Safe House (PODCAST EXCLUSIVE EPISODE)

Summary

MrBallen Podcast: Strange, Dark & Mysterious Stories

Episode: Safe House (Podcast Exclusive)

Host: John Allen (MrBallen)
Release Date: June 22, 2026

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Episode Overview

In this chilling episode of the MrBallen Podcast, “Safe House,” John Allen (a.k.a. MrBallen) recounts the true and deeply unsettling 2005 double murder of Michael Lefkow and Donna Humphrey in Chicago, Illinois. What begins as an ordinary winter morning for a tight-knit family unravels into a harrowing tale of danger, paranoia, and mistaken identity, leading investigators through a maze of suspects tied to a federal judge and ultimately exposing the tragedy born from a grudge gone terribly wrong. The episode stands out with MrBallen’s trademark narrative style, combining suspenseful storytelling with a methodical breakdown of the investigation's twists and emotional moments.

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Key Discussion Points & Story Structure

1. Ordinary Beginnings, Unimaginable Ending

• Setting the scene: The Lefkow family — Michael (father), Joan (mother, a respected federal judge), their daughter Meg, and Joan’s elderly mother, Donna — are introduced during a chilly February morning routine in Chicago.
  • “It was just a very relaxed morning.” (03:40)
• Michael, injured and working from home, helps Donna settle in before heading to his basement office.
• Early hints at anxiety and past threats related to Joan’s career as a federal judge.
• Joan departs for a routine day, unknowingly leaving the house in grave danger.

2. A Shocking Discovery

• That evening, Joan returns home after failing to reach her husband by phone all day.
• Meg, their daughter, had been home briefly but saw no one.
• Joan's growing panic culminating in the discovery of blood and a gruesome scene in the basement office.
  • “It was like everything she saw in there was so shocking, it was like her brain couldn't process it.” (11:23)

3. Law Enforcement Response and Forensic Clues

• FBI Special Agent Douglas Secombe arrives to investigate, quickly ruling out robbery due to lack of theft and signs of forced entry only at a broken basement window.
• Discovery of a 12-pack of beer in the utility closet (one bottle missing), and a lone beer bottle on the office windowsill—potentially a critical clue. (17:10)
• Forensic team uses chemicals to reveal blood cleanup attempts, showing premeditation but also panic and sloppiness.

4. Suspect List & Theories

• Investigators immediately suspect the killings are related to Joan’s position as judge.
• Interviews with Joan at a safe house reveal three potential sources of threat:
  1. Shawn Peters – A gang leader she sentenced.
  2. Richard Young – An intimidating armed robber.
  3. Matthew Hale – A notorious white supremacist, infamous for ordering hits and past threats against Joan.
     • “Hale had actually targeted her a couple of years ago…he was still in prison for those charges.” (24:55)

5. Investigative Dead Ends and a Red Herring

• (24:30) FBI and police pursue leads related to Hale’s followers, including intensive scrutiny of Kathleen Robertazzo, a frequent prison correspondent of Hale’s, whose alibi holds.
• The pastor from a neighborhood church reports seeing two suspicious men in a red car, but this ultimately proves unconnected to the actual crime.

6. Stagnation and Frustration

• As suspects are cleared, and forensic tests on cigarette butts and Coke cans prove fruitless, the investigation stalls.
  • “It sort of seems like we really don't have much to show for it.” (34:48)
• Law enforcement debates whether the judge was ever the actual target, considering no precedent for a judge’s family being killed while the judge survived.

7. A Break in the Case

• Nine days in, forensic analysis returns a fingerprint match from the beer bottle left at the scene.
• The killer is identified as Bart Ross, a man with no criminal background but a grudge against Judge Joan Lefkow after she dismissed his medical malpractice suit.
  • “Bart was not like a hardened criminal. Bart was a cancer patient who had tried to sue his doctors after he lost part of his jaw.” (37:47)

8. What Really Happened: The Killer’s Confession

• Ross’s confession (found after his suicide) details a plan to assassinate Judge Lefkow, not her family.
• He broke in, hid in the basement closet, but was discovered by Michael, whom he killed in panic. He shot Donna, who was drawn by the noise.
• Ross tried to clean up, drank a beer to “calm his nerves” (38:50), and abandoned his original plan, shaken by murdering two unintended victims.
• The notorious red car/story was unrelated; Ross acted alone.

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Notable Quotes and Memorable Moments

• On the paranoia inherent in Joan’s job:
  “Decisions that, you know, sometimes were sort of in that gray area between, you know, is this the right moral decision or is this the right legal decision? …sometimes her decisions would, you know, put her in danger.”
  — MrBallen (05:10)
• Vivid description of the discovery:
  “She calls out for Michael, but there's no answer. She calls out for her mom, there's no answer… she saw what looked like blood on the ground.”
  — MrBallen (11:05)
• Dissecting the beer bottle clue:
  “A single beer bottle sitting on that windowsill…”
  — MrBallen (17:33)
• A grim reality about the suspect pool:
  “As a federal judge, there could be literally hundreds of people holding very serious grudges against her.”
  — MrBallen (22:47)
• Description of the killer’s mental state:
  “He ultimately blamed Joan Lefkow for dismissing his medical malpractice suit… he’d become increasingly paranoid and detached from reality.”
  — MrBallen (38:12)

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Timeline of Key Events

• [00:00–05:00]: Introduction to the Lefkow family and ordinary start to the day.
• [05:00–10:30]: Joan heads to court, Michael and Donna go about their routines.
• [11:23]: Joan discovers the crime scene after work.
• [14:00–20:00]: Special Agent Secombe and forensic teams begin their investigation, focus on the beer bottle, and look for motive.
• [22:00–25:00]: Joan is interviewed at the safe house; three main suspects are established.
• [32:15–36:00]: Task force expands investigation, hits dead ends, public reward offered.
• [37:30]: Breakthrough via forensic fingerprint match on beer bottle; identity of killer revealed.
• [38:30–41:00]: Reconstruction of the crime from confession, with the killer’s mental unraveling laid bare.
• [41:25]: Aftermath: Killer’s suicide and the closing of the case.

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Episode Tones & Takeaways

• Tonal qualities: MrBallen’s signature suspense, empathy for the victims, methodical pacing—evoking fear and sadness tied to the randomness of tragedy and the burdens of public service.
• Themes: The unforeseen (and innocent) collateral damage of holding power in a contentious world; how unresolved personal pain and delusion can lead to unthinkable acts; and the emotional toll on investigators and the judicial system.

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Summary for New Listeners

This episode dissects a haunting double murder that, beyond its immediate criminal intrigue, examines the vulnerabilities faced by those in public service and how unresolved trauma can trigger devastating ripple effects. MrBallen’s narrative takes listeners deep into the procedural side of the investigation while keeping a deeply human perspective, ultimately unraveling not just a who-done-it, but a why-done-it—exposing the sad truth of a vendetta tragically misfired.

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Transcript

[Narrator (Mr. Ballin)]

On a cold February night in 2005, a woman in Chicago was sitting down for dinner when her phone rang. She looked over and saw it was her mom. So she answered it and her mom, who lived only a few blocks away. She seemed really upset about something and she told her daughter that she needed to come to her mother's house right now. And the daughter was like, why? What's going on? But her mom cut her off and said, no, you need to come here. Like right now. You need to run. And that's when the woman realized that the very thing her whole family had been so afraid of for so long might have finally happened. But before we get into today's story, 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. So if that's of interest to you, please tell the Follow button that you want to bring them out on an amazing, fun night out, but when it's time to go pick them up, don't show up. Okay, let's get into today's story.

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Michael said good morning to his wife and then he hobbled his way through the kitchen over to the dining room where Meg was finishing up her eggs, and they chatted for a few minutes. And then the school bus honked outside, and Meg grabbed her backpack and raced past her dad on her way out the front door. A few moments later, Joan walked into the dining room as well with a plate of food for Michael and a cup of orange juice. And Michael thanked her. And then he asked her, what's on the docket for you today? And he meant that literally because Joan was a federal judge, and, you know, she had, like, a very heavy burden on her shoulders. She was routinely thrust into these cases where it was her job to make these just really difficult decisions, decisions that, you know, sometimes were sort of in that gray area between, you know, is this the right moral decision or is this the right legal decision? And it was really her job to err on the side of legal. And I mean, the reality was, is she was a great judge, but sometimes her decisions would, you know, put her in danger. I mean, this was, again, a. A very heavy burden. And it was something that Michael, being an attorney himself, definitely understood. He knew what it meant to be a judge. But, you know, on this particular day, when Michael asked her what she was up to in court, it just sounded an awful lot like today was gonna be very typical, sort of a run of the mill day for her. Nothing too crazy, no. No big decisions looming. And so pretty soon, you know, the two of them were just having their breakfast, and it was just a very relaxed morning. And at some point, Michael told Joan that because of his injury, he actually was not going into the office today. He was going to be working from home. And so pretty soon they wrapped up their breakfast, they cleaned up, and then before long, Joan was ready to go. She grabbed her stuff and she said goodbye to her husband, and then out the door she went, hopped in her car, and drove off to court. About half an hour later, around 9am, Michael was getting ready to start his day at the house when he saw Joan's mother, Donna, coming down the stairs. Donna was 89 years old and needed two canes just to walk. And she'd been hospitalized for sepsis the previous year. So since Joan and Michael had extra space in their home, they had offered to let her stay with them so she wouldn't be alone and they could help her if they needed to. And so Michael, despite being hurt himself, he immediately got up and hobbled over and helped Donna get down the last few steps. And then he led her back over to the dining room and helped her sit in her favorite chair. And then after she was situated and she said that she didn't need anything else, Michael thought, okay, now I'm going to start my day. And so he gathered up his things and he headed downstairs into the basement where his home office was. When Michael reached the bottom of the basement steps, he hobbled his way down this hallway that led to a door. He opened the door up, and inside was his home office. In he went, and he sat down at his desk, and there was already some files on the desk that he needed to sift through. And so he picked them up and began looking through the files, figuring out where he was gonna start for the day. And as he was sitting there, he thought he heard something in the closet, the utility closet that was in the home office that he was in. And the door to the utility closet was shut. And he just sat there and he listened. And again he heard what sounded like rustling or something inside of this closet. And so he thought, you know, maybe it's the furnace that's, you know, working extra hard right now. Maybe it's making some weird sounds or something. But, you know, for whatever reason, he's thinking, there's something happening in this closet. I want to see what it is. And so he gets up and he hobbles his way over to the closet. And then right as he's hearing more rustling inside, he turns the doorknob and he opens up this closet. At 5pm that night, Michael's wife, Joan, walked through the parking garage at the federal courthouse and. And got into her car. She was feeling a bit unsettled because she had called Michael a couple of times that afternoon, but there had been no answer. And this was just really unlike him. In fact, this was so unusual that Joan had actually gotten in touch with her daughter Meg after the school day ended and asked her, you know, have you been in touch with dad? And Meg said that she hadn't, but she had gone home after school, and she had grabbed some workout clothes in the house before leaving again. And she said when she was in the house, she had not seen her dad or, you know, Joan's mom. So her grandmother Donna, she said the house was quiet. And I just assumed that dad and grandma were asleep upstairs or something. It took Joan about half an hour to drive home. And when she pulled into the driveway around 5:30 that night, it was getting dark. And so she pulls into her driveway, she gets out. She. She's still pretty anxious because she just hasn't heard from Michael or her mom at this point. And she she goes up to the front door, she unlocks it, she steps inside, and right away, she calls out for Michael, but there's no answer. She calls out for her mom, there's no answer. And so she walks around the first floor again. No sign of any issues here. Her husband and her mom are not around. She eventually makes her way upstairs, hoping to find them asleep in their beds. But she gets up there, and she checks the bedrooms and all the rooms upstairs, and there's no one up there. And so the only place left to look in the house was the basement. But at this hour, it just made no sense that Michael or her mom would be in the basement. And so eventually, you know, even though she felt really uneasy, she went back to the first floor. She went to the doorway that led down to the stairs into the basement, and she took a deep breath. She turned on the lights inside of the stairwell down to the basement, and she called out for Michael and her mom, but still no answer. And then down the stairs she went. When she got to the base of the stairs, she looked down that hallway that led to Michael's office, and she saw first there was nothing. She didn't see anything. But on the floor, right outside of Michael's office, she saw what looked like blood on the ground. And so at this point, she panicked. She ran down the hallway. She's screaming for Michael. She grabs the door handle. She opens it up, and it's like everything she saw in there was so shocking, it was like her brain couldn't process it. And she just shut the door right away, like she. She couldn't handle what she had just seen. And then a moment later, she had bolted back upstairs and called 911. In the late evening of February 28, 2005, Special Agent Douglas Secom of the Chicago FBI office ducked under the crime scene tape around the Lefkow family's home. So about 30 minutes earlier, the 911 call had come out of this home from Joan about what appeared to be a murder at this address. And since the caller, Joan, had identified herself as a federal judge, the Chicago police had immediately called the FBI to take part in this investigation. And so now Special Agent Secum flashed his badge to one of the uniformed officers who was standing outside, right near the edge of the crime scene tape. And he asked them, where is Judge Joan Lefkow? And the officer said that Judge Joan, along with her daughters. So not just Meg, her teenage daughter, but also Joan's three adult daughters who no longer lived at home. They had all been taken together to a safe house by the U.S. marshals. And so Cecum, after hearing this, stepped inside the house, and he found a whole bunch of forensic teams already hard at work, sweeping every room for evidence. And as he walked through the living room and the kitchen on the main floor, he didn't see any signs of blood or a struggle of any kind. And he also saw that, you know, TV and other expensive looking electronics were still in place. And so he didn't think this was a robbery gone wrong. Cecum eventually found his way to the stairs that led down into the basement. And so down he went. And he found there were a few officers and a crime scene photographer that were down there gathered around a door that was at the end of the hallway. And so Cecum made his way down the hallway. He pushed past the group of people, and there inside of this home office, he saw two dead bodies. There was a man who was lying face down. And then right next to him was also an elderly woman who was lying face up. And there was just a big pool of blood underneath both of them. Cecum immediately noticed that both the victims had fairly obvious gunshot wounds to their heads. And then when he knelt down to get a better look, he also found shell casings scattered around on the floor. So he figured that very likely these two clearly have been shot, but more specifically, they've been shot and killed in this room. On the other side of this office, Seecombe saw there was a closet, and its doors were open, and it appeared to be a utility closet. And so Sikhem, he walked over and he stepped inside, and inside of it was this big furnace. And then next to it on the ground, he found there was a 12 pack of beer bottles, except one of the bottles was missing. And so Sikham looked around inside the closet. He didn't see the 12th bottle. And then he turned around and looked back into the office. And as he's looking back into the office, he notices there's this window high up inside of the office. And it actually was out to the ground floor. Cause this is a basement, right? This is a window that leads to the first floor of the house, if you will. And there's like a cutout inside of the office, like a windowsill, almost like a ledge that is part of this window, right? So you could actually place things on this windowsill if you wanted to. And he looked up into this window, and he saw there was a single beer bottle sitting on that windowsill on that ledge. And. And also we saw the window itself was shattered. And so right away Seecombe's thinking, like, okay, did the killer leave behind this beer? And if so, why? Like, is this a message? Are they leaving the bottle here on purpose for us to find it, or is this a mistake? And so Secum, he called for a forensics officer to come over and bag this additional bottle, the 12th bottle, and swab it for DNA and fingerprints in case, you know, this was left behind by the killer. And so the forensics officer, he placed this bottle inside of a plastic bag. And then he asked Secombe to leave the office and head upstairs for a minute so that he and his team could spray the entire basement with a chemical called leucocrystal violet, which can illuminate traces of blood that are not necessarily visible to the naked eye. And so, as Seecombe left the office and began making his way upstairs, he began thinking about what he had just learned. So you have a broken window leading into the home office, where it appears the shooting took place. Place. And the fact that, you know, the window was broken does suggest that's how the killer or killers got in. And if that's the case, it likely means the killer or killers did not know the victims personally. You know, they didn't have a key to the house, for example, or they weren't going to be let in if they showed up at the front door. But then you have this weird beer bottle thing, like if the. If the killer left behind beer in that utility closet and this extra beer bottle up on the ledge of the window, that feels really sloppy. And so that's sort of at odds with the idea that this was, like, an intentional, you know, outsider coming to do this hit. And then he's also thinking like, you know, the elephant in the room here is that Joan, you know, Judge Joan Lefkow, this is her husband and her mother. You know, was that intentional? Were they trying to sort of indirectly hurt Judge Joan? Or was Judge Joan the target? Or was this coincidence? 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 when you are miles away from anywhere familiar. 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But obviously this chemical had still revealed the blood traces. And so Secombe thought to himself that if the killer or killers stuck around to clean up after themselves, it suggests that they went into this home with the intention of committing murder. It was just a matter of why. Was it Joan the target? Was it her loved ones? Why did that happen? Who would want to harm the Lefkows? And so Sikom went down the street, knocking on doors and speaking to various neighbors, trying to get a feel for, you know, what the Lefkows were like. But, you know, after speaking to many people on the block who tried to be very helpful, you know, Cecum really hadn't learned much of anything. Like, no one really had all that much to say. But eventually Seecombe found his way to a church that was in the neighborhood, and he knocked on the door and. And a moment later, the pastor opened the door and Secum explained that, you know, unfortunately a double murder had taken place down the block and they were here investigating. And have you seen or heard anything unusual in the past, you know, several hours? And the pastor at first is just totally taken aback by what he's been told. He can't believe it. But then he's like, you know, what? Actually, yeah, something strange did happen earlier today. The pastor said he had seen this red carpet just loitering nearby that had two men inside of it, and they were apparently smoking and drinking cans of what appeared to be Coca Cola, but they just sort of didn't fit in with the neighborhood. Like the pastor didn't know who they were, and it just. It just seems sort of odd that they were here. And so just considering what he's been told about this double murder, he basically said, you know, you might want to look into who those guys were. And so Secum asked the pastor if he'd gotten a good enough look at these two men to maybe be able to help their sketch artist come up with a composite sketch. And the pastor said, yeah, I think so. And so Sikkim's like, okay, great, we're going to do that. But also, can you specifically point out where this car was, like, outside, so I can go look at the area? And the pastor, he pointed across the street, and he said, you know, right over there. And so Sikum, he looks where the pastor is pointing, and sure enough, he could see on the ground there were all these cigarette butts and clearly an empty Coke can. And so Cecum called over a forensics team, and they scooped the stuff up, and they sent it off to be tested. Later that same night, Cecum sat down at a table at the safe house where Joan and her daughters were all staying. And Joan, she walked over and set a glass of water in front of him, and then she sat down across from him. And Secum thought Joan seemed surprisingly calm and composed, considering her husband and her mother have just been brutally murdered. But he also could sense that underneath the surface of Joan's sort of calm affect, she seemed furious. And so Cecum and Joan, they spoke a little bit about, you know, this great tragedy and how awful this was. However, pretty quickly, Cecum just sort of got into asking pointed questions of Joan, and Joan answered them. Cecum asked Joan about the 12 pack of beer that was in the utility closet in the basement. And she told him it was leftover from a party that they had thrown earlier that same week. And she said she was the one who actually put those beers in the closet. And when she did, she said they were all unopened. And this was great news for Cecum and the investigation, because that meant that the beer up on that windowsill in the basement almost certainly was handled by the killer or killers. But still, the idea of somebody breaking into this house and stumbling across some beer in the closet and stopping to actually have a drink right in the middle of committing a double murder and then leaving the beer bottle behind, it just felt like a really weird decision to make. And so Secum wondered if maybe there was something at play here that literally prevented the killer from thinking clearly in the moment, like mental Illness or maybe drug use. So at this point, Seecom had already come to the conclusion that very likely Donna, Joan's elderly mother, was not the intended target. She's 89. She doesn't have any known enemies. She's not hurting anyone. Like, she's not a target here. But perhaps Michael Jones, husband, could have been the target. After all, at one point, he had actually run for Cook county judge a few years ago. And even though he had lost, entering politics was a surefire way to make enemies. So it was possible he could have been the target and Donna was collateral damage. But most likely of all still was that Joan was the one being targeted. Cecum knew that as a federal judge, there could be literally hundreds of people holding very serious grudges against her. And so Seecombe told Joan that back at the command post, there was a team of detectives going through her entire docket and making a list of everyone who might have had a ruling that they were not happy with in the past few years. But maybe to help speed things along, he asked Joan if she could think of anybody off the top of her head who might have been responsible for this. And Joan, sort of without hesitation, said, yeah. In fact, there were three cases that came to mind. The first case was about a guy named Shawn Peters, who was the leader of a local gang. And Joan had given him a very lengthy prison sentence. And so she said any of his fellow gang members, in theory, could have come after her in retaliation. The second case she brought up was about this armed robber whose name was Richard Young. And she said he just really scared her in the courtroom. Like, he himself was just a very intimidating and sort of threatening person. And so he seemed capable of doing something like this. And she said the third case was about Matthew Hale. And before she even got into the explanation, Secum recognized the name, because at the time, Hale was one of the most notorious white supremacists in all of Illinois. Six years earlier, one of his followers had committed this horrible shooting spree that left two people dead and nine others injured. Joan said that Hale had actually targeted her a couple of years ago in the wake of this trademark dispute, A church in Oregon with the same name as Hale's group had sued them, and Joan had actually enforced a ruling that forced Hale to change his group's name. Joan said that just the year before, Hale had actually been convicted of plotting to kill her over this issue. Jones said he was still in prison for those charges. So Secum realized he could not have pulled the trigger himself, but clearly he had many Followers who were willing to do things like this for him. The next day. So, March 1st, Secum sat down from notorious white supremacist Matthew Hale in a visiting room at the prison in Chicago where he was incarcerated. Hale was this very clean cut, very stern looking man in his mid-30s, and he didn't seem remotely rattled to be sitting across from an FBI agent who basically was insinuating that Hale was a potential suspect in a double homicide. And so Secombe told Hale about how Joan Lefkow's husband and her elderly mother had been brutally murdered inside of her home. And in response, Hale just laughed. He said that he and his followers had nothing to do with those murders. But, you know, this was more or less what seecom had expected Hale to say, because Hale was actually still awaiting sentencing for having tried to kill Joan. So, of course he's not gonna admit here to arranging another murder. He's gonna say, no, I had nothing to do with it. Secum told him that it really didn't matter if he denied this, because at this very moment, agents were seizing his phone and computer records. And if he had said anything at all about Joan Lefkow and her family to any of his followers, they would find out. But Hale, he just sat back and smiled and continued to insist that he's like, look, I really had nothing to do with this one. Like, nothing at all. You will find nothing. And Cecum couldn't help but think that Hale seemed so calm and so confident that really, deep down, he thought to himself, maybe he's telling the truth. Later that same afternoon, Cecum hunched over a desk in the corner of the Chicago Police Command Post. At this point, the police, the FBI, and the US Marshals were all working on this case as part of a joint task force. And all the officers on the task force had moved their equipment into the police precinct so the investigation could be centralized in a conference room. To his left, Secombe could see police officers comparing photos of Matthew Hale's followers to the composite sketches of the two men in the red car who the pastor had seen near the crime scene. And at a desk to Seecombe's right, there was another FBI agent who was listening to a recording of a phone call that Hale had recently made to his mother. The FBI at this point, was taping all of Hale's phone calls in case he said anything incriminating. And meanwhile, other task force officers were sorting through this huge pile of letters that Hale had received in prison. However, after going through these letters, there was no mention of the Lefkows anywhere. However, at some point, Cecum would join these other officers and and continue to sort through all this mail in case something got missed. And as he was sorting through, you know, months worth of mail, something actually did catch his attention. For months, Hale had been exchanging letters with this woman whose name was Kathleen Robertazzo. Basically every other day they were speaking. And Hale did not write to anybody else nearly that often, not even his own family. So this woman was clearly very important. Now, on the surface, nothing in these letters between Hale and Kathleen was incriminating. However, given the frequency of communication, Seecombe had to wonder if maybe these two could be talking in code, like maybe they are talking about the Lefkows, but we just can't tell. The return address on these letters was for a suburb in Chicago about 30 miles away from the prison where Hale was at. So Secum bundled up all the letters from Kathleen and stuck them inside of an envelope. He would need them as evidence to get a search warrant.

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[Narrator (Mr. Ballin)]

Everybody learns a language for different reasons. Maybe you just want to watch K dramas without subtitles, or you want to talk with family members but in their native language. Your life is unique, so your language learning should be too. I remember trying to learn a new language before a trip, and most of the systems that I tried felt pretty generic, but with Rosetta Stone, it was completely different. It adjusted to how I was learning, so it felt more like I was actually preparing to use this language, not just, you know, learning how to regurgitate it. Rosetta Stone Sapphire is designed for personalized learning, helping you go beyond generic lessons and focus on the topics that matter most to you. If you want to take your language skills to the next level, don't wait to try Rosetta Stone Sapphire. Mr. Ballin Podcast listeners can get 20% off their Rosetta Stone Sapphire subscription when they sign up. Today, you'll get unlimited access to all 25 Rosetta Stone languages plus all the new Sapphire learning tools. Visit rosettastone.commrballin to redeem your 20% off again, go to rosettastone.commr. and start learning a language for real. The next evening, March 2, 2005, Special Agent Douglas Secombe led a team of FBI agents up the driveway of a suburban home just outside of Chicago. And as they made their way up the driveway, they saw the car parked. There was red, just like the car the pastor had seen outside the church that had been loitering near where Michael and Donna had been killed. Cecum made his way up to the front door, and he knocked. And then a moment later, a woman answered.

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And.

[Narrator (Mr. Ballin)]

And he said, are you Kathleen Robertazzo? And she said, yes. And he said, okay. And he held up a search warrant, and he said, we're here to search your house. And so Cecum stayed outside with Kathleen while the other agents went inside and swept the whole house. And Kathleen seemed really annoyed by this whole thing, but definitely not that surprised. And so while the team was searching the home, Cecum turned to Kathleen and asked her about her relationship with Matthew Hale. And he also asked her if she agreed with his, you know, white supremacist views. And Kathleen admitted that, you know, she did have a relationship with Matthew, but she corrected Cecum and said, you know, I'm not a white supremacist. I'm a white separatist. Secum sighed and moved on to asking Kathleen about her whereabouts on the day of Michael and Donna's murders. And Kathleen insisted that she had nothing to do with that. She gave Seecombe her alibi for the whole day of February 28th. And while Secombe was writing down the details on his notepad, the other agents came back out of the house carrying a computer. When Kathleen began complaining that she needed that computer for her work, Seecombe told her that they'd return it as soon as they searched it. And then before Secombe put his notepad away, he looked down to the driveway, and he looked at Kathleen's red car, and he remembered that he actually hadn't written down the license plate or the make or the model. But as he's looking at this car, he's realizing that there's no way this car matched the description of the pastor's red car that he had seen loitering outside of the church. Like, this was definitely not the same car that was suspected of being involved in the murder. Two days later, on the evening of Friday, March 4th. So now, four days after Michael and Donna were killed, Special Agent Secombe carried a cup of coffee into a meeting room with the other officers on the task force. And he looked around the room, and everybody just looked completely exhausted. It would turn out Kathleen's alibi had checked out, and her red car was definitely not the red car that had been spotted by the pastor. And there had been nothing on her computer that they had taken to search. So basically, she was cleared. And so Secombe and his fellow FBI agents over the past couple of days, this is right after Kathleen was cleared, they had gone ahead and expanded their search and began interviewing more and more of Matthew Hale's followers. And a lot of them were very confrontational. And at least three people were detained for starting fights with the investigators. But one by one, their alibis began to check out. And so none of them were tied to Michael and Donna's murders, at least not yet. Now, a lot of Hale's followers had criminal records, so Secum was hoping that maybe once fingerprint evidence came back from the crime lab, it would turn up a match. But deep down, realistically, Secum was starting to doubt that anybody in Hale's circle was behind this. Additionally, the task force had investigated that gang leader Joan had mentioned Shawn Peters, as well as that armed robber, Richard Young, and they both also had been cleared as suspects. And so now, you know, Seecombe couldn't help but feel like, you know, we're four days into this investigation, this pretty high profile investigation, and it sort of seems like we really don't have much to show for it. Now, it was the case that there were still dozens of other people on Joan's court document that maybe could have wanted to kill her that Joan was not aware of. But, you know, it was going to take time to keep sorting through all these people. And right now they just. They didn't have traction in any one direction. It was like everything was sort of becoming a dead end. And so as Seecombe is sitting in this room full of the other agents, and they're all sort of at a loss for what to do next. He was thinking to himself, is it possible that we've all just sort of wrongfully jumped to conclusions? We all basically assumed that this attack was, you know, targeted at Joan. But Seecom's thinking to himself, he couldn't remember any other case where a judge's family was killed and not the judge themself. Just then, Secum's supervisor from the Chicago FBI office kicked off the meeting by announcing that the agency was putting up a $50,000 reward to the public for information on the murders. Now, the task force by this point had received over 200 tips, but the supervisor said, like, clearly that wasn't enough. And so we're going to use this Reward to try to entice people who might have been too afraid to come forward to come forward. We'll pay them. And so hopefully this leads to better tips. The next Tuesday. So, nine days after Michael and Donna's murders, Secombe walked into the command post. The task force had been working all weekend, following up on hundreds and hundreds of calls that had come in since the reward money was announced. But it still didn't really seem like they were getting anywhere. And so Cecum, he sat down at his desk and he opened up a folder, and he was about to get started when his cell phone rang. And he answered it, and it was the deputy director of the crime lab. And so Cecum's heart began to pound with anticipation as the deputy director told him that they had analyzed those fingerprints found on that beer bottle in the basement of the crime scene up in the window ledge. And after they had run it through the database, they had found a match. Based on forensic evidence and a confession from the killer, this is what police believe happened to Michael Lefkow and Donna Humphrey. On February 28, 2005, Around 4:30am, while everybody in the Lefkow house was still asleep, the killer smashed through that basement window and climbed down into the basement, and with them was a gun. Their plan was to hide in the utility closet all day. And then once everybody inside the house cleared out, they would leave the utility closet, sneak upstairs, and they would wait. And when the time was right, they would jump out and they would ambush the person that they wanted to seek revenge on. But things did not go according to plan. Around 9am, the killer was still in the closet when they heard footsteps coming downstairs, coming down the hallway and into the office where they were. And then they heard the sound of somebody sitting in that desk chair and papers shuffling around. And then a moment later, they heard the sound of footsteps as somebody approached the closet. And then before long, the closet doors opened, and there was this man standing there, looking really surprised. He was on crutches, and he's looking at the killer. And the killer just panicked. And they raised their gun and they shot this man point blank in the head. And he crumpled to the ground. And the killer's looking down, and there's just blood going everywhere. And they're like, I can't believe what I've done. And then a moment later, the killer hears somebody calling out, michael. Michael, is that you? And he looks down the hallway, and he sees this elderly woman shuffling down the hallway, looking really concerned, who clearly just heard the gunshot and sort of In a continued state of panic, the killer rushed out of the closet, went down the hallway, raised the gun, and shot this woman in the head as well. And as Donna is bleeding all over the hallway, the killer put their gun away, reached down, scooped her up, and dragged her over into the office and sort of dropped her next to Michael. At this point, the killer's looking down at what they've done, and they're thinking, well, at this point, I better make sure they really are dead. So they pull out their gun again, and they shoot Donna and Michael one more time just to make sure they would not talk to anyone about what they had seen. After that, the killer went back into the utility closet, and their eyes landed on that pack of beer sitting on the floor. And they felt like that was exactly what they needed right now to calm their nerves. So they reached down and they pulled out one of those beers, and they cracked it open, and they took a sip while they thought about what their next move was going to be. And so as the killer is drinking this beer, they're thinking to themselves, well, I've just killed two people that I did not intend to kill. Those were not my targets. And so they felt kind of bad, like, two basically innocent people had been murdered here. And so it made the killer think, like, should I still stick around and wait for my intended target? And eventually they decided, you know what? I need to change my plan. And so the killer, they set their beer bottle down on the windowsill. Then they went and found a sponge and some bleach, and they began to try to clean up all the blood in the hallway. But as they're doing this, you know, they're realizing there's just so much blood out here. There's bodies and lots more blood in the office. Like, this is too much. Like, I can't possibly clean all this. And so finally, around 1:15pm the killer just sort of was like, well, this is as good as I can do in terms of cleanup. I'm just gonna leave. And so they did. They left the house, and they left behind that bottle in the windowsill that would have their DNA and fingerprints all over it. The killer was a man named Bart Ross, and his intended target was Joan Lefkow. But Bart was not like a hardened criminal. Bart was a cancer patient who had tried to sue his doctors after he lost part of his jaw. During treatment, Ross had developed a vendetta against these doctors who had left him disfigured. And over the last few years, he'd become increasingly paranoid and detached from reality. And he ultimately blamed Joan Lefkow for dismissing his medical malpractice suit and preventing him from getting justice. And so Bart had put together this list of 25 doctors, lawyers and judges he wanted to kill, and Joan just happened to be at the top of the list. But after going into her home with the intent to kill Joan but actually just killing Michael and Donna, Ross was so shaken up by it that he gave up on attacking Joan and just left the scene. But he obviously left behind crucial clues that got him caught. Ross's fingerprints and DNA were found inside of Joan's home, not just on that beer bottle, but elsewhere in the house. However, his fingerprints and DNA were not found on those cigarette butts in the coke can that was left on the curb where that suspicious red car had been parked. And also, Ross looked nothing like the composite sketches of those two men that were seen inside of that red car. So in the end, the investigators believed that the red car probably had nothing to do with the murders, and Ross simply acted alone. On March 9, one day after the fingerprint results came back, Wisconsin police officers spotted Ross's van near a federal courthouse in Milwaukee. But as they approached his van, Ross fatally shot himself. However, inside of his van, police found a note confessing in detail to the murders of Michael Lefkow and Donna Humphrey. 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 Gallagher Research and Fact checking by Shelley Shue Samantha Van Huse 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 Locascio and Jordan Stidham Production support by Antonio Minotta and Delaina Corley Artwork by Jessica Claugston Kiner Theme Song Something Wicked by Ross Bugden thank you for listening to the Mr. Ballin podcast. And just a reminder, every new and exclusive episode we put out on the Mr. Ballin podcast you can also now watch on the Mr. Ballin YouTube channel that very same day. And trust me, some of these stories you truly have to see to believe. Again, my YouTube channel is just called Mr. Ballin. If you want to listen to episodes one week early and ad free, you can subscribe to SiriusXM Podcast plus on Apple Podcasts or visit siriusxm.com podcastplus to listen with Spotify or another app of your choice. So that's gonna do it. I really appreciate your support. Until next time. See ya.

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