There is a little cottage right on the water in Maryland called Cotage 506. It's a rustic place with a wood fire stove, a couple of small beds, and a small sitting area for breakfast. And then outside the cottage, on the porch, you have this amazing view of the water. And then behind the cottage is the resort that the cottage is a part of. And the resort offers guests that stay in this cottage. Great food, great entertainment. I mean, this is a great spot. However, Cotage 506 has a dark secret, and it's the reason, I and many other people will never be staying there. But before we learn about Cotage 506, if you're a fan of the Strange dark and mysterious delivered in story format, then you come to the right place because that's all we do, and we upload once a week. So if that's of interest to you, please offer to house sit for the like button while they're away for the weekend. But instead of looking after their property, just spend the entire weekend downloading viruses to the like button's computer. Also, please subscribe to our channel and turn on all notifications so you don't miss any of our weekly uploads.

Okay, let's get into today's story. A little afternoon on Valentine's Day, 1998, a married couple named Steve and Kim Riko, held hands as they walked towards their car. They had just dropped their eight-year-old daughter off at a neighbor's house in the suburban neighborhood in Maryland where they lived. Now, Steve and Kim had the whole weekend to themselves, and they were really excited about it because they had this big trip planned. Now, admittedly, Kim had no idea what they were actually going to be doing because Steve was the one who planned it, and he was obviously being very secretive about the details. He wanted this to be a surprise. For weeks leading up to this weekend, Kim would see Steve on the phone all the time, presumably planning whatever it is they were going to be doing, but wouldn't let Kim hear what he was saying on the phone. He would muffle his voice, or he'd hang up before she could come over and hear him. Then also after these secretive phone calls, Kim would often see Steve writing all these notes down in his journal, presumably about whatever it was he was planning. The only detail Steve shared with Kim about this trip was, make sure you wear something nice.

When the couple reached their car, Steve hopped in the driver's seat and Kim hopped in the passenger seat. Immediately, right after Steve had fired up the car, Kim turned to him and said, Are you going to tell me? You're going to tell me where we're going? But Steve just grinned and said, No, it's a surprise. Kim gave a theatrical sigh and sat back in feigned frustration. But inside, the way she was really feeling was just excited. This was so cool that Steve had put so much effort into whatever it is they were going to do. But also, Kim was seeing her husband was really making a big effort to make her happy. This was new because lately, their relationship had been really rocky. Kim and Steve had been married for nine years by this point, and they were both very, very different people. Steve was a total homebody, introverted, and Kim was the opposite. She was super extroverted and very social. But when they first met each other, it was actually their stark differences that brought them together. For Kim, when they met, she was in her early 20s, she had just dropped out of college, and her experience with men so far had been she would meet them at parties or bars, and at first it would seem like their relationship was great But then invariably, these guys would just move on and break Kim's heart.

But Steve was different. He was this huge guy, 6'4, massive football player, but he was totally a gentle giant. As soon as he met Kim, Kim could tell this guy is different. He's treating her with respect. He's loyal to her. He really cares about her. And so they hit it off right away. Kim, very quickly, became pregnant, at which point Steve asked her to marry him, and Kim didn't hesitate for a second. They were totally in love. Marriage to Steve had really been a stabilizing factor in Kim's life. She wound up going back to college and got her degree, which landed her a job as a surgical technician, which is what she did now. And Steve turned out to be just a fantastic father, and he wound up actually staying home with their daughter when she was a baby so Kim could go out and work. And Kim always thought it was funny when she would come home and she would see Steve standing in the doorway, cradling this infant. But he's like this massive person. And so their baby looked like a toy. But unfortunately, over the last year, Kim had seen a change in Steve.

He went from being a shy person, but a person who could go out and function in society, to a shy person who basically stopped going outside altogether. Steve basically refused to go out anywhere with Kim. He didn't want to talk to anyone. He didn't want to spend time with their friends or family. He just wanted to stay home and watch TV or hang out in the basement. I mean, it was pretty obvious he was depressed, but his introvertedness was becoming stifling for Kim. And so Kim approached Steve and said, You really need to go to therapy to get better here. I'll go with you. We can do couples therapy. But Steve refused. And so finally, right around this past new year, Kim decided she had just had enough. She was totally unhappy. She did not feel like Steve was going to change. And so Kim told Steve that she wanted to get divorced. And when Steve heard that, he realized the gravity of this situation. He knew Kim was unhappy with him, but he did not know she was thinking about separating. And so Steve broke down and begged Kim to give him another chance.

Let him prove to her that he will change, that he wants this marriage to work. And Kim said, Okay. And so that was how Steve wound up planning this very secret getaway on Valentine's Day. This trip was supposed to be the start of their new and improved marriage, and so Kim was really excited and optimistic about the future. After driving for about an hour and a half, Steve pulled off the highway and began following signs towards the Eastern shore, which is a waterfront area of Maryland that's very beautiful, that was located about 70 miles away from Steve and Kim's home. After driving for a few minutes, Steve pulled into the parking lot of the Harbourtown Golf Resort, and as soon as he pulled into a spot, and turned off the car, he clapped his hands and turned to Kim and said, Okay, we're here. Kim looked from her husband out to all the perfectly manicured grounds in the beautiful resort, and she smiled and leapt out of the car excitedly. Kim and Steve took each other's hands and marched inside to check in. As they were checking in, the person behind the desk gave them glasses of champagne.

Then after handing Kim and Steve their key cards, the receptionist told them that their cottage where they were staying was like the nicest property at the resort. Kim and Steve were totally pumped. They took their champagne and their room keys. They walked back to their car and then drove a little ways deeper into the resort to their cottage. It was Cotage 506, and it looked out over the water. When they went inside, Kim was totally wowed. It was this rustic suite with a wood fire stove in the middle and two queen-size beds and a little coffee table area for breakfast over here. It was perfect. Then when Kim actually walked into this cottage, she noticed there was a card sitting on a table, and it looked like a wedding invitation. Kim was confused and looked over at Steve, and Steve just smiled and said, Go, check it out. And so Kim walked over and she grabbed the note and she began reading it, and as she did, she began to smile. The card really was a wedding invitation, albeit it was for a a fake wedding. Because it would turn out this was not just a random overnight that Steve had planned for both of them.

Instead, he had purchased a romantic getaway package, which included this amazing cottage, but also a professional dinner theater performance that would be held on the resort grounds. Kim read the description of the dinner theater show on this invitation. It was a murder mystery called The Bride Who Cried, where the actors in the show would put on a whole fake wedding, and then at the end of the wedding, somebody would get killed, and the audience would need to figure out who did it. For an extrovert like Kim, an activity like this was perfect. And so Kim felt totally touched that clearly Steve had heard her, and the first thing he did to win her back was to begin to do the things that Kim really wanted to do, which was really going out and having fun. And so after Kim finished reading the card, she turned and looked over at Steve, and Steve was nervous because he wasn't sure if Kim was going to like it. And Kim, she broke into this huge smile. She walked over to Steve and gave him a big hug. And Steve, he was so happy, and he hugged her real tight right back.

Kim and Steve would spend the next couple of hours sitting by their fire inside of their nice cottage, drinking their champagne and talking about the future and just telling stories and having a good time. And then around 7:00 PM, Steve and Kim put on their nicest clothes and walked their way over to the area on the resort where this dinner theater was going to happen. It was in an event hall with a bunch of brown tables set up for the audience. Once Steve and Kim and the other audience members all took their seats, the actors and actresses came into the room, and they were all dressed in their wedding clothes. There was a bride and a groom and a wedding party, and the audience was instructed to participate in the wedding as if they were wedding guests. The audience all stood up, and they began having this fake social hour of meeting all the wedding guests. Then Steve, Kim, and the audience members all took their seats, and they got ready to watch the drama unfold. Kim, pretty much immediately, was totally absorbed in this performance. She was so enthusiastic talking to the actors and talking to the other guests and really pretending like she was part of the wedding.

I mean, she was having a blast. The play itself was about a groom who was in the Mafia who was forcing his bride to marry him by threatening her family. The climax came when the groom stood up and gave a toast with his champagne. He took a sip and then fell down dead. Kim watched all of this with delight, but she kept looking over at Steve, hoping he, too, would be smiling and having a good time. But each time she looked at him, he was just stone-faced and looking straight ahead like he just didn't care or he was totally disinterested. Then a couple of times when Kim leaned over and said, Hey, honey, who do you think did it? Who do you think the killer is? Steve basically just completely ignored her. It was like she wasn't there and the play wasn't there. He was just totally zoned out. Eventually, Kim and a few other very enthusiastic audience members figured out the killer in the play was the bride's mother who poisoned the groom. Then after this discovery was made, the play was over. As everyone got up from their seats and began to leave, Kim couldn't help but feel really annoyed with Steve because he was just so silent and not invested in this play.

It's like, We came all the way here. Why aren't you at least pretending to enjoy this? But Kim also thought, Steve put a ton of effort into this weekend. He's clearly trying. I'm not going to start a fight. I'm not going to bring it up. And so finally, Kim just said to Steve, Hey, why don't we go to the bar and get a couple of drinks, bring them back to our cottage, and just hang out there for the night? And when Steve heard this, he actually smiled said, Okay, great, let's do it. And by the time the couple got back to the front door of Cottedge 506, they were holding hands again and laughing and telling stories, and they went inside, and Steve put the beers down on the table. And then Kim said she was going to go in the bedroom and just quickly change into something more comfortable. And so Kim walked into the bedroom and shut the door, and Steve walked to the front door and turned the lock. Hey, everybody. If you've not heard by now, Last week, we made a major announcement. Our flagship podcast, Mr. Ballon podcast, Strange, Dark, and Mysterious Stories, that pretty much immediately rocketed to the top of the charts when we launched in 2022 and then quickly was scooped up by Amazon by the end of the same year.

Yeah, that show, our top show, is now available everywhere. It is no longer just on Amazon Music. It's on all platforms, and it's free. Which means if you've not listened to this podcast since it went exclusive with Amazon Music back in November of 2022, then that means you have about 100 news stories that are only on the podcast that are only now being made available to everybody. So go binge them. And if you signed up for Amazon Music just for this podcast, I love you. Thank you so much. But most importantly, there are still going to be perks for you if you continue to listen to the podcast on Amazon Music. Prime members will get to listen to the Mr. Ball Mr. Ballin' podcast 30 days earlier than everybody else, and Prime members will get to listen to the podcast on Amazon Music with no ads. But again, the Mr. Ballin podcast is now available worldwide on every podcast platform, and it's totally free. So please, if you would, go find the Mr. Ballin' podcast on your choice podcast platform, whether that's Amazon Music or Spotify or Apple or whatever. Give us a follow, listen to an episode, and then please rate the podcast and leave a review.

It does an enormous amount for the growth of the show. I'd really appreciate it. All right, back to the stories. Three hours later, a man named Philip Parker, who was staying at the resort with his family, heard a commotion in the lobby, and he heard people saying there might be a fire at Cottedge 506, and there could be somebody still inside. Philip immediately turned to his cousin who was with him, and the two of them bolted outside and just started running towards Cotage 506. As soon as they got to a place where they could see the cottage from a distance, they could see black, oily smoke pouring out of the windows. When they got up to the burning cottage, Philip ran to the front door, but it was locked. He couldn't get inside. He screamed to see if anybody was in there, but there was no answer. And so Philip and the cousin ran around to the back of the cottage where there was a glass sliding door. And Philip, he tried the handle, but it was locked. At this point, the cousin said he was going to run back to the resort and get a fire extinguisher.

And after the cousin ran off, Philip turned back towards the sliding glass door and realized it actually opened on both ends. And he had only checked one side and found that side to be locked. But on the other side, which he was now noticing, it was obviously unlocked because it was open just barely. So Philip immediately opened it up and all the smoke began coming out. So Philip dropped down to get a better look because down low, the smoke had not fully settled. There was a bit of an air pocket right at the bottom of the floor. Philip got down and he looked inside, and for a second, he couldn't quite see anything. But then he noticed in the middle of the bedroom, right inside this cottage, he could clearly see somebody's feet. Somebody was on the And so Philip screamed that he was coming in, and then he opened the door the rest of the way, and he began low crawling into the bedroom. And as he did, he was hacking and coughing from all the smoke. And so finally, Philip reached this person, and he grabbed their foot, and he shook them to try to wake them up, but they weren't moving.

But the fire was getting bigger and stronger. The smoke was getting thicker. Philip was really starting to panic and was worried that he, too, would get trapped in here. And so he just grabbed this person's leg and began pulling them. And it was really hard, but he finally got this person back to the door. He couldn't quite get them over that lip of where the sliding door was. But right then, Philip's cousin showed up, and the two of them were able to grab this person and get them out of the cottage. This was the moment when Philip finally got a look at the person he was just dragging out, and it was immediately clear to him that this person was deceased. Their face was basically gone. It was completely burned away. In the days and weeks leading up to this weekend, Steve really was taking secret phone calls and writing notes down in his journal because he was planning something very special. But he was not the only one with plans for this weekend. Here's what police say happened after Kim and Steve got back to their cottage following the show, and Kim went into the bedroom to change, and Steve went to the front door and locked it.

A couple of minutes later, Kim came out of the bedroom wearing something sexy, and she looked at Steve and smiled and said, Come on, get in bed. I'll join you in a second. And so Steve's like, Great. My plan is working. We're going to reconnect here. He climbed in bed and he laid down. Then Kim, she walked over and got something out of her bag, and then she walked back over to the bed and she pulled out a syringe, and she stabbed it into Steve before he could do anything, and She injected him with something called succinalcholine. Kim had access to this drug from her job as a surgical tech. Succinalcholine is used to relax people's muscles during surgery. But if you give someone too big a dose, it can stop their breathing. This drug works pretty much instantly, which means Steve would have seen his wife stab him with that syringe, but then instantly, he would have been totally paralyzed, but fully awake and fully alive. As he was laying there, he would have seen his wife put the syringe down and then grabbed lighter fluid and then walked over to him and calmly poured the lighter fluid all over Steve's face and chest.

Then one of Steve's final images he likely saw before his lungs stopped working and he died was his wife striking a match and lighting him on fire. After lighting Steve on fire, Kim casually walked out the backsliding door. She shut it, leaving it open just a crack. Then she made her way to the resort lobby where she put on this big act about how her cottage was on fire, and she thinks her husband was still inside. Philip overheard Kim say that her husband might be inside the cottage, which is when he and his cousin jumped into action. They ran to the cottage and ultimately found Steve deceased inside of the cottage. Ultimately, Kim never intended to give Steve a second chance in their marriage. She was already having an affair with a much younger man who was in the Marines, and she was just done with Steve. As Steve began telling his friends and family how he was going to make a huge to save his marriage. Kim was going around to her friends and literally, openly talking about how she wanted to murder her husband. But nobody took her seriously. They thought she was just venting and being dramatic.

But as soon as the news broke that Steve had died in this fire and Kim had not, people rushed to the police to tell them, pretty sure Kim had something to do with this. Kim was convicted of her husband's murder, and she was sentenced to life in prison. It would turn out the primary reason why Steve was so secretive before going on this trip was he really wanted it to be this unbelievably special, romantic, like recreation of the couple's first date. What he was doing is he was calling all of Kim's friends and family members and asking them questions about things Kim liked because he wanted to incorporate all of her interests in this trip. Then after these calls, when Steve was writing in his journal, that was not just writing down logistics of the trip. He was also writing down how much he loved Kim and how excited he was for their future and what they would build together as a family. I mean, Steve really believed they were on a path to reconciliation. But of course, that just was not the case. This past week, we dropped a brand new merch line to commemorate Valentine's Day 2024, and people are loving it.

Our designers put together, in my opinion, one of the very best graphics we've ever put on any merchandise, and it's right here. So this is the hoodie. This is the back of the hoodie. I think that's just an amazing design. And then the front of the hoodie, it just says, Ballentine's Day, and the T-shirt has the same design set up as well. But the deal with this merch is it's only available to be purchased for a very short amount of time. And so you have now until Wednesday, February 21st, so just a couple of days from now, that is the last day you can pick up your official Ballantines Day 2024 merchandise. All you have to do is go to shopmisterballin. Com, and you can buy your Ballantines Day merch, or you can also check out the Ballantines Basics line, which is our everyday merchandise we sell year round. So again, shopmisterbaulen. Com. Enjoy. So that's going to do it. If you enjoyed today's story, be sure to check out our podcast called the Mr. Ballant podcast, which has hundreds of stories, a lot like this one, but many of them are only on the podcast.

Again, it's called The Mister Ballin' Podcast, and it's available wherever you get your podcasts for free, or you can listen early and add free on Amazon Music. Wait, don't go anywhere. If you're looking for more Strange, dark, and mysterious videos, click here.