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Download the Amazon Music app today. On the morning of July 7th, 2019, Sergeant Dan Burbeck responded to a call at the home of a 49-year-old woman in a small Texas town.
Burbeck got to the house and found a bloody crime scene in the master bedroom, evidence that a violent struggle must have taken place there the night before.
Now, three other members of the victim's family were home that night and they had been in close proximity to the master bedroom.
The victim's husband had been asleep on the couch just steps away from the master bedroom, the victim's teenage daughter was asleep in the room just next door, and the victim's son had been in an upstairs bedroom playing video games all night.
But they all said they didn't hear a thing the night before.
And so it seemed totally inconceivable to Sergeant Burback that this violent attack could have taken place in one room while the entire family just kind of went about their business and heard nothing.
And so Burbeck believed something sinister must have happened in that house the night before, and it seemed very possible, if not likely, that these family members were a part of it.
But the sergeant had a problem. The victim of this apparent crime in the master bedroom was nowhere to be found.
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.
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It had been a muggy day in North Texas on July 6th, 2019, but the oppressive heat began to let up right as the sun set.
And by 7 p.m., it had become an ideal summer night of about 73 degrees Fahrenheit.
And so it seemed like the perfect Saturday night to go out in town.
But 49-year-old Manuela Allen, known to her friends and family as just Manu, along with her husband Peter, had the house all to themselves that evening.
So instead of going out to enjoy the pleasant summer weather, they decided instead to have a relaxing night in, just the two of them, on the couch, just watching TV together.
Peter and Manu had not had many evenings alone like this in their 23 years of marriage.
And that was because they had spent most of those years raising their four kids.
So this was a house that had constantly buzzed with activity and noise.
But now all but one of their four kids had graduated from high school and their oldest son was away at college.
So the house was getting quieter. And Manu and Peter were already thinking about how someday soon it might just be the two of them living here.
And as much as they love their children, it was nights like this that made them kind of look forward to the day that they would be empty nesters.
Peter grabbed his glass that contained some vodka from the end table and took a sip, and then he and Manu leaned back on the couch to watch a replay of a Texas Rangers baseball game.
Manu loves sports, and while baseball was not her favorite, it would have to do until football season rolled back around.
Manu and Peter lived in the small Texas town of Olney with a population of just 3,000 people, and the nearest city with a major football team was over two hours away.
But both Manu and Peter were teachers at Olney High School, and so during football season, they went to watch their beloved Olney Cubs play every Friday night.
Manu didn't care that the Cubs were on the third-longest losing streak in the state of Texas.
She just loved going to support her students who were on the team, and she enjoyed the camaraderie of sitting in the stands along with her friends and her family.
As a teacher, Manu felt responsible for her students, even when they were outside the classroom.
So she dedicated a lot of her time to tutoring and mentoring students, especially the ones that seemed to have the most issues, even beyond just schoolwork issues.
Kids that had problems at home or kids who had behavioral issues.
You know, Manu was all about helping those kids.
But the upcoming school year and the roaring crowds in the stands on Friday nights felt really far away from Manu on this relaxing summer evening, and the sound of the baseball game on TV started to become white noise for her, and by 10 p.m., she could barely keep her eyes open.
Peter noticed his wife nodding off, and he gently nudged her and asked if she wanted to go to bed.
Manu looked over at the clock and said she should get some sleep.
Peter gave his wife a kiss, and Manu stood up, and she shuffled down the hallway, entered the master bedroom, and closed the door behind her.
Peter would not be joining his wife tonight in the master bedroom.
He and Manu had this understanding that on any night when Peter drank, even if it was just one drink, he would have to sleep on the couch.
So, with his glass of vodka still half full, this would be one of those nights.
Peter continued watching TV and slowly nursing his drink, and he started to feel tired.
And then around 11.30, the couple's 20-year-old son, Darien, came home.
He let himself in with a key, nodded to his dad, and went upstairs to his own bedroom.
But then, around 15 minutes later, there was a knock on the front door.
Peter stood up and groaned a bit as he walked bleary-eyed towards the front door.
He unlocked it and opened it up. And outside the door stood the couple's 15-year-old daughter, Kiara.
She said hi to her dad, walked right past him, and went straight to her room.
Peter sat back down on the couch. The couple's 18-year-old daughter, Melanie, was away on a weekend trip with her friends, so she wasn't expected home.
And at this point, it was close to midnight, so Peter dimmed the lights, reclined on the couch, and slowly drifted off to sleep while the TV stayed on at a low volume.
A little after 8 a.m. the next morning, Peter woke up feeling like he could have used maybe another hour or two of sleep.
Now, it was Saturday, and if Peter wanted to, he could keep sleeping.
But even on these weekends, you know, Peter just could not seem to sleep in.
He just automatically got up. So Peter climbed up from the couch, grabbed his computer, and then went back to the couch to read some news online.
At the same time Peter was doing this, his daughter Kiara had just woken up as well and she was getting ready to go to the gym, but first she wanted to put her dirty clothes in the washing machine.
The Allen house had five bedrooms, but it was still a fairly compact house, just a little over 2,000 square feet.
And the house was laid out in a way where Kiara actually had to go through her parents' master bedroom, which was right next to her own bedroom, in order to get into the laundry room.
So Kiara stepped out of her room and then tried turning the knob to the master bedroom, but she found the door was locked from the inside.
Kiara walked down the hall and saw her dad on the computer and she asked him where mom was and Peter just said oh check the master bedroom.
Kiara said she already had and the door was locked.
Peter then told his daughter to just go around through the garage because in their house the master bedroom had two entrances.
There was one in the hallway inside of the house which is the door that was locked and then the other entrance was through the laundry room on the other side which connected to the garage.
So Kiara stepped outside of the house and went into the garage and she walked into the laundry room and then she reached the door that led into the master bedroom and when she tried the doorknob, it was unlocked.
So she swung it open, she stepped inside and she froze because what she saw was horrifying.
Kiara turned and ran back outside, back around into the main house, ran to her dad and said, mom is not in the bedroom and there was blood everywhere.
Peter instantly sprung up, raced outside into the garage and into the master bedroom and right away he stepped in this big puddle of blood in the carpet and he looked around the master and there really was blood everywhere and his wife was nowhere to be seen.
Peter instantly thought his wife must be badly injured somewhere.
So he ran from the master bedroom with Kiara now following behind him back into the garage and then out to the driveway.
And that's when he realized Manu's car was gone.
Peter turned to his daughter and said, you know, mom must have hurt herself and driven herself to the hospital.
And so Peter called his wife's cell phone, but it went straight to voicemail.
So a few minutes later, Peter and Chiara got into his car and they sped to a nearby hospital thinking that's where Manu's gonna be.
But when they got there, Peter slowly drove through the parking lot of the emergency room looking for Manu's white SUV, but they didn't see it anywhere.
So they parked the car and they went inside the hospital and asked the staff if Manuela Allen had been admitted and they said no.
So Peter and Kiara left that hospital, went to another nearby hospital, but again, Manu's car was not there, and the staff said she had not admitted herself.
And so Peter and Kiara returned home, and at this point, Peter dialed 911.
And he explained to the operator that his wife was missing, and there was blood all over her bedroom.
The first officer who arrived at the Allen house met with Peter outside.
He asked Peter what was going on and Peter told the officer that he really had no idea.
His daughter Kiara had come to him that morning saying their mom was gone and there was blood all over the bedroom and then he went and checked and he saw the same thing and then he went out to the driveway and he noticed his wife's car was gone.
Peter explained that he and Kiara then drove to two hospitals thinking his wife must have gotten hurt and then driven herself to a hospital.
But when they got to the two hospitals, his wife wasn't there and they said they had not seen her.
The officer noticed that as Peter was explaining the story, he seemed totally calm and not shaken or panicked or really showing any kind of emotion.
And that just seemed unusual to the officer, considering the circumstances Peter had just described.
I mean, his wife, at a minimum, seems to have been gravely hurt if she's not already deceased.
And so you would think that would elicit a bigger reaction.
But the officer kept that to himself, and instead he had Peter lead him inside the residence to the master bedroom.
And the first thing the officer noticed was that the bed had been stripped bare, and there was a bloody pillow on the floor next to the bed.
And he did see blood spatter all over the room, across the mattress, the closet doors, and the wall.
In fact, there was so much blood that the officer did not believe a person could survive having lost that much of it.
And so he wondered to himself why Peter didn't immediately call 911 instead of getting in the car with his daughter and driving around to various hospitals first.
It seemed obvious this was an emergency, so why wasn't it treated that way?
Then the officer noticed something else on the bedroom floor.
It was a knife. And so at this point it was obvious this was a crime scene.
So he asked Peter and Kiara to clear out of the master bedroom and go wait for him on their couch.
And so after the father and daughter had stepped out of the room, the officer walked outside and went to the garage.
And immediately he saw bloody streaks on the ground and he traced them through the laundry room and back to the door of the master bedroom.
And he recognized these bloody streaks had to be drag marks.
Everything the officer saw painted a picture of a very violent struggle having taken place in the bedroom, most likely sometime during the night.
The officer then walked back into the house and observed bloody footprints leading from the master bedroom to the kitchen, right to a spot next to the refrigerator.
And so the officer walked into the living room where Peter and Kiara were, and he asked Peter about these footprints and, you know, why would somebody go into the kitchen potentially?
And Peter explained that actually his wife kept her keys on a hook right next to the refrigerator and her keys were gone along with her car.
And so at this point, the officer radioed dispatch for help and said the police should now be on the lookout for Manu's vehicle because clearly either Manu or someone who harmed Manu had taken the keys and taken the vehicle.
A few minutes later, Sergeant Dan Burbeck of the Young County Sheriff's Department, along with a couple of local police from Olney, pulled up in front of the Allen House, and the officer who had first arrived on scene walked up to Burbeck and briefed him on what he had seen.
After being briefed up, Sergeant Burbeck immediately walked into the Allen House and told Peter and Kiara that they would need to step outside.
As Peter and his daughter walked out onto the porch, Peter told Burbeck that actually one of his other kids was still in the house upstairs.
So Burbeck told the father and the daughter to stay outside, and then Burbeck walked into the house and upstairs to a second floor bedroom, opened the door, and found 20-year-old Darian inside with his headphones on playing video games.
Burbeck asked Darian to come outside with him, and Darian, who looked very confused, asked what was going on here, but Burbeck just said he needed Darian to leave the house right now.
So Darian just did as he was told and stood up and followed the detective downstairs, and then he, along with Burbeck, joined Peter and Kiara outside on the porch.
Once they were out there, Birbeck began questioning them, starting with the husband, Peter.
Birbeck asked Peter, you know, why did you sleep on the couch that night instead of in your bed with your wife?
Peter explained the agreement he had with Manu, that whenever he drank, no matter how much, he would sleep on the couch.
Now, Sergeant Birbeck kept this to himself, but right away he wondered, why would you have that agreement in place?
Was Peter like a maniac when he drank? Did he get violent?
You know, what was going on here? Birbeck then proceeded to ask each member of the family if they had heard anything unusual during the night before, because Birbeck assumed someone in the house must have heard something considering the crime scene in the master bedroom, and the couch where Peter slept was only about 20 steps away from the master bedroom, Kiara was in the bedroom right next door to the master bedroom, and Darian was right above it in the upstairs bedroom.
It just seemed impossible that such a violent struggle could have taken place with them not hearing anything.
But Peter said he really heard nothing, aside from the sound of an engine, which he thought could have been his wife's SUV, starting up around dawn.
And he said the sound actually woke him up, but he went right back to sleep and figured it was not a big deal, whatever it was.
Burbeck asked Peter, you know, is it normal for your wife to just get up and leave in the middle of the morning like that?
Like, didn't you think to maybe ask her where she was going?
Peter replied that it was not his job to keep tabs on his wife.
Darien, who had been upstairs, said the whole night he'd had his headphones on and was playing video games.
The only thing he said he heard over the course of the whole night was a rustling sound coming from the kitchen sometime between maybe 3 and 5 a.m., but he figured it was just his dad maybe getting a snack.
And then Kiara, who was in the room right next door to where her mother appeared to have been in some life-and-death struggle, said she really had heard nothing.
Absolutely nothing. Now, Birbeck, by this point, looked totally stunned by their answers, and so Chiara, who kind of picked up on his suspicion, she quickly explained that she had been out that night, and when she got home, she went straight to her room, slipped into her bed, put her earbuds in, which would have nullified the noise, and she FaceTimed with her boyfriend.
And then after the call, she fell asleep still with the earbuds in her ears, which again could have prevented her from hearing anything.
Burbeck didn't know what to believe here, but he just still felt like something was off.
You know, maybe these family members know more than they're letting on, but he obviously had no proof.
And so Burbeck told the family that, you know, when he was done here at the house, he wanted them to come to the station so he could speak to them further.
It was around this time that Lieutenant David Wilk was driving past the Allen family house when he saw the yellow crime scene tape stretched out around their property.
Now, Lieutenant Wilk worked for the sheriff's department that was the next county over, so he had no idea what this crime scene tape was about, but he did know the Allens personally.
In fact, his son was a football player at Olney High School and the boy adored Manu.
So Lieutenant Wilk just really liked the Allen family and seeing the crime scene tape, it just made his stomach drop because he knew obviously something bad had happened.
Wilk immediately pulled over, got out of his car, and introduced himself to a local police officer he saw standing outside of the residence.
And Wilk asked the officer, you know, what's going on here?
And the officer told Wilk that Mrs. Allen was missing and it didn't look good.
Wilk asked if there was anything he could do to help.
And the officer told him that actually right now, other patrol units were out looking for Manu's white SUV, and so if Wilk wanted to, he could join in that search.
And Wilk said, yes, you know, where should I look?
And the officer suggested that maybe he explore the recreational area around Lake Cooper, which was a very popular swimming hole about eight miles north of town.
And so the officer gave Lieutenant Wilk a description of Manu's vehicle and her license plate number, and then Wilk left, got back in his car, and began driving north until he reached the lake area.
There, he pulled into the recreational area and began driving along the perimeter of the lake.
And as he approached a boat ramp, something on the other side of the lake near the dam drew his attention.
It was a white SUV, just like Manu's missing vehicle.
And so Lieutenant Wilk parked, got out of his car and walked around the lake to where this white SUV was parked.
And as Wilk got closer to it, he could see there was nobody in or around the SUV.
He could also see that the SUV appeared to be stuck on a large mound of dirt with all four wheels kind of hovering off the ground as if somebody had driven it there, gotten it stuck and then left.
Wilk approached the driver's side of the vehicle and he noticed there were brown smears near the door handle.
He leaned in closer and he saw that these smears were clearly bloody fingerprints.
So immediately, Wilk turned on his body camera and proceeded to film and photograph the car both outside and in and also the area around it.
And then when he was done, he decided to just go ahead and search the whole area because obviously, you know, this could be connected to Manu and maybe she was out here somewhere.
And so Wilk walked towards a fence that was a short distance away from the car, and then once he got there, he turned around and just began scanning the entire area.
And that's when something else caught his eye.
It was something off in the distance, beneath a thicket of trees.
It looked sort of like a pile of laundry on the ground.
Wilk began walking towards it, and as he did, he realized this was not just some pile of laundry.
It looked like it was the outline of a white bed sheet, and very clearly this sheet was wrapped around something fairly big.
And so Wilk picked up his pace a bit, and as he got closer, he began to see there were bloodstains on the outside of these sheets, and then when he was right on top, it was obvious that there was a dead body wrapped up inside of the sheets.
Wilk had a sick feeling because he was sure the person who was inside of these sheets would be identified as Manu.
And so he called into the Young County Sheriff's Department and said he'd found a dead body and it was almost certainly the one they were looking for.
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Back at the Allen house, Sergeant Burbeck heard about the discovery of a body on his radio, and so now that this was officially a homicide case, he reached out to the state police, known as the Texas Rangers, for help.
He arranged for Peter, Kiara, and Darien to be taken to the nearest Texas Rangers station, and then he got into his cruiser and drove down to the lake, as other county and state police headed that way as well.
Birbeck arrived at the lake and Lieutenant Wilk led him to the body that was still wrapped in the sheets.
Since Wilk was not working the case in any official capacity, he'd left the body as he'd found it.
So, Sergeant Birbeck leaned down and began pulling away the sheets and also some yucca leaves that had covered up the victim's face, and then once the victim was exposed, Lieutenant Wilk, who was standing nearby and who knew Manu personally, was able to positively identify her.
Manu was deceased. Burbeck and a few of the other officers who had arrived put up crime scene tape while they waited for a forensics team to get there.
Burbeck turned to one of the officers and shared his opinion that the killer was almost certainly someone Manu knew.
He pointed out that the violence inside of her home was so brutal that it just seemed personal, and also the fact that her face seemed to be covered up with leaves when they found her, well, that was something he'd seen before when the killer was someone close to the victim.
Then Burbeck radioed the Texas Rangers down at the station where he'd sent Manu's family and one of the Rangers broke the news to Peter that unfortunately his wife's body had been found.
Now by this point, Peter and Manu's oldest daughter Melanie had returned from her overnight trip and their oldest son had also come back from his college campus and so they were also with Peter and Kiara and Darian at the station.
And so the Rangers watched Peter closely as he turned and told the four children the news about their mother.
The two oldest immediately broke down and cried, and Kiara, who had first discovered the blood in the bedroom, collapsed to the floor.
But Darian, who said he'd been up all night playing video games, didn't break down, he just walked away and sat in a corner by himself.
The rangers noticed this and actually went to another room to talk about how odd it was that Darian had not started crying and had just sort of sat down.
So they decided Darian should be the first person they speak to.
And so a few minutes later, one of the Rangers sat down with Darien in an interview room and asked him how he had been getting along with his mother in recent weeks.
And Darien admitted that he and his mother had actually been arguing a lot about his college plans.
Darien was 20 years old, but he spent basically all of his time in his room playing video games.
Now Darian was perfectly fine with that, he figured he would get his life together at some point, but Manu wanted him to act now to go enroll in college, but Darian said he didn't want to go back to school and just sort of wished his mom would leave him alone.
After this the ranger just asked Darian point blank if he had anything to do with his mother's death, and Darian was immediately adamant that no he would never hurt his mom, so the ranger asked him if he would consent to being fingerprinted and Darian said yes of course.
Peter was the next to be interviewed, and he was unemotional just like he had been with police at the house.
The ranger thought this was strange, so he pointed out that Peter seemed to be handling the situation quite calmly.
Peter explained that his background was he had been in the army as a part of their special forces unit, the Green Berets, and so he had been trained to keep cool under pressure and that was just what he was defaulting to.
But Peter clearly understood what the ranger was hinting at here, that he was suspicious of Peter, so Peter quickly added that of course he wanted justice for his wife here.
And then after that, Peter said very calmly that he also owned a whole lot of firearms and a whole bunch of ammunition, and he'd make sure his wife's killer saw justice one way or the other.
The ranger just stared at Peter for a second, not convinced if Peter really was being genuine about potentially going out and seeking vigilante justice, or if maybe this was just performative, that this was Peter's way of kind of acting out his emotions.
And so the ranger decided to just kind of move on.
And he asked Peter, you know, you heard that car start sometime in the morning and you believed it was your wife's car.
You know, how did you hear that noise? How did that wake you up?
But the violent attack on your wife in your bedroom just down the hall didn't wake you up.
Peter said he couldn't really offer an explanation, but he did offer a theory, which was that maybe Manu's killer put their hand over his wife's mouth.
Sometimes violent struggles are silent, he said.
The ranger couldn't help but just shake his head.
At this point, the ranger was starting to feel like Peter had already thought of an answer for everything, like he had prepped for this interview.
The pair spoke for a bit longer, kind of rehashing details, and then at some point, the ranger thanked Peter for coming in and told Peter that somebody would follow up with him soon.
After that, the Rangers would speak to the two oldest Allen children separately, and then finally, after the longest day of their lives, the Allen family were told they could go.
However, they were told they were not allowed to return to their home because their house was now a crime scene.
So Peter made a few phone calls, and a friend agreed to let them stay at his Airbnb until they could go home.
The next day, Sergeant Burbeck got a call from the medical examiner who had Manu's autopsy results.
The medical examiner revealed that Manu had been stabbed multiple times and she had defensive wounds on her hands.
She had also been strangled and her neck was broken.
And what's more, after Manu had been taken to the lake, the killer had shot her in the face after she was dead.
The violence had been even more extreme than Burbeck realized, and this only convinced him further that Manu's killer had to be somebody close to her that had some sort of personal issue with her.
Then Burbeck and members of the state police met with forensics investigators who had processed the scene out by the lake, and they had found shoe prints in the mud near Manu's stranded SUV and bicycle tracks that led away from the SUV out of the recreational area and onto the main road.
And so while investigators followed up on these shoe prints and bike tracks, word of Manu's murder quickly spread through the small Texas town.
Students at Olney High School, where Manu worked, were devastated when they learned of the death of their beloved teacher.
And also rumors began to fly, in particular on a Facebook group called Rants and Raves, where citizens of Olney voiced their theories about what they thought happened in the Allen house on the night of the murder.
And most of those amateur theories pointed the finger at Peter. and Peter suddenly began noticing that people around town were treating him differently.
They were treating him with suspicion. A few days after Manu's death, Peter and his kids were finally allowed to return to their family home.
And when they got there, Darien helped his father secure the house by bolting the windows shut, and Peter said he would sleep with a gun under his pillow because he said the killer was still out there.
The next morning, Peter was contacted by Burback and asked to come in for another interview.
And so Peter drove to the station where Burback and a Texas Ranger met him and led him into an interview room.
The ranger began the interview by asking Peter why someone might want to kill his wife.
In response to this question, Peter referred to his large collection of guns.
He said he had a ton of them, at least maybe a hundred, and a lot of people knew about them, so he said, you know, maybe somebody broke into the house to try to steal the guns.
And actually, Peter said he had a pistol, a communist block pistol, that he kept in a drawer, and when he had finally gotten back to his home the day before, he noticed that that pistol was missing.
Burbeck noted everything Peter was saying in his memo pad and he began to feel even more confident that Peter did have something to do with his wife's murder.
Burbeck felt like Peter was trying to influence the investigation by suggesting an angle that would divert attention away from him.
So Burbeck and the ranger stepped out of the room and talked for a second and decided to shift to a more confrontational tone with Peter.
So they went back into the interview room and they revealed to Peter that in the master bedroom where his wife was horribly attacked and killed, they had found a bloody sock which matched footprints left by the killer.
And it happened to be the exact same type of compression sock that Peter wore because they found socks just like those in his drawer.
And so they asked Peter to please explain that.
And Peter said he really couldn't. He just kept repeating that he did not hurt his wife.
And so at some point, the ranger asked how someone, other than the family, would know exactly where Manu kept her car keys, because that's where the footprints went, right next to the fridge, and the keys were gone, and the car was gone.
And Peter just lowered his head and stared down at the floor and said again, you know, he just had no explanation.
And so Burbeck and the Ranger continued drilling Peter, trying to get more information from him, but Peter really didn't have any more information.
He really stuck to this idea that he did not do anything wrong.
And so eventually, at the end of the interview, it was clear there was not enough evidence to arrest Peter.
And so Peter was told to go home and that if they needed him again, they'd be in touch.
Sergeant Burbeck was sitting in his office that afternoon when he got a report from one of the rangers who had been out in the field canvassing for witnesses.
Burbeck learned that the officer had made contact with an oil field worker who was on duty in the area near Lake Cooper on the same morning Manu's body had been found.
The worker had been out near the recreation area when he noticed someone on a bicycle pedaling away from the lake and in the direction of Olney.
The worker stated that this actually struck him as pretty odd because it was so early in the morning, just after dawn, and even though people did bike in that area, he never saw people biking that early in that area.
However, the worker said he didn't really get a good look at the person riding the bike.
He could only remember that the bicyclist wore shorts and had a backpack on.
And so Sergeant Burbeck assigned two investigators to contact area businesses along the route from Lake Cooper to Olney to see if any of them had surveillance cameras that were running that morning that maybe picked up some footage of this person on the bike.
And sure enough, the investigators found a local bank whose surveillance footage outside had captured an individual on a bicycle wearing shorts and a backpack, just like the oil field worker had described.
Burbeck took a look at this footage, and he was unable to make out the facial features of the individual on the bike.
However, he was able to glean enough information from the footage about the person's general age, sex, and build to potentially narrow the suspect pool down.
Burbeck was also still convinced Peter had something to do with his wife's murder, but he knew he didn't have enough evidence to move forward with an arrest.
But what he could do was try to rule out other possibilities, like for example Peter's theory about a burglar trying to steal his guns, because if he could rule that out, it would only help strengthen the case against Peter.
So Birbeck began looking into recent gun burglaries in the area, and there was only one.
And the homeowner who was targeted happened to be the father of a friend of Darien Allen's.
Birbeck wondered if that was more than just a coincidence.
After all, everyone in the town of Olney was connected by no more than two degrees of separation, so maybe it didn't mean anything. but Burbeck knew he would have to dig into it further.
So he began reading the reports that were made from this burglary investigation, and in examining the leads that had been developed, one name stood out, and that name was Corey Taylor.
Corey was a young guy who was a loner, who was known around town as a troublemaker, and he'd had numerous run-ins with law enforcement, and he also had what looked like a love affair with guns.
Burbeck found a video on Corey's Snapchat of him showing off a semi-automatic rifle with a sight attached to it.
So Burbeck decided to pay Corey a visit.
He drove to Corey's apartment complex and began walking towards Corey's place.
And as Burbeck made his way towards a stairwell, he saw something that made him slow down and then back up.
Because in the storage space underneath the stairs right in front of him was a bicycle.
Burbeck knelt down to inspect the tread pattern on the bicycle's tires, and he wasn't 100% sure, but the treads looked a whole lot like the bicycle tracks that were found down by the lake.
Burbeck took a picture of the treads and then proceeded up the stairs to Corey's apartment.
When he got to the door, Burbeck knocked, and Corey opened it up.
Burbeck introduced himself, and Corey allowed Burbeck inside.
And right away Burbeck noticed that Corey appeared to be very nervous, like he couldn't even stand still.
Burbeck asked Corey if he knew about what happened to Manu Allen, and Corey said he was aware of what happened to Mrs. Allen.
He said he knew her as Mrs. Allen because he knew her from his high school, only high school where she worked.
And he said everybody knew what happened to her.
It was horrible. Corey said he didn't know her well and he'd never been inside of her house.
Burbeck then asked Corey if he owned the bike that was outside under the stairwell and Corey said no, the bike was not his, it belonged to his friend, Julius Mullins.
Burbeck recorded this name in his notepad and he and Corey talked for a few minutes longer and then he left.
And within a day, investigators had tracked down this new person Corey had mentioned, Julius Mullins, and they brought him in for an interview.
Investigators asked Julius where he was on the night of July 6th, and Julius said that he had gone to a party.
Afterward, he had gone to Cory's apartment, let himself in, and crashed there.
He said he didn't actually see Cory that night, so he wasn't sure if Cory was actually in the apartment or not.
And so this sounded pretty odd that he just crashed at Cory's place and didn't even know if his friend was there, but it sounded like the two were close friends and maybe this was normal.
And so eventually the investigators just asked Julius if he would submit fingerprints and DNA. and Julius voluntarily submitted both and was then allowed to leave.
A day later, one of the rangers who had been working the case returned to Corey's apartment to confiscate the bicycle that Burbeck had seen underneath the stairwell, and as the ranger was approaching the stairs, he suddenly had a chance encounter with someone he was very familiar with.
On a whim, the ranger asked this person if he could look at the bottom of their shoes, and the person said yeah sure, so the ranger looked at the bottom of their shoes, and when he did, the ranger could barely contain his excitement, because he knew he had just broken the case wide open.
Investigators would meet with this person the ranger had just happened to run into, and after that interview, they knew who had killed Manu Allen.
Here is a reconstruction of what police think happened to Manu Allen in the early morning of July 7th, 2019.
Around 2am, Manu's killer quietly climbed through a window in the garage of the Allens' household and then made their way into the hallway of the house.
From there, they quietly crept down the hallway and went into the master bedroom where Manu was sleeping in the bed.
Now the killer tried to be quiet, but Manu was a light sleeper and very quickly they woke Manu up. and when the killer noticed that Manu was sitting awake in the bed looking over at them, the killer froze for a second, but then suddenly the killer reached out and grabbed a butterfly knife off the dresser, and just jumped on top of Manu before she could do anything, and the killer began furiously stabbing her.
Manu tried to shield herself from the knife, but the killer plunged it into her again and again in this frenzied attack, eventually rolling Manu over, jamming her head into the mattress, and then jabbing the knife into her head multiple times.
And after the 47th and final stab wound, the killer dropped the knife onto the bed.
But the killer convinced themselves that Manu was not dead.
She was still breathing. So the killer wrapped their hands around Manu's neck and squeezed as hard as they could until they were sure she was dead.
The killer then wiped the knife off on the sheets and then placed the knife into their backpack.
Then they took the bed sheets and kind of wrapped them all around Manu who was on the bed and then they dragged Manu inside of these sheets off the bed onto the ground.
Then the killer casually walked out of the bedroom into the kitchen to retrieve the car keys from the spot where Manu always kept them And so with Manu's keys in hand, the killer returned to the master bedroom, locking the door behind them, and then they dragged Manu in the bedsheets, out the other door of the master bedroom, through the laundry room and the garage, and then outside to Manu's SUV.
There, the killer put Manu's body, still wrapped in the sheets, in the trunk, and then they also placed the bike that they had driven over to the Allens' house into Manu's SUV.
Once Manu's SUV was all packed up, the killer hopped in the driver's seat and drove 8 miles north to the recreational area by the lake, but as they were driving along, the SUV got stuck.
So at that point, the killer hopped out of the SUV and removed Manu from the vehicle and dragged her over to the spot where she would later be found.
However, before the killer actually left Manu there, they pulled out a gun and shot Manu in the face, even though at this point Manu was obviously already dead.
Then after covering up Manu's face with some leaves, the killer walked back over to the SUV, took the bike out, and then pedaled away from the scene back towards town.
Police would track down Manu's killer and place them under arrest.
And then once they were brought into an interrogation room, investigators asked them, why?
Why had they killed Manu? And that's when the killer claimed that Manu's husband, Peter, had made them do it.
The killer said Peter had cornered them at a convenience store and made them get into his car and put a gun to the killer's head and said, you're going to kill my wife.
But as much as investigators had suspected Peter at different times during this investigation, this story didn't make sense with the timeline of the murder.
And the forensics, both the fingerprints and DNA, implicated only one person, Julius Mullins.
Julius was the owner of the bike who had stored it under the stairs at his friend's apartment, but more importantly, Julius was the ex-boyfriend of Peter and Manu's oldest daughter, Melanie.
The pair had dated for a year when Melanie was a junior in high school.
Julius' home life was undeniably rough, and there were times when his parents would kick him out of the house and he would have no place to sleep.
Sometimes the only high school coaches would let Julius, who played tight end for the football team, sleep in the gym.
And on at least one occasion, when Julius had been kicked out, Manu had allowed Julius to sleep over at their house.
And also, Julius was a frequent visitor to the Allens' household, but just for the day, he'd come over for a couple hours at a time to see Melanie.
And so it was during these frequent visits that Julius learned where Manu kept her car keys, which is how he knew where to go in the kitchen to find them.
Manu always treated Julius incredibly kindly because she was just a person who really looked out for the kids in this town.
I mean, she was always spending her spare time looking after kids and mentoring kids and tutoring kids, especially kids who had rough home lives like Julius did.
And so Julius was no exception to her kindness.
Manu would sometimes help him with his homework and, you know, talk to him and make sure he was doing okay.
But during Manu's daughter's relationship with Julius, it seemed like Julius's behavior began to change.
He was very temperamental and moody and just seemed like he was snowballing.
And so eventually Melanie broke off the relationship and Manu kind of stopped talking to him as well.
And Julius did not take it well. And this was about seven months prior to the murder.
Police noticed that when they brought Julius in for his first interview, that he had cuts and scrapes all over his arms and legs.
And when that ranger went to retrieve the bike from Corey's apartment, Julius was the person he ran into who he was very familiar with because of this case.
And he asked Julius to see the soles of his shoes, and when Julius showed him, it was immediately apparent that they matched the shoe prints that had been found by the lake where Manu's body was discovered.
The shoes were later found to be an exact match and the treads on Julius' bicycle were also an exact match to the tracks that were found leaving the scene.
Investigators also performed a sound test at the Allen residence with one ranger in the master bedroom and the other on the couch where Peter had been asleep and they turned the TV on in the living room to a low volume as it had been the night Peter fell asleep on the couch and Manu was later murdered and the ranger in the master bedroom shouted and yelled and made all this noise and the ranger in the living room could not hear a thing.
That's how poorly sound traveled in the Allen household, which is a big reason why nobody heard what was going on in the master bedroom.
And also, Kiara, when she had fallen asleep, she had her earbuds in, which did already degrade her ability to hear what was going on in the house.
And Darian really had been upstairs with headphones on, which also affected his ability to hear what was going on in the house.
So really, nobody heard anything. As for the knife that was found in the bedroom, it was determined to have not been the murder weapon, the knife that was used to kill Manu was found in Julius' backpack, and Peter's stolen communist block pistol was found in the home of Corey Taylor, Julius' friend, but Corey was found to not have been involved with the murder at all.
Julius would eventually come clean and would admit that Peter actually had nothing to do with the murder and that Julius had acted totally alone.
And it would turn out Peter's theory about the murder, the idea that somebody had maybe tried to break in to steal his guns, but then inadvertently killed his wife, seemed to be at least partially right.
Julius claimed when he snuck into the house, he was looking to steal Peter's guns.
Julius said he was in the process of stealing an unsecured gun from a cabinet in the master bedroom when Manu woke up and he said his fight-or-flight response kicked in and it led him to stab her 47 times and then strangle her and then eventually later on also shoot her in the face post-mortem.
Julius Mullins, who was 18 years old, pled guilty and was ultimately sentenced to 55 years in prison.
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