Trapped

[0] Today's podcast is about places you can't go and people who went there anyway.

[1] This will be a top three style episode, so you'll hear three unique stories back to back to back, and each story will be more intense than the last one.

[2] The audio from all three of these stories has been pulled from our main YouTube channel, which is just called Mr. Ballin, and they have each been remastered for today's podcast.

[3] The links to the original YouTube videos are in the description.

[4] The first story you'll hear, which is the number three stories, story on today's list is called The Happiest Place on Earth, and it's about one of the most gruesome accidents I've ever come across.

[5] The number two story on today's list is called Water Closet, and it's about a person who accidentally put themselves in a terrible position.

[6] And the final story you'll hear, which is the top spot of today's list, is called The Maze, and it's about the massive secret world that exists on the other side of the walls in a huge mall in Australia.

[7] But before we get into today's stories, if you're a fan of the strange, dark, and mysterious delivered in story format, then you've come to the right podcast because that's all we do, and we upload twice a week, once on Monday and once on Thursday.

[8] So, if that's of interest to you, please offer to do the five -star review button's eyeliner, but use a wide -tip black Sharpie.

[9] Also, please subscribe to the Mr. Ballin podcast, wherever you listen to podcasts, so you don't miss any of our weekly uploads.

[10] Okay, let's get into our first story called The Happiest place on earth.

[11] I'm Dan Tibertsky.

[12] In 2011, something strange began to happen at a high school in upstate New York.

[13] A mystery illness, bizarre symptoms, and spreading fast.

[14] What's the answer?

[15] And what do you do if they tell you it's all in your head?

[16] Hysterical.

[17] A new podcast from Wondry and Pineapple Street Studios.

[18] Binge all episodes of Hysterical early and ad -free on Wondery Plus.

[19] In 1974, 18 -year -old Debbie Stone landed what she considered to be an amazing summer job.

[20] She was hired to work at Disneyland in Anaheim, California.

[21] Her specific role was to be a hostess at a brand new attraction called America Sinks.

[22] Disney had basically converted an old carousel, which is a ride that spins around in a circle.

[23] They had converted it into a rotating stage, and they put up partition walls all along this rotating stage to create six distinct stages on this rotating stage.

[24] And so on each of these six stages were different sets of the rotating stage.

[25] these robotic animals that played different songs about America.

[26] And so the way this would work if you were in the audience is you would walk into this theater that looked like a single theater with one stage right in front of you, but really what you were looking at is one of the six stages.

[27] And so the audience would sit down, they would see one of the acts, they'd see one performance on one of the stages, and then the stage would rotate.

[28] And so the audience would remain in the theater until all six stages had rotated.

[29] in front of them and played their two to four minute long act.

[30] Debbie's job at America Sings was at the beginning of these shows where the audience would watch all six acts.

[31] She would go up before the very first act.

[32] She'd go on stage and she would greet the audience.

[33] And then the show would start.

[34] It would filter through all six of the stages and then Debbie would get back on stage and she would say goodbye to that group of audience members.

[35] It was a simple gig and Debbie seemed to like it.

[36] And so on July 9th of that year, which was nine days after this attraction had opened, and so it was nine days after Debbie had started her job, Debbie was asked to come in for an evening shift.

[37] And so she left her house, and she made it out to the attraction at about 10 p .m., which was right at the start of a show.

[38] And so she went right inside, she hopped on stage, she greeted the audience, and then she left the stage, and the show began.

[39] And so over the next 30 minutes, all six of the stages performed their acts, and then after the sixth act was done, Debbie Dutifully climbed back onto the stage, she said goodbye to the audience, and that as that audience was leaving the theater, she turned around and walked towards the back of the stage she was on.

[40] What happened next requires some additional explanation.

[41] Each of the six stages that made up this attraction had a fairly tall back wall, and behind each of these six back walls that were kind of in a ring was the center of the actual attraction, and, In the center was this circular, fairly tall storage room.

[42] This storage room did not rotate.

[43] It was stationary.

[44] The stages and their respective back walls, they rotated around this storage room.

[45] And the gap between the outside of the storage room and the back of any of these back walls was only a few inches.

[46] It was very narrow.

[47] But it was big enough that a person, in theory, could get stuck back there.

[48] So it was a real hazard.

[49] However, Disney did not put any specific safeguards in place to prevent their staff from intentionally or unintentionally going into this space.

[50] They just told their staff to not go back there and be careful.

[51] So back on July 9th, after Debbie has said goodbye to the audience and she's walked towards the back of the stage she's on, she decides to move from the stage she's on to the adjoining stage.

[52] And when she does that, she either trips or falls or something happens, which causes her to fall into the narrow space between the two back walls of the two stages she was on.

[53] And so she falls through that gap and then gets wedged between the outside of the storage room and the back of one of the back walls.

[54] She tries to pull herself up and pull herself out of the space, but she realizes she's stuck.

[55] And so she starts to panic and she starts screaming for help.

[56] None of the staff hear her or they don't recognize that this is a real call for help.

[57] And this new wave of people that are coming in, the new audience, they're all talking loudly, there's music playing, they don't really hear her.

[58] And anyone that actually did hear her calling for help, they would later say they thought it was part of the show.

[59] And so as Debbie is screaming bloody murder, she cannot get out of this gap, this narrow gap she's stuck in, these stages, they start to move because the show is going to start.

[60] And because Debbie has nowhere to go, when the stage began to rotate, she got, forcibly dragged and twisted and rolled and her body began to contort and bones started to break and she was forced to continue moving through this narrow space because the stage was just going to keep on going until it reached its next position and so finally after it dragged her all the way to its next position Debbie didn't die she was grievously injured she probably had dozens of broken bones but she was alive and she's still totally stuck and she's screaming with every ounce of energy she has, but again, the audience, even though they heard her screaming, they assumed it was part of the show.

[61] And apparently the staff also heard her screams and convinced themselves it was just no big deal.

[62] And so two to four minutes later, when the act was complete, the stage began to rotate again.

[63] And so Debbie again is rolled and contorted and crushed and dragged and smashed and broken as the stage again rotates to its next position.

[64] And she's still not dead.

[65] She's screaming out for help.

[66] No one is coming to help her.

[67] And so the entire show would play out with the stage rotating through all of its sections.

[68] And then finally, at the end of the show, when one of the audience members alerted the staff that, hey, you should really go check out that screaming we heard.

[69] And at that point, they went for a look, and they discovered Debbie, and she was very obviously deceased.

[70] Disney would pay a small settlement to Debbie's family, and then they would put up a number of safeguards on the America Sings attraction to make sure something like this never happened again.

[71] I'm Dan Tversky.

[72] In 2011, something strange began to happen at the high school in Leroy, New York.

[73] I was like at my locker and she came up to me and she was like stuttering super bad.

[74] I'm like, stop fucking around.

[75] She's like, I can't.

[76] A mystery illness, bizarre symptoms and spreading fast.

[77] It's like doubling and tripling and it's all these girls.

[78] With a diagnosis, the state tried to keep on the down low.

[79] Everybody thought I was holding something back.

[80] Well, you were holding something back.

[81] Intentionally.

[82] Yeah, yeah.

[83] Well, yeah.

[84] No, it's hysteria.

[85] It's all in your head.

[86] It's not physical.

[87] Oh, my gosh, you're exaggerating.

[88] Is this the largest mass hysteria since the Witches of Salem?

[89] Or is it something else entirely?

[90] Something's wrong here.

[91] Something's not right.

[92] Leroy was the new date line and everyone was trying to solve the murder.

[93] A new limited series from Wondery and Pineapple Street Studios.

[94] Hysterical.

[95] Follow Hysterical on the Wondery app or wherever you get your podcasts.

[96] You can binge all episodes of Hysterical early and ad -free right now by joining Wondry Plus.

[97] She struck him with her motor vehicle.

[98] She had been under the influence that she left him there.

[99] In January 2022, local woman Karen Reed was implicated in the mysterious death of her boyfriend, Boston police officer John O 'Keefe.

[100] It was alleged that after an innocent night out for drinks with friends, Karen and John got into a lover's quarrel en route to the next location.

[101] What happens next depends on who you ask.

[102] Was it a crime of passion?

[103] If you believe the prosecution, it's because the evidence was so compelling.

[104] This was clearly an intentional act.

[105] And his cause of death was blunt force trauma with hypothermia.

[106] Or a corrupt police cover -up.

[107] If you believe the defense theory, however, this was all a cover -up to prevent one of their own from going down.

[108] Everyone had an opinion.

[109] And after the 10 -week trial, the jury could not come to a unanimous decision.

[110] To end in a mistrial, it's just a confirmation of just how complicated this case is.

[111] Law and crime presents the most in -depth analysis to date of the sensational case in Karen.

[112] You can listen to Karen exclusively with Wondery Plus.

[113] Join Wondery Plus in the Wondry app, Apple Podcasts, or Spotify.

[114] The next story, which is our number two story, on today's list is called Water Closet.

[115] On Saturday, September 30th, 2017, a staff member at a North Wales Country Club noticed water leaking out of the bottom of an outside wall of one of their many bungalows.

[116] These bungalows, which were generally just vacation rentals, were single -story white structures situated up on this beautiful green hillside.

[117] The staff member, after seeing this leak, they just turn around and go back to the front office and they tell their boss about it.

[118] And then shortly after, two maintenance workers were sent out to check on this leak.

[119] And so these two workers, they go over to this bungalow and they knock on the front door.

[120] But after a while, when no one comes to the door, they pull out their master key and they begin to turn to lock.

[121] And as they do that, they yell out just in case, hey, you know, we're here just to check on a leak.

[122] We have to come in.

[123] You know, it's a potential emergency.

[124] And so they open up the door, they swing it open, and no one comes to the door.

[125] It's still silent.

[126] And they're looking into this property.

[127] and what they see is on the left, from their perspective, is a kitchen, and on their right is a living room.

[128] It was basically one big room that had been designated for two distinct functions.

[129] And so they yelled out again into this bungalow, hey, you know, we're coming inside, we're just checking on this leak.

[130] And then they just walked straight across past the living room and past the kitchen to the back of this property where they reached a door.

[131] And this door led into a bedroom, and this door was shut.

[132] And so just as a precaution, they knocked on the bedroom door, but nobody.

[133] came to the door again so they opened up the bedroom door and they looked into this room and on the right side of the room tucked up against the right wall or two twin beds where the head of each bed was tucked up against the wall and then in the middle of the room at the base of these two beds was a pile of unopened luggage and so to the two maintenance workers this told them that someone clearly was staying in this bungalow either they had just arrived or they were getting ready to leave but apparently they were not there right now.

[134] And so the workers walked around the luggage and around the two beds.

[135] They walked on the left side of the room all the way to the back where there was another closed door and it went into the bathroom.

[136] And based on where the leak had been coming out of the structure, they believed it would be coming from this particular bathroom.

[137] And so again, they get up to this door and they knock on it because, you know, they want to make sure no one's in there.

[138] But there's more silence.

[139] And so they open up the bathroom and right away, they see water all over.

[140] the bathroom floor.

[141] But as they scan around the bathroom, they look at the sink, they look at the shower, the toilet, none of them are overflowing or running, so it was not any of the usual suspects that had caused this leak.

[142] However, there was one other area in the bathroom that could have caused a water leak, and that was the airing covered.

[143] An airing covered is typically where you keep a hot water heater.

[144] It's basically like a walk -in closet where the majority of the space is taken up by this heater.

[145] And also generally people put in shelves in front of the heater to store their linens and towels and that sort of thing.

[146] And in this bungalow, the airing cupboard had its own door and it was right in the bathroom and this door to the airing cupboard was right to the left of the door that led into the bathroom from the bedroom.

[147] And so these two workers, they reached over and they opened the door that led into this airing cupboard.

[148] And as soon as it swung in, they could tell right away where the leak was coming from, and they could tell right away they had a much, much bigger problem.

[149] Seven days earlier, 60 -year -old former policewoman, Mary Isherwood, arrived at the North Wales Country Club.

[150] She and her ex -husband had for a long time owned one of these bungalows.

[151] However, they almost never stayed in it.

[152] They basically used it as an income property, renting it out to vacation goers.

[153] But they had recently decided that they wanted to actually sell the property, And so before the sale became final, Mary had told her ex -husband that she just wanted to go and spend a week actually enjoying the property and actually take a vacation there.

[154] And so originally, she and some friends were going to go to this bungalow and spend a week there.

[155] But right before they were going to leave, Mary's friends all said they couldn't make it.

[156] And so Mary decided she would just go on her own.

[157] And so Mary arrives at this country club.

[158] It's late at night when she gets there.

[159] She gets to the bungalow.

[160] She puts her luggage down in her bedroom.

[161] and then instead of just kind of getting settled in and going to sleep, she decides she's going to go exercise.

[162] Mary was incredibly fit and healthy.

[163] She loved playing golf and running and exercising in general, and she knew the club had a pool.

[164] And so she reached into her luggage and she just pulled out a bathing suit.

[165] She switched into that and then she went down to the pool and did some lap swimming.

[166] After that, she came back to her room where she took a shower and then she climbed in bed without any clothes on.

[167] That was just how Mary liked to sleep.

[168] And then at some point, in the middle of the night, Mary woke up to go use the bathroom.

[169] And so she hopped out of her twin bed.

[170] She walked around to the door that led into the bathroom.

[171] She went inside.

[172] She did her business.

[173] And then afterwards, as she was attempting to go back into her bedroom, she accidentally grabbed the door handle of the airing cupboard, which was right to the left of the door leading back to her bedroom.

[174] She opened it up.

[175] It swung inward.

[176] She stepped into the airing cupboard, which was totally pitch black.

[177] And as she walked in, she might have bumped into the shelves or realized, you know, this was the wrong turn.

[178] But as soon as this happened, the door behind her had actually shut.

[179] And so she's inside of this tiny airing cupboard, realizing, okay, this is not where I need to go.

[180] I've made a silly mistake.

[181] She turned around to grab the door handle to open the airing cupboard back up again.

[182] But when she grabbed the knob, it disintegrated in her hands.

[183] It broke into multiple parts and fell to the ground.

[184] Now, this space she is in is pitch black.

[185] She has no way of knowing which parts go where for this doorknob.

[186] And so by touch, she reached down and she grabbed all these pieces, and she probably tried to put them together and put it back on this door to try to get it open, but she just couldn't do it.

[187] And so eventually, Mary would have realized this is a pretty serious situation.

[188] She was staying at this bungalow by herself, and she was not expected to check out for another week.

[189] So no one was going to be checking on her, and without this doorknob, she could not open this closet door.

[190] It was a hard wooden door, the locking mechanism was solid, there was just no way to open it without this doorknob.

[191] And so Mary began banging on the door and screaming out for help, but her bungalow was not actually connected to any other structures.

[192] It was a standalone.

[193] And so her voice did not carry very far, and the banging sound she was making, those also did not carry very far.

[194] And so no one heard her.

[195] And so after several hours, she's just standing in this closet, probably thinking to herself, how in the world did I get myself in this position?

[196] But after the initial shock of this totally bizarre situation she was in had worn off, she decided to act.

[197] And so she turned away from the door and she faced towards the back of this closet.

[198] She would have been face to face with a row of shelves, but she wouldn't have been able to see the shelves because it was totally dark.

[199] And then beyond the shelves, farther into the this closet was the actual hot water heater.

[200] There was no wall behind the shelves.

[201] Basically there was a space behind the shelves where this heater was.

[202] And so Mary grabbed one of these shelves and she managed to break it off the wall.

[203] And then she turned around and used this piece of wood and tried to smash the door, but very quickly realized that was just going to do nothing.

[204] However, she began striking the wall right next to the door and she realized she could break through the drywall.

[205] She was starting to kind of burrow a hole.

[206] And so maybe she thought to herself, if I can just build a hole big enough right next to the door, I can reach through the hole and maybe open this cupboard from the outside.

[207] And so she began using the shelf to smash this wall and she's burrowing as fast as she can.

[208] But the progress must have been very, very slow because she decides she needs a different tool.

[209] So she turns back around, so she's facing the shelves again, and she breaks down a few more shelves to clear a path to get to the water heater.

[210] And then once she could step past the shelves, once there was a path, she got right in front of this water heater, and then by touch began feeling around for any pipes extending off of the heater.

[211] Then when she found one, she got a good grip of it, and she began yanking and tugging on it until she managed to rip a piece of pipe off of the hot water heater.

[212] Now, as soon as she did that, she now had a pipe that was a far better tool for burrowing and creating this hole in the wall.

[213] However, as soon as that pipe broke off, cold water began leaking out of this hot water heater, the water that had not been heated yet, and it was being sprayed all over the inside of this cupboard.

[214] Now, this was a very small space, and so there was no way for Mary to get out from under this cold water.

[215] And so it was a shocking and probably very painful experience, but she now had her tool and figured, okay, you know, this is awful, but I'll just use this tool, I'll burrow this hole, I'll get this covered open, and I'll get out of here.

[216] And so with the water raining down on her, Mary used her new piece of pipe and began digging and burrowing at that spot right next to the door.

[217] But after a while, probably several hours, she struck a brick wall.

[218] There was no way she could actually push through this wall and reach around and open the cupboard door.

[219] There was nothing she could do.

[220] It was a dead end.

[221] And so totally devastated and probably very exhausted from all the energy she used to burrow this hole, She stopped.

[222] She's still getting rained down on by all this freezing cold water, and instead of just totally giving up, she just turned and faced the wall that was leading into her bedroom.

[223] She began digging again, using this tool all over again, to now dig a new hole on this other wall, most likely hoping that she could literally burrow a hole big enough that she could actually crawl through into her bedroom and escape.

[224] And so after several more hours of digging as fast and as hard as she could, while also periodically banging on the door and screaming out for help, she did eventually push through into her bedroom.

[225] However, in a cruel twist of fate, when she did finally poke through this wall, there was no bricks in the way, she hit what felt like another dead end.

[226] But in fact, what it was was a picture frame with a glass cover across it had been screwed onto the wall in her bedroom.

[227] And this painting was right over where she was digging this hole.

[228] And so in her totally exhausted and panicked and saddened and scared state, she hits the back of this painting.

[229] And again, it's pitch black and she's feeling through the hole most likely and she's touching this hard back of this painting.

[230] And she's realizing, oh my goodness, I've hit another dead end.

[231] There's nowhere for me to go.

[232] Even though in reality, she could have very easily just broken through that frame and then maybe made the hole a little bit bigger and then she could have squeezed through it and escaped.

[233] but she didn't know that and so she eventually just slouched to the ground and accepted her fate six days later when those two maintenance workers opened the airing cupboard door they found mary's body slumped up against the wall inside this closet she had died of hypothermia it would turn out other residents of the other bungalows nearby heard banging coming from this bungalow on saturday night the night that mary actually got stuck and then they also heard the banging the following morning on Sunday morning, but none of the other residents reported it because they believed it was just construction or some other maintenance work.

[234] However, there was one couple staying in one of the nearby bungalows that thought there was something off about this banging, and they told each other, if the banging persists past 5 p .m. on Sunday, so that's the day after Mary butt stuck.

[235] This couple told each other that if it continues past 5 p .m., we'll report it.

[236] But as it happened, Mary stopped banging on the walls and yelling for help right around 5 p .m. on Sunday.

[237] And so this couple, right as they're getting ready to go tell the front desk, the banging stopped, and so they stopped worrying about it.

[238] It's unclear how long Mary survived after she stopped banging around 5 p .m. on Sunday.

[239] It could have been minutes.

[240] It could have been hours.

[241] It could have been days.

[242] Mary's family would ultimately sue the country club for negligence.

[243] However, the outcomes of this case have not been made public.

[244] The next and final story, which is the top story of today's list, is called The Mace.

[245] In 2017, 71 -year -old Bernard Gore was a retiree living in Tasmania, which is an island state of Australia.

[246] In January of that year, he and his wife of 50 years, Angela, decided to go visit their daughter who lived in Sydney, Australia.

[247] Now, they made this trip with some regularity, and they had developed a sort of routine for every time they visited.

[248] They would land in Sydney and then the first day.

[249] they would spend it entirely with their daughter at her house, and then the next day, Angela would get up early and she would head out into town and do some shopping on her own.

[250] And then sometime in the afternoon, Bernard would head out and he would meet up with her for lunch at a very popular spot.

[251] It was called the Westfield Center Mall, and they had an amazing food court.

[252] So on January 5th of that year, Bernard and Angela, they land in Sydney, and like they always did, they went straight to their daughter's house and they spent the day with her.

[253] And then early the next morning, Angela got up and she headed out to do her shopping.

[254] And before she left, she confirmed with her husband that they would meet up for lunch at Westfield Center Mall.

[255] Now, as it happened that day, Angela actually chose to do her shopping at Westfield Center Mall.

[256] And so she was there around lunchtime when she was supposed to meet Bernard.

[257] And so when she looked at her watch and she realized it was time to meet him, she just simply stepped out of the shop she was in and headed over to the food court.

[258] And when she got there, she found their meeting spot.

[259] It was in front of one of their favorite restaurants, and she sat down, and then she scanned around looking for her husband, but inside of this busy food court, she couldn't see him.

[260] And so she looked at her watch again, and she realized she was a couple of minutes early, and so she grabbed a menu, and she began looking for what she was going to order while she waited for him to show up.

[261] But 15 minutes would go by, and Bernard would not show up, and so now he was late.

[262] And so Angela, at this point, she pulls her phone out, and she tries calling her husband, but he didn't answer.

[263] However, that was kind of common for Bernard, so not necessarily a red flag.

[264] Angela would continue to try calling her husband for the next several minutes, and each time he would not answer.

[265] And so eventually, Angela just gets frustrated and she's thinking to herself, you know, maybe he just got sidetracked and he's walking around the mall somewhere because Bernard was known for being a big window shopper.

[266] And as soon as Angela thought that, she was like, that's going to be it.

[267] And it was so frustrating for her that he had just totally blown off their lunch date.

[268] And so she stands up, she abandons her table, she's totally annoyed, and she heads out into the main shopping area to go find her husband.

[269] And so she's walking along, looking in each of the windows, expecting to see her husband, and at the same time, she's looking over her shoulder back towards the food court to see if maybe Bernard had shown up.

[270] But after 30 minutes of wandering around kind of right near the food court and not seeing him anywhere, Angela thinks to herself, you know what, I bet he thought we were supposed to meet at our daughter's house first.

[271] And so he probably hasn't even left the house yet.

[272] I bet he's just there waiting for me. And so Angela, when she realizes this, she stops looking for him in the mall.

[273] She turns around and she begins walking towards the mall exit.

[274] But before she reaches the exit door, a terrifying thought crosses her mind.

[275] What if Bernard got confused and has no idea where he is right now?

[276] A recent unfortunate development for Bernard was that he was showing early signs of dementia.

[277] It hadn't fully taken a hold of him yet, but he was clearly starting to forget things that he shouldn't.

[278] And so as soon as Angela thought of this, she went from being annoyed with her husband to being very worried about her husband.

[279] And so she sped through those doors outside and speedwalked all the way back to her daughter's house, which was not far from the mall.

[280] And the whole time she's walking, she's telling herself, she's going to walk inside and she's going to see Bernard.

[281] He's going to be in the house.

[282] But when she got to the house and went inside and saw her daughter, her daughter said, no, dad left about two hours ago to go meet you.

[283] I haven't seen or heard from him since.

[284] Now, of course, both of them were extremely worried for Bernard, but they decided to just stay calm that the best thing they could do right now would just be to stay put, stay at their daughter's house and wait for Bernard to eventually come back because the only other logical place he would go would be his daughter's house.

[285] And so they sat at the house, just kind of waiting, looking at the door, waiting for him to come in, but he didn't.

[286] And by 8 p .m., six hours after anybody had last seen Bernard, he still had not shown up.

[287] They couldn't get in touch with him.

[288] And so Angela called the police and reported him missing.

[289] Immediately, the police contacted the Westfield Center Mall security team and said, hey, you know, we're looking for the sky.

[290] And they went right down to the food court where Bernard and Angela had said they were going to meet, and the mall security team walked all around, and they walked into all the nearby shops and kind of scanned the immediate vicinity near their meeting spot, but they reported back to police that there was no sign of Bernard.

[291] And they would also tell police that after reviewing their camera footage, and this mall had hundreds of cameras covering every angle inside and out.

[292] I mean, everything is covered.

[293] They would tell police, you know, after reviewing the footage, we didn't see Bernard enter or exit the mall at any point today.

[294] He was not here.

[295] And so the police, they take this information and they go back to Angela that night and they say, hey, look, you know, we talked to the mall, and based on their security footage, they have no record of Bernard ever being in the mall.

[296] Do you have any idea where he could have gone?

[297] And Angela would say, no, the only places would have been the mall or maybe at our daughter's house.

[298] This is also when Angela explained to police that her husband had early signs of dementia, and so it was possible that he might have just gotten confused and he could be out on the street somewhere.

[299] But she assured the police that her husband, whenever this happened, whenever he got confused, he would just sit down and he would try to ask for help from anybody passing by, or he would just sit where he was and he would wait for his family to come find him.

[300] And so with this knowledge, the police went back out and they widened their search and they began looking in all the areas that were within walking distance of the Westfield Center Mall.

[301] At the same time, Angela and her daughter began trying to retrace Bernard's footsteps from the daughter's home in the direction of the Westfield Center Mall to see if maybe there was something obvious along the route that might have sidetracked him and kind of led him astray and that maybe he'd be somewhere else in those directions.

[302] But as they were walking around, there really was nothing that stood out to them and then eventually it just got too dark out and they had to just turn it in and go back to their house and hope that the next morning when they got up, the police would have found Bernard and that he was okay.

[303] But the next morning when they got up, the police had not found Bernard.

[304] there was no sign of him, there was no clues, nothing.

[305] And unfortunately, over the next several weeks, there was no sign of Bernard.

[306] Nobody knew what happened to him.

[307] On January 27th, so three weeks after Bernard had gone missing, a maintenance worker at the Westfield Center Mall was walking down the staff -only passageway.

[308] It was basically like this tunnel with no windows, all concrete, they kind of looped around the outside of the mall to help workers get to and from certain locations in the building.

[309] he's walking down this passageway when he looks down this one hallway that was very rarely used and he sees at the end of it barely lit up from the lights inside there looks to be some equipment kind of propped up against the wall and he's thinking to himself there's no reason someone would leave their equipment at the end of this very rarely used hallway didn't make any sense and so he decided to walk down and see whose equipment it was and so he's making his way down and he's getting closer and closer and he still can't quite figure out what it is the lighting's not great.

[310] But when he gets close enough to see what it is, he stops where he is, he turns around, and he runs back down the hallway, he finds the nearest exit, he goes outside, and he calls the police.

[311] Back on January 6th, on the day that Bernard and Angela were supposed to meet up for lunch, Bernard did leave his daughter's house and he walked straight to the mall, and he got there.

[312] He arrived at the Westfield Center Mall and was picked up on camera walking into their food court.

[313] But the staff at the mall who reviewed the footage for police, they only looked at a handful of cameras.

[314] There's hundreds of cameras.

[315] They only looked at a couple, and so they missed this crucial footage of Bernard.

[316] And what the footage would have shown them was Bernard making his way into the food court ahead of Angela.

[317] Angela's nowhere to be found.

[318] And Bernard, instead of sitting down at their meeting spot in front of this restaurant, Bernard suddenly looks like he's confused, and he turns, and he walks to this emergency exit door.

[319] He presses it in, he steps inside, and the door shuts behind him.

[320] Now, the Westfield Center Mall is not your average mall.

[321] It is massive.

[322] There are six floors to it, nearly 300 shops and restaurants, but what truly makes it massive is something that the public doesn't usually see.

[323] And that is behind staff -only doors and emergency exit doors like the one Bernard had just gone through are nearly eight miles of windowless concrete, narrow stairwells and tunnels that loop all around the outside of the building.

[324] And once Bernard had gone through that emergency exit door and that door had shut and locked behind him, the only way for him to return to the food court and meet his wife would be if he completely exited the mall and looped all the way back around.

[325] But in order to exit the mall from where he just entered, he would need to go to a very specific exterior fire exit door that was several floors below him and to get to it required following this very confusing signage on the walls.

[326] And so if you did it correctly, you would basically go down the hallway, find this particular stairwell, you'd go down a couple of levels, and then at some point, without really any signage, you would get to the appropriate floor, and you'd go down the hallway into this maze of more hallways, and then finally you'd reach this kind of nondescript exit door, and that would be your exit.

[327] Finding your way from where Bernard entered all the way to the exit of the mall would be challenging, for someone thinking clearly, and clearly Bernard was not.

[328] Bernard was confused and likely really didn't understand where he was or what he was doing or why he was there, and so he did not follow these directions.

[329] Instead, he just began wandering down the hallway, and he would have immediately passed the one stairwell that would have very circuitously brought him down, but out of the building.

[330] He passed that stairwell, and he just kept on walking, and eventually he walked into this staff -only area, which was even more confusing because there was no signs telling him where to go, and virtually every door he encountered would have been locked.

[331] And so as Bernard wandered through this concrete maze and got more and more mixed up and confused, he most likely began yelling out for help.

[332] But his sound could not have penetrated the walls, which means the only people who could have heard his cries would have been people inside the hallway with him.

[333] And unfortunately, this section of tunnels that Bernard had found himself in was rarely, if ever, used by any of the staff.

[334] And to make matters worse, the mall security guards were supposed to come in and do regular checks of all these eight miles of tunnels and stairwells specifically to see if people got lost in them, but over time, the security guards kind of stopped doing that.

[335] And there were no security cameras inside of this particular segment of tunnels that Bernard found himself in, and there was no cell phone reception, so had he tried calling anyone, it wouldn't have worked.

[336] And so truly, Bernard was on his own.

[337] And so after several hours or days of Bernard aimlessly wandering around this maze, hitting dead end after dead end and reaching locked door after locked door, Bernard at some point turned a corner and looked down at the end of a hallway and he saw there was a chair up against the side of the wall.

[338] And like he was programmed to do any time he got confused, He rushed over to it and he sat down and he began waiting for a passerby to help him or his family to find him.

[339] But unfortunately, help never came and he would eventually pass away on that chair.

[340] On January 27th, that maintenance worker, he discovered Bernard's body.

[341] Following his death, the Westfield Center Mall came out and said they made drastic changes to their security system and how they track people while they're on their property.

[342] Thank you for listening to the Mr. Ballin podcast.

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