Mr. Ballin (10:58)

Our next story is called fans.

Storyteller (11:12)

In 2009, 25 year old Larry Mario Moncada graduated from college and moved back in with his parents in Iowa. He was excited about his future and his parents were extremely proud of him. As soon as Larry moved back home, the first thing he did was go out and get a placeholder job at the no frills supermarket, which was a local supermarket right in town. He figured, you know what, it's temporary, but I don't want to just sit around all day. I want to do that until I find my career. But even though the job was supposed to be temporary, he found that he kind of loved the job because he loved the people he worked with. And his co workers would later say that they loved working with him too. But everything in Larry and his family's life would get turned completely upside down in November of 2009. On November 26, while a blizzard raged outside, Larry and his family celebrated Thanksgiving inside. After everyone was done eating, Larry told them that he actually had an overnight shift at the supermarket. And I don't think his family knew he had this shift. So they were like, oh man, do.

Narrator (12:16)

You really gotta go?

Storyteller (12:17)

The weather's so bad? And he's like, no, I gotta go, I don't mind. And they're like, all right, well, hey, sorry, you go to work and Larry walks outside and goes to work. The next morning when he came back from that shift, his mother would say something seemed off about him. When he came inside, he was very disoriented. He didn't really know where he was. And his mom's trying to tell him that everything's okay, you know, what's going on? Did something happen out there? And this is when it dawned on her that he could be having an anxiety attack. Just a few years earlier, Larry had had a whole bunch of panic attacks, and he was really struggling with anxiety. And it wasn't until his mom made him go to the doctor and put him on medication that he stabilized. But at this moment, she didn't know if her son was on any medication or not. So just to play it safe, she said, hey, let's go to the doctor and have you look, you don't seem well. So she brings him to the doctor, and the doctor quickly prescribes Larry an antidepressant. They go and fill the prescription. They go back home, and Larry takes one of these antidepressants. But the medication didn't seem to be doing anything, because over the course of the day, Larry got progressively more and more stressed out and more confused seeming. And eventually, he told his mom that he was hearing voices in his head that were telling him his heart is beating too quickly and he needs to eat sugar to slow down his heart. And his mom is looking at him thinking, what do I do about this? And so all she could think to do was just to stand next to him and kind of comfort him as he sits there eating sugar over the course of the day. Finally, that night, he would fall asleep. And his mother prayed that over the course of the night, that somehow this medication he had been prescribed would kick in and he would wake up and feel better, because so far, it really seemed to only be getting exponentially worse. But the next morning, when Larry got up, he was just as bad as the night before, except now he was having these vivid hallucinations. He said there were people in the house that were looking for him. And so he spent the day running around the house, hiding from people in the house that were not actually there. Then finally, that night, Larry just kind of loses it and begins screaming at his parents and berating them before suddenly running out the front door without shoes, without a jacket, no wallet, no cell phone, no anything. And he just runs directly into the blizzard and disappears. His family was so caught off guard by this happening that it took them a minute to get out the front door after him. But it was snowing so hard, they could barely see in front of their face. And they knew he was gone. So immediately they call the police. But the police have the same issue. They can't really go looking for him right now because the visibility was so, so bad. And so they told his family that we can't really start until tomorrow morning, so hopefully he turns up tonight. So the next day, when the weather clears up a little bit, the police go out looking for Larry, and they're asking people in town if they've seen him. And no one's seen Larry. And unfortunately, because it had snowed so much the night before, Any of Larry's tracks leading out of Larry's house were now covered over. And so after a couple of days of this, when there's just no sign of this guy, the police say to the family, look, you know, there's not much we can do. We're just gonna have to wait to see if he turns up. Ten years later, the no frills supermarket where Larry used to work was out of business. And it was about to get torn down. And some contractors were sent in to start ripping down the shelving and breaking down the inside of the building. And when they went into the back and began pulling away those huge freezers that keep your milk and your dairy products in, they start pulling those away from the wall, Larry's body comes tumbling out. It had been pinned in this tiny 18 inch wide space between the back of the freezer and the wall. It's believed on the night Larry ran out of his parents house barefoot into a blizzard, he ran right up the road and went to the no frills supermarket. Now, it was closed at the time, but he had access to the back door with the key code because he worked there. And so he went inside and he climbed on top of the freezers, the section of the freezers that jut back into the space that no one in the store can see. And he climbed on top because on top of there, all the workers would kind of congregate up there. It was like a little clubhouse where the workers would avoid the managers for little pockets of the day. And so Larry probably climbed up there because it represented a really happy place for him. And when he got up there, he must have somehow tripped and fallen into the tiny 18 inch space between the freezer and the wall. Investigators believe there's no way he actually got hurt when he fell into this little space. He got wedged in there, but he wasn't harmed. The problem was these huge fans that run constantly to keep the freezer cold were unbelievably loud and would have completely drowned out his cries for help. And so no one knows for sure how long this took, but eventually he would die because no one heard him. Looking back at old facebook posts around the time that Larry would have been dead behind the freezer, There was a whole bunch of people that were commenting on facebook that they didn't want to shop at the no frills supermarket anymore. Apparently there was a really bad smell coming out of the back freezer.

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Narrator (18:30)

Plus hey listeners.

Mr. Ballin (18:31)

Big news for true crime lovers. You can now enjoy this podcast ad free on Amazon Music with your prime membership. Listen to all episodes of my podcasts, Mr. Ballin's Medical Mysteries and Mr. Ballin's Strange, Dark and Mysterious Stories, along with a huge collection of top true crime podcasts. Completely ad free. No more wading through cliffhangers or dealing with ads. Because let's be honest, ads shouldn't be the most nerve wracking part of true crime. To start your ad free listening journey, download the Amazon Music app for free or head to Amazon.com ballen that's Amazon.com B A L L E N Dive into uninterrupted true crime stories today. The next and final story of today's episode is called the Blue Do.

Narrator (19:26)

On the morning of September 19, 2013, a man named Mark Casey sat with his girlfriend Lynn Spaulding in the triage area of the emergency room at San Francisco General Hospital. A nurse took Lynn's temperature and her blood pressure while Mark tried to explain what had been going on with Lynn over the past few weeks. Lynn, who was now 57, had been dealing with this really intense stomach pain and so she had gone to the doctor and she had been diagnosed with a urinary tract infection and she was given antibiotics for it. But despite taking those antibiotics, it didn't get rid of the stomach pain. And in fact, her stomach pain was only getting worse. She was losing weight and she just seemed really frail. But despite her condition obviously getting worse every single day over the past few weeks, Lynn had basically refused to go back to the hospital, despite Mark saying, we really gotta go. You're getting worse, we gotta have you looked at. But she just kept saying no. And then finally When Mark noticed Lynn was now becoming somewhat despondent, like, he would try to talk to her, and her eyes would glaze over, and she would look off into the distance like she didn't even hear him. Mark had just looked at Lynn and said, you know what? I'm taking you to the hospital. And so he put her in the car, he brought her to the hospital. And now that he was here, he had to explain what was going on because Lynn was still despondent, just kind of staring off into space and very likely having no idea what was going on. And so after Mark gave all the information to the nurse, the nurse said that, okay, you know, Lynn needs to be admitted to the hospital. And so after a short wait, an orderly came over and pushed Lynn's wheelchair up to the fifth floor where she'd be staying. And Mark went with them. And then once in the room, Mark helped Lynn get settled in her bed. And again, Lynn is just kind of staring off into space, not really paying attention. And then a whole team of nurses and doctors came in and hooked lyn up to IVs and different machines to make sure they could monitor her. And then at some point, one of the doctors pulled Mark aside and said, you know, we think Lynn is dealing with some kind of infection. And so what we need to do is run some tests to figure out what this infection is, and then hopefully we can treat it. And so Mark said, okay, that sounds great. And then all day, Mark sat right next to Lynn and held her hand as the medical team came in and out of the room running all these tests. The following day, the medical team still didn't know what was wrong with Lynn. The tests they had run so far were inconclusive or were negative. Now, the biggest issue with Lynn was not trying to figure out what infection she had or how to cure her. Instead, it was, how do we keep Lynn in her hospital room? Because on this second day that Lynn was at the hospital, despite being very despondent, still any chance she got, she was getting out of her bed and trying to escape her room. And so the medical team, they kept having to go find her and bring her back to her room. And they tried to explain to her, like, Lynn, you, that's why you're here. You need to stay in your room. But Lynn clearly was just not getting it. She was just not there. And she would just say to the team, I want to go home. I just want to go home. I want to go home. And they would say, well, Lynn, you got to get better first. And Then you can go home. Now, Mark, like the medical staff, was also concerned about Lynn's behavior. It was not safe for her to get up and flee her hospital room. But Mark kind of secretly thought, you know, maybe this is a good sign, because the day before, Lynn couldn't even walk on her own. And now today she's walking around on her own trying to escape the hospital, which is bad, but, you know, she's ambulatory. That's going to be a good sign. And also, Mark was thinking that because Lynn was fleeing her room over and over again, she's going to get even better medical care because the staff has to be super focused on her. And so Mark was feeling kind of optimistic that Lynn was on the road to recovery the next morning. So now Lynn has been at the hospital for two days at this point. A nurse went into Lynn's room to check on her at about 10:15am and she walked up to Lynn, who was in her bed. And Lynn immediately told the nurse that she wanted to go home. And the nurse said, sorry, Lynn, we still don't know what's wrong with you. You gotta stay here for now. But again, it was pretty clear Lynn did not understand what the nurse was saying. And so Lynn was not agitated. She was laying in bed and did not appear to, you know, want to flee the room anytime soon. And so the nurse took Lynn's vitals. They were all basically normal. And then the nurse wrote down on Lynn's chart that her condition as of this moment was fair. And then the nurse left the room. And once this nurse was gone, Lynn laid in bed for a second. And then when nobody else came in the room, she sat up, she hopped off the bed, and she took off her hospital gown. She pulled out all the cords and wires that were on her. Then she put on her jeans, her boots, her jacket. She grabbed her purse off the table, and she walked out the door. And the second she walked out the door, she would have been in this long hallway, except her room was at the end of the hallway. So when she stepped out into that hallway, if she turned right, she would have seen a long, long stretch of hallway with other hospital rooms and lots of staff and doctors and nurses kind of walking around. But to her left, it would have been a dead end with a single blue door with a green exit sign over the top of it. And so Lynn, she steps into the hallway, she looks down the long side to the right. Then she looks to the left, she sees the blue door. And she goes to the blue door. She Opens it up, and she disappears inside. When the nurse came back to Lynn's room and saw she wasn't there, she reported Lynn missing. Now, remember, the hospital was well aware of the fact that Lynn had been trying to escape for the past 48 hours. And so nobody was really shocked by this. In fact, the hospital, their first move was to contact Mark, who had actually gone home the night before to get some real sleep and to take a shower. And so they contacted Mark and they said, hey, Lynn's not here. Is she with you? And Mark was like, no, I'm home. She's not here. I have not seen her. I haven't talked to her. I have no idea where she is. And so the hospital at this point began this huge search in their building, just checking the entire property for Lynn, but there was no trace of her. And so the police were contacted, and they launched a search, both of the hospital grounds and also of the surrounding areas. And they, too, could not find a trace of Lynn. It was like Lynn just vanished into thin air. That is, until October 8, 2013. So 17 days after Lynn had strolled through that blue exit door, on that day, October 8, a hospital maintenance worker was walking down the long hallway in the hospital, not on the fifth floor where Lynn was staying, but one floor below. So on the fourth floor, he's walking down this long hallway in the direction of the dead end side, so the same side that Lynn was on where her room was, but again, one floor above. And the maintenance worker, he walks all the way to the end of this hallway on the fourth floor, and he arrives in front of the blue door with the green exit sign above it. Again, this is below where Lynn was, but it looks the same. And the maintenance worker, he opened up the door, and when he looked out of the fourth floor door, he just froze because what he was looking at just seemed impossible. And then he had this urge to scream. But he knew there were all these patients and kids and doctors and stuff in the hallway behind him, and he didn't want to scare anyone. And so, very quietly, he reached down and grabbed his radio and he called for help.

Mr. Ballin (26:53)

In order to explain what happened next, you have to have a basic understanding of the layout of this building, specifically.

Narrator (26:59)

The outside of it.

Mr. Ballin (27:01)

If you were outside looking at this building, you would see an enclosed staircase that runs from the bottom to the top of the building with outdoor landings on each floor.

Narrator (27:10)

The one on top is the fifth floor landing, and the one below it with a single person on it, is the fourth floor landing. And to get Onto these outdoor landings, you have to walk through those blue exit doors at the end of those hallways. These blue doors are emergency exits. And so when you go out these blue doors, once they shut, they lock automatically. But now you're out on this outdoor landing. And immediately to your right, although you can't see it in this picture, there is actually another door that leads to this enclosed stairwell that will bring you all the way to the ground floor, where there's another door that's unlocked that will bring you out to safety. And so, again, you walk out one of those blue doors, you're on this landing, you can turn, open up another door, you're in the stairwell, and you can evacuate. So in theory, if you were a person that really wanted to escape this hospital like Lynn did, going out one of these blue door emergency exits was a great idea. It would bring you to the ground. This is a way to escape the hospital. But remember, Lynn was totally confused mentally. She was just not there because of whatever illness was affecting her. And so when she walked out that door, she arrived on the fifth floor landing, and the door shut behind her, and it locked. And the theory is, as soon as Lynn got out there, maybe she had some second thoughts and wanted to go back into the hospital. And so she turned and she grabbed that door and tried to open it back up again, but because it locks automatically, it wouldn't open. And so Lynn did have the wherewithal to turn and see this other door that led to this enclosed stairwell, the emergency stairwell that did go to the ground floor. She could absolutely go all the way down and escape. She could do that. She went down one floor to the fourth floor landing. And when she got there, she left the stairwell and she went to that door that would lead back into the hospital on the fourth floor. And she tried it, but of course, it was locked. And then again, instead of her just going back into the stairwell and going down and escaping to safety, she, for some reason, just stayed on the fourth floor landing. Again, you got to remember that she's not all there mentally. And so she was confused, and she just stayed there on the landing, basically waiting to be rescued. But despite these huge searches of the hospital property by hospital staff and by the police, for some reason, this area, this landing on the fourth floor, was never checked. And so nobody found her, that is, until October 4th. So at this point, Lynn has been outside for 13 days on this landing. And a researcher from the hospital, for whatever reason, exited out one of these emergency doors, and they began making their way downstairs. And when they passed by the fourth floor landing, they. They spotted Lynn on the ground on the fourth floor landing. But instead of going over to her and seeing if she was okay, this researcher just called security and said, hey, there's a patient outside on the fourth floor landing. Like, come check it out. And then instead of waiting for security, the researcher just left, leaving Lynn alone. And security at the hospital who said they were going to go check, they didn't. And so four more days would go by with still nobody officially finding Lynn. And then finally, on October 8th, the hospital maintenance worker opened up the blue door on the fourth floor and he saw the fourth floor landing, that exterior landing, and he saw Lynn and he knew she was dead. Officials were never able to determine when Lynn died, so it's not clear how long she was alive out on that landing. But it is possible she could have been alive when that researcher found her. But obviously help didn't come in time. Ultimately, Lynn's family would sue the city and the hospital and they would be awarded $3 million.

Mr. Ballin (31:09)

A quick note about our stories. They are all based on true events, but we sometimes use pseudonyms to protect the people involved. And some details are fictionalized for dramatic purposes. Thank you for listening to the Mr. Ballin podcast. If you enjoyed today's stories and you're looking for more bone chilling content, be sure to check out all of our studio's podcasts, this podcast, the Mr. Ballin podcast, and also Mr. Ballin's Medical Mysteries. Bedtime stories, wartime stories, Run fool and redacted. Just search for Ballin Studios wherever you get your podcasts to find all of these shows. To watch hundreds more stories just like the ones you heard today, head over to our YouTube channel which is just called Mr. Ballin. So that's gonna do it. I really appreciate your support. Until next time, see ya. 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. Download the Amazon Music app today.

Narrator (32:30)

And before you go, please tell us.

Mr. Ballin (32:32)

About yourself by completing a short survey@wondry.com survey if you're listening to this podcast, then chances are good you are a fan of the strange, dark and mysterious. And if that's the case, then I've got some good news. We just launched a brand new strange, dark and mysterious podcast called Mr. Ballin's Medical Mysteries. 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. In this free weekly show, we explore bizarre, unheard of diseases, strange medical mishaps, unexplainable deaths, and everything in between. Each story is totally true and totally terrifying. 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.