Transcript of In the Dump Truck (PODCAST EXCLUSIVE EPISODE)

In June of 2005, a customer at a gas station in Derry, New Hampshire carried a prepaid cell phone to the counter. They paid for it in cash, and then afterwards they went out to their car and cut open the packaging. Then once they had the phone, they dialed a number to activate it. But when the customer service rep asked for their name, the customer hesitated because the whole reason they'd bought this prepaid phone in the first place was specifically so nobody could trace the calls back to their real identity. But before we get into today's story, if you're a fan of the strange, dark, and mysterious delivered in story format, then you've come to the right place because that's all we do.

So if that's of interest to you, please offer to make the follow button a nice home-cooked meal, but be sure you first douse it with liquid laxative. Okay, let's get into today's story.

A Killer's Revenge. On an afternoon in June of 2005, a 57-year-old truck driver named Jack Reed took a sip of his margarita at a barbecue in a park in Derry, New Hampshire. Now, he usually didn't drink, but today he was celebrating. It was his daughter Megan's high school graduation party. And this was a big deal for Jack.

He'd grown up in the foster care system with nothing, and he'd worked really hard to ensure that his kids were set up for a better life than he had. So he was just really proud of Megan for making the right choices and finishing school. Now he looked over and he saw Megan sitting at a picnic table with her brother, Jack Jr., and also their mother, Virginia. Even though he and Virginia were not together anymore, they were still on good terms, and he was glad the whole family could be there for this special occasion. But then Jack tensed up as he spotted somebody else who was walking across the grass toward them— Megan's boyfriend, Walter.

So Megan and Walter had moved in together recently, and Jack was definitely not thrilled about it. He didn't have anything against Walter in particular, but his daughter was just 18 years old, and he thought that she was definitely too young to be living with a boyfriend. But Jack didn't want to pick a fight about it on a day like this, so instead He actually got up and walked over to Walter and gave him a big friendly hug and said he was glad to see him. Then they both sat down at the table and joined the family's conversation, and as Jack took another sip of his margarita, he actually felt himself relax.

That evening, after the party was over, Jack drove his car home and stopped at a gas station along the way. He parked at the pump, he went inside, and then passed the cashier a few bills for a tank of gas. And also a lottery ticket. Jack was a regular lottery player, and even though he'd never won anything particularly big, he was always hoping that one day he would hit the jackpot and strike it rich. So he put the ticket in his pocket and then went back outside and filled up his car.

Then he got in his car and he drove a few more blocks to his home, which was a trailer parked behind a warehouse on the edge of town. And one big reason Jack chose to live here was because there was plenty of room to park all of his work vehicles. Including a large red and black dump truck. After years of working as a truck driver, Jack had built his own trucking business from the ground up. He did garbage removal and moving and other odd jobs, and he was making a decent living, but he still lived frugally in his rented trailer so he could save up for retirement.

His goal was to save enough so that in a couple of years, once Jack Jr. was done with school, he could leave the cold New Hampshire winters behind and move to sunny, beautiful Las Vegas. He'd gotten the idea a couple of years ago when he'd done a moving job for a local self-made millionaire who was moving from New Hampshire to Vegas. He saw the millionaire as a huge success story, and he believed that if he worked hard enough, or maybe got lucky enough, he could follow in this same path. Now, Jack got out of his car and he walked over to his trailer. He opened up the door and he went inside.

He turned on the lights, and he was just about to sit down to take off his shoes when he heard a noise outside. Immediately, he went to the window and pulled back the curtains, and he looked outside into the the woods behind the property, but he didn't see anything. Still, he felt his heart racing, and he actually had to take a few deep breaths to calm himself down. So almost 2 years ago, there'd been an incident where Jack heard someone creeping around outside his trailer. He'd grabbed his gun and went out to confront them, and he'd seen a man standing at the edge of the woods.

The man had stared right at him and actually called out his name. Jack had actually fired his gun at this man, who then ran away into the woods and never came back. But Jack had never figured out what the encounter was about. As far as he knew, he didn't have any enemies, so it really just didn't make any sense. But again, since this strange guy was never caught, Jack was still very on edge whenever he heard strange noises outside and around his trailer.

Now, as he looked out the window and he felt sure that there was nobody there, Jack closed the curtains and took the lottery ticket out of his pocket. He sat down at the table and he started scratching off the silver foil with a coin. And he was not a winner this time. But it didn't dampen his mood. Next time, he knew, might be his lucky break.

A couple of weeks later, on the morning of Monday, June 27th, Jack climbed up into his dump truck and rolled down the windows. It was already pretty hot outside, and he was on his way to the only job he had lined up for that day, a trash disposal gig that would likely only take a few hours. So he started the truck, and as he pulled out onto the road, his cell phone rang. He answered it, and a man spoke and said his name was Charlie, and that he had heard Jack did some work, you know, hauling stuff away, and that, you know, he had this new barn that really needed to be cleaned out, and could Jack do it? Jack said sure, he could actually do it that afternoon.

And then he grabbed his logbook off the passenger seat, and he flipped to a blank page, and he scribbled down Charlie's name and address, which was in Deerfield, almost 30 miles away. Jack told Charlie he would let him know as soon as he was on the way, and then the two men hung up.

Around 3 PM that afternoon, Jack drove down a very secluded two-lane road in Deerfield. It was sweltering outside, and he was already exhausted and dripping with sweat from his trash disposal gig that morning. He had no idea what to expect going into this barn cleaning job with this guy Charlie, but he was hoping it wouldn't take too long. Jack slowed down as the trees to his right parted and a gravel driveway appeared. He turned onto the driveway, and a few seconds later, he pulled up right outside of a white two-story house with a big barn out back.

Jack parked his dump truck and walked right up to the front door. He rang the doorbell, and a moment later, the door opened. Two days later, on the afternoon of June 29th, Jack's daughter Megan and her boyfriend Walter walked up to the front door of Jack's trailer. Megan noticed that Jack's dump truck was not parked outside, which seemed wrong, and so she immediately felt this knot in her stomach. About an hour earlier, Megan had gotten a call from her mother Virginia saying that Jack had not shown up to a job that morning and he was not answering his phone.

This was unlike him, so Megan had said that she and Walter would just go over to his trailer and make sure he was okay. Now initially, Megan had assumed her dad had just overslept or maybe forgot about the job, But now it looked like he'd actually left for work because the dump truck wasn't there, but never actually made it to the job. But nonetheless, Megan knocked on the trailer door just to be sure her dad really wasn't home, and there was no answer. And so at this point, Megan called her mom to tell her what she had seen and, you know, the fact that her dad wasn't here. And she also told her mom that she was starting to feel pretty worried.

And then a few minutes later, Virginia pulled up in her car. Megan, Walter, and Virginia all just stayed there right at the trailer all afternoon, hoping that maybe Jack would just show up at some point. And the whole time they're calling him over and over again, but it just kept going straight to voicemail. And then finally, around 6:30 PM, when still they had not seen or heard from Jack, they decided it was time to call the police.

On Tuesday, July 5th, So 6 days after Jack was reported missing by his family, Derry police detective Mike Houle pulled into the parking lot of a Target store about an hour's drive south in Saugus, Massachusetts. Houle slowed down and began to sort of slow roll through the rows of cars, keeping an eye out for one particular vehicle. Houle was in charge of Jack's missing persons case, which had not really been going anywhere so far. According to his family, the last time anybody had seen or heard from Jack was actually on June 27th, so 2 days before he was reported missing to the police. But his family could not think of anywhere Jack might have gone or anybody who might want to hurt him.

So initially, Houle had figured that Jack must have just driven off for some time alone and that he would just come home sooner or later. But that morning, he'd gotten another call from Jack's daughter, Megan. She said the family had put up all these missing posters around town for Jack, and somebody had called her and said they actually saw Jack's dump truck at this particular Target in Saugus, more than 40 miles away from Derry. Now, this tip was unique enough that Houle decided he would just drive out and take a look for himself. And now, as he slowly made his way towards the back of this parking lot, he saw it, a red and black dump truck parked near the back corner.

So Houle stopped his car and he walked over to look at this truck, and right away he saw the license plate confirmed this truck was definitely Jack's. When Houle peeked in the driver's side window though, He didn't see anybody inside, but there were flies buzzing around the back of the truck, basically the open section of the dump truck. There was something in there the flies were attracted to, and there was also very clearly a rotten, awful smell wafting out of the back of this truck. And so Houle put on some gloves and he climbed up the side of the dump truck. Now, the actual bed of this dump truck was covered by a tarp, and so Houle grabbed the tarp and he pulled it back.

But he still did not have an unobstructed view because whatever was in the bed was also wrapped in plastic and quite a bit of it. So he pulled out a knife and began cutting through the plastic. Less than an hour later, Detective Houle stood by as workers from the medical examiner's office loaded Jack's body into their van and he was still wrapped up in plastic. Houle really wanted to get a look at Jack's body to figure out how he died. But that would require cutting through all the plastic that he was wrapped in, and Houle knew he needed to leave all that intact for evidentiary purposes.

So he'd just have to wait until the autopsy to find out the cause of death here. But from the way Jack's body had been disposed of, hidden in a parking lot 40 miles from his house, Houle was already guessing that this was, one, a murder, and two, it was carefully planned, probably by somebody that Jack knew. Houle had already found out from the family that Jack had 5 children with 2 different women. And so he figured there could be some hidden tensions between any of them. But he also thought the murder could be tied to Jack's business.

Now, as far as Jack's family knew, everything Jack did with his business was above board. But it's entirely possible that he might have gotten involved with sketchy people or maybe done something that made a client angry that the family didn't know about. Also, I mean, leaving Jack's dead body in the back of his own dump truck definitely seemed like a way to send a message. So once the forensics team had taken photos and swabbed the truck for DNA and fingerprints, Poole pulled on a pair of latex gloves and opened up the driver's side door. There was no blood inside the cabin of the truck, no sign of a weapon, and really nothing that struck him as unusual or helpful.

That is, until he saw the logbook that was tucked into a pocket on the passenger side door. He reached for it, pulled it out, and began to flip through it, and he saw there was a list of all of Jack's appointments along with the names, addresses, and phone numbers of the clients who had hired him. The last job that was recorded in this book was on the morning of June 27th, back in Derry where Jack lived. Now, there were no other jobs noted down for that day, but a couple of pages later on an otherwise blank page, Houle found an entry that Jack seemed to have scribbled down in a rush. It was just an address, 145 North Road, no town listed, and the name was just Charlie for the client.

Houle placed the logbook inside of an evidence bag and he sealed it. And then as he sort of looked around the area, he noticed all the security cameras on light posts all over the parking lot, and there happened to be one that was pointing directly at Jack's truck.

The next day, so Wednesday, July 6th, Houle was back at the precinct in Derry reading over an autopsy report that had just been sent over from the Massachusetts Medical Examiner. The description in the report said that Jack had been severely beaten. He had broken ribs, skull fractures, and a softball-sized hole in the side of his head. His face had been so mangled that they'd actually had to pull Jack's dental records to confirm that it was actually him. Houle thought this level of violence definitely made this murder feel really personal, and it only made him more confident that Jack's killer or killers was somebody who knew him.

Just then, Houle heard a knock at his door, and he looked up as an officer peeked his head into Houle's office and asked him to come take a look at something. So Houle stood up from his desk, and he followed the officer down the hallway to another room where a team of investigators were poring over that security footage from the Target parking lot. Houle watched over their shoulders as the investigators pulled up a specific clip, and he could see from the timestamp in the corner of the screen that this footage was from around 5:30 PM on June 27th. Which was the day of the last job written in Jack's logbook. Once it was up on the screen, Uhl nodded for the investigators to press play, and then he watched as the footage played on screen, and it showed Jack's dump truck pulling into the parking lot, followed closely by a white minivan.

After Jack's truck parked, two people got out of the truck, and unfortunately, it was impossible to identify really anything about these people. They couldn't tell if they were men or women or Man and woman, it was just totally unclear. However, there was one thing that was definitely true about these people, and it was what they were actually doing. They were clearly dumping Jack's body. One of them went around to the back of the dump truck and checked to make sure that tarp was secure, and then they both walked over to the white minivan, got in, and drove away.

And so Houle's mind was racing now because it looked like there were at least 3 people involved in Jack's murder. There were the two people that were just out and about sort of dealing with the truck and then whoever was driving the white minivan. But another unfortunate reality was this footage was so fuzzy that they couldn't even pull the license plate for that minivan. And Hull was naturally pretty frustrated by that. But then the investigator said there was actually one more thing he wanted to show him, and he pulled up another portion of security video.

This one was from the evening of July 4th, which was 7 days after Jack's dump truck was left abandoned in the parking lot. And one day before police, i.e., Houle, found the truck parked in that lot. The investigator told Houle that this footage he was about to see was from a different security camera, which was positioned on the other side of the parking lot from where the dump truck was parked. And then when he hit play, he directed Houle's attention to one particular car pulling into the parking lot. Now, the angle on this car was much closer, so there was a lot more detail visible than in the first video.

And as Houle watched, he saw what clearly was a young woman get out of the passenger seat and walk toward the store. Houle leaned in close and squinted, and he realized he knew this woman because it was Jack's own daughter, Megan. Later that day, Houle walked into an interrogation room in the Derry police station where Megan was waiting for him. When Houle walked in, he made a point to shake her hand and smile you know, acting as friendly and sympathetic as possible. He did not want to let on that he was looking at her as a suspect.

So he didn't mention that they had video of her in the same parking lot where Jack's body was found just a day before they found it. But as they started talking, Megan actually brought it up herself that she happened to have been in the exact same lot that her father was ultimately found in. She said she had been shocked when she found out One, that her father was dead, of course, but also that he was dumped in that Target lot. She had been there recently. She said her boyfriend Walter's sister lived in Saugus and they had visited her for the 4th of July in an attempt to get their mind off their father's disappearance because at the time, you know, he had not been found yet.

Megan said they had unexpectedly decided to spend the night there, so they had driven to the nearest Target to get a contacts case. And when she said that, she just shook her head and said she couldn't believe her dad had basically been right there. She was so close to him. Poole had to admit this story did not sound totally crazy. After all, in the security video, Megan didn't go anywhere near the actual part of the lot where Jack's truck was parked.

But still, he had a hard time believing that this was just one big coincidence, especially because when he was reviewing what Megan had told the police when she had first reported her father missing, he realized that she had said she last saw her dad on the night of Monday, June 27th, when she and her boyfriend Walter had gone to his place to pick up an air conditioner. But now, Houle knew that was impossible because the security video showed that Jack was already dead in the parking lot on the night of June 27th. So, during this interview with Megan, Houle asked Megan again, "When was the last time you saw your father?" And once again, without missing a beat, she said it was the night of June 27th. Hull asked her if she was positive about the date, and she said, "Yes, absolutely." So, without tipping his hand that he felt like, for sure, Megan was lying here, Hull let her go and immediately called in her boyfriend, Walter, who had been waiting in the hallway. According to Megan, Walter was the one who actually drove her to that Target in Saugus.

Hull wanted to question the couple separately so he could see if there were any contradictions in their stories. But when he spoke to Walter, Walter repeated the exact same things Megan had said about why they were in the area and why they went to that Target to get a contacts case. Walter also included the detail about the last time they saw Jack being the night of the 27th. So basically Walter and Megan's stories are the same. But to Houle, the only thing he thought when he heard this consistency is that clearly what's happened here is Megan and Walter have rehearsed this story because it is their alibi.

But they don't realize there was timestamped security footage that would contradict it.

The following afternoon, Poole sat at his desk combing through a copy of Jack's phone records. He'd sent officers out that morning to interview all of Megan's family and friends to see if they knew anything that could really help them pin the blame on Megan, and they quickly learned that Megan and Walter had moved in together recently, and Jack did not approve. So Poole began to wonder, you know, maybe the young couple might have killed Jack so he would stay out of their way. Now, Megan, at some point here, found out from her friends who were being spoken to that, clearly, Megan was being investigated. And Megan had already called Houle to revise her testimony.

She was now claiming that actually the last time she saw her dad was on the night of the 26th, not the 27th. But Houle didn't buy that she and Walter had both made the same mistake about the date. They both seemed really confident when they said 27th. And so Houle was hoping that if he could just retrace Jack's steps on the day of his death, he'd find some proof that Megan and Walter were somehow involved. Houle had already called around to check on the last scheduled job in Jack's logbook, which was on the morning of June 27th.

And that client had confirmed that Jack was definitely there, and security footage from the local dump had shown Jack dropping off the trash afterwards around 2 PM. But that left about a 3-hour gap on the afternoon of June 27th where Jack's whereabouts were unaccounted for. And really, Jack had to have been killed sometime in that window. So now, Houle hoped that Jack's phone records might help him figure out where Jack went after leaving the dump that afternoon. Houle had been able to match most of the phone numbers that Jack dialed or received calls from to contacts in Jack's logbook, except for one.

On the morning of June 27th, he had gotten a call from a number that wasn't anywhere in his contacts list. And at 2:07 that afternoon, while Jack was finishing up at the dump and just a few hours before his dead body was left in a Target parking lot, he'd gotten a second call from that same number. And so now, Houle called that number, but it went straight to voicemail. So he called the cell provider and asked them to look up who this number belonged to. And he found out it was registered to a man named Charlie Woz.

And suddenly something clicked in Houle's mind. And so he reached over and he grabbed Jack's logbook and he flipped to the page where Jack had scribbled down that address, 145 North Road, and also the name Charlie. This Charlie may be the same Charlie who called from that unknown number. And also, this Charlie may have been the last person to see Jack alive. Or maybe Charlie was the one who killed him.

The cell provider employee also told Houle that that number came from a prepaid phone, the kind you can buy at a convenience store and load minutes onto without signing up for a long-term contract, and that it had been activated on June 19th, just 8 days before Jack's murder. Houle asked the worker to send over a full copy of the prepaid phone call's records, and then they hung up. Then Houle logged on to the police database and looked up the name Charlie Waz, but he didn't find anything. No criminal records or driver's licenses or car registrations. And so Houle had a feeling that this had to be a fake name, that there was no Charlie Wass.

And what seemed to confirm that even further was when he looked up that address, the 145 North Road that was in the book next to the word Charlie, there was no Charlie affiliated with that property at all. The owner of 145 North Road was somebody called Michael Connors. But that name didn't mean anything to Houle, and it certainly wasn't Charlie. So, Houle stood up from his desk and he grabbed his car keys. It was time to go talk with whoever actually lived at 145 North Road.

Less than an hour later, Detective Houle pulled onto a gravel driveway at 145 North Road. The address of the secluded farm scribbled in Jack Reed's logbook. He parked his car and he walked up to the big white house and he rang the doorbell. And the middle-aged man who answered the door seemed very calm and composed until Houle showed him his badge. Then the man started acting really jumpy.

As they stood in the doorway, Houle asked the man if he was Michael Connors, and the man nodded and said yes. Houle asked if he knew a man named Jack Reed, And Michael quickly said no. And when Houle asked why his address was in Jack Reed's logbook, Michael stammered out that he didn't know. It seemed fairly obvious to Houle already that Michael clearly knew more than he was admitting to. And so he asked Michael where he'd been on the afternoon of June 27th.

And Michael, very nervously and very quickly, said that he had spent all day doing repair work at a friend's lake house 30 miles away, and he didn't get home until late that night. And then he gave Houle the names of a few other contractors who were also working on these repairs, who could verify his alibi. So Houle, without giving off how suspicious he felt of this guy, wrote down the contractors' names and contact information. And then, as calm as could be, he asked Michael if he could take a look around, both inside his house and outside. Michael, who looked pretty resigned at this point, nodded and said yes, and then he stepped aside.

And so Houle walked into the house and began walking from room to room. But he didn't see any blood or anything really obviously suspicious. But then he went outside and he found this muddy path that led over to the barn, which was only a short distance from the main house. And when he reached the barn, he opened up the heavy wooden door and sunlight flooded in. Poole stepped inside and right away he was struck by how neat it was in here.

He began looking behind the hay bales and he shined his flashlights in the corners and he bent down to examine the dirt and the straw on the ground, but It was like the barn was spotless, almost like the barn had recently been cleaned really thoroughly. When Houle was done in the barn, he went outside and walked back towards the main house. And as he did, he saw Michael standing by the back door staring right at him like he had been really watching him closely as he was over at the barn. And so Houle walked over to Michael and very calmly he asked him one last question. Did he know anyone named Megan Reed?

And Michael said no, but the way he said it was noticeably less anxious, as if for really the first time he was telling the truth here. After that, as Houle walked back to his car to leave, he thought that even though he hadn't found any hard evidence at this farm, Michael's weird behavior seemed to be saying a lot.

Later that day, Houle hung up the phone in his office feeling very frustrated. He called every single one of those contractors who Michael had given him, and they had all confirmed his alibi. Michael had been doing repairs at his friend's house, you know, 30 miles away at the time of Jack's death. So Houle figured that, you know, Michael couldn't have been directly involved in the murder, but based on his very suspicious behavior, it seemed like he probably knew something had happened on his property, maybe while he was away. And this gave Houle something to work with because it could mean that at least one of Jack's 3 or more killers was close enough with Michael that Michael was willing to lie to protect them.

But that was about all he had to work with. There was no obvious link between Michael Connors and Jack's daughter Megan and her boyfriend Walter, who were still really his only real suspects. And so he was starting to think that maybe he'd been looking in the wrong direction and that Megan and Walter maybe weren't involved after all. It was still only a few days into the investigation and there were plenty of other potential suspects to dig into, like Jack's ex-partners and his adult children from his first relationship and all the other clients in his logbook. But just then, Houle's fax machine whirred to life.

The cell provider was finally sending over the call records from Charlie's prepaid phone. Once it was done printing, Houle ripped the sheet out of the machine and began looking over the call log. The phone had only been activated a week before Jack's murder, and it hadn't been used at all since the evening Jack was killed. And every single call that had been made or received on that phone was to Jack's number, except for one. And when Houle looked into the owner of that one other number, everything about the case began to fall into place.

Based on those phone records, as well as interviews with the various suspects, this is what police believe happened to Jack Reed on June 27th, 2005.

That afternoon, while Jack's dump truck was pulling into the gravel driveway at 145 North Road, two of Jack's killers were inside of that house waiting for him. One of them was sitting on the couch nervously tapping their feet, and then that killer looked up and saw their accomplice staring right at them, looking very annoyed, like stop tapping your feet. And so they did. But just then, the doorbell rang. The calmer of the two killers walked over to answer it while the, the more nervous one stayed on the couch.

And the nervous one, they listened as the door opened and they could hear the sound of their accomplice greeting Jack. And then a few seconds later, Jack walked into the living room. And the nervous killer, when they saw Jack, they kind of jumped to their feet and tried to act natural, but very likely they were acting incredibly nervous. But after a sort of awkward conversation between all three of them, they left the main house and they walked down that dirt path towards the barn. As they walked, the killer, who'd been very nervous, sort of hung back, walking a few steps behind Jack.

And then as they got close to the barn, their heart began to pound. I mean, they'd rehearsed this a dozen times and they knew exactly what they had to do, but Actually doing it was going to be the hard part. Then the doors to the barn opened up, and inside, Jack would've seen there were two more people waiting for him. But before Jack could react, the nervous killer leapt forward and tackled Jack to the ground. And then a second later, the nervous killer heard a loud thump and looked up to see one of their accomplices standing above them holding a hammer that was now dripping with blood.

The nervous killer climbed to their feet and looked down at Jack, who was now lying on the floor of the barn with a gaping hole in the side of his skull. It was so gruesome that the nervous killer had to go outside and vomit. And then when they came back inside, the other 3 had unrolled this big piece of plastic on the floor of the barn, and they were placing Jack's body in the center of it. Blood was still pouring out of his head, pooling into this big red puddle on the plastic. I mean, it was so awful.

Then one of the killers grabbed the bloody hammer and said that if they could just stop Jack's heart, it would stop the bleeding. And so they raised the hammer and began pounding on Jack's chest. And after that, the bleeding did slow down, and the 4 killers worked together to wrap Jack's body in the plastic. Then, once he was all wrapped up, they carried him outside and loaded his body into the back of his own dump truck. The killer who had first answered the door, the calmer of the killers, got in the driver's seat of the dump truck.

And the nervous killer, the one who had been tapping their foot, the one who had initially tackled Jack to the ground, they climbed into the passenger seat. The other two, the ones who had been waiting in the barn, climbed into a minivan, and they followed behind them as they drove all the way across state lines to Saugus, Massachusetts, more than an hour away. When they finally got to Saugus, they pulled into the first major parking lot they came across, a Target store. They parked the dump truck near the back of the lot, and then when they got out, the nervous killer double-checked the tarp to make sure it was secure, and then they, along with their calmer accomplice, walked across the lot to the white minivan, and they climbed inside. After that, all four killers drove all the way back to New Hampshire to clean up the barn.

Because the farm's owner, Michael Connors, expected it to be left in perfect condition. Now, Michael Connors, the owner of the barn, was not directly involved in the murder scheme. However, he did know that the mastermind of the murder was going to be using his property while he was gone. However, he would testify that he did not know what they were doing and just asked that they keep it clean when he got back. Ultimately, the reason he allowed his property to be used at all is because he was doing a favor to the mastermind of the murder, who was his longtime friend and business partner, and also the very same self-made Las Vegas millionaire that Jack Reed himself had viewed as this big success story whose path in life Jack was hoping to emulate.

The millionaire's name was John Brooks, and he believed that when Jack had helped him move— it was a job he had done for him a few years back— that Jack, during that move, had stolen some of his motorcycles and jewelry. Now, there was no evidence to actually back this up, but John Brooks was convinced. And he held a grudge. So in retaliation, a few months after the move, Brooks had sent his son Jesse to Jack's home to scare him. That's who Jack had spotted in the middle of the night on his property almost 2 years ago, the strange prowler who had literally called out to Jack by name.

But when Jack came outside to confront him and literally fired a gun at Jesse, Jesse and his dad did not stop what they were doing. Instead, Brooks only got angrier, and he vowed to get revenge. So he'd sent 4 people out to New Hampshire to kill Jack. It was his son Jesse, Jesse's friend Michael Benton, who was not the same as the Michael who owned the farm, and the 2 other men who were named Joseph Vrooman and Robin Knight. All 5 men were eventually convicted of taking part in the murder.

John Brooks was sentenced to life in prison without the possibility of parole, Robin Knight was also sentenced to life. Michael Benton, not Michael Connors, the owner of the barn, so Michael Benton, got 33 years to life. Joseph Vrooman was sentenced to between 17 and 35 years, and Jesse Brooks was sentenced to 15 to 30 years. He was released on parole in 2023.

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.

The Mr. Ballen Podcast: Strange, Dark, and Mysterious Stories is hosted and executive produced by me, Mr. Ballen. Our head of writing is Evan Allen, produced by Jeremy Bone. This episode was written by Kate Gallagher, research and fact-checking by Shelley Xu, Samantha Van Hoos, Evan Beamer, Abigail Shumway, and Camille Callahan. Research and fact-checking supervision by Stephen Ear. Audio editing and post-produced by Whit Lacascio and Cole Lacascio.

Additional audio editing by Jordan Stidham. Production coordination by Samantha Collins. Production support by Antonio Manada and Delaina Corley. Artwork by Jessica Clogston Kiner. Theme song called Something Wicked by Ross Bugden.

Thank you for listening to the Mr. Ballen Podcast. And just a reminder, every new and exclusive episode we put out on the Mr. Ballen Podcast, you can also now watch on the Mr. Ballen YouTube channel that very same day. And trust me, some of these stories you truly have to see to believe. Again, my YouTube channel is just called Mr. Ballen. If you want to listen to episodes one week early and ad-free, you can subscribe to SiriusXM Podcast on Apple Podcasts, or visit SiriusXM.com/podcastplus to listen with Spotify or another app of your choice.

So that's gonna do it. I really appreciate your support. Until next time, see ya.