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 the day after Thanksgiving in 1998, a police officer responded to a 911 call at an apartment in a Florida beach town.
However, the 911 call had been vague, so the officer didn't really know if he was responding to an accident, a break-in, or something else.
He knocked on the front door, and nobody answered.
He tried the doorknob, but it was locked.
So the officer walked around the outside of the apartment, and he found an open window that led into the kitchen.
The officer climbed in the window and then made his way through the apartment, and at first, everything looked totally normal.
But then he came to a door at the end of a hallway that was slightly cracked open.
The officer opened the door, stepped inside, and could not believe what he saw.
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 sneak into the Follow Buttons bathroom while they're sleeping and replace their toothpaste with superglue.
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On the evening of November 27th, 1998, 25-year-old Corey Parker pulled a pie out of the oven in the kitchen of her first floor apartment in Jacksonville Beach, Florida.
She put the pie down on the counter near the open kitchen window to help it cool.
This pie was one of a few that Corey had made in preparation for Thanksgiving, which was the following day.
Corey had always loved Thanksgiving, but she was really looking forward to the holiday this year.
A few months earlier, she had moved from Rochester, New York to Jacksonville Beach.
So this was the first time she'd lived on her own and the first time she was going to celebrate what she called Friendsgiving.
Corey and a bunch of others who weren't spending the holiday with family were all making different Thanksgiving foods and getting together at a friend's house on the holiday.
Corey cleaned up the small mess she'd made while baking all day, she walked through the apartment to the bathroom, and she took a shower.
After her shower, Corey did her makeup and her hair and then went to her bedroom closet.
She scanned the clothes that were hanging up and she grabbed a pair of black pants and a blue velvet tank top.
Then she picked up her favorite pair of black high heels, stepped into her room, and got dressed.
She walked through the apartment, grabbed her keys off the coffee table, and headed outside.
Corey locked the door behind her and then walked down a sidewalk that led past several small apartment buildings just like hers.
Each of the buildings looked like an old house that had a few apartments in it.
Corey loved this spot in the small beach town where she lived because this was the first place where she felt like she was truly independent.
But she also loved it because the apartments close to hers were home to a lot of other young people.
And tonight, Corey saw a bunch of them hanging out outside.
She saw people drinking beer and smoking in front of their apartments, her teenage neighbor from the building behind hers was listening to music on a second-floor balcony, and others were walking to their cars to go out for the night.
Corey could also see people who had spent the day drinking at the nearby beach laughing and stumbling down the street that ran in front of the apartment buildings.
The noise and near-constant activity around the apartments drove some people crazy, but Corey liked it when there were a lot of people around.
She thought it was fun, but it also made her feel safe to know that she was not out there by herself at night.
Because recently, some of the women who lived nearby had caught a peeping Tom watching them through their windows.
None of the women had gotten a really good look at him, but they thought he looked like a middle-aged man and that there was a good chance he lived in one of the apartments.
But tonight, there were plenty of people out, so Corey didn't worry about some strange man creeping around the apartments trying to spy on young women.
Corey stepped off the sidewalk and crossed a small patch of grass to where her car was parked on the street.
She got in, started the car, cranked up her stereo, and sped off down the street.
She drove for a few blocks and pulled onto a road that ran alongside the beach and was lined with bars and restaurants.
This was the town's main drag, and it was already packed with cars and people.
Jacksonville Beach was a resort town that hosted a lot of tourists who came to spend time at the beach and to enjoy themselves at all these touristy bars and restaurants down by the water.
Corey worked as a waitress at one of those kinds of restaurants, and she enjoyed it.
It was exciting getting to meet and talk to people from all over the place, but when Corey and her friends went out, they preferred to go to places where the locals hung out.
So Corey pulled off the main drag onto a side street, and a couple of minutes later, she saw the big lit-up sign for her favorite bar and lounge called The Ritz.
Corey pulled into The Ritz parking lot, checked her makeup in the rearview mirror, and then got out of her car.
As she walked across the parking lot, she could already hear the live music blaring inside.
Corey showed her ID to the bouncer at the door, and then she stepped inside the club.
And as soon as she did, it was almost like the whole place started moving in slow motion or something.
Because when Corey walked inside, almost everybody turned to look at her.
Corey was 5 foot 11 inches tall, and in her heels, she stood well over 6 feet tall.
She was beautiful with long brown hair, and a lot of people who met her, especially when she was dressed up for a night out, just assumed she was a model or an actress.
Corey didn't mind the attention, but recently she'd started dating a new guy and it was getting pretty serious.
So she wasn't at the club to meet anyone new.
She was there to spend time with one of her best friends and just to have a good time.
Just then, Corey heard a loud scream over the music coming from somewhere behind her.
She turned and her face lit up. One of Corey's best friends, Tiffany Zienta, ran over, wrapped her arms around Corey's waist, and gave her a big hug.
Then the two women made their way to the bar and ordered some drinks.
And while they waited, they talked about their plans for Thanksgiving.
And Corey said how excited she was for Friendsgiving.
Tiffany said she was a bit jealous. She was spending the holiday with her parents, which was okay, but spending time with Corey and other people their age sounded way more fun.
The bartender came over and handed Corey and Tiffany their drinks.
The two women raised their glasses, downed the drinks, and cheered on the band playing.
At 1.30 a.m. on November 28th, so a few hours after Corey had arrived at the Ritz, she got into her car and started driving home.
She knew she had a big day ahead of her, so she had kept her drinking to a minimum.
That's why she had passed when Tiffany had asked her to stay out a bit later and go bar hopping with them before heading home for the night.
Tiffany was bummed, but Corey knew she did not want to be completely exhausted for Thanksgiving.
Corey drove down the street in front of her building, parked her car, and stepped outside.
She walked down the sidewalk to her apartment, and as she did, she felt herself tense up a bit.
It was a lot quieter than it had been when she left, and nobody else seemed to be around.
Corey approached her apartment, and she saw a few people out on their balconies in the buildings next to hers and behind hers, and this made her relax a bit.
She unlocked her front door, went inside, and locked the door behind her.
Then she dropped her keys on the coffee table and went to her bedroom.
She slipped off her heels and tossed the shoes and her purse onto the floor, and then she got undressed, climbed into bed, and fell asleep pretty quickly.
But just a little later, Corey woke up startled.
It was dark and she was disoriented, but she thought she heard someone breathing.
At 11 a.m. on November 29th, so the day after Thanksgiving, a cook at a Jacksonville Beach restaurant prepped his station in the kitchen, getting ready for the lunchtime rush.
The cook glanced at his watch and stopped what he was doing.
He walked out of the kitchen and scanned the restaurant floor, and he got worried when he didn't see Corey.
The cook and Corey not only worked together, but they were also friends, and so they would let each other know if they were going to miss a shift.
So the cook quickly met with some of the waiters and other kitchen staff to see if any of them had seen or heard from Corey this morning, but none of them had.
And one of the waitresses said she was really concerned because she had called Corey the day before when she had heard from a mutual friend that Corey had not shown up for Friendsgiving.
The restaurant manager came over and he said he was worried too.
He tried calling Corey a couple of times this morning and hadn't heard back, and it was not like her to just blow off a shift without calling in.
The manager asked the cook if he knew where Corey lived.
The cook said he did, so the manager asked him to go by Corey's place to check on her and make sure she was okay.
The cook took off his apron and then walked out to his car and sped out of the parking lot.
A few minutes later, he arrived at Corey's apartment.
He went up to the front door and knocked, but nobody answered.
He knocked again, but it didn't sound like anybody was inside the apartment.
And so the cook walked around the apartment to the back and he found Corey's bedroom window.
He looked inside and he could see part of Corey's room through a small opening in the blinds.
He thought he saw Corey, or at least her legs, lying in her bed.
He knocked on the glass and waited, but he didn't see any movement inside.
So he pressed his face right up against the window to get a better look, and immediately he felt his heart start to race.
He turned away from the window and ran as fast as he could back to his car and sped back to the restaurant.
The cook ran inside, and the manager and the other staff members could tell something was obviously wrong, but the cook didn't even say a word.
Instead, he ran to the front counter, grabbed the phone, and dialed 911.
A few minutes later, two Jacksonville Beach police officers arrived at Corey's apartment.
The call they had gotten from dispatch had been kind of vague because the young man who had called 911 said he really hadn't seen much.
Apparently, he'd looked through a small opening in the window blinds and he thought he saw his friend laying in bed.
And he thought he saw blood on her foot.
So the officers didn't really know if they were dealing with a potential accident, a violent crime, or if the caller had just panicked and dialed 911 without really even seeing anything.
And so the officers walked up to Corey's front door and they knocked, but nobody answered.
One of them tried the doorknob, but it was locked.
So they walked around the side of the apartment and they saw that the kitchen window was open.
One of the officers told his partner to wait right there by the side of the house, and he said he would check out the apartment.
Then he put on a pair of gloves, opened up the window a bit more, and then climbed through the opening into the kitchen.
Once inside the apartment, the officer called out and introduced himself as a police officer in case anyone was home.
But nobody responded. It was totally silent.
And so he began looking around the kitchen, but there was nothing there that looked strange.
There was no sign of a robbery or a struggle.
And then also he checked the front room of the apartment and there also was nothing there.
And so he walked to the back of the apartment where Corey's bedroom was.
The officer got to the bedroom door and he saw it was slightly cracked open.
Before opening it, he called out one more time, not wanting to frighten anybody if they were sleeping in the room, but there still wasn't any response.
And so the officer opened the bedroom door, looked into the room, and was absolutely horrified by what he found.
Minutes later, detectives Katie Kingston and Billy Carlyle arrived at Corey's apartment.
They were followed by several uniformed police officers and a forensics team.
Kingston and Carlyle ducked under the crime scene tape that had been strung up across Corey's front door.
They walked inside and quickly found their way to the bedroom.
The detectives stepped into the room and immediately they felt just as shocked as the officer who had first arrived on scene.
A young woman lay in bed propped up against the headboard.
She was completely naked and her whole body was covered in blood.
And there was so much blood spatter on the wall behind the bed that it looked like someone had thrown a bucket of red paint against the wall.
As Detective Kingston walked closer to the bed, she could barely wrap her mind around what she was looking at.
This poor young woman had sustained an unthinkable number of stab wounds.
Then Kingston noticed something laying on the bed next to Corey.
Now, at first, it just looked like another bloodstain, but Kingston leaned down and saw that it was actually a pair of bloody women's underwear.
Kingston heard her name, and she turned to see Carlisle crouched over, looking at something on the floor near the bed.
She went over to him, and she saw he had found a gold cigarette lighter.
The detectives walked the rest of the room, but other than the lighter and the underwear, nothing really jumped out at them.
They saw some clothes and shoes on the floor, but they were not drenched in blood like the underwear.
The detectives also found a purse in the bedroom with a driver's license inside, and so they were able to officially identify the victim as Corey Parker.
Kingston and Carlisle stepped aside and let a couple of forensics officers get to work in the bedroom.
The forensics officers were able to take multiple blood samples, but the investigators realized there was a chance that all this blood was the victims, not the killers.
Then one of the forensics officers looked more closely at Corey's body, and he said the medical examiner would have to weigh in, but he didn't see any signs of sexual assault.
And so Kingston and Carlisle theorized that, you know, maybe Corey had just gone to bed naked, or maybe the killer had stripped off her underwear either during the attack or afterwards for some unknown reason.
The forensics officer motioned for the two detectives to look, and when they leaned down, they saw a strand of hair on Corey's underwear, and it definitely did not match Corey's.
And so, the detectives believed that, you know, given the location of this piece of hair on her underwear, and the insane level of violence inflicted on Corey, meant they were most likely looking for a current or former intimate partner.
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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.
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Throughout the afternoon, the investigative team searched the apartment and the surrounding area, and the detectives caught something that the first officers on the scene had missed.
There were drops of blood on the kitchen counter and on the outside kitchen windowsill.
The officers that arrived first had told Kingston and Carlisle that the kitchen window had been open when they got there.
That's how they got inside. And so the detectives imagined that this is where the killer must have entered and exited the apartment.
And so they hoped that the blood on the counter and the windowsill belonged to the killer.
The forensics team took blood samples from both of those spots and prepped them to be sent to the lab along with the blood samples from the bedroom and the strand of hair they'd found on the underwear.
In 1998, DNA testing was starting to evolve, but the process was still slow, and it was not always as effective as it is today.
So Kingston and Carlisle knew they could be waiting a while for any test results, and that those results might not tell them anything.
In the meantime, they wanted to speak to people who might have seen something that night, or who knew Corey well.
That afternoon, the detectives canvassed the apartment buildings nearby, and several people who had been on their balconies or in front of their apartments thought they had seen Corey leaving her apartment the night before Thanksgiving.
And none of them had seen or heard anything strange in that area over the past two days.
One neighbor also said she had met Corey's new boyfriend, and she provided enough information that an officer back at the station was able to quickly track him down.
And it turned out the boyfriend was away visiting his family for Thanksgiving, and the officer was able to find proof that he had taken a flight days before Corey was killed, so Detectives Carlisle and Kingston did not consider the boyfriend a prime suspect.
But Corey could have been seeing someone else, or she could have had ex-lovers who were jealous about her new relationship.
So, after getting confirmation about the boyfriend's alibi, Kingston and Carlisle got in their car and drove a few blocks away to the restaurant where Corey had worked, hoping one of her co-workers might have additional information about Corey's personal life.
They walked in and the whole place felt like something heavy was hanging over it.
The staff were going about their jobs, but it was obvious they were all waiting for news on their friend, Corey.
Kingston and Carlisle pulled the manager into the kitchen and the manager quickly waved over the cook who had called 911.
Then the detectives told them that Corey had unfortunately been found dead inside of her apartment.
The cook immediately started crying and the manager closed his eyes and tried to fight back tears.
Kingston told them the police would need to talk to everybody at the restaurant who knew Corey, but for now, they wanted to know if there was somebody working there who might have had an intimate relationship with Corey, a boyfriend or even a casual fling.
The manager and the cook looked at each other like they were thinking the same thing.
The cook said Corey was not actively seeing anybody from the restaurant, but there was a dishwasher who worked there named Eric Ely who wished he had a relationship with Corey.
Detective Carlisle asked if he meant that this guy Eric had a crush on Corey, but the cook just shook his head and told the detectives that Eric did not just have a crush on Corey.
He was completely obsessed with her. The following day, Detectives Kingston and Carlisle sat in an interview room waiting for the dishwasher, Eric Ely, to arrive.
Eric had not been at the restaurant the previous day when the detectives were there, but they had spoken to several other staff members about him, and almost all of the women they spoke to at the restaurant said the same thing.
Eric was a total creep, and he harassed Corey way more than he harassed anybody else.
An officer led Eric into the interview room, and he took a seat across from the detectives.
Eric was in his 20s, he had long, light brown hair, and as he sat down, he smiled at the detectives.
Eric already knew that Corey had been killed, and so Kingston didn't waste any time with pleasantries.
She wanted to press Eric right from the start.
She leaned across the table and asked Eric point-blank if it was true that he was obsessed with Corey.
Eric smiled a bit wider and said maybe he was a little obsessed, but Kingston immediately went after him.
She said police knew he was more than just a little obsessed.
They knew that he had asked Corey on multiple occasions to spend Thanksgiving alone with him, and that even after she turned him down every time, Eric had made a huge Thanksgiving feast and then planned to try to guilt her into coming to his apartment.
The smile on Eric's face disappeared. He looked at Kingston and admitted that he was completely obsessed with Corey.
But he said he just wanted to spend time with her.
He would never hurt her. But then Eric said something that took the detectives by complete surprise.
He asked them how Corey was killed. Without missing a beat, Carlisle asked Eric how he thought Corey might have been killed.
And Eric immediately got this look on his face like he was having a daydream or something.
And then he said he thought the killer probably attacked Corey while she was tired or sleeping and stabbed her.
The detectives both looked stunned. Eric had just described, at least in a general way, how Corey had actually been murdered.
So Kingston said it sounded like Eric knew a lot about the murder.
And what Eric said next stunned the detectives even more.
Eric smiled again and told them that maybe he knew how the killer did it because he had fantasized about doing the same things.
Kingston asked in a calm voice what kind of fantasies Eric had.
And Eric said sometimes he fantasized about raping and murdering women.
But before the detectives could even react, Eric said those were just fantasies.
He never acted on them and he never hurt Corey.
Kingston and Carlisle talked to Eric for a while longer, and then they ended the interview.
They told him he could go, but they made it clear he should not leave town.
An officer came in and escorted Eric out of the interview room, and for a second, Kingston and Carlisle just sat there without talking.
Neither of them had ever had an interview go like this.
They'd never seen anyone discuss their secret desire to rape and kill so easily, especially when they were claiming they didn't do anything.
There was no question in their minds that Eric was their best lead by far, but they also knew that they couldn't arrest him just because he had dark and violent thoughts.
So they just hoped when the DNA results came in, they would have a clearer idea if Eric was the killer.
But in the meantime, they wanted to get a better idea of Corey's last few hours alive.
So they talked to some of her friends and eventually tracked down Tiffany Zienta, Corey's friend who had been at the Ritz with her on the night before Thanksgiving and as far as police knew, was the last person to see Corey alive.
In the week following Corey's murder, Kingston and Carlisle sat down with Tiffany in the same interview room where they had met with Eric.
But the situation was a lot more relaxed, and the detectives told Tiffany they were just trying to get a better picture of Corey's movements on the night before Thanksgiving.
Tiffany told them she had met Corey at the club and said they went there together a lot.
And then, without any prompting, Tiffany started talking about how beautiful Corey was and what an amazing person she was and how being around her was just different than being around other people.
The detective smiled, nodded, and listened, but both of them thought the same thing.
It was completely normal for someone to talk about how great and how pretty one of their friends was, but something in the way Tiffany spoke about Corey felt different than that.
So when Tiffany stopped talking, Kingston asked if she and Corey had been more than just friends.
Did they ever have an intimate relationship?
But Tiffany shook her head and almost laughed.
She said no, she and Corey were just really good friends, they had a lot in common, and they loved hanging out together.
Then Kingston asked when Tiffany had last seen Corey.
At this, Tiffany lowered her head, and it was clear she was starting to cry.
She said they left the club sometime around 1.30 a.m., and she asked Corey to go have some late-night drinks with her and a few other friends, but Corey had said she just wanted to go home.
Tiffany said she called Corey around 2.15 a.m. just to make sure she had gotten home safely, but nobody answered.
Tiffany figured Corey had already gone to bed, and so that's why she didn't try calling back again.
The detectives thanked Tiffany for coming in and told her they would follow up with her soon.
Tiffany said she would do everything she could to help, and then she left.
But in the days following the interview, the detectives worked with the phone company and retrieved all of Corey's recent phone records.
And despite what Tiffany had said, there was no record of her calling Corey at 2.15 a.m. or any time after they supposedly left the club.
And so after finding that out, Kingston and Carlisle wanted to speak to Tiffany again right away.
But when they called Tiffany, they discovered she had left town.
And soon after that, they were told by the lawyer she'd just hired that Tiffany would no longer help with their investigation.
Detectives Kingston and Carlyle spent the next few weeks pursuing any lead that might provide more information on the obsessed dishwasher Eric or on Corey's friend Tiffany.
And they had conversations with a lot of different people that made both of their suspects seem totally viable.
But the detectives still did not have any concrete evidence linking either suspect to the crime scene or to Corey's murder.
Then, Kingston and Carlisle finally got the test results back that they had been waiting for from the crime lab.
And these tests showed that DNA from the hair found on Corey's underwear and from the blood on the kitchen counter and the outside kitchen windowsill belonged to the same person.
And that person was not Corey. But the DNA did not match any samples the crime lab had on file or any samples that had been entered into the FBI's national DNA database.
So this meant the police had proof that another person had been in Corey's apartment on the night she was killed, but they had no idea who that person was.
Still, Kingston and Carlyle thought they were getting close to finding the killer, and after several more interviews, they believed they had zeroed in on one particular suspect and that they had enough proof to arrest someone.
However, the district attorney did not agree.
He told them that without proof of who the DNA found in the house belonged to or some other smoking gun, this case would never hold up in court.
This news from the district attorney felt like a gut punch to Kingston and Carlisle, and no matter who they talked to or what information they got, they could not find the type of evidence that would enable them to make an arrest.
And so the investigation started to slow down, and Kingston and Carlisle started to run out of options.
The case remained open, but it was no longer the department's top priority, and Kingston and Carlisle had to focus on other work.
In late May of 2000, about 18 months after Corey's murder, a man named William Rensler sat on the dock of a lake near Jacksonville Beach fishing with two of his friends.
Rensler referred to himself as a fugitive specialist, but most people called him a bounty hunter.
Rensler had tracked down criminals and bail jumpers, and he was skilled at finding people who had seemingly disappeared.
Recently, Jacksonville Beach Police had put up a reward of $20,000 for anyone who could provide information that would lead to an arrest in Corey's murder.
And once Rensler started looking into the past investigation, he became confident he could close the case, bring Corey's family some peace, and collect the reward money.
Rensselaer laid his fishing rod down on the dock.
He grabbed a beer from a cooler sitting next to him, he cracked it open, and then pulled out a thick file folder from his leather bag.
He sipped from his beer and started looking over his notes on Corey's murder.
Rensselaer's two friends, like everybody in town, knew about the case.
They took a seat next to Rensselaer on the dock, they each grabbed a beer too, and asked him how it was going.
Was he close to finding the killer? Rensselaer said he had interviewed a bunch of people connected to the case, but there was one person he really wanted to talk to that he just couldn't find.
He pointed to this person's name in his notes, and both of his friends almost spit out their drinks.
Rensselaer asked what was going on, and his friends said they both knew the person he was looking for because they had worked with them at a restaurant, and they told Rensselaer there was something really weird about this person.
Rensselaer's friends said this person had come into the restaurant one day and said they had to quit and leave town immediately because their child had tragically died in Texas.
Rensselaer asked, you know, what was so weird about that?
That sounded horrible. But one of his friends said he had gotten to know this person pretty well and he was almost positive that they did not have children.
Rensselaer took a swig of his beer and then asked his friends if they remembered when all this happened.
And one of them said, you know, this person he was looking for had left town around Thanksgiving about a year and a half ago, not long after Corey Parker's murder.
It would take a couple of months, but Rensler, the fugitive specialist, tracked down this person who had skipped town soon after Corey's murder.
Rensler had traced their movements to Texas and then eventually discovered they had moved to a town in Maryland about 800 miles away from Jacksonville Beach.
Once Rensler had this information, he informed Detectives Kingston and Carlisle where this possible suspect was now living, and the detectives caught the next flight to Maryland to try to secure a DNA sample.
On July 26th, 2000, so 20 months after Corey's murder, Kingston and Carlisle sat in an unmarked car in Easton, Maryland with a local police officer.
The detectives were watching the suspect who was smoking a cigarette in a parking lot while on a break from work.
And Kingston and Carlisle could not believe their luck.
A discarded cigarette butt was perfect for getting a DNA sample because the suspect's spit and saliva would be all over it. and so they watched their suspect smoke for several minutes, and when it looked like the cigarette was about to be out and they might flick it onto the ground, they felt the surge of adrenaline.
But then, Kingston and Carlyle watched in horror as the suspect carefully put the cigarette out on the ground and then slipped the butt behind their ear.
The detectives looked at each other. The suspect very likely knew they were being tailed by the police.
The suspect turned to walk back into work, but before opening the door, they leaned down a little and spit on the ground.
Kingston and Carlisle practically wanted to start cheering.
They waited for the suspect to go inside, and then Carlisle got out of the car, ran across the parking lot, collected the spit off the ground, and ran back to the car.
A little bit later, Kingston, Carlisle, and local police officers delivered that sample to the FBI's DNA lab, which is only about 70 miles from where they were.
And when the FBI conducted their tests, they were able to match the DNA from the suspect's spit to the DNA samples taken from the hair and blood found in Corey's apartment.
The fugitive specialist, the bounty hunter, William Rensler, had indeed led the detectives right to Corey's killer.
Based on DNA testing, crime scene evidence, and interviews conducted throughout the investigation, here is a reconstruction of what police believe happened to Corey Parker in the early morning hours of November 28, 1998.
At about 2 a.m., the killer crept towards Corey's apartment, trying their best to stay low and out of any lights that were shining from people's porches and balconies.
The killer made their way around Corey's apartment to the kitchen window, and it was still open.
So, quietly, the killer climbed in through the window and into the kitchen.
The whole apartment was dark, but the killer knew their way around well enough.
So they walked through the front room and down a short hallway to Corey's bedroom.
They reached the bedroom door and it was cracked open.
The killer took a breath and opened the door just a little more and stepped into the bedroom.
In the light coming through the window, the killer could see Corey sleeping in her bed.
And they saw Corey's underwear laying near her leg on top of the comforter.
The killer got excited and started breathing heavily.
Then suddenly, Corey woke up. She heard someone breathing and saw a shadow near the foot of her bed.
But before she could scream, the killer lunged at the bed and ripped the comforter off of Corey.
The killer could see she was naked and they leapt on top of her.
The killer pinned Corey down, but Corey's arms were long and she was fast and she fought back.
The killer didn't see it, but in the struggle, their gold cigarette lighter tumbled out of their pocket and onto the floor.
Corey slashed her hands and nails at the killer and cut into the palm of their hand and ripped at their hair.
Then the killer grabbed Corey's head and slammed it against the headboard.
With Corey suddenly stunned and woozy, the killer reached down and covered her mouth with one hand and reached around and grabbed the knife out of their pocket with the other.
Then the killer raised the knife and Corey put up her arms to try to defend herself, but the killer just cut at her arms, knocking them out of the way.
Then the killer raised the knife again and stabbed Corey in the chest.
The killer pulled the knife back up and stabbed her in the chest again and again and Corey's body went limp and slumped against the headboard.
But the killer did not stop. They kept stabbing as blood splashed onto the wall and ran down Corey's body onto the bed.
Finally, the killer did stop and they looked down at Corey.
They had just stabbed her 101 times. The killer climbed off the bed and staggered back.
They could barely think or see straight, but they made their way out of the bedroom and through the apartment.
They walked into the kitchen, steadied themselves on the counter for a second, and then they climbed through the open window, leaving a little bit of blood on the windowsill.
Once outside, the killer crouched back down and rushed through the darkness to the apartment building right behind Corey's.
It would turn out the obsessed dishwasher, Eric, who had admitted to having fantasies about rape and murder, did not kill Corey.
And neither did her close friend, Tiffany, who police thought might have been infatuated with Corey.
In fact, the killer was not somebody who police had suspected early on.
It was a 17-year-old named Robert Denny, Corey's teenage neighbor who often hung out on a second floor balcony in the apartment building right behind Corey's.
Robert was not the peeping Tom who had been spotted in the area, but he did spend a lot of time spying on Corey.
From his balcony, he could watch her in her apartment or when she went out to sit on her back porch.
Police had talked to Robert when they talked to Corey's other neighbors, but he didn't seem to know her and his age played in his favor.
Police simply didn't believe that this crime had been carried out by a teenager.
But when police later discovered that Robert had left town not long after the murder, they did start to reconsider their thoughts about him.
And they even wanted to arrest him, but the district attorney did not believe they had enough evidence to make the case stick.
When the fugitive expert, William Rensler, learned from his friends that Robert had given a really bizarre reason for leaving town so soon after Corey's murder, Rensler became convinced that Robert had killed Corey.
Soon, Rensselaer tracked Robert down and told Detectives Kingston and Carlisle everything he had learned about the young man.
And so, the detectives headed to Maryland and secured the DNA sample from Robert's spit that matched with the DNA samples found inside of Corey's apartment.
In addition to those samples, one of Robert's ex-girlfriends came forward and told police that the gold cigarette lighter found in Corey's apartment belonged to Robert.
And finally, detectives discovered that Robert's own brother was in a Texas prison for murdering a woman by stabbing her 98 times.
And authorities came to believe that by stabbing Corey 101 times, Robert was just trying to outdo his brother.
Robert was sentenced to life in prison without the possibility of parole.
To this day, he maintains his innocence.
Thank you for listening to the Mr. Ballin Podcast.
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