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 fall of 2003, two detectives were in the middle of a year-long homicide case involving the brutal murder of a 19-year-old girl.
And for the first time, they finally felt like they had a viable suspect.
However, when they pulled up to the suspect's house to conduct a second interview, the detectives quickly realized the house was abandoned and their suspect had just disappeared.
And when they tried to track the suspect down, they discovered something totally bizarre that would turn their case on its head.
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.
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On the afternoon of June 18, 2002, 19-year-old Allie Kemp walked through the gate at the local pool where she worked in Leawood, Kansas, and headed towards a deck chair.
Allie had on a pair of shorts and a t-shirt, and she had a backpack slung over her shoulder.
She also had a huge smile on her face because her boyfriend, Phil Howes, was sitting in the chair that she was approaching.
Phil stood up, Allie threw her arms around his neck, and they kissed.
Normally, they wouldn't do this at the place where they both worked, but it was a gray, cloudy day, and nobody was swimming, and there was no other employees on site.
Allie had only been back home in the wealthy Kansas City suburb where she grew up for a few weeks after finishing her freshman year at Kansas State University.
And almost as soon as her summer break had started, she reconnected with her high school boyfriend, Phil.
They had actually mutually agreed to break up before they went off to different colleges, but now that they were back together, Allie felt like no time had passed at all.
And it was nice that they even had the same summer job as pool attendants, so they got to see each other at work sometimes.
Allie asked if anybody had come to the small neighborhood pool that day, and Phil told her it had been empty, except for the landscaping crew, and he thought maybe the pool maintenance worker was coming by later.
Phil grabbed his bag and told Allie he would pick her up that night for their dinner date they had planned.
Then they kissed again and Phil walked out to the parking lot.
After Phil was gone, Allie tossed her backpack on the ground and sat down in the deck chair.
She stared out across the empty pool and saw the landscaping crew trimming some trees on the other side of a low fence.
They looked her way and smiled. Allie smiled back, but she kind of shrunk down in her chair at the same time.
Being alone at the pool near a group of men she didn't know made her feel sort of uncomfortable.
But the landscaping crew quickly seemed to forget about her and get back to their work, and Allie sort of forgot about them.
Since there was literally nobody at the pool, Allie decided she would do something for herself.
She opened up her backpack and pulled out a few brochures for different educational opportunities she had for her upcoming sophomore year.
At college, Allie got really good grades, she was a student athlete, and was involved in multiple university clubs.
In fact, she had been such an exemplary freshman at Kansas State that she had been invited by the U.S.
State Department to join a group of 60 students from across the country who would study abroad and learn about diplomacy and American foreign policy.
Allie knew it was a huge deal that she'd been asked to join this program, and she would have immediately jumped at the chance, but she also had another great offer. her church group had asked her to join them on a study abroad trip to Russia, where she would work directly with young people in need, which was something she thought was extremely important.
Both opportunities sounded incredible. Allie still couldn't make up her mind on which one she wanted to take.
But either way, she knew she wanted to travel and experience other cultures.
Allie had loved growing up in Leawood, and she enjoyed going to college not too far away, but she was ready to get out of Kansas for a while to see what the rest of the world had to offer.
Around 3 p.m., an hour after Allie had gotten to the pool, there still wasn't anybody swimming.
So she grabbed her backpack, stood up, and walked around the pool to a small table that was set up on the deck for employees.
Once she was there, she pulled out her phone and called her boyfriend, Phil.
But he didn't answer. So she left a message and said she was looking forward to their date that night.
Allie checked the time on her phone and sighed.
Her younger brother, who also worked at this pool as an attendant, had told her he would come by a bit earlier to take over so she could go home and get ready for her date, but that was still almost two hours away.
She grabbed a book out of her backpack and started to read, but she didn't feel right doing that on the job, so she decided to do a little work to pass the time.
Allie got up, leaving her stuff on the table, and headed to the pump room, which housed pumps, filters, and other equipment to keep the pool clean.
She was just about to start organizing the supply shelves when she heard a voice out by the pool.
She thought maybe somebody had finally come to swim.
Allie called to the person and said she'd be out in just a second.
About two hours later, at 5 p.m., Allie's younger brother opened the gate to the pool, expecting to see his sister.
But the pool was completely empty. He called out for Allie, but she didn't respond.
He walked to the restrooms, knocked on the doors, and called for her again, but there still wasn't any reply.
This was really weird. His big sister would never just duck out of her shift early.
He waited for a little while, thinking maybe Allie had just run across the street for some food or something.
But when another several minutes passed and Allie still didn't show up, he started to feel a bit worried.
Allie's brother grabbed his phone and called his sister, but Allie didn't answer.
And so he dialed another number, his father's number.
And when his dad heard what was going on, he said he'd be right over.
At 5.25 p.m., Allie's dad, Roger Kemp, arrived at the pool.
He met Allie's brother just inside the gate, and he told his son to stay right there.
Roger shouted for Allie over and over as he searched the area surrounding the pool, but Allie never called back.
And when Roger saw Allie's phone, backpack, and book on the deck table, he was at a complete loss.
It seemed like his daughter had just disappeared.
He looked around for a little while longer, and as he did, he noticed the open door that led to the pump room.
Roger walked through the door into that room, and right away he saw there were pool supplies scattered everywhere like they had fallen off the metal shelves they were kept on, and he saw a large blue tarp laying on the floor.
And when Roger leaned down and lifted up the tarp to see what was underneath, his entire world shattered.
His daughter, Allie, lay face down on the ground.
Her t-shirt was tightly wrapped around her throat and she was naked from the waist down.
Her hands and arms were scratched and bloody, her face looked badly bruised and beaten, and her hair was matted with so much blood it stuck to the sides of her face.
Roger grabbed his daughter and held her in his arms and told her to please stay with him.
That evening, Sergeant Scott Hansen and Detective Joe Langer of the Leawood Police Department arrived at the neighborhood pool.
They were still in shock from the call they'd gotten earlier from dispatch.
A young woman had been brutally attacked at this pool, and she had been rushed to the hospital, but pronounced dead soon after.
Violent crime in Leawood was rare, but a murder like this was just completely foreign to them.
Hansen and Langer walked through the gate, and they quickly met a couple of uniformed police officers who led them around the pool to the crime scene.
The door to the pump room was still open, and before they even walked in, the detectives saw pool supplies scattered everywhere and a pool of blood on the floor near a blue tarp.
The detectives put on their gloves and stepped into the room.
Both men were known to be extremely calm and methodical, almost clinical when they conducted an investigation.
But imagining what Allie must have gone through in this room made it impossible for them to hide their anger.
They were part of this community, and they couldn't believe that something this horrific had happened to a young woman from their town.
After the detectives had looked around the pump room for a few minutes on their own, several members of the county forensics team arrived and quickly began pulling blood samples from the floor.
But as the group started investigating the pool supplies on the floor, one of the forensics officers told everyone to stop moving.
He pointed to a small white object on the ground, and he didn't want anyone to accidentally step on it or kick it.
As the forensics officer inched across the ground towards this object, Langer and Hansen asked him what was it.
The forensics officer stared at it for a second and then said it was a small cap to a bottle, and specifically, it had a brownish-red stain on it.
The other officers continued to scan the floor.
Partially hidden amongst a bunch of pool supplies, one of them found a small tube of antibiotic ointment, and it had the same kind of stain on it as the cap.
The forensics officers put the cap and the bottle side by side, and it was clear they went together. but both objects looked out of place among the other pool supplies on the floor.
However, Detective Langer noticed an open first aid kit on a shelf and he thought it might've come from there.
But regardless, all the investigators felt sure that the brownish red stains on the cap and on the tube were blood.
So one of the forensics officers bagged the tube and the cap as evidence.
While the forensics team continued their work in the pump room, the detectives walked back outside and made their way towards the pool.
They immediately saw that the arrival of the police had already drawn a lot of attention.
Two uniformed officers were doing everything they could to keep a large and growing group of bystanders on the other side of the gate.
The detectives headed over to the crowd and with the help of the uniformed officer, they took down names and statements from everyone who was there who claimed to have been near the pool that day.
One person in this group was the man who actually managed the pool, and he gave the detectives the name of employees and others who occasionally worked on site.
Members of that landscaping crew were also in the group, and a couple of them said that the only strange thing they had noticed that afternoon was that somebody had been laying on their car horn in the parking lot, just honking over and over again.
Also, one of the landscapers added that Allie did not appear to be the first pool employee to arrive that day.
Before her, a young man had been there, and when he and Allie saw each other, they had kissed like they were girlfriend and boyfriend.
Later that evening, Detectives Langer and Hansen sat together in a cramped interview room in the police station.
They had met with Allie's father, Roger, and also the rest of her immediate family, and after seeing how absolutely devastated they were firsthand, it had really motivated both detectives to do everything they could to solve this case quickly and bring some peace back to this family.
A little while later, the door to the interview room opened, and an officer let in Allie's boyfriend, Phil, who politely introduced himself to the detectives and then took a seat across from them.
As the victim's boyfriend, Phil basically automatically had become the first suspect on the detectives' list, and the nature of this crime made it seem even more likely that an intimate partner could have committed it.
The attacker had clearly been enraged and there was potential sexual assault.
But only minutes into their interview and Phil had given the detectives his alibi.
He had a job at another pool in the community and he had gone there right after leaving the pool where he worked with Allie.
The detectives reached out to his employer at the other pool and they confirmed that Phil had arrived on time for a shift and had not left early or anything like that.
And so Hansen and Langer asked Phil if he would still submit DNA samples, and he agreed to do it without any hesitation.
And then after getting those samples, the detectives let him go.
The detectives could not fully rule out Phil's involvement, but his alibi was very strong.
So they had to admit to themselves that maybe this was not an open and shut case.
Not long after the meeting with Phil, a young woman came into the police station requesting to speak to whoever was in charge of Allie's case.
Hanser and Langer met this young woman and she told them she was one of Allie's closest friends and she had been at the pool that day.
And she was sure she had seen Allie's killer.
The detectives quickly led Allie's friend to an office and sat down with her.
And Hansen said he was surprised to hear that she was at the pool because everyone they'd spoken to so far had said nobody had been swimming that day.
Allie's friend said she had not gone swimming either.
She said she had pulled into the parking lot of the pool and begun honking her horn over and over again.
She told them she was just doing it as a dumb joke, trying to annoy Allie while she worked alone at the pool.
But after honking, she never saw Allie. Instead, she said she saw this guy walking out from somewhere on the far side of the pool.
She thought it was Allie's boss, so she stopped honking the horn because she didn't want to get Allie in trouble.
But this guy ended up walking to the parking lot and just driving off in an old pickup truck.
Detectives Hansen and Langer couldn't believe this.
Was there actually a chance this young woman just happened to be at the pool playing a joke on Allie at the exact time of the murder and that she had also seen Allie's killer up close?
It seemed too good to be true. Hansen asked her if she knew who the man was, but she said she didn't.
However, she said the guy had kind of creeped her out because before he got into his pickup and drove off, he had looked right at her with the strange look on his face and smiled at her.
If you're anything like me, you love a good story that has twists and turns and moments that make you stop and think, like, how is the story even real?
That's why I want to recommend the podcast, Crime Junkie.
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As midnight approached on June 18, 2002, about six hours after Allie's body had been discovered, her dad Roger walked into the University of Kansas City Medical Center and approached the morgue.
He knew this was where his daughter's body had been taken for an autopsy the next day.
Roger found an employee and told her he'd be staying there that night.
The employee was confused and said they weren't really set up for visitors.
Roger said he understood, but he couldn't bear the idea that his daughter was all alone.
The employee nodded and said he could stay if he wanted to.
Roger thanked her, took a seat on a bench, and began his overnight vigil.
In the days following the murder, detectives Hansen and Langer learned from the autopsy report that while Allie did have bruises that seemed to indicate an attempted sexual assault, no sexual assault had actually taken place. they also learned that she had put up a major fight.
And so the medical examiner and the forensics team hoped they would find samples of the killer's DNA under her fingernails.
And so while Hansen and Langer waited for these test results, they met with Allie's friends and family to try to get a clearer picture of her life. and they quickly realized Allie was not a young woman who lived dangerously at all.
Allie was a standout student, she did volunteer work, she had a job at school and also over the summer, and she didn't seem to do drugs or drink alcohol.
For the most part, her close friends and her boyfriend Phil led similar lives.
So the detectives did not think Allie was mixed up in anything or with anyone that would have made her a target for violent crime.
And when they got the result of Phil's DNA test, there was no match to the crime scene.
In fact, none of the DNA samples collected so far matched anyone in the FBI's national database.
And so now Hansen and Langer had to face the fact that they might be dealing with one of the hardest types of homicide cases to solve, a murder committed by an unidentified stranger.
These types of cases can be so difficult that police often use the old cliche about trying to find a needle in a haystack when talking about them. because the suspect pool is basically infinite.
At this point, Langer and Hansen's strongest lead was the man that Allie's friend had seen leaving the pool and getting into his pickup truck on the afternoon Allie was killed.
But the detectives had no idea who this guy was.
So they had Allie's friend sit down with a police sketch artist to describe the man as best as she could, and the police started distributing copies of the artist's drawing all over town.
At first, this seemed like the right strategy to tackle a possible murder by a stranger because people started contacting the Leawood Police Department with tips almost right away.
But this quickly proved to be overwhelming because the man in the drawing kind of looked like a lot of people.
He was white, in his late 20s or early 30s, a little overweight and starting to lose his hair.
And so detectives Hanson and Langer soon found themselves fielding calls from all over the county.
But most of these leads fizzled out almost immediately.
At one point, weeks after the murder, the tips got so out of control in Leawood that people were approaching Hansen, Langer, and other members of the police force out in public just to claim that they were sure their brother-in-law or their cousin or some guy they saw was the person from the drawing.
The investigative team got help from the county sheriff's department and other law enforcement agencies to try to pursue any viable lead, but none of these tips really seemed to go anywhere.
And all of a sudden, months had gone by and Langer and Hansen felt like despite chasing countless leads, they had basically made no headway in the case.
And when 2002 came to an end, six months after Allie's murder, the detectives worried that the case was going cold and that they would soon be pulled off of it.
On a morning in early February of 2003, so eight months after Allie's murder, detectives Langer and Hansen were working together in Hansen's office when they got a message that Roger Kemp, Allie's father, was there to see them.
Langer and Hansen had made a point to meet with Roger throughout the investigation, but they knew he had grown frustrated that no new evidence seemed to be coming in.
Hansen went out to meet Roger, handed him a cup of coffee, and then led him back to the office.
The detectives began by apologizing to Roger that they didn't have anything new to tell him.
But Roger said he knew they were both doing everything they could.
Still though, he refused to just sit around and do nothing.
And he understood as well as the detectives that if things didn't change soon, Allie's murder investigation would become a cold case.
And so Roger said he had an idea that he wanted to run by the detectives.
Something he thought would help get the public thinking about Allie's case again.
He wanted to put the sketch of the man Allie's friend had seen on some huge billboards in town and maybe out on the highway.
He said he also wanted to offer a $50,000 reward for anyone who provided a tip that led police to Allie's killer.
Roger said he would pay half, and he believed he could get the city to provide the other half.
Hansen and Langer discussed it for a second.
At the time, using billboards in a murder investigation was a radical idea.
Police generally used billboards to help in missing person cases, but Langer and Hansen had never heard of using billboards to showcase a potential murder suspect.
Still, they knew they did need to jumpstart the investigation, and this would definitely get people thinking about Allie again.
And really, they were not about to tell Roger he couldn't do something that might help bring him and his family some kind of closure.
A few days after this meeting, the first billboard featuring the drawing of the potential suspect went up in Leawood, and it would soon be followed by three more billboards.
And almost right away, tips started coming into the police station again.
And just like the last time this happened, it got overwhelming.
But Langer and Hansen felt energized that the investigation had sort of gotten back on its feet.
And so the detectives and their team methodically followed up on any leads that came in.
Then on June 18th, 2003, which happened to be the one year anniversary of Allie's death, they got a tip that felt huge.
Someone who had seen one of the billboards called the tip line to say the guy in the drawing looked exactly like someone he knew, a man named Ted Hoover.
And when Langer and Hansen heard this name, it immediately rang a bell.
And so they dug through Allie's case file, and they came back to the notes they had taken from the very first day of the murder investigation.
And that's when they saw Ted's name. He was the owner of a local pool maintenance company.
Detectives Langer and Hansen didn't waste any time.
They got Ted's address, headed out to their car, and drove across town.
And when they arrived at Ted's house, they saw an old pickup truck parked in the driveway.
It didn't exactly fit Allie's friend's description of the truck she had seen in the pool parking lot, but the detectives knew witnesses didn't always get all the details right, especially if they were uncomfortable or creeped out like Allie's friend had said she'd been.
Langer and Hansen felt like, for the first time in this investigation, they might finally have the killer in their sights.
Both men stayed completely calm as they approached the front door.
They needed Ted to talk, so they didn't want to frighten him in any way.
Hansen knocked on the door, and a few seconds later, a man answered.
And this man looked remarkably similar to the sketch the detectives have been staring at every day for the past year.
But the detectives didn't give off any signal that they thought that.
Instead, they introduced themselves and asked the man if his name was Ted Hoover.
He said it was, and so the detectives asked him if they could come inside and ask him a few questions about the young woman who had been killed at the public pool a year earlier.
Ted, who seemed as calm as the detectives, said sure, and he let them inside.
The three men sat down in the front room of the house, and Detective Langer started things off by telling Ted that somebody had called the tip line and pointed to him.
And so Langer wanted to know if Ted had been anywhere near the pool where Allie worked on the day that she was killed.
Ted remained totally calm. He said he was not surprised he'd come up on the tip line.
He'd seen the billboards, and he knew he kind of looked like the man in the drawing.
He also said he had not done any work on the pool where Allie worked, but he did have a lot of clients around the area, so there was a chance he could have been maybe nearby that day, but he wasn't sure, and he wasn't great about keeping records of exactly what he did every single day.
The detectives looked at each other. This all seemed way too convenient.
So Langer asked if Ted had ever met Allie Kemp, either at the pool where she worked or somewhere else in town.
And Ted shook his head. He said he didn't know her, and he definitely did not have anything to do with her death.
The detective spoke to Ted for a bit longer and he was very cooperative throughout the entire interview.
However, he couldn't provide them with any kind of solid alibi.
And so at some point Langer asked Ted if he would submit a DNA sample just so they could cross him off the list.
And at that point, the calm look on Ted's face completely disappeared and he started acting very nervous.
Ted must have noticed right away the vibe he was giving off because he quickly told the detectives that his nervousness had nothing to do with the case.
He just didn't like the idea of his DNA being part of some kind of national database.
That just didn't sit right with him. The detectives tried to assure Ted that his sample would only be used to help with this particular case, but Ted said he didn't want anything to do with it and he would need to speak with a lawyer.
By the time Langer and Hansen left Ted's house, they were confident they had just found Allie's killer.
His appearance alone had already been pretty solid evidence.
I mean, he looked exactly like the sketch.
But also, the detectives just didn't buy his paranoia around the national database thing.
They figured the real reason he was afraid to give a DNA sample was because he knew the results would incriminate him.
Since Ted did not voluntarily give up a DNA sample, the detectives would have to find enough evidence pointing to him that would enable them to secure a warrant so they could demand Ted to provide a DNA sample.
And they knew if Ted really was lawyering up, their case would need to be airtight just to get that warrant.
So over the next several weeks, the detectives tried to find any proof they could that Ted had been at the pool on the day Allie got murdered.
They got back in touch with the landscaping crew, Allie's boyfriend, and anyone else they thought might have seen him, but they didn't have any luck.
Langer and Hansen refused to give up on this lead, though.
It was the first time in over a year that they believed they were close to solving the case.
So they dug deeper into Ted Hoover's background, hoping to find anything that might give them a clue.
And they ended up finding something that completely blew their minds. because according to multiple government documents, Ted Hoover had been dead for over a decade.
With this bizarre new discovery, Langer and Hansen went to meet with Ted again, but this time his house was empty and none of his neighbors or clients had seen or heard from him.
It was like he had vanished without the police even noticing.
Hansen and Langer set out to find anyone who might know where Ted was, but nobody knew where he was and nobody seemed to have spoken to him since he left.
And the detectives knew that trying to locate a man who'd supposedly been dead for years and had seemingly just disappeared into thin air seemed like an impossible task.
But the detectives caught a huge break when a couple of people who knew Ted said that before he disappeared, he had been dating a woman named Lara Barr.
So Hansen and Langer shifted their focus to her, but tracking Laura down proved to be as difficult as tracking down Ted.
She was nowhere to be found in Leawood, or anywhere in Kansas for that matter.
Weeks, months, and then an entire year went by, and the detectives were still trying to find this woman who could maybe lead them to the man they were actually looking for.
And in the meantime, they had to tell Allie's dad, Roger, that even though they believed they knew who had killed his daughter, they couldn't track him down.
Finally, in the fall of 2004, which was almost two and a half years after Allie's murder, Detective Langer got a hit on Lara Barr.
He learned that Ted's one-time girlfriend, Lara, was now living in Connecticut with a man named Benjamin Appleby, an ex-convict who had been busted for armed robbery and indecent exposure.
And when the detectives began digging into Benjamin Appleby's background as just part of their general investigation into Lara Barr, they realized Benjamin Appleby had a clear connection to Leawood, Kansas and to Allie's murder case.
In November of 2004, about two weeks after Langer and Hansen first located Lara, the detectives sat inside of an interview room with local detectives at a small police station in Connecticut.
An officer led Lara in, and Langer asked her about her relationship with their suspect, Ted Hoover, and any connection Ted might have to Allie.
Lara appeared to be as helpful as she possibly could be, but it became pretty clear within a few minutes of talking to her that she didn't seem to have any helpful information or really any connection to the murder.
However, when her new partner, Benjamin Appleby, stepped into the interview room later that day, everything changed.
Just looking at Benjamin made the hair on the back of Langer's neck stand up.
And as the detectives spoke to Benjamin, slowly but surely, they realized he must know more about what happened to Allie than he was letting on.
And so the detectives went on the attack, asking blunt and aggressive questions.
And this tactic paid off, because the more they pushed, the more Benjamin began to crack.
And soon, Benjamin broke down crying and said he knew who killed Allie.
Based on Benjamin's interview, DNA testing, and evidence collected over the course of the investigation, this is what police believe happened to Allie Kemp on the afternoon of June 18, 2002.
The killer walked through the gate and began to scan the area.
They saw the pool was completely empty and that the landscaping crew that had been working nearby had moved far enough away that the killer could remain out of their sight.
The killer walked around the pool towards the pump room and then said out loud, is anybody here?
Even though the killer had clearly watched Allie from the parking lot and seen her walk that way, so they knew she was over here.
And a moment later, Allie called out from the pump room that she'd be out in a second.
And when the killer heard that, they felt a rush. and before Allie could even step out of the pump room, the killer stood in front of the door and blocked it and then made a lewd remark about Allie's appearance and also made a clear sexual advance towards her.
But Allie brushed the killer off and told them to get out of the way and tried to walk past them.
The killer grabbed Allie and touched her breast, at which point Allie threw a punch.
The killer blocked Allie's fist and immediately lost it and flew into a rage.
They grabbed Allie by the shoulders and shoved her further back into the pump room.
But Allie fought back, swinging her fist and scratching at the killer's hands and face.
But the killer slammed her into the metal shelves and pool equipment fell onto the floor.
Allie kept fighting, but the killer punched her in the head and face several times, stunning her and causing her to begin bleeding badly.
The killer threw Allie to the floor and tore off her shorts and underwear, but Allie kept fighting back, so the killer punched her again and again until Allie finally stopped moving.
At this point, the killer got up, opened a first aid kit that was on one of the shelves, grabbed a bottle of antibiotic ointment to use as a lubricant, and got back on the floor.
Allie was still breathing, but she could no longer fight back.
The killer began to undress themselves. Then they took off the cap of the bottle and climbed back on top of Allie.
And just then, the sound of a car horn began to blare over and over again from the parking lot.
And the killer panicked. By this point, they had already decided they were going to rape and then kill Allie.
But now they were worried they were running out of time.
Somebody was here. They were going to get caught.
So the killer reached for the bottom of Allie's t-shirt.
And at that point, Allie began moving again.
And she tried to fight off the killer one more time.
But the killer turned Allie over, pulled her t-shirt up to her neck, and wrapped it around her throat and strangled her to death.
Afterwards, the killer stood up and stared down at Allie's body.
They looked around the room and saw a large blue tarp tucked in a corner.
The killer grabbed the tarp, covered Allie's body with it, tried to pull themselves together as much as possible, and then walked out.
The killer then made their way to their pickup truck in the pool parking lot, and before they got in, they made eye contact and smiled at a young woman who was sitting in her car.
They didn't realize she was Allie's friend and was the one who had honked the horn.
The killer then drove home, convinced they had not been seen by anyone who could pin Allie's murder on them.
And for almost three years, the killer would believe they had been right.
Until one day, a couple of detectives from Kansas came to Connecticut to question them.
It would turn out Benjamin Appleby, the man who was Laura's new partner living in Connecticut with her, murdered Allie.
However, that was not remotely the whole story.
Because it turned out Benjamin Appleby was also Ted Hoover, the pool maintenance worker and the investigator's prime suspect.
Benjamin had done prison time for multiple charges in Missouri where he was from, so he decided to leave his name and his past behind.
He moved around to a few different places, and eventually he assumed the identity of a boyhood friend of his who had died at the age of 13, Ted Hoover.
And with this dead person's name, he moved to Leawood, Kansas, and started his pool maintenance business.
That's how he had first seen Allie and decided that he wanted her.
But when Allie rejected his blatantly sexual advance one afternoon at the pool, he decided to rape and kill her.
But Allie's friend honking her car horn in the parking lot altered those plans and made him go right to the murder.
After Benjamin killed Allie, he went about his life like nothing had happened.
And even when Allie's dad got the billboards put up with Benjamin's image clearly on them, he didn't panic.
But when detectives Langer and Hansen showed up at his house asking for DNA samples, he realized they were closing in on him.
So he decided to flee to Connecticut with his girlfriend Laura and start using his birth name again.
But eventually, when the detectives tracked Lara down and learned she was living with this ex-con, a guy named Benjamin Appleby, well, they decided to look into Benjamin Appleby, and sure enough, it turned out he was Ted Hoover.
When they finally interviewed Ben Appleby, a.k.a.
Ted Hoover, in Connecticut, it seemed to the detectives almost like he was an entirely different person.
The relatively calm, cooperative man they had spoken to in Kansas had transformed into someone who seemed completely devoid of feeling or empathy.
Someone they believed was evil from the second he walked in the door.
In that interview, Benjamin ultimately confessed to everything.
However, the detectives didn't want to leave any room for a court case to fall apart, so they finally got a DNA sample.
And when the test results came back, Benjamin's DNA matched the sample they had taken from the blood on the bottle and bottle cap at the crime scene.
Benjamin Appleby, aka Ted Hoover, was sentenced to life in prison with a chance for parole in 50 years.
Roger Kemp's idea for running billboards with the potential murderer's sketch on them was a first-of-its-kind strategy in law enforcement.
But now, as a result of its effectiveness in Ali's case, this strategy has been adopted by police departments all across the United States.
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.
Thank you for listening to the Mr. Ballin Podcast.
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