Today, I'm going to share three progressively more unbelievable stories, and at the end of each of them, I will share the photo or photos that are famously associated with them. But before we get into those stories, if you're a fan of The Strange, Dark, and mysterious delivered in story format, then you've 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 give the like button a 1,000-piece jigsaw puzzle for their birthday. But before you hand it over, make sure you secretly remove one of the pieces. 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 stories. Early on the evening of New Year's Eve in 2010, a 38-year-old man living in the Philippines named Ronaldo Dagsa decided he was just too tired to stay up all the way till midnight. But at the same time, Ronaldo really didn't want to miss out on all the festivities he knew would be going down out on the streets outside that night. So Ronaldo told his wife he was going to go take a nap, and could you please wake him up right before midnight?

That way, he could go outside and catch the tail end of the big celebration. And so his wife said that was fine. And just a couple of minutes later, Ronaldo was in his bedroom, in his bed, passed out. Ronaldo was a politician, and he was beloved in the Philippines because he was one of the very few politicians who was not afraid to arrest and prosecute gang members. In the Philippines, gang violence is a big issue. And really, Ronaldo was one of very few people doing anything about it. About 10 minutes before midnight, Ronaldo's wife went into the bedroom and woke Ronaldo up. And Ronaldo, even though he was really tired, he was so excited to get to go outside that he jumped out of bed, and he made his way into the kitchen, and he grabbed his camera. And then he called for his wife, his daughter, and his mother-in-law, who were the only people still awake in his family at this point, to come with him. And so they would agree, and they would come with Ronaldo. He would go outside. And as soon as he opened the door, it was like everything he hoped it would be.

There were people everywhere all along these busy streets. There were firecrackers being shot up into the sky. People were laughing and cheering and celebrating. And so Ronaldo was really excited. And what he really wanted to do was capture a picture of his family right as the clock struck midnight, commemorating New Year's Eve. And so Ronaldoado led his family to a part of the sidewalk that wasn't very crowded, and he positioned his family, so his daughter, and his wife, and his mother-in-law, in a position that he was happy with and made sure the picture was in frame. And then he kept checking his watch, waiting for midnight. And then right as it was about to strike midnight, he raised up his camera, and he aimed at his daughter, his wife, and his mother-in-law, and he took a picture. And here is the picture that Ronaldoado took. In the foreground, you can see Ronaldo's daughter on the left leaning up against the car. And then next to her is Ronaldo's wife, and then next to Ronaldo's wife is Ronaldo's mother-in-law. And all three women are smiling as this moment in time is captured on film. But what Ronaldo also captured on film were two men who he didn't know standing right behind his family.

The man on the right is not looking at Ronaldo. Instead, he's looking out to the road near them and staring at the festivities. He looks concerned. And then on the left is the other man who's clearly holding a gun that is aimed directly at Ronaldo. These two men were assassins who had been sent to kill Ronaldo, and Ronaldo took a picture at the exact moment that he was assassinated. Literally, the second this photo was taken, the man on the left in this photo fired his gun and killed Ronaldo. This photograph would be used by police to track down and arrest Reynaldo's killers. Police believed that Ronaldo was targeted because he was so anti-gang that very likely, a gang hired hitmen to kill him. Thank you to BetterHelp for sponsoring today's video. Back in 2017, when I had just left the military, I was a mental train wreck. I was totally irritable for really no reason, and I basically couldn't stand to be around anyone, even my family and friends, and I didn't know why. Now, to other people who were watching me, it might have been obvious that I was struggling with my mental health, but I didn't see that.

I thought it was just a rough patch, and I would just magically get through it and go back to normal at some point, but I didn't. At least not until I took my family and friends' advice and went and spoke to a therapist. I'm glad I did, because my therapist was able to show me that the reason I was feeling the way I was and acting the way I was was because I was depressed, primarily because I had lost my military identity, something I had had for seven years up until that point. Now, as soon as I got this diagnosis, I was a bit shocked, but at the same time, it did make a lot of sense. And more importantly, once I accepted that I was depressed, I was able to actually work with my therapist to get better. And eventually, I did. Look, therapy is not a one size fits all solution, but if you're struggling right now and you don't know what to do, you should really consider giving BetterHelp a try. Betterhelp is a highly reviewed online therapy platform, which means you can get the help you need right from the comfort of your own home.

Get matched with a BetterHelp therapist after filling out a brief survey online, and then it's up to you how you communicate with your therapist, whether that's through text, or chat, or video, or phone call. You can also switch therapists at any time at no additional cost. Go to our sponsor, betterhelp. Com/mr. Ballin, for 10 % off your first month of therapy with BetterHelp, and get matched with a therapist who will listen and help. On a Friday afternoon in late August of 2008, a homicide detective in Los Angeles, California, named Kevin Lloyd, grabbed a cup of coffee from the break room and then made his way to his office, and he sat down at his desk. Detective Lloyd had already had a very difficult week, but now he had all this paperwork on his desk that he basically had to go through right now. He had put it off for too long. It was the end of the week, and so today was the day. And so Detective Lloyd took one more sip of coffee and then began sifting through all the papers. Now, this paperwork that Detective Lloyd was charged with going through was really just a huge stack of biographical information about gang members in and around Los Angeles.

Basically, any time a gang member got arrested for anything could be super minor. Their information was added to this big dossier of biographical information. And it was the job of the homicide detectives to periodically basically go through all of this information and just make sure you're up to date with what gang members were doing in and around the city. And so this was highly monotonous work, but it was necessary. So Detective Lloyd continued to flip through all these pieces of paper, and as he did, he slammed his cup of coffee, doing his best not to fall asleep from boredom. But after about 30 minutes, Detective Lloyd turned the page, and suddenly, something he saw immediately stood out to him. And for about 30 seconds, Detective Lloyd just stare at the paper, having no idea what to make of what he was seeing. And what he was seeing was basic biographical information of a small-time gang member named Anthony Garcia, who had recently been arrested for driving with a suspended license. Now, to this point, many other detectives had seen this document about Anthony Garcia, and they hadn't thought anything of it. But when Detective Lloyd looked at this page about Anthony Garcia, a photo of Anthony immediately stood out to the detective.

But before Detective Lloyd was prepared to run to his boss and tell him about this huge discovery he had made, he thought, You know what? I need to do a little bit more digging because this could totally be wrong. So Detective Lloyd left the paperwork on the desk. He put his coffee down, and he walked his way out of the office and down to the room in the police department where they stored all of the files for all the unsolved murder cases. And so Detective Lloyd, he goes in there, and he begins walking up and down the rows until finally, he found the case that he was looking for. He grabbed it, and he walked back to his desk. He sat down, and he began to read it. Now, this unsolved murder case, which was from four years ago in 2004, did not appear on the surface to have anything to do with Anthony Garcia. But Detective Lloyd was reasonably sure that there were details in this unsolved murder case from 2004 that would prove his theory about Anthony Garcia. The file that Lloyd was reading described a murder that took place on January 23rd, 2004.

That night, a 23-year-old man named John Juárez was standing in front of this liquor store called Mr. Ed's Liquors, which is located in a small neighborhood in Los Angeles. John was a devoted father to a four-year-old girl, and he was also a devoted member of a gang. But on this particular evening, John was not doing anything criminal in front of this liquor store. He was just standing there near a street sign, minding his own business. But at some point, two men walked up to John and asked him where he was from. But before John could even answer, one of these two men drew a gun and began firing shots into John, and one of those rounds struck him in the head and killed him. Now, after Lloyd had read through this file and the description of the murder several times and felt confident he had gotten all the information he could, he still wasn't sure if this was enough to prove his theory about Anthony Garcia. So he decided he would actually go to the liquor store where this murder happened and see it for himself. And so, Detective Lloyd, he hopped in his car.

He drove to Mr. Ed's Liquors. He parked in the parking lot, and he just looked around. He scanned around the whole area. He took in the shape of the parking lot. He looked at the doors on the liquor store to look at the size and the shape. He also saw the nearby street sign that John had been standing near when he was shot and killed. And so finally, after looking all around and feeling like he had seen all that he needed to see, Detective Lloyd felt more sure than ever that his theory about Anthony Garcia had to be correct. And so he drove his car back to the police station. He walked right into his boss's office, and he would tell him that they have been wrong about Anthony Garcia this whole time. He is not some small-time gang member. He is a big player, and he's not even trying to hide it. The photo that Lloyd saw of Anthony Garcia that really out to him when he was going through all that paperwork was the photo of Anthony when he was being booked into jail. And in this photo, Anthony is shirtless, and Anthony has this huge chest tattoo that you can clearly see in this photo.

The tattoo shows a liquor store, and the left of the liquor store is this military style helicopter that's coming in and firing its gun towards the ground. And on the ground, in the line of fire from this helicopter, is what looks like this man who's got the body of a peanut. And so he's being killed by this helicopter. All the other people who saw this photo or who saw Anthony Garcia in person, chalked up his tattoo to just some weird depiction of a helicopter killing a peanut guy, and they didn't think too much of it. But Detective Lloyd had actually been to the crime scene in '04 when John Juárez had been murdered. And so he had seen the layout of the crime scene. And then he's looking at this photo of Anthony Garcia's chest tattoo, and he realizes it is the same depiction of the crime scene. Anthony Garcia, his nickname was Chopper, which is often a slang term for a helicopter. And John Juárez, who was murdered in '04, he was a member of a gang called Pico Nuevo. And Anthony Garcia and the gang he was involved in, which was not Pico Nuevo, they used to make fun of people like John for being affiliated with that gang by calling them Peanuts, meaning the helicopter in the tattoo represented Anthony Garcia, and the peanut guy was John Juarez.

So this tattoo is literally like a confession that Anthony Garcia was the guy who shot and killed John Juarez. And there were other details in this tattoo as well that made it even more clear that this really was like a confession. I mean, just the angle of the peanut guy's body, so John Juarez's body in the tattoo, was the same angle as he was found in real life. And also the decorations on the liquor store in the tattoo lined up with the decorations that were on Mr. Ed's liquor store when John Juárez was murdered in '04. So really, Anthony Garcia sealed his fate by tattooing that to his chest. Ultimately, Anthony's tattoo would be used to convict him of John Juárez's murder, and Anthony would be sentenced to 65 years to life in prison. There is a very popular TV show on HBO called Kerbner Enthusiasm, and it's about the mega famous Larry David who created Seinfeld. And so Kerbner Enthusiasm is totally a satire. It's a comedy. It's about Larry David. And in fact, Larry David plays himself in the show. But Larry David in the show, is a very exaggerated version of himself in real life.

But the show is to look like it's almost biographical, but it's not. It's totally comedy. Apparently, in real life, Larry is known for getting into funny, awkward situations often that he brings on himself. And so on the show, basically every episode, Larry, David finds himself getting into totally absurd situations that just get worse and worse and worse because Larry just makes all the wrong decisions. And so it's a really funny show. However, there is one particular episode of Kerb here enthusiasm that will go down as the single episode virtually everyone who has ever watched the show will remember, and it's not because it was funny. It's because this particular episode had massive ripple effects that nobody from Larry David to writers to producers, anybody involved with this production could have predicted. The episode in question is called The Carpool Lane. And in this episode, Larry David, the character, is late to a baseball game at Dodge Stadium, and so he's stuck in traffic and he's totally upset. And then he has this idea that if he picks up this prostitute who's right outside his car, that if she gets in the car with him, he'll now have two passengers in the car, and therefore will be eligible to use the carpool lane that nobody else was using in this traffic jam, and that would allow him to get to Dodge Stadium faster.

And so he hires this prostitute, and she gets in the car and Larry awkwardly explains his plan. And then he hops in the carpool lane. He makes his way to Dodge Stadium. The plan works great. And when he gets there, he actually ends up bringing the prostitute with him into the game to just watch the game with him. And so he goes up, they find their seats, and their seats are just so bad. But as they're sitting there and Larry's totally upset about how bad his seats are, Larry happens to see one of his friends who's also at this Dodgeers game, and Larry can tell his friend has great seats. And so the rest of the episode is basically Larry going down and trying to convince his friend to give up his seats for Larry and his prostitute to watch the game. And his friend just continuously says no. And so really, that's the gist of the episode. And you can see how it gets more and more ridiculous, and it gets really funny. But I mean, it's pretty typical writing for this show. This was not like a special show in any way. It was just par for the course, curb your enthusiasm.

That is, until a lawyer named Todd Melnik heard about it. In the fall of 2003, this lawyer, Todd Melnik, called HBO and said he needed to see the raw footage from the episode they shot called A Carpool Lane. A producer at HBO named Tim Givens is the one who answered this call, and his first reaction was, We can't let you see this footage because this episode hasn't even aired yet, and so you're going to have to wait the couple of months until this episode comes out if you want to see this footage. But Tim quickly noticed that Todd Mellnik, the lawyer, was not about to give up this easily. He was adamant that he had to see this footage right now. And so eventually, Tim Gibbs actually would go and find Larry David, and he would ask Larry, Hey, do you mind if this random lawyer comes and watches this footage from this unaired episode? And Larry was like, Okay. And so the next day, Todd Melnik showed up at HBO, and he was led into the small room with the TV. And Tim, the producer he spoke to, as well as Larry David and a few other people from the Kerbure enthusiasm production, they all filed into this room, and all of them just sat down, and then they began playing the footage, the raw footage from the Carpool Lane episode.

And as they watched this footage, which was hours and hours and hours long, the lawyer, Todd Melnik, is watching the footage and just slumping into his chair, just seeming like what he was watching was making him more and more unhappy that clearly he was looking for something and he was not seeing it in this footage. But finally, when one of the producers put in the fifth and final tape of raw footage from this episode. Todd Mellnik, as he's sitting there watching the footage, which looks basically like Larry walking up and down the steps at Dodge Stadium over and over again, and him also walking in and out of his aisle. They re-shot the scene of him sitting down inside of his crappy seats, because Todd's watching this over and over again, and then suddenly he sits up and he points at the screen and goes right there. It would turn out Todd Mellnik was investigating a murder case. The murder happened on May 12th, 2003. A 16-year-old girl named Martha Puebla, was standing in front of her house in a neighborhood in Los Angeles when she was shot by gang members, because apparently a rumor had gotten out that Martha was snitching on gang members, and so she was killed.

And the police actually had already made an arrest in this murder. They had arrested a guy named Juan Catalan. Juan's brother, Mario, was on trial for a different murder, and just two weeks before Martha's murder, Martha testified in Mario's case. And who was in the audience listening to Martha's damning testimony about Mario? Well, Mario's brother, Juan. And so prosecutors believed this was the motive for Juan to kill Martha. Also, there was an eyewitness to Martha's murder, and the sketch artist who worked with this eyewitness came up with a composite sketch of Martha's killer that looked exactly like Juan. And so now, Juan was potentially facing the death penalty if he was found guilty. But Juan was adamant that he did not kill Martha, and on the night of her murder, he said he was at the Dodgers game where they were filming a Curb your enthusiasm episode. But nobody believed him, except for his lawyer, Todd Melnik, who, called HBO, got access to all that unseen footage from the episode. And after watching for hours and hours and hours, finally, that fifth tape goes in. And sure enough, Todd Melnik watched as his client, Juan Catalan, strolled right into frame and sat down with his daughter.

It would turn out Juan was telling the truth the whole time. He did not kill Martha and curb your enthusiasm proved it. Shortly after this discovery, Juan would be released from prison, and he would receive a settlement of $320,000 from the city of Los Angeles and the police. As for Martha, the police were able to eventually track down four people who were involved in her murder, and all four would be convicted and sent to jail for life. There is a road in Detroit, Michigan, called Knock Knock Road that is quite possibly one of the scariest places in all of America. As the story goes, there was this little girl who was biking on Knock Knock Road, and she was struck by a car. Now, the driver sped off and did not help the girl, and the driver was never caught. But the little girl, she would eventually pass away from her injuries. And since that tragedy, motorists on Knock Knock Road have constantly reported seeing glimpses of a little girl lurking around this road often at night. But those are nothing compared to what happened to this married couple. One night, a man and his wife were coming home from dinner, and they were driving on Knockknock Road, when suddenly from outside the car, they heard this high pitch scream.

And so reflexively, the man who was driving slammed on the brakes, and then he and his wife looked out the window to see where the scream was coming from. Now, at first, they didn't see anything, but then right in front of them, they saw a quick glimpse of a little girl who then vanished. Then from behind them, they began to hear a knocking on their back windshield. And so the man and the wife, they looked at each other and then slowly turned around to see what was there. To hear what they saw and to hear the rest of this story, check out The Little Girl on Knockknock Road, which is the newest episode on our new Ballin' Studios podcast called RunFool. New episodes of Runful drop every Tuesday, and you can find Runful on any podcast platform. So go check them out and listen to The Little Girl on Knockknock Road. So that's going to do it. If you enjoyed today's stories, be sure to check out our podcast called The Mr. Ballin' Podcast, where we have hundreds more stories, a lot like the ones you heard today, but many of those stories are only available on the podcast.

Again, it's called the Mr. Ballin' podcast, and it's available on Amazon Music. Wait, hold on a minute. If you enjoyed this episode of Disturbing Photos, then I know you're going to love this other episode of Disturbing Photos. It's the same series. Check it out.