MrBallen Podcast: Strange, Dark & Mysterious Stories
The Mutant (PODCAST EXCLUSIVE EPISODE)
Mon, 03 Mar 2025
On a day in 2001, a veteran homicide detective put on his gloves and stepped into a cluttered bedroom. He’d been working a murder case for months, but he still had no clear evidence pointing to any of his suspects. But a tip from an informant had led him to this bedroom, and he hoped he would find something useful. The detective searched the room, but nothing stood out to him amidst the mess – until he saw a piece of notebook paper sitting on a nightstand. On the paper was someone’s list of goals they wanted to accomplish in life. The detective scanned the list. Most of the goals on the list were pretty standard stuff, but one goal immediately jumped out at the detective. Because one of the things on the list the writer wanted to achieve was to “Kill somebody and get away with it.”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 is the story behind the detective's discovery in 2001?
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 day in 2001, a veteran homicide detective put on his gloves and stepped into a cluttered bedroom. He'd been working on a murder case for months, but he still had no clear evidence pointing to any of his suspects.
However, a tip from an informant had led him to this bedroom, and he hoped he'd find something useful there. The detective searched the room, and at first, nothing stood out to him. That is, until he saw a piece of notebook paper sitting on a nightstand. On this paper was somebody's list of goals they wanted to accomplish in their life. The detective scanned the list.
Most of the goals on the list were pretty standard, except for one, which was totally psychotic. 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 hide a tiny speaker in the ceiling of the follow button's bedroom and then play It's a Small World After All on repeat every time the follow button tries to fall asleep. Okay, let's get into today's story.
Redacted Declassified Mysteries is a new podcast hosted by me, Luke LaManna. Each week, I dive into the hidden truths behind the world's most powerful institutions. From covert government experiments to bizarre assassination attempts, follow Redacted on the Wondery app or wherever you get your podcasts.
Just after midnight on August 31st, 2001, 36-year-old Dana Laskowski sat on her couch sipping a drink at her home in Puyallup, Washington, which is about 35 miles outside of Seattle. Dana had been enjoying a night at home by herself, but as she sat there on the couch, the silence in the house started to feel a bit unsettling. It just was not something she'd gotten used to yet.
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Chapter 2: Who was Dana Laskowski and what happened on August 31st, 2001?
Dana was the mother of nine-year-old triplets, so the house was typically filled with a lot of noise. but tonight the kids were three hours away staying with their dad. Dana and her husband Stan had separated the previous year, and after the separation, Dana had moved several hours away to Puyallup, where some of her family lived. Dana and Stan had tried hard to effectively co-parent the triplets.
She loved the idea. She loved that the kids still had a good relationship with their father, but not having them around all the time had been a huge transition for Dana. Dana grabbed the remote off the coffee table and turned on the TV just to have some background noise. She sipped her drink and then kind of laughed at herself. Spending a night on her own really should not be that big of a deal.
It should be fun, it should be enjoyable. And plus, even though her triplets would be gone for a few more days still, Dana worked as a nanny for a couple in town and she'd be able to spend time with their kids who she loved too. And so Dana told herself to just relax and enjoy a stress-free night. Then she leaned back on the couch and tried to watch TV.
But as she was doing that, she suddenly heard this noise coming from the back of the house. She put her drink down, turned off the TV, and then walked out of the room towards the back door. She expected to see her 17-year-old niece and Amanda's best friend, Emily Lawnborg, standing in the hall, because Dana always kept her back door unlocked for these two teenage girls.
Amanda and Emily both had strained relationships with their families, so Dana had become a kind of surrogate mother to both of them. She let them use her house to do laundry, take showers, or to just have a place they could come where they would feel taken care of. But when Dana reached the back of the house, she didn't see the girls standing in the hall.
She walked to the back door and glanced outside onto the back porch, but she didn't see anybody there either. She figured she must be hearing things. Being home alone could do that after all. So she left the back door unlocked in case the girls did show up later and then turned back around and headed back to the couch.
Even though it was late, Dana suddenly thought about giving her niece a call just to check in on her. The last time she'd seen Amanda and her friend Emily, they had been spending almost all their time with this group of teenage guys who called themselves the park rats because they always hung around at the same public park.
Dana tried to keep an open mind and not judge, but she couldn't help but worry about two young women spending time with a group of guys who did not seem to have any ambition in life. And she knew for a fact that some of the park rats had pretty serious drug problems.
On top of that, Amanda and Emily were both relatively small girls, and Dana knew they really couldn't protect themselves if any of the guys ever tried to get physical with them. Dana sat down on the couch, still debating if she should call Amanda. However, before she could make up her mind, she heard something at the back door again. Then she heard footsteps coming down the hall. At 10.30 a.m.
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Chapter 3: Why was Dana's estranged husband, Stan, considered a suspect?
Also, Detective Bramhall knew that in a lot of cases of strangulation, the victim fights back really aggressively, thrashing and fighting as much as they can, giving further credibility to the idea that Dana's killer really did have to be big and strong to be able to overpower her. After a few moments, Bramhall left the forensic tech and searched the rest of the house with a few other officers.
He told a member of his team to get started on a background check for Dana, while other officers went out to speak with Dana's neighbors to see if any of them had seen or heard something strange that morning or the night before. As the detective made his way through Dana's house, it was clear the place had been ransacked.
However, he noticed that some pretty obviously expensive items like a computer and other electronics had been left untouched. This could mean a couple of different things. Either someone had robbed Dana's house looking for something specific like jewelry, or this entire scene had been staged to look like a robbery.
Another thing that stood out to Bramhall was that even though Dana's body and the blood indicated a struggle, there was no sign of forced entry. The back door had been open and unlocked when the patrol officer had first arrived on the scene, and the front door had been locked and showed no signs of a break-in.
So Bramhall wondered if Dana had let her killer inside or if they had unlocked the back door with their own key. As Bramhall was searching the house, one of his team members came up to him This officer told him that he'd only just started looking into Dana's background, but already he'd found something important.
She and her husband Stan were recently separated, and Stan was not answering his phone. That night, after Detective Bramhall had spent hours at Dana's house, he got back to the police station, and he was already feeling antsy. Dana's husband, Stan, like any murder victim's spouse, would basically automatically be a major suspect under almost any circumstance.
However, in the few hours since Bramhall had begun working this case, Stan had started to look like the perfect suspect. Stan had not responded to the multiple calls the Puyallup police had made throughout the day. And when Detective Bramhall had reached out to police in the town where Stan lived, they actually went by his house. and there had been no sign of Stan or the triplets.
Now, Detective Bramhall did not want to jump to conclusions here. However, he couldn't ignore what might be going on here. A man killing his estranged wife so he could have sole custody of their kids was actually a fairly common thing. Still, Bramhall couldn't do anything until they actually tracked Stan down.
So, the detective stayed in touch with the police in Stanstown, and he also contacted the Washington State Police to tell them to be on the lookout for Stan. In the meantime, Bramhall started to gather information on Dana's friends, family, and her employers.
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Chapter 4: Was there any other suspect in Dana's murder case?
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On the evening of September 2nd, two days after Dana's body had been found, Detective Bramhall sat inside of an interview room across the table from Dana's alleged stalker, William. It would turn out William had installed cabling at Dana's house a few months earlier.
And since then, he'd been leaving notes and poems on Dana's front door, and he'd been seen lurking around her house a bunch of times by several of Dana's neighbors. Police also found a string of harassing messages from William on Dana's phone. And so all of that had been enough for Bramhall to secure a search warrant. And the search of William's house had led to a disturbing discovery.
Inside the interview room, Detective Bramhall pulled out a notebook and put it on the table. Then he asked William if he recognized it. William lowered his head and then nodded. He said it was his personal journal. Bramhall flipped open the notebook and showed William what appeared to be a letter to an unnamed woman.
And this letter was filled with all these violent things William wanted to do to her. Bramhall flipped to another page, which was another letter to the same unnamed woman filled with even more anger and more threats of violence. And so Detective Bramhall said it looked to him like William had been obsessed with Dana, leaving her notes and poetry and spying on her at her house.
And when Dana didn't reciprocate, he got angry and started fantasizing about hurting her and began writing about it in his journal. But as William heard this, he just shook his head and said, no, it's not like that at all. William said those letters were an exercise his therapist had told him to do, and they weren't even about Dana.
He said he had written that stuff about a woman who'd broken his heart, but it was just to get out the anger and hurt that he felt. He would never actually do any of the stuff he had written. Bramhall sat there in silence for a minute, just looking at the man across the table. Like Dana's husband, William was easily big enough to have overpowered Dana.
And even if William was telling the truth about the notebook, he clearly had some kind of unhealthy obsession with Dana. So Bramhall leaned in and told William there was a really easy way for him to clear his name and help the police figure out what happened to Dana. William could provide the police with his phone and a DNA sample. And William didn't hesitate.
He said he would do whatever the police needed, anything that would show he did not hurt Dana. In the days following the interview with William, Detective Bramhall and his team met with more of Dana's friends and family. Bramhall had two solid suspects, Stan, the estranged husband, and William, the stalker. But he still didn't have any clear evidence pointing to either of them.
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