Number One Fan (PODCAST EXCLUSIVE EPISODE)

[0] Hey, Prime members, you can binge eight new episodes of the Mr. Ballin podcast one month early and all episodes ad -free on Amazon Music.

[1] Download the Amazon Music app today.

[2] Late at night in the fall of 1990, a woman stopped her car in front of her mailbox to check her mail.

[3] After grabbing the stack of letters, immediately she noticed one envelope in particular looked odd.

[4] Unlike the other letters in her hand, this one had no postage, no writing on it, and it was unsealed.

[5] Curious, she opened it up, and within seconds, this woman would be literally screaming at the top of her lungs and driving full speed down the road away from her house as fast as she possibly could.

[6] But before we get into that story, if you're a fan of the Strange, Dark, and Mysterious Delibered in Story format, then you come to the right podcast because that's all we do, and we upload twice a week, once on Monday and once on Thursday.

[7] So, if that's of interest to you, the next time the Amazon Music Follow button, cleans their house, be sure to sneak in afterwards and untuck all of their bed sheets.

[8] Okay, let's get into today's story.

[9] I'm Dan Tversky.

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

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

[12] What's the answer?

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

[14] Hysterical.

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

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

[17] 34 -year -old Diane Newton -King woke up before sunrise.

[18] She showered, she curled her bangs, she did her makeup, and then she dressed for work in the most professional women's fashion of the day.

[19] She put on panty hose, a pencil skirt, and a blazer with the absolutely massive shoulder pads.

[20] It was the spring of 1990, and in Battle Creek, Michigan, Diane was one of the biggest names in town.

[21] Diane anchored the morning news show for Battle Creek's local TV station, WUHQ, which meant most days of the week, Diane had to leave her house by no later than 4 .30 a .m. As she shuffled around her two -story farmhouse in her panty hose, trying to figure out where her briefcase was, Diane's husband, Brad, hollered up at her from the kitchen to tell her that breakfast would be ready in five minutes.

[22] Diane was thrilled.

[23] She had recently discovered that she was pregnant with their second child, and so she was constantly feeling hungry.

[24] Diane finally found her briefcase, then she slipped on her shoes and made her way downstairs into the kitchen.

[25] Her firstborn child, two -year -old Marler, was sitting in his high chair chomping away on some apple slices.

[26] Diane kissed him on the forehead before sliding into her own seat at the kitchen table.

[27] 43 -year -old Brad brought Diane a plate of scrambled eggs and toast.

[28] It was her favorite, and he made it for her every morning.

[29] Brad worked part -time as a criminal justice professor at the University of Western Michigan, but he liked to tell people that his real job was taking care of Diane and Marler.

[30] And for the most part, that was actually pretty true.

[31] Most days, while Diane was at work, Brad managed things on the home front.

[32] It was an untraditional dynamic for the time, and some of their friends jokingly called him Mr. Diane King, but Brad didn't mind.

[33] He was proud of Diane, and he was happy to support her this way.

[34] Diane scarfed down her breakfast, gave Brad and Marler a kiss goodbye, and then she grabbed her coat and raced out the door just as the clock hit 4 .30 a .m. Outside the farmhouse, Diane paused for just a moment.

[35] She'd always wanted to live on a farm, and when she looked out across their property, with the cement silo on the left and the old red and white Victorian barn on the right, and the hundreds of acres of farmland and woods surrounding the house, she felt like she was really living her dream, even though the family didn't do any actual farming.

[36] But someday, Diane thought, maybe after the baby came, she'd leave the TV station to focus on her family, and maybe even, grow a few vegetables.

[37] But for now, all that would have to wait.

[38] It would be months and months before the baby arrived, and Diane had a lot of things she wanted to accomplish before then.

[39] So, Diane, standing on her front stoop, took one more deep breath of clean country air, then she walked down the gravel driveway and hopped into her brand new Jeep Wagonier.

[40] Diane then slowly drove down her long driveway, and when she reached the black mailbox at the end of the driveway, she turned right onto Diverson Drive, the street she'd called home for more than a year now.

[41] And from there, she snaked her way through the neighborhood out to the highway.

[42] About 20 minutes later, Diane was sitting behind her desk, diving into yet another busy day of reading the news.

[43] Most days, when Diane arrived at the office, the first thing she would do is review her scripts for the day.

[44] Then she would anchor the morning news show, and then Diane and her staff would spend the rest of the day reporting and writing stories for future news segments.

[45] Diane worked a lot, and she worked really hard.

[46] She was actually a perfectionist, and she expected perfection from the people around her.

[47] And sometimes that perfectionism rubbed her colleagues the wrong way.

[48] But the people who actually watched her on TV, the audience, loved her.

[49] Diane was constantly being invited to meet local celebrities and attend different charity events around town.

[50] But despite how well things seem to be going both professionally and personally for Diane, something very unusual would start to happen to her, and it would change her life forever.

[51] It all started with a phone call.

[52] Diane was at the office, sitting behind her desk, working on a story when her phone rang.

[53] Now, remember, this was 1990, so Diane did not have a cell phone or even call her ID.

[54] All she had was a landline.

[55] So Diane's phone began to ring, and without hesitation, Diane picked it up because the people who typically called her on this line, or her colleagues, or sources, or people who knew.

[56] her personally.

[57] But this day, the caller was not any of those things.

[58] Instead, the caller was a fan.

[59] Diane didn't ask the caller what their name was, but based on their voice, Diane guessed that the caller was a male, probably in his 20s or 30s.

[60] He said he had been watching Diane on TV, and he was so inspired by her reporting, he was thinking about getting into broadcasting himself, and he wanted to know if Diane had any advice about how to break into the business.

[61] Diane was caught off guard that this guy got her number, but she was polite and professional and ultimately recommended that he get enrolled in the communications department at the local community college.

[62] Diane even recommended specific classes she thought he should take.

[63] The fan thanked Diane for her time, and she wished him luck in his professional efforts, and then she hung up the phone expecting never to hear from this guy again.

[64] But Diane would hear from him again.

[65] The fan started calling Diane's direct line on her desk on a very regular basis, sometimes as often as three times in a single week.

[66] And again and again, because Diane didn't have caller ID, she just kept answering his calls unintentionally.

[67] Despite being really annoyed by all these calls, Diane still remained very professional with the fan and continued to give him advice about how to do her job.

[68] However, the more he called, the more Diane sensed there was just something off about the guy.

[69] For one thing, she started to suspect that he wasn't actually interested in pursuing journalism.

[70] The questions he asked her didn't feel like the kind of questions you would expect from someone who was looking for guidance or information or even mentorship.

[71] They felt like an excuse to contact her, like he was making up questions just so that he could listen to her answer them.

[72] And there was something else that seemed kind of creepy.

[73] The more Diane heard from this guy, the more she noticed, he had this very strange way of talking.

[74] It was slow and kind of slurred, almost like he was under the influence of some drug.

[75] Now, nothing this guy said to her was ever overtly rude or threatening, but after several calls, Diane couldn't help feeling like this guy could be a danger to her.

[76] And she had good reason to feel that way.

[77] For the last two years, every supermarket tabloid in the country had been running these stories about the rise in celebrity stocking cases.

[78] And now, the problem had gotten so serious that even the legitimate newspapers were covering these stories too.

[79] There were stories about celebrities getting threatening letters and stories about their homes getting broken into, and some of these stories ended violently.

[80] Just one year earlier, an obsessed fan in Los Angeles, California, had shot and killed a young television actress on the doorstep of her own apartment.

[81] And it wasn't just the media that saw these stocking cases as being a big problem.

[82] Slowly, the government was also starting to realize that something had to be done.

[83] The problem was, nobody really knew what to do about it.

[84] In the 1990s, there were no anti -stalking laws anywhere in the country, and neither psychologists nor law enforcement could say for sure if it was better to confront a stalker head -on or simply ignore them.

[85] Diane wasn't sure if her situation with her fan would be considered a celebrity stocking case, but she was definitely feeling a bit scared of this.

[86] guy and just wished he would leave her alone.

[87] So Diane consulted with the people closest to her.

[88] And everybody offered her different advice.

[89] One of her friends told her to be nice to the guy because who knows what would happen if she made him mad.

[90] One of her colleagues suggested that Diane just tell the guy to back off, but Diane could see that there was potential for problems in both of those situations.

[91] So Diane turned to Brad, her husband, not only because he was smart and an objective thinker, but also because, in addition to being a part -time professor of criminal justice, Brad also used to be a police officer.

[92] Brad, who was very concerned about his wife's stocking situation, told her that the safest thing she could do was simply cut off the guy's access to her.

[93] And the easiest way to do that was to set up some kind of arrangement with the receptionist at her work who could then screen Diane's calls.

[94] If the guy couldn't get through to Diane, eventually, Brad figured, he would just give up and stop calling.

[95] The plan made sense to Brad and to Diane, so she decided to give it a shot.

[96] Diane talked to the receptionist at the TV station, and they worked out a screening system.

[97] The way it worked was every call that came in on Diane's direct line would actually first ring at the front desk with the receptionist, and the receptionist would answer the phone, and if it was Brad or a colleague or a source calling for Diane, they would get pushed through.

[98] But when the receptionist got a call from the fan with the slow, slurred voice, she would tell him that Diane was not available.

[99] And the screening system worked great for several weeks.

[100] The fan would call and would be immediately turned away before Diane ever had to speak to him.

[101] But eventually, the screening system failed.

[102] One afternoon, around the end of the summer in 1990, Diane was in the newsroom sitting at her desk filing some papers when her direct landline on her desk started to ring.

[103] Diane picked it up before the end of the very first ring.

[104] She said, hello, this is Diane Newton King.

[105] And when she heard the voice on the other end of the line, she was so startled, she almost dropped the receiver.

[106] It was the fan.

[107] He said, Hello, Diane.

[108] Immediately, shivers ran up Diane's spine.

[109] Before Diane could hang up, the guy told Diane that he liked the way she looked and that he wanted to meet her in person.

[110] Specifically, he said, I want to go to lunch with you.

[111] Diane wanted to scream, but she was so flustered and so scared that she sort of just started stammering until finally she was able to compose herself enough to tell the guy that she appreciated the offer, but she absolutely could not meet him in person.

[112] Then she slammed the phone down and started sobbing at her desk.

[113] As she cried, everybody in the newsroom looked over and was very concerned.

[114] That night when Diane came home, she told Brad about what happened that day, and Brad was libit.

[115] How could this guy get through to her phone?

[116] Why didn't the receptionist screen the call?

[117] Brad called the station and demanded answers, but no one at the station, including the receptionist, had any idea how this guy got through to Diane.

[118] The station told Brad they would look into the situation right away and make sure that from now on, absolutely no calls whatsoever would reach Diane's line unless they had first been screened.

[119] Now, it's unclear exactly what the station actually did to ensure that, but from that day forward, the fan's calls were always intercepted by someone at the station, and so Diane was protected from speaking with him.

[120] And after a couple of weeks, the fan's calls to the station started to slow down.

[121] And after a couple of months, the calls stopped entirely.

[122] And soon, Diane just kind of forgot about the fan and moved on to more important things in her life, like the upcoming arrival of her second child, a baby girl.

[123] And with this child, Diane was becoming more and more conflicted about what she wanted in life.

[124] Suddenly, her career just felt a whole lot less important than being home with her kids.

[125] and so she started talking more openly with her family and friends about potentially leaving the station after her daughter was born so she could be a stay -at -home mom and enjoy a simple farmhouse life with her family.

[126] But all of that excitement and optimism about the future would come to an abrupt end one night in the fall of 1990.

[127] On the night before Halloween that year, so about five months after the first fan phone call, Brad told Diane that he was going to be working late, that night at the university and so wouldn't be home until later in the evening, which meant Diane would have to be on primary parent duty for Marler that afternoon when she got home from work.

[128] Now, under normal circumstances, this would not be a big deal.

[129] Diane had done plenty of parenting on her own, and she loved spending time with Marler.

[130] What made this night so different was that Diane was now eight months pregnant.

[131] Her belly was massive, her hormones were raging, and her joints hurts so much she could barely walk.

[132] On top of all of that, Diane was in the middle of a big project at work that was totally stressing her out.

[133] Nevertheless, when she finished her shift at the station that day, Diane drove to Marler's daycare, she picked him up, and then they headed home.

[134] By the time Diane turned onto her street, Divison Drive, Marler was already passed out in the back of the car in his car seat, and Diane's body was really starting to ache.

[135] So, when Diane turned into her driveway, instead of stopping the car and getting out to get the mail in the mailbox by the road, she simply pulled the car right up alongside the mailbox and reached out and collected the mail through her window.

[136] And after she had the stack of letters sitting on her lap, she began flipping through them, and right away, one letter caught her attention.

[137] It was in a typical white envelope, just like most of the other letters in her lap, but this one had no postage and nothing written on it, and it wasn't sealed.

[138] Diane opened the envelope, retrieved the letter inside, and then opened it up to read, and what she saw instantly terrified her.

[139] There was just one sentence on the page, but it wasn't written by hand.

[140] Each letter of this sentence had been cut out of a magazine and then scotch taped to the page, like one of those ransom letters you see in the movies.

[141] The sentence on this strange letter read, You should have gone to lunch with me. Diane knew immediately that this letter was from the fan.

[142] Clearly, he'd found out where she lived, and he'd visited her house that day to drop it off.

[143] In fact, she realized with sudden alarm that this guy might actually still be in the area waiting for her to come home.

[144] In that moment, Diane forgot about everything else she had going on.

[145] She forgot about how much her body hurt and how tired she felt.

[146] She even forgot about the sleeping baby sitting right behind her.

[147] Diane just started screaming like a banshee.

[148] Then she threw the car into reverse, backed away from the mailbox, slammed on the gas, and drove away from her house as fast as she possibly could.

[149] If you're listening to this podcast, then chances are good, you are a fan of the Strange Dark and Mysterious.

[150] And if that's the case, then I've got some good news.

[151] We just launched a brand new Strange Dark and Mysterious podcast called Mr. Ballin's Medical Mysteries.

[152] And as the name suggests, it's a show about medical mysteries, a genre that many fans have been asking us to dive into for years, and we finally decided to take the plunge, and the show is awesome.

[153] In this free, weekly show, we explore bizarre, unheard of diseases, strange medical mishaps, unexplainable deaths, and everything in between.

[154] Each story is totally true and totally terrifying.

[155] Go follow Mr. Ballin's Medical Mysteries wherever you get your podcasts, and if you're a prime member, you can listen early and ad -free on Amazon Music.

[156] I'm Dan Tiberski.

[157] In 2011, something strange began to happen at the height of school in Leroy, New York.

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

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

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

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

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

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

[164] Everybody thought I was holding something back.

[165] Well, you were holding something back intentionally.

[166] Yeah, yeah.

[167] Well, yeah.

[168] No, it's hysteria.

[169] It's all in your head.

[170] It's not physical.

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

[172] Is this the largest mass hysteria since the witches of Salem?

[173] Or is it something else entirely?

[174] Something's wrong here.

[175] Something's not right.

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

[177] A new limited series from Wondery and Pineapple Street Studios, Hysterical.

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

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

[180] About 15 minutes later, Diane showed up at her friend.

[181] Cindy Acosta's house.

[182] Diane and Cindy worked together at the TV station, and Cindy was one of the first people Diane had reached out to for advice when this fan started calling her.

[183] When Cindy opened the door, Diane, who was carrying Marler, practically collapsed into Cindy's arms.

[184] In between sobs, Diane told Cindy about this letter and how scared she was, and right away, Cindy said, we have to call the police.

[185] The police showed up a few minutes later and escorted Diane back to the farmhouse to search the property for intruders, but they didn't find anyone.

[186] Still, Diane was too afraid to stay at the house alone, so the police brought her back to Cindy's house where she waited with Marler until Brad was finally out of his class and could come and pick them up.

[187] After word got out about this threatening letter, the Battle Creek community really came together to support Diane.

[188] Also, the TV station beefed up their security around the office, Diane's sister bought them a dog, and Brad installed motion -censored lighting outside of their house.

[189] But none of those things actually made Diane feel any safer.

[190] She just couldn't shake the idea that her fan was watching her everywhere she went.

[191] Her fear got so paralyzing that Diane literally just stopped going outside the house at all except to go to work.

[192] And when she did have to go outside, she used a system that she and Brad created to ensure she was never outside alone.

[193] Diane would call Brad to tell him exactly when she would be home from work.

[194] That way, when she arrived, Brad would be outside waiting for her.

[195] If it was too cold for Brad to just stand outside, he would leave a particular light on in the house that was visible from the outside.

[196] This light was a signal to Diane that he was in the house and that everything was safe so she could hustle out of her car and come inside, no problem.

[197] On days that Brad was not home, when Diane returned home, she would call a neighbor to come meet her outside of her farmhouse.

[198] And if for some reason the neighbor arrived late, Diane would literally just sit in her driveway inside her car waiting for the neighbor to show up.

[199] But all of this fear and all of this hiding had started to make Diane's world feel very small, and she really didn't like that.

[200] So after Diane gave birth to her second child, a blonde baby girl named Kateri in November of 1990, Diane started trying to reconnect with her extended family.

[201] She started calling her sisters and mother much more often, and together over the phone, the women would bond over the challenges and joys of raising their kids.

[202] And it was during this time on these phone calls that Diane started to talk more openly about her desire to leave the TV station altogether.

[203] She'd been thinking about it ever since she found out she was pregnant with Kateri, and now that Kateri was here, the whole thing felt much more real.

[204] Diane's extended family was very supportive and encouraging, and they pushed her to start leaving the house more often besides just going to work they got her to start coming out to detroit where her extended family all lived about two hours away from battle creek by car so that she and her kids and the rest of the family could all participate more actively in each other's lives and so starting in late 1990s slash early 1991 every few weeks after delivering the thursday morning newsbreak diane and her two kids would leave battle creek and head out to detroit They'd spend a few days with Diane's mother and sisters, and then on that following Saturday, they'd all head home.

[205] And on the night of Saturday, February 9th, 1991, about nine months after the first call from that fan, this was exactly what Diane and the kids were doing, returning from her mothers.

[206] That night, Diane left Detroit a little after 4 p .m. So by the time she was pulling on to Divison Drive around 6 p .m., the sun was just beginning to set.

[207] Diane turned on her headlights, and when the King's black mailbox came into view, Diane tightened her grip around the steering wheel.

[208] It had been more than three months since she received the letter, but just the sight of that mailbox still filled her with dread.

[209] Diane turned on to the gravel driveway leading to the house, and as she made her way up the long, narrow path, she spotted the signal light on inside the farmhouse up ahead, meaning Brad was home and everything was safe, and she could get out of her car and just go inside.

[210] But, as Diane was about to find out, Brad was not inside the house, and it was definitely not safe for Diane to get out of the car.

[211] About 30 minutes after Diane pulled into the driveway and saw the signal light, a call came into the dispatch office at the local police department.

[212] It was Brad, and he was hysterical.

[213] He was so shaken up by what he had just seen that he could barely form a sentence.

[214] But he was able to eventually communicate with the dispatcher that he'd just found his wife lying in their driveway not moving, and there was blood in her mouth.

[215] When the police arrived, less than 10 minutes later, they found Brad sobbing and pacing around the driveway, Diane was just lying in the middle of the driveway next to her car, and their two kids, two -year -old Marler, and three -month -old Kateri, were still sitting in the backseat of the car, crying uncontrollably.

[216] The reason Brad had left them in the car was because, as cruel as it seems, Brad knew from his work as a cop and as a criminal justice professor that even just opening the door to the car could potentially contaminate a crime scene.

[217] The responding officer walked right up to Diane and knelt down next to her.

[218] Even without much blood, it was obvious that Diane had suffered some sort of horrible injury and was definitely deceased.

[219] The officer spent a few minutes looking her over and eventually found the likely cause of death.

[220] There were two bullet holes in her body, one in her chest and the other near her waistline.

[221] An autopsy would later reveal that the shot to Diane's chest had been the fatal one.

[222] It had caused so much internal damage that she had died within three minutes of impact.

[223] Initially, though, the police had no idea how long ago those shots had been fired.

[224] But when the officer touched Diane's body, he found that it was still warm, which meant her killer might still be in the area.

[225] Instinctively, the officer grabbed his radio and called for backup.

[226] Over the next two hours, a small army of investigators would descend on Divison Drive.

[227] They would search the property for fingerprints and evidence, and they would interview neighbors and potential witnesses, and after a little while, they would bring one of the best trackers in the state onto the property, a German shepherd named Travis.

[228] When Travis arrived on the scene, the dog quickly locked onto a scent trail.

[229] The dog took off running from the farmhouse straight back into the forest behind the home.

[230] The dog ran through muddy, brushy fields, then he crossed a creek, and then he sort of just stopped, turned around, and headed back to the farmhouse, where a crowd of investigators and neighbors were beginning to form outside.

[231] At the time, Travis's handler assumed that the dog had just kind of lost the scent at some point in the woods, and that was why he had stopped, turned around, and just gone back to the farmhouse.

[232] But many months after that night, once the police had figured out what happened to Diane, they would look back at Travis's initial movements that night and realize the dog had not simply given up and returned to the farmhouse.

[233] The dog had just continued to follow the scent trail, which happened to stop somewhere in the middle of the woods, turn around, and then come back to the farmhouse.

[234] In fact, that night that Diane was discovered, the killer was standing right outside of Diane and Brad's home among the police and onlookers.

[235] After being arrested, Diane's killer did not confess to the murder, and so we don't have every detail of what happened in the final moments of Diane's life.

[236] However, based on several key interviews and pieces of evidence, this is what investigators believe happened to Diane.

[237] About an hour before Diane returned home from Detroit on the night she was killed, Diane's killer entered her farmhouse and turned on a particular light inside.

[238] The killer knew about the light signal system that Brad and Diane had created to make Diane feel safe, and now the killer was going to use that system to lure Diane into a trap.

[239] After switching the signal light on, the killer walked back outside and headed for the old red and white Victorian barn, which was situated in front of Diane and Brad's property just to the left of the gravel driveway.

[240] There was no light in the old barn, but it didn't matter.

[241] The killer had been on this property many times in the past, and had even practiced this particular route in the darkness when no one else was home.

[242] Inside the barn, the killer walked past the family's tractor and the many tools.

[243] They left lying on the ground.

[244] The killer walked past the family's protection dog, but the dog just kind of looked up and didn't even bark, and then the killer reached the back of the barn and climbed a narrow staircase which led to a large dusty loft area.

[245] The killer paused briefly at the top of the stairs.

[246] The floor of the loft was covered in straw, and at the far end of the loft, away from the killer, was a sliding door that was open just wide enough for what the killer needed to do.

[247] The killer walked over to this slightly open door and peered outside.

[248] From there, they could see the front of the farmhouse and the driveway and the spot where Diane parked her car, which was about 70 feet away.

[249] The killer checked their watch.

[250] It was getting late, which meant Diane would be arriving soon.

[251] So the killer got into position.

[252] The killer lay belly down in the straw facing the gap in the door, and then they reached out their arm to the right and stuffed their hand into some nearby straw.

[253] A moment later, they pulled out a weapon that had been hidden inside the straw, a 22 -caliber rifle.

[254] About 20 minutes later, the killer spotted a pair of headlights coming down Divison Drive.

[255] The killer raised their rifle and looked through the scope.

[256] And sure enough, Diane was sitting behind the wheel of this car.

[257] As she turned on to her long gravel driveway, the killer flicked the rifle off safe.

[258] The killer held Diane in their sights as she drove up the driveway to the house.

[259] And when she got close enough that the killer could hear the gravel under her tires, the killer slipped their finger over the trigger.

[260] Diane reached her normal parking spot located off to one side of the driveway close to the house and then she turned the car off.

[261] As she gathered her things inside of the car, the killer pushed the rifle's barrel through the small opening in the sliding door and focused their sights on Diane's car door.

[262] A moment later, that door opened up and Diane stepped out onto the driveway.

[263] The killer paused for a second, Taking in the sight of the woman, they had terrorized for months and months, calling her over and over and over again at work, and then leaving her that threatening letter in her mailbox.

[264] Then, the obsessed fan slash Diane's killer squeezed the trigger.

[265] The bullet hit Diane squarely in the chest, throwing her body backwards onto the ground and tearing through her insides.

[266] After watching her fall to the ground, the killer quickly got up and with the rifle in his hand, hustled back to the stand.

[267] climbed down to the first floor of the barn, and then marched outside over to Diane's body.

[268] Everything was going exactly to plan until the killer spotted something he did not expect to see.

[269] Diane's two kids, Marler and Kateri, were still sitting in the back seat of her car.

[270] The killer began to panic.

[271] Why were the kids here?

[272] The killer was certain Diane's plan had been to leave her kids in Detroit for the weekend with her grandmother.

[273] But as the police would later discover, the arrangements for the kids were changed at the last minute because one of the kids had gotten sick while they were at Diane's mom's house, so Diane just brought the kids home with her.

[274] But for Diane's killer, the kids presented a huge problem because after killing Diane, the killer had planned to drive away, get rid of the gun, and then try to establish some kind of alibi before Diane was discovered.

[275] But now there were these two kids in this car without heat in the middle of winter in freezing cold Michigan, and so if the killer left, the kids would freeze to death, and the killer was not trying to kill anyone except for Diane.

[276] So the killer changed plants.

[277] First, he turned away from the kids, crouched down, and then fired an additional shot into Diane's body to make sure she was dead.

[278] This was the shot that tore into her waistline.

[279] Then the killer turned and ran into the forest behind the farmhouse and charged through muddy, brushy fields across a creek to a spot where they were able to hide the rifle, and then the killer turned back around and ran back to the driveway of the King's house.

[280] When the killer got there, they ran up to the car window and looked inside and waved to the two kids and said, everything's going to be fine, okay?

[281] Daddy's here.

[282] I'm going to make a phone call, and then I'll be right back.

[283] Then Brad King, aka Diane's obsessed fan, aka Diane's killer, ran inside of his house that he shared with Diane and called the police.

[284] When they answered, Brad hysterically told him that he had just been out for a walk in the woods and when he came back, he had found his poor wife lying in the driveway not moving.

[285] It would turn out, Brad King had been obsessed with Diane ever since the first day he met her.

[286] She was beautiful and funny and more ambitious than anyone Brad had ever met.

[287] Diane dreamed of becoming a news anchor and Brad wanted to help make Diane's dream.

[288] come true.

[289] So while Diane was off working her way up to the news desk, Brad spent most of his time working to make sure she had everything she needed to be successful.

[290] He cooked Diane's meals and ironed her clothes, he handled the shopping, and when the kids came along, Brad took care of them too.

[291] And as far as Brad was concerned, everything was working out great.

[292] Until one day, when Diane came to him and told him that she wanted to quit her job at the TV station so that she could stay home and raised the kids.

[293] In fact, she told him she was planning to leave the station the summer after Kateri was born.

[294] Diane hadn't formalized this announcement yet, but pretty much everyone in Diane's inner circle knew about her plans.

[295] But the problem was, if Diane was going to stay home, then Brad would have to be the family's primary breadwinner, and being a part -time professor just wasn't going to cut it.

[296] He would have to go out and find a full -time job, which was something Brad simply didn't want to do.

[297] He had grown to love not working very much, and he was not prepared to change that.

[298] However, when Brad voiced his concern to Diane about not wanting to work full -time, she was empathetic, but said it was really important for her and the kids that she'd be home with them, so he would just have to kind of accept it and get a full -time job.

[299] However, Brad did not accept this.

[300] Instead, he decided he would just kill Diane.

[301] And because of his background as a police officer and as a criminal justice professor, he was confident he could get away with it.

[302] Brad knew that whenever a woman got murdered, the male partner is almost always identified as a primary suspect.

[303] So Brad knew he would need to create another suspect to divert attention away from himself.

[304] This is when Brad came up with this obsessed fan concept.

[305] About 10 months before Diane's murder, Brad began calling Diane's TV station pretending to be this obsessed fan.

[306] He would intentionally slur words and slow down his speech to make sure Diane could not recognize him.

[307] Then, about five months after that first call, when by this point everybody in town knew about Diane's stalker, Brad decided to up the ante.

[308] On the night before Halloween, Brad left that threatening letter in the mailbox.

[309] He used cut out letters so Diane could not identify his handwriting and And he did it because he knew that type of letter would be more intimidating because of its use in scary movies.

[310] And the letter worked.

[311] It terrified Diane.

[312] And most importantly, it brought more attention to this fake fan, to the point where the police were actively searching for this person.

[313] This obsessed fan had become so real that by the time Brad was ready to kill his wife, he felt certain that nobody would even look twice at him.

[314] But thanks to his kids still being in the car after he killed Diane, Brad had not been able to flee the scene like he had hoped.

[315] And so he had to come up with a story about how he had been walking in the woods that night and had returned home and came upon his wife in the driveway and that's when he called police.

[316] But this story didn't make sense.

[317] Police discovered that Brad would have known exactly what time Diane was coming home that night because Diane's mom had called Brad and told him when Diane.

[318] had left her house.

[319] And based on the system that he and Diane had, Brad would have known that Diane would have expected him to be at their house waiting for her when she arrived.

[320] So why would Brad choose to be out on a walk in the woods at the exact moment Diane was arriving home?

[321] Also, neighbors had just seen Brad carrying the 22 caliber rifle that was used to kill Diane.

[322] The gun was located in the creek behind their house, roughly where Travis the tracking dog had gone on the first night of the investigation.

[323] And in the barn, police also found a single shell casing from the shot that killed Diane.

[324] On December 13, 1992, Brad was convicted of murdering his wife, Diane.

[325] He was sentenced to life in prison without the possibility of parole.

[326] He never showed any remorse for her murder.

[327] Diane was buried in Detroit near where her family lived.

[328] On her headstone, it says, beloved daughter, sister, mother.

[329] Diane was also, of course, a wife, but her family decided not to include that word.

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

[331] If you got something out of this episode and you haven't done this already, the next time the Amazon Music Follow button cleans their house, make sure you sneak in afterward and untuck all of their bed sheets.

[332] This podcast airs every Monday and Thursday morning, but in the meantime, you can always watch one of the hundreds of stories we have posted on our main YouTube channel, which is just called Mr. Ballen.

[333] Consider donating to our charity.

[334] It's called the Mr. Ballin Foundation, and it provides support to victims of violent crime, as well as their families.

[335] Monthly donors to the Mr. Ballin Foundation Honor Them Society will receive free gifts and exclusive invites to special live events.

[336] Go to Mr .ballin .com foundation and click Get Involved to join the Honor Them Society today.

[337] If you want to get in touch with me, please follow me on any major social media platform and then send me a direct message.

[338] My username is just at Mr. Ballin, and I really do read the majority of my DMs.

[339] Lastly, we have some really cool merchandise, so head on over to shop Mr. Ballin .com to have a look.

[340] So that's going to do it.

[341] I really appreciate your support.

[342] Until next time, see ya.

[343] Hey, Prime members.

[344] You can binge eight new episodes of the Mr. Ballin podcast one month early and all episodes ad -free on Amazon Music.

[345] Download the Amazon Music app today.

[346] And before you go, please tell us about yourself by completing a short survey at Wondry .com slash survey.

[347] She struck him with her motor vehicle.

[348] She had been under the influence and she left him there.

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

[350] 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.

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

[352] Was it a crime of passion?

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

[354] This was clearly an intentional act.

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

[356] Or a corrupt police cover -up.

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

[358] Everyone had an opinion.

[359] And after the 10 -week trial, the jury could not.

[360] not come to a unanimous decision.

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

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

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

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