MrBallen Podcast: Strange, Dark & Mysterious Stories - Weirdest Murder Motive Ever

Episode Date: August 11, 2022

Today’s podcast features two separate, unique stories that share a theme: crazy mysteries that were actually solved. The audio from these stories has been pulled from our YouTube channel, which is just called "MrBallen," and has been remastered for today's podcast.Story names, previews & links to original YouTube videos:Story 1 -- “Bat Man" -- A locked room mystery takes a bizarre turn (Original YouTube link -- https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=b4iNqoLQ-1E)Story 2 -- "The Weirdest Murder Motive Ever" -- A truly baffling crime on a college campus (Original YouTube link -- https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=GCIZ1mnWAHw)For 100s more stories like these, check out our 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.

Today's podcast features two separate, unique stories that share a theme. Crazy mysteries that were actually solved. The audio from both of these stories has been pulled from our YouTube channel and has been remastered for today's episode. The links to the original YouTube videos are in the description. The first story you'll hear is called Batman, and it's about a totally insane secret that eventually got out and made headlines all

around the world. The second story you'll hear is called The Weirdest Murder Motive Ever, and as the title suggests, it's about a murder with a truly baffling motive. But before we get into today's stories, 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, and we upload twice a week, once on Monday and once on Thursday. So, if that's of interest to you, please re-crust the five-star review buttons, Smuckers Uncrustables. Also, please subscribe to the Mr. Ballin Podcast wherever you listen to podcasts so you don't miss any of our weekly uploads. Okay, let's get into our first story called Batman.

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. OK, 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? 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 Wanderie Plus on Apple Podcasts or the Wanderie app. Wondery Plus on Apple Podcasts or the Wondery app.

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. On August 22nd, 1922, shots rang out from inside a stately Victorian home in Beverly Hills, where Dolly and Fred Ostrich lived. Neighbors called police right away, and when officers stepped into the front door, they saw the entire house was trashed. On the floor in the living room was Fred, who had been shot to death,

and next to him were three.25 caliber shell casings. With weapons drawn, the police cleared the entire first floor. There was no one down there. They heard screaming coming from upstairs, and so they run up the stairs and they get up there and no one's upstairs. And then they heard the screaming again and they realized it was coming from inside of a closet in the master bedroom. And so as the police are clearing the second floor, they yell out to this woman and they say, who are you? What are you doing in the closet? And she yells back, I'm Dolly. I'm okay, but I'm trapped. And so after the police finish clearing

the upstairs and they're sure it's safe they go over to the closet door and they do try the handle but it's locked they ask her do you know where the key is and she says no and so before they start trying to break the door down they did a quick search of the upstairs to see if maybe they could find the key to the closet and sure enough across the hall in another bedroom they found it on the ground and so they took the key back they opened opened the door up, and out came Dolly. She was okay, but obviously very frantic and panicked. And they asked her, you know, what happened? And she told them a very abrupt and chaotic story.

She said she had been hanging clothes inside of this big walk-in closet, and her back was to the door when she heard a fight break out on the first floor. And before she could even turn around to go investigate, she said the closet door was swinging shut and then she heard it lock from the outside and she didn't get to see who it was that shut the door. The whole thing was a bit of a head scratcher for police because they're thinking, okay well you know was it one person that attacked Fred downstairs and then ran upstairs and shut and locked the door immediately afterwards before Dolly could come out and see? Or was there two people, one person downstairs attacking and one person upstairs shutting and locking the door?

Or was it more than two people? And despite the house being totally ransacked and there being lots of valuable stuff in their house, Dolly said the only thing she could tell was missing was the diamond encrusted wristwatch that Fred always wore was not on his wrist when they discovered his body. And why, detectives wondered, were these burglars or this burglar carrying a.25 caliber weapon, something that small was more likely to be found in a woman's purse than in a home invasion? When police spoke to neighbors, they were quick to say Fred and Dolly fought all the time, and earlier that night they had gotten into a really bad one. But as much as police wanted to point the finger at Dolly, it was just impossible for her to have committed this crime, because how could she have murdered Fred and then ran upstairs and locked herself in the

closet from the outside, and then also somehow deposited that key across the hall in another room. It just didn't make any sense. But since the police had little else to go on, they dug into the new widow's past. Dolly was born in Germany in 1880 and following a move to Milwaukee, Wisconsin just before the turn of the century, she married Fred, who was three years older than her. Fred was driven and successful, but he was also a raging alcoholic and prone to violence. And so as Fred built up his textile empire, opening up factory after factory all across the Midwest, their marriage grew strained. He was mean and she was lonely. When they moved from Milwaukee to Southern California in 1918, their new neighbors immediately were aware of the fact that Dolly and Fred fought loudly and often

and they frequently bickered in public. Police looked high and low to see if Dolly had maybe taken a lover but no one had ever seen her with anyone but Fred and so while they might be miserable they seemed to be faithful and so try as they might the police could find no clues that suggested anything darker or more dangerous than a petty and meaningless marriage. The case hung open and suspicion continued to trail Dolly, even though it was physically impossible for her to have committed the crime. Now free from her unhappy marriage, Dolly moved into a new home in Los Angeles and she took up with her estate lawyer, Herman Shapiro, who was handling her husband's million-dollar estate. But just like her late husband, her new boyfriend, Shapiro, worked long hours and he was not around much, so she was lonely

all over again. So she went out and got another boyfriend, a guy by the name of Roy Klum, and she began seeing the men at the same time. A year after Fred's death, Captain Herman Klein of the Beverly Hills Police Department dropped by Dolly's estate lawyer slash boyfriend's office. Detectives were still suspicious of Dolly, even though the case still made no sense. And so Captain Klein goes into Shapiro's office, and wouldn't you know it, sitting on the desk is this beautiful diamond-encrusted wristwatch that looks an awful lot like the watch Dolly claimed was the one thing stolen from her house on the night of her husband's murder. When the captain asked Shapiro how he got this watch, Shapiro told him that Dolly claimed was the one thing stolen from her house on the night of her husband's murder. When the captain asked Shapiro how he got this watch, Shapiro told him that Dolly had given it to him as a gift, but I know where you're going with this because I thought the same thing too.

I know about the missing diamond watch on the night of the murder. I asked Dolly about it when she gave it to me and she told me that that was actually a mistake. The watch was never missing and she later on found it tucked underneath a sofa cushion in the living room. The captain was not buying this, and so as soon as he left Shapiro's office, he immediately confronted Dolly about the watch, and Dolly said, ah, you know what, that's right, I did find the watch, but I didn't think it was that important, so I didn't tell you guys. The captain couldn't believe what he was hearing, and shortly after, the newspapers found out about this new twist in this totally bizarre case, and they went wild with it, putting all the heat back on Dolly. Spooked by the headlines, Dolly's second boyfriend, Roy Klum, came forward to the police

and said, I have a confession to make. Dolly made me hide one of her.25 caliber pistols, and I threw it in the La Brea tar pits. And then before police could even go get that gun, one of Dolly's neighbors came forward and said, yeah, I got a confession to make. Dolly asked me to get rid of a 25 caliber pistol and I buried it in my backyard. So police went out and recovered both weapons, but they were so badly rusted, they couldn't confirm if they were in fact the murder weapons. And Dolly had an excuse. When the police confronted her with these guns, she said, oh yeah, those old things,

I've had those in the house for years. But, you know, given the circumstances of my husband's death, just felt a little awkward keeping them around the house. So I had some friends get rid of them. The police were not buying this. And so in July of 1923, they arrested Dolly for killing Fred.

But despite these new developments, the facts of the case had not changed. It was still physically impossible for Dolly to have committed this crime. She was locked in the closet from the outside. And so with Dolly in jail awaiting trial, investigators tirelessly hacked into her story to try to find holes in it, but they had no success.

And so after every theory that might connect her to the crime was ultimately discarded, they had to drop the murder charges and Dolly was released. Seven years went by and the crime was largely forgotten about. And then in 1930, Dolly and her estate lawyer boyfriend Shapiro, they broke up. And Shapiro immediately called the police and said, you know what? I haven't been entirely truthful. I know a lot more about what happened to Fred than I've let on. And in fact, I have someone in the office with me right now that can tell you the whole story.

Investigators flew to Shapiro's office. They go through the doors and sitting inside is a man they never knew existed. His name was Otto Sandhuber. He was a quiet, small sewing machine repairman slash aspiring dime store fiction writer. And the story he would tell them would be more bizarre and lurid than any investigator could have imagined. It began almost a decade before the murder. When Otto was a teenager, he had worked for Fred in one of his Milwaukee factories. One day in 1913, Dolly complained to Fred that her sewing machine was broken. And so Fred asked one of his employees, who he knew was a sewing machine repairman, the then 17-year-old Otto, if he would go over to his

house and fix the sewing machine for his wife. Dolly knew her husband was going to send Otto specifically to their house, and she was very attracted to Otto. And so when Otto showed up, all she had on was a silk robe, stockings, and heavy perfume. Thus began Dolly and Otto's affair, which at first they conducted in a pretty typical way, meeting secretly in hotels. But when that became burdensome, they moved their relationship back into the ostrich home, with Otto needing to sneak in and out around Fred's schedule. But it wasn't long before nosy neighbors were asking Dolly, you know, who's that strange man coming around your house all the time? And she would say, oh, that's my vagabond half-brother. But Dolly and Otto knew they couldn't continue in this way. But instead of breaking it off or returning to secret hotel

liaisons, Dolly decided that Otto should take up residence in the Ostrich home in a secret hideaway in the attic. That way no one would see him coming or going. Otto, who had no family to miss him, quit his job at the factory, moved into the secret room, and then never left. And pretty quickly, Otto and Dolly fell into a routine where when Fred would leave for work for the day, Otto would come downstairs, they'd spend time together, and then Otto would clean the house and then make bathtub gin. Before Fred came home, Otto would sneak back upstairs to write pulp stories about lust and adventure, and he would read newspapers and magazines by candlelight. Around this time, Fred started complaining to Dolly about strange noises in the house. He also started to notice they were running through food a lot faster than normal and a couple times he thought he was short of cigar. But no matter how much Fred complained, Dolly was always able to convince him

that everything he was hearing and seeing was in his head. And so over the next five years they would live in four homes in Milwaukee and always these strange sounds and oddities about the house would follow them, but Fred never investigated. In 1918, Fred told Dolly he wanted to move to Southern California, and so Dolly hunted down a house with an attic, a rarity in the area, and she sent Otto ahead. When Fred and Dolly arrived, Otto was already ensconced in the attic, and Fred moved in right beneath him. By the time Fred and Dolly got in their final argument on the night of August 22, 1922, Otto had been secretly living with them for almost a decade. On that deadly night, Otto was in a secret room listening to drunk Fred getting louder

and angrier and clearly getting physical with Dolly. And so worried that he might kill his lover, Otto leapt out of the attic and ran downstairs carrying two.25 caliber pistols. He runs into the living room and he confronts Fred. And Fred is astounded to see his formerly teenage sewing machine repairman, who abruptly quit the factory so suddenly and completely, now standing in his living room. And so Fred lunged at Otto and Otto just started shooting. It was then that Dolly hatched the scheme

that had almost let them get away with it. Knowing the police would be there any minute, Dolly staged the house to look like a robbery. She told Otto to lock her inside of the closet and then ordered him to go back up into the attic. And so when the police got there, Otto was crouched silently right above their heads. After the killing, Otto moved in with Dolly in her new house and even though they could have had a normal open relationship, Dolly ordered Otto to go live in the attic of this new house as well. It wasn't until a year later when Dolly was briefly arrested after the police found out about the hidden guns that Otto was forced to come out of the attic. While Dolly was sitting in jail for these gun charges, she begged her estate lawyer boyfriend Shapiro to go get groceries

for her vagabond half-brother Otto who lived in her attic. She said when you deliver them make sure you go to the bedroom and knock on the ceiling that will let him know it's safe to come out. But when Shapiro arrived and followed the procedure and Otto came out Otto was so starved for human interaction and conversation that he wound up telling Shapiro the whole insane story. But instead of going to police, Shapiro told Otto that he should just leave. And he did. He went and became a janitor and he got married. The secret held until Dolly and Shapiro broke up for good, at which point Shapiro called the police. Dolly and Otto were arrested and the press went insane. They called this the Batman case because Otto was living like a bat in a cave.

This was before Batman the comic was a thing. Otto was convicted of manslaughter, but the statute of limitations was up, so he was allowed to walk free. As for Dolly, she was allowed to walk free too because the jury hung on her conspiracy to commit murder charges. After the trial, Otto disappeared and nothing more is known about him. As for Dolly, she stayed in LA and she died in 1961 at the age of 80, two weeks after marrying yet again. 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. If you're listening to this podcast, then chances are good you are a fan of The Strange, Dark and Mysterious. And if that's the case, then I've got some good news. We just launched a brand new Strange, Dark, and Mysterious podcast called Mr. Ballin's Medical

Mysteries, and as the name suggests, it's a show about medical mysteries, a genre that many fans have been asking us to dive into for years, and we finally decided to take the plunge, and the show is awesome. In this free weekly show, we explore bizarre, unheard of diseases, strange medical mishaps, unexplainable deaths, and everything in between. Each story is totally true and totally terrifying. Go follow Mr. Ballin's Medical Mysteries wherever you get your podcasts.

And if you're a Prime member, you can listen early and ad-free on Amazon Music. The next and final story of today's episode is called The Weirdest Murder Motive Ever. When classes began at Drexel University in Philadelphia on the morning of November 30th, 1984, students walking into Randall Hall made a gruesome discovery. Crumpled at the bottom of an outdoor stairwell underneath a gray jacket was the body of a young woman. She had cuts and bruising all over her face and she had a deep purple line that went all around her neck from where she had been strangled to death. She had no purse, no backpack, nothing to

identify her. There was no evidence of sexual assault because she was fully clothed, although she was missing her shoes and socks. Police immediately cordoned off the area. Their first suspicion was this was a robbery that turned deadly. But right away the police knew they were in for a very difficult investigation because one, there were no cameras inside or outside of Randall Hall, so they couldn't just review the footage to see what happened to Debbie. And two, there was a virtually unlimited number of suspects because Drexler University was not an isolated campus. Its buildings were integrated into West Philadelphia, and Randall Hall itself was located right along a known cut-through that residents that lived in and around Drexler would use almost every single day. And it was clear this young woman had not been killed in this stairwell.

She had been killed elsewhere and then dragged a great distance, losing her shoes in the process before being dumped at this spot. But just a couple of hours after the body was discovered, the police received a lucky break when a young man who was combative and frantic rushed the closed-off crime scene and demanded he be let through because he said he knew the identity of the dead girl. The police were immediately suspicious because they didn't even know who this dead girl was. So they pull the young man aside and they interview him and he tells police his name is Kurt Rayner, he's a student at

Drexel University, and he believes the girl they had found, the dead girl, was his girlfriend, University and he believes the girl they had found, the dead girl, was his girlfriend, 20-year-old Debbie Wilson, who was also a student at Drexel. And then he proceeded to give police a very long and complicated explanation of how he figured out the girl inside was his girlfriend. He said the night before he was with Debbie in Randall Hall in the computer lab in the basement. He said Debbie had a big project that was due the next day and that he had offered to just keep her company while she worked. But by about 1 30 in the morning, Debbie still had a lot of work to do and Kurt said he was just really tired and didn't know if he could stay awake any longer and so he asked Debbie if it would be okay if he took off early. Debbie said it was totally fine, she was used to working late at this computer lab and Kurt, even though he

wanted to stick around and walk her safely to her car when she was done, he felt like she was okay and so he took off on his own. On his walk back to the dorm, Kurt said he passed by a campus security guard and he actually asked him if he wouldn't mind checking on his girlfriend in the computer lab because she was all alone and it was late and the security guard said no problem I'll make sure she's okay. late and the security guard said, no problem, I'll make sure she's okay. The next morning when Kurt woke up, he heard rumors from other students on campus about a woman's body being found just outside of Randall Hall and that apparently it looked like murder. Kurt said he didn't think much of it at first, but that day when he went into campus to meet up with Debbie, he saw her car still parked in the computer lab parking lot, looking like it had never left.

And then when he got to the meeting site, Debbie never showed. And he said it was at that point that he realized the dead woman in Randall Hall must be Debbie. And he wasn't wrong, it was Debbie, but the police were not buying his story. He was the last person to see Debbie alive, and by his own admonition, he had heard that morning about a dead woman being found at Randall Hall, the very place he had left his girlfriend the night before all alone. But it took him hours to bring this up to anyone? The police also noticed he had bruises on his knuckles and a deep cut between his fingers. Suddenly, Kurt seemed like the killer, and this crime that initially looked like a robbery gone wrong, now looked like something much more personal.

Strangulation is intimate. The killer almost always is face-to-face with their victim. And it takes a lot of time and a lot of rage. And afterwards, the killer had covered Debbie's body with her jacket, an act that indicated remorse or even respect. And investigators know that generally when a woman is murdered, her romantic partner is the culprit. Instead of tipping off Kurt that they were looking at him as the primary suspect, they told him to go back to his dorm room and they would be in touch with him as the investigation developed. In the meantime, investigators turned their attention to the computer lab in Randall

Hall where Kurt said Debbie had been last. Debbie had logged into a computer at the front of the lab, but had not logged out. Her computer cursor was left blinking mid-sentence at 1.38 a.m., leading investigators to believe she was interrupted by her attacker inside of the lab. Investigators found two extension cords on the ground near this computer that matched the ligature marks on Debbie's neck. They also found a small spot of blood on the back of Debbie's chair that they sent off for testing. As police swept the computer lab, they began commenting on how neat everything looked, considering that there must have been some sort of death struggle that took place in there. And that's when they realized there had been a

huge setback in this case. The janitor that morning had cleaned the computer lab and the hall right outside, likely destroying critical physical evidence. They interviewed the janitor who had a rock-solid alibi and was incredibly remorseful at unintentionally destroying the crime scene. And so they asked the janitor, before you cleaned it up, was there anything strange about the computer lab or the hallway right outside of the computer lab? And the janitor said, no, it was all normal. But she did say it looked like the tables and chairs had been moved around inside of the computer lab, but it didn't stand out to her because it always looked that way when she went in to clean it up. Because the police lacked physical evidence, they couldn't just go arrest Kurt, even though they wanted to.

And so instead, they asked him if he'd be willing to come down to the station for a formal interview, and he said he would. During the interview, Kurt insisted he had nothing to do with Debbie's death. As for the bruises and cut on his hand, he said he had punched a wall after finding out what had happened to Debbie, and the cut in the middle of his fingers was from working on his car. But neither of those things could be proven. After this interview yielded no new results, and they still had no evidence on Kurt, they told him he could go, and in the interim they began digging into his alibi. Kurt had previously told police that after leaving Debbie in the computer lab, on his walk back to his dorm he had passed a security guard and asked that security guard to check on Debbie. And so the police were able to track down that

security guard who confirmed Kurt's alibi. The security guard's name was Bryce Klapman, who was a longtime employee of Drexler University with a stellar work record and no criminal history. Klapman said he spoke with Kurt around 1.30 in the morning as Kurt was walking back towards the dorms. After speaking with Kurt, Klapman radioed Bronson Ziegler, who was one of the two security guards that were working in Randall Hall that night, and he told him that he or the other guy, David Dixon, would need to go down into the basement and check on this girl. Shortly after radioing Ziegler, Klapman would say he saw a person, presumably a student, come out of Randall Hall. He said he was just too far away and it was too dark that he couldn't make out any features, but he definitely saw someone walking around the premise around 1 30 in the morning. Klapman told police he never stepped foot inside

of Randall Hall that night and that he was willing to take a lie detector test. Police ran the backgrounds of Bronson Ziegler and David Dixon. Dixon was a military veteran with a pristine record who was still in the army reserves. As for Ziegler, he had spent time in jail for burglary and had actually lied about it to get his job as a security guard. When As for Ziegler, he had spent time in jail for burglary and had actually lied about it to get his job as a security guard. When police interviewed Ziegler, he was evasive and frustrated and he said that he did receive the message from Klapman to go check on the girl, but he didn't feel like doing it himself, so he radioed Dixon and said he should go do it. Ziegler insisted he had done his rounds properly and he had never stepped foot inside of the

computer lab. He told detectives they could check his security guard clock that he carried with him every time he did rounds, which was basically like a punch card where there was designated stations along his security rounds where he would punch this card that stamped a time that he had arrived at that station. And so over the course of the night, he would punch his card at each of these stations and there was a record of what time he arrived and what time he left. And so when they checked this record, it showed that Ziegler had hit all the stations at the correct time. But that didn't mean he didn't kill her, because there was lots of time in between rounds that he could have attacked her. Towards the end of the interview, Ziegler accused detectives of messing with him,

and then he sarcastically said he had killed Debbie, and then he refused to take a lie detector test. When the police interviewed Dixon, he said that Ziegler had never radioed him asking him to check on the girl in the computer lab. However, he did say he was aware of someone working late in the computer lab, because around 2.15 in the morning,

he had walked past and the lights were on and he heard the sound of printers working inside. And so not wanting to disturb whoever was in there, he didn't even poke his head in, he just figured he would come back in a couple hours and make sure they were gone. And so over the next couple of hours he chatted on the phone with his girlfriend and then around four in the morning he went back down to the computer lab and the lights were off and the door was locked. And so he figured whoever had been in there had finished up and left and Ziegler had locked up after them. When asked why he or Ziegler had not discovered Debbie's body, he said their security rounds did not leave the building and so that stairwell was considered outside of the building and so they never would have seen her. At this point, Klapman and Dixon

were ruled out as suspects, but Ziegler became a primary suspect. But just as with the boyfriend, Kurt Rayner, there was no physical evidence tying Ziegler to a primary suspect. But just as with the boyfriend, Kurt Rainer, there was no physical evidence tying Ziegler to the crime, and so they couldn't arrest him. Investigators decided instead to try to track down that person Klapman had seen walking around Randall Hall around 1.30 in the morning after speaking with Kurt and after radioing Ziegler. It would turn out to be 28-year-old PhD student Ashlyn Bearhard, who was known for keeping long hours and was also known for sneaking up behind the female secretaries that worked in his

office and suddenly holding a pencil up to their neck and threatening to kill them. His office also happened to be directly above where Debbie's body was ultimately found inside of that stairwell. When interviewed by police, Ashlyn said he had been in Randall Hall the night Debbie had been killed, but didn't know Debbie, had no interaction with her, and didn't leave his office the whole night. He quickly agreed to take a lie detector test, but he failed it. Scrambling to explain it, he named two other students

that were in the office with him that could be his alibi. But when police spoke to these two other students, they said, no, Ashlyn was not in the office the whole time. He left around one in the morning and was gone for about three hours. He said he was going to take a nap. When the police approached Ashlyn with this information, he said, oh, you know what? I forgot to tell you about my nap. Yes, I left for a few hours. I stepped outside for a breath of fresh air, went back inside and slept in one of the study hall rooms. But besides that, I was inside of that building for a full 24 hours and I never saw Debbie. I had no interaction with her.

It's just coincidence that my nap coincided with when she was killed. But detectives were not buying it. They believed wholeheartedly that now, finally, they had found their killer. But just like with Kurt and with Ziegler, they had no physical evidence tying Ashland to the crime, and so they couldn't arrest him. And because they were not able to make any arrests, the police just continued to look for more suspects, and so they began speaking to some of Debbie's friends and acquaintances, and it came out that Debbie actually had a stalker. It was another student named Alan Smith, who had previously been one of Debbie's very close friends, but at some point he wanted to take the relationship from platonic to romantic, and Debbie rejected him. Alan apparently

didn't take this very well, and took to following Debbie around campus, trying to get her to stop and talk to him and try to reconcile their relationship, but Debbie every time would just say no, and Alan got increasingly more angry about it, and just the day before Debbie was killed, their friends saw Debbie fighting with Alan in the middle of campus where Alan had actually grabbed her shoulder and was shaking her and yelling at her. Police tracked down Alan and he was cooperative and said he did not kill Debbie but he didn't have an alibi. He just said he was alone in his apartment on the night that Debbie was killed. And so like all the other primary suspects in this case, there was no physical evidence tying Alan to the crime, and so they couldn't make an arrest. Around this time,

the lab that tested the blood spatter that was on Debbie's chair inside of the computer lab came back with their results. DNA profiling was not available back then, so all they could provide was blood type. The blood type that came back from that little spot was type A and Debbie's blood was type O, meaning this blood spot likely belonged to Debbie's killer who during their struggle must have gotten wounded and then bled on the chair. And so right away the police got Kurt Rayner, Bronson Ziegler, Ashlyn Bearhard, and Alan Smith to all come in and provide a blood sample and they figured if any one of them was Type A that they probably were the killer. But unbelievably when their test results came back in, none of them were Type A. It was a crushing blow to the investigation. The first few days after Debbie's killing seemed so

full of promising leads, but now with this blood type development, investigators had no suspects and all of a sudden the Drexel community was starting to panic. Students were outraged at the light security and wondered why the security guards were not allowed to carry weapons. The administration put up a $10,000 reward for any information about who could have done this, and the president of the university told students to use the buddy system and never be alone on campus because he believed the killer was one of us. No one could understand why anyone would want to target Debbie in the first place. She seemed like such a wonderful person that was nice to everyone.

She had modeled in high school, but she wasn't vain. She'd actually turned down getting braces because she was worried it might affect her clarinet playing. She was an average student, but she had an uncommon drive. She worked really hard to get good grades. Whenever she was feeling down or wasn't feeling motivated, she would stare at a picture of a Mercedes-Benz car that was there to inspire her and remind her what she could achieve if she continued to work hard. When she was killed, that picture of the Mercedes-Benz still hung above her desk. It was ultimately her work ethic that put her in danger

because she was prepared to stay at that computer lab as long as it took to make sure her project was perfect. The few pieces of physical evidence the police had didn't fit together. The crime wasn't really a robbery. While she was missing her shoes and socks, her backpack had turned up at the campus lost and found about a week later and no one knows how it got there or who put it there, inside it appeared all of her belongings were still there. Also, when she was discovered, she was still wearing her expensive watch. Her murder looked personal, but the police could not prove that someone who actually knew her was the one who killed her. Police considered a few other suspects, but like all the others, there wasn't enough evidence to make any arrests, and so eventually, Debbie's case went cold. In 1985, the Philadelphia Inquirer ran a story about unsolved cases that most haunted detectives, and Debbie's was one of them. Some

of the detectives that were involved in the case said they believed this was a random killing, and that the killer would most likely strike again. Debbie's case eventually disappeared from headlines and it languished for eight years. And then in the spring of 1992, Debbie's murder was assigned to a cold case squad led by Detective Bob Snyder, and desperate to crack the case, Snyder threw a Hail Mary. He took the case to the VDC Society, which is a private and highly selective club of geniuses from all walks of criminology. Homicide detectives, prosecutors, defense attorneys, FBI agents, forensic scientists, even an aeronautic physicist. They came from all over the world for these monthly closed-door sessions where they would

talk about these unsolvable cases and try to solve them. So in one of their monthly closed-door sessions, Detective Snyder stood in front of the VDoc Society and laid out the details of Debbie Wilson's murder. Then he opened the floor to questions, and for hours the Society got nowhere. Then Richard Walter, who was a founding member of the Society, said that he had a theory. Walter was a famous criminal psychologist who had profiled some of the world's most infamous killers. Most of his work is actually still confidential. He believed the killer was a power-assertive, macho-type guy that liked being in control. Walter pointed to one clue that detectives and everyone seemed to have overlooked after all these years,

and that was Debbie's missing shoes. He said the missing shoes were not random, they were the most important clue. The killer, Walter predicted, was a foot fetishist. Detective Snyder had nothing else to go on and he was really intrigued by this idea, so he brought the information back to the cold case squad and they began re-interviewing everybody involved in the case. When they spoke with the manager of the computer lab at Randall Hall, he told them he was always bothered by one particular detail. The printers in the lab always turned off after 10 p.m., and so he was always confused how the security guard David Dixon could have heard the sound of printers inside the lab at 2.15 in the morning like he claimed.

Detectives were shocked. Somehow no one had picked up on this discrepancy. They began looking more closely at David Dixon, who had been ruled out as a suspect and was viewed by and large as this pristine military veteran with no criminal history, and they dug all the way to the back of his military file where they discovered in 1979, the first year he was in the service, he had gotten in trouble for stealing another soldier's white Reebok sneakers, the exact type of shoe that Debbie was known to wear. Police began interviewing Dixon's former and current neighbors, and at least four women reported having a break-in when Dixon was living next to them, and the only thing missing was their white sneakers and dirty socks, although none of

these women actually ever found out who was responsible. When they raided Dixon's apartment they found in one of his closets 20 sets of used women's white shoes that were all wrapped in plastic like they were trophies. They also found 77 homemade videos presumably shot by Dixon that are just filming the feet of women walking around in white shoes. Dixon's alibi on the night that Debbie was killed was that most of the time he was on the phone with his girlfriend. His girlfriend had become his wife and then she became his ex-wife. And so when detectives spoke to her, she told them that they had only spoke for a couple of minutes that night, not for a couple of hours. Police arrested Dixon in June

of 1993 and he never admitted to anything. But as soon as he got into his cell, he started bragging to his cellmate about how he had killed Debbie because he wanted to have his way with her feet, and his cellmate immediately told on him. Dixon was ultimately found guilty of killing Debbie Wilson, and he was sentenced to life in prison. 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 re-crust the five-star review buttons Smuckers Uncrustables. Also, please subscribe to the Mr. Ballin podcast on Spotify, Apple Podcasts, Amazon, Google, and anywhere else you get your podcasts. This podcast airs every Monday and Thursday morning,

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