The Cold, Dark Basement (PODCAST EXCLUSIVE EPISODE)
39:03 Share

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.

Police cruisers, ambulances, and fire trucks roared down the street, shattering the early morning silence in a Queens, New York neighborhood. Minutes later, two veteran NYPD homicide detectives stepped out of their car and walked into what was supposed to be an abandoned house. They made their way down a long hallway, opened up a door, and then began going down into the basement. And when they got down there, it seemed like for a second that they had just stumbled onto the set of a horror movie.

These two hardened homicide detectives just stood there at a loss for words. All they could think was, "I hope this person died before all of this was done to them."

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 take the follow button out for baseball practice with an automatic pitching machine, but make sure you aim it right at their stupid face. Okay, let's get into today's story.

Listening on Audible helps your imagination soar. Whether you listen to stories, motivation, or expert advice, you can be inspired to imagine new worlds and new ways of thinking. Find the genres you love and discover new ones along the way. Explore bestsellers, new releases, plus thousands of included audiobooks and originals that members can listen to all they want, with more added all the time. Audible makes it easy to be inspired and entertained as part of your daily routine, without setting aside extra time. There's

There's more to imagine when you listen. A title I can't recommend enough is The Only One Left by Riley Sager. You know I love a good plot twist, and this one has like five, and they are all excellent. The ending of the book is sort of chaotic and packed, but if you stick it out, the last two pages really pull the entire story together. It's awesome.

As an Audible member, you can choose one title a month to keep from the entire catalog, including the latest bestsellers and new releases. New members can try Audible free for 30 days. Visit audible.com slash ballin or text ballin to 500-500. That's audible.com slash ballin or text ballin to 500-500 to try Audible free for 30 days. audible.com slash ballin

If I'm outside running around with the kids on a super hot day, and then my wife hands all of us a popsicle, it's like I suddenly become a kid too. There's just something great about a cold treat on a hot day. Nothing tastes better.

Well, the heat of summer is definitely here, and your favorite summer treat could be giving you extraordinary hydration. Liquid IV has refreshing summer flavors like Popsicle Firecracker and Rainbow Sherbet that hit the spot when you need hydrating relief all summer long. And all of their other flavors are awesome, too. I especially like Strawberry Lemonade and also Sugar-Free Peach.

Indulge in hydration with electrolytes, essential vitamins, and clinically tested nutrients from the number one powdered hydration brand in America, Liquid IV. Tear, pour, live more. One stick plus 16 ounces of water hydrates better than water alone. Indulge in hydration this summer with Liquid IV. Get 20% off your first order of Liquid IV when you go to liquidiv.com and use code MRBALLEN at checkout. That's 20% off your first order when you

when you shop better hydration today using promo code MRBALLEN at liquidiv.com. On February 28th, 1995, 20-year-old Kim Antonakis sat in front of her mirror getting ready to go out for the night in Brooklyn, New York. Kim had long curly brown hair that matched her brown eyes, which were actually the only part of her appearance that she was never happy with. So she put on her favorite pair of gold earrings and leaned in close to the mirror to add the finishing touch, her blue contact lenses.

Putting in those blue contacts made Kim feel like a different person. By day, she was a reserved college student who studied, did well in school, and worked hard at her part-time job. But by night, she was free and a bit wild, and men could not keep their eyes off of her or her blue eyes.

Kim took a final look in the mirror and then walked through her ground floor apartment, a place most people her age in Brooklyn would have been jealous of. It had two bedrooms, hardwood floors, and a private two-car garage right across the street. Now, Kim alone could never have afforded this place, but luckily, her dad covered most of the rent. Kim looked over and saw her friends, April Deedly and Josh Torres, sitting on the couch watching TV. And April looked up and told Kim how pretty she looked and told Kim to go out and have a great time.

April and Josh had been staying at Kim's place with their two-year-old son for the last couple of weeks while the floors got refinished in their apartment. Kim loved getting to spend time with April and her little boy, but really, she was glad that Josh was there. Having a strong man in the apartment made her feel safer. And for most of the past month, Kim had not felt safe at all. In early January of that year, Kim had met a guy named Flatic, who actually went by the nickname Psycho. He was Russian, he was very good-looking, and he was a bit older than Kim.

At first, Kim thought "Psycho" was one of those ironic nicknames, like when a really big guy gets called "Tiny" or something, because Psycho seemed like a lot of fun. He was laid back and really nice when they had met. But recently, that had all changed. Kim said goodnight to April and Josh, she put her coat on, and walked outside.

It was about 40 degrees Fahrenheit, which wasn't bad for a New York winter, but still Kim felt a bit cold. She glanced up and down the street, looking for strange cars parked nearby or headlights coming down the road. Psycho had really begun to live up to his nickname starting about a month before when Kim and Psycho had taken a quick trip to Florida together. Now, Kim had thought this getaway was just kind of a casual chance to go hit the beach and have some fun, but apparently Psycho saw things very differently because when they got back to New York,

He got Kim's name tattooed on his leg and then he proposed to her.

Kim had broken things off right then, a marriage proposal was way too fast and way too serious for her, but since this breakup, Psycho had been basically stalking her. He called Kim constantly and he came around and literally shouted at her from outside the apartment. And lately, Psycho had been showing up more and more often at her apartment because he had discovered that Kim had gotten back together with one of her ex-boyfriends and so he was very jealous.

And so Kim scanned the street one more time and saw that no one was there, and so she took a deep breath like she was trying to relax herself. Then she walked to her garage, opened up the garage door, and then slid inside of her white Honda Civic car and cranked up the stereo. She loved all kinds of music, but hip-hop was her favorite when she was going out. Kim drove about 15 blocks to pick up her friend, and as she did this, she refused to let thoughts of psycho come into her head because that would ruin her night, and she didn't want that.

And so after getting her friend, the two young women had a great night out. They ate dinner and then eventually ended up at a club where they danced all night until the place shut down at about 4 am on March 1st. Kim drove her friend home and even though Kim was extremely tired from being out all night, she was in a great mood. And then after dropping her friend off, a few minutes later Kim pulled into her own garage. By this point, Kim's contacts, her blue contacts, were starting to hurt her eyes. All she wanted to do was just take them out and fall asleep in her bed.

She actually had to work later that day, so she really needed to get a few hours of sleep. Kim stepped out of her car, but immediately she froze, because she heard something in the darkness. She turned, but she couldn't see anything, and then she heard a noise from the other side of her garage. Terrified, Kim just clutched her keys in her hand and rushed towards the open garage door. Later that day at 4pm, Kim's father, Tommy Antonakis, knocked on the door of his daughter's apartment.

Kim's friend, April, opened up the door, carrying her son in her arms, and she could tell right away that Tommy was upset. She asked him what was going on, and he said he hadn't heard from his daughter all day. Tommy stepped inside the apartment, and at the same time, April's boyfriend, Josh, came over to say hello, but he also could see how upset Tommy looked, and so Josh just stayed quiet and kind of waited to be told what was going on.

Tommy asked April and Josh if they had any idea where Kim was, and they would tell him that they actually hadn't heard from Kim since she left the night before to go out, but they also didn't want to tell her father that this was actually pretty normal for Kim. Josh and April figured that Kim had either gone home with the guy she met or maybe stayed out super late and crashed at her friend's house. But then Tommy told them that his daughter had not shown up for work that day,

Kim actually worked for her father's girlfriend, and the girlfriend had called Tommy that day to let him know she was not in. At this, April and Josh both got very concerned looks on their faces. As much as Kim liked to go out and party and have a good time, she was also very responsible when it came to school and work. She would never just not show up for work without calling.

And on top of that, Kim did have a cell phone, which still wasn't very common at this time, but she hadn't answered any of her father's calls. And so Josh asked if maybe Kim had tried calling Tommy at his house, but Tommy said he'd only missed one call on his home phone that day, and when he checked the message on his answering machine, it was just static, so he had no idea if, you know, that was his daughter or not. And so Josh asked Tommy if he wanted to go down to the garage to see if Kim's car was there. Tommy agreed this was a good idea,

So the two men made their way out of the apartment and across the street and opened the garage door. But Kim's white Honda Civic was not inside. Now both men didn't know how to react to this. However, Josh kind of threw out there that, you know, hey, this could be a good thing. You know, this might mean Kim is actually still with her friend. But now Josh also looked as worried as Tommy.

A few minutes later, Tommy left the garage and the apartment and went straight to the nearest police station. And when he got there, two officers listened to his story, but they told him that even though of course he was concerned, that realistically, an adult woman, who hadn't even been gone for 24 hours at this point, did not warrant a missing persons report, at least not yet.

But Tommy begged them to please at least go to his daughter's apartment to see if maybe they could find anything out of the ordinary. And now at this point, Tommy was so distraught that the officers were actually worried that he might have a total mental breakdown right there in the station. And so they told him, okay, we'll swing by your daughter's apartment and have a quick look around. And so a little later that afternoon, Tommy stood outside of Kim's garage while the officers searched inside the garage.

And at some point, one of the officers knelt down and waved his partner over because he had found a gold earring laying on the ground. And when Tommy heard this, he lost it. He said this had to be proof something bad happened to his daughter. The officers tried to calm him down, telling him, you know, hey, her earring could have just fallen out when she got into the car. That's not totally out of the realm of possibility. But they did tell Tommy they would now issue a search for her vehicle and let him know if they found anything.

Tommy then gave the officers a photo of Kim and said she had two distinct tattoos that people might have noticed, depending on how she was dressed. There was a scorpion on her left thigh and an infinity symbol on her lower back. The cops said they'd keep Tommy informed and then headed out.

Tommy immediately went back to Kim's apartment and when he got inside, he said to April and Josh that he knew something was wrong here and he didn't think the police were taking him seriously. And so he asked Josh if he would help him put up missing person flyers with Kim's picture all around the city and Josh said, yeah, whatever you need, I'll help you. And so while the two men laid out their plan for these missing person flyers, April contacted the friend that Kim had gone out with the night before. And the

And the friend said that, you know, her and Kim had stayed at the club until around 4 a.m. when it closed. And then afterward, Kim had dropped her off and that was the last the friend had seen Kim.

And so after April relayed this information to Tommy, Tommy became convinced that this, in conjunction with the earring that was found in the garage, meant something must have happened to Kim in the garage right when she got home after dropping off her friend. And so Tommy looked at Josh, totally despondent, and said they were already running out of time if they wanted to find Kim alive.

On March 3rd, so two days after Kim had gone missing, Kim's mother arrived in town. Over the last two days, her ex-husband, Tommy, had continued to put up flyers all around the city and the police had really ramped up their search for Kim and her car, but nobody had any idea where Kim was. So that's why Kim's mom had come to New York to conduct a search for her daughter in her own way.

Kim's mother walked through a small row house in the Bay Bridge neighborhood of Brooklyn, and the house was dark and smelled of incense and candles. She stepped through a curtain at the back of the house and entered a room where a woman with long dark hair sat at a small wooden table. This was the psychic Kim's mother had come to see. The psychic told Kim's mom to take a seat and then asked her how could she help.

Kim's mom fought back tears and said her daughter had not been seen in days. She put a photo of Kim and a few of Kim's personal belongings on the table, and she pulled out a small tape recorder from her purse and asked the psychic if she could record this session. The psychic nodded and then touched the objects that belonged to Kim. Then the psychic closed her eyes and took a deep breath. For a minute, the only sound in the room was the hypnotic click of the spinning tape in the tape recorder. Then the psychic opened her eyes and began talking.

She said to Kim's mother that Kim was alive, but she was no longer in Brooklyn. She was tied up in some place cold and dark, maybe a basement. Then the psychic looked up like she was trying to see something in the room that was invisible to everybody else, and she told Kim's mom that different letters had begun to appear in front of her, and one of them was a big letter T. A moment later, the psychic sort of came out of her trance, and at this point Kim's mom hit stop on the tape recorder.

Later that day, Kim's mom met with April, Josh, and Kim's ex-boyfriend, Jay Negron, at Kim's apartment. Kim's mom knew that her daughter had started sleeping with Jay again, even though Kim didn't really like him. Kim's mom didn't think this was a good idea, but she was happy to see that Jay was there and willing to help. Kim's mom took out her tape recorder and said she had come from a meeting with a psychic. Jay stifled a laugh and glanced over at Josh and April, but they looked like they were taking this very seriously.

The recording started and Jay quickly stopped smirking. The psychic's voice on the recording sounded eerie, like it was coming from someplace far away. And when the psychic got to the part about seeing the letters in the room floating around, everybody got a deadly serious look on their face. April didn't want to say anything in front of Kim's mom, but she thought the letter T that the psychic saw clearly pointed to a particular person, Kim's father, Tommy, T for Tommy.

At 2:00 a.m. on March 4th, three days after Kim had gone missing, a man woke up at his house in Queens, New York, about 30 minutes from Kim's apartment. The man smelled smoke, so he rushed out of his bedroom, but he quickly realized the smoke was not coming from inside of his house.

So the man ran outside and looked down the street, and flames engulfed an old wooden two-story house down the block, and smoke was pouring out of the windows. The man ran back inside and called 911, and he would tell the operator that the house that was on fire had been abandoned for a long time, but there could be squatters inside, so it was possible there were people in immediate danger right now. So the operator said they would send fire and rescue right away.

Soon after that, fire trucks roared down the street with their sirens wailing, and they arrived in front of the abandoned burning house. Firefighters got right to work, and luckily, once they got inside, they could tell the house did seem to be empty, and they were able to put out the flames quickly. But then several firefighters walked through the now smoldering house to try to discover what the source of the fire had been, and one of them led the way down the stairs into the basement of this building, and he quickly told the others to stay back. He had seen some terrible things on this job.

But what he saw in the basement was the worst he had ever seen. The others called down to him and asked if he was okay. And he just turned and shouted up that they needed to get the police down here right away.

Ryan Reynolds here from Mint Mobile. With the price of just about everything going up during inflation, we thought we'd bring our prices down. So to help us, we brought in a reverse auctioneer, which is apparently a thing. Mint Mobile, unlimited premium wireless. Give it a try at mintmobile.com slash switch.

$45 upfront payment equivalent to $15 per month. New customers on first three-month plan only. Taxes and fees extra. Speeds lower above 40 gigabytes each detail. Halloween is just around the corner, but Huluween is here. Hulu is the streaming home to fresh fall releases that'll creep under your skin, like Immaculate starring Sidney Sweeney.

FX's American Horror Stories, the new thriller film Hold Your Breath starring Sarah Paulson, and FX's chilling horror thriller Grotesquerie. So snuggle into your couch with a pumpkin spice latte and watch all your scary favorites. Turn your Halloween into Huluween and stream till you scream on Hulu.

Later that morning, Detectives Louis Pia and Tom Shelvin of the NYPD arrived at the burned-out building in Queens. Other cops thought that Pia and Shelvin made the perfect team. Pia could talk to anyone and seemed like their best friend right away or maybe their favorite uncle. He was known on the force for getting guilty people to quickly confess to their crimes because they suddenly just wanted to do the right thing and not let Pia down. On the other hand, Shelvin was quiet and methodical.

Other cops said when he analyzed evidence at a scene, it was like he could transport himself to the moment of the crime and see exactly what had happened. Pia and Shelvin could still smell smoke as they walked through the burned-out house. They descended the stairs and stepped into the basement. And just like the firefighter, these two experienced New York homicide detectives could not believe what they were looking at.

In the basement, slumped over in a burned-out chair, they saw an obvious corpse that was charred from the waist up. This person's clothes and their facial features had been completely and utterly burned off. The detectives walked closer to the body and they were able to identify that the victim was almost certainly a woman, and she still had pieces of burned duct tape on her wrists that had been used to bind her hands behind her back.

Detective Pia stared at the body. He knew it was not much of a consolation, but he said he hoped this poor woman was already dead by the time her body was on fire. Detective Shelvin crouched down to get a better look at the body, and as he did, he leaned in close and he saw something on her left thigh that caught his attention. He shouted to Pia, and Pia also crouched down next to him. Through the very badly burned skin on this woman's leg, the detective saw a scorpion tattoo.

The two detectives walked around the chair, which had actually mostly survived the blaze intact, and they looked at the woman's back. Most of the skin was completely charred, but a small piece of skin on her lower back was not as badly burned as the rest of her. And that's where the detectives saw the infinity tattoo.

Pia called into the station and was quickly put in touch with an officer who had been working a missing persons case in nearby Brooklyn. And the officer said those two tattoos that were found on the victim inside the basement matched the description of a young woman who'd been missing for a few days in the area. Pia knew he would need to get dental records to actually confirm everything, but he knew deep down they had just discovered the body of Kim Antonakis.

The following day, detectives Pia and Shelvin met with April and Josh at their own apartment. The couple had moved out of Kim's apartment so her mother could stay there. And so now Josh and April, who were very shaken up, took turns speaking to the police about what happened to their friend while the other parent would stay with the son.

Pia and Shelvin wanted to know about any close relationships Kim had, particularly romantic or sexual relationships. Something about the horror and brutality at the crime scene had made the detectives think that maybe an angry or jealous boyfriend was the most likely culprit.

April and Josh, who again were kind of shell-shocked by everything that had happened, basically said the same thing to police. That Kim had begun seeing her ex-boyfriend Jay again, but honestly that did not seem very serious. However, there was one person they felt like the cops needed to speak to right away, and that was Kim's other ex-boyfriend, whose nickname was Psycho.

Now, the detectives couldn't believe this guy actually referred to himself as Psycho. It was like advertising yourself as a violent criminal. But then, after talking to April and Josh about how psychotic Psycho really had been, after stalking Kim and being totally maniacal after she had broken up with him, well, the detectives were pretty sure they had the perfect suspect who, you know, maybe his nickname was right on brand.

And it didn't take them long to discover that Psycho had ties to the Russian mob in New York, and that he was out on bail from a statutory rape charge, and that he had a history of physically assaulting people who made him angry. So later that day, the detectives tracked down Psycho and called him into the station for questioning.

Psycho walked into the interview room with a level of confidence the detectives weren't used to seeing in suspects. Psycho was tall, pale, blonde, had blue eyes and a light beard, and when he sat down across from the two detectives, he grinned and actually laughed before either of the detectives had asked him anything. Detective Pia told Psycho that Kim Antonakis had been murdered, and after that, Psycho just stared at Pia, completely calm and unaffected.

And so Pia eventually broke the silence by asking Psycho how he knew Kim and at this Psycho smiled and laughed again. And then he said, you know, the name Kim rings a bell but I can't really picture her. Pia smiled right back at Psycho and asked, you know, hey if you don't know who Kim is then why do you have her name tattooed on your leg?

Psycho leaned back in his chair and got a look on his face like this was the most ridiculous thing he'd ever heard. He said he did have the letters K.I.M. tattooed on his leg, but it wasn't for this girl Kim. It stood for something that wouldn't make sense to these detectives. It was just a positive phrase that inspired him.

The detectives looked at each other and they almost started laughing. Psycho's act would be entertaining if he wasn't a murder suspect, so Pia leaned in and told Psycho to stop lying. The police knew Psycho had been coming around Kim's apartment after she broke up with him and also several people had told the detectives that they had seen Psycho physically on Kim's block the day she disappeared.

At this, Psycho lowered his eyes and dropped the tough guy act. He admitted to not only knowing Kim, but also dating her at one point, but he still insisted his tattoo had nothing to do with her and that their relationship wasn't actually all that serious. And then he told the detectives that he really had nothing to do with her death. By the end of the interview, despite Psycho seeming like a totally psychotic and very likely suspect, the detectives did not have enough information to actually hold Psycho, so they let him go.

However, based on his criminal record and his connection to the victim, they were able to secure a warrant to conduct surveillance on him. The detectives hoped that surveillance would pay off quickly, but in the meantime, they decided to move on to another one of Kim's ex-boyfriends, Jay.

A few days after Kim's murder, the detectives met with Jae at the station and they had a much easier conversation than they'd had with Psycho. Jae told them that he and Kim had been dating for a while and even though they split up for a time, they had been back together at the time that Kim disappeared and was ultimately killed.

The detectives both took note of this. April and Josh had made it sound like Kim was sort of back with Jay, but it wasn't serious. They were just sleeping together. And so maybe this upset Jay. Maybe he wanted more from her. Maybe he did want to be fully back together. And, you know, when Kim didn't want that, maybe he got angry and kidnapped and killed her in a rage. But the detectives didn't let on what they were thinking. Instead, they just let Jay keep on talking.

And eventually, Jay would say that there was actually someone the cops needed to look into. At this, Pia raised his hand to stop Jay and said, yep, they'd already spoken to Psycho. But Jay shook his head. He wasn't talking about Psycho. The cops needed to investigate Kim's own father, Tommy.

The detectives looked at each other surprised. Tommy had rushed to the police first and he had been trying to find his daughter even before the NYPD launched a full-scale search. And Tommy, by all accounts, had been devastated the second he found out his daughter could be in trouble. So Pia asked Jay why on earth would he think Tommy had anything to do with what happened to his daughter?

Now, Jay did not want to say the real reason that a psychic had told Kim's mother about seeing a letter T floating in the air, because he figured the detectives would laugh in his face if that was his reason for suspecting Tommy. And so instead, Jay lowered his voice like he was afraid somebody could be listening to him, and he told the detectives that he was pretty sure Kim's father, Tommy, had connections to the mafia. This seemed completely out of left field to the detectives, but Jay said he knew the family pretty well and he really was not making this up.

All they needed to do to confirm this was just look into Tommy's businesses. The detectives chatted with Jay for a bit longer and then eventually they wrapped up the interview and thanked Jay for coming in and sent him home.

After he was gone, the detectives struggled with what they had to do next. The idea of interrogating a father who had just lost his daughter in such a violent, horrific way made both detectives feel sick. But unless the cops surveilling Psycho found something basically right now, they had to keep digging if they were going to find out what happened to Kim.

And so later that day, Pia and Shelvin drove to Tommy's house and Tommy came to the door and welcomed them inside, but he looked horrible, like he hadn't slept in days. He was jittery and he struggled to even put full sentences together. And then Pia told Tommy they were actually there to question him. And at this, Tommy lost it. He screamed that they were just wasting their time while his daughter's killer clearly was out there roaming the streets. And if they knew how to do their jobs, they would not be questioning him about the murder of his beloved daughter.

the person who meant more to him than anybody else in the world. Pia told Tommy that it really was just routine for police to follow up with everyone who was close to the victim, and Tommy at this, you know, managed to calm down a bit, but he was still very upset about this, and so Pia just got right to the point and asked if Tommy had any connections to the Mafia.

Tommy shook his head. He couldn't believe where this investigation was going. He said they could look into his businesses or whatever they wanted and they wouldn't find any links to organized crime. He said, yes, he did happen to have an office near the office of famous New York mobster John Gotti and he had met some of Gotti's people in passing a couple of times, but that was it. There was no actual connection to the mafia. And then Tommy just began shouting for the detectives to do some real work and go find his daughter's killer.

The detectives could tell Tommy was not willing to talk to them right now, so they quickly left the house and just headed back to the station.

As a father, Pia knew how gut-wrenching it must be for Tommy to hear someone even suggest he might have done something to hurt his own child. But as the detectives dug into Tommy's potential ties to the mafia, something did jump out at them. Tommy owned several businesses, and one of them was a fire insurance company. Detective Shelvin said that, you know, regardless of whether Tommy had mafia connections or not, as someone who dealt with fire insurance professionally, he would likely know how to burn a house down and leave nothing traceable behind.

And if the guy in Queens hadn't smelled smoke and woken up when he did, there was a chance firefighters would have not stopped the blaze before it basically totally consumed Kim's body. Pia hated to even consider this theory, and he still hoped it was just a matter of time before Psycho or somebody else made a mistake and proved that Tommy had not murdered his own daughter. But as the days went by, police didn't seem to be getting closer to pinning down Psycho or anyone else. The case was just wide open.

Police did, however, finally locate Kim's abandoned car miles away from her apartment, but it had been completely wiped down, so there were no prints to point the detectives in the right direction. And so soon, months went by with no new leads, and Pia and Shelvin felt like they were running out of ideas. So they engaged in what they called, quote, shoe leather work, end quote, literally walking the streets around Kim's apartment and the house in Queens where she had been found, knocking on doors and talking to anybody they could. It felt like a very thankless job.

But then in June of 1995, so three months after Kim's murder, the detectives got a call from a police officer in the Queens neighborhood they'd been walking around in and they would tell the detectives that another body had turned up. And this body was a young man who had been murdered in the street, literally, mafia execution style.

Pia and Shelvin got the victim's details and then sped to his house in Queens. When they got there, the victim's mother let them in and said they could look around to see if they could find anything that would help their case. She told them that she had no idea who had killed her son. However, she did tell them her son had begun hanging around what she considered to be a bad crowd. Pia sat and spoke to the very upset mother some more while Shelvin searched the house.

And at some point, Shelvin got to a room at the back of the house and he looked out the window, and just over the fence, he could see the backyard of the abandoned house where Kim's body had been found. Shelvin walked back through the house and asked the mother if she'd ever seen anybody going in or out of that abandoned home, or if she knew if her son had ever gone in there for any reason. And the woman said, you know, she hadn't seen anybody go in there for well over a month and really couldn't imagine why her son would have gone inside either.

The detectives thanked her for her time and then they headed back to their car. And once they got in there, they both agreed there was just no way this could be a big coincidence. That this young man who had been murdered mafia style just happened to live right behind the abandoned house where Kim had been murdered. And with all this talk about the mafia connection to Kim's murder, it just felt like this young man's murder had to be connected to Kim's in some way. They just didn't know what that way was.

On September 3rd, 1995, so six months after Kim's murder, detectives Pia and Shelvin sat at their desks and went over their notes like they had been doing almost every day since the murder. They had found a possible connection between Kim and that young man who was the shooting victim in Queens, but nothing concrete had come out of that yet. On top of that, Psycho, despite being under surveillance, had not shown his hand in any way, and also the detectives had discovered that Kim's father, Tommy, really had absolutely no discernible ties to the mafia.

So at this point, none of their leads had panned out. However, the detectives refused to say that Kim's case had gone cold, but they admitted it was, at the very least, lukewarm.

But just then, the detectives heard shouting and crying down the hall. They looked up and saw an officer leading a blonde woman towards them. The officer had an apologetic look on his face and he said, you know, this woman claimed to have vital information regarding Kim's murder and she kind of barged her way down here. Now, a lot of people had made similar claims over the past several months, so Pia and Shelvin understood why this officer was hesitant to let this woman come down and talk to them right away. But they stood up

and they could see how upset this woman was. Also, it looked like she had some serious bruising on her cheeks and around her eyes. So the detectives walked over to the woman and wanted to make sure she didn't need immediate medical attention. But the woman shook them off and said she needed cops, not doctors. Pia nodded and said, okay, well, what's your name? And she smiled through tears and pointed to her hair and said, everyone just called her Blondie. Pia smiled back at her and asked her to tell him and his partner, you know, what's going on here.

Blondie took a deep breath and stopped crying. She said that morning, she and her boyfriend had gotten into an argument. Blondie said she was sure he was cheating on her. And so she got very upset and angry and began yelling at him, but instead of just yelling back at her, her boyfriend grabbed a shovel and hit her with it. Blondie fell to the floor and thought her boyfriend was going to literally kill her, but he ended up just running outside, stealing her motorcycle and speeding off.

Pia told Blondie, you know, I'm so sorry, and then told her she really ought to go get some medical attention, but then he also asked her, you know, what does this have to do with Kim's murder? Blondie glanced between Pia and Shelvin and took a deep breath, and then she said, while she was on the floor after being struck by the shovel and thinking she was about to be killed, her boyfriend, before running off, leaned down, got into her face, and told her he had already set one woman on fire and he would have no problem doing it again.

The detectives asked Blondie who her boyfriend was and when she gave them the name, they knew he had been telling Blondie the truth about previously burning someone because they knew her boyfriend had to be Kim's murderer. Based on the information Blondie provided, interviews, and evidence found at the crime scene, the following is a reconstruction of what the detectives believe happened to Kim Antonakis beginning in the early morning of March 1st, 1995.

On March 1st, at about 4 a.m., the kidnappers sat crouched behind a parked car a few feet away from Kim's garage. It was getting colder outside, and the kidnappers were tired of waiting. Finally, they saw a white Honda Civic coming down the street, and they knew it had to be Kim's. And so the kidnappers stood up, and after confirming it was hers, they ducked back down. They were wearing all black clothes, gloves, and face masks, so they remained hidden in the darkness. From their crouched position, they watched as Kim's car pulled into the garage, and they waited right outside.

Once the overhead light inside of the garage went out, each of the kidnappers crept inside and crouched down on opposite sides of Kim's car. The hip-hop music from inside the car cut out, and then Kim turned off the engine. At this point, the kidnappers were totally still, fixated on the driver's side door. The door opened and Kim stepped out, but immediately she stopped, because when she looked to one side of the garage and then the other, she saw something moving around, she heard something, it scared her, and so she began rushing towards the open garage door.

At this point, one of the kidnappers leapt out of the darkness and surprised Kim from behind. They wrapped their arms around her, but Kim screamed and thrashed with her elbows and almost broke free. She scraped her long fingernails down the kidnapper's arm and thrust her keys at the kidnapper's face. And finally, the kidnapper's grip loosened and Kim got away. Kim made a break for it, but at this point, the other kidnapper leapt at her and brought her to the ground. It was at this point one of her earrings fell out and landed on the ground.

Kim kept on fighting, but the kidnapper now had her pinned. And then suddenly Kim's head slammed against the ground, completely stunning her. The kidnapper on top of Kim turned her over onto her stomach and pulled her arms behind her back. At this point, the other one rushed over and unrolled a strip of duct tape and bound Kim's hands behind her back. Then both kidnappers flipped her back over. Kim would have felt a piece of duct tape being stretched across her mouth and then would have felt her head slam against the ground one more time, at which point she lost consciousness.

The kidnappers lifted Kim up and threw her in the trunk of her own car, and then sped down the street in her car and drove from Brooklyn to Queens. They made their way to that abandoned house and parked right out front. The street was pitch black and nobody was out that early in the morning, so the kidnappers just pulled Kim out of the trunk and dragged her right into the abandoned house and down the steps into the basement.

Once in the basement, Kim began regaining consciousness and she screamed through the tape, but the kidnappers threw her onto a chair, crouched down, taped her feet, and then walked out of the basement, locking the door behind them. Kim would remain in that basement for about 36 hours without food or water, just sitting in that chair all tied up until the cold sent her into the final stages of hypothermia. She drifted in and out of consciousness and started hallucinating, so she could never really tell if she was alone or if people were there with her.

Then, in the early morning of March 4th, three days after Kim was kidnapped, the basement door flew open again. Kim's kidnappers remained at the top of the stairs, but Kim's killers walked down the steps into the basement, and one of them held a gas can. The killer with the gas can walked right up to Kim, and from the looks of it, Kim seemed dead. But the killer didn't care. The killer leaned down, kissed Kim on the forehead, and said, quote, "'Shit happens, and life sucks,' end quote."

But the truth was, Kim was not dead. Hypothermia had simply slowed down multiple functions of her body, so she appeared dead but certainly was not. Which means Kim was fully alive when the killer doused her with gasoline, took several steps back, lit a match, and flung it at her, setting her on fire. Once the fire started, the killers and the kidnappers turned and fled the scene and watched from outside as the house went up in flames. Then the killer and the kidnappers got in two separate cars and drove away.

Eventually, the killers made it back to Brooklyn and they split up. One just kind of walked the streets for a while, while the other went back to their apartment and checked in on their two-year-old son before they went to bed. It would turn out, the man who called himself "psycho" that police really believed must have had something to do with Kim's murder, had nothing to do with it. And as for Kim's father Tommy, he loved his daughter more than he loved anyone and he would never have done anything to hurt her just like he said.

The truth was, Kim's horrific murder had taken place simply because somebody wanted a new car. Josh Torres, the man who'd been staying at Kim's apartment with his girlfriend April and their two-year-old son, really liked Kim's white Honda Civic. And he started thinking that he really wanted a car just like that, or one maybe even nicer.

And Josh's good friend, Jay, just happened to be Kim's ex-boyfriend, and he knew firsthand that Kim's dad was rich and could easily hand over enough money for Josh to get whatever car he wanted. And Jay was willing to help Josh pull this off because deep down, Jay knew that Kim did not really love him the way he loved her, and so he knew this relationship was never really going to amount to much. And also, Jay figured he wasn't really ripping Kim off, he was just ripping off her rich dad who could easily afford giving up some money.

And so Josh came up with a plan to kidnap Kim and get ransom money from her dad. And he reached out to two friends to pull off the kidnapping job, and one of them lived near an abandoned house that he said would be the perfect place to stash Kim until her dad forked over the ransom money.

Jay, who knew Kim's schedule really well, helped the other guys, the kidnappers, work out the details of the plan and pick the perfect time to put it in motion. And in the early morning of March 4th, when Kim was kidnapped, everything seemed to be going the way it was supposed to. But later that day, things began to fall apart.

After the kidnapping, Josh called Kim's father, Tommy, and played him a pre-recorded ransom demand telling Tommy to leave $75,000 at a specific location at a specific time. But Tommy's answering machine did not pick up the recorded message. Instead, it just sounded like static and Tommy had no idea that message had anything to do with his daughter. And when Tommy showed up at the apartment asking Josh for help...

Josh panicked, so he did everything he could to make it look like he was desperately trying to find Kim while he and Jay secretly figured out a different way to get Tommy the Ransom message. But then everything changed again when Kim's mother came to town and visited the psychic and played that recording for Josh and Jay. Because the psychic correctly said Kim was no longer in Brooklyn and that she was in a cold dark basement. But more importantly, the psychic did not just mention the letter T floating around,

She also said that she kept seeing one other letter, the letter J. And when Josh and J heard that, they freaked out because their names begin with J. And so totally convinced the psychic knew exactly what was happening, Josh and J went to that abandoned house where Kim was with the two guys they had hired to kidnap Kim. Josh had picked up a gas can on the way over, claiming they would just move Kim to a different location and then burn the abandoned house down, kind of destroying evidence.

But investigators would never know if that was actually Josh's intention. Because when Josh saw Kim in the basement and thought she was dead, even though she wasn't, she was just hypothermic, Josh would say he felt like the only way to deal with the situation was to light her on fire and burn her body along with the house, destroying all evidence. But of course, you know, Kim was actually alive.

Detectives Pia and Shelbin had actually begun to suspect Josh and Jay when that dead young man turned up in Queens, the guy who was shot out in the street, mafia execution style. That young man, who would turn out to be one of Kim's kidnappers, had connections to both Josh and Jay. But it was ultimately Blondie, the woman who had been attacked by her boyfriend, who broke the case wide open. Because Blondie's boyfriend at the time was Josh. Not long after Kim's murder, he had left April and their kid and started seeing Blondie.

Police arrested both Josh and Jay, and Detective Pia very quickly got Jay to tell him absolutely everything that had happened. In fact, Jay cut a deal with the prosecution and would only serve two years in prison. As for Josh, he was not found guilty of the execution-style murder in Queens of that young man. However, he was found guilty of kidnapping and murdering Kim and was sentenced to 58 years to life in prison.

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 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.

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. And before you go, please tell us about yourself by completing a short survey at wondery.com slash survey. Imagine you're walking through the park one day and you see a suspicious backpack sitting underneath a bench. You report it to the police and upon investigating, they discover two live pipe bombs inside.

This was the story of security guard Richard Jewell. After the Centennial Park bombing killed one person and wounded more than 100, public

Public pressure and a media witch hunt pushed a desperate FBI to find a suspect. Despite obvious holes in the case and unethical tactics used by the FBI, security guard Richard Jewell was under pressure to confess. I'm Aaron Habel. And I'm Justin Evans. Join us as we explore the aftermath of the 1996 Centennial Olympic Park bombing.

and the newest season of our podcast, Generation Y, the Olympic Park Bombing. Follow Generation Y on the Wondery app or wherever you get your podcasts. You can listen to Generation Y ad-free right now by joining Wondery Plus.