True Crime Campfire - Illusion: The Murder of LaNell Barsock

Episode Date: January 20, 2023

Remember those Magic Eye posters from the 90s? The technical name is stereogram, an optical illusion where if you kinda unfocus your eyes and stare at it long enough, a colorful kaleidoscope-looking abstract will turn into something else. A rocket ship, maybe, or a tropical landscape. They’re fun, and everybody had one in their dorm room for a while. We’re always fascinated by illusion. It’s why magicians are so popular. In the right context, we love to watch something transform into something totally different. But when that something is a person we’ve come to care about and trust? Not so fun anymore. Sources:https://www.grunge.com/926587/larene-austins-motive-for-murdering-lanell-barsock-explained/https://truecrimedaily.com/2016/05/31/woman-leaves-false-clues-in-lovers-murder-caught-after-escape-to-belize/https://www.oxygen.com/crime-news/dateline-the-last-day-larene-austin-convicted-killing-lanell-barsockInvestigation Discovery's "In Plain Sight," episode "Red Hot Murder"NBC's "Dateline: The Last Day," episode "The Case of LaNell Barsock"Follow us, campers!Patreon (join to get all episodes ad-free, at least a day early, an extra episode a month, and a free sticker!): https://patreon.com/TrueCrimeCampfireFacebook: True Crime CampfireInstagram: https://gramha.net/profile/truecrimecampfire/19093397079Twitter: @TCCampfire https://twitter.com/TCCampfireEmail: [e-mail]! https://true-crime-campfire.myspreadshop.com/Become a supporter of this podcast: https://www.spreaker.com/podcast/true-crime-campfire--4251960/support.

Hello, campers, grab your marshmallows and gather around the true crime campfire. We're your camp counselors. I'm Katie. And I'm Whitney. And we're here to tell you a true story that is way stranger than fiction. We're roasting murderers and marshmallows around the true crime campfire. Remember those magic eye posters from the 90s? The technical name is Stereogram, an optical illusion where if you kind of unfocus focus your eyes and stare at it long enough, a colorful kaleidoscope-looking abstract will turn into something else, a rocket ship maybe, or a tropical landscape. They're fun, and everybody

had one in their dorm room for a while. We're always fascinated by illusion. It's why magicians are so popular. In the right context, we love to watch something transform into something totally different. When that's something is a person we've come to care about and trust, not so fun anymore. This is Illusion, the murder of Linnell Barsock. So, campers, for this one, we're in Palmdale, California. June 16th, 2010. It was about 7.30 in the evening when a young woman came bursting through the front door of the sheriff's station in a panic. As she struggled to make them understand what she was saying between frantic breaths,

the front desk clerks noticed that the woman was covered in blood. When they finally got her calm down enough to talk coherently, the young woman said her name was Lorraine Austin, and she had a horrifying story to tell. She'd just come from her friend Lanell Barsock's house, she said. She was supposed to finish a hair weave she'd started on her. earlier that day. She'd gone into the house looking for Linnell, calling out her name but not finding her anywhere, until she went out into the dark garage and suddenly lost her balance. Her feet

had skidded on something wet and slippery. When she turned around to see what it was, she slipped again, and this time she fell into the stuff. It was plastic, like clear plastic sheeting, strewn all over the place. As Lorraine sat there on the garage floor, struggling to get her bearings before getting back up again, her eyes adjusted to the dim light, and she realized what she was looking at. There was blood all over the garage. And a few feet away from where she'd fallen, there was a pair of bare legs sticking out from behind Linnell's car. It was Linnell. Lorraine recognized her pedicure. Her heart pounding, Lorraine stood up and went over to her friend. I walked around the corner, she told the police she had a bag over her head, a black garbage bag, and I ran over there and

I picked her up, Lorraine said, but she could tell that her friend was already gone, dead and covered in blood. Lorraine was a mess as anybody would be, shell-shocked, still stained with her friend's blood from where she tried to revive her, so police told her to sit tight and get herself together while officers and detectives raced over to the scene. They found 29-year-old Linnell Barsock lying flat on her back on the floor of her garage, dead from a single gunshot wound to the back of her head. The black garbage bag over her head was an interesting detail. I mean, it might have just been a way for the killer to stop Linnell from bleeding all over the place, but the detective suspected there was more to it than that. As I'm sure some of you all already know, when a killer

covers their victim's face, it usually tells us that there's some degree of remorse there, or at least some degree of shame. They cover the face so they don't have to look at what they've done, and so the victim won't be able to look at them. What does that mean? Well, a lot of the time it means that the victim knew the killer pretty well. Not always, but often enough that it's made it into the homicide investigation training manuals. Detective's Bob Kenny and Joe Espino were also struck by what a nice house it was, big and spacious and airy and brand new. It looked like Linnell hadn't lived there long and was still in the process of unpacking everything and picking out enough furniture to turn it into a home. The garage was a gold mine of evidence. Someone had opened the trunk of the car.

There was a bunch of bedding in there stained with blood. and a tire had been dragged over and leaned against the bumper, possibly as a kind of makeshift ramp for the killer to use to hoist the body into the trunk. Clearly, whoever killed Linnell had been in the process of cleaning up the scene and getting the body ready to transport somewhere, but for some reason they stopped on a dime and fled. Inside the house, there was no obvious signs of a struggle or anything like that. Just two things stuck out.

First, on the living room carpet, you could see what looked like the faint out. outline of an area rug that had been there and been removed, a void, as Detective Kenny put it. And in the laundry room, there was a pile of blood-stained towels on the floor. There was some blood on the tile, too, but it didn't look like somebody had bled there. It looked more like somebody had tried to wipe up some blood with a towel and some cleaning products. That was interesting. Why would the killer try to clean up the scene? What kind of killer does that. Probably not a burglar or a home invader, right? I mean, why would they? If Linnell had interrupted a robbery and the robber had killed her in a panic, he'd have probably just left her where she fell.

Add that to the detail of the plastic bag over Linnell's face and a picture started to emerge of a killer who knew the victim well. But they didn't have to ponder any of this for long, because while they'd been cordoning off the crime scene and making their initial walk through the house, Back at the sheriff's station, Lorraine Austin had pulled herself together enough to keep telling her story, and she dropped a bombshell. Finding Linnell's body had been a horrifying enough experience by itself, but it got worse just a few moments later. Because Lorraine was scrambling back inside the house to run out the front door and call for help, she heard a thump from upstairs. Oh my God. She wasn't alone in the house.

As she rushed toward the front door, she glanced over at the stairway and saw a man. at the top of the stairs. They locked eyes. It was Louis Bonner, Linnell's boyfriend. Lorraine's heart dropped into her shoes. She bolted for the front door and ran to her car. As she fumbled her key into the ignition,

she realized that she didn't have her cell phone on her. She must have dropped it in the house. So she just laid on the gas and headed, hell bent for leather, for the sheriff station. And she hadn't gotten far before she saw the last thing on earth she wanted to see. Lewis's truck, speeding up behind her. She made eye contact with him

in her rearview mirror, and he looked furious. Lorraine stepped on the gas, and when Lewis realized where she was heading, he backed off and disappeared into traffic. Holy shit. God, that poor girl. Yeah, I can't even imagine. It's like a horror movie. Yeah, she freaking walked in on like the immediate aftermath

of a murder. God, that's so scary. He'd probably killed her in a heartbeat if he'd caught her. hell yeah. Girl got lucky. And now she was determined to do what she could do to help police unravel what had happened to her friend. She and Linnell had been friends since high school, she told them. Linnell was the kind of friend everybody wants to have, something the investigators would soon hear from a bunch of her other friends as well. She was a breath of fresh air, the kind of person who made you feel better just by being there, always smiling, and she was driven

too. Worked her ass off in school, first to become a licensed vocational. nurse, then Noren. It was at school that she met Louis Bonner four years earlier. Lewis was from Haiti. He met Linnell when he started taking English as a second language classes at the same place where she was studying nursing. One afternoon

he was waiting for a bus when Linnell struck up a conversation and ended up offering him a ride. Typical Linnell, always reaching out to anybody she thought could use a friend. She'd done the same thing for her friend Marcel, a recent immigrant from Cameroon and one of her classmates in the nursing course. She kind of took him under her wing.

helped him navigate the culture shock of being a student in a new country, which has got to be absolutely terrifying. I can't even imagine. Marcell called her his guardian angel. Later told Dateline how she gave him his first ever birthday presents, a sweetest story. And this was the kind of friend she was. And right away, she and Lewis hit it off. Lewis had a sort of exuberance about him that Linnell really liked. One of his best friends, Philippe, tells a story that illustrates that really well about taking Lewis out to a club one night, not long after he immigrated from Haiti, and They were just kind of having a good time, just vibe in, listening to the music. And at one point, Philippe looked over, and Lewis was just in absolute heaven. There was this look on his face

of just, like, pure childlike joy. He was just so grateful to be somewhere safe and happy, Philippe said, just listening to music and hanging out with friends, something so many of us take for granted, and that joy was just written all over his face. Before long, Lewis and Linnell were joined at the hip. Philippe worried that it was too much too fast, but there was no stop in it. They moved in together, and in 2009, they bought the house in Palmdale. Linnell had big plans for that house. She wanted to remodel it, turn it into a sort of boarding house for elderly people who needed live in medical care, and Lewis was supportive of that. It was all hearts and flowers for a while.

They started talking about getting married, but in the months leading up to Linnell's murder, their relationship had hit the skids in a pretty major way. Lonell had confided in her friend Marcel about it. Some of it was just standard issue relationship stuff, like they argued a lot of. lot about money. Linnell didn't think Lewis was very smart about finances, and that really worried her. And beyond that, Lewis didn't seem to have much in the way of ambition. Linnell felt like he was kind of spinning his wheels, not doing much to figure out where he wanted to go in life, what he wanted to do. He had a job working in the maintenance department for the

city of Hawthorne, but he didn't seem interested in moving up the ladder or really doing anything else, and not everybody cares about that kind of stuff. Like, it wouldn't really bother me unless he was being a freeloader or something. I don't need my partner to be like super ambitious, but for a go-getter like Linnell, these weren't minor issues. She told her friend Marcel that the tension was starting to creep into the bedroom. They hadn't had sex in a while. But it wasn't just a difference in philosophy coming between them. It was darker and messier than that. Lewis could be jealous, possessive, and controlling. He kept a close eye on Linnell, swiping her phone and snooping in her text and call history, sometimes even texting her

male friends and pretending to be Linnell just to see what her friend would text back. Ugh, not great. He'd call any number he didn't recognize to see if a man answered, that kind of toxic shit. And worst of all, he'd started stalking her. He'd drive over to the health club where she worked and, like, post up a little ways from her car just so he could, like, watch and see who she went to lunch with. We've said it before, campers, and we'll say it till we're blue in the face. This shit right here is the best way to make 100% sure you create what it is you're afraid of, because Your partner can be ass over tea kettle in love with you, but you start pulling this possessive crap, I promise you, you're going to push them away at the speed light.

So you have got to fight through that insecurity stuff. Yeah, go to therapy. Right. But then it got worse. A few months before the murder, police had responded to a 911 call at Linnell and Lewis's house. Somebody had called to report a domestic disturbance, a screaming argument specifically. Nobody got physical, so no.

nobody ended up arrested. But it didn't bode well for the relationship, obviously. And one afternoon, not long after that 911 call, Linnell's mom, Bobby, got a frantic phone call from her daughter. Mama, Linnell said, Lewis tried to run me off the road. She was screaming, Bobby said. They'd been arguing, and Linnell told Lewis she'd had enough. She wanted to break it off for good. She got in her car and drove off, trying to just get out of there and give them both time to cool down. But Lewis jumped in his truck and chased after her. He ended up scraping his truck all at the side of her car and shattering one of the windows. It was ugly, and it shook Linnell up badly. Now, sitting in an interview room at the sheriff station, still scared to death and covered in her murdered friend's

blood, Lorraine Austin told investigators that Lewis's jealousy hadn't come out of nowhere. As Linnell's bestie, over at the house at least a few times a week, Lorraine had a front row seat all the drama over the past few months, and she knew a little secret. Linnell had been seeing a new guy for about four months now, a handsome flight nurse named Ike Umuna. Ike even had given her a burner phone so she could communicate with him on the sly. And Ike was the one who called 911 that night to report a domestic disturbance

when he heard Lewis yelling at Linnell over the phone. That was the night Lewis found out about Ike, Lorraine said. Caught her talking to him on the secret phone and flipped out. Lewis was furious, especially when he found out where Ike and Linnell had met, on a dating site called fling.com. And Ike was worried about her, especially after the incident with the truck. He felt like Lewis was dangerous. He was so troubled by it that at one point he even texted.

said Linnell's mom. Ma'am, this is Ike, he wrote. Linnell called me today. She sounded really scared and worried like she was afraid Lewis might do something. Please, I need you to watch her, even if she doesn't want to be with me. Please just help her stay safe.

Ike was losing sleep over the whole thing. He felt like Lewis was unstable. And he really was, Lorraine told the detectives, unstable. When he found out about the secret cell phone, he ranted and raved until Linnell promised to break things off with Ike. But Lorraine didn't think she really meant it. She liked Ike, and she was sick of dealing with Lewis's jealousy and temper. Promising she'd break it off with

Ike was just the easiest way to calm him down in the moment. Things were escalating. Everybody around Lewis and Linnell could feel it, like something was about to break. The day before the murder, Lorraine went over to the house to weave Linnell's hair. But the tension in the air was so thick that she left before they finished, promising to come back soon. And she did, at about 10 o'clock the next morning. When she got there, Lewis was getting ready to drive to L.A. to work on his truck with a friend of his. The friend's place was about an hour and a half away, so Lorraine figured she and Lonell would have plenty of time to finish up the hair weave before he got back.

She didn't want to get caught in the middle of another argument between those two. Yeah, they were one of those couples who have no compunction about fighting in front of their friends, which is just torture. Please, seriously. don't do this, there should be something in the Geneva Convention about that shit, because it's awful. Lorraine had gotten to the point where she didn't even want to be there when Lewis was home. So anyway, they sat down in the living room, put the TV on, and Lorraine started working on Linnell's hair. And in the grand tradition of hairdressing, going all the way back to the dawn of human civilization, when the very first cavewoman took a sharp rock and used it to give her

best friend bangs, they started to dish about Linnell and Lewis's relationship issues. Specifically, Linnell was worried about that secret cell phone she got from Ike. She couldn't find it, and she had a bad, bad feeling about why. She told Lewis that she and Ike were done, and the phone was dead, but of course that wasn't true. She and Ike were very much still involved, and as for that phone, well, she just added more minutes to it like a day earlier. If Lewis had found that thing, it was going to get ugly. And, of course, that's exactly what happened. Lewis had found the phone, and he'd yonked it and taken it with him,

on his drive to L.A., and at some point he'd flipped it on and realized it was still very much active. Linnell had lied to him. Lewis forgot all about his truck for the moment. He hung a U-turn and sped back to Palmdale to confront Linnell, and about an hour into her peaceful little living room salon session with Lorraine, he burst through the door, spoiling for a fight. But Linnell wasn't having it this time. She yanked her phone back from Lewis, grabbed Lorraine, and no out. She and Lorraine hopped in Linnell's BMW and headed out the door to go pick up a pizza and some hair care stuff at the mall. Let Lewis cool off a little bit before shit hit the fan. Good choice, right? The security footage from that hair care store would later break her loved

ones' hearts as the last images ever made of Linnell. But Lewis wasn't willing to let the argument drop. And when Linnell and Lorraine came out of the beauty supply store, there he was, waiting for him in the parking lot. So as Lorraine stood there, probably wishing she could drop through a hole in the earth, he and Linnell started fighting again, just right there in the parking lot. Why do you still have this phone? You told me you shut it off. Are you still seeing this guy and blah, blah, blah, blah. Finally, Linnell was just like, fine. Take the damn phone away from me. Smash it into a billion smithereens if it'll make you feel better. It's over, okay? And this, for the moment, anyway, seemed to play Kate Lewis. Enough anyway that he got back in his truck and went back to the house.

Linnell and Lorraine picked up a pizza and some sodas and headed back themselves. But when they got back, Lorraine told detectives, Lewis was showing his ass again. The atmosphere was excruciatingly tense. So when he and Linnell started bickering yet again, Lorraine said, look, y'all, I can't sit here and listen to this anymore. You guys clearly have some stuff you need to work out, so I'm going to go. Linnell, girl, I'll come back and finish your hair later, okay? And then she got the hell out of there. She walked over to a park nearby, she told the detectives.

nice place with the playground and stuff and watched the kids play for a while, and then at 6.30, she finally went back to the house and found her best friend, lying in a pool of blood in the garage, ran back into the house, saw Lewis standing at the top of the stairs, and booked it to the sheriff's station, with Lewis coming after her until he realized where she was headed. Y'all know this part already. So obviously, it was time to find Louis Bonner and bring him in for a chat. And as it turned out, he wasn't hard to track down. He was actually at Linnell's mom house, sound asleep. He stayed there sometimes when he had to go somewhere for work to cut down on his commuting time. This was just a few hours after Linnell's body was discovered and her poor

mama didn't know anything that had happened yet. They wanted to get Lewis out of the house safely first and foremost, so they reached out to him first and he seemed eager to help. Sure, sure, I can come to the station and talk to you, no problem. Once he was on the way, they broke the awful news to Bobby Barsock, Lonell's heartbroken mom. I can only imagine what it was like for her. At the station, Lewis willingly gave a DNA sample and let an officer photograph him. He seemed weirdly cheerful at first. His account of the day pretty much matched Lorraine Austens. He said he left the house around 10.30 in the morning to drive up to L.A. and work on his truck. He admitted that he'd come back a couple hours later, though he didn't mention why.

Nothing about Ike or the secret cell phone. But he did tell them about following Linnell and Lorraine to the beauty supply store. But then his story veered off in a different direction. Where Lorraine had said that he and Linnell had gotten to another fight once they all came back from the mall, Lewis left that part out. He said once they all got back to the house from the beauty store, he'd said goodbye to Linnell, hop back in his truck, and headed once again to L.A. Uh-huh.

Yep, he said he'd rolled into L.A. around 2 o'clock, spoke to Lennel on the phone at around 2.30 and then spent the next couple hours shopping for auto parts before driving to Linnell's mom's house to spend the night. That last part, they knew was true. Linnell's mom said he rolled in around 6.15, but she also told them something else, something that made their spidey senses twitch. Linnell's brother had seen Lewis looking up flights to Miami and doing some online banking. Yeah, that's no good at all. So can we say inconsistencies, camper? And Lewis was throwing out red flags like a pissed off football coach. The investigators knew from everybody they'd talked to that his and Lonell's relationship

had been a hot mess the past few months. But according to Lewis, everything was fine and dandy. Their relationship was great, he told the detectives. He loved her and she loved him, no problems. When they asked if there was any infidelity going on, Lewis shook his head. Oh, no, no, nothing like that. We're happy. But as he spoke, Detective Espino,

noticed a big, fresh-looking scratch across Lewis's cheek. Oh, this? Well, okay. Linnell did that, Lewis said. We were having a little argument, but it was no big deal. Linnell thought I was flirting with another girl on Facebook, but it was just a misunderstanding. We worked it out. Right.

Yeah. Who's this guy named Ike, Detective Kenny asked. It seemed to catch Lewis off guard. Linnell told him, Ike was a friend, he said. just a friend, nothing romantic at all. Now, while this interview was going on, the CSIs were still at the crime scene, and they were uncovering more and more little evidentiary treasures. And they figured now was the perfect time to show one of these little gems to Lewis.

It was a note they'd found in Linnell and Lewis's kitchen, a Dear John letter, basically. It said in part, Dear Lewis, I am leaving you for Ike. He makes more money. You can do whatever you want to do with the house. We're getting married, just leave me alone. I've been sleeping with him for four months now. Good luck in life. Don't try to find me. Goodbye, Lanette. Yaut. This thing might as well have been addressed to the detectives with, Here is Your Motive, scrawled across the top in all caps. But when they showed it to Lewis, he played it off. Note? What note? I didn't see any note. Sure, bud. Not only that, but when they finally brought up the shooting, he acted totally stunned, like he had no idea

that Linnell had even been hurt. Somebody shot her, Lewis said, looking shocked. Oh my God, that's not right. He started to wail. Lewis was making all the right weepy noises, but Detective Espino didn't see much in the way of actual tears, and he couldn't stop staring at that nasty-looking scratch on Lewis's cheek. We understand that things happen, Detective Kenny said, trying to lure Lewis into a face-saving scenario the way detectives always do. Like, look, man, I know women can piss you off like crazy sometimes. I mean, what guy hasn't wanted to kill his girlfriend from time to time, right? I mean, come on. If this was an accident or you just lost your head for a second, just tell us, and we can work something out.

But Lewis wasn't playing ball. That's not me. That's not me, he wailed. Find the right person for me, please. He said, I'm begging you. Espino thought, yeah, I'm looking at him right now. But Lewis wouldn't give it up. Just kept repeating, that's not me. It's not me. Yeah, good luck with that, right?

Doesn't get much worse than an eyewitness, and in this case, that was just the cherry on top of a delicious Sunday of circumstantial evidence. And the forensic evidence was on its way, too. Just had to be processed. In the meantime, they weren't about to let him out of their sight. They figured he was planning to flee back to Haiti. Why else would he be looking at flights to Miami and doing a bunch of online banking

within hours of Linnell's murder? The detectives weren't about to let it happen on their watch. So it was habeas-gravus time for Louis Bonner, much to the relief of Linnell's friends and family. Some of them later said they'd seen this coming, or at least worried that it would. But now, Lewis was cool in his heels in the county lockup waiting for trial.

And as always, the investigation continued. The CSIs had found a bloody fingerprint on a plastic pitcher that they figured the killer had used to try and clean up. They also found a folded-up area rug shoved into the backseat of Linnell's car, and when they unfolded it, goldmine. Big, bloody footprint. They figured those, along with whatever DNA they could find on some black latex gloves they found on the garage floor would be the final nails in Lewis's coffin.

Despite the fact that they found so much evidence in the garage, the detectives could tell that Linnell probably hadn't died there. They suspected she'd actually been killed inside the house. house. They thought back to that weird void in the living room floor where it looked like a rug had been taken up. Time to break out the luminal. Now in case you're not familiar with luminal campers, it's a chemical spray that reacts with the hemoglobin in blood, and when you turn the lights off, it glows an eerie, bright blue wherever there's blood. To the naked eye, it just looked like clean carpet in Linnell's living room. But when they hit the lights, holy shit. That room lit up in

phosphorescent blue, bright as the Vegas strip, and those glowing patterns told a story. It looked like someone had dragged Linnell's body from the living room rug all the way down the hall, through the kitchen, and into the garage. There appeared to be a few more footprints scattered around, too, in addition to the creepy drag marks. And in the trunk of Linnell's car, they found a throw pillow with a bullet hole in it. Apparently the killer thought it would make a good homemade silencer. You really couldn't ask for more evidence to work with? They found a 9mm shell casing as well. The more, the better, of course, and the investigators wanted to make sure they had to make sure.

every one of their ducks in a row to convict this prick. So the next day, they said about blowing up Lewis's alibi, that he'd been in L.A. with his friend shopping for truck parts at the time of the murder. They'd found a couple of receipts from two different auto parts stores in Lewis's truck, but they didn't have names on them, and they definitely didn't prove that Lewis had been the one to make the purchases. So Kenny and Espino made the drive up to L.A. to visit both places and review their security footage from the day of the murder. They were fully expecting to find a big bunch of nothing to prove beyond any doubt that Lewis was not where he claimed to be

at the time Linnell was shot. Instead, as they stood there watching the footage, it felt like a punch in the stomach. There in crystal clear, black and white were Louis Bonner and his buddy shopping for truck parts, first at one store, then a couple hours later at another. What the fuck? The detectives looked at each other, stunned into silence.

This was definitive. There was no way in hell that Lewis Bonner could have driven back to Palmdale in time to commit the murder. He couldn't have killed Linnell. Of course, once they picked their jaws up off the floor, the investigators realized that this didn't necessarily put Lewis in the clear. He might have had an accomplice, right? So they got a warrant to take a look at his phone records. should clear things up, but that was going to take time. Weeks, most likely. I mean, CSI isn't exactly a documentary, right? Documentary, right? Nothing is instant like that. No. For now, there was an enormous

flashing neon red elephant in the room, namely that Lorraine Austin had told them she saw Lewis at the crime scene with her own two eyeballs, and that could only mean one thing, the one thing that nobody saw coming. What did they really know about Lorraine after all? Only that she was Linnell's best friend. Or was she? Detective Kenny suddenly remembered back to a strange encounter at the sheriff's station on the day of the murderer.

He and his partner had been walking Lorraine to an interview room when they passed Linnell's mother, Bobby, in the hallway. Lorraine had run up to Bobby and hugged her, and as Detective Espino continued on down the hall with Lorraine, Kenny stayed back to talk to Linnell's mom. Bobby looked confused. Who is that woman? she asked. That's your daughter's best friend, he said.

You know, the one she's known since high school? Bobby shook her head. I've never seen her before, she said. At the time, it just seemed strange. Nothing to really raise an alarm. I mean, parents don't know who their kids are friends with all the time. Sure. But now, it got the investigators wondering.

If Lorraine had been besties with their victim since high school, more than 10 years of friendship, wouldn't her mother know her? So they dug into it and found something nobody saw coming. Lorraine hadn't known Linnell since high school. They'd only known each other for a month or so. And how did they meet? Oh, y'all. They met through a Craigslist ad, a personal ad Lorraine had placed in the Women Seeking Women's section. The two supposed besties were lovers, and nobody had a clue.

It started out pretty hot and heavy, but Lorraine was coming on a little too strong for Linnell, and a few weeks after they hooked up for the first time, she ended it. I'm getting quite serious with my boyfriend, Linnell texted, so I don't want anything sexual with you anymore. I enjoy your friendship, and I'd like to keep it that way. Lorraine seemed to take it on the chin. In fact, she seemed pretty chill in her reply. I understand, she wrote back, I'm just seeking friendship as well. I think you're a cool person to hang out with.

And they had kept hanging out as friends, at least to the extent of Lorraine coming over to weave Linnell's hair. But the timing here seemed beyond significant. This text exchange happened on June 11th, just five days before the murder. Revenge? Jealousy? Two of the oldest murder motives in the human heart. And there was more.

Lorraine was in major debt. And according to texts between the two ladies, she'd been hoping to move in with Linnell. into that beautiful big 3,700 square foot house of hers. Must have stung to find out that wasn't going to happen. I mean, of course it wasn't, for fuck sakes. You've known each other for a few weeks, but Lorraine was intense about that relationship from day one, it seems like.

And as the investigators dug into her personal life in social media, they found something else disturbing. Lorraine had been single white female in it up in a big way. Even while she was seeing Linnell, she was still macking on other women she met online and going on dates with a few of them. And she was using Linnell's life story to describe herself to her dates.

Like, oh, I'm a nurse, blah, blah, blah. She even got herself a blue BMW just like Linnell's. Creepy. Somehow, she'd managed to become capital O obsessed with this woman she'd only known for a month. It seems like kind of a complicated emotional mishmash to me. Like, was she in love with Linnell? Did she want to be Linnell?

Maybe a little column A, little column B. There were strong emotions involved anyway, and it seems like the main one was jealousy. And there was one other thing from that first night in the interview room. As Lorraine sat talking with the officers, her purse was sitting open, and they noticed a couple bullets in there nestled among some change. When they asked her about him, she was vague. Now, Detective Espino ran her name through the California State Firearms Registry, and

lo and behold, our girl had bought a nine-millimeter Smith and Weston pistol about four months before the murder. A 9mm, just like the one that killed Linnell. So they hauled Lorraine in for another interview and confronted her with all this stuff. Did you kill your friend? They asked her. Lorraine seemed offended to the depths of her soul. Of course I didn't kill my friend. She said, I loved my friend. She wasn't going to cop to anything, clearly. But the net was tightening around her anyway. And then finally, several weeks after they sent for them, Lewis Bonner's cell phone records came back, and the verdict was in.

Lewis's phone had pinged in exactly the places it should if he was telling the truth about where he went that day. They followed his route from Palmdale to L.A. to the auto parts shops and back to Lonell's mom's house. The records showed the call from Lennel's landline to his cell at 2.30, a time when they knew he was standing in the middle of an auto zone looking for truck parts,

and that call was the last time anybody heard from Linell. And there were no suspicious calls to any possible accomplices. Lewis was telling the truth. He didn't kill his girlfriend, and he didn't need to spend one more second in jail. The DA dropped the charges, and the two detectives went to the county lockup to tell him he was being released. They expected him to be furious, threaten a lawsuit, yell at them, all of which he'd be 100% justified in doing. But he surprised them by throwing his arms around them in a bear hug. Thank you so much, he said.

And once again, he asked them, find the person who did this to Lennel. For all his many faults as a partner, and he sure as hell had him, Lewis wanted to see Linnell's killer brought to justice. Oh, and by the way, in case he'd been wondering, they did check out Linnell's boyfriend, Ike, too. I mean, obviously, you have to check everybody out in a case like this, but Ike had a cast iron alibi. At the time of the murder, he'd been at a job interview at UC Davis in Sacramento. It was pretty clear by now who the real killer was. Even clearer when the forensic tests came back and revealed Lorraine's DNA on those black latex gloves and a perfect match between her fingerprint and the bloody one they found out the scene. It was time for

the habeas gravis gravis 2.0. Grabus 2, Electric Bugaloo. They got their arrest warrant drawn up and everything, but when they went to slap the cuffs on her, our girl was nowhere to be found. Lorraine had apparently flown the coop, where they had no idea and she hadn't left any helpful little breadcrumbs to tell them the bitch and much to everybody's frustration there it sat for a while for a year in fact until drumroll please America's most wanted got involved hell yeah yes hell yeah john walsh was on the case Not long after they aired this segment about the case, a tipper called in to say they knew where Lorraine was hiding. The bitch was in Belize.

Which is really kind of infuriating, if you ask me, like, how dare you go to a gorgeous subtropical country to hide out from a murder charge? You know, you should have to hide out in, like, Siberia, where you'll be good and miserable. Well, fortunately, she didn't get to be there for long. The FBI worked with the authorities in Belize, and they were slapping on the silver bracelets in no time. And finally, in the summer of 2015, five long years after Linnell Barsox murder, she went on trial. The prosecution's theory was that Lorraine hadn't initially planned to frame Lewis. She most likely shot Linnell shortly after he left to drive back to L.A. Linnell was watching TV while Lorraine worked on her hair, and she probably never even saw it coming. Lorraine picked up

the pillow to use the makeshift silencer, took out her nine-millimeter. and shot her in the head. It killed her instantly. The original plan, prosecutors argued, was to load Linnell's body into the trunk of her own car, along with the bloody towels and bedding that Lorraine had used to try and clean up the crime scene. She wrote that Dear John-type letter to Lewis

to try and make it look like Linnell had just run off with her new boyfriend. She was probably planning to drive out to the desert and dump the body there, hoping it would never be found. But, best laid plans and all that stuff. Yeah, see, the friend who Lewis had driven up to L.A. to go car parts shopping with was actually Lorraine's boyfriend, which is just, I know, like she had a boyfriend, too. The story is all over the place. And as Lorraine was in the process of cleaning up the crime scene, her boyfriend called to tell her that he and Lewis had finished up for the day and Lewis was on his way back. And at this point, Lorraine freaked the fuck out. She realized she didn't have enough time to finish her cleanup and get rid of the body. Now, ironically, she actually needed to worry because Lewis wasn't coming back to the house. He was planning. to spend the night at Linnell's moms, but Lorraine thought he was barreling towards her at 80 miles an hour, about to walk right in on her with Linnell's body, and she came up with an ill-advised, panicky plan B. Frame Lewis for the murder. Wait till he's had time to get back,

then run into the sheriff's station, acting all scared and say you saw him at the murder scene. Foolproof, right? Except not so much, because, you know, places like AutoZone have security cameras, and medical examiners have ways of telling when a victim took their last breath. See, this is why we always say, don't try to frame a specific person for your crime. Unless you're a hundred percent sure, you know exactly where that person is every hour of the day. You're just setting yourself up for failure because all it takes is one stinking security camera or cell phone ping or alibi witness to prove where that person was at the time of the murder and you are capital effed, fucked. Especially if like our girl Lorraine here, you were enough of a potato head to say,

you saw the dude at the scene. Now they know you're lying. And if you're lying, that probably means you're the killer. Hello? I mean, just use your head, dumbass. And by the way, that dear Lewis note was such phoned and nonsense. And I bet if some of y'all saw the twist coming, that's when you saw it. Like, it doesn't have any real emotion in it whatsoever. It reads like she's telling him she's got to run to Costco for a few minutes and she'll be back in an hour. Like, hey, Lewis, so like, I'm leaving you for this other dude because he makes more money than you. Like, that wasn't her at all, right? It was a very, very silly attempt. But despite all the rock solid evidence to the contrary, Lorene's defense was basically to double down on her original story, that Lewis killed

Linnell. It was weak sauce nonsense, and unsurprisingly, the jury didn't buy it. They found Lorraine guilty, and the judge sentenced her to 50 years to life in prison. Two 25 to life terms consecutive. Woo to the who. Because this bitch is scary. I hope she stays right where she is for every minute of those 50 years. And by the way, this is rich. When they first put the grab us on her in Belize. Lorraine didn't have much to say about the case, but she was pissed off. She had a bone to pick at the way she'd been portrayed in the media while she was on the lamb. She was like, they made me sound like a mooch. Oh, wow, how dare? Like, you can call me a murderer, but don't you dare suggest I'm a gold digger? That's just insulting. So that, I think

you'll agree, was a wild one, right? Campers? And we have to thank Katie because she has been sick as a dog and is really kind of still sick as a dog and yet still like, you know, muscled her way up to the mic tonight so that y'all could have an episode. Thank you, baby. I couldn't leave y'all hanging in. Thank you. And you know we'll have another one for you next week, but for now, lock your doors, light your lights, and stay safe until we get together again around the true crime campfire. And as always, we want to send a grateful shout out to a few of our lovely patrons. Thank you so much to Sylvia, Carrie, Jason, Melissa, Allison, Randy with an eye, and Kevin.

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