Murder on the Answering Machine (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 fall night in 1998, a woman walked into her kitchen after being out all day and tossed her keys onto the counter. She glanced over at her answering machine and saw there was a light blinking, which meant she had a message.

She walked over and pressed the button, and as the message played, at first it just sounded like static noise or maybe somebody breathing heavily into the receiver. And for a second, the woman thought maybe this was a prank call or maybe somebody had dialed her number by accident. But then, right as she was about to turn off the message, she heard screaming and crying, and then it all just went silent and the message ended.

For a moment, the woman just stood there, shocked by what she had just heard. She tried calling the number back who had left this message, but it went straight to voicemail. And so out of fear that this message she had gotten was the sound of someone actually being hurt, the woman picked up the phone and called 911. But before we get into that story, if you're a fan of the Strange, Dark, and Mysterious delivered in story format, then you come to the right podcast because that's all we do and we upload twice a week, once on Monday and once on Thursday.

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On Saturday, November 14th, 1998, 35-year-old Sarah Rariss and her best friend Laura scanned the racks at a local clothing store in Howard County, Maryland. Sarah wasn't really looking to buy any new clothes, but she was desperate to distract herself from the horrible day she was having, and she hoped shopping might help with that. This was one of the weekends that her estranged husband, Lorenzo, had custody of their one-year-old son, and Sarah hated every minute she was apart from her baby.

Sarah and her husband were in the middle of a heated divorce and custody battle, and if she had her way, Lorenzo would actually never see their son again. Just then, Laura pointed out a shirt that she thought Sarah might actually like. "It would look great with Sarah's red hair," she said. Sarah forced a smile, but deep down she knew that this retail therapy was not having the desired effect. Sarah continued to walk around the store, but she just couldn't shake herself out of her bad mood.

and this frustrated her because she'd always prided herself on being this really upbeat, positive person. In fact, up until about a year ago, Sarah's life had seemed almost perfect. She worked as a statistician for the National Security Agency, or NSA for short, helping solve a range of information security issues for multiple federal agencies. Sarah had always had a gift for mathematics, and so using her talent to help her country was like a dream job for her.

Also, at the time, she had begun writing her first novel, a murder mystery about a brilliant statistician who solves crimes. And she and her husband Lorenzo had bought this beautiful house in a suburban neighborhood that looked like something out of a painting. The streets were lined with manicured lawns and white picket fences. And perhaps most importantly for Sarah, she had become a mother. But soon after her baby was born, things at home had begun to fall apart.

Lorenzo didn't seem to want anything to do with helping raise the child, so Sarah quickly felt like she was juggling this important government job with taking care of a newborn baby all on her own. Also, Sarah's family lived about a thousand miles away in Alabama, so they weren't able to help. Luckily though, her mother-in-law, so Lorenzo's mom, had pitched in and began babysitting whenever she could and also helping Sarah with cooking and cleaning. But Sarah's mother-in-law worked full-time at a retirement home, so there was only so much she could do.

And no matter how much Sarah begged Lorenzo for his help, he basically just refused. After almost a year of this, Sarah just couldn't take it anymore, so she filed for divorce. However, as soon as she did that, Lorenzo suddenly began acting like he wanted to be with their child all the time. And so he made the divorce and custody proceedings very difficult for Sarah. Back in the store, Sarah's friend Laura asked her if there was anything Sarah wanted to try on.

Sarah thanked Laura for going out with her and trying to help her get her mind off of things, but at this point she said she just wanted to go home. Laura said she totally understood and the two friends said goodbye and headed to their cars in the parking lot. A little later that night, Sarah opened up a notebook and her laptop on a coffee table in her family room and began working on her mystery novel. Then at around 8:45 p.m. as she was still hard at work, she suddenly heard something and looked up startled.

She held her breath, trying to be as quiet as possible, but she didn't hear anything else. Still feeling unsettled, she got up, walked down the hallway to her bedroom, and then crouched down by her bed. And there, on the floor, she saw the large metal skillet exactly where she kept it every night. Living by herself with her baby made her nervous, so this skillet let her feel like she had a weapon close by when she went to bed.

But as Sarah stayed there crouched down by her bed for a second, she didn't hear any more noise anywhere in the house and so she shook off her nerves and decided to leave the skillet behind. She told herself she was just being paranoid. And so Sarah stood back up, walked down the hallway and sat down in the family room getting ready to dive back into her mystery novel. However, just moments later, she heard the sound of shattering glass.

At 7:45 pm on the following night, Sarah's friend Laura got home after being out for most of the day. She walked into her kitchen and tossed her keys on the counter and she noticed the light on her answering machine was blinking. And so Laura picked up her phone, hit a button to play back the message, and the automated voice on the machine told her that this message had come in the previous night at 8:56 pm. Laura figured she must have missed the call the night before and just not noticed she had this voicemail before she went out earlier. The voicemail began to play.

And at first, all Laura heard was static, and she thought maybe somebody had dialed accidentally and not left a message. But suddenly she heard heavy breathing and then screaming and crying, and then the message ended. Then the automated voice gave Laura the option to dial the number of that caller back. Laura just stood there for a second, completely freaked out by what she had just heard. She snapped out of it and hit that button to automatically return the call, and when she did, it went straight to Sarah's voicemail.

Laura's hands started shaking. Now that she knew it was Sarah who had left this message, it was like the urgency went through the roof. And so she hung up and tried calling her friend right back, hoping maybe this time Sarah would pick up. But again, it just rung and rung and went to voicemail. And so Laura hung up and immediately dialed 911. A few minutes later, a Howard County police officer pulled up in front of Sarah's house. He'd been out on patrol nearby when he got the call to do a wellness check at this address.

The officer got out of his car and walked towards the front door. It was dark out, but there were lights on inside the house and also out in front of the house. However, before the officer even got to the front door, he froze. He saw that one of the front windows of the house had been smashed in, and there was glass laying all over the ground under the windowsill. His first thought was that he had just stumbled upon a robbery. And so the officer quickly went to the front door and knocked, but he barely waited before trying the doorknob.

When he saw it was locked, the officer quickly used a special tool to unlock it and then he opened up the door. The officer stepped inside the house and slowly began walking around, calling out to see if anybody was home and keeping his hand hovering above his weapon. For all he knew, the robber might still be in the house and could be armed.

The officer eventually made his way into the brightly lit family room. And when he did, he looked down at the floor and as soon as he saw what was there, he turned and ran out of the house. He got to his cruiser, fumbled for his radio, and called for backup. It was close to 9:00 PM that night when Detective Nate Reddick of the Howard County Police stepped out of his car and approached the officer who had first arrived on the scene. By now, this quiet neighborhood had come to life.

Detective Reddick saw neighbors standing on their porches, staring at all the police and first responders swarming outside of Sarah's house. Reddick spoke to the responding officer who had come to the house for a wellness check. He was a young officer who now looked completely shaken by what he had seen inside of the house. Luckily, Reddick, who was more senior than this young officer, had a very fatherly demeanor about him. He was tall and still and always appeared to be in total control.

He spoke in a calm voice with a Baltimore accent, and he was able to get the young officer to calm down and also give him a detailed account of what he had seen inside of the house that had shaken him so. After that, Reddick told the young officer to just stay outside, and then Reddick put on his gloves and walked to the front door. Once inside, Reddick went straight to the family room, and when he looked down at what was on the ground, it shocked him too.

He'd just walked into one of the goriest crime scenes he'd ever witnessed in his many years as a homicide detective. A woman, who looked like she was in her 30s, was covered in blood, and there was blood spatter all over the walls and the floor. But that wasn't all. The woman had clearly been hacked and stabbed out with a blade so violently and so many times that her head had nearly been decapitated and her hands were barely connected to her wrists.

Reddick's first thought was that this had to have been a rage-filled overkill. I mean, several of the wounds he was looking at that had been inflicted on this woman individually should have been enough to kill her. But she had several of those fatal-seeming wounds. Also, a scene this brutal typically meant investigators were dealing with a crime of passion. Detective Reddick saw a purse sitting on the nearby coffee table. He looked inside of it and found a wallet with a driver's license inside.

Despite all of the blood, he could still match the victim to the woman on this ID. The victim was Sarah Rorris. Redding knelt back down to get a better look at Sarah. He saw all the blood on her clothes and skin and the blood on the walls and the floor had all dried. And Redding knew that the woman who had called police to do the wellness check said she'd gotten a frightening voicemail from the victim, from Sarah, the night before.

So it seemed logical to him, especially based on the dried nature of the blood, that Sarah had already been dead for 24 hours or so. Reddick stood up, walked back outside, and joined several forensics technicians and police officers who had also just arrived at the scene. He told the officers to start by talking to the neighbors, many of whom were still standing around and watching from their porches, to see if any of them had seen anything strange or heard anything strange the night before.

Reddick hoped in a quiet neighborhood like this that maybe somebody heard the sound of that window shattering and came outside to take a look. Maybe they saw something. As the forensics team entered Sarah's house and began searching for prints and DNA samples, Reddick also went back inside and began a full walkthrough of the house. And as he did that, he noticed that somebody had clearly ransacked the place. But Reddick immediately thought this was all just staged to look like a robbery.

It looked like a VCR had been pulled off its stand and stolen, there were VHS tapes littered all across the family room floor, and the kitchen drawers had all been pulled open. But Sarah's purse with cash and credit cards in it had been left behind on the coffee table. And so too had her jewelry and laptop, which were worth way more than a VCR. And so Reddick did not think this looked like a robbery gone bad. Also, just the brutality of the murder itself backed up his theory.

As far as he was concerned, there was no way Sarah had been killed just by some random burglar. After searching the house for well over an hour, Reddick reconvened with the rest of the team. Forensics technicians had found bloody handprints on the wall, but those just indicated that the killer had been wearing gloves. But they did find several bloody footprints leading from the family room to the broken window and into the front yard.

They would use these prints and the blood on the body, walls, and the floor to see if they could get any DNA samples that might belong to the killer. The officers who had been out canvassing the neighborhood said that unfortunately, nobody had seen or heard anything strange the night before. In fact, nobody had even noticed the shattered window at Sarah's house until the police arrived.

This surprised Detective Reddick. I mean, this was not a neighborhood that experienced much crime at all, and so he really hoped that somebody had heard that broken glass and maybe thought there was a break-in going on and went out to investigate, but clearly not.

But even still, the forensics team had plenty of samples for testing and because of the brutal, sort of rage-filled nature of the crime, Reddick felt like he could start narrowing down potential suspects to only people who had a close, intimate relationship with their victim, Sarah. Reddick also knew there was another huge piece of evidence that was not in the house. The voicemail message that her friend Laura got that might have recorded her murder.

As late night turned into early morning, Detective Reddick arrived at Sarah's friend, Laura's house. Laura was still wide awake, desperately waiting to hear any news about Sarah. And so when she saw Reddick, she led him into her house and brought him into the front room. And when they got there, Reddick just told her she should sit down. Laura sat down on the couch and began shaking her head. It was like she already knew what was coming.

Reddick told her that he was so sorry, but police had found her friend Sarah dead inside of her home, and she had clearly been murdered. Even though Laura by this point had sort of been expecting the worst, she refused to accept this at first. She said there was no way Sarah was gone, it had to be a mistake.

Rettig watched Laura completely break down on the couch, sobbing and just repeating that police must have made a mistake. He again told her how sorry he was, and eventually Laura did begin to breathe a bit easier, and she wiped the tears from her eyes, and then she looked right at Rettig and said something that totally threw him for a loop. Laura told him that the police needed to arrest Sarah's soon-to-be ex-husband Lorenzo right away because he was the one who had killed her.

Rettig was used to victims' friends and family suggesting who they thought might have committed a murder, but it was Laura's complete confidence that just seemed strange to him. He told Laura that Sarah's husband, Lorenzo, would definitely be brought in for questioning, especially considering, you know, it sounded like they were going through a divorce. Generally speaking, spouses and intimate partners were always the first suspects in murder cases like this.

But Laura told him it wasn't just that they were getting a divorce. It was also that Sarah and Lorenzo were in the middle of this nasty custody battle over their child. And Laura said that Sarah was just plain terrified of Lorenzo. Laura told Reddick that Lorenzo had been living with his mother since he and Sarah had gotten separated. But one time Lorenzo had shown up at Sarah's house and literally threatened to kill her.

Sarah was so afraid that he would come back to hurt her and take their son far away from her that she kept a metal skillet under her bed as a weapon in case he ever showed up. Now, Reddick would obviously have to follow up on this claim. He had no idea if Laura was telling the truth or not, but it definitely seemed like Laura was being truthful and he felt like he needed to act fast in case there was a chance that Lorenzo really was trying to leave town and take he and Sarah's son with him.

And so Reddick asked Laura for her answering machine, that way police could study the message Sarah had left her. Laura said that was fine, she got up, unplugged the machine and handed it to him. And then very quickly, he left her house with the machine and rushed out to his car. On his way back to the station, Reddick called in to ask for any records they had on Lorenzo Rarus. And when he got back to his office, he found a file folder waiting for him on his desk.

It would turn out Laura had been telling the truth. Sarah had called the police on her estranged husband, Lorenzo, a few months earlier, claiming he had threatened to kill her. Police had removed Lorenzo from the premises, and there was still a court order in place forbidding him from returning to Sarah's house. After reading this report, Reddick didn't waste any time. He requested a search warrant for Lorenzo's mom's house, Lorenzo's car, and for Lorenzo himself. This warrant would allow police to demand fingerprints and DNA samples from Lorenzo.

Finally, Reddick sent two of his team members to Lorenzo's mother's house where Lorenzo was living. They couldn't go into the house until the search warrant was granted, but Reddick wanted to have his eyes on Lorenzo just in case he tried to make a run for it. By 10:00 AM on November 16th, so the day after Sarah's body was discovered, all of Detective Reddick's warrants had been approved. And so even though he had just worked through the night and he was starting to feel exhausted, he still gathered up several members of his team and they headed to Lorenzo's mom's house.

At about the same time, Lorenzo stepped out of the house and got into his car to head to work. But before he could make it down the street, the two officers who'd already been there staking out the place pulled him over and told him to leave his car behind, and then they drove him to the police station. Reddick and his team arrived soon after that, and Reddick had Lorenzo's car impounded for a forensic search, and then they headed to Lorenzo's mother's house, and they knocked on the front door.

Lorenzo's mother, a small woman in her 60s named Emilia Raris, opened up the door. She was carrying Sarah and Lorenzo's young son in her arms and she looked genuinely frightened. She didn't understand why there were police at her house. But very quickly, Reddick broke the news to her. He told her that unfortunately, her daughter-in-law, Sarah, had been killed the night before and even though this is very abrupt and shocking for her, they did need to search her house and also ask her some questions.

Amelia stared back at Reddick in total shock. She said that wasn't possible. Her son Lorenzo had just seen Sarah a couple of days ago to get their son. Reddick said he was terribly sorry, but this was the truth. And then he showed her the search warrant and said they really needed to come inside. Amelia nodded, still in shock, and led them inside. And then it was like she was on autopilot and just asked them if she could put the baby in his crib. Reddick said that was fine, and while Amelia sort of shuffled off, he instructed his team to do a thorough search of the house.

A few minutes later, Amelia came back, still looking very confused and shocked, and she walked with Reddick into the kitchen. Reddick again apologized for the whole situation and for having barged into her home like this, but quickly asked her point blank if she knew where her son Lorenzo had been on the night Sarah had been murdered. She told Reddick she had had a late shift at the retirement home where she worked that night, so she didn't know, but her other son, Mike, would know where Lorenzo had been.

And so Amelia called out for Mike. And suddenly this man in his late 20s walked into the kitchen. It was Mike and he looked just as frightened as his mother. He clearly had just been listening intently to Detective Reddick and Amelia have this conversation about Sarah being murdered. And so Reddick, who could tell Mike already knew what happened, he just asked the same question he had asked his mother. Did Mike know where Lorenzo had been on the night of Sarah's murder?

Mike immediately stared down at the floor and just began shifting back and forth on his feet for a minute without saying anything. And then he looked up at Rettig and slowly nodded and said Lorenzo had actually been home that night. In fact, he and Lorenzo had hung out together that night for a little while before Mike had to leave for a night shift at his job. Rettig thought Mike seemed like he was hesitating as he was saying this and so he couldn't tell if Mike was just nervous or scared or if he was trying to hide something.

But either way, Reddick never put much stock in family-related alibis. Parents and siblings would often go to great lengths to protect a loved one, even if it meant lying to the police. And on top of that, even if this alibi were legitimate, Mike did not seem particularly clear on what time he actually left the house to go to that work shift. And so really, this alibi did not let Lorenzo off the hook at all. After that, Reddick joined his team and searched the house.

Nothing really jumped out at them, no piece of evidence that made it clear Lorenzo could be a killer, but they were able to pull some fingerprints and they collected a number of physical items that could be evidence that might help the investigation. Later that day, Detective Reddick returned to the police station and met with one of the investigators who had picked up Lorenzo. And this investigator told Reddick that there was something really strange about this whole thing.

He said that when he and his partner met Lorenzo, one of the first things they told him was that his wife had been killed. And Lorenzo reacted by bending over and heaving and sobbing. But then when he stood back up again, it was clear he had not actually been crying at all. It was all an act. Now, Reddick didn't want to jump to conclusions here, but it was hard to deny that things were really lining up against Lorenzo.

He was already an estranged husband in a heated custody battle who had previously threatened the victim, and now he seemed to be fake crying at the news of his wife's murder. The investigator told Reddick that Lorenzo was in an interview room, so Reddick grabbed a cup of coffee and headed that way. And after a few minutes of talking to Lorenzo, Reddick felt like his case was only getting stronger.

The conversation they had was relatively short and to the point. Lorenzo said he was at his mother's house at the time Sarah had supposedly been killed, just like his brother Mike had said. Lorenzo also made it clear that despite all of the custody issues, he still cared about Sarah a lot and he would never hurt her. But it was not Lorenzo's answers or his sort of flimsy family alibi that made Reddick feel like Lorenzo was now definitely his primary suspect. Instead, it was Lorenzo's attitude during this short interview.

Reddick thought every answer this man gave him sounded smug and arrogant. And when he talked about his wife's death, he didn't show any emotion at all, despite the huge crying display he'd put on for the other investigators when they first told him about it. At the end of the interview, Reddick called in an officer to take Lorenzo's fingerprints and to swab his cheek for a DNA sample. After that, Reddick wanted to keep Lorenzo in custody, but he didn't have enough evidence to do that, so we had to let him go.

But Reddick felt confident that it was only a matter of time before Lorenzo would be back at the station, back in police custody.

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See earnin.com slash TOS for details. Bank products are issued by Evolve Bank and Trust, member FDIC. On November 20th, so six days after Sarah's murder, her friends and family gathered at a local church for her funeral. And they were joined by people from the community who didn't even know Sarah, but who had followed her story closely on the local news day after day.

Detective Reddick and members of his team also attended, and it struck Reddick that everyone who spoke at the service was so bright and positive when speaking about Sarah. Even though everybody was still in shock and heartbroken, they said Sarah had spent her life being happy and spreading joy, so they wanted to honor her by doing the same, even now at her funeral.

But that was not the only thing about the funeral that stood out to Reddick. It was common for investigators to attend funerals of murder victims, specifically to watch how potential suspects might react. But Reddick couldn't really fully do that because his primary suspect wasn't even there. Lorenzo and his family had not shown up to Sarah's funeral.

About a week after the funeral, Reddick was sitting at his desk going over notes from the search of Lorenzo's mother's house. Nothing had really come from the search so far and he was starting to feel stuck. He was still waiting on DNA test results from the crime scene and Lorenzo's car and without these results or some clear evidence from the search, he still couldn't move in on Lorenzo or anyone else for that matter.

Just then, Reddick heard somebody call his name. And he looked up and he saw an excited officer flagging him down, telling him there was something he needed to hear right away. And so Reddick followed this officer down a hallway to a small room where a member of the investigative team was hunched over Laura's answering machine. This investigator had spent days trying to break down the voicemail recording of the breathing and the screaming and the crying into small sections to see if he could isolate anything that would help.

The investigator, when they saw Reddick, waved him over and rewound the voicemail Sarah had left on the night of the murder and played it back. And when it reached a certain spot, the investigator stopped the message and looked at Reddick like he had just discovered something major. But Reddick just shook his head and said he wasn't really sure what he was supposed to have just heard.

And so the investigator rewound the message again, played it, and then stopped it at that same point. And then did it a few more times, going back to the beginning, playing it, and stopping it at that exact same spot. And eventually, Detective Reddick knew why the investigator was so excited. Because in the middle of all the screaming and the crying they had just listened to, Reddick thought he heard Sarah say one word, a name, Mike.

Detective Reddick quickly dispatched two officers to pick up Lorenzo's younger brother, whose name was Mike, and they found him at his mother's house. Later that day, Reddick sat in an interview room across from Mike, just like he'd done with Lorenzo. But after only a few minutes of speaking to Mike, Reddick felt like these two brothers could not be more different. Where Lorenzo had come off as arrogant and uncaring, Mike seemed shy and sensitive. Talking about Sarah's murder clearly upset him.

Reddick wondered if maybe Lorenzo, the older and seemingly more domineering of the brothers, had pushed Mike to maybe murder Sarah on his behalf. But Mike stuck to the same story he'd told Reddick when they met at the house. He said he had seen Lorenzo at home before he headed out to work. After the interview, Mike agreed to provide some DNA samples and he also asked if someone could drive him to work, because he didn't want to be late. Reddick said he'd be happy to and before long he was driving Mike across town to his job.

And as they drove, Reddick didn't push Mike too hard. But he did say he thought Mike knew more about the murder than he was letting on. Mike didn't respond. However, when Reddick dropped him off at work, Mike stepped out of the car and then fell to the ground and started vomiting.

Redding immediately got out and helped Mike stand back up and get him cleaned off. But as he watched Mike walk into work, Redding now felt completely sure that Mike and maybe even his mom Amelia were hiding information about Lorenzo. As 1998 approached its end, Detective Redding still felt sure he knew who the killer was. Either Lorenzo had done it himself or he had gotten someone to do it for him, most likely his younger brother Mike.

But before New Year's, the detective got the DNA results he'd been waiting for. And nothing from the crime scene matched Lorenzo or Mike's DNA. This shocked Reddick. He'd been so sure this case was just about closed. But without this scientific evidence, or any other real hard evidence to back him up, he couldn't do anything. So Reddick started to question his own theories about the case. Had he been so locked in on Lorenzo and Mike that he'd ignored other evidence?

He went back to the beginning and tried to see what he could have overlooked. And so he dug into Sarah's job at the NSA, thinking maybe the murder could have some connection to her role there. It did seem far-fetched, but if she was involved with sensitive intelligence reports, he at least wanted to look into that. Reddick reached out to a contact at the NSA and they told him they would look into it.

But within days, the NSA contacted Reddick to tell him there was nothing they could find about Sarah's murder that seemed even remotely connected to her work. The fact that Reddick had gone from feeling like he was close to bringing Sarah's killer to justice to feeling like he suddenly had nothing to go on started to weigh heavily on him. He began having trouble sleeping and he also started seeing that horrific image of Sarah lying there in her house all the time. But no matter what avenue he pursued, nothing new turned up.

And so now this case, which had seemed like a slam dunk, started to go cold. On a night in January of 1999, two months after Sarah's murder, a 19-year-old sat in his car in the parking lot of a Baltimore McDonald's. The teenager pulled a ski mask down over his face, grabbed a revolver from the passenger seat, and stepped out of the car.

He quickly walked across the parking lot, stepped into the near-empty fast food restaurant, raised his gun, and started yelling for everyone who was in there to stay where they were and for the employee behind the counter to hand over all the money from the register. The employee began to panic and couldn't quite get the register open, and so his manager quickly rushed to the counter to help. At the same time, the manager told the teenager with the gun to please calm down and that he would get the money out of the register, just hold on.

But the teenager kept waving his gun and yelling at the manager to hurry up. It was taking too long. The manager kept saying he was working on it. And then finally, he opened up the register. At which point, the teenager with the gun lunged over the counter and began grabbing the money. But at the same time, the manager of the restaurant must have done something to spook the teen. Because the teenager fired his gun and the bullet hit the manager.

The employees and the few people in the restaurant began screaming as the teenager ran out of the restaurant with the little bit of money he had in his hand. But the cops were already swarming. On an afternoon in August of 1999, so seven months after the fast food restaurant robbery and nine months after Sarah's murder, an officer rushed over to Detective Reddick's desk and told him there was a phone call he had to take.

Reddick went to the officer's desk and grabbed the phone, and a detective from nearby Baltimore County introduced himself. This Baltimore County detective said he was pretty sure Reddick had not heard about a Baltimore County McDonald's getting robbed at the beginning of the year. Reddick sort of laughed and said that he had not heard anything about that. The Baltimore County detective said it was the craziest thing, but the person who had robbed that McDonald's and actually shot the manager of that McDonald's was a 19-year-old kid named Ardale Tickles.

This kid was in jail for the robbery and the shooting, and recently he'd begun bragging to other inmates that he knew everything about the murder that had been all over the TV. The one where the woman had been killed in Howard County, Sarah Rariss. Detective Reddick felt a rush, and he almost didn't know what to say. He'd reached the point where he wasn't sure if he'd ever find any new evidence in Sarah's murder.

Still, Reddick knew that inmates often bragged about murders they knew nothing about, especially if those murders had been all over the news for weeks like Sarah's had. The other detective agreed with Reddick, but he said this was different. He was nearly positive that this kid, Ardell Tickles, had been giving away details of this murder that police had never released to the public. Reddick thanked the detective for the call and said he was heading that way right now.

As he rushed out to his car, Reddick felt more optimistic than he had in months, and he thought he might finally find justice for Sarah. And after meeting with the young inmate, Ardale, Detective Reddick was sure Ardale was telling the truth. He did know things that only the killer, or someone who had at least spoken to the killer, would know.

It would take a little more time for Reddick and his team to get the concrete evidence they needed, but almost exactly a year after the investigation began, they finally knew who had murdered Sarah Rarris. Based on Ardell's interview, DNA testing, and evidence collected throughout the investigation, the following is a reconstruction of what happened to Sarah on the night of November 14th, 1998. On that night, the killer sat in their car a few houses down from Sarah's.

They slipped on a pair of leather gloves, checked the hunting knife sheathed on their hip, and stepped outside. The killer wore all black, and they moved quickly towards Sarah's house, being careful to stay out of the glow from the streetlights. They ran across Sarah's yard to a window near the front door, crouched down, and looked inside the house. From this spot, they could see Sarah sitting at her computer in the family room. The killer raised up their elbow and slammed it into the glass.

The window shattered and the killer unsheathed their knife, climbed through the broken window, making sure to avoid the shards of glass, and ran right towards Sarah. Sarah was already up on her feet, running towards the phone that was on an end table, but the killer grabbed Sarah and slammed the hunting knife into her back just as Sarah picked up the phone.

The killer kept stabbing Sarah over and over as she desperately tried to dial 911. She didn't manage to do that, but did hit a special speed dial button on her phone that called her best friend Laura. The killer sliced Sarah's hand and she and the phone fell to the floor. The killer crouched down and stabbed Sarah in the chest again and again until she was barely breathing. And then the killer slit her throat.

Sarah died there on the floor, but the killer kept digging into her neck with the knife as they grew more and more crazed. They stabbed Sarah's chest again and then hacked away at her wrists. Finally, the killer saw all the blood on the floor and the walls, then they stood up and backed away from Sarah's body. They ran across the room, grabbed the VCR and threw some VHS tapes on the floor before heading to the kitchen to throw open some drawers.

The killer had wanted to make this look like a robbery, but even they knew this was a very weak attempt, and they didn't want to spend any more time in that house. So they ran back to the broken window, climbed through it, and sprinted across the yard and down the street to their car. And to their shock, the neighborhood still remained completely quiet. Nobody knew. The killer tossed the stolen VCR into the passenger seat, gunned the engine, and sped away from the secluded suburban neighborhood.

The following day, they went into work at a retirement home and told the woman they worked with that the job was done. Ardale Tickles, the 19-year-old who robbed the McDonald's and shot the manager, also murdered Sarah. But Ardale had no personal connection to Sarah at all. He just happened to work at the retirement home with Sarah's mother-in-law, Amelia. And it turned out Amelia wanted Sarah dead. Amelia never thought Sarah was good enough for her son Lorenzo.

She claimed Sarah was a "loose woman" and was having all these online relationships with other men. Now, even though there was absolutely no proof of this, Amelia still did not want Lorenzo to be with Sarah. And these feelings only got worse when Sarah and Lorenzo had a baby together.

Amelia thought Sarah was a terrible mother. And so whenever Amelia would babysit, she would give Sarah all this unsolicited, extensive parenting advice. But Sarah often rejected her advice. And so Amelia felt disrespected and angry on top of detesting Sarah. And so when Sarah filed for divorce and tried to gain full custody of her grandson, Amelia decided Sarah had to die.

Now, Amelia knew she could not carry out the murder herself. So, she offered Ardale, the 19-year-old young man she worked with, $3,000 to murder Sarah for her, and Ardale accepted. And for several months after the murder, it looked like Amelia might actually get away with it. Detective Reddick had focused the bulk of his investigation on Amelia's sons, Lorenzo and his brother Mike. Reddick had never even considered Amelia a suspect.

And when no concrete evidence against her son surfaced, Amelia believed investigators would just leave the family alone and go down some other path. But in early 1999, Ardell robbed the McDonald's and shot the manager, got caught, and while he was in jail, began bragging to other inmates about how he'd been involved in a highly publicized murder. When Reddick and detectives from Baltimore County interviewed Ardell, he admitted to killing Sarah.

It didn't take long for them to connect Ardale and Amelia through their work, and they also eventually connected a bank withdrawal Amelia had made to the payment she'd given Ardale, and so it was clear she had arranged the murder. Police do not believe Lorenzo had any idea what his mother was doing, and although investigators were convinced Lorenzo's brother, Mike, knew more than he was letting on, it was never proven that he had any knowledge of what his mother had done.

On top of that, the FBI later conducted a detailed analysis of that voicemail that had been left on Laura's answering machine, the voicemail that basically captured Sarah's murder. And they determined that the word Mike had not actually been said on the tape. It was just a sound that could have been mistaken for the name. And so as a result, the district attorney's office focused their case solely on Amelia and Ardell.

Ardell pleaded guilty to first-degree murder and was sentenced to life in prison with a possibility for parole as early as 2024. As for Amelia, she was found guilty of first-degree murder and sentenced to life in prison without parole. 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 like today's stories 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 Runful. To find those other podcasts, all you have to do is search for Ballin Studios wherever you listen to your podcasts.

To watch hundreds more stories just like the one you heard today, head over to our YouTube channel, which is just called Mr. Ballin. So that's going to do it. I really appreciate your support. Until next time, see ya.

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