MrBallen Podcast: Strange, Dark & Mysterious Stories - Trick or Treat (PODCAST EXCLUSIVE EPISODE)

Episode Date: February 27, 2023

Late one night in 2004, a young woman was asleep in her downstairs bedroom when she suddenly was awoken by a bright light shining in through her bedroom window. The motion sensor light outside on the garage had been tripped. The young woman, who was sitting on her bed by this point, squinted and tried to look outside to see what had caused this, but she couldn't see anything. And so she just assumed it had to have been a neighborhood cat or something that had tripped the sensor. So she lay back down and was nearly back to sleep when something else caused her to suddenly sit up wide awake in her bed. But this time, it was not a bright light, it was a sound. Footsteps to be exact, and these footsteps were not outside. They were inside her house, right outside of her bedroom door. Seconds later, this woman would live a nightmare.For 100s more stories like this one, 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. Late one night in 2004, a young woman was asleep in her downstairs bedroom when she suddenly was awoken by a bright light shining in through her bedroom window. The motion sensor light outside on the garage had been tripped. The young woman who was sitting on her bed by this point squinted and tried to look outside to see what had caused this, but she couldn't see anything, and so she just assumed it had to have been a neighborhood cat or something that had tripped the sensor. So she lay back down and was nearly back to sleep when something else caused her to suddenly sit up wide awake in her bed. But this time,

it was not a bright light. It was a sound. Footsteps, to be exact. And these footsteps were not outside. They were inside her house, right outside of her bedroom door. Seconds later, this woman would live a nightmare. But before we get into that story, if you're a fan of the Strange, Dark, and Mysterious Deliberate 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 offer to pick up the Amazon Music Follow button after their work shift is over, but don't show up and instead just keep sending them periodic text messages that promise you are only five minutes away.

Okay, let's get into today's story. I'm Peter Frank-O'Pern. 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. Join us on Legacy for Nina Simone. 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. The weather on Halloween evening in Napa, California was perfect. The sky was clear,

and the air was cool without being cold. And all along Dorset Street, that year's most popular costumes were on display. It was October 31st, 2004, and the tree-lined neighborhood of small but pricey houses was a parade ground for pastel-colored princesses, black vampires, smiling yellow spongebbs, and Power Rangers in six different bright colors. Trailing behind and alongside these trick-or-treaters were parents who were shining their flashlights at the skull and bones and headstones planted in front yards and at the strings of orange lights around doorways. The whole scene was a snapshot of what made Napa such a desirable place to live.

Located just north of San Francisco, the trendy city of 70,000 residents still had a small-town vibe. Spread out around it were miles of green hillsides, covered with the acres of grapevines that had made the Napa Valley the premier wine-producing region in the United States. And tucked inside of this agricultural wonderland, the city of Napa was both beautiful and safe. And on this particular Halloween night, if there was one house on Dorset Street that radiated that feeling of safety and warmth, it was number 2631. Barely 900 square feet in size, the olive green, one-and-a-half-story home with the white trim and the attached two-car garage looked almost doll-sized,

hardly big enough for the three 26-year-old women who had all moved in there together over the course of the last nine months. Two of those roommates, Leslie Mazzara and Adrian Insagna, had been busy all evening passing out big handfuls of candy. Their excitement about this first Halloween together in this little house could be heard loud and clear as they oohed and aahed over the little visitors trooping past the effigy of a witch hanging from the outside porch ceiling to knock on the front door. The two roommates who greeted the trick-or-treaters, Leslie and Adrian, and their third roommate, who was sitting in the living room behind them, could not have been more different. Even before she got her degree in engineering, Adrian had always loved building things, and

in keeping with her hands-on and matter-of-fact approach to life, she had no problem telling people what was on her mind. Leslie was a former beauty queen from the deep south who moved with the grace of someone who had spent 15 years of her life taking ballet lessons. She also had so much natural charm and magnetism that the first time she had visited one of the most famous vineyards in Napa Valley, she had immediately been offered a job. Six months later, and Leslie had been promoted twice to her current position as a sales coordinator at the winery named after the famous Hollywood film

director Francis Ford Coppola. Even the children who were there to get candy seemed immediately taken with Leslie. From her always expertly applied makeup to her long southern drawl, Leslie had stood out from the crowd from the moment she had arrived in Napa just six months earlier. But the children weren't just seeing Leslie's striking green eyes and friendly smile. As one of Leslie's admirers had once said, when looking for words to describe Leslie's deeper beauty, it was like trying to describe a rainbow to someone who couldn't see. In contrast to Adrian and Leslie's outgoing personalities, the third roommate at 2631 Dorset Street, 26-year-old Lauren Minza, was the quietest and the neatest of the three women. As the volleyball coach of the local community college,

Lauren had no trouble yelling out encouragement and instruction to her students, but when it came to any sort of social confrontation, Lauren held back and usually just let Adrian do the talking. Of the three women, Lauren and Adrian had been the first to move into this rented house on Dorset Street. After graduating from California's Polytechnic State University in 2001, Adrian had returned to her childhood home in Napa Valley and almost immediately got hired in as an assistant engineer at the Napa Sanitation District. It was there at the Sanitation District that Adrian had met the person who would become her best friend, a contract supervisor named Lily Prudhomme. Through Lily, Adrian quickly became part of a news circle of friends.

A year or so later, at the start of 2004, Adrian had met Lauren for the first time at a volleyball class they both took at Napa Community College. And in February, when Lauren found the little house on Dorset Street, she had asked Adrian to move in and share the rent. As for Lauren, her social life had taken off on the day Adrian had arrived at 2631 Dorset. In typical Adrian fashion, Lauren's new roommate did not arrive alone. Right behind Adrian, carrying cartons and furniture, were Lily and her boyfriend Eric and another friend named Ben, all of whom helped Adrian and Lauren settle into their new home. In the space of that one day, Lauren had been welcomed into Adrian and Lily's circle, and by the time all the moving boxes were empty, the whole group of them had been laughing and talking over pizza and beer.

Leslie, the last roommate to arrive at 2631 Dorset Street, had walked into their lives four months after that pizza party. Leslie had actually been living right next door to them for several weeks, and in passing conversations, Lauren had felt an instant connection to Leslie. Lauren liked Leslie's sense of fun, and even more, Leslie's genuine warmth and interest in other people. So when Leslie's roommates made plans to move out, Lauren and Adrian invited Leslie to move in with them. Before long, the upstairs bedroom across from Adrian's was filled with Leslie's clothes, perfume, and makeup. Leslie's arrival had definitely changed the dynamic

at 2631, but in a fun way. While Adrian had arrived at the little house with a tight but small circle of close friends, Leslie arrived with an army, not just friends, but acquaintances and more male admirers than she could even count. And those were just the people Leslie knew in Napa. Her phone was filled with contacts from her life in Georgia and South Carolina, including ex-boyfriends who still made regular calls to Leslie, hoping to rekindle an old romance. But despite her busy social life and being involved with at least two different men at the same time, inside 2631, Leslie had respected her roommate's expectation of privacy. For the

most part, if any of them wanted to spend the night with a boyfriend, they did it quietly and very infrequently, or they spent the night at the man's house. But that October, Leslie had started breaking that unspoken house rule, causing the first and only real conflict among the three roommates. Three nights before Halloween, on October 28th, Leslie and one of her dates had made so much noise in Leslie's bedroom that Adrian and Lauren decided it was time to call a house meeting. Lauren had dreaded what she expected would turn into an awful confrontation, something she totally hated, but with her amazing charm and tact, Leslie had managed to defuse the situation. Before the women even sat down together,

Leslie sent both Lauren and Adrian an email apologizing for putting them in such an awkward situation and costing them most of one night's sleep. The roommate's ability to resolve the situation with some simple rules about having men over, rather than arguing or fighting about it, had felt like a win for all three women. And by Halloween day, everything felt right again with the world. The handyman that their landlord hired was outside working on the house, and that afternoon Lauren spent a few hours out playing soccer and running errands. Meanwhile, Leslie and Adrian, all strain forgotten, were busy in the kitchen together making Halloween-themed cupcakes

and planning the next big holidays, Thanksgiving and Christmas. By around 9 p.m. on Halloween night, nearly all the adults and trick-or-treaters along Dorset Street had all gone home, and the front door light at 2631 had been turned off, leaving the witch and the little patch of pumpkins in the front yard in darkness. Inside the small green house, the empty bowls of candy had been put away, and the three roommates were all looking forward to a quiet Sunday evening before the start of a new work week. Adrienne was the only one of the women who had plans to go out that night. As she got ready to go visit her boyfriend, Christian Lee, who lived only a few blocks away, Lauren and

Leslie settled onto the couch to watch one of their favorite TV shows. At 9.30pm, Leslie got a call on her phone and headed upstairs, where she would get another two calls, this time from the father of one of her ex-boyfriends that she'd left behind in South Carolina. Looking at the two calls come in, Leslie sighed and let them go to voicemail. She'd listen to them later, or not at all. Suddenly tired, Leslie called a good night down to Lauren, and a few minutes later, Leslie was in bed. Meanwhile, Adrian's visit with Christian had ended in an argument. Adrian was ready for the two of them to make a serious commitment to one another, but Christian was not ready. As Adrian left Christian's a little

after 10 p.m. and began heading home, all she could think about was Lily. Here, Adrienne was wanting more from her partner, Christian, while four months ago, her best friend, Lily, had moved in the opposite direction with her partner, canceling or at least delaying her plans to marry Eric. Letting herself through the door of 2631 about a half hour later, Adrienne reminded herself that love was just not easy, and after saying hello to Lauren and her dog Chloe, Adrienne made her way up the stairs to her bedroom directly across the tiny landing from Leslie's bedroom. By 11 p.m., Lauren and Chloe were also tucked in for the night in Lauren's downstairs bedroom.

Just a few minutes before, after letting Chloe outside in the backyard one final time, Lauren had done what the last person to bed always did. She'd made sure all the doors were locked, including the garage door and the back sliding door. Then she had turned out all the indoor and outdoor lights, glanced one last time around the cozy house she called home, stepped inside her bedroom, and closed the bedroom door behind her. Two and a half hours later, a little after 1.30 in the morning, Lauren woke up suddenly to a flash of bright light and a bark from Chloe who was lying on the bed next to her. Outside her window, the motion sensor light attached to the garage had clicked on.

Lauren waited, listening, but heard nothing. Turning back over in her bed, Lauren murmured to Chloe that it must have been a neighborhood cat out on the prowl. But just minutes later, Lauren found herself wide awake a second time, and this time it wasn't the outside light. This time she'd been awakened by a sound coming from inside the house. Shushing her growling dog, Lauren listened intently, and she heard quiet footsteps making their way up the stairs towards the second floor where the other two roommates were sleeping. Lauren's first thought was that Leslie must have broken their new house rule

and invited a man over to spend the night, and that was him kind of sneaking into the house to be with her. Annoyed, Lauren did her best to quiet Chloe and go back to sleep. But just a few minutes later, at about 2 a.m. in the early morning hours of November 1st, Lauren heard the first scream. Lauren and her dog instantly bolted upright. It was obvious that that scream had not been from lovemaking. And a moment later, Lauren's confusion turned to panic and terror as she heard a second scream coming from upstairs, followed by the sound of a violent struggle in the room directly above her. Furniture being shoved aside, things falling on the floor,

the stamping of bare feet and shoes. And then Lauren heard Adrian's voice raised to a shout, Oh my God, please help. Please help. Without turning her light on, Lauren stumbled out of her bed. She opened the door of her room and took one step into the dark hallway. For half a minute, Lauren just stood there listening, paralyzed with shock and fear until suddenly she heard the sound of the glass light fixture at the top of the second floor landing break. And then she heard pounding footsteps of the glass light fixture at the top of the second floor landing break, and then she heard pounding footsteps as the intruder seemed to fly down the stairs two or three at a time, coming directly towards her. Jolted into action by a huge rush of adrenaline,

Lauren reached down, grabbed Chloe, and turned toward the back door of the house. But no sooner had she stepped through the sliding door, onto the patio, and out onto the cold, damp grass, than Lauren realized her mistake. The backyard was completely surrounded by a six-foot-high fence, with no way for Lauren to escape. Terrified, Lauren dragged Chloe with her into a thicket of bushes, and just above the thudding of her own heart, Lauren could suddenly hear from inside the house the clack of the wooden window blinds in the kitchen. The sound told her one thing. The intruder had not followed her into the backyard.

They were somewhere in the front of the house where the kitchen was. And then, when the clacking sound stopped, Lauren thought she heard a window break. Whoever had been inside the house must have left. And then, in the sudden quiet, Lauren heard it again. Adrian's faint, but desperate cries for help. A moment later, Lauren crawled out from the cover of the bushes, and then, feeling her way in the darkness, she re-entered the house through the back door, and as carefully and quietly as she could, she picked up the receiver of the kitchen phone to call 911. But all she heard was the beep, beep, beep of a busy signal. And in her mind's eye, Lauren pictured the phone upstairs.

The receiver knocked off its hook during that terrible struggle she'd heard just a few minutes earlier. Lauren put the phone down, and then, taking a deep breath and praying she was right that the intruder was gone, she tiptoed to the front of the house, turned, and then began to climb the stairs. She was careful not to touch the dark smears along the right side of the staircase that she knew were blood, focusing instead on the light that was coming from one of the bedrooms. Reaching the tiny landing, Lauren stepped around the broken glass light fixture on the floor and turned so she was looking through the door into Leslie's room. But before Lauren could even register the feeling of

wet blood on the floor under her bare feet, Lauren saw Adrian. Her friend was crouching in a narrow space between the wall and Leslie's bed. But something was terribly wrong. Adrian's face and neck and arms were covered in blood. As Lauren rushed over to help her friend, Adrian made an effort to speak, but all Lauren heard was a long, gurgling breath deep in Adrian's throat. It was at that point that Lauren noticed something else. On top of the bed, in a pile of blankets and clothes, she saw the body of her other roommate. Leslie lay face down and motionless with deep cuts all across her back and upper arms. Lauren tried not to slip in the blood as she backpedaled out of Adrian's room. Turning on the landing, Lauren ran down the stairs, she grabbed her cell phone out

of her bedroom, and she punched in 911. By the time police and medical emergency vehicles had pulled up to the curb outside 2631 Dorset Street at 2.13 a.m., Lauren and her dog Chloe were still sitting inside of Lauren's car. Afraid that whoever had attacked her friends might come back for her, Lauren had grabbed her dog, jumped into her car, cell phone pressed to her ear, and driven up and down the street as she begged the emergency dispatch operator to send help, and did her best to describe what had happened. She said, both my roommates are hurt. I think they're dying. The first officers on the scene set up a loose defensive perimeter around the house. Before letting the emergency personnel inside 2631, four other

officers, guns drawn, cleared the inside of the little house to make sure it really was empty, except for the two victims. The police, who had reached Adrienne just before she died, later described the carnage in the upstairs bedrooms as the bloodiest crime they'd ever seen. Meanwhile, wrapped in a blanket and standing outside the house, Lauren told an officer trained in questioning victims of trauma all that she could remember about the attack, from the moment the light flicked on in the backyard to the calls she had just made to 911 operators. And as Lauren would repeat over and over again to police and later to the families of Adrian and Leslie, no, at no point had Lauren seen the intruder's face or noticed any details that would help

police identify who had attacked her roommates. And no, Lauren had absolutely no idea who would want to hurt either Leslie or Adrian. Hello, I'm Emily, and I'm one of the hosts of Terribly Famous, the show that takes you inside the lives of our biggest celebrities. And they don't get much bigger than the man who made badminton sexy. Okay, maybe that's a stretch, but if I say pop star and shuttlecocks you know who i'm talking about no short shorts free cocktails careless whispers okay 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 Wanderie Plus on Apple Podcasts or the W ever came out. Follow Terribly Famous wherever you listen to your podcasts or listen early and ad-free on Wondery Plus on Apple Podcasts or the Wondery app. 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. By 2.30 am on November 1st, the little house on Dorset Street surrounded by yellow crime scene tape was lit up in the glow of portable floodlights. Most crime scenes yield maybe two to three pieces of physical evidence, but over the next two days, the crime scene techs, who were now combing the inside and outside of 2631, would collect a whopping 71 pieces of evidence. Meanwhile, as small groups of neighbors began to gather together in the street, whispering to each other and calling out questions to the police, Napa Police Detective Todd Schulman was already giving the orders that would get the investigation going. The four-year veteran investigator assigned officers to canvas neighbors and the growing crowd outside to see if

anyone remembered seeing anything or anyone that night that was out of place or suspicious. And based on what Lauren had been able to tell police about her roommate's work, personal and social lives, the detective also ordered his team to start interviewing friends, co-workers, boyfriends, and acquaintances of the two victims. And by mid-morning, seven hours after Adrian and Leslie were murdered, police would be knocking on the doors of Adrian's best friend, Lily Prudhomme, and Adrian's boyfriend, Christian Lee. Further away, at the vineyard where Leslie worked, her co-workers would also be questioned by police, and as police began gathering information about

Leslie's social life, so would a long list of Leslie's current and former boyfriends. But even as police fanned out around Napa and began working the phones to trace Leslie's current and former boyfriends. But even as police fanned out around Napa and began working the phones to trace Leslie's connections in South Carolina and Georgia, crime scene techs had already collected evidence that would wind up making a big cut in the possible pool of suspects. By Thursday, November 3rd, four days after the early morning double murder, the police knew that the killer was a male, a finding that ruled out the female half of the U.S. population. Forensic investigators had been able to collect several critical pieces of physical evidence from the crime scene that would all contain samples of

the killer's DNA. There was a packet of plastic zip ties, the kind that could be used to bind a person's wrists, that the killer had dropped just under the front window where they entered and then later exited the house. There was also a smear of blood that did not belong to the victims on the aluminum siding of the house near the window. And finally, police had found three cigarette butts in the front and backyard of 2631. DNA from all three pieces of evidence was identical, and it showed, without a doubt, that the killer was a man. Unfortunately, what the DNA did not reveal was the identity of this man. The DNA would turn out not to match the DNA sample that police had collected from Adrian's boyfriend, Christian, and when the DNA results were run through a nationwide database of more than 4

million known criminal offenders, there was no match there either. Although the police would not release this information to the public for another two weeks, the DNA results did clear any females, including Lauren and Lily, of any involvement in the murders. And even though Detective Shulman could not completely rule out the possibility that the murders of Adrian and Leslie were just the result of a burglary gone horribly wrong, the DNA results showing the killer was a man did support the investigator's emerging theory of the murder. The violence of the attack suggested the killer had a personal motive, and with Adrian's boyfriend off the suspect list,

and given the number of men who had been close to or involved with Leslie, police began to focus on Leslie as the killer's prime target. And Adrian must have just been in the wrong place at the wrong time. A witness who had to be eliminated. Still, there was a second theory about these murders, a theory that would make this case even harder to solve, and one that was already keeping terrified residents of Napa awake at night. That theory was that the murders were the work of a serial killer, a person with no connection to their victims, a killer who might strike again at any moment or leave without a trace and continue to kill somewhere else.

Within days of the murders, local security companies saw an uptick in the number of people in Napa County requesting the installation of alarm systems. And by November 9th, the day of Adrian's funeral, the 350 mourners who watched a video showing Adrian's progression through life from childhood to engineer were talking to one another in hushed whispers about a killer who could be lurking in every backyard. One day later, on Wednesday, November 10th, the city of Napa offered a $100,000 reward, money collected from local businesses, for information leading to the arrest and conviction of whoever had killed Adrian and Leslie. But despite the size of that reward, and despite the long list of potential suspects in the murder, most of them connected in some way to Leslie Mazzara, as November 2004 came to a close, police had still not made any arrests. And by December 2nd, one month after the Halloween night murders,

Napa's police commander was offering a very sobering update on the investigation. So far, progress had consisted of what police figured out had not happened at 2631 Dorset Street. Investigators had ruled out domestic violence. They had also ruled out any gang-related connections to the murder, a lead that popped up when they found out that Leslie's father was serving back-to-back life sentences in Florida for his role in a murder conspiracy. Adrian's boyfriend, Christian, had also been ruled out as a suspect, along with that father of one of Leslie's ex-boyfriends who had called Leslie twice the night before she was killed, and the handyman who had been working on the roommate's house on Halloween day. But according to the commander,

the lack of progress had nothing to do with a lack of effort on the part of law enforcement. In the days after the murders, several other high-profile agencies had joined forces with the Napa police. Those included a response team from the Federal Bureau of Investigation, the Napa County Major Crime Investigations Team, the California Department of Justice, and a handful of recently retired local detectives who had been rehired to help investigate this case. And behind the scenes, police had collected DNA swabs from almost 200 men who had some connection with the victims, and investigators had conducted nearly a thousand interviews across eight different states. Still, it just wasn't enough. Standing up in front of a packed press

conference, the commander of the Napa Police Department told the public that one month after the murder, law enforcement had nothing to indicate that they were going to solve this case, quote, today, tomorrow, or next week, end quote. And if anything, that prediction turned out to be a very big understatement. Because over the next 10 months, the only breakthrough on the case

was the use of a new DNA analysis tool that allowed police to further narrow down their suspect pool. In addition to knowing that the murderer was male, police now knew with good certainty that he was also of Northern European descent with possibly blonde hair and blue or green eyes. But while this ruled out suspects of color, it wasn't enough of a break to lead police to their killer. In the meantime, as the investigation dragged on, friends of Adrian and Leslie tried very hard to keep the memory of these two women alive and to move forward with their own lives. In between candlelight vigils, fundraisers, and interviews with the media about Adrian and Leslie, there was only one bright spot. Inviting their friends and Adrian's family to join them, Lily and Eric got married in a celebration of life service at the Big White Episcopal Church on 3rd Street in Napa. It would not be until the

fall of 2005, almost a year after Adrian and Leslie were murdered, that investigators finally got the break they needed to solve the so-called Halloween homicides. After basically running out of options for kick-starting an investigation that had ground to a halt, the Napa Police Department had decided to go public with one of the details in the case that they had been keeping a secret. Holding back evidence is a common practice in investigations. Investigators like to use undisclosed information to help confirm whether a suspect actually knows details about the crime that have not been made public. It also helps police rule out false confessions. In this case, the detail related to the cigarette butts that had been picked up by crime scene techs in the front and backyards of 2631 Dorset Street early on the

morning of the murders. In August 2005, nine months after those cigarette butts were collected and tested for DNA, further analysis had revealed that the cigarettes themselves, Camel Turkish Golds, were very unusual. Not only did the cigarettes have distinctive markings around the filter, they had only been on the market for 14 months and they were only sold in Napa by a handful of stores. A month later, on September 21st, in a last-ditch effort to jog the memory of anyone who might know a smoker of Turkish Gold cigarettes, Detective Schulman released the name and description of the cigarettes to the local media, calling the information an important new piece of evidence in the Halloween murders.

And for one television viewer, that evening's headline story about these Camel Turkish Gold cigarettes immediately struck a nerve. Sitting in a house just two miles away from the place where Adrian and Leslie had been killed 11 months earlier, the viewer suddenly stiffened up in his chair and turned up the volume on the TV set. As the newscaster ran through the latest details in the murder investigation, the young man watching knew that he had information that could be vital to the police trying to solve this case. Leaning forward, the young man clicked through other news stations on TV to see if he could find out any more information on what police

were calling a breakthrough. Five days later, on September 27th, Detective Schulman got a call from the Napa police station. Someone had just walked into the station asking for a detective and said he had important eyewitness testimony related to the murders of Adrian and Leslie. Based on this person's information, along with follow-up interviews and additional investigation by law enforcement, here is a reconstruction of what police and forensic experts believe happened to Adrian and Sonia and Leslie Mazzara on the night they were killed. For the killer, Sunday, October 31st, 2004, was a day of terrible disappointment. And at that party, on that Halloween night, as the killer looked around

the table at the people sitting there and playing cards with him, his feelings of jealousy, anger, and resentment just kept getting stronger and stronger. Those feelings were helped along by all the alcohol, one drink for every hand of cards he lost, and the killer was losing the game badly. By the time the killer had been driven back to his house, he was so drunk he had trouble standing up, and by the time he stumbled into the empty apartment, he couldn't even remember getting dropped off at his own front door. But sometime after midnight, after waking up from a short sleep, the killer was sober enough to make a plan for that night and early morning that did not involve going

back to bed. Instead, the killer had decided to go confront at least one of the people that he held responsible for the emotional pain he was feeling. And on his way out to his car, the killer stopped in his garage and put together his murder kit, a packet of plastic ties secured with a rubber band, and a sharp knife with a four to five inch long blade. Then, just before hopping into his car and heading for his destination, the killer patted his coat pocket, making sure he had a pack of his favorite cigarettes, the only brand he smoked now, Camel Turkish Gold. Ten minutes later, when the killer arrived at the little house at 2631 Dorset Street, he parked the car across the street and turned off the engine.

Before getting out, he sat for a while in the darkness, looking at the orange pumpkins on the lawn and the witch with the green face twisting from one of the ceiling rafters of the front porch. Then the killer opened the car door and walked across the street until he was facing the closed white garage door of 2631. Standing there quietly, he pulled out his packet of cigarettes and began to smoke while he lifted his eyes to stare at the upstairs windows. When he flicked one of his cigarette butts out of his hand and into the grass, the sudden movement was picked up by a

motion sensor and the backyard light suddenly turned on, temporarily blinding him. But even though this startled him and he might have even considered turning around and going back home, he ultimately decided to continue with his plan. He moved from the white garage doors across the front lawn to the front door where he gently tried turning the knob. But the door was locked. However, that didn't mean the windows were locked too. Taking out his knife, the killer stepped from the door over to one of the front windows, and sure enough, when he inserted the blade between the windowsill and the window sash, he could feel the upward give as he pried the window open. And once he was able to slip his

fingers under the sash, it was easy to push the window open all the way, giving him plenty of room to crawl inside. On his way into the house, the killer didn't notice that he had dropped his packet of zip ties secured with a rubber band that had soaked up a sample of his sweat and DNA. Once inside, the killer let his eyes adjust to the darkness, and then he stepped a little to his right, towards the stairs that led to the two upper bedrooms. Once upstairs, the killer turned into Leslie's room first. Seeing the sleeping woman on the bed in front of him, he stepped closer and stared down at her. Then, raising his knife high in the air, the murderer brought it down with all his force directly into Leslie's heart. Leslie had time for one short scream before the killer raised the knife and stabbed her again and again.

But that scream had been enough to wake up Adrian in the little bedroom across the hall. Switching on the light, she could see that someone, an intruder, was inside of Leslie's room. A moment later, and Adrian was out of bed and stepping through the open door across the hallway to help her friend and roommate. The killer looked up, locked eyes with Adrian, and then he attacked, striking her with the knife. And when Adrian fought back, the killer struck again and again and again, leaving cuts and wounds all over her upper body, arms and hands, along with a deep gash across her face and neck. The frenzied attack had left blood everywhere, in pools on the floor and spatter marks along the walls and the bed.

But from the very start of their struggle, Adrian had begun to shout and call out for help, and she did not stop. And even as Adrian began to bleed out, her cries were so loud that the killer panicked. Running out of the bedroom, he turned on the landing, smashed the glass light fixture on the wall before pounding down the steps, taking them two and three at a time, leaving streaks of bright red blood where his fingers had touched the wall. Once he reached the bottom of the stairs, the killer raced for the front window, causing the wooden blinds to clatter as he jimmied himself through the opening and back out onto the front porch. This time, the smear of blood he left on the exterior aluminum siding was his own. At some point he had cut himself, leaving a clear DNA marker alongside the window. A moment

later the killer had reached his car, yanked open the driver's side door, thrown the bloody knife onto the back seat, and headed for the freeway that would take him home. It's believed the killer either didn't know Lauren was still there at the property, or he simply was too panicked from all the screaming and chaos happening upstairs that he did not want to stick around any longer. Either way, Lauren was ultimately spared. Back at his apartment, the killer stripped off his bloodstained clothes and took them out to the backyard. Building a fire in the fire pit, he fed the clothes and his shoes into the bright orange flames. Later that same morning, when Lily Prudhomme heard the news that Leslie and Lily's own best friend Adrian had been murdered, Lily was

absolutely heartbroken. And the one person who was there right from the start to help her cope with this terrible loss was her boyfriend and killer, Eric Koppel. It would turn out that Eric Koppel had been devastated when Lily had called off their wedding back in August of 2004. He knew he had a drinking problem, and he knew he suffered from deep depression, but to Eric, Lily was the most important person in his life, and he could not imagine living without her. Despite canceling their wedding, the two of them were still living together, and on Halloween, the two of them had gone to a party together, where Eric would start playing a drinking card game. But the more Eric drank at that party,

the more he kept thinking that October 31st was just hours away from the day, November 1st, 2004, that should have been his wedding day. And instead of getting married to Eric, Lily had planned to spend what would have been their honeymoon on a trip not with him, but with her best friend Adrian, one of the people, Eric was sure of this, who had probably told Lily that she could do much better than Eric. But it wasn't until Eric had made one final plea that night, asking Lily again to marry him and set a new date for their wedding, that Eric's bitterness overflowed. Lily, angry at how intoxicated Eric was, said no to his marriage proposal, and

when she drove him home that night, she didn't stay with him at their apartment. Instead, she went to her parents' house. As Eric Koppel would later tell police when he confessed to the double murder of Adrian and Leslie, he only remembered bits and pieces when he confessed to the double murder of Adrian and Leslie, he only remembered bits and pieces of what happened in the early hours of November 1st. He would never say exactly why he had killed the two women, and his own story of how he had committed the murders was different from the reconstruction police had put together based on forensic evidence and the autopsy reports on Leslie and Adrian. According to Eric, he had gone first to Adrian's room to lie down and sleep on a pile of blankets at the foot of her bed. When Adrian woke up, turned on the light, and saw Eric, he attacked her to keep her from

crying out. And then, forgetting exactly how or why, Eric told police he had gone into Leslie's room and stabbed her too before running down the stairs and leaving by the front window. And after the murders, Eric had been such a comfort to Lily that five months later, the two of them were married in a ceremony that featured a special reading by none other than Adrian's mother, Arlene Allen. Eric made his confession to police on September 27th, five days after he had seen on TV the news story in which police linked the killer in the Halloween murders to a white male with light hair and eyes who smoked Camel Turkish Gold cigarettes. It was a brand that was so distinctive that when police had asked Lauren if she or Adrian or Leslie knew anyone who smoked Turkish Golds, Lauren was able to give investigators one name, Eric Koppel. Eric was one of the people who had helped Adrian move

into the little house on Dorset Street back in February of 2004, eight months before Adrian and Leslie were killed. And Eric was one of the only members of Adrian's inner circle who had never been questioned by police or asked for a DNA sample. By the time the news story about the cigarettes had aired, Eric could already feel the net tightening around him. He knew from earlier news coverage that police had recovered the killer's DNA from the scene, and that the blood, saliva, tissue, and sweat were his. And as the killer's DNA profile came into clearer focus, a white male of Northern European descent with light hair and light eyes who smoked these Turkish gold cigarettes,

it was a face Eric recognized every time he looked into a mirror. After starting in late summer, before Turkish gold cigarettes had made the headlines, police, acting on Lauren's tip, had already begun calling Eric. Until then, Eric had slipped below police radar. A quiet and religious 26-year-old land surveyor, he did not appear to have close personal ties with either Adrian or Leslie. And while police collected 218 DNA samples from men known to be among the victim's circle of friends and acquaintances, they did not collect any samples from Eric. When Eric arrived at the police station on September 27th, 11 months after he had killed Adrian and Leslie, he didn't come alone.

After seeing the TV news story about the Turkish gold cigarettes, Eric apparently wrote suicide letters to his family. In response to those letters, his family urged him to go to the police. And so when Eric walked alone into the police interrogation room, the family members who had accompanied him sat waiting for him in the lobby. Despite the differences between the police reconstruction of the crime and the story that Eric told them, Eric Koppel was immediately arrested and charged with first-degree murder in the deaths of Adrian and Sonia and Leslie Mazzara. carry out two murders, stand outside his victim's house smoking cigarettes, and later destroy evidence of his crime, but also be so drunk that he was unable to remember actually stabbing and killing his victims, and unable to recall what he had done with the murder weapon, which was never found. On Tuesday, December 5th, 2006, just two months after the second anniversary of the Halloween murders, Eric Koppel pleaded

guilty to two counts of first-degree murder. That guilty plea meant that the families of his victims would be spared a potentially painful jury trial, and it also meant that Eric would not face a possible death sentence. Instead, Eric was sentenced to life in prison without the possibility of parole. He is currently serving his time at Corcoran Prison, a corrections center in California designed specifically to house inmates who have a substance abuse disorder. At Eric's sentencing, Adrian's best friend, Lily, told a packed courtroom there was nothing in the world that Eric could do to make her love him less. Two years later, though, in 2008, the couple got a divorce. Later, Lily would enroll as a graduate student at

the University of Edinburgh in Scotland, where she would write a doctoral dissertation on forgiveness. Thank you for listening to the Mr. Ballin podcast. If you got something out of this episode and you haven't done this already, please offer to pick up the Amazon Music Follow button after their work shift is over, but don't show up and instead just keep sending them periodic text messages that promise you are only five minutes away. 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. Consider donating to our charity.

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