On a morning in early 1986 in Arizona, someone sat hunched over a desk, furiously writing a letter.
And almost every line of this letter included a direct threat of violence this person was going to inflict on the recipient.
They kept on writing, saying every horrible thing that they wanted to do.
Finally, when they were done, they read the letter over.
It was explicit and terrifying, just as they'd hoped.
They put the letter down, then glanced over at a cardboard box sitting on the floor, and they smiled.
Nobody would ever suspect that the contents of that plain box would soon help them carry out this very bizarre plot they'd had running through their head for months.
But before we get into that story, if you're a fan of the Strange, Dark, and Mysterious delivered in story format, then you've come to the right podcast because that's all we do and we upload twice a week, once on Monday and once on Thursday.
So if that's of interest to you, please get ahold of the follow button's house keys and swap them out for random fake keys.
Okay, let's get into today's story. You know that person in your life who just can't stand mayo?
Call them traumatized. Call them closed-minded.
We get it. They're stuck in their ways. But here's the thing.
They just haven't tried Hellman's flavored mayo.
We're talking bold flavors that will flip even the biggest skeptics.
Spicy mayo that adds the perfect kick to your burger.
Garlic aioli that transforms ordinary fries into something extraordinary.
Chipotle mayo that turns your basic wrap into a smoky sensation.
So to all the mayo haters out there, yes, we're looking at you.
It's time to eat your words. Because with mayo this flavorful, any hater is just a mayo lover waiting to be convinced.
Hellman's Flavored Mayo. Get ready to eat your words.
Did you know that parents rank financial literacy as the number one most difficult life skill to teach?
Meet Greenlight, the debit card and money app for families.
With Greenlight, you can send money to kids quickly, set up chores, automate allowance, and keep an eye on your kids' spending with real-time notifications.
Kids learn to earn, save, and spend wisely.
And parents can rest easy knowing their kids are learning about money with guardrails in place.
Try Greenlight risk-free today at greenlight.com slash wondery.
On the morning of Monday, March 24th, 1986, 46-year-old Julie Williams finished up getting ready for work in her bedroom in Mesa, Arizona.
And as she did, she couldn't stop smiling.
When she was done, she took a final look in the mirror, then grabbed her purse and headed outside to her car.
And as she made her 20-minute morning commute to the city of Tempe, where her office was, she saw other people heading to work.
And she saw businesses and shops opening up.
And this made her smile just keep getting bigger.
Julie had been working as a secretary at an insurance agency for the past several months, and she actually loved going in every day.
It wasn't that she always dreamed of working in insurance or anything like that, but for the first time in years, Julie had started to feel a real sense of purpose and peace at her job.
Because Julie had dedicated most of her life to this point, to being a mother to her three daughters.
She'd stayed at home in California, where she'd lived while the girls were growing up.
She stayed home so she could look after them and cook them dinners and just be there for them all the time and give them the best life they possibly could have.
Julie's daughters were everything to her.
Now, Julie would not have traded that time with her daughters for anything in the world.
She didn't regret it at all. But now, her daughters were grown up.
They were married and even beginning families of their own.
Once all three of them had officially moved out of the house, Julie really struggled.
She didn't really know how to live without them.
It was like now that she was an empty nester, she didn't know what to do.
And to make matters worse, following her kids leaving, she and her husband got divorced.
So she really was beginning to feel lost and alone.
But Julie had decided she would just have to make some major changes to basically save her life.
And so she had moved from California to Arizona, where one of her daughters lived, and she had set out to start the next phase of her life, which she was determined to make a happy one.
Just before 8 a.m., Julie turned off a road in Tempe and pulled into the parking lot of a large office building that housed several businesses, including the insurance company where she worked.
She parked her car and headed to the front door.
She pulled her magnetic ID badge out of her purse and swiped it across the card reader that was just to the side of the door.
She heard the lock click open, so she walked inside and headed down a hallway to her company's office.
This particular branch of this insurance company was rather small.
Julie was one of only five employees there.
But this small office had played a major part in helping her start this new phase of her life.
Julie liked the job and got along well with the few other people she worked with.
But most importantly, working here had helped Julie realize she could be independent and that she could have goals for herself that had nothing to do with taking care of other people.
And this realization had already inspired Julie to do other things on her own.
She'd started making new friends and going out with them on the weekends, and she'd become an active member in her church.
Inside the office, Julie said hello to a couple of the other employees who'd also just arrived.
And at some point, one of her coworkers named Deborah Gresham waved to her and came over.
And the two women began chatting about their weekends as they headed to the break room to put on a pot of coffee before beginning the workday.
But just a few minutes later, Julie's coworker, Debra, rushed out of the break room with a concerned look on her face.
She saw Julie running down a hallway, and she called after her if Julie needed help.
But Julie didn't respond. The other three employees saw and heard Deborah calling out, and they immediately got up from their desks and came over to see what was going on.
But Deborah just shook her head like she didn't even understand what was happening.
She said that she and Julie were talking in the break room making coffee, and then all of a sudden, Julie said she felt sick and dizzy and just took off running down the hallway towards the bathroom.
Deborah said Julie looked really bad, like something was genuinely wrong with her.
From the hallway, Debra continued to call out to Julie to see if she needed anything, but she didn't get any response.
So she and another female employee went into the women's bathroom.
And when they stepped inside, they immediately began to panic.
Because through the crack under one of the bathroom stall doors, they could clearly see Julie slumped over on the floor.
Immediately, Debra and the other woman ran to the stall, but they couldn't get it open.
And so the other employees, so not Debra, she dropped to the floor and crawled under the bathroom stall door.
And when she actually got a good look at Julie, she immediately shouted to Debra to call 911.
About 15 minutes later, Officer Sue Scoville of the Tempe Police Department was driving through the city in her cruiser when she got a message from dispatch.
A woman had been found unresponsive inside of a bathroom in a nearby office building.
There wasn't much information other than that, but dispatch said paramedics were already on the way.
Officer Scoville said she'd head right over to the office building, then she turned and hit the gas.
As Scoville drove, she began to run through a series of statements in her head, like she was repeating some kind of mantra.
And what she was saying to herself was basically every step she had been trained to take when she arrived on the scene, because Officer Scoville was not experienced.
She was actually a rookie cop. And even though there was really no expectation that she would fully understand what she was walking into, I mean, she didn't, and nobody would, she still wanted to make sure that when she got there, she followed procedure and did everything just right.
So as Scoville sped towards the office building, she kept repeating those steps over and over, and then when she arrived, she jumped right into action.
Scoville walked into the big business building and made her way over to the insurance agency.
And there, at the door, she saw four employees, and all of them looked like they were completely in shock.
Just before Scoville had arrived, she'd received word that paramedics had arrived at the scene and taken the woman who had collapsed to the hospital.
And so for all Scoville knew, this woman might have just had a heart attack or some other medical emergency.
But in the office, Scoville cycled through the steps she would need to take in her head once again and then began taking those steps.
She asked the employees who the woman was who'd collapsed and exactly what had happened that morning prior to calling 911.
Deborah said the woman who had been taken to the hospital was Julie Williams, a secretary in the office.
Deborah said Julie had arrived at work that morning at about 8, like she always did.
Officer Scoville asked if Julie had seemed okay when she first got there.
Had she seemed sick or maybe looked like she was physically struggling in any way?
But Debra just shook her head. She said no, Julie seemed fine.
They'd talked about their weekends and gone to the break room together.
But then Julie took a sip of water, got this weird look on her face, and told Debra not to drink any.
Then, before they could do anything else or say anything else, Julie said she felt sick and turned and ran out to the bathroom.
Scoville took down some notes and then asked Debra to lead her to the break room.
The break room was a small, brightly lit room with a sink, a refrigerator, a lunch table, a coffee station, and a water cooler.
Officer Scoville walked over to the water cooler.
It looked like any normal water cooler in a typical office break room, but she already had a hunch.
She asked if anybody else had had a cup of water that morning from this water cooler.
And when she said that, Debra had this really surprised look on her face like she'd completely forgotten something huge.
And she said, me. I got water earlier. But as soon as I tasted it, it just tasted strange.
And so I had spit it out and dumped the water down the drain.
Officer Scoville didn't waste any time. She told Debra to step out of the break room and to make sure nobody else came in there.
Debra nodded and walked out. Scoville still wasn't sure what was going on here, but she now had a real fear that the water in that cooler had caused Julie to get sick.
And if that was the case, this might not be just a natural medical emergency.
So Scoville radioed into the station and said they would need a detective on the scene right away.
The show is sponsored by BetterHelp. When I fell into a depression in 2018, I didn't know what to do.
Every day I felt stressed, but figured I'd just eventually snap out of it.
However, as time went on, I only felt worse.
And over time, my mental health really took a serious toll on my life and the lives of the people around me.
Friends and family tried to help by, you know, doing their own research and offering different remedies and opportunities to boost my spirits.
But ultimately, it was just such an overload of information that I struggled to make any steps toward getting better.
And in some ways, this only made me feel worse and honestly more depressed.
However, eventually, really with the help of my family urging me to do this, I did speak to a therapist for the first time.
And that's where I had a breakthrough. Now therapy might not be a solution for everyone, but if you're struggling and you don't know what to do and haven't really tried to do anything yet, therapy is a great starting point.
Take time to invest in your mental wellness with BetterHelp.
With access to over 30,000 therapists and serving more than 5 million people globally, BetterHelp is a platform you can trust.
Join a session with a therapist at the click of a button and easily switch therapists anytime at no additional cost until you feel supported.
As the largest online therapy provider in the world, BetterHelp can provide access to mental health professionals with a diverse variety of expertise.
Talk it out with BetterHelp. Our listeners get 10% off their first month at betterhelp.com slash mrballinpod.
That's betterhelp, H-E-L-P dot com slash mrballinpod.
Wherever you go, whatever they get into, From chill time to everyday adventures, protect your dog from parasites with Credelio Quattro.
For full safety information, side effects, and warnings, visit credelioquattrolabel.com.
Consult your vet or call 1-888-545-5973.
Ask your vet for Credelio Quattro and visit quattrodog.com.
Later that morning, veteran detective Mike Palmer of the Tempe Police Department walked into the insurance agency and immediately met with Officer Scoville.
In his eight years as a detective, Palmer had gotten this reputation on the force for having what they called a sixth sense.
He could just tell when something was off.
Other police officers said he could arrive at a scene and see things that nobody else could see, like an entire crime would just come to him in a vision.
Now, Detective Palmer kind of laughed off claims like that.
As far as he was concerned, the sixth sense people talked about was just him being hyper-observant and trying to ask the right questions.
He told Scoville that he had called the hospital before he left the station, and he learned that Julie Williams, their victim, was in a coma.
And based on an MRI and CAT scan, doctors already feared she would never wake up.
They said she had gone into cardiac arrest and suffered brain damage.
But at this point, they still didn't know what the cause was.
Scoville told Detective Palmer all the details she had gotten from Julie's coworker, Deborah.
She told him that Julie had supposedly gotten a drink from the water cooler right before she passed out.
And before that, Deborah had apparently tried the water, basically barely sipped it, but said it tasted funny and had just spit it out right away.
Palmer put on a pair of gloves and he and Officer Scoville headed to the break room.
Palmer grabbed a cup and he filled it from the water cooler and the smell immediately hit him.
He told Scoville that her hunch about the water being bad was definitely right, because he said this cup of water had a distinct almond smell.
He would need to bring a forensics team in and get the crime lab to run tests to be sure, but he was confident that that smell could only mean one thing.
The water in the cooler had been contaminated with cyanide.
Cyanide is a highly toxic and potentially deadly chemical.
It can be found in liquid and powder forms, and sometimes it can give off a distinct odor that smells a lot like almonds.
But even when that's the case, not everyone can pick up this almond smell.
But Detective Palmer, who people already believed could see more than other cops, had smelled it right away.
Palmer stood up, poured out the water and started searching the rest of the kitchen.
And when he got to the coffee station, he saw something that further supported the idea that cyanide had been used in here.
The empty coffee pot had the strange crystalline residue inside of it.
Palmer suspected this meant that cyanide had also been poured into the coffee pot. and the mugs that were sitting next to the pot also had a light coat of the same residue inside of them.
So it seemed to him like whoever did this had been trying to poison basically any drink somebody could have possibly gotten in this break room.
Palmer told Scoville that there was no question in his mind about what had happened here.
They were dealing with an attempted murder.
Somebody had tried to make sure that Julie Williams, or somebody else, or maybe everyone at the office, was going to ingest cyanide.
Detective Palmer quickly radioed in that he needed a forensics team and several more officers on the scene.
Then he walked out of the break room and found Julie's coworker, Deborah, and he had one simple question for her.
When was the last time the coffee pot and the mugs in the break room got washed?
Deborah said she knew that everything had been cleaned when she had left the office for the weekend this past Friday evening.
Palmer had shown up here not knowing if he was walking into a crime scene or a medical emergency.
And while he was still trying to get his mind around how or why somebody seemed to have poisoned the entire break room, Debra's comment about things being washed on Friday enabled him to see a clear timeline of events.
If Debra was telling the truth, that meant the coffee pot and mugs had been contaminated potentially with cyanide sometime after Friday evening after work and before 8 a.m. this Monday morning. to Palmer, this likely meant that whoever had done this had come into the office over the weekend and poisoned everything with cyanide then.
Deborah said as far as she knew, nobody from the office had come into work over the weekend.
However, the whole building did have a weekend cleaning crew that would have had access to the break room, and also there had been a construction crew working inside the building all weekend too.
This made the list of people that Palmer would have to potentially track down a lot larger than just Julie's coworkers at the insurance agency.
However, Palmer had noticed there was an ID card reader by the building door when he came in, and he thought that that reader would at least make identifying some of those people a bit easier.
So when the rest of his investigation team arrived, he sent several other officers to track down a list of every ID that had been used to access the building since Friday evening.
However, because this was 1986, compiling a list from an ID reader was not a fast, simple computer function like it is now.
And so Detective Palmer knew that data collection like that would take some time.
He also told his team to get the names of the people on the construction and cleaning crews that had been there as well.
Palmer hoped that all of this would point him in the right direction.
Because as of right now, Palmer had no idea who the intended victim or victims were supposed to be.
But he assumed it clearly had to be somebody at the insurance agency.
And if Julie hadn't been the target, or at least not the sole target, he feared that others could still be in danger.
Within hours of Julie being taken to the hospital, Detective Palmer's team was tracking down names of people who had weakened access to the building and a forensics unit began a full sweep of the break room.
And while that was happening, Detective Palmer met with the other employees and things quickly took a turn.
The first employee he spoke to was a man who was clearly upset about what had happened.
He said he just didn't understand, because everybody loved Julie.
She was like a nice mom who looked out for everyone else.
But when Palmer approached the desk of a 29-year-old woman named Diane Harry, she did not look upset.
Standing next to her was a man who she would say was her husband, Louis, and apparently, after she had found out what happened to Julie, she had called him, and Louis had rushed right over to be with her.
Palmer understood that, but from his perspective, it just seemed like Diane and Lewis appeared to be in a total panic, like as if they were the ones who had been poisoned.
And so Palmer asked them like, hey, you know, why are you guys this upset?
What's going on here? And Diane at that point would chime in and say, actually, that's an easy question to answer because she believed somebody was actually trying to kill her.
This surprised Detective Palmer. So he actually took a seat near Diane's desk and said, okay, what do you mean by that?
And Diane said that both she and her husband Louis were being threatened by a very dangerous man.
And so Palmer asked them to please tell him everything they could about this man.
Diane immediately shot a look over at Lewis.
He nodded, and in a low voice, he told Detective Palmer that this had all started a few months back, when a friend named Verbray Wooten had come to him for help.
He said this woman, Verbray, had been in a relationship with a man named Roy Fitzpatrick, but when she'd broken things off with Roy, he got mad.
Verbray had tried to stay away from Roy, but he began stalking her.
Verbre was really scared of Roy and didn't know what to do.
Louis had told her she needed to go to the police, tell them what was happening, and at the very least get a court injunction that would legally force Roy to stay away from her.
Verbre followed Louis' advice, and Louis said he had hoped that that would be the end of it.
However, within days, a letter had shown up at his and Diane's house, and it was from Roy.
And in this letter, Roy threatened that if Louis didn't step away from this situation with Verbray, well, Roy would do something to him.
And within days, more letters from Roy began showing up, and they were increasingly more and more threatening.
And in the final three letters they received, Roy said things like, since Louis had ruined his relationship with Verbray, he would do the same thing to Louis, by getting rid of Diane.
Detective Palmer was shocked. He still hadn't written off the idea that Julie Williams, the woman who was fighting for her life in a coma, had been the intended target.
But there was no way he could ignore that Diane and Lewis seemed to have someone bent on doing them harm.
So he asked Lewis if he would go home and bring those threatening letters back so he could take a look at them.
Lewis said he would. He said they had actually held onto them with the intention to bring them to the police, but they had held off in fear that, you know, talking to the cops might somehow make things even more dangerous for them.
But, you know, given what's happened to Julie here, it was clear they'd waited too long.
Once Lewis headed out to get the letters, Palmer asked one of his team members to get all the background information they could on Roy Fitzpatrick.
In the meantime, Palmer met with the forensics team, and they said he'd been right.
They were sure cyanide had been poured in the water cooler, coffee pot, and the mugs.
And one forensic tech said he thought there was enough of this deadly chemical in the break room to kill 150 people.
It didn't take Lewis long to return, so Detective Palmer sat down again with him and Diane and quickly read over the letters that Lewis had brought in.
There were seven in total. A few were handwritten and a few were typed.
And they definitely got progressively more threatening, just like Lewis had said.
As clear as it was that Roy now had to be considered a major suspect, something still didn't quite make sense to Palmer.
How could Roy have gotten into the office building over the weekend?
He didn't work at this building, and so he did not have an ID card.
But, you know, there was a chance that he might have just crept in unseen with the construction crew or cleaning crew or anybody else that just happened to come in over the weekend that did have a batch.
Palmer asked Diane and Lewis if maybe Roy had any connection to the insurance agency or to any of the other businesses on site in this building.
Lewis said he wasn't sure, but he knew Roy worked for a company that did deliver packages all over Tempe.
So maybe that was enough to allow him access to the building without being noticed.
On the morning of March 25th, so one day after Julie was rushed to the hospital, Detective Mike Palmer sat inside of a small interview room at the Tempe police station, reading over the letters that Diane and Louis had supposedly received from a friend's angry ex-boyfriend, Roy Fitzpatrick.
Palmer had barely slept, but he still felt energized.
In the course of just a day, this case had gone in a totally different direction that he never would have predicted.
He also now had confirmation from the hospital that Julie, who was still in a coma, had indeed ingested cyanide.
And even though Palmer now did have doubts that Julie had been the intended target, regardless, she was the victim of this crime.
Palmer didn't want to forget that, and he wanted to get justice for her and her family as quickly as possible.
Just then, the door opened and a uniformed police officer led Roy Fitzpatrick into the room.
He told Roy to take a seat across a table from Palmer, and then after he had, that officer stepped out.
Detective Palmer slipped the threatening letters into a file folder and then took a good look at Roy.
Palmer's first impression was that Roy looked more annoyed than nervous.
In fact, Roy said he had no idea why he was there.
So Palmer started right in with his line of questioning.
He asked if Roy had ever gotten violent with his ex-girlfriend, Verbrae Wooten, either when they were together or after they had broken up.
Roy shook off the question. He said they'd argue like couples do, and maybe he yelled sometimes, but that was it.
So Palmer followed up by asking if Roy had ever sent any threatening letters to Diane and Lewis Harry.
And at that, a very confused look came across Roy's face.
Without missing a beat, Detective Palmer opened up that file folder and slid the letters across the table and asked Roy if he had written them.
Roy looked down at the first letter sitting in front of him, and he said, I didn't send that.
But Palmer didn't buy it, so he kept pressing.
And pretty soon, any attitude that Roy had walked in here with completely dropped.
Roy apologized for lying, and he began to shift uncomfortably in his chair.
He admitted that he had sent Lewis and Diane some letters.
He blamed Lewis and that stupid court injunction for his ongoing problems with Verbre.
But he said the letters were just posturing, a way for him to sort of get out his anger.
He said he would never actually do anything to hurt them.
Detective Palmer and Roy spoke for a bit longer.
As incriminating as the letters seemed, Palmer knew they were not nearly enough for him to hold Roy for now.
Because without any real evidence linking Roy to the crime, it would be a big leap from someone writing threatening letters to poisoning an office break room with cyanide.
And Palmer had been a detective long enough to know that a district attorney would not take on a case against Roy at this point.
So at the end of their interview, Palmer told Roy he could head back home.
But he shouldn't be surprised if he soon found himself back in this room.
Hey, it's Mr. Ballin. I'm excited to tell you about something special.
For the first time, my show, Mr. Ballin's Medical Mysteries, has joined forces with Redacted, Declassified Mysteries with Luke LaManna, to tell a story so complex it required our combined storytelling styles.
This special episode is called A Redacted Medical Mystery.
In it, unexplained symptoms after a routine surgery quickly unravel into something much darker, leading straight to classified government operations hidden for decades.
To listen and uncover the truth alongside us, head to either the Mr. Ballin's Medical Mysteries or Redacted show pages right now.
Or search for A Redacted Medical Mystery in the Wondery app or wherever you get your podcasts.
If you're fascinated by unexplained medical stories, well, stick around on Medical Mysteries.
Every week, we dive deep into cases that will leave you questioning everything you know about the human body.
And if government conspiracies are more your style, Redacted is your go-to for stories that unravel secrets never meant to see the light of day.
Remember, you can listen to both shows early and ad-free by joining Wondery Plus.
Hey, it's Mr. Ballin. For the first time, my show, Medical Mysteries, has joined forces with Redacted for a special episode.
A Redacted Medical Mystery uncovers how routine surgery leads to classified government operations.
Listen now on the Medical Mysteries or Redacted feeds or search A Redacted Medical Mystery wherever you get your podcasts.
Following the interview with Roy, Detective Palmer called the hospital, hoping against hope that they might have some good news about Julie.
But those hopes were quickly dashed. Julie's condition had not improved at all, and doctors feared she actually wouldn't be alive much longer.
The call with the hospital really made Palmer mad.
Nobody deserved what happened to Julie, but the fact that she might have just been the victim of some insane plot that had nothing to do with her just made things even worse.
Even though it had only been one day so far, Palmer was determined to keep moving quickly.
He sent members of his team to keep pressing building security for the names of the people who'd swiped their ID badges at the building over the weekend, and he sent others to start interviewing the construction and cleaning crews that had been there as well.
And by early afternoon, Detective Palmer's desire to close this case as fast as he possibly could got even stronger.
Because news of the poisoned water cooler had gotten picked up by local reporters and by popular morning radio DJs in Tempe.
And this had quickly sparked a panic in the city.
People in every office with a water cooler wondered if their water could also be laced with cyanide.
And Palmer knew rumors like that could lead to chaos if they didn't get quashed fast.
And so while Palmer waited to hear back from his team, he went back over the notes he'd taken during the past 24 hours.
Roy remained his primary suspect, but Palmer still didn't know if this man who'd been angry enough to threaten Lewis and Diane would go so far as to actually indiscriminately poison an entire office break room in the hope that, you know, Diane might get killed in the process.
Palmer reread Roy's letters, and when he did, something stood out about the final three, the ones that were by far the most threatening of all of them.
And so as he wondered what to make of them, Palmer decided he would track down the woman who appeared to be at the center of all of this, Roy's ex-girlfriend, Verbrae Wooten.
Just hours later, Palmer sat down with Verbrae inside of an interview room at the station.
And he made it clear to her that she was not in any trouble.
He was just trying to understand her relationship with Roy.
And Verbray said a lot of the same things that Diane and Louis had said.
That she and Roy dated seriously for a while, but when she broke it off, Roy started harassing and threatening her.
And she regretted that, you know, she knew she played a role in getting Louis and Diane dragged into it as well.
Because she was pretty sure Roy had begun stalking both of them.
Now, none of this was new information to Detective Palmer, but Verbray's testimony did reinforce the idea that Roy had the motive and the means to commit this heinous crime.
But before Palmer wrapped up the interview, Verbray said something that Palmer couldn't ignore, and it set his mind racing.
And within minutes, just from this small piece of information, Detective Palmer thought he knew exactly how the break room poisoning had gone down.
This was one of those moments that led other cops to believe Palmer possessed that sixth sense.
Detective Palmer let Verbray go and hurried back to his desk to continue to look over his notes.
Now, despite what his colleagues might think, Palmer would never assume his hunch on something was 100% correct without hard evidence to back it up.
But right now, even though he did feel really strongly that he had a hunch how this went, all he could do was wait.
Because that hard evidence he needed wasn't something he could just get on his own.
Late in the afternoon on the following day, March 26th, Detective Palmer was at the station working the case, as he'd done for almost 48 hours straight, when a member of his investigative team rushed in and headed straight for him.
The officer handed Palmer several sheets of paper and said that they were the record of all the badges that had been swiped to open up the building from past Friday evening until Monday morning, right before Julie was rushed to the hospital.
There were a lot of names, but Palmer immediately began scanning over the pages, and quickly, he found exactly what he was looking for.
Palmer rallied his team and said the information about the IDs almost sealed the case in his mind.
But there were a couple more pieces of evidence he was sure were out there that would make their case airtight.
So Palmer and several other investigators rushed out of the station and headed across town.
They arrived at a small office, and Palmer and his team combed through all of it, hoping to find those final pieces of evidence.
As Palmer rifled through a bookcase, he found a notepad.
He picked it up, flipped through the pages, and then shouted for his team that he had found one of the things they had come for.
A few minutes later, one of Palmer's investigators crouched down on the floor and began digging through a trash can, and he suddenly froze.
This officer completely trusted Detective Palmer's instincts, but he still couldn't believe he had found this object just sitting in the trash.
He grabbed it in his gloved hand, stood up, and held it up for Palmer to see.
And for the first time in two days, Palmer felt like he could finally just take a breath.
Because between the ID badge report, the notepad in Palmer's hand, and now this object the other officer had found in the trash, Detective Palmer didn't just know what happened to Julie Williams.
He knew what happened, and he had evidence to back it up.
And just as Palmer was getting ready to move in on a suspect, he got word that Julie had passed away.
So now he had a murder case on his hands, not just an attempted murder.
Based on the ID card report, evidence found at the crime scene and other locations, and interviews conducted over the investigation, this is a reconstruction of what police believe happened that led to Julie Williams getting poisoned.
Just after 10 a.m. on Saturday, March 22nd, 1986, two days before Julie was rushed to the hospital, the killer drove slowly through the streets of Tempe, Arizona.
The killer wanted to make sure they didn't speed or do anything that might attract attention.
Because sitting in the passenger seat was what appeared to be a nondescript cardboard box, but inside, it held a container of cyanide.
The killer pulled into the parking lot and cut the engine, but they didn't move.
Instead, they scanned the exterior of the office building right in front of them.
But all they saw were a couple of construction workers taking a break outside, so basically nobody was around.
The killer took a steadying breath, then climbed out of the car, walked around to the passenger side, and grabbed the cardboard box.
With the box, they headed to the front door of the building, making sure not to rush.
If those construction workers or anybody else saw them, they didn't want to stand out in any way.
The killer reached the front door and swiped an ID card over the reader.
The door unlocked, and the killer made their way inside and down the hallway to the insurance agency.
When they stepped inside the insurance office, the killer looked around, making sure nobody was there.
But it was all clear. So the killer went to the break room and put the box down on the floor right near the water cooler.
Then they grabbed the large water bottle on top of the cooler, trying hard not to spill any water or make any kind of mess, and they managed to turn the large open bottle over and set it on its base on the floor without spilling any.
Then they carefully opened up the cardboard box and pulled out a large unmarked plastic bottle.
They unscrewed the cap and then grabbed a scooper they had brought out of the box and used it to begin to scoop up the powdered cyanide from that bottle and dump it into the water bottle.
They used far more cyanide than they figured they would need to kill someone, but they didn't want to take any chances.
Finally, when they were done, they carefully picked up that big water bottle, now laced with tons of cyanide.
They raised it up, flipped it over, and put it back on its spot atop the water cooler, again, without spilling any water.
The killer exhaled. They'd gotten through what was by far the hardest part of their plan.
But they still needed to move quickly and get the rest done and get out of that building as quick as they could before anybody saw them.
So the killer carried the cyanide bottle across the break room and set it down near the sink.
Then they grabbed the clean coffee pot as well as some clean coffee mugs and they sprinkled more cyanide into all of them.
Once the job was done, the killer left the coffee pot and the mugs by the coffee machine, put the cyanide bottle back in the cardboard box, scooped it up, and now at this point, they just wanted to get out of there, so they just ran out of the building back to their car.
A few minutes later, the killer arrived back at their house.
There, they hid the box until they could discard of it later, and they also slipped their spouse's ID badge back where they had taken it from without their spouse ever knowing it was gone.
Diane Harry, Julie's co-worker, had been absolutely right when she told Detective Palmer that she, not Julie, had likely been the intended target of the cyanide poisoning.
But it would turn out it was not Roy Fitzpatrick, the man who Diane thought wanted to kill her, who had actually done the poisoning.
Instead, it had been Diane's own husband, Lewis.
It turned out Roy's ex-girlfriend, Verbrae, was not just a friend of Louis's.
She was his lover. In fact, they'd been having a secret affair for months when she'd filed the court injunction against Roy, and Louis had been the catalyst behind that decision, hoping it would finally get Roy out of the picture for good.
But when Roy began sending those threatening letters, Louis saw a huge opportunity.
Investigators believe that Lewis wanted out of his marriage, but he didn't want to deal with the hassle and financial burden of a divorce.
So he thought he could just murder Diane and frame Roy for it, using those threatening letters as evidence.
But it was actually those seven letters that initially led Detective Palmer to question if Roy really was the man behind the crime that killed Julie.
Because those letters were a mix of handwritten and also typed letters.
And the final three, the ones where Roy allegedly started threatening to actually kill Diane, were all typed.
So there was no way to prove they'd actually been written by Roy.
Roy admitted he had sent letters to Lewis and Diane, but he said he had only written four of them, and he had only written them by hand.
He had not typed any letters. Now, Palmer was not willing to just accept Roy at his word, but he didn't ignore the fact that maybe somebody else had typed and then delivered those final three letters, sort of framing Roy.
With that in mind, Detective Palmer brought Verbray in for questioning.
And while most of what she said pointed the finger at Roy, there was one thing she told Palmer that helped completely change his mind about the case.
Because she said that Lewis was actually in the process of divorcing Diane, and that he was already talking to Verbray about them getting married and starting a family together.
But in truth, Lewis had not started the divorce process at all, and Diane still truly believed that she and Lewis were in a faithful, loving marriage.
And the final pieces began to fall into place when Detective Palmer received the log of everyone who had used an ID to get into the office building over the weekend, because one of those ID cards belonged to Diane.
But Palmer didn't think Diane was the culprit here.
Instead, he saw this as further proof that Lewis was the man they were looking for.
Clearly, he had used his wife's ID card to sneak into the building.
And so when they searched Lewis's office where he worked, Palmer found a notepad, and it was filled with handwritten drafts of the final three typed threatening letters that focused on killing Diane.
And then also one of Palmer's investigators found something in Lewis's office trash can, and it was a receipt from a chemical company that appeared to be for the purchase of cyanide.
During this whirlwind investigation, Detective Palmer also came to learn that Lewis had actually first attempted to murder his wife when they were at home by putting cyanide in her scotch.
But when the amount of cyanide he used in her scotch just made Diane feel sick for a night, he completely rethought his plan, and he decided killing Diane at work would make it far easier for him to cast suspicion on Roy, even if it meant killing other people in the process.
Lewis Harris was found guilty of first-degree murder as well as multiple counts of attempted murder.
He was sentenced to life in prison with a chance of parole after 95 years.
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.
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. 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. And before you go, please tell us about yourself by completing a short survey at wondery.com survey.
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+.
