MrBallen Podcast: Strange, Dark & Mysterious Stories
One of Their Own (PODCAST EXCLUSIVE EPISODE)
Mon, 23 Dec 2024
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 got onto the sidewalk. Suddenly, the 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 grabbed her, lifted her off the ground, and threw her into the backseat. The car sped 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…For 100s more stories like these, check out our main YouTube channel just called "MrBallen" -- https://www.youtube.com/c/MrBallenIf you want to reach out to me, contact me on Instagram, Twitter or any other major social media platform, my username on all of them is @mrballenSee Privacy Policy at https://art19.com/privacy and California Privacy Notice at https://art19.com/privacy#do-not-sell-my-info.
Chapter 1: What happened on the fall night in 1987?
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.
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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.
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Chapter 2: Who was Karina Mullen?
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, Lieutenant Billy Fields of the Central City Police Department arrived at the scene with several other local police officers. Fields got out of his car.
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Chapter 3: What led to the discovery of Karina's body?
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'd both gone out to a club last night, since neither of their daughters were home, and they'd 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, Lieutenant 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.
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Chapter 4: What did the police find at the crime scene?
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.
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Chapter 5: What did Karina's parents say about her boyfriend?
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, 10 months after the murder, Fields brought in Angela for another interview. But all she could say was that, you know, 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.
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Chapter 6: What were the police's suspicions about Jimmy Springer?
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.
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Chapter 7: Who is Jeffrey Lee Boyd and why is he relevant?
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.
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Chapter 8: What challenges did investigators face during the case?
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.
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