MrBallen Podcast: Strange, Dark & Mysterious Stories
Square Dance of Death (PODCAST EXCLUSIVE EPISODE)
Mon, 02 Dec 2024
On a cold December night in 2013, a 59-year-old widow stood on stage at a square dance club in Arkansas, watching some of her closest friends dance together. The woman had owned and run the square dance club for years, and the people out on the floor were just like family to her. But as she listened to the music and called out different square dance steps, she didn’t notice that one of the dancers had their eyes fixed right on her. And the woman did not know that this dancer had become obsessed with her. In fact, the dancer had started losing sleep just thinking about the woman. And now the dancer had decided it was time to act, because they believed they would never find peace until the object of their obsession was dead.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 cold December night in 2013?
On a cold December night in 2013, a 59-year-old widow stood on stage at a square dance club in Arkansas, watching some of her closest friends dance together. The woman had owned and run this square dance club for years, and the people out on the floor were just like family to her.
But as she listened to the music and called out different square dance steps, she didn't notice that one of the dancers had their eyes fixed right on her. And the woman didn't know that this dancer had become obsessed with her. In fact, the dancer had started losing sleep just thinking about this woman.
And now the dancer had decided it was time to act because they believed they would never find peace until the object of their obsession was dead. 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 offer the follow button a nice refreshing cup of water while they run a marathon, but don't tell them you've replaced the water with colite. Okay, let's get into today's story.
Lamont Jones is shattered when his cousin dies just weeks after entering prison. The official report says natural causes, but bruises and missing teeth tell a different story. Wondery presents Death County PA, a chilling true story of corruption and cover-ups. Follow Death County PA on the Wondery app or wherever you get your podcasts.
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Chapter 2: Who was Patty Wheelington and what was her role in the dance club?
On the night of Monday, December 2nd, 2013, 59-year-old Patty Wheelington walked across a gravel parking lot toward her favorite place in Texarkana, Arkansas, the Guys and Dolls Square Dance Club.
Patty was the owner of the club, a spot where club members from town got together each week to socialize and square dance, which is a traditional type of partner dance that had once been extremely popular in the American South and West.
Patty had managed the club for years with her husband Ray, but Ray had died a year earlier, leaving Patty to run things on her own with some help from the most dedicated club members. The couple had always considered Guys and Dolls to be like their second home, and now that Ray was gone, Patty felt like this club was the most important thing in her life.
And tonight was her first day back at the club since taking a short trip for Thanksgiving, so she was looking forward to seeing some of her friends and getting back into her weekly routine. Patty opened the front doors, stepped inside, and her face immediately lit up.
This old-fashioned dance hall was housed in a metal building that almost looked like a large storage unit from the outside, but the inside was bright and festive. String lights and decorations hung along the walls, and Patty saw a group of older women dressed in colorful Western skirts and petticoats, and older men wearing their cowboy boots and hats.
And everybody was socializing and laughing and having a great time while filling up their paper plates with food. The moment Patty walked inside, the club members turned, saw her and shouted hello and some rushed over to greet her like she'd been away for months.
They told her they'd been anxiously waiting for her to come back because they hadn't known what to do with themselves while the club was closed over the holiday. She told them how much she missed them too and thanked them for getting everything set up for the night. As she talked, Patty heard somebody calling her name.
She looked over at a long table lined with food, and she saw two of her closest friends waving to her. They were Phyllis' neighbors and Virginia Hyatt. Patty went over to the table, and the women hugged each other and talked about their Thanksgiving holidays, until Patty noticed it was almost time to start the night's dance.
Patty walked across the dance hall, got up on the stage and tapped the mic, and then welcomed everyone back to the club. And immediately, everybody cheered and took their spots on the dance floor with their partners. Well, at least almost all of them cheered. As Patty looked out from the stage, she noticed one of the couples whispering to each other while pointing her way.
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Chapter 3: What signs indicated that Patty was in danger?
Minutes later, another car pulled up the driveway, and two men stepped out. Texarkana police detectives Paul Noll and Jason Hack, who were about as physically mismatched as two people could be. Noll was round and bald, and Hack was tall and thin. They looked like an odd pairing, but these two men were actually almost always on the same page, and they were both sharp and meticulous investigators.
Texarkana, Arkansas only had a few murders every year, so whenever Nall and Hack got a call for a homicide, they knew it was not going to be an ordinary day at the office. And as they sized up their new crime scene, they could tell right away that this murder seemed especially out of the ordinary.
The dead woman looked much older than the average murder victim in the area, and this neighborhood was more affluent than where they usually responded to violent crimes. Nall and Hack quickly met with Phyllis and Barbara, but both women seemed so shaken they could barely talk.
However, Phyllis did offer, in a very trembling voice, that the deceased was their friend, a woman named Patty Wheelington. Hack looked at the time and figured he should start canvassing the neighborhood while the neighbors were still awake. He told Nall he'd be back in about an hour. As Hack walked to his car, he was struck by how eerily quiet it was.
Even during the drive here, he had noticed how the woods seemed to isolate everything and how much land there was between each house. And as he pulled out onto the road to begin his canvassing, he didn't feel optimistic that any of Patty's neighbors would have witnessed anything.
Meanwhile, Nall stepped onto the front porch and began examining Patty's body and the area around her, trying to make sense of what had happened. For Nall, there was no mistaking the five small, perfectly round wounds on Patty's body for anything other than gunshot wounds.
He observed a bullet hole in the swivel chair where he guessed Patty had been sitting, and then another bullet hole in the bedroom window directly behind the chair. It looked as though the first shot was fired while Patty was seated, and it missed her. He then noticed another bullet lodged inside the front door of the house, which looked like yet another missed shot.
Nahl took a step back, trying to picture the crime as it happened. He looked down at Patty and saw the cigarette wedged between her fingers now burnt down to the filter.
He noticed the way Patty's body was positioned, face up with one knee raised, and Nahl visualized Patty leaping up from her chair after the first shots were fired and desperately trying to retreat into her house as more bullets hit her until she collapsed onto her back.
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Chapter 4: How did Patty's friends react when they couldn't reach her?
And while he was doing this, headlights suddenly swept across the porch as the coroner's van pulled up to the house. The coroner got out and met with Nall, and Nall told him he was free to remove the body. So, with the help of two police officers, the coroner lifted up Patty's body, placed it into a cadaver bag, and carried it off the porch.
With the front door now clear, Nahl entered the home and went straight to the bedroom, where he found a .38 caliber slug on the bedroom floor, right where he calculated he would find it. He then began doing a walkthrough of the house, going from room to room, looking for any signs of ransacking or burglary. But nothing appeared out of place.
In fact, it didn't look like Patty's killer ever entered the home. It was as if they drove up to the house, exited their car, immediately began firing, and once Patty was down, they got back into their car and drove away.
Just as Nall started a search of the kitchen about an hour after he'd arrived, his partner, Detective Hack, walked in and quickly brought Nall up to speed on what he had learned during his canvas of the neighborhood. Several of Patty's neighbors reported hearing gunshots around 8 a.m. that morning. After hearing this, Nall looked over at the half-empty pot of coffee still on the kitchen counter.
He'd seen Patty lying dead in her bathrobe, and she'd obviously been dead for at least several hours before she was discovered, so it definitely seemed like she'd been killed that morning, possibly around 8 a.m. but then Nall wondered why none of these neighbors had called the police if they heard gunshots that morning.
Hack said he'd asked the neighbors the same question, and the explanation was pretty simple. People in that area fired their guns into the air all the time to scare geese out of their gardens or deer off their front lawns, so hearing gunshots would not exactly be cause for alarm.
Then Nall started updating his partner on what he had found on the porch and inside the house as the two men searched the kitchen. But then suddenly, Nahl stopped talking. He picked up several pieces of paper that were lying on the counter near the coffee pot, and as he read them over, he turned to Hack with a smile on his face. It looked like he had just found a huge piece of the puzzle.
Null handed over the papers to his partner, and after reading it over, Hack as well got the same look on his face. The first piece of paper was an invoice for a locksmith. Just a day earlier, Patty had paid someone to change all the locks on the doors to her house. Hack looked up at his partner with his eyebrows raised.
If Patty was suddenly changing her locks at the house she'd lived in for years, it very likely meant she was afraid of someone who she knew well enough to maybe have a key to her house. Nall nodded in agreement and told him to wait until he saw what was on the other papers he had handed him.
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Chapter 5: What did the police discover at the crime scene?
We continue to find ourselves at an impasse. I'm declaring a mistrial in this case.
But now the case is back in the spotlight. And one question still lingers. Did Karen Reid kill John O'Keefe? The evidence is overwhelming that Karen Reid is innocent. How does it feel to be a cop killer, Karen? I'm Kristen Thorne, investigative reporter with Law & Crime and host of the podcast, Karen, The Retrial. This isn't just a retrial. It's a second chance at the truth.
I have nothing to hide. My life is in the balance and it shouldn't be.
I just want people to go back to who the victim is in this. It's not her.
Listen to episodes of Karen the Retrial exclusively and ad-free on Wondery+.
Lamont Jones' world is shattered when his cousin dies in custody just weeks after entering prison. The official report says natural causes, but bruises and missing teeth tell a different story. From Wondery comes Death County, PA, a chilling true story of corruption and cover-ups that begins as one man's search for answers, but soon reveals a disturbing pattern.
Lamont's cousin's death is just one of many, and powerful forces are working to keep the truth buried. With never-before-heard interviews and shocking revelations, Death County PA pulls back the curtain on one of America's darkest institutional secrets. This isn't just another true crime story. It's happening right now. Follow Death County PA on the Wondery app or wherever you get your podcasts.
You can binge all episodes of Death County PA early and ad-free right now by joining Wondery Plus.
Hey guys, Mr. Ballin here. You know how I tell strange, dark, and mysterious stories? Well, I've stumbled on some strange, dark, and mysterious medical stories that really are just as wild. Like there was a story about this woman who accidentally swallowed something that got lodged in her heart. There was a story about a guy where a tree grew in his lung.
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Chapter 6: What evidence suggested a personal motive behind Patty's murder?
And it was a burner phone for James Hyatt. Nolenhack immediately got in their car and drove across town towards James' house. They still considered Phyllis and Barbara suspects, and they thought there was a chance the women had worked together with James.
But based on the text messages the detectives had found between Patty and this MF person, and now the burner phone, it seemed pretty clear that James and Patty were having an affair, which automatically made James a major suspect in his own right.
On top of that, it made it even more likely James would have had a key to Patty's house, and as a final strike against him, he had something to gain financially from Patty's death. The detectives arrived at James' house, but his wife Virginia came to the door and told them James wasn't home.
In fact, she had no idea where he was, and she was starting to worry that he might have just left town or something without telling her. And now the detectives realized they might be looking at a fleeing suspect. They told Virginia to contact them if she heard from her husband and to please keep her phone close by in case they needed to follow up with her. And Virginia said she would.
Nall and Hack got in their car and headed right back to the station. It was late and they were both very tired, but now this was starting to feel like a case they could close before sunrise. They just had to find James. Detective Nall walked into his office and called James' main phone, not the burner phone. There was no answer, but Nall was relentless.
He just kept calling over and over and over, and finally, after a bunch of tries, Nall heard James' answer. Before James could say anything other than hello, Nall introduced himself and told James why he was calling. But James cut him off, saying he'd already gotten the news of Patty's death, and so this would just have to wait, because he was out of town.
Nall couldn't believe how arrogant and dismissive James sounded, and he was not convinced James was actually out of town. But either way, the detective knew he could not let James off the phone and risk having him disappear for good. Usually, Nall liked to interview his primary suspects in person, but he knew he could not wait for a face-to-face meeting with James.
So, Nall just launched into an interview right there on the phone. He told James that police knew all about the burner phone and his affair with Patty. There was no point in trying to hide those things. James immediately went silent, and there was a long pause, and then when he started talking again, all of the arrogance Nall had sensed just minutes ago was gone.
James sighed and admitted that he and Patty were romantically involved. He only had the burner phone and the different name in her contacts to protect Patty's reputation. After all, he said, you know, people in this town don't look too kindly upon adultery and the other woman often gets blamed in these situations. So he just never wanted any of this to get out to protect her.
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Chapter 7: What mysteries surround Patty's life insurance policy?
As soon as Nall hung up, he and Detective Hack put in a request for a subpoena so they could get James' cell phone records. They knew that request would take a little time to be fulfilled, so in the meantime, they reached back out to James' wife, Virginia. They said they knew it was late, but they needed to talk to her.
And not long after the call, the detectives drove back to James and Virginia's house, picked her up, and brought her back to the station. and by the time they arrived there, detectives Nall and Hack weren't even sure if it was considered late at night or early in the morning. They just thanked her for coming in at such a strange time, and they led her into a large office with a conference table.
Virginia sat down across from them, and for a second, neither of the detectives spoke. This was not a situation that either of them wanted to be in. But, finally, Hack looked across the table at Virginia and asked her if she was aware that her husband James had been having an affair with Patty.
Virginia gave a little smile and said she knew it might sound strange to them, but she knew all about the affair. Hack and Nall shared a quick look, like, what was going on here? And then Virginia told them that she and Patty were friends and there were no problems between them at all.
Now, neither of the detectives had expected this response, but they knew there were all different kinds of marriages out there. Maybe Virginia and James had an open marriage, or maybe James' affair with Patty somehow made his and Virginia's marriage stronger.
They were not there to pick apart the exact nature of this relationship, but they did think there was a chance Virginia might have information that could directly connect James to Patty's murder, even if she didn't know it. And so Hack asked if Virginia remembered where her husband was when Patty was killed. Had Virginia seen James or even called or texted with him?
Virginia said she hadn't seen James at all. She had woken up around 8 a.m. that morning and she drove straight to a fast food restaurant to buy breakfast for her mother, who lived in a nursing home. After spending some time with her mom, she had gone home, and she said James had already been gone when she woke up, and he wasn't home when she got back, and they hadn't talked on the phone at all.
The detectives excused themselves and stepped out into the hall. They had some new information, but nothing that would enable them to close the case or prove if any of their potential suspects were actually where they claimed to be at the time of the murder. they needed James' cell phone data.
If his phone had been picked up by one of the cell phone towers near Patty's house on the morning of the murder, they would know he'd lied to them about being in Florida at the time of the murder. Luckily, it didn't take long for the phone company to come through yet again.
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