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In early 2018, a woman in her 50s stood in her Austin, Texas bedroom doorway firing shots from her .357 revolver into the dark kitchen in front of her. Someone in the kitchen fired back at her and bullets tore through the house as she aimed at shadows but missed. When her gun finally emptied, she fled to her closet to hide.
Later, detectives found a chaotic scene in the kitchen, bullet casings everywhere, a middle-aged man dead on the floor, and a handgun near his hand. The woman claimed intruders had broken in, killed her husband, and fled when she opened fire. Detectives, however, began to suspect that the scene was staged to cover up something darker, possibly a wife killing her husband.
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 when we upload twice a week, once on Monday and once on Thursday. So if that's of interest to you, please offer to do the follow buttons colored laundry, but instead of using detergent, just use bleach.
Okay, let's get into today's story.
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On the evening of March 1st, 2018, 55-year-old Ted Shaughnessy placed a necklace and a glass display case in his high-end jewelry store in Austin, Texas. Ted adjusted his glasses on his face and then leaned in a bit closer, and he saw the lights in the case bounce off the gold and jewels in this necklace, and it was so beautiful, he just smiled.
He and his wife, Corey, had owned this jewelry store for 20 years. Corey had a keen eye for jewelry, so she worked as the appraiser, choosing which pieces to buy and then sell inside of the store, and also determining how much they were worth. And Ted was a great salesman. Ted took pride in the way he displayed the jewelry in the store.
He wanted to draw the customers in, and then once they were there, Ted would approach them like they were lifelong friends. Now, part of the reason he did this was just because it was an effective sales tactic. But also, Ted really did love meeting and talking with people who came in to shop off the street. That's actually one of the reasons he'd worked in retail for most of his adult life.
Ted locked the display case and walked around the shop, turning off lights and closing things up for the day. Then he set the security alarm, headed out the door, and locked it behind him. Some nights, Ted would stay at the jewelry store long after it had closed to go over the books or to redo the displays. But tonight, he wanted to get home as quickly as he could.
He and his wife had plans to spend the entire night doing one of their favorite things, eating a great home-cooked meal together and just relaxing and watching TV. After leaving the store, Ted climbed into his car and headed home. About 25 minutes later, he pulled into his neighborhood and he looked around at all the huge houses with sprawling front yards and swimming pools out back.
He found his house, which was just as big as all the others, and he pulled into the long driveway and came to a stop. He got out of the car, walked inside his house through the front door, and the moment he was inside, he was hit with this wonderful smell of something delicious cooking in the kitchen.
But before he could even call out to his wife, he heard loud clacking sounds on the hardwood floors as two large dogs bounded through the front room towards him. Ted enthusiastically knelt down and began goofing around with the dogs and asking them how they were doing like they could answer back.
Then he stood back up and the dogs followed at his heels as Ted made his way through the house, which could feel like walking through a maze for somebody who had never been there. Ted and the dogs got to the kitchen, and Ted saw his wife Cori standing over the stove. Cori turned around, and Ted immediately walked over, put his hands on her waist, and gave her a kiss.
Ted helped his wife put some finishing touches on the meal, and then they both got excited about the night ahead of them. They knew a lot of people would find this to be a pretty boring way to spend the night, but Ted and Cori really were never happier than when they were just hanging out together.
After the food was finally done cooking, the couple sat down and ate their great meal at the dining room table while their dogs just stared at them, hoping for some scraps. After they were all done eating, Ted cleared the table and took the dishes into the kitchen. One of the dogs, a Rottweiler named Bart, followed him every step of the way.
After Ted rinsed off the dishes, he joined his wife on the couch in the front room. He draped his arm around her shoulder, and she leaned her head on his chest as they began to watch TV. They spent the night flipping between channels, really only half paying attention. Most of the time, they just talked.
Talked about things at the jewelry store, and also how their son and his girlfriend seemed to be getting pretty serious. Even though their 19-year-old son only lived about two hours away in College Station, Texas, and they saw him often, it still felt strange to be empty nesters, not to have him in the house anymore.
Before they knew it, they had spent hours just sitting there talking and they'd both begun to feel tired. So Ted flipped off the TV and the couple headed to their bedroom with both of their trusty dogs trotting along right behind them. A little before 4.45 a.m.
on March 2nd, 2018, so several hours after Ted and Corey had gone to bed, they both suddenly woke up to the sound of their dogs barking in their room. Ted flipped on the light on his bedside table, and he and his wife looked over and saw their dogs barking away, standing right by the bedroom door. Ted tried to get them to calm down, but they just kept on barking over and over again.
Ted could see his wife looked frightened, and he was feeling a bit freaked out too. The dogs were both really good guard dogs, and they usually only got agitated when they'd heard something. And so Ted slowly got out of bed, opened the drawer on the bedside table, and pulled out a .45 caliber handgun. He checked to make sure it was loaded, and then told his wife to stay in the room.
Ted walked over to the door, opened it up, and headed outside. He made his way into the dark kitchen, and Bart the Rottweiler followed right behind. Just a few minutes later, Corey threw open her closet door, jumped inside, and slammed it shut behind her.
She crouched down in the corner, trying to make herself as small as possible, and as she sat there panting out of breath, she clutched her phone in one hand, and in the other hand, she was holding a .357 caliber revolver. She dialed 911 on her phone and pressed it to her ear, and at the same time, she held the gun out in front of her, aimed at the closet door in case anybody approached her.
She heard the sound of the emergency operator on the other line, and she said the police needed to get to her house right away. Multiple gunshots had been fired, she didn't know if her husband was even alive at this point, and she said she was sure she would be dead within seconds.
Fifteen minutes later, so just after 5 a.m., Travis County homicide detectives James Moore and Paul Salo headed up the long walkway toward Ted and Corey's front door.
By this point, crime scene tape had already been stretched across the large property, several uniformed police officers stood on the lawn, and two officers stood near the front door with Corey, who was there in her nightgown, sobbing. Detectives Moore and Salo introduced themselves to Corey and told her they'd be back to her shortly. Then they put on their gloves and headed inside of her house.
Just standing in the front room, both detectives got a sense of how big this house was and how many different hallways and paths there were to take. They made their way through the front room and walked into the kitchen, where a team of forensics officers were already searching for evidence. On the floor, sprawled out under the kitchen table, the detectives saw Ted Shaughnessy's body.
Blood covered his face and his chest. But the detectives also saw something that completely threw them off. Because in the call they got, they'd already been told about Ted being deceased. But they didn't expect to also see his pet dog lying right there with him.
Bart, the Rottweiler, had clearly been shot and killed, laying just a few feet in front of Ted, like he'd been trying to maybe protect him. One of the forensics officers joined detectives Moore and Salo and pointed out multiple bullet casings littering the kitchen floor.
In fact, there were so many casings that the detectives thought it looked like a massive shootout had taken place right there in the kitchen. The detectives walked over to the kitchen table and knelt down by Ted's body. Near his outstretched hand, they saw a .45 caliber handgun. Moore checked the magazine and saw it was full. So it appeared like Ted had not fired a single shot from his weapon.
However, Moore asked the forensics officer if there was any chance that Ted maybe did fire off some shots and actually emptied out a magazine and then reloaded. And then once it was reloaded, maybe he didn't fire again, giving the impression he had not shot at all. Now, Moore didn't think this was likely, but he just wanted to be sure.
The forensics officer told him they were still looking at everything, but so far, none of the casings they'd found matched the caliber of Ted's gun. So very likely, Ted did not fire a single shot. After spending some time searching the kitchen and also studying Ted's wounds, Moore and Salo began to make their way through the rest of the house.
They found a home security system that was not armed, and they didn't find any evidence of forced entry at the front, back, or side doors. They thought maybe whoever had killed Ted had been invited inside the home or at the very least had a key. However, as soon as they stepped into one of the bedrooms, they immediately began to rethink that theory.
Based on the way the room was decorated, it appeared to belong to a young man. But more importantly, when they looked inside this room, they could see that one of the windows was open and the window screen had been removed and dropped down onto the ground just outside. Moore and Salo went back to the kitchen and told the forensics officers what they just found.
And as members of the forensics team headed to that bedroom, the detectives made their way to the front of the house and walked outside. They saw Ted's wife, Corey, still standing with the two officers. They approached her and gently asked if she was up to answering a few questions. Corey wiped some tears away from her face, but then nodded and said she was.
And so Detective Salo asked her if she could just walk them through what had happened that morning. Corey said that she and her husband had woken up sometime around 4.45am when they heard their dogs barking. Ted had grabbed his gun and walked out with one of the dogs, while she had stayed back in the bedroom with the other dog.
But then she said she heard gunshots coming from the kitchen, so she grabbed her own gun and ran out of the bedroom. She could hear her husband screaming, but there was also this bright light shining directly at her, making it really hard to see. All she could see were shadows moving around in front of her.
But then she saw one of these shadows fire a gun and kill one of their dogs, and so instinctively she raised her own gun and unloaded her weapon, trying to hit the shadow. Detective Salo asked her what kind of weapon she had, and Corey said she had a .357 revolver. Salo and Moore looked at each other, but didn't say anything.
Corey had just admitted she fired her weapon inside the house, and they've just found her husband dead from gunshots. So either she was lying and was making this whole thing up about shadows to cover up her part in the crime, or this really happened. Detective Moore asked Corey if one of the bedrooms in the house belonged to a young man. Corey said they must mean her son's room.
She said she still had his room, but he was 19 years old now and lived a couple of hours away with his girlfriend, and she'd already asked an officer to call them right after police had arrived, and they were on their way right now. Detective Salo asked Corey if she could give any description of the person she'd fired her gun at, even though it was dark and shadowy.
Corey shook her head and said no. She figured it was just a burglar. After all, she and Ted were well-known in the area for their jewelry store and for having made a good amount of money. And so they knew they were a target for a robbery. After this, Salo and Moore stepped away from Corey and headed back inside the house. And already, they were starting to question some of Corey's answers.
Like most spouses in murder cases, Corey was immediately considered a suspect, and the fact that her weapon had been fired in the house only made her a stronger one. On top of that, when she called 911, she said she was hiding in the closet, and she was sure whoever was inside her house was coming for her. But when the police had arrived and done a sweep of the house, nobody was there.
Finally, Corey had just claimed that she thought this was all a robbery gone bad. However, the detectives had walked through the house and seen stacks of cash, high-end jewelry, and expensive electronics just laying out, untouched. And Corey and Ted's safe did not look like anyone had even tried to break into it. So why would a robber leave without taking a single thing of value?
Still, the son's bedroom window had been opened, and so if Corey had done that to try to stage things to make it look like a break-in and robbery, she didn't do anything else to the house to back that up.
The detectives talked this over as they went back to the son's bedroom, and when they walked in, one of the forensics officers had a smile on his face, and he said they had just pulled a really clear fingerprint off the outside of the window, so they hoped that would lead them right to the person who had climbed in. And as Moore and Salo stood there, something began to hit them.
If somebody did really break into the house through this window, climb into this bedroom, and then make their way all the way to the kitchen, they would almost have to have some previous knowledge of the layout of this place. Because even with all the lights on, this was not an easy house to navigate. It was massive and basically like a big labyrinth.
So now, the detectives felt almost convinced that even if Ted's wife was not involved, somebody who Ted knew and who had very likely been to this particular house many times must have been his killer. It's officially 2025, and this year I plan on really focusing on my health.
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Visit BetterHelp.com slash MrBallinPod today to get 10% off your first month. That's BetterHelp, H-E-L-P dot com slash MrBallinPod. A couple hours later, at 8 a.m. on March 2nd, a car pulled up in front of the house. Ted's 19-year-old son, Nicholas, and Nicholas's girlfriend, Jackie Edison, parked behind the line of police cars outside the house that Nicholas had grown up inside of.
They both got out of the car and immediately spotted Corey, who was still standing in the front yard, and began running towards her. An officer stopped them, but when they said who they were, he let them by. A moment later, Nicholas and Jackie were hugging Corey, and all three of them just stood there, crying.
Inside the house, Detectives Moore and Salo got word that Ted's son had just arrived, so they quickly went outside and found Nicholas and Jackie still standing with Corey. The detectives apologized for interrupting, but they asked Nicholas if they could talk to him for a few minutes.
Nicholas said of course, and then followed the detectives across the yard to a spot where they'd be able to talk without anybody else hearing. Moore started off by asking Nicholas where he'd been around 4.45 a.m. that morning, the time the 911 call had come in, and Nicholas said that he and his girlfriend were asleep at their place in College Station.
Jackie was a student at Texas A&M down there, and Nicholas worked trading stocks as a day trader. Moore took down a few notes and then asked Nicholas if there was anyone he could think of who had a problem with his father and might have wanted to do this. But Nicholas shook his head and said basically everybody who knew his parents loved them.
Moore asked if there was anything at all about Nicholas' dad that he could think of that could maybe help them, even if it was really small. Nicholas thought about it for a few seconds and then suddenly his eyes went wide like he just remembered something. He said there was one thing that could be important, but it was a really weird situation.
When he'd still been living at home, his next-door neighbor had come to him and said she thought that her husband was cheating on her. This neighbor knew Nicholas was pretty good with technology, so she'd asked if there was any way he could track her husband or something, and she told him she would pay him for his services.
Nicholas had felt strange getting involved in something like this, but his next-door neighbor was a nice woman and a good friend of his mother's, so he had helped her. He had put a tracker on her husband's car and followed him one night to another woman's house, and it became clear pretty quickly that the man was cheating on his wife. Now, Nicholas got a worried look on his face.
He'd always assumed the husband never knew he was involved in helping the wife catch him cheating. But if this man had found out it was him, he might have wanted revenge, and his dad might be dead because of it. After that, the detectives told Nicholas he could go rejoin his mother. After he had walked off, the two men just looked at each other and shook their heads in disbelief.
That was a really weird story. Neither of them had ever run into a teenager who had acted like a private investigator to catch a cheating husband. It almost sounded made up, more like something the kid might have watched on TV. But regardless, it was a good lead. After Moore and Salo finished up their initial work at Ted and Corey's house, they walked next door to the neighbor's house.
They knocked on the front door and a woman answered, and quickly she invited them inside. They all sat down at her kitchen table, and the detectives didn't waste any time. They needed to know if Nicholas' wild story about trailing this woman's husband was true. The woman looked a little embarrassed, but she said Nicholas was telling the truth.
She felt bad for dragging a teenager into her marital problems, but she had been desperate. Detective Moore leaned in and told her he did not need all the details about her marriage, but he needed to know one thing that was extremely important. Had she ever told her husband about Nicholas's involvement in all of this? The woman didn't hesitate. She said no way would she ever do that.
Her husband, who had since moved away and was soon to be her ex-husband, had no idea at all about Nicholas. And as she was talking, the reason for this line of questioning finally dawned on her. And she stopped and just said her husband might have cheated on her, but there was no way he would have ever attacked Ted or anybody else like that.
The detectives left the house not long after that and headed back to the station. Despite what the woman said about her husband, they knew they still had to track him down and get more information directly from him.
In the days following the murder, while members of their investigative team followed up on the neighbor's husband, Moore and Salo contacted Ted's closest friends to see what else they could learn about him. But not much new came from that. Everybody seemed to like Ted, and nobody could understand who would do this unless it was a robbery.
Now, while the detectives still were not convinced Ted's death was the result of a robbery gone wrong, they did start to look more into the jewelry store to see if maybe somebody had been staking the place out and following Ted home. However, they got a phone call from Ted's son, Nicholas, that caused them to quickly change the direction of their investigation.
Nicholas was aware that his bedroom window had been found open on the night his father was killed, and he said he just couldn't stop thinking about it, and in fact, there was something he felt like he needed to share with the detectives. He told them when he was younger, he would use his bedroom window to sneak out of the house and then get back inside without his parents knowing.
It was just stupid teenager stuff, nothing serious, but he did it so often that he made a habit of just keeping that window unlocked. Now he realized that particular window might have been left unlocked even after he had moved out. But what Nicholas said was really weighing on him was that there was only really one other person who knew he did this with his window.
And that was his friend Spencer Patterson. Because he and Spencer had crept out of that window a bunch of times together when Spencer had slept over. Detective Salo asked Nicholas if the reason he was so worried was because maybe Spencer had some reason to come after Nicholas now? Like, had they had a bad fight or something?
Nicholas said no, but he said Spencer would have gone to their house and potentially used that window to get in there and get his parents' money and jewels. Nicholas said Spencer had not really grown up with money of his own, and he'd always been kind of jealous of how wealthy Nicholas' family was. And there was more.
Spencer not only knew about the bedroom window, he also knew exactly where to find Nicholas's parents' safe. About a week after the murder, Detective Salo and Moore sat together in an office, going over the notes they'd already put together. And even though their investigation was still relatively new, they felt like they had some promising leads.
they still thought there was a strong chance that Corey had simply shot her husband, because in addition to what they'd learned at the house, they'd now discovered that Corey was the beneficiary of Ted's $1 million life insurance policy. She also stood to gain sole ownership of the jewelry store and the house, which were both worth a ton of money too.
The detectives believed they'd have a clear idea about Corey's potential involvement in the murder when they got the results of the ballistics tests that would show if Corey's gun had fired the bullets that killed Ted. But the detectives had also started to consider that maybe Corey had been right. Maybe this was a robbery gone bad.
And if that was the case, Nicholas's friend, Spencer, had to be high on their suspect list. Even if this robbery had not actually been successful, Spencer did know that Ted and Corey were wealthy, he knew how to sneak in through Nicholas's window, he knew his way around the maze-like house, and he knew where the safe was.
Detective Moore picked up the phone, put it on speaker, and called the number he had for Spencer. Spencer picked up, and Moore quickly introduced himself and then immediately launched into a series of questions.
The detectives learned that Spencer had gone over to Ted and Corey's house for dinner about a month ago when Nicholas had been visiting, and they said that they had treated him like he was one of the family, just like they'd done since he was a kid.
Moore asked Spencer how he and Nicholas used to sneak out of the house when they were younger, and Spencer talked about using the bedroom window, just like Nicholas had said. While the detectives talked to Spencer, they kept getting the feeling like he was holding something back.
The kid was being very cooperative in answering their questions, but there just seemed like there was always this hesitation, or like he was about to say something and then chose not to. By the end of the call, Moore and Salos still did not feel satisfied, so they scheduled an in-person meeting with Spencer. And in the meantime, they decided to keep a close eye on their other major suspect.
About a week later, in late March, Nicholas and Jackie were sitting on the couch in the front room of Ted and Cory's house, looking at Cory as she stared out the window onto the street. Nicholas didn't want his mom to be alone, so he told her that he and Jackie would stay at the house as long as they needed to. That had cheered Corey up, but it was clear she was still struggling.
And today, Nicholas and Jackie were extra worried about her because she kept standing there just staring out the window. They had no idea why. But suddenly, Corey turned around and told them to come over and take a look for themselves. And so Nicholas and Jackie walked over to the window and Corey pointed to a plain-looking sedan on the street.
She told them she thought it was a cop and that he was watching her. At first, this seemed like paranoia to Nicholas and Jackie. However, when Nicholas looked out the window and he got a good look at that car before it drove off, he thought his mom was right. It definitely could be an unmarked police car. Corrie stepped away from the window and collapsed onto the couch.
She didn't understand why the police would be watching her. Why weren't they out finding the person who had actually killed her husband? Nicholas looked over at his mom and he could tell she was just in total despair. And so he leaned over to Jackie and whispered something in her ear. Jackie was surprised by what she just heard, but she quickly smiled and nodded her head.
And so Nicholas took Jackie's hand and together they walked over to the couch where Corey was. And then Nicholas took a breath and said that he and Jackie had something very important he wanted to tell her. They were not just boyfriend and girlfriend anymore. They had actually gotten married. Corey instantly sat up and just stared at them for a second, shocked.
Nicholas quickly said that they had planned to tell her and dad when they came to visit next, and they still wanted to have a big ceremony, but they had just decided they wanted to spend the rest of their lives together, and so they had just gotten it done and gotten married. After a tense couple of seconds, Corey broke down in tears, but these were tears of joy.
She got off the couch, smiled, and hugged Jackie and told her how happy she was to welcome her to the family. Then, Corey said Jackie should go pick an engagement ring from their jewelry shop and then they should have a big engagement party. Even if they were already married, she didn't want her to miss out on anything.
And who knows, maybe this was a way for them to start to heal a bit and move forward as a family. Nicholas was very relieved. He was so glad the news had made his mom as happy as he hoped it would.
But as excited as she seemed, and as much as they all wanted something to celebrate during this terrible time, Nicholas just couldn't shake the image of that unmarked police car staking out his mother's house. Over the following weeks, the investigative team continued to dig into the Shaughnessy's financial records, and they also did keep eyes on Corey's house.
While that was going on, detectives Moore and Salo met in person with Nicholas' friend Spencer. And somehow, being face-to-face with him made them feel even more like he was hiding something. And it was strange, because on the surface, Spencer seemed cooperative and like he wanted to help.
But there was just something about the way this kid spoke that convinced Moore and Salo that they couldn't fully trust him. So after meeting with Spencer at the station, the detectives secured warrants to search Spencer's house and his car. Now, the search of the house didn't turn up anything out of the ordinary. However, when they went through Spencer's car, they found a .380 caliber gun.
Spencer had never mentioned having this gun, which seemed a little odd since he knew he was being investigated for a shooting. The detectives thought if he had wanted to clear himself, he wouldn't try to hide the fact that he owned a gun. And within days, this new piece of evidence looked a lot more damning.
Because when Ballistic's reports came back, they showed that some of the bullets fired at the crime scene came from a .357, which matched Corey's gun, and some of the others came from a .380, just like Spencer's. About a month after Ted's murder, Detectives Moore and Salo believed they had Ted's killer in their sights.
They collected more financial records and cell phone data to try to tie up any loose ends, and then they brought Spencer into the station for one last interview. Spencer sat down at a small table across from Salo and Moore in a brightly lit, cramped room. He'd always seemed a bit nervous to the detectives, but today, he looked like he was carrying the weight of the world on his shoulders.
But despite that, Moore and Salo didn't go on the attack. Spencer was young, and he was nervous and scared. So, Moore tried to put him at ease. He told him they thought they knew what happened on the morning Ted died. They just needed Spencer to help them fill in the blanks.
And before Spencer could even begin to talk, the detectives confronted him with all the evidence they had in the case, since they told him there really wasn't any point trying to hide anything anymore. After a very tense minute, Spencer looked across the table at the detectives and then told them everything he knew.
Following that interview, it would take Moore and Salo several more weeks to nail everything down. But in May of 2018, two months after Ted's murder, they knew exactly what had happened and who had fired the shots that killed Ted Shaughnessy.
Based on Spencer's interview, cell phone data, and evidence collected throughout the investigation, here is what police believe happened to Ted in the early morning hours of March 2, 2018. On that morning, the killers crept through the dark house, led only by the light shining from one of their phones. They each held a gun in their hands, and they tried to move as slowly and quietly as possible.
But when they made it to the kitchen and turned towards the main bedroom, they heard dogs start barking. The killers froze, not sure what to do. One of the dogs sounded really aggressive. The killer holding the phone shined the light towards the bedroom door, and right away they both saw something moving towards them.
As the barking got louder and they heard footsteps and loud clacking on the wooden floors, suddenly the light illuminated the dog, and it was the Rottweiler, Bart, bounding towards them, baring his teeth. One of the killers instinctively raised their gun and fired off a shot. The dog squealed and fell to the kitchen floor. Ted screamed and ran into the kitchen after the dog.
He raised his gun, but before he could get a shot off, now both killers started firing. The sound of gunshots crashed through the house as bullets hit Ted in the back, the thigh, and the head. Ted collapsed to the floor under the kitchen table, dead. The killers began shouting at each other, starting to panic. This had not gone the way it was supposed to.
But before they could make another move, bullets came whizzing out of the dark into the kitchen, hitting the wall and sending pieces of plaster onto the floor. The killer with the cell phone shined the light in the direction of the gunshots, trying to get a clear look at the shooter.
Their hands were shaking and they couldn't really aim well, but still the killers just held their guns and started firing wildly. And then finally the shots stopped and the kitchen fell silent. One of the killers shouted that they needed to get out of there. So they ran out of the kitchen into one of the bedrooms and climbed out the open window.
Outside, they ran as fast as they could through the darkness back to a car they'd parked down the street. They got in and one of the killers hit the gas and floored it through the neighborhood while the other killer sat panicking in the passenger seat.
They both knew they had screwed up and now they were gonna have to get in touch with the people who had hired them and tell them they'd only taken out one of the intended targets. The killers were two men who had no connection to Ted. However, the two people who hired these men were Ted's own son, Nicholas, and the woman Nicholas had secretly married, Jackie Edison.
Nicholas knew if both of his parents were dead, he would inherit their store and their house and benefit from their life insurance policies, all of which would have made him a multimillionaire. And Nicholas really wanted that money because he had gone into quite a bit of debt from playing the stock market as a day trader.
So with Jackie's help, he found two hitmen and offered to pay them a lot of money to kill both Ted and Corey and to make it look like a robbery. Nicholas told the hitmen about his bedroom window and gave them a complete layout of the house.
But on the night of the murder, the hitmen did not imagine they would find themselves in a full-fledged shootout, so when Corey started firing off her .357 at them, the whole plan fell apart. And so when Corey rushed back to her closet to call 911, instead of the hitmen going after her and killing her, they just ran out of the house and didn't even attempt to make it look like a robbery.
And then a few hours later, when Nicholas and Jackie arrived at the house, they knew their plan had not worked. so they tried to play the perfect son and daughter-in-law. Nicholas also sent the cops after the neighbor's husband and his close friend Spencer.
The neighbor's husband was cleared as a suspect very quickly, but Spencer remained high on the suspect list, just like Corey was, for a significant amount of time. However, when ballistics tests came back, they confirmed that none of the bullets fired from Corey's gun had actually struck Ted, and that the gun that was found in Spencer's car had not been used in the murder.
And that fingerprint that had been found on the bedroom window did not match Spencer's. In fact, it just turned out to be an old print from when the window had been manufactured. So, the detectives no longer believed Spencer committed the murder. And the more they talked to Spencer, the more they realized he wasn't hiding something to protect himself.
He was hiding something to protect his best friend, Nicholas. But in his final meeting with police, Spencer would admit that Nicholas had talked to him on several occasions about wanting to murder his parents and hiring hitmen to do it. And after this, when police dug deeper into Nicholas' phone records, they found a couple of things that sealed the case.
Nicholas, being the family member who was the most tech-savvy, set up an app on his phone that enabled him to control the alarm system on his parents' house. And the second discovery, and the far more damning one, was a series of text messages between Nicholas and Jackie in which the two of them were clearly arranging a murder-for-hire.
Nicholas and both shooters were sentenced to 35 years in prison. Jackie cut a plea deal and received 10 years of probation. But with one very specific caveat, she had to spend two nights in jail every year on the anniversary of Ted's murder.
A quick note about our stories, they are all based on true events, but we sometimes use pseudonyms to protect the people involved, and some details are fictionalized for dramatic purposes. Thank you for listening to the Mr. Ballin Podcast. If you enjoyed today's story and you're looking for more bone-chilling content, be sure to check out all of our studios' podcasts.
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