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. Late one night in the summer of 1993, an 11-year-old boy climbed into his bedroom through an open outdoor window at his house in Port Hunemey, California.
And when he got into his room, the 11-year-old was startled to see his four-year-old little brother just standing there motionless.
Then, before the 11-year-old could even ask what the little boy was doing, the 4-year-old just turned and raised his arm and pointed at the door that led out to the hallway and he said, Mommy has a band-aid on her face.
A day later, police would discover the meaning of the little boy's bizarre statement and they would step into a crime scene that felt like it was straight out of a horror movie.
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 offer to make the Amazon Music Follow button a fresh, healthy fruit smoothie, but don't remove the stickers from the fruit before you blend them together.
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Go to audible.com slash richgirlsummer. On the afternoon of May 29th, 1993, 32-year-old Norma Rodriguez stood over a grill flipping hamburgers in her backyard in Port Hunemi, California.
Norma had long brown wavy hair, and she was wearing a light colorful dress.
It was Memorial Day weekend, and Norma had invited over a bunch of her friends and coworkers from the retail store where she worked to celebrate the holiday.
Music was playing, the smell of food wafted through the backyard, and the weather felt perfect at about 70 degrees Fahrenheit.
Norma smiled as she watched her youngest son, who was four years old, running around the yard with a few of her friend's kids.
And she thought to herself that she couldn't have asked for a better day to host a party.
Norma checked the burgers on the grill and then shouted out to the guests that the food was ready.
Then she put the burgers on a tray and put it down on a long picnic table next to paper plates, side dishes, and condiments that she'd already laid out.
Then she just stepped back and watched as her friends continued talking, laughing, and walking over to the table to get their food.
And as she watched them, she was reminded of all the family cookouts she had had when she was a kid.
Norma came from a big family. She had six sisters and a brother, and she still enjoyed having her house filled with people.
A friend of Norma's, Warren Mackey, walked over to her with this plate of food in his hand.
He thanked Norma for the burger and for inviting him to the party.
Warren and Norma had worked together for a while, but even after Warren had left the job, they stayed in touch.
Because Norma was one of those people who made friends for life.
In fact, she was still close with people she'd known in college and in high school, and she made it a point to still talk to them as often as she could.
Warren took a bite of his hamburger, and then he told Norma that he'd noticed the rim on the basketball hoop in her driveway was bent forward, and he said he'd be happy to fix it right now if Norma wanted him to.
And Norma said that would be great. She knew her oldest son would be very excited when he got home, and he saw the basketball hoop that he loved was now fixed.
Norma lived in a small one-story house in Port Hanami with her 4-year-old and 11-year-old boys.
She had met the boy's father, Anthony Rodriguez, when she was in college, and they had married a couple of years later and started their family.
Norma and Anthony's relationship had looked perfect from the outside.
They seemed happy together, and they had these two beautiful sons.
But despite the appearance of how they looked, internally, their relationship was kind of a mess.
Anthony spent a ton of time away from the house, either working or just hanging out with his brother, so Norma had often felt like she and the boys were just not a priority for Anthony.
And the longer they had stayed together, the worse their relationship got, and soon they were fighting all the time.
And so, two years before this Memorial Day party, Norma had finally had enough and she had divorced Anthony.
As a single mom, Norma spent all of her time making sure she was providing for and taking care of her sons.
She put in long hours at the retail store where she worked to earn extra money, but she also tried really hard to spend as much time as she could with the boys.
She made it a point to help her oldest with his homework, and she always tried to be home to make the boys dinner and to help her youngest get ready for bed every night.
It wasn't easy, but Norma never worried about how busy or tired she was.
As long as her sons were okay, she was too.
Norma also tried to remain friends with her ex-husband, Anthony, really just for her son's sake.
She'd even let her oldest son miss the backyard cookout that day just so he could go to a baseball game with his dad and his uncle.
And so for the most part, Norma was happy on her own with her kids.
But there were times, like when her son's basketball hoop broke, that she missed having someone else in her life to help her manage everything.
But the few times she dated since the divorce had not led to anything long-term, and Norma was just really picky about who she let into her and her son's lives.
And so she was appreciative of friends like Warren who would pitch in and help her from time to time.
After Warren had very quickly fixed the basketball hoop, Norma had thanked him profusely, and then she walked over to talk to one of her other friends named Beatrice.
The two women had met at work, and they had hit it off right away.
Beatrice was having problems in her marriage, and so she felt like Norma was one of the only people she could actually talk to about it because of Norma's experience with her own divorce.
Norma asked Beatrice if she was doing okay, and Beatrice would say that, you know, things are about the same.
And then Beatrice would ask Norma how she was doing, and Norma would say that, you know, life was great.
Except that lately, her ex-husband Anthony had started showing up at their house totally unannounced.
Norma didn't mind letting her oldest son spend more time with Anthony than Anthony was actually allotted in their custody agreement to go see a baseball game or to spend an extra weekend with him, but Norma was not okay with Anthony coming to the house whenever he wanted like he still lived there.
Beatrice asked Norma if Anthony had tried to sleep with her again, like maybe he wanted to rekindle things.
But Norma said no, he usually just came into the house, talked for a minute, and then sat down on the couch and watched TV.
And if Norma tried to ask him to leave, he would just get mad.
One of Norma's sisters who lived nearby had told her to just stop letting Anthony into the house at all.
And Beatrice said she agreed with Norma's sister.
Norma had to draw boundaries. But Norma worried that keeping Anthony out of the house would upset the boys.
And that was the last thing she wanted. She knew her sons loved their dad, especially her oldest son, who shared a lot of interests with Anthony.
And so her oldest son liked to hang out with his dad and talk about baseball and basketball and other things that Norma just didn't really know much about.
Beatrice and Norma talked a bit longer about the whole situation, and then Norma walked around the backyard and checked in with her other guests to see if they needed anything.
Norma's Memorial Day cookout lasted for hours.
Some people stuck around until long after the sun had set to spend some more time with Norma and to help her clean up.
Eventually, when the last guest had left, Norma picked up her four-year-old son, who was still running around outside, and she began carrying him towards the house.
Before she went inside, she turned and looked over at the now-fixed basketball hoop and smiled, thinking about how nice it was that Warren had done that.
Norma went inside and made her way to her son's room, where she tucked him into his bed and said goodnight.
Then she walked into her own bedroom and got changed into a t-shirt and a pair of comfortable shorts.
She went to the living room at the front of the house and then sat down on the couch to watch TV.
On most nights, Norma found it a lot easier to fall asleep on the couch watching TV than she did falling asleep in her own bed.
And this night was no different. A few minutes after finding something to watch, Norma felt her eyes getting heavy and so she stretched out on the couch and with the sound of the TV playing in the background, she drifted off to sleep.
24 hours later, at about 10.30 p.m. on May 30th, Norma walked down the hall towards her four-year-old son's bedroom.
She opened the door quietly, looked in, and saw him sound asleep in his bed.
Norma knew he was still totally worn out from the barbecue the day before.
Norma had spent that day cleaning up the house a bit and watching movies with her four-year-old.
Her oldest son was still staying with her ex-husband, Anthony, and he wouldn't be home until the following night.
So the house felt quiet and a little empty.
Eventually, Norma went to the living room, turned on the TV, and stretched out on the couch like she had done the night before.
And within a few minutes, she had drifted off to sleep.
The next day at 9.45 p.m. on May 31st, so 48 hours after the barbecue, Norma's 11-year-old son stepped out of Anthony's car in front of the house.
The boy said goodbye to his father and to his uncle, who was also in the car.
Then he walked up to the front door of the house as they drove away.
The boy grabbed the doorknob, but the door was locked.
So he knocked on the door and waited, but nobody answered.
Then he knocked again, but there still was no answer.
The boy figured his mom had just fallen asleep on the couch like she usually did.
And so he looked out to the street to see if maybe his dad was still nearby and could help him wake up his mom.
But his dad was gone. So the boy walked around to the side of the house to his open bedroom window.
Norma liked to keep the windows open when it was nice out in the summer.
The boy leaned in close to the window and pulled off the screen and put it on the ground.
Then he grabbed the actual window and raised it higher and then climbed inside.
But when he got into his room, he almost screamed.
He was startled because his four-year-old younger brother was just sitting there in the middle of his room.
The 11-year-old caught his breath and then asked his little brother why he wasn't in his bed.
The four-year-old just looked at him and then pointed at the door leading into the bedroom and said, Mommy has a band-aid on her face.
The 11-year-old looked at his little brother for a second, totally confused, but then he figured his little brother was just tired and not making any sense, or that his mom maybe had cut her cheek or something and had put a band-aid on the cut.
Either way, the 11-year-old didn't want to wake up his mom if she was sleeping, so he walked his little brother to his own room and tucked him in.
Then the 11-year-old went back to his room, changed into pajamas, and went to bed as well.
The following morning, so June 1st, at around 7.30 a.m., Norma's ex-husband, Anthony, pulled his car up in front of their house again.
Anthony and his brother got out of the car and walked up to the front door.
Anthony was 33 years old and he was tall with dark hair and dark eyes.
He knocked on the door and then he and his brother stood on the porch and talked while they waited for Norma to answer.
Anthony and his brother were there to take the boys for the day because Norma had made plans to go to the beach with some of her friends.
After a few moments had passed and Norma had not come to the door, Anthony knocked again.
And when nobody answered again, he said he was worried something weird was going on.
Norma knew he was coming over and even when she fell asleep on the couch, she always woke up early in the morning.
Anthony pounded on the door again, and again when nobody answered, he reached into his pocket, pulled out his wallet, and then grabbed a credit card that was inside of it.
Then he slipped the credit card into the crack between the door and the frame right under the lock.
He shook the card up and down against the lock a few times, and then just like that, the lock gave way.
As soon as this happened, Anthony looked back at his brother with a smile on his face, and his brother clearly was impressed that Anthony was able to do that.
Anthony then opened the door and walked into the living room, and he was about to call out to Norma, but then he saw something and just froze.
Then Anthony turned back to his brother and yelled for him to give him the knife that Anthony knew his brother always carried.
His brother grabbed the knife out of his pocket and handed it over.
Anthony took the knife and ran across the living room and got down on the floor.
And his brother saw him cutting something with the knife, but he couldn't see exactly what was going on.
Then, just as quickly as Anthony had done that, he stood up and ran into the kitchen and called 911.
A few minutes after Anthony called 911, Detective Tony Paradise walked through the small Port Hanami Police Department drinking a fresh cup of coffee.
His phone was ringing at his desk, so he sat down and answered it.
On the other line, a 911 dispatcher said they'd just gotten a call about a potential homicide.
Paradise hung up the phone and he thought somebody was playing a prank on him.
That day was literally Paradise's first day on the job.
He'd just transferred over from a station in Los Angeles, and he knew that Port Honami had a very low crime rate and that the small local police force had not dealt with a reported homicide case in close to three years.
So Paradise thought the phone call might just be the other cops kind of hazing the new guy.
Paradise got up and walked over to the desk of lead detective Dennis Fitzgerald to see if he was really being pranked, but Fitzgerald said there was no way that call was a joke.
So Fitzgerald, Paradise, and several other officers headed outside, got into their cars, and drove a few minutes across town to Norma's house.
Paradise parked his car in front of the house behind Fitzgerald's and then stepped outside.
Paramedics were already there, and a uniformed officer was standing outside with Anthony, his brother, and Norma's two young sons.
And Paradise saw at least a few of Norma's neighbors standing on their porches trying to see what was going on.
Paradise still couldn't believe this was how he was spending his first day as a Port Hunemi detective.
He thought Port Hunemi was the type of place people moved to so they could feel safe, a place where they could escape to the beach and leave their windows open at night without worrying about anything.
Detective Fitzgerald waved Paradise over.
Fitzgerald was 49 years old. He was average height, and he had thinning hair and a mustache.
The detectives headed up the walkway towards the front door while other officers started to block off the scene with police tape.
The front door was open, so Paradise and Fitzgerald just walked right into the living room and put on their gloves.
Then both detectives walked across the room towards the kitchen, and when they saw what was on the floor, they felt like they'd walked into a scene from a horror movie. a woman's dead body was lying there.
It was Norma, and her face and head were completely wrapped in duct tape.
Fitzgerald and Paradise crouched down to get a closer look at the victim.
A small piece of the duct tape had been cut away from her nose and mouth, and there was a set of house keys lying on the floor next to her.
The detectives also noticed that rigor mortis had already started to set in, which causes the body to stiffen after death.
But inside of a controlled environment like this suburban living room, rigor mortis usually takes several hours to appear in the arms and legs.
So Fitzgerald and Paradise believed the victim had most likely been dead in the house since sometime the day before.
Fitzgerald and Paradise stood up and searched the living room.
There was no blood anywhere, no weapon, and no sign of forced entry.
So Fitzgerald wondered if maybe Norma had come home with the killer and still had her keys in her hand when she was attacked.
While the detectives did a full search of the house, the forensics team arrived.
They started to take DNA samples from Norma's body using sweat from her hands, fingernail clippings, and samples from the duct tape wrapped around her head.
In 1993, DNA testing was still a relatively new investigative technique.
Large samples of DNA were required to get any useful results, and the testing process took a really long time.
So investigators knew they should not expect a fast turnaround with any of these samples.
During their search of the house, Fitzgerald and Paradise didn't find anything that had been disturbed in either of the boys' bedrooms or in Norma's bedroom.
So they walked back outside and pulled Anthony down the walkway to talk to him while Norma's son stayed with their uncle and another officer.
Anthony confirmed that the dead woman inside the house was his ex-wife, Norma Rodriguez.
And Fitzgerald told Anthony they would need him and his brother to come to the station to answer some questions.
Anthony said he understood and then walked back over to his son's.
A little later, as Fitzgerald drove away from the house back to the station, he couldn't get the image of Norma out of his mind.
There was something about wrapping duct tape around her face and head that felt so personal and invasive to Fitzgerald.
So he was convinced whoever had done it must have known Norma intimately, and Fitzgerald thought that all of the initial signs pointed to Norma's ex-husband, Anthony.
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Hey listeners, Mr. Ballin here. What if I told you that some of the strangest, darkest, and most mysterious stories happening right now are all connected to what might be the biggest crime of our generation?
You know I'm always on the hunt for the most chilling and perplexing tales out there.
Well, I've discovered a new podcast that uncovers real-world mysteries unfolding right now. much like how another Ballin' Studios podcast, redacted Declassified Mysteries, brings hidden government secrets to light.
And it's called Lawless Planet. Host Zach Goldbaum reveals how shocking tales of murder, cover-ups, and mysterious deaths are all part of something bigger. the systematic destruction of our planet.
From activists who vanish in the Amazon to whistleblowers uncovering billion-dollar environmental crimes, these aren't just stories about the environment.
They're real-life thrillers about people caught between powerful forces willing to kill to keep their secrets buried.
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You can listen to new episodes of Lawless Planet early and ad-free right now by joining Wondery Plus.
Hey, it's Mr. Ballin. I'm excited to tell you about something special.
For the first time, My show, Mr. Ballin's Medical Mysteries, has joined forces with Redacted, Declassified Mysteries with Luke LaManna, to tell a story so complex it required our combined storytelling styles.
This special episode is called A Redacted Medical Mystery.
In it, unexplained symptoms after a routine surgery quickly unravel into something much darker, leading straight to classified government operations hidden for decades.
To listen and uncover the truth alongside us, head to either the Mr. Ballin's Medical Mysteries or Redacted show pages right now. or search for A Redacted Medical Mystery in the Wondery app or wherever you get your podcasts.
If you're fascinated by unexplained medical stories, well, stick around on Medical Mysteries.
Every week, we dive deep into cases that will leave you questioning everything you know about the human body.
And if government conspiracies are more your style, Redacted is your go-to for stories that unravel secrets never meant to see the light of day.
Remember, you can listen to both shows early and ad-free by joining Wondery Plus.
Hey, it's Mr. Ballin. For the first time, my show, Medical Mysteries, has joined forces with Redacted for a special episode.
A Redacted Medical Mystery uncovers how routine surgery leads to classified government operations.
Listen now on the Medical Mysteries or Redacted feeds, or search A Redacted Medical Mystery wherever you get your podcasts.
Shortly after Detective Fitzgerald went back to the Port Hunemi police station, he sat down with Anthony inside of an interrogation room.
The room was bright cold and cramped, and Anthony knew that Fitzgerald did not just want to have a casual conversation with him.
Anthony was sure the police had targeted him as a suspect from the moment they showed up at the house.
After all, he was the ex-husband, and he was the one who had found Norma's body.
Anthony's brother had also been brought to the station for questioning, and Norma's sons were there too.
Fitzgerald needed to talk to the boys, but he knew they were scared and still in shock, so he wanted to make sure they were physically and mentally okay before he talked to them about what had happened to their mother.
In the interrogation room, Fitzgerald asked Anthony to start by explaining what had happened earlier that morning when Anthony had arrived at his ex-wife's house.
And Anthony told Fitzgerald how when nobody had answered the door, he had unlocked it using a credit card.
Fitzgerald sat straight up in his chair.
This was a huge red flag and Fitzgerald had a couple of different thoughts running through his head.
Did this guy have experience breaking into houses?
Or had Anthony just used the key to get in and he was making up the credit card story to cover his tracks?
The police had found a set of house keys next to Norma's body on the floor, and there was no sign of forced entry.
So Fitzgerald believed there was a good chance whoever killed Norma had been invited into the house, and he knew Anthony was a frequent visitor there.
Anthony could have easily killed Norma, taken the keys, used them to get back into the house the following day, and then put the keys on the floor by Norma's body before the police arrived.
But Fitzgerald didn't want to show his hand in any way, so he let Anthony keep talking.
And Fitzgerald spotted yet another huge red flag almost immediately.
Anthony said when he walked into the house, he saw Norma lying on the floor between the living room and the kitchen, and her head and face were completely wrapped in duct tape.
And so he said his first instinct was to cut the tape away so Norma could breathe.
So Anthony got a utility knife from his brother that had a fold-out pair of scissors on it, and he had rushed over to Norma and cut the duct tape away from her mouth and nose.
He said her body still felt warm when he was touching her, but she wasn't breathing, so he ran into the kitchen and called 911.
Fitzgerald leaned back and just kind of stared at Anthony in disbelief.
In Fitzgerald's mind, Anthony was admitting to tampering with evidence at a murder scene.
And the idea that Anthony thought Norma's body was still warm didn't seem possible to Fitzgerald.
He knew Norma had been dead since the day before Anthony and his brother showed up at the house.
So her body definitely would not have been warm.
It would have been cold. But Fitzgerald knew that people could experience different things and make strange decisions when they were in shock.
So even though everything about Anthony's story felt totally off to Fitzgerald, he stayed open to the idea that Anthony could be telling the truth.
Fitzgerald asked Anthony if he would stay at the station and submit to a polygraph, which is commonly known as a lie detector test.
Anthony said he would, and he also agreed to submit DNA samples for testing.
While Anthony was prepped for his polygraph, Fitzgerald stepped out of the interrogation room and met with the investigators who had been speaking with Anthony's brother.
It would turn out both men had given identical stories of what had happened.
But that didn't really mean anything to Fitzgerald.
Anthony and his brother could have easily worked out a story together before they called 911.
Later that day, Norma's ex-husband, Anthony, sat through a polygraph test and he passed.
So as far as that test was concerned, Anthony was telling the truth about the events of the morning, which meant he was telling the truth about not killing Norma.
Not long after Anthony had taken his polygraph, Fitzgerald and Paradise walked into an office in the police station where Norma's sons had been waiting with an officer and a child welfare social worker.
Fitzgerald crouched down in front of the chair where Norma's four-year-old son was sitting, and he introduced himself in a soft, calm voice.
The little boy was scared and confused, and he barely spoke.
So, his 11-year-old brother stepped in to try to help police as best as he could.
He told detectives about how his dad and uncle had dropped him off at home the night before and how he had missed the Memorial Day cookout at the house.
Then the 11-year-old told them that, you know, the front door was locked when he got home and so he'd gone in through his bedroom window and that was when he found his little brother just sitting there in the middle of the room.
He said he didn't want to wake up his mom, so he tucked his younger brother into bed and then went back to his own room and fell asleep.
But then the 11-year-old remembered something else.
He told police that when he first climbed into his bedroom, his little brother had said something really weird.
He said, Mommy has a band-aid on her face.
At that moment, something hit Fitzgerald in paradise for the first time.
They realized that Norma's four-year-old son had been alone in the house with the body of his dead mother for hours, and the little boy couldn't understand what the duct tape covering his mother's face was, so he had told his older brother that their mom had a band-aid on her face.
Fitzgerald and Paradise tried not to react in front of the boys, but nothing they had seen in their time as cops had ever hit them as hard as that image of this poor little boy just alone with his dead mother, not having any idea what had happened.
Fitzgerald thanked both of the boys for talking to them, and he told them that the police were there to help them if they needed anything.
Then he and Paradise walked out of the office and Fitzgerald sat down at his desk and tried to collect himself.
He had kids of his own and he struggled to imagine how anyone their age or younger could go through what Norma's little boy had gone through.
On June 2nd, so the day after Norma's body had been discovered, Fitzgerald and Paradise got Norma's autopsy results, and those results caused them to fixate on the duct tape even more.
It turned out the killer had used 20 feet of duct tape to completely cover Norma's face and head.
The detectives were stunned by the amount of time that must have taken.
And their initial thought after seeing the autopsy results was that whoever had killed Norma had immediately wanted to kind of distance themselves from her.
So they had used the tape to depersonalize her and make her someone kind of faceless.
This theory supported Fitzgerald's first impression that the killer must have known Norma well.
And so after the murder, they couldn't admit to themselves that they had killed someone so close to them.
But Norma's ex-husband, Anthony, who really seemed like the best suspect, had passed his polygraph.
That didn't mean the police would rule him out as a suspect, but they needed to meet with other people who were also close to Norma.
And they wanted to start by focusing on Norma's friends who had recently been at her house for that cookout.
In the week following Norma's murder, the investigative team tracked down everyone who had attended Norma's Memorial Day cookout the day before she was murdered.
And one of the first people they brought into the station to talk to was Warren Mackey, Norma's former coworker who had fixed the basketball hoop in the driveway.
Warren was very tall and thin with short brown hair and a mustache.
And on this day, he was wearing a t-shirt and jeans.
Warren told Fitzgerald in Paradise that he and Norma had kept in touch even after he had stopped working at the same retail store as her.
He said Norma was one of the nicest people he'd ever met and that she always treated everyone around her like family.
And so that was why so many people stayed close to her even after they moved away or they didn't work together anymore.
Then Warren talked about the actual Memorial Day barbecue and said while he was there he had fixed the basketball hoop and then at the end of the party he had stayed back with a few people to help Norma clean up and then he had just gone home and that was it.
Fitzgerald nodded and then asked Warren where he'd been the following night, the night that Norma was actually murdered.
Warren shifted a bit in his seat and his face began to turn red.
He said he was embarrassed but he'd gone out to a club that night with some friends and he'd gotten really drunk and done a little cocaine. a look of surprise came across Fitzgerald's face, not at what Warren had done at the club, but that he was admitting to using hard drugs in front of a police officer.
But Fitzgerald wasn't investigating cocaine use, so he asked Warren if he would take a polygraph and submit DNA samples.
And Warren quickly agreed and immediately sat for the polygraph.
He passed the test just like Anthony had, and later that day when Fitzgerald and Paradise followed up with the friends Warren said he'd gone to the club with, they corroborated his alibi.
The investigation was only in its first week, but Fitzgerald was starting to worry they were already totally off track.
They had no evidence tying anybody they'd interviewed to the crime scene, and everyone who had taken a polygraph test had passed.
So after the initial rush of the investigation, things started to slow down.
Weeks went by and no new information or new leads came in, and Fitzgerald and Paradise, they kept digging, but nothing was panning out.
Then several weeks into the investigation, Fitzgerald got bad news from the forensics team.
They had not been able to secure large enough DNA samples from the crime scene to effectively try to match it with DNA samples taken from Anthony and from Norma's friends who had gone to the cookout.
So without those DNA tests providing any help, Fitzgerald and Paradise scrambled to find a new way forward in this investigation.
And then a month after Norma's murder, they finally caught a break.
One of Norma's sisters told Fitzgerald that she had found out a woman named Beatrice, who had been at that Memorial Day barbecue, was cheating on her husband.
And Norma had given Beatrice an extra set of keys to her own house so Beatrice could meet this secret lover at Norma's house.
The news that Norma's friend Beatrice was using Norma's house to carry out an affair got the murder investigation right back on track.
And Fitzgerald wondered if maybe the keys that had been found on the floor next to Norma's body were the keys that Norma had given Beatrice.
Fitzgerald had met with Beatrice early in the investigation when he was interviewing everybody who had been at Norma's cookout, but she hadn't said anything about an affair or the extra set of house keys.
So when Fitzgerald met with Beatrice again at the station, he started his line of questioning by asking her why she had kept that information from police.
Beatrice looked at Fitzgerald and her face turned red and her eyes started to water.
She said she was totally ashamed and embarrassed that she was cheating on her husband and she was scared what would happen if her husband found out.
After speaking to Beatrice for several more hours, Fitzgerald did not think she was the killer, but he thought Beatrice's husband could be the person they were looking for.
Fitzgerald thought that Beatrice's husband probably did know that his wife was cheating on him.
And so he could have potentially stolen Beatrice's extra set of keys to Norma's house and used them to storm into Norma's house to confront Norma about her role in his wife's affair and maybe in a fit of rage, he had killed Norma.
So after meeting with Beatrice, Fitzgerald sent officers to bring in Beatrice's husband.
The man looked totally confused from the second he walked into the police station.
He said he didn't know Norma that well and he really didn't understand how he could possibly help.
But Fitzgerald led him into the interrogation room and took a seat across from him and then just point blank, Fitzgerald asked if he had gone to Norma's house to confront her because she was letting Beatrice use the house to have an affair. a look of complete shock came across Beatrice's husband's face.
He stared at Fitzgerald and then said he had no idea his wife had been cheating on him.
By the time the interview ended, Fitzgerald felt really bad.
He figured the man deserved to know the truth about his wife, but no one should have to find out like that.
And if Beatrice's husband had been faking his reaction to this news, Fitzgerald figured he had to be the best actor in the entire world because the guy walked out of the police station looking like his entire life had just come crashing down.
And so, after Beatrice and her husband could not be directly linked to Norma's murder, the investigation slowed down again.
And after months, nobody close to Norma had filled a polygraph, there was still no help from any of the DNA tests, there was no concrete evidence that pointed to anybody in particular, and so the case just started to go cold.
No matter how hard Fitzgerald and Paradise worked to move the investigation forward, they felt like they didn't have anywhere to go, and several more months passed with no new details coming in.
People in the small city of Port Hunemi started to get restless, and wild theories surfaced that Norma's murder was the work of a serial killer who staged his victims in dramatic ways.
But that wild theory, or any other wild theory, never checked out.
And then one year passed after another, and Norma Rodriguez's murder started to fade from the media and from public discussion, and soon the police turned to other cases.
But Detective Fitzgerald vowed he would keep working the case until Norma's killer was brought to justice.
Fitzgerald had been almost 50 years old at the time of Norma's murder, and he promised Norma's sisters that he would not retire until the case was solved, no matter how old he got.
So by the time Fitzgerald was almost 60 years old, he was still working the case and trying to keep his promise to Norma's sisters.
Flash forward to May 31st, 2003, 10 years to the day after Norma's murder, and Fitzgerald was sitting in his office at the Port Hunemi police station.
Years earlier, he had put a photo of Norma on his desk to remind him of the promise he'd made to her sisters, and also to help people remember that there was a real person whose life had been taken and who still deserved justice.
Fitzgerald's phone suddenly rang, and so he answered it, and on the other line, someone from the state crime lab told Fitzgerald that they had news about the Norma Rodriguez case that he might not believe.
Fitzgerald held his breath and listened.
He learned that the crime lab had been following up on all these cold cases, and in doing that, they believed they had finally learned who had killed Norma.
In the 10 years since Norma's murder, there had been major advances in DNA testing.
So, in 2003, the DNA samples that had been taken from Norma's body were now, with all these advances, more than enough to find a match.
The crime lab said they still needed to run new tests on the duct tape that was found on Norma to confirm their suspicions about her killer, but they would have those results soon.
Fitzgerald hung up the phone and he wanted to cry.
He had lived with Norma's case for a decade and even he had started to doubt that he would ever be able to solve it.
But just a few weeks after Fitzgerald got that big phone call, the crime lab confirmed their initial findings.
So Fitzgerald picked up the phone and called one of Norma's sisters to let her know that Norma would finally be able to rest in peace because he finally knew what had happened to her and who had done it.
Based on DNA test results, evidence found at the scene, and interviews conducted throughout the 10-year investigation, here is a reconstruction of what police believe happened on May 31st, 1993, the day Norma Rodriguez was murdered.
Just after midnight, the killer parked their car down the street from Norma's house.
They picked up a roll of duct tape off the passenger seat and then stepped outside of their car into the dark summer night.
The killer quickly scanned the nearby houses to make sure nobody was outside.
When the killer was sure the area was clear, they moved quickly down the street, staying in the shadows and away from the streetlights.
The killer was feeling angry and hurt and embarrassed, and they did not want to feel that way anymore.
The killer crouched down low and moved quickly up the walkway to Norma's front door.
They reached into their pocket, grabbed Norma's house keys, and unlocked the door and walked inside.
The sound of laughter startled the killer, but they realized it was just coming from the TV and they breathed a bit easier.
The killer closed the front door behind them, put the keys back in their pocket, and walked into the living room.
The sound from the TV got louder as they approached, and the killer saw Norma fast asleep on the couch.
The killer stood there just for a second, watching her.
Then they walked towards the couch and knelt down and put the duct tape on the floor.
Then they lunged at Norma on the couch. Before Norma could even wake up, the killer had wrapped their hands around her throat and had begun strangling her.
Norma's eyes opened wide and she gasped for breath.
She flung her hands at the killer and tried to push them off.
In the struggle, the killer kind of stumbled and Norma managed to fall off the couch onto the floor.
She could barely breathe, but she tried to make it out of the living room to the kitchen.
But the killer followed, grabbed her and threw her on her back.
Then the killer grabbed Norma's throat with both hands again and squeezed as hard as they could.
Norma gasped and choked and then her body stopped moving and she went limp.
The killer finally released their grip and they looked down and saw very clearly Norma was dead.
The killer then went back through the living room, grabbed the duct tape off the floor and then returned to Norma's body.
Then the killer unrolled a piece of tape, covered Norma's eyes with it, and then wrapped it around the rest of her head.
But the killer didn't stop. They held Norma's head up and wrapped 20 feet of duct tape around her face and head 14 times.
Finally, the killer ripped off the tape from the roll and let Norma's head fall to the floor.
They reached into their pocket with their free hand, pulled out the house keys, and dropped them next to Norma's body.
Then they ran back through the living room and opened the front door.
They locked the door handle from the inside, then walked out of the house, closed the locked door behind them, and ran down the walkway with the roll of duct tape still in their hand.
The same duct tape they had used to help prop up the rim on the basketball hoop in Norma's driveway.
Warren Mackey, Norma's former coworker who had been at the Memorial Day cookout, had murdered Norma.
It would turn out that Warren had wanted to be more than just friends with Norma, and for a while, he thought that was a real possibility.
Norma and Warren talked on the phone regularly, and he even spent time at her house with her and the kids.
But Norma just did not want a romantic relationship with Warren, and every time he asked her out or made a move on her at her house, she turned him down.
Finally, Warren decided he just couldn't handle the rejection or the embarrassment he felt, so he decided he would murder Norma.
At the Memorial Day cookout, while Norma walked around talking to her guests, Warren had gone into the house, found Norma's purse, and stolen her keys.
It would turn out Norma had actually complained to a friend at the cookout that she had apparently misplaced her house keys somewhere.
Then, late the following night, Warren had returned to Norma's house.
He knew she slept on the couch a lot, so he figured he would either find her there or in her bedroom.
It's not known if Warren had always intended to use the duct tape to wrap up Norma's face, or if he had decided to do it just because after he had killed her, he couldn't stand looking at her face and kind of seeing what he had done, and so he had just kind of impulsively decided to wrap her up.
Following the murder, Warren had quickly gone home and then headed out late that night to the club with his friends to give himself a possible alibi.
But the duct tape found on Norma ultimately discredited that alibi and led authorities to Warren after the investigation had stalled for 10 years.
In 2003, the crime lab discovered that DNA samples that had been taken from Norma's hands matched the samples provided by Warren when he had submitted to DNA testing.
But the crime lab and the district attorney believed it could be argued that Warren's DNA was found on Norma's hands because they had recently spent time together at a party.
So tests were run on the part of the duct tape that had been torn away from the rest of the roll, the part of the duct tape that only the killer would have touched.
And when DNA samples from the duct tape matched Warren's DNA, authorities knew they had found Norma's killer.
Some investigators came to believe that Warren was able to pass his polygraph test because he possessed certain traits often linked to narcissists and sociopaths.
Things like a lack of remorse about lying and the ability to create a totally alternate reality in your mind that actually feels like the truth when you're talking about it.
And so those traits can obviously make it easier for some people to pass a lie detector test even though they're lying.
But regardless of how he passed that polygraph, Warren could not outrun the DNA evidence forever.
And once the duct tape tests confirmed he was the killer, police arrested him for enormous murder.
When Warren was confronted with the DNA evidence, he pled guilty to second-degree murder and he was sentenced to 15 years to life in prison.
As of fall of 2023, he is still in prison in California.
At Warren's sentencing, one of Norma's sisters looked him in the eye and told him, I curse you for the rest of your life.
You didn't just do this to my sister. You murdered all of us."
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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