Transcript of One Foot Out The Door (PODCAST EXCLUSIVE EPISODE)

Hey, Prime members. You can binge eight new episodes of the Mr. Ballon podcast one month early, and all episodes ad-free on Amazon Music. Download the Amazon Music app today. Just after 07: 00 PM on June 16th, 2010, an employee at the Palmdale, California Sheriff's Department tapped his fingers on the desk inside. The department was usually pretty busy, but this night had been very slow, and so the shift was totally dragging. But as the employee aimlessly moved around some paperwork and shifted in his seat, he suddenly heard something that made him look up. The sound was coming from outside the front doors, and it was muffled, but it sounded like somebody yelling. Then seconds later, a young woman charged through the front doors. She was frantically screaming for help, and she was covered in blood. 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 podcast because that's all we do, and we upload twice a week, once on Monday and once on Thursday. So if that's of interest to you, on the next Really Hot Day, please not offer the follow button a nice ice-cold lemonade, but only offer them a soggy, crumpled up paper straw to drink it with.

Okay, let's get into today's story.

Hello, I'm Jon Robbins, comedian and host of WNDRI's How Do You Cope podcast. I'm also, Plot Twist, an alcoholic. I've written a book, Thirst: 12 Drinks That Change My Life, published by Penguin. Thirst is a book about alcohol. It's mystery, it's terror, it's havoc, it's strange meditations. But, John, I hear you cry. Isn't that a rather odd book to write for a sober man who more than anything wants to stop thinking about alcohol? Well, yes, but I had to go back to find out why the one thing I know will kill me still calls out across the night. It's the story of what alcohol did for me and what alcohol did to me. If that's of interest to you or someone you know, Thirst, 12 Drinks That Change My Life is available to pre order now online and from all good bookshops. I'm John Robbins, and on my podcast, I sit down with incredible people to ask the very simple question, How do you cope? From confronting grief and mental health struggles to finding strength in failure. Every episode is a raw and honest exploration of what it means to be human. It's not always easy, but it's always real.

Whether you're looking for inspiration, comfort, or just a reminder that you're not alone in life's messier moments, join me on How Do You Cope. Follow now wherever you get your podcasts or listen to episodes early and ad free on WNDYRI Plus. How Do You Cope is brought to you by Audible, who make it easy to embark on a wellness journey that fits your life with thousands of audiobooks, guided meditations, and Motivational Series.

Around 9: 30 AM on June 16, 2010, a 29-year-old woman named Lanell Varsack lay in bed in her house in Palmdale, California. It was a Wednesday, and Lanell had the day off from her job at a health center in Los Angeles. But she didn't really have time to relax because she was also a college student. She was working on becoming a registered nurse, and she knew she had to get up and go study, but she just didn't feel like it. Plus, she could hear her boyfriend, Louis, moving around in the kitchen downstairs, and just knowing Louis was down there was another reason to stay put. Lanell and Louis had been together for about four years. They'd met in college and immediately hit it off. Now, they own this house together, a five bedroom home that they had scraped together all their savings to make a down payment on. At the beginning of their relationship, Linel and Louis had been completely in love and on the same about building a life together. But over time, Louis had become this incredibly jealous and possessive person that was just really volatile, and it really just scared Linel and was beginning to drive her away.

And then, just a few months ago, they'd gotten into this huge screaming fight when he had heard her talking to another guy on the phone. That fight had gotten so bad that she had tried to drive away, but Louis had literally chased her in his truck, which led to both of them crashing. Even now, as she laid in bed months later, Linnell still felt traumatized by that whole thing. They had eventually made up, but it was hard to look at Louis in the same way. It was like she couldn't see a future with him anymore. All she saw now was this volatile, controlling guy. And so lately, Linel was seriously considering ending things with him. But just then, Linel's phone buzzed on the night stand, interrupting her thoughts. It was a message from her friend Lorraine asking if she was up. And as soon as she saw it, Linel just died because she actually had forgotten that she had plans with Lorraine, who would offer to do Linnell's hair that day. So resigned, she texted Lorraine to come on over. Then, Linnell got out of bed. About 30 minutes later, Linnell sat on a bar stool and ate breakfast at the Kitchen Island with Louis.

The stools were actually some of the only furniture in the whole house. It had already been a year since they'd moved in, but Linnell, so far, had not had time to decorate. As she ate, Lanell tried to keep her chit chat with Louis to a minimum. They'd been fighting so much lately that she didn't want to accidentally start an argument. But Lanell was a naturally bubbly and talkative person, and so just sitting here being quiet was awkward. She was actually relieved when she heard the front door open and her friend Lorraine walked in. Lanell smiled. Lorraine lived right in Palmdale, and so it was nice for Lanell to have a friend so close by. The rest of Lanell's friends and family were in LA, about an hour and a half away. Lorraine walked over and gave Lanell a hug, and the two of them began talking while Louis got ready to leave. He was going to have his truck worked on, actually by Lorraine's boyfriend, who lived near LA and would do the work for a low price. It was a long drive, but it was worth it for the savings. Louis ultimately left without even saying goodbye, and And then at that point, Lorraine worked on Linel's hair while Linel vented about Louis and how tense things had gotten.

And just talking about everything actually made her feel better, even though she had no idea how she was actually going to solve any of these big problems in her relationship. But about an hour later, Linel suddenly heard tires breach into the driveway outside. Seconds later, Louis burst into the house looking absolutely furious. He was holding a cell phone above his head and waving it around in the air. And Lanell immediately recognized this phone because it was her secret phone that she'd actually gotten from her other boyfriend. That guy she'd been talking to on the phone with the day she and Lewis got in that big fight about it that ended with the car crash. Well, the truth was, And Louis had a reason to be upset because she was talking to another guy who she was involved with. It was this other boyfriend. That other boyfriend's name was Ike, and Lannelle had met him about four months ago on a dating website. Both of them were seeking careers in nursing, and they had a ton in common. Ike was also way calmer, more successful, and more motivated than Louis. He lived over 300 miles away in Northern California, but whenever he had time off and Louis wasn't home, he came down to Palmdale to see Lanell.

On the day of Lanell and Louis' huge fight, Lanell had promised Louis that she would never talk to Ike again, but that had been a lie, and now Louis had caught her. And so Louis started yelling, demanding to know if Lanell was still cheating on him, and Lanell felt her heart start racing. The last time Louis had gotten like this, their fight ended with a literal car crash. She didn't want that to happen again, so she decided the best way to handle this was to just remove herself from this situation. So she just walked over and grabbed the secret phone out of Louis' hand and then ran out the door with Lorraine while Louis kept on screaming at her. Lanell and Lorraine jumped into Lanell's car and sped out of the neighborhood. Lanell couldn't stop shaking because she knew Louis was furious, and she didn't really know what was going to happen next. And so she and Lorraine decided that they would just go kill some time by going to a beauty store to get some more products. And hopefully by the time they got home, Louis would be gone. The two of them got to the store around noon.

Lanell and Lorraine went inside, and Linel walked around the aisles grabbing products. Her heart was still hammering in her chest. And when she checked out at the counter, she found herself just staring into space, trying her best to not think about Louis, but she couldn't help herself. But by the time she actually had her products paid for and put in a bag, she was starting to calm down just a little bit. Then she headed outside with Lorraine. However, as soon as she stepped out of the shop, she gasped because right there on the sidewalk was Louis. He was waiting for her. Louis demanded to know if she was still seeing Ike. And at first, Lanell was just super defensive, like she always was when they fought. But as Louis continued to rant and accuse her, her head just started to pound, and then suddenly, it was like all of her fear and stress about this relationship just disappeared. This weird sense of calm came over her, and she knew this was it. This was the last straw. She was done, and she just wanted Louis out of her life. So she exhaled, handed Louis her second phone, and then just stormed back over to the car with Lorraine.

About 15 minutes later, Linnell parked her car in the driveway at home. When she'd gotten into her car and driven away, she thought that maybe she had lost Louis, and she'd hoped that he had just driven somewhere far away to cool down. But apparently, that hadn't happened because his truck was parked right outside the house, which meant Louis was inside waiting for her. Lanell wanted to scream. She glanced at Lorraine, who just reached over and squeezed her hand, trying to give her a bit of encouragement. Then, Lanell just took a deep breath. She knew what she was doing with Ike was wrong, but she was sick of all the fights and of Louis trying to control everything about her. I mean, the relationship had died months ago. She just needed to end it now, officially. She wish she had more time to plan out how to do this, but after today, she felt like she had no choice. She just had to go in there and tell him this was done. So, Lanell got out of her car and headed towards the house. Over 6 hours later, around 6: 45 PM, Linnell's friend Lorraine was staring down at her silent cell phone and starting to feel nervous.

Lanell hadn't called her after whatever final fight she had had with Louis, and Lorraine had a bad feeling about the whole thing. She knew that Louis and Lanell's fights had the possibility of getting completely out of hand. I mean, they had before. So now Lorraine was back at Lanell's house, just making sure her friend was okay. But as she walked through the living room, she noticed their house was unnaturally quiet. Louis was not there, and it didn't seem like Lanell was there either. That morning, Lorraine had been afraid when Louis was chasing them all around town, and now she was starting to get that same nervous sense that maybe Louis was nearby about to spring out at her. But she told herself to just settle down and focus. However, when she passed by the laundry room, she felt this wave of panic so intense come over her that she had to grasp the wall just to steady herself. Because there on the laundry room floor was a pile of bloody towels. And then beyond the laundry room, there was a door that led into the garage, and it was partially open. Lorraine was very nervous, but still, she felt like she had to investigate.

And so she walked over to the door and she pushed it all the way open. Now, it was dark in the garage, so she couldn't see much, and so she just stepped forward. When she did, she stepped onto this plastic bag that was slick, and it caused her to trip and fall to the ground. Then when she looked at what she fallen in, she realized it was blood. She stood up as quick as she could and then just stood there staring at the garage like waiting for movement, but there was no one in there. And then as her eyes slowly adjusted, she saw Lanell's car. It had been backed into the garage and was now sitting there with its trunk open. And when she looked at the ground by its back wheels, she saw something sticking out from behind the car. And the longer she stared at it, the more the image clarified. It was a pair of feet. At this point, Lorraine turned and ran. A few minutes later, Lorraine sped into the parking lot at the Palmdale Sheriff's Department. Once she parked, she stumbled out of her car and began running towards the front doors.

Once she got inside, she charged up to the employee at the front desk and just started yelling about how there was blood, so much blood, and how she had slipped in it when she tried to find her friend, and her friend was just lying there. And she knew she wasn't making a lot of sense, but it was like it was impossible to think. Finally, though, she was able to calm down enough that she just blurted out, My friend, Linel, was murdered.

The town of Agde in France is famous for Sun, Sand, Sea, and Sex. But lately, life on the Coast has taken a strange turn. The town's mayor, a respected pillar of the community, has been arrested for corruption. His wife claims he's been bewitched by a beautiful clairvoyant. Then there's the mysterious phone calls that local people have been getting. I am the Archangel Michael. The whole town has been thrown into chaos.

Mr. Le Maire, as the mayor, is unable to carry out his duties. I would like to address you all. Legal proceedings have been initiated.

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What if I told you that the crime of the century is the one being waged on our planet? Introducing Lawless Planet, WNDYRY's new podcast, Exploring the Dark Side of the Climate Crisis. Uncover shocking tales of crime and corruption threatening our world's future. Follow Lawless Planet on the WNDYRY app or wherever you get your podcasts. Later that night, around 11: 00 PM, two homicide detectives stood in the driveway of Linnell's home, looking up at the two-story house. Their names were Bob Kenny and Joe Aspino, and they were veteran detectives who worked together all the time. They'd come all the way from the Los Angeles County Sheriff's Homicide Bureau, which meant they'd just driven about an hour and a half to get to Palmdale. But this actually wasn't out of the ordinary. Detective Kenny had been called to Palmdale more than a few times to investigate homicides there. Palmdale had gotten safer in recent years, but the murder rate was still higher than both the state and the national average. But as Kenny looked at his surroundings, this trip to Palmdale felt different. They were in an upscale neighborhood, and the house they were standing in front of looked nice.

The detectives walked inside, and right away, Kenny noticed that the front door was undamaged, and a uniform police officer who was standing in the entryway told them that there were no signs of forced entry at the back door either. Kenny had already been briefed that this home was owned by a 29-year-old woman named Lanel Barsock, who was found dead in her garage by a friend right after what sounded like a pretty intense fight with her boyfriend. Lanel shared the home with that boyfriend, Louis Bonair, and Louis was nowhere to be found. So to Kenny, this was starting to look like a pretty straightforward case. Romantic partners, especially angry ones, were always the first suspects, and the fact that Louis had apparently taken off made him look even more suspicious. There were already officers out canvassing the neighborhood and calling Louis' friends and family, trying to track him down. The uniformed officer led Kenny and Espino through the house towards the garage. As they walked, Kenny noted the strange emptyness of all the rooms. Some didn't even have furniture in them. But this didn't feel like robbers had come in and removed all the furniture. It just seemed like the house was vacant.

And on top of that, there really were no signs of robbery in general. I mean, the TV was there and nothing had been rifled through. But Kenny was more struck by the fact that there was so little to steal in the first place. To get to the garage, the detectives had to pass through a laundry room, and when he stepped inside that area, Detective Kenny saw bloody towels everywhere and smears of blood on the floor. It was immediately obvious that whoever had killed Lanell had tried and failed to clean up their mess. When Kenny and Espino stepped into the garage, they found there was a car there that had been backed in and had its trunk open. Next to it on the ground were more bloody towels, along with large plastic sheets, and most of them were shoved to the side and in a big pile. But there was some bloody plastic sheeting that was up by the door to the laundry room where they were standing. Detective Kenny stepped into the garage around the bloody towels to the far side of the car, where he saw a pair of feet on the floor. It was Lanell.

Her face was covered by a black plastic bag, and so Detective Kenny knelt down and peeled back the plastic. He found her face and head were covered in blood, and when he tipped her head to the side, he saw the source, a bullet hole right in the back of her skull. He wondered if the killer had wrapped her head in plastic to try to clean up or contain the blood, or if they had felt some remorse and couldn't bear to look at Linnell's face. Detective Kenny stood and moved over to the trunk of the car. When he looked inside, he saw that it was full of garbage bags which were packed with bloody sheets and bedding. It looked like the killer must have trying to put all this evidence into the car and drive away with it, except they hadn't actually done that. Instead, they left the car behind along with everything else, which just didn't make any sense. Kenny wondered if maybe something like the arrival of Lanell's friend Lorraine had interrupted the killer before they could escape. But just then, a deputy stuck his head in the garage and excitedly told the detectives that they just found something.

Moments later, detectives Kenny and Espino were standing in the kitchen. They were leaning over a piece of paper that lay on the floor right beside a yellow evidence marker the crime scene text had placed. This piece of paper had messy handwriting on it. Kenny made sure it was photographed before he picked it up with his gloved hand to look closer. It was a letter signed by Lanell and addressed to Louis, her boyfriend. The letter said she was leaving him for her other boyfriend, Ike. At this, Kenny raised his eyebrows. The missing boyfriend, Louis, was already suspect number one, and this note certainly gave him a motive for murder. But it also gave Kenny a second suspect, this other boyfriend, Ike. Maybe he thought this case was going to be more complicated than he first expected. He looked around at the bare kitchen and the empty rooms beyond it, and it looked to him like neither of the people living in the house had actually committed to settling in and staying together. Lanell apparently had one foot out the door already. As he read the note one more time, Kenny wondered what other secrets his victim might have been keeping.

Detectives Kenny and Aspino were still on scene when a uniformed officer came to tell them that they had gotten a lead on the missing boyfriend, Louis. Apparently, he had gone to Los Angeles, and he often stayed at Lanell's mom's house when he was there, since the drive back to Palmdale was so long. It was the middle of the night by this point, but that didn't matter. Kenny dispatched an LA police officer to wait outside of Lanell's mother's house as backup, and then he dialed the phone number for Lanell's mom. After a few rings, a woman answered. When Detective Kenny introduced himself, she confirmed she was Lanell's mother, Bobby Barsock. She sounded concerned and asked what was going on, but Kenny didn't tell her. Instead, he needed to speak to Louis. His decision not to explain himself was strategic. Neither Bobby nor Louis had been told explicitly that Linnell was dead, and Detective Kenny wanted to hold back that information for as long as possible. When he talked to Louis, he wanted to see if Louis would act confused, which would be the natural reaction if you really hadn't done anything, or if he would behave like a guilty person who knew exactly why the police were calling him in the middle of the night.

Detective Kenny heard Bobby hand over the phone, and then a man came on the line and said he was Louis. Right away, Louis said, This is about Linnell. When Kenny finished the phone call a few minutes later, he was feeling good because now he had a definite number one suspect. Louis had brought up Linnell without being told she was dead, and then he had been surprisingly cooperative when Kenny responded by giving him no information at all and just told him to go outside and get into the squad car in front of the house that's waiting for him. To Kenny, it seemed like Louis had been waiting for this call and maybe even feeling guilty. He thought of the plastic that had been pulled over Linnell's face, like whoever had killed her couldn't bear to look at what they had done. After Kenny had told Louis over the phone to go get into the squad car, he had spoken to Linnell's mom, Bobby Barsack, again. And when he told her that her daughter was dead, Bobby just wailed in anguish into the phone. And then eventually, she told Kenny how controlling and jealous Louis was, and she said she was coming to the Sheriff's Department to talk to them, too.

It would take more than an hour and a half for Louis and Bobby to get to Palmdale, but that was fine by Kenny. He and his partner still needed to go talk to their first eyewitness, the friend Lorraine, who had reported the murder in the first place, who was waiting for them at the Sheriff's Department. Around 6: 00 AM, Detectives Kenny and Aspino walked through the same Sheriff's Department doors that Lorraine had burst through 11 hours earlier, saying that she had found her friend dead. Lorraine had already told her story to uniformed officers, but Kenny wanted to hear her story directly. He had read her statement, and it was clear that she had been in a state of pure panic when she had first arrived at the department. When Kenny and his partner walked into the interview and sat down across from Lorraine, Kenny thought she seemed a lot calmer than her statement made her out to be, although she did still have blood in her clothes and looked exhausted and clearly shaken up. He started slowly with general questions about her relationship to Lynel. Lorraine said they were really good friends, and they hung out a few times a week since they lived so close to each other.

Then she went over what had happened the day before, how she'd gone to Lanell's that morning to do her hair, but then Lanell and Louis had gotten into a big fight, and he, Louis, had ended ended up chasing them all around town. Lorraine said that she and Lanell had gone back to Lanell's house at about 12: 30 PM, and Louis was there waiting for them. She said that she decided to leave and give the couple some space. Lorraine said the couple's fighting was typical, and that whole relationship honestly was toxic. But this fight in particular did seem worse because Lanell was cheating on Louis with a man named Ike, and Louis had found out about it. Kenny and Espino looked at each other. This information lined up exactly with that letter they had found at the scene. Lorraine said after she had left Lanell's, she had gone to a nearby park, and there she just waited to hear from Lanell. But by early evening, she still had not heard, and she was starting to get worried. So around 6: 45 PM, she went back to Lanell's to make sure her friend was okay, and that's when she found Lanell's body.

As Lorraine told this part of the story, her calm affect changed, and she became much more emotional. Lorraine looked down at her stained clothes and just began to cry. Detective Kenny pushed a box of tissues across the table. He felt for Lorraine because no matter what, it was a trauma she would carry for the rest of her life to have found her friend dead. But there was one thing about her story that just didn't sit right, and that was Lorraine's claim that she had been sitting in the park for five hours just waiting for her friend to call her back or text her. Kenny wasn't sure he believed that. It had been very hot out all day, almost 90 degrees, and that whole time, what, Lorraine is just sitting on a bench, people watching waiting for Linnell the whole time. It just seemed unrealistic. But that was her story, and she hadn't changed it once. And anyways, the crime itself did really seem like textbook domestic violence. And Linnell's boyfriend, Louis, was acting like a man with a very guilty conscience. But regardless, at this point, it was obvious to Kenny that Lorraine was no longer in any condition to answer any more questions, so they would just have to talk to her again later.

And so he and Detective Espino told Lorraine she could go. And then when the Detective stepped out of the interview room, an officer was waiting for them. The boyfriend, Louis Bonair, had arrived. Hey, listeners. Big news for true crime lovers. You can now enjoy this podcast ad-free on Amazon Music with your prime membership. Listen to all episodes of my podcast, Mr. Ballen's Medical mysteries and Mr. Ballen's Strange, Dark, and Mysterious Stories, along with a huge collection of top True Crime podcasts, completely ad-free. No more waiting through cliffhangers or dealing with ads, because let's be honest, ads shouldn't be the most nerve-wracking part of true crime. To start your ad-free listening journey, download the Amazon Music app for free or head to amazon. Com/ ballon. That's amazon. Com/ballin. Dive into Uninterrupted True Crime Stories today. Now, Louis still had not been told what happened to Lanell. He didn't know she was dead. And suspiciously, he had not asked anybody why he had been summoned to the Sheriff's Department. And he still didn't ask when detectives Kenny and Espino sat down across from him in an interrogation room. As soon as the door closed behind the detectives, they asked Louis about his relationship with Lanell.

Right away, Louis launched into a story about Lanell that, as far as Kenny could tell, was full of lies. Louis said he and Lanell had a great relationship and were deeply in love. He said they'd had a couple of minor fights, but nothing that would lead to a breakup. Just normal relationship stuff. And he said neither of them was seeing anyone else. Both Kenny and Aspino knew this was false, not just because of the letter they found and the things that Lorraine and Bobby had told them, but because they had checked the police record of calls to Linnell and Louis' home and found that at least twice, officers had been called to break up a domestic disturbance that started because Lanell was speaking to another man. The detectives asked Louis to walk them through everything he did on June 16th, the day Lanell was murdered. Louis admitted that he and Lanell had gotten into a fight that morning because he'd found Lanell's secret cell phone. He also admitted to following Lanell and Lorraine around town, trying to get answers from his girlfriend about why she was using this secret phone. But Louis said they had only fought until about 12: 40 PM.

At that point, he said he had gone to LA and gotten his truck repaired by Lorraine's boyfriend. He said he'd gotten to Lorraine's boyfriend's place around 2: 00 PM and then spent the rest of the day going to auto supply shops in the area to buy car parts. And then after that, around 6: 00 PM, he'd arrived at Lanell's mother's house for the night. And while Louis was sitting there telling the detectives this very far-fetched story, all the detectives could think about was the long, thin scratch on the side of Louis' face. When Louis finished his story about what he'd done the day before, Detective Aspino asked him about the scratch. This kicked up a whole 'nother story' by Louis. He talked fast, explaining that Lanell had scratched him a few days ago, but he just said it was a misunderstanding. However, the detectives did not buy it, and so Kenny decided it was time to go on the offensive. He had a folder in front of him, and from it, he took out the letter that police had found at Lanell and Louis' home that said Lanell was breaking up with Louis to go be with her other boyfriend, Ike.

And Kenny slid that letter across the table to Louis, and then sat back silently while Louis read it. Now, Kenny was expecting Louis to read this letter with some level of recognition, and then after that, he would likely crumble. After all, Louis had just sat here lying to their faces for a full half hour, and now they were showing him that they had known he was lying to them the whole time. I mean, if nothing else, it was clear they were not in a loving relationship, and his girlfriend was seeing other people. Kenny actually wondered if when confronted with this letter, if Louis might actually just confess right then and there. But instead, after Louis finished reading it, he just frowned and looked up in confusion and said he had never seen it before. He did admit that he knew who Ike was, but he said that, you know, Lanell and Ike were just friends. Kenny had to stop himself from shaking his head in disgust. These lies were homeless, and he couldn't stand to listen to them anymore. So he leaned across the table and he told Louis the real reason he had been brought to this interview room.

The letter, he said, had been found at his house, and his girlfriend Lanell had been murdered. At this, Louis did lose his composure. He started stammering incoherently and then broke down into hysterical sobs. Detectives Kenny and Espino just watched him for a minute. They didn't feel sorry for him at all. All they actually thought was, This guy is a really good actor. Without waiting for him to stop crying, they told him they were going to need his fingerprints and samples of his DNA. And then they dropped one final bombshell. They said they were going to continue their investigation into Linnell's murder, but Louis was not leaving the Sheriff's Department. Between the record of domestic disturbances, the scratch on his face, the huge fight the day of the murder, his lies during the interview, and his so far unconfirmed alibi, the detectives told Louis they had enough to arrest him on suspicion of murder. The detectives left the interrogation room as a crime tech went in to collect Louis' DNA samples, and a uniform police officer stood by to start the booking procedure as soon as they were done. The detectives were not even one full day into their investigation, and they already had taken a suspect into custody.

And so they were both feeling pretty good and very much like they needed to take a break for at least a few hours and go get some sleep. However, as they walked back into the lobby, they saw a woman with a puffy, tear-striaked face walk in the door, looking lost and bewildered. At the same time, the detectives realized this had to be Bobby Barsock, Linnell's mother. And so sleep would have to wait. They ushered Bobby into a private room and got all three give them cups of coffee. What Kenny and Aspino needed from Bobby, first and foremost, was a timeline of the evening of the murder because Bobby was part of Lewis's alibi. So as they sipped their coffee, they asked her to walk them through what happened when Louis showed up, what time, what he said, everything. In a shaky voice, Bobby said Louis had gotten to her house a little after 6: 00 PM. She was sure of the time because family feud had just started on TV when he walked in the door. Kenny furrowed his eyebrows. This was exactly what Louis had said, which was a little disappointing because if Louis had lied about when he got to Bobby's house, it would have made the case simpler.

Still, though, this detail didn't mean Louis was innocent. Lanell had to have been killed sometime between about 12: 30 PM after she got home from the beauty store, and 6: 45 PM, when Lorraine discovered her body. It would have taken Louis about an hour and a half to drive from Palmdale to Bobby's house, which meant that to arrive by 6: 00, he had to leave no later than about 4: 30 PM. So Bobby's timeline left Louis approximately 3 to 4 hours before he had left when he claimed he was just walking around shopping for car parts, but he actually could have been killing Linel. But before Detective Kenny could follow that thought any further, Bobby told the detectives that there was something important she had to show them. It was part of the reason she had driven all the way up here. She pulled out her phone and the detectives leaned forward to look. On the screen, she pulled up a text message. It was from Lanell's other boyfriend, Ike. On the night of the murder, Ike had messaged Bobby to say he spoke to Lanell that day, and she sounded scared. He said he was worried that Louis was going to hurt her.

As Bobby put her phone away, Kenny thought that message made Louis look really bad. However, Kenny was a veteran homicide detective, and he knew that finding a killer was as much about ruling the right suspect in as it was about ruling the wrong suspects out. The victim's romantic partner was almost always the first suspect, but in this case, Lanell had two of them. Louis and Ike were both part of this love triangle, so by default, they were both suspects. To prove that Louis was guilty, the detectives also needed to prove that Ike was innocent. After speaking with Lanell's mother, Detectives Kenny and Espino had both been awake for more than 24 hours, so they decided to get some sleep. Then they regrouped on the afternoon of June 17th, the day after the murder. Their case was moving fast. L'anelle's boyfriend, Louis, was in custody, and they were hoping the evidence would continue to line up and continue to point straight at him. But Linnell was living a more complicated life than it looked like from the outside, and now they needed to rule her second boyfriend, Ike, out as a suspect. So their first step when they returned to the Sheriff's Department was to track Ike down.

And because Bobby had given them his number, it wasn't that difficult. They just called him up on the phone. Ike's full name was Ike Umuna, and he lived in Northern California, and he readily admitted to having a relationship with Lanell. And he said he had given her that secret cell phone because Louis was unpredictable and scary. When Kenny told Ike that Lanell was dead, Ike broke down. This was exactly what he said he'd been afraid of when he had texted Lanell's mom. Ike said he had an alibi for the entire day of the murder. He said he had been at a job interview at the University of California, Davis, which was a six-hour drive from Palmdale. And this was exactly the thing Kenny had hoped to hear. Because if this was true, then Kenny knew it was not physically possible for Ike to have killed Lanell himself. That didn't mean he hadn't hired a hitman, but to Kenny, the crime scene looked like a murder committed by an amateur, not a professional. Yes, Lanell had been shot in the back of the head, which was execution style and maybe hitman style, but the bloody messy scene suggested a level of panic after the fact that didn't make sense for a stranger killing for money.

So it was looking very likely that they would be able to rule Ike out as a suspect. Kenny told Ike they would be in touch, and then he hung up the phone. Kenny and Espino looked at each other. They would run down both boyfriends' alibis at the same time, and whoever's didn't check out was very likely their murderer. Now, the break neck pace of the investigation slowed as Kenny and Espino began the painstaking work of finding every person that Louis and Ike mentioned interacting with on the day of the murder. Both detectives were leaning towards Louis as their guy, and initially, their interviews seemed to confirm their suspicions, ruling Ike out and ruling Louis in. Ike's alibi was basically air tight. Administrators at the University of California, Davis confirmed that he had been there right in the middle of the day, which meant he definitely was not in Palmdale. And as the detectives talked to more of Lanell's friends, Ike's warning about Lewis's violence started to look less extraordinary, because basically everyone in Lanell's life seemed to have been worried about her relationship with Louis. But as the days went by and Kenny and Aspino leaned into tracking each and every one of Louis' movements on the day of the murderer, they found something surprising.

Louis' alibi also checked out. The detectives searched Louis' truck and found receipts from June 16th, which was the day of the murderer. Louis had claimed He was shopping for car parts that afternoon, but the detectives had not believed him. However, the receipt showed that he was, in fact, near LA, an hour and a half away from Palmdale, starting a little before 3: 00 PM. And so suddenly, the window of time that Louis had to murder Lanel He had himself shrunk from around three or four hours to only about one hour. Of course, it was still possible that he killed Lanell in that hour, but when the detectives pulled surveillance footage from the auto shops, they saw Louis walking calmly through the aisles and paying at the registers. There was no blood, no nervous behavior that would suggest he had just shot and killed his girlfriend. But the final blow to their case against Louis came when Kenny and Espino tracked down Lorraine's boyfriend, who was the one who actually worked on Louis' car. He told them on the day of the murder, Louis had shown up at his house in LA at 2: 00 PM.

This meant that Louis had apparently been telling the truth when he said he left his house at 12: 40 PM, which meant Louis could not have killed Lanell. So In the middle of July, one month after Kenny and Espino had picked up what they thought would be an open and shut murder case, they were forced to release their primary suspect, Louis, from jail. Now, they were back to square one. Detectives Kenny and Espino It would have just waited for the forensic evidence to come back. The crime scene text had collected so much DNA evidence that it had taken multiple days to process the scene and would take months to return results. But whoever had killed Lanell had tried and failed to clean it up, and in the process, had left fingerprints and maybe even their own DNA behind. But there was something bothering both of the detectives about the timeline they had spent weeks constructing so methodically. They had a precise chronology of the movements of Lanell, Lorraine, Bobby, Louis, and Ike, as well as all of Linnell's friends and family. But the only thing this chronology really showed was that no one had been able to kill Linnell.

So somebody was lying. They just didn't know who. Now, the detectives had already pulled Linnell's phone records from the day she was killed, but now they decided to get new search warrants. They didn't just want suspect and victim phone records anymore. They wanted to know who their witnesses had spoken to, too. It would take the detectives about four months to get their hands on all the records they needed. But when they did, everything suddenly made sense. It turned out that Lanell had been keeping one more secret that Kenny and Aspino had not been able to uncover until they discovered a single phone call made at 04: 44 PM on the day of the murder that explained everything. Based on evidence collected by investigators, the following is a reconstruction of what police believe happened to Lanell Barsock on June 16th, 2010. That afternoon, sometime before 04: 00 PM, the killer stood in the living room at Lanell's house, right behind Lanell La Nell staring at the back of her head. Even though they both had moved on from the fight earlier in the day, the killer could tell La Nell was still upset. But truthfully, they weren't really concerned about how La Nell felt.

La Nell had so much, a great personality, a loving family, a growing career. But the killer only had La Nell, who they still had deep feelings for. And now that La Nell didn't want them, they decided La Nell shouldn't have anything. Slow and silently, the killer lifted the gun they had brought with them, aimed it at the back of Lanell's head, and pulled the trigger. Lanell immediately slumped to the floor, and seconds later, blood was pooling all around her. Step one of the plan was complete. Now, the killer had to clean up, and then after that, they would drive to the desert where they would bury her body and everything that had blood on it. They quickly wrapped Lanell's head in a plastic bag to keep more blood from spreading. Then they dragged Lanell to the garage where the car was. After that, the killer sopped up all the blood in the living room with towels, and so far it seemed like everything was going great. Soon the floor was clean. But then at 04: 44 PM, they heard their phone ring, and on the other end was a person who had some bad news.

Somebody was on on their way to the house. The killer knew if they didn't hurry, they'd be caught. This made the killer panic, and instead of finishing the cleanup, they decided to make sure that the evidence left behind didn't lead to them but to somebody else. So they quickly wrote a fake letter and left that behind. Then they ran out of the house, got in their car, and sped off to the Sheriff's Department to report the crime they had just committed. Because the killer was Lanell's so-called close friend, Lorraine Austin, She executed her friend in cold blood while she was standing right behind her doing her hair. It would turn out these two women were not just friends. They actually had a romantic relationship that they both had kept a secret. They had met online just a month earlier and briefly dated. However, five days before her murder, Lanell suggested they just be friends. And Lorraine had been devastated because not only was she in love with Lanell, she also wanted to be Lanell. Lorraine was extremely jealous of her. Lanell had a career, she had a big house, while Lorraine was in debt and living at her mom's place.

And so being dumped by her made her bitter and furious. Lorraine's phone records revealed her romantic relationship with Lanell and their breakup. And most critically, the records also showed what interrupted Lorraine while she was cleaning up the crime scene. It was a phone call from her boyfriend, the one who had been with Louis all afternoon fixing his truck. The boyfriend told her that Louis had just left, and that made Lorraine think Louis was coming home, when in reality, Louis was going to Linnell's mother's house for the night. But since Lorraine thought he'd be there soon, She pivoted from cleaning up the crime scene to framing Louis. When the forensic evidence was finally processed, it revealed Lorraine's DNA and fingerprints at the scene. But that was to be expected because she was friends with Linnell. However, her DNA eye and fingerprints were found in areas that tied her directly to the crime. By the time police solved the case, Lorraine had gone on the run. She wasn't captured until a year and a half after the murder, after authorities put the case on America's Most Wanted, and a tipster spotted her in Belize. Lorraine Austin was convicted of first-degree murder and sentenced to two consecutive 25 years-to-life prison terms.

She'll be eligible for parole in 2032. 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 Kate Murdock. Story editing by Karras Pash Cooper. Research and fact-checking by Sherry Hsu, Samantha Van Hoos, Evan Beemer, Abigail Shumway, and Camille Callahan. Research and fact-checking supervision by Stephen E. Audio editing and postproduced by Whit Lacassio and Cole Lacassio. Additional audio editing by Jordan Stittam. Mixed and mastered by Brenda Cain. Production Coordination by Samantha Collins. Production support by Antonio Monada and Delaina Corley. Artwork by Jessica Clogston-Kyner. Theme song called Something Wicked by Ross Bugdon. Thank you for listening to the Mr. Ballon podcast. If you enjoyed today's story and you're looking for more bone-chilling content, be sure to check out all of our studios' podcasts. There's this one, the Mr. Ballon podcast, as well as Mr. Balin's Medical mysteries, Bedtime Stories, Wartime Stories, Run Full, Redacted, Late Nights with Nexbo, and A Twist of History.

All you have to do is search for Balin Studios wherever you get your podcasts. To watch hundreds more stories just like this one, head over to our YouTube channel, which is just called Mr. Ballen. So that's going to do it. I really appreciate your support. Until next time. See you. Hey, Prime members, you can binge eight new episodes of the Mr. Ballon podcast one month early, and all episodes ad-free on Amazon Music. Download the Amazon Music app today. And before you go, please tell us about yourself by completing a short survey at wondry. Com/survey.