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. In the summer of 2014, a middle-aged man named Mark sat in the small lobby of a quick service oil change garage.
As he waited for his oil change to wrap up, Mark sipped on a cup of coffee and stared out the window.
But a minute later, a strange man who Mark didn't know walked into the shop and despite there being plenty of empty seats, this man sat down right next to Mark.
Mark thought this was very strange, but he tried not to overthink it and just nodded politely to the guy and Mark just kept on sipping his coffee and looking out the window.
But then the strange man started talking to Mark, just small talk, and Mark responded politely, but it really seemed like this guy was trying so hard to strike up a conversation with Mark.
Finally, when Mark's car was done, Mark was very relieved to grab his keys and get out of there.
And as Mark drove home, he couldn't help but feel like that strange guy was just off in some way.
Like there had to be a reason why he sat down next to Mark despite the open seats and then had tried so hard to strike up a conversation.
It all just seems so weird. But by the time Mark got home, he had forgotten about the guy.
However, the strange guy had not forgotten about Mark because Mark was right to be suspicious.
That strange man had a very specific reason for doing what he did.
And what he did was about to have massive ripple effects.
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, the next time the Amazon Music Follow button asks you if they can borrow your chapstick, say yes and hand it over, but don't tell them that you've secretly replaced the actual chapstick with a glue stick.
Okay, let's get into today's story. On a cool Saturday afternoon in April of 2014, 60-year-old Gary Terrell was crouched down in the dirt, pulling weeds from his beautiful backyard garden.
Even though it was only about 50 degrees Fahrenheit, Gary could still feel a bead of sweat dripping down his forehead.
Gary also felt a slight ache in his back, and he laughed at himself because digging in the dirt apparently was not as easy as when he was younger.
But even with the sweat and the muscle aches, there was still no place Gary would rather be than in his garden on a pretty spring day.
Gary and his wife Jan had lived in their house in Springfield, Missouri for over 20 years, and the house itself looked a lot like the other homes in their small suburban neighborhood.
It was red brick with a large first floor and a basement, but the landscaping at Gary and Jan's house made it stand out from all the other houses in the area.
Landscaping had always been a passion for Gary and Jan.
They had spent years working on their flower and vegetable gardens in the back, and they had filled the front yard with plants and various design accents like a concrete bench with cupids and hearts carved into it.
Gary slipped off his gardening gloves, stood up, and stretched out his back.
Gary was average height with graying hair and a receding hairline.
Gary heard the back door open, so he turned and he saw his wife Jan walking towards him.
She was carrying a glass of water and she had a big smile on her face like she usually did.
Jan was 61 years old. She had brown hair down to her shoulders and she wore glasses.
When Jan reached Gary, she handed him the glass of water and told him he should really take a break.
So they sat down together on a bench and they talked about what else they could plant to add even more color to their gardens.
Then Jan took Gary's hand and they sat there quietly, just looking out over their perfect yard.
The truth was the garden was much more than just another landscaping project to Gary and Jan.
It had been like a sanctuary to them for years.
Gary and Jan had met and fallen in love over 30 years earlier in the 1980s.
Soon after they had gotten married, they started a family, first welcoming their daughter, Jessica, and then their son, Jimmy.
But when Jimmy was only a toddler, Gary and Jan had gotten the worst news they could imagine.
Their little boy had been diagnosed with cancer.
After Jimmy's diagnosis, Gary and Jan had moved to the house in Springfield to be closer to medical facilities for their son's treatments.
But unfortunately, at the age of three, Jimmy had passed away.
Gary and Jan knew they would never get over the death of their son.
But the garden they started in the backyard of their home became their quiet, beautiful place where they could go and sit and remember their son.
And soon, it became a place where they could retreat from stress and pain and just spend time together.
It really was their sanctuary. Over the years, Gary and Jan had started to heal as best as they could from the terrible loss of their son, and they both turned their grief into a desire to help others.
Gary had dedicated his life to education and working with children.
He had been a history teacher, a school principal, and then he had gone on to serve as the assistant superintendent in his school's district.
Jan volunteered her time sewing and crocheting for cancer patients.
And even though nobody other than Gary knew, Jan also paid for milk and food items at the local school cafeterias to help cover the costs for kids who couldn't afford to buy those things on their own.
And even after Gary had retired from working in the school district for decades, he wanted to remain an educator.
So he had taken a position at a local college as an adjunct history instructor.
So as much as Gary and Jan loved to escape from the stress and grief of life by going into their garden, they both still believed it was their job to stay engaged in their community and to help others as much as they could.
In the garden, Gary finished his water and cleaned up his supplies.
Then he and his wife went inside their house.
Jan sat down on the living room couch and called their daughter Jessica.
Jessica was in her late 20s, and she lived about 300 miles away in Oklahoma City, Oklahoma.
Jan and Gary still talked to their daughter just about every single day.
Jessica would call her mom every morning, and her dad would text her every night before he went to bed.
But lately, Jessica and Jan had been on the phone with each other even more than usual because Jessica was planning her wedding.
And that day, Jan had called Jessica to set up a time for them to go wedding dress shopping together.
They decided Jessica would drive up to Missouri in a couple of weeks, stay with her parents, and she and Jan would shop for as long as they needed until she found the perfect dress.
While Jan talked to Jessica on the phone, Gary made his way through the first floor of the house towards his home office.
It was true that the outside landscaping Gary and Jan had done over the years really did set their house apart, but the inside of their house was also very different from other homes.
In fact, the inside of their home wasn't like anything anyone in the neighborhood had ever seen.
The inside of Gary and Jan's house was like a small museum or a curiosity shop filled with all kinds of rare items.
Gary loved world history. That's why he continued to teach the subject even after he had technically retired.
But Gary's love of history had also turned him into an avid collector.
At first, Gary had begun collecting things like old books or rare furniture pieces he found at garage sales.
But over the years, Gary's collecting had turned into something way bigger than just a hobby.
The walls on the first floor of the house were covered with shelves, and those shelves displayed antique handguns and rifles, Native American spearheads, first edition books, jars filled with old coins from all over the world, and countless other collectibles.
On his way to his office, Gary stopped for a second in front of a large wooden table that displayed his prized possession, three rare 19th century scrimshaw walrus tusks.
Scrimshaw was the art of hand carving detailed pictures or intricate designs into bone or ivory objects like whale and walrus tusks.
Gary looked at his prized tusks and he smiled.
Each one was worth about 10,000 US dollars, but their monetary value was not really why Gary loved them so much.
As a collector, he had to work hard to track down these kinds of very rare items.
He combed through catalogs, visited antique dealers, talked to other collectors, and still went to local garage and estate sales in search of rarities.
So these three scrimshaw tusks represented a lot of time and effort by Gary.
And the artwork and craftsmanship of these three pieces just totally blew Gary away.
Gary stepped away from the walrus tusk display, walked down a hallway, and went into his office.
The shelves in his office were overflowing with books.
Some were hard to find and long out of print, and others were just books about history that Gary enjoyed reading.
Gary sat down at his desk, and he reached over into a jar that was filled with all these silver coins.
Like the walrus tusks, most of these coins were very rare and worth a lot of money, and Gary was on a mission to catalog all of them.
Cataloging items in his collection made it much easier for him to trade with other collectors because that way he knew exactly what he had and he could give others a description of all the objects he owned.
But cataloging coins was also kind of like sitting in the garden for Gary.
There was something about the sound the coins made when they clinked against each other and the time it took to determine exactly when and where each coin was from that brought Gary a real sense of peace.
Gary wasn't sure how long he'd been sitting at his desk cataloging these rare coins when his phone buzzed in his pocket and it sort of snapped him out of his peaceful trance.
He grabbed his phone and glanced down at the number that was calling him and he saw it belonged to one of his closest friends, Mark Porter.
Mark had been the superintendent of the school district back when Gary was the assistant superintendent and the two men had gotten along really well.
It turned out that Mark shared Gary's interest in collecting coins, so the two men had remained close friends even after they both had retired.
Gary and Mark talked for a few minutes about maybe getting together for dinner soon, and then Mark asked how Gary's work with his latest coin collection was going.
The truth was, Mark loved that Gary had this huge collection to spend his time on, but Mark also worried that Gary was a little naive about the world he'd been drawn into.
Most collectors and antique dealers were like Gary.
They were good people who just had a real love of history.
But there were some people who saw collectors like Gary as very easy targets because they were in possession of items that were worth a ton of money.
And there were times when Mark worried if Gary really knew enough about the different people he was reaching out to in order to make potential buys or trades with.
You know, it wasn't really clear if Gary actually understood if these business partners of his were good people with good intentions or not.
On the phone, Gary told Mark that everything was going great with cataloging his coins and he'd be able to see if anyone was interested in buying them soon.
And he reassured Mark that he would only work with reputable collectible coin dealers when the time came to actually sell them.
Then the two friends agreed to meet for dinner the following week and they said goodbye.
Not long after Gary hung up on Mark, Jan walked into the office and she told Gary that their daughter, Jessica, would be coming up from Oklahoma soon to go shopping for a wedding dress.
Gary stood up and he had a huge grin on his face.
He loved when his daughter came to visit and he knew how happy it made Jan to spend time with their daughter.
Gary put his arm around Jan and the two of them walked out of the office and into the living room.
They sat down on the couch and Jan leaned her head on Gary's shoulder.
Gary and Jan had been together over 30 years and they had been through some really horrible things together, but they had come out on the other side.
They were happy and healthy and just as much in love with each other as they had been on the day they first got married.
A few days later, on April 30th, 2014, Gary kissed Jan by the door that led to their garage and then Gary headed out to his car.
He was going to head out to teach one of his classes at the local college.
Jan watched as Gary pulled out of the garage and headed down the driveway.
And then once he was gone, Jan shut the garage door and then walked back inside into the living room.
She sat down on the couch and called her daughter, Jessica.
They talked about Jessica's wedding planning and Jan reminded her that if she needed help with anything, all she had to do was ask.
Jessica's house in Oklahoma City was only about a five-hour drive to Jan and Gary's, and they did see each other fairly often.
But Jan secretly wished that Jessica and her fiancé lived closer.
And even though Jan didn't say this, she really hoped when Jessica had children of her own, she would move back to Springfield, because Jan would want to be as close to her grandkids as possible.
Jan and Jessica talked for a bit longer, and then Jan told her daughter she loved her and she couldn't wait to see her.
Jan hung up her phone and then walked across the first floor to the basement door.
Now, while she and Gary did call the basement the basement, in reality, it really wasn't.
It had been converted into another living space years earlier, complete with a small kitchen, so it was kind of like an apartment.
Jan walked down the stairs and into the basement kitchen.
She spent a lot of time down there canning vegetables.
Jan didn't take canning as seriously as Gary took his collecting, but it was still a hobby she loved.
But before Jan could get started canning that day, she thought she heard footsteps upstairs.
She knew she'd been on the phone with Jessica for a while, but she still thought it was way too early for Gary to be home from his class.
Jan walked over to the basement steps and called upstairs to see if maybe Gary was there, but nobody called back.
Then Jan heard heavy footsteps running across the floor right above her and suddenly her breath was caught in her chest and she felt scared.
Then the basement door at the top of the stairs swung open and Jan looked up and saw someone running down the stairs right at her.
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, it's Mr. Balan. I'm excited to tell you about something special.
For the first time, my show, Mr. Balan'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.
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.
The next day, on May 1st, 2014, Jessica, Gary and Jan's daughter, nervously tapped her foot and stared down at her phone inside of her house in Oklahoma City.
Jessica was starting to panic because she hadn't heard from either of her parents since she'd talked to her mom the day before, and that wasn't normal.
Her dad always texted her to say goodnight no matter where he was or what he was doing, and he didn't do that the night before, and she talked to her mom every morning, and that morning, she had not heard from her mom.
Jessica's fiance, Jason, tried to calm her down.
He was sure there was a totally normal explanation for why Gary and Jan had stopped being in touch.
Maybe they fell asleep early the night before and maybe slept in this morning.
But Jessica just couldn't believe that. She knew something was wrong, and so she couldn't relax.
Jessica and her mom looked a lot alike. They had the exact same smile, but Jessica had blonde highlights and her shoulder-length brown hair.
On this day, Jessica wore a gray sweatshirt and jeans.
As for Jessica's fiance, Jason, he was a big guy, and he was what some people might call the strong silent type.
In their Oklahoma City living room, Jessica got up and started to pace back and forth.
At noon, she still had not heard from her parents, and so she really began to feel worried.
By this point, Jason could see how upset his fiance was, and so he told her, you know, just call the police up in Springfield and ask them to do a wellness check on your parents.
This would mean a police officer would go to Jan and Gary's house and just knock on the door and make sure everything was okay.
Jessica looked up the non-emergency number for the Springfield Police Department and she gave them a call.
She told them she was really worried about her parents and she gave them her parents' address.
The officer on the other line assured her they would send somebody over to the house immediately.
Jessica hung up the phone and then sat back down and waited.
It felt like hours had passed, but in reality, the police called Jessica back pretty quickly.
An officer told Jessica that they had gone by her parents' house, and while they didn't actually talk to her parents, nothing seemed out of the ordinary about their home.
The doors were all locked. There was no sign of forced entry anywhere.
I mean, the house looked totally normal.
Jessica thanked the officer for going over and looking around, but after she hung up, she told Jason that that was not good enough for her.
She was sure there was something wrong and somebody actually needed to speak to her parents.
Jessica tried calling both of her parents again, but again, neither of them answered.
So Jessica told Jason that they needed to drive to Springfield to see in person what was going on here.
So at about 2 p.m. that day, Jessica and Jason walked outside to their car to begin the five-hour drive to Springfield.
Jason drove as fast as he could, and he and Jessica barely spoke on the ride.
And then just a little before 7 p.m., Jason pulled the car into Gary and Jan's driveway.
Right away, Jessica reached into her purse and she took out the garage door opener she had for her parents' house.
She pressed the button and she and Jason watched as the garage door opened up and inside, Jessica saw both of her parents' cars were parked.
And when Jessica saw that, she turned to Jason and she said now she was certain something terrible had happened.
Jessica slowly got out of the car, but she didn't dare go inside the house.
Instead, she dialed 911 and waited outside for the police to arrive.
A few minutes after Jessica called 911, a police cruiser arrived in front of the house.
Two uniformed officers stepped out of the car and approached Jessica and Jason, who were still standing outside in front of the house.
The officers saw the garage door was open and that there were two cars parked inside.
The officers asked Jessica and Jason if either of them had gone into the house.
Jessica said they hadn't, but she was sure something was wrong.
She also told them the door that led into the house from the garage was always unlocked.
The officers told Jessica to wait outside and then they walked into the garage.
Jessica was right. The door in the garage leading into the house was unlocked.
So the officers walked through that door into the house and made their way down a hallway towards the front of the house.
And not far from the front door, they saw a man's body lying in a pool of blood with a gunshot wound to his chest.
As soon as they saw this, one of the officers called into the station and then both officers drew their guns and began slowly making their way through the rest of the first floor.
The officers were tense. They had no idea if the shooter was still in the house.
They didn't find anyone else on the first floor, so they made their way to the basement door, they opened it up and began going down the stairs again with their guns drawn.
But before even making it halfway down the steps, the officers saw another body.
It was a woman lying face down on the floor below.
Even from a distance, they could see a gaping wound in the back of her head.
Later that evening, Jessica and her fiancé Jason were still anxiously waiting outside, but this whole time they had stood there and watched multiple police cruisers arrive one after another and they had watched as police officers blocked off Jessica's parents' house with yellow police tape.
One officer had told Jessica and Jason that two bodies had been found inside of the house, but those bodies had not been identified yet.
However, Jessica knew it had to be her parents, and she'd be right.
In the darkness, Jessica watched another car pull up in front of the house.
This one was not a police cruiser, but a sedan.
And out of the sedan came two tall, thin men wearing suits with buzzed brown hair.
In the low light, the two men could easily pass as brothers. the men approached Jessica and Jason and introduced themselves as detectives Chris Barb and Neil McCamas of the Springfield Police.
Like the first officers on the scene, the detectives learned that Jessica and Jason had not gone inside of the house before or after they called 911.
Barb and McCamas asked them to continue waiting outside, and then the two detectives made their way inside of the house.
Once they were inside, they joined the state forensics officers in the front room where Gary's body was lying.
The detectives were immediately taken aback by the amount of blood that had pooled around his body, and they soon discovered that Gary had been shot and bludgeoned.
While this type of violence was shocking to see, even for these experienced detectives, there were a couple of other things about the scene that really stood out to them.
Gary's pants were pulled down to about the middle of his thighs, but Barb and McAnus didn't think it looked like someone had tried to undress Gary.
Instead, they thought maybe someone might have dug through Gary's pockets after he was dead and Gary's pants had sort of slipped off his waist.
But Gary's pants being down were not remotely the strangest aspect about the scene.
Forensics officers had found white dust and flakes all over Gary's body.
It was clear to investigators that the dust was not cocaine or any other kind of drug, but they had no idea what it was.
So, as forensics officers collected samples of the white dust for testing, detectives Barb and McCamus followed a uniformed officer across the first floor and down to the basement.
At the bottom of the stairs, another forensics officer was crouched over Jan's body.
Barb asked if the wounds on Jan's body matched the ones on Gary upstairs, and the officer said, only partially, because Jan had not been shot like Gary had been.
Barb and McAmis crouched down and just like upstairs, they saw the same white dust and flakes.
They also saw a latex glove turned inside out on the floor, not far from Jan's body.
The detectives left the forensics team to do their work in the basement and they made their way back upstairs and through the rest of the house.
Eventually, they went into the garage and they saw a concrete floor-to-ceiling tornado shelter standing in the corner.
Garage shelters like that were pretty common in the area because Missouri was part of what's often called Tornado Alley, an area of the United States that experiences a ton of tornadoes.
But Detectives Barb and McCamus noticed something strange about this tornado shelter right away.
A combination lock had been added to the structure.
While locks were not out of the ordinary for outdoor shelters, they weren't that common in garage shelters.
Because the idea that during a tornado, people would rush into their garage to get in their shelter and then have to fiddle around with a lock first just felt really unnecessary.
And so Barb and McCammis walked over to the shelter to get a better look at this lock.
And when they got there, it was clear someone had struck that lock over and over again in a failed attempt to get it to open.
So the detectives were pretty sure that Gary and Jan had converted this tornado shelter into a sort of safe, hence the lock.
And then whoever had killed them had then tried to break into this safe. meaning whoever had killed them knew Gary and Jan had converted the shelter into a safe, they knew where the safe was, and they very likely had an idea of what was inside of it.
And so, for Detectives Barb and McAmmis, there was now one very obvious suspect, Gary and Jan's daughter, Jessica, who had apparently been so worried about her parents that she drove five hours to check on them, but apparently not worried enough to actually go inside the house.
Late at night on May 1st, so a few hours after police had arrived at Gary and Jan's house, Detective Barb led Jessica and Jason into a small interrogation room at the police station.
Barb motioned to a small wooden table that was pushed up against a wall that looked like it hadn't been repainted in decades.
Jessica and Jason sat down at that table and then Barb took a seat across from them.
Barb was calm and measured, and he told Jessica how sorry he was about her loss.
But he made it clear there were a few things that seemed really strange to him.
Barb couldn't understand why Jessica and Jason had driven all the way from Oklahoma only to arrive at Jessica's parents' house and then Jessica doesn't go inside to see if her parents need any help.
But all Jessica would say in response to this was that as soon as she saw her parents' cars were in the garage, she knew something terrible had happened and she didn't want to see it.
And that was why she had just called the police and waited outside.
Detective Barb nodded and jotted down a few notes on a pad of paper.
Barb's face never gave anything away, but Jessica's reasoning still seemed very odd to him.
And in fact, he had heard answers like Jessica's before.
In murder cases, Barb had come into contact with people who left the scene after they had killed their victims and then contacted police to try to remove suspicion from themselves.
But these killers would pretend they had not even seen the victims because they simply could not confront what they had done.
So they would say things like they knew something was wrong, but that they had no idea what police would actually find inside when in reality, of course they would know.
And that's exactly what Jessica's response sounded like to Detective Barb.
Now, he was not ready to just declare Jessica guilty, but he definitely still considered her a major suspect despite her explanation.
Because in addition to her strange behavior at the house, Barb and his team had discovered some very important information since they had arrived at Jan and Gary's house that really only began to point more suspicion at Jessica.
It turned out that Gary's collection of rare and historical items was worth hundreds of thousands of US dollars.
And like police thought, Gary and Jan had converted that garage tornado shelter into a safe.
And that safe held tens of thousands of dollars worth of gold and silver.
So, Detective Barb knew that Jessica was the only child of wealthy parents and she stood to inherit a lot of money when her parents died.
In the interrogation room, Barb's voice remained totally calm, almost casual, like he was talking to a friend.
He asked Jessica if she was angry at her parents for any reason.
But Jessica just looked at him and shook her head, no.
She said her parents were her whole life.
Then Barb asked her if she had resented her parents for keeping their money from her or anything like that. and a confused and almost angry look suddenly came across Jessica's face.
She told Barb that if she ever wanted money, or anything else from her parents for that matter, all she had to do was ask and they'd give it to her.
Barb thanked Jessica and Jason for coming in, and then he let them go.
Jessica might be a prime suspect, but Barb knew he needed a lot more evidence to be able to hold her.
So Detective Barb and McCammis regrouped and started to put together a list of people who were close to Gary and Jan and who might have information about the crime or about Jessica.
And the first person they wanted to talk to was Gary's friend and fellow collector, Mark Porter.
At 7 p.m. on May 2nd, the day after Gary and Jan's bodies had been discovered, Mark Porter sat in an interrogation room similar to the one Jessica and Jason had been in the day before.
Mark was 53 years old and he was tall and handsome with salt and pepper hair.
Detective Barb was once again handling the interview and he asked Mark if he knew of any friends or family that might have wanted to harm Gary and Jan.
But Mark shot down that idea right away.
People in the community loved Gary and Jan because they both spent so much of their time helping other people.
And Mark said as for their daughter, Jessica, she loved her parents and had a great relationship with them.
Before Barb could press him further, Mark said there was a much more obvious path investigators should be following.
Mark said he was almost positive that Gary and Jan had been killed because of something having to do with Gary's collection.
And he added that someone could have stolen stuff from Gary worth thousands of dollars and it would be almost impossible to know it was missing because Gary had amassed such a large collection of all different kinds of rare items.
Then Mark shook his head and fell silent.
Detective Barb asked him what was wrong, and Mark just kept shaking his head.
Then he looked up at Barb and said that he had seen at least one text message exchange between Gary and a potential buyer, and something about this exchange had just seemed off to Mark.
Mark told Barb that he had tried to warn Gary not to go into business with this guy in the text messages, but now Mark said he wished he had really pushed Gary to truly walk away from that deal.
Detective Barb thanked Mark for his time and for the information he'd provided.
And after Mark left, Barb met with the rest of the investigative team.
None of the investigative team were familiar with the world of collectors that Gary and Mark and others were a part of, but they all knew that when it came to things worth a lot of money, there were going to be people involved who would do anything to other people to get their hands on those items.
Now Barb needed to figure out if something, one of the collectibles or multiple collectibles were missing from Gary's house.
Police could go through Gary's catalogs, but there was no guarantee that everything Gary had ever collected would be listed in those catalogs.
So this was going to be a really difficult chore.
So Barb reached out to Gary's brother to see if maybe he could help.
Gary's brother was a respected attorney in the area, and he was probably more familiar with Gary's complete collection than anyone because he had helped Gary with legal and financial issues related to collecting some of these rare objects.
Detective Barb wasn't willing to rule Jessica out as a suspect, but what Mark had said did make a lot of sense, and investigators started focusing on the murders as possibly being the result of a robbery, and they hoped either Gary's brother or the test results from the mysterious white dust they were waiting on would lead them to the killer.
On May 10th, so 10 days after Jan and Gary's murders, their daughter Jessica stood at the front of a massive crowd that had gathered inside of a high school gym.
The outpouring of love for Jan and Gary from the community had been overwhelming, and it became clear that a funeral home would not be large enough to accommodate everybody who wanted to pay their respects to Gary and Jan.
So the school district, where Gary had worked for decades, let the family use a local high school gym for a memorial service.
But as Jessica listened to friends and other family members talk about how much her parents had meant to them, one thought kept coming into her mind.
This was the day she was supposed to go dress shopping with her mom, and now her parents wouldn't even get to be there for her wedding, and they would never get to meet their grandkids.
Jessica just started sobbing, and Jason wrapped his arms around her and pulled her face to his chest.
The fact that Jessica had lost her parents was devastating, but Jason could not believe that on top of that, she also had to endure being a primary suspect in their murders.
After the service was over, Jason stood by Jessica outside the gym as she greeted people she had known since she was a kid, and most of them were also appalled that she was being treated like a suspect.
Finally, Jessica's uncle, so Gary's brother, approached them and gave Jessica a hug.
He didn't believe Jessica would ever do anything to hurt her parents, but as an attorney, he understood why police had focused on her.
After all, she was the sole heir to her parents' fortune, and she had acted a little strange at their house on the day that Gary and Jan's bodies were discovered.
But he was sure Jessica would soon be crossed off the suspect list, and he was also determined to help police discover if anything really had been stolen from Gary's collection.
In the following weeks, with Gary's brother's help, investigators started to believe they were getting closer to identifying Jan and Gary's killer.
But they still needed more evidence to be sure they were right and to create an airtight case that would actually hold up in court.
But as more time passed, the people who were closest to Gary and Jan put added pressure on the police because they felt like the investigation had started to drag.
And on top of that, some of Gary and Jan's friends and neighbors had begun to get frightened because they had no idea if Gary and Jan had been the killer's only target or if they too were also in danger.
Three months after Jan and Gary's murder, Gary's friend, Mark Porter, sat in the small lobby of a quick service oil change garage.
Mark sipped on a cup of coffee from a fast food restaurant and waited for his oil change to be finished.
Then a man walked in and sat down right next to Mark, which was odd because there were plenty of other seats available in the lobby.
But Mark didn't think too much about it.
He just kept drinking his coffee. Then this man started to talk to Mark.
It was just small talk and Mark responded politely.
Finally, Mark heard someone behind the counter call his name.
Mark put down his coffee, nodded to the stranger who had been talking to him, paid for his oil change, and then went outside to his car.
But as Mark drove away, he got this weird, uneasy feeling in his stomach.
Who was that guy? And why had he sat down right next to him and just started talking to him?
It just felt odd. When Mark got home, he started to worry that that strange guy might be somehow connected to the murders of Gary and Jan.
But as Mark continued to fret over the next few days about this mystery guy and what he meant, detectives Barb and McAmis decided they were ready to make an arrest.
Because they now knew what had been stolen from Gary's collection, and they knew what that mysterious white dust was that was found at the scene.
So they were sure about who had killed Gary and Jan, and how they had done it.
Based on evidence found at the murder scene, interviews conducted throughout the investigation, and the test results from the white dust and flakes found inside of Gary and Jan's home, here is a reconstruction of what police believe happened on the night of April 30, 2014, when someone murdered Gary and Jan Terrell.
It was still light outside, so the killer casually walked up to Jane and Gary's front door as if they were just there for a visit.
They had a large gym bag with them slung over their shoulder.
From the porch, the killer glanced over their shoulder to make sure none of the neighbors were outside.
Satisfied, the killer reached into their pants pocket and pulled out a pair of latex gloves.
The killer slipped on the gloves and then reached into their other pocket and pulled out a key.
They used that key to open the door and they stepped inside.
The house was quiet. The killer started down the hallway towards Gary's office, but then they heard a voice calling from downstairs in the basement.
The killer froze and started to panic. Then the voice in the basement called out again, at which point the killer made a decision on the spot.
The killer rushed to a wooden table nearby and grabbed one of those three scrimshaw walrus tusks that were on display.
Then the killer, carrying one of those tusks, ran across the first floor towards the basement.
They flung open the basement door and quickly descended the stairs.
In the basement, Jan, who was the one calling upstairs, she began to scream.
She saw the killer rushing towards her, so she turned away from the stairs, but there was nowhere for her to go.
The killer reached the bottom of the stairs and caught up to Jan.
They clutched that walrus tusk in both hands like a baseball bat, and then they swung.
The tusk cracked the back of Jan's head and she fell face down onto the floor.
Blood immediately spilled from the wound, but the killer thought they could still hear her breathing.
So the killer stood over Jan's body, raised up the walrus tusk again, and slammed it back down into the back of Jan's head multiple times.
With each blow to the back of Jan's head, white dust and flakes fell off of that tusk.
It would later be determined that the killer had used so much force when smashing Jan's head with that tusk that pieces of Jan's hair were literally embedded into her skull.
Finally, the killer stopped smashing Jan's head with the tusk.
They stood there for a second and then went back to the basement stairs and headed back up to the first floor.
Everything had happened so quickly that the killer didn't realize one of their latex gloves had slipped off their hand and fallen near Jan's body.
Upstairs, the killer made their way past the front door, down the hall, and into Gary's office, still clutching the bloody tusk in one of their hands.
Once in the office, they grabbed something off the desk, opened up their bag, and dropped it inside.
But before the killer could take anything else, they heard the front door open.
Again, the killer froze up and began to panic.
Then they made another split decision. They opened up one of the desk drawers, pulled out a handgun that was inside, and then ran out of the office down the hall.
When the killer got to the front door, Gary, who was the one who had opened the door, he was standing there and he was calling out for his wife.
The killer shouted at Gary and Gary turned to see them, at which point the killer raised the gun and fired.
The bullet struck Gary in the chest. Blood spattered across Gary's clothes and he fell to the floor.
The killer had no idea if Gary was alive or dead, but they weren't gonna take any chances.
So they stood over him, raised up the walrus tusk and smashed Gary with it.
Again, white flakes and dusk from the tusk fell to the floor.
Eventually, the killer stopped bludgeoning Gary and just stood there in the front room, breathing heavily and feeling totally crazed.
Gary and Jan were now dead. The killer tried to collect themselves and calm down their breathing.
Then they slipped the tusk and the gun into their bag.
They got down on the floor and reached into Gary's pockets, searching for money or other valuables.
Gary's pants slid down his legs as the killer did this.
But the killer did not find anything of note in Gary's pockets.
So the killer walked back through the house and went into the garage.
There, they grabbed a hammer from Gary's tool rack and then walked over to that tornado shelter that they knew had gold and silver inside, and the killer began smashing at the lock with the hammer.
But when it became clear that they could not break this lock, the killer just put the hammer back and went back inside the house.
They walked past Gary's body, opened the front door, and stepped outside.
It had gotten darker outside, but there was still light, so the killer tried to act as casually as they could as they locked the front door behind them, then got into their car and drove out of the neighborhood.
Later that night, the killer sat down on the couch in their home, reached into the bag they had brought to Gary and Jan's house, and took out the item they had stolen from Gary's desk.
It was a jar that was filled with old coins.
The killer wished they could add these coins to their own collection, but instead, the killer would sell these coins as fast as they could.
Mark Porter, Gary's friend and former co-worker, had been the one who murdered Gary and Jan.
It would turn out Mark was in massive debt due to gambling losses and other poor financial decisions.
And weeks before the murder, he had asked his friend Gary to borrow a staggering 250,000 US dollars.
Gary had been totally stunned by this request.
He thought Mark was doing really well financially and he had no idea why Mark would assume that he, Gary, had enough money to just casually give away 250 grand.
And so Gary had said no. Mark had said he understood and that he wouldn't press Gary anymore about the loan, but in reality, Mark had actually decided that he would go into Gary and Jan's house when Gary was off teaching a class so he could raid Gary's collection himself for some of his more high-end items and then sell them on the collector's market.
Being a coin collector himself, Mark knew the worth of Gary's very rare coin collection and he also knew the worth of a lot of the other items Gary had.
So on April 30th, Mark made his way into Gary and Jan's house to do this robbery.
Investigators don't know if he stole the key he used to get inside or if maybe Gary and Jan had given him the key since he was a friend, but either way, that was how he got in with that key.
And so Mark had entered the house with the intention of just robbing Gary, but then Gary's wife, Jan, shouted from the basement and suddenly Mark's plan fell apart.
Mark grabbed the walrus tusk and rushed downstairs and beat Jan to death.
But when Mark heard Gary come home, he wasn't sure if the tusk would be enough.
He knew Gary kept a handgun in his desk drawer, so he grabbed it and shot Gary and then followed it up with smashing him with the tusk as well.
While investigators had initially considered Jessica their primary suspect, they were eventually able to place her at a restaurant in Oklahoma City at the time of her parents' murder.
And it turned out that her reasons for not actually going into her parents' house when she drove all that way to see if they were okay were totally legitimate.
When Jessica saw her parents' cars parked there, when she couldn't get in touch with them and nobody knew what was going on with them, she really did just have this gut instinct that something horrible had happened to them and she just could not bear to see it for herself.
And so that was why she had not gone in.
So when Jessica was off their suspect list, investigators started digging into the possibility that someone from the collecting world had killed Gary and Jan like Mark had suggested.
But then Gary's brother realized that a huge stash of rare coins was missing from Gary's office.
And not long after that, police received a call from a local shop that bought, sold, and traded rare coins.
And they had a video of a man who had recently sold a large coin collection for over $18,000.
And the man on that video was Mark Porter.
At this point, detectives Barb and McCammis thought they were close to catching their killer.
But there was still a chance that Mark had simply sold some of his own coins, so they needed more proof that what he sold was actually Gary's.
They asked Mark to submit a DNA sample to see if maybe they could tie it to DNA found at the scene, but Mark refused.
So the police sent in an undercover cop to get the DNA sample.
And so it would turn out Mark had every right to be suspicious of that stranger who had come in and sat down right next to him and chatted with him while his car was being worked on because that stranger was an undercover police officer who ultimately left with Mark's coffee cup that he left behind inside.
And the crime lab was able to connect DNA samples from the coffee cup to DNA samples that were found on the latex glove that had been left behind at the murder scene in the basement near Jan's body.
Finally, detectives Barb and McCammis learned that the white dust and flakes found near the bodies had come from a walrus tusk similar to the two they had seen on display at Gary's house, so they knew what weapon Mark had used to attack and kill Jan and then also to bludgeon Gary with after he had shot him.
Mark pleaded guilty to second-degree murder and received two consecutive life sentences.
He'll be eligible for parole after he turns 82 years old.
Jessica was able to speak at Mark Porter's sentencing, but she refused to put the focus on Mark.
Instead, she focused on her parents, saying she would miss her parents' advice and their laughter, and she would miss telling them she loved them.
Thank you for listening to the Mr. Ballin podcast.
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