Blood on the Bridge (PODCAST EXCLUSIVE EPISODE)

One morning, an early November of 1888, a conductor drove a steam train through the woods outside of Shantilly, France. And everything was business as usual until the conductor noticed way up ahead just next to the tracks. There were these two men, two maintenance workers waving frantically at him and pointing at something that was on the ground on the tracks. The conductor couldn't really tell what they were doing, but he squinted and looked ahead trying to figure out what was on the ground. When he saw what it was, he lunged for the breaks. But before we get into that story, if you're a fan of the strange dark and mysterious delivered in story format, and you've come to the right place because that's all we do, so if that's of interest to you, please invite the follow button to go to the movies with you. But when you get there, be sure to tell the ticket checker about all the secret candy the follow button is sneaking inside. Okay, let's get into today's story. On the evening of November 2nd, 1888, a 45-year-old man named Epolita Oyos got dressed in a three-piece suit in the bedroom of his very cramped apartment in Paris, France. In the next room, he could hear his wife, Alphonseen, cooking dinner, while their three young kids ran around playing. And even though this really should have felt like a happy, idyllic moment, Epolita instead felt this pang worry, because keeping this family afloat was his responsibility. And recently, he'd had a very hard time doing that. So, Epolita had grown up on a farm in Belgium, and when he was younger, he'd gotten into some trouble with the law. And basically had a really tough time kind of finding his way in life. But about 10 years ago, he had moved to France, and he had met Alphonseen, and he also found a steady job running a farm for a wealthy French noble in the countryside. Now, Epolita knew a lot about agriculture. He'd grown up on a farm, so in theory this job really should have been perfect for him. But the problem was, no one on the farm really liked him. And it was true, he'd been very strict with the farm hands, but a lot of them had taken that sternness, and they had gone to their boss and complained about him, saying that he was overbearing and very difficult to work with. So, last month, when Epolita's contract was up, and he was expecting his boss would renew it, his boss didn't. And so now, Epolita's perfect life, this amazing life he had built for himself here in France with Alphonseen, felt like it was falling apart. And so, following not getting his contract renewed, Epolita and his wife and their kids had moved to Paris, so he could look for other work. But luckily, they'd also found this very cheap, but luckily furnished apartment just the week before, so they at least had a place to live, but Epolita still needed work. Now, this new neighborhood they were in, you know, understandably, because it was so cheap, it was largely full of, you know, working class people. And there were lots of factories and lots of warehouses, so it was sort of a little bit rough and tumble, compared to what Epolita had become accustomed to, working for this this nobleman out in the countryside. I mean, Epolita, you know, he wasn't crazy about the area, he had expensive tastes, even though he didn't have an expensive budget. However, Epolita knew that this whole situation was just temporary, because, after all, he was about to come into a huge windfall. And he actually had to travel outside of Paris right now to actually get the money, which was what he was currently getting dressed for. And so on this trip, his friend, 52-year-old Louis Barone, would be accompanying him, at least for a portion of the trip, because he was going the same way for a job interview that Epolita had actually helped set up for him. Now, Louis was also from Belgium, and so he had known Epolita for a long time, but things were tense between them at the moment. Epolita had arranged for Louis to work on the farm that he used to manage, but when Epolita was fired, it had also caused Louis his job there as well. The reality was, Louis was quite furious, I mean, he was really upset about it. To the point where Epolita had actually helped pay for a room at a hotel, just a few blocks away from his apartment in Paris, for Louis. And he'd even let Louis borrow one of his suits to where to this job interview. And so really, Epolita was hopeful that by the end of this trip he was going on, his buddy Louis would finally just stop being mad at him, that was causing lots of problems. So now, after getting dressed in his fancy suit, Epolita packed up a bag with some extra clothes and some cash and he put on hat. Then he went into the kitchen to kiss Alfon, seeing goodbye. She kissed him back, but she definitely seemed a little bit anxious. And Epolita figured she was just thinking about being left alone with her three small kids. So he just reassured her that, you know, this trip this was all going to be worth it, like don't worry about a thing, I'll be back soon. Then he said goodbye to the kids and then left for the train station. Just after dark that night, Epolita stepped off a train at the station in Chantilly, which is about 30 miles north of Paris. Louis was with him and already dressed for his interview in the suit that Epolita had given him. And as the two men walked across the platform, Epolita noticed that Louis was moving sort of slowly and awkwardly, like he was uncomfortable in the suit, like he wasn't used to dressing that way. The men left the station on foot and continued walking down the road toward Sennless, the little town where they were both spending the night. It was about a six-mile walk to get there, and once they got outside of Chantilly, the road was surrounded almost entirely by woods. It was dark and it was late, so there weren't many people that were out and about, and the two men didn't talk much, so the walk was very quiet. Eventually, as they were approaching Sennless, they came to this narrow stone bridge with metal railings on either side that passed over a railroad track. And as they reached it, Epolita heard this rustling in the trees. He stopped and he listened, and as he did, he felt his heart start to pound, because this whole walk has been just like eerily quiet, and so to hear anything was just sort of alarming. But as he stood there, listening, he couldn't hear it anymore, so he decided he must be imagining things. Now, Louis did not appear to hear the sounds at all, and he was still walking ahead across the bridge. So, Epolita, he took a deep breath, and then hurried onto the bridge to catch up with him. The next morning, two road maintenance workers were hauling a gravel-filled cart down that same wooded road that connected Shantilly and Sennless, the road that Louis and Epolita had been on the night before. And so these workers were looking for potholes that they would fill in with this gravel, and so they're moving along, they're filling in potholes, and then eventually, they got to that narrow bridge by Sennless. And when they did, one of them noticed a man's hat lying near the bridge's railing, and as they got near the hat, they looked on the pavement, and saw these dark splatters of blood. Now, the workers were immediately on edge, they're looking around, they don't see anybody, but at some point, one of them looked over the railing. And when he saw what was down below, he immediately shouted that they had to go tell the police. Later that morning, a judge named John Oberton walked down a small hill by some railroad tracks. At the bottom, a police officer and two road maintenance workers stood next to the tracks, staring down at a dead body. So in France, at the time, judges were responsible for leading investigations instead of police. So Oberton would essentially function as the lead detective on this case, and only been told so far was that a body had been found on this stretch of train tracks, and he really didn't know what to expect beyond that. When Oberton reached the group down below, the police officer explained that the two workers, the road maintenance workers, had found the body that morning. They'd flag down a train conductor who would stop just in time, and then waited for them to move the body off the tracks, and then the conductor kept going in his train and notified the police at the next station. And so Oberton, he knelt down to get a better look at the body, and right away he could tell that it was clearly a man with blonde hair, and that he was wearing a nice three-piece suit, but that was really about all he could conclude, because his face was just completely mangled. And his head was almost completely severed from his body. Many of his teeth were also broken, and there was also a deep gash on his left foot near his ankle. Now at first glance, Oberton wondered if he had just jumped off the bridge and got hit by a train. But when he looked closer, the pattern of the wounds on his face just did not look like they'd been caused by a train. These were long distinct gashes going in multiple different directions. It looked more like this man had been attacked with a sharp weapon, like an axe or something. And Oberton's best guess was that whatever happened to this guy very likely happened the night before. There wasn't much decomposition, and this railroad line got a lot of traffic. So the body couldn't have been here for very long, or another train conductor would have seen him earlier, or maybe wouldn't have seen him and then run him over, and then his body would be completely mangled. As Oberton stood up, one of the workers told him that they had seen blood up on the bridge. So Oberton climbed up the small hill onto the bridge, and he saw that hat that was lined by the railing, and then just a ton of blood all around the hat on the ground. And to Oberton, I mean there was so much blood up here that he figured his theory that this guy was attacked had to have been right here. I mean he very likely was attacked right here on the bridge, and he either fell over the edge during the assault, or maybe after the assault his killer. through his body, maybe to make it look like a suicide, or perhaps to dispose of evidence. And so at this point, Overton felt pretty much certain that this was a homicide, and he knew he would have to identify this victim as soon as possible. On the afternoon of November 4, 1888, the day after a man's body was found mangled in the woods near Sennelos, France, Judge Overton walked down a busy street in a working class part of Paris. Now by this point, he'd already gotten the autopsy results back, but they didn't really tell him much that he didn't already know, which was that the victim had been killed by multiple strikes from a sharp weapon like a hatchet. Now even though the body itself had not given Overton too much to go on for this investigation, the clothes that the victim had on had given him something. Overton had spent the past day piecing together clues that he had found in the victim's pockets, including a piece of paper with an address to a location in Paris, and the initials HH embroidered on a handkerchief. And at this point, Overton knew what HH meant. It was the initials for the victim, Ibalita Oils. Overton had gone to that address in Paris from that piece of paper, and he found it belonged to an acquaintance of Ibalitas, and this person had not only identified Ibalita, but also he gave Overton Ibalita's last known address, where he had lived with his family, and Overton was right outside of that address now. But as he looked up at the building that matched the address he'd been given, he wondered if he had the wrong place. The man whose body had been found was wearing this really nice suit, and looked like he was upper-class, based on the suit. And this was definitely not an upper-class place to live, this was not a nice area. But Overton went inside anyways, and he walked up a flight of stairs, and then he knocked on the door of the apartment number that he'd been given. The second's later, a very tired looking woman answered the door, bouncing a toddler on her hip, and Overton asked her if this was the home of Ibalita Oils, and the woman just kind of frowned and said, yes, she was actually his wife, Alphonseen. Overton kept it simple, and just said that he was a judge, and he was conducting an investigation, and asked if he could come in. Alphonseen got this uneasy look on her face, but she nodded and said, come on in. Once they'd both sat down at the dining room table, Overton told her that the investigation he was doing was for a homicide. The body had been found in the woods near Senna's France, and he believed, unfortunately, the body belonged to her husband, Ibalita. And to Overton's surprise, Alphonseen just didn't seem very upset at all. She just sat there expressionless, as Overton went on to explain a little bit further what actually happened, that the body had been found on some train tracks, and it appeared like that he had been attacked. Someone had clearly killed him. And as Overton did this, he kept waiting for Alphonseen to cry or gasp or really show any emotion, but she just didn't. And Overton couldn't decide whether this was suspicious, or if this woman was just in shock. So after laying out why he was here, he began just asking her questions to get a bit of read on her. So he asked her, when was the last time you saw your husband? And she just began to speak. She said it was the evening he had left for the train station. He was going to Belgium to collect the inheritance from a relative who had died recently. She said that she'd been staying home and taken care of their three kids since then, and hadn't heard anything from him since he had left. To Overton, this explained why Epilita was found in Sennless, because Sennless was about halfway between Paris and Belgium, so clearly he was on his way to Belgium. However, as he was internalizing this new information, he was interrupted by a very loud gasp. And he looked at Alphonseen to see that she had sort of broken out of her muted state, mistaring at him with really wide eyes, like something huge had just occurred to her. And she told him, you know, maybe her husband had been on his way back with all the money he got from the inheritance, and she said, you know, maybe he was killed by a robber. Now Overton, he considered this, and a robbery did make sense to him. Epilita was very well dressed, and there hadn't been any money in any of his pockets. But this whole interview with his wife just felt really off. Alphonseen didn't seem at all confused, or rattled, or upset in any way. And now, just literally moments after finding out that potentially your husband has been brutally murdered, like he's dead. She's begun pitching theories of how he was killed, like she was trying to point the finger at someone else right away, it just fell off. Now to Overton, Alphonseen did not really seem like she could have been the one to actually kill Epilita herself. She's clearly here alone with three young kids, and you know, this took place in Sandless, and more than that is, Epilita was a pretty big guy, and he clearly had been overpowered by somebody, or maybe multiple people, and you know, Alphonseen was quite small. However, if she was involved and maybe hired someone to carry out a hit on her husband, well that would cost, presumably, quite a bit of money, and considering, you know, the low quality nature of where they lived, it just seemed unlikely to Overton that she would be able to afford paying a hitman. And so at this point, Overton didn't think that Alphonseen was a particularly strong suspect, but at the same time he couldn't completely rule her out. However, one thing he was definitely sure about, just based on a gut feeling here, was that Alphonseen knew something more than she was telling him. That night, when Judge Overton got back to the courthouse in Sandless, he walked down the hallway toward his office, and saw a police officer waiting at his door. And this officer told him that they'd arrested a man that afternoon, whose name was Etienne Buio, for the murder of Epilita Oios. Overton's heart began to race, and when he heard Etienne was in a holding cell in the jail right next door, he told the officer to take him there right away. As they hurried down the hallway and out of the courthouse, the officer explained to Overton that a group of police had been out at the crime scene near Sandless collecting evidence, and at some point they'd passed Etienne sitting in the woods nearby. And as soon as he saw the police approaching, Etienne had just started running. And so the officers had chased him down, and they had caught him, and when they did, they'd noticed he had blood on his pants and on his jacket. They also found a bloody handkerchief that was in one of his pockets. Now, the officer said that Etienne had claimed he was hit by a cart the night before, and that was why he was covered in so much blood. But the police were just not convinced. Especially because Etienne refused to give them an alibi for where he had been, the night Epilita was actually killed. And so the officer and Overton, they get to the jail and they go inside, and when they reach the holding cell, Overton saw Etienne sitting inside, and he was wearing very shabby clothes and looked like he might be homeless. And so Overton, he goes inside the cell, and Etienne is just sitting there, he's not saying anything, and Overton, he just sits down and begins going over all the evidence that they had. And a lot of it made it seem like Etienne was their guy. And at some point, when Overton was done sort of going over what they had, he told Etienne that you're basically our only suspect at this point. So unless he could give Overton an alibi for the night of November 2nd, the night that Epilita was killed, then, unfortunately, Etienne was very likely going to be charged with murder. At this point, Etienne just sort of looked down for a moment, and then let out this long, defeated sigh, like the reality of a situation was really settling in. Eventually, he looked back up at Overton, and he mumbled that he did have an alibi. He said he had spent the whole night sleeping at an inn in Chantilly. He said the reason he hadn't told the police this is because he actually left the inn without paying. And that's also why he had run from the police when he was seen in the woods. He thought they were there to arrest him for theft. Overton looked hard at Etienne. He wasn't sure if he believed him, but he wrote down the name of the inn, and planned to go out there and verify Etienne's alibi first thing in the morning. A week later, Judge Overton walked down a street in Paris in the same working-class neighborhood where Epilita and his family lived. He was on his way to check out a lead that he really hoped would reinvigorate his investigation. Because over the last week, the case had completely stalled. Etienne's alibi had checked out. The inn's owner verified that Etienne had stayed there that night, and at some point, he had left without paying. Now this did not completely rule Etienne out because he could have left his room without anyone noticing to go commit this murder, but it did make it seem much more likely that Etienne was just in the wrong place at the wrong time. And since Etienne, Overton hadn't gotten any more tips about this case until that morning, when he'd gotten word that one of Epilita's friends was missing. This friend was a Belgian farmer named Louis Barone who had come to France to work with Epilita. And this friend, Louis, hadn't been seen in over a week, basically since the murder he's been missing. And so to Overton, the timing here was just too perfect to be a coincidence. And so now, the judge was looking into Louis as a possible suspect who maybe skipped town after killing Epilita. Olberton came to a stop outside of the hotel where he was. he had heard, Lui was most recently living, which happened to be just a few blocks from Epileta's apartment. The judge went inside and approached the front desk and asked the manager if a guest named Louis Barone had been around recently. And the manager said that yes, they definitely knew who Louis Barone was, but he hadn't been here in about a week. The manager said that the last time he had seen him, he was leaving the hotel on the night of November 2nd. And when he said that, Oberton perked up, because that was the same night that Epileta was killed. Like again, the coincidence was just too much here. And so the judge quickly asked the manager, like what else can you tell me about Louis? What kind of person was he? Who did he hang out with, like give me anything you got? And the manager clearly didn't know Louis particularly well, but he did say that there was one person he saw Louis with all the time. And often these two people were arguing in the lobby. Now the manager said he didn't know who this person was, but this other person that Louis we fought with appeared to be a middle-aged man with blonde hair. Now to Oberton, he's thinking clearly you're referencing Epileta, like that sounds like Epileta this guy. And so he asked the manager, like did you ever overhear what these guys were fighting about? What were the arguments about? But the manager said he really didn't know. He said that he couldn't ever hear what they were saying. It just always seemed like when they were talking, it was like kind of heated. And he could really tell that Louis appeared to despise this other guy, like it was much more Louis hating this guy than the other way around. The manager did tell Oberton that occasionally their arguments did get so bad that it almost became violent. And in fact the manager at one point or another had to break them up, like physically separate them, but even still he didn't know what they were fighting about. As Oberton is hearing all this new information, his mind just raced. And as he looked around at this pretty shabby hotel in a rough part of town, he realized that the robbery theory might be partly right. But instead of it being some random thief, Epilita might have been targeted by someone he knew, like Louis. And so if this blonde haired guy that Louis was fighting with was Epilita, then based on what the manager was saying, it seemed pretty reasonable to assume that Louis and Epilita didn't get along. And if Louis was an out-of-work farmhand living in a shabby hotel, it wasn't unreasonable to think that he needed money desperately. And if Louis had known that Epilita was traveling alone to go collect this inheritance, maybe he could have made plans to meet up with him on the way back and then lured him out to the woods and killed him and taken his money and then, you know, after ditching his body on the tracks, fled to avoid being caught. And if Louis really did have all that inheritance money on him, I mean with all that cash, he could be anywhere by now, and so Oberton realized he might never find him. A couple of weeks later, in late November of 1888, Judge Oberton sat in his office at the Sandless Courthouse, reading a telegram from a police sergeant in Belgium. Police all over France and Belgium had been searching for Louis Barone for weeks now. This telegram was bad news just like all the others. This one said that no one in Louis' hometown had heard from him since before Epilita's murder, and there was still no sign of him anywhere in Belgium. Oberton sighed and began flipping through a stack of notes from the investigation. Louis was the strongest suspect, because he'd completely skipped town on the same day Epilita was killed. But, he also hadn't ruled out Alphonseen. She'd acted incredibly suspicious when Oberton spoke to her. And now, Oberton had discovered that she actually might have lied to him. He'd looked into the inheritance Epilita had supposedly gone to collect in Belgium, and he couldn't corroborate any of the details that Alphonseen had given him. So the judge had looked into this inheritance that Epilita had supposedly gone to Belgium to collect, and so far anyways, he hadn't been able to corroborate any of the details that Alphonseen had given him. Like they hadn't found any record of this relative, who supposedly died recently and was the one passing the inheritance to Epilita and his family. Like this person just didn't seem to exist. And then there was Etienne, who'd been found at the literal crime scene covered in blood. But he'd had an alibi. And since this was 1888, DNA analysis didn't exist, so Oberton had no way of proving that that blood was Epilitas or his own or somebody else's. And so as Oberton was racking his brain, trying to figure out what he was missing, there was an awkwardness door. And so Oberton got up and he opened the door, and he saw a man in a nice suit standing there. And the man asked if Oberton had a few minutes to chat, he said it was about Epilita's murder. Now Oberton didn't recognize him, so he was a little confused, but he needs some leads here. He needs progress on this case, so he said, yeah, come on in, let's chat. And so they sat down and this well-dressed man explained who he was, and then he launched into this incredibly wild story that, at first, didn't seem to have anything to do with the murder case. Then it was like all at once, Oberton realized that what this man was saying was the key to his entire case. Based on all the evidence, which included letters and witness interviews, this is what police believe happened to Epilita Oios on the night of November 2, 1888. Once it was totally dark out, the killer walked down a quiet, deserted road in the forest between Shantilly and Senless, and as they walked along, they were absolutely buzzing with anticipation. The plan they'd been working on for weeks was about to be completed, and their victim had no idea what was coming. Up ahead, there was this bridge, this narrow bridge that went over some railroad tracks, and on the bridge was a man in a three-piece suit, and he was the target. The killer knew this man was worth a fortune to them, and so all they had to do now was just kill him, and they, the killer, would be set for life. And so carefully, trying not to make a sound, the killer began hustling toward the bridge, and as they did, they reached into their jacket, and they pulled out a hatchet, and so finally they got to the bridge, and they crept up right behind their victim, and without the man even noticing, the killer raised the hatchet, and brought it down on the back of the sky's head. And then after that, they hit him over, and over again with the hatchet, until the man stopped moving. After that, the killer put away their hatchet, and then lifted this man's body up, and dumped it over the railing, and it fell down below, and the killer, they walked off the bridge, and turned around, and went down the hill, down to those railroad tracks, and they grabbed the body of their victim, and dragged it, and placed the body on the tracks. They were hoping that by doing this, they would look like, you know, this guy was hit by a train, not murder. But before the killer could actually flee the scene, they first had to do one more thing, just to make sure they wouldn't get caught. And so they reached into their own pocket, and they pulled out two items, a handkerchief, and a piece of paper with an address on it, and they stuffed both of these items in the jacket pocket of their victim, and then the killer fled. The victim was not Epilito Oils, he was the killer, but turned out the body that the investigators thought belonged to Epilita was actually Epilita's own friend, Louis Barone. So Epilita and his wife Alfoncene, they conspired to murder Louis, and make it appear like his body was actually Epilita's body, because just a few months before the murder, Epilita had taken out a life insurance claim on himself that in the event of his death, Alfoncene would be paid a huge sum of money. But Epilita had no intention of dying. They needed somebody else to die on his behalf, and it just so happened that Louis actually already looked an awful lot like Epilita, like strikingly similar. And so Epilita lured Louis out to that deserted stretch of road in the woods on the way to a job interview, which was just pretext to lure his friend out there to be isolated. And there, Epilita butchers his friend with the hatchet, kills him, and after hitting him over the head a bunch of times on the bridge, he flipped him over and hacked his face apart with the hatchet as well, just to ensure his face would be so badly mauled, nobody could recognize him. Epilita also put that handkerchief and that note with the address in his pockets, which by the way, he's literally wearing one of Epilita's suits that he's so, you know, kindly allowed his friend to use for the job interview. It was a setup. He put those items inside of the suit and he's like, boom, now the police are going to find this body, they're going to think it's me. Here's all this evidence that will suggest it's me and I'm going to get off scot free. But Epilita and his wife Alfoncene had left one big loose end. And that loose end was the well-dressed man who had walked into Judge Oberton's office and basically cracked the case wide open. The well-dressed man at Oberton's door was the president of an insurance company. And he told the judge that Epilita had been shopping around for life insurance policy just two months before his sudden murder. And that his insurance company had actually flagged Epilita's application as possible fraud. And so they had not given him the policy. But he would tell Oberton that apparently after this failed attempt, Epilita just reached out to another insurer who did take the bait. And as soon as that contract was signed and suddenly Epilita had this policy, Epilita supposedly died. And so after hearing these details from the president of this company, Oberton ordered the body to be exhumed and re-examined, and this time when the body was compared against photos, investigators confirmed it was in fact Louis. The real epilita was tracked down in the North of France where he was living under Louis's identity. He was charged with murder, and on June 15th, 1889, he was sentenced to death. 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 Acasio. This episode was written by Kate Gallagher, story editing by Kate Murdock, research and fact-checking by Shelley Shoe, Samantha Van Hoos, Evan Beamer, Abigail Shumway, Camille Callahan, Alex Paul, Ben Fassiano, research and fact-checking supervision by Stephen Ear, audio editing and post-produced by Whit Lacasio and Jordan Stidem, production support by Antonio Monada and Delana Corley, artwork by Jessica Clogston Keiner, theme song "Something Wicked" by Ross Bugden. Thank you for listening to the Mr. Ballin podcast, and just a reminder, every new and exclusive episode we put out on the Mr. Ballin podcast, you can also now watch on the Mr. Ballin YouTube channel that very same day. And trust me, some of these stories you truly have to see to believe. Again, my YouTube channel is just called Mr. Ballin. If you want to listen to episodes one week early and add free, you can subscribe to Sirius XM Podcast Plus on Apple Podcasts or visit SiriusXM.com/podcastplus to listen with Spotify or another app of your choice. So, that's gonna do it. I really appreciate your support. Until next time, see ya. (upbeat music)