Fan Favorite - "One Foot Out the Door"

Today's episode is a fan favorite, the audio in the story has been remastered for today's episode. Just after 7pm 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 a 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. And 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 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. Around 9.30am on June 16, 2010, a 29-year-old woman named Lonelle Barsoch, lay in bed in her house in Palmdale, California. It was a Wednesday, and Lonelle 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 Lewis moving around in the kitchen downstairs, and just knowing Lewis was down there was another reason to stay put. So Lonelle and Lewis have 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'd scraped together all their savings to make a down payment on. At the beginning of their relationship, Lonelle and Lewis had been completely in love and on the same page about building a life together. But, over time, Lewis had become this incredibly jealous and possessive person that was just really volatile, and it really just kind of scared Lonelle 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 Lewis had literally chased her in his truck, which led to both of them crashing. Even now, as she laid in bed months later, Lonelle still felt traumatized by that whole thing. They had eventually made up, but it was hard to look at Lewis 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, Lonelle was seriously considering ending things with him. But just then, Lonelle's phone buzzed on the nightstand, interrupting her thoughts. It was a message from her friend Lorraine asking if she was up, and as soon as she saw it, Lonelle just kind of sighed because she actually had forgotten that she had plans with Lorraine, who would offer to do Lonelle's hair that day. So, resigned, she texted Lorraine to come on over, then Lonelle got out of bed. About 30 minutes later, Lonelle sat on a bar stool and ate breakfast at the kitchen island with Lewis. 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 Lonelle so far had not had time to decorate. As she ate, Lonelle tried to keep her chitchat with Lewis to a minimum. They'd been fighting so much lately that she didn't want to accidentally start an argument. But Lonelle was a naturally bubbly and talkative person, and so just sitting here being quiet was kind of awkward. So she was actually relieved when she heard the front door open and her friend Lorraine walked in. Lonelle smiled. Lorraine lived right in Palmdale, and so it was nice for Lonelle to have a friend so close by. The rest of Lonelle's friends and family were in LA, about an hour and a half away. Lorraine walked over and gave Lonelle a hug, and the two of them began talking while Lewis 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. Lewis ultimately left without even saying goodbye, and then at that point, Lorraine worked on Lonelle's hair while Lonelle vented about Lewis 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, Lonelle suddenly heard tires screeching to the driveway outside. Seconds later, Lewis burst into the house looking absolutely furious. He was holding a cell phone above his head and waving it around in the air, and Lonelle immediately recognized his phone. Because it was her secret phone that she'd actually gotten from her other boyfriend. That guy she'd been talking to in 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, you know, Lewis 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 Lonelle 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 Lewis. He lived over 300 miles away in Northern California, but whenever he had time off and Lewis wasn't home, he came down to Palmdale to see Lonelle. On the day of Lonelle and Lewis's huge fight, Lonelle had promised Lewis that she would never talk to Ike again. But that had been a lie. And now, Lewis had caught her. And so Lewis started yelling, demanding to know if Lonelle was still cheating on him, and Lonelle felt a heart start racing. The last time Lewis had gone 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 Lewis's hand and then ran out the door with Lorraine while Lewis kept on screaming at her. Lonelle and Lorraine jumped into Lonelle's car and sped out of the neighborhood. Lonelle couldn't stop shaking because she knew Lewis 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, Lewis would be gone. The two of them got to the store around noon. Lonelle and Lorraine went inside and Lonelle 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, you know, not think about Lewis, 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 Lewis. He was waiting for her. Lewis demanded to know if she was still seeing Ike. And at first, Lonelle was just super defensive, like she always was when they fought. But as Lewis 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 Lewis out of her life. So she exhaled, handed Lewis her second phone, and then just stormed back over to the car with Lorraine. About 15 minutes later, Lonelle parked her car in the driveway at home. When she'd gotten into her car and driven away, she'd thought that maybe she had lost Lewis, 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 Lewis was inside waiting for her. Lonelle wanted to scream. She glanced at Lorraine who just reached over and squeezed her hand, trying to give her a bit of encouragement. Then Lonelle 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 Lewis trying to control everything about her. I mean, the relationship had died months ago, she just needed to end it now officially. She wished 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, Lonelle got out of her car and headed towards the house. Over six hours later, around 6.45 pm, Lonelle's friend Lorraine was staring down at her silent cell phone and starting to feel nervous. Lonelle hadn't called her after whatever final fight she had had with Lewis, and Lorraine had a bad feeling about the whole thing. She knew that Lewis and Lonelle's fights had the possibility of getting completely out of hand. I mean, they had before. So now, Lorraine was back at Lonelle's house, just making sure her friend was okay. But as she walked through the living room, she noticed their house was unnaturally quiet. Lewis was not there, and it didn't seem like Lonelle was there either. That morning, Lorraine had been afraid, you know, when Lewis was chasing them all around town, and now she was starting to get that same nervous sense that maybe Lewis 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, [BLANK_AUDIO] partially open, and so Lorraine was very nervous, but still she felt like she had to investigate, and so she walked over to the door and 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, and when she did, she stepped onto this plastic bag that was slick, and it caused her to trip and fall to the ground. And then when she looked at what she had 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 the 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 now 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 Lynelle was murdered. Later that night, around 11pm, two homicide detectives stood in the driveway of Lynelle's home, looking up at the two-story house. Their names were Bob Kenny and Joe Espino, 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 the 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 four-century at the back door either. Kenny had already been briefed that this home was owned by a 29-year-old woman named Lynelle Barsoch, who was found dead in her garage by a friend, right after what sounded like a pretty intense fight with her boyfriend. Lynelle shared the home with that boyfriend, Lewis Bonnere, and Lewis 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 Lewis had apparently taken off made him look even more suspicious. There were already officers out canvassing the neighborhood and calling Lewis's friends and family trying to track him down. The uniformed officer led Kenny in a spinoe through the house towards the garage. As they walked, Kenny noted the strange emptiness of all the rooms. Some didn't even have furniture in them, but this didn't feel like robbers would come in and removed all the furniture. It just sort of 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 Lynelle had tried and failed to clean up their mess. When Kenny and the spinoe 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 Lynelle. 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, you know, clean up or contain the blood, or if they had felt some kind of remorse, and couldn't bear to look at Lynelle'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 been 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, you know, the arrival of Lynelle'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 or 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 Lynelle and addressed to Lewis, her boyfriend. The letter said she was leaving him for her other boyfriend, Ike. At this, Kenny raised his eyebrows. The missing boyfriend, Lewis, 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. Lynelle 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. Detective Kenny and Espino were still on scene when a uniformed officer came to tell them that they had gotten a lead on the missing boyfriend, Lewis. Apparently he had gone to Los Angeles, and he often stayed at Lynelle'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 Lynelle's mother's house as backup, and then he dialed the phone number for Lynelle's mom. After a few rings, a woman answered. When Detective Kenny introduced himself, she confirmed she was Lynelle'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 Lewis. His decision not to explain himself was strategic. Neither Bobby nor Lewis had been told explicitly that Lynelle was dead, and Detective Kenny wanted to hold back that information for as long as possible. When he talked to Lewis, he wanted to see if Lewis 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 Lewis, and right away, Lewis said this is about Lynelle. When Kenny finished the phone call a few minutes later, he was feeling good, because now he had a definite number one suspect. Lewis had brought up Lynelle 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 Lewis had been waiting for this call, and maybe even feeling guilty. He thought of the plastic that had been pulled over Lynelle's face, like whoever had killed her couldn't bear to look at what they had done. After Kenny had told Lewis over the phone to go get into the squad car, he had spoken to Lynelle's mom Bobby Barsock again, and when he told her that her daughter was dead, Bobby just wailed an anguish into the phone, and then eventually she told Kenny how controlling and jealous Lewis 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 Lewis 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, was waiting for them at the Sheriff's Department. Around 6am, 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 room 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 on her clothes and looked exhausted and clearly shaken up. He started slowly, with general questions about her relationship to Lorraine. 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 Lorraine's that morning to to do her hair, but then Lynelle and Lewis had gotten into a big fight. and he, Lewis, had ended up chasing them all around town. Lorraine said that she and Lanelle had gone back to Lanelle's house at about 12.30 pm, and Lewis 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 Lanelle was cheating on Lewis with a man named Dyke, and Lewis had found out about it. Kenny and his Spino looked at each other. This information lined up exactly with that letter they had found at the scene. Lorraine said after she had left Lanelle's, she'd gone to a nearby park, and there she just waited to hear from Lanelle. 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 Lanelle's to make sure her friend was okay, and that's when she found Lanelle'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 kind of 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 Lanelle the whole time, it just seemed sort of unrealistic. But that was her story, and she hadn't changed it once. In any way, the crime itself did really seem like textbook domestic violence, and Lanelle'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 detectives stepped out of the interview room, an officer was waiting for them. The boyfriend Louis Bonneir had arrived. Now, Louis still had not been told what happened to Lanelle, like 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 Lanelle. And right away, Louis launched into a story about Lanelle that, as far as Kenny could tell, was full of lies. Louis said he and Lanelle 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 Espino 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 Lanelle and Louis' home and found that at least twice, officers had been called to break up a domestic disturbance that started because Lanelle was speaking to another man. The detectives asked Louis to walk them through everything he did on June 16th, the day Lanelle was murdered. Louis admitted that he and Lanelle had gotten into a fight that morning because he'd found Lanelle's secret cell phone. He also admitted to following Lanelle and Lorraine around town, trying to get answers from his girlfriend about why she was using this secret phone. But Louis said they'd only fought until about 12.40 pm. At that point, he said he'd 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 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 pm, he'd arrived at Lanelle'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's face. When Louis finished his story about what he'd done the day before, Detective Espino asked him about the scratch. And this kicked out a whole 'nother' story by Louis. He talked fast, explaining that Lanelle 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 that Lanelle and Louis's home that said Lanelle 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 him before. He did admit that he knew who Ike was, but he said that you know Lanelle and Ike were just friends. Kenny had to stop himself from shaking his head and disgust. These lies were shameless 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 Lanelle had been murdered. At this, Louis did lose his composure. He started stammering and coherently, 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 Lanelle'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's 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-streaked face walk in the door looking lost and bewildered. At the same time, the detectives realized this had to be Bobby Barsock, Lanelle's mother, and so sleep would have to wait. They ushered Bobby into a private room and got all three of them cups of coffee. What Kenny and Espino needed from Bobby, first and foremost, was a timeline of the evening of the murder, because Bobby was part of Louis' 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 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. Lanelle 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, he had to leave no later than about 4.30 pm. So, Bobby's timeline left Louis approximately 3-4 hours before he had left. When he claimed he was just walking around shopping for car parts, but he actually could have been killing Lanelle. 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 Lanelle's other boyfriend, Ike. On the night of the murder, Ike had message Bobby to say he spoke to Lanelle 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, Lanelle 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 Lanelle'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. Lanelle'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 Lanelle was living a more complicated life than it looks like from the outside. side, 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 Lennel, and he said he had given her that secret cell phone because Lewis was unpredictable and scary. And Kenny told Ike that Lennel was dead, Ike broke down. This was exactly what he said he'd been afraid of when he had texted Lennel'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 kind of thing Kenny had hoped to hear. Because if this was true, then Kenny knew it was not physically possible for Ike to have killed Lennel himself. I 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, Lennel had been shot in the back of the head, which was sort of 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 Aspino looked at each other. They would run down both boyfriends' alibi's at the same time and whoever's didn't check out was very likely their murderer. Now the breakneck pace of the investigation slowed, as Kenny and Aspino began the painstaking work of finding every person that Lewis and Ike mentioned interacting with on the day of the murder. Both detectives were leaning towards Lewis as their guy, and initially their interviews seemed to confirm their suspicions, ruling Ike out, and ruling Lewis in. Ike's alibi was basically airtight. 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 Lennel's friends, Ike's warning about Lewis' violence started to look less extraordinary. Because basically everyone in Lennel's life seemed to have been worried about her relationship with Lewis. But as the days went by, and Kenny and Aspino leaned into tracking each and every one of Lewis' movements on the day of the murder, they found something surprising. Lewis' alibi also checked out. The detectives searched Lewis' truck and found receipts from June 16th, which was the day of the murder. Lewis 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 L.A., an hour and a half away from Palmdale, starting a little before 3pm. And so suddenly, the window of time that Lewis had to murder Lennel shrunk, from around three or four hours, to only about one hour. Of course, it was still possible that he killed Lennel in that hour. But when the detectives pulled surveillance footage from the auto shops, they saw Lewis 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 Lewis came when Kenny and Aspino tracked down Lorraine's boyfriend, who was the one who actually worked on Lewis' car. He told them that on the day of the murder, Lewis had shown up at his house in L.A. at 2pm. This meant that Lewis had apparently been telling the truth when he said he left his house at 12.40pm, which meant Lewis could not have killed Lennel. So in the middle of July, one month after Kenny and Aspino had picked up what they thought would be an open and shut murder case, they were forced to release their primary suspect Lewis from jail. Now they were back to square one. Detectives Kenny and Aspino could 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 Lennel 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'd spent weeks constructing so methodically. They had a precise chronology of the movements of Lennel, Lorraine, Bobby, Lewis, and Ike, as well as all of Lennel's friends and family, but the only thing this chronology really showed was that no one had been able to kill Lennel. So somebody was lying, they just didn't know who. Now the detectives had already pulled Lennel'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 Lennel had been keeping one more secret that Kenny and Espino had not been able to uncover until they discovered a single phone call made at 4.44pm on the day of the murder that explained everything. Based on evidence collected by investigators, the following is a reconstruction of what police bleep happened to Lennel Barsock on June 16, 2010. That afternoon, sometime before 4pm, the killer stood in the living room at Lennel's house right behind Lennel 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 Lennel was still upset, but truthfully, they weren't really concerned about how Lennel felt. Lennel had so much, a great personality, a loving family, a growing career, but the killer only had Lennel, who they still had deep feelings for. And now that Lennel didn't want them, they decided Lennel shouldn't have anything. Slowly and silently, the killer lifted the gun they had brought with them, aimed it at the back of Lennel's head and pulled the trigger. Lennel immediately slumped to the floor and second slater blood was pooling all around her. Step one of the plan was complete. Now, the killer just 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 Lennel's head in a plastic bag to keep more blood from spreading, and they dragged Lennel to the garage where the car was. After that, the killer sobbed 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 4.44pm, they heard their phone ring. And on the other end, was a person who had some bad news. Somebody was 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, caught in their car, and sped off to the sheriff's department to report the crime they had just committed. Because the killer was Lennel'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, Lennel suggested they just be friends. And Lorraine had been devastated. Because not only was she in love with Lennel, she also wanted to be Lennel. Lorraine was extremely jealous of her. Lennel 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 Lennel 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 same 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 Lennel'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 Lennel. However, her DNA 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 police. 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. 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 Bohn and Cole Lacasio. This episode was written by Kate Murdoch. Research and fact-checking by Shelley Schoo, Samantha Van Hoothse, Evan Beamer, Abigail Shumway, Camille Callahan, Alex Paul. Ben Fassiano, research in fact-checking supervision by Stephen Ear, audio editing and post-produced by Whitlacasio and Jordan Stitum, production support by Antonio Manata and Delana Corley, artwork by Jessica Clogsden Keiner, theme song "Something Wicked" by Ross Bugden. Thank you for listening to the Mr. Ball in Podcast, and just a reminder, every new and exclusive episode we put out on the Mr. Ball in Podcast, you can also now watch on the Mr. Ball in 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. Ball in. If you want to listen to episodes one week early and add free, you can subscribe to SiriusXM Podcast Plus on Apple Podcasts, or visit SiriusXM.com/podcastplus to listen with Spotify or another app of your choice. So, that's going to do it. I really appreciate your support. Until next time, see ya. [Music]