Hey, Prime members, you can binge eight new episodes of the Mr. Ballin podcast one month early and all episodes ad-free on Amazon Music.
Download the Amazon Music app today. One November night in 2004, in a tiny town in Alaska, a state trooper was responding to a call about a potential car accident.
The trooper eventually reached the isolated logging road where this accident supposedly happened, and sure enough, he saw a smoking vehicle that had clearly gone off the road.
The trooper quickly got out of his vehicle and rushed down the embankment to the crashed car to see if there was anyone inside that he could help.
But when the trooper looked inside the car, at first he was just confused.
Then he happened to look into the back seat of the car and immediately he recoiled in horror.
This was no car accident. This was something else.
But before we get into that story, 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 wash the Amazon Music Follow Button's laundry, but instead of using laundry detergent, just use black computer ink.
Okay, let's get into today's story. If you're anything like me, you love a good story that has twists and turns and moments that make you stop and think, like, how is the story even real?
That's why I want to recommend the podcast Crime Junkie.
Every week, amazing host Ashley Flowers unravels stories about missing people, murders, and mysterious deaths.
These strange, dark, and mysterious cases range from stories ripped straight from the headlines to cases you really won't hear anywhere else.
It's binge-worthy true crime storytelling that is thoughtful, well-researched, and always leaves you wanting more.
Discover why Crime Junkie has such a loyal community and dive into your next mystery today.
Search for Crime Junkie wherever you're listening right now.
On the night of Saturday, November 13th, 2004, in a tiny city called Craig, Alaska, all the people who were attending the Chamber of Commerce banquet suddenly stood up and broke into applause for 48-year-old Lori Waterman.
Lori was sitting at a table in the back of the room.
She was tall with short brown hair and her skin was very pale, but at this moment, her cheeks were flushed red with embarrassment as she looked around at all the familiar faces smiling at her.
Lori knew almost all of the 1,300 residents in Craig, Alaska from her many years as a community volunteer and special education teacher's aide.
And Lori definitely knew everyone at this banquet because she had helped her friend organize it.
From the podium, Lori's friend told the room that she couldn't have put on this event without Lori and that Lori was really the one person in Craig, Alaska that people could always count on if they needed help with anything.
Lori stood up and smiled sheepishly and waved to all the people in the room as they continued to cheer for her.
Lori wished her husband, Doc Waterman, had been there to see this, but unfortunately, he was hundreds of miles away in Juneau, Alaska on a business trip for the weekend.
Lori's husband was a prominent real estate agent.
Still, Lori had the feeling that this was her lucky night.
She had won the raffle for a fleece jacket earlier in the evening, and by the time the dinner wrapped up at about 10pm, so many people had thanked her personally for all her help through the years that she truly felt appreciated and celebrated.
At the conclusion of the banquet, Lori hugged her friend who she had planned this banquet with and then said she would see her again the next day after church.
Both Lori and her friend were on a committee that helped raise money for an international Catholic event for young people.
The friends hugged one more time, said goodbye, and then Lori turned around and headed for the parking lot.
Lori drove her purple minivan to her peach-colored house at 604 Ocean View Drive.
With its spectacular view of the bay, the three-bedroom, three-bath house was one of the nicest in town.
But to Lori, the house always felt a bit empty whenever Doc was away.
And also this night, Lori and Doc's 16-year-old daughter, Rochelle, was also out of town at a volleyball tournament in Anchorage.
So tonight, Lori was going to be all alone.
As Lori headed upstairs for the night, she walked past Rochelle's bedroom and thought about the fight they had had right before Rochelle left town with her volleyball team.
Lori had seen the all black outfits that her daughter was packing for this trip and asked Rochelle why she couldn't bring something a bit more cheery.
Lori was not a big fan of the goth stylings that Rochelle had adopted over the last year, but Lori's daughter just rolled her eyes at her mother as soon as she began talking about her outfit.
Then Lori also told her daughter that she didn't really like the shaggy 20-something year old guys that Rochelle had been hanging out with recently.
They seemed polite, but Lori felt like they were just too old for Rochelle, and they also didn't seem ambitious enough for an honor roll student like Lori's daughter.
One of them even lived in his mother's basement.
Rochelle had cursed at her mother when Lori had said some things about her friends, and at that point, Lori was furious and she just couldn't contain herself.
Lori began complaining about all the time Rochelle spent on her computer, specifically all the time that Rochelle spent publicly embarrassing her family on the computer.
Rochelle was a blogger whose blog, called My Crappy Life, often harshly criticized the people in her life and referred to their town not as Craig, Alaska, but as Hell, Alaska.
This online journal really upset Lori because she wanted to give her daughter the best life possible.
But the blog's title, My Crappy Life, really made Lori feel like she had failed as a mother.
But perhaps what bothered Lori most about the blog was that Rachelle had made their mother-daughter friction public.
Once, Rochelle had written about coming home from school and proudly telling her mother that she had scored a 92 on a Spanish test, but she had said her mom, Lori, ignored her grade completely and just told her she should go to fat camp.
But that wasn't even true. Lori had told her daughter that maybe she should eat healthier, but never once mentioned fat camp.
This fight they got into had ended with Rochelle theatrically throwing even more black clothing into her suitcase and Lori storming out of her room.
Now thinking back over what happened, Lori regretted the things she said and how blunt she had been.
She still disliked the gloomy clothes, the two old friends and the rude seeming blog, but she really wished she had not offended her daughter.
So while Rochelle was off at her volleyball tournament, Lori had written her a letter expressing how sorry she was that they had been arguing lately.
Lori said that she hoped they could get back to the way things used to be when they were closer.
Lori had left this note on Rochelle's nightstand, knowing she would find it when she came home, and Lori hoped it would help reset their relationship.
Lori walked down the hall into her and Doc's bedroom and changed into her nightgown.
She brushed her teeth and got ready for bed.
As she took off her wedding band and engagement ring, she thought about Doc, wishing her husband did not have to travel so much for work.
Doc was a dozen years older than Lori and not far from retirement age.
Lori had hoped that he'd start throttling down his workload, but lately it seemed that Doc had been busier than ever.
But Lori couldn't help but wonder if maybe there was another reason why Doc was staying away so much.
She knew her husband had a wandering eye.
People had made innuendos to her about that before.
Lori tried not to listen to the gossip. She knew Doc could be a flirt, but she was sure he would never actually cheat on her.
Still, on this night, when Lori was already feeling insecure about her relationship with her daughter, the rumors about her husband's supposed affair really nagged at her.
Lori slipped into bed around 11 p.m. She grabbed the TV remote from the bedside table and turned on the TV.
She didn't mind a little solitude, but she had been on her own for a few days now, and she couldn't wait for her husband and daughter to come home the next day.
After a few minutes of TV channel surfing, Lori turned out the lights and drifted off to sleep.
At 3.30 p.m. the next day, which was a Sunday, Doc Waterman and his daughter Rochelle drove towards their house.
They had been in different cities over the weekend, but their paths had crossed at the airport, and so they headed home together.
Like Lori, Doc was a highly respected figure in town.
The Vietnam War veteran had his struggles, including the lingering effects of post-traumatic stress, but he'd managed to build a family and a career as the top real estate agent on the whole Prince of Wales Island, which is where Craig, Alaska was, which is one of the biggest islands in the entire United States.
Doc steered his car down Ocean View and turned into his driveway.
He then opened the garage door to park, and immediately he noticed that his wife's purple minivan was gone.
Doc had expected Lori to be home to greet them, but then again, she was always busy, even on a Sunday.
Doc figured she must be out running an errand or attending a meeting.
And at this point, Doc was actually far more concerned about his daughter, Rochelle, who had sprained her ankle during her volleyball tournament. and so Doc helped his daughter limp into the house and upstairs.
Rochelle hobbled into her room and sat down on her bed.
She looked over at her nightstand, and she saw the letter her mother had written her.
She unfolded it, and as she started to read, she began to cry.
She hated how much she and her mom had been fighting, and she too wished things were different.
Eventually, Rochelle wiped the tears away and put the letter down.
Meanwhile, Doc walked into the kitchen to check the messages on the answering machine.
He noticed an empty bottle of wine sitting on the counter, which he found very odd, because Lori really was not a drinker and certainly would not be drinking on her own.
The answering machine showed three messages.
Doc pressed play and listened, but all the calls were from him checking in as he made his way home.
Doc carried his suitcase up to his and Lori's bedroom on the third floor.
Normally, he'd drop his luggage on top of the comforter and start to unpack, but the bed was unmade.
Lori always made the bed. That is, if Doc didn't beat her to it.
Doc also saw Lori's nightgown thrown haphazardly on the floor.
He frowned. His wife of 20 years was a total neat freak.
What was going on? Doc suddenly felt flush with concern and stepped into the bathroom to splash water on his face.
As he turned on the faucet, he saw Lori's engagement ring and wedding ring sitting next to the sink.
Now, Doc was really worried. Lori never went anywhere without those rings.
Something very strange was going on. Doc couldn't tell what it was, but he had a sinking feeling that it was bad.
Doc knew there were not that many places in their small town where Lori might be, and he couldn't just call her because in 2004, cell phones were still somewhat rare and Lori didn't have one.
So Doc just waited a few hours, hoping Lori would come home on her own.
But by 7 p.m., when she hadn't and he hadn't heard from her, Doc felt like he had to act.
He didn't want to alarm his daughter, but he told Rochelle that they needed to get in the car and drive around town and look for her mother.
Doc and Rochelle drove to the building where the Chamber of Commerce banquet had been held the night before, thinking maybe they'd see Lori's purple minivan parked outside while she helped to clean up inside.
But when they got there, her minivan, which anyone could spot a mile away, was nowhere to be found.
Next, the father and daughter went to the church, but they didn't see Lori's van there either.
Doc did see Lori's friend's car, and he remembered Lori saying she had a committee meeting with her friend that day, but when Doc talked to Lori's friend, the friend said that Lori did not show up to the meeting and had not called to explain why she couldn't be there.
So, Doc and Rochelle drove to the middle school where Lori worked, but the parking lot was empty.
Despite the near freezing temperatures outside, Doc was sweating.
When he and Rochelle had started their search, he was perplexed.
Now he was desperate. After driving around for almost two hours with no sign of Lori, Doc and Rochelle didn't know what else to do.
So at around 9 p.m., they went home and the normally composed Doc tried to keep from choking up as he called the Craig police.
At about the same time Doc was calling the police, Alaska State Trooper Bob Claus drove his SUV down a logging road that cut through a pine-covered mountain nearly 50 miles from Craig.
He was one of only two troopers who patrolled the entire 145-mile-long island.
Claus was out in this area responding to a call he had received from a hunter who had said they had seen a vehicle that had gone off the road and caught on fire.
Claus had spotted the plume of smoke in the sky and drove over, and there he found the remains of a minivan on the side of the mountain.
It looked like the minivan had careened off the logging road until it struck a fallen log, which prevented it from rolling any further.
The van was no longer on fire, but the brush and log beneath it were still smoldering.
Claus climbed out of his vehicle and hiked down the slippery wet slope to reach the wreck.
When he got there, he saw the tires were melted down to their steel belts.
The paint had been scorched off the frame and all the windows were blown out.
The fire had burned everything inside the vehicle.
Claus looked for something to identify the minivan, but the license plate was a puddle of aluminum and the vehicle identification number on the driver's side door was melted beyond recognition.
Claus had originally come out here believing he was going to find a road accident, that someone had crashed and that's why this had happened.
But when he kind of scanned around the inside of the vehicle, he felt like this was something far worse.
If this had been an accidental car crash, Claus would have expected to see the driver's body in the front seat or at least nearby and some sign that they had been in the front seat.
But the two front seats of the car were empty and there was no sign of a driver.
But when Claus looked in the back of the car, he saw something absolutely horrible.
There, laying across the back seat, were the charred remains of a human torso.
And next to the torso, looking straight at Claus, was a blackened human skull.
Claus didn't want to move the vehicle or disturb its contents until help arrived, so he radioed his partner and asked him to stay with the minivan while he called his lieutenant in Craig, Alaska.
The lieutenant, in turn, called the Alaska Bureau of Investigation to send help.
The Bureau promised to send a team, but cautioned that it would take time for help to arrive.
Prince of Wales Island is located 800 miles south of Anchorage, and it has no major airports, and so the trip to the island requires five different planes.
But finally, a day later, the small aircraft carrying state homicide investigator Randy McFerrin, a state fire investigator, and a crime scene technician touched down at a local airstrip.
Right away, the investigators drove out to meet the state troopers on that logging road overlooking the crash site.
And when they got there, McFerrin peered down at the wreck while the fire investigator immediately began taking pictures from the seat next to him.
McFerrin, a former Army infantry officer, was an experienced investigator who had led eight homicide investigations by himself.
McFerrin got out of the vehicle and shook hands with Trooper Bob Claus.
Claus was relieved to see heavy hitters from Anchorage on the scene.
Claus had handled all kinds of cases over his career, but this case seemed far more complex than his two-man station could handle.
Claus told McFerrin that they had received a missing person report the night before from the husband of a woman from Craig, a community activist named Lori Waterman.
As he said Lori's name, Claus grimaced because he knew Lori really well.
His daughter was friendly with her daughter, Rochelle, and like most people in town, Claus liked both Lori and Doc Waterman.
It absolutely gutted Claus to think that Lori could be the body in this wreckage, but he would tell the state investigators that that was looking more and more likely.
The burned-out vehicle was clearly a minivan, just like the one Lori drove, but the paint had all been scorched off, so it was impossible to tell whether it had once been purple.
Claus led McFerrin and the fire investigator down the slope to get a better look at the wreck.
The wreck was about 50 yards down the mountain from the gravel road.
When they got down to it, McFerrin peered inside at the charred human remains in the back seat.
The clothes had burned off completely, and the fire had reduced the lower portion of their legs and the lower portion of the victim's arms to ash, making it truly impossible to tell whether the body was a man or a woman.
But right away, the fire investigator could see telltale blistering in the back seat that suggested that an accelerant had caused the fire to burn very hot and fast.
In other words, it looked like someone had set this fire on purpose.
And adding credibility to that theory, the investigators couldn't find any skid marks on the road, suggesting the driver of this vehicle had never tried to stop.
And when people are about to crash, they hit the brakes and they skid.
But in this case, there was none of that.
McFerrin sighed and looked over at Claus and said, you know, whoever was in this car was murdered.
He figured the fire was an attempt to destroy evidence.
And whoever had set the fire had very nearly succeeded because the human remains that crime scene technicians removed from the van weighed just 33 pounds.
The rest of that body was just gone. McFerrin ordered the technicians to put all of the human remains into an evidence bag and ship it to Anchorage for an autopsy.
Claus arranged for a tow truck to take the wrecked minivan to a nearby garage for further analysis.
But as they moved the vehicle, McFerrin found the metal tag from the dashboard that had melted off during the fire.
And amazingly, he could still read the minivan's identification number on this tag.
And so within minutes, investigators knew exactly who owned this wrecked minivan.
Later that night, McFerrin traveled with Claus to the town of Craig to speak with Lori's husband, Doc.
Rochelle was home too, along with her friend, Jason Arant.
Jason was a large man with flaming red hair, and at 24 years old, he was eight years older than Rochelle.
But the two had become close when Rochelle had worked at a store owned by Jason's best friend the previous summer.
Rochelle had called Jason earlier that day because she was worried that something bad had happened to her mother.
Rochelle said her mom must have gotten into a drunk driving accident because of the empty wine bottle she and her dad had found in the kitchen.
Jason had immediately left his job as a school custodian and gone to Rochelle's school to pick her up.
He found her in the principal's office in tears about her missing mother, so Jason had driven her home.
McFerrin wanted to speak with the family alone, but Jason said he didn't want to leave Rochelle's side, that is, until Trooper Claus stepped in.
Jason had actually come to Claus previously for advice on how to become a Marine, and so he respected the state trooper.
So when Claus stepped in and told Jason the family really needed some privacy, Jason listened and he left.
Doc invited Claus and McFerrin into the TV room on the first floor of the house.
The investigators sat on the couch, but Doc and Rochelle remained standing, bracing themselves for whatever potentially terrible news they were about to learn.
After a pause, McFerrin leaned forward, choosing his words very carefully, as he told Doc that they had discovered Lori's burned-out van in the woods 50 miles away, and there was a body in the back seat.
McFerrin said that police still needed to make a positive ID of the body, but no one aside from Lori had been reported missing.
And so, unfortunately, it seemed very likely that the body was Lori.
Doc was silent for a moment, and then he sort of stumbled back and fell into a chair.
He had seen more than a share of death in Vietnam, and he had never cried, but this was different.
He put his face in his hands, and he wept.
Trooper Claus turned to Rochelle, who he had known since she was a little girl, and told her how very sorry he was.
But Rochelle didn't respond. Instead, she ran upstairs to her bedroom and slammed the door.
As she sat on her bed, reeling at the news, her eyes fell on Lori's letter.
Rochelle couldn't bear to look at it, so she put the letter inside the nightstand drawer.
Meanwhile, downstairs, McFerrin had to make a very difficult request.
He needed Doc to obtain his wife's dental x-rays to help identify the body.
And so Doc had fumbled through Lori's address book, saying nothing, until he found the number of Lori's dentist.
And so McFerrin made the call and got Lori's latest x-rays sent to the coroner in Anchorage to see if maybe it was a match.
After hanging up with the dentist, McFerrin and Claus asked Doc to walk them through his house and show them everything he had found the day before that seemed sort of strange or out of place and contributed to his worry about his wife.
And in fact, in the day since Doc had come home, he had found even more alarming evidence of a crime.
Doc took the investigators up to his and Lori's bedroom to show them the tip of a rubber glove and also a five-inch long fiber from a rope he had found in the sheets of their bed.
Then Doc pulled back the comforter on his bed to show them a spot of blood on the sheets.
He said at first he assumed this might be menstrual blood, but when he had looked closer, he had seen a few other spots on both sides of the bed.
Doc told the investigators that he had no idea who would want to harm his wife.
Claus agreed that everyone on the island really seemed to love Lori.
At this point, McFerrin very gently told Doc to go ahead and leave the house along with his daughter because now their home was officially a crime scene and it would soon be cordoned off with yellow tape.
With the help of the crime scene technician who had flown out from Anchorage with him, McFerrin started the official search of the house, and almost immediately, he figured out how the assailant had gotten inside.
The door that led from the garage into the house had scratches on the lock that indicated to McFerrin that the assailant attempted to force their way in.
Meanwhile, Claus began searching Rochelle's room.
The walls were adorned with posters of men and women with black hair, black clothes, and black makeup.
Claus continued searching through Rochelle's room, searching her dresser, her shelves, and her closet, and then inside of her nightstand, he found that letter that Lori had written to Rochelle.
Claus saw that Lori addressed it to, quote, my dearest daughter, end quote, and he felt a twinge of compassion for this mother trying to reconnect with her daughter.
Claus made a mental note to make sure to return this letter to the family.
When Claus and McFerrin regrouped in the TV room a little while later, they immediately began reviewing what they had found.
Other than a few spots of blood on the bed, there was no sign of a struggle.
A couple of details suggested to the investigators that Lori was alive when she left the house.
The nightgown, uncharacteristically thrown on the floor, indicated she might have changed in a hurry, and the rope fiber inside the bedsheets suggested the attacker might have tied Lori up at the house rather than killed her.
Both investigators agreed that the assailant's break-in attempt looked clumsy and amateurish, but the rope and the rubber glove suggested the killer had planned the crime ahead of time.
McFerrin noted that a premeditated crime like this was typically not random.
It was usually committed by someone with a personal grudge against the victim.
But the scratches on the door where the assailant had entered the house suggested they did not know this family well because Doc told investigators that most people who knew them would know where he kept the spare key and would have simply unlocked the door.
This was perplexing to investigators, so until they could narrow it down, everybody was a suspect.
Hey, listeners, Mr. Ballin here. What if I told you that some of the strangest, darkest, and most mysterious stories happening right now are all connected to what might be the biggest crime of our generation?
You know I'm always on the hunt for the most chilling and perplexing tales out there.
Well, I've discovered a new podcast that uncovers real-world mysteries unfolding right now. much like how another Ballin' Studios podcast, Redacted Declassified Mysteries, brings hidden government secrets to light, and it's called Lawless Planet.
Host Zach Goldbaum reveals how shocking tales of murder, cover-ups, and mysterious deaths are all part of something bigger, the systematic destruction of our planet. from activists who vanish in the Amazon to whistleblowers uncovering billion-dollar environmental crimes, these aren't just stories about the environment.
They're real-life thrillers about people caught between powerful forces willing to kill to keep their secrets buried.
Follow Lawless Planet on the Wondery app or wherever you get your podcasts.
You can listen to new episodes of Lawless Planet early and ad-free right now by joining Wondery+.
Hey, it's Mr. Ballin. I'm excited to tell you about something special.
For the first time... My show, Mr. Ballin's Medical Mysteries, has joined forces with Redacted, Declassified Mysteries with Luke LaManna, to tell a story so complex it required our combined storytelling styles.
This special episode is called A Redacted Medical Mystery.
In it, unexplained symptoms after a routine surgery quickly unravel into something much darker, leading straight to classified government operations hidden for decades.
To listen and uncover the truth alongside us, head to either the Mr. Ballin's Medical Mysteries or Redacted show pages right now. or search for A Redacted Medical Mystery in the Wondery app or wherever you get your podcasts.
If you're fascinated by unexplained medical stories, well, stick around on Medical Mysteries.
Every week, we dive deep into cases that will leave you questioning everything you know about the human body.
And if government conspiracies are more your style, Redacted is your go-to for stories that unravel secrets never meant to see the light of day.
Remember, you can listen to both shows early and ad-free by joining Wondery Plus.
No more wading through cliffhangers or dealing with ads, because let's be honest.
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That's amazon.com slash b-a-l-l-e-n. Dive into uninterrupted true crime stories today.
Hey, it's Mr. Ballin. For the first time, my show, Medical Mysteries, has joined forces with Redacted for a special episode.
A Redacted Medical Mystery uncovers how routine surgery leads to classified government operations.
Listen now on the Medical Mysteries or Redacted feeds, or search A Redacted Medical Mystery wherever you get your podcasts.
Statistically, the most likely person to have murdered Lori was her own husband.
So McFerrin started with Doc. Claus had told McFerrin about the rumors that circulated around town that Doc was having an affair.
That was a big red flag. A cheating spouse could have all sorts of reasons to want their partner dead.
Doc denied having an affair. He knew what people said about him and he admitted that he could be flirtatious, plus he was away from home a lot.
Small town rumors really didn't need much more fuel than that.
But even if he had been having an affair, it didn't matter.
He had a rock solid alibi. He was over 200 miles away in Juneau at the time of the murder.
McFerrin made a mental note to look into the family's finances and phone records to see if Doc could have hired someone to kill Lori while he was away, but he suspected that was a total long shot.
If Doc had been involved in planning this crime, McFerrin was pretty sure the killer would not have had such a hard time getting into the house in the first place.
Surely, if Doc had hired someone to murder his wife, he would have told the killer where to find the spare key.
The following day, which was Tuesday, November 16th, McFerrin finally heard back from the coroner in Anchorage, and as expected, the body was Lori's.
The coroner said the fire that had erupted inside of that minivan had reached 1,800 degrees Fahrenheit, the same heat at which bodies are cremated, damaging the remains so badly that a proper autopsy was nearly impossible.
But the coroner had been able to match Lori's dental x-rays with the teeth in the skull.
However, the coroner was not able to zero in on the time of death or even how Laurie had died.
McFerrin looked into Doc's bank accounts and found no indication of any money transfers, cash withdrawals, or suspicious gaps in income that could suggest he was trying to hide or transfer funds, and the family's phone records were totally mundane, no unknown numbers, or unusual late night calls.
McFerrin eliminated Doc as a primary suspect, and he was eager to talk further with Rochelle, hoping she might shed some light on who might want to hurt her mother.
A few hours after the coroner had identified Lori's body, McFerrin picked up Rochelle at her house and drove her to the police station for an official interview.
On the short drive, McFerrin tried to make Rochelle feel comfortable telling her about his own daughter, who was just a few years older than her and in college.
Rochelle's eyes were red and puffy, but she seemed to relax and talked about a trip to Germany she and a friend had been planning to take the following year.
The pair eventually got to the small police station, and there, McFerrin escorted Rochelle through the small station to a small windowless interview room.
Once they sat down inside, Rochelle said she spoke to her mother just before the Chamber of Commerce dinner on Saturday night.
She said her mom seemed excited about the event, and she was looking forward to Rochelle and her father coming home.
Rochelle also said that her mom basically got along with everyone.
In fact, Rochelle admitted that she herself was likely the only person who regularly butted heads with Lori.
And even that was nothing major. Most of their arguments were over the way Rochelle dressed or the way she painted her nails black.
McFerrin then picked up Lori's letter and read it aloud to Rochelle, and then asked her what could have inspired her mother to write it.
Rochelle admitted that her mother did not like some of her friends because they were too old in her mother's eyes, and so they had argued about that.
She said her mom especially disliked Jason, her friend who had been at the house when investigators had first visited, but Rochelle said her mom just didn't understand.
Rochelle said that her mom was convinced that Rochelle was dating Jason, but Rochelle said she was not.
He was just a good friend, nothing more.
McFerrin would ask Rochelle several more questions and he would eventually learn about her blog, which also was a point of contention in Rochelle and Lori's lives.
But eventually the interview came to an end and overall nothing major really came out of it.
However, McFerrin was interested to look more closely at Rochelle's blog.
So he drove Rochelle home and then he and Claus went back to the station and they sat down at a computer and they loaded up Rochelle's blog.
The blog was pretty harsh. Rochelle complained about her mother a lot, even calling her nasty names like psycho bitch.
But both McFerrin and Claus were fathers to girls around Rochelle's age, and they were well aware of the friction that can grow between teenage daughters and their mothers.
And so nothing in Rochelle's blog struck either detective as anything more than a typical teenage girl's diary, well, except for the fact that the blog was public.
And so they wondered if maybe somebody reading Rochelle's blog had become really fixated with Rochelle's conflicts with her mother.
And so the investigators decided to scour Rochelle's electronic communications for any unusual or alarming messages.
The next morning at the breakfast table, Claus talked to his daughter, who was good friends with Rochelle, and his daughter said the students were in complete shock that Rochelle's mother had been killed.
Murders almost never happened in their tiny town, and certainly not to her friend's parents.
But then Claus's daughter told him something interesting.
She told him that Rochelle spent a lot of time around three people in particular.
There was Jason, there was also Jason's friend, Brian Riddell, and there was Rochelle's ex-boyfriend, 16-year-old Ian Lendrum, so three guys.
And apparently, Rochelle and these three guys would all play video and fantasy role-playing games together, and Claus' daughter said that sometimes these three guys would just show up unannounced when she, Claus' daughter, was trying to hang out with Rochelle alone.
Claus's ears pricked up at this. Rochelle had not mentioned that she had an ex-boyfriend.
Claus called McFerrin and told him they needed to speak with Ian Lendrum right away.
Later that morning, so this was three and a half days after the murder, McFerrin tracked down Ian at his house.
The teenager had just woken up, but McFerrin noted that Ian was not surprised to see him.
Ian said that everyone on the island had been talking about Laurie's murder, McFerrin followed Ian into his kitchen and sat at the small round table.
Ian poured two cups of coffee, handed one to McFerrin, and sat down across from him.
Ian said that he had seen Rochelle after she and her dad had searched for Lori around town.
Ian said he hadn't known anything about Lori's disappearance, but he'd gotten worried about Rochelle because she wasn't answering her phone, and so that night he'd just gone over to her house to check on her.
But right after saying this, Ian immediately jumped up from the table and rushed over to get sugar for their coffee.
And to McFerrin, it seemed like Ian was really nervous.
But McFerrin knew that people often got nervous when they were being questioned by the police, even if they didn't do anything.
McFerrin thanked Ian for the sugar when he returned, and then McFerrin sipped his coffee and kept his tone casual.
He was watching for signs that Ian was hiding something.
He asked Ian about his history with Rochelle, and Ian blushed a bit, but then he said that yes, he had dated Rochelle for a while, but they had broken up a year earlier, however, they had remained close friends.
McFerrin asked Ian about the two older guys, Jason and Brian, who also hung out with him and Rochelle.
Ian told McFerrin that he and Rochelle were both very good friends with the other two guys.
Brian owned the shop where they often played video games, and his buddy Jason often joined in.
Ian also admitted to McFerrin that Rochelle's other teenage friends did not really hang out with her when Jason and Brian were around.
Ian thought Jason rubbed the girls the wrong way.
McFerrin had met Jason briefly. Jason had been with Rochelle when investigators had gone to their house.
But now McFerrin really wanted to talk to Jason again to see why this young man might rub the girls the wrong way.
At noon the same day, McFerrin met with Jason at the Trooper Post near the high school where Jason worked.
McFerrin brought Jason into an interview room and offered him some water.
Jason nodded and took the bottle from him, but left it on the table unopened.
Jason, a big man nicknamed Red for the color of his hair, had once dreamed of becoming a Marine, but he had washed out of boot camp, mainly because he was seriously out of shape.
So Jason came back to the small town of Craig, got a job as a high school janitor, and moved into his mother's basement.
He also began hanging out at his buddy Brian's computer shop.
As Jason and McFerrin talked, Jason spoke slowly and very carefully.
He said he had previously dated Rochelle, something Rochelle never mentioned in her discussion with McFerrin.
That was pretty strange, McFerrin thought.
But Jason said that their romance did not last long because it caused way too much trouble for Rochelle at home.
McFerrin couldn't be sure if Jason was telling the truth about dating Rochelle or if that was just male bluster, but Jason's claim did suggest that he was well aware that Lori disapproved of him hanging around with her daughter.
And McFerrin started to wonder if maybe Jason had wanted to get rid of Lori because she got in the way of his relationship with Rochelle.
McFerrin asked Jason what he was up to on the night of the murder, and he would say that he had been with his friend Brian at his place playing video games.
They'd both been drinking, so Jason said he had just crashed there overnight.
Eventually, the interview ended, and McFerrin let Jason go home for the day, but McFerrin still had a lot of unanswered questions about this young man.
But as it would turn out, McFerrin would not have to wait very long to talk to Jason again.
A few hours later, at 5.30 in the afternoon, Trooper Claus was sitting at his desk when his phone rang.
Claus answered and he heard a frantic voice on the other line.
It was Jason and Claus could barely understand what he was saying.
Claus told Jason to take a breath and then asked what was going on.
Jason shouted into the phone that he was at the school where he worked and he'd just been attacked by a man with a knife.
Claus hung up the phone and immediately told McFerrin about the call.
The two investigators raced over to the school, and when they arrived, they found Jason sitting on the bleachers by the football field.
He was in tears as he told them that a man had snuck up on him by the dumpsters and held a knife to his neck.
Jason said the man had warned him to stay away from Michelle or there was going to be another accident.
Then the man ran the knife across Jason's neck.
Jason showed the investigators a red mark that the serrated blade had left on his skin.
Claus and McFerrin exchanged looks that expressed their doubts.
They had been suspicious of Jason before because of his hidden romance with Rochelle, but his conduct now just seemed bizarre.
He had no witness to back up his story, and the wound on his neck looked totally superficial and was likely self-inflicted.
So the investigators wondered if this was a misguided attempt to distract them by introducing a new mystery suspect.
McFerrin quickly pressed Jason for a description of his attacker.
Jason claimed he didn't get a good look at the man, but McFerrin said that seemed highly unlikely.
The attack happened in broad daylight. Surely Jason would have seen something that could help them identify the assailant.
Jason's voice got softer as he tried to grasp for details.
He was fumbling, which meant he was vulnerable.
So McFerrin dropped any pretense that he believed what Jason was saying.
He told Jason flat out that he thought he was lying.
Jason looked like he had just gotten the wind knocked out of him.
He was quiet for several seconds. Then he let out a deep sigh and admitted that it was true.
No one had attacked him. He had cut himself.
Now McFerrin knew he had the advantage. So he narrowed his eyes, stepped a bit closer to Jason to kind of intimidate him.
And he told Jason that he thought he was also lying about another story he had told police.
The one Jason had told police about what he was doing on the night Lori Waterman was killed.
Jason started stuttering and said he really wasn't lying about that, but his face was flushed and he was sweating and talking in circles.
The experienced investigators could see Jason's facade was starting to crumble.
So McFerrin cut him off and said in a slow and certain tone that he knew Jason took part in Lori's murder.
But now Jason's voice changed. He wasn't stuttering anymore.
He spoke with urgency, like what he was saying was true and he needed them to believe it.
He told the investigators that they really didn't understand.
They did not know what Lori had done to deserve what happened to her.
She was not this perfect person everyone thought she was.
Then the big red-headed man looked right at McFerrin and he said he did not kill Lori.
But he knew who did. Based on information provided by Jason and evidence discovered throughout the investigation, here is a reconstruction of what happened to Lori Waterman on the evening of Saturday, November 13, 2004.
Not long after midnight, the killer stared at himself in the bathroom mirror.
He picked up an electric razor from the counter, flipped it on, and methodically shaved off his bushy brown beard.
When his face was clean-shaven, he brought the razor up to his head, and clumps of his floppy brown hair started falling into the sink.
He knew from TV crime shows that a few strands of hair could give a killer away, so he wanted to make sure none of his hairs were left behind at the crime scene, hence why he was shaving them all off.
A little before 1 a.m., the killer walked into his bedroom and grabbed a trash bag off the floor.
Then he threw a bunch of supplies, including a roll of duct tape, a bristly old rope, and a bottle of wine into that bag.
With his break-in kit in hand, he stepped outside and got into his partner's idling pickup truck, and the two of them drove together to Lori's house.
When they arrived, the killer picked his trash bag off the floorboard, got out of the truck, and closed the passenger door behind him.
His partner sped away down the street. The killer looked at the big peach-colored house in the moonlight and reminded himself why he was doing this.
A dangerous woman lived in that house, and she needed to be stopped.
The killer pulled a pair of latex gloves from the trash bag, slipped them on, and then climbed into the two-car garage through a window.
Once inside, he tried the door that led into the house, but it was locked.
He tried to jimmy open the door with a butter knife that he'd brought along.
He scratched up the striker plate on the lock, but he just couldn't get it to open.
So, he removed the cat door, crouched down, reached through the opening, stretched his arm out to unlock the door from the other side, and then let himself in.
Once inside, the killer walked upstairs to the third floor and walked through an open door into the master bedroom where Lori was fast asleep.
But the killer didn't do anything. Instead, the killer darted out of the bedroom, went back downstairs, and spent the next two hours pacing around the house while Lori slept upstairs, psyching himself up to go back up there and kill her.
And finally, after two hours, at about 3 a.m., the killer was ready, so he grabbed his flashlight and other supplies from the trash bag and made his move.
He went upstairs and burst into Lori's room and immediately enveloped her head with a t-shirt before she could even wake up.
He put his massive weight on top of Lori, pinning her to the bed.
Lori couldn't scream, she couldn't move, she couldn't do anything.
Then the killer secured a cloth over her mouth with duct tape.
The killer tied his rope around Lori's neck like a dog leash and dragged her from the bed across the room.
He rifled through Lori's dresser, pulling out a sweater and jeans, and ordered her to change out of her nightgown.
Lori complied with his demands, changing into street clothes right in front of him.
The killer held the rope so she wouldn't go anywhere, but he averted his gaze.
After Lori had changed, the killer wrapped socks around her wrists and then duct-taped over them, sealing her wrists together.
He didn't want to leave any residue from the tape on her skin, which is why he taped directly on the socks.
The killer then forced Lori, who was now bound and gagged, down the stairs into her kitchen.
And then once they were down there, he sat her down and took the gag from her mouth.
He opened up the bottle of wine that he'd brought along, poured her a full glass, and forced her to drink it as he held it.
He kept forcing Lori to drink wine until she'd finished the entire bottle.
Then the killer put the gag back in Lori's mouth and led her out to the garage.
He opened the back door of her purple minivan and ordered her to lie down across the back seat.
Lori was now very drunk, but the killer was still worried about her making a run for it, so he tied her to an armrest in back to make sure she couldn't go anywhere.
But after doing this, the killer noticed that the tip of his latex glove had ripped off while he was securing Lori with duct tape.
Worried that he might leave a trace of his DNA in this tip of the glove, he ran back inside and back upstairs and scoured the bedroom, but he could never find that piece of latex.
Cursing, he rushed back down to the garage.
It was now close to 4 a.m., which meant he did not have much time until dawn.
So he hopped behind the wheel of the minivan, and using Lori's keys, he turned it on and drove off, with Lori in the back, lying across the back seat, her arms and legs bound.
As the killer drove out of town in the minivan, his partner caught up with him and followed in the truck they'd driven to the house.
The killer drove about half an hour north of town, where the roads turned to gravel, and then he continued for another 30 minutes through the thick hillsides of Prince of Wales Island.
Finally, he pulled over by a creek and pulled Lori out of the car.
As for his partner, he parked his truck not far behind them.
The killer then put a garbage bag on the ground and laid Lori on top of it to keep her from getting dirty.
Getting dirt on Lori's clothes was not part of the plan because he wanted it to look like Lori had had a drunk driving accident.
And so with Lori in place on the trash bag on the ground, the killer crouched over Lori, wrapped his massive hands around her neck, and attempted to break it.
He heard a crack, but Lori didn't die. Instead, her gag had slipped off.
Lori, breathless and drunk, tried to say something to the killer, and the killer was horrified at the sound of Lori's voice.
So he just raised his flashlight over his head and swung it as hard as he could against Lori's neck a dozen times, but Lori just kept on breathing.
Desperate to finish the job and just get out of there, the killer pinched Lori's nose and covered her mouth with the cloth, suffocating her.
Lori struggled as best as she could to get free, but she was bound and gagged and totally intoxicated and she was way smaller than the killer and so she was no match.
Lori's breath finally gave out and she died laying on the ground in the middle of nowhere.
The killer checked Lori's wrist for a pulse, and when he couldn't find one, he concluded that she was dead.
However, after he cut off the tape around Lori's wrists and ankles, he could see there were clear marks on her neck and there was mud on her clothes despite his efforts to keep mud off of them, and so this made him rethink his plan.
He knew this would not look like a drunk driving accident.
So at 5 a.m., the killer put Lori's body back in the purple minivan and pushed the vehicle off the logging road down a steep embankment. had crashed into a fallen tree, and came to a stop.
The killer's partner had not planned for any of this, but he knew the plan was changing.
The killer now wanted to destroy all the evidence.
So the partner grabbed a jerry can of gasoline from the truck and rushed over to the killer.
The killer then poured that gasoline on the ground, on Lori's body, and all over the minivan.
Then he backed away, lit a match, and tossed it onto the gasoline trail leading to the minivan.
In 30 seconds, the vehicle had exploded with flames, but there was nobody around to hear it or see it except the killer and the partner.
The killer and his partner ran back to the truck, and the two of them drove into town just before the sun started to rise.
Once the killer got back to his place, he played some video games and tried to calm down while his red-haired partner got ready for his janitor shift at the high school.
And before he headed to work, he got a phone call from Lori's daughter, Rachelle, and she wanted to know how everything had gone earlier that morning.
Jason, who had told police he did not kill Lori, was technically telling the truth.
However, he was the partner who drove the truck and helped plan the murder.
His friend Brian, who was also friends with Rochelle, had been the one who actually carried out the murder.
However, these two were not acting alone.
It turned out Rochelle had had sex with both Jason and Brian, and as a result, both of them would do anything for her.
For months, Rochelle had complained to them about her mother.
Over pizza and video games, she would tell them how Lori hated the way she dressed and took offense at Rochelle's adoption of Wicca, the nature-based religion associated with witchcraft.
But most of all, Rochelle would tell them that her mother was really upset about her, Rochelle, hanging out with Jason and Brian.
Her mother was afraid that Rochelle could marry someone like them, leading to a dead-end life instead of realizing her true potential.
But Rochelle also critically told Jason and Brian that her mother physically abused her, slapping her and even hitting her with a baseball bat.
She said her mother also threatened to sell Rochelle into prostitution.
But none of Rochelle's stories of abuse were real.
They were dark fantasies fueled by real-life mother-daughter friction.
However, when she spoke to Jason and Brian about her mother, Lori was made out to be a real-life monster who was going to kill Rochelle unless Jason and Brian put a stop to it.
So when Rochelle told Jason and Brian that she and her father would be away the weekend of November 13th and her mother would be home alone, they knew what they had to do.
Investigators had suspected both young men, but it was Jason's bizarre claim that he had been attacked by a stranger with a knife that sealed his and Brian's fate.
McFerrin and Claus knew Jason was lying about that knife attack, but they also believed he was lying when he said he did not kill Lori.
And so they pressed him, and he would finally admit to helping plan the murder and to driving Brian to the scene.
So in exchange for a lesser sentence, investigators got Jason to wear a wire and record Brian talking about the murder.
And sure enough, on this wiretap, investigators would hear Brian describe basically everything that happened and who played a role.
And so they had enough to arrest both young men and Rochelle.
Brian was found guilty of first-degree murder and sentenced to 99 years in jail.
Jason pled guilty and got a 50-year sentence for his role in planning the murder.
As for Rochelle, she actually pled innocent, insisting that she told Jason to stop Brian from going ahead with the plan, but either Jason never relayed the message to Brian or Brian just ignored it.
In 2011, Rochelle was found not guilty of murder, but was found guilty of criminally negligent homicide.
The jury found that even though Rochelle did not take part in her mother's murder, she clearly knew what Jason and Brian were planning and did very little to stop them.
Rochelle served three years in prison and was released in 2015.
She moved to Florida, where she revived her My Crappy Life blog and continues to maintain it.
Thank you for listening to the Mr. Ballin Podcast.
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