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. Today's podcast features two true stories that inspired legendary horror movies.
The audio from both of these stories has been pulled from our main YouTube channel and has been remastered for today's episode.
The links to the original YouTube videos are in the description.
The first story you'll hear is called Woman's Suit, and it's about an infamous serial killer from Wisconsin.
The second story you'll hear is called Candyman, and it's about a bathroom mirror that fuels nightmares.
But before we get into today's stories, if you're a fan of the Strange, Dark, and Mysterious delivered in story format, then you've come to the right podcast because that's all we do, and we upload twice a week, once on Monday and once on Thursday.
So if that's of interest to you, please sneak in to the Amazon Music Follow Button's house, toast all of their bread, and then leave.
Okay, let's get into our first story called Woman's Suit.
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The phenomenally talented Philippa Soo returns to narrate her fifth Lily Chu title.
This time, Philippa is joined by her real-life husband, Steven Pasquale.
Set in Toronto's wealthy cottage country, aka the Hamptons of Canada, Rich Girl Summer follows the story of Valerie, a down-on-her-luck event planner posing as a socialite's long-lost daughter while piecing together the secrets surrounding a mysterious family. and falling deeper and deeper in love with the impossibly hard-to-read and infuriatingly handsome family assistant, Nico.
Caught between pretending to belong and unexpectedly finding where she truly fits in, Valerie learns her summer is about to get far more complicated than she ever planned.
She's in over her head and head over heels.
Listen to Rich Girl Summer now on Audible.
Go to audible.com slash richgirlsummer. Ed Gein was always a little bit off.
His classmates and his teachers recalled him being very shy, but at the same time, having these strange mannerisms where all of a sudden he would burst out hysterically laughing, usually at something he had been muttering to himself in class.
The school blamed Ed's mother for Ed's kind of odd behavior because Ed would admit that his mother punished him if he showed signs of having friends.
So Ed's childhood was incredibly lonely and isolated.
Ed's mother would confine he, along with his brother Henry, to their farm.
He was basically never allowed to leave with the exception of school.
And when he was at the farm, his mother would regularly read from the Bible and would tell Ed and his brother Henry that basically everybody else in the world is evil.
We are the only pure ones. Everyone is evil and you should stay away from them.
In 1944, when Ed was 38 years old, he and his brother Henry were burning away some marsh vegetation on their property.
And at some point, the fire got out of control and the fire department had to be called in.
And after they put out the fire, Ed was okay, but they couldn't find Henry.
He was just gone. That night, Henry's body was found face down in the marsh in that same area where the burn was going on.
He had died of asphyxiation. At first, the fire was blamed, but then authorities discovered that Henry had actually died before the fire started.
And so all eyes turned to Ed, who was the only one with him at the time, but there was no hard evidence connecting Ed to Henry, and Ed said, I didn't do it.
So Henry's death remained labeled an accident, even though basically everyone believed that Ed must have been the guy that strangled his brother to death before the fire was set.
Shortly after his brother's death, Ed's mother also died, leaving Ed alone in this farmhouse.
Ed began to make some modifications to the farmhouse, not to improve it or to make it bigger and better, but rather to board off all of the rooms in the house that his mother ever used.
He basically made them time capsules. He didn't touch them, he just sealed them off, and so he confined himself to a single room in this farmhouse that he did not take care of, and so filth is just piling up everywhere.
And so he just kind of lived in squalor in this one weird room.
While living in seclusion, Ed became obsessed with cannibalism.
He basically spent all his time reading about cannibalism inside of this tiny room in his boarded up farmhouse.
And that's how he lived his life for the next 10 years.
No one really ever saw him. Then in November of 1957, a local hardware store owner, her name was Bernice Worden, goes missing.
When police show up at the store to have a look around, they find bloodstains all over the place, and they discover in the register that the last person to make a purchase inside of the store was Ed Gein.
So they go to Ed Gein's house to interview him and see if he knows anything about Bernice Worden.
And so they're bracing themselves for probably finding her body at Ed's house.
But they were not prepared for what they actually found at his house.
What they find would end up inspiring movies like Silence of the Lambs, Psycho, and Texas Chainsaw Massacre.
Basically, inside of Ed's house was a whole bunch of human remains, but not in the way that you would imagine.
Ed was taking human body parts and making things like kitchen utensils and bowls, and he was using skin to create seats and lampshades and bedposts.
I mean, his whole house was like built of human bones and flesh.
Bernice Worden's body was found as well and she was kind of hung up as if she was next up to be made into some sort of kitchen utensil or chair or table.
When questioned, Ed confessed to killing Bernice Worden.
But as for the dozens of other bodies that were inside of the house, he claims they were from robbing graves, but no one really knew if that was true or not, and they weren't able to ever actually convict him for anything beyond the killing of Bernice Worden.
As for his motive, he told investigators that what he really wanted to do, what he intended to do, was build what he called a woman's suit that would resemble his mother, and it would allow him to, quote, crawl into his mother's skin.
He was deemed unfit to stand trial and he was sent to a mental hospital where he stayed until his death in 1984.
Hey, listeners, Mr. Ballin here. What if I told you that some of the strangest, darkest, and most mysterious stories happening right now are all connected to what might be the biggest crime of our generation?
You know I'm always on the hunt for the most chilling and perplexing tales out there.
Well, I've discovered a new podcast that uncovers real-world mysteries unfolding right now. much like how another Ballin' Studios podcast, Redacted Declassified Mysteries, brings hidden government secrets to light, and it's called Lawless Planet.
Host Zach Goldbaum reveals how shocking tales of murder, cover-ups, and mysterious deaths are all part of something bigger. the systematic destruction of our planet.
From activists who vanish in the Amazon to whistleblowers uncovering billion-dollar environmental crimes, these aren't just stories about the environment.
They're real-life thrillers about people caught between powerful forces willing to kill to keep their secrets buried.
Follow Lawless Planet on the Wondery app or wherever you get your podcasts.
You can listen to new episodes of Lawless Planet early and ad-free right now by joining Wondery+.
Hey, it's Mr. Ballin. 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.
Hey listeners, big news for true crime lovers.
You can now enjoy this podcast ad-free on Amazon Music with your Prime membership.
Listen to all episodes of my podcasts, Mr. Ballin's Medical Mysteries and Mr. Ballin's Strange, Dark, and Mysterious Stories, along with a huge collection of top true crime podcasts completely ad-free.
No more wading through cliffhangers or dealing with ads, because let's be honest, Ads shouldn't be the most nerve-wracking part of true crime.
To start your ad-free listening journey, download the Amazon Music app for free or head to amazon.com slash ballin.
That's amazon.com slash b-a-l-l-e-n. Dive into uninterrupted true crime stories today.
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.
Our next and final story is called Candyman.
One day in early January of 1987, a very strange 52-year-old woman named Ruthie Mae McCoy walked out of her 11th floor apartment in Chicago, Illinois.
Today was the day that Ruthie was going to be doing one of her self-appointed public duties.
Ruthie was quite tall, and this particular day, she had on two pairs of pants with a dress over them.
She also had her favorite long stick she was carrying.
And as Ruthie marched down the hallway, she began jiggling each of her neighbor's doorknobs to see if they were unlocked.
And then in between each doorknob check, she would suddenly stop and wave her stick around like it was a sword, and she was fighting off some unseen attacker.
And so after Ruthie had checked four doors in a row that were all locked, she reached the fifth door and when she tried the doorknob, it was unlocked.
And so without any hesitation, Ruthie pushed the door open, she stepped inside and began yelling, hey, look at me, I'm inside of your apartment.
And the woman who lived in this fifth apartment was in her kitchen making dinner at the time.
And when she looked up and saw Ruthie barging into her apartment, she wasn't scared.
She was just totally annoyed. She rolled her eyes and then began yelling at Ruthie to get out now.
But as always, Ruthie didn't listen. And before long, Ruthie had moved from the doorframe into the apartment, into the kitchen where she was waving her stick around wildly and berating this young woman for leaving her front door unlocked in this very dangerous apartment building.
The young woman yelled at Ruthie a few more times to try to get her to just leave, but Ruthie didn't budge.
And so eventually this young woman picked up the phone and called 911.
It would turn out the 15-story apartment building that Ruthie and this young woman and all of their neighbors lived in was indeed a very dangerous place to leave your front door unlocked.
In fact, at the time in the late 1980s, this particular apartment building was considered to be one of the most dangerous places in all of Chicago, with a murder occurring there nearly every week.
Gangs basically ruled the building, which was totally falling apart and totally decrepit and had these long, dark hallways that thieves and killers could hide in.
And so Ruthie wasn't wrong in trying to get her neighbors to keep their doors locked, but her very hands-on approach to delivering this message was never met with appreciation from the people who lived on her floor.
Instead, her neighbors viewed Ruthie as potentially more hazardous than anything Ruthie was trying to protect them from.
However, in reality, Ruthie was not a threat to her neighbors.
She was just totally mentally unstable and basically afraid of everything.
For example, whenever Ruthie got mail, she would just assume that it was terrible news and most likely about someone coming to take all of her money.
And when Ruthie was out in public, which was quite rare, she was so scared of strangers that whenever she passed them, she would just yell out obscenities at them to keep them away.
And then also when Ruthie was in public, she never ate because she was afraid strangers were going to literally run up and take her food.
So, back inside of this fifth apartment that Ruthie has barged into, Ruthie was busy berating this young woman about her unlocked door when the police did finally show up and they dragged Ruthie out of the apartment into the hall.
The police, by this point, knew Ruthie really, really well.
And they were not about to arrest her. They knew she was harmless, but just kind of out of her mind.
And so, like they always did in this situation, they told Ruthie to leave her neighbors alone and just go back into your apartment and mind your own business.
And Ruthie usually would mutter something under her breath about needing to increase the security in this building, but she would eventually do as she was told and she would go back home.
And that was basically Ruthie's life in a nutshell.
Constant fear and paranoia from living in this totally dangerous apartment building, exacerbated tenfold by her very poor mental health.
But Ruthie was not content with her life.
She, like virtually everybody else in this high-rise apartment building, wanted to get out and live somewhere else and have a better life.
But Ruthie, like virtually everybody else living in this high-rise apartment building, did not have enough money, and so she was trapped there.
But then in February of 1987, so one month after busting into that woman's apartment, Ruthie got incredible news.
She had recently begun going to a day program for psychiatric care at a local hospital, and the staff there had really taken a liking to her And they were going above and beyond trying to help Ruthie kind of get her life together beyond just her mental health.
And so one of the things they were doing with her was helping her apply for various government programs like disability payments.
And so that month in February, Ruthie found out that the application they had sent off for her was approved.
And so Ruthie was entitled to disability payments. which meant right away she would get a check for $2,000, and then every month going forward, indefinitely, she would get a payment.
It wouldn't be $2,000, but it would be a lot of money.
Ruthie was beside herself. She could not believe her luck.
And she now knew that with this money, she would finally be able to move out of that terrible apartment.
Even before the money began coming into Ruthie, she was already looking for a new place to live.
And as she did this, all she could think about were her two beloved grandchildren, a little boy and a little girl.
They were the only people in the world, it seemed, to Ruthie that really accepted her and just loved her unconditionally.
And so whenever Ruthie would go visit her grandkids, the three of them would sit on the ground and just play together for hours and hours.
But to that point, Ruthie's grandkids had not been allowed to visit Ruthie at her apartment because it was too dangerous.
But now that Ruthie was going to move in to someplace much, much safer, she knew that was going to change.
She was going to see her grandkids so much more often.
And this made Ruthie so happy. And this newfound happiness inside of Ruthie really motivated her to start looking at other aspects of her life and see if she could improve them.
And so as Ruthie is doing this new apartment search, she began taking classes to finally get her high school degree.
She began picking up these old art projects she had kind of blown off.
And also, most importantly to this story, she really began leaning into her religion, something she had not been doing for a long time.
Specifically, she began tuning in to these very animated preachers that she would find on TV.
And when she really liked one of them, she would write them a letter.
And in this letter, she would praise them for their sermons and how incredible they were.
And she would ask them to bless her with miracles.
And these miracles were often just centered on her health.
She wanted to look and feel young again.
And some of these TV preachers, who were actually just running scams, would write back to Ruthie and say, of course we can bless you with your miracles, but first send us some money.
And so when Ruthie's disability payments began coming in, even though she needed to save every penny to be able to afford moving out to start this beautiful new life with her grandkids, she still found a way to set aside some of that money and sent it off to these TV preachers.
And soon, these preachers were sending things back to Ruthie.
Things like a blessed piece of wood for her to sleep on, or bottles of water said to be from the Holy River Jordan.
These spiritual items were often accompanied with a letter from these preachers telling Ruthie that in order for them to fulfill her miracles request, she would need to keep these spiritual items close to her and also send us some more money.
And so Ruthie did as she was told, and after sending off all this money, she would excitedly wait inside of her apartment for her miracles to come true.
And while she waited, she began tacking up all these newspaper articles all over her apartment of these people who miracles had happened to them, that supposedly God had fixed their teeth or eradicated a tumor in their brain or cured them of cancer.
And in all of these stories, the person who the miracle happened to would describe looking in the mirror one day and just looking different.
And that was the moment they knew that this miracle had occurred.
And so Ruthie, believing this was bound to happen to her any day because she was working with these TV preachers, began going to her bathroom mirror all the time and just looking at herself, looking for some visible change in her appearance that would indicate one of her miracles had come true.
But by April 22nd, so roughly a month after finding out she was going to be receiving these payments, and this was about two weeks before she was set to actually move out into her new place, Ruthie had still not seen any sign in the mirror that she had changed, and so she believed these miracles had not happened yet.
But something else had begun happening when Ruthie was in the bathroom looking at herself in the mirror.
And that was she would hear somewhere off in the distance the sound of someone talking to her.
It was almost like they were whispering to her, but she couldn't quite tell what they were saying.
Now, Ruthie wanted to believe that these disembodied voices had something to do with her miracles coming to fruition, but Ruthie was naturally a very paranoid and scared person, and so she couldn't help but be a little bit scared of these voices.
And so that afternoon, when Ruthie was on the bus headed back home after a doctor's appointment, she told a friend on the bus about these strange whispers she was hearing, and Ruthie would also say that she felt like these whispers meant that somebody was out to get her.
Now, Ruthie's friend knew Ruthie really well, and this just wasn't unusual behavior for Ruthie.
Ruthie routinely thought people were out to get her, and she talked about hearing voices before in the past.
And so this friend told Ruthie that, you know, you really should tell someone about this.
But deep down, this friend was not that concerned.
This was kind of normal Ruthie behavior, and this couldn't be a big deal.
However, it would turn out to be a huge deal.
That night around 8.45 p.m. when Ruthie was back home at her apartment, she called 911.
And when the dispatcher answered her call, Ruthie was in a total panic and she was talking about something to do with the cabinets and with her bathroom and how her neighbors wanted to use her bathroom.
And the dispatcher just did not understand.
And they tried to ask Ruthie some clarifying questions, but Ruthie just could not put together a coherent sentence.
And so the dispatcher told Ruthie that they would send police over right away.
And then afterwards, the dispatcher would put out to the officers in the area that, hey, Ruthie McCoy seems to be having some sort of argument with her neighbors over cabinets.
I don't really know, but someone needs to go check it out.
And when the officers got that call, they were not quick to respond.
They knew Ruthie. They knew that this was likely nonsense.
But 15 minutes after Ruthie called 911, 911 got another call from somebody else inside of Ruthie's apartment building, and they were calling to report hearing loud noises coming from inside of Ruthie's apartment.
And so at this, the police did act quickly.
They rushed over to the apartment building.
They went to the 11th floor. They went to Ruthie's door, and they began pounding on her door because it was locked.
But Ruthie didn't come to the door, and it was totally silent inside of her apartment.
And so at some point, the police called back to dispatch and asked them to call Ruthie on the phone she had just used 15 minutes earlier to call 911.
And so these police officers are standing right outside of Ruthie's door, and they're listening to the sound of Ruthie's phone ringing inside of her house, but Ruthie didn't answer it.
And again, the apartment stayed totally quiet.
And so the responding officers turned around and began walking down the hall and knocking on other people's doors and began asking them, hey, did you hear any loud sounds coming out of Ruthie's apartment?
And everybody said no. And so the police eventually just kind of gave up and left, despite not seeing Ruthie, not talking to Ruthie, not seeing what's going on inside of her apartment.
The next day, when one of Ruthie's friends on her floor noticed that Ruthie had not come out of her apartment all day, and when she knocked on the door, Ruthie didn't answer, this friend called the police.
The police came out again, they knocked on Ruthie's door, and after a while, when she didn't answer, the police again just left.
Ruthie's friend who had called the police was furious that the police were not taking this seriously.
And so she wound up contacting maintenance of the building and a janitor went up to the 11th floor, went to Ruthie's door, drilled through the lock and pushed her door open.
The janitor immediately yelled out for Ruthie, but there was no response.
And so he stepped inside and kind of looked around, and right away he was struck by two things.
One, it was a total mess inside of her apartment.
There were all these religious books and pamphlets all over the ground.
But as messy as the apartment looked, it also seemed weirdly empty.
Like there was no TV. There was really no furniture or anywhere to sit.
It was almost like this apartment had been half moved out and then whoever was moving it out had just kind of stopped.
The janitor started to get a really bad feeling about being inside of this apartment, but he mustered the courage to walk a little farther into the apartment to look into the bedroom.
And when he turned the corner and looked into that bedroom, he froze because there on the ground was Ruthie McCoy.
She was lying on the ground in a pool of her own blood.
She was dead. The police were called, they came out, they walked around her apartment, and they concluded that this was kind of an open and shut case.
Ruthie must have opened her door for the wrong person who came inside and killed her.
Remember, this apartment building saw one murder nearly every week, so this really was kind of routine.
And just a couple of days later, the police would arrest a 19-year-old living in this apartment building named Edward Turner because he was found to be in possession of Ruthie's TV.
Edward did not admit to doing anything, but the police assumed that he must have tried to rob Ruthie, and in the course of this robbery, perhaps Ruthie had tried to fight back, at which point Edward had overpowered her and killed her.
But the police did suspect that there was at least one other person involved in Ruthie's murder, so they did keep investigating.
And then in June, so about a month and a half after Edward was arrested, the police began hearing this very disturbing rumor about the building where Ruthie had lived.
At first, the police completely dismissed it because it sounded totally made up.
But when it kept coming up over and over again, whenever they interviewed anybody in this building about Ruthie's murder, the police finally decided they had to at least look into it in order to confirm that it was not true.
However, when the police looked into this rumor, they would discover that it was true, and it absolutely played a role in Ruthie's murder.
Back on the night of April 22nd, 1987, so the night that Ruthie called 911 in a panic, saying something about her cabinets and her neighbors and her bathroom.
Well, what had really happened is Ruth was home around 845 when she heard this loud banging sound coming from her bathroom.
And then before she could go over and inspect the bathroom, her bathroom door flung open and standing in the doorway was this dark, tall figure who just suddenly took off running through her apartment, out her front door, out into the hallway.
Ruthie was so startled she had no idea what to make of it.
She knew that sometimes she saw things that weren't real, and so she likely struggled to figure out, did that really happen?
Am I dreaming? Am I hallucinating? What's going on?
And so with all these thoughts going through her head, she called 911 to get help, but she couldn't quite. quite describe what had even happened.
And so that's why she began rambling about how her neighbors wanted to use her bathroom and the cabinets were somehow involved.
It was all very confusing. And so the dispatcher obviously didn't understand what was going on, but they told Ruthie, okay, I'll pass this along and the police will be out soon.
And so as Ruthie is waiting for the police to show up, she wanders over to the bathroom where this dark figure has appeared.
And she walks inside and she looks at where her mirror had been above her sink.
The mirror that she had spent so many hours looking into, hoping for signs of a miracle.
And the mirror was gone. And in its place was this big dark hole on the wall, almost like an entrance to a dark tunnel.
And as Ruthie is staring at this void, she sees these two dark hands emerge from underneath that come out of the hole and grip onto her sink.
And then eyes pop up and a man's head pops up.
And then he uses his arms, which are clutched onto the sink, to pull himself up and out of the hole in her wall where he plopped down on the bathroom floor and then stood up and stared at Ruthie. and then everything after that point would have happened really fast.
Ruthie likely began screaming, at which point the first man, the dark figure that had run out into the hallway and prompted Ruthie to call 911, he must have heard Ruthie screaming, and so he came running back in through the front door into Ruthie's apartment with a jacket over his head, and then at some point, he or the other man who had come out of the hole in the wall yelled at Ruthie to get down on the ground, maybe she didn't comply,
Maybe she did, but after that, four gunshots rang out.
All four shots hit Ruthie. However, these four shots did not kill Ruthie right away.
And so Ruthie was very alive as these two men stole her TV.
They stole her rocking chair and some other things.
And Ruthie was almost certainly still alive when the police did finally show up and began knocking on her door and calling her phone.
But she was bleeding to death. She couldn't move.
She couldn't make a sound. but the police just abandoned her, at which point she did die.
It would turn out that disturbing rumor that the police heard about this apartment building was that apparently people in this building had learned that you could pull off your mirror inside of your bathroom and literally climb into the walls.
And from that point, you could basically wander all over this building and then punch other people's mirrors in their bathrooms in, and then climb through that hole and do whatever you wanted to the people inside of that apartment.
And so when Ruthie began hearing those whispers when she was in her bathroom looking at the mirror hoping for a miracle, those were the sounds of thieves and killers and criminals slinking about her wall. detectives speculated that the two men who killed Ruthie likely found out about her disability payments and decided to rob her.
However, the two men that police arrested, the 19-year-old Edward Turner, who was found in possession of her TV, and this other man who was also arrested, were ultimately acquitted.
Because there were so many people crawling through the walls all day and night inside of this building that there was no way to prove that those two were the ones who actually went in and killed Ruthie.
To this day, no one else has ever been charged with Ruthie's murder.
What happened to Ruthie became the basis for the very popular horror movie called The Candyman, starring Tony Todd.
Thank you for listening to the Mr. Ballin podcast.
If you enjoyed today's stories, be sure to check out our YouTube channel, which is just called Mr. Ballin, where we have hundreds more stories just like this one, but many of them are not available on this podcast.
They're only on YouTube. Again, the YouTube channel is just called Mr. Ballin.
So that's going to do it. I really appreciate your support.
Until next time, see ya. 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.
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