The Binge Cases: U R NEXT - Killer Story | 4. Dead Body Waking

Episode Date: February 23, 2026

Now Lyndal thinks she knows who is responsible for Sabrina’s disappearance. So she decides to confront him. Alone. Binge all episodes of Killer Story ad-free today by subscribing to The Binge. Visit The Binge Cases on Apple Podcasts and hit ‘subscribe’ or visit GetTheBinge.com to get access. From serial killer nurses to psychic scammers – The Binge is your home for true crime stories that pull you in and never let go. Join our free newsletter at Patreon.com/TheBinge. The Binge – feed your true crime obsession. Killer Story is brought to you by Sony Music Entertainment and Orbit Media. Find out more about The Binge and other podcasts from Sony Music Entertainment at sonymusic.com/podcasts and follow us @sonypodcasts. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices

Listen to all episodes of Killer Story ad free right now by subscribing to The Binge. Visit The Binge channel on Apple Podcasts and hit subscribe at the top of the page or visit getthebinge.com to get access wherever you listen. The Binge, feed your true crime obsession. The Binge.

Previously on Killer Story. That's when I noticed the tear drop, the bloody tear. This woman, tells me that her niece is missing. She goes, I guess, want someone to love me. And they told me this nice man who seemed to be managing her career. Bobby Sue, that was like, you know, Christmas has arrived.

She said that he tried to control what she did. And I told her, like, this guy's kind of full of shit. I looked down. It was just looked like a document, a boring document. But then I saw $400,000. And at that point, I said, okay, go for it. But be careful. This is killer story.

I'm Steve Fishman, episode four, dead body waking. Want more true crime? Subscribe to The Binge to get all episodes of My Mother's Lies, add free today, and get instant access to over 50 other jaw-dropping true crime stories. Plus, subscribers get a binge drop of a brand new series on the first of every month, every month. Search for The Binge Channel on Apple. Apple Podcasts, or head to getthebinge.com to subscribe today.

The binge, feed your true crime obsession. A few weeks ago, documents came over the facts at the current affair office and completely changed the narrative. For the past year, Lyndall Marks had been investigating the disappearance of Sabrina Kid. And now, the facts delivered a copy of an application for a $400,000 life insurance policy on 17-year-old Sabrina. The beneficiary?

Sabrina's landlord, Tom Preston. For months, this story has been Lindel's clandestine operation. Now she believes she has a game-changing document in her hand. Here it is. Here's the motive. You don't need a degree in tabloid news to understand this motive. Greed. one of the oldest in the book.

This wasn't hearsay, this wasn't an interview. This was actual documentation proof that would take this to the absolute next level. Yeah, Lindel's thrilled. We hear it in her voice, and we're rooting for her. But let's pause for a second. Lindel says it's proof, but proof of what? It doesn't prove that Sabrina was murdered.

It actually doesn't even prove Sabrina's dead. And without that, it's difficult to accuse someone of murder. Lindel's aware of this. We didn't even know, you know, she still might just be missing. So Lindel needs to locate Sabrina or her body. She doesn't have the resources to do that on her own. She needs help, the help of the Las Vegas Metropolitan Police Department. That's right.

The same cops who've been indifferent to this case for years. I happen to be there, so they said, well, here you're handling. This is Detective Robert Leonard. He's the cop who's about to be interviewed by the reporter from New York with the funny accent. And he's not just any cop. He also happens to be one of the cops who looked at the case of the missing teenager four years ago and then dropped it. He's at his desk at police headquarters. He's wearing his usual billowy white shirt and thin black tie

in Undertaker's uniform more or less. And he's watching Lyndle march toward him with a film crew in tow. Camera sound, the whole Hollywood works. Lindel spots Detective Leonard across the floor of the detective unit, a big open-plan office with bright lights overhead, which aren't particularly good for makeup on TV. A couple dozen desks are spread out. Phones ring.

Homicide detectives all working in their little stations. Linda walks toward the detective and takes a seat in front of him. He kind of had short, cropped brown hair or a suit. Her first impression, not promising. He kind of looked at me and like, he's one of these people that didn't say a lot. All right, so Detective Leonard is, let's call it relaxed. But then he's not expecting much.

He did a look at Sabrina's case file when she first disappeared. To him, back then, Sabrina looked like a runaway. Just from her past history, you know, her arrest and then not wanting to stay with her mother, coming back to Las Vegas. That just kind of made it seem like she was, what would you call, fly-by-night, flitty. I mean, runaways, you see a lot of them in Las Vegas. and Detective Leonard, he's busy with murder cases, thank you very much. So Detective Leonard stares absently at this journalist with the Australian accent,

who, for some reason, has come to talk about this dusty old case. I meet her for the first time, and besides not being able to understand her, I mean, she talks 100 miles an hour. But Lyndall has come with a plan. to get his attention. I told him that a nurse had gone out to do a physical. He kind of raised one eyebrow. My first reaction was, oh yeah, who'd said that?

Meanwhile, Lindel's fingering some papers sitting in her lap. And then all of a sudden she throws out this copy of the policy at me. I didn't know anything about this. His head swivels from the documents in his hands to look at Lyndle. Some cops would resent being set up this way. Detective Leonard's detective brain switches on. Why in the world would someone who's not a relative or anything be taken out a $400,000 insurance policy

on a teenage girl that, I mean, it became very apparent that there was something wrong? Lindel got his attention, and now Detective Leonard climbs on board. He wants to know more. He wants to work together. She had put so much time and effort into it. I thought we were almost like a team at that time. They are an odd pairing, the morose detective.

He doesn't show his emotions and he's, you know, just goes along. Nothing stresses him out. He's at one level the whole time. And the speed talking Lindle. She is just bubbly all the time. I don't know how you can be bubbly like that all the time. Truthfully, Detective Leonard kind of likes Lindel's cheerful personality. Plus, she's already done so much work on the case, and he appreciates that too.

Did you ever say to yourself, why is this girl Lindel so interested in this case? I really couldn't understand it. Detective Leonard doesn't know about Lindel's personal stake, about the attack. when she was a teenager. She keeps that to herself. And Leonard has things that he doesn't mention to his new partner, Lindle. In his career, he's investigated over 200 murders. All those murders, he hates them, and he hates the murderers.

But he bottles up that emotion. Well, you take it home, but you can't discuss it. I mean, it's with you all the time, but you can't, You never talk about your cases. It just wasn't done. So, if you did anything, you go to the bar after work, and you drink with your friends and try to forget. Okay, back to the investigation.

If you're like a bulldog, she just grabbed hold of it and wasn't going to let go. The bulldog, Lindle, was definitely the team leader. Most of my stuff was just following up, one leads that she would give me. So Lindel gives Detective Leonard his marching orders. Get me a body. How do you find a missing girl?

The first thing you want to do is to find the girl. If you can't find the girl, well, then, well, then, well, maybe there is a body. I mean, you were very tenacious on finding. Well, I was being impressed to do that by somebody else, too. He means by Lyndle. I had a number of sources where I could get information from credit bureaus and Social Security and things like that. And I utilized all that I could. Nothing turned up.

How about arrests since she disappeared? So she would probably be arrested just like most of them girls' war at that time. checking though, we came up with nothing. And that would raise your interest as to how she could have been gone for four years and not had contact with anybody or anything and be out and about still. Detective Leonard is saying Sabrina couldn't be out and about still. So then you start looking for bodies. The stakes are high here.

If Detective Leonard doesn't find one, the case collapses. If he can't locate a dead body, it's unlikely a prosecutor will pursue a murder case. As they say in the murder business, no body, no murder. The detective gets on the phone, calls sheriff departments in and around Las Vegas. I checked nothing was shown that would have been heard. So Detective Leonard expands the search area. There was nothing on our side, so then we checked with the Mojave County Sheriff's Office. That's in Arizona, just across the Colorado River from Nevada.

And after weeks of swings and misses, a hit. Some fishermen had recovered a body, taken it over to one of the sites on the Arizona side of the river, and then contact authorities. called me a fisherman. I've never thrown a fishing line in that river. Technicalities. Tom and Linda Percival, whose voices you heard in episode one, had come upon a dead female body while boating on the Colorado River.

At the spot they found her, the Colorado River flows along the border between Nevada and Arizona. So anything that's found on the river could go to either jitter or steer. It could be either one. So I think they just set the closest one. Which was in Arizona, so a Nevada Jane Doe had been hidden away in Arizona. I remember getting the call from Detective Leonard, who said a body had been recovered from the river just days after this girl was reported missing. And I'm thinking, oh my God, this could be Sabrina. Could be.

I had to identify the body as being Sabrina's in order to go to our case. That was the next challenge. Identify the body. Detective Leonard showed the boaters photos of Sabrina, but they couldn't identify her. Uh-oh. There are other ways to ID a body. At autopsy, a doctor had removed a portion of the jaw to check against dental records. Detective Leonard contacted Sabrina's. dentist. But Sabrina hadn't had an appointment since age 12 when she had braces. Bobby Sue wasn't going

to let Sabrina into the world with crooked teeth. But Sabrina's dentist said he couldn't be certain of a match. The dental records were incredibly disappointing. They tried DNA, but techniques were rudimentary back then, and a pair of waterlogged hands didn't yield the quality needed. Another avenue is fingerprints. At autopsy back then, the practice was to cut off the hands below the wrist and store them until needed, which means that in some gray storage locker somewhere, hands float in jars waiting to be IDed. First thing, Detective Leonard puts the prints from the Jane Doe through a national database of fingerprints. They did not come up with any matches for fingerprints. She was a juvenile, so that would negate a lot of her possibility of having been fingerprinted.

Sabrina had been arrested for shoplifting, but as a juvenile, and juvenile records are closed. And so Lindel is distraught. Will another perpetrator skate free? Without identification, is this as far as Sabrina's case can go? Bubbly Lindel turns fearful. Then I'm going to be silenced? I'm going to be silenced and I'm going to lose the story.

These are the things that are going through my mind. How am I going to do this? How am I going to tell this story? The team of Lyndall and Detective Leonard convened once again at the sprawling Las Vegas homicide offices. Every avenue they've walked down has hit a dead end. Any ideas, anyone? Detective Leonard takes out some photos of the bloated body. Perhaps there's a clue there.

They leaf through them. I remember just how hideous it is, seeing the bloated body and bloated face and bits of skin that's just been eaten by various fish. Yeah. And how hideous that is. To see a beautiful young girl has become this misshapen, bloated blob, barely human. A drowning, I think, is probably one of the worst things. to see. For once, the hard-bitten detective chimes in. Well, it's obvious you haven't seen a burn victim then. So flipping through the photos turns out to be a diversion, horrifying, and kind of

intimate, but no help in identifying the body. They need something else. She kept talking about, was there some way to get fingerprints or something? We had no records of any fingerprints, they had no place to look. Or did that? Linda wonders, how about the mother, Bobby Sue? She must have something with Sabrina's fingerprint on it. The detective's view? All right, Linda, have at it. So she calls Bobby Sue in Texas.

In the days after Sabrina went missing, her mother, Bobby Sue, kept in touch with Preston. He told her he couldn't understand why Sabrina would take off, and he wanted to help find her. He returned Sabrina's suitcase, one of two of her suitcases on a Greyhound bus. And that suitcase was now sitting in Bobby's mother's home in Texas. I phoned them and I said, have you got anything, anything she may have touched?

It had to be a clean print, preserved unsmudged for the past four years. A long shot, to be sure. Bobby rummaged through the suitcase. They found this little math certificate. Sabrina's math achievement certificate received when she was 13 years old. She obviously cherished it, a sign however distant, that someone once saw potential in her. Sabrina had slipped it into a plastic sleeve in her photo album. She packed it in one of the two suitcases she traveled with, the one that happened to have made it to Texas.

We didn't know, would it have a fingerprint or not? Detective Leonard sent the certificate to her. to the lab. Technicians turned to the disembodied hands from the Jane Doe. That previous fingerprint wasn't usable any longer, and they faced a new challenge. An aged and waterlogged hand won't yield a usable fingerprint. But you could peel off the skin, slip it into a gloved hand, and usually get a clear print. You had one shot per finger. You know, the skin had been eaten by various creatures in the water and had been, you know, scaled back. So the skin had been really interfered with.

But they were perfect match for one clean fingerprint on that math certificate. Linda was beside herself. Detective Leonard raised an eyebrow. Very professional, you know, doesn't get carried away with emotion. But that couldn't last forever. Detective Leonard is in his 70s now. Things have changed nowadays. Nowadays, I think you're saying you're emotional every few minutes.

Yes, and I don't know why. Every few moments, his eyes well up with tears, and his voice gets full, maybe making up for lost time. That's been suggested. The Sabrina case was maybe one of those. he was making up for. Soon after, he'd retire. And I was basically, to be honest with you,

just sick of people and how they act. All I wanted to do was get away. After they found the body and identified it, now the investigation shifts. Now they can ask the crucial questions. What happened to Sabrina? Did she drown? Was she the victim of foul play?

Was there, in fact, a murder? The ID body came with an autopsy report. This is Lori Miller. You heard her at the top of episode two. She reviewed the report. There wasn't any water in her lungs. She was dead before she entered the water. Had she drowned, her lungs would have been filled with water.

A haioi bone is a little like U-shaped bone. It is positioned in such a way that it would have to be, a fluke or a really freaky accident for it to break other than someone's hands or a rope or something being wrapped around that area and it being compressed to the point that it actually fractures. She had died of a manual strangulation. This was no longer a missing person case. A full-bone murder investigation.

Now, a grim duty informed Sabrina's mother and end. They'd clung to the hope that Sabrina had been kidnapped and was just missing. Linda volunteered to make the call. Detective Leonard was happy to let her. They were absolutely devastated because now they knew that their daughter, their niece, was dead. And at the same time, I think there was a relief that after so many years they knew. they had closure. I think there's nothing worse than not knowing. Lyndall thought of Bobby Sue and of TV.

She flew Bobby Sue to Kingsman, Arizona, to the little cemetery where the unidentified body of a young woman had been interned with a prayer for the deceased since she had no name. At the grave site, Bobby Sue trudged toward a headstone marked with the name Jane Doe. tape was placed over it and on the tape Bobby wrote one word Sabrina. As she

wrote, you could see her pink fingernails just like Sabrina's. It was heartbreaking. And Bobby Sue's heart did break. Now she knew with cold certainty she'd never speak to her baby

again. Bobby pretty much destroyed herself after Sabrina died. she really got heavy into drugs and everything else. That's Dewana, Bobby Sue's niece, Sabrina's cousin. She'd moved in with Bobby Sue after Sabrina disappeared. Every time she cried, she blamed her own self for abandoning her daughter and not taking care of her daughter. What would she actually say? What were her words?

I am a failure. I failed as a mother. I let my daughter die. So much for the benefits of closure. The investigation didn't have closure either. The biggest questions were still unanswered. Who killed Sabrina and how to prove it? Detective Leonard had questioned people like the dodgy ex-boyfriend. Nothing came of those interviews. Everything he'd heard led Detective Leonard to target one suspect. It all pointed towards Preston. However, there wasn't a lot. Everything we had was circumstantial. the evidence didn't directly prove a thing. You could infer, you could draw conclusions from what they had,

but there was no forensic evidence. Nobody had witnessed the crime. Detective Leonard brought the case to the district attorney, said he thought Preston was the killer. He thought it was a prosecutable case. He would never actually say that he thought he was guilty. Linda was nervous. They'd come so far.

They had the insurance policy, but that too just created suspicion, not certainty. Lindel needed something more than inference in suspicion, or else these months of investigation could be a waste. Lyndall contemplated, in her mind, there is one person who knows everything. She calls him.

Totally cond him. And Preston, agrees to meet her at a diner. She's going to lunch with a man who may be a killer. For Lindle, Tom Preston is the face of evil. She wants justice for Sabrina and by proxy for herself. So her hope is to entice Preston, to divulge information that could be used against him. I wanted to hear what he had to say. The first time I spoke to him was on the phone to see if he'd actually meet with me to talk to me. And he was just charming on the phone.

Lindel could do charm too. Wow, you poor man, this is awful. You've put this girl up and you've given her so much support. And here she goes and runs away. And that must be awful for you. You know, we're doing this story on runaway teens in America. And that's what he thought. He had no idea.

She had no intention of doing a story on runaway teens. Meanwhile, back at the current affair offices, Dan hears about Lindell's plan to meet Preston and loses it. I was frightened for her. He was, by now, her husband as well as her news editor. I mean, here's a guy that might have murdered Sabrina. You know, I just thought it was too dangerous. So Dan gets Lindel on the phone in Las Vegas,

just as the crew is wiring her, a tiny mic is hidden under her lapel, which is covered by her hair. Under no circumstances are you to talk to Preston without other people around. Is he talking to his husband or boss? Lindel doesn't care. I'm going to be wired.

The crew's going to be right there. I said, okay, but I want the crew in there with you. They're going to be around the corner. They're going to hear what's going on. Dan gets angry. I do not want you alone with a murderer. I'm doing it. It's too late. Gotta go.

Click. Lindel's not going to give up this interview. In a way, her life since a teenager has led up to this. She didn't confront her own attacker. She's going to confront the person she believes to be Sabrina's. I'm a lone wolf. I go out there, I do the story, I get the story. No one's going to tell me not to put a microphone on and go and ambush a killer.

I'm sorry. No one's going to tell me not to do that. But Dan's not done. He calls the crew, which has now moved to a rooftop across from the diner. Get your fucking asses in there right now, and they hung up on me. Lyndall gets ready to head into the diner as planned. She's wired. The crew stays across the street.

It's high tension, high, high adrenaline. I was very aware. Lindel straightens her blazer, checks her mic, testing one, two, three. It was the pepper mill diner on the strip in Las Vegas. Elvis and Tarantino both ate there. To Lindel, the diner looks dingy and dark. Preston got there early. He'd chosen a booth in the district.

deepest corner of this diner. I was shocked when I first laid eyes on him. He was this very big man, very large man, and I walked up to him, and of course I had to shake his pudgy hand, and that kind of made me feel sick. But Preston isn't what Lindell expected. So sweet and seeming like so innocent and he sat there like this big oversized, cuddly little teddy bear. And he cared for Sabrina. He didn't know where she went. I mean, it was easy to believe that he genuinely cared. He's convincing. So is Lyndall. She talks about her missing children's story with emotion, a story that doesn't exist. I had to play the game of being sweet and cordial and respectful and and lovely to meet you and thank you for your time.

What I was hoping, I think, was that he might actually say something about what he thought might have happened to Sabrina. Suddenly, Preston freezes. His expression changes. He realizes this luncheon date isn't as described. I probably asked one too many questions about Sabrina and his relationship with her. He just said, I'm done, and he walked out. Oh man, this is just going pear-shaped.

Linda's on her feet now and shouting into her mic to the crew. So I'm following him out, and I'm now saying to the crew who were waiting on the top of a building opposite, get down now, come and get a shot of him, get down now, he's on to me. They rushed down, and just as they turned the corner, and with a moment to spare, I was able to say, Mr. Preston, can you tell me what happened to Sabrina? There are few people that have told me things about Sabrina.

I'd like your comment. Preston looks stunned as he gets into his car. Lindel didn't get the information she wanted, but she's happy. Preston looks guilty of something. And he just sped off. Linda would never know that just a year earlier, Jim Bixel, Sabrina's old boyfriend,

got a mysterious phone call from his best childhood friend who just happened to be the son of Tom Preston. I said, I need to talk to you now. And I said, what's this about? And he says, this is about my fucking dad. He goes, he's a fucking asshole, Jimmy. He says, and I'm in trouble. I need to talk to you.

That's next time on Killer Story. Holy crap. You know, and I'm like, what is going on? He had something to do with Sabrina's disappearance, 100%. When he gets up there and he says, She's never lied. Now, I'm no better than that. I mean, I've been around a lot of the lies, you've told him.

Unlock all episodes of Killer Story ad-free right now by subscribing to the binge podcast channel. Not only will you immediately unlock all episodes of this show, but you'll get binge access to an entire network of other great true crime and investigative podcasts. All of them ad-free. Plus, on the first of every month, subscribers get a big, Ginge drop of a brand new series. That means all episodes all at once. Search for The Binge on Apple Podcasts and hit subscribe at the top of the page.

Not on Apple. Head to getthebinge.com to access wherever you listen. Killer Story is a production of orbit media in association with Signal Company No. 1. Creator and host is me, Steve Fishman. Executive producers are Linda Marks, Kevin Warnas, and Jonathan Hirsch from Sony Music Entertainment. Producers Jackie Pauley, Hannah Beale, and Austin Smith. Production coordinator, Austin Smith.

Series consultant, Emil Klein, sound designer, Britt Spangler, fact-check Ryan Alderman. Our lawyers are at Clarice Law. Special thanks to Emily Rassick, Steve Ackerman, Catherine St. Louis, Sammy Allison, Allison Haney, Fisher Stevens, and the glamorous Ria Julian. We also thank our agents at WME, Evan Krasick, Marissa Hurwitz, Ben Davis, and a special thanks to Shelley Chenoy for voiceover casting.

Our voice actor for this episode is Lindsay Smart for Bobby Sue Mae. And a special, special thanks to the inimitable Emil Klein.