Transcript of Life is a Circus (PODCAST EXCLUSIVE EPISODE)

Hello, fans of the Strange, Dark, and mysterious. I'm here today to tell you all about what it actually means now that we've moved over to the Serious XM family. Big picture, it means we are going to make more content for you. Right now, you get one YouTube video a week on Saturday. Well, what we're going to do now is we're going to have the Saturday upload be the same, but then also the Mr. Balin podcast. Well, we've begun already filming those episodes like a YouTube video. So that's a second piece of content every week. Then there's other shows that you guys don't even know about yet, which means on any given week, you could have up to four new video pieces of content on the Mr. Ballen channel. And also all these pieces of content will double as podcasts as well. This new content schedule is going to start early next year. Also, there's one other thing I want to clarify, which is the state of Mr. Balin's Medical mysteries and redacted. Those shows were created in collaboration with Wundry, but now we're partnered with Sirius, and so We're not going to be making any new episodes of either of those shows.

For now, if you want to hear my podcast episodes one week early and ad-free, make sure to subscribe to SiriusXM podcast plus on Apple podcasts or visit siriusxm. Com/podcastplus to listen with Spotify or another app of your choice. Keep on the lookout for more announcements in the coming weeks. Thank you. On a cold evening in early February of 2010, a group of friends gathered around the table at a restaurant in a French ski resort. They had spent their whole day out on the slope skiing and snowboarding, and they were now warming up by the fire with some warm drinks. Just then, one of their cell phones buzzed, and when this person looked down at their phone, they immediately frowned. Then, they excused themselves from the group and stepped away to go talk. When this person came back from that conversation, they were visibly pale and their hands were shaking. And so the others who noticed this, they asked them what was wrong. But this person just shook their head, grabbed their coat, and said they had to leave right now. Someone they cared deeply about needed their help. But before we get into that story, if you're a fan of the Strange, dark, and mysterious delivered in story format, then you come to the right show because that's all we do.

So if that's of interest to you, please sneak into the Follow Button's house and replace their foam in their mattress with rocks. Okay, let's get into today's story. On the afternoon of Saturday, February sixth, 2010, 61-year-old Alan Leylou set up the ironing board behind the couch in the living room of a little house outside the town of Chartret, in northern France. From the kitchen, he could smell the beef Bourguignonne simmering on the stove. But Alan and the 37-year-old woman who was cooking the beef Bourguignonne We're not talking. The woman's name was Alexandra Nicola, and Alan had actually bought this house for her and her 10-year-old daughter. Alexandra used to be Alan's assistant, but over the years, they had developed a really close relationship that was much more like father to daughter. Now, Alexandra had not worked for Alan in a number of years, but they remained close. And also, remember, Alan literally bought her this house. And so as a result of this bond they had, Alan found himself visiting her quite a bit at this house, helping out where he could, and he also paid for her car and also for their vacations. And Alan could afford to be this generous because he was a very successful, high-powered producer of circus shows, which were a huge moneymaker in France.

Lots of companies booked circus shows for end-of-the-year parties for their employees, and Alan had lots of major contracts. And so as a result, Alan's office was in this fancy chateau in the countryside, and His wife actually lived in this luxury ski town near the Swiss border, and Alan was constantly traveling all over Europe for work. But this life could also be a grind. Just in the past 24 hours, Alan had traveled more than 1,200 meeting with potential clients and scouting new performers. So he put a lot of value on the time where he could escape to Alexander's house, where he could recharge in the quiet of the suburbs, and obviously spend time with somebody he cared a lot about. Now, Alan knew all of his friends and coworkers thought that he and Alexander were blatantly having an affair here, and he was sure that's what his own wife assumed, too. And this was fair because after all, Alan did have lots of extramarital relationships. He also engaged with sex workers all the time, and he really didn't even try to hide any of it. He and his wife, Elizabeth, they lived in separate homes, and they had this understanding that she can have this life and he can have this life in exchange.

However, Alan's relationship with Alexandra really was different. It had always been platonic. They'd never even kissed or held hands. Alan had no kids of his own, and he genuinely enjoyed playing the of doting father and grandfather to Alexandra and her daughter, respectively. But now they were in this big fight, and Alan was anxious to repair it. Alexandra's daughter was out of the house for the weekend, so he and Alexandra had planned to have this nice dinner tonight before Alan had to head out again on business on Sunday afternoon. But Alan, somewhat stupidly, had brought up Alexander's past, and had ended up getting into this horrible fight and just continued to yell at each other ever since. Alexander was very defensive about her troubled history. When she was a young woman, she had moved to Paris, and she had fallen in love, and she had had a baby, but the baby had tragically died, and her relationship with her love had fallen apart. And so she had spiraled into very self-destructive behavior. By the time Alan finally met her in 2002, so this is eight years before they were in this house having this big fight, Alexander was really struggling.

By this point, she had a two-year-old daughter, and she was really struggling to provide for her because all she could muster in terms of work was this combination of minimum wage jobs and side hustles. And so when Alan had hired her as his full-time secretary, it had completely transformed her life. But deep down, sometimes she seemed more resentful of Alan's power than grateful for his help. It's like he had total control over her well-being, and she didn't necessarily like that. And so with that as context, Alan left the ironing board and walked into the kitchen, hoping that Alexandra had cooled down enough that they could actually have a real conversation here. And so once he was in the kitchen, he looked over at Alexandra and couldn't really tell where she was at. And then he turned, opened up the fridge, and just stared inside of it, not really looking for any food or drink or anything. He was just hoping that Alexander would say something to him. And to his relief, Alexander did turn around and playfully swung her dish towel at him, telling him that he had to wait for dinner. She didn't seem mad at him anymore, so Alan felt very relieved, and he he smiled and closed the fridge, and then he told her to come sit with him and have some wine while they waited for the laundry to dry so she could iron it.

A few minutes later, they both sat down on the sofa with their wine glasses, and Alexandra asked Alan how business was going. He told her it was good, which technically it was. His company was on track to bring in around €4 million that year, which is the equivalent of about €5 million. But despite how things looked on paper, Alan was pretty stressed. He made the majority of his money through contracts with companies, but he was not the only person competing for those lucrative contracts. His number one competitor was another circus owner whose name was Michel Delarueil. And recently, Michel had been beating Alan on one contract after another. And it was starting to feel to Alan Michel was actually targeting Alan's contracts, trying to steal them from him rather than trying to cultivate his own clients. Alan told Alexandra that on Monday, he had a very important meeting in Vichy, which is a city in central France, about a four-hour drive south of Alexander's house. At this meeting, Alan was hoping to win a big contract as long as Michelle didn't steal it out from under him. Alexandra put her hand on Alan's arm and told him, Don't worry.

She said she was sure his meeting on Monday would be a huge success and they could celebrate in a few weeks on the ski trip that he had booked for the two of them and her daughter. Then she put down her now empty wine glass and went to go do the laundry. As Alexandra disappeared into the back of the house, Alan just sat by himself for a minute. He was looking forward to the vacation that she had mentioned, in part because Alexandra had been a lot busier lately with her new boyfriend, a 42-year-old IT engineer from Paris named Yves with Bernard. Now, Alan and Eve got along just fine, but he could tell that Alexander and Eve were getting pretty serious. They might even get married. Alan couldn't help but worry that eventually, if that happened, Yves Steve might start to resent him for stepping in as this paternal figure in Alexander's life, that perhaps he would come off as being overbearing. But he was not going to let that fear wreck the evening. So as Alexander came back now with the laundry he picked up a book from the coffee table, and took the last sip of his wine.

The rest of the weekend passed by quickly, and by Sunday afternoon, Alan was back in his car, headed back out of town. But what no one would realize until much later was there was actually a second car following closely behind him. The following day, on the morning of Monday, February eighth, Alan And Lillou's wife, Elizabeth, was drinking a coffee inside her home in the mountains when her phone rang. She picked it up and she heard the voice of Alan's assistant, Sylvie. Then Sylvie sounded very worried. And she said she was calling to see if Elizabeth had heard from her husband recently. And this was pretty strange because Alan was not the type of person to just disappear from work without telling his secretary. So Elizabeth told Sylvie that no, she hadn't heard from Alan in a few days. And then she asked Sylvie, Why? What's going on here? And as Elizabeth listened to Sylvie's answer, she felt herself growing really nervous. Because apparently, Alan had this very important meeting in Vichy that morning, but he had not shown up for it. In fact, he'd never even checked into the hotel in Vichy where he was supposed to be staying.

Sylvie said she had already reached out to several of Alan's friends and business contacts, but nobody had heard from him, and he was not answering the repeated phone phone calls to both of his cell phones, which appeared to be turned off. None of this made any sense to Elizabeth. Alan was famous for spending entire days on his various phones. She couldn't even recall a time when he'd been unreachable, even briefly. So Elizabeth told Sylvie she was glad she called, but she would take it from here. Then Elizabeth hung up the phone with Sylvie and called the police. A week and a half later, on February 19th, a young police officer knocked on the front door of a little house outside the town of Chartret, in northern France. Now, up until this point, Alan's case had been treated as a simple missing person's case, with the local police in Alan's wife's hometown handling the inquiry, which was pretty basic. But now enough time had passed without Alan being found and no evidence coming in that the original report had been kicked over to the crime division because they were thinking this could potentially be a kidnapping or something worse.

This young officer was here at this home because it was the last place Alan was known to be before he went missing. The door of the home opened and a thin blonde woman looked out. The officer asked her if her name was Alexandra Nicola, and she said yes. When he explained her why he was there, Alexandra looked immediately concerned and invited him inside. And as she led him into her living room and offered him a seat on her couch, the officer looked around, taking stock of the space. It was clean but a bit cluttered, with toys that appeared to belong to a young girl scattered about. The officer scanned for any signs of a physical fight or violence of some kind, like damage to the walls or the furniture, but there was nothing that stood out, nothing concerning. Alexandra began asking the officer pretty anxiously all these questions about what was going on with Alan. Was he hurt? Was he in some danger? What do you know? But the young officer just shook his head and said, for now, they really didn't know much. He was just here to try to build a timeline of Alan's last known movements.

And so speaking of that, he asked Alexandra to please walk him through what she remembered about her last interaction with Alan. The officer took careful notes as Alexandra began to rattle off all the details she could remember. She He said that Alan was like a surrogate father to her, and he had come over on the evening of Friday, February fifth. He had been there on Friday, also on Saturday and Sunday, and then he had taken off on that Sunday because he had to go to Vichy for this big meeting on Monday. She told the officer that after he left for that meeting, she hadn't heard from him, but that was pretty typical. She said their relationship was not remotely romantic. It really was platonic. And he didn't always check in the way a spouse would. This is more like really close friends. The officer nodded while he wrote down what she said. Alexandra seemed very helpful and appropriately worried, but he was suspicious of the idea that she and Alan were not romantically involved at all. So before he left, he asked to see the rest of her house, in part, just to see what her reaction would be.

If she said no or got defensive, he would probe a bit more deeply. But she immediately agreed, and she actually took him all around the house, showing him anywhere he wanted to go. And what he found is the rest of the house seemed just as normal as the living room and the entryway. She eventually brought the officer back to the door and promised him she would call if Alan reached out. And so after leaving Alexandra's house, to be thorough, the officer actually went door to door up and down Alexandra Street, asking her neighbors what they remembered about that particular weekend and over the past several days, seeing if there was anything that contradicted what Alexandra had said. But everybody, more or less, confirmed Alexander's story. Alan was indeed a regular visitor in the neighborhood, and several people did remember seeing him on the weekend in question and said that really nothing had seemed off. So eventually, the officer just left and went back to the station, and when he got there, he wrote a report highlighting Alan's last known destination of Vichy. Over the next week, police in Vichy, as well as in the ski town where Alan's wife lived, followed up on the loose threads of the investigation.

They poured over Alan's cell phone history and his bank account and credit card transactions, which all showed no activity after he left Alexander's house on February seventh. They also spoke to his business connections and his friends, but no one had heard anything. And they even put in a request to the car company, Audi, for the GPS data that was stored in Alan's car, which was an Audi Q7. Now, the investigators knew it was entirely possible that Alan had chosen to disappear. I mean, he was very wealthy. He had lots of connections. That was a possibility that he had basically chosen to be gone. And if that was the case, it would be pretty difficult to find him. However, it was a lot harder to hide a car that logged all of its travel data. And so whether Alan's disappearance was voluntary, accidental, or the result of foul play, the police knew finding his Audi was likely the best hope they had of knowing where to even look for Alan. On February 26th, 2010, so 19 days since Alan was reported missing, a detective named Pierre Martin stood in a secure impound lot in the city of Orléans, France, looking at Alan's gray Audi Q7.

The GPS data that police had requested from Audi had come back a few days earlier, and it had led detectives to a surprising place. So again, the last place where Alan was known to have been before he vanished was leaving the home of his surrogate daughter, Alexander Nikola, near Chartres, France, and heading to Vichy, France, for a business meeting, but his Audi had not been found in Chartres or Vichy. Instead, it had been discovered in the parking lot of a train station in Orléans, which was in between those two cities. And so to the police, it looked like he had gotten halfway to his destination and just stopped. Now, when they found this car, the first thing they did is they just put it under surveillance for two days to see if maybe Alan or somebody else would return to it. For context, The parking lot where this car was was in a pretty rough area where violent crime and sex work were pretty common. So I mean, any number of people could potentially break into this car or who knows what. It just seemed like a seedy area where something It might happen here if we keep watching.

But nobody had shown up. So finally, they just towed the car to the impound lot for forensic technicians to process it and look for evidence. And Detective Marton was here to watch that process. The forensic techs circled the vehicle and began taking photos of the outside and also dusting for fingerprints. There was no visible damage anywhere on the outside of the car, and there were no traces of any effort to try to break into the car. Plus, Alan's briefcase and luggage were clearly still inside the car, which meant the fact the car was found where it was was likely not a product of a robbery. This didn't seem like somebody just stole his car. It's here, and it has nothing to do with Alan's disappearance. It seems like how this car got here is connected in some way to what happened to Alan. And going down that path, it seemed more and more likely that what happened to Alan probably fell into the category of foul play. However, when the technicians opened up the car doors and began dusting for prints inside, the upholstery was disappointingly clean, which doesn't exactly enhance the idea that foul play happened here.

It just seems like, what's going on? But after a few minutes, after thoroughly scanning the inside of the car, one of the techs pushed the button near the driver's side that opened up the trunk. And then after it was open, Detective Martin walked around to the back to look inside and see what was in there. And what he saw was this bulky object wrapped in a pink sheet. Right away, Martin had this sinking feeling in his chest as one of the techs reached forward with a gloved hand and pulled the sheet back. And pretty much immediately, Martin's suspicions were confirmed. Underneath that pink sheet was a body, a man's body, fully clothed and curled in the fetal position. There was no doubt this was Alan Lillou, but there was no visible blood or wounds or bruises anywhere on his body, and there was no blood in the trunk. When Detective Marton reached in to try to move Alan's body to further examine him, he found his body was already incredibly rigid with rigor mortis. The coroner told Martin that she would hopefully have some answers for him after she did the autopsy. The weather over the past few weeks had been pretty cold, which was good for evidence collection because it basically meant the trunk had acted like a refrigerator and preserved Alan's soft tissue.

As the coroner wheeled the body away, Marton just stood there staring at the now empty trunk. He had no theories about when or why or even how Alan had died. All he knew was that this was now officially a murder investigation. Detective Marton returned to his office at the police station and got to work. Since Alan's body was found in early on, he was now in charge of the murder investigation. His first step was to review all the witness statements and other evidence that had already been gathered by the other departments. Right away, the picture they painted told Marton that this was going to be a very complex investigation with lots of suspects and multiple locations. Alan was a workaholic who was always on the move, and he had no apparent connection to the city of Orléans, where he had ended up. In fact, he rarely seemed to spend more than a few days in the same place. He didn't live with his wife. Instead, he seemed to bounce between his office and a series of hotels, with stops at the home of a woman named Alexandra Nicola in between. According to reports, Alexandra had been interviewed, and she said that Alan was at her house the weekend before he disappeared.

And so this made her the last person to see Alan alive, which in Marton's mind, clearly made her a suspect right off the bat. However, Alexandra's story about Alan leaving her house on Sunday, February sixth, matched up with the data Marton had from Alan's car, cell phone, and credit card records, which all showed that Alan really did leave her house and went to Orléans on that day, and then, for reasons unknown, stopped communicating or spending money. Maybe that was the day he was killed. Right off the bat, like the police officer who originally visited Alexandra and took down her original story, Detective Marton found it pretty hard to believe that her relationship with Alan was not romantic. It just seemed like based on how frequently they apparently saw each other and the fact that Alan was buying her things and bought her house and paid for vacations and things like that, it just seemed like there was more to the story than what he had been told. But even though that did totally cast some level of suspicion on Alexandra. There was also just the logical side of it for Detective Morton, which is like, okay, the size difference between Alan and Alexandra was stark.

I mean, Alan was 240 pounds, a really big guy, and Alexandra was just very small and petite. Now, is it impossible for her to kill him and put him in the trunk of the car in Orléans? No. But it just makes it unlikely. And so that's just floating in the background of Detective Martin's mind. But for now, what Martin found himself much more interested in was some of the other information that Alan's business associates and wife had supplied. First off, Alan apparently had lots of affairs with lots of women. And so that meant every one of those women, and any husbands or boyfriends or other romantic partners of any kind connected to them, were also suspects. It also meant that Alan's wife, Elizabeth, had a motive to want her husband dead. I mean, Basically, he's cheating on her openly all the time. That's got to be motivation for her to do something to him. Now, Marton didn't think that Elizabeth literally would have done the killing herself because she was actually 400 miles away at her home when her husband died, but she certainly had the financial means to hire a hitman. And the second thing that Detective Marton got from the associates and from Alan's wife was Alan's business dealings were both very high stakes and and very ugly.

Alan's employees and colleagues clearly respected him, but they also described him as a very tough boss and a ruthless businessperson. He could be very loud and abrasive, and he had already made his fair share of enemies in the circus business, which was already known to be a cutthroat industry where a lot of money was flying around. And so because Marton had been handed this murder investigation, and really there's an overwhelming number of people that could have been involved here, instead of just not being sure where to start, Marton just assembled a team of his very best deputies, and they set to work, literally re-interviewing everybody. And from that, making a list of suspects that they deemed were appropriate. Three weeks later, on March 17th, Detective Martin walked into an interrogation room in the Orléans police station, and he sat down crossed from a relatively fit-looking 50-year-old man who was waiting for him quietly and apparently very calmly. The man's name was Michel Delarueil, and he was Alan's biggest rival in the circus business. He was also, at this very moment, Detective Marton's number one suspect in this murder. Marton and his team had spent the last few weeks conducting dozens and dozens of interviews, and Michel's name had come up more times than anybody else's.

And this was because immediately And after Alan disappeared, Michel had begun contacting Alan's clients, trying to get them to all sign new contracts with him. Sort of a pretty cutthroat and cold thing to do. And Detective Marton had done the math on these contracts Michel was going for, and they added up to the equivalent of millions of dollars, which in the detective's mind was a very compelling motive for murder. Maybe Michelle killed this guy specifically to gobble up these contracts. And not only that, But the coroner had, by this point, come back with Alan's cause of death. He had been strangled using some ligature, like a rope or a belt, and it likely took between five and maybe 10 minutes for Alan to actually be strangled to death. So the idea is someone's actively strangling him for that long. That is a long time to be right there on top of somebody killing someone. And then the scratches that were found on Alan's legs suggested that his body had been lifted into the trunk after he was already dead. So the death struggle, the actual strangling, clearly took place outside of the trunk. And so all that meant whoever killed Alan had to be pretty strong.

And looking at Michel now, Detective Martin thought that He did fit the description. He seemed like a pretty fit, strong guy. However, as Martin began asking Michel questions and watching his face and body language for signs of anxiety or defensiveness that could suggest he was hiding something, what he found was Michel seemed pretty open and very straightforward, like he was not hiding a thing. Michel immediately acknowledged poaching Alan's clients, but he just shrugged as he explained it. That was business. He said he was sure if somehow the positions were reversed, Alan would do the same thing to him. And also, he said he had an air tight alibi. On the weekend when the coroner believed Alan had been killed, Michel had been hundreds of miles away skiing. And then Michel produced this folder full of these receipts and all these phone numbers, and he handed it over to Martin, who took it, and he told Michelle, Okay, sit tight. And then the detective got up and he left the interrogation room, and he handed over this folder to another detective to check out. But after that, Detective Martin did not go back into the interrogation room.

Instead, he grabbed another detective and told them to take a shot. The idea was to have a good cop, bad cop dynamic to see if maybe that would rattle Michelle. And so Detective Martin watched from behind the two-way mirror as the next detective walked inside and took a stab at breaking Michelle. But their conversation basically played out the same way that Martin's had. So Martin signaled for another detective to go in there and have them take a shot. But they, too, had a run-of-the-mill conversation with Michelle, and they didn't make any progress. And then finally, after basically hours of cycling different detectives into the room to try to catch Michel in a lie, Detective Martin felt a tap on his shoulder. And when he turned around, it was one of his deputies who told Martin that, unfortunately, he had called all the people that Michel had given them information for, all the witnesses from the ski resort, and he had also even called the manager of the ski lodge. And basically, Michel's alibi checked out. He clearly had not been physically able to kill Alan. He was at that ski resort at the time of the murder.

At this point, Martin knew he could not just keep Michel indefinitely and just keep trying to catch him in a lie, even if there was some possibility here that he was involved in this murder. At this point, there just wasn't enough evidence, and so he had to let Michelle go. A few days later, Martin was back at his desk combing through reports when a uniformed officer came up and told him there was somebody at the front desk who really wanted to talk to him. And this was exactly the news that Martin had been hoping for. He had recently put out a statement to the local papers basically saying, Hey, if there are any witnesses out there, please come in and talk to me. And he hoped that whoever this was was potentially a witness. And so Detective Martin followed the uniformed officer out to the lobby, and there he saw the person who had come in to see him. It was this man who appeared to be in his early 50s, who was dressed all in black with these shiny black shoes and glasses. And Marton wondered if maybe this was a business contact of Allen's.

And as he went up to shake the man's hand, he felt himself getting excited. But then this man introduced himself, and when he did, Marton had to resist the urge to just turn around and walk away right there. Because the man said his name was Rémy Saint-Troisne, and he was a professional psychic. Marton did not believe in psychics, and he was annoyed with the police officer for even bringing him out here to meet this person. And so Marton was literally about to just tell Remy to, Thanks for coming in, but I don't have time for this. You need to go. But then he thought better of it because Marton was really having no luck with this case. There had been very little forensic evidence recovered from Alan's car. There were no usable fingerprints. And while the bedsheet Alan's body was wrapped in did have some DNA on it, it didn't match anything in their system. And then the business leads that Marton had been pretty excited about hadn't panned out either. And he'd found no evidence that anyone in either Alan's personal or business circles took out a paid hit on him. Marton's team had also spoken at length to Alan's surrogate daughter, Alexandra, and all the women he was having affairs with, and all the sex workers he had engaged with, and none of them nor any of their boyfriends or husbands or partners made sense as the killer.

So out of a mixture of a little curiosity and a lot of desperation, Morton brought Remy, the psychic, back to an interrogation room and asked him what he thought. Remy explained that he had heard a news bulletin about Alan while he was driving, and when he heard it, he had a vision that was so vivid that he actually had to pull over. He said he saw Alan Lillou as clear as day in this physical struggle with a woman. Remy didn't know her name, and he couldn't describe her, but he was certain that a woman was somehow involved in Alan's murder. Martin was disappointed because unsurprisingly, this just felt like a generic stab in the dark by somebody parading around as a psychic who could see things that nobody else could. It just seemed like he threw this random generic thing out there as if it was some big revelation, and it just didn't feel like it was. But Remy wasn't done. He went on to say he was sure that Alan was not killed in Orléans, even though that's where his body had been found. He said Alan's body had been taken away from the murder scene and actually placed in the trunk after he was dead.

And this caught Marton's attention because the coroner had been certain that Alan was strangled in one place and then placed into the trunk afterwards for transportation. But critically, the police had not released that information to the press. This, specifically because they wanted to be able to weed out fake tips. And so for Remy to say that, I mean, how would he have access to that? Now, Marton knew this could have just been a lucky guess by Remy, but it just seemed so on the nose that he began considering what else Remy had said, this idea that, okay, Allen was struggling with this woman. That was something that Martin had not really considered. He had ruled most women out as the potential suspect because of how how big Alan had been and how physical this murder had to have been. So it just seemed more likely that a big, strong man was responsible for the killing. But now, Martin wasn't so sure. And suddenly it seemed entirely possible that, you know what? Maybe a woman really did do this. And so eventually, Detective Martin thanked Remy for coming in and sharing his ideas about the case.

And then after walking him out of the station, Detective Marton sped back to his desk because Marton had an idea. Lots of people in Alan's life had told the police investigating his murder that Alan had had lots of extramarital affairs. Now, Detective Marton and his team had spoken to all the women they could possibly find who had had these affairs with Alan, and basically all of them had been ruled out. However, now, after talking with Remy the Psychic, something about the location where Alan's body was found was jumping out at Detective Marton. The part of Orléans, where Alan's car had been parked, was pretty sketchy, it was crime-ridden, and critically, it was known for being a hotbed for sex work. Now, Marton already knew, clearly, that Alan engaged with sex workers. It just seemed like that was one of the things that he did. They spoke to numerous sex workers and ruled them out as being suspects. And so for the most part, sex workers were not really on Detective Marton's as primary suspect pool. However, now with fresh eyes, he was thinking maybe the reason Alan was in Orléans was because he was there to meet a sex worker.

And while he was there, something went wrong, and it resulted in his death. So, Detective Martin spent the next few days absolutely scouring Alan's laptop. Now, the forensic text had already been through at once, looking at all of Alan's emails and business records, but Martin was looking at something different. He was using the laptop to search through all the websites where Alan had found sex workers to go visit. Basically, what he was doing is making a true exhaustive list of every single sex worker he had ever really engaged with. So this is an even bigger list than they had before. There were dozens of names and profiles to sift through, and as Marton found them, he would send members of his team out to speak all the women he possibly could. But as he was doing this, Detective Marton discovered that really none of these sex workers that Alan was engaging with had any connection to Orléans, and they also did not appear to have any real issues with Alan himself, at least based on the messages that were on his laptop. However, as Detective Marton dug deeper and deeper into this laptop, going further and further back in time, he eventually came to one new profile, this woman named Marie Eve.

When he took in who this woman was and got a picture of her and saw her information, he knew right then and there he had solved the case. Based on the entire police investigation, as well as a confession from the killer, the following is a reconstruction of what police believe happened to Alan Lee Lou on the day he was The killer found themselves standing behind Alan, and inside, they were burning with rage. Alan seemed to think he was so much better than the killer just because he was this powerful businessman and the killer was just a sex worker. And the killer had tolerated Alan's behavior because Alan had money. But now Alan had pushed it too far and the killer It felt like they had to shut him up for good. Alan's belt lay nearby, and impulsively, the killer grabbed it and lunged forward and looped the belt around Alan's throat. And at first, Alan struggled. He reached up, he's trying to pull the belt off. He has no idea what's happening, but the killer just held on tight. And for several minutes, there's this unbelievable death struggle going on. And Alan, he's fighting. He's a big guy, and he's getting close to pulling this thing off.

But then something unbelievable The killer had braced themselves against an object behind them. And so they're back as up against it, and they're pulling as hard as they can with this belt against Alan's throat. And as they're leaning back, the object they're up against suddenly broke. And because the killer didn't let go of the belt and is applying max pressure, when they fell backwards, it created almost like this whiplash effect. Their body tumbles and all that force is driven into Alan's throat. And what happened is that A sudden whiplash crushed Alan's larynx, and he immediately went still. Just for good measure, the killer held on for a couple more minutes, pulling as tightly as they could across his throat, really ensuring that Alan was dead. And when Alan did not move at all, eventually, the killer let go of the belt and stood up, their heart pounding, just taking in the scene. Then, as reality began to set in for the killer, they realized they needed help getting rid of this body. I mean, this He was a huge guy. How are they going to get rid of it on their own? So the killer called their accomplice, and the accomplice was hundreds of miles away in a ski resort, but they immediately told the killer to wait, and they would drive to them.

Sure enough, The next day, the accomplice arrived, and they helped the killer load Alan's body into the trunk of Alan's car. Then the killer climbed into Alan's car and drove it to the train station in Orléans. Behind them, as they made this ride, police would realize much later there was a second car being driven by the killer's accomplice. The killer and the accomplice would abandon Alan's car and his body in Orléans, and then together they would drive away, and shortly thereafter, they would actually get married because the killer was Alan's own surrogate daughter, Alexandra Nicola. Alexandra's troubled past that she was very defensive about included the fact that she was actually a sex worker under the name Marie-Yves. Her accomplice was her new boyfriend, Yves Bernard. So Alexandra and Alan had fought previously about her troubled history, and she was especially mad that at one point, Alan had implied that Alexander's daughter could end up like her, as if that would be a horrible thing. So on Saturday, February sixth, when Alan brought up Alexander Alexandra's daughter just in conversation, for Alexander, something snapped. It just felt so disrespectful that he again was talking about her daughter.

And out of impulse, she grabbed the belt, wrapped it around Alan's neck, strangled him, and ultimately stumbled backwards and crushed his larynx and killed him. In a way, it was true what Alexandra had told the police when they initially questioned her, that Alan had left her house in his car on February seventh, and she had not seen him again. What she had left out was that Alan was already dead in the trunk of his car when he left. Alexandra Nicola confessed to the murder of Alan Lillou and was sentenced to 15 years in prison. Her boyfriend, Eve Bernard, was sentenced to two years for concealment of a dead body. The couple has since been released, and together, they have a child who was born before Alexander went to prison. 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. Our head of production is Zack Levet, produced by Jeremy Bone.

This episode was written by Margaret LeBron. Research and fact-checking by Shelleyshue, Samantha Van Hoos, Evan Beemer, Abigail Shumway, and Camille Callahan. Research and fact-checking supervision by Stephen E. R. Audio editing and post-produced by Whit Lacassio and Cole Lacassio. Additional audio editing by Jordan Stidham. Mixed and mastered by Brenda Cain. Production coordination by Samantha Collins. Production support by Antonio Minata and Delaina Corley. Artwork by Jessica Claugston-Kyner. Theme song called Something Wicked by Ross Bugdon. Thank you for listening to the Mr. Ballen podcast. If you enjoyed today's story and you want to hear more like it, go ahead and check out our YouTube channel, just called Mr. Ballen, where we have hundreds more stories, a lot like this one, but most of them are not available on this podcast. They are only available on that YouTube channel, which again is just called Mr. Balin. So that's going to do it. I really appreciate your support. Until next time. See you.