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

Episode Date: October 5, 2026

One afternoon in December 1980, one of the most famous comedians in France pulled a stack of letters from his mailbox in Paris. As he flipped through them, one caught his eye: It had no postmark or return address, and there was something small and hard inside. He ripped the envelope open and pulled out a bullet, along with a piece of paper that read: “The next one is for you.” 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.

One afternoon in December of 1980, one of the most famous comedians in France pulled a stack of letters out of his mailbox in Paris. And as he flipped through the mail, one of the packages caught his eye. It had no postmark or return address. And there was clearly something small and hard inside of it. And so intrigued, he ripped open the envelope and he pulled out a bullet, along with a piece of paper that read, the next one is for you. 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, please sneak into the Follow Button's house, steal the rotating plate in their microwave, and then leave. Okay, let's get into today's story. On the evening of November 23rd, 1980, a 39-year-old man named Renee Gorlin sat on a bench at a train station in Paris, France. His 22-year-old girlfriend, Marie-Pierre des Albrey, was sitting there.

sitting next to him, and the energy between them was tense, because Marie-Pierre did not want Renee to get on the train that was about to arrive. So for the past few years, René had basically been living two separate lives. He spent most of his time in Paris, where he worked as the stage manager for a very famous comedian, and he lived in an apartment with Marie-Pierre. But the train he was waiting for now was about to take him back to his other life, which was on a farm 60 miles away in the town of Chateau-Tier-Eau. where he lived with his longtime partner, Danielle, and their two kids.

Now, having a relationship with two different women was often very complicated for Renee, but it really wasn't a secret. Both women knew about each other. So this was all out in the open. So in the beginning, the arrangement had been quite rocky, because Renee, at the time, had been with Danielle exclusively for years before ever meeting Marie-Pierre and starting the affair. And when the affair began with Marie-Pierre, Danielle had been furious, like she couldn't believe this.

But now, she had a boyfriend on the side, too. And it seemed to Renee, like she'd made peace with the whole situation and was at least reasonably happy with their overall arrangement. But Marie-Pierre, Renée's girlfriend in Paris, who was currently sitting with him waiting for this train, was not fine with the overall arrangement. She'd always been very jealous of his girlfriend. relationship with Danielle, and things really had only gotten even messier lately, because Marie Pierre was now seven months pregnant. Renée had promised Marie Pierre that he was going to leave

Danielle and marry her, Marie Pierre, as soon as the baby was born. But secretly, he wasn't sure if he'd actually go through with it. After all, Marie Pierre had already left Renee twice before, and he was afraid to abandon his long-term family for a relationship that seemed somewhat unstable. he still had time before he had to make a decision about any of that. Right now, he really was not looking to add any more drama into his personal life. He was already dealing with quite enough at work. So the very famous comedian that Renee worked for, whose stage name was Kaluche, had announced a month ago that he was going to run for President of France.

And even though the campaign was essentially a joke, the current president took Kaluche really seriously. He viewed this comedian who, I mean, to everybody else, it seemed like a schick, he viewed this campaign as an actual threat to his reelection. And now, a month after Kaluche has announced this run for being the president, he was actually doing quite well in the polls, which was only increasing the paranoia by the current French political establishment. And so now it's like, you know, the powers that be in France were having this extreme reaction to Kaluche, like this guy is a threat to us.

In fact, government agencies were now actually tapping Kaluche's phone and the state-run TV and radio stations now suddenly wouldn't let him on the air. And on top of that, perhaps the most sort of frightening aspect of Kaluche's political rise here, was that at least one person had been sending him death threats. And so for Renee, it was sort of amazing to see Kaluche's rise that started as sort of a joke and became something much more serious, but it was also sort of scary. Renee was worried that just in virtue of being Kaluche's employee, he might be in danger too. And so now, as the train to Chateau Tieri finally pulled up to the platform,

the only thing on René's mind was just holding his life together for another day. He kissed Marie-Pierre goodbye and told her to remember to lock the apartment door while he was gone because, again, he's sort of worried about safety for him, safety for others near him. And then he said that if anything went wrong, she knew where the farm was where he was staying, and she knew how to get a hold of him. A couple hours later, after the train ride, Renee sat in the passenger seat of Danielle's car as she drove him back to the farm from the train station.

It was now pretty late, and their two young kids were falling asleep in the back seat, so Renee and Danielle were not talking much. Up ahead, Renee saw their farm come into view. It was on a big plot of land in the countryside with dozens of horses and a little white stone farmhouse. It was beautiful. And as soon as he saw it, Renee breathed deeply and let his shoulders relax. He was glad to be back here, away from all the chaos of Paris.

They pulled onto the property and Danielle parked the car in the driveway. And as she was getting the kids situated, Renee got out. And the first thing he did is he walked over to the stables to check on the horses. And as soon as he poked his head inside, he noticed that Danielle clearly had not groomed any of them while he was gone. And so Renee, he walked back to the house feeling kind of irritated. And once he was inside with Danielle and their kids, He couldn't help it. He had to ask her about it.

Like, why didn't you do it? And Danielle instantly snapped back at him, saying that the horses being groomed were very low on her list of priorities. She'd been too busy taking care of their kids and the entire farm without him for a whole week. Renee was very defensive, and he argued right back. And pretty quickly, this fight escalated until they were both screaming at each other right in front of their kids. But this actually was not particularly unusual. for Renee and Danielle. They had explosive arguments like this all the time, and they always just

blew over eventually. So at the end of their, you know, initial volley of fighting when there was kind of a lull there, Renee, you know, he's heated, he's full of adrenaline, but from experience he knew the best thing for him to do right now was just to take a beat. So he stormed out of the room and headed to the bedroom to just cool down. Once inside, he sat down on the bed, and at first he just sat there, you know, seething, you know, still mad. And then he saw there was a phone on the nightstand, so he just picked it up and almost reflexively he dialed a number. And a moment later, Marie Pierre answered. And before long, you know, Renee is venting to Marie Pierre about Danielle. He told her that, you know, hey, we just got in this horrible fight. You know, pretty much

the second I walked in the door, we're fighting about all the stupid stuff, like, oh, you wouldn't believe it. And Renee, as he's venting about Danielle to his mistress of sorts, you know, he expected Marie-Pierre to ultimately sympathize with him. But instead, when Marie-Pierre responded to this diatribe about Danielle, she just sounded really frustrated. She said that, you know what, if you hate Danielle so much, just leave her already. Like enough of this talk, just leave her.

And at first, Renee couldn't help but feel annoyed himself. Like, this suggestion was kind of offensive. Like, you understand how complicated this is. But then he actually considered that Marie-Pierre might be, right. And then after he hung up the phone, he found himself sitting on that bed wondering if it was really worth even spending the rest of the night here, just probably fighting some more with Danielle. Like, what good was that going to do? He began to think maybe he ought to just leave right now and go back to Paris with Marie-Pierre. And so for a few minutes, René just sat on the bed,

weighing his options, basically stay or go, and then eventually, he made a decision. Two days later, at 7.30 a.m. on November 25, 1980, a worker walked through a very busy construction site just outside of Paris. It was raining, and the ground was muddy, and as he headed over to his crane, he saw something a few feet away on the ground next to a pile of gravel that just looked out of place. It was like this big, lumpy shape that was covered in what appeared to be fabric, and he thought it actually might be maybe a sandbag that got put in the wrong spot, but when he walked over and got a better look and actually saw what this was, he immediately began stumbling backwards

and began shouting for someone to call the police. A couple hours later, on the morning of November 25, 1980, Inspector Charles Diaz parked his car at that same construction site right outside of Paris. So Inspector was like the equivalent of detective for the Paris Police, and Diaz was actually brand new to the title. This was going to be his first major crimes case since joining this department.

So Diaz at this point, as he's showing up, didn't really know much about this crime scene or who the victim was yet. All he knew was that a man's body had been found here by some workers, and apparently it appeared to be a homicide. And for Diaz, you know, in a weird way, this was kind of exciting. You know, since he was a kid, he had been dreaming of solving a real murder. But now, as he walked through the gate into the construction site, he had the sinking feeling that his case was already off to a pretty bad start. Between the rain and all the workers and police walking around the site, any tire tracks or footprints that were left by the killer or killers were probably long gone. And so Diaz, he was pretty disappointed right off the bat, but, you know, he had to just continue on. So he walked over and he joined the few forensics officers who were all gathered around the body.

And when Diaz got over there, he looked down and he saw it was a man who appeared to be in his 40s, and he was lying in the mud right behind this pile of gravel. Diaz immediately asked for an update, and one of the other officers told him that the body had been found that morning, and based on the state of the body, he probably had been dead for maybe a day or maybe two. Diaz knelt down to get a better look, and right away he saw there were two distinct bullet wounds

in the back of this guy's head, and Diaz's first thought was that this looked like an execution. Now, there was some blood pulling around the man's head, but he didn't see any other. blood in the area. So Diaz guessed that this victim must have been killed somewhere else, you know, executed somewhere else, and then brought here post-mortem. And so right off the bat, Diaz's best theory was that this was some kind of gang hit. The way he was shot and the construction site dumping ground both just sort of felt like this was an organized crime thing or a

drug trafficking murder. When he searched the man's pockets, he didn't find any wallet or ID to help figure out who he was, but the victim did have his fingers, and Diaz knew that if the victim was a criminal himself, his prints were very likely already in the system. Later that afternoon, Diaz got back to the police station in Paris. He'd already gotten word from ballistics that the victim at the construction site had been shot twice, and they were from bullets from a 22-caliber long rifle, which was not an especially powerful weapon, but it was quieter than a lot of other guns. And Now, as Diaz walked into his office and sat down, he saw there was a report waiting for him on his desk. So he walked over, he sat down, he picked it up, and he began to look through it,

and he read that the victim's fingerprints had been run through the database, and he had been identified. This was apparently 39-year-old René Gorland. But as Diaz scanned the page, he realized his initial gang theory hit here was not nearly as solid as he thought it was. because Renee was not a gangster. He had been arrested once, and it was for petty theft when he was 18, and since then he'd stayed completely out of trouble. Like, this is not a career criminal here.

And so Diaz leaned back in his chair and tried to make sense of how a seemingly law-abiding man found himself shot execution style and then dumped at a construction site. While Diaz was thinking, his phone rang. So he picked it up, and it was an officer from a precinct in an innumerable. part of Paris. And this officer said that a woman had just come into their station to report

Renee Gorman missing. An hour later, Inspector Diaz walked into an interrogation room at a precinct across town, where a woman who appeared to be in her 20s was sitting at the table. She seemed very worried and she seemed a little bit nervous because she kept fidgeting and shifting around in her chair. Diaz walked in, took a seat across from her and introduced himself, and then he asked the woman to go over what she had told the other officers about Renee Gorlin. The woman, who again appeared to be very nervous, she told Diaz that her name was Danielle Blondell and that she was Renee's longtime partner

and was actually the mother of their two kids. And she told him that two nights earlier, Renee had come home from Paris, but before that even settled in and had dinner, Renee had told her that he needed to go back to the city right away. And so Danielle and her sister had ultimately driven Renee back to the train station that night. so we could go back to his apartment in Paris.

Now, Danielle said they had been arguing pretty much immediately when he had come home, and so she was just kind of annoyed with him in general, and so it was like kind of a good ridden's, like, go back to Paris type of thing. But now she said that she hadn't heard from him in a couple of days, but she said after a couple of days when she hadn't heard from him, she got worried. And so she said she literally went to Paris to check on him. He had an apartment in Paris. And what she found out is he wasn't at his apartment.

Like she had no idea where he was. And so that's what prompted her to walk down here and report him missing. It just felt like something was off. Now, Diaz knew that as Renee's partner and one of the last people, apparently, to see Renee alive, Danielle was clearly an obvious suspect here. But Diaz doesn't know. He can't really read her yet. And so the way she's speaking to him right now is like someone who doesn't know that Renee is actually dead. He's not just missing.

And so Diaz, he decided to break the news to her that, Renee was found dead and sort of see how she reacted. And so Renee, he leaned in and he looked at her and he said, Renee was found this morning. He was found dead. Diaz expected Danielle to be shocked or devastated. But at first, she just seemed really confused, like she didn't understand how that could be possible.

But as Diaz explained what little the police knew so far, Danielle's expression suddenly went completely blank, as if she was just completely in shock. And so as so as Danielle, as just sort of looking off into the distance, sitting there not reacting, Diaz asked her if she had any idea who could have done this. And Danielle, despite being almost catatonic, she immediately nodded, and then she broke out of her trance and said, actually, there was one person who definitely came to mind, Renee's pregnant mistress, Marie Pierre. Now, when Diaz heard that, he sat up

in surprise. It was almost instinctual. He couldn't believe what he heard. If Renée was having an affair, that gave him two very strong suspects here. Danielle and the mistress. But Danielle very quickly seemed to guess what Diaz was thinking here because she quickly explained that this was not like a typical love triangle, typical affair here. She said that she knew that Renee had been seeing Marie-Pierre. And Renee knew that she, Danielle, was seeing another man on the side as well.

She said it was all out in the open, and both she and Renee were fine with it. Now, Diaz heard this, and even though she's saying it's fine, he had no idea if that was true or not. But for now, Diaz just took down Marie-Pierre's name and her contact information from Danielle, and then he also asked Danielle for the name of that other man that Danielle was seeing on the side.

Basically, any of these people in Diaz's mind could easily be Renee's killer. Now, Diaz would have to confirm Danielle's story about dropping Renee off at the train station with Danielle's sister. However, you know, even though he was going to dig into that for sure, Diaz didn't feel like Danielle was a particularly strong suspect. It seemed like she had very little to gain from Renee's death because now she just had to raise two kids and take care of a farm on her own with no additional income. On the other hand, the other woman, Marie Pierre, who lived in Paris close to where Renee's body was found, it was possible that she was not nearly as satisfied with this arrangement as Danielle appeared to be.

and perhaps she killed Renee in a jealous rage. That evening, Diaz knocked on the door of Marie-Pierre's apartment in Paris, where she had actually been living with Renee. That was Renee's apartment. And a minute later, a very pregnant young woman opened the door, and Diaz asked her if she was Marie-Pierre, and she nodded and said yes. Diaz explained who he was, and Marie-Pierre just seemed really kind of confused and definitely nervous, but ultimately she let Diaz into the apartment,

and then once they'd both sat down at the dining room table, Diaz told her the news that Renee was dead. Now, unlike Danielle, who had sort of gone into a catatonic shock here from this news, Marie Pierre, when she heard Renee was dead, instantly broke down crying. Diaz watched for any sign that her reaction was fake, but at least at first it seemed pretty sincere. There were actual tears rolling down her face, and she really could barely speak coherently as she was weeping.

So Diaz had to wait until she was calm and up to talk. And then when she was, he asked her, you know, when was the last time you saw Renee? And Marie-Pierre, she, you know, barely able to compose herself. She stammered out that she had taken him to the train station on the evening of November 23rd, and he'd gotten on a train to go back to his farm. She said they had briefly spoken on the phone later that night,

but she hadn't seen or heard from him since. And this surprised Diaz, because from his conversation with Danielle, she had said that that same night on the 23rd when Renee had returned to the farm, you know, had come back home again, that that same night he had demanded to go back to the city and Danielle had dropped him off at the train, you know, and so Diaz assumed he had gone back to his apartment in Paris where Marie Pierre was. But Marie Pierre is insisting that Renee had not come home that night, that she had seen him off on the train, and that was it. And so at this point, Diaz was feeling like either one of Renee's romantic partners was lying, you know, about their last interaction with Renee, or both women were telling the truth and someone else killed Renee. Somewhere in transit, somebody else was involved. So with that in mind, Diaz asked Marie Pierre if Renee had any enemies or if he had been threatened by anyone. And she said no, but she said Renee's boss had been getting lots of threats.

Marie-Pierre explained that Renee was the stage manager for Kaluche, the very famous comedian who was now running for president. Renee had told her that Kaluche was actually getting death threats over his political campaign, and he was also under government surveillance. And Renee said that he had been really afraid that he was being watched too, just because of his connection to Kaluche. As Diaz listened to this, he was stunned. He knew about Kaluche's campaign, and he knew that a lot of politicians were not happening. about it. But what Marie-Pierre was saying sounded really extreme, and even if she was telling the truth, he had a hard time believing that political operatives would kill a comedian's stage manager as like an intimidation tactic. But at the same time, Diaz had been working on this case

for less than 24 hours, so at this point, he really had to consider everything until he could rule it out, no matter how outrageous it seemed. A month later, near the end of December 1980, sat in his office pouring over files and evidence that still didn't add up to a complete picture here, and he was starting to worry that his very first murder case was heading towards a complete standstill. A few weeks earlier, he'd brought Renee's boss, the very famous comedian-turned politician, Kalush, in for questioning to look into the theory that someone had maybe killed Renee to intimidate Kaluche into dropping out of the election. But Kaluche was pretty much completely uncooperative. He refused to answer any questions, not even his name or date of birth.

He just seemed really deeply paranoid and pretty obviously fearful that Diaz was working with whatever, you know, shadowy intelligence agencies that were surveilling him. And he was worried that if he said anything now that they would find out about it and they would use it against him. And so on the one hand, this was very unhelpful for Diaz. But on the other, it made this lead, this idea that maybe Renee was killed, to politics, it made it feel like it wasn't so crazy after all. I mean, Kaluche wouldn't be acting this terrified if he didn't at least suspect that Reney's murder was a warning to him. But, you know, at the same time, without really any cooperation from Kaluche, Diaz was going to have a very hard time following this lead any further than this.

So he kept this theory alive, but put it on the back burner. And in the meantime, he'd been trying to rule out all the other suspects that he had. Daniel's sister had confirmed Danielle's alibi. She said that she and Danielle had driven Renee to the train station on the night he was killed. That was the last time they saw him. There was no blood or evidence of a shooting or really a struggle of any kind found out at the farmhouse. So Danielle had been ruled out as a suspect. And then Danielle's lover had also been cleared because he too had an alibi. Marie-Pierre, though, she was looking more suspicious than ever. Diaz had interviewed Renee's friends and colleagues and they had a lot of negative things.

to say about Marie Pierre and Renee's relationship with her. Diaz had learned that Marie Pierre had had an affair with another man, and that Renee had also cheated on her with several other women, including Marie Pierre's own sister. And so their relationship was just a total mess, and it was like every other thing that Diaz learned about their relationship only strengthened his theory that Marie Pierre could have wanted Renee dead. In fact, at this point, Diaz's best theory was that Renee had actually made it back to his apartment in Paris that he shared with Marie Pierre on the night he was killed. And then when he got back there, he and Marie Pierre must have gotten into a pretty awful argument that resulted in her killing him. But even if it were true,

so far, investigators had not found any evidence that proved it. And Marie Pierre had given police full permission to search her and Renee's apartment. And they had. You know, most of the multiple times, but they hadn't found anything linking her to the murder. And so Diaz was obviously pretty frustrated because even though he had narrowed down the suspect pool to basically Marie Pierre and maybe some other unnamed third party that was involved in killing Renee in transit, let's say, you know, right now there was just no evidence that pointed to Marie Pierre or anybody else. There was just nothing.

But just then, there was a knock on Diaz's door. He got up, he walked over, he opened it up, and standing outside the door was Kaluche, who looked very anxious. Kaluche, without saying anything, hurried into the office, and then he thrust an envelope into Diaz's hands. Diaz looked at it and then opened it up, and inside of this envelope was a single bullet and a note that said, the next one is for you. Kaluche said he had found this thing, this package, in his mailbox just the day before.

And he was thinking about just giving up on his campaign at this point. it was too much. He'd been getting threatening letters basically ever since he announced his run, and after what happened to Renee, he didn't want to take any more chances. And so he said, like, he would fully cooperate with Diaz's investigation, but only if the police would guarantee that he could be placed into protective custody. On an evening in February of 1981, so now about three months after René Gorlin was killed, Inspector Charles Diaz got out from his desk at the end of another long and disappointing day. He grabbed his coat, he flicked off the lights, and he walked down the hallway to head home for the night. So for the past couple of months, Diaz and his team

had been working closely with Kalush, who was now in protective custody, to try to see if there was evidence that would link the threats against Kalush to René's murder. And what Diaz and his team discovered was that some of the threatening letters that Kaluche had received were signed by this shady criminal organization called Honor of the Police. This group had claimed responsibility for a number of political murders over the past few years, including the assassination of an activist in Paris just a year earlier. But unfortunately, no members of the shady group had ever actually been identified, and so Diaz had had no luck tracking any of them down.

And so basically, over these last couple of months, every day Diaz had come into the station hoping that maybe some new evidence had come to the surface that would finally point him toward Renee's killer, and every night he would go home feeling like he had nothing to show for that day's work. And so, after a few more months without any new leads, Diaz's very first murder case officially went cold. Six months later, in the fall of 1981, Diaz, who by this point was working at their cases,

was basically done for the day, and he walked back into his office at the police station, and he saw there was a report waiting on his desk, and it was from the medical examiner. And so he walked over and he looked at this report and he saw it was about Renee Gorman. It was actually Renee's bolus analysis, which is an examination of a body's undigested stomach contents. This type of analysis takes a long time to do, and usually it doesn't reveal anything groundbreaking. But Diaz, despite working on other cases, was still desperate to get this case moving again.

This was his first murder case after all. So when he saw what this was, he began eagerly scam. through the pages. And as he began flipping through it, there was one thing in the results that immediately stood out to him. Sometime in the few hours before he died, René had eaten chestnut cream, which is a spread used on toasts and in desserts in France, but it's not something most people eat every day. And so because it was such a specific food, Diaz decided to look into it as a potential new lead. And as soon as he did that, the entire case fell into place. Based on forensic evidence and an eventual confession, this is what police believe happened

to Renee Gorlin in the early morning hours of November 24, 1980. The killer very slowly crept their way down the hallway with a rifle in their hands. They reached a door to a bedroom and they slowly cracked it open and they saw Renee was in there asleep in the bed by himself and he was lying on his stomach. The killer quietly entered the room and they got right next to the bed and they raised the rifle and they aimed it right at the back of Renee's head, and they fired. And Renee didn't move at all, didn't make a sound nothing. He just went completely still as blood began spilling out of his skull. But just to be sure he was dead, the killer reloaded the rifle and they fired again into the

back of his skull. As the killer watched the blood seeped through all the sheets and the pillows and the blankets, and as they continued to make sure Renee wasn't moving, and he wasn't, he was definitely dead at this point. For a second, they were satisfied, but then they panicked because now came the hard part. How are they going to get rid of Renee's body before anybody noticed? Luckily, the killer had an accomplice. And so as the killer dragged Renee's body off the bed and pulled all the bloody sheets off the bed with him and as they're pulling Renee over to the door, the accomplice came into the room and they helped the killer clean everything up and they carried the body out into the car and they drive to a landfill where they offload the sheets and they burn the

sheets at the landfill. Then they drive to a nearby river and they throw the murder weapon into the river. And then finally, the killer and the accomplice drove Renee's body to a construction site outside of Paris and they just sort of ditched him unceremoniously in the mud. And then the very next day, the killer drove to the police station in Paris, walked inside, and reported Renee missing. The killer was Renee's longtime partner, Danielle Blondell. She was completely fed up with her constant fights with Renee, and also, even though she tried to play it off as no big deal, she actually was really bothered by his affair,

especially now that he'd gotten Marie-Pierre pregnant. And so that night at the farmhouse, after their argument that started over whether or not she had groomed the horses, the simmering humiliation and resentment finally pushed Danielle to a breaking point, and she snapped. And so after she shot Renee at the farmhouse, her accomplice, her sister, came over and helped her clean up the crime scene, and they both together lied to the police and claimed Renee had gone back to Paris on the night that he had died.

And the police had believed them until the bolus analysis came back. Diaz couldn't find anywhere that served chestnut cream near Renee's apartment in Paris. But when he recanvassed the neighbors out near the farm, you know, where Danielle lived a few months later, one of the neighbors told him that they had recently helped Danielle clean out her fridge, and that in that fridge, she had had chestnut cream. And so this led Diaz to take a closer look at Danielle again. Because remember, her story about the last time she saw Renee was he came out to her farmhouse on the night he died, but then almost immediately he had asked to leave, go back to Paris,

and so Danielle and her sister said they drove him out to the train station. But she made it seem like he was only at the farmhouse for a matter of minutes before that happened. But now, because of this bolus analysis, it's clear that a few hours before he died, he ate chestnut cream. And based on all the investigating Diaz had done about chestnut cream, the one place he would be eating chestnut cream is at that farmhouse. So very likely, based on the bolus analysis, He had stayed at the farm longer than Danielle was giving off.

She made it seem like it was a quick turnaround. It probably wasn't. And so with this suspicion, Danielle was confronted again. She was questioned again. And they were like, well, wait a minute. It seems like he would have eaten at your place. He might have eaten this chestnut cream. And when she began to hear about the chestnut cream,

she cracked and confessed to the murder. Danielle was convicted of murder and sentenced to 10 years in prison. As for her sister, she got a six-month-old. suspended sentence for her role in helping to dispose of Renee's body. 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, produced by Jeremy Bone and Cole Lacasio. This episode was written by Kate

Gallagher. Story editing by Kate Murdoch. Research and fact-checking by Shelley Shoe, Samantha Van Hoose, Evan Beamer, Abigail Shumway, Camille Callahan, Alex Paul, Ben Fasiano. Research and Fact-checking supervision by Stephen Ear. Audio editing and post-produced by Whitlocasio and Jordan Stidham. Production support by Antonio Manada and Delana Corley. Artwork by Jessica Clogston Kiner, theme song, 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. Ball &

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. Ballin. 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. So that's going to do it. I really appreciate your support. Until next time, see ya.