Hello, fans of The Strange, Dark, and Mysterious.
I'm here today to tell you all about what it actually means, now that we've moved over to the SiriusXM family.
Big picture, it means we are going to make more content for you.
Right now, you get one YouTube video a week on Saturday.
Well, what we're going to do now is we're going to have the Saturday upload be the same, but then also the Mr Ballin podcast.
Well, we've begun already filming those episodes like a YouTube video.
So that's a second piece of content every week.
Then there's two other shows that you guys don't even know about yet, which means on any given week you could have up to four new video pieces of content on the Mr Ballin channel.
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This new content schedule is going to start early next year.
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Those shows were created in collaboration with Wondery, but now we're partnered with Sirius and so we're not going to be making any new episodes of either of those shows.
For now, if you want to hear my podcast episodes one week early and ad-free, make sure to subscribe to SiriusXM Podcast Plus on Apple Podcasts or visit SiriusXMcom slash podcast plus to listen with Spotify or another app of your choice.
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Thank you.
In today's story, a family uncovers a secret on a laptop.
And after that, everything spirals completely out of control.
But before we get into today's story, if you're a fan of the strange, dark and mysterious delivered in story format, then you've come to the right show, because that's all we do.
So if that's of interest to you the next time the follow button lets you look through their prized 1970s family photo album, make sure you aggressively lick your finger and flip the pages each time so you smudge all the edges.
Okay, let's get into today's story.
On the night of January 3rd 2008, a 21-year-old man named Part Engel had just poured himself a beer and sat down on the couch next to his girlfriend to watch some TV when he heard a knock at the front door of his apartment in Pottstown, Pennsylvania.
It was late around 8 pm and Part was not expecting any company, and so before he got up he looked over at his girlfriend to be like are you expecting anybody?
And she looked at him and kind of shrugged, and so Part just put his beer down and stood up and walked over to the front door to see who was there.
And when Part opened up the front door, he was very surprised to see his mother standing there carrying a small duffel bag.
So Part's mother lived in Middletown Township, which was located about an hour and a half away from Part's apartment.
And while it was not unusual for Part's mom to stay over at Part's apartment, what was unusual is her just showing up unannounced.
She never did that.
And on top of that, as Part is looking at his mom.
He could see clearly she had been crying because her eyeliner was smudged and her face was all puffy.
And so Part knew clearly, you know, there must be a problem here.
But when he asked his mother, you know, like, what's going on, mom?
She wouldn't tell him.
She would just say, I have to stay with you for the night.
And then, before he or Part's girlfriend could do or say anything, his mom just walked inside, walked down the hallway, went into the guest bedroom and then shut and locked the door.
And so Part and his girlfriend were left looking at each other like, what's going on here?
Three hours later, at 11pm, Part was in bed next to his sleeping girlfriend, just staring up at the ceiling, unable to sleep.
Part was so anxious about whatever was going on with his mom because where he was staying, his bedroom was right next door to the guest bedroom where his mom was staying, and so he already knows there's clearly some issue here with his mom, but all night he's been listening to her next door just pacing and crying in this guest bedroom and he has no idea what's going on.
But deep down, Part knew that whatever was going on, it very likely had to do with his father, whose name was Arun Kumar.
Part's parents had a complicated relationship.
They had immigrated from India decades earlier and had settled in Pennsylvania where they had two kids, Part and Part's sister.
Part's father, Arun Kumar, worked as an engineer at Boeing, and Part's mother owned a 7-Eleven franchise.
And basically, since arriving in America, the two of them had really come with nothing and had worked their way up to now to where they had a very comfortable life, kind of like the American dream.
You know the house, the white picket fence, the kids, you know the whole thing.
And so Part had always believed that you know his parents, as a result of getting through so much hardship together, that they must truly love each other now.
I mean, to have gone through all that together, that would certainly make two people very close.
And for the most part that actually seemed to have been the case, that his parents just got along great and were a great couple.
That is, until a couple of years earlier.
Arun Kumar had started an affair and Part's mother had caught him.
Now Arun Kumar said that you know this affair meant nothing and he would stop right now and Part's mother had forgiven him, you know, in order to keep the family together.
But despite Part's mom forgiving Arun Kumar deep down, she just knew she could never actually trust him again.
And so she actually wound up enlisting Part's help to basically watch Arun Kumar's behavior.
She had Arun Kumar set up the software that basically spied on Arun Kumar's computer.
Through this software, Part's mom could basically watch Arun Kumar's email traffic and all of his internet activity.
Now, Part had not felt good about setting up the spy software on his dad's computer.
It just felt totally wrong to be getting in between his parents like this.
But he just felt like this was the only way Part's mom was ever going to be able to actually move on.
And so Part sort of felt like this was his responsibility.
This is the way that the family was going to stay together.
His mom really just needed that extra layer of transparency on her husband, otherwise the family was going to fall apart.
But now, as Part lay in his bed, unable to sleep, listening to his mom pace back and forth in the room next door, he began to think to himself you know, maybe my mom found something using the software on my dad's computer.
Maybe Arun Kumar had started another affair, and that was why his mom was now so upset.
But just then, Part heard a new noise coming out of his mother's room.
At first, it kind of sounded like low murmuring, like his mom was saying something to herself.
But then he realized his mom was having a real conversation with somebody on the phone.
And since Part couldn't sleep and he was pretty intrigued about what the heck was going on with his mom to begin with, he decided to basically spy on his mom.
So he very quietly got out of his bed and he walked around to the wall that lined up against his mother's room and he put his ear to the wall and he began to listen and what he heard was far worse than anything he could have imagined.
What he heard his mom saying to whoever she was talking to on the phone was that she had discovered that Arun Kumar had taken out 36 million in life insurance policies on Part on his sister and on his mother.
And now Part's mom was saying to whoever she was talking to on the phone that she wasn't even worried about divorce at this point.
She was worried about the physical safety of her and her kids.
She was worried that her husband was going to kill her and her kids to get this payout.
And so, not long after saying this Part's mom hung up the phone and went back to pacing and crying in the room.
And Part, meanwhile, has just heard this horrifying news and he had no idea what to make of it.
I mean, he knew his dad was not a good husband, but the idea that his dad would want to hurt his wife or him or his sister just seemed totally impossible.
But then, as Part's standing there just kind of processing what he's heard, he began to think back to these recent behavioral changes.
He'd noticed in his father that at the time he had kind of chalked up to.
You know, maybe my dad's stressed or something.
But now, given the context of what his mom was talking about, Part began to wonder if these behavioral changes were a sign of something being terribly wrong with his father.
The first change that Part had noticed happened a few weeks earlier.
Now Part's dad was normally a very mild-mannered and calm guy, but a few weeks earlier he had gotten into this vicious dispute with their next-door neighbor over the property line that ran between their two properties.
It was like he was picking a fight with the neighbor or something.
And then a few days after that, one of the bathroom sinks in their house had stopped working.
And so Arun Kumar got out his tools and went to go break apart the sink and put it back together again.
And because he was an engineer, this was something he did.
This was typical behavior.
But after breaking apart the sink basically ripping it all apart, and having all the parts on the ground, Part's dad didn't put it back together.
He just left all the tools and all the parts just scattered across the bathroom floor.
And considering that Arun Kumar was typically incredibly meticulous and organized and he's this brilliant engineer to part, seeing his dad leave this sloppy mess and this unfinished sink, it just it felt totally off.
And so standing there in his bedroom, totally horrified about everything he's heard and you know now, kind of second-guessing everything he knew about his dad, who suddenly seemed like this combative kind of disorganized guy Park, suddenly felt like I have to learn more here.
I have to figure out if my dad really is a threat.
So Park quietly left his bedroom and made his way to the kitchen where his laptop was, and he loaded up that software that spied on his dad's computer.
And as he began logging into this program Part, was thinking you know, maybe I'm gonna find something that will show that my mom is clearly just overreacting and misinterpreting what she's seeing.
That you know, my dad is not, you know, out to kill us for some insurance payout.
But after loading up this program and kind of scanning through some recent activity Part, realized that actually the situation with his dad was way worse than his mom had made out on that call he overheard.
He not only found all these multi-million dollar insurance policies taken out on him, his sister and his mom, but also he discovered the stash of fraudulent looking paperwork.
There were all these passport photos of his father, but then connected to these photos was a passport application that was using somebody else's name, as if his father was trying to forge paperwork to create a phony passport for himself.
And so at this point, Part felt like his mother was certainly not overreacting here, that in fact it really did seem like his father was, you know, preparing to kill his family and collect millions of dollars in insurance money and then, using this you know fake passport he was making he'd be able to flee the country.
For the next several days, Part's mom stayed at Part's apartment, but she barely ever left the guest bedroom.
And then, when she would leave the bedroom Part, would go up to her and try to ask her you know hey, what's going on, without giving away how much she knew already.
But Part's mom was like, nope, I don't want to talk about it.
And she would just go right back in the room, shut and lock the door.
And so finally, after several days of this Part, just went to his mom's bedroom door.
He knocked on the door until she answered and then, before she could kind of shoo him away, he said 'Mom, stop.
I know what's going on.
I read the emails and we have to figure out what we're going to do because our lives literally depend on it.
I agree with you.
It looks like Dad is going to kill us and then flee the country.'"
And so Part and his mom would talk through all the details of what was found on his computer, and ultimately they would decide that Part would be the one to go to police and tell them what was going on with Arun Kumar.
And so the next day, Part went to the police station, you know, with a stack of evidence that he believed would implicate his father.
And, you know, Part was so nervous about this, he was shaking.
But when he talked to an actual police officer, they looked over his evidence and they heard the whole story.
They told him, like, look, we really can't do anything about this.
They told Parth that, you know, it's not illegal to take out life insurance policies on your family.
And then also the police officer pointed out that in addition to Arun Kumar taking out those policies on his kids and his wife, he had also taken out a policy on himself and made his wife and his kids the beneficiaries of that policy.
And so the police officer said, look, this does not look like a murder plot to me.
It just looks like your dad is doing something fairly responsible.
And then, as for the passport application paperwork where his dad had used a phony name, the police officer said look, he has not filed this paperwork.
And so it's not illegal what he's doing.
Anybody can get some paperwork out and fill it in with whatever they want.
It becomes illegal if they attempt to actually pass it off and submit the paperwork.
And as far as we know, he hasn't done that.
So that's weird, but it's not illegal.
And so Part had to leave the police station and he went back to the apartment and he told his mom what happened.
And ultimately they decided that all they could do now was just wait and continue to watch that software that monitored Arun Kumar's computer and just hope Arun Kumar would do something that was incriminating that they could then bring to the police and say see, he's trying to kill us and collect a payout and flee the country.
But over the next few days that Part and his mother every day just constantly checked this software and watched what Arun Kumar was doing on his computer.
All they saw was Arun Kumar was using his computer to do work, emails and really basic stuff, absolutely nothing incriminating.
And in fact over these few days, Arun Kumar would actually call Part's mom to ask her when she was coming back home again, and she would tell him that basically she was going to stay at Part's place indefinitely.
And Arun Kumar did not seem upset or annoyed by this at all.
If anything, it just seemed like he was really distracted and wasn't actually listening to Part's mom as she was speaking.
And while this did seem kind of suspicious to Part and his mom that basically Arun Kumar didn't care that his wife wasn't coming home anytime soon, it still wasn't incriminating.
And so Part and his mom decided to just continue looking deeper and deeper into Arun Kumar's computer to see if there was anything that could begin to explain what was really going on here.
And sure enough, Part dug deeper and deeper into Arun Kumar's computer, and he did discover something.
Part began finding all these emails with people back in India that kind of vaguely indicated that Arun Kumar was involved in a very sketchy deal like a business deal.
Now again, the emails were incredibly vague, but what was clear in these back and forths in these emails was that it seemed like Arun Kumar had gotten wrapped up with some really shady people and they were having these really nasty exchanges in these emails about this.
You know deal that Arun Kumar seemed to be involved in.
And so Park began to wonder if maybe he and his mom had this all backwards.
That he, his mom, and his sister were not the ones actually in danger here.
That in fact, it was Arun Kumar who was in danger.
Maybe because this deal you know went south and these people that he was doing this deal with, maybe they were mad at him.
And so perhaps all these life insurance policies and this new fake identity were some sort of move by Arun Kumar to kind of flee the danger he was in.
And so obviously, if this was true, this was still a horrible situation for their whole family, but it was markedly better than what Part and his mom had been operating on before, which was, you know, that Arun Kumar was going to kill his whole family.
And so pretty quickly, as a result of kind of thinking about this in a new way, Part's mother started feeling a lot better about the whole situation and actually left Part's apartment and went back to the house to go live with Arun Kumar.
And Part himself began to think that, you know, maybe this is not as big of a deal as we thought it was.
You know I'm sure my dad will figure out whatever he needs to figure out here to get out of whatever mess he's in.
And over the coming days, you know, Part checked in with his mom every single day, because now she's living with Arun Kumar, and she said everything was fine.
And Part.
You know he continued to check his dad's computer activity and nothing else really popped up.
It was still just the same stuff they had originally found.
And so it just kind of seemed like, you know, maybe this really is not as big of a deal as we thought it was.
But on the morning of January 20th 2008, so about two and a half weeks after Part's mom showed up at his apartment, everything changed.
On that morning Part logged into his computer to check on his dad's computer using that software, because he was still checking it every single day.
And the first thing he saw was his dad had sent this email to this woman who Part didn't know.
And this woman was certainly not his mother.
And in this email his dad told this person that he had a big contract coming up and he was going to make a ton of money from it.
And then also at the end of this email, he told this woman that he loved her.
And so right away, Part's thinking okay, my dad is obviously having another affair because this is not my mom, and he's saying he loves her.
And also, what's my dad talking about with this big contract coming up?
Is he talking about the insurance policies?
Does he expect those to pay out soon, indicating that I, my sister, or my mom might be dead?
And then also the other thing that Part noticed that morning as he's checking through his dad's computer activity, is he found another message his dad had sent out recently, where he communicated to somebody that his father had died, so Part's grandfather had died.
And also in this message, Arun Kumar is telling this person that he's going to go to his dad's funeral alone, that his wife and two kids were not invited to this funeral.
And so Part's reading this and he's totally devastated by the fact that his grandfather's dead and the fact that what he's not being invited to the funeral.
But again, he's thinking, oh my gosh, is that because my dad thinks I'm not going to be alive?
Is this all connected, you know, between the big contract and the fact that we're not going to be at the funeral?
Is this my dad thinking he's going to enact this murder plot soon?
Part didn't know, but he felt like he and his mom and his sister were running out of time and he needed to act right now.
And so Part got off his computer, he called his mom, and they made a plan.
That evening at around 915 pm, Part got in his car and began driving towards his parents' house to go confront his dad.
This was the plan he and his mom had come up with.
Basically, his mom would stay at Part's apartment and Part would go and tell his dad you know, we know about what you're doing and you gotta stop.
And even though Part was totally jacked up on adrenaline as he drove towards the house, he felt like he really had the upper hand going into whatever this confrontation was going to be.
Because, number one, Part was showing up totally unannounced at night to his dad's place.
I mean, his dad's going to be caught off guard when he sees him.
And also, Part knew he was much physically bigger than his father.
Part was over six feet tall and over 200 pounds, and so he had the physical angle as well.
And so Part really felt confident, driving towards the house, that he was going to come out the victor in whatever ensued.
At around 10.45 p.m., Part finally arrived in front of his parents' house.
He parked the car, he got out, he walked up the front steps, and he knocked on the front door.
And a couple of seconds later Arun Kumar came to the door.
He opened it up and he's totally confused to see his son standing there.
And then, before Arun Kumar could do anything, Part in his deepest and most authoritative voice looked at his dad and said we need to talk.
And then he intentionally bumped into his dad with his shoulder as he walked into the house.
And so his dad is like standing at the front door, not really sure what's going on.
And part, after taking a few steps in, he abruptly turns around.
And so now he's looking back at his dad.
And he takes a step forward and gets right in his dad's face and says, I know.
I know what you're up to, I know what you've done, and you have a simple choice to make.
You can either stop what you're doing and become the family man you're supposed to be faithful to mom, or I'm going to go to the police and tell them what you're up to and you're going to go to jail.
Either way, whatever you're doing stops right now.
And for a moment, Part and Arun Kumar are basically staring at each other in silence.
And then Arun Kumar, before Part could stop him, basically ran past Part, passed him down the hallway and he ran into the master bedroom, disappearing from Part's view.
And so Part's turned around and he wasn't expecting this.
And suddenly all that confidence he had going into this confrontation was gone.
Because he's thinking, oh my goodness, my dad, maybe he's got a weapon in there.
I need to get in there and stop him.
And so Part, he turns and runs down the hallway.
He darts into the bedroom, having no idea what he's gonna see inside, but what he sees does catch him off guard.
Arun Kumar is just sitting on the bed, doing nothing.
He's just staring what looks like at the wall and Part just stops in the doorway, looks at his dad and then realizes his dad's not just absently staring at the wall, he's staring into the open bathroom.
And in the open bathroom on the ground are all those tools left over from where his dad had been working on the sink and then never finished.
Like all these tools are scattered on the ground, including one tool that now Part is realizing his dad is looking directly at.
It was a big, heavy metal pipe wrench.
And suddenly Part realized my dad is looking at a weapon and he's considering whether or not to get that weapon and attack me with it.
The next morning, Part's mother pulled up in front of the house that she shared with Arun Kumar.
She walked up the steps, went to the front door, she opened it up and as soon as she stepped inside she yelled out you know hello, who's here?
But there was silence, and immediately she got a bad feeling, but she knew she had to investigate.
And so Part's mom began slowly walking down the hallway the same hallway that Part and his dad had been fighting in the night before and she went down the hallway and she turned and looked into the master bedroom and she couldn't believe what she saw.
There was blood on the carpets, on the walls.
It was a bloodbath, and in the middle of the room was an obvious dead body that was so mutilated and destroyed she couldn't even identify it.
And so seconds later she had run outside and dialed 911.
It would take police almost four years to finally untangle Arun Kumar's insane web of lies and also make an arrest for the murder that took place inside of that house.
And the reason it took nearly four years is because nothing in this case was what it looked like.
Now, Part and his mother had been correct about a number of things about Arun Kumar.
For example, Arun Kumar was having another affair.
He had taken out life insurance policies on his whole family and he was looking to obtain a fake identity.
They were also right that Arun Kumar had become embroiled in a very shady deal back in India.
But the specifics of that deal were not what Part and Part's mom thought it was.
And when Arun Kumar announced in that message that you know his father had died and he'd be traveling to India all alone, that his wife and his kids weren't coming, they weren't invited.
Well, Part and his mom had been correct.
That this was a cover.
This was an excuse for Arun Kumar to put his big plan into action.
And Arun Kumar's big plan did involve murder.
And so Part and his mom were right about that aspect of his plan.
However, Arun Kumar's target for this murder was not who Part and his mom thought it was.
They were not the target.
Arun Kumar was going to murder himself.
Or more specifically, he was going to pretend to kill himself.
That was actually the shady deal he was involved in back in India.
He was working with people who could help him fake his own death.
And so what he was going to do is go to India, fake his death and then, once he was dead on paper, that would trigger an insurance payout of his own life insurance policy, and that money would go to his wife and his kids.
And then Arun Kumar would disappear using his fake identity.
He would have along with his mistress, the woman he was having an affair with.
That was the person he had sent that email to talking about the big payout.
But Part and Part's mom did not know this last critical piece of Arun Kumar's plan.
They really believed they were the target of this big plot, that they were going to get killed, and so that's why they felt like they had to act first.
So on January 20th, 2008, Hart and his mother worked out an alibi for themselves.
What they were gonna tell people is that at around 8 pm, Hart went and picked up his mother from the house that she shared with Arun Kumar, and the two of them just went back to Hart's apartment and that was it.
But in reality, Part never went over and picked his mom up and brought her back to the apartment.
Instead, she was at the house with Arun Kumar when Part showed up at 10.45pm to confront Arun Kumar.
So it was him, and his mom at the house as Part is demanding Arun Kumar come clean and stop what he's doing.
And then, at some point during this heated argument in the hallway, Arun Kumar turned and ran into the bedroom and Part chased after him.
And Part.
He sees Arun Kumar sitting on the edge of the bed and he thinks his dad is looking at the pipe wrench on the floor in the bathroom.
And Part thinks, my dad is about to get that wrench and attack me with it.
And so Part just acted first and he ran and grabbed that wrench and he beat his father to death with it.
And then, after leaving, his father's unrecognizable mutilated body just lumped in the middle of the bedroom floor, blood all over the walls.
He and his mother just left the house and went back to Part's apartment.
And then the next day Part's mom went back to the house and she pretended to find Arun Kumar's body, even though she already knew he was in there.
And then she called 911 and acted totally beside herself when they showed up, as if she had just happened upon her husband's dead body.
But almost four years later, when the truth finally came out about this horrible situation, Part and his mother were arrested.
Now both of them absolutely maintained that they genuinely believed their lives were in danger because of Arun Kumar and they said during that confrontation in the house, Part was only acting in self-defense.
He really believed his dad was gonna grab that pipe wrench first, and so he had to do it before him, and that's why he killed his dad.
But ultimately Part would plead guilty to manslaughter and he would be sentenced to 33 months in prison, and Part's mother would plead guilty to conspiracy and she would be sentenced to 10 months in prison.
A quick note about our stories.
They are all based on true events, but we sometimes use pseudonyms to protect the people involved and some details are fictionalized for dramatic purposes.
The Mr Ballin Podcast Strange Dark and Mysterious Stories is hosted and executive produced by me, Mr Ballin.
Our head of writing is Evan Allen.
Our head of production is Zach Levitt.
Produced by Jeremy Bone.
Research and fact-checking by Shelley Hsu, Samantha Van Hoose, Evan Beamer, Abigail Shumway and Camille Callahan.
Research and fact-checking supervision by Stephen Ear.
Audio editing and post-produced by Wit Lacascio and Cole Lacascio.
Additional audio editing by Jordan Stidham.
Mixed and mastered by Brendan Cain.
Production coordination by Samantha Collins.
Production support by Antonio Minata and Delaina Corley.
Artwork by Jessica Clogston-Kiner.
Theme song called Something Wicked by Ross Bugden.
Thank you for listening to the Mr. Ballin Podcast.
If you enjoyed today's story and you're looking for more bone-chilling content, be sure to check out all of our studios' podcasts.
There's this one, the Mr Ballin Podcast, as well as Mr Ballin's Medical Mysteries, Bedtime Stories, Wartime Stories, Run Fool, Redacted Late Nights with Nexpo and A Twist of History.
All you have to do is search for Ballin Studios wherever you get your podcasts.
To watch hundreds more stories just like this one, head over to our YouTube channel, which is just called Mr Ballin.
So, that's going to do it.
I really appreciate your support.
Until next time, see ya.
