Sponsor Voice (10:48)

Others in who Took Misty Copsey? I'm investigating the disappearance of a 14.

Mr. Ballin (10:54)

Year old girl who vanished from the.

Sponsor Voice (10:56)

Washington State Fair in 1990.

Mr. Ballin (11:00)

How? Why? She was so sweet and so young. What happened to her?

Sponsor Voice (11:07)

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Mr. Ballin (12:09)

Our next story is called rabbit hole. On January 1, 2015, a family in South Yorkshire, England gathered at a restaurant for their annual New Year's Day lunch. But one member of this family who said they would be attending didn't show up. It was 50 year old Stephen Winfrey, who was an unemployed divorced father of two who in recent years had become quite depressed. When they reached out to him on his phone and he didn't pick up, the family pretty quickly started to worry that something could have happened to him that, you know, perhaps he did something to harm himself given his mental state. But his sister Nadine, who was at this lunch, she reassured the rest of the family that she had spoken to Steven the night before and he was in great spirits and had told her that his plan was to go rabbit hunting the next day on New Year's Day before heading over to the restaurant for lunch. And because Nadine knew that her brother recently had really taken a liking to rabbit hunting, it was one of the very few things that actually made him happy. She told the family, look, I bet you anything he just lost track of time and he will get here late or maybe we won't see him at all, but at least he's out doing something that makes him happy. And so the family was reassured by this. And so they sat down at their table, they ordered their food, and the whole meal. Everyone's kind of looking over at the front door, expecting Steven to come strolling in at any minute. But when they finished up eating, he still had not arrived. And so as the family was getting ready to leave the restaurant and head back home, they all decided that, you know what? I'm sure Stephen is fine. He's doing something he loves. I'm sure he did just get carried away. And so we'll just wait for him to contact us. And so the family, they all leave the restaurant, and they spend the rest of the day at their respective households. And then the following morning, they all get in touch with each other, and they discover that still no one has seen or heard from Steven. And so at this point, the family just felt like there was something off about this. And so they contacted the police, and they reported him missing. As the police were getting ready to head out and begin looking for Stephen that day, they received a call. Stephen had been found. Although the exact details of what happened to Steven may never be fully understood, this is the best theory that the police have come up with. On New Year's Day, January 1st, the day Steven was supposed to meet his family for lunch, he had gotten up early and headed out to a nearby forested park to do some rabbit hunting, just like he told his sister he would be. He had gone to the park with his dog and some ferrets. The way Stephen caught rabbits is he would release these ferrets into various rabbit holes, and then he would stand back with his rifle and he would wait for the fer the rabbits out of their holes, out into the open. And then he would raise his rifle and shoot at the rabbits. And then his dog would run over and grab the rabbit and bring it back to him. And so all morning long, he was doing this with relative success. And then something happened to where Stephen decided he needed to actually look inside of one of these rabbit holes. Perhaps one of his ferrets got stuck, or one of the rabbits got stuck, but either way, he wanted to look into the opening of one of these rabbit holes. And so he walked over to it, and apparently he couldn't quite see whatever it was he wanted to see. And so he got down on his hands and knees and stuck his head into this rabbit hole opening. Now, these openings to these rabbit holes are pretty narrow. And so once he forced his head inside, it got stuck. He could not pull it out again. And so all around the outside of this hole where his head was stuck, there were these deep divots that his hands had obviously dug once he realized he was stuck because he was trying to dig the entrance a little bit wider to get his head out. But as he was working really, really hard and laboring to kind of dig this hole out, he was burning up the very limited amount of oxygen that was inside of this hole. And so very quickly, as he was trying to save himself, he would have started to struggle breathing because there just wasn't enough air in this hole. And so when it became clear he was starting to suffocate, he abandoned the approach of trying to dig himself out and began trying to contort his body outside of the hole at really extreme angles to try to pop his head out, even if it meant breaking his neck in the process. But no matter how hard he tried, he just could not get his head out. The following day, January 2nd, at 4pm this is after Stephen has been reported missing. A person walking through that forested park, they found Stephen. They saw his body poking out of that hole at a really extreme angle. And so they called the police. The police showed up to the park and they confirmed that Stephen was dead. He had suffocated. His death was not ruled a suicide. It was determined to be an accident. As for Steven's dog and his ferrets, they were found near his body and they were unhurt. The next and final story of today's episode is called My Brother's Keeper. Just after midnight on March 9, 1947, a man slipped out the front door of his four story brownstone mansion on New York City's iconic Fifth Avenue. The man was named Langley Collier. He was 61 years old and he was a trained engineer. He was a very famous concert pianist and he was very wealthy, but he didn't dress like he was wealthy. This night, Langley was going for an eight mile walk to the south to Brooklyn, New York, where he was going to pick up a very specific thing that he needed for his older brother, Homer, who was currently laid up in bed on the second floor of the mansion. It was a freezing cold night, and so as Langley walked along the road, he flipped up his collar of his very shabby wool coat that was held together by safety pins. Nowadays, Langley felt like the only time he was safe going outside was, was at night because at nighttime he could kind of hide from the prying eyes of his neighbors or police officers or really anyone. It was the one time he could basically be invisible. And so Langley scurried his way down the dimly lit sidewalk, looking left and right constantly to make sure he wasn't being followed. And then finally, at 2am he arrived at his destination in Brooklyn, a very particular set of dumpsters. And right away, Langley got to work. He went in that dumpster, and he got the things he was looking for and then put them in his bag, slung it over his shoulder, and then began the long, slow walk back home. Several weeks later, on March 21, the phone rang inside the police station near where the Collier brothers lived. And so a sergeant picked up the phone, and on the other line was a guy who called himself Charles Smith. And in a very gruff voice, he told the sergeant that there was a dead body in the Collier brothers mansion. Now, while of course, this was a huge tip, the sergeant was skeptical because the police were aware of the fact that there were lots of rumors floating around about the Collier brothers. They were very eccentric. I mean, Langley's going out at night with a bag over his shoulder and going to look at dumpsters in Brooklyn. I mean, they were also kind of reclusive. And the windows outside of their mansion were boarded up with wood and metal. And so people were kind of on edge about the Collier brothers. And periodically, when they heard rumors about them, they would call the police and report it. And so the police were used to getting these rumor calls going and checking it out, only to discover that they were not true. And so this sergeant said to Charles Smith, well, how do you know there's a dead body inside the mansion? But the caller simply didn't answer and hung up. And so, because the sergeant did not necessarily believe this was a credible tip, instead of sending an entire investigative team to the mansion to check out this dead body, he asked a single police officer to, when he had time, make his way over and basically do a wellness check on the Collyer brothers. And so later that day, this one lone police officer showed up to the Collier brothers mansion. He got out of his cruiser and he just stopped and looked at the brownstone mansion. Even though it was every bit a mansion, it was not in good condition. All the windows were boarded up with wood and metal, and the glass behind them was all shattered. There was newspapers coming out of the broken windows, like they had been jammed up against the inside of the windows. There was all this furniture and wooden crates and just junk piled up outside the front of the property. I mean, the place looked kind of dilapidated, and he was shocked that anybody lived in here to begin with. But the Collier family were not normal people. Langley and Homer's dad Was a doctor, and he would take home pieces of real people, like parts and organs and that kind of thing, and he would put them in glass jars and put them on display all over the house. Their dad also always canoed to work, which meant walking out of the mansion with a canoe on his shoulder, Walking to east river, canoeing his way in his fancy doctor clothes, all the way until he got off, and then carrying the canoe to his office building. As for Langley and Homer's mother, she was the first cousin of their dad, and she also kicked their dad out of the house when he tried to convert their entire house into a sanatorium, which is kind of like a cross between a hospital and a resort for people who are recovering from tuberculosis. And so the brothers had grown up in this very odd family. And while they were totally brilliant, they were also very eccentric. Homer, the older brother, was a literal genius who was accepted to study law at the highly prestigious Ivy league university Columbia at the age of 14. Langley, who was five years younger than Homer, Also graduated from Columbia, where he got two degrees, One in engineering and one in chemistry. But Langley wasn't just an accomplished scientist. He was also this incredible musician. In fact, he was such a talented pianist that he actually performed shows at New York's legendary Carnegie Hall. But despite their incredible achievements and their huge wealth, Homer and Langley never got married. And over time, after the death of their parents, Homer and Langley became more and more reclusive inside of this mansion. And then in 1933, so 14 years before, this lone police officer had arrived at the Collier brothers mansion to investigate a dead body. Homer Collier had had a stroke and went completely blind. He was only 55 at the time, and really, he was at the height of his career, but he was forced to quit his law practice. As for Langley, even though he was very successfully selling pianos and playing these incredible shows at Carnegie hall, he, too, had to give up what he was doing and stay home and take care of his brother. And once this happened, the two brothers basically stayed in the mansion all the time. They basically never left. And they also stopped paying any of their bills. So their water, their phone, their electricity all got cut off. But instead of the brothers paying the bills to get the power back, Langley just went out and bought a model T car. And he pulled the engine out of the car and built his own generator. And then when they stopped paying their mortgage, eventually, the police came to the mansion to evict them. And when Langley came to the door to speak to the officer, he just wrote a check for the entire amount of the mansion, basically paying for it on the spot. He handed the check to the police officer and then told the officer to leave them alone. And so fast Forward back to March 21, 1947, and this lone police officer, after staring up at this dilapidated mansion, finally walked forward and climbed over all the furniture and junk that was all out front. And he literally climbed his way up the front steps to the front door where he began pounding on it. But after a while, no one came to the door and the officer couldn't hear anything inside. Now, because this officer was here to investigate a dead body, no matter how uncredible the claim, the officer knew he really needed to get inside and have a look around. And so he decided he would try to break in the front door. And so after knocking a few more times just to make sure really no one was there, the officer called out and said, I'm coming in. And then began pounding with his shoulder against the door. And pretty quickly the door gave way, but it only opened a few inches. And so the officer tried to fit through it, but he was too big, he couldn't fit. But he was able to look into the crack and he saw there was this huge man made wall that was basically positioned right inside of the mansion, blocking the front door from opening more than a couple of inches. And so as the officer was thinking about why there would be this wall here, he began to smell this terrible smell coming out of the mansion. And at that point the officer thought, okay, there could be a dead body in here. I don't know what's going on. And so he called for backup. Foreign.

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Howie Mandel (27:30)

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Mr. Ballin (28:38)

When backup arrived, the group of officers attempted to smash the front door in together. All seven of them are ramming against this door, but they could not break down the man made wall inside. And so ultimately the police got a ladder and they lined it up on the side side of the property. And one of the officers was able to climb up to the second floor, break a window and climb in that way. And once the police all made their way into the second floor of this mansion, they realized very quickly that the tip Charles Smith had given had been correct. There was a dead body inside of this mansion. It was Homer Collier, the older brother. He was seated in a chair in this alcove on the second floor. He only had on this ragged bathrobe and he was kind of slouched forward with his head resting on his knee with all these orange peels all around him. The coroner would ultimately determine that Homer likely had been dead for about 10 hours. As for Langley Collier, despite looking around the mansion for him, they couldn't find him. It was like he had just vanished into thin air. And so pretty quickly the police became suspicious of Langley because they couldn't find him. And they began to think, you know, maybe he had something to do with his brother's death and that's why he's not here now. In fact, maybe it was Langley who called in the tip as Charles Smith out on the road somewhere after he'd run away. So the police posted an officer at the Collier brothers mansion. Basically his job was to stay there in case Langley came back at any time he could be detained. And then also the police put out a nine state alarm. Basically all the states around New York were told to keep an eye out for Langley because he was wanted for questioning in connection to his brother's death. And so, as police agencies all across the east coast searched for Langley largely in vain, Detectives in new york continued to search the collier brothers mansion to find clues that might shed some light about where Langley went and what role he might have played in homer's death. And on April 8, 1947, so, 18 days after Homer was first discovered, the police would finally find that big clue that would break the case wide open back on March 21, when that lone police officer first responded to the collier brothers house because of this call about the dead body. And then the officer broke the door in and discovered that man made wall right behind the do. Well, that man made wall was not constructed out of normal building materials like brick or wood or anything else you might expect a wall to be built out of. Instead, it was built out of things like chairs and beds and a sewing machine and all sorts of just junk. It was trash. And this trash wall started right in front of the inside of the front door, and it extended back towards the interior living space of that floor. Except there really wasn't any living space at all anywhere inside of this mansion. Not the second floor, first, third, fourth, nowhere. Because every surface inside of this mansion was covered wall to wall, floor to ceiling in trash. Things like 14 broken pianos, an x ray machine. There was a horse's jawbone. There were 25,000 books. And of course, they had all of their father's glass jars that contained all of these human body parts. And over the years, the collier brothers had apparently begun to think that their neighbors and random passerbys out on the street would someday break into their mansion and steal these treasures from their home. For reference, the collier brothers did have real treasure in their house. They had tons of cash. They had jewelry. I mean, they had real valuables. But to them, that wasn't the real treasure. The real treasure were the things they pulled out of the dumpsters all around the city. And so that was the stuff they were worried about getting stolen from random people outside. And so they had begun fortifying the inside of this mansion to protect themselves when, inevitably, these people began breaking in. And so, basically, the inside of their mansion had not just been turned into a big trash pile, but instead, they had created all these sophisticated tunnels through all the trash that was everywhere. And lining these tunnels and all these special alleyways they had built Were real booby traps. And it was when the police were inspecting one of these tunnels with booby traps in it that they discovered the big clue that broke the case wide open. Based on that big clue here is the leading theory about what happened to Homer and Langley Collier back on March 9, 1947. So the night that Langley had snuck out the front door in the middle of the night with his shabby clothes on and headed to Brooklyn, where he went dumpster diving. Well, he wasn't just dumpster diving to find new treasures to bring back to the mansion to stuff inside. Instead, he was actually looking for something really specific for his brother. He was looking for oranges, like the fruit. And this particular dumpster in Brooklyn was right behind a store that sold fruit. And so there were always lots of oranges in this dumpster. Langley was actually trying his very best to take care of his older brother, Homer. He had actually begun doing research, using his father's old medical textbooks to try to find a cure for Homer's blindness caused by his stroke. And at some point, Langley believed he really had come across the cure. And the cure was basically for Homer to eat oranges. Lots and lots of oranges. And in fact, over the last several weeks before this night, Langley had already made this change in Homer's diet. He only fed him oranges for every single meal. He got them from this dumpster, and he fed them to Homer. And Homer, he too believed this cure was going to work. And so he ate the oranges without question. And so, back on March 9, after Langley had gathered up the oranges from inside this dumpster, slung it on his shoulder, and walked back to his mansion, he maneuvered his way through the crack in the front door. Because he was super skinny, he was able to barely get through. And then once he was inside the mansion and shut the door behind him, he maneuvered his way up to the second floor. And then he began the most dangerous part of his journey. From one side of the second floor to the other, where Homer was basically, Langley needed to crawl through a two foot wide tunnel he had built through all the junk and trash, but it was lined with booby traps. In particular, there was a nasty trap at the end of the tunnel where there was this stack of metal boxes filled with all these newspapers. They were really heavy, and they were positioned so if you even so much as barely touched the lowest box, they would come crashing down on you. Now, Langley had made this journey countless times. This is how he went to see his brother every single day as he went through this time tunnel. But on this day, as he low crawled his way through the tight tunnel in the trash, he accidentally knocked the lowest metal box. The boxes tumbled down on him and pinned him to the ground. Now, these boxes were very heavy, but they were not heavy enough to kill someone. It would just pin them down. It would be impossible to get out from under them. And so Langley, very likely, after getting trapped, called out for his brother Homer, who was actually only 10ft away from him. But Homer was blind. He was sick. He had absolutely no energy because all he ate was oranges, and it was basically killing him. And so he couldn't even get out of his chair, let alone go save his brother. And so for several agonizing hours, Langley likely yelled for his brother until the weight of all these boxes did crush him to death. And then Homer was left all alone in this house where no one knew he needed help and no one could even get to him if they wanted to. And so he was doomed. And so for two weeks, Homer just sat in this chair, starving to death, while he likely listened to the sound of rats eating his brother's body. The big clue that the police found that broke this case wide open is they actually spotted Langley's white foot bone that had been picked clean by the rats jutting up out of this trash tunnel 10ft away from Homer. When the police had first searched the mansion, it was so full of stuff that they never saw this bone. It just kind of blended in. But 18 days after finding Homer, they realized Langley was right there. There was a skeleton. As for the Charles Smith tipster that police thought had to be Langley calling in after he had murdered his brother, well, it wasn't Langley, because Langley was dead at the time this tip came in. And so Charles Smith was a real person who very likely just walked past the mansion, and he probably caught a whiff of the smell of rotting dead bodies. And so he called it in. Four months after Homer and Langley were found dead inside of their maze of trash, their mansion was declared a fire hazard and demolished. Today there is a small park called the Collier Brothers park, and it's filled with nothing but a couple of trees and a bench. 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 story and you're looking for more bone chilling content, be sure to check out all of our studio's podcasts. There's this one, the Mr. Ballin podcast, as well as Mr. Ballin's Medical Mysteries. Bedtime Stories, Wartime Stories Run Fool Redacted Late nights with Nexpo and a twist of history. All you have to do is search for Ballin Studios wherever you get your podcasts. To watch hundreds more stories just like this one, head over to our YouTube channel, which is just called Mr. Ballin. So that's going to do it. I really appreciate your support. Until next time. See you. 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. And before you go, please tell us about yourself by completing a short survey@wondry.com.

Sponsor Voice (39:51)

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