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. On July 16th, 2011, in Colusa County, California, seven-year-old Fabian Ayala sat in his father's truck while his dad worked on a farm nearby.
Suddenly, the ground started to shake and the windshield inside the truck shattered, sending glass flying onto Fabian.
Fabian closed his eyes and tried to protect himself with his arms, and then finally when all the shaking stopped, he leapt out of the truck and looked around to figure out what had just happened.
But when he looked down the road in front of him, he saw something on the ground that at first he just couldn't believe was real.
But as he got closer, he realized it was, and he knew that what he was looking at would haunt him for the rest of his life.
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 replace all of the Amazon Music Follow Buttons Gatorade with lukewarm hot dog water.
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Go to audible.com slash richgirlsummer. On a hot July afternoon in 2011, 43-year-old Roberto Ayala drove his white Ford F-250 truck down a private farm road past a field of sunflowers in full bloom.
Roberto had worked that farmland outside of the small town of Colusa, California since he was a young man, but looking out at that sea of yellow flowers in the sunlight still took his breath away.
Roberto glanced over at the passenger seat and saw his seven-year-old son, Fabian, staring out the window, also transfixed by the flowers.
Roberto smiled. He wanted all three of his kids to appreciate the beauty of nature as much as he did.
The sunflower field was part of 1,800 acres of farmland owned by the Moore brothers, two wealthy and powerful men in their 70s.
Roberto had started working for the Moore brothers decades earlier as a farmhand, and the brothers had taken to Roberto almost immediately.
They thought Roberto was a natural farmer who understood the land even better than they did.
And so the Moore brothers had quickly come to trust and rely on Roberto.
They had looked to him to weigh in on major decisions about their farmland, like what to plant and when to plant it.
And within a short period of time, Roberto had gained more responsibility within the Moore brothers' family business, and eventually they made Roberto their farm manager.
Managing the Moore brothers' multi-million dollar farm was a stressful job, but Roberto loved it.
And he looked up to the Moore brothers like father figures who had given him a chance to succeed and who trusted him like he was part of their own family.
In his truck, Roberto eased off the gas, pulled to the side of the road, and parked.
He told his son Fabian to wait in the truck while he went out and did a couple of chores.
Roberto's job managing the Moore brothers farmland often required him to be on call seven days a week from sunup to sundown.
So Roberto often took one of his three kids with him when he had to check on something at the farm.
It gave Roberto a chance to spend some time with his kids and he had already started to train his older son in aspects of farm management in the hope his son would take over for him someday.
But when Roberto was with his seven-year-old, Fabian, he didn't pressure the boy to learn anything about farming unless Fabian asked.
Roberto just liked sitting in his truck, talking with Fabian in both English and Spanish, and giving him a chance to take in the beautiful Northern California scenery.
Roberto grabbed a pair of rubber electrical gloves sitting between him and Fabian, and then he hopped out of the truck into the summer sun.
Roberto was not a big guy, but he was very strong.
He wore jeans, cowboy boots, and a cowboy hat.
And he had salt and pepper hair and a thick, dark mustache.
He took off his cowboy hat and wiped the sweat off his forehead with the back of his hand.
Then he put his hat back on and walked away from the truck down the road a few feet towards a tall wooden pole that had a high voltage electrical box on it about the size of a high school locker.
Roberto slipped on his electrical gloves and opened the box.
This large metal box was one of many on the Moore brothers' farmland that housed electrical switches that controlled irrigation pumps used to water the fields of different crops at different times.
Roberto turned on the irrigation pump, closed the metal box, pulled off his gloves, and began walking back towards his truck.
But he stopped on the side of the road when he saw another truck driving towards him.
The truck stopped a few feet away from Roberto's truck and Paul Moore, the son of one of the two Moore brothers, stepped out.
Paul was 47 years old, he was six feet tall, good looking, and he had brown hair and green eyes.
Paul waved to Roberto's son, Fabian, who was still sitting in his dad's truck, and then Paul trotted his way over to Roberto.
Roberto had worked alongside Paul for almost 20 years.
When they were younger, they had both worked in the fields together, but now as Paul got older, he had moved more into helping run the business side of the family farm.
Paul and Roberto got along well and they regularly checked in with each other and it was assumed by almost everyone in the company that when the older Moore brothers retired, Paul and Roberto would essentially run the farm together.
Paul and Roberto asked each other how their families were doing and then they shifted gears and began talking a bit about the current sunflower and rice crops growing on the farmland.
But then Paul got a strange look on his face like he was embarrassed by what he was about to say.
Roberto asked him what was wrong, and Paul said it was about his cousin, Peter.
Roberto smiled and kind of shook his head.
It was rarely good news when Peter came up.
Peter Moore was a couple years younger than his cousin Paul, and the two had basically been raised as brothers.
Their fathers had run the family farming business together for decades, and they had always intended to pass the land and the business onto their sons, who they hoped would run things together just like they had.
But Peter had just never seemed ready to take on any real responsibility.
When he was young, he had worked in the fields alongside Paul and Roberto, but he always seemed angry about one aspect of the job or another.
And over the years, he had gained the reputation of having a bad temper, and he spent a lot of his time complaining about the way he felt mistreated by his father and his uncle.
And over the years, Peter had also made a habit of blaming a lot of his problems on Roberto.
He said Roberto was arrogant and bad at his job and that he didn't deserve the respect he got from the Moore brothers.
On the side of the road, Roberto asked Paul what Peter had done.
Paul took a breath and told him that Peter was looking for a fight with Roberto, like a real physical confrontation.
Roberto laughed. That sounded like something a kid would say.
But Paul told Roberto he was being serious.
Peter had spent years taking martial arts classes, and now he wanted to literally fight Roberto.
Roberto laughed again. He thanked Paul for the heads up, but he said there was no way he was going to physically fight Peter or anyone else for that matter.
Then Roberto and Paul shook hands, said they'd talk soon, and walked back to their trucks.
Once he was back in his truck, Roberto asked his son, Fabian, if he'd had a good time coming to work with him.
And Fabian said he had, and that he wanted to come to work with his dad more often.
Roberto said, great, it's a deal. And then he hit the gas, drove down the road, and left the field of yellow sunflowers behind them.
That night, Roberto, his wife, and three children sat around the dinner table talking. and Roberto laughed all over again when he told his family about how Peter wanted to fight him.
Fabian and his big brother laughed along with their dad, but Roberto's wife and daughter were not amused.
Roberto's daughter didn't like Peter at all, and she didn't trust him.
She had gone to work with her dad a lot over the years, and she was old enough to understand that Peter did have it out for her dad.
In fact, Peter didn't even hide his disdain for Roberto, and she had heard Peter say mean things about her father right in front of her.
But Roberto told his daughter and his wife that there was nothing to worry about, Peter was all talk, and he would never have the guts to actually try to fight him.
But later that night, as Roberto's wife lay in bed next to him, she was still worried.
As far as she was concerned, Peter was an angry rich man who acted like the world owed him something.
And she feared Peter would follow through with his latest threat, no matter how foolish Roberto thought it sounded.
A couple of weeks later, on July 16th, 2011, Roberto was back in his white Ford F-250 with his seven-year-old son, Fabian, at his side in the passenger seat.
Roberto was in his usual work clothes, jeans, cowboy boots, and a cowboy hat, and Fabian wore a cowboy hat too, exactly like his dad's.
At about 1 p.m., Roberto drove past the sunflower fields and a few minutes later, he glanced out his window towards one of the Moore brothers' rice fields.
He pulled the truck over and parked on the side of the road.
Roberto told his son to wait in the truck and then he grabbed his electrical gloves and he hopped out and walked towards a large metal high-voltage box on a wooden pole like he had done a couple weeks earlier.
It was time for Roberto to irrigate this rice field.
As his dad walked off, Fabian stayed in the truck as he was told, staring back at the sunflower fields in the distance.
The young boy already shared his dad's appreciation for the beautiful flower.
Then suddenly, Fabian felt the ground begin to shake and the windshield glass shattered.
Without thinking, Fabian threw his hands up in front of his face and he felt shards of glass stinging his arms.
Fabian screamed and looked around totally confused.
Growing up in Northern California, Fabian was already familiar with earthquakes and for a second he thought that's what this must have been.
But then Fabian stepped out of the truck and he felt an intense heat on his face.
He stumbled towards where his dad had walked off to, and when he looked out towards the rice fields, he began screaming and crying.
He called out to his dad, but his dad didn't respond.
Fabian looked up and down the isolated farm road, but there was nobody in sight.
So the seven-year-old boy just turned around and began running back down the road towards the sunflower field.
Fabian ran as fast as he could, and as he did, his cowboy hat fell off the back of his head, but Fabian didn't even stop to pick it up.
He just kept on running. Several minutes later, Fabian reached the sunflower field.
He'd gone to work with his dad enough to know there was a small neighborhood on the other side of this field, so he rushed into the tall stalks of the flowers and ran through the field as fast and as hard as he could.
But as Fabian ran, he felt his feet sinking into the mud that recent irrigation had caused.
Fabian stopped, bent down, and pulled off his shoes and socks.
Then he just kept on running through the field barefoot, holding his shoes in his hands.
As he ran, tears streamed down his face, mud covered his feet, and his legs felt like they were on fire, but Fabian did not stop.
Finally, after running two miles barefoot in the hot summer sun, the seven-year-old boy burst out of the field into a clearing.
He looked up and he saw a few small houses on the other side of the clearing, so despite being totally out of breath, he forced himself to just keep on running.
When he reached the other side, Fabian stumbled up the walkway to the first house he came to and he knocked on the door and screamed at the top of his lungs.
Seconds later, the door flew open and a woman saw the little boy standing there yelling and covered in mud.
The woman rushed out of her house, wrapped her arms around the boy and pulled him inside.
She asked him what was going on and Fabian coughed and wheezed and he looked up at the woman and he told her he had come from the rice field with his dad and his dad was on fire.
The woman grabbed her phone and immediately dialed 9-1-1.
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.
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.
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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.
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A few minutes after the woman called 911, Detective Dave Salm of the Colusa County Sheriff's Department stepped out of the small sheriff's station and walked across the lot to his car.
Along with this 911 call, the sheriff's department had gotten multiple calls from people all over the place saying they had heard a loud explosion coming from the Moore Brothers farm.
Detective Salm got into his car and headed out towards the farm road near the rice field where Roberto and Fabian had been.
Calls like this were not a regular thing in Colusa County, but they weren't too out of the ordinary either.
As a sheriff's detective, Salm spent a good amount of his time investigating potential industrial accidents in the area.
Farming was dangerous business, and unfortunately, Salm had witnessed his share of serious injuries and deaths related to faulty farm equipment and just plain bad luck.
Thick black smoke hung in the air as Salm pulled onto the farm road that led to the rice field.
He hit the gas and sped toward the road, and soon he could see the swirling lights of the fire trucks up ahead.
And as he got closer, the heat from a burning fire hit him even inside of his car.
Salm pulled over to the side of the road far enough away from the scene that he wouldn't interfere with the fire department who was trying to put out the fire. and after several minutes, the fire department got the blaze that had engulfed part of the rice field under control.
By that time, a few other officers from the sheriff's department had arrived, so Salm led his small investigative team down the road to where the fire had been put out.
He walked past Roberto's white truck and he saw shattered glass from the windshield and windows scattered over 10 feet on the ground.
Then he walked closer to the rice field and he saw the splintered fragments of what used to be a tall wooden pole.
The large metal box that had once been attached to this pole was nowhere to be found.
Just then, a member of the fire department approached Salm.
The two men had worked together several times before.
The firefighter led Salm and his team past pieces of metal on the ground and around behind one of the fire trucks.
When they got back there, Salm could still see the smoke in the air and he could feel it in his lungs and he covered his mouth and his nose and then looked down at the ground.
And when he did, he shuddered. Because he was staring at the burnt remains of a person.
It was the charred body of Roberto Ayala.
Detective Salm tried to catch his breath, but the smoke and the shock of the sight of Roberto made it very hard to breathe.
Salm had investigated plenty of industrial accidents, but he'd never seen anything even close to this.
Salm knelt down to get a better look at Roberto, and it was obvious he'd been badly burned for an extended period of time.
But Roberto's cowboy boots looked like they'd almost remained untouched.
So Salm got down as low as he could and craned his neck to get a good look at the bottom of Roberto's boots, and he saw there were several burn holes, each an inch wide on the sole of the boots.
Salm called over members of the fire department.
He thought he knew what those burn holes meant, but he wanted a second opinion.
So a few of the firefighters crouched down next to Salm, and they looked at Roberto's boots as well, and all of them agreed the holes on the bottom were a clear sign of electrocution.
Even though the wooden pole had been obliterated, Salm knew there had been a high-voltage unit attached to it at some point.
So he sent members of his team to go look for parts of this locker-sized metal box that would have housed the electrical switch that controlled the irrigation pumps.
And while the team fanned out to look for remnants of the box, Salm and members of the fire department talked through what they thought they were seeing.
They had all encountered electrocution in industrial accidents, but this scene just seemed different than anything any of them had dealt with before.
There was so much damage to the wooden pole, to the rice field, and even to Roberto's truck, that this looked like a far bigger thing than just a malfunction within the high voltage box.
Detective Salm prided himself on his work ethic and his commitment to his community.
But he never pretended to be some kind of Sherlock Holmes who could figure everything out.
And he was more than willing to admit that he had no idea what had happened to Roberto and that he badly needed help investigating this.
And so Salm grabbed his phone and reached out to Pacific Gas and Electric, the utility company that provided natural gas and electricity services to millions of Californians.
And later that day, that company sent crewmen out to the scene, but when they arrived, they felt as lost as Detective Salm was.
They told him they had never seen a blast radius on that scale in any kind of incident involving a high-voltage unit like the one Roberto would have been using.
Then members of Salm's team returned to the scene with the door of the high-voltage box that was on that pole, and they said they had found it over 150 feet away from where it had first been on the pole.
And when Salm and members of the fire department heard how far that door had flown from this explosion, they admitted that they really didn't know if the explosion had been an accident or if maybe it had been caused by a bomb on purpose.
On July 17th, so the day following the deadly explosion, Detective Salm drove back out to the farm road where Roberto had been killed.
As Salm drove, he felt his eyelids getting heavy.
He'd barely slept at all since arriving at the scene the day before, and he still didn't even know if he was dealing with an accident or a crime.
But that was not what had kept him awake.
The night before, Salm and members of his team had checked on Roberto's son Fabian at the hospital where the boy had been brought after running two miles barefoot to get help for his father.
Then the officers had driven Fabian home.
Roberto's wife had gotten the initial call from police telling her that Fabian had been taken to the hospital.
Roberto's wife spoke Spanish and she usually had Roberto or one of the kids translate for her, but nobody else had been in the house when she had gotten the call and so there had been communication issues between her and the police officer on the other line.
That meant when police had arrived at the house with Fabian, his mother, Roberto's wife, still didn't know what had happened to her husband.
And when Fabian had walked in, she ran and hugged him and then asked where his dad was.
And Fabian, the seven-year-old, had to tell her that dad is dead.
Everything about the scene at the house had been totally gut-wrenching.
Roberto's family cried while the two oldest kids translated the story of what had happened to their father to their mother.
And all the while, they all tried to make sure Fabian was somehow okay after having just seen his father's body burning right in front of him and then needing to run two miles at a dead sprint to try to get help.
In his car, Salm shook himself awake and focused on the road ahead of him.
And after he'd driven a couple of miles, he saw up ahead a swarm of law enforcement vehicles blocking the road.
Seeing the heartbreak of Roberto's family right up close and personal had made Salm really want to figure out what had happened to Roberto as quickly as possible.
And that meant he first had to determine if Roberto's death was an accident or a murder.
But by the end of the previous day, Salm and the others had still been at a total loss.
So Salm had done the only thing he could think of.
He contacted two federal agencies for help.
The Federal Bureau of Investigation, so the FBI, and the Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco, and Firearms, or ATF.
The ATF was the agency that investigated federal crimes involving arson, explosives, and bombs.
Salm parked his car on the farm road, stepped outside, and almost instantly regretted his decision to call the feds.
The appearance of the FBI and ATF had surely already terrified residents in that small town near the Moore Brothers farm, and those agencies could completely overwhelm a county's resources while taking over from local law enforcement.
Psalm smiled and waved at the big group of feds out in front of him as he approached a particular ATF agent who was on the scene, but all Psalm could think about was how he had possibly brought this circus to town for nothing more than maybe just an industrial accident.
The ATF agent he approached introduced himself to Psalm.
The agent was tall and skinny, and he wore glasses, and Psalm thought the guy seemed oddly excited for somebody who was in town to investigate a horrible death.
But the ATF agent told Salm that they found evidence he needed to see.
The agent led Salm down the road past several other members of the ATF and also the FBI and then walked him over to a large piece of metal that was laid out on the ground.
The agent said someone had found this piece of metal in a canal not far from the rice field and brought it to the agents because the person thought it might have something to do with the explosion that had occurred.
And the agent said that that person was right.
He crouched down and motioned for Sam to do the same, and then once they both were down there, the agent pointed to a series of markings on this piece of metal.
Sam just stared at the agent and asked him what they were looking at.
The agent said he would need to run a series of tests on the metal fragment to determine exactly what had happened, but the markings on the piece clearly indicated that some type of bomb had been detonated in the high-voltage box that housed the switch for the irrigation pump.
In short, the agent said this had not been an accident at all.
Somebody had definitely murdered Roberto Ayala.
Detective Salm exhaled and his shoulders relaxed.
He was horrified that somebody would want to kill Roberto, a man who was well-liked in the area, who was also a husband and a father.
But this news at least let Salm know that he had been right to ask for help from the FBI and ATF because this was a crime.
The ATF agent told Salm it would take some time for them to search the entire site and to run all the tests they needed to run, but Salm could definitely launch a murder investigation immediately.
Salm thanked the agent and then he headed back to the sheriff's station to regroup with his investigative team and to inform them they now had a very public murder case on their hands.
But it didn't take long for investigators to get their first lead.
That afternoon, Salm got a call from a guy who said he had to talk to him immediately.
The man's name was Paul Moore, and he said he might know who killed Roberto.
Later that day, Paul Moore, the heir to the Moore Brothers farming business, stepped into the sheriff's station.
Salm had been waiting for Paul to arrive, and so when he did, he went right over to him, shook his hand, and thanked him for coming in.
Everybody in the sheriff's department knew Paul well from just living in the area, and they were used to seeing him laughing, telling stories, and pretty much just lighting up any room he walked into.
But Psalm could tell on this day something was very wrong.
Paul looked pale and worried, and when he greeted Psalm, his voice was quiet and shaky.
Psalm, along with another detective, led Paul into a small office and closed the door behind them so they could talk privately.
Paul took a seat at a small table and the detective sat down across from him.
Then, Solom asked Paul what prompted him to reach out to police.
Paul cleared his throat and then, in a quiet voice, he told them what had happened over the course of the last day.
Paul said that he and his father had been eating a late lunch together when they got the call about Roberto.
At first, both men had just sat there in shock.
Roberto was like part of their family and they couldn't even come to terms with the fact that he was now gone.
But once they heard there had been some sort of explosion and that's what had killed Roberto, they immediately began to blame themselves.
Everyone in the company, including Roberto, was diligent about keeping their equipment as safe as possible.
So the idea that a faulty electrical box had just killed Roberto just destroyed Paul and his father.
But then, earlier that morning, after the ATF and FBI had rolled into town, Paul and his father knew something else was going on.
And because of their status in town, they had been able to get information quickly about what appeared to be a criminal investigation, not a query into an industrial accident.
Salm and the other detective nodded and said Paul was right.
There was no use pretending the Moore family didn't know everything about what was happening on and around their farm at all times.
But Psalm then followed up and said, well, okay, but why did that prompt you to reach out?
Paul looked both detectives in their eyes, and he said as soon as he realized somebody may have killed Roberto, there was only one person who came to mind, and that was his own cousin, Peter.
A look came across Psalm's face like he'd just heard the most obvious thing ever, and he couldn't believe he hadn't already thought of it.
Detective Salm, like almost everyone in town, knew about Peter's bad temper and about his strained relationship with his father and his uncle.
Paul said that his cousin Peter had always been a total jerk to Roberto, and just recently, he had even threatened to physically fight Roberto.
Paul usually just told himself that his cousin was all talk and that he would never actually do anything to Roberto, but recently, Paul said Peter really seemed more angry than usual at Roberto.
Paul reached into his pocket and pulled out his phone.
His hand was shaking as he pulled up text messages between him and his cousin Peter.
Paul held out the phone and the detective working with Salm took it from him.
Then he and Salm scrolled through a series of text messages that Peter had sent to Paul over the past couple of weeks.
And in these texts were a series of very harsh criticisms of Roberto.
Peter had messaged Paul to tell him that the rice fields were a total mess and that it was all Roberto's fault and that Roberto really needed to be fired.
There were also text exchanges between the cousins in which Peter talked openly about wanting to physically attack Roberto.
After talking a bit longer, the conversation reached its natural conclusion, at which point Paul got up and Psalm thanked him for coming in.
And then after Paul had left, Psalm quickly gathered the other members of his team.
Peter's very hot-tempered reputation and those text messages they had just seen were enough to immediately make Peter their primary suspect.
But there was something else that jumped out to Detective Solm.
The ATF agent that Salm had met with said he believed whoever planted the bomb that killed Roberto would have to understand how the electrical equipment worked because the bomb had been connected to the high voltage system used to start the irrigation pumps.
And Detective Salm knew that Peter had spent the bulk of his life on the family farm and he had grown up learning every aspect of the business so he would absolutely know how the electrical equipment worked.
So, Psalm didn't waste any time. Using the text messages from Paul and evidence the ATF and FBI had found at the crime scene, Psalm secured a warrant to search Peter's house and to conduct around-the-clock surveillance on him.
Psalm hoped he could bring this case to a close within a couple of days.
On July 19th, so three days after the explosion that killed Roberto, Detective Salm and his team rifled through everything inside of Peter's house.
As Salm led the search, one thing kept coming into his mind, and it wasn't Peter's possible guilt or even the explosion itself.
It was the bravery that Roberto's seven-year-old son Fabian had shown.
This boy had been just feet away from the explosion.
Shards of glass literally had flown at him and he had seen the horrific sight of fire ravaging his father's body.
But this little kid had turned and ran miles to get help.
As terrified as he must have been, he had done everything he could to try to save his father.
So, Psalm told himself that he not only owed it to Roberto to solve this case, he also owed it to Fabian.
It was Psalm's job now to do everything he could just like Fabian had done.
Psalm was standing in Peter's home office when a deputy came in to tell him that Peter and his wife had just pulled up in front of the house.
Psalm nodded and went to meet them. Peter was already rushing towards the front door when Psalm stepped outside.
And Peter started yelling immediately. He wanted to know what the police were doing there.
And Psalm told him they had a search warrant.
And so Peter knew right away that he had to be a suspect in Roberto's murder.
Then Peter did something that took Psalm by complete surprise.
Right there in front of his wife and other police officers, Peter launched into a tirade about how arrogant Roberto had been and how he had never liked Roberto.
But Peter said that just because he didn't like Roberto, it didn't mean that he, Peter, was a killer.
After this exchange, Salm just nodded and walked back into the house to continue the search while other officers stayed outside with Peter and his wife.
The initial search of Peter's property didn't provide police with a smoking gun or anything like that, but they did confiscate Peter's computers and his cell phone.
And when Salm left the house, he was still convinced Peter was the killer.
This guy couldn't even contain his hatred for the victim while police were actively searching his house.
But as investigators began their surveillance of Peter and they continued to search other properties that belonged to Peter, this case would take a baffling turn.
And Detective Salm would soon start to feel like he was living in some kind of Hollywood crime thriller.
On the morning of August 12th, almost a month after Roberto's murder, Detective Salm sat down at his desk at the sheriff's department.
And when he did, he saw there was an envelope with the words Ayala case written on it.
The words had been made with a label maker and then photocopied onto a piece of paper.
And the small envelope had eight stamps on it, way more than were needed to send it in the mail.
Psalm opened the envelope and took out a letter that was addressed to the investigators.
Just like the front of the envelope, the words in the letter had been created with a label maker and then copied.
Psalm and his team had spent the past few weeks continuing their surveillance on Peter Moore.
They still hadn't found any evidence tying Peter directly to the crime scene, but Psalm was confident they were getting close.
In fact, Peter's uncle had provided Psalm with a phone message in which Peter had called, begging his uncle to talk to get Peter's father to put Peter back in his will.
After that, Psalm had discovered that Peter's father, one of the Moore brothers, had not only cut Peter out of his financial inheritance, but he also had cut Peter completely out of the family business.
So Peter wouldn't take over at all when the Moore brothers retired.
Instead, Paul would run the company and Roberto Ayala would be his right-hand man.
All of the clues in this case pointed right to Peter as far as Detective Psalm was concerned. but now Sam was staring at this bizarre letter and he had no idea what to think.
The letter was written by a man who claimed to be a hired assassin.
The assassin said that he had been paid to take out Roberto by a well-known violent international criminal gang called MS-13.
The assassin said that Roberto's brother had tried to rip off members of MS-13 in an international drug deal and so they had Roberto killed as revenge.
But that wasn't all. The assassin said MS-13 wanted him, the assassin, to strike again and kill Roberto's brother and other members of his family next.
But this assassin said they had seen the light and did not want to kill anyone anymore, so he was now trying to help the police without giving himself up.
Salm put the letter down and just stared off into space for a minute.
He was a detective in a small sheriff's department in a small county.
This case was already bigger than anything he'd ever dealt with, and now he had this letter from an assassin like a cop would get in some kind of a crazy action movie.
None of this made any sense to Salm, and he was at a loss for what to do next.
So he reached out to his new contacts in the ATF and the FBI and shared the letter with them.
The federal agents agreed with Somme that the letter was very strange, but they didn't want to ignore any possible lead.
And so they started to investigate the MS-13 crime group to see if they could find any connection to Roberto, his brother, or anybody else in the county.
Then, two days later, Detective Somme was back at the station and he found another envelope with the same kind of label on it as the last one sitting on his desk.
When he opened this envelope, he found a single page with a detailed diagram of the bomb that was supposedly used to kill Roberto.
Salm immediately contacted ATF agents, and when they looked at this diagram, they confirmed that it matched the type of homemade bomb they believed had killed Roberto.
So whoever sent this diagram, professional assassin or otherwise, definitely had intimate details about the murder weapon.
So over the next week, the investigation shifted focus to MS-13 and the letters Salm had received.
Still, Salm never gave up on the idea that Peter Moore had been involved in Roberto's murder in some way.
But Salm still could not find clear evidence that could tie Peter to the murder.
And investigators also couldn't identify or locate this mysterious assassin who had supposedly sent these letters.
So, Psalm and his team started to lose hope.
They had felt kind of overwhelmed from the beginning of this investigation, and now things had gotten so crazy and far-fetched that they couldn't even see how they were going to figure out what had really happened to Roberto.
And Psalm really felt guilty, like he was letting Fabian and the rest of Roberto's family down.
On August 20th, over a week after that first letter arrived, Psalm was sitting at his desk.
At this point, he almost expected something totally bizarre and straight out of a movie to happen daily in this investigation.
And almost on cue, Salm's phone rang. He answered and he heard a muffled voice on the other end.
Salm asked who was calling, but the person wouldn't say who they were.
They simply said they had information about Roberto's murder that investigators needed to hear.
Then the caller said one simple thing and hung up.
And once again, Detective Salm sat there stunned.
This just seemed like more crazy movie stuff to him.
But then he felt a jolt of energy. Something the anonymous caller said suddenly made complete sense to Salm.
He got up from his desk and called his team together.
Then he contacted the federal agents who had been working with them.
Salm told them all about this phone call he just got, and then he showed them a piece of evidence that he thought supported what the caller had just said.
And everyone on the team thought Salm was definitely on to something.
It would take several weeks for investigators to put everything together, but they would eventually figure out what happened to Roberto out on that isolated farm road.
Based on the anonymous phone call and evidence discovered throughout the investigation, here is a reconstruction of what authorities believe happened on the day of Roberto Ayala's murder, July 16, 2011.
A flashlight clicked on, but it was still very dark on the secluded farm road.
The sun wouldn't come up for a few hours, and the bomber thought there was something eerie about this place in the total darkness, like someone or something could be hiding anywhere out in the rice fields watching.
The bomber shook off those thoughts, though, and followed the beam of light down the road towards the wooden pole with the large metal box attached to it.
The bomber wore all black and had a large black bag slung over their shoulder.
The bomber walked down the road and eventually reached the pole, at which point they put the bag on the ground.
Then they opened up the high-voltage metal box and then crouched down and unzipped their bag.
They shined the flashlight into the bag, and they could see the homemade pipe bomb they'd constructed.
It hadn't been easy, but everything they had read made them feel confident that this pipe bomb would function the way it was supposed to when the time came.
The bomber reached into the bag and slowly and carefully began to set up the pipe bomb inside of the metal box.
There was a line that would be pulled when the door to the box was opened and the irrigation switch was flipped, and that line would engage a trigger that would set off the explosives inside of the pipe bomb.
As the bomber worked, they could feel sweat dripping down their forehead, but they took a deep breath, kept their hands steady, and finished the job.
The bomber closed and locked the door to the metal box and exhaled.
Then they walked back down the farm road to their vehicle and drove into the darkness.
Now all they had to do was wait. Hours later, at around 1 p.m., Roberto parked his white F-250 truck on the road and told his son Fabian he'd be right back.
Roberto stepped out of the truck and before he began walking down the road, he turned around and glanced back at his truck and he smiled.
He could see Fabian looking back at the sunflower field in the distance.
Roberto turned back around and continued walking towards the pole and as he did, he put on his electrical gloves and then when he reached the pole, he opened up the door to the high voltage metal box and flipped the switch to start the irrigation system.
The explosion was enormous and instantaneous and Roberto actually died instantly from electrocution coming out of the box.
But as his body fell to the ground, it was wreathed in flames caused by the explosion of the pipe bomb.
The ground shook and in the truck, Fabian was covered in pieces of glass from the shattered windshield and windows, but Fabian remained courageous and leapt out of the truck and ran towards his father who was literally on fire.
Fabian thought about trying to reach through the flames to pull his dad's phone out of his jeans pocket to try to call for help, but the fire was just too much.
And so after taking one last look at his dad, the seven-year-old turned and just started running.
Later that afternoon, one of the Moore brothers' phones rang.
It was the police, and they were telling him what had happened to Roberto.
He hung up and he started crying. Then he looked across the table and told his son what he just heard.
His son looked stunned. He said there was no way this could be true.
But as an outward expression of hurt and confusion came across the son's face, internally, the son felt completely relieved because he knew his homemade pipe bomb had just worked.
Paul Moore had killed Roberto, not his cousin Peter, who Paul immediately had thrown under the bus.
It would turn out that Paul hated Roberto just as much as Peter did, but Paul did a better job hiding it.
And when Peter had lost his inheritance and his chance to someday run the family farm, Paul had begun to fear that his father and uncle could do the same thing to him.
And then the Moore brothers had begun to talk about possibly making Roberto a financial partner in the business.
And at that point, Paul had just had enough.
And so Paul got to work building his pipe bomb.
He knew Roberto's irrigation schedule, so he knew exactly when and where to plant the bomb.
While he waited for the day to come that he would be able to kill Roberto, Paul began accumulating evidence that would send investigators directly to his cousin Peter.
In fact, Paul was the man who had brought ATF and FBI agents the piece of metal found in the canal that made it clear Roberto had been killed with a bomb.
But when investigators failed to arrest Peter right away, Paul had decided he would need to throw them even further off of his trail.
Paul was the one who had created the letters from the assassin, and he had dreamed up the story about Roberto's brother being connected to MS-13.
Paul thought it was a perfect plan, like something right out of a movie.
But it was actually the fake assassin letters that eventually got Paul busted.
The anonymous caller who contacted Detective Salm told him that he was looking into the wrong cousin.
Paul, not Peter, was the guilty party. At first, Salm had thought the anonymous caller was maybe just Peter trying to now throw suspicion on Paul.
But then, as Salm thought about it, something from early on in the case came back to him.
In the text message exchanges between Peter and Paul, Paul often used numbers as abbreviations for words, like using the number four in a sentence like, I have something for you.
He would actually put the four instead of F-O-R.
And when Psalm went back to the letters from the supposed assassin, it turned out the assassin used the same type of abbreviations.
And so with this anonymous call, which by the way would stay anonymous, we don't know who called that in, and the connection between Paul's texts and the assassin's letters, Salm and his team searched Paul's home.
And tucked away in his office, they found evidence that did link him to the diagram of the bomb that the alleged assassin had sent to the police.
And soon after that, police arrested Paul.
Paul was found guilty of murder and sentenced to life in prison without parole.
Roberto's son, Fabian, who had so bravely tried to run to save his father on the day he was killed, spearheaded a project to erect a memorial in his father's honor at the elementary school where Roberto had gone as a child.
And in 2022, Fabian graduated from high school as a varsity football and soccer star.
Thank you for listening to the Mr. Ballin Podcast.
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