Blood on the Bridge (PODCAST EXCLUSIVE EPISODE)

And everything was business as usual until the conductor noticed, way up ahead just next to the tracks.

There were these two men, two maintenance workers waving frantically at him, and pointing at something that was on the ground on the tracks. The conductor couldn't really tell what they were doing, but he squinted and looked ahead trying to figure out what was on the ground. When he saw what it was, he lunched for the brakes. 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 place, because that's all we do, so if that's a interest to you,

please invite the follow button to go to the movies with you.

“But when you get there, be sure to tell the ticket checker about all the secret candy the follow button is sneaking inside.”

Okay, let's get into today's story. [Music] On the evening of November 2, 1888, a 45-year-old man named Epolyta Oyos, got dressed in a three-piece suit in the bedroom of his very cramped apartment in Paris France. In the next room, he could hear his wife, Alphonseen, cooking dinner, while there are three young kids ran around playing. And even though this really should have felt like a happy, idyllic moment, Epolyta instead felt this pain of worry,

because keeping this family afloat was his responsibility. And recently, he'd had a very hard time doing that.

“So Epolyta had grown up on a farm in Belgium, and when he was younger, he'd gotten into some trouble with the law.”

Basically, had a really tough time finding his way in life.

But about 10 years ago, he had moved to France, and he had met Alphonseen, and he also found a steady job, running a farm for a wealthy French noble in the countryside. Now, Epolyta knew a lot about agriculture. He'd grown up on a farm, so in theory, this job really should have been perfect for him. But the problem was, no one on the farm really liked him. And it was true, he'd been very strict with the farm hands, but a lot of them had taken that sternness, and they had gone to their boss and complained about him,

saying that he was overbearing and very difficult to work with.

“So, last month, when Epolyta's contract was up, and he was expecting his boss would renew it, his boss didn't.”

And so now, Epolyta's perfect life, this amazing life, he had built from self here in France with Alphonseen, felt like it was falling apart.

And so, following, not getting his contract renewed, Epolyta and his wife and their kids had moved to Paris, so he could look for other work. But luckily, they'd also found this very cheap, but luckily furnished apartment just the week before, so they at least had a place to live, but Epolyta still needed work. Now, this new neighborhood they were in, you know, understandably, because it was so cheap, it was largely full of, you know, working-class people. And there were lots of factories and lots of warehouses, so it was sort of a little bit rough and tumble, compared to what Epolyta had become accustomed to working for this noble man out in the countryside.

I mean, Epolyta, you know, he wasn't crazy about the area, he had expensive tastes, even though he didn't have an expensive budget. However, Epolyta knew that this whole situation was just temporary, because after all, he was about to come into a huge windfall. And he actually had to travel outside of Paris right now to actually get the money, which was what he was currently getting dressed for. And so on this trip, his friend, 52 year old Louis Barone, would be accompanying him, at least for a portion of the trip, because he was going the same way for a job interview that Epolyta had actually helped set up for him.

Now, Louis was also from Belgium, and so he had known Epolyta for a long time, but things were tense between them at the moment. Epolyta had a range for Louis to work on the farm that he used to manage, but when Epolyta was fired, it had also cost Louis his job there as well. The reality was Louis was quite furious, I mean, he was really upset about it. To the point where Epolyta had actually helped pay for a room at a hotel, just a few blocks away from his apartment in Paris, for Louis. And he'd even let Louis borrow one of his suits to wear to this job interview. And so really Epolyta was hopeful that by the end of this trip he was going on, his buddy Louis would finally just stop being mad at him.

That was causing lots of problems. So now, after getting dressed in his fancy suit, Epolyta packed up a bag with some extra clothes and some cash, any put on hat. Then he went into the kitchen to kiss Alfonsine goodbye, she kissed him back, but she definitely seemed a little bit anxious, and Epolyta figured she was just thinking about being left alone with her three small kids. So he just reassured her that, you know, this trip, this was all going to be worth it, like don't worry about a thing, I'll be back soon.

Just after dark that night, Epolyta stepped off a train at the station in Shanti Lee, which is about 30 miles north of Paris.

“Louis was with him and already dressed for his interview in the suit that Epolyta had given him.”

And as the two men walked across the platform, Epolyta noticed that Louis was moving slowly and awkwardly, like he was uncomfortable in the suit, like he wasn't used to dressing that way. The men left the station on foot and continued walking down the road towards Seneless, the little town where they were both spending the night. It was about a six mile walk to get there, and once they got outside of Shanti Lee, the road was surrounded almost entirely by woods. It was dark and it was late, so there weren't many people that were out and about, and the two men didn't talk much, so the walk was very quiet.

Eventually, as they were approaching Seneless, they came to this narrow stone bridge with metal railings on either side that passed over a railroad track.

And as they reached it, Epolyta heard this rustling in the trees.

He stopped, and he listened, and as he did, he felt his heart start to pound, because this whole walk has been just like eerily quiet, and so to hear anything was just sort of alarming.

“But as he stood there listening, he couldn't hear it anymore, so he decided he must be imagining things.”

Now, Louis did not appear to hear the sounds at all, and he was still walking ahead across the bridge. So Epolyta, he took a deep breath, and then hurried onto the bridge to catch up with him. The next morning, two road maintenance workers were hauling a gravel filled cart down that same wooded road that connected Shantili in Seneless, the road that Louis and Epolyta had been on the night before. And so these workers were looking for potholes that they would fill in with the gravel, and so they were moving along, they're filling in potholes, and then eventually they got to that narrow bridge by Seneless.

And when they did, one of them noticed a man's hat lying near the bridge is railing, and as they got near the hat, they looked on the pavement and saw these dark splatters of blood. Now, the workers were immediately on edge, they're looking around, they don't see anybody, but at some point one of them looked over the railing. And when he saw what was down below, he immediately shouted that they had to go tell the police.

“Later that morning, a judge named John Oberton walked down a small hill by some railroad tracks.”

At the bottom, a police officer and two road maintenance workers to next to the tracks, staring down at a dead body. So in France at the time, judges were responsible for leading investigations instead of police. So Oberton would essentially function as the lead detective on this case, and all he'd been told so far was that a body had been found on this stretch of train tracks, and he really didn't know what to expect beyond that. When Oberton reached the group down below, the police officer explained that the two workers, the road maintenance workers, had found the body that morning.

They'd flagged down a train conductor who would stop just in time, and then waited for them to move the body off the tracks, and then the conductor kept going in his train and notified the police at the next station. And so Oberton, he knelt down to get a better look at the body, and right away he could tell that it was clearly a man with blonde hair, and that he was wearing a nice three-piece suit. But that was really about all he could conclude, because his face was just completely mangled. And his head was almost completely severed from his body.

Many of his teeth were also broken, and there was also a deep gash on his left foot near his ankle.

Now at first glance, Oberton wondered if he had just jumped off the bridge and got hit by a train.

But when he looked closer, the pattern of the wounds on his face just did not look like they'd been caused by a train. These were long, distinct gashes going in multiple different directions. It looked more like this man had been attacked with a sharp weapon, like an axe or something. And Oberton's best guess was that whatever happened to this guy very likely happened the night before. There wasn't much decomposition, and this railroad line got a lot of traffic.

So the body couldn't have been here for very long, or another train conductor would have seen him earlier, or maybe wouldn't have seen him and then run him over, and then his body would be completely mangled. As Oberton stood up, one of the workers told him that they had seen blood up on the bridge. So Oberton climbed up the small hill onto the bridge, and he saw that hat that was lying by the railing, and then just a ton of blood all around the hat on the ground.

And to Oberton, I mean, there was so much blood up here that he figured his theory that this guy was attacked had to have been right here. I mean, he very likely was attacked right here on the bridge, and he either fell over the edge during the assault, or maybe after the assault his killer threw his body, maybe to make it look like a suicide, or perhaps to dispose of evidence.

On the afternoon of November 4th, 1888, the day after a man's body was found mangled in the woods near Senella's France,

“Judge Oberton walked down a busy street in a working class part of Paris.”

Now, by this point, he'd already gotten the autopsy results back, but they didn't really tell him much that he didn't already know, which was that the victim had been killed by multiple strikes from a sharp weapon, like a hatchet. Now, even though the body itself had not given Oberton too much to go on for this investigation, the clothes that the victim had on had given him something. Oberton had spent the past day piecing together clues that he had found in the victim's pockets, including a piece of paper with an address to a location in Paris,

and the initials HH embroidered on a handkerchief, and at this point, Oberton knew what HH meant.

It was the initials for the victim, Epolyta Oils.

Oberton had gone to that address in Paris from that piece of paper, and he found it belonged to an acquaintance of Epolyta's,

“and this person had not only identified Epolyta, but also he gave Oberton Epolyta's last known address, where he had lived with his family.”

And Oberton was right outside of that address now, but as he looked up at the building that matched the address he'd been given, he wondered if he had the wrong place. The man whose body had been found was wearing this really nice suit, and looked like he was upper class, based on the suit. And this was definitely not an upper class place to live, this was not a nice area.

But, Oberton went inside anyways, and he walked up a flight of stairs, and then he knocked on the door of the apartment number that he'd been given.

Seconds later, a very tired-looking woman answered the door, bouncing a toddler on her hip, and Oberton asked her if this was the home of Epolyta Oils. And the woman just kind of frowned and said, "Yes, she was actually his wife, Alfonsine." Oberton kept it simple and just said that he was a judge, and he was conducting an investigation, and asked if he could come in. Alfonsine got this uneasy look on her face, but she nodded and said, "Come on in." Once they'd both sat down at the dining room table, Oberton told her that the investigation he was doing was for a homicide,

that a body had been found in the woods near Senella's France, and he believed, unfortunately, the body belonged to her husband, Epolyta. And to Oberton's surprise, Alfonsine just didn't seem very upset at all. She just sat there expressionless, as Oberton went on to explain a little bit further, you know, what actually happened, that the body had been found on some train tracks, and it appeared like that he had been attacked, someone had clearly killed him. And as Oberton did this, he kept waiting for Alfonsine to cry or gasp or really show any emotion, but she just didn't.

And Oberton couldn't decide whether this was suspicious, or if, you know, this woman was just in shock.

“So after, you know, laying out why he was here, he began just asking her questions to get a bit of read on her. So he asked her, you know, when was the last time you saw your husband?”

And she just began to speak. She said it was the evening he had left for the train station. He was going to Belgium to collect the inheritance from a relative who had died recently. She said that she'd been staying home and taking care of their three kids since then, and hadn't heard anything from him since he had left. To Oberton, this explained why Eipelita was found in Senless, because Senless was about halfway between Paris and Belgium, so clearly he was on his way to Belgium. However, as he was internalizing this new information, he was interrupted by a very loud gasp.

And he looked at Alfonsine to see that she had sort of broken out of her muted state and was staring at him with really wide eyes like something huge had just occurred to her. And she told him, you know, maybe her husband had been on his way back with all the money he got from the inheritance. And she said, you know, maybe he was killed by a robber. Now, Oberton, he considered this, and a robbery did make sense to him. Eipelita was very well dressed, and there hadn't been any money in any of his pockets.

But this whole interview with his wife just felt really off. Alfonsine didn't seem at all confused or rattled or upset in any way. And now, just literally moments after finding out that potentially your husband has been brutally murdered, like he's dead. She's begun pitching theories of how he was killed, like she was trying to point the finger at someone else right away, it just felled off. Now, to Oberton, Alfonsine did not really seem like she could have been the one to actually kill Eipelita herself.

And he clearly had been overpowered by somebody or maybe multiple people, and, you know, Alfonsine was quite small. However, if she was involved and maybe hired someone to carry out a hit on her husband, well, that would cost presumably quite a bit of money, and considering, you know, the low quality nature of where they lived, it just seemed unlikely to Oberton that she would be able to afford paying a hitman.

“And so, at this point, Oberton didn't think that Alfonsine was a particularly strong suspect, but at the same time he couldn't completely rule her out.”

However, one thing he was definitely sure about, just based on a gut feeling here, was that Alfonsine knew something more than she was telling him. That night, when Judge Oberton got back to the courthouse in Senless, he walked down the hallway toward his office, and saw a police officer waiting at his door. And this officer told him that they'd arrested a man that afternoon, whose name was Etienne Buillo, for the murder of Eipelita Oios. Oberton's heart began to race, and when he heard Etienne was in a holding cell in the jail right next door, he told the officer to take him there right away. As they hurried down the hallway and out of the courthouse, the officer explained to Oberton that a group of police had been out of the crime scene near Senless collecting evidence.

And at some point, they'd passed Etienne, sitting in the woods nearby, and as soon as he saw the police approaching, Etienne had just started running. And so the officers had chased him down, and they had caught him, and when they did, they noticed he had blood on his pants and on his jacket. They also found a bloody handkerchief that was in one of his pockets. Now, the officer said that Etienne had claimed he was hit by a cart the night before, and that was why he was covered in so much blood.

“But the police were just not convinced, especially because Etienne refused to give them an alibi for where he had been, the night Eipelita was actually killed.”

And so, the officer and Oberton, they get to the jail and they go inside, and when they reach the holding cell, Oberton saw Etienne sitting inside. And he was wearing very shabby clothes and looked like he might be homeless. And so, Oberton, he goes inside the cell, and Etienne is just sitting there, he's not saying anything, and Oberton, he just sits down, and begins going over all the evidence that they had. And a lot of it made it seem like Etienne was their guy.

And at some point, when Oberton was done sort of going over what they had, he told Etienne that you're basically our only suspect at this point.

“So, unless he could give Oberton an alibi for the night of November 2, the night that Eipelita was killed, then, unfortunately, Etienne was very likely going to be charged with murder.”

At this point, Etienne just sort of looked down for a moment, and then let out this long defeated sigh, like the reality of a situation was really settling in. Eventually, he looked back up at Oberton, and he mumbled that he did have an alibi. He said he had spent the whole night sleeping at an inn in Shanty Lee. He said the reason he hadn't told the police this is because he actually left the inn without paying. And that's also why he had run from the police when he was seen in the woods. He thought they were there to arrest him for theft.

Oberton looked hard at Etienne. He wasn't sure if he believed him, but he wrote down the name of the inn and planned to go out there and verify Etienne's alibi first thing in the morning.

A week later, Judge Oberton walked down a street in Paris, in the same working-class neighborhood where Eipelita and his family lived. He was on his way to check out a lead that he really hoped would reinvigorate his investigation. Because over the last week, the case had completely stalled. Etienne's alibi had checked out. The inn's owner verified that Etienne had stayed there that night, and at some point he had left without paying. Now, this did not completely rule Etienne out, because he could have left his room without anyone noticing to go commit this murder.

But it did make it seem much more likely that Etienne was just in the wrong place at the wrong time. Since Etienne, Oberton hadn't gotten any more tips about this case. Until that morning, when he got in word that one of Eipelita's friends was missing. This friend was a Belgian farmer named Louis Barone, who had come to France to work with Eipelita.

And this friend, Louis, hadn't been seen in over a week, basically since the murder, he's been missing.

And so to Oberton, the timing here was just too perfect to be a coincidence. And so now, the judge was looking into Louis as a possible suspect, maybe skip town after killing Eipelita. Oberton came to a stop outside of the hotel where he had heard Louis was most recently living, which happened to be just a few blocks from Eipelita's apartment. The judge went inside and approached the front desk and asked the manager if a guest named Louis Barone had been around recently. And the manager said that yes, they definitely knew who Louis Barone was.

And when he said that, Oberton perked up, because that was the same night that Eipelita was killed. But again, the coincidence was just too much here. And so, the judge quickly asked the manager like, what else can you tell me about Louis? What kind of person was he? Who did he hang out with? Like, give me anything you got. And the manager clearly didn't know Louis particularly well, but he did say that there was one person he saw Louis with all the time. And often, these two people were arguing in the lobby. Now, the manager said he didn't know who this person was, but this other person that Louis fought with appeared to be a middle-aged man with blonde hair.

Now, to Oberton, he's thinking, clearly, you're referencing Eipelita, like that sounds like Eipelita this guy.

“And so, we asked the manager like, did you ever overhear what these guys were fighting about? What were the arguments about?”

But the manager said he really didn't know. He said that, you know, he couldn't ever hear what they were saying.

It just always seemed like when they were talking, it was like kind of heated. And he could really tell that Louis appeared to despise this other guy.

Like, it was much more Louis hating this guy than the other way around. The manager did tell Oberton that occasionally, their arguments did get so bad that it almost became violent. And in fact, the manager at one point or another had to break them up, like physically separate them. But even still, he didn't know what they were fighting about. As Oberton is hearing all this new information, his mind just raced.

And as he looked around at this pretty shabby hotel in a rough part of town, he realized that the robbery theory might be partly right.

“But instead of it being some random thief, he believed he might have been targeted by someone he knew, like Louis.”

And so, if this blonde haired guy that Louis was fighting with was Epolyta, then based on what the manager was saying, it seemed pretty reasonable to assume that Louis and Epolyta didn't get along. And if Louis was an out-of-work farmhand living in a shabby hotel, it wasn't unreasonable to think that he needed money desperately. And if Louis had known that Epolyta was traveling alone to go collect this inheritance, maybe he could have made plans to meet up with them on the way back, and then lured him out to the woods and killed him and taken his money and then, you know, after ditching his body on the tracks, fled to avoid being caught.

And if Louis really did have all that inheritance money on him, I mean with all that cash, he could be anywhere by now.

And so, Oberton realized, he might never find him.

A couple of weeks later, in late November of 1888, Judge Oberton sat in his office at the Centeless Courthouse, reading a telegram from a police sergeant in Belgium.

“Police all over France and Belgium had been searching for Louis Barone for weeks now.”

But this telegram was bad news, just like all the others. This one said that no one in Louis' hometown and heard from him since before Epolyta's murder, and there was still no sign of him anywhere in Belgium. Oberton sighed and began flipping through a stack of notes from the investigation. Louis was a strongest suspect because he'd completely skipped town on the same day Epolyta was killed. But, he also hadn't ruled out Alfonsine.

She'd acted incredibly suspicious when Oberton spoke to her, and now, Oberton had discovered that she actually might have lied to him. He'd looked into the inheritance Epolyta had supposedly gone to collect in Belgium, and he couldn't corroborate any of the details that Alfonsine had given it. So the judge had looked into this inheritance that Epolyta had supposedly gone to Belgium to collect. And so far anyways, he hadn't been able to corroborate any of the details that Alfonsine had given him. Like, they hadn't found any record of this relative, who supposedly died recently and was the one passing the inheritance to Epolyta and his family.

Like, this person just didn't seem to exist. And then there was a Tien, who'd been found at the literal crime scene covered in blood. But he'd had an alibi. And since this was 1888, DNA analysis didn't exist, so Oberton had no way of proving that that blood was Epolyta's or his own or somebody else's. And so as Oberton was wracking his brain, trying to figure out what he was missing, there was an alibi story.

And so Oberton got up and he opened the door and he saw a man and a nice suit standing there. And the man asked if Oberton had a few minutes to chat. He said it was about Epolyta's murder. Now, Oberton didn't recognize him, so he was a little confused. But he needs some leads here.

He needs progress on this case, so he said, "Yeah, come on in, let's chat." And so they sat down and this well-dressed man explained who he was.

And then he launched into this incredibly wild story that at first didn't seem to have anything to do with the murder case.

Then it was like all at once, Oberton realized that what this man was saying was the key to his entire case.

Once it was totally dark out, he killer walked down a quiet deserted road in the forest between shantyly and seneless.

“And as they walked along, they were absolutely buzzing with anticipation.”

The plan they've been working on for weeks was about to be completed, and their victim had no idea what was coming. Up ahead, there was this bridge, this narrow bridge that went over some railroad tracks. And on the bridge was a man in a three-piece suit, and he was the target. The killer knew this man was worth a fortune to them. And so all they had to do now was just kill him, and they, the killer, would be set for life.

And so carefully, trying not to make a sound, the killer began hustling toward the bridge. And as they did, they reached into their jacket, and they pulled out the hatchet.

And so finally they got to the bridge, and they crept up right behind their victim,

“and without the man even noticing the killer raised the hatchet, and brought it down on the back of the sky's head.”

And then after that, they hit him over, and over again with the hatchet, until the man stopped moving. After that, the killer put away their hatchet, and then lifted this man's body up, and dumped it over the railing, and it fell down below. And then the killer, they walked off the bridge, and turned around, and went down the hill down to those railroad tracks, and they grabbed the body of their victim, and dragged it, and placed the body on the tracks. They were hoping that by doing this, it would look like, you know, this guy was hit by a train, not murder.

But before the killer could actually flee the scene, they first had to do one more thing, just to make sure they wouldn't get caught.

And so they reached into their own pocket, and they pulled out two items, a handkerchief, and a piece of paper with an address on it, and they stuffed both of these items in the jacket pocket of their victim, then the killer fled.

“The victim was not Epolyto Oils. He was the killer.”

But turned out the body that the investigators thought belonged to Epolyto was actually Epolyto's own friend, Louis Barone. So Epolyto and his wife, Alfonstein, they conspired to murder Louis, and make it appear like his body was actually Epolyto's body. Because just a few months before the murder, Epolyto had taken out a life insurance claim on himself, that in the event of his death, Alfonstein would be paid a huge sum of money. But Epolyto had no intention of dying. They needed somebody else to die on his behalf, and it just so happened that Louis actually already looked an awful lot like Epolyto, like strikingly similar.

And so Epolyto lured Louis out to that deserted stretch of road in the woods on the way to a job interview, which was just pretext to lure his friend out there to be isolated. And there Epolyto buttures his friend with the hatchet, kills him, and after hitting him over the head a bunch of times on the bridge, he flipped him over and hacked his face apart with the hatchet as well, just to ensure his face would be so badly mauled, nobody could recognize him. Epolyto also put that handkerchief and that note with the address in his pockets, which by the way,

he's literally wearing one of Epolyto suits that he's so, you know, kindly allowed his friend to use for the job interview. It was a setup. He put those items inside of the suit and he's like boom. Now the police are going to find the spotty. They're going to think it's me. Here's all this evidence that will suggest it's me, and I'm going to get off Scott free. But Epolyto and his wife, Alfonstein, had left one big loose end.

And that loose end was the well-dressed man who had walked into Judge Oberton's office and basically cracked the case wide open.

The well-dressed man at Oberton's door was the president of an insurance company. And he told the judge that Epolyto had been shopping around for life insurance policy just two months before his sudden murder. And that his insurance company had actually flagged Epolyto's application as possible fraud. And so they had not given him the policy, but he would tell Oberton that apparently after this failed attempt, Epolyto just reached out to another insurer who did take the bait. And as soon as that contract was signed and suddenly Epolyto had this policy, Epolyto supposedly died.

And so after hearing these details from the president of this company, Epolyto ordered the body to be exhumed and re-examined. And this time when the body was compared against photos, investigators confirmed it was in fact Louis. The real Epolyto was tracked down in the north of France, where he was living under Louis identity. He was charged with murder, and on June 15th, 1889, he was sentenced to death. A quick note about our stories, they are all based on true events.

The Mr. Ballem Podcast, strange dark and mysterious stories, is hosted and executive produced by me, Mr. Ballem.

“Our head of writing is Evan Allen, produced by Jeremy Bohn and Cole LaCocio.”

This episode was written by Kate Gallagher, story editing by Kate Murdoch, research and fact checking by Shelley Shu, Samantha Banhous, Evan Beamer, Abigail Schumway, Camille Callahan, Alex Paul, Ben Fassiano.

Research and fact checking supervision by Steven Eher, audio editing and post-produced by Whit LaCocio and Jordan Stitham.

“Production support by Antonio Minata and Delana Corley, artwork by Jessica Clogston-Kiner, theme song "Something Wicked" by Ross plugged in.”

Thank you for listening to the Mr. Ballem Podcast, and just a reminder, every new and exclusive episode we put out on the Mr. Ballem Podcast,

you can also now watch on the Mr. Ballem YouTube channel that very same day, and trust me, some of these stories you truly have to see to believe. Again, my YouTube channel is just called Mr. Ballem.

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or visit SiriusXM.com/podcast+ to listen with Spotify or another app of your choice. So, that's going to do it. I really appreciate your support. Until next time, see ya. [Music]