One of Their Own (PODCAST EXCLUSIVE EPISODE)
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Hey Prime members, you can binge eight new episodes of the Mr. Ballin podcast one month early and all episodes ad-free on Amazon Music. Download the Amazon Music app today. On a fall night in 1987, a young woman was walking down the middle of a dark street in a rural Kentucky town. She heard a car turn onto the street behind her and it sounded like it was driving fast, so she quickly stepped up onto the sidewalk.

Suddenly, that car screeched to a stop just a few feet away from her. The car doors flew open, and before the young woman knew what was happening, someone had grabbed her, lifted her off the ground, and threw her into the back seat. A second later, the car was speeding off, and the terrified young woman would soon find herself in the middle of a horrific nightmare that would haunt her for almost 20 years.

But before we get into that story, if you're a fan of the Strange, Dark, and Mysterious delivered in story format, then you've come to the right podcast because that's all we do and we upload twice a week, once on Monday and once on Thursday. So if that's of interest to you, please sneak into the Follow Buttons house and reverse the hot and cold handles on their shower. Okay, let's get into today's story. The show is brought to you by Progressive.

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On October 1, 1987, 20-year-old Karina Mullen slid some file folders into a metal cabinet at the police station in the rural town of Central City, Kentucky. Karina glanced at her watch. It was the end of her workday, but she wanted to finish this filing before she left. She had only been working at the police station as an office assistant since she moved to Central City from her family farm about six weeks earlier.

But, in that short time, members of the small local police force had embraced her as one of their own, and she'd quickly become part of Central City's law enforcement family. Karina finished up her filing and took a few minutes to say goodbye to the officers on duty. It was Thursday, and she had off the next few days, so she told everyone to have a great weekend and said she'd see them soon. After that, she went outside to her car and drove through town towards the apartment she shared with her two-year-old daughter and another young single mother, who she'd quickly become friends with.

Central City was only about 10 minutes from the farm Karina had grown up on, but to her, it felt like kind of a different world. Shops lined the main street, there were a few bars and restaurants in town, and it wasn't too far of a drive to a much bigger city with a thriving nightlife. Karina turned off the main street onto a side road, drove a little further, and then parked in front of her two-bedroom apartment, which was one of several apartments in a small but crowded complex. Just six weeks ago, when she had moved here, this apartment felt like her first real taste of freedom.

Now, Karina loved her parents and living on the family farm, but when she had turned 20 very recently, she really wanted to go out on her own. And she wanted to prove to her parents that she could raise her daughter by herself. But things had not quite turned out like she'd hoped. Karina was raising her child while working at the police station and studying to try to get into nursing school. And she just couldn't do it all.

In truth, she missed having her mom and dad's help. And so, after only having been in this apartment for a little over a month, she had decided to move back to the farm. Karina stepped into her apartment and walked past the few moving boxes she'd already packed up. She saw her roommate, Angela Smith, getting something to eat in the kitchen. When Karina had dropped the news on Angela that she was leaving to go back to her farm, things had not gone well.

Angela felt totally blindsided. She couldn't afford rent by herself, and she had no idea how quickly she could find a new roommate. But Karina had told her she wouldn't just disappear overnight. She would take her time moving out, and she'd try to help Angela get situated with rent before leaving, and so as a result, the tension had begun to ease between them.

And this particular evening, the two women were less stressed than usual because it was just them in the apartment. Karina's daughter was at the farm with Karina's parents and Angela's ex had her daughter for the weekend. So Karina sat down with Angela in the kitchen and they began chatting about work for a while. But at some point, Angela got a bit giddy and said she really just wanted to hear the latest gossip on Karina's boyfriend.

Karina sighed and kind of laughed at herself. She'd recently broken up with her boyfriend, a guy named Jimmy Springer, who she'd had this on-again, off-again relationship with for eight months. But almost in the same breath as talking about the most recent breakup with Jimmy, Karina told Angela that Jimmy was actually coming by later to spend the night. Karina knew this sounded sort of ridiculous, but even though she'd just cut Jimmy loose a few days earlier, she was looking forward to seeing him that night when her daughter was gone and they could just be alone together.

At 9 a.m. the following morning, October 2nd, a city worker was driving to a job not far from the center of town when he noticed something that seemed totally out of place. Behind the parking garage used by the Central City Street Department, he saw an old 1977 Chevrolet car. This didn't make much sense because people from town normally never parked over here, and he knew this car didn't belong to anyone who worked for the street department. The worker parked his truck and hopped out. He wanted to make sure there wasn't someone in the car who might need help or something.

He walked towards the car and at first he didn't see anybody inside. But when he was just a few feet away, he got a good look at the trunk. And without thinking, the worker turned around, ran to the nearest open shop, asked to use the phone, and called 911. Minutes later, Lt. Billy Fields of the Central City Police Department arrived at the scene with several other local police officers. Fields got out of his car. He was in his mid-40s and was one of the most experienced cops on the force.

He saw the parked 1977 Chevrolet and from where he was standing, it was clear there were bloodstains on the outside of the trunk. When the other cops looked at Fields and then over at the car he had just stared at, it hit them why he was so upset. They all recognized the Chevy. It belonged to their co-worker and friend, Carina Mullen. Fields walked closer to the car and he saw blood smears that went into the trunk, like whoever had been bleeding might actually be in the trunk.

Lieutenant Fields noticed the trunk was not actually closed all the way. So he reached down and opened it, and as soon as he did, he shouted and just turned away. The other officers walked over to him and saw what he was looking at, and when they did, they all looked away too. They had just seen their friend, Karina, laying in the trunk, and she was obviously deceased. She was naked, covered in dried blood with cuts on her hands and neck, her nose had been smashed in, and there were dark bruises covering most of her body.

Fields and the other officers did their best to collect themselves. This was a small-town police force that dealt mainly with petty theft and domestic disputes. They occasionally had to tackle larger drug-related crimes in the area, but none of them had dealt with anything like this. Not to mention the victim was somebody they all knew and cared about.

Fields told them he knew how upsetting this was, but they still had a job to do. So he and a couple of officers turned back to the trunk and did a more thorough search, while others opened the car and looked inside. Fields found a bloody comforter from a bed stuffed into the trunk next to Karina's body, along with jeans and a pair of women's underwear. There was a lot of blood in the trunk, but Fields said there would be a lot more if she was actually killed in the trunk or in the car, versus being killed elsewhere and then moved to the car.

The officers who had searched the rest of the car said they did find a few small bloodstains, but nothing that would indicate the attack had actually taken place inside the vehicle. So as a result, Lieutenant Fields and the others began to think that Karina must have been murdered somewhere else and then thrown into her trunk and dumped here. The bloody comforter could have been used to carry her from the murder scene to the car, and it only made sense that that comforter would have come from a bedroom.

Later that day, after Karina's body had been removed from the trunk and the clothes and the bloody comforter had been bagged as evidence, Lieutenant Fields knocked on the front door of Karina's apartment. A young detective and several uniformed officers stood behind him. Karina's roommate, Angela, opened the door. Even though it was the afternoon, she looked like she'd either just rolled out of bed or hadn't slept all night. Angela had met most of these officers before and she knew they worked with Karina and so she asked them if they needed Karina for something work-related.

But Fields didn't waste any time. He bluntly told Angela that Karina was dead and the police needed to search the apartment. Angela backed away from the door, either too shocked or too scared to say anything. Fields told her to wait right there, and then he and the other officers stepped inside. And immediately, they felt like they had found the murder scene. There was no sign of forced entry at the door, but they could clearly see bloodstains on the carpet. They followed the bloodstains down a short hallway to a closed door.

Fields opened it, and when he and the others stepped inside, they knew this had to be Karina's bedroom. They saw photos of her, her parents, and her little girl. But they also saw a scene of complete horror. Blood spatter covered the wall above the bed, and the sheets looked like they had been soaked in blood. The officers also saw there was no comforter on the bed. There was no question this had to be where Karina had been killed. And so Fields sent the uniformed officers to canvas the apartment complex.

The units were all close together and the walls looked pretty thin. He thought somebody must have heard a violent attack last night. Fields and the young detective walked back through the apartment and Fields barked at Angela to join them in the kitchen. Fields was usually a pretty easygoing guy, very calm on the job, but this case had already put him on edge. Fields and the detective sat down with Angela at the kitchen table and Fields asked her when she had last seen Karina.

Angela told him that they had both gone out to a club last night, since neither of their daughters were home, and they had gotten back at around maybe midnight. They'd been drinking pretty heavily, so they both went to bed not long after that. Fields snapped right back. He didn't care how much she'd been drinking. This was a small apartment, and the two bedrooms shared a wall. There was no way Angela didn't hear what happened in Karina's room, and there was no way she didn't see the bloodstains on the carpet when she woke up.

Angela hung her head and fought back tears. And as she did, Fields asked her if she was hiding something from them. She stayed silent for a second and then nodded. She said she hadn't just been drinking the night before. She'd also taken a bunch of painkillers and totally blacked out. She said she was just kind of starting to feel normal again and so that's why she hadn't heard anything the night before or noticed the bloodstains when she finally woke up. Lieutenant Fields took a breath and eased off a bit.

He'd worked enough drug cases in the area to know that the right combination of booze and pills could basically make someone seem dead to the world for a while. This meant there was a chance Angela was actually telling the truth, that she really had no idea what happened over the last 10-12 hours. Fields and the young detective gave Angela a minute to collect herself. Then the young detective asked if there was anyone she could think of in Karina's life who might have wanted to hurt her.

Angela said there was one obvious choice. Karina's on-again, off-again boyfriend, Jimmy Springer. Fields and the detective looked at each other. They didn't know a ton about Karina's boyfriend, but they'd heard enough from her at work to know her relationship had its share of drama. Fields asked if Angela knew the last time Karina had seen Jimmy. Karina closed her eyes and tried to fight back tears.

She said last night, before Karina went to bed, she had told her to keep the front door unlocked, because Jimmy was coming over late and he was going to be spending the night. After leaving the apartment, Lt. Fields caught up with the uniformed officers who'd canvassed the area, and they told him that nobody had heard anything strange last night. This made no sense. The complex was small and the walls looked thin. How had nobody heard anything?

Fields said he would try to figure that out later. He told the young detective to go track Jimmy down and call him in for an interview. In the meantime, Fields would have to drive out to Karina's family farm. News of a violent crime like this in such a small town would spread fast, and he did not want Karina's parents to find out that their daughter had been murdered from the TV. That afternoon, Fields sat down with Karina's parents in a large open room with high ceilings in their farmhouse, and he told them the news.

Karina's mother broke down immediately, but her father just stared off into space, almost like his mind had gone completely blank. All Fields could do was tell them how sorry he was and how he would do everything in his power to find her killer. He told them that Karina was part of the family at the police department and nobody would get away with doing this to her. Fields told the parents that he didn't want to intrude on their grief, but he wondered if they knew anything about Karina's latest boyfriend, Jimmy Springer.

Karina's mom forced herself to stop crying for a second, and she got an angry look on her face. She said Jimmy was no good for her little girl. He was jealous all the time and he had a bad temper. Karina's dad quickly added that this was not just typical jealous boyfriend stuff that might be expected from a young man. He told Lieutenant Fields that a few weeks earlier, Karina had come to the farmhouse and her face was all red.

When he asked her what had happened, she told him that Jimmy had grabbed her, dragged her into the bathroom, and rubbed off all of her makeup with a washcloth because he didn't like her wearing makeup when she was out. Fields assured the parents that the police were already working to bring Jimmy in for questioning. He said he would update them about the case as quickly and as often as he could. He told them again how sorry he was, then said goodbye and walked back outside to his car.

On the night of October 2nd, so a little over 12 hours after Karina's body had been found, Lieutenant Fields sat with the Central City Chief of Police and the County Sheriff in an interview room at the Sheriff's Department. Fields had been right, and the story of Karina's murder had already made the nightly news in cities all over the area. This was by far the biggest crime to have hit Central City in recent memory, so the Chief and the Sheriff wanted to make sure they handled everything by the book and that they could control the story in the media as much as possible.

Just then, a deputy led Jimmy Springer into the room. Jimmy was 19 years old, tall and skinny, and he wore jeans and a t-shirt. He currently lived a little less than two hours away in Nashville, Tennessee, but police had found him staying with a friend in Central City. Jimmy sat down, and right away the sheriff asked him if he knew why he was there. Jimmy had already heard about Karina, so he responded by saying he had nothing to do with her death.

The police chief asked Jimmy where he'd been the night before, and Jimmy said he'd gone to a local bar with a couple of friends just to have a few beers. Afterward, he swung by Karina's apartment, but when he knocked on the door, nobody answered. So he headed to his friend's house and crashed there for the night. The chief didn't hold back. He told Jimmy he thought he was lying. Karina's roommate had told police she left the door unlocked for Jimmy, so why didn't he just walk in?

Jimmy sat there for a second and began to shift in his seat uncomfortably, but he stuck to his story. The investigators kept pushing, but Jimmy didn't budge. He just kept saying he had nothing to do with Karina's murder. Now, despite the fact that everybody in that room thought Jimmy was not telling them everything, the chief and the sheriff recognized that they didn't really have any clear evidence tying Jimmy to the murder yet, so they let him go.

This decision baffled Lieutenant Fields. He argued that they were just letting Karina's killer walk out the door. On October 5th, three days after Karina's body was found, Fields sat at his desk reading over the medical examiner's autopsy report. The report did not surprise Fields, based on what he already knew about the case. Karina had been cut several times with a blade and had been beaten badly with a blunt object. She'd also been raped before she was killed.

The medical examiner believed that this had all taken place the night before Karina's body had been found in the trunk of her car. Lieutenant Fields believed this autopsy report made Jimmy look even more guilty. The violence inflicted on Karina showed the kind of rage that police often saw in cases involving jealous boyfriends and husbands. But Fields had been told he couldn't go after Jimmy yet, so he had to be patient.

The comforter, clothing, and other pieces of evidence found in the trunk of Karina's car and at her apartment had already been sent off to the state crime lab for testing. Enfields knew that those test results might help police close the case whenever they came in. While Enfields read over the autopsy report again, an officer approached his desk and told him he'd just come across something important that had somehow gone overlooked. On the day before Karina's murder, a young man had called into the station saying he witnessed someone threatening Karina with a gun.

And this alleged gunman was somebody the police in town knew all too well. His name was Jeffrey Lee Boyd, and he was the biggest drug dealer in Central City. The fact that this had gone overlooked didn't actually come as a shock or anything to Fields. This was a small police force with limited resources, and as soon as Karina's body had been found, everything else had sort of gotten pushed aside.

Fields knew Jeffrey Lee Boyd well enough to know that he and his crew of drug dealers were very dangerous, and so Fields didn't want to just go after Jeffrey on potential murder charges unless he really had to. So he asked this officer to go find the witness and tell them to come down to the station. A little later that day, Fields met with this witness. But after only a few minutes of questioning, the young man's story began to fall apart.

He went from accusing Jeffrey of sticking a gun in Karina's face, to saying he actually wasn't positive Jeffrey had a gun at all, to admitting he hadn't even gotten a clear look at the man with Karina. So he couldn't even guarantee that it was Jeffrey. After the interview, Fields told his team it had felt like a big waste of time speaking to this witness. Jeffrey was definitely a known drug dealer and he'd done prison time in the past, but that didn't automatically mean he was Karina's killer.

And if the police chief felt like they didn't have enough evidence to go after Karina's boyfriend Jimmy, then there was no way he was going to have them pursue a lead based on an eyewitness account that was flimsy at best. So, a few days into the investigation, the team already felt like they were treading water. And at the same time, Fields began receiving regular phone calls from Karina's dad, who was desperate for any updates. But Fields just kept apologizing and saying he had nothing new to report.

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On October 28th, so almost a month after Karina's murder, the police chief called Lieutenant Fields into his office and told him he had some big news. He'd just gotten a call from police in Nashville, Tennessee, and they'd picked up Karina's boyfriend Jimmy for stealing a computer from his work. They were currently holding him on grand larceny charges, but Jimmy had been talking a lot about the murder in Central City, and so they wanted the chief to know. And now, the chief and the sheriff were going to Nashville to question Jimmy again.

Fields felt a rush of excitement. He said he knew they didn't have any test results from the lab yet, but he was sure Jimmy was their guy. That night, Fields paced back and forth in the police station, anxiously waiting for any news. Most of the other officers waited with him. There was the sense that the Chief's trip to Nashville was going to help bring this case to a close and finally get justice for their friend Karina. Finally, late that night, Fields' phone rang. He grabbed it and he heard the Chief's voice on the other end.

And the chief said Fields was not going to believe what had just gone down in Nashville. Jimmy had not confessed to the murder, but he had admitted to going into Karina's apartment that night. Fields knew this was a huge deal. It meant Jimmy had flat out lied to the police the first time he spoke to them. But the chief said there was something way bigger than that.

Jimmy said he had gone to Karina's bedroom and seen blood, but instead of calling the police, he had driven around town looking for Karina himself, and when he didn't find her, he just went to his friend's house and fell asleep. This had to be one of the most unbelievable, ridiculous alibis the Chief or Fields had ever heard in their law enforcement careers. And so a few minutes later, when Fields hung up the phone, he felt this huge sense of relief. The Chief and the Sheriff were ready to put together a case against Jimmy.

Because they too now believed he was the killer. On July 19th, 1988, so nine months after Karina's body had been found, her boyfriend, Jimmy, went on trial for her murder. Some officers who worked in the state crime lab felt like this case had actually been rushed to trial. Because when the lab had finally tested evidence from the case, the results had not tied Jimmy directly to the murder scene.

so the case against Jimmy was based entirely on circumstantial evidence. But Fields and other members of the Central City Police believed their case against Jimmy was still strong, and they expected a conviction. After a couple of days, the trial ended, and the jury deliberated for only an hour. Fields sat in the courtroom, feeling a rush of anticipation as the jury foreman read the verdict. And Fields heard the words, not guilty.

Fields felt like he had just gotten the wind completely knocked out of him. He'd spent a huge part of almost a year doing everything he could to ensure that Jimmy would go to prison for killing Karina. Now, any hope of that was gone. The police officers filed out of the courtroom feeling utterly defeated and like they had failed their friend and her family. And with nine months of work basically erased, they had no idea where to restart the investigation.

During the weeks following Jimmy's trial, Lieutenant Fields felt like he was scrambling. But he and his team did decide to revisit the possibility that the killer could be Jeffrey Lee Boyd, that drug dealer who may or may not have threatened Karina with a gun. And this time when they looked into it, they discovered something new about Jeffrey. He was close friends and maybe even lovers with Karina's roommate, Angela. The team immediately went back to their early notes from the case and they quickly found something else they had missed.

The medical examiner's toxicology report made it clear that no alcohol or drugs were present in Karina's body when she was killed, but Angela had told Fields and the other detective that she and Karina had been drinking heavily the night of the murder. Fields said he was frustrated with himself. These oversights could be chalked up to a small team handling a case that might be too big for them, but he apologized for what he saw as a massive misstep on his part.

Still, they now had a clear connection between the drug dealer, Jeffrey, and the victim. And they now believed the victim's roommate had lied to them. So, in August of 1988, ten months after the murder, Fields brought in Angela for another interview. But all she could say was that maybe she'd been wrong. Maybe she only thought Karina was drinking a bunch when they went out because she herself had been really drunk and on painkillers.

Following his talk with Angela, Lt. Fields tracked down 25-year-old Jeffrey at his house, and he happened to be there with an 18-year-old drug dealer named Kramer, who cops believed worked for Jeffrey. The two dealers made an odd-looking pair. Jeffrey was this tall, massive guy who had no problem physically intimidating people, while Kramer was skinny and barely stood 5 feet tall.

Fields talked to them for a while at the house, but when he got back to the station, he told the chief that both young men had barely said a thing. This seemed par for the course, though, because Jeffrey, who had been questioned many times in the past by police, sort of knew to keep his mouth shut. Even though Jeffrey had started to seem like a strong suspect on the surface, as the investigation went on, Fields was not able to produce enough evidence to convince anyone that they had a case against Jeffrey.

And once Jeffrey fell off the radar, the investigation began to dry up. In fact, as brokenhearted as police officers and the people who knew Karina still were, there seemed to be an effort from everybody to just move on. Like the only way for the town to heal was to put this horrific murder case behind them despite it being unsolved.

And so as months and then years went by, there were only two men who seemed to still be actively looking for Karina's murderer. That was her father and Lieutenant Fields. Sometimes, Fields would even pick up Karina's dad at the farm and they would just drive around together, looking for any potential clue that they might have missed. But those clues never surfaced and the years kept passing by.

Eventually, Lieutenant Fields retired from the force. And then once Fields was gone, Karina's dad convinced the state police to pick up the investigation. And they tried for a time to solve the murder, but eventually, they also let the case go. Finally, after over a decade of searching, Karina's mom convinced her husband that he needed to drop the case too. They could not spend the rest of their lives hunting for a killer that nobody could find. That is not what Karina would have wanted for them.

In June of 2006, over 18 years after Karina's murder, Detective Damon Fleming of the Kentucky State Police sat at his desk digging through old notebooks and file folders. The state police had recently made an effort to revitalize cold cases and Detective Fleming had been assigned to Karina's murder investigation.

Fleming knew the case had long since disappeared from public consciousness, but when he took it over, he had gotten the word out to the media in and around Central City that the investigation had been reopened, and if anybody had information, no matter how insignificant they thought it might be, they should contact the state police. Sitting at his desk, Fleming heard someone call his name. He looked up from the notebook he was reading, and he saw an officer there with this woman who appeared to be in her 30s, and she looked absolutely terrified.

Detective Fleming asked what he could do for her and she said she needed to talk to him in private. Fleming stood up, signaled for the other officer to leave, and then he led the woman into a conference room. He closed the door behind them and then sat down across from her at a long wooden conference table. As soon as she sat down, the woman kept glancing over her shoulder like she thought somebody was following her. But Fleming assured her they were totally safe in here and he asked her why she needed to see him.

Tears began running down the woman's cheeks as she cleared her throat. And then, she told him her name was Samantha Robinson, and that when she was 16 years old, she had witnessed the brutal murder of Karina Mullen. Detective Fleming sat there, silent and almost in awe of this woman. And by the time she stopped talking, he knew that she had given him all of the information he would need to finally close Karina's murder case after almost 20 years.

Based on Samantha's story and evidence and interviews from multiple investigations conducted over 18 years, this is what police believe happened to Karina on the night of October 1st, 1987. On that night, 16-year-old Samantha Robinson was walking down the middle of a street in Capital City, Kentucky towards her house when she heard a car behind her. Samantha turned and saw headlights rapidly approaching, so she hopped up onto the sidewalk to get out of the way.

Suddenly, the car came to a screeching halt right alongside her. The driver's door and the front passenger door flew open and two men came out and rushed towards her. The driver grabbed Samantha and she kicked and screamed, but there was no way she could get out of his grip. The passenger opened up one of the back doors and the driver shoved Samantha into the back seat and then slammed the door shut behind her. Samantha looked next to her and there was the group's leader, sitting in the back seat, smiling at her.

The car lurched forward and a few minutes later, it pulled up to Karina's apartment. The back door of the car opened and the driver and passenger grabbed Samantha and pulled her out of the car and up towards the apartment, while their leader followed behind, holding a metal club in one of their hands. The driver opened the door to Karina's apartment and told Samantha to keep her mouth shut if she wanted to live. The leader walked past them and right to Karina's bedroom, where Karina was sleeping.

The driver and passenger followed with Samantha and then threw Samantha to the bedroom floor. Karina woke up and saw all the people in her room and began to scream, but the leader jumped on top of her and began beating her stomach with the metal club until she went quiet. At this point, the leader climbed off of Karina off the bed and motioned to the driver. This man drew a knife from his hip, climbed onto the bed with Karina, and made shallow cuts into Karina's neck, arms, and stomach.

After that, the driver with the knife, and then the passenger, and then the leader, all raped Karina. Afterwards, they stepped away from the bed, and for a second, Samantha, who was on the ground, hoped and prayed they would just leave. But the leader raised the metal club, rushed back to the bed, and smashed Karina in the head and nose with it. Karina's nose broke, blood sprayed all over the wall and ran into the sheets, and Karina began to choke. At which point, the group just stood there and watched her die.

After Karina was dead, the leader told the other two to wrap Karina up in her comforter. They followed the orders and carried Karina in her comforter out of the apartment. The leader picked up Karina's car keys off the bedside table, then yanked Samantha up off the floor and dragged her outside. The leader opened up the trunk of Karina's 77 Chevrolet that was parked out front and told the others to dump Karina inside of it.

Then, the leader handed the car keys to Samantha and told her if she drove them to the parking garage near the center of town, they might let her live. Shaking and terrified, Samantha did as she was told. She climbed into the driver's seat with the killers and drove them to a spot behind the parking garage in town and parked the car. And then, in a flash, this teenage girl killed the engine, took the keys out of the ignition, leapt out of the car, and threw the keys as far away as she could.

By the time the killers knew what had happened, Samantha was already running through the shadows and making her way home. The leader sat in the car for a second and just started laughing. They said there was no way this little girl would ever rat them out. She would spend the rest of her life in constant fear that if she did, they would find her and kill her. And so all three of the killers got out of Karina's car and walked through town covered in blood. The driver and the passenger went their own way and the leader walked home, showered and went to bed.

The following morning, the killer's leader got dressed, grabbed their badge and gun, and headed to their place of work, the police station. The drug dealer, Jeffrey Lee Boyd, and his 18-year-old friend, Kramer, helped carry out Karina's murder. But their leader, the one who was in charge of the murder, also happened to become the lead investigator on Karina's murder, Lieutenant Billy Fields.

It would turn out Lieutenant Fields was at the top of the drug trade in Central City, giving out orders and providing police cover while Jeffrey ran things on the street. But Jeffrey just couldn't keep quiet. One day, while he was hanging out with Karina's roommate, Angela, he let it slip that he had cops working with him and protecting him, and Karina heard all of this.

Jeffrey quickly realized he'd made a huge mistake, so the day before the murder, he got his gun and threatened to kill Karina if she talked, just like the witness described seeing. But Fields thought that was not enough. The only way to be sure they would not get caught was to kill her. Fields and Jeffrey were sadistic, though. Murder wasn't enough for them.

So, when they were driving to Karina's and saw that teenager Samantha on the street, they decided to grab her and make her watch what happened next. And what happened next is they raped and killed Karina and forced Kramer to participate. But Karina's roommate Angela had been in her bedroom and heard everything that night. But they threatened to kill her if she talked. Jeffrey came up with the story about Angela and Karina going out and drinking and taking pills for Angela to tell the police.

Fields also told Jeffrey to threaten everybody who lived in that apartment complex. That's why when they were asked by police, all those neighbors said they didn't hear anything. After that, Fields made sure to personally overlook whatever needed to be overlooked in the investigation in order to steer it away from him and his partners.

Karina's boyfriend Jimmy almost turned out to be the perfect patsy for Fields. But in court, Jimmy's lawyers argued that police had bullied and manipulated him into saying things that were not true, and so he was acquitted. And after Jimmy was found not guilty, Lieutenant Fields led the investigation into his own accomplices, but he made sure to steal evidence from the police station to make sure his accomplices didn't actually look guilty. So eventually the case went cold.

It would take almost 20 years for Samantha to finally get over her fear of Fields and Jeffrey. When she heard the case had been reopened, she went straight to the state police and told them everything. She said she owed it to Karina. Angela ultimately aided the prosecution and was only charged with perjury. She did not serve any jail time. As for the killers, Kramer was sentenced to 60 years in prison and Jeffrey and Lieutenant Billy Fields were sentenced to life.

A quick note about our stories: they are all based on true events, but we sometimes use pseudonyms to protect the people involved and some details are fictionalized for dramatic purposes.

Thank you for listening to the Mr. Ballin Podcast. If you enjoyed today's stories and you're looking for more bone-chilling content, be sure to check out all of our studios' podcasts. This podcast, the Mr. Ballin Podcast, and also Mr. Ballin's Medical Mysteries, Bedtime Stories, Wartime Stories, Run Full, and Redacted. Just search for Ballin Studios wherever you get your podcasts to find all of these shows.

To watch hundreds more stories just like the ones you heard today, head over to our YouTube channel, which is just called Mr. Ballin. So that's going to do it. I really appreciate your support. Until next time, see ya.

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