← MrBallen Podcast: Strange, Dark & Mysterious Stories
MrBallen Podcast: Strange, Dark & Mysterious Stories
Safe for Now (PODCAST EXCLUSIVE EPISODE)
00:30:24
Today we have two stories about people who had close brushes with death, and were absolutely certain that they had escaped harm and could move on with their lives. They... were wrong.
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Today we have two stories about people who have near death experiences. And then after the initial trauma of the experience has passed, they're like, okay, I'm good now. I'm safe. Everything's fine. But no, they were not okay, as they would soon learn. But before we get into today's stories, if you're a fan of the strange, dark and mysterious delivered in story format, then you've come to the right place, because that's all we do. And we upload two, three, even four times every week. So if that's of interest to you, please sneak into the Fallabuttons house and on their bathroom mirror, write, I'm watching you in red lipstick. Okay, let's get into our first story, which is called Crisis Averted, Crisis created.
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The Mr. Bolan podcast. Strange, dark and mysterious stories is brought to you by Progressive Insurance. Do you ever find yourself playing the budgeting game? Well, with the name your price tool from Progressive, you can find options that fit your budget and potentially lower your bills. Try it@progressive.com, progressive Casualty Insurance Company and affiliates. Price and coverage match limited by state law. Not available in all states. On the morning of April 29, 1963, a woman named Sofia Perez was riding in the passenger seat of her car. Her husband Julian was driving, and they were traveling down a narrow city street in Sevilla, Spain. It was a Monday, but Julian, who was the primary breadwinner, he didn't have work that day. And so the couple had decided, since it was such a beautiful spring day as well, that they would get out and go on a nice drive and just spend some time together. And for Sophia, I mean, this was like a perfect day. She adored her husband and she really loved the city of Sevilla. You know, all the people there were so nice and friendly and it was such a beautiful place that, like, this was shaping up to be really a tremendous day. And so Sophia and her husband, they are all smiles as they continue driving down this road. You know, Sofia, she's looking out, taking in the sights and the sounds, and then at some point she just has this inclination to pull out her lipstick and, you know, apply her lipstick. And so she, she reaches down. And she grabs her purse, which she brought with her everywhere. She was a very organized person. And she opened it up, and she's rifling through it, and she finds her lipstick. And then she. She grabs the rear view mirror, and she turns it, and she uses it to apply the lipstick. And as she's doing this, she begins asking Julian, like, hey, you know, what should we do for the rest of the day? Like, beyond this drive? What else should we do? And as she's sort of half looking at the mirror and half looking at Julian, she sees a blur of motion out in front of the car. And then she turns, and she realizes there's someone in the intersection that they're gonna hit. It's a guy on a motorcycle. And before she could say anything, Julian is swerving hard to the right to try to avoid this guy. It's like absolute madness. And then the. The motorcyclist, he tips over, and he goes into a slide. And then Julian and Sophia, they ram off the road onto the sidewalk and smash into this huge pole. And pretty much right away, Sophia, after the car had come to a stop in front of this huge, you know, metal pole, Sophia began, like, patting herself down to sort of assess the damage to make sure she was okay. And then she looked over at her husband, Julian, who was sort of doing the same thing, and they realized that, you know, obviously, despite the horribleness of this crash, that they were okay. But then their attention turned to the motorcyclist, because even though Julian didn't hit him, they narrowly missed him. You know, he swerved away, and they crash into this pole. Despite that, one of the last things Sophia saw before they swerved is the motorcyclist had tipped over and gone into a skid. So they had no idea if he was okay or not. And so Sofia and Julian, they carefully climbed out of their pretty wrecked vehicle. And again, they stood and kind of checked to make sure they really were okay, because now they're standing for the first time, but, you know, they're okay. And they walked a little ways, you know, across the street to this other sort of side street where the motorcyclist had skidded off to. And right over there he was standing. The man who was on the motorcycle, he was standing next to his bike. And, you know, obviously, his bike had had some damage done to it. But the man, the motorcyclist, he looked unhurt as well. So this was like an enormous, in some ways, stroke of luck. Obviously, it was bad to get into the accident, but all three of them appeared to be okay. And so Sophia and Julian, they walk over to the motorcyclist, and, you know, the three of them were really amicable. I mean, the motorcyclist understood that, you know, accidents happen. You know, thank goodness nobody was hurt. And just for a few minutes, the three of them just, you know, just chatted and sort of just talked about how lucky they really were here. And they exchanged information, you know, so they could cover the damages if they needed to, of the respective vehicles. And as they're just sitting there having this, you know, relatively calm and just normal conversation here, Sophia looks over at Julian and she realizes, you know, he was basically unhurt, but not entirely unhurt. He had this scratch on his face that was bleeding a fair amount. That very likely was from the crash. And even though by no means is this, like, life threatening or anything like that, Sophia was not at the moment talking to the motorcyclist. And so she figured she would just go back over to the car and grab her purse, because she's very organized, and she has something in that purse for every situation. She figured she very likely had, like, a bandage or something she could use to clean up her husband's cut. And so she told her husband and the motorcyclist she was gonna, you know, go get her purse and go grab a bandage or something. She goes over to the car, which is still, you know, smashed up on the side of the road, of course, and there's a little bit of a crowd of people sort of, you know, relatively nearby, kind of assessing the scene. She makes her way around towards the passenger side because her purse was still in the car in the passenger seat. And as she was coming around, getting ready to reach through the open door to grab her purse, which was sitting right there on the seat, something happened. Like, she got close enough to the car where, like, suddenly she felt this intense pain all through her body. And then it was like she couldn't even move.
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And she found herself falling towards the ground, looking up at the sky, and, like, her muscles are beginning to spasm. And the last thing she saw was her husband and the motorcyclist running over to her. And then to her horror, as she's laying there looking up at them, they, too, began to sort of seize up and spasm and fall to the ground right next to her. It would turn out that when Julian swerved to avoid that motorcyclist and crashed into that pole, neither he nor Sophia realized that that pole was. Was actually connected to a power line that held up electrical lines carrying a huge amount of electrical voltage. And during the crash, a few of those lines from the pole had been knocked down to the ground and they fell around Sophia and Julian's car. When the couple first got out of the vehicle, they sort of miraculously avoided stepping on those lines. And if they had just stayed over there, you know, with the motorcyclist and just hadn't gone back to the vehicle, they would have been fine. But Sophia, whose purse always had exactly what she needed, was in the car and she wanted to get it and get that bandage. And so when she went back, she stepped on one of those lines and she was electrocuted. And so she's on the ground, she can't move. And her husband and the motorcyclist, they see this happening, they hear it happening, and they run over unaware of the danger, and they too are hit by those electrical lines, they fall to the ground and all three were electrocuted to death. You can predict the playoff action all the way to the finals with FanDuel predicts, and all you have to do is sign up to get your $25 bonus. Follow all the playoff dishes, swishes, wishes and misses from opening tip to the final buzzer. Stay locked in with every pass, every play and every moment that moves us closer to crowning a champion. I started using FanDuel Predicts during a recent NBA playoff game and what surprised me was just how much more dialed in I was and how easy it was to use right from my phone. Every possession, every shot, it all felt like it mattered way more. It just really pulls you into the game in a different way where you're not just watching, you're part of it. Sign up now for your $25 bonus on FanDuel Predicts offered by FanDuel Prediction Markets LLC, a registered Futures Commission merchant. 18 bonus is non withdrawable and expires 7 days after receipt. Trading derivatives involve significant risk and may not be suitable for all investors. Manage your activity with their consumer protection tools. Restrictions apply. See terms@fanduel.com predicts bonus offer terms Everyday life is full of moments that you plan for and moments that just happen often when you least expect them. 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Go to shipstation.com and use code mrballen for 60 days for free. 60 days gives you plenty of time to see exactly how much time and money you're going to be saving on every shipment. Again, that's shipstation.com, code mrballin shipstation.com code mrballin Our second and final story today is called Rock Bottom. On January 11, 2018, around 10am, 55 year old Ray Wright saw it through a wooden board inside of his workshop, which was located about 20 minutes outside of Rockland, California. Now, Ray had only just begun his workday, but he was already covered in sawdust. However, he barely noticed because this was just a normal part of his job as a carpenter, something he absolutely loved. He loved his career. In fact, Ray really just sort of loved everything about his life and sort of how it was going these days. And that had not always been the case. So about six years earlier, Ray was in a very different and much worse place in his life. He'd been recently divorced and had started drinking a lot and he'd spiraled further and further out of control until one night he'd gotten really drunk and then hopped behind the wheel and he caused a terrible accident when he crashed head on into another Vehicle. Now, Ray was more or less okay after that crash, but he'd actually severely injured the people in the car that he had hit. And so Ray had been arrested and sentenced to 18 months in prison. And he was ordered to pay a huge monetary settlement to the victims of this crash. And so really, this. This had been, like, the true rock bottom moment of Ray's life. But by the time Ray actually got out of jail, he was determined to really turn his life around and become a better person. He'd stopped drinking, and he had joined Alcoholics Anonymous, which is a very well known support group that helps keep people sober. He'd started spending way more time with his three kids and also his brother Dean. And he'd been renting this particular workshop that he was in right now to revamp his carpentry business, Ray Wright Design. And then also, like, in addition to these specific behavioral changes, overall, Ray had made this huge effort to really shift his thinking about, like, the way he approached life. He decided he was gonna really try hard to just have a much more positive attitude in general and just try to be happier. Like, he believed it was more of a mindset, and he really was trying hard to stay in that positive, happy mindset. However, despite these. These wholesale changes in Ray's behavior and his. His mindset, which were definitely all good, the one thing he was up against that was very difficult to change, you know, since coming out of prison, was his financial situation. I mean, he really just didn't make a whole lot of money. You know, despite working really hard as a carpenter, now he just. He just didn't make a lot of money. And this really didn't just affect his life. It affected other people's lives as well, because, you know, he needed to make those huge settlement payments to the victims of the crash, which he intended to do. But so far, you know, he had not made enough money to make those payments. And it was definitely stressing him out. You know, he knew he needed to make those payments. But Ray was sort of determined that he would just continue to work really hard, continue to build up his business, continue to stay positive, stay happy, you know, be a good person, and eventually he was sure to make these payments and everything would be okay. So, in essence, Ray still had problems, but he was working really hard to just stay on the straight and narrow and do the right thing. Now, Ray blew some of the sawdust off the board that he had just cut, and he set it aside. And then as he was about to start on the next thing, he realized one of the tools that he needed was out in his truck. So he walked through the shop's big warehouse style doors that opened out onto a dirt driveway. So the workshop where Ray worked was in a fairly rural area with only one immediate neighbor who lived in a trailer right next door on the same property. And the person who owned the trailer was a woman named Katie. But, you know, despite there only being Katie next door, there was still a fair amount of people just sort of coming and going around the place, like Katie's friends and Ray's clients. So the area was actually usually pretty lively. But this morning, as he stepped outside onto the driveway, it was pretty quiet. So Ray just made his way out to his truck and grabbed what he needed from inside. And then he turned and began walking back towards the shop. However, before he actually got to the shop, he heard footsteps on the driveway right behind him. Two days later, Ray's brother Dean drove his car through some back roads as he made his way towards Ray's house in Rockland, California. Dean had just been to Ray's workshop and now he was making the 20 minute drive back to Ray's home yet again. And the reason he was doing that is because Dean was really worried. He hadn't heard from his brother in two days and neither had Ray's kids or any of Ray's friends. And this was like very unusual. Dean, you know, himself talked to Ray every single day. And he also knew that Ray was a very involved and responsive dad who would definitely not just disappear on his kids. And he was also definitely in touch with other friends. I mean, this was just very unusual for Ray. So over the past 48 hours, Dean had been increasingly getting more and more worried about Ray, and he had been talking to anyone he could to try to figure out, like, why his brother was just suddenly gone. He'd already gone to Ray's workshop and his house repeatedly, and he hadn't found Ray or any sign of Ray or any sign of where he might have gone. And also, Ray's truck was nowhere to be found either. And that was actually particularly concerning because, you know, deep down, Dean was worried that, you know, despite the changes Ray had made in his life, to be a better person and to do right by people. He was worried that, you know, maybe Ray had fallen off the wagon and was drinking again. Like, maybe that's why he's gone, he's on a bender somewhere now. Dean really didn't want to face that reality that would be like devastating for so many reasons. Not to mention, you know, if Ray was Off drinking somewhere. Who knows what trouble he could be in? Like he could be in a lot of trouble or hurt or something. And so Dean, by this point, 48 hours into his brother's disappearance, he's just doing his best to kind of push down this growing concern that maybe that's what happened. And in fact, it was actually that sort of nagging fear that Dean had that had kept him from going to the police and reporting Ray missing. There was just this fear that if he did that, it would sort of expose Ray if he was, you know, not doing what he was supposed to be doing. And so by this point, you know, Dean had held off. Now, Dean parked his car outside of Ray's house again. And Dean, he got out and, you know, Ray's truck was not back yet. But Dean was determined that he would just go back inside and take another look around to see if maybe he had missed something. You know, maybe there was some clue as to where, you know, Ray went or what he was up to. So Dean walked up to his brother's front door and he let himself inside. And immediately Dean stopped because he smelled something. It smelled like marijuana smoke inside the house, which was really, really odd. I mean, one, because the last time he was here, he definitely did not smell marijuana smoke. But more than that, Ray, his brother, had definitely once been a very heavy drinker. That was true. But he had always hated marijuana. Like, he did not smoke marijuana. And so Dean's standing in the doorway trying to make sense of this, when from the other side of the room, he hears somebody shouting at him to leave. And he sees on the other side of the room, this man has suddenly popped up who Dean did not know, who was looking right at him, basically gesturing for Dean to get out of the house. But Dean, he's sort of like, what's going on here? He looks at this guy and he's like, who are you? Like, what are you doing in here? And the guy went very quickly from being sort of demanding to Dean to very spooked, turning and sprinting out the door, out of sight. Within the hour, a police officer with the Rockland police department pulled his cruiser up outside of a small one story home in Rockland and parked. He saw a man waiting outside the garage. And as the officer got out of his car, the man rushed up and introduced himself as Dean, the person who had called 911. Dean explained to the officer that he had just seen an intruder here inside of his brother's home, and that his brother was also missing. And so the officer Took down some notes both about the intruder and also about, you know, Dean's brother's absence and why him being gone for two days was really out of character. And so after the officer finished speaking to Dean, he went inside of Ray's house to take a look around and see if, you know, there was any evidence left behind by the intruder to indicate who they were or if there was any evidence about, you know, where Ray was and maybe that this intruder had something to do with Ray's absence. But once inside the home, the officer saw there was no sign of forced entry or any kind of mess or violence. So it didn't immediately seem like the intruder had robbed the place or gotten into some kind of physical fight with its owner. But still, the officer left the property and went back to his cruiser and called it in. And so over the next few days, the Rockland police department sort of led two parallel investigations. There was the investigation into this intruder inside of Ray's home, which really wasn't going very far. They had very little evidence. There was barely a description of this guy from Dean, who did not get a good look. Look at him. And then the other investigation was into Ray's disappearance. And there was definitely some thinking that the intruder and Ray's disappearance could be connected. But as of right now, they didn't know. But with regards to Ray's disappearance, after the police had spoken to Ray's family and friends, they determined that no one had seen or spoken to him since January 11th. That was like, the first sort of hard date and hard fact that they had. They also checked into Ray's bank account and phone activity, and they learned he hadn't used them since January 11, when, apparently, he went missing. But beyond those details, like, as the weeks went on, really, nothing else came in, not about the intruder or about Ray. Then on January 21st, so 10 days after Ray went missing, the Rockland police department got their first, you know, big new lead. And that was Ray's truck had been found. He was not in it. It had been found totally abandoned in this apartment complex that was not far from his workshop. You ever discover something that just immediately becomes part of your daily routine that if you were to miss it, it would completely throw your day off? Well, that's how I am with kachava. It is 100% a part of my morning routine. I gotta have it. Kachava delivers clean, wholesome nutrition that keeps you energized for whatever your day throws at you. It's great. I swear by it. But this summer, I Have a packed schedule. 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So I've got a road trip coming up and I have unfortunately learned the hard way that the worst time for car trouble, and often the most common time for car trouble is, is when you are miles away from anywhere familiar. So this time I made sure that I had my car looked at in advance to make sure it was ready and safe. And also, you know, just generally speaking, staying on top of routine auto maintenance can really help you avoid bigger issues down the line and also just prevent unexpected, costly repairs. And so what I did is I went to the Firestone Complete Auto Care right near my house. And let me tell you, great decision because the whole experience was so smooth. Just from making the appointment online, to dropping off my car, you know, to the text communication with the people that were there while my vehicle was being serviced and then also picking it up, it all went great. And so I know, you know, in the future if I have any issues with my car or if I want to be preventative, whatever it is, I am definitely going back to Firestone. So whether it's tires or an oil change or your brakes, your battery, alignment or diagnostics, Firestone Complete Auto Care has everything your car needs, making it truly a one stop shop. And this year there's additional reason to celebrate. Because Firestone Complete Autocare is celebrating 100 years of dependable, reliable, value driven service. And with locations all across the country, expert care is always within reach. Get more life out of your car. Visit firestoneauto.com to find a location near you again, that is firestoneauto.com a couple of months later, on an afternoon in late March, Rockland police Sergeant Zach Lewis sat at his desk at the station going over Ray's case file for what he felt like was the millionth time. So, since finding Ray's truck, basically no new leads had come in. And even that the finding of Ray's truck really had not been the break that the police had really hoped it would be. The. The truck was basically in decent working condition. The only thing that really stood out was the plates had been taken off of it. But after they searched the truck extensively, they basically didn't find anything. Nothing that gave away what happened to Ray or where he was or whether or not this intruder had something to do with Ray. Like, it just really didn't go anywhere. So Sergeant Lewis was feeling pretty stuck when it came to this case. And so right now, he was just looking through the information they already had on this case to see if maybe he had missed something. However, as he began doing this, another officer ran through the station towards his desk, waving around some sheets of paper. And this officer ran right up to Lewis, and he slammed the papers down on his desk and explained that the California Highway Patrol had just sent a report over because they thought it might contain a lead in Ray's case. And here was the lead. And so Lewis is really excited. He grabs the document and he sees it's a report, and it's about this van that had gotten in an accident at the end of January a few miles south of Rockland in Sacramento. The driver of this van had been extremely drunk and was going over 100 miles an hour when he crashed. And somewhat miraculously, nobody got hurt, including the driver. And so the driver, he survives, and now he's facing, like, all these charges of drunk driving and reckless driving. But the reason this report was sent over to Rocklin was because the driver was a man named Victor Gray. That's what his license said. So after the crash, the police discovered that the license plate on the van that Victor had been driving was definitely the right license plate. However, the registration stickers that were on the license plates were not the right ones. Basically, you know, Victor or somebody had taken stickers from some other vehicle and put them on this van's plates to give the impression that they're their vehicle. This van was registered. But when they tracked those registration stickers, they discovered those stickers actually belonged to Ray Wright's abandoned truck. Now, Rockland's police department Knew this was a huge lead, and they could not screw it up. And so they wanted to make sure that they handled whatever they did next exactly right, and they leveraged whatever resources they could get. So over the next few weeks, Lewis and his team reached out to the FBI to help them process Victor's van and collect any potential evidence that was associated with Ray's disappearance. And a little over a month later, on May 8, 2018, Lewis stood with a few of his other officers in a parking lot not far from Rocklin, watching as a team of FBI agents searched Victor's van. Now, by this point, they had discovered that this van not only had ran Ray's registration stickers on it, but also inside of the van was a lot of Ray's stuff. They had found Ray's glasses, which were smashed. They had found Ray's cell phone, which was also smashed. They found his wallet. They found a hat that said Ray Wright design on it. And critically, they found Ray's rain jacket. And it was covered in blood and partially charred, like it had been burned. And so at this point, it seemed fairly obvious to investigators that Ray was not just missing. You know, he didn't just, you know, go off the wagon and start drinking again and go disappear somewhere. No, he very likely had been killed, and very likely this guy Victor Grey, had something to do with it. But the problem was there was no obvious connection between Victor Grey and Ray Wright. Like, they were total strangers. And when they tried to speak to Victor, to interrogate him, to try to get him to open up and explain if he had something to do with this, if he knew who Ray was, Victor was not talking. So that was a total dead end. And so now investigators were just hoping that, you know, whatever evidence they found in this van, that once it was sent off and analyzed, that hopefully that would sort of maybe begin to explain what actually happened here. Was this just a. A random robbery gone wrong? You know, Victor was just robbing Ray and it got violent, or was it something else, or who knows what? They just. They just didn't know. Now, Lewis watched as the FBI agents wrapped up the search of the van. And, you know, they began packing things up. So it was clear they had sort of pulled all the evidence they were going to pull. And, you know, Sergeant Lewis and his team, they were about to leave when suddenly, one of the FBI agents who was searching the front of the van in the front two seats, he began waving his arm like he had found something. And so Lewis and the others, they go running over, and they look inside the van. And this agent is pointing down to like the center of the front of this van, basically near the center console. And there was this little space underneath the center console that apparently nobody had looked in yet. And inside of this little space was another cell phone. Five months later, on an afternoon in October, Lewis pulled his cruiser into the dirt driveway right outside of Ray's workshop. But when Lewis and the other detective that he was with got out of their car, they ran past Ray's workshop and went to the trailer next door where Lewis knew a woman named Katie Barnard lived. And so Lewis stood back as the other detective knocked on the door of the trailer. And a few seconds later, a very timid looking woman, Katie, came to the door and she asked what was going on. And when Lewis explained to her why they were there, Katie went from looking timid to looking downright terrified. And she just began to shake, like she clearly understood why they were here. So they took her down to the station and pretty much as soon as she was sitting inside of an interrogation room and they began asking her questions, Katie just completely broke and told them everything she knew. So ever since Ray got out of prison for that drunk driving accident, he really had been single mindedly focused on trying to be a better person and not letting his rock bottom moment sort of ruin his life. And he'd done a great job doing that. He'd gotten sober, he'd begun spending much more time with his family. He was like a very present father now. He was very well liked in the community. However, even though Ray had good intentions here, the reality was is he was just sort of focusing on rebuilding his own life. He wasn't really trying to help other people. Like his post jail efforts were sort of all about him. And his self improvement journey had really not been beneficial for everyone because Ray had really not truly atoned or done right by the person he had hurt the most. One of the victims of his drunk driving accident, a man named Bob Manor. Bob had been absolutely furious with Ray after the accident because the accident had severely injured him. Bob to the point where Bob had a permanent limp. And then Ray had stopped making those court mandated settlement payments to Bob. He was supposed to, but he just wasn't making them. And so Bob is like incensed. It's like, how dare you. You, you hurt me, you hurt my family and you're not even paying for it. Like jail isn't enough. And so for Bob, it became like an obsession that he really wanted to get his revenge on Ray. And it just so happened that Bob Was. Was not just a guy with a grudge. Bob was a very violent drug dealer as well. So this was a really big deal for him. So basically, after Ray got out of prison, Bob began obsessing over where Rey was. Like, he wanted to literally discover his address so he could physically go and take his revenge. But he couldn't find Ray. He could not find the information. No one was gonna give it to him, you know, for this reason. Exactly. And so he was just furious all the time. He wants to find Rey, but he has no way of knowing where he lives. Then, just by pure happenstance, Bob ends up dating a woman named Katie Barnard, who just so happens to live in the trailer right next door to the shop in Rockland, California, where Ray worked. And, you know, Bob had no idea. He's just over visiting with Katie all the time. And one day he looks out the window, and who does he see walking out of the doors of that shop? Ray Wright. After that. And you have to understand that some of this stuff actually was never fully explained. Bob hired a man named Victor Grey to kidnap Ray for him because he wasn't gonna do it himself. He needed to catch Ray off guard. And so Victor Grey kidnaps Ray, and he apparently brings Ray to Bob so that Bob can exact his revenge on Ray. Now, we don't know exactly what happened once Bob potentially received Rey. We don't know if Rey ever actually made it to Bob. But we do know at some point, Victor did kidnap Ray, and there was definitely revenge, you know, on the agenda. But what Bob ultimately failed to do, that got him caught and got Victor caught and got this whole thing blown up, was he didn't pay Victor for the kidnapping. So the very thing that Bob was so mad about really was like, how dare Ray do this to me and then not pay me? Well, Bob did the same thing to Victor. He didn't pay him. And Victor was also a violent person. He's a convicted felon, and he didn't take that lightly. And so what did he do? He wrote a letter to Bob, basically being like, hey, I kidnapped this guy for you, and I handed him to you, like, I handed him over, and you haven't paid me yet. And then he took pictures of this letter. And those pictures were on that phone that was found underneath the center console of Victor Gray's van. Those pictures of this letter are what connected Victor to Bob. And then the connection from Bob to Ray was already known. And then also critically, because Victor hadn't been paid by Bob for this. This kidnapping, he took the liberty of not only kidnapping Ray, but he went back and stole the registration stickers off of Ray's truck and he put them on his own van. And then ultimately it was that that led to Victor getting caught and this whole, you know, con being exposed. Now we actually don't know specifically what happened to Ray Wright. All we know is that he definitely was kidnapped and that Bob ordered the kidnapping and that realistically, you know, Bob is a pretty violent guy. Victor's a violent guy. There's blood found all over, you know, Ray's stuff. It seemed pretty apparent that the revenge that was exacted on Ray involved his murder, but Ray's body was never found and so we don't really know what happened to him. However, using overwhelming circumstantial evidence, both Bob Manor and Victor Grey were both convicted of first degree murder and kidnapping and they were sentenced to life in prison without parole. 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. The Mr. Ballin podcast Strange, Dark and Mysterious Stories is hosted and executive Produced by me, Mr. Ballin. Our head of writing is Evan Allen. Produced by Jeremy Bone and Cole Locasio. This episode was written by Kate Murdock Story editing by Evan Allen Research and fact checking by Shelly Shue, Samantha Van Hus Evan Beamer Abigail Shumway Camille Callahan Alex Paul Ben Faciano Research and fact checking supervision by Steven Ear Audio editing and post produced by Whit Locasio and Jordan Stidham Production support by Antonio Minotta and Delaina Corley Artwork by Jessica Clogston Kiner Theme Song Something Wicked by Ross Bugden
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