Hey, Prime members, you can binge eight new episodes of the Mr. Ballon podcast one month early, and all episodes ad-free on Amazon Music. Download the Amazon Music app today. On the morning of July seventh, 2019, Sergeant Dan Burback responded to a call at the home of a 49-year-old woman in a small Texas town. Burback got to the house and found a bloody crime scene in the master bedroom, evidence that a violent struggle must have taken place there the night before. Now, three other members of the victim's family were home that night, and they had been in close proximity to the master bedroom. The victim's husband had been asleep on the couch just steps away from the master bedroom. The victim's teenage daughter was asleep in the room just next door, and the victim's son had been in an upstairs bedroom playing video games all night. But they all said they didn't hear a thing the night before. And so it seemed totally inconceivable to Sergeant Burback that this violent attack could have taken place in one room while the entire family just went about their business and heard nothing. And so Burback believed something sinister must have happened in that house the night before, and it seemed very possible, if not likely, that these family members were a part of it.

But the sergeant had a problem. The victim of this apparent crime in the master bedroom was nowhere to be found. But before we get into that story, if you're a fan of the Strange, dark, and mysterious delivered in story format, then you come to the right podcast because that's all we do, and we upload twice a week, once on Monday and once on Thursday. So if that's of interest to you, please offer to do all the grocery shopping for the follow button. But when you get to the store, buy absolutely nothing on their list. Okay, let's get into today's story.

Everything to play for has taken on its biggest challenge yet. We've had two-parters We've even had three partners. This is a four-partner. And the reason why we're giving it four podcasts is it's probably the greatest individual rivalry in Premier League history. Yes, Arsene Wenger versus Alex Ferguson. We've bitten off more than we can shoot. And what it reminds me of, I saw a video on social media the other day of a Python having swallowed a duvet. And the vets were trying to get the duvet out of the Python. I thought that is like me and Colin having to skip over FA Cup finals because there's so much to talk about when it comes to Wenger and Ferguson.

Doubles, trebles, pizza around the face.

It has everything. If you want to listen to the podcast equivalent of a Python swallowing a duvet. Follow everything to play for on the Wundry app or wherever you get your podcasts. You can binge Seasons early and add for you right now on WNDYRI Plus. From WNDYRI, I'm Indra Vama, and this is The Spy Who. This season And we open the file on Oleg Penkowski, the spy who diffused the missile crisis. It's 1960, and the world's on the brink of nuclear war. However, one man in Moscow is about to emerge from the shadows with an offer for the CIA. His name is Oleg Penkowski. As a Cold War double agent, Penkowski wants to supply the US with the Soviet Union's greatest nuclear secrets. But is this man putting his life on the line to save the world, or is he part of an elaborate trap? Follow the Spy Who on the WNDYRI app or wherever you listen to podcasts, or you can binge the full season of the Spy Who diffused the Missile Crisis early and app-free with WNDYRI Plus.

It had been a muggy day in North Texas on July sixth, 2019, but the oppressive heat began to let up right as the sun set, and by 07:00 PM, it had become an ideal summer night of about 73 degrees Fahrenheit. And so it seemed like the perfect Saturday night to go out in town. But 49-year-old Manuela Allen, known to her friends and family as just Monu, along with her husband Peter, had the house all to themselves that evening. So instead of going out to enjoy the pleasant summer weather, they decided instead to have a relaxing night in, just the two of them on the couch just watching TV together. Peter and Monu had not had many evenings alone like this in their 23 years of marriage, and that was because they had spent most of those years raising their four kids. So this was a house that had constantly buzzed with activity and noise. But now, all but one of their four kids had graduated from high school, and their oldest son was away at college, so the house was getting quieter. And Manu and Peter were already thinking about how someday soon, it might just be the two of them living here.

And as much as they loved their children, it was nights like this that made them look forward to the day that they would be empty nesters. Peter grabbed his glass that contained some vodka from the end table and took a sip, and then he and Manu leaned back on the couch to watch a replay of a Texas Rangers baseball game. Manu loved sports, and while baseball was not her favorite, It would have to do until football season rolled back around. Manu and Peter lived in the small Texas town of Olny, with a population of just 3,000 people, and the nearest city with a major football team was over two hours away. But both Manu and Peter were teachers at Olny high school, and so during football season, they went to watch their beloved Only Cubs play every Friday night. Manu didn't care that the Cubs were on the third longest losing streak in the state of Texas. She just loved going to support her students who were on the team, and she enjoyed the camaraderie of sitting in the stands along with her friends and her family. As a teacher, Manu felt responsible for her students, even when they were outside the classroom.

So she dedicated a lot of her time to tutoring and mentoring students, especially the ones that seemed to have the most issues, even beyond on just schoolwork issues, kids that had problems at home or kids who had behavioral issues. Manu was all about helping those kids. But the upcoming school year and the roaring crowds in the stands on Friday nights felt really far away from Manu on this relaxing summer evening. And the sound of the baseball game on TV started to become white noise for her, and by 10:00 PM, she could barely keep her eyes open. Peter noticed his wife nodding off, and he gently nudged her and asked if she wanted to go to bed. Manu looked over at the clock and said she should get some sleep. Peter gave his a kiss, and Manu stood up, and she shuffled down the hallway, entered the master bedroom, and closed the door behind her. Peter would not be joining his wife tonight in the master bedroom. He and Manu had this understanding that on any night when Peter drank, even if it was just one drink, he would have to sleep on the couch. So with his glass of vodka still half full, this would be one of those nights.

Peter continued watching TV and slowly nursing his drink, and he started to feel tired. And then around 11:30, the couple's 20-year-old son, Darien, came home. He let himself in with a key, not to his dad and went upstairs to his own bedroom. But then, around 15 minutes later, there was a knock on the front door. Peter stood up and groaned a bit as he walked bleary-eyed towards the front door. He unlocked it and opened it up. And outside the door stood the couple's 15-year-old daughter, Kiara. She said hi to her dad, walked right past him, and went straight to her room. Peter sat back down on the couch. The couple's 18-year-old daughter, Melanie, was away on a weekend trip with her friends, so she wasn't expected home. And at this point, it was close to midnight, so Peter dimmed the lights, reclined on the couch, and slowly drifted off to sleep while the TV stayed on at a low volume. A little after 08:00 AM the next morning, Peter woke up feeling like he could have used maybe another hour or two of sleep. Now, it was Saturday, and if Peter wanted to, he could keep sleeping.

But even on these weekends, Peter just could not seem to sleep in. He just automatically got up. So Peter climbed up from the couch, grabbed his computer, and then went back to the couch to read some news online. At the same time Peter was doing During this, his daughter, Chiara, had just woken up as well, and she was getting ready to go to the gym. But first, she wanted to put her dirty clothes in the washing machine. The Allen house had five bedrooms, but it was still a fairly compact house, just a little over 2,000 square feet. And the house was laid out in a way where Kiara actually had to go through her parents' master bedroom, which was right next to her own bedroom, in order to get into the laundry room. So Kiara stepped out of her room and then tried turning the knob to the master bedroom, but she found the door was locked from the inside. Kiara walked down the hall and saw her dad on the computer, and she asked him where mom was, and Peter just said, Oh, check the master bedroom. Kiara said she already had, and the door was locked.

Peter then told his daughter to just go around through the garage because in their house, the master bedroom had two entrances. There was one in the hallway inside of the house, which is the door that was locked, and then the other entrance was through the laundry room on the other side, which connected to the garage. So Kiara stepped outside of the house and went into the garage, and she walked into the laundry room, and then she reached the door that led into the master bedroom, and when she tried the door knob, it was unlocked. So she swung it open, she stepped inside, and she froze because what she saw was horrifying. Kiara turned and ran back outside, back around into the main house, ran to her dad and said, Mom is not in the bedroom, and there is blood everywhere. Peter instantly sprung up, raced outside into the garage and into the master bedroom, and right away, he stepped in this big puddle of blood in the carpet, and he looked around the master, and there really was blood everywhere, and his wife was nowhere to be seen. Peter instantly thought his wife must be badly injured somewhere.

So he ran from the master bedroom, with Kiara now following behind him, back into the garage and then out to the driveway, and And that's when he realized Manu's car was gone. Peter turned to his daughter and said, Mom must have hurt herself and driven herself to the hospital. And so Peter called his wife's cell phone, but it went straight to voicemail. So a few minutes later, Peter and Kiara got into his car and they sped to a nearby hospital thinking that's where Manu is going to be. But when they got there, Peter slowly drove through the parking lot of the emergency room looking for Manu's white SUV, but they didn't see it anywhere. So they parked the car and they went inside the hospital and asked the staff if Manuela Allen had been admitted, and they said no. So Peter and Kiara left that hospital, went to another nearby hospital, but again, Monu's car was not there, and the staff said she had not admitted herself. And so Peter and Kiara returned home, and at this point, Peter dialed 911, and he explained to the operator that his wife was missing, and there was blood all over her bedroom.

The first officer who arrived at the Allen house met with Peter outside. He asked Peter what was going on, and Peter told the officer that he really had no idea. His daughter, Kiara, had come to him that morning saying their mom was gone, and there was blood all over the bedroom, and then he went and checked, and he saw the same thing, and then he went out to the driveway, and he noticed his wife's car was gone. Peter explained that he and Kiara then drove to two hospitals thinking his wife must have gotten hurt and then driven herself to a hospital. But when they got to the two hospitals, his wife wasn't there, and they said they had not seen her. The officer noticed that as Peter was explaining the story, he seemed totally calm and not shaken or panicked or really showing any emotion. That just seemed unusual to the officer, considering the circumstances Peter had just described. I mean, his wife, at a minimum, seems to have been gravely hurt if she's not already deceased. And so you would think that would elicit a bigger reaction. But the officer kept that to himself, and instead, he had Peter lead him inside the residence to the master bedroom.

And the first thing the officer noticed was that the bed had been stripped bare, and there was a bloody pillow on the floor next to the bed. And he did see blood spatter all over the room, across the mattress, the closet doors, and the wall. In fact, there was so much blood that the officer did not believe a person could survive having lost that much of it. And so he wondered to himself why Peter didn't immediately call 911 instead of getting in the car with his daughter and driving around to various hospitals first. It seemed obvious this was an emergency, so why wasn't it treated that way? Then the officer noticed something else on the bedroom floor. It was a knife. And so at this point, it was obvious this was a crime scene. So he asked Peter and Kiara to clear out of the master bedroom and go wait for him on their couch. And so after the father and daughter had stood out of the room, the officer walked outside and went to the garage. Immediately, he saw bloody streaks on the ground, and he traced them through the laundry room and back to the door of the master bedroom, and he recognized these bloody streaks had to be drag marks.

Everything the officer saw painted a picture of a very violent struggle having taken place in the bedroom, most likely sometime during the night. The officer then walked back into the house and observed bloody footprints leading from the master bedroom to the kitchen, right to a spot next to the refrigerator. And so the officer walked walked into the living room where Peter and Kiara were, and he asked Peter about these footprints and why would somebody go into the kitchen, potentially. Peter explained that actually his wife kept her keys on a hook right next to the refrigerator, and her keys were gone along with her car. At this point, the officer radio dispatch for help and said the police should now be on the lookout for Manu's vehicle because clearly, either Manu or someone who harmed Manu had taken the keys and taken the vehicle. A few minutes later, Sergeant Dan Burbeck of the Young County Sheriff's Department, along with a couple of local police from Olne, pulled up in front of the Allen house, and the officer who had first arrived on scene, walked up to Burbek and briefed him on what he had seen. After being briefed up, Sergeant Burbek immediately walked into the Allen house and told Peter and Kiara that they would need to step outside.

As Peter and his daughter walked out onto the porch, Peter told Burbek that actually one of his other kids was still in the house upstairs. So Burbek told the father and the daughter to stay outside, and then Burbek walked into the house upstairs to a second floor bedroom, opened the door, and found 20-year-old Darien inside with his headphones on playing video games. Burbek asked Darien to come outside with him, and Darien, who looked very confused, asked what was going on here. But Burbek just said he needed Darien to leave the house right now. So Darien just did as he was told and stood up and followed the detective downstairs. And then he, along with Burbek, joined Peter and Chiara outside on the porch. Once they were out there, Burbek began questioning them, starting with the husband, Peter. Burbek asked Peter, Why did you sleep on the couch that night instead of in your bed with your wife? Peter explained the agreement he had with Monu that whenever he drank, no matter how much, he would sleep on the couch. Now, Sergeant Burbek kept this to himself, but right away he wondered, Why would you have that agreement in place?

Was Peter like a maniac when he drank? Did he get violent? What was going on here? Burbek then proceeded to ask each member of the family if they had heard anything unusual during the night before because Burbek assumed someone in the house must have heard something, considering the scene in the master bedroom, and the couch where Peter slept was only about 20 steps away from the master bedroom. Kiara was in the bedroom right next door to the master bedroom, and Darien was right above it in the upstairs bedroom. It just seemed impossible that such a violent struggle could have taken place with them not hearing anything. But Peter said he really heard nothing, aside from the sound of an engine, which he thought could have been his wife's SUV starting up around dawn. He said the sound actually woke him up, but he went right back to sleep and figured it was not a big deal, whatever it was. Burbek asked Peter, Is it normal for your wife to just get up and leave in the middle of the morning like that? Didn't you think to maybe ask her where she was going? Peter replied that it was not his job to keep tabs on his wife.

Darien, who had been upstairs, said the whole night he had his headphones on and was playing video games. The only thing he said he heard over the course of the whole night was a rustling sound coming from the kitchen sometime between maybe 3:00 and 5:00 AM, but he figured it was just his dad maybe getting a snack. And then Kiara, who was in the room right next door to where mother appeared to have been in some life and death struggle, said she really had heard nothing, absolutely nothing. Now, Burbek, by this point, looked totally stunned by their answers. And so Kiara, who picked up on his suspicion, she quickly explained that she had been out that night And when she got home, she went straight to her room, slipped into her bed, put her earbud in, which would have nullified the noise, and she FaceTimed with her boyfriend. And then after the call, she fell asleep still with the earbud in her ears, which again could have prevented her from hearing anything. Burbek didn't know what to believe here, but he just still felt like something was off. Maybe these family members know more than they're letting on.

But he obviously had no proof. And so Burbek told the family that when he was done here at the house, he wanted them to come to the station so he could speak to them further. It was around this time that Lieutenant David Wilke was driving past the Allen family house when he saw the yellow crime scene tape stretched out around their property. Now, Lieutenant Wilke worked for the Sheriff's Department that was the county over, so he had no idea what this crime scene tape was about, but he did know the Allen's personally. In fact, his son was a football player at Olnie High School, and the boy adored Manu. So Lieutenant Wilke just really liked the Allen family, and seeing the crime scene tape It just made his stomach drop because he knew, obviously, something bad had happened. Wilk immediately pulled over, got out of his car, and introduced himself to a local police officer he saw standing outside of the residence. And Wilk asked the officer, What's going on here? And the officer told Wilk that Mrs. Allen was missing, and it didn't look good. Wilk asked if there was anything he could do to help.

The officer told him that actually right now, other patrol units were out looking for Monu's white SUV, and so if Wilk wanted to, he could join in that search. Wilk said, Yes, where should I look? And the officer suggested that maybe he explore the recreational area around Lake Cooper, which was a very popular swimming hole about eight miles north of town. And so the officer gave Lieutenant Wilk a description of Monu's vehicle and her license plate number. And then Wilke left, got back in his car and began driving north until he reached the Lake area. There, he pulled into the recreational area and began driving along the perimeter of the Lake. And as he approached a boat ramp, something on the other side of the Lake, near the dam, drew his attention. It was a white SUV, just like Manu's missing vehicle. And so Lieutenant Wilt, parked, got out of his car and walked around the Lake to where this white SUV was parked. And as Wilt got closer to it, he could see there was nobody in or around the SUV. He could also see the SUV appeared to be stuck on a large mound of dirt, with all four wheels hovering off the ground, as if somebody had driven it there, gotten it stuck, and then left.

Wilke approached the driver's side of the vehicle, and he noticed there were brown smears near the door handle. He leaned in closer, and he saw that these smears were clearly bloody fingerprints. So immediately, Wilk turned on his body camera and proceeded to film and photograph the car, both outside and in, and also the area around it. And then when he was done, he decided to just go ahead and search the whole area because obviously, this could be connected to Manu, and maybe she was out here somewhere. And so Wilk walked towards a fence that was a short distance away from the car. And then once he got there, he turned around and just began scanning the entire area. And that's when something else caught his eye. It was something off in the distance, beneath a thicket of trees. It looked like a pile of laundry on the ground. Wilk began walking towards it, and as he did, he realized this was not just some pile of laundry. It looked like it was the outline of a white bedsheet, and very clearly, this sheet was wrapped around on something fairly big. And so Wilk picked up his pace a bit, and as he got closer, he began to see there were blood stains on the outside of these sheets.

And then when he was right on top, it was obvious that there was a dead body wrapped up inside of the sheets. Wilk had a sick feeling because he was sure the person who was inside of these sheets would be identified as Monu. And so he called into the Young County Sheriff's Department and said he'd found a dead body, and it was almost certainly the one they were looking for.

Are you listening to this podcast in your car or on your commute to work? Maybe while you're dropping your kids off at school. I'm Dan Snow, and on my podcast, Dan Snow's History Hit, I transport you to somewhere a little more exciting. With in-depth series and storytelling, I'll unravel the mysteries of the Inca at Machu Picchu. Follow the footsteps of Howard Carter to Tutankhamun's tomb, and hunt down Shackleton's expedition to Antarctica. For historical adventure and escapism, check out Dan Snow's history hit wherever you get your podcasts. I'm Afua Hirsch. I'm Peter Frankerpan. In our podcast, Legacy, we explore the lives of some of the biggest characters in history. This season, we're exploring the life of Bob Marley. He managed to rise from a childhood of poverty in colonial Jamaica to global stardom, becoming an influential pioneer of reggae and Rastafari. His music was and is extraordinarily popular, but who was the man behind the amazing music and lyrics? Peter, I love Bob Marley. I feel so connected to his legacy in multiple ways. I really can't wait to get into his life because I feel like he's one of those people that everybody can sing along to, but very few really know who he was.

His music It was it I grew up with, but I want to know more about what formed him, and how did you manage to fit so much into such a tragically short life. Follow Legacy Now wherever you get your podcasts, or binge entire seasons early and ad free on WNDYRI Plus. Go deeper and more to the story from WNDYRI's top history podcasts, including American Scandal, American History Tellers, and Black History for Real.

Back at the Allen house, Sergeant Burbeck heard about the discovery of a body on his radio. And so now that this was officially a homicide case, he reached out to the state police, known as the Texas Rangers, for help. He arranged for Peter, Chiara, and Darien to be taken to the nearest Texas Ranger station, and then he got into his cruiser and drove down to the lake as Other county and state police headed that way as well. Burbeck arrived at the lake, and Lieutenant Wilke led him to the body that was still wrapped in the sheets. Since Wilke was not working the case in any official capacity, he'd left the body as he'd found it. So Sergeant Burbek leaned down and began pulling away the sheets and also some yucca leaves that had covered up the victim's face. And then once the victim was exposed, Lieutenant Wilke, who was standing nearby and who knew Manu personally, was able to positively identify her. Manu was deceased. Burbek and a few of the other officers who had arrived put up crime scene tape while they waited for a forensics team to get there. Burbek turned to one of the officers and shared his opinion that the killer was almost certainly someone Manu knew.

He pointed out that the violence inside of her home was so brutal that it just seemed personal. Also, the fact that her face seemed to be covered up with leaves when they found her, well, that was something he'd seen before when the killer was someone close to the victim. Then Burbek radioed the Texas Rangers down at the station where he'd sent Monu's family and one of the rangers broke the news to Peter that, unfortunately, his wife's body had been found. Now, by this point, Peter and Manu's oldest daughter, Melanie, had returned from her overnight trip, and their oldest son had also come back from his college campus, and so they were also with Peter and Kiara and Darien at the station. And so the Rangers watched Peter closely as he turned and told the four children the news about their mother. The two oldest immediately broke down and cried, and Kiara, who had first discovered the blood in the bedroom, collapsed to the floor. But Darien, who said he'd been up all night playing video games, didn't break down. He just walked away and sat in a corner by himself. The Rangers noticed this and actually went to another room to talk about how odd it was that Darien had not started crying and had just sat down.

So they decided Darien should be the first person they speak to. And so a few minutes later, one of the rangers sat down with Darien in an interview room and asked him how he had been getting along with his mother in recent weeks. And Darien admitted that he and his mother had actually been arguing a lot about his college plans. Darien was 20 years old, but he spent basically all of his time in his room playing video games. Now, Darien was perfectly fine with that. He figured he would get his life together at some point, but Manu wanted him to act now, to go enroll in college. But Darien said he didn't want to go back to school and just wish his mom would leave him alone. After this, the ranger just asked Darien point blank if he had anything to do with his mother's death, and Darien was immediately adamant that no, he would never hurt his mom. So the ranger asked him if he would to being fingerprinted, and Darien said, Yes, of course. Peter was the next to be interviewed, and he was unemotional, just like he had been with police at the house.

The ranger thought this was strange, so he pointed out that Peter seemed to be handling this situation quite calmly. Peter explained that his background was he had been in the army as a part of their Special Forces unit, the Green Berets, and so he had been trained to keep cool under pressure, and that was just what he was defaulting to. But Peter clearly understood what the ranger was hinting at here, that he was suspicious of Peter, so Peter quickly added that, of course, he wanted justice for his wife here. And then after that, Peter said very calmly that he also owned a whole lot of firearms and a whole bunch of ammunition, and he'd make sure his wife's killer saw justice one way or the other. The ranger just stared at Peter for a second, not convinced if Peter really was being genuine about potentially going out and seeking vigilante justice, or if maybe this was just performative, that this was Peter's way of acting out his emotions. And so the ranger decided to just move on. And he asked Peter, You heard that car start sometime in the morning and you believed it was your wife's car, how did you hear that noise?

How did that wake you up? But the violent attack on your wife in your bedroom just down the hall didn't wake you up. Peter said he couldn't really offer an explanation, but he did offer a theory, which was that maybe Manu's killer put their hand over his wife's mouth. Sometimes violent struggles are silent, he said. The ranger couldn't help but just shake his head. At this point, the ranger was starting to feel like Peter had already thought of an answer for everything, like he had prepped for this interview. The The pair spoke for a bit longer, rehashing details, and then at some point, the ranger thanked Peter for coming in and told Peter that somebody would follow up with him soon. After that, the rangers would speak to the two oldest Alan children separately, and then finally, after the longest day of their lives, the Allen family were told they could go. However, they were told they were not allowed to return to their home because their house was now a crime scene. So Peter made a few phone calls, and a friend agreed to let them stay at his Airbnb until they could go home.

The next day, Sergeant Burbek got a call from the medical examiner who had Manu's autopsy results. The medical examiner revealed that Manu had been stabbed multiple times, and she had defensive wounds on her hands. She had also been strangled, and her neck was broken. And what's more, after Manu had been taken to the lake, the killer had shot her in the face after she was dead. The violence had been even more extreme than Burbek realized, and this only convinced him further that Manu's killer had be somebody close to her that had some personal issue with her. Then Burbek and members of the state police met with forensics investigators who had processed the scene out by the lake, and they had found shoe prints in the mud near Manu's stranded SUV and bicycle tracks that led away from the SUV out of the recreational area and onto the main road. And so while investigators followed up on these shoe prints and bike tracks, word of Manu's murder quickly spread through the small Texas town. Students at Olny High School, where Manu worked, were devastated when they learned of the death of their beloved teacher. And also, rumors began to fly, in particular on a Facebook group called Rants and Raves, where citizens of Olny voiced their theories about what they thought happened in the Allen house on the night of the murder.

And most of those amateur theories pointed the finger at Peter. And Peter suddenly began noticing that people around town were treating him differently. They were treating him with suspicion. A few days after Manu's death, Peter and his kids were finally allowed to return to their family home. When they got there, Darien helped his father secure the house by bolting the windows shut, and Peter said he would sleep with a gun under his pillow because he said the killer was still out there. The next morning, Peter was contacted by Burback and asked to come in for another interview. And so Peter drove to the station where Burback and a Texas ranger met him and led him into an interview room. The ranger began the interview by asking Peter why someone might want to kill his wife. In response to this question, Peter referred to his large collection of guns. He said he had a ton of them, at least maybe 100, and a lot of people knew about them. So he said, maybe somebody broke into the house to try to steal the guns. Actually, Peter said he had a pistol, a Communist block pistol, that he kept in a drawer.

And when he had finally gotten back to his home the day before, he noticed that that pistol was missing. Burbek noted everything Peter was saying in his memo pad, and he began to feel even more confident that Peter did have something to do with his wife's murder. Burbek felt like Peter was trying to influence the investigation by suggesting an angle that would divert attention away from him. So Burbek and the ranger stepped out of the room and talked for a second and decided to shift to a more confrontational tone with Peter. So they went back into the interview room and they revealed to Peter that in the master bedroom where his wife was horribly attacked and killed, they had found a bloody sock which matched footprints left by the killer. And it happened to be the exact same type of compression sock that Peter wore because they found socks just like those in his drawer. And so they asked Peter to please explain that. And Peter said he really couldn't. He just kept repeating that he did not hurt his wife. And so at some point, the ranger asked how someone other than the family would know exactly where Manu kept her car keys, because that's where the footprints went, right next to the fridge, and the keys were gone, and the car was gone.

And Peter just lowered his head and staring down at the floor and said, Again, he just had no explanation. And so Burbek and the ranger continued drilling Peter, trying to get more information from him, but Peter really didn't have any more information. He really stuck to this idea that he did not do anything wrong. And so eventually, at the end of the interview, it was clear there was not enough evidence to arrest Peter, and so Peter was told to go home and that if they needed him again, they'd be in touch. Sergeant Burbeck was sitting in his office that afternoon when he got a report from one of the rangers who had been out in the field canvassing for witnesses. Burbek learned that the officer had made contact with an oil field worker who was on duty in the area near Lake Cooper on the same morning Manu's body had been found. The worker had been out near the recreation area when he noticed someone on a bicycle pedaling away from the lake and in the direction of Olny. The worker stated that this actually struck him as pretty odd because it was so early in the morning, just after dawn.

And even though people did bike in that area, he never saw people biking that early in that area. However, the worker said he didn't really get a good look at the person riding the bike. He could only remember that the bicyclist wore shorts and had a backpack on. And so Sergeant Burbeck assigned two investigators to contact area businesses along the route from Lake Cooper to Olny to see if any of them had surveillance cameras that were running that morning that maybe picked up some footage of this person on the bike. And sure enough, the investigators found a local bank whose surveillance footage outside had captured an individual on a bicycle wearing shorts and a backpack, just like the oil field worker had described. Burbek took a look at this footage, and he was unable to make out the facial features of the individual on the bike. However, he was able to glean enough information from the footage about the person's general age, sex, build to potentially narrow the suspect pool down. Burbek was also still convinced Peter had something to do with his wife's murder, but he knew he didn't have enough evidence to move forward with an arrest.

But what he could do was try to rule out other possibilities, for example, Peter's theory about a burglar trying to steal his guns, because if he could rule that out, it would only help strengthen the case against Peter. So Burbek began looking into recent gun burglaries in the area, and there was only one. And the homeowner who was targeted happened to be the father of a friend of Darien Allen. Incidents. Burbek wondered if that was more than just a coincidence. After all, everyone in the town of Olny was connected by no more than two degrees of separation, so maybe it didn't mean anything. But Burbek knew he would have to dig into it further. So he began reading the reports that were made from this burglary investigation, and in examining the leads that had been developed, one name stood out, and that name was Cory Taylor. Cory was a young guy who was a loner, who was known around town as a troublemaker, and he'd had numerous run-ins with law enforcement, and he also had what looked like a love affair with guns. Burbek found a video on Cory's Snapchat of him showing off a semi-automatic rifle with a site attached to it.

So Burbek decided to pay Cory a visit. He drove to Cory's apartment complex and began walking towards Cory's place. And as Burbek made his way towards the stairwell, he saw something that made him slow down and then back up, because in the storage space underneath the stairs right in front of him was a bicycle. Burbek knelt down to inspect the tread pattern on the bicycle's tires, and he wasn't 100% sure, but the The treads looked a whole lot like the bicycle tracks that were found down by the lake. Burbek took a picture of the treads and then proceeded up the stairs to Cori's apartment. When he got to the door, Burbek knocked, and Cory opened it up, Burbek introduced himself, and Cory allowed Burbek inside. Right away, Burbek noticed that Cori appeared to be very nervous, like he couldn't even stand still. Burbek asked Cori if he knew about what happened to Monu Allen, and Cori said he was aware of what happened to Mrs. Allen. He said he knew her as Mrs. Allen because he knew her from his high school, only high school where she worked. And he said everybody knew what happened to her.

It was horrible. Cori said he didn't know her well, and he'd never been inside of her house. Burbek then asked Cori if he owned the bike that was outside under the stairwell. Cori said, No, the bike was not his. It belonged to his friend, Julius Mullins. Burbek recorded this name in his notepad, and he and Cori talked for a few minutes longer, and then he left. Within a day, investigators had tracked down this new person Cori had mentioned, Julius Mullen's, and they brought him in for an interview. Investigators asked Julius where he was on the night of July sixth, and Julius said that he had gone to a party. Afterward, he had gone to Cori's apartment, let himself in, and crashed there. He said he didn't actually see Cori that night, so he wasn't sure if Cori was actually in the apartment or not. And so this sounded pretty odd that he just crashed at Cory's place and didn't even know if his friend was there, but it sounded like the two were close friends and maybe this was normal. And so eventually, the investigators just asked Julius if he would submit fingerprints and DNA, and Julius voluntarily submitted both and was then allowed to leave.

A day later, one of the rangers who had been working the case returned to Cori's apartment to confiscate the bicycle that Burbek had seen underneath the stairwell. And as the ranger was approaching the stairs, he suddenly had a chance encounter with someone he was very familiar with. On a whim, the ranger asked this person if he could look at the bottom of their shoes, and the person said, Yeah, sure. So the ranger looked at the bottom of their shoes, and when he did, the ranger could barely contain his excitement because he knew he had just broken the case wide open. Investigators would meet with this person the ranger had just happened to run into, and after that interview, they knew who had killed Monu Allen. Here is a reconstruction of what police think happened to Monu Allen in the early morning of July seventh, 2019. Around 2:00 AM, Manu's killer quietly climbed through a window in the garage of the Allen's household and then made their way into the hallway of the house. From there, they quietly crept down the hallway and went into the master bedroom where Manu was sleeping in the bed. Now, the killer tried to be quiet, but Manu was a light sleeper, and very quickly, they woke Manu up.

And when the killer noticed that Manu was sitting awake in the bed, looking over at them, the killer froze for a second, but then suddenly the killer reached out and grabbed a butterfly knife off the dresser and just jumped jumped on top of Manu before she could do anything, and the killer began furiously stabbing her. Manu tried to shield herself from the knife, but the killer plunged it into her again and again in this frenzied attack, eventually rolling Manu over, jamming her head into the mattress actress, and then jabbing the knife into her head multiple times. And after the 47th and final stab wound, the killer dropped the knife onto the bed. But the killer convinced themselves that Manu was not dead. She was still breathing. So the killer wrapped their hands around Manu's neck and squeezed as hard as they could until they were sure she was dead. The killer then wiped the knife off on the sheets and then placed the knife into their backpack. Then they took the bedsheets and wrapped them all around Manu, who was on the bed, and then they dragged Manu inside of these sheets off the bed onto the ground.

Then the killer casually walked out of the bedroom into the kitchen to retrieve the car keys from the spot where Manu always kept them. And so with Manu's keys in hand, the killer returned to the master bedroom, locking the door behind them and then they dragged Manu in the bedsheets out the other door of the master bedroom, through the laundry room and the garage, and then outside to Manu's SUV. There, the killer put Manu's body still wrapped in the sheets in the trunk, and then they also placed the bike that they had driven over to the Allen's house into Manu's SUV. Once Manu's SUV was all packed up, the killer hopped in the driver's seat and drove eight miles north to the recreational area by the lake, but as they were driving along, the SUV got stuck. So at that point, the hopped out of the SUV and removed Manu from the vehicle and dragged her over to the spot where she would later be found. However, before the killer actually left Manu there, they pulled out a gun and shot Manu in the face, even though at this point, Manu was obviously already dead.

Then, after covering up Manu's face with some leaves, the killer walked back over to the SUV, took the bike out, and then peddled away from the scene back towards town. Police would track down Manu's killer and place them under arrest. And then once they were brought into an interrogation room, investigators asked them, Why? Why had they killed Manu? That's when the killer claimed that Manu's husband, Peter, had made them do it. The killer said Peter had cornered them at a convenience store and made them get into his car and put a gun to the killer's head and said, You're going to kill my wife. But as much as investigators had suspected Peter at different times during this investigation, this story didn't make sense with the timeline of the murder. And the forensics, both the fingerprints and DNA, implicated only one person, Julius Mullen's. Julius was the owner of the bike who had stored it under the stairs at his friend's apartment. But more importantly, Julius was the ex-boyfriend of Peter and Manu's oldest daughter, Melanie. The pair had dated for a year when Melanie was a junior in high school. Julius's home life was undeniably rough, and there were times when his parents would kick him out of the house and he would have no place to sleep.

Sometimes the only high school coaches would let Julius, who played tight for the football team, sleep in the gym. And on at least one occasion, when Julius had been kicked out, Manu had allowed Julius to sleep over at their house. And also, Julius was a frequent visitor to the Allen's household, but just for the day, he'd come over for a couple hours at a time to see Melanie. And so it was during these frequent visits that Julius learned where Manu kept her car keys, which is how he knew where to go in the kitchen to find them. Manu always treated Julius incredibly kindly because she was just a person who really looked out for the kids in this town. I mean, she was always spending her spare time looking after kids and mentoring kids and tutoring kids, especially kids who had rough home lives like Julius did. And so Julius was no exception to her kindness. Manu would sometimes help him with his homework and talk to him and make sure he was doing okay. But during Manu's daughter's relationship with Julius, it seemed like Julius's behavior began to change. He was very temperamental and moody and just seemed like he was snowballing.

And so eventually, Melanie broke off the relationship and Manu stopped talking to him as well. And and Julius did not take it well. And this was about seven months prior to the murder. Police noticed that when they brought Julius in for his first interview, that he had cuts and scrapes all over his arms and legs. And when that ranger went to retrieve the bike from Cory's apartment, Julius was the person he ran into who he was very familiar with because of this case. And he asked Julius to see the soles of his shoes. And when Julius showed him, it was immediately apparent that they matched the shoe prints that had been found by the lake where Manu's body was discovered. The shoes were later found to be an match, and the treads on Julius's bicycle were also an exact match to the tracks that were found leaving the scene. Investigators also performed a sound test at the Allen residence with one ranger in the master bedroom and the other on the couch where Peter had been asleep, and they turned the TV on in the living room to a low volume as it had been the night Peter fell asleep on the couch and Monu was later murdered, and the ranger in the master bedroom shouted and yelled and made all this noise, and the ranger in the living room could not hear a thing.

That's how poorly sound traveled in the Allen household, which is a big reason why nobody heard what was going on in the master bedroom. Also, Kiara, when she had fallen asleep, she had her ear buds in, which did already degrade her ability to hear what was going on in the house, and Darien really had been upstairs with headphones on, which also affected his ability to hear what was going on in the house, so really, nobody heard anything. As for the knife that was found in the bedroom, it was determined to have not been the murder weapon. The knife that was used to kill Monu was found in Julius' backpack, and Peter's stolen Communist block pistol was found in the home of Corey Taylor, Julius' friend, but Corey was found to not have been involved with the murder at all. Julius would eventually come clean and would admit that Peter actually had nothing to do with the murder and that Julius had acted totally alone. It would turn out Peter's theory about the murder, the idea that somebody had maybe tried to break in to steal his guns but then inadvertently killed his wife, seemed to be at least partially right.

Julius claimed when he snuck into the house, he was looking to steal Peter's guns. Julius said he was in the process of stealing an unsecured gun from a cabinet in the master bedroom when Manu woke up, and he said his fight or flight response kicked in, and it led him to stab her 47 times and then strangle her, and then eventually, later on, also shoot her in the face postmortem. Julius Mullen, who was 18 years old, pled guilty and was ultimately sentenced to 55 years in prison. Thank you for listening to the Mr. Balin podcast. If you enjoyed today's stories and you're looking for more strange, dark, and mysterious content, be sure to check out all of our studios' podcasts. They are this one, of course, Mr. Balin podcast, and we also have Mr. Balin's Medical mysteries, we have Bedtime Stories, and also Run Full. To find those other podcasts, all you have to do is search for Balin Studios wherever you listen to your podcasts. To watch hundreds more stories just like the ones you heard today, head over our YouTube channel, which is just called Mr. Balin. So that's going to do it.

I really appreciate your support. Until next time. See you. Hey, prime members. You can binge eight new episodes of the Mr. Balin 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 wondry. Com/survey.

Divorced beheaded, died. Divorced beheaded, survived. We know the six wives of Henry VIII as ponds in his hunt for a son, but their lives were so much more than just being the king's wives. I'm Eresha Skidmer-Williams. And I'm Brooke Zifrin. And we're the hosts of WNDRI's podcast, Even the Royals. In each episode, we'll pull back the curtain on royal families, past and present from all over the world, to show you the darker side of what it means to be royalty. We rarely see Henry VIII's wives in their own light, as women who use the tools available to them to hold on to power. Some women won the game, others lost, but they were all unexpected agents in their own stories. Being a part of a royal family might seem enticing, but more often than not, it comes at the expense of everything else, like your freedom, your privacy, and sometimes even your head. Follow even the Royals on the WNDYRI app or wherever you get your podcasts. Go deeper and get more of the story with WNDYRI's top history podcasts, including American Scandal, Legacy, and Black History for Real.