Today's podcast features two separate unique stories that are both themed around the same thing.
True crime stories with a shocking plot twist at the end.
The audio from both of these stories has been pulled from my YouTube channel and has been remastered for today's episode.
The links to the original YouTube videos are in the description.
The first story you'll hear is called Basketball with Friends, and it is about a brutal crime that has two significant plot twists.
The second story you'll hear is called What Happened in Room 348, and it is about a crime, or more specifically, a crime scene, that made absolutely no sense until detectives noticed a very small detail.
The first story.
Basketball with Friends is very distressing and involves harm to a minor.
As such, listener discretion is advised.
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 podcast, because that's all we do, and we upload twice a week once on Monday and once on Thursday.
So if that's of interest to you, please offer to get the five-star review buttons car detailed.
But as soon as they give you the keys, simply fill their car with an angry pack of Asian murder hornets.
Also, please subscribe to the Mr Boland podcast wherever you listen to podcasts, so you don't miss any of our weekly uploads.
It begins here.
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Okay, let's get into our first story, which is called Basketball with Friends.
Right in the middle of the United States is a quiet little town called Milstadt, Illinois.
Milstadt is home to about 4000 people and had it not been for Ashley Reeves, only those 4000 people and their friends and family would even know that Milstadt existed.
In 2006, Ashley Reeves was a 17-year-old high school student who lived with her parents and her younger sister Casey, in Milstadt.
Ashley was an excellent student who, even though she was over a year from her high school graduation, she was already thinking about what colleges she wanted to go to.
She was also extremely likable and outgoing and she had this huge infectious smile.
And so she had tons of friends and she had a very serious boyfriend who her parents adored.
His name was Jeremy and he was a high school student as well.
On the morning of Thursday April 27th of that year, Ashley got up and, like every other morning, she got ready for school alongside her sister Casey.
And then, right before Ashley stepped out to head off to school, she told her parents that after school she had a job interview on the other side of town and then, after her interview, her plan was to play basketball with some friends and then she'd be home.
And so her parents said OK well hey, good luck with your job interview and just make sure you're home before 1030 pm.
And so Ashley said, no problem.
I'll see you tonight.
And then she left.
That afternoon after school, Ashley made her way to Jeremy's locker, And when she got to him, Jeremy handed her his keys to his car.
He had an SUV and he was lending it to her for the day so she could go to the interview and then go play basketball.
And so Ashley took the keys.
She thanked him.
She gave him a hug and then she turned and she walked down the hallway where she met up with her sister casey, at her locker, and then the two girls left the school.
They went out to the student parking lot.
They found jeremy's suv, they hopped inside and then ashley began driving them back to their house.
When they got there, Casey hopped out of the car, she said bye to Ashley, and then Ashley left their house and she began driving to Fairview Heights, which was a town about 15 miles away where her interview was going to be.
Several hours later, around 10 pm, Ashley's parents had not heard from their daughter, and it was getting close to her curfew.
And so they asked Casey if she had spoken with Ashley.
And, you know, did she know how her interview went?
Did she know when she was going to be home?
But Casey would tell them actually no, I haven't talked to Ashley since she dropped me off from school.
And so Ashley's parents said, OK, no big deal.
And they called Ashley, but Ashley didn't pick up.
So they sent her a series of text messages.
But after a couple of minutes of not getting any response, they decided to just call her boyfriend Jeremy, to see if maybe he knew what was going on with Ashley.
But when they spoke to Jeremy, he would say that you know, I haven't spoken with Ashley since I gave her the keys to my SUV.
And I've actually been trying to talk to her all day.
I've been calling her and texting her, but I still haven't heard back.
And so at this point, Ashley's parents were starting to get really worried.
And so, after hanging up with Jeremy, they began calling other friends of Ashley's to see if maybe they had spoken to her and knew what was going on.
But all of her friends that they spoke to all had the same story.
We haven't talked to her since the end of school and she's not returning our calls or texts.
And so Ashley's mother, she just sensed that something was terribly wrong.
And so without any hesitation, she just called the police.
Now, the police in this town were used to getting calls every now and again from parents whose teenage child had run off and they were concerned about them.
But virtually every time the police investigated they would find the teenager had just kind of been blowing off their friends and family and they would pop up maybe a couple hours later totally unharmed.
But the Milstadt police would later remark when they heard Ashley's mother's voice over the phone.
The fear in her voice was so pronounced it immediately pushed the police department to take this case very seriously.
And so that night, right after this phone call, the Milstadt Police Department went out in force to try to locate Jeremy's SUV, the car that Ashley had been driving around that day.
And the first place they went to to look for this car was Laderman Park, which is this very popular public park that has a really popular basketball court that lots of teenagers would go to all the time.
And Ashley was known to frequent that park.
And this park was located about halfway between Fairview Heights, where her interview was, and Milstadt, where she lived.
So they go to Laderman Park, and right away, sitting in the parking lot, they find Jeremy's SUV.
But Ashley is not in the car.
She's nowhere near the car.
And when they searched the car, there was nothing of significance inside of it.
There was just some of Ashley's clothes lying around.
The police would spend all night and well into the morning combing Laderman Park looking for any sign of Ashley, but there wasn't one.
And so, as the sun came up and the police were nowhere closer to finding this girl, they began to suspect that perhaps foul play was involved.
And so the first person they hauled in for questioning was Ashley's boyfriend, Jeremy.
But as soon as he sat in the interrogation room He demonstrated a real concern for Ashley.
He had a rock-solid alibi and he basically was an open book.
And so they quickly ruled him out as a suspect.
And then the police basically began hauling in all of Ashley's friends and acquaintances, family members, basically anybody that knew her.
They were bringing them into the station to find out if they knew anything that could help them figure out where Ashley was.
And, more specifically, the police were really looking to see if any of these people were hiding something.
And sure enough, a few of the friends that were brought in were.
According to a few of Ashley's closest friends, Ashley was in not one, but two romantic relationships.
One was the public relationship she had with Jeremy, and the other was a secret relationship that was actually illegal.
In order to hide this forbidden second relationship, Ashley would tell her family and her friends that she was going to the park to play basketball, when in reality she was going to the park to meet up with the secret second partner.
And the day before when Ashley went missing, Her friends told police that that was the exact reason she was going to Laderman Park.
The police got the name of the secret person from Ashley's friends.
His name was Sam Shelton. and the police tracked him down.
When they found him, he was at a baseball practice, but the police didn't care.
They marched right onto the baseball diamond and they grabbed Sam and they brought him back to the police station.
And then, when he got there, they sat him down in the interrogation room, and he's still wearing his baseball uniform.
And they ask him about his relationship with Ashley.
And he immediately denies it and says he does not have a relationship with Ashley.
He's got no idea why he's here.
But pretty quickly, after a few questions, Sam's answers became inconsistent.
And so the police just ratcheted up the pressure on him.
And then finally, after 12 hours of questioning, the interrogator brings up Sam's mother and his grandmother.
And he says to Sam you know how would they feel if they knew you were lying to the police right now?
And this just broke Sam.
And so he cracked.
Now, at this point, the police were already expecting the worst when it came to Ashley, but they were not ready for just how brutal Sam's confession would be about what exactly he did to her.
The following is an account based on his confession.
30 hours earlier, Ashley wrapped up her interview in Fairview Heights and she made her way to Laderman Park to meet up with Sam.
And now it's not clear exactly how they met up, but eventually the two of them did connect and they made their way over to Sam's car where they became intimate.
Afterwards, the two are sitting in the front two seats of Sam's car.
Sam is in the driver's seat and Ashley is in the passenger seat.
And while they're sitting there, something happens that causes this huge fight between the two of them.
And at some point, Sam tells Ashley to get out of the car.
But Ashley refuses.
She wants to talk to him.
She wants to deal with their issues.
But Sam's not having it.
And so he gets so mad at her that he lunges across the center console of the car and he puts Ashley into a vicious chokehold.
Now he tells police his plan was to kind of yank her out of the car, but he squeezed so hard around her neck that he heard this loud popping sound coming from her neck.
It was the sound of her neck breaking.
And so as soon as he heard it, Sam let go, and Ashley kind of crumpled forward and hit the front dashboard of the car.
And so Sam is staring at her, wondering what he should do.
He's kind of looking around, making sure no one saw what he just did.
And then he reached over and lifted her back up to see if she was still alive.
And he saw she was.
But instead of trying to get her help, he decides right then and there he's going to kill her.
And so he reaches over and he begins choking her.
But after several minutes of throttling her, she just wouldn't die.
And so Sam pulled his belt off of his waist and he wrapped it around Ashley's neck.
And then he began pulling.
But he would tell police he couldn't stand looking at Ashley's face while he did this.
He said she was staring right at him.
Her tongue was coming out of her mouth.
She was frothing and her face was turning this ghastly shade of gray blue.
And so at some point, when she still hadn't died, he released the belt from around her neck and he turned her body so she was facing the window, away from him, and then he repositioned the belt on her neck and then he put his foot on her back to use as leverage, and then he pulled as hard as he possibly could on her throat for quite a while until the belt actually broke around her neck.
And then at that point, he checked to make sure she was dead.
And when she was, he stuffed her down into the floorboards in front of the passenger seat.
And then he drove several miles across town to another park called Citizens Park that was very heavily forested.
And once he parked in the parking lot, he looked around to make sure no one was watching.
And then he dragged Ashley's body out of the car and deep into the woods where he abandoned her.
It would turn out Ashley was far from the only teenage girl who found Sam Shelton attractive.
Many teenage girls in the area thought he was the perfect catch.
He was smart, he was handsome and he had these beautiful, striking blue eyes that you couldn't help but just stare at.
However, there was something unique about Sam that made him fundamentally different than all the other guys at their schools.
Sam was not a student.
He was a 27-year-old middle school teacher in Milstadt and he also was the high school baseball coach.
He had never been Ashley's teacher directly.
However, years earlier when she was in middle school, he had begun grooming her for exploitation.
And so fast forward to 2006, when she was 17.
He had effectively manipulated her into believing she was in this romantic relationship with him, when in reality he was just using his position of power to abuse her.
In addition to being a school teacher, Sam was also an aspiring pro wrestler.
He would often compete in local showcases under the nickname The Teacher.
While Sam was probably nowhere near good enough to actually become a professional wrestler, like you would see on TV, he was extremely strong and really knew how to do a chokehold.
And so when he attacked Ashley and put her in that vicious chokehold, she had no chance at escaping.
She was completely doomed.
Shortly after his confession, Sam would tell the police that he would take them out into the forest of Citizens Park to try to find Ashley's body.
But when they got there it was late.
It had been raining for several hours and Sam right away acted like he couldn't figure out exactly where he had left her.
And so the police were actually starting to think, you know, is he lying to us?
Is this whole thing just kind of made up?
Did he really attack her?
Is she really out here?
But after about 30 minutes of the police and Sam kind of trudging around the thick forest, one of the officers suddenly sees something on the ground.
He raises his flashlight.
And there in a clearing is Ashley's body.
And so the police and Sam, they walk over to her and they're standing above her ruined body.
Her neck is totally bent at a grotesque angle.
She's covered in bugs.
But as they're standing there and they're watching her, her chest suddenly starts to move.
She wasn't dead.
She had been left for dead and she had been out in the woods with a broken neck for 30 hours in the freezing cold and the rain.
She only had a t-shirt and some pants on, but she was alive.
And so moments later, the paramedics, they come rushing into the forest.
They pick her up really gently.
They bring her out and they rush her to the hospital where she'd be put into a medically induced coma.
The doctors would tell her family that unfortunately, her injuries were just too serious and we don't expect her to ever wake up again.
But miraculously, she would.
Now she would have to relearn how to walk and talk and eat and drink, but she would do all of those things.
And today she is 32 years old.
She is happily married, she has two kids of her own and by and large she leads a very happy, normal life.
As for Sam Shelton, he was sentenced to 20 years in prison for attempted murder, and he's still in prison today.
However, he is up for parole in 2024.
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Hey listeners, big news for true crime lovers.
You can now enjoy this podcast ad-free on Amazon Music with your Prime membership.
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Dive into uninterrupted true crime stories today.
The next and final story of today's episode is called What Happened in Room 348?
On September 15 2010, a 55-year-old man named Greg Flanagan checked into the Elegante Hotel in Beaumont Texas, to start his work week.
As a young man, Greg had worked as a chief engineer on ocean-going vessels, spending months out at sea.
But in his middle age, he had reinvented himself as a landman.
It was Greg's job to secure leases of mineral rights and land for drilling.
Greg was slender and fit looking despite the fact that he never exercised and he smoked constantly.
He kept a close cropped white beard and he had the leathered skin of a lifelong outdoorsman.
Every Monday morning, Greg would make the two-hour commute in his pickup truck from Lafayette Louisiana, all the way to Beaumont Texas, where his company would always rent him a room.
The hotel itself was neither good nor bad, but to Greg, he didn't care.
He just needed a bed and a TV.
Once Greg walked inside, he had a bathroom immediately to his right, and then, a little bit farther in, was the main section of the hotel room, which was very basic.
Straight ahead there was a window that looked down onto a small pool that was lined with potted plants.
And then in the main space was a queen size bed tucked up against the right wall.
And then on the left wall was a TV.
Greg wheeled his one suitcase into the hotel room and he put it at the foot of the bed and he opened it up.
He pulled out the shirts that he wanted to keep wrinkled free for the week and he hung them in his closet.
Then he pulled out his toiletries that were kept in a cloth bag with a hook and he hooked those onto a towel rack.
Then he took off his very worn brown boots and his faded blue jeans and he slipped on some pajama pants.
Anytime Greg stayed at the Elegante, he rarely left his room.
There was a bar downstairs, but he wasn't a big drinker or socializer.
He preferred to just have quiet nights alone in his room watching TV.
So that night, Greg cranked the air conditioning to make sure it was as cold as it could get.
He liked to sleep in a very cold room.
And then he hopped on his bed and he put two big pillows behind his head and he rested up against the headboard.
And then he took a towel and he laid it out next to him and on the towel was his ashtray, his cigarettes, his lighter, his phone, the TV remote and a candy bar.
Then he picked up the TV remote, turned it on, flicked through the channels until he landed on one that was playing Iron Man 2 and he thought good enough, put the remote down, picked up his candy bar, opened it up, he ate a piece of his candy and then he grabbed a cigarette, lit up a cigarette and he began smoking.
The following morning Susie Greg's wife did not get a call from her husband, and he always called her every morning that he was gone.
That was their routine, and this was a big break from their routine.
And so she tried calling him and his phone rang and rang and rang and he never picked up.
And so then she called his Beaumont office and he didn't pick up.
But after the second or third time she called his coworkers, picked up the phone and they said hey, you know, Greg's not here.
He hasn't come into work yet.
And Susie felt concerned.
She felt like something was wrong.
And she said do you guys mind just going to his hotel room and knocking on his door and making sure he's okay?
And they said, sure, we'll go over there.
So the two coworkers head over to the hotel.
They knock on Greg's door.
He doesn't answer.
And so they go down and get the manager who comes up and opens Greg's door.
And right away, they find Greg lying dead in the middle of his hotel room.
The way Greg was positioned when they found him.
It looked like he had fallen to his knees and then fallen again onto his face and his left arm got kind of tucked underneath his body.
And still in his two left fingers was a cigarette that had not fallen from his hand but had burned down to the wick.
The room was exceptionally warm and Greg's skin was grayish blue.
Immediately after seeing Greg, the two coworkers called 911.
Shortly after the ambulance arrived at the hotel, Detective Scott Apple arrived in his cruiser.
Apple was a short guy, very, very fit.
He had silver hair that he spiked up.
He looked 100% cop and he worked basically 24 seven.
When he got up to room 348, there was no sign of a break-in.
Nothing had been disturbed inside of the room.
And there was no blood or obvious wound on Greg, with the exception of a slight abrasion on his cheek when he came down and hit his face on the rug.
He looked around the room and he found Greg's wallet that was sitting in the back pocket of his jeans.
And there was hundreds of dollars in his wallet that had not been taken.
So he ruled out robbery.
He went out into the hall and he began interviewing the other occupants of the surrounding rooms and no one had heard anything and no one had seen anything.
He went back into the hotel room and he began looking around for drugs of any kind or any substance that Greg might have taken that could have contributed to his death.
And there was nothing, no prescription pills, no alcohol, nothing.
Later that day, after the family had been notified of Greg's passing, his grief-stricken wife Susie called Detective Apple and she said you know, my husband did not take good care of himself.
He had a terrible diet.
He's been smoking like a chimney since he was a young teenager.
And he never saw a doctor.
And I always told him that if he wasn't careful, something like this was going to happen.
I always worried that he might have a heart attack or something.
So at this point, not only does Greg's family think he died of natural causes, Detective Apple also thinks the same thing.
He's thinking about what he saw in the hotel room, and there's no sign of any foul play.
It just looks like a guy whose lifestyle caught up to him.
Greg's body was sent to Dr. Tommy Brown, who in Beaumont, Texas, he was like the medical examiner.
He'd been doing this for years and years.
Dr. Brown had read ahead that they believed Greg had died of a heart attack or something like that.
And when his body was wheeled in in front of him, there was nothing he saw right away that contradicted that theory.
The only two marks that the doctor noted on the outside of Greg's body was the small abrasion on his face from where he landed on the rug, and then he also had another small abrasion on his crotch.
But beyond that, the rest of his body was completely unblemished.
When he looked inside of his body, it looked like someone had literally just crushed.
His torso was full of blood.
Food from his intestines had been ripped outside.
He had ribs broken, internal organs were lacerated, and there was a hole in his heart.
Dr. Brown was really confused at what he was looking at.
Because the severity of Greg's internal injuries were more consistent with someone who had been in a severe car crash or who had had a really heavy object land on them.
But Greg didn't have any significant external injuries that would support either of those two things happening to him, and he was found in the middle of a hotel room where there was nothing disturbed and no one had apparently seen or heard anything.
And so Dr. Brown says, look, I don't have all the answers here, but this was not natural.
This is a homicide.
And my best guess is he was beaten to death.
I know it doesn't really make sense because there's not any external injuries, but he suffered some significant trauma from somebody else.
And that's what killed him.
When Detective Apple got this report from the medical examiner, he was just as confused as Dr Brown was, but his attention turned to okay well, if he's been murdered, who would want to murder him?
And he began digging into Greg's background and he found that he was universally liked.
He was known for being incredibly courteous and polite.
He kept to himself.
He was in love with his wife and his wife loved him back.
There was no evidence of some scandal in the background.
He was just this really nice normal guy, and it didn't make any sense why anybody would want to kill him.
After a few months of getting nowhere and in reality he hadn't really even gotten started because there wasn't any good starting point.
The only thing he could find that was odd about the crime scene was that the room was particularly warm when they walked inside, which was not in keeping with how Greg would have kept the room.
But that doesn't explain why his insides were crushed.
And so he's gotten nowhere, and then he makes a discovery.
He found in the hotel's maintenance logs on the night Greg died.
He had been making popcorn in his microwave and managed to blow a fuse.
And it wasn't just his power.
Maybe Greg didn't know this, but he cut the power to both the room next to him, on his right, and on his left, and below him.
And so he calls down to the front desk and a maintenance guy came up and he reset the breaker.
This opened the door to two theories.
The first theory is the maintenance guy, who did have a criminal record when he came up to fix the breaker.
He attacked Greg.
But that was wildly speculative and there was no evidence to suggest that the maintenance guy would do that.
And so that was quickly ruled out.
The other theory was Greg's neighbors in room 349 were these two electricians who were big partiers and drinkers.
And so Detective Apple suggested that maybe when Greg accidentally cut the power to their room, they were really annoyed.
And they went outside in the hall and they saw Greg and they somehow realized he was to blame for this.
And in a drunken rage, they attacked him and killed him.
And that's what killed Greg.
And even though it was a stretch, it was the closest thing to a motive Detective Apple had found in anyone.
And so detective Apple put on a hidden camera and he went and interviewed these two electricians that were still staying in room 349.
And he said, when he spoke to them, they were very forthcoming.
They seemed very honest.
They were appropriately curious about what happened to Greg.
And all they said was, look, we had no interaction with him.
We did hear him coughing when we came back from the bar.
We were at the bar that night.
But honestly, that's the extent of our interaction with him.
The electricians offered up their cell phone numbers, their email addresses and said anything you need from us, we'd be happy to help.
We're really sorry this happened.
At this point, Detective Apple is back to square one.
No one knows what happened to this guy.
The one big lead he had, the maintenance records proved to be a total dead end.
And so unfortunately, this case went cold.
Seven months after Greg's death, where there had been absolutely no traction on figuring out what happened to him Susie, Greg's wife, decided she wanted to hire a private investigator.
And her friend suggested she call Ken Brennan, who was a famous private detective who was well known for being able to solve really complex cases.
And so on a whim, Susie calls Ken Brennan, not expecting to get through to him, thinking he's probably super busy and has other cases, because he's on TV and he's this really famous guy.
But he picked up the phone and he was like, hey, how can I help you?
And Susie couldn't believe it.
She had a chance to tell him about what happened to her husband.
And Ken said he was really interested and that he would take on the case.
Ken was a former Long Island cop and he was a DEA special agent.
He spoke with a really thick New York City accent and he wore T-shirts that were a little bit too small to show off his muscles.
And he usually had a big gaudy gold chain on.
Once Ken agreed to take on this case, he flew right to Lafayette, Louisiana, where Susie lived.
He sat down and he asked her a lot of really difficult questions about their marriage, about whether she thought he might be cheating on her if he had, like a secret life she didn't know about.
And after feeling satisfied that all those avenues have been explored and were not going to lead to the answer, he said OK well, can you tell me anything about the crime scene that stood out to you?
Is there anything about it that seems off?
And Susie said, yeah.
Greg always kept the air conditioning on very cold at night.
He never slept in a room that wasn't freezing cold.
And so I thought it was really odd when his co-workers discovered him that the air conditioning was off and it was really hot inside of the room.
That's incredibly unlike Greg for his air conditioning to be off.
Ken made a note of this and then he left Lafayette and he went to Beaumont, Texas to meet up with Detective Apple and Detective Apple and he actually got along really well.
They agreed to work together on this case because Detective Apple feels like he's reached a dead end anyways.
Apple brought Ken to the crime scene.
He showed him the hotel room.
And then afterwards he turned over all of the documents he had on the case, from the autopsy report to the photographs, to anything he'd collected over the seven months he'd been working on it.
So that night Ken diligently looks through all of the documentation, all of the photos, and the next day when he goes into Apple's office he says to him I think I figured it out.
And Apple's like, oh, really?
You figured it out one day after being here?
And Ken's like, no, seriously, I think I figured it out.
I have to confirm something with his wife, but I think I have a theory.
And so Ken calls Susie right in front of Apple.
And when Susie picks up Ken's like hey, did your husband ever smoke with his left hand or did he smoke with his right hand?
And Susie said, oh no, he only smoked with his right hand.
And Ken goes, thank you very much.
He hangs up and he goes, Apple, I got it.
And so Apple's like, okay, what's your theory?
And Ken says, okay.
So I spoke to Susie and she told me it was very strange that his room was not air conditioned when they discovered his body, because Greg was known for always turning on the air conditioning to as cold as it can get, especially at night when he went to bed.
And so when his power went out the night before, his air conditioning would have gone out.
And so the maintenance guy comes up, turns the power back on, but it doesn't trigger the air conditioning to turn back on.
The room is still cold from having been air conditioned all evening to that point.
And so the TV is back on.
And so perhaps Greg turns and just starts watching TV because the room feels air conditioned.
He hasn't realized that he hasn't turned the air conditioning back on again.
Now this is Beaumont in the summer, so it's gonna get really hot in his room really quickly and as soon as it starts to warm up in there, he's gonna realize oh, I didn't turn the AC back on and he would go over and turn it on again.
And so because the air conditioning wasn't on and we know that the power was restored at 830, then he must have died after the power was on, but before it got warm enough in the room for him to recognize he did not turn the AC on, which means he would have died somewhere between 830 and 9 pm at night.
And so Apple's like wow, that's pretty impressive.
Except that doesn't really help us figure out how he died or who killed him.
And Ken puts his hand up and he says, I know, I'm just building the whole picture here.
Okay, so we have him dying between 8.30 and 9.00
And I don't think he was beaten to death.
I think a lot of people want that to be what killed him, because it's kind of the only thing that might make sense.
But I say it definitely doesn't make sense because of the cigarette.
Now we found that cigarette in his left hand and I talked to his wife and she said he only smokes in his right hand.
And so what I think happened is the power came back on at about 8.30, which is what the report says.
The TV turns back on.
Greg doesn't turn the air conditioning back on.
He sits on his bed.
He's watching TV.
He lights up a cigarette and he's smoking with his right hand.
And then something happens to him, which I'll get into my theories on that.
And he jumps off the bed and he starts making his way to the door to get help.
And he transfers the cigarette from his right hand to his left hand so he can use his right hand to turn the doorknob and open the door to safety.
He doesn't make it.
He falls to his knees and he falls to the ground and his cigarette's still in his fingers and he dies.
And Apple's like, you know what?
That's pretty good.
It makes a lot of sense.
But the crucial missing piece here is well, what was the trauma he suffered that caused him to jump from his bed and run to the door and then ultimately die?
Ken's like, I got a theory on that too, but I got to be in the hotel room to see if it's true.
So Apple and Ken go back to the hotel room.
When they get there, Ken goes inside and he starts walking around looking at the ceiling, the wall, the ground.
And Apple looks at what he's pointing at and it looks like there had been some patchwork on the wall in the same spot where the doorknob, when it swings open, would hit the wall.
And so Apple's looking at it and he's like, that's just from the doorknob.
And so Ken takes the door and he opens it all the way to where the doorknob is pressed against the wall.
And it's to the right of this patchwork, meaning this patchwork is not connected to the doorknob.
Apple was confused and was about to ask questions and Ken was like on a roll.
And he said, hold on.
And he goes outside.
He goes next door to room 349 to go inside.
And Apple walks in the room and he's watching Ken do his work.
And Ken's rubbing his hands all over the wall and eventually he stops and he looks up at Apple and he takes his finger and he pushes on one spot in the wall as Apple is watching and his finger goes right in.
What he pushed on was this little chunk of toothpaste that had been wedged in this little tiny hole in the wall, and he pushed it through.
Apple brought in a crime scene investigations unit who carefully excavated both sides of this wall and they shined a laser from 349 into Greg's room, and the trajectory of the laser going through this hole lined up perfectly with where Greg would have been sitting on the bed smoking cigarettes, eating candy, watching a movie.
So Ken and Apple go back to the medical examiner, Dr Brown, and they say look, you missed something, because Greg got shot.
And unfortunately Greg's body had already been cremated.
But they did have the pictures to look at from the autopsy.
And sure enough, they find that little tiny laceration in his crotch was actually an entrance wound.
And then when Dr Brown pointed out there was a hole in the heart, it kind of lined up with the trajectory that bullet would have been traveling through his body.
Dr Brown realized he had made a mistake and he changed the autopsy report to reflect a gunshot wound.
Ken and Detective Apple re-interviewed one of the electricians that had been in room 349.
That was in the room where the gunshot had originated from.
His name was Lance.
And when they brought him in, they said, this is totally routine.
You know, it's been seven plus months since Greg's death.
And what we're doing is any of our witnesses, we want them to sign a statement basically attesting that this is what I saw or didn't see.
And so they had prepared a statement that basically lined up with the first thing he had told police, which was I didn't hear anything, I didn't see anything.
And they said is there anything you want to change about your story, or is this exactly what you saw and heard?
And Lance said, yeah, that's, that's, that's exactly, I don't know anything.
I wish I wish I knew more.
I'm sorry.
And like all right, well then, can you sign this document saying that you don't know anything and you didn't see anything?
And he said, yeah.
He signs the document and then Ken's like all right gotcha, because we know a gunshot was fired from your room and that's what killed Greg.
And so you need to tell me who shot the gun.
Otherwise, I'm taking you to jail for submitting a false police report.
At this point, Lance crumbles and the truth comes out.
And he said that he and the other electrician in the room with him, whose name was Muller, they were goofing around and drinking that night.
And Muller went out and got his pistol from his car and he brought it in and he was goofing around with it.
And Lance was saying that he was trying to get him to stop doing that, but he kept goofing around with the gun.
And at one point he aimed the gun at Lance and Lance kind of batted it away from him.
He dropped the gun, it landed and it went off.
And they saw where the bullet hole was.
They saw it was into Greg's room and they both froze and they listened to see if anybody had reacted to this gunshot.
And he said they didn't hear anything for a long time.
And that made them believe that no one was in the other room, that no one was in Greg's room and that they were in the clear.
And so they left and went to the bar.
They didn't even think to check on whoever was in that room.
And when they came back they said they heard Greg coughing in his room and that further confirmed that he must not have been in there when they fired the shot.
And he's totally fine and they are totally in the clear.
The next day, Lance said when they saw his body being taken out at first they did think, oh my goodness, this is us.
We did this.
But they overheard Detective Apple walking around interviewing people saying out loud that yeah, we think this is natural causes.
Yep, looks like a heart attack.
This is probably nothing.
I'm sure it's nothing.
And they were like, oh, phew.
Ugh.
It's not us.
And so they actually believed it was just a coincidence that on the same day they're firing a rogue bullet into Greg's room that Greg had a heart attack and died separately.
But Lance would say that somewhere in the back of both of their minds they knew they probably had something to do with it.
And so they covered their tracks and they put toothpaste in the wall to cover up the hole and they hid the gun and they intentionally kept information from the police.
And so ultimately Mueller, the owner of the gun, the one who really instigated that night waving the gun around and the one who actually dropped the gun.
He was charged with manslaughter and was given 10 years in prison.
Thank you for listening to the Mr.
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