Coach Killer (PODCAST EXCLUSIVE EPISODE)
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Hey Prime members, you can binge eight new episodes of the Mr. Ballin podcast one month early and all episodes ad-free on Amazon Music. Download the Amazon Music app today. On a February night in 2013, inside of a secluded suburban neighborhood, a man sat down to eat at his dining room table when suddenly he heard these strange popping sounds coming from somewhere outside. The man dropped his fork on the plate and ran to the window to see what was going on out there, but there was nothing out there. It was totally silent and quiet.

Still, the man couldn't shake the feeling that something bad might have just happened. You know, maybe that was gunfire. So he called the police and he explained what he heard. And the police sent an officer to investigate, but the officer patrolled the neighborhood and couldn't find anything out of the ordinary. And so that police officer went back to the station and that man went back to his dinner, neither of them realizing that something terrible had happened. Those noises the man heard were the sound of somebody being killed.

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 go into the follow button's phone and delete all of their unread messages. Okay, let's get into today's story.

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On the evening of February 20th, 2013, 49-year-old coach Jimmy McLean blew his whistle and brought basketball practice to an end inside of a high school gym in Memphis, Tennessee. His young players rushed to the sidelines and gathered up around Jimmy. And even amongst a group of basketball players, Jimmy looked big. He was 6'4", but his long arms and legs made him seem even taller. And even though he was almost 50 years old, he still completely looked like he could get out on that court and play.

Jimmy told the kids they had a great practice and he told them what he wanted them to focus on over the next few days. Jimmy and the other coaches had led the team to a great season, but they all had their eyes on a state championship, and Jimmy knew how much hard work and focus it would take to get there.

Jimmy had been an incredible high school basketball player in his own right back in Arkansas where he grew up. He'd gone on to play at the University of Central Arkansas alongside Chicago Bulls legend Scottie Pippen, and after college, Jimmy actually played ball in a professional minor league for years. And so now, the young men on his team looked up to Jimmy because of his illustrious basketball career, but also they admired him because he was one of their teachers and mentors, and they knew he cared about them as people first and as players second.

Jimmy just wanted them to do their best and take care of each other, win or lose. Jimmy told the team to go hit the showers and then go home and hit the books. He had a quick talk with the other coaches and then headed out to his car in the school parking lot.

The drive home took Jimmy about 30 minutes away to Cordova, a suburb that was made up of secluded neighborhoods filled with huge homes that had perfectly manicured lawns. Jimmy had lived here in Cordova for about 15 years, but there were still times it felt like a different world from the small Arkansas town he'd grown up in. But as he got older, Jimmy had really come to embrace Cordova as his home, and he knew living there had allowed him to pursue his passions. Jimmy loved basketball, but sports was not all that he cared about.

He was also a very talented writer, and he was a devout Christian who felt a calling to serve God and his community. And so during his time in Cordova, Jimmy had written his first book and become a pastor at a local church, two dreams he'd had since he was a kid. A little after 8.30 p.m., Jimmy pulled onto a street which looked like most of the other streets in town. He drove past the driveway of his large four-bedroom house, parked by the curb, and then hit the button on his garage door opener. Jimmy took a deep breath and watched as the garage door opened.

In public places like church or school, Jimmy was outgoing, energetic, and confident. But there was a different side to Jimmy, a side that only the people closest to him ever saw. In private, Jimmy often got really anxious, and some people even said obsessive, about the littlest of things.

Once the garage door was all the way open, Jimmy swung his car around and back down the driveway all the way into the garage with his car facing out onto the street. Then once he was parked inside, he pushed the garage door button again and he sat in his car watching the garage door close. This order of how he would go about parking his car was something he did every single time he came home and he never changed the routine. He would always sit there in the car watching the door until it came all the way closed.

Once the door was closed, Jimmy grabbed his leather bag out of the passenger seat, got out of his car, unlocked the door that led from the garage into the house, and he walked inside. Once he was inside, he locked the door he had just come through and went right to the front room of the house.

There, he carefully laid his bag down on a leather couch and then very carefully placed his keys on top of the bag, just like he did every single night when he got home from practice. After all that, Jimmy walked over to the leather couch that matched the chair that he had just put his bag and keys on, and he took off his sport coat, folded it along the sleeves, and laid it over the arm of this couch. And then once that ritual was complete, he went towards the front door, leaned down, and then slid a small rug that was in the entryway up against the bottom of the door.

He would say he did this to keep the draft out. Jimmy never missed any of these steps when he got home, and he would go through them again in reverse order when leaving for work in the morning. People who loved Jimmy usually just got used to his particular habits, but they also knew Jimmy had a lot of trouble adjusting to how other people did things. And also, Jimmy really did not like to be confronted about his routines.

Jimmy's phone buzzed inside of his pocket and he smiled. Right on time, he thought. He grabbed his phone and he read a text message from his girlfriend, Carlotta Smith. Her message said, how was practice? And Jimmy replied, great! Carlotta lived almost three hours away in Nashville, Tennessee, so Jimmy only saw her maybe a few times a month. But they made sure to text or call each other every morning and every night. And Carlotta always seemed to know exactly when Jimmy got home from school.

Now, the long-distance aspect of their relationship could get frustrating, but Jimmy couldn't remember the last time he was this happy. Jimmy was technically still married, but he and his wife had separated four years earlier, and they had finally started divorce proceedings. But Jimmy had been slow to get into another serious relationship. Part of him still felt loyal to his soon-to-be ex-wife and her two kids, who he was a stepfather to.

But when Jimmy had met Carlotta six months earlier, he knew almost right away that he was falling in love all over again. Jimmy slipped his phone back into his pocket and he walked through the room, past the fireplace and towards the kitchen, but he suddenly stopped. He thought he heard something.

Jimmy stood there for a second, and then he heard the sound again. It was coming from somewhere out front of the house. He turned around and walked towards one of the windows that overlooked the front yard, but there was nothing out there, and it was totally silent. And so Jimmy figured, you know, he was just being anxious, like, there's nothing going on here. So he left the window and headed back towards the kitchen, but then he heard another sound right behind him. And this time he knew something was right outside his front door.

At 8.40 p.m. that night, so just a few minutes after Jimmy had gotten home, his next-door neighbor was home and having a bite to eat at the dining room table when he suddenly heard popping sounds. Now, the sounds were loud enough that the neighbor immediately stopped eating, got up, went to the window to look outside, but they didn't see anything and they didn't hear anything.

Now, the neighbor knew the sounds he had heard could have been gunfire, but it also could have just been some kids setting off firecrackers like he really didn't know. But just in case, he grabbed his phone off the table and he called the non-emergency number for the Shelby County Sheriff's Department. And when they picked up, he explained to the operator that he just heard these loud sounds right nearby that he thought maybe could be gunfire. The operator told him to stay in his house and that an officer would be over right away.

And sure enough, a few minutes later, a Shelby County deputy knocked on the neighbor's door, and Jimmy's neighbor told him what he had told the operator. The deputy thanked him and said he'd take a look around and see if he could find anything, and then he left the neighbor's house and headed back towards his cruiser. The deputy drove around the small neighborhood several times and did what he thought was a thorough patrol of the area. But he didn't find anything suspicious, so finally he went back to Jimmy's neighbor and told him, you know, everything seemed fine.

Then the deputy left and drove back to the station, and Jimmy's neighbor tried to calm his nerves and not worry too much about the strange sounds. Two days later, on the morning of February 22, 2013, one of Jimmy's fellow basketball coaches sat in the high school's front office across from a school administrator, and both men looked very worried.

Jimmy had not shown up to teach his classes or to coach basketball practice the previous day, which was completely out of the ordinary. Jimmy almost never missed school or practice. He would rather show up sick than feel like he was letting the kids down. And he definitely wouldn't stay home without calling to let somebody know he was not going to come in.

Now, the day before, when Jimmy hadn't shown up, both of these men had told themselves that, you know, maybe there had been some sort of miscommunication. That, you know, perhaps Jimmy had let somebody in the office know he wasn't coming in, but that didn't get relayed. But now, Jimmy was gone for a second day in a row, and nobody at the school had any record of him calling. And now the coach and the administrator really regretted not doing something 24 hours earlier.

So, the administrator dialed the Shelby County Sheriff's Department and he said his colleague, Jimmy McClain, had not come into work for two straight days and that that was really strange and he wondered if maybe police could go by Jimmy's house to make sure he was okay. The operator got Jimmy's address and told the administrator that an officer would go to Jimmy's property to do a wellness check right away. A little bit later that morning, at about 10 a.m., two Shelby County deputies arrived at Jimmy's house.

They went up to the front door and they knocked, but they got no response. And after a little while of just total silence, one of the deputies tried the doorknob, but the door was locked. So he called his boss and got permission to try to force his way into Jimmy's house. The deputy used a simple lockpicking tool to quickly get the door open, and then once it was, he and his colleagues stepped inside, and immediately they called their boss back.

A few minutes later, Lieutenant Jason Valentine of the Shelby County Sheriff's Department parked in front of Jimmy's house and approached the two deputies, who were now standing just outside of the open front door. Lieutenant Valentine put on his gloves and greeted the two deputies, and then they stepped aside to let him pass. Once inside, Valentine made his way to the front room of the house, and right away he noticed a large dried blood stain on the other side of the room in front of the fireplace. And just beyond the blood, Valentine saw the dead body of a middle-aged man.

Valentine walked over to the body and saw that the man's face, neck, and shirt were also stained with large amounts of dried blood, and the man's limbs looked very stiff, like rigor mortis had set in. And so this, coupled with all the dried blood, made Valentine think that the man had been dead for a while. Valentine began to scan the room. He saw in a nearby leather chair there was a bag with keys sitting on top of it, and then on the couch there was a sports coat laying over the arm.

Valentine went to the coat, reached into the inside pocket, and he found a wallet with a driver's license inside of it. And the man in the photo matched the man on the floor. It was Jimmy McLean. And from the looks of it, Jimmy had been murdered.

And so at this point, Lieutenant Valentine asked the two deputies outside to come into the house and help him do an initial search. And right away, they noticed there was a whole bunch of high-end electronics that were left untouched all throughout the house. And so this seemed to indicate to the officers that, you know, it didn't seem likely that the person who killed Jimmy had come here to rob him. It seemed like they had come here to kill him. After searching the four bedrooms, which all seemed undisturbed, Valentine walked down a long hallway to the door that led to the garage.

He entered the garage and he saw Jimmy's car was parked right there inside facing the closed garage door. But other than that, there really wasn't much to see in the garage. There were no obvious prints, no sign of blood, no forced entry. So Valentine went back inside the house to keep looking. And a few minutes later, Valentine's fellow county detective, Alan Bean, stepped inside the home and he was followed by several state forensics officers.

Valentine and Bean worked together often, and so Valentine knew Bean had a sharp eye for evidence. And so Valentine right away told him that the front door and the door leading in from the garage had both been locked when police first arrived. And so Bean turned and went right to the front door, and he found that the door itself could be locked from the inside, but if someone had left through that door, they could only lock that door by using a key.

Then Bean looked at the entryway of the house, and he saw there was a rug laying nearby, but it was at a strange angle, like somebody had pushed it away from the door. Then something between the rug and the door caught his eye. He crouched down and he signaled for Lieutenant Valentine to come look too.

At first, Valentine thought what he was looking at was just some mud on the floor. But Bean pointed at one particular spot within the mud and what it was was a small portion of a shoe print. Now, there wasn't nearly enough of a print to tell what kind of shoe or what size it was. But Bean hoped the forensics team would be able to use this partial shoe print to tell them more at some point.

Now, Bean and Valentine both knew that this print could just be the victim's, but there were no other prints anywhere like it on the floor, so it seemed like there was a real chance it belonged to the killer. As forensics officers began to pull the shoe print, Valentine led Bean over to the body. Multiple .40 caliber bullet casings lay on the floor near the dried pool of blood around Jimmy, and so it seemed clear Jimmy had been shot several times.

And so Valentine and Bean came up with the same initial theory. Whoever killed Jimmy likely knew him really well. The level of violence inflicted on Jimmy looked like the result of rage that often accompanies a crime of passion. And assuming the killer was indeed close with Jimmy, they very likely had their own house key that they could have used to lock the door on their way out.

The forensics team continued their work in the house and the detectives canvassed the neighborhood to see if someone had seen or heard anything strange. And they found the information they were looking for at the very first house they tried. Jimmy's next door neighbor told them that he had called the sheriff's department two nights earlier when he heard a series of loud popping sounds that maybe could have been gunfire or fireworks, he wasn't sure.

Valentine asked if he knew what time that took place, and the man grabbed his phone, scrolled through his recent calls, and saw he had called the sheriff's department at 8:40 p.m. Now, even though Valentine and Bean did not have an official autopsy report from the medical examiner, at this point, they both felt confident that this neighbor had actually heard the sound of Jimmy's murder, and that Jimmy had very likely been laying dead in his house for two days.

The detectives thanked the neighbor and then left and headed back over to Jimmy's house. There, a forensics officer waved them down and handed over Jimmy's phone that had been found inside of his pocket and bagged as evidence. And then a little bit later that day, when Valentine and Bean were back at the station, they did a full data search of Jimmy's phone. And as they combed through Jimmy's text messages and calls, they knew exactly who they wanted to speak to first. The woman who had texted Jimmy right before he died, Carlotta Smith.

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The day after Jimmy's body was found, Detective Valentine walked Carlotta into an interview room at the Sheriff's Department. Valentine told her how sorry he was for her loss and how much he appreciated her coming in. Valentine wanted Carlotta to feel very at ease, as if she was just there to help. But in reality, she was already at the top of the investigator's suspect list.

By this point, the medical examiner had officially confirmed Valentine and Bean's initial theory that Jimmy had died on the night that neighbor had called police, most likely not long after responding to Carlotta's text. Valentine and Bean had also contacted members of Jimmy's family and they had learned that Carlotta and Jimmy had been in a serious relationship for about six months. And as Jimmy's serious girlfriend, she very likely had a key to his house and she would also fit the profile of someone who would maybe commit a crime of passion.

On top of that, a victim's intimate partners are almost always primary suspects at the beginning of any murder investigation.

After Carlotta sat down at the table across from the two detectives, Valentine asked her about the final text message she had sent to Jimmy. Carlotta explained that she tried to text Jimmy every night when she knew he'd be getting home from basketball practice. It was one of the ways they stayed connected while living three hours apart. After that, Valentine asked Carlotta if she had her own key to Jimmy's house that she used whenever she came into town, but Carlotta shook her head and said no, she didn't.

Valentine seemed very surprised. He said he thought that she and Jimmy were pretty serious and always stayed together when they visited each other. And Carlotta said they were serious, but she actually didn't stay at his house when they visited. She was a religious person, and she just didn't feel right spending the night at the house of a married man. So she had told Jimmy that until his divorce went through, she would stay by herself at a hotel whenever she came to town.

Valentine hesitated for a second. He thought Carlotta actually sounded angry. And so he asked her if it bothered her that Jimmy was still married. And when he said this, Carlotta immediately seemed like she might just start crying. She said it absolutely bothered her and she thought Jimmy was actually kind of dragging his feet with the divorce and she was kind of tired of it.

Valentine knew it was best to just let her keep talking, so he just kept nodding along like he understood exactly what she was going through. And so Carlotta just kept on talking. She went on a rant about Jimmy's wife and how he was still way too friendly with her and how it didn't make sense that this woman was still part of Jimmy's life.

Finally, Carlotta trailed off, at which point Valentine asked her for a few more details about where she had been when Jimmy was killed. Carlotta said she had been at home in Nashville, but then she said police really needed to speak to Jimmy's wife. The wife and her son lived close to Jimmy, and the wife just could not seem to let Jimmy go. And Carlotta was sure Jimmy's wife still had a key.

Valentine thanked Carlotta for coming in and told her she could leave. And then after she was gone, the detectives couldn't help but feel like Carlotta had not really helped her own cause here. If she was as angry about Jimmy's marriage as she seemed, then perhaps that was her motive to kill Jimmy. The following day, Valentine and Bean brought Jimmy's wife, Carla McClain, and her 19-year-old son, Dwayne Moore, into the station. Valentine and Bean questioned Carla first, and she seemed totally distraught about her husband's death.

She said he was such a good man who loved God and loved helping young people. It just didn't make sense that he was gone. But Bean asked the obvious question. Was there any animosity between her and Jimmy during their four-year separation and now during their initial divorce proceedings? But Carla just shook her head. She said that she and Jimmy were good friends. They just didn't quite work as a romantic couple.

So Bean asked Carla if she still had a key to Jimmy's house, since after all, they were on good terms. Carla got a look on her face like she was searching for something, and then she said she didn't think she had a key, and if she did, she had forgotten where it was. Bean and Valentine nodded like that made complete sense, but inside, they did not buy that at all. And they believed Carla was lying right to their faces. Valentine asked Carla where she was on the night Jimmy was killed, and Carla said she had been home the whole night with her son Dwayne, and he would vouch for her.

Valentine nodded and then asked if police could actually have her phone to download her data, because this would be an easy way to confirm where she was and to cross her off their list. Carla immediately reached into her purse, pulled out her phone, and put it on the table. She said police could search it all they wanted. She had absolutely nothing to hide. Bean picked up the phone and left the room, and then Carla was escorted out, and then her son, Dwayne, was brought in.

Dwayne was quiet and respectful, but at first all he cared about was whether or not his mom was okay. And Valentine said his mom was just fine and she'd be waiting for them as soon as they were done. And so the detectives and Dwayne talked for a short time and the kid seemed a bit nervous, but he was cooperative. He said he liked and respected Jimmy. You know, they bumped heads sometimes like any stepfather and stepson would, but he thought, you know, Jimmy was overall a good man and he had no idea who would want to hurt him.

Dwayne said he did not have a key to Jimmy's house and that on the night Jimmy was killed, he was at home with his mom. Valentine thanked Dwayne for coming in and then led him to an office where his mother was waiting. A little bit later, Bean informed Valentine that all the data on Carla's phone had been gathered up and so the detectives gave Carla her phone back and told her and Dwayne they were free to go.

It would take a while for Bean and other investigators to go through all of Carla's text messages and phone calls. And so while he waited, Valentine got back in touch with a few of Jimmy's family members. And they all said the same thing about Jimmy's wife, Carla. Her relationship with Jimmy was not nearly as good as she wanted people to believe. In fact, she and Jimmy had been fighting recently because Carla wanted him to sell his house and give her half of the profit as part of their divorce.

After talking to Jimmy's family, Valentine delved a bit deeper into Carla and Jimmy's financial records, and he found a huge red flag. Carla was the beneficiary of Jimmy's life insurance policy. And so between that policy and the potential sale of the house, Carla stood to make hundreds of thousands of dollars now that Jimmy was dead.

So at this point, the detectives had two women, Jimmy's girlfriend and his wife, who were very strong suspects. Jimmy's girlfriend could have murdered him out of anger or jealousy about his marriage, and his wife could have killed him for the money. Over the next couple of days, investigators revisited the crime scene and conducted more interviews, trying to find anything that would directly connect Jimmy's girlfriend or wife to the murder. Then Detective Bean got a call from a forensics officer, and this officer sounded like he had just hit the jackpot.

He told Bean they were able to create a reconstruction of the sole of the shoe that left that muddy footprint inside of Jimmy's house. And this shoe was a size 10.5 men's shoe, which was not the size shoe that Jimmy wore. Then the officer said that the forensics team had actually worked directly with Nike and they were able to determine that the shoe was a Nike Air Force 1 high top, a favorite among young basketball players.

Bean hung up and rushed over to tell Valentine the news, and they both felt exhilarated by it, but also totally confused. This was a huge piece of evidence, but it undercut the theory that one of the two women in Jimmy's life had killed him. Neither Carlotta nor Carla wore that size shoe. And so the detectives thought that this piece of evidence seemed to point to maybe somebody on the high school basketball team that Jimmy coached.

Not long after learning about this shoe, Bean and Valentine headed to Memphis, Tennessee to interview students and faculty at the school where Jimmy taught and coached. And right away, things took a bizarre turn.

A coach told the detectives that one of the team's star basketball players had recently been exposed as a 22-year-old man who was pretending to be a high schooler so he could dominate the sport and hopefully earn a college scholarship. The school had discovered the player's secret and promptly kicked him off the team after an anonymous call was made to the school district about this kid.

Now, the coach said everybody knew Jimmy prided himself on being honest and that he despised the idea of cheating. And so a lot of people at the school thought Jimmy might have been the anonymous caller who sold out the 22-year-old. At this point, Valentine and Bean understood what the coach was getting at. If this 22-year-old player found out that, you know, Jimmy was the guy who called on him, well, maybe he was the one who killed Jimmy for ruining his chances to play in college and maybe make it to the NBA.

And to make things even more suspicious, the coach said the disgraced 22-year-old player had recently moved out of the city. The detectives thanked the coach and then tracked down the player's records in the school's front office. Valentine found a local phone number for the player's mother, so he reached out to the woman and asked her to come to the station.

The following day, Valentine and Bean sat in the interview room, staring at a woman who either looked extremely young for her age or who had lied to them on the phone about who she was. So before Valentine launched into any questions about the investigation, he asked the woman flat out if she really was this player's mother. The woman just laughed and said no, she was his wife, and then she admitted that she had helped him forge his transcript and listed herself as his mother. This would allow him to go back and pretend to be a high schooler.

Valentine and Bean looked at each other and just shook their heads. This all seemed absolutely absurd. Bean asked the woman if her husband had any issues with his coach, Jimmy McClain, or if he believed Jimmy was the one who called the school anonymously and exposed his scam. The woman kept on smiling. She said she didn't know if her husband had a problem with Jimmy, but Jimmy definitely did not call the district because she did. Because she had caught her husband cheating on her with a high school girl and she wanted to ruin him.

Valentine looked over at Bean again, and then he just sat back in his chair and stared at this woman. This now seemed like something out of a soap opera. But still, even after this woman left, the detectives agreed that the fake high school basketball player was someone who might wear Nike Air Force One shoes. He also could have had problems with Jimmy about something else, and also his story was so strange and calculated and full of lies that Valentine and Bean did not want to rule him out, at least not yet.

But just as they started looking deeper into this whole weird scenario with this fraudulent basketball player, something happened 300 miles away that would change the entire investigation. On the night of February 26th, 2013, six days after Jimmy's murder, a woman in pajamas burst into a police station in Crossville, Tennessee, over four and a half hours from Cordova, where Jimmy was killed.

The woman screamed that she was in danger and she needed protection. Several officers got up from their chairs and ran over to her and ushered her into a small office. The police tried to calm her down, but she was frantic and she kept looking all around her like somebody was following her. The officers told her they could help, but they needed to know what was going on.

Finally, the woman took several breaths and calmed down, and then she said somebody had just told her husband who had murdered Jimmy McClain over in Cordova, and now she was worried that somebody would come after them because of what they knew. It took a while for the officers to get all the necessary information from this woman, but when they felt like they had a grasp on the situation, one of the officers rushed to his desk and called the Shelby County Sheriff's Department.

Lieutenant Valentine picked up and he listened to the whole crazy story about this woman in pajamas. And information from that call led Valentine and Bean to do another search of Jimmy's wife's phone records. And during that search, they found what they were looking for. On the day of the murder, Jimmy's wife Carla had been texting with a young man in town who was a known drug dealer, a guy who everybody called Pooh. And Pooh definitely had the connections and the skills to have somebody killed.

On March 5, 2013, about two weeks after Jimmy's murder, two undercover cops sat in an unmarked car not far from Pooh's house. They were conducting surveillance on the house and waiting for Pooh to do something they could bring him in for. And they didn't have to wait long. The officers watched Pooh step out of his house, and he was clearly carrying a gun.

And so the officers got out of their car and called out to Pooh, saying they needed to speak to him. But Pooh didn't waste any time. He ditched his gun into the yard and then took off running towards the back of his house. The two cops followed on foot, but Pooh sprinted through the alley, he ran between a couple of houses, and then he turned onto a residential street. Pooh looked over his shoulder, and the cops were nowhere to be seen, so he slowed down a bit and kept heading towards the end of the road.

Suddenly, tires screeched on the road, and Pooh saw a SWAT vehicle come to a stop right in front of him. Pooh turned and tried to run again, but two members of the SWAT team leapt out of the vehicle, and they were fast. They caught up to Pooh and tackled him to the ground, and Pooh relented and did not put up a fight.

The SWAT team would search him and they would find baggies full of pills and also marijuana. And then a few minutes later, the undercover cops who had been conducting the surveillance, they arrived and they had retrieved the gun that Poo had thrown into the yard. And so now the police had enough evidence to hold Poo on drug and weapons charges.

A little bit later that day, Pooh sat inside of an interview room across from Detectives Valentine and Bean and several other investigators at the Shelby County Sheriff's Department. Valentine stared across the table at Pooh and then glanced down at Pooh's phone that police had confiscated. Valentine held up the phone, leaned across the table, and showed Pooh a photo. Pooh looked at the photo and then lowered his eyes. The picture was of a handgun and piles of cash sitting on a blanket.

Then, Valentine pointed out several text messages that Pooh had sent and received from Jimmy's wife, Carla, leading up to the time of Jimmy's murder. Valentine said it did not take a huge leap to think maybe Pooh had been hired to kill Jimmy. Pooh was silent for a minute. Then he raised his head and looked at Valentine and the other investigators, and he said he would tell them everything.

Based on information provided by Pooh, cell phone data, evidence at the scene, and interviews conducted throughout the investigation, the following is a reconstruction of what police believe happened to Jimmy McClain on the night of February 20, 2013. On that night, the killer slouched down in the driver's seat of their car that was parked just a few houses away from Jimmy's. In their hand, they clutched a Smith & Wesson Sigma, a .40 caliber pistol.

A little after 8:30 p.m., the killer saw Jimmy's car pull up in front of his house and then reverse into his garage. The killer watched the garage door close all the way, hiding Jimmy inside the house. And at that point, the killer got out of their car, they crouched low to the ground, and ran across Jimmy's front yard, not noticing they had just gotten mud on the underside of one of their shoes. A moment later, the killer reached into their pocket and pulled out a single key on a key ring. They took a breath, clutched the gun tighter in their hand, and then crept out of the bushes.

Staying low, they approached Jimmy's front door and quietly slipped that key into the lock. The killer raised the gun, unlocked the door, and threw it open. And as they did, the door slid a small rug out of the way, and the killer stepped right inside and then slammed the door behind them. And Jimmy was standing right there in the room. And when Jimmy turned around and saw a person in his house with a gun, he just started running, trying to get away. But the killer was ready, and they began shooting at Jimmy.

Jimmy screamed out and fell to the floor right in front of the fireplace and blood began pouring out of his shoulder and back and the killer didn't even move. They stood right there firing over and over again aiming at Jimmy's neck and head until the gun was empty. And after it was empty, the killer just stood there for a minute staring at Jimmy's now lifeless body.

Then they turned, calmly walked out of the front door, closed it, and locked it using that key. Then the killer crouched down, ran back across the lawn to their car, hopped inside, and sped all the way across town to their house. And once they were inside, they went right to their bedroom, hoping their mother had no idea they had even left. It would turn out the drug dealer, Pooh, provided Jimmy's killer with the murder weapon, but Pooh himself did not kill Jimmy. Jimmy's killer was his own 19-year-old stepson, Dwayne Moore, Carla's son.

It would turn out, Dwayne and Jimmy's relationship was far more volatile than Dwayne led on to police. Jimmy's adherence to his kind of obsessive routines and his belief that things should be done a very particular way had made it difficult for him to get along with his stepson, who he thought was kind of aimless and had no structure in his life. And so, in an effort to combat this, Jimmy became a very strict stepfather to Dwayne, imposing all kinds of rules on the young man.

And eventually, Jimmy kicked Dwayne out of the house when he caught Dwayne smoking weed.

Dwayne had been on the investigators' radar from the beginning. As Jimmy's stepson, Dwayne made a logical suspect. But it was not until the woman in pajamas rushed into that police station with a wild story to tell that things began to fall into place. It turned out the woman in pajamas' husband was Dwayne's favorite uncle. And Dwayne had apparently spilled a whole bunch of information about Jimmy's murder to him, including Pooh's involvement. And so when Pooh was brought into custody, he admitted that he had gotten Dwayne a gun, but he didn't know what he was doing.

But he said it was not the gun he'd photographed with the stacks of cash, and he said he had not killed Jimmy. Then Pooh told police that Dwayne often used his mother's cell phone. And so all those text messages they found to and from Pooh were actually with Dwayne, not Carla. Carla really had no idea what was going on.

After Poo spoke to investigators, they searched Dwayne and Carla's house, and they discovered that Dwayne had several pairs of basketball shoes that were size 10.5. He was definitely the one who had left that footprint at Jimmy's house. And soon after that, Dwayne would confess to the murder. But he said he didn't kill Jimmy just out of spite for how strict Jimmy had been. Instead, he said he had committed the murder because he believed Jimmy was mistreating his mother and trying to rip her off by not selling the house.

Dwayne was found guilty of second-degree murder and sentenced to 22 years in prison without parole. He will be 43 years old when he is finally released. The University of Central Arkansas, Jimmy's alma mater, went on to create the Jimmy McLean Scholarship Fund to celebrate Jimmy's life in sports and to honor his dedication to mentoring student-athletes.

Thank you for listening to the Mr. Ballin Podcast. If you liked today's story and you're looking for more strange, dark, and mysterious content, be sure to check out all of our studios' podcasts. They are this one, of course, the Mr. Ballin Podcast. We also have Mr. Ballin's Medical Mysteries, Bedtime Stories, Wartime Stories, and also Run Full. To find those other podcasts, all you have to do is search for Ballin Studios wherever you listen to your podcasts.

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