335. The Aliso Viejo Spa Bombing - The Murder of Ildiko Krajnyak

You're listening to an ONO media podcast. Hey everyone, welcome back to the podcast. This is Murder with My Husband. I'm Pete Morley. And I'm Garrett Morley. And he's the husband. And I'm the husband. Hello. Welcome back. Hope everyone's having an amazing day. Yeah. I don't know how it's our day. Good. I don't know. Working. Working, yeah. Working on the weekends. Like usual, you know. Yeah. And that song, everybody. Thank you for watching. Thank you for listening. Thank you for supporting. We love you guys. Daisy's tired. She went swimming today for the first time in a long time. So if you're watching on video, you will see she is just absolutely a little. Zonky. Droopy. Drowsy. Zonky. Yeah. I think that's all we got. Um, we have any announcements? Murk. Oh, yeah. Dude, we almost forgot. We almost forgot. We have some new baby merch. You guys were dropping some kind of like mommy and me spooky season baby merch. But obviously we want you to get it now so that you know, you can have it up for all of fall. Um, it's very much just like murder with my husband basics. Nothing super true crime, obviously, or graphic on a more just like MWMH and cute matching stuff. But we have onesies. Don't worry. 100% organic. I know. None of us are putting our babies in anything less. But yeah, um, I'm super excited about those and hopefully we have ones soon that can also wear them. Yeah. They're cute. Go check them out. Links everywhere. Anywhere you can find a link, it'll be there. Yeah. And we're going to get right into this week's case. But I'm here. I'm literally not going to get ready to do it. I have to say something quick. I think we had a mishap with ads last week on a certain platform. So I just want to apologize to anyone who experienced that and was like, why the heck are we completely bombarded? Apparently there was something going on on the platform's end. We triple checked everything on our end. So fingers crossed that's fixed. But I did just want to give an apology because that was obviously never, it's never intended to be bombarded like that. All right. This is for this episode, our justice dot gov peacock TV BBC dot com ABC 7 dot com medium dot com CBS news dot com people dot com NBC news dot com courthouse news fox LA dot com oxygen dot com NY one dot com and PR dot org and LA mag dot com. Pretty often when we hear news of a bombing. We often think this is a random act of mass violence that it wasn't so much about the targets themselves as it was about the message that the bomb or bombers were trying to send. So the thing that makes an act of violence like this so terrifying is anyone can literally be collateral damage and it leaves behind a crime scene. It's very difficult to trace. There's usually very few witnesses hardly any clues and the perpetrator doesn't even have to be at the scene when the bomb goes off. They can do damage from miles away without ever leaving behind a hair a fingerprint or a shred of DNA. In many ways a bomb is a good weapon for murder, but no weapon is perfect. If the person who built it can't seem to keep it a secret. So today we are actually headed to sunny California to a town about an hour south of Los Angeles called Elisa Viejo. Ooh, very familiar with this town, this city. Yes. Haven't heard of this because it's not as a grand scale as it bomb. This is like 15 20 minutes for where I grew up, by the way, everybody. So we're headed there to Elisa Viejo and we are meeting a 48-year-old esthetician named Ildilko Kronjak. Now quite a name, Ildilko was born and raised in Hungary. But once she reached her 20s, she dreamed of moving to America, starting a new life for herself. Eventually she does move to California and she finds herself in a relationship with a man named Ronilo Vesteel. Now Ildilko's cousin admired this new relationship. Her cousin said that they were just so in love, they were both wonderful people who made each other happy. Everyone said Ronilo treated Ildilko well and would help her with her family back in Hungary any chance he got. So it was no surprise when they tied the knot and then welcomed a baby boy into their lives. Now as the years passed and their son got older, Ildilko decided to follow her career goals and get her cosmology and estheticians license. She eventually ended up owning her own spa in a commercial building in Elisa Viejo called Magha Cosmereca and by 2018 her son was now grown and in college. And by this point, Ronilo and Ildilko who had been so in love, had had this beautiful love story in America, they had also started to grow apart. There was a disconnect growing in their 22 year long marriage by 2018. The two weren't quite ready for a divorce but apparently was enough that Ildilko started to have a wandering eye and she began looking for love in places outside of their marriage. Apparently this is something she and Ronilo were working on but never got to fully mend because on May 15, 2018 the unthinkable happened. Ildilko had just come back from visiting some family in Hungary the night before. So she'd been gone for a couple of weeks but was quickly getting back into the groove of seeing clients at her spa in Elisa Viejo. Now that day she treated her friend Sarah. Sarah was a long time client of hers who was getting her lashes done. Sarah said that everything seemed to be going well for Ildilko. She spoke about her trip and her family. They caught up on their lives just like they often did during their appointments. And then later that day around noon, Ildilko had two other clients in her spa. It was a mother and daughter who she was treating together. But just after 1 pm, the city of Elisa Viejo felt the rattle of what seemed to be at first maybe a little earthquake. Ildilko's friend Holly, who lived about a mile away from the spa, had heard it. And what she recalled was much bigger than any earthquake she'd experienced. She said she heard a massive explosion. Now within the next hour to the source of this explosion was all over the news. This wasn't an earthquake, a two story office building in Elisa Viejo had just exploded. How, I don't just went, what date are we in 2018? We were living there. How, how did I not hear about this? At California's big. Am I just like a completely oblivious sometimes? There's no way because anyways, I'm not going to get to it. Like, I keep up with a lot. Shookheim's not one of those things I keep up with, but I don't know, confused. So apparently bystanders were filming the damage of this building blowing up. News trucks were covering the story. And meanwhile, the Orange County Sheriff's Department was at the scene along with fire trucks and ambulances. They weren't sure if this had been a gas leak or something more nefarious. But one thing was clear, there was a loss of life at the scene outside of the building. Leathered body parts were found among the debris and the smell of sulfur like you would get from fireworks was definitely in the air. Now when Holly, build a ghost friend who lived close by, saw the news of where the bombing had taken place, her heart sank because she knew this is the same building that the spa is in. She had a terrible feeling. Unfortunately, she was right. And police arrived. They discovered that Oldeco's two clients, so the mother and daughter who had been her last appointments that day, they were both still alive. They were raised to a nearby hospital, but Oldeco had not survived the blast. It was her severed remains that were found scattered throughout the scene. Now thankfully, the radius of the blast didn't injure anyone else in the vicinity. It was just the people in the building, especially because there was a preschool that was not too far away from the spa. But obviously, police are immediately like what happened? What caused this explosion like we have a fatality. Now while teams began combing the scene, detectives spoke to the mother and daughter who who are being treated for their injured. injuries at the hospital, they both had second and third degree burns. The mother unfortunately had lost her eye in this blast. Her daughter though happened to remember something critical and useful before the explosion went off. You know, when police are like, tell us about your appointment, what was going on. What did you hear? See, she said they had actually just finished their treatments and they went out to the lobby to pay. And that was when Yildiko picked up a package. She grabbed a tool and began opening the package, which according to the daughter was then followed immediately by a blinding light. They were knocked unconscious as the blast hit and the walls of the building basically turned to rubble. It was a miracle that these two had survived. This is crazy. But this immediately tells detective something important because obviously this package had caused the explosion. And I think especially nowadays when detectives hear this, their immediate thought is, is this an act of terrorism or was this a personal bomb intended for this spa? So by the end of the day, the FBI was also there at the crime scene, obviously. They were called in. And they were collecting clues. They were trying to figure out exactly what kind of explosive device they were dealing with. And as they sifted through the debris, they found parts of a CVS branded nine volt battery. And parts of a wire that were actually embedded into the ceiling of the salon. So they began to believe this was part of a homemade fusing system that someone had put together, which told them that whoever built this bomb knew what they were doing. They had some sort of specialized skill or sophisticated knowledge of how to make something this powerful at home. For the Orange County Sheriff's Department, this sounded terrifyingly familiar because back in March of that year, just two months prior, Austin, Texas was actually dealing with their own series of package bombs. There had been about five total bombs in Texas. They killed two people and injured several others and all of these bombs again were package bombs. You know, I honestly, this is something that I think about sometimes, like that I'm glad it doesn't happen more, but I guess some surprises don't happen more. But also, I mean, their security systems and systems put in place. So what doesn't happen? But scary. I think people can, you can make a bomb and just I mean, there is a series of bombs right here in Salt Lake City. Yes. Yeah. Like I just think it's scary. I don't know. So these Texas bombs that had were around the same time, police eventually traced those bombs to a man named Mark Anthony Condit who died after detonating one of his own bombs inside his car. They never actually found the motive for these Texas bombs, though Condit did stay in a recorded confession that he was quote, a psychopath. And since he actually died before the explosion at Ildeco Spa, police were like, it can't be him. But this is so eerie that we've had a series of package bombs in Texas a couple months ago. And now we've just had our own package bomb here in Southern California. So they're like, is there a chance this is an accomplice? Is this a copycat bomber? These were all things that needed to be considered, though they do eventually learn that the package that had been opened the bomb package was intended for Ildeco. It was addressed to her. So this makes them feel like she was probably the primary target. And that meant speaking to those closest to her to see who might have wanted her dead. It's definitely a pretty wild way to just kill one person, but that's what they're starting to think is that this was just one targeted event. So one of the first threads they follow is obviously Ildeco's husband, Ronnie Lowe. He said he was at work during the time of the bomb blast. And he actually rushed down to the scene. This second that his brother told him about where the explosion was. But there was something a little strange about his story. He tells police he wasn't even sure if Ildeco had come back from her Hungary trip yet. So he wasn't even sure if she was inside the spa when it blew up. Now Ronnie Lowe and Ildeco were seemingly, like I said, on a bit of a break at this point, separated, if you will. But they were still living together at the time. So it was odd that he wouldn't have known if she was in America, like at this point, though to be fair, she had just gone back the night before and then went into work at the spa that morning. Still police question, Ronnie Lowe, which was why that night they end up placing a tracker on his car and they sent about 25 SWAT agents over to the house to search the house. And again, if you're like, whoa, this is overkill, they're dealing with a bomb, a deadly deadly weapon. Like this weapon can kill multiple people at once, mass casualties, right? So that's why it is such an intense thing because what if there's more? What if he has more at the house that could go off? So during that time that 25 SWAT agents are searching their home, Ronnie Lowe is brought down to the station for questioning and he admitted to the police. They had been living pretty separate lives recently. He told them, listen, she's my wife, but Ildeco was definitely dating other men outside of our marriage. I know about it. According to some of Ildeco's friends, she was juggling about five to six different men. She was definitely like, it was definitely common knowledge even to the husband who's getting it. We're separated. And I'm dating. Okay. Like it, it's not necessarily that this was happening behind his back. It was just like we're separated. And she was dating a lot at the time of the bombing. So this is not an easy suspect list scenario down when they learn that she is dating this much, but Ronnie Lowe knows at least one of the men's name. He says, it's a handy man named Max. This Max guy has a key to Ildeco's spa because he's a handy man. But Ildeco had once told Ronnie Lowe that she felt a little weird about Max because he would sometimes park overnight in the spa parking lot and sleep in his car. So when they hear this and that he had a key and that maybe him and Ildeco had some type of relationship, again, all from the husband, they bring Max the handy man in and it leads nowhere. Either the guy had a good alibi or the situation didn't match up because he was crossed off the suspect list, which was when police moved on to another person, Ronnie Lowe, Ildeco was involved with a man named Gabor Papp. Now Ildeco had actually met Gabor a few years prior. So back in 2015 and apparently the relationship between them had quickly become intimate, even though they both were technically married at the time. So the two got so serious in 2015 that they spoke about leaving their current partners for one another. That was until a fight happened at Ildeco's spa. Apparently, once Gabor's wife Elizabeth found out about the affair, she showed up at Ildeco's spa and things got heated. Some say it turned physical, but apparently this whole situation caused Ildeco and Gabor to put things on pause, at least for a little while. Two years later, Ildeco found Gabor on Facebook again, so that was 2015, it's now 2017 and she gave him a little poke. Remember when you could just poke people on Facebook. Oh, I forgot about that. Yeah. So his wife, Elizabeth, said that's when she noticed Ildeco had been driving by their home in Aliso, VAO, almost like she was looking for Gabor, like she now sees this old mistress of her husband's driving around. So Elizabeth decides, what am I going to do, am I going to confront my husband, am I going to confront her? She says, I'm just going to send Ildeco some photos of me and Gabor being intimate. That's okay. My great idea. It's just she's like, he's my husband. This is what we do back off. Now it's not clear if things had picked back up between Gabor and Ildeco during this time. Like I don't know if they were seeing each other after this Facebook post and she was seen driving around, but Elizabeth made it very clear. We were over this two years ago and I'm not going down without a fight. Now, eventually Elizabeth texts Ron Nilo to tell him, Hey, two years ago, I caught your wife having an affair with my husband. This happened a few years ago. years back. I just want you to know, Elizabeth even said in the text, quote, she almost destroyed my family enough is enough. I think it's safe to say Elizabeth the wife is spiraling a little bit at this point to be fair. But Ronnie Lowe, when confronted with this information by Elizabeth, actually texted her back, telling her to just block it, it'll go on Facebook. But she found that absurd saying, quote, really, you're so blind and accept what your wife is doing instead of stepping up. Be a man. And you know what? He got this text just a month and a half or so before the package bomb was sent. So obviously, when police learned about this whole affair situation from years back, that had also trickled into the weeks before the bomb. Basically, they decide to speak to the couple and the couple cooperated, even handed over all of their electronic devices, hoping to clear their names, and it helped. There was no indication that either of them knew how to build a bomb had ever researched how to so detectives scratch their names off the list as well. And that's your your suspects that can actually build a bomb like that's not very high. I'm sure pretty small police are like a holy cow like we have so many potential suspects that probably have good motive and they're not working like they're not actually who's doing this, which has got to be a little wild. So this is when they decide to circle back to something Ildaco's friend Sarah had said, this is the one who had been treated at her spa earlier on the day of the explosion before the mother and daughter. Sarah noticed there was a man hanging around the spa that day, the day of her appointment and the day of the bombing. And she also said Ildaco kind of seemed a little bit unnerved about something. She said at one point, Ildaco came rushing out of a room with keys and mail in her hands and this man that was kind of lingering tried to speak with Ildaco, but she just shoot him off. And when Sarah was like, what was that? Who is that guy? What just happened? Ildaco told Sarah, he was just a friend, but she doesn't go into any detail. So when Sarah tells police this, she described the guy as tall and stout with gray hair. Police showed her some photos and they do eventually determine the guy's identity. Apparently it was a man who had lunch plans with Ildaco that day, the day of the bombing. And he had been seen lingering around the spa and his name was Scott Malali. I feel like I've become like I'm skeptical people now. I'm saying yeah, like I'll be somewhere and I'm like, that person have a gun. Does that person have a bomb? Why is that person standing there? Why is that like why is that person acting weird over there? Yeah. What are you doing? You know who like I'm just I look at people now and I'm like, nah, you're being weird. Why are you being weird? You know who gets the most unfair judgment of anyone? Who? People who go alone to movies. Oh, do not. Yes, I agree. I'm all for it because I would go alone to movie, but do not come alone to my movie. Don't do it. Do not do not come alone to my movie. I'm sorry because instantly it's true. Someone comes in a lone movie and I'm like, get immediately gives me eyes. Like, can you see that person there alone? There's no one there alone. But the thing is I would go alone to movie. There's nothing wrong with going alone. But they really do get the worst judgment. I just don't want you alone in my movie. Anyways, okay, we can keep going. So the police pay Scott of his at next. They're like man number three. You were supposed to have lunch with her that day. He told them he'd met Ildico at a casino a few weeks before her death. There was a spark. He'd even drove her to the airport for her flight out to Hungary and had picked her up as soon as she landed at LAX the night before the bombing. He said they spent the night together. And then he drove her to the spa the next day. So this actually matches up with Ronnie Lowe the husband's account that he hadn't seen Ildico because she didn't actually go back home. She went to Scott's house and then went to work the next morning. So it actually does match up that he was like, I don't even know if she's home or not. But police want to obviously check this out. They pull up video footage from baggage claim at LAX. Sure enough, there's Ildico and Scott standing there on tape. He's helping her with her bags. And after doing a little more digging into Scott, he is also crossed off the suspect list. So man number three is crossed off. He just didn't seem like someone capable of building a bomb. However, police soon learned there's more to Ildico's last days. Apparently she didn't fly back from Hungary alone. She came back with a man who she parted ways from during their layover in San Francisco before she then continued on to Los Angeles and met Scott at LAX. So she actually flew home with a man. Now that man was named Laslo Zabo. So police learned that Laslo and Ildico had also been dating for a few months just kind of on and off of that point seeing each other. So this is man number four. And I'm not sure how the two of them met, but I know he was Hungarian and had traveled with her to the country on this recent trip. So she had traveled with Laslo to Hungary when she went back to visit her family. And again, before you're like to worried about remembering all of these characters, I will remind you if it's important. That's why I just keep saying this is man number four. So they track Laslo down in his current home in the San Francisco area. And he says I haven't even been to Southern California in months. They eventually find this to be true. So Laslo is now ruled out. Okay, come on. It's 2018. We have cameras. Hey, they've used the cameras to find these people. How can we not find the guy or girl when someone has five or six guys that they're seeing at the same time? Yeah, get it. So they think it's one of them for sure. They just got to go down the list. I mean move. We got to move. Come on. The list is getting smaller, but there was one person. Police were not able to rule out someone who had actually come down to the station on the day of the bombing to voluntarily offer information about Will Deco. It was her business partner and apparently former lover, the guy named Stephen Bill. Okay. Now 58 year old Stephen was a grandfather who had been widowed with four adult kids. He lost his wife back around 2008. He had been dipping a toe back into the dating pool over the last couple of years. Now back in 2016, he said, he met Ildeco on a dating app and things kind of got serious. They started going on vacations together. Stephen would spend tons of money on Ildeco during one trip to Portugal. He apparently spent $10,000 on her and five of that was for a Louis Vuitton purse that he bought her. He eventually decided to then support her spa business as well. Stephen helped Ildeco find a location for her spa and the two signed the lease together. And then he helped her put together a skincare company she wanted to start called INS Enterprises, which Stephen was listed as the CFO of. But as they say, you should probably never mix business and pleasure because soon things started to go south with the businesses finances and Stephen and Ildeco began fighting about it a lot. And after 18 months of this little wing, Ildeco went to Stephen and said, Hey, let's just like cool things down a bit. And then she changed the passwords on the financial accounts she once gave Stephen access to. And while Stephen was aware at the time that she was married, he then learned she'd also been seeing other men on the side, like she was dating around. It wasn't just him. Ildeco confided in some of her friends about this relationship she had with Stephen about how like we've just gone too deep like we traveled a law, he helped invest in my stuff. And now I just don't I want to break up. But like how do you do that when this man has spent so much money on you? How even before this breakup, he was controlling he was a little possessive and with threat in her. Now, of course, Stephen doesn't share that part in his interview with police. They get that part from friends. He did tell them, however, again, this is the day of the bombing. The bombing happens. Stephen walks in and says, I know her. Here's what I know. He says he and Ildeco were in business together and he felt like she was hiding things from him lately. But when it came to means and motives, Stephen voluntarily told police there was no motive for him to kill her. But the means, well, they might find that in his garage. He tells police he was into making his own fireworks and he had been a rocket hobbyist for years. Okay. So detectives are like found him. You're just coming in here and telling us this? They ask him okay well would someone with your type of experience be able to convert what you do into a bomb like to a bigger scale? And Stephen said he has no idea how someone would put together something large enough to produce the blast that occurred at the spa. He's like that's out of my realm of expertise. But regardless, Stephen literally just placed himself directly in their line of fire. I guess his thoughts were if I go in and I'm open like you're probably going to stumble across my name anyways when you begin learning about her life. So I might as well get ahead of it. And while I'm doing that, I might as well let you know that we were kind of on the rocks because we'd start a business and broke up. And also I like to build my own fireworks. But that wasn't the case because Stephen, he just could not shut up in this interview. And shockingly, the fireworks were not the weirdest part about this interview with detectives. After talking about his little rocket hobby, Stephen told them he also had something else. He was very interested in. He was just like singing. Just talking up a storm. You know, something I've realized is I try, I try not to overshare. You're very mysterious. I try not to overshare. I try not to overtalk. I try to stay a little mysterious, a little cool. But also I feel like it tends to help me out in the longer. Yeah, I think because you do your 10 seconds, people probably think you're very open. But when you meet Garrett in person, he's very closed off. He's a real tough cookie to crack. I just don't really feel like giving everyone everything. You're the most vulnerable in your 10 seconds. I'm like, yeah, I'm not going to give you that. Or if I do give you something, is it a lie? Is it the truth? Me on the other hand, if I got out and said I just talked to detectives for nine hours, Garrett would be like, yeah, I'm sure you did surprise me. True. Well, Steven is the same. Okay. He's like, oh, it's not just rockets that I love. Let me tell you. Next up, Loki, when you were pregnant, I was tone every listener that came to the shop. I was like, yeah, pain's pregnant. I would get texts from people and be like, Garrett, just told me the news. I'm like, sure. I was telling everyone you were pregnant. He says he likes writing screenplays. Turns out, Steven was also an actor and writer. Who said he had been working on a script about a part-time soccer mom who had a secret life as an assassin? The emphasize that she was very good at what she does and knew how to cover her tracks. Oh, and then he was like, do you guys want to see a magic trick? Okay. When he's just a little crazy officer said they were, quote, blown away and not by the quality of the illusion. But by the fact that Steven just, he was talking and he thought he was really smart. Yeah. He was like, I write this. I do this. You want to see a magic trick. He somehow came across like he was the soccer mom assassin who knew how to cover his tracks. But Steven was doing the complete opposite. He led them right to his doorstep where they showed up that day with a warrant to then search his property in Long Beach, California. So they interview him and then they're like, yep, we're going to go search to see what we find. He already told us he likes rockets. Sure enough, they discovered batteries, two handguns and a shotgun, two improvised explosive devices and 100 pounds of explosive material was found as Steven Bills home. So the day after the explosion on May 16, 2018, Steven Bills was arrested, but not for homicide. No, he was arrested for one charge of possessing an unregistered destructive device. And then two days later, prosecutors actually dropped those charges primarily because a lab tech with the FBI said they couldn't rule out the fact that those devices might have actually been used for his rocket hobby, not bomb making just like Steven had claimed. So do you even have enough evidence to prove he's the one who made this bomb and set it off? So Steven Bill goes gets out, he gets to live his life, but the police are not going to let him off that easily. They continue looking deeper into him to see if there's any more evidence there because I mean, they've now gone through four men. This is the fifth that she has dated. This fifth one invested a lot of money into her also found out she was seeing other men and also was her business partner and likes making fireworks. Police are like, no, there's something going on. They just need more evidence. And one of the things they found was the stalking. Turns out in the weeks and months before the bombing, Steven had apparently been keeping close tabs on Ildaco's online accounts. He still had access to which by the way was her personal calendar. Oh my gosh. Her social media accounts. Weirdo. You name it. He had somehow figured out how do you access to it. He also went by this boss several times while she was out of the country in Hungary, which wouldn't be that surprising, you know, because I mean, he still owns some of it. He's still involved in it. But police also suspected that he dropped off the package during one of those visits, knowing that when she came back and returned to the spa, she would open it. But there's just not enough proof yet. It's just a theory. They have proof that he was going there while she was gone. They just don't have proof putting the package in his hands. So the police keep digging through thousands of hours of CCTV footage and other records trying to find the smoking gun. And several months into their investigation, they find something hidden in Steven's financial records. He had bought three boxes at a store right around the corner from the spa. Just simple six by six cardboard boxes. Exactly. Okay. Now we're getting somewhere like the bomb was packaged in. And they had camera footage of him making that purchase just a week before the bomb went off in the spa. And then they remembered that nine volt battery they found at the scene and how it was CVS brand. So they roll the dice. They look back at the security cameras from the CVS right around the corner from Ildaco's spa. And they also do it around the same time that they know Steven bought those boxes. And that's when they see Steven on camera in CVS buying a single nine volt battery and paying for in cash. Now shortly after making these discoveries, the lab techs with the FBI also come back with some evidence of their own. They concluded there was no quote meaningful differences between some of the wires recovered from the crime scene and the wires that were in the devices found at Steven's home. All of this to say to lab techs, it was a probable match. So now you have him buying boxes that the bomb was found in. Yeah. The exact type of battery used in the bomb, which let's be honest, those are all very generic. Like what you're naming is very generic. Boxes battery. Not think. I mean, he's probably guilty, but I'm just saying the wires matched ones found in his home. But when you put all of that together, he's buying every single supply to make the bomb. He has a hundred pounds of explosive material at his home to make this bomb. And he has more than enough motive to kill her. Police are like, we think this is enough to make an arrest. On March 3rd, 2019, this is nearly 10 months after the explosion. Steven Biel kissed his new fiance. Goodbye that morning. Oh my gosh. 10 months later. And he has a new fiance. After allegedly bombing an X. And he goes out to run some errands. And later he calls her to say, Hey, I've just been arrested for murder. It then takes nearly three years. Oh my gosh. First Stevens case to get its day in court. So it's now 2022. And the prosecution reminded the jury, Hey, Ildaco is not the only victim in Stephen's crime. There was also a mother and daughter who would have to live with the memory of that day. And the aftermath, losing an eye, the trauma of it also had they been standing in a different spot. Probably could have died. Probably would have died. And as for motive, they told the jury, let's tell you everything we know about Stephen and Ildaco's relationship. Like he's obsessed. He found out she was seeing other men. He was seething with jealousy. Apparently, Stephen had even screen-shotted texts on his phone that he discovered of a text message conversation between Ildaco and her new boyfriend, Luzlo, the one she went to hungry with. So they're like, he has proof on his own phone of her talking other guys, why would he be why would he even have this? They also showed the jurors of video Stephen had made showing how to mix explosive chemicals to make fireworks at home. So he was, you know, documenting his hobby and how many of the parts that he bought that were in this specific bomb or had it as home. I mean, all the signs were there. But the defense argued, listen, there was so many people with motive to get rid of Ildico. Think of all of the men that you talked to, you have the couple who had been in this year's long battle with this affair. Or even Ildico's husband Ronilo, they also pointed to the possibility of max, the handyman who would have access to the spa. They also said, Stephen bought Ildico that battery for her business. They were like, there's no proof like he said it's generic. There's no proof they use that battery for the bomb or that those boxes he bought were used for the bomb. Overall, the trial lasted seven weeks. 70 different witnesses were called to the stand. When the jury returned, some of them had reasonable doubt. They didn't come to an agreement. A hung jury metamist trial, no verdict. But the prosecution was not done. In the meantime, Stephen went back to jail because he was unable to make his bail. But as he waited for his second trial to come in June of 2023, some new information came to light. Information that suggested this might not have even been Stephen's first time dealing with a situation like this. Turns out, they discovered there was some suspicious circumstances surrounding his own wife's death back in 2008. On February 16th of that year, 48-year-old Stephen and his wife, 48-year-old Christine, were carrying a heavy piece of furniture down the stairs of their long beach home. Stephen was carrying the top part of a 50-pound table and Christine was on the bottom. Apparently, Stephen lost his balance and let go of the table and the table fell on top of Christine while they were going down the stairs. And it fell on top of her. The injury was severe, but she survived. It was extremely painful, though. Christine went to see multiple doctors in the weeks that followed eventually after several days of vomiting. Christine died on March 8th from what was said to be a result of her injuries from this fall. The autopsy report said her cause of death was pancreatis or an inflammation of the organ, as well as an electrolyte imbalance. Her manner of death was listed as undetermined. So this is his ex-wife, but there was something a little odd about the report. It said the lead in Christine's blood was four times higher than what it should have been. No way. They didn't catch this. And the source of that lead poisoning was unknown. However, prosecutors found that Stephen had actually purchased lead in the months before Christine's death from a company called Virginia Pyrotechnics. How do we miss this? Turns out detectives did investigate this death around the same time as Ildacos thinking the two could now be related, but according to a department spokesperson, they found nothing to suggest that her death was criminal. Instead, Stephen's kids think the lead came from the renovations their parents were doing on the house and apparently Stephen himself had actually gone for treatment for lead poisoning a few months before his wife died. But there's obviously more to the story when people keep digging. Stephen took out a quote, accidental death insurance policy on Christine through his work. This is getting ridiculous. Just a few weeks before he then accidentally dropped the table on her. I don't need to hear anymore. Put him in jail. But when he went to claim the life insurance, it was denied because they're like, we don't even know how she died. We can't give it to you. Stephen eventually filed a lawsuit against both his employer and the insurance company and he won $550,000. Now as Stephen's going to retrial in June of 2023, people are like, we're going to bring this up. In July of 2023, after the trial, his second trial, he was found guilty of four families, malicious destruction of a building resulting in death, use of a destructive device during and in relation to a crime of violence, possession of an unregistered destructive device and using a weapon of mass destruction. Stephen sentencing hearing came in January of 2024. There, the prosecution hoped to use the information about his wife to kind of bolster the sentence. But the judge wasn't taking it into consideration. Still, Stephen Bill was given life plus 30 years in federal prison and he will not be eligible for parole. But in the end, it's hard to wonder. Would Stephen Bill have ever even ended up under the microscope if not for his own big mouth? Probably not. What the police have eventually caught on after going through all the men, I'm sure his name actually, no, I think you're right. I think they were slowly going through everybody. He's made it fast. Yeah. Yeah. We'd hope, obviously, that's true. But you also have Christine's death. That's crazy. And he'll never probably get charged for that. That's crazy. Oh, literally, allegedly killed his ex-wife. He accidentally took out the life insurance policy and then accidentally dropped the table on her that accidentally killed her. That's so sad. That's horrible. He hasn't obviously paid the price for that, at least not yet, but he is in prison for ill-deco's murder. And that is her case. That's horrible. I'm glad more people didn't die. Right. Like, surprisingly, more people didn't die. Also, like, again, I'd have all the way to kill somebody a bomb. Like, if you're trying to kill one person, that seems, I mean, it's, I guess, killing someone in general. Also, you're immediately getting the FBI involved. Yeah. Like, you're asking for the most intense, like, you're not getting away with it. Investigation. If you do a bomb, you're not getting away with this. That's so sad. It's horrible. Why are you buying the supplies around the corner? Insane. Crazy. Anyways, that was our case for this week. Thank you for watching or listening. And we will see you next time with another one. I love it. I hate it. Goodbye. [Music]