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 winter of 2001, inside of a Southern California police department, a fax machine in the corner of the room suddenly came to life.
A moment later, a few pieces of paper fell out of the machine onto a tray and a police officer walked over and began reading them.
And as he did, his eyes went wide because the fax was a goldmine of evidence for an ongoing murder investigation that had begun to stall.
So this was a major breakthrough. But as other officers rushed over to see the fax for themselves, they all started to feel like something was off about this fax.
It just seemed too good to be true. But regardless, the police followed up on the contents of this fax and sure enough, it did lead them to their killer.
However, the killer was not who anyone thought it would be.
But before we get into that story, if you're a fan of the Strange, Dark, and Mysterious delivered in story format, then, well, here's a quick aside.
I love listening to stories that leave me feeling scared.
I don't know why, but that's the truth. So we here at Ballin Studios have been looking for a really good horror podcast to bring our fans something we know that not only I will enjoy, but all of you fans of The Strange, Dark, and Mysterious will enjoy too.
And I can tell you with confidence, we have found the right horror podcast.
It's called Run Fool, and it's directly from the mind of absolute horror legend and master storyteller Rodney Barnes.
Every week, Run Fool will deliver a brand new story told by Rodney Barnes that will leave you feeling terrified.
The first two episodes of Run Fool come out tomorrow, and new episodes drop every Tuesday.
So, if that's of interest to you, the next time you're on a cross-country road trip with the Amazon Music Follow button, tell them you'll make the playlist for The Drive, but only add our brand new show, Run Fool, to the playlist.
Okay, let's get into today's story. Are you searching for a romantic summer getaway?
Escape with Rich Girl Summer, the new Audible original from Lily Chu.
The phenomenally talented Philippa Soo returns to narrate her fifth Lily Chu title.
This time, Philippa is joined by her real-life husband, Steven Pasquale.
Set in Toronto's wealthy cottage country, aka the Hamptons of Canada, Rich Girl Summer follows the story of Valerie, a down-on-her-luck event planner posing as a socialite's long-lost daughter while piecing together the secrets surrounding a mysterious family. and falling deeper and deeper in love with the impossibly hard-to-read and infuriatingly handsome family assistant, Nico.
Caught between pretending to belong and unexpectedly finding where she truly fits in, Valerie learns her summer is about to get far more complicated than she ever planned.
She's in over her head and head over heels.
Listen to Rich Girl Summer now on Audible.
Go to audible.com slash richgirlsummer. On September 7th, 2000, Frank Rodriguez lay on the couch in his Montebello, California home, staring off blankly into space as the TV news described the latest traffic jam on the freeway.
It was a warm morning in Southern California, but Frank felt cold even though he was underneath a blanket.
And he felt so nauseous that every half hour or so, he'd have to get up and run to the bathroom to throw up.
Frank, a 41-year-old teacher, had not felt like his normal energetic self for two days, not since he agreed to help chaperone a field trip at the school where he used to work.
The trip had turned into a 15-hour marathon, and he had come home feeling totally tired and groggy.
And by the next day, Frank felt too lousy to stay at work at his current job with the Los Angeles Public School District, so he came home a few hours early.
Now Frank's new wife, Angelina, was really getting worried.
Frank was a lean, fit man, known for his firm handshake, and he rarely got sick at all.
But on this morning, Frank could barely stand up.
Angie tried to get Frank an appointment at a nearby clinic, but they said he was too sick for them.
So she drove them to a hospital emergency room across town where the waiting area was totally packed.
By the time a doctor could actually see Frank almost five hours later, he was feverish and shaking uncontrollably, but the doctor was reassuring.
He said Frank was suffering from some kind of food poisoning and he just needed to rest and stay hydrated.
He wrote Frank a prescription to help him with the nausea and diarrhea and told him to drink plenty of Gatorade.
The doctor said this fruity sports drink is actually even better than water when someone has thrown up a lot.
On the way home, Angie stopped to buy Gatorade and then also she stopped to pick up her 10-year-old daughter, Autumn, from school.
Autumn was not Frank's biological daughter, but Frank totally adored the little girl and his face lit up when she jumped into the backseat.
As soon as she sat down, Autumn asked Frank how he was feeling, and even though Frank was leaning up against the window, kind of barely able to move, he kind of turned his head and smiled at her and said, you know what, I'm doing a lot better now.
Angie planned to play nurse for her ailing husband for the day, making chicken soup and hot tea and making sure he drank plenty of Gatorade.
Autumn said she would help too. When the family got home, Angie and Autumn headed for the kitchen, but Frank called them back to the living room.
Instead of lying down, Frank dropped down to one knee in the middle of the room and he reached out both his hands for theirs.
Once they were all holding hands, they formed a small circle and then Frank closed his eyes and began to pray out loud.
He talked about how much the Lord had blessed him when he found them, giving him a second chance at happiness.
He felt awful right now, Frank admitted, but he was still very thankful for the happy life they all shared together.
Frank prayed a lot. He was a deeply religious man who often carried a Bible with him and went to the local Pentecostal church for Wednesday prayer groups as well as Sunday services.
But Frank wasn't preachy. Instead, he was a very calming presence who listened well and tried to do the right thing.
The students that he taught and counseled, many of them very deeply troubled, adored Frank because he didn't judge them.
There was a lot of truth in Frank's prayer when he talked about getting a second chance.
He had married young while he was in the Navy, but the long separations from his wife while he was out at sea had put the couple on the road to divorce.
For years after their breakup, Frank bounced from job to job, from plumber to paralegal.
He never stuck with anything or anyone for too long, and he often turned to alcohol for comfort.
He would be the first to admit that it was a very lonely life.
Then Frank found a job as a counselor at Angel Gate Academy, an intensive boot camp for troubled teenagers, on the grounds of an old National Guard base almost 200 miles north of Los Angeles.
It was a place full of unhappy adolescents who were required to live for four weeks at a time in the barracks under military-style discipline.
The school could be a really tough place to work and tended to attract teachers who had been through traumas themselves.
But Angel Gate made Frank feel like he was making a difference in young lives.
In fact, he loved it so much that he went back to school to get a degree in counseling and he gave up drinking almost entirely.
Even after he stopped working at Angel Gate, Frank had agreed to help chaperone that school field trip.
That was when he had started to feel sick.
A big part of the reason Frank loved Angel Gate so much was because of who he met there in February of 2020, Angie, who worked in administration at Angel Gate.
Angie was beautiful with dark skin, jet black hair, and a sparkle in her eye that just drew men's attention.
But she was also very spiritual. She went to church on Sundays and embraced Jesus as her savior.
When Frank suggested that they hold off on having sex until they got married, Angie agreed.
Frank thought the two seemed made for each other.
Angie, who was 32 years old, was also looking for another chance at love.
She had been through a divorce from Autumn's father a decade earlier, and she was just tired of being alone.
She was also tired of struggling financially.
She had grown up poor in a New York City housing project and spent much of her adulthood looking for a more secure life with limited success.
But with Frank, who was solid, hardworking, and loyal, Angie felt like she had finally found that more secure life.
And so within just two months of meeting each other, Frank and Angie got married and together with Autumn, they became a family.
Right after the wedding, Frank accepted a new job teaching middle school in the Los Angeles Unified School District.
And that summer, the fledgling family packed up and relocated to a pleasant ranch-style home in the Los Angeles suburb of Montebello.
In little more than six months, Angie and Frank had changed everything about their lives.
They had a new marriage, a new home, a new city, and a new career practically all at once.
And they talked all the time about how bright their future looked together.
Frank opened his eyes after he said amen to finish his prayer, and he let go of Angie and Autumn's hands.
Then he shuffled over to the couch, where he plopped down and Angie wrapped him in a blanket.
And then for the rest of the day, Frank alternated between bowls of chicken soup, glasses of Gatorade, and cups of tea that Angie and Autumn would bring to him.
By 9 p.m., Frank still felt terrible, but he was determined to try to sleep it off and hopefully feel better in time for the weekend.
And so he kissed Angie and Autumn goodnight, and then he went off to bed.
After Frank had left for the bedroom, Angie thought about joining him right then because she was tired too, but one of her favorite shows came on at 10 p.m., Law & Special Victims Unit, so she stayed up.
She lost herself in the program, confident that she had done everything she could to help her husband get well.
As Angie lay on the couch watching her show, she began thinking to herself that she actually really didn't want to sleep in the same bed as her husband that night.
She loved him, but she knew he'd be getting up over and over again to go to the bathroom, you know, waking her up every time.
And if she just stayed on the couch after her show, she'd be able to sleep and she'd still be nearby if there was an emergency and had to bring him to the hospital.
So as the closing credits rolled on Law and Order, Angie decided she would stay right there on the couch, and so she shut her eyes and drifted off to sleep.
But at around 3 a.m., Angie woke up and decided it was time to go to the bedroom, so she stood up and she began walking in that direction, and then when she went into the bedroom, she saw Frank was not in the bed.
At first, she thought he must be in the bathroom, but when she looked, she saw the bathroom light was off, and when she opened the door, Frank wasn't in there.
Confused, Angie walked around the end of their bed, and that's when she saw Frank lying face down on their shag rug.
He was wearing a t-shirt as he normally did in bed, and so at first it just seemed like he must have just fallen asleep and maybe rolled off the bed or something.
But when Angie yelled Frank's name and pulled on his shoulders, he didn't react.
And then when Angie got down close and listened to Frank, she couldn't hear him breathing.
Angie ran out of the room and called 911.
Paramedics arrived within minutes at the Rodriguez's front door where they were met by Angie, her eyes red-rimmed and puffy from crying.
She frantically led them through the house to the bedroom where her husband was laying and then when they got down and felt him, they could see he was cold to the touch and when they checked, he had no pulse.
He was dead. but there was no obvious reason why.
His body offered few clues. The only injury they could find was a bloody nose, likely from when Frank fell to the ground.
Angie told them that Frank had been sick for the past couple of days with food poisoning, but overall Frank's health was excellent and he was doing all the right things to get better from this food poisoning.
He had no history of drug use and he certainly had no suicidal tendencies.
It seemed like Frank was just a healthy guy who dropped dead for no reason.
The team from the coroner's office zipped Frank into a black body bag and wheeled him out to the waiting van that would take him to the lab for an autopsy.
As an increasing number of emergency officials tramped in and out of the Rodriguez's house, Angie and her daughter clung to each other, sobbing.
And by the time they all left around 9 a.m., Angie felt like she had answered a million questions about Frank's medical history, his emotional state, and the food poisoning that had sent him to the hospital.
She didn't believe for a minute that her husband had died suddenly from food poisoning, but neither the police, paramedics, or the coroner's team had helped Angie understand what else could have killed him.
As she dialed Frank's mother to tell her that her son was dead, Angie didn't know what she was going to say.
But Frank's mother became so hysterical at the news that Angie couldn't tell her much anyway before the call dissolved into wordless sobbing.
A few minutes later, Frank's younger sister, Rebecca, called Angie to get more of the awful details.
Rebecca had never known her big brother to even get sick, and she knew he was still fanatical about taking care of himself.
And so how could he be dead? But Angie had no answer.
Nobody did. But something suddenly occurred to Angie when Rebecca told her over the phone that, you know, everybody loved Frank.
And Angie, without really thinking about how insensitive this sounded, she just kind of blurted out, not everyone, Rebecca.
I mean, there were some people who didn't like him.
Maybe this wasn't a natural death. Maybe he was murdered.
Then Angie began talking about this one particular teacher at Angel Gate who did not like Frank.
Now, Angie did not name this person to Rebecca over the phone, but she was thinking about this guy named Mike Benning.
Frank had actually left Angel Gate after a nasty internal controversy involving this teacher, Mike Benning.
Frank had blown the whistle on Benning for exposing himself to students as well as groping students.
Angie said to Rebecca over the phone that this, quote, sicko, because again, she wasn't using his name, had been allowed to keep his job despite Frank's allegations.
But Benning was furious with Frank for making the allegations in the first place.
And so Angie thought that it was certainly possible that this sicko finally got his revenge on Frank.
But Frank's autopsy, which was performed the same day that Frank died, turned out to be inconclusive.
The medical examiner, who had performed 4,000 autopsies before Frank's, checked for signs of strangulation or choking, and he found nothing.
He looked for needle marks between Frank's toes that might have indicated he was a closet junkie, and there were none.
And blood tests for cocaine, heroin, and even marijuana came back negative as well.
The medical examiner would also look for signs of damage to key organs from his heart to his lungs to his kidneys.
And again, everything just appeared normal.
The coroner's team then went back to Frank and Angie's house a couple of days later to search for toxic chemicals, thinking that might have killed Frank.
But all they could find inside of the house was some ant poison and some insecticides.
And when they tested Frank's blood, he was negative for both of those poisons, as well as negative for common poisons like arsenic and cyanide.
Frank had been dead for only a few days, but his death was on the way to being classified a medical mystery and put on the shelf to be forgotten.
The coroner's office was out of ideas, and the local police had never really shown much interest in the case to begin with.
They didn't even send over a detective to ask questions on the night that Frank was found dead.
But Angie Rodriguez was not about to let her husband's death be forgotten.
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 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.
Hey listeners, big news for true crime lovers.
You can now enjoy this podcast ad-free on Amazon Music with your Prime membership.
Listen to all episodes of my podcasts, Mr. Ballin's Medical Mysteries and Mr. Ballin's Strange, Dark, and Mysterious Stories, along with a huge collection of top true crime podcasts completely ad-free.
No more wading through cliffhangers or dealing with ads, because let's be honest, Ads shouldn't be the most nerve-wracking part of true crime.
To start your ad-free listening journey, download the Amazon Music app for free or head to amazon.com slash ballin.
That's amazon.com slash b-a-l-l-e-n. Dive into uninterrupted true crime stories today.
Hey, it's Mr. Ballin. I'm excited to tell you about something special.
For the first time... My show, Mr. Ballin's Medical Mysteries, has joined forces with Redacted, Declassified Mysteries with Luke LaManna, to tell a story so complex it required our combined storytelling styles.
This special episode is called A Redacted Medical Mystery.
In it, unexplained symptoms after a routine surgery quickly unravel into something much darker, leading straight to classified government operations hidden for decades.
To listen and uncover the truth alongside us, head to either the Mr. Ballin's Medical Mysteries or Redacted show pages right now. or search for A Redacted Medical Mystery in the Wondery app or wherever you get your podcasts.
If you're fascinated by unexplained medical stories, well, stick around on Medical Mysteries.
Every week, we dive deep into cases that will leave you questioning everything you know about the human body.
And if government conspiracies are more your style, Redacted is your go-to for stories that unravel secrets never meant to see the light of day.
Remember, you can listen to both shows early and ad-free by joining Wondery Plus.
A few days after Frank's death, Angie called the Montebello police to voice her frustrations at their total inaction.
She told the sergeant, who answered the phone, that it was high time for them to finally open up an investigation.
She said there was no way her husband just suddenly got sick and died.
He had to have been murdered. Angie was totally insistent.
And day after day, Angie would call back, often speaking to the same sergeant, Greg Wilsey, to demand an investigation.
To Sergeant Greg Wilsey, Angie's pleas actually sounded familiar.
Angie was grieving a sudden unexplained loss and she desperately wanted someone or something to blame.
This was something the sergeant saw a fair amount with people who were recently bereaved.
Also, the sergeant knew that Angie had been asleep on the couch when her husband died in the bedroom and so he thought, you know, maybe she also felt guilty about not being there when he was struggling with whatever happened to him and so maybe that's why she's come up with this far-fetched murder theory to explain everything away.
But the more Angie called the police department day after day demanding this investigation, the less she sounded just like some grieving widow.
She sounded like someone who really thought this could be a murder.
And with every call she made, she got more and more specific about who she really believed should be the primary suspect.
Angie explained to Sergeant Wilsey that Frank's sudden decline in health began right after he filled in as a chaperone for that field trip at Angel Gate where he used to work.
Frank had come home from that day trip feeling very weary and worn down, so much so that he had to leave work early the next day.
And Frank just never recovered, dying just four days after the field trip.
Angie told Wilsey that maybe someone at Angel Gate poisoned Frank, and she knew someone who certainly had the motive to do that, Mike Benning.
Angie threw out the theory that, you know, perhaps on this field trip, Benning, who wanted a chance to get back at his accuser, put poison maybe in the cookies or the Gatorade that was served to Frank as refreshments during the field trip.
And when the sergeant began asking questions, Angie just said, look, if you want to understand what happened to my husband, you got to start at Angel Gate Academy.
It might seem harsh to accuse some ordinary school teacher of plotting a revenge killing against a former colleague, but as Angie explained to Sergeant Wilsey, Angel Gate was not a normal school.
Some of Southern California's most troubled students were ordered to attend this academy for these four-week stints of intense military-style discipline that was intended to kind of scare them straight.
And though Angel Gate could certainly point to plenty of success stories, there were also lots of accusations of brutality swirling around the school.
There were stories about students who were forced to eat their own vomit or who were force-fed large volumes of water.
There were stories about teachers calling students terrible names.
And there were also allegations of physical abuse.
And so after Sergeant Wilsey heard all this context about Angel Gate and how potentially the staff there were inappropriate and even violent, he told Angie that, yeah, it does seem like we do need to launch an investigation into your husband's death. and see if it's possible that someone from Angelgate had something to do with it.
But the police department in Montebello was tiny and did not have the resources for a full-blown murder investigation.
So they called on the Los Angeles County Sheriff's Department to take the lead.
And within weeks, Angie was talking regularly with two sheriff's deputies who were assigned full-time to the case.
Their names were Joe Holmes and Brian Steinwand.
And in early October, Angie actually went to the Montebello Police Department to sit down with these two detectives.
Holmes and Steinwand were at opposite ends of their careers.
Steinwand was a young specialist in street gang investigations with 10 years of experience, while Holmes was a nearly 30-year veteran closing in on retirement.
But together, they got things done. They had just arrested the suspect in a murder days before Frank's death.
Inside of a sterile interview room at the police station, Angie again told Holmes and Steinwand the full story of Frank's life and death and why she thought his death was actually a murder.
Angie explained that Frank at one point suspected that someone at Angel Gate Academy had spiked his drink on an earlier occasion, which made him sick, but did not seriously injure him.
Frank never figured out who it was, but Angie always suspected it had been Mike Benning, the teacher that Frank had reported for alleged inappropriate relationships with his students.
Angie told detectives that she was so nervous about Frank's safety that she begged him not to go back to Angel Gate for the September 3rd field trip, but he had already promised and he refused to reconsider.
When he got home from that field trip, he had told Angie that his former colleagues had treated him really well and she was totally relieved.
But then of course Frank got sick and that was when Angie thought, you know, he must have been poisoned.
The detectives were intrigued, but they pointed out that poison is a pretty generic term that includes thousands of different chemicals.
Did Angie have any idea what kind of poison Benning could have potentially used to spike Frank's drink?
If they had something more specific, they could ask the medical examiner to test Frank's blood again for it.
Unfortunately, there is no single test that can detect all kinds of poison.
You basically have to have the type of poison and then test for that type.
Frank's death had become a total obsession for Angie.
Specifically, she couldn't stop thinking about how he had actually died, and she had been doing all this research about it.
She casually told the two detectives that she had been reading about a deadly poison that's actually pretty easy to obtain, hard to detect, and frighteningly effective.
The leaves of the oleander tree, which is a red and white bush that grows all over California, contains a poison that's very easy to disguise in food or drink.
And so Angie believed that it was totally possible that that was what Benning could have used to kill Frank.
The detectives agreed that Angie's suggestion could be right, but it was just speculation.
Without evidence, they really could not pursue this as a lead.
Holmes and Steinwand walked out of the meeting with Angie with mixed feelings.
Angie could be right that maybe Mike Benning had killed Frank and, you know, maybe he used Oleander, but it was just totally speculation.
At this point, the detectives weren't even sold on the idea that there had been a murder at all.
After all, they had no cause of death and the medical examiner had not even ruled out natural causes yet.
And so it just seemed like Angie was really jumping to conclusions and they couldn't do that.
But despite all that, both men agreed on one thing.
They needed to talk to Mike Benning. After Angie got back from the meeting, she collapsed onto the couch in her living room, feeling totally emotionally and physically exhausted.
She was pleased that the police were now seriously investigating her husband's death, but she was actually a little surprised at how much the two detectives were now leaning on her for help.
Didn't they have their own sources of information?
Couldn't they have come up with a list of hard-to-detect poisons themselves?
She was worried that the sheriff's department had assigned a couple of hillbilly cops to the case who didn't know what they were doing.
Angie felt like she had no choice but to stay right on top of detectives Holmes and Steinwand at every step of their investigation.
It was the only way to be sure she got justice for Frank.
But despite how Angie felt about them, the two detectives were working the case in their own way.
They did their homework on Oleander. It was indeed highly toxic and widely available.
And so they asked the coroner's office to try to determine whether that could have been what killed Frank.
The detectives also started gathering background information on Mike Benning.
What was his disciplinary record? Did he have a criminal record?
And much more. Then, on October 19th, so six weeks after Frank's death, Angie called Holmes with startling news.
Angie said she had gotten this frightening phone call that morning from someone who identified themselves only as being one of Frank's former students.
The ex-student said that he had spoken directly to Mike Benning about Frank's death, and Benning had seemed really defensive, saying police, quote, can't pin it on me, end quote.
Detective Holmes stopped Angie while he searched for a pen, and then when he had it, he said, okay, keep going, and then he started writing down all these notes as Angie continued.
Angie said this caller said that police had questioned Benning about Frank's death, but Benning insisted that investigators would never be able to connect the death to him.
Angie said she tried to pump the caller for information, but the call quality was poor and the static kept getting worse and worse, and then just before the call broke off completely, the caller had said, "'Ask them about antifreeze.'"
Angie said she called the detectives right away before she even had a chance to check with her cell phone company to try to figure out who had just called her, but she was just so excited about this tip that she wanted to share it immediately."
And then Angie wondered aloud to the two detectives if maybe Mike Benning really had killed her husband and used antifreeze to do it.
But Detective Holmes was not ready to leap to conclusions the way Angie was.
For starters, he wondered how anyone could drink antifreeze without knowing it.
Wouldn't it taste horrible and the intended victim would spit it out?
Holmes was also curious about who this former student might have been and why they would call Angie instead of the police.
And then also why didn't this caller call back after that first call broke up?
Neither Holmes nor Angie could answer either of those questions.
And so ultimately, Detective Holmes told Angie that yes, this call was clearly very helpful and investigators would love to speak with this person, this former student again, if they could.
And so he asked Angie to please keep his phone number close to her at all times and to pass it along to this anonymous caller if they happen to reach out again.
And Angie said she would. After Holmes hung up with Angie, he immediately briefed Detective Steinwand about the call.
Angie's anonymous caller may have handed them their first break in the case.
Now they needed to contact the phone company and figure out who made the mysterious call to Angie.
Angie was also feeling very excited after she got off the phone with Holmes.
She was sure that now the detectives would ask the coroner to conduct a new autopsy and he would be able to test for antifreeze in Frank's blood.
She had learned from her research that the main ingredient in antifreeze, which is called ethylene glycol, actually tastes sweet even though it's a deadly poison.
As a result, antifreeze is particularly dangerous to animals and children who can't read the warning labels.
Angie felt like she had become a junior detective herself, spending hours on the phone with law enforcement and many hours more doing her own research both online and at the library.
But if the police were finally able to catch the person who killed her husband, then of course all of it would be worth it.
But at a minimum, Angie already felt so proud that she was actively helping to catch her husband's killer.
But days passed and then weeks passed and still the detectives did not call Angie back with any updates.
Meanwhile, Angie moved out of the house in Montebello to stay with friends up the coast.
Frank had been the main breadwinner in the family and so money was tight now with him gone, but Angie was actually happier to be living with other adults.
The horror and stress of the last few months and having no explanation for her husband's death were a bit easier to manage with other people she could talk to all around.
But nothing could have prepared Angie for the call she would receive on December 13th, so three months after her husband's death.
It was a call from Mike Benning, the man she believed murdered her husband.
Angie was at home with Autumn baking Christmas cookies in hopes of somehow creating a little holiday cheer when her cell phone rang and she picked it up.
Mike didn't even say hello before he asked her a blunt question.
Why did you tell the police that I poisoned Frank with antifreeze?
Initially, Angie was caught off guard and asked who was calling, even though she knew perfectly well that this had to be Mike.
But Mike totally ignored her and pressed on.
When would he even have the opportunity to poison Frank, he asked.
They hadn't worked together since June. Mike said that Angie's allegations against him were now ruining his reputation, and she owed him an explanation.
But at this point, Angie now was just mad, remembering her clashes with Mike over his alleged misconduct when they both worked at Angel Gate.
She said to Mike that his hostility towards her and to Frank had been totally obvious, and now all the evidence suggested that he had been the one to poison Frank.
She told him that he should go talk to detectives, not her.
And then Angie hung up. Angie sat there for a second in shock.
Then she picked up her phone again and dialed Detective Holmes' number.
When he picked up, she excitedly told him that Mike had just called her out of the blue and accused her of spreading false rumors about him being the killer.
Angie also said that Mike had even threatened her towards the end of the call when he said, "...you just gotta watch your back."
Holmes seemed totally taken aback. He told Angie that just the night before, detectives had informed Mike that he was a suspect in this case and they had said Mike seemed really nervous when he was told this news.
And so Detective Holmes promised Angie that he would tell Mike to make absolutely no further contact with Angie or he would go directly to jail.
And so Holmes just urged Angie to stay calm and patient and allow police to finish the investigation.
Holmes didn't tell Angie this, but he had actually already asked the coroner's office to send Frank's blood samples to a state-of-the-art lab in Minnesota that specialized in antifreeze poisoning.
If Frank really died from drinking antifreeze, then this lab would be able to prove it.
They just had to wait for the lab tests to come back.
Finally, on the day before Christmas in 2000, Detective Holmes and Detective Steinwand got the report back from the lab in Minnesota.
The moment Holmes saw the envelope on his desk, he immediately grabbed it, tore it open, and pulled out the documents and started to read.
And as he did, his eyes grew wide. Frank Rodriguez did indeed have a fatal level of antifreeze in his blood at the time he died.
In fact, his body was literally riddled with this toxic chemical.
There was antifreeze in his eyes, his heart, and his stomach.
Angie had been right, her husband had been poisoned, and her anonymous caller had been spot on when he suggested that antifreeze could have been the murder weapon.
The death of Frank Rodriguez was now officially classified as a murder.
Detective Holmes and Steinwand were now very close to cracking the case, but the detectives knew there was still a big weakness in trying to hang the murder on Mike Benning.
Did he really have the opportunity to poison Frank?
Frank had been a last-minute substitute chaperone on that fateful Angel Gate field trip, and so how would Mike have known that Frank was going to be on the trip so he could bring along his antifreeze?
Because Mike certainly wouldn't be carrying antifreeze with him at all times.
So the detectives turned one more time to Angie for help in late January of 2001.
Detective Holmes called her up at home and he asked her if she had a memo or any other written evidence that actually listed Frank as a chaperone for this trip before the trip actually happened on September 5th.
This time, Angie had nothing but her memory to go on.
Angie said there definitely was a list that had all the chaperones, which included both Frank and Mike on it, and she had seen that at least several days before the trip happened, but when she looked around her house, she couldn't find it.
But two weeks later, on February 5th, 2001, detectives caught one more big break.
The fax machine in the LA County Homicide Bureau came to life in the middle of the afternoon and spit out an anonymous fax.
The fax, marked urgent, was addressed to Detective Holmes, and on it, on the first page, was just a simple question.
Why is Mike still free? And then all the other pages in this fax showed that there had been a faculty orientation for the Angel Gate field trip almost two weeks before the event.
And Frank's name, circled, was on the list of chaperones.
In other words, Mike had plenty of advance notice that Frank would be coming on this trip, and so he would have plenty of time to obtain some antifreeze and mix it in with Frank's drink and cookies.
This final piece of evidence was all the detectives needed to make their case against Mike Benning.
Two days later, Detective Holmes and Steinwand were driving when Angie paged Holmes.
Holmes immediately called her back and told her about the mysterious facts they got.
It was the final piece of the puzzle, making it clear that in addition to having a motive, Mike also had the opportunity to murder Frank.
Holmes said that they were on their way to arrest Mike in San Luis Obispo and they'd be happy to pick up Angie if she wanted to be present at the big moment.
Angie was thrilled and said yes, she'd love to go.
A few minutes later, the two detectives arrived at the door of the house where Angie was staying with friends, and she immediately let them in very eagerly, but Holmes' expression was not what Angie expected.
This was a moment of triumph for all of them, and she thought he'd be high-fiving her and thanking her for her help in cracking this case.
Instead, Holmes' face was stern, cold even, and he made no attempt at conversation.
Instead, Holmes walked over to Angie's purse that was sitting on a side table and he looked inside of it, and then he looked over at his partner and he nodded.
Inside the purse were a few sheets of paper, just like Holmes expected there to be.
And the contents of those papers would change everything about this case.
Here's what detectives say really happened to Frank on the night of September 7th, 2000.
To begin with, Angelina Rodriguez was not the lonely, virtuous woman her husband thought she was.
She was far from it. She had been divorced three times previously, not once as Frank believed, and she began an affair with a former prison inmate a few months after she married Frank.
Friends of Frank say that Angie's devotion to Jesus was just an act to lure him in.
Her previous boyfriend had been more of a cowboy, and so she had morphed into this cowboy-hat-wearing party girl doing the Texas two-step at country bars.
Angie told friends that she never loved Frank and that she saw him mainly as a source of cash.
In July of 2000, two months before Frank's death, she convinced Frank to take out a $250,000 life insurance policy.
If Frank died, Angie would get the financial security she had been dreaming of.
Within days of applying for Frank's life insurance, Angie told a friend that she was unhappy in her marriage.
But when the friend asked her why she didn't just get a divorce, Angie said she'd get more money from the insurance if she killed her husband.
The friend took it as a joke and suggested that Angie try oleander leaves brewed in tea.
Angie had never heard of oleander poisoning, but as it turned out, she had an oleander bush right outside of her home.
A few days later, in July of 2000, another friend of Angie's suggested killing a nuisance dog by feeding the animal hot dogs soaked in antifreeze.
Angie asked, you know, why antifreeze? And the friend said, well, because it tastes sweet and so the animal will eat it, but it will also kill them and no one will know.
And so Angie took note. and by early September, Angie was ready to put her life insurance scam into action.
First, she gave Frank tea brewed with oleander leaves, which made him incredibly ill but didn't kill him, much to her annoyance.
The emergency room doctor had said that Frank had symptoms of food poisoning, but it was probably Angie's toxic tea that was making him ill.
And then when they got home from the ER visit, when Angie promised to nurse her husband back to health, what she really was doing was just finishing her crime.
The Gatorade that she was giving her husband every four hours to keep him hydrated likely contained toxic antifreeze that left Frank dead on the bedroom floor within 24 hours.
Angie called her life insurance representative the same day that her husband died to find out about collecting on her husband's policy.
And that's when she hit a serious obstacle.
The salesman said Angie could not collect on the policy until the medical examiner determines the cause of death.
As a result, when the autopsy came back inconclusive, Angie was not able to get her $250,000.
Desperate for this money, Angie began badgering the Montebello police to open a murder investigation, and then she began feeding them clues to solve a crime that she herself had committed.
All the time that Angie thought she was providing key information for this investigation, the two detectives that she called hillbilly cops had been one step ahead of her.
Holmes and Steinwand had been working with Mike Benning for months.
They quickly discovered that Frank had never been a whistleblower, he had never reported Mike for sexual misconduct with students, and Mike also said he considered himself a friend of Frank.
Angie was the one who had repeatedly accused Mike of misconduct, but no one at the school believed it.
As a result, Holmes and Steinwand knew that Mike had no reason to want Frank Rodriguez dead.
But someone else had a powerful motive to murder Frank Rodriguez.
The detectives just needed proof that their theory was right, and they used Angelina Rodriguez's own greed to lure her into a trap.
But Angie just thought the detectives were slow, so she kept giving them new leads, eventually revealing the two poisons she had used and creating a trail of lies in an effort to blame someone else.
On the night in February of 2001 that Mike confronted Angie about her allegations, the detectives were listening to that phone call.
They knew he never threatened Angie and that she lied about much of their conversation.
But Angelina Rodriguez was genuinely surprised at what happened when Holmes and Steinwand came to her door that day in February of 2001.
She really believed the detectives were coming over to her house to drive her out so she could watch Mike Benning get arrested.
Instead, Detective Holmes pulled out a pair of handcuffs and slapped them on her wrists and said, you are under arrest for the murder of your husband.
Just before he arrested her, Detective Holmes had opened Angie's purse, and like he expected, he found the original of the anonymous fax that had given the detectives that last bit of evidence they needed to arrest Mike.
Angie was the anonymous faxer. Disturbingly enough, the detectives believe that this was not the first time that Angelina Rodriguez killed for money.
Her daughter, Autumn, actually had a younger sister named Alicia who died at the age of one in 1993 from choking on a broken pacifier.
At the time, no one suspected foul play, but after Frank's murder, investigators reviewed that case and they discovered that the child did indeed choke on a pacifier, but there was evidence that someone forced it down the child's throat.
At the time, Angie had a $50,000 life insurance policy on the baby and after the baby died, Angie successfully sued the pacifier maker for a wrongful death.
Angie never collected the life insurance money for her husband, Frank.
Instead, she was convicted of aggravated murder and sentenced to death.
Two decades later, and Angelina Rodriguez is still on death row awaiting execution.
As of recently, she insists that she is innocent and that her husband Frank just killed himself when he found out that she wanted a divorce.
Also, just as a closing remark, Mike Benning is a pseudonym.
We did not use his real name in order to protect his reputation.
Thank you for listening to the Mr. Ballin Podcast.
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