Transcript of You Next (PODCAST EXCLUSIVE EPISODE) New

Today's story is about a family in England who were living these totally ordinary lives. They were farmers, they were just simple people, when in 1984, something really strange began happening to them that basically turned their lives upside down, like it was a complete nightmare. In fact, in many ways, it was almost like they were living the plot of a crazy detective novel, except it was real. 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. And we upload 2, 3, even 4 times every week.

So if that's of interest to you, please buy the follow button a dozen jelly donuts. But don't tell them you've secretly removed all the jelly. Okay, let's get into today's story called "You Next." On the morning of March 30th, 1984, a 43-year-old dairy farmer named Graham Backhouse walked slowly across this huge fenced-in field on his farm in Horton, England, carrying along a bucket of cow feed. And Graham, like usual, was exhausted from all the, the endless daily chores on this farm that he was in charge of. 5 years ago his father had died and he had inherited this farm.

And so now he was, you know, taking over this massive property with all these, these animals and all these just daily chores. It was backbreaking work. And so it was like every day was a slog, just like today. But Graham was actually a terrible farmer. He did the chores, he did the things he was supposed to do every day, but he did not know how to run this farm.

And so over the last 5 years that he'd inherited the big family farm, he had basically run it into the ground 'cause he just didn't know what he was doing. But he was sort of stuck because there was no one else to take over the farm. And so it's like every day he's doing all this backbreaking work and the profit for the farm is dwindling lower and lower and lower. It's like he was just trapped in this vicious cycle that he didn't know how to get out of. But in some ways, what was even worse than that is that Graham never even wanted to be a farmer.

I mean, like, as a kid he grew up here on this property and he watched his dad every day do this labor and, you know, work until the wee hours of the morning nearly every day. And he was an amazing farmer, he was amazing at taking care of this property, but Graham didn't want to do that. Like, he knew he didn't. What he really wanted to do was be a writer. That's what his passion was.

And so any chance he got as a kid, he was like, you know, writing things down, poetry, you know, journaling, whatever it was. But then his dad sort of suddenly died and he's handed the farm and it's the family legacy. And so here he was just sort of saddled with, in a way, golden handcuffs, except he was destroying those handcuffs. There was no gold in them. It was about to be like an insolvent farm and it was all his fault.

And then on top of all the guilt and the shame and the embarrassment of how badly this was going, he also recently had begun getting into these heated disputes with his neighbors over the property lines. And so it's like all around him is just constant problems. And so now, as Graham dutifully trudged through the field with his bucket of feed, his mind is swimming with all the other things he has to do that day. And as he's walking along, he sees something odd on one of the fence posts up ahead. And as he got closer to it, he began to hear this really loud buzzing of lots of flies in the area.

And then finally, when he got up to the fence post, he saw why the flies were here. Because on the fence post, the thing he saw was a severed lamb's head, and the flies were swarming all around it. And then before Graham could, could process, like, why this lamb's head was here, which immediately appeared to be intentional— it didn't seem like a lamb had somehow gotten trapped here or something, like somebody took this head and put it here— he's sort of looking around and he sees taped to the fence right nearby is this piece of paper with a message on it. And it was basically in all capital letters, and even from a distance, he could have been able to read it. And it just said, "You next." Now, of course, this is like collectively a shocking scene.

This is a very obvious threat to Graham. Someone has placed these things here to threaten Graham. But believe it or not, when Graham saw the letter, not so much the lamb head, but the letter, He sorta didn't breathe a sigh of relief, not at all. But he had actually gotten, over the past couple of weeks, several other letters like this. So this is just a continuation of something that's been going on here.

The animal head? That was new. That was a clear escalation here. But the letters? That had been happening.

The notes had started around the end of the previous month when one had arrived at his house by mail, which had just directly threatened Graham. And then he and his wife had gotten even more messages after that, and all of them were threatening to hurt Graham and also his family. Now, Graham had gone to the police and told them, and they had said, you know, do you know anyone that might want to hurt you guys? Do you have any enemies or anything? And Graham, like, he wanted to say, oh no, definitely not.

But realistically, he knew probably over the course of his life in this small town— I mean, Horton is like this really small village. There was a good chance that he might have made some people mad somewhere along the lines. You know, he wasn't perfect, but in his mind, he basically got along with everyone. And so he said, no, I don't think so. But the police, after getting Graham's statement, they didn't really do any investigating.

From what Graham knew, they basically had just filed a report and called it a day. But now, as Graham is standing here by his fence and there's this, this animal head here, Again, this is like a clear escalation. It's no longer just notes. We now have a dead animal involved. This is like a real threat.

So Graham at this point is mad, feeling like the police really let him down, and he ripped the note off the fence and he headed back to his house to call the police again. 10 days later, on the morning of April 9th, 1984, Graham was inside one of his barns and he was milking a cow. And he had the radio on and the music turned all the way up as he worked. Graham, 10 days before, had called the police and told them about the severed lamb head and the note, and at this point they said that they would actually start an investigation. But Graham had not heard anything from them since they said that.

But at the same time, he also hadn't gotten any other threatening notes since. So even though Graham didn't feel like whatever was going on was over, he still felt like, you know, he and his family did need to find a way to just, you know, try to live their lives like normal, because what else could they really do? And so today was just gonna be a day where he and his family just tried to go about their business as they normally would. The kids were at school, and Margaret, his wife, had some errands to do in town, and Graham was on milking duty. And today the cows were really lively, and so they're mooing constantly, and the music that Graham's playing is really loud, so the barn is like just full of noise.

In fact, it was so noisy that Graham didn't hear the barn doors open up behind him. However, he did hear voices suddenly begin shouting inside the barn, and he turned around just as two locals that he recognized from his village charged into the barn waving their arms frantically at him, telling him something. And so Graham, he lunges and turns off his radio, and he turns to these locals and he said, like, "What? What's going on?" And they told him, like, "Your wife, she's been in this terrible accident. You need to come outside right now." And so Graham, he's shocked by what they're saying, but he's thinking like, I thought my wife was in town running errands.

Like, what do you mean come outside? And so he jumps up and he runs with the locals outside and he looks towards his house, the farmhouse, and he sees there's all this gray smoke curling up into the air. And so Graham sprints to his house. He runs around to the backside where the driveway is, where the smoke appears to be coming from. And as he turns the corner, he sees his car and it's like damaged in some way and there's, the smoke is definitely coming off the car.

And he turns the corner fully and he looks onto his front yard and there, laying there in a bloody heap, is his wife. And so Graham, he's just so shocked for a second, he's paralyzed. And then he turns and he screams at the other two, the locals who had just told him about the accident. He yells for them to call the police and then he runs for his wife.

About 20 minutes later, Graham stood by his front steps with a police officer while a team of paramedics loaded his wife into an ambulance. Amazingly, despite her horrible injuries, especially to her legs, she was still alive. But Graham couldn't actually go with her to the hospital right now because he had to give a statement to the officer. Because it would turn out there had been a bomb underneath one of the car seats in the car Graham's wife was driving that had detonated and it nearly killed his wife. And so now they needed to figure out how the heck this happened.

And so Graham needed to give his statement while the bomb squad, which was swarming his property, looked everywhere to make sure there weren't more bombs here. And so of course, like, Graham at this point is shocked. He's so worried about his wife. He doesn't really know the state of her injuries. You know, she was just kind of whisked away and he wasn't allowed to go with her.

And so his mind is very occupied with his wife, but then also there was a part of him that was just furious. Like, he had told the police about these threats to him and his family that had only really been escalating over the past several weeks. I mean, 10 days ago, there's that severed lamb head on his post with the words, 'You next.' Like, clearly this was getting worse, and the police seemed to have done nothing. And now here they are demanding he explained what happened. And so he's furious.

And so Graham again reiterates to this officer that there had been all these threats to he and his family over the past several weeks. And really, it seemed like the threats had been directed at him. And he actually pointed out to the officer that the car that had the bomb in it that, you know, nearly killed his wife that was actually his car. It was his Volvo, and his wife never drove that car. The only reason she was driving it today is because her car had an ignition issue.

So this was like anomalous that she was in the car, and so obviously the bomb was intended for him. And so as Graham is relaying all these details to this officer, they both start hearing all this shouting coming from sort of far away in the front of the property, like towards the front of the driveway. And they turn and they see a mailman has driven his van onto the driveway and is driving right up towards the house. And remember, this is now a crime scene, and it's sort of a new crime scene, and there's all these officers everywhere, and they haven't fully roped everything off yet. And this van is basically just driving up into the crime scene.

And so all the officers down in front are like, whoa, whoa, stop, stop, stop! And they stop the mailman, who's like, what is going on here? And he's like, "Hey, I just, I just have the mail for them." And he hands a stack of letters to one of the police officers who then tells the mailman to turn around and get out of here. And so he drives out of there, and then the officer with the mail comes up the driveway and he hands it over to Graham. And so Graham has just told the officer, the guy he gave a statement to, about all these threats he's been getting and how he thinks it's all tied to this bomb.

And wouldn't you know it, the letter sitting at the top of this stack of mail that he was just handed had very familiar handwriting on it. It looked just like all the other threatening letters that he and his family had gotten over the previous few weeks. And so Graham, he turns to the officer and he's like, "I know this is another threat. This envelope, it contains another threat for sure." And the officer, he's like, "Do not open it. We're gonna take that.

It's now evidence." 15 days later, on April 24th, Graham left his house and began walking down the road. And the fresh air was really helpful to Graham because right now he was feeling very anxious. Margaret miraculously had survived, but she was still in the hospital. She was still getting surgeries because, you know, the bomb had done quite a bit of damage to particularly her lower half. There was all this shrapnel that had been embedded in her legs and her hips.

And so she'd be there for quite some time. As for the children, I mean, they were not affected directly by the bomb, but of course they were you know, so upset because their mom's been hurt and they're scared because of all these threats. Like, is there going to be another attack? Like, it was awful for them. And so Graham, you know, did his best to be strong for them, but it just didn't make sense to have them at the home with him.

I mean, it was, it was dangerous. They were scared all the time. So he had sent them to stay with his mother, basically to keep them safe and keep them calm and sort of away from him until this whole thing sort of blew over, or whatever this was, until it ended. And so Graham is just stuck at this farm by himself, you know, basically spiraling 24/7. Like, he hates being here.

He's always hated this farm. He resented the fact that he had to look after it and it was just going so badly. And now it's like he has an actual, like, active threat against him and his family and his wife's almost been killed. Like, life is just— it couldn't be worse right now. And then on top of that, you know, the police were clearly investigating what happened here and investigating these threats.

But so far, Graham had not gotten any answers. Now, immediately following the bombing, for like the few days that followed, the police gave Graham and his family around-the-clock physical protection because, again, there's like this active threat out there. But after a few days when nothing else happened and, you know, it was really, you know, taxing the police to be constantly monitoring this family, they throttled that back and instead just gave Graham a panic button that he could press in case he or his family had some emergency at the property. And so the police are gone and Graham just has this panic button. His wife's at the hospital, his kids are away, and he's just, again, stuck at this farm and he's just so upset.

He's so stressed out. And in this place, this mental place he's in where he's just wondering what's gonna happen in the future, he began to think about who really would wanna do this to him. Who could he really fixate on that would want to cause he and his family harm? And he actually came up with one suspect that began to make more and more sense the more he thought about them. His neighbor.

Graham's neighbor was a guy named Colin, and in town it was no secret that Graham and Colin didn't get along, primarily because they bickered over property lines. Now, Graham and Colin's arguments never actually escalated into violence, but Graham knew that sometimes their fights got really heated, and it seemed entirely plausible that Colin might want to exact some physical violence on Graham. And so now Graham was actually walking over to Colin's house and he was just going to talk to him. Because even though these two really didn't get along, like, they were capable of speaking to each other. This was not totally unusual.

And so his plan was he was just going to go over there and intentionally not bring up sort of like the elephant in the room here, which is, you know, the bombing and the threats and the ongoing criminal investigation. Graham was just going to go over there and basically just make his presence known and just sort of see how Colin reacted to him, see if he acted strange, see if he could pick up on any suspicious behavior by Colin. And so he turned the corner and he walks up Colin's driveway, and Colin was actually out in front, and Colin sort of turned and saw Graham and did not look pleased to see him, and he didn't walk up to greet him or anything. He just stood there staring at him. But Graham confidently strode up the driveway and he just started talking to Colin, and they had this sort of weird stilted conversation where neither man really wanted to see the other, but They really didn't talk about anything of substance.

You know, Graham didn't really explain why he was there. They just had this, this weird small talk. And then they said their goodbyes and Graham turned and he walked away. And as Graham walked back to his property, it started to become more and more clear in his mind, like, how bizarre it was that in this conversation, which, you know, of course it was awkward, these guys don't get along, but how weird it was that Colin didn't ask why Graham had come over. He didn't bring up the bombing.

He didn't ask about, you know, Graham's wife. He didn't ask about anything. It was like this weird, super neutral conversation. And for Graham, it just made Colin feel that much more suspicious. A few days later, on the night of April 30th, Graham was in his office inside of his farmhouse, staring down at a blank notepad.

Graham was trying to write because that used to be something he loved doing, but, you know, tonight he just couldn't be creative. I mean, no arrests had been made in this case. His wife was still at the hospital. His kids are still out with his mom. You know, no progress has been made on this case.

Like, he still feels like there's this imminent threat out there. And also, the police had very recently interviewed Colin and nothing came of it, so it just sort of seemed like Nothing was going on, but all the problems he had were still very much there. And so as Graham is sitting there feeling terrible, he hears this loud, sudden knocking on his front door. And immediately, you know, Graham's on edge. One, he wasn't expecting visitors, and two, really generally he didn't get guests, especially this late at night.

And considering everything going on right now and the fact that no arrests have been made, I mean, he's fearful, he's paranoid. But, you know, he's here all alone. He can't just ignore the fact that somebody's here. And so very apprehensively, he gets up and he begins making his way out to the front door. When Graham was about to open the door, there was another pounding on the door, like whoever was out there was really eager to talk to him.

And so Graham, like, his pulse is racing and he grabs the doorknob, he turns it, and he opens it. And the instant he saw who was standing out there, Graham knew he had to turn and run and press that panic button. Just a few minutes later, Detective Superintendent Tom Evans with the local police charged up the walkway of Graham's farmhouse with a team of officers right behind him. Evans was the lead investigator on Graham's case, like the entire ongoing, you know, threat and bomb case. And he'd been notified that the panic button that they had installed in the farmhouse had just gone off.

So his team was responding to see if, you know, maybe the person or people who were targeting Graham and his family had struck again. When Evans got up to the front door, he tried the handle and found that it was open. So he opened the door and he announced that police were here and they were coming inside, but there was no answer. And so Evans and his team went inside, and pretty much immediately when he stepped inside, he saw a dead body. There was a man laying on his back in the hallway, and his chest was covered in blood.

However, when Evans approached him, he realized that this was not Graham. This was someone else. This man was much older than Graham. He was in his 60s, and at first he just had no idea who it was. But then after a second, Evans actually recognized him.

It was Colin, Graham's neighbor, who they'd actually interviewed fairly recently during their investigation. Colin, in addition to having what appeared to be, you know, one or several gunshot wounds to the chest, was holding a knife in his right fist. Before Evans and his team could take note of anything else here, they began to hear moaning coming from the kitchen. So Evans told a few of his officers to stay with the body, and then Evans and another officer slowly made their way, you know, guns drawn, into the kitchen to see what was going on. And when they turned the corner and looked into the kitchen, I mean, it was a bloody mess.

There was blood really on everything— chairs, tables overturned. And then lying on the ground in the center of all the chaos, cradling a shotgun, was Graham Backhouse. And Graham was a mess. He was the one who was moaning. He had this just horrible knife wound on his face, and he was bleeding profusely.

And he also appeared to have a gash across his chest and also across his stomach. Evans and his partner, they run over to Graham and they kneel down next to him. And, you know, Graham, he's in rough shape, but he's clearly, you know, stable. He can talk. He's in a lot of pain, and Evans asks him like, "Hey, what happened?" And Graham, who again, like, he's in quite a bit of physical pain here, so every time he speaks he's sort of like gritting his teeth, but he was able to explain to Evans that he heard a knock on his door, he opened it up, and there's Colin, his neighbor.

And it was unclear what he was doing here, and before long the two men are getting in this argument, and then Graham said that Colin sort of inexplicably admitted that he was the one who planted the bomb. He was the one who was leaving all these threats. And then Graham, who was about to run and press the panic button, right before he did, he said Colin pulled out a knife and then started chasing after him. And at that point, Graham said he bolted, he grabbed his shotgun, he was able to get a shot off in self-defense, and then he did press the panic button. And he had no idea what happened to Colin, but he figured he was dead.

The paramedics eventually arrived, and it was determined that, you know, Graham's injuries were serious, but he would survive. However, he was still ushered out into an ambulance and brought to the hospital. And then after Graham was gone, the police once again roped off the farmhouse and began processing the scene, taking pictures of everything and collecting evidence. And then after they were done doing that, the police also went next door to Colin's property and roped that off and searched that as well to look for evidence. And they discovered under some leaves on his property was actually a piece of pipe that exactly matched the bomb that was used to blow up the car that nearly killed Margaret.

So at this point, it seemed extremely likely that Colin really was the bomber. But over the next few days, as Evans and his team analyzed all the other forensics and items and photographs they'd collected, they noticed something strange. And then they found another new piece of evidence that actually was even more damning and far more significant than that pipe that was found on Colin's property. This new evidence was just a, a very mundane everyday object. However, this object told Evans that he and his team had gotten this entire case completely wrong.

What was really going on here was like nothing Evans had ever experienced in his entire nearly 30-year law enforcement career. In fact, what was happening here was closer to something out of a detective novel. So Graham Backhouse really did love to write, and he had dreamed of being a writer. Specifically, he actually had wanted to write detective stories. And in some ways, over the last few weeks during all this madness, He'd sort of done exactly that.

Using his spiral notepad, he'd concocted a very over-the-top, exciting narrative full of twists and turns and intrigue and murder. Except the thriller that Graham was putting together, this detective story, was not all fiction. In fact, most of it was very, very real. It would turn out the threatening notes The severed lamb's head, the bomb that nearly killed his wife— all of those were Graham's ideas. The farm, because of Graham, was in a lot of debt.

So Graham took out a series of life insurance policies on his wife and then planned to murder her with a bomb that he made. But before he did that, he wrote and planted a whole bunch of threatening notes around the property, and he mailed to himself That way, police would think there was like this maniac on the loose that was after his family and that Graham was nothing more than a victim. However, Margaret didn't die from the bomb, and Graham panicked. He worried that police would eventually realize it was him who planted the bomb, and so he decided he would frame his neighbor Colin as the fall guy since it was widely known in the village that they didn't get along. Except, while Graham had managed to create a A new twist, an outrageous turn in the storyline.

Unfortunately, he was just as terrible at covering up his crime as he was at farming. Colin's murder scene had a whole bunch of evidence that clearly proved Graham had set the whole thing up. The blood spatter was completely off, and Graham had no defensive wounds. But the big clue that led the police to actually arresting Graham was his own spiral notepad. They'd found the notepad in Graham's office, and on one of the sheets was a very unique-looking circular doodle that clearly Graham had drawn on it.

And when he drew this doodle, the pen had made an impression on the sheets underneath it, and Graham had used some of those sheets underneath the doodle after he had done the doodle to write those threatening notes. And so the police, they had those notes because, you know, Graham had been turning them over as evidence of this maniac. And they had previously noticed that on these, these notes, in addition to the letters, there appeared to be like an imprint on the piece of paper that was like a very unique doodle. And now they were staring at the original doodle on his notepad. And so that allowed them to directly link the threatening notes right back to Graham.

Graham Backhouse was found guilty of murder and attempted murder and given two life sentences. He would die in prison of a heart attack in 1994.

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. Ballin Podcast: Strange, Dark, and Mysterious Stories is hosted and executive produced by me, Mr. Ballin. Our head of writing is Evan Allen. Produced by Jeremy Bone and Cole Locascio. This episode was written by Kate Murdock. Story editing by Luke Baratz.

Research and fact-checking by Shelley Xu, Samantha Van Hoos, Evan Beamer, Abigail Shumway, Camille Callahan, Alex Paul, Ben Fasciano. Research and fact-checking supervision by Stephen Ear. Audio editing and post-produced by Whit Locascio and Jordan Stidham. Production support by Antonio Manata and Delaina Corley. Artwork by Jessica Clogston Kiner.

Theme song "Something Wicked" by Ross Bugden.