Unseen - The Halloween Roommate Murders | The Terrifying Case of Lauren, Adriane, & Leslie | UNSEEN

Episode Date: January 18, 2024

“Oh my God, we got attacked!” -- It’s Halloween night, 2004. 911 dispatch receives a distressing call from a woman saying her roommates need help: Lauren Meanza just survived a horrible home invasion that took the lives of her two friends. The hunt for their attacker begins, even going to psychics for potential answers, but nobody suspects that the killer is hiding in plain sight, and Lauren will do everything to stop him and get justice for Adriane & Leslie. External Footage From: "48 Hours (Nightmare In Napa)", "CBS", "Snapped" (S21 E11, ERIC Copple)", "Oxygen", "Jupiter Entertainment", "20/20 (WHAT REMAINS)", "ABC", "Psychic Investigators (SE3 E14)", "Halloween Homicide", "Nextfilm", "Cineflix Productions". Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

This is 911 emergency. What are you reporting? Oh my God. We've got attacked. Who attacked you? Please, I don't know. You don't know how to attack you? Is that your home? Yeah, I don't know what to do. Halloween night, the heart of Napa Valley. 19 years ago.

Three roommates, Lauren, Adrian, and Leslie, just finished handing out candy to the kids in their neighborhood. The roommates have a relaxing Halloween at home, hanging out and watching TV before saying good night. Lauren goes to bed around 11, but she suddenly. Woken up in the dead of night to her dog Chloe barking at the window. Something set off a motion detector outside, causing a light to turn on. Assuming it's a neighborhood cat that set off the sensor in the past, Lauren tries not to worry about it, and she gets Chloe to come back to bed. My reaction is basically to quiet her down, so I, Chloe, it's okay, shh, and told her to lie down again. And then I heard the screaming and cries for help. I knew right away that it was something

awful. Someone else is in the house, and Lauren and her roommates are all in danger. Terrified that Adrian and Leslie are getting attacked, Lauren jumps out of bed and runs to her bedroom door, working up the courage to face whoever's in the house. She steps out of her room, but suddenly she stops in her tracks when she hears footsteps coming down the stairs. I have never, ever felt that terrified, not knowing what to do. I just ran into the backyard. I thought this is a race for me to get to the door. I wouldn't have done. Lauren makes it out the back door and hides. She doesn't know if the intruder heard her go outside or not.

She waits, heart pounding as she wonders if they'll come looking for her. But miraculously, the footsteps don't follow. Lauren thinks she hears the person leaving through a window. She doesn't know where they went, but she braves going back inside the house to see what happened and help her roommates. Lauren runs to the home phone to call the police, but it's not working. She rushes to Adrian and Leslie on the second floor, but nothing could have prepared her. for what she was about to see. I noticed blood on the walls and everything.

It was a horror movie. That's what I thought exactly what I thought when I was up there. This can't be happening. When she gets upstairs, she finds both of her roommates on the floor. Leslie is dead, and Adrian is clinging to life. Lauren doesn't have any time to process the shock,

but she knows she has to do something to try to help Adrian. Terrified, she quickly finds her cell phone, grabs her dog Chloe, and runs to her car to call her. call the police. They tell Lauren to go back in the house. They tell Lauren to go back to the house. She has no idea if the killer is coming after her next, but she turns around and heads

back. Police arrive around 2.15 a.m. shortly after police and paramedics get there, Adrian dies too. The attack took just four minutes, and Lauren is the only one left alive, with the killer vanishing into the Halloween night. In a few minutes' time, my entire life was changed. lost my friends, my roommates, and I'd been left untouched. I asked, what do people in my situation generally do? People don't generally survive in this situation. They're usually killed, too.

February 2004, eight months earlier, Lauren and her friend Adrian and Sonia had found a house to rent together in Napa, California. She really genuinely cared about people and her friends and would do anything for her friends, and that's what I really did admire about her. With the help of Adrian's friend, Lily, and Lily's boyfriend, Eric, the girls moved their things into the house. Shortly after, they met a group of young women who also lived in the neighborhood. One of them was Leslie Mazara. Leslie was very, very outgoing and very spunky. I never met anyone like her. It's warm and southern hospitality, everything, everybody kind of was drawn to her. Leslie's roommates were planning to move out, and Lauren and Adrian invited her to move

in with them. They had an open third bedroom, and she moved in in June. The three young women became close friends, but four months later, their idyllic life is shattered. Police are digging through the horrific scene at the house, searching for any bit of evidence that could help them catch the person who killed Adrian and Leslie, and it's nearly impossible for their friends and family to believe they're gone. The pain is just excruciating. I could not accept that someone wanted to kill my child. Someone hated it. her and wanted her gone. Choice Hotels gets you more of what you value.

Comfort in, it's calling your name. Save on the stay. Oh, and free waffles are yours to claim. Book direct at storesotails.com. Investigators find blood on the blinds where they think the killer broke into the house. They also find zip ties tied together with a rubber band and cigarette butts right outside. None of the roommates smoked. So the attacker might have smoked outside their house, waiting for a while before breaking in.

They don't find a murder weapon, but Leslie and Adrian were both stabbed repeatedly. Police determined that Leslie was likely asleep when she was attacked, and then Adrian ran in, trying to save her friend. It was a struggle up to the very end. She did not go down lightly. She was a fighter. She was a scrappy girl. She would have fought very, very hard, and I hope she heard him. With how violent the attack was, police don't think it was random. They believe the killer likely knew the girls. Lauren was able to escape, but she lost two of her friends over the course of just a few minutes. She was the only other person in the house, and she wants to do all she can to help,

but she didn't see the killer's face, and she's worried he could still be after her. I can only imagine her fear. It must have been just horrible. No one has any idea why Leslie and Adrian were targeted. Police ask around the neighborhood, but because it happened on Halloween night, there were lots of people out in costumes and masks throughout the evening, approaching the different houses in the neighborhood. An intruder could easily sneak around without looking suspicious.

What it does is it turns my world into looking around and having a suspicion about everybody. I was thinking everybody was a suspect. Any of my friends are awful. Investigators look at the same. the girl's close circle. Friends, ex-boyfriends, anyone who might have held a grudge against them for any reason. Leslie was a former beauty queen, and she traveled across the country, meeting and socializing with lots of people. She was also the first one who was attacked, so police wonder if she was the target. They get DNA samples of hundreds of men connected to the girls, their relatives,

friends, neighbors, but none of them match what was found at the scene. They also look at registered sex offenders in the area. Everywhere they turn is a dead end, and it seems like they're not getting any closer to catching who did it. Adrian's mom finds support from Adrian's best friend, Lily, and Lily's husband, Eric. Together, they refuse to give up hope that they'll catch the person who killed them. Somebody would have had to notice a friend of theirs acting strange or had bruises. It doesn't seem like somebody could just walk away from it and be fine. Somebody must have seen something. somebody out there knows something. It's now been months since the attack, and Lauren is still traumatized from what she went through.

She's grieving the loss of her friends, but she also faces criticism and doubts about her own story from others. She's overwhelmed with guilt and questions about how she's still alive when her roommates were both killed. And with no progress in the investigation, she continues to worry that the killer might come back for her. She's constantly looking over her shoulder, wondering if they could be hiding in the shadows. It's hard to go to sleep, and it's hard to be quiet when everything goes quiet and it's dark. That's when everything comes back every night.

It was the weirdest feeling ever. I was so I don't want to touch me. My mom would try to console me a little bit. I'm like, don't touch me. Even though she's been suffering, she also does everything she can to help with the investigation. She thinks through all her past conversations with her friends, trying to think if there might be anyone who would want to hurt them. But she can't think of anything.

and as police eliminate more and more potential suspects without finding any promising leads, it seems like there's no end in sight. Lauren takes matters into her own hands. She has to do something, and she sets up a phone call with two Los Angeles psychics, Marty and Michael Perry. They say they're able to communicate with Adrian and Leslie, and Lauren tells investigators. Desperate for answers, police agreed to work with the psychics to see if they can figure anything out. The psychics make a sketch of the killer, saying they're able to put it together with the help of Adrian

and Leslie. I did ask the girls on the other side to send me an image of the perpetrator. The biggest feeling was the goatee. After the session, they emailed it to me. I remember looking at it and actually looked familiar. Lauren sends a sketch to the police, hoping someone else might recognize it too. They added to the case file, and they schedule an in-person meeting with the psychics. Michael Perry claims to connect with Adrian.

This time, he hears a familiar name. I said to Lauren, who's Lily? It seems like it could be a breakthrough. Lauren thinks of Adrian's best friend, Lily Prudome. Lily, Adrian, Lauren, and Leslie often hung out together, but Lauren has no idea how she could be connected to the murders. Lauren felt just as I did that it was just Adrian's best friend and that it really didn't have any significance other than Adrian was trying to maybe get a message to Lily.

September 2005, nearly a year after the attacks, Halloween is approaching again, and with a killer still on the loose, families in Napa are terrified. Every investigative lead had been followed up, and there were no leads. They could not figure it out. Police were frustrated. Certainly the victim's families were frustrated. People were genuinely afraid that the killer might strike again. September 22nd, police make the decision to reveal to the public, that they found a rare brand of cigarette butts at the scene. Camel Turkish gold. Stores that had them would often only sell one or two packs a week, and the DNA from the ones left at the scene

matched with the killer's blood in the house. The decision was made that they would come out with some of this information to see if that may get somebody to talk. It might put some pressure on the suspect. The decision to reveal the brand of cigarettes to the public pays off, making it seem like police were closing in on a suspect. With the pressure growing, a man turns himself in just five days later. Adrian's mom gets a call from the police with the news.

The police sergeant, he told me that they had made an arrest. My next words were, who was it? And I was not at all prepared for the answer to that question. The man is Eric Cople. I was stunned, and I said, Lily's husband, it's like I'm hearing it, but am I hearing them? thing. I thought of him as part of Adrian's intimate circle of friends, the same circle of friends that had been supporting me through this difficult time. February 2005, seven months before

Eric Koppel turned himself in, he got married to Lily, Adrian's best friend. Adrian was supposed to speak at their wedding, so they asked Adrian's mom to speak in her honor. But now that Eric has been arrested for the murders of Adrian and Leslie, their friends and family can't believe he's been lying to them this whole time, even pretending to offer his support. I was just shaking and I was very upset. When I got off the phone, that's when it really kind of hit me and I lost it. Right away, I was wondering how he could possibly have been overlooked. Eric had not been interviewed by the police, even though he was part of the circle of friends.

He was on a list at one point to be interviewed. I don't recall why it didn't happen. Police finally have the culprit. and he was much closer to home than anyone thought. He also didn't have any criminal record. Investigators find out that Lily and Eric were at a party on Halloween night, and Eric had a lot to drink. He and Lily had a fight,

and she dropped him off at their apartment and went to stay at her parents' place for the night, leaving him alone. He claimed that while he had some memory of leaving his house and taking a knife, he didn't know why he did that. After the attacks, he burned all his clothes, trying to do everything he could to avoid being caught. But Eric smoked outside the house before breaking in,

and saliva from the cigarette butts left at the scene, the blood on the blinds, and Eric's DNA all match. But even though he turned himself in, he didn't reveal why he killed Adrian and Leslie. That is the burning question. Why? What caused him to commit these horrible murders? Throughout the investigation,

police largely focused on Leslie's connection to the killer. They figured she was the target, but they might have been looking in the wrong place. In March of 2004, seven months before the attack, Lily called off her engagement with Eric. He had drinking problems, and she was upset that he refused to get help. It appeared that some people, and possibly Adrian, were telling Lily that she could do better. She shouldn't be any longer involved in this relationship with Eric Koppel, that he wasn't good enough for her or right for her.

Lily seems to come alive when she's with Adrian, and I think he felt threatened. Adrian and Lily had planned a trip to Australia together, and so he was just deathfully afraid of losing her. So his answer was, kill the one that's in the way of my happiness with Lily. Kill the problem. On December 5, 2006, Eric Cobble pleads guilty to two counts of first-degree murder. He accepts a plea deal, and in exchange he doesn't face the possibility of the death penalty. The decision to offer the plea deal was made after, after talking with Adrian and Leslie's families,

who wanted a different punishment for him. We wanted him to suffer. We wanted him to supper every day for a long, long time. At Eric Koppel's sentencing, Adrian's mom, Arlene, gets the chance to speak to him directly. In a powerful statement, she forces him to face the reality of what he's done and how many people he's betrayed.

You knew Adrian. She counted you among her friends. You are a man who violently stabbed to death The best friend of the woman you love You cannot love Lily and bring a knife Into Adrian's home and stab her And stab her again And again

And again While in the coming years The memory of Leslie and of Adrian Will remain clear and shining bright in our hearts I will think of you no more Eric's wife Lily also speaks, offering her support to Adrian and Leslie's families. When she speaks to Eric directly, her statement shocks people in the courtroom, but Adrian's mom still has sympathy for her. My heart goes out to both Arlene and Kathy and to the rest of their families and friends.

Eric, there is nothing in this world that you could do to make me love you less. I told myself that there is no way that I could know what she was going through. There is no way I could put myself in her position. I think that Lily was like another sister to Adrian. She could not have even suspected that her husband was involved with that. Then, Eric Cople speaks. He admits that he was worried his relationship with Lily was falling apart. He even tries to get people to feel for him,

breaking down as he claims to feel intense regret for what he's done. The voice doesn't work. I am a broken man. The words evade me to articulate the depths of my sorrow. I did believe that he was truly remorseful. Those were real tears that he was crying, but not for us. I believe he was crying for himself. Eric Koppel is sentenced to life without parole.

Lily divorces him after he's convicted. Adrian and Leslie's friends and families finally have closure. their killer has been brought to justice, and he will never be able to hurt anyone again. It's a long healing process, but today, Lauren finds hope in her continuing bond with Adrian and Leslie. Experience with the Perry's has given me a faith that after we pass, that we can still have a connection to the ones we've loved in this lifetime. And I tell the girls this every day, like, I'll never forget them. I'll never forget what they had to go through.

During Leslie's life, she was passionate about child abuse prevention, She even raised money to help build safe houses for abused children. In 2010, Calvary Home for Children built the Mazar C cottage, named in honor of Leslie, helping to continue her mission of providing shelter and care for kids in need. Leslie's life speaks to herself. I'm so grateful that I got to be her mom and that she brightened our lives. She was a gift. Leslie and Adrian's memories live on.

Their family and friends continue to think of them every day, spreading the love and care that they showed throughout their lives. This car is Adrian's car, and I haven't even changed the preset radio button. So every time I get in this car and turn on the radio, I feel that she's with me and that the day is going to be a good day. It makes me feel happy to know that as long as I live, Adrian will be loved.