Transcript
Mr. Ballin (0:00)
Today's episode is a fan favorite. The audio and the story has been remastered for today's episode. On the afternoon of September 10, 2009, an art student walked inside of her off campus apartment in Dallas, Texas and immediately began making herself a late lunch. Her roommate didn't come out of the bedroom to greet her, but to be honest, this wasn't totally unusual. The two of them, despite being roommates, were not actually very close at all. After eating their food, the student studied for a while and then watched some TV and then went to bed, all the while still never hearing a sound coming out of her roommate's bedroom. But again, this was normal. That is, until the next day when the student received a call from their school telling her to go back to her apartment to check on her roommate because apparently the roommate's mother was very concerned about them. The student was annoyed, but went back to the apartment and when they walked into the roommate's bedroom, they would see something that would haunt them for years and it would instantly explain why their roommate had not come out of the room. But before we get into that story, 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. So if that's of interest to you, please offer to change the oil in the follow button's car, but be sure you replace their oil with vegetable oil. Okay, let's get into today's story.
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Mr. Ballin (1:56)
Hey everybody, it's me, Mr. Ballin. Thank you so much for listening to the Mr. Ballin podcast each week. If you want to hear new episodes ad free and a whole week early, subscribe to SiriusXM Podcast plus on Apple Podcasts or visit siriusxm.com podcastplus to listen with Spotify or another app of your choice. On the Evening of Wednesday, September 9, 2009, 20 year old Shelly Nance walked into her bedroom inside of her off campus apartment in Dallas, Texas and then shut the door behind her. Shelley liked the fact that once inside of her room, she would not need to speak to anybody. She preferred it that way. She settled down on her bed with her back propped against a stack of pillows and then she took out her notebook and pencil and Began to draw. Shelley spent most of her time drawing on a computer at the Art Institute of Dallas, where she was a second year multimedia and animation student. But when she was by herself and just wanted to relax, she preferred just using pencil and paper. Tonight, Shelley began sketching a young woman who looked a lot like herself. Slender, with long flowing hair and just a hint of a smile on her face. Shelley originally began drawing to escape the boredom of growing up in the tiny town of Italy, Texas, where she'd always been something of a loner. She even joked about that in her senior yearbook. Choosing a biting quote to go with her picture, she wrote, you laugh at me because I'm different. I laugh at you because you're all the same. But Shelley got so good at drawing that it actually changed her life. She eventually won an art competition that gave her a partial scholarship to this art institute. And suddenly, Shelley had a plan for life after high school. To be an artist. As soon as she got to the art school and started meeting her eccentric and creative classmates, Shelley felt like she'd finally found her place. For the first time ever, she had friends who actually understood and accepted her quirks. They would go to anime conventions together and even dress up as their favorite anime characters. It was a world that Shelley frankly never could have imagined back in her hometown, which was basically no more than a truck stop along a highway. And going to this art institute provided another big first for Shelley. She had a boyfriend, Nathan Schuck, and they often could be found playing video games together on the couch at his apartment. But as Shelly sat there sketching tiny doves into her picture, she realized that having this active social life now could actually be kind of a burden. Until recently, she had never had to consider anybody else's feelings but her own. But now, having a boyfriend meant she had to plan for two people. And after dating Nathan for two months now, she was actually starting to have her doubts about the relationship. She thought Nathan was a good person, but deep down she knew she didn't feel about him the way he felt about her now. She didn't want to hurt his feelings, but at the same time, she couldn't help but feel really strongly that she kind of just wanted to break up with him. She just had no idea how to actually tell him. Shelley put her pencil down and closed her sketchpad, hoping for a new distraction. And she found one after she hopped on her computer and went on a popular website looking at other artists work. And Shelly's thoughts very quickly kind of drifted away from Nathan and the seemingly imminent unpleasant conversation that she was going to have with him. After a while, Shelly looked up at the clock and she was shocked to see that it was already six in the morning. She'd been up all night. She really needed to get some rest before her classes that afternoon. So she left her room to make sure the front door was locked. Then she went back to her bedroom, closed the door, crawled back into bed and drifted off to sleep. A Little more than 24 hours later, at 7am on Friday, September 11, Shelley's mother, Cynthia woke up in a motel in Colorado. She and her husband were a little over halfway through their 22 hour drive to Yellowstone national park, which was like their dream trip. While they raised their three girls, they barely ever left their small town in Texas. But now that Shelly, their youngest, was settled in college, they'd finally decided to take the plunge and go do this big trip. When they'd hit the road Thursday morning, Cynthia sent a text message to all three of the girls and Shelly was the only one who didn't text back. But Cynthia was not that worried about it because Shelly was a night owl and she often slept during the day when everybody else was up and about. But Shelly would usually call at some point after she woke up for class. Except this time she didn't. And so Cynthia had called one of Shelly's sisters to say she was worried. But the sister thought their mother was just overreacting. And so she told her mom, hey, remember, she's an adult. She's a 20 year old woman who's allowed to have a social life. In fact, her sister was happy that maybe Shelly the homebody was out somewhere having fun for once. At 9am that same morning, Cynthia and her husband went for a scenic ride through the Colorado Rockies. But Cynthia barely noticed any of it because she still hadn't heard from Shelly. And she just had this gut feeling that something was actually wrong. And so, as they drove through this beautiful area, Cynthia grabbed her phone and called Shelly's school. A school administrator answered the call, but she sounded annoyed. At Cynthia's request, she said they just didn't have the resources to send somebody out to check on every student who didn't call their parents right on time. Cynthia knew she was coming off like an overprotective mother, but she also knew it was completely unlike Shelly to ignore her messages for this long. So Cynthia practically begged the administrator to please check later that day and just see if her daughter made it to class. The administrator sighed and said she'd wait for a break between classes and See if someone could track Shelly down. Around noon that day, Shelly's roommate, Ashley Olvera, grumpily made her way up the stairs towards their apartment. Someone from the school administration had stopped Ashley when she was leaving class and asked her to just stop what she was doing and go back to her apartment and check on her roommate, Shelly, make sure she's okay. Apparently, Shelly's parents were looking for her, and she wasn't returning any calls or texts. But Ashley thought this request was totally ridiculous. Shelly's parents did not need to know where Shelly was. 24 7, she was an adult. And so now Ashley felt like her time was being wasted. But nonetheless, she made it upstairs to the apartment. She unlocked the door and walked inside. And once she was inside the apartment, she noticed the door to Shelly's bedroom was closed as usual. And so she walked over and knocked, and she didn't get an answer. Then she called out Shelly's name, but she was met with more silence. So Ashley opened the door, and there in bed was Shelly, lying face down under the blanket. And so Ashley quickly went from feeling annoyed at this to now just feeling angry. She'd come all the way back to the apartment to check on her roommate just to find out Shelly had been sleeping all day. So Ashley walked over and kind of gruffly told Shelly, hey, wake up. Your parents are looking for you. But Shele didn't move. Ashley sighed and walked back over to the door and flipped on the light in the room. But when the lights were now on, Shelly didn't react. And so, now, feeling sort of on edge, Ashley walked back over to the bed and gently shook Shelly. But Shelly didn't move. And also, Shelley's arm felt cold to the touch. And that's when Ashley just grabbed the blanket and pulled it back. And she saw Shele's sheets were soaked in blood. Absolutely horrified, Ashley screamed Shelly's name over and over again, but Shelly wasn't moving or making any sound. And so Ashley turned and ran out of the room to call 911. Not long after that 911 call, the school called Cynthia back and began to tell her what was going on. They told her her daughter had been found in her room. She was covered in blood. And then before the caller from the school could explain further, Cynthia's cell phone just went dead. The reception in the Colorado Mountains where they were, was terrible. And so she had just dropped service. And so Cynthia, who's heard this terrible thing about her daughter, began frantically trying to call back, but she just couldn't get Any service. And so Cynthia shouted at her husband to turn the car around and keep driving until she got better phone reception. Her husband immediately did a U turn and hit the gas, making the tires squeal. And then, just as suddenly as Cynthia had lost service, she suddenly had service again. And so she screamed at her husband to stop the car so she could call them back. And so Cynthia, whose hand was now shaking, finally got through to the Art Institute and breathlessly asked them if her daughter was okay. And the woman on the other end said she was so, so sorry, but Shelly was dead. Police were investigating right now, but it appeared her daughter had been murdered. Cynthia and her husband just sat there in silence in the middle of nowhere, absorbing the worst news a parent can possibly receive. Cynthia felt this desperate urge to do something. Visit Shelley's apartment, talk to detectives, or just be there to comfort their other daughters. But they had no choice but to just start driving again, because it was going to take them nearly a day to drive all the way back to Texas. At about the same time that Cynthia and her husband got this terrible news, Detective Paul Elsey placed a fan belt and motor oil on the checkout counter at a Dallas auto shop. He was heading out to his farm in East Texas that weekend and was looking forward to doing some maintenance on his tractor. And just as he finished paying, his phone rang. It was his partner. His partner said they had a murder to solve, and it was a tough one. A young art student had been stabbed to death in her bed with no witnesses and so far, no evidence. Suddenly, Elzie knew he was not going to be spending time at his farm. So he left the auto shop, got into his car, and drove across town to Shelly's apartment complex. Elsie walked up the stairs to Shelly's apartment and stepped inside, and already it was flooded with evidence technicians who were dusting for fingerprints and snapping photos. Elsie's partner greeted him and quickly got him up to speed. The victim's roommate discovered the body around noon, but she said she didn't know anything else because she'd been away at class all morning. Unfortunately, the technicians had not found anything useful so far. No fingerprints, shoe prints, or hairs near the body that could give police some clues to who the killer was. Detective Elzey thanked his partner for the update and said he wanted to take his own look around the small apartment to see if anything stood out. Elzey was a seasoned homicide detective with 36 years on the force. He saw each case as a challenge, a puzzle he would need to solve. And sometimes the pieces did just kind of fall into place inside the apartment. He noticed the TV and some other fairly expensive electronic equipment were still there. Also, the windows weren't broken and there didn't appear to be any signs of forced entry. So this didn't seem like a robbery. More likely, Elsie thought, the victim let the killer into their apartment. Or the killer had a key. Elzie walked into the bathroom next to Shele's bedroom and realized why there was so little blood trapped around the apartment. He could see a spot of blood on the edge of the sink as well as a few spots on the edge of the tub. The killer had clearly tried to clean themselves up after committing the murder. And so whoever killed Shele had thought this crime through and potentially had really thought through how to get away with it. Elsie then headed to the bedroom to look at the victim. Shele was lying on her stomach on the bed in a shirt and underwear. Her back and neck were covered in wounds and her long reddish brown hair was now matted with dried blood. Elzie had seen countless bodies over his long career and he usually kept a very cool professional distance from the victims lives. But he was not prepared for what lay before him. Now. The murder was gruesome, but that wasn't what unsettled him. It was Shele herself. She was the same age as one of Elzie's daughters and he suddenly felt like he was looking at his own child lying there covered in blood. Elsie composed himself and leaned over the bed and looked more closely at the condition of Shele's body. He couldn't even count the number of stab wounds in her neck and back, but there didn't seem to be wounds anywhere else, including her hands and arms. The lack of defensive wounds made Elsie think that Shele had not put up much of a fight against her attacker. Plus, all the blood seemed to be concentrated on the bed, while the rest of the bedroom looked basically undisturbed, as though Shele never had a chance to get up. So maybe she was asleep when this happened. Shele's clothes were still on and relatively undisturbed, making Elsie think she had not been sexually assaulted as well. But looking at her battered body, Elzie saw a killer that must have been filled with rage. And this rage filled killer clearly had ready access to this apartment. And so the detective felt certain that Shele must have been killed by someone she knew who must have had a very personal and serious problem with her. Later on that day, sometime in the afternoon, the medical examiner provided a more detailed picture of what actually killed Shele. Both her carotid artery and her jugular vein, which are in her neck, were severed. And her esophagus and trachea had been punctured as well as one of her lungs. And so Shele had suffered multiple wounds that on their own would have killed her. But she had several of these fatal wounds. Yet beyond the savage attack on Shele's upper body, there were basically no other injuries. Not only were there no additional stab wounds, the medical examiner also concluded that Shele had not been sexually assaulted. And the killer left behind almost no obvious physical clues, except perhaps one. As the medical examiner was swabbing under Shele's fingernails in hopes that maybe she might have scratched or killer or. He spotted a blue speck under Shele's left wrist. It looked like nothing more than a tiny piece of plastic, but it was the only physical evidence the killer seemed to have left behind. So he had sent it off to the lab to be tested. Detective Elsey was interviewing Shele's roommate Ashley at the police station when he heard a knock at the door and one of the officers handed him the autopsy results. Elzey stepped into the hallway outside of the interview room and quickly scanned over the report for highlights, and one finding jumped off the page at him. From the condition of Shele's body, the medical examiner estimated that she had been dead for up to 24 hours by the time Ashley found her. Elzie was startled. He had assumed that Shele must have been killed no more than a few hours before Ashley found her. But now the medical examiner was saying that the murder most likely happened a full day earlier, sometime on Thursday, not Friday. And this cast the murder into a whole new light. And so Elzie went back into the interview room with lots of new questions for Ashley. It dawned on Elzie that if Ashley's story was to be believed, that meant Ashley had been living with the corpse of a roommate for the better part of a full day. Ashley had said that she and Shelly were really never friends. They were just roommates, and it wasn't uncommon for them to go days without seeing each other. In fact, Ashley had already told Elsie that the last time she had seen Shelly was Wednesday morning before she'd left for class, so 48 hours before Shele had been found. But despite that, Elsie really just wanted to know where Ashley was all day on Thursday, when she apparently didn't see her roommate at all. Ashley told him she'd left for class at 9am that day and then come back to the apartment at 3pm and for the rest of the day, Ashley said she stayed at the apartment, eating dinner, doing homework, and then going to bed. Elsie's eyebrows shot up. And he held up the autopsy results. And then he told Ashley that the report showed her roommate had been killed earlier than police realized. Initially, he told her that if what she was saying was true, she'd gone about her business in their small apartment for 18 hours with a dead body in the next room. How was that possible? But Ashley only seemed confused, like she couldn't quite process the information she had just been given. She said she really didn't know what he was talking about, but the detective thought that just wasn't good enough. Elzie pointed out that the roommates shared a single bathroom and that investigators found blood on the sink and in the bathtub. How could Ashley possibly have missed the blood? Didn't it make her worry about her roommate? At that point, Ashley began to cry. She did see the blood, but it was only a few spots. So she didn't think Shelly was hurt in any serious way. But still, Elzie was not persuaded. He thought there was more going on here than Ashley was saying. So he asked her, was there any problem between them? Ashley insisted that they'd only had minor disagreements. You know, just girl stuff, she said. The detective wondered what that meant exactly. And so he said, were they fighting over the same love interest or something? But Ashley swore that never happened. Shelly had a boyfriend, Nathan, and Ashley was not interested in him at all. In fact, Ashley said she had very little contact with Nathan, and she kind of liked it that way. Friends of hers told her that Nathan actually had a really bad temper. He apparently loved playing video games so much that if something went bad for him in the game, he would just totally lose his cool and explode. Detective Elsie thought Ashley's answers still seemed off. In fact, they were so far off that Elsie started to see Ashley as a suspect. After all, who would have had easier access to the apartment than Shele's own roommate? But Elsie decided to try a new tactic. And he asked Ashley, was there anybody else besides her who had a key to this apartment? And Ashley told him that besides her and Shelly, no one else did. At this point, Detective Elsey couldn't help but feel convinced that Ashley must have had something to do with Shele's death. If Ashley had the only other key, well, then she was either directly responsible. Or perhaps she was the one who let the killer into the apartment. He didn't know which it was, but based on how nervous Ashley looked at this moment, he had a pretty good idea how to find out. So he just came out and accused Ashley outright of the murder. He told her to confess and that things would actually be much easier for her if she did. But Ashley just stared back at the detective in total disbelief and began to cry again. For the next couple of hours, Detective Elsie tried to wear Ashley down, hoping for a confession that would wrap up the case. But Ashley did not change her story and she never confessed to anything. Well, the holidays have come and gone once again, but if you've forgotten to get that special someone in your life a gift, well, Mint Mobile is extending their holiday offer of half off unlimited wireless. So here's the idea. You get it now, you call it an early present for next year. What do you have to lose? Give it a try@mintmobile.com Switch limited time