Killer Without a Face (PODCAST EXCLUSIVE EPISODE)

In the early evening of July 2nd, 2000, a local man from Gleene, Michigan was walking slowly through a wooded area with about 30 other people by his sights. So a local woman had gone missing just a few days ago, and this man, along with the others, were part of a large volunteer search party that was now combing these woods, looking for any sign of this woman. But so far they hadn't found really much of anything, and actually as it was, it was starting to get dark, and this particular man was thinking, "You know what, I'm probably gonna call it soon, and just head back home, and I'll come out tomorrow if they need my help." And so he turned to leave, and head back home, but when he looked, he noticed something on the ground that he hadn't seen before. It was like something blue poking out of the ground, and he could just tell that maybe this is something useful, and he called some people over, and before long they began digging. And what they uncovered would completely change the entire investigation. But before we get into the 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 two, three, even four times every week. So if that's of interest to you, please offer to make the follow button a nice hot cup of coffee, but instead of using water, use vinegar. Okay, let's get into today's story. [Music] Just after 5pm on June 29th, 2000, 33-year-old Lisa Fine was cutting some vegetables at the kitchen counter of her home in the town of Galene, Michigan. And as she did this, every now and again, she would look out her back window into the backyard, and she would see her two kids just playing and, you know, playing catch and goofing around. Lisa had her own biological son, Jake, he was out there, he was 11 years old, and then her other son was actually her stepson, and he was just a year younger, and his name was Shane. Lisa had married Shane's father, whose name was Ron almost five years ago, and so their boys really had gotten to know each other at a very young age, and had effectively grown up together as real brothers. They felt super close the way biological brothers often do. And Lisa and Ron's house in Michigan really was like the perfect spot to raise these two very active boys. I mean, really their whole property, which was pretty sprawling, was just effectively all woods, like they have this huge backyard that was cleared, and then just like forest all around it, and there were virtually no neighbors, really anywhere nearby. Although Ron's grandmother, she did live next door, and so she often spent some time with the boys, but, you know, for the most part, these kids just kind of had like the wilderness to explore pretty much anytime they wanted. Just then, Lisa turned away from the window and saw her husband, Ron, coming into the kitchen. He clearly had come from the bedroom and had just gotten dressed for work. He did the night shift at the local power plant, so he always left around this time in the evening, and he'd be up all night working. And so Ron, he comes into the kitchen, and he just sort of nodded to Lisa. And Lisa, she sort of smiled and nodded back, and just said, "You know, I hope you have a good shift." And then a moment later, Ron left out the front door, and Lisa could hear him climb into his car, and he began pulling down the driveway. And as he was leaving, as Lisa could hear him leaving, she noticed that she just felt so much better. It was like she was relieved that Ron was out of the house. Now, Lisa loved her husband, and she was pretty confident her husband loved her too, but lately they just had not been getting along. There was quite a bit of stress in their household and their marriage, primarily because of money. They were just tight on money, and it just seemed to, you know, sort of get in the way of everything in their lives. In fact, it had gotten so hard that Lisa had actually given some consideration to leaving Ron, and just leaving with her son Jake, or biological son Jake. But she loved her stepson, Shane. She really loved him like he was truly her son, and she couldn't imagine doing that to him. And when she really thought about it, she did care for Ron. This was just a difficult time in their lives. And also, you know, one thing that Lisa and Ron did know is that Lisa actually had an ex-husband. His name was Frank Spagnola, and Lisa and Frank did not get along. And they continued to fight for years in the court system over child support. Basically Frank did not want to pay all or any child support, and Lisa was, you know, constantly trying to get him to pay, at least pay something. And finally, a judge had actually ruled in Lisa's favor, and had ordered Frank to pay her $14,000 in back pay, basically money that he should have already paid her. And so Lisa was kind of holding on to hope here that as bad as it was right now with Ron, as soon as they got that cash, things would be better. And then also, you know, after Ron had left on this particular night, Lisa she was thinking that part of the reason that she was relieved that he was gone was for something actually kind of unrelated. So Lisa actually had had an affair with Jake and Shane's little league coach about six months earlier, and both Lisa and the baseball coach, whose name was Jerry Good, they were both married. So it wasn't just, you know, her walking out in her marriage, it was also Jerry, and the two of them, they said, we gotta stop this. We can't let our spouses know we did this, it'll destroy our lives, and so they end this affair six months earlier. But Lisa and Jerry clearly had chemistry, and even though they stopped the affair, they continued staying in touch with each other. In fact, pretty much at least once a week, they were hopping on the phone and just like talking to each other. And so Lisa obviously knows these calls with Jerry are totally inappropriate, but she was still having them. And that night, she and Jerry had planned to have a call to just like catch up that night, and they had timed it, so the call would happen after Ron had left for work. And so Lisa finished making dinner, and she called in the boys, and she got them fed, and she sent them off to do their homework, and while they were doing that, she actually made a phone call to Frank, her ex-husband to do a quick call about some custody logistics, and then after that she goes and confirms the boys are done with their homework, she sends them upstairs, they brush their teeth, they go to bed, and then before long, it's like the nighttime routine is done. And just before 11, as they had planned, she hears the phone ringing, and when she answers the phone, she hears Jerry's voice, and she just smiles, like this is the highlight of her day. About 25 minutes later, and Lisa and Jerry were done with their call, and she hung up, and she was still just like beaming. For Lisa, it was just really nice to speak to a grown man who seemed to really value her, and be really interested in her, and care about her, and it just sort of a nice change of pace. Lisa talked about how she was going to be the next day, going to a water park with the boys, and Ron talked about his family, and it was just like a simple conversation, but it was definitely very nice for Lisa. And now it's late, she's tired, she's going to go to bed, and so she walks around the house, she shuts all the windows, she locks all the doors, she heads upstairs, she checks in the boys to make sure they were asleep, and they were, then she went into her bedroom, she climbed into bed, and she turned out the lights. The next morning, at 6.20am, Lisa's husband, Ron, was done with a shift, and he finally got home, and he had been up all night, so he's like completely exhausted, and he went around to the back of the house, he unlocked the back door, that's how he came in in the mornings, and as soon as he got in the house, all he's thinking about is I just want to get in bed and go to sleep. And then when he gets in the bedroom, even though it's dark, there was enough light coming in that he immediately stopped, because it just looked off, like there was an issue, something's wrong here. Number one, Lisa was not there, which was odd, he hadn't seen her anywhere in the house, the house was quiet, but more than that, the bedroom was a wreck, like the sheets were like balled up and pulled off to the side of the bed, like the actual mattress was exposed, the sheets had come off, like it's a disaster in here. Out of instinct, he just runs into the boy's bedrooms to check on them, to make sure they're okay, and he finds that they are also not in their beds. And so he instinctively, after that, runs around the whole house, shouting for Lisa, shouting for Jake, and Shane, like looking for his family, but they're not here. And so really, just totally panicked, he grabs the phone, and calls 911. About an hour and a half later, Detective Roland Lubbombard, with the Barian County Sheriff's Department, practiced cruiser out in front of Ron and Lisa's house. And immediately, he looked out, and he saw several other officers already there walking in and out of the house, and also around the property. And then a little ways away from Lisa and Ron's house was what appeared to be like their sole neighbor, there was like one smaller house that was their neighbor. And Lubbombard, he saw a deputy was standing outside of the neighbor's house, with what appeared to be the neighbor, or neighbors. There was like this elderly woman who was standing with two young boys, and then a guy who appeared to be maybe in his 30s or 40s, this really big guy was standing with the deputy. Now Lubbombard has not spoken to any of these people yet, but he had been sent out here, because originally a man named Ron, who lived in this house, had reported that his wife Lisa and his two sons, Shane and Jake, were missing. But on the way over, Lubbombard had gotten an update that Ron had located his two sons, apparently they had turned up at his neighbor's house, and his neighbor was actually Ron's grandmother. And so Lubbombard, he gets out of his car, he goes over to the group, and sure enough, he confirms that, yep, this is Ron, his grandmother, and his sons. and his sons, and so Love on Bard knew he'd like to know. was going to speak to everybody here, but for now he just he looked at Ron because Ron is the one who called 911 and he just said you know tell me what's going on here like tell me what happened. And so Ron would tell Love on Bard really the same story that had already been passed to police, which is he had come home from work early that morning gone in the house and his wife and sons are just inexplicably gone and you know when he couldn't find him he called 911. And then shortly thereafter he goes and speaks to his grandmother, his neighbor and discovers that his sons are unhurt and they are there with their grandmother who they adored like this is a safe place for them. But Ron would tell Love on Bard that when he spoke to his grandmother that she said the boys showed up in the middle of the night and apparently they were talking about how their mom had been fighting with someone some you know masked person in the bedroom and they had been scared and they'd fled in the middle of the night and ran to their grandmother's house and all Love on Bard is thinking is like wait a minute in the middle of the night these boys have fled the house claiming their mother's being attacked and grandma doesn't call the police. Grandma doesn't even think to tell her son you know Ron like something's going on at your house, but Love on Bard kept his suspicions to himself. You just sort of took the story on its face and said okay you know we'll obviously need to speak to you guys more extensively here in a minute, but for now I'm going to go take a look around. A few seconds later Love on Bard stepped into Lisa and Ron's house and right away he saw there were a couple of crime scene technicians who were placing evidence markers down and also taking photographs. Love on Bard he started looking at the door frame of the front door to see if there was any signs of forced entry but there wasn't any and then he walked all around the house and he didn't really see any damage anywhere at least not on the first floor you know he didn't see any windows open or broken windows or any sign that like there was a break in here. However when Love on Bard went into the boys bedrooms he actually did notice something. In one of the boys rooms there was a huge tear in the screen of the window so theoretically this could have already been there or perhaps this is where the intruder broke in. And so Love on Bard called one of the crime scene tax to come over and take pictures of the cut in the screen and also dust for prints on the windowsill and in the vicinity. And then after that you know once the tech got to work Love on Bard left the boys rooms and he headed over to the master bedroom and there he saw exactly what Ron had seen earlier. The bed was a total mess and clearly it looked like a struggle had taken place here but when Love on Bard walked around the bedroom he noticed there was some cash just sitting out in the open on a dresser and so naturally he thinks okay well based on this I don't think whatever happened here was the result of a robbery because this is something a robber very likely would have taken and so after that Love on Bard left the bedroom and did another sweep of the entire house to see if there's anything else that you know he missed and there wasn't really anything and Love on Bard he goes outside and immediately he's called by some deputies in the back of the house they're saying hey come over here and look at this and so Love on Bard he gets to the back side of the house right outside of the basement door and on the ground right outside of this door are these two parallel lines that sort of stretch away from the house and appear to go off into the woods and he realized this could easily be drag marks like two parallel lines could represent someone's legs someone's feet in the ground as they're getting dragged and the the lines were unbroken they're just like two steady lines that went all the way out to the woods so whoever was being dragged didn't appear to be trying to stop being dragged like they're not putting up a fight at all which could suggest that they were limp which meant they could be unconscious or worse dead On the morning of June 30th 2000 Detective Roland Love on Bard sat at a table and Lisa finds kitchen across from her two sons Jake and Shane as well as her husband Ron and the boys looked just incredibly nervous and they kept glancing over it Ron presumably for reassurance now Love on Bard did not want to stress these boys out more than he needed to I mean he would have loved it if he could just send them home to go sleep and go you know recover here but as of right now they were the only witnesses to whatever happened to Lisa the night before and so he really needed to speak to them while their memory was still fresh also at this point Love on Bard was not looking at this as you know potentially some sort of misunderstanding where Lisa's gonna be you know found at a friend's house or something like he thinks this is very likely at a minimum an abduction case and at worst an abduction slash homicide case in fact minutes earlier Love on Bard and a few of his deputies had followed those two parallel supposed drag marks out into the woods and they eventually reached a road where they stopped now Love on Bard had this huge team of officers combing the woods around where that road was to see if they could find any more tracks or any more evidence you know of Lisa or maybe even find her body but for right now Love on Bard just wanted to hear directly from the boys and he asked the boys to just tell him everything they could remember about that intruder and Jake who was Lisa's biological son he was the first to speak and he said that at about three in the morning he had woken up in his bedroom to the sound of his mother screaming and so of course he got up to go make sure she was okay and he said when he looked into the bedroom he saw what appeared to be this this big man who was wearing all black and he had like a motorcycle helmet on like a helmet with a visor on it and clearly his mom and this man were fighting they're having like a physical struggle and so Jake said at that point he was just so scared that he ran down the hall and he told his stepbrother Shane about what was going on and Jake would say that the two boys they decided like their only chance now was just to try to escape the house and you know try to get help somewhere else and so Jake and Shane they ended up cutting the screen in Jake's bedroom and they climbed out the window down the house and then ran next door to the great grandmother's house where they effectively took shelter there after he hears these these details Love on Bard he's like okay you know in his mind he's thinking you know the torn screen now makes sense in the boys room that was not an intruder breaking in that was the boys fleeing the house to go to their great grandmother's house but it also made him think okay well then whoever attacked Lisa likely arrived around 3am and if they didn't break into the house how did they get in did Lisa let them into the house at three in the morning that seems unlikely or maybe they just had a key which would suggest this is like a personal thing Love on Bard he looked at Jake and he said do you have any idea who that masked person was like did you recognize them and Jake he looked really uncomfortable and he just said I'm not really sure and Jake still looking really uncomfortable he eventually turned and looked at his stepdad Ron who was sitting next to him and instead of saying this to Love on Bard he said to Ron I actually thought it was you immediately Love on Bard is like whoa he looked at Ron and Ron is like oh my goodness he looked over at Jake and he's like you thought it was me that wasn't me like I had nothing to do with this I didn't I didn't hurt Lisa I didn't do anything to her and Ron he quickly went from being sort of like really caught off guard or or appearing to be very caught off guard to then composing himself and he leaned forward and sort of almost whispering he said to Love on Bard you know if you want to look into someone who might have it out for Lisa you should look into Jake's dad Frank about an hour later detective Love on Bard knocked on the front door of a house located about 40 miles away from Lisa and Ron's home he had a team of officers still searching the woods for signs of Lisa and by this point he'd also spoken to Ron's grandmother Jeanette so the boy's great grandmother who had said that Ron and Lisa fought a lot that was actually why when the boys had shown up in the middle of the night claiming that you know there was some struggle happening in the bedroom between their mother and some person in all black she had told Love on Bard that her instincts were that's gotta be Ron however Love on Bard had called the power plant where Ron worked and confirmed Ron's alibi Ron's work records showed that he could not have been the one in the bedroom fighting with Lisa because he was at work the entire night and so now Love on Bard was here at this home to speak with Lisa's ex Frank Spagnola after speaking with Ron and several of Lisa's friends Love on Bard had learned that Frank had a very strong motive to want to hurt Lisa the two of them apparently it had a really chaotic relationship and have been fighting for years in court over custody of Jake and over child support and in fact recently Frank had been ordered by a judge to write this this big check like fourteen thousand dollars to Lisa and unpaid child support just then the door opened and a man who appeared to be in his forties with some some stubble on his face and a very worried expression he came to the door and Love on Bard asked him if he was Frank Spagnola and the man nodded and then Love on Bard explained that he was there because Frank's ex-wife Lisa was currently missing now Love on Bard didn't know Frank he didn't really know what to expect with the sky but he had expected Frank to be shocked when he heard that his ex-wife is missing but Frank was not surprised he just he just nodded solemnly and he looked sort of pained and he said that he had heard because Ron had actually called him that morning to see a he had seen or spoken to Lisa. And Frank said that he'd offered to come over and help look for her, but apparently Ron just didn't want him there. And then a moment later, Frank was like, hey, you want to, you want to come in and we can talk inside? And so Lebombardi went in and they sat down in the living room and in the living room, there were some other people. There was an elderly couple who was sitting on the couch. And Frank quickly introduced them as his parents and said that they all lived together. And so a few moments later, after Lebombardi sort of introduced himself to the parents, Lebombardi looked back at Frank and he asked him about his relationship with Lisa. Frank sighed and said it actually was not great, like he and Lisa did not get along. They fought over child support and custody when it came to their son Jake and they really just weren't nice to each other. And he also said that he had been pretty terrible about paying her child support in the past, but he said recently a judge had ordered him to pay some back pay for child support. So, you know, the child support thing, even though it was not really good for him, it was being sorted out. And so kind of out of nowhere, he just looked at Frank and said, okay, great, tell me where you were last night and what you were doing. Lebombardi's hope was he was going to, you know, catch Frank off guard and maybe roughless feathers a little bit, but really without any nervousness, he just said, you know, he had done a bunch of errands. He had picked up his mother's paycheck from the local hospital where she worked because she was actually recovering from surgery and couldn't pick it up herself. And then he had returned some movies to a video store just before midnight and he said he had gotten back home sometime around maybe 1230. And he said he actually got a message, a phone message from Lisa, she'd called him, but he said he just didn't want to deal with it. It was late, so he didn't call her back. And then shortly after that, he said he just went to sleep. And so Lebombardi and Frank and his parents, they talked for a bit longer, but there really wasn't a whole lot else to say. The detective thanked the family for their time and said, you know, he'd be in touch as the investigation continued. And so Lebombardi got up and as he was leaving, he couldn't help but feel pretty discouraged because at this point, his two at least most obvious suspects in Ron and now Frank, they both seemed to have really strong alibis. I mean, Ron literally was at work, at least according to work records. And Frank, I mean, the guy is being as forthcoming as you can be. He has his parents, seconding, you know, the story he's telling. None of it feels contrived. So, you know, at first glance, it seemed like these guys probably didn't do it. But at the same time, Lebombardi knew he couldn't just fully rule them out. They were still suspects, but maybe just lower down the list. On Sunday evening, July 2nd, so two days after Lisa fine went missing, detective Lebombardi hurried through the woods about a mile away from Ron and Lisa's house. Up ahead, he could see in the tree line, there was a group of volunteers that were just standing there by this large pile of dirt. And everybody seemed pretty anxious as he was running over to them. So, for the last couple of days, there had been teams of volunteers and officers out here searching the woods, you know, looking for signs of Lisa. And they hadn't found anything until now. Lebombardi just got in the hall that this particular group thought they had found something. They had found something blue poking out of the ground. It almost looked like cloth. And, you know, near the cloth poking out of the ground, the dirt apparently looked sort of like recently churned up. Like it was packed down, but looked like it had been churned up. Like somebody had buried something here. And so Lebombardi, he's already got a sinking feeling about what he's going to find. But, you know, he rushes over, and they show him what's in the ground. And Lebombardi just immediately reaches down and he begins tucking on churned up. This is like blue piece of fabric. And as he does this, the dirt begins kind of crumbling off. And before long, he's kind of pulled up this fabric and he looks under the fabric, basically underground. And he realizes they had just found Lisa. The next day, Lebombardi was sitting in his desk at the Berrien County Sheriff's Department. And he had his head in his hands and in front of him on his desk where all of the case files for Lisa find just kind of spread out in front of him. Lebombardi really was just completely exhausted. He had been in the woods all night last night waiting for the technicians from the Michigan State Crime Lab to come out here and dig out the body that was buried there, which had been positively identified as Lisa find. Lisa was found still wearing her pajamas and her face was covered by a towel. And then there was this blue pillow case that had been pulled down over her whole head. And then someone had wrapped duct tape really tightly around the pillow. And so at this point, Lebombardi's case was officially a homicide investigation. And he was sure that the killer had to have known Lisa pretty well. They had likely used a key of their own to get into her home. And now he was sure that they also knew her property well enough to get around in the dark and find a place to bury her, you know, a mile away from the property. That fit both Ron and Frank, but again, both Ron and Frank had pretty strong alibis. So Lebombardi, he either needed to find new evidence to break one of those alibis or he needed another suspect entirely. And so now Lebombardi took a deep breath and sort of sat up, you know, determined to focus once again on the files on his desk. And after a few minutes, I've just kind of mindlessly shifting through the files, he actually grabbed a copy of Lisa's most recent phone records. And he had already looked at it before, but now he was looking a little bit more closely. And he noticed that most of the numbers that were on this phone log were familiar. They were Ron, they were Frank, they were her sister, her friends. But then he noticed there was actually one number that stood out, because on the night that Lisa was killed, she received a call from an unknown number around 11 p.m. And they spoke for 25 minutes, which meant whoever had called Lisa potentially was the last person to speak to Lisa alive. A few hours later, Lebombardi sat down across from a man named Jerry Good in a booth at a small coffee shop. So after a closer look at Lisa's phone records, Lebombardi had noticed a pattern. In the weeks and months before her death, Lisa regularly received calls from an unknown number, usually late at night. And Lisa also regularly called a pager number. And they would find out that that pager belonged to Jerry Good, the little league coach for Lisa's sons Jake and Shane. So this was a huge development. I mean, Lebombardi just based on the phone records was pretty confident that there was some kind of romantic relationship going on here, especially because when he had spoken to Jerry to request this interview, Jerry had immediately said that yes, he would speak to him, but could we please meet away from my house so my wife does not overhear us. And so now, as the two men actually began to talk, Jerry just seemed really nervous, and he pretty much without even any prompting, just launched into this somewhat frantic explanation. He said he'd heard about Lisa's death on the news, and he just wanted to be totally honest here. He said they did have an affair last year. It ended months ago, but they had still stayed in touch, and they talked weekly. And when Lebombardi asked him about the night that Lisa had been attacked, like had you guys spoken that night, Jerry, he kind of looked down sheepishly and then looked up and said that yes, they had spoken. He said he had called Lisa around 11 p.m. from a gas station payphone, just so that his wife wouldn't hear the conversation. But he swore after they hung up, after this, you know, a 20-some-odd, totally normal-seeming phone call, he said he had just gone home for the night. Lebombardi could tell that Jerry really appeared to be trying very hard to cooperate, but as soon as Jerry actually told Lebombardi which gas station he had called Lisa from that night, Lebombardi, I mean, he nearly smiled. I mean, this is like so suspicious, because the gas station was extremely close to Lisa's house, like less than two miles away. And so Jerry very easily could have after that phone call made his way over to Lisa's house, maybe they got into some sort of fight, maybe it turned violent. So Lebombardi basically was not convinced Jerry had nothing to hide here. He felt like Jerry had a lot to lose. And so Lebombardi told Jerry that for right now he was free to go. But Lebombardi was going to have to speak to Jerry's wife, and if Jerry wanted to stay at a jail, his wife was going to have to confirm his alibi. One afternoon in mid-July, so a little more than a week after Lisa finds body was found in the woods near her home, Detective Roland Lebombardi rushed down the hallway of the Barian County Sheriff's Department toward his office, and his hands was Lisa's autopsy results. Now, the investigation was just a week old, but it had already stalled, and Lebombardi was getting frustrated. It would turn out, Lisa's a fair partner, Jerry Good. He did have a solid alibi. His wife had confirmed that he had gotten home around 11.30 pm on the night of Lisa's murder, and that he had spent the entire night in bed with her and their sick child. And Lebombardi did not get the impression that she was lying to protect him, like she basically had heard the details and still was like, no, he was home. And so what this meant for Lebombardi was that basically all of his suspects had alibi, which meant he kind of didn't have any suspects, at least not good ones. And so now, the detective was hoping that this autopsy would have some useful information that would maybe give him a new idea, or a clue, or just some new angle to explore, because basically right now he felt like he had just several dead ends. However, when he sat down at his desk and opened up the report, the first thing he saw was something he had already guessed. Lisa had died from his fixation, so whoever had killed her had smothered her, probably with the towel in the pillowcase that were found wrapped around her face, and so this was not like big news. However, there was some good news, pretty much right away as he's reading this file. The medical examiner had found some reddish brown flakes under Lisa's nails that could be dried blood, and this possible blood had already been sent out to the lab, and Lubbom Bard was very hopeful that it belonged to the killer. He knew from Lisa's son Jake that his mom apparently had been actively fighting back against her killer, so it seemed entirely possible that she might have scratched them and gotten their blood under her nails. But this was the year 2000, and DNA analysis at this time could take months. Plus, law enforcement didn't have the kind of extensive DNA databases that they have now. So while DNA might help to eventually confirm who the killer was, Lubbom Bard still had to manually find them first. Lubbom Bard continued reading the autopsy report, and he eventually got to this list that had all the other items that were found in the shallow grave with Lisa, and the items found were sort of mundane. It was like the pillowcase, and the towel, and the duct tape, but the way these items were described in this list was really technical. And at first, he just read the list, and nothing really stood out. He'd read plenty of autopsy reports before he had seen lists like these, because then he thought for a second, and he remembered something. He remembered a detail, and then he went back to the list, and he read it again, and he stopped on one particular item, one very technical readout of the item in question here, and he's thinking to himself, "Oh my goodness, I think I'm on to something. I might not need to wait for the DNA. I might have basically the clue I need to figure out who did this." However, to prove his new theory here, he needed to execute one more search warrant. Based on forensic evidence, including evidence found during that additional search, and witnessed testimony, here is a reconstruction of what police and forensic experts believe happened to Lisa Fine on the morning of June 30, 2000. Just before 3am, Lisa's killer parked on a road out in the woods, short distance away from the fine house. After they had parked, they grabbed a bag full of the things they knew they would need tonight, which included a pillowcase, a towel, and duct tape. Then, once they had their supplies, they put on a black motorcycle helmet with a visor, and then they began walking toward the house. When they got there, they pulled out their own house key, and they unlocked the front door, and then slipped quietly inside, and began walking down the hallway, and careful not to wake the boys that they knew were asleep in the house. They went down the hallway, they went up the stairs, and then they got to the master bedroom. Before going into the bedroom, the killer pulled the towel out of the bag they had brought. They had their towel in hand, and then they walked into the bedroom, and they climbed onto the bed on top of Lisa. As soon as they did that, Lisa, she opened her eyes, and she began to scream and she began fighting with the killer. There's this really intense physical struggle between the killer and Lisa. Lisa is fighting for her life here. At some point here, the boys must have woken up, and they saw what was happening, and they obviously fled the house. At some point, the killer gained control of Lisa, and then they pulled that towel back out, and they pressed it over Lisa's nose and mouth, cutting off her airway, and they held it there, and they smothered her until she stopped moving. Once the killer was sure that Lisa was dead, they climbed off her bed, and they composed themselves. This was an intense physical struggle to cut their breath, and then they reached into that bag they had brought, where they had had the towel from before, and now they reached in and pulled out a pillowcase, a blue pillowcase, and then they climbed back on the bed, and they put the pillowcase over Lisa's head. She still had the towel on her nose and her mouth, and then they grabbed the duct tape from that bag, and they used the duct tape to wrap it all the way around her head, sort of sealing her inside of this pillowcase. And then from there, the killer grabbed Lisa by the arms, and they dragged her off the bed, and they dragged her down the hallway, down the stairs, all the way down into the basement, and then out the basement door, and then they dragged her across the backyard, all the way out into the woods, through the tree line, all the way to the road out there, where they had parked their car, they loaded her body into the car, and then from there, they drove Lisa's body about maybe a mile away into another section of the woods, where they would bury her in that shallow grave, and then after that, the killer went home. And when they got home, the first thing they did is they went and checked on their elderly mother, who was recovering from surgery, and still sound asleep. The killer was Lisa's ex-husband, and Jake's biological father, Frank Spagnola, whose own parents had helped confirm his alibi. So the thing that had ultimately broken the case was that particular item on the autopsy report that had gotten Detective Lubumbard's attention, and that item, which was really just a towel, had been described on that list as being this really specific kind of towel that was not sold commercially, and was actually only used in hospitals, and Lubumbard knew that Frank's mother, who he lived with, worked at a hospital, and Frank said he had gone to the hospital on the day Lisa was murdered to pick up his mother's paycheck. He just as easily could have also grabbed a towel while he was there, and then beyond that, the DNA testing also confirmed that under Lisa's fingernails, that was blood, and it matched Frank's blood. And he was arrested on July 10, 2002. In 2003, Frank was found guilty of the first degree premeditated murder of Lisa Fine, and sentenced to life in prison without parole. 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 LaCasio. This episode was written by Heather Dundes, story editing by Luke Barats, research and fact checking by Shelley Shoe, Samantha Van Hooose, 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 Manada 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 SiriusXM 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. [Music]