just this helpless harmless person who had come to central florida and she was trying to be their friend and so they

should try to be her friend back but as they they would soon find out, they were very, very wrong about Sherry. In December of 1989, so roughly eight months after George and Diana had first met Sherry, Diana decided she wanted to move her medical practice from Alturas to a neighboring town called Sebring. And the drive from where their house was in Alturas to where her new office was going to be was just far enough that it made sense for George and Diana to relocate to Sebring. And when Sherry discovered that the couple was moving, she immediately called George and said, please let me rent out your house. I don't have a place to stay up and stay in with friends. I'll pay whatever rent you want. And as it happened, George and Diana had actually talked about keeping the house and renting it out. And so it was actually a pretty

easy decision. They trusted Sherry. And so they said, you know what? That's fine. You can rent out the house for a couple of months and then we'll decide if this is a long-term solution or not. And within just a couple of hours, Sherry was on Diana and George's doorstep with a sleeping bag and a small bag of toiletries ready to go inside and so george and diana they grabbed the last couple of things they needed and then as they walked out the front door they gave their house key to sherry and told her you know hey if you need anything just give us a call and then george and diana they climbed into their car and as soon as they had drove off and were out of view, Sherry dropped her things and she kind of looked around

and then she ran inside of the house. And just minutes later, practically the entire Alturas Police Department came crashing through that front door after Sherry. And within an hour, the police department would find something that would not only reveal the true identity of Sherry and her true intentions,

but it would also reveal the truth about what happened to Peggy and her family. A couple of days before Peggy first started feeling bad, when her heart started racing and her arms and legs began tingling at the diner, a couple of days before that, someone had placed eight Coca-Cola bottles, so full sodas, glass bottles, inside of Peggy and Pi's kitchen. And they set these eight drinks kind of tucked away inside of a storage nook. A couple of days later, the family discovered these sodas, but they didn't think anything of it. They figured somebody else in the family had bought them and left them in the kitchen, and so they were fair game. And so before long, Peggy and the rest of her family were drinking these Cokes. But Peggy, who was notorious for loving Coca-Cola,

drank way more than anybody else. Well, it would turn out all eight of those Coca-Colas had been tampered with. They all contained a significant dose of the heavy metal called thallium. Thallium is odorless, it's colorless, it's tasteless, and even though there are very small trace amounts that naturally occur inside of our bodies, if there's even a little bit more than that inside of our bloodstream, it becomes lethal. And so when Peggy was admitted to the hospital

the second time, around the same time that Dwayne and Travis were also admitted, that neurologist who was looking at Peggy, what he noticed about her condition was that her hair was starting to fall out. And that's when it clicked for him. He had this flashback to his medical training where he was taught about thallium poisoning. And one of the symptoms was hair loss. The other symptom was extreme pain in the extremities. And so the neurologist and his colleagues went and got a thallium test kit, and they tested Dwayne and

Travis and Peggy, and they all came back positive for thallium poisoning. But the level of thallium inside of them was astronomical. The boys are lucky to have survived. They had 20,000 times the amount that naturally occurs inside of the human body. As for Peggy, she had an astounding 50,000 times the amount that naturally occurs. Way more than was lethal. And so that was why the doctors told her, there's nothing we can do. Your body is basically already dead. You're just technically still alive right now. And so the rest of the family, besides Dwayne and Travis, would also test for thallium, and they would all, with the exception of one child, have elevated levels of thallium. However, compared to Dwayne, Travis, and Peggy, of course, you know, their conditions were negligible, and they would all make full recoveries. And so the doctors realized fairly early on that

this family has been poisoned. And so they contacted the police who launched an investigation. And right away, their primary suspect was Pi. He and Peggy had been fighting extensively before she fell ill. He also had that kind of abrupt hunting trip that lined up with the day Peggy started feeling sick. And so they're thinking, okay, well, did that have something to do with how he planted the thallium? And then also there was the fact that Pi worked at the phosphate mining company and so had access to fairly rare chemicals. However, upon closer inspection, Pi did not have access to thallium specifically. Thallium is incredibly rare and very expensive.

And it just seemed odd that he would use thallium to poison and kill his wife, but he would also poison himself and his son, who he adored. It just didn't really add up. And so Pi would get ruled out as a suspect fairly quickly. But during one of his last interrogations, he would give the police something he didn't think was very valuable, but it wound up being very significant. He would say that three months before Peggy got sick, their family received a death threat. He

opened the mail one day and there was this typed out note that said, your family needs to leave Florida in the next two weeks or you're all going to die. But Pi thought it was some stupid teenage prank. And so he didn't think anything of it. And then when two weeks went by and they weren't dead, he just kind of forgot about it. And so after the police have ruled Pi out as a suspect, they didn't know where to turn. They had no other suspects. And so they just began focusing on who might have written this note. And that's where Sherry comes in. Sherry Gwynn was not a Texas transplant who had come to Central Florida to run away from her abusive husband. Sherry Gwynn wasn't even her real name. Her real name was Susan Gleck, and she had lived in Central Florida for most of her life. Susan was very smart, but she certainly was not Mensa-level genius smart, and so almost certainly her paperwork that got her in to the Alturas Mensa chapter was forged. Susan also had absolutely no interest

in becoming real friends with Diana and George. The only reason she was pretending to be their friends and wanting to be around them all the time is because she was studying them. Because Susan was actually an undercover police officer. She had been sent undercover after the police discovered Diana and George were responsible for that death threat letter that was sent to Peggy and Pi. It would turn out Diana and George hated Peggy, Pi, and their kids. They hated them. They thought they were obnoxious. They were too noisy. They were annoying. And so Diana, who for context was the type of person who would stop people mid-sentence and correct them if they ever referred to her as anything other than Dr. Carr, she had gotten into at least one or two serious yelling fights with

Peggy and with Pi and their kids when she had gone over to tell them to turn their music down and be quiet and do this and do that. And Peggy and Pi, they're not putting up with that. They just told with Pi and their kids when she had gone over to tell them to turn their music down and be quiet and do this and do that. And Peggy and Pi, they're not putting up with that. They just told her to get out of here. As for George, he didn't get into any public altercations with Peggy and Pi and their family. George was a very meek and submissive guy. He was very meager and he was mostly a recluse. But he spent virtually all day peering out the window at Peggy and Pi and their family, studying what they were doing and obsessing over how noisy and obnoxious they were. And as he's seeing his wife getting more and more frustrated with their

neighbors, George finally decides he's going to take drastic action. And so that's when George types out that death threat and he sends it across the way. But after Pye reads it, nothing happens. They don't leave Florida within two weeks. And so George went to phase two of his plan. George had actually spent time in a federal prison in the 1970s for cooking meth. And one of the byproducts of making meth is thallium. So George used his old meth cooking skills and he whipped up some thallium and he put lethal doses of thallium in eight different Coca-Cola bottles. And then after

mixing them all up so you couldn't tell there was any chemical inside of them, he used his bottle topping machine to put tops back on top of each of them. George made his own beer and so that's why he had a topping machine at his house. And so with his eight deadly drinks all prepared, looking like brand new Coca-Colas, George waited until Peggy and Pi and her family were out of their house, and then he snuck over and he walked into their kitchen and he placed these Coca-Colas right down on the kitchen counter and he slid them into a storage nook, and then he left the house and that was it. And over the next several weeks, he watched with absolute pleasure as the family got sick and then Peggy

died. While George never actually admitted that he had poisoned his neighbors, he did do some things that really tipped off Susan that he had to be the guy. Like, for example, that Mensa mystery murder weekend. The murder method that George had come up with was poisoning. And remember, at that point, Susan has been sent undercover to find out if George and Diana are responsible for poisoning their neighbors. And now George is sitting up there talking about the perfect crime he's come up with, and it's poisoning. And so that was why she had followed up with him really specifically on, wow, what else do you know about poisoning? And how'd you learn about poisoning? And what kind of poisons do you know about? And over the following months,

even though Susan never got George to actually admit to her when she was undercover recording him that he was the poisoner, she did completely earn his trust. And she did this by always making sure she was very submissive around him and always made sure to stroke his ego and remind him how smart he was. I mean, George was used to being in a relationship with Diana, who was extremely overbearing and kind of kept him under her thumb. And so Susan kind of allowed George to feel like he was in control for once, and he loved it. And so he completely trusted Susan to the point where when he and Diana were going to move out of Alturas, they were willing to rent their house to Susan.

And this is important because the house had not actually been emptied. A lot of their things were still in the house, including George's things. And so he just assumed Susan would never go through his things. But as soon as Susan was in that house and she watched George and Diana drive off, she immediately called in backup, the police swarmed the house, they searched it top to bottom, and in the garage they found George's chemistry equipment, and nestled underneath it was a bottle that contained thallium. George would be found guilty of first-degree murder, as well as attempted murder on the rest of Peggy's family, and he would be sentenced to death. As of this

episode, he is still alive and he is still on death row. As for his wife Diana, who many people believe must have had something to do with the poisoning, or must have at least known it was happening, was never actually charged with anything, and so she would eventually divorce George and move on with her life and remarry. If you got something out of this episode and you haven't done this already, please ask the Amazon Music Follow button to go out dancing with you. But when you get to the dance floor, repeatedly step on their feet without acknowledging it. This podcast airs every Monday and Thursday morning. But in the meantime, you can always watch one of the hundreds of stories we have posted on our main YouTube channel, which is just called Mr. Ballin. main YouTube channel, which is just called Mr. Ballin. We have a registered 501c3 charitable organization called the Mr. Ballin Foundation that honors and supports victims of violent crime,

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