MrBallen Podcast: Strange, Dark & Mysterious Stories - You Can't Risk It (PODCAST EXCLUSIVE EPISODE)

Episode Date: June 10, 2025

This is a special bonus episode of "You Can't"Today, I’m going to tell two stories about how an idea that might seem brilliant in the moment… can quickly turn out to be the worst thing ever.For 100s more stories like these, check out our main YouTube channel just called "MrBallen" -- https://www.youtube.com/c/MrBallenIf you want to reach out to me, contact me on Instagram, Twitter or any other major social media platform, my username on all of them is @mrballenSee Privacy Policy at https://art19.com/privacy and California Privacy Notice at https://art19.com/privacy#do-not-sell-my-info.

Hey Prime members, you can binge eight new episodes of the Mr. Ballin podcast one month early and all episodes ad free on Amazon Music. Download the Amazon Music app today. Today I'm going to tell you two stories about how an idea that might seem brilliant in the moment can quickly turn out to be the worst thing ever. Today's episode is a very special extra episode. It's part of a new series I'm calling You Can't. If you're a fan of my YouTube

channel, then you're very likely familiar with the series, Places You Can't Go, and People Who Went There Anyways. It's a very popular series on YouTube, and so we decided to bring some of those stories onto the podcast. But before we get into the stories, if you're a fan of the Strange, Dark, and Mysterious, delivered in story format, then you've come to the right podcast, because that's all we do, and we upload twice a week. Once on Monday, and once on Thursday. And periodically, on random days of the week and at random times, we post episodes like this.

So if that's of interest to you, please change the settings on the follow button's computer mouse so it moves in the opposite direction of where you want it to go. Okay, let's get into today's stories. On the night of November 23, 1983, a 40-year-old man named Jimmy Farroso sat at the bar of the Condor Club with his date, a 23-year-old dancer named Teresa Hill. The Condor Club was a famous strip club in San Francisco's North Beach area, and Jimmy worked there, in a whole bunch of different roles. On any given day, he was the club's doorman, the bouncer, and sometimes its manager. And Jimmy was really good at all these jobs. Jimmy was a big guy, six feet tall and over 220 pounds, and he had so much facial hair that people called him the beard. So he was intimidating and could quickly shut down

fights, which made him great at security. But he was also very easygoing and friendly, and so everyone who met and worked with him really liked him, so it made him a great manager too. So on this particular night, although Jimmy was at the club, he was not working. He was there to have fun. He had his cowboy boots on, which he wore when he wanted to dress up, and he was trying his hardest to impress Teresa with endless liquor and lots of trivia about the Condor Club itself. And there were a lot of cool things about the Condor Club. In particular, it was the home of the very first topless dancer in America, a woman named Carol Dota, who did her act from on top of a gigantic white velvet-covered piano on the Condor Club stage.

Some of Jimmy's favorite stories to tell were about trying to keep order in the club when Carol's musical intro started. And as he told Teresa all these different stories and kept hitting her with trivia questions, he felt like he was really impressing her. By around 2 a.m., they both were pretty drunk, and the condor was starting to shut down. All the patrons had cleared out, and Jimmy and Teresa were the last people there, other than the bartender. But neither of them wanted to call it a night yet. So Jimmy caught the bartender's attention and told him to go on home. Since Jimmy was kind of the boss and everybody loved him, the bartender

did what Jimmy asked. Instead of closing up, he gave Jimmy the keys and the run of the club, and then he left. Which meant Jimmy and Teresa were all alone. Jimmy drained the last of the liquor from his glass and looked over at Teresa. He really liked her, and she was new in town, so Jimmy felt like it was important that he show her a good time tonight. And so, he found himself kind of looking around the empty club for inspiration on how to do that. So, the Condor's main room was an intimate theater with tall, 12-foot-high ceilings, and inside of there was a mix of cafe tables and booth seating that faced a stage at the far end of the room, which was where the club's dancers performed, against the backdrop of a huge mirror.

And while Jimmy was looking all around this space, he saw something that gave him a really good idea for how to show Teresa a night she would never forget. He grabbed her hand, smiled, and led her away from the bar. A little while later, at around 3am, a man named Art Thanash arrived at the Condor Club. Art didn't work at the Condor Club, he worked at a shipyard in town, and he was actually on his way there now. He was only stopping by the Condor as a favor to the club's owner. The owner was out of town and had asked Art to handle the club's money while he was gone.

So Art's plan was just to run this errand and then head to work right after. But when he tried to open the door of the club, he couldn't get in. And this didn't make sense because the arrangement was supposed to be that the bartender would still be inside, waiting for Art to turn over the money, so the door at this point should still be open. But as Art jiggled the knob and pounded on the door itself, he realized it must be locked from the inside. Art stood there for a second, trying to decide how urgent of a problem this was.

The locked door could mean there was some kind of trouble, but he decided that more likely it was just a minor mistake. Maybe the janitor was in there and he had locked the door out of habit. Art couldn't just hang around indefinitely waiting for the janitor was in there and he had locked the door out of habit. Art couldn't just hang around indefinitely waiting for the janitor to open the door again. He had to get to his own job. So that's what he did. He headed to work and began his shift. But a few hours into his shift, he realized he just couldn't concentrate. He kept thinking about the locked door. Something about it just felt wrong, but he couldn't quite identify what it was.

It bothered Art so much that he decided he couldn't wait until lunchtime. So, at around 7 a.m., he told his boss at the shipyard that he had to take care of something and that he'd explain it later. Then, he headed back to the Condor Club. When he got there, he tried the door again and found that it was still locked. This time, Art was not going to give up. He knew the deadbolt was a very weak brass lock and assumed it would not be that hard to break. So, he kicked the door as hard as he could and it worked. The door popped open.

The instant Art was inside, he knew his instincts had been right. Something was horribly wrong at this club. Because from somewhere inside the club, someone was screaming for help. Except when Art looked around, he couldn't see anyone or anything that could explain the screaming. The club appeared to be totally empty. And as Art began frantically looking around for this screaming person, he realized that the acoustics of the screaming didn't make sense.

They seemed to be bouncing off the walls and he couldn't follow them to their origin point. It almost sounded like they were coming from above him, but that didn't make sense at all because the only thing above him was the ceiling. Art looked up anyway, and the second he did, he gasped, because what he was looking at up there was inconceivable, but as he blinked and it didn't go away, he realized that what he was seeing was really happening. Art sprang into action. This was horrific, but he thought maybe it was still fixable, so he ran over to a panel

on the far wall of the club and he flipped a switch. But nothing happened. He flipped it again and again, hoping to hear something start moving around. But no, nothing happened. And that's when he realized the switch must be broken. Art knew he needed to try something different, so he turned around and ran to the staircase that led up the back of the club to the dressing rooms. So in the Condor Club, the dressing rooms were on the second floor, directly above the main stage.

Now most of the dressing rooms were just typical rooms, they had closets and makeup mirrors and bright lights, that was it, nothing unique about them. However, there was one particular room that did have one unusual feature. It was the dressing room that the famous topless dancer, Carol Dota had used, and the unusual thing about this room was that it had a tunnel. This tunnel went down through the floor and led to an opening where you could actually look down onto the stage in the club's main room from the ceiling. And so that's where Art went.

He entered Carol Dota's dressing room through the regular door and then he crawled into that tunnel so he could look down at the horrific thing he had seen from a different overhead angle. And when Art was in that tunnel and finally got a good view of what was happening, he knew this situation was not fixable. He scrambled backwards out of the tunnel, back through the dressing room, down the stairs, and back over to the bar. He picked up the phone and called the police.

Last year, law and crime brought you the trial that captivated the nation. She's accused of hitting her boyfriend, Boston police officer John O'Keefe with her car. Karen Reed is arrested and charged with second degree murder. The six-week trial resulted in anything but resolution. We continue to find ourselves at an impasse. I'm declaring a mistrial in this case. But now the case is back in the spotlight and one question still lingers. Did Karen Reed kill John O'Keefe? The evidence is overwhelming that Karen Reed is innocent.

How does it feel to be a cop killer, Karen? I'm Kristin Thorn, investigative reporter with Law & Crime and host of the podcast, Karen, The Retrial. This isn't just a retrial. It's a second chance at the truth. I have nothing to hide. My life is in the balance and it shouldn't be. I just want people to go back to who the victim is in this. It's not her.

Listen to episodes of Karen, The Retrial, exclusively and ad-free on Wondery+. Hey, it's Mr. Ballin here. If you haven't discovered redacted, declassified mysteries yet, well, you're in for a fascinating journey through history's hidden files. As a fellow military veteran, I can tell you that the host of the show, Luke Lamanna, brings a very unique insider perspective to these wild stories. From covert operations to historical deceptions, Luke examines verified stories that sound almost too incredible to be true. Like Ana Montes, the defense intelligence analyst who maintained a perfect cover while

secretly working for Cuba for nearly 20 years. Or the Tic Tac incident, where a decorated Navy pilot encountered something in the skies that the Pentagon couldn't explain. Luke and his team dive deep into declassified documents to bring you thoroughly researched, eye-opening stories from the darkest corners of history. Follow redacted, declassified mysteries with Luke Lamanna on the Wondery app or wherever you get your podcasts. You can listen to new episodes early and ad-free right now by joining Wondery Plus. A little while later, the police and the fire department arrived. They put signs on the

Condor Club's doors warning people to stay away, then they assembled in front of the main stage, looking up, trying to figure out what on earth they were going to do. It was obvious they didn't have much time, because the screaming was only getting more and more frantic. They decided to start working on several different possible solutions all at once. One group of firefighters hunched over the panel on the wall, the one with the switch that Art had tried flipping when he first came in, but it was clear the firefighters

couldn't get the switch to work either. A second set of firefighters went up to the dressing rooms and tried crawling through that tunnel in the floor like Art had, but that also didn't solve anything. A third group of firefighters worked on the stage itself. They set up two ladders, one firefighter stood on one of them with his hands up over his head, and at the same time another firefighter stood on the stage itself, poking up at the ceiling with a long metal pole. And this approach did seem to be promising.

Every few minutes a chunk of white plaster and dust would fall from the ceiling, which was a good sign, because it meant they were making progress. But the progress was slow. As they worked, the screaming stopped and became whimpering. Then silence. Hours would pass by. But finally, one more clump of plaster dropped to the floor and this loud whirring sound filled the air.

And for the first time since they had arrived at the Condor Club, the firefighters and police officers stopped staring at the ceiling. Instead, they watched as something enormous descended toward the floor. Here's what happened hours earlier around 2 a.m. after Jimmy told the bartender to go home. Jimmy felt like his night had been going really well, and when the club door closed behind the bartender, Jimmy had looked around the condor club trying to think of a grand finale that would totally blow Teresa away. And he saw it. He grabbed her hand and he led her away from the bar and over to the stage. They climbed up onto the stage together and walked to the center, so they were standing

at the gigantic white velvet cupboard piano that the topless dancer Carol Dota had used in her act. Jimmy kissed Teresa and then leaned her backwards so that she was laying on top of that piano. His grand finale idea was to be intimate with her on top of this famous piano. And Teresa was into it. They were both very drunk and making out and having a generally excellent time. But remember, Jimmy was wearing his cowboy boots because he was trying to look his best for Teresa.

And the thing about cowboy boots is that the toe portion is pointed and extends far enough beyond your actual toes that if you were to say hit something small with the toe of your boot, you might not actually feel it. And this was very likely what happened to Jimmy. Because Carol Dota's piano did not just sit stationary on the stage. The reason her dressing room had a tunnel in the floor that led down to the main stage was because of the special way that Carol liked to start her act. When the music started playing, she would descend from the ceiling, riding on the white

piano which was suspended by cables and powered by a motorized system like an elevator. The piano would be lowered from the ceiling onto the stage at the beginning of Carol's act and then it would be raised back up to the ceiling at the end and she would go back through that tunnel into her changing room. The raising and lowering of the piano was all controlled by two little switches. The first one was the switch on the panel on the wall that both Art and the firefighters were trying to make work, but the second one was right beside the piano. And this second switch was the one that Jimmy must have accidentally hit with the pointed toe of

his cowboy boot when he was making out with Theresa on top of the piano. And when he hit that switch, the piano began to rise. But Jimmy and Theresa were too drunk to hear the cables start to whir or feel the piano lift them up. It would have taken about 90 seconds for the piano to get all the way up to the ceiling. And during that time, Jimmy and Theresa didn't notice. They would not realize the danger they were in until it was too late. Fast forward several hours, the moment that firefighters managed to fix the switch mechanism that raised and lowered the piano. The piano's motor had burned out after Jimmy had flipped it on, which was why the switch on the wall didn't work when Art and the firefighters

first tried it. But the firefighters chipped away at the ceiling and repaired the mechanism, and when they did, the piano began descending from the ceiling. And when it reached the stage, the firefighters and police officers just stared in shock. Because there, on top of the piano, lay Teresa and Jimmy. Teresa had been the one screaming. She was laying on her back on the piano with Jimmy on top of her. She was bruised and bleeding, but alive. Jimmy was not so lucky.

His huge body had been crushed between the piano and the ceiling. This had very likely saved Teresa's life, but it killed Jimmy. Teresa was treated at the hospital and released the same day. When police spoke to Teresa, she would say that she had been so drunk she really couldn't remember anything. As for the Condor Club, it would open back up two days later, with the piano still on the stage. But the topless dancer Carol Dota stopped using it in her act. She thought the energy was off. famous. On the evening of January 18, 1977, a very famous 28-year-old Italian soccer player named

Luciano Ray Cicconi was hanging out at a perfume shop in Rome with one of his teammates. Luciano and his teammate, whose name was Pietro Gideon, had dinner plans later, so right now they were just killing time till their table opened up. And they knew it was easier to kill time inside the relative privacy of a shop rather than out on the street, because basically everywhere they went, they got recognized by fans who would flock to them asking for their autographs or trying to shake their hands. This was particularly true of Luciano, who was a handsome star midfielder that people called the blonde angel. He was almost like the equivalent of Tom Brady or LeBron James, but for late 1970s Italian soccer. So, since Luciano and Pietro were friends

with the owner of this perfume shop, they had ducked inside of it. And now they were just laughing and talking and having a relaxed, easy time and just kind of minding their own business. Luciano, who had a very good sense of humor, was just cracking jokes left and right, and Pietro and the perfume shop owner thought it was great. This night was supposed to be a celebration for Luciano, who had just come out of one of the hardest periods he'd ever experienced in his whole career. His beloved coach had died about a month earlier, and then also Luciano had gotten a bad knee

injury, which had kept him from playing for weeks. It had all taken a very serious emotional toll on him. But just that afternoon, Luciano had had a big breakthrough. He'd played his first full soccer practice since getting hurt. And this meant he was finally well enough to start again in his team's next soccer game, which was 12 days away. At around 7.30 pm, the shop owner told Luciano and Pietro that despite having this hilarious time with them, they were going to have to clear out of his shop, because he had an errand

to run at the jewelry store next door. Luciano and Pietro said that was fine, they would just go with him. So the three men walked outside together, and almost immediately, as they stepped out onto the street, they started hearing gasps and seeing people point over at them. Luciano and Pietro were sort of preoccupied with talking about their plans for the night, but both of them paused to wave and smile at the fans. The attention from their fans was very uplifting, and they were careful never to take it for granted. Up ahead, they saw the door of the jewelry store. It wasn't kept locked for safety, like a lot of the jewelry stores in Rome were at this time. So, the perfume shop owner pushed

it open and led the group inside. The men could see the owner of the store behind his counter with his head down, writing notes inside of a sales ledger. The jewelry store owner was a 44-year-old man named Bruno Tabachini, and he'd been in the jewelry business for years. However, he was starting to tire of this line of work, and recently, he'd been thinking about getting out and trying something new. He just didn't know what. On this evening, however, he wasn't focused on any of that.

He was just exhausted from dealing with the steady stream of customers coming in and out. It had been a long day and he was looking forward to closing up and going home. But all of a sudden, he heard a commotion at the door of his shop. He jerked his head up just as these two men barged in with jackets pulled up over their faces and then a second later one of these men shouted out this command that Bruno had heard before. It was a command that both terrified him and enraged him, and it caused him to react immediately. That command was, everyone freeze! This is a robbery!

Hey guys, Mr. Ballin here. You know how I tell strange dark and mysterious stories? Well, I've stumbled on some strange dark and mysterious medical stories that really are just as wild. Like there was a story about this woman who accidentally swallowed something that got lodged in her heart. There was a story about a guy where a tree grew in his lung. or there was a story about this person who their skin turned bright blue, or this town, everybody started laughing uncontrollably that lasted for months. I mean, the list goes on,

and these are not urban legends. These are real mysteries that we dive into that have left doctors and scientists baffled, sometimes for years. And so that's why I created Mr. Ballin's Medical Mysteries, a totally separate show all about these wild mysteries of the human body. Follow Mr. Bolland's Medical Mysteries on the Wondery app or wherever you get your podcasts. Want to listen to episodes early and ad-free? Well, join Wondery Plus or listen on Amazon Music with Prime. Hey, listeners, big news for true crime lovers! You can now enjoy this podcast ad-free on Amazon Music with your Prime membership. Listen to all episodes of my podcasts, Mr. Ballin's

Medical Mysteries and Mr. Ballin's Strange Dark and Mysterious Stories, along with a huge collection of top true crime podcasts completely ad-free. No more wading through cliffhangers or dealing with ads, because let's be honest, ads shouldn't be the most nerve-wracking part of true crime. To start your ad-free listening journey, download the Amazon Music app for free, or head to Amazon.com slash ballin. That's Amazon.com slash B-A-L-L-E-N. Dive into uninterrupted true crime stories today. Bruno had been robbed once before, 11 months earlier, and it was terrifying, and now he was reliving that trauma all over again.

He could see one of the robbers had his right hand shoved into his pocket, and he was clearly holding something which looked like a gun. And so Bruno knew everybody in this store was now in terrible danger. And so without hesitation, Bruno lunged for a drawer behind the jewelry counter and pulled out a gun of his own, and he raised it into the air. Everything was happening so fast that the people inside the store, including Luciano and Pietro, couldn't even keep up. Luciano, Pietro, and the perfume store owner were facing Bruno, and they gasped when they

saw Bruno raise his own gun. Pietro seemed to understand that something very serious was going on and he threw his hands up in the air in a gesture of surrender. But Luciano was in the middle of telling a joke, and he didn't seem to compute that he was in the midst of an armed standoff. So he kept on with his joke and didn't even try to defend himself or give himself up. It was all happening too fast for Bruno too. His eyes were solely focused on the armed robber and what they were going to do next.

Bruno felt his heart pounding in his ears. He felt like it was him or the armed robber. His instincts took over and he squeezed the trigger. There was a loud booming sound and for a second, it felt like the world froze. Then the armed robber slumped slowly to the ground and Bruno lowered his gun. In the moment of silence that followed, there was only one sound inside of that jewelry store. It was the voice of the armed robber.

He was saying something. It was quiet but distinct, and Bruno was able to make out the words. But this time, unlike when the robbers first burst into the store, the words that the armed robber said, they didn't ring any bells for Bruno. In fact, they made no sense at all. So as one of the store customers ran out the door to go find a police officer, Bruno just stood there behind his counter in total confusion. So one thing to keep in mind here is that in Rome in the late 1970s, violent crime was

rising fast, and jewelry store robberies were becoming extremely common. In fact, just a few hours before the robbers entered Bruno's store, a different jewelry store in Rome got robbed. This meant that when the police arrived at Bruno's store, a different jewelry store in Rome got robbed. This meant that when the police arrived at Bruno's shop, they figured they were just walking into another typical holdup. And when they actually first stepped inside, that is what it looked like. Bruno was behind the counter, freaking out about what had just happened, the unarmed robber was standing in a corner in shock, and the armed robber was laying in the middle of the floor in a pool of blood with a bullet hole in his chest. But then the customers in the store began telling the police the words that the armed robber had said as he fell to the ground, and that's when the police realized

this was not a typical robbery. In fact, they knew that what had happened inside of the shop was about to be worldwide news. After Bruno fired that single gunshot into the armed robber, the confusing words the armed robber then uttered were, it was just a joke. The robbers were not actually robbers. It was Luciano and Pietro. It would turn out, Luciano was not just famous for soccer or for his incredible flowing blonde hair that made him instantly recognizable, he was also very well known for his sense of humor. And when he was in a really good mood, like he was on the night of January 18th, 1977, Luciano, aka the blonde angel, liked to play practical jokes.

So as Luciano and Pietro had left the perfume shop and fans were yelling to them and waving and they're kind of waving back and they were getting ready to go next door to the jewelry store, well Luciano pulled Pietro into this conversation where he pitched him his big idea. Why don't we fake a robbery as a prank? Luciano thought it would be hilarious and a great story for this jewelry store owner to tell that he'd been held up by the blonde angel himself. But what Luciano didn't count on was that the jeweler, Bruno, had been traumatized by

the earlier robbery and was actually considering leaving the jewelry business altogether because of it. And, perhaps most importantly, Luciano had no way of knowing that Bruno didn't care at all about soccer. He was probably one of the only people in Rome who wouldn't recognize Luciano or Pietro. So when the two soccer stars ran in pretending to be robbers, Bruno thought it was real. When Bruno pulled out his own gun, Pietro realized immediately that this joke had gone south and he put his hands in the air to say hey, it's a joke.

The perfume shop owner was not involved in this prank at all in the first place so he just stood there and did nothing. But Luciano, who was in this very playful and happy mood, was slow to recognize the real danger here. And so he pulled out his pretend gun from his pocket, which was actually just his hand with his thumb and forefinger extended, and he playfully aimed it at Bruno. And Bruno, who kind of had tunnel vision at this point, didn't see that he was actually unarmed. Instead, he thought this was real, he's about to get shot himself. And so he fired.

Luciano would die in the hospital 30 minutes after being shot. The story of his prank robbery did become international news. Bruno was arrested but the charges were ultimately dropped because a court decided he was acting genuinely in self-defense. The big soccer game, the one that Luciano was so excited to play in again that was actually the whole entire reason he was out celebrating to begin with on the night he was killed, was held 12 days later, and instead of celebrating Luciano's heroic comeback, his fans held a moment of silence in his honor. And so, Luciano and Jimmy's stories are a stark reminder that even if you think your crazy idea is a good one, you can't risk it. 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. involved, and some details are fictionalized for dramatic purposes. Thank you for listening to the Mr. Bollin Podcast. If you enjoyed today's stories and you're looking for more bone-chilling content, be sure to check out all of our studio's podcasts. There's this one of course, the Mr. Bollin Podcast, and there's Mr. Bollin's Medical Mysteries, Bedtime Stories, Wartime Stories, Run Fool, Redacted, andin podcast, and there's Mr. Bollin's medical mysteries, bedtime stories, wartime stories, run fool, redacted, and late nights with Nexpo. All you have to do is search for Bollin Studios wherever you get your podcasts. To watch hundreds more stories just like this one, head over to our YouTube channel, which

is just called Mr. Bollin. So that's going to do it. I really appreciate your support. Until next time, see ya. Hey Prime members, you can binge 8 new episodes of the Mr. Ballin podcast one month early and all episodes ad free on Amazon Music. Download the Amazon Music app today. And before you go, please tell us about yourself by completing a short survey at wondery.com

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