The Hitman (PODCAST EXCLUSIVE EPISODE)
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In April of 1990, a bleary-eyed detective stepped into a townhouse in a suburb of Chicago, Illinois. The detective had been on call for days and all he wanted to do was sleep, but now he'd been called in to investigate a double homicide. The detective opened the door to the basement and began walking down the steps. The overhead light cast shadows on the floor below, so he couldn't get a clear look at what he was walking into. But when the detective got to the bottom of the stairs, he suddenly felt wide awake.

The scene in the basement was far more gruesome than he'd imagined. Two dead bodies lay there on the floor. And there was one thing that jumped out at the detective immediately. On a cardboard box sitting between the bodies, a heart and the letter "U" was scrawled in blood. The detective had no idea if one of the victims had left the message or if this was a scene staged by a deranged killer. And it would take him six months to get the answer he was looking for and to discover what really happened in that basement.

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 gift the follow button a homemade wind chime made out of raw hot dogs. Okay, let's get into today's story.

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On the evening of April 7th, 1990, 25-year-old Nancy Langert looked at the cardboard boxes stacked up in the living room of her home in Winnetka, Illinois, trying to figure out what else she still had to pack. She and her husband Richard were moving at the end of the month, and Nancy could not wait. She was almost three months pregnant, and the new house had a lot more space, including a room for the baby's nursery.

But as Nancy scanned the room, she realized there really wasn't much left for her to do. Other than the boxes, the only things in the room were a TV, a stereo, a card table, and some folding chairs. The truth was that even though she and Richard had been staying in this small townhouse for months that was owned actually by her parents, they had never actually really settled in. It always felt like it was a temporary place to sort their finances out, after Richard had racked up some serious gambling debt.

As soon as the thought of Richard's gambling crossed her mind, Nancy shook her head and then called for her little dog, Pepsi. She heard his nails clicking across the floor, and she picked him up and scratched under his chin, trying to take her mind off of Richard's gambling and their money issues. But it was no use. It was all she could think about.

Both Nancy and Richard had good jobs working at a growing coffee company, but Richard had always liked to bet on sports. And at some point, he had started spending more than he earned and began also borrowing money from friends to keep up with his gambling. It had all come to a head months earlier when Nancy and Richard fell behind on bills and had to move into this townhouse owned by Nancy's parents. And then Nancy's mother had to create a budget for them and put them on a weekly allowance, which was very embarrassing for both of them.

But recently, things had gotten a lot better. They'd paid down their debt, built up their savings again, and now they were about to move out of this temporary home. In fact, at this very moment, Nancy even had $500 in cash in her purse to deposit into her bank account.

Nancy gave Pepsi a kiss and put him down on the floor, and she reminded herself to stay positive. Richard was trying hard to curb his spending, and other than his gambling issue, he really was a great husband. And Richard and Nancy had both wanted a baby for so long, and now it was finally happening, and she knew Richard was going to be an amazing father. Feeling better, Nancy sat down on a folding chair and flipped on the TV. At around 6.30 p.m., the phone rang.

It was Richard, telling Nancy he was leaving work and he'd be home to pick her up in just a few minutes. They were celebrating Nancy's father's 60th birthday that night. They had an 8 p.m. dinner reservation, but they were picking up Nancy's parents and sister at her sister's place first. Nancy turned off the TV, picked up Pepsi, and took him upstairs to the bedroom so he wouldn't chew up any of the cardboard boxes while they were gone. After putting him inside, she shut the door gently, walked back downstairs, threw on a coat, and walked outside to Richard's car, shivering in the early spring chill.

A few minutes later, Nancy's sister, Jean, opened the door to her apartment with a huge smile on her face. She led Nancy and Richard inside, and then she handed Nancy two beautifully wrapped presents that she'd brought back from a recent trip to Ireland. Nancy opened up the first gift and found a gorgeous Irish wool sweater inside. But the other present made Nancy feel like she might cry from happiness. It was a little onesie and booties for a newborn baby. Nancy thanked Jean repeatedly and gave her a big hug. She was so happy.

At around 8 p.m., the group got to the restaurant, and Nancy was happily surprised to see that none of her parents' friends were meeting them there. The celebration would now just be with family. It wasn't that Nancy didn't like her parents' friends, though. Some of them had been around for so long that they actually felt like her own family, like her dad's work friend, Nick Biro, and his wife, Joan, who she had totally expected to be there.

But then there was this guy Victor, who was one of her father's closest friends, but he was also rumored to be in the mob. Nancy didn't mind Victor, but Richard could not stand him. So his absence from the party was a relief.

As the food started to arrive to their table, Nancy suddenly didn't feel well. Her pregnancy was giving her really bad nausea and the smell of pasta and steak just set it off. But she didn't want to ruin the night for everyone, so she tried to hide the fact that she really just wanted to go throw up. However, she could see her mom looking over at her with a raised eyebrow from across the table and Nancy forced a smile back. She knew she was not convincing her mother that she was doing okay, but her mother just went back to her lasagna without saying anything in fear she might embarrass her daughter.

After dinner, Nancy and the rest of her family all piled back into Richard's car so he could drive everybody home. He dropped Nancy's sister Jean off first, and when she got out, Jean gave Nancy a big hug and told her she would see her tomorrow at church. Then Richard dropped off Nancy's parents. However, Nancy's mother paused before getting out of the car. She said she noticed at dinner that Nancy was feeling sick and asked if maybe Nancy and Richard wanted to spend the night there, at her house.

For a second, Nancy did consider it. I mean, having your parents around if you're feeling sick is kind of like what everybody wants. But Richard was supposed to dog sit for a neighbor and she wanted to sleep in her own bed, cuddled up with Pepsi. So she ultimately said, you know, no, thank you. Her parents then said goodnight and then they walked into their house. On the drive back home, Richard and Nancy planned out the rest of their evening. Richard would walk the neighbor's dog and then actually sleep over at the neighbor's house to keep the dog company.

But first, Nancy and Richard would take their dog, Pepsi, for a walk together. They pulled up to their townhouse, and Richard walked around the car, opened up Nancy's door, and helped her outside. They smiled at each other, and he asked her how she was feeling, and Nancy said she still felt nauseous, but she was too happy about everything to let it bother her. Richard gave Nancy's shoulder a quick squeeze, and then they walked inside together.

At 7am the next morning, Nancy's mother called her daughter to see if she was feeling any better. But Nancy didn't pick up, so her mom figured she must be sleeping in and hung up without leaving a message. She knew she would just see her daughter later at church anyway.

However, when Nancy's mother got to church that day and took her seat in their regular pew, the bench beside her stayed empty for the entire service. Nancy's mom worried the entire time, so as soon as she got back home, she called her daughter again. And when Nancy still didn't answer, Nancy's father said he was going over to the townhouse to make sure everything was okay. Nancy's dad got to the townhouse just a few minutes later. He figured Nancy was just sick and sleeping, so he wasn't actually all that worried.

He rang the bell, but nobody answered, so he took out his own key, unlocked the door, and stepped inside. The place felt oddly quiet, and no one responded when he called out. Then, Nancy's dad saw his daughter's purse lying on the floor, surrounded by cash and credit cards, and so now he was worried. Suddenly, he heard a noise upstairs. It sounded like scratching on a door. So he ran out of the room, took the steps up two at a time, and then headed down the second floor hallway to Nancy's bedroom, where the scratching sound was coming from.

There, he opened up the door, and the little dog Pepsi came running out, and the stench of urine immediately hit Nancy's dad. Now he was really starting to panic. He knew his daughter would never lock her precious dog in a room long enough for the dog to have to urinate all over the ground. He turned and ran back downstairs, now screaming his daughter's name, but still he didn't get an answer. He knew there was only one place he hadn't checked yet, the basement.

Nancy's father ran to the top of the basement stairs. The basement light was on, but all he could see when he looked downstairs were shadowy shapes below, which he assumed must be their moving boxes. But as he slowly walked down the stairs and the shapes came into view, he gasped. They weren't boxes. They were the bodies of his pregnant daughter and his son-in-law. They were both covered in blood. Nancy was still wearing her clothes from the night before, and her eyes were wide open. For a moment, Nancy's father simply froze, unable to process what he was seeing.

Then he leapt down the remaining stairs to his daughter's side and grabbed her hand, but it was freezing cold. He sprinted back up the stairs and he dialed 911.

Winnetka Police Sergeant Gene Calvatus woke up to the sound of his wife's voice calling him from the other room. He blinked at his clock, which read 6:40 p.m. He'd worked overnight and hadn't gotten to bed until about midday, and now his wife was saying he had yet another phone call from headquarters. All Sergeant Calvatus wanted was just to go back to sleep, but he forced himself to get up and go to the phone because this was his job. And as soon as he heard his lieutenant's voice in the phone, Calvatus snapped wide awake.

The lieutenant said there had been a double homicide and Calvados needed to get to the scene right now. A few minutes later, Sergeant Calvados parked his car outside of Nancy and Richard's townhouse.

Calvatus had seen plenty of violent deaths in his life. Before he became a police officer, he had served in Vietnam, and he had watched other young men in his unit grow hardened to bloodshed and violence, but Calvatus really never got used to it. In fact, Calvatus could see the face of every dead person he'd ever seen as clearly as if they were still right in front of him. And now he braced himself for the faces he was about to see in that basement.

Sergeant Calvatus stepped out of his car and he saw several officers speaking to Nancy's father outside the house. Calvatus quickly introduced himself and then headed inside, where our forensics team was already combing through the townhouse. One of the forensics officers came over to Calvatus. He said the double homicide had taken place in the basement, but before Calvatus went downstairs, he wanted to show the detective three pieces of evidence they'd found on the first floor.

The forensics officer pointed to the ground just a few feet away and Calvados noticed Nancy's purse lying there with $500 in cash and several credit cards lying next to it. Calvados quickly noticed there was still a TV and a high-end stereo in the room, so it seemed unlikely that what they were dealing with here was a robbery gone bad.

Then the forensics officer led Calvedes towards a door that opened onto a small back patio. Calvedes saw a perfectly cut square piece of glass which had been removed from the door and placed on the floor inside. And the forensics officer pointed out something interesting: the door was still locked. So whoever cut the glass did not reach through the hole and unlock the door, which would have been easy. Instead, they literally climbed through the small hole in the door, which would have taken far more time and effort.

Finally, the forensics officer took Calvatus over to a small card table that was next to a moving box. The officer said it looked like someone had rifled through the box and put a single item from it on the table. Calvatus leaned in and a look of surprise came across his face. The item on the table was Nancy and Richard's marriage license. But the forensics officer said he didn't know yet if the person who broke in had put the license there or if maybe it just happened to be there already.

Calvatus thanked the officer and then after taking a deep breath, he headed to the basement, hoping things would start to get a bit clearer down there. Calvatus walked down the steps slowly and as the scene came into view, he couldn't help but wince. Richard had been handcuffed and shot in the back of the head. It looked like he had probably died instantly. Nancy though was not handcuffed and her death had clearly been slow.

She was shot twice in her side and in her abdomen, and there was blood smeared all around her body, like she had crawled or rolled in the blood after being wounded, and her eyes were still open, frozen in her final moment. Calvatus also saw an axe on the floor between Richard and Nancy, and he wondered how that figured into the crime if the killer had a gun. Had the couple tried to fight back with it? He didn't know.

Then something else caught Sergeant Calvatus' attention. On a moving box between the bodies, a small heart and the letter U were scrawled in blood. Calvatus crouched down and saw blood on one of Nancy's fingertips, so he wondered if she had left this message or if the killer had staged it to look that way.

Regardless of the answer, Calvatus realized whoever killed Nancy and Richard had not acted in the heat of the moment. The handcuffs and the execution-style shooting of Richard proved that. And that execution-style shooting made Calvatus wonder if the murders had been carried out by a professional hitman. The cut glass in the patio door could also support that theory because it suggested a very high level of planning.

But Calvados stood there and just shook his head, like he was arguing with himself. Removing the glass in the door seemed like something a professional would do, but then why would the professional killer squeeze through the small hole in the door instead of just reaching in and unlocking the door?

Also, Richard's murder seemed like a cold-blooded, very efficient assassination, whereas Nancy's murder seemed sloppy. She clearly lived long enough to roll or crawl through the blood on the floor, and she might have lived long enough to even write that message on the moving box. So in a way, Calvatus felt like he was almost looking at two different crime scenes at once, one crime scene for Richard and one crime scene for Nancy.

Calvados suddenly felt a tap on his shoulder. It was one of the officers who'd been talking to Nancy's dad. The officer told Calvados he had very important information. Nancy had been pregnant. Calvados' heart sank. He knew the look on Nancy's face would stay with him for a very long time. Later that day, as officers met with Nancy and Richard's neighbors, the chief of police decided to form a task force to investigate the double murder. He said he would ask for help from detectives from surrounding suburbs, but he wanted Sergeant Calvados to lead the team.

Calvatus knew this was going to be the biggest challenge of his career. A double homicide of a young couple that was potentially carried out by a professional hitman was a whole different level of crime than he'd ever seen in Winnetka. The next day, Sergeant Calvatus knocked on the door of Nancy's parents' house. Nancy's dad opened the door and Calvatus could tell from his puffy eyes that he'd been crying.

As gently as he could, Calvatus asked the father if he could get Nancy and Richard's wedding albums and address books or anything that could help him identify all of their friends and acquaintances. Nancy's father just nodded, looking shell-shocked, and invited the sergeant to come inside while he looked.

Calvados stepped inside and then sat down on the couch, and Nancy's mother came in. She also had a vacant stare on her face, almost like she literally couldn't process what had happened. Still, almost on autopilot, she politely offered him some coffee, which Calvados said no thank you to.

Then, Calvados told her that he was the one leading this investigation and he really needed her to think as hard as she could about all the people in her daughter's life. Did she know anyone who might want to hurt Nancy or Richard? But Nancy's mother shook her head and said no. And as Nancy's father came in with the things the sergeant had asked for, he also said the same thing. Nancy and Richard were wonderful people with a big supportive group of friends. The idea that either of them had enemies seemed kind of ridiculous.

On Tuesday, April 10th, so three days after the murders, Nancy and Richard's bosses at the coffee company offered a $10,000 reward for information in the case, and also Nancy's parents matched it. And so tips about Nancy and Richard began to pour in. Phones at police headquarters rang constantly, and before long the task force was totally inundated. And as Sergeant Calvados sifted through all this new information they were getting, a new and much more complicated picture of the murdered couple began to emerge.

A few tipsters alerted the sergeant to Richard's gambling debts and the fact that he very likely owed people money because of his gambling problem. This was a major red flag to Calvados, but the debts themselves actually seemed way too small to be worth killing two people over.

However, the tips about Nancy were more promising. Apparently, she had had an affair for more than a year and her former lover had left town for Georgia just two days after the murders. This, combined with the marriage contract left on the table at the crime scene, made Calvatus wonder if the killings were retaliation from Nancy's ex-lover for breaking the affair off. Calvatus sent detectives down to Georgia to speak with Nancy's former lover, but the man said the affair was far more emotional than physical.

Nancy mostly just wanted someone to talk to because Richard was working two jobs and she was just kind of lonely. But when Richard got his full-time job at the coffee company, the couple had totally reconciled and they got back to normal. And so this ex-lover said at that point, he also had been ready to move on. And so even though the move to Georgia came so close to the murders, it had actually been planned out for weeks.

Calvados wasn't quite prepared to rule this man out quite yet, but he was already finding this case very frustrating. Everything from the conflicting evidence at the crime scene where, you know, one murder is well planned and the other seems sloppy and, you know, the glass, why did you climb through and not unlock it by reaching through, to the contradictory stories about the victims seemed to pull him in very different directions. Meanwhile, rumors of hitmen and criminal syndicates began flying all over town.

There was a bike path that ran behind Nancy and Richard's house leading basically all the way to Chicago and residents became convinced that a Chicago mobster must have been the killer and they must have used that path to travel in and out sight unseen. Calvatus did not necessarily buy that, but he got a tip that a close friend of Nancy's father, a man named Victor, supposedly had ties to the mafia. So Calvatus began digging.

However, he struggled to find anything useful. At least on the surface, Victor looked like an upstanding businessman. So, Kalbatis was not any closer to nailing down a primary suspect.

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Four days after the murders, a massive crowd of 800 people from the area gathered for Nancy and Richard's funeral. I mean, the community really came out in force, to the point where random local groups like the high school's Peace Alliance Club and the track team were waiting in these long lines after the service just to offer their condolences to Nancy and Richard's family. I mean, their deaths really took a toll on this town.

Sergeant Calvados and some other detectives also went to the funeral, but mostly just to look for anybody who seemed nervous or excited or maybe overly dramatic. But all they found was a large group of people trying desperately to understand how something this horrible could have happened. After the funeral, Calvados went back to the station. He was on his way to his office when a lieutenant stopped him to tell him that somebody was there to see him.

The lieutenant took Calvatus to a very nervous-looking couple who said they had a tip about Nancy's sister, Jean.

Jean was a lawyer and she was heavily involved in political issues in Ireland. At that time, Ireland was in the midst of a violent period known as the Troubles. The Troubles were clashes between Protestants and Catholics over control of Northern Ireland and there were regular shootings, car bombings, murders, and kidnappings. And Jean was not neutral. She provided legal aid to members of the Irish Republican Army or IRA, which was the Catholic organization blamed for many acts of violence.

The couple also told Sergeant Calvedes that Jean had received a threat that if she returned to Ireland, she would be injured or maybe even killed. But despite that threat, Jean had gone back to Ireland very recently, and when she had arrived home, she showed up with gifts for Nancy and the baby just three days before the murders.

The sergeant listened quietly, but inside he was practically jumping out of his skin. This was the best lead he'd gotten so far. Maybe he thought somebody was hired to kill Jean, but killed Nancy and her husband by mistake. Or maybe they killed Nancy on purpose just to hurt Jean. It was not unheard of during the Troubles for innocent family members to be targeted for political revenge. And so after speaking to this couple, Calvatus got on the phone and called Jean into the station.

Later that day, Calvados sat down across a table in a small interview room with Jean, and he could tell right away she was completely unlike any suspect he'd ever questioned before. Jean was unusually confident for somebody who was about to be questioned by a homicide detective. She sat up perfectly straight and calmly looked Calvados right in the eyes without fidgeting or tapping her fingers or shifting around in her seat. Calvados asked Jean some basic questions about her job, and she was quite helpful.

But then, the sergeant mentioned the threat that had been made on her life because of her work in Ireland and also this theory that maybe a hired killer took out Nancy either by mistake or for revenge. At this point, Jean's demeanor totally changed. She went from cool and collected to sharp and visibly angry.

She said it was ridiculous to imagine a gunman could confuse Nancy for her. They looked nothing alike. And the idea that someone would kill Nancy to get back at Jean was even more outrageous. Jean insisted that her job in Ireland was mostly human rights work and not worth killing her over, let alone her sister. Jean leaned forward and looked Calvados dead in the eyes and told him he was really stretching with that theory.

Calvatus was genuinely surprised. This was not what he was expecting, and he wasn't sure if Jean's reaction was fueled by righteous indignation at questions she truly considered unfair, or anxiety and guilt at the idea that she might have played a role in putting her sister at risk. But the sergeant pressed on, and he asked Jean for the names of every person she had visited the last time she was in Ireland, along with all of her work associates there.

Jean turned red and yelled at the sergeant that none of this had anything to do with her sister's murder. She said Calvatus was not getting anything from her, and then she stood up and stormed out of the interview room. Sergeant Calvatus just sat there, both really surprised and really mad. This death threat on Jean was the first real lead they had, and he couldn't fully investigate it without the names from Jean.

He had expected her to be grateful and to immediately offer up anything she knew to try to figure out who killed her sister. And so he just couldn't believe Jean was unwilling to help him unless, of course, she was involved. Without any information from Jean about the death threat, Calvados was left chasing other possibilities that frankly just seemed increasingly unlikely.

Both Richard and Nancy had worked for a coffee company that imported their beans from Colombia, which Calvados and basically everybody knew was a major importer of cocaine. He knew that drug cartels sometimes hid cocaine in coffee shipments. In fact, just three months before the murders, federal agents had seized five kilograms of cocaine in a coffee shipment from a different coffee company.

So, Calvetas started poking around into the coffee company looking for any ties to cartels. But the owners of the company seemed mostly puzzled by this and they gave Calvetas permission to inspect their next shipment like they didn't care at all, look at whatever you want. And so, Calvetas did that, flagging the ship that had their coffee on it to US Customs officers who then met the vessel when it came into port. A giant crane lifted the container with their coffee out of the ship and onto the dock and then Customs officer cracked it open.

Then they began slicing through random bags of beans to see if their drug-sniffing German shepherds could pick up a scent. But, like Calvedus had feared, they found nothing. The police began to feel like they were just grasping at straws, and so they decided they should just go back to the beginning and kind of start over. So they re-interviewed all the neighbors, and they got one tantalizing tip about a mysterious man walking around the neighborhood the night of the murders, but after looking into it, they discovered it was actually just a bored teenager who lived nearby.

After that, they looked into whether Richard and Nancy had maybe taken a loan from mobsters to lease their new place, but when they looked at the couple's tax records, they saw they could easily afford the rent. And so, once again, one after another, all the tips and leads they were finding just went nowhere. Calvados still had suspicions that Gene's ties to the IRA got her sister killed, but without Gene's cooperation, he struggled to make any headway on that lead.

So, by the end of May, Sergeant Calvados was basically out of ideas as his big case rapidly went cold. Finally, on May 30th, so about a month after the murders, the police chief pulled Calvados into his office. From the look on Chief's face, Calvados knew the news was not good. But he could not have guessed what was coming next.

The chief told him they were going to dismantle the task force. They had spent a whopping $1 million on this investigation so far and still had not come up with a serious single suspect. Calvados was shocked. This felt way too early to basically give up. But the chief wasn't done. In addition to dismantling the task force, he wanted Calvados back on the beat while another investigator stepped in and took a look at this case.

The chief followed up and told Calvedes that he was not taking him off the case completely, he just wanted a set of fresh eyes on it. But as Calvedes nodded and turned to walk out of the office, it definitely felt like he had failed and he was being removed. Sergeant Calvedes walked slowly towards his team to break the bad news, at the same time feeling totally sick and angry at the thought of patrolling the neighborhood again with everything in this case still completely up in the air.

But a few days later, sure enough, Calvetis was back in his blue uniform driving a police cruiser around Winnetka. He figured his days as a detective were likely over. Six months passed with no progress at all in the Langert case. Sergeant Calvetis focused on working his beat, but at the same time he just felt so distracted because all he felt was regret that he had not been able to find the killer.

But then, on October 4th, Sergeant Calvatus was home sleeping when his wife woke him up telling him that work was calling, just like she had done on the day of the murder. But this time, when he picked the phone up, his lieutenant was yelling excitedly that there had been a break in Nancy and Richard's case and Calvatus had to get down to the station right now.

Calvados was so excited, he rushed out of bed, he jumped into his car, and he sped to the station. But when he got there, he found the supposed break was just a kid. And not a very tough-looking kid either. It was a skinny high school senior who had arrived at the station with his girlfriend for moral support, asking about the witness protection program. Calvados had to keep himself from rolling his eyes. He wondered what this kid could possibly know about a brutal double homicide.

And at first, when the kid began talking, his story, predictably, sounded unbelievable. The kid said he somehow knew the killer, and the killer had supposedly confessed everything to him in unbelievable detail. But as he began walking Calvatus and the other detectives through what he knew, Calvatus realized this kid was telling the truth. The teenager knew details of the crime that had never been made public, like how many shots were fired and the fact that the marriage contract was on the table.

But beyond individual details, the teenager's story explained all the strange contradictions that Calvados had struggled with since the beginning of the case. Richard was killed quickly and efficiently, but Nancy's murder was messy and slow. The killer had apparently brought a gun along, but someone had grabbed an axe that wasn't entirely clear, and then the killer had used glass cutting tools to get inside, but then needlessly crawled through the tiny hole in the door instead of just reaching through and unlocking it.

And so all these things definitely lined up with what Calvatus had suspected. Calvatus had never been able to figure out if the killer was a professional hitman or a sloppy amateur. But now, as the sergeant listened to this kid talk, it seemed like the killer might have been a little bit of both. After speaking to this kid and looking at all the evidence in the case and looking at all their interviews, here is a reconstruction of what police think happened on the night of Saturday, April 7th, 1990, when Nancy and Richard were murdered inside of their home.

The killer arrived at Nancy and Richard's townhouse while the couple was out to dinner. The killer had been preparing for this moment for months. They approached the patio door from the path that ran behind the house. They didn't even bother trying the doorknob. Instead, they pulled out a glass cutter to remove a section of the sliding patio doors. And then once the cuts were made, they stuck some very sticky tape to the front of the glass piece and then pulled it out silently, just like they had been practicing.

Then, once it was out, instead of reaching through and opening the door, the killer crawled into the house through the hole and then waited.

But they had no idea how long it would be before Nancy and Richard came home, and as the minutes turned to hours, the killer began to get restless. And so they just started wandering around the house sort of aimlessly, rifling through random boxes that were sitting around. And it was there that the killer found Nancy and Richard's marriage contract. They began to read it, but it was mostly legal jargon, so they just placed it on the card table near the box they'd dug it out of. But the longer the killer waited for Nancy and Richard to come home, the more impatient they got, and the more nervous.

And so they ultimately just turned on a light and then sat on a chair in the shadows with their gun on their lap. They had a hood pulled down low, but they thought the light shining from behind them would help hide their face even more. Then finally, sometime after 11 p.m., the killer heard voices and then the key in the door. Nancy and Richard walked inside, but they were so caught up in their conversation, they didn't even notice the killer sitting there. But then the killer spoke and told them to be quiet and closed the door behind them.

The killer could instantly see how startled Nancy and Richard were. The killer then raised their gun, and Nancy and Richard's surprise quickly turned to fear. The killer loved it.

The killer demanded Nancy hand over her purse. She said she didn't have any money, but the killer demanded the purse again. And so Nancy threw it to the killer. And everything inside of it fell out onto the floor, including the stack of cash totaling $500. Nancy started stammering that she'd forgotten about the money, and Richard urged the killer to just please take the cash and go. She wasn't trying to lie to you. But the killer, who acted totally offended at the idea that they were hiding things from him, was not actually here for their money. They didn't care.

The killer, still aiming their gun at Nancy and Richard, reached into their pocket to pull out handcuffs. But as they fished around in their pocket, they began to curse. In their excitement about this night, they'd only brought one pair of handcuffs, not the two they actually needed. But Richard was clearly the bigger threat. He was a tall, athletic guy, so the killer gave the cuffs to Nancy and told her to handcuff her husband. As Nancy handcuffed Richard's hands behind his back, she began to plead with the killer. "'Please don't hurt us. I'm pregnant.'"

Something about Nancy's plea hit the killer hard, and they could feel their hands begin to shake. Suddenly there was a noise upstairs, and the killer accidentally pulled the trigger, shooting a bullet into the baseboards. But the killer quickly realized that the noise was just the dog, closed in the upstairs bedroom, barking at something.

Still, the killer felt like their plan was now quickly falling apart. Things were already going so wrong. The killer started to lose their nerve and they thought about sparing Nancy and Richard. So the killer told the couple to go to the basement and then once they were down there, the killer would lock the door and just leave.

And so the killer directed Nancy and Richard to the basement stairs at gunpoint and no one said a word. But as Nancy and Richard descended the stairs and then reached the bottom of the stairs, Nancy suddenly turned around and looked at the killer. And the killer knew from her surprised look on her face that she had seen the killer's face. The light was better down there and the hood did not disguise the killer enough. The killer knew Nancy would be able to identify them.

And so now the killer had a choice to make. Let them live and face the consequences or follow through with the plan. But before the killer could decide, Richard made a desperate move. With all his strength, he snapped the cheap handcuffs, jumped at the killer and smashed his own head against the killer's head. Almost instinctively, the killer just fired the gun and it hit Richard right in the back of his head. Richard crumpled to the floor. Nancy rushed to his side screaming, then looked back at the killer whose gun was still raised. Nancy shouted, not again, no! And

and covered her face as the killer took a shot at her. The killer turned and ran up the stairs, but as they got to the top, they looked back. Nancy was still alive and moving. The bullet had only hit her in the elbow. The killer knew at this point they had already come this far. They had to go back. So the killer raised their gun again and pulled the trigger one more time. The bullet hit Nancy and lodged in her pregnant stomach. She collapsed to the floor, and the killer turned and ran out of the basement. But after the killer left, Nancy was still alive. Barely.

She tried to climb up the stairs, but it was a struggle. The coat she was wearing was quickly filling with blood, weighing her down. And so with an enormous effort, she managed to pull off her jacket, but as she looked up the stairs, she knew it was just too much. She would never get up there.

So, Nancy turned and dragged herself over to the basement shelves and grabbed the nearest thing she could reach, the axe. And then with the axe, she banged on the shelf, hoping that the noise would get somebody's attention, but nobody came to the rescue. And so, with her last bit of strength, Nancy dropped the axe, dipped her finger in her own blood, dragged herself over to a moving box on the floor, and drew a heart and the letter U.

She looked at Richard, hoping maybe there was a small chance he would live and see her final message. I love you. And then Nancy took her final breath. When the police began investigating this case, they knew that some of the evidence suggested the killer was an amateur, but most of their leads pointed to a professional hitman, which is why Calvados and his team had been so interested in the mob and in drugs and the IRA.

It was a mistake that allowed one person to escape any attention at all. Because the killer was right there, hanging around the investigation in plain sight the entire time. He was one of the members of the High School Peace Alliance Club who came to the funeral. He was on the track team too. So he ran past the Langerts' house almost every single day. The police had even questioned him because he was also the teenage boy who had been seen in the neighborhood on the night of the murders but had quickly been written off.

But it turned out that kid, the 16-year-old named David Biro, was the killer. And he also happened to be the son of Nancy's family friends, Nick and Joan Biro, who Nancy had thought might be her father's birthday party on the night that she was killed. It would turn out 16-year-old David had serious psychological issues and he had become obsessed with becoming a hitman after seeing the 1980s movie, Best Seller, about a hitman who wanted to turn his story into a book.

The idea of killing people excited David, and he had actually already tried to do it at least once before. Prior to the murders, David's parents had him committed to a psychiatric hospital after he tried to poison his own family. But after only two months, his parents had let him come home against the recommendation of his doctors. And once he was home, teenager David Biro chose to live out his hitman fantasy by killing Nancy and Richard.

And his reason for targeting Nancy and Richard had nothing to do with their connections to his family. Instead, he chose them as his murder victims because their townhouse was conveniently located and he also found them, quote, annoying. David might have gotten away with these murders, but as the months went by and the police never came for him, he got cocky and he began to brag to a friend about what he had done.

He even showed his friend the glass that he'd practiced his glass cutting on, and he also showed him the murder weapon. And David's friend pretty much immediately turned him in because he was very worried David would kill again. And so on October 5th, 1990, almost six months to the day after Nancy and Richard were gunned down, David was arrested. It was the day before Nancy's baby would have been due. David was sentenced to life in prison for killing Nancy, Richard, and their unborn child.

Nancy's parents would move back into Nancy and Richard's townhouse shortly after the murders as a way to feel closer to Nancy and Richard.

Thank you for listening to the Mr. Ballin Podcast. If you enjoyed 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, Mr. Ballin Podcast, and we also have Mr. Ballin's Medical Mysteries, we have Bedtime 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. To

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

I'm Dan Taberski. In 2011, something strange began to happen at the high school in Leroy, New York. I was like at my locker and she came up to me and she was like stuttering super bad. I'm like, stop f***ing around. She's like...

I can't. A mystery illness, bizarre symptoms, and spreading fast. It's like doubling and tripling, and it's all these girls. With a diagnosis the state tried to keep on the down low. Everybody thought I was holding something back. Well, you were holding something back intentionally. Yeah, well, yeah.

No, it's hysteria. It's all in your head. It's not physical. Oh my gosh, you're exaggerating. Is this the largest mass hysteria since The Witches of Salem? Or is it something else entirely? Something's wrong here. Something's not right. Leroy was the new dateline and everyone was trying to solve the murder. A new limited series from Wondery and Pineapple Street Studios. Hysterical.

Follow Hysterical on the Wondery app or wherever you get your podcasts. You can binge all episodes of Hysterical early and ad-free right now by joining Wondery+.