Open Door Policy (PODCAST EXCLUSIVE EPISODE)

lecture hall in Southern California, listening to his professor give a talk, and suddenly

“the doors to the building opened up and in walked three campus police along with a man”

in a suit. And so everybody goes quiet, the professor is well, and these men, they walk down to the front, and they whisper something to the professor. At which point the professor who looks confused himself, he goes to the podium, and he leans into the mic, and he looks up at the anxious college student.

And the professor just says, "They want to talk to you." But before we get into today's story, if you're a fan of the strange dark and mysterious delivered in story format, and you've come to the right place, because that's all we do, so if that's of interest to you, please invite the fall of button to come with you on a fun long road trip.

And at some point, when you're out on the road, when the fall of button has to use the bathroom, pull over to a rest stop and let them out, but then before they come back out again, just leave. Okay, let's get into today's story.

“On the morning of Thursday, October 22nd, 2009, a 41 year old man named Damon Nicholson”

opened the double doors to a hotel ballroom in Laguna Beach, California. Damon was an event planner at the hotel, and today he was giving a tour to a recently engaged couple who wanted to use the space for their wedding. So event planning was like the perfect job for Damon, because he loved a good party,

and he'd always been great with people.

In fact, by the time he'd shown this couple, the ballroom and then led them out onto the veranda to show off the hotels amazing beachfront views, they were all chatting and laughing like they were long time friends, and the couple was now dead set on using the space. Just then, Damon felt a cell phone buzz in his pocket, so he politely excused himself,

he stepped away, and when he pulled his phone out, he saw he'd gotten a text message from a college student who he'd just recently begun dating. The guy's name was Alan Coffield, and Alan was texting Damon just to make sure they were still on for their date that night. After reading this message, Damon found himself not really sure how to respond.

After all, I mean right now, he was feeling really tired, because the night before he'd been out late, having a good time, and actually the night before that as well, he'd been out late, so he's like really tired from all the partying he was doing. Laguna Beach was known for having this really big gay community, and Damon, like to date around quite a bit.

He'd grown up in a much more conservative family, and his sexual orientation had always

been a source of a lot of pain in his life. But here, in Laguna Beach, he felt fully accepted and free, and he was really enjoying his life. But his lifestyle could also get kind of wild sometimes, with partying so hard, and like he even got involved in some of these anonymous group sex parties, I mean, he really

was just livin' it up. And in fact, this week, in addition to being tired from all the partying he'd been doing, also all this staying out late and partying had gotten him behind on his work. And so, in seeing this text from Alan, he's thinking not only physically, do I sort of feel depleted, and don't really feel up for another night of that, but also like, I really

need to be responsible and like, do my work tonight. But he really liked Alan, he didn't want to give off the impression that, you know, he

wasn't interested, and so he ultimately was like, you know what, I'll go out with him.

So, Damon just sent a text confirming the date back to Alan, and then he put the phone back in his pocket and walked over and continued the tour. Later that same night around 10pm, Damon stood on the porch of his first floor apartment, watching Alan's car pull away from the curb. They'd spent a few fun hours together, but Damon had actually cut the night short.

He had really enjoyed, you know, having his time with Alan, but even though it was late,

“he did need to get some work done, and so he figured that's what he would do before”

going to bed. So, Damon watched Alan's car disappear around the corner, and he turned and went back inside of his apartment, leaving the sliding glass tour open just a few inches. Then he walked over and sat down on the couch, he opened up his laptop, and it took him a minute to sort of get focused again, but once he did, he got in the zone, and he sort

of lost track of time, and he'd been working for a while when he heard footsteps out on the porch outside, and he looked up, just as the door slid open. At 2.30pm the next day, a woman named Lindsay Scott got out of her car and walked over to Damon's apartment, Lindsay worked with Damon at the hotel, and she was worried because he hadn't shown up to work that morning.

over to Damon's place, and just check on him during her break.

“As she stepped onto the porch, Lindsay saw these sliding glass tour, leading into Damon's”

apartment, was open, but Lindsay actually was not that surprised, because she had been to party at Damon's place, and she knew he had this kind of open door policy where his friends would just drop by unannounced. So, Lindsay just poked her head through the open door and called out for Damon. And he didn't answer, she stepped inside, but immediately froze in shock at what she saw.

And right away, she turned, ran out of the apartment, she grabbed her phone, and she called 9-1-1. About 30 minutes later, Detective Larry Banner of the Laguna Beach Police Department parked his car outside of Damon's apartment building. It was a small building, and it was located about a block away from the beach, and this

was a pretty quiet area. In fact, in Banner's experience, this area really didn't see much crime at all. And a homicide, like the one Banner had been brought in here to investigate, was basically unheard of.

“Banner made his way over to the building, ultimately climbed up the steps to the wooden”

porch, he ducked under the yellow crime scene tape that was blocking the doorway, and he stepped inside of Damon's apartment. The small apartment was already crowded with crime scene tags, where taking photos, and dusting everything for prints, and the body of a man was slumped over right on the couch, fully dressed, and also partially covered in pillows.

Banner walked over to get a better look, and when he did, he realized he actually recognized the victim. It was Damon Nicholson, the event planner who for years had coordinated the police departments annual Christmas party.

Banner shook his head, because, you know, in his experience, Damon had always seemed like

a really nice guy. You know, he couldn't think of, you know, how he could get wrapped up in something that would turn into him getting murdered. But, you know, Banner was here to do a job, and so despite the personal connection, he leaned in and got to work.

“And right away, he noticed that the back of Damon's head was covered with blood, like”

he'd been struck with a blunt instrument. But there were no obvious contenders for the murder weapon anywhere in sight, like nobody had brought anything up that could have been used to kill him. Additionally, Banner didn't see any blood anywhere else in the room he was in, aside from obviously the blood on the victim, and also on the couch.

So that likely meant Damon, likely died, where he was right now. Next, Banner looked at the throw pillows that had been piled up on Damon's legs. From how they were positioned, it was obvious that Damon had not put them there himself. Banner knew that killers sometimes covered up the victim's bodies. It was usually a sign of shame or remorse after the fact.

So that could mean that the killer knew Damon personally, and after killing him they felt bad and covered him up or something. But the pillows were definitely not definitive, Banner meets. Once he'd seen enough of the body, Banner walked around the rest of the apartment, before

ultimately making his way over to the forensic team lead.

And she confirmed that there were no signs of forced entry, and that according to the woman who had called 911, Lindsay Scott, the door had been open when she arrived. Lindsay had also said that Damon had a habit of leaving the door open whenever he was home, which meant that any stranger could have seen the open door and wandered in off the street.

Now, the apartment didn't appear to have been ransacked or anything, but there was a pile of loose garbage sitting in the middle of the kitchen floor, right next to the trash can. The lid was lying on the floor beside the can, and there was no trash can liner inside. It was like an empty trash can.

So Detective Banner guessed that what likely happened here is the killer took the liner that had been in there, pulled it out of the can, dumped out the contents, but then used that same bag, probably to hold the murder weapon or maybe some bloody clothes and brought it with them on their way out. And then also, despite the police not being able to know what actually had been in the

apartment before the attack, it did look like a few things had been taken. For example, there was a computer mouse that was on the coffee table, but no computer or laptop anywhere in the apartment, and also the forensics team had not found Damon cell phone anywhere. So it looked like the motive maybe could have been robbery, but that bothered Banner.

Because robbery was impersonal, and those pillows, piled on Damon's legs and his body, those felt personal. On top of that, killing someone with a blunt instrument took a lot of strength and determination, and in Banner's experience, that was the kind of violence that typically came from a serious grudge, someone with a personal connection to the victim.

So Banner couldn't be sure if Damon had been killed by someone he knew, or a stranger, who had just walked in off the street, it was like either one really could have happened

If the killer had taken Damon's cell phone, they had made a huge mistake, because Damon's

“phone could be tracked, and if the killer still had it, it would lead Banner right to them.”

On October 25, 2009, so two days after Damon Nicholson was found bludgeoned to death in his apartment. If Larry Banner climbed into a dumpster, right outside of an apartment building, about 20 minutes north of Damon's home in Laguna Beach. Once inside, he crouched down and began sorting through the garbage.

Banner had tracked Damon's missing cell phone to this apartment building, so he knew it had to be somewhere nearby, but this building was enormous, and searching it unit by unit would take days. And on top of that, it just seemed unlikely that the killer would have led them straight to their home.

It was a good chance that they had realized the phone could be tracked and had dumped

it somewhere. So now, Banner and a dozen other officers were checking all the dumpsters before they

“resorted to going inside and canvassing the building unit by unit.”

By this point, for context, Banner had reviewed the autopsy report for Damon Nicholson, and it confirmed that Damon had died from multiple blows from a blunt instrument, probably sometime between one and three a.m. on October 23rd, so in the very early morning hours of the same day, the body was found. The forensic team had found fingerprints inside of Damon's apartment, but they had found

so many different fingerprints from so many people that, in essence, the fingerprints became useless. There was just too many of them. However, they had found DNA inside the lid of Damon's garbage can, which Banner knew or assumed the killer had very likely touched when they dumped out the trash and took

the trash liner. Now Damon and his team had already sent that DNA sample to the crime lab for analysis, but those results would take a few weeks at least to come back.

“So in the meantime, finding Damon's missing phone was the best lead.”

And so now, Banner was still, you know, knee deep and trash, sifting through the dumpster, when he heard a door open nearby. He stood up and he turned to see this bearded man step out of the apartment building and he's looking over at Banner inquisitively, Banner showed the man as badge and explained the whole situation.

And when he mentioned that they were specifically looking for a cell phone that they had tracked to this building, the bearded man replied that he knew exactly where they could find that phone, because he had it. Minutes later, detected Banner followed the bearded man into a cluttered office on the

first floor of the apartment building.

The man who gave his name as Rick Larson explained that he was the building custodian, and that he actually regularly checked the dumpsters to see if tenants had thrown out anything good. Then he opened up the top drawer of his desk and he took out a cell phone that he had found. And Banner, when he saw it, he took out his own phone and he called Damon's phone number.

And sure enough, a moment later, the trash can phone, the one that had been in Rick's desk, began to ring. So this was definitely Damon's phone, but now Banner had to wonder if Rick's dumpster diving story was true, or if it was just an excuse to explain why he was in possession of a murdered man's missing phone.

So Banner was pretty direct and just asked Rick, point blank, where he'd been between one and three a.m. on the morning of October 23rd. And Rick, when he heard this question, looked genuinely surprised, and then sort of worried, and then he said, he'd been here, a sleep in his own apartment. But when Banner pressed him on this, you know, asked him, is there anybody else out there

who could verify that you really were here? Rick just shook his head and said, no, he'd been alone. Just a little while later, Banner left the apartment building, but now carrying two bags. One bag contained Damon's cell phone, and the other bag contained the DNA kit with Rick Larsson sample in it.

Now it would take time for the crime lab to compare Rick, the apartment building custodian, his sample that they had just gotten to the DNA from the crime scene. But in the meantime, Amber did now have Damon's phone to go through. He still wasn't sure if Damon had been killed by a random burglar, or just a random stranger period, or if maybe there was a personal component to the murder.

And so now he wanted to try to dig into Damon's personal life and find out who he'd been spending time with before he was killed. And a way to do that was going to hopefully beat through his phone. A few days later, just after lunch, Banner sat inside of an interview room, across from a professionally dressed man with a big, gauze bandage wrapped around one of his hands.

Banner had spent the last few days reviewing Damon's phone records, and also his online dating profile. And by now, he knew that Damon had been seeing a number of men before his murder.

The man with the bandage tan that he was interviewing right now was a guy named Ethan Cooper.

“And from Damon's phone activity, Banner knew that Ethan had gone on a date with Damon just”

two nights before the murder. Banner did not need to tell Ethan that Damon was dead, because clearly Ethan already knew. I mean, as it was, the murder was all over the news. And it was an especially big deal for Laguna Beach's gay community. So by this point, it was like everybody knew, Ethan included.

According to Ethan, his date with Damon a couple of days before the murder had been pretty straightforward. They'd gone out for drinks before heading back to Damon's place to watch a movie, and Ethan had wound up spending the night there. At some point, Banner asked Ethan about the bandage on his hand, and Ethan explained that

it was actually a spider bite.

Banner was surprised to hear this, I mean, spider bites, especially spider bites that require a huge bandaging or pretty rare, and so he just asked to see it.

“And Ethan clearly hesitated, but then he did unwrap the bandage and he held out his hand.”

And there definitely was a big wound on Ethan's hand. It was right in the center of his palm. But to Banner, it did not look like a spider bite, or not like any spider bite he had ever seen. It didn't even look like a puncture of any kind, it looked more like a cut, like a laceration.

The kind of wound that someone might get during a life-and-death struggle was somebody else. Ethan must have read Banner's face because he quickly added that he had gotten this bite before Damon was murdered, and that he'd actually shown the bite to his boss at work who could vouch for him. Banner said he'd take down the number for Ethan's boss, as well as contact info for anyone

who could verify Ethan's whereabouts on the night of the murder. And while he had Ethan there, he said he'd like to get a DNA sample too. The next morning, Banner was back inside the interview room with the next person on his list.

“This time, it was a middle-aged manning glasses named Todd Daniels.”

From reading all their messages to each other in Damon's cell phone, Banner could tell that Todd and Damon had been friends for years, and that they had seen each other the night after Damon's date with Ethan, which was one night before Damon was killed. When Banner asked Todd what he and Damon had done that night, so again, the night before Damon was killed, Todd seemed really uncomfortable.

Todd explained that what he had to say about that night was extremely personal, but he was willing to share it with the police on the off-chance that it could be relevant. Banner told him he really couldn't make any promises in terms of what he did with the information he was going to get, but he would try to be discreet. So Todd, somewhat reluctantly, explained that he and Damon had not just been friends.

They'd actually been sexually involved.

They'd been hooking up casually for years, and that their visits always tended to go the

exact same way. Todd would show up at Damon's apartment and just let himself in through the sliding door that was often just left open. Todd said that inside, the lights would all be off in the apartment, and Damon would be waiting, wearing nothing but a ski cap, pulled all the way down to cover his face.

Sometimes, Todd said it wouldn't just be him who was showing up to meet up with Damon. Todd would bring other partners to join in, basically it was anonymous sex. And Todd said he was pretty sure he was not the only one with this kind of arrangement with Damon. Damon clearly did this with other men too.

Banner, after hearing this, just sort of sat there in silence for a moment. If Todd was right here, it meant that Damon had, you know, potentially for years, been letting an unknown number of strangers into his home. And that meant, Banner's pool of suspects had just gotten a whole lot bigger. On the morning of October 29th, so one week after the murder, Banner was at his desk still

working tirelessly to get through all of Damon's contacts, to figure out who's even in this suspect pool. And so he leaned closer to his computer screen, and he's reading all this information and he, he's just so frustrated because it just felt like this was an overwhelming amount of work.

Since his interview with Todd, the man who brought up that Damon allowed strangers to come in and have sex with him, since that meeting, Banner had spoken to more than a dozen men, who had had casual sexual relationships with Damon, including some of the arrangements that were in fact similar to the one that Todd had described. Now Banner had already collected DNA samples from most of these men he had spoken to,

and he had sent those samples off to the lab, along with the ones he'd gotten from Rick and Ethan and Todd. But again, it's like it's just a waiting game. You get to wait for the results to come back, and it's like the likelihood you're going to find a match is kind of low because there's just so many people now that that comprise

But Banner now had another lead that did seem really promising.

“He finally had more details on a phone number that had called and texted Damon multiple”

times on the night he died. The number belonged to a man named Alan Coffield, and it looked like Alan and Damon had been planning to see each other on the night that Damon died. And so if that date had happened if these two got together, it would make Alan very likely the last person to have seen Damon live.

So after reviewing his notes, Banner picked up his phone and he called Alan's number. Alan picked up, Banner explained that he was a detective with the Laguna Beach police, and he really needed to speak with Alan about homicide. And Alan, without asking for any clarification about who would have been killed or really anything at all, he just stammered that he didn't think he could possibly have been

information about anything like that. It was very obvious to Banner that Alan did not want to be on this phone call. So before he could allow Alan to hang up, Banner just got right to the point and asked if Alan had been to Damon Nicholson's apartment on the night of October 22nd.

Alan was silent for a long moment, and then when he finally did reply, he just said that

he was not willing to answer that question. One morning, an early November of 2009, so just over a week after Damon Nicholson was murdered at his apartment in Laguna Beach. Detective Larry Banner stood in an empty college classroom in San Diego, California, a young man named Alan Coffeeld sat in a chair in front of him, very nervously tapping his foot on

the floor. Alan had not been willing to admit anything over the phone with Banner, but Banner believed that he had been with Damon on the night he was killed. And so that fact, combined with Alan's reluctance to talk to the police, had pushed Alan to the top of Banner's suspect list.

“Remember thought, you know, scaring Alan with a public scene might rattle him and get him”

to open up. So Banner had made the 80-minute drive to Alan's college and asked the campus police to pull

Alan out of class and bring him to an empty classroom to conduct the interview, basically

rip him out of his life and force him to confront a homicide detective. And so now, when Banner asked the very rattled Alan, if he had been to Damon's apartment on the night of October 22nd, Alan, this time, did not try to put up a fight instead he just shut his eyes and he nodded and said yes. He said that he had met Damon some time around 8pm that night and they'd hung out for

a little bit and then Alan had left some time around 10pm and he had just driven back home. That was it. Banner jotted the info down on his note pad, but inside he's thinking to himself, okay, you know, if Alan's telling me the truth, that meant he left Damon's apartment a few hours before Damon was killed because the autopsy said that Damon was killed sometime

“between 1 and 3am, Alan saying he was gone by 10pm.”

However, Alan had been really cagey with Banner on the phone. He wouldn't give him any information. He was so quick to dismiss, you know, even talking to Banner and now Banner had to drive all the way here and cause a scene just to get him to what had meant to spend a couple of hours with Damon.

If you had nothing to do with it, this should have been revealed very quickly. And so at this point, Banner was not totally sold that what Alan had just told him was true. So he asked Alan to just give them a DNA sample. It would be the cleanest way to rule him out.

And Alan, he paused and just stared at the floor for a second and then he said, okay, whatever

the police wanted, he would do. About two weeks later, on November 17th, so just under a month after Damon was murdered. Detective Banner was back at his desk reviewing the case files, and as he did, he found himself constantly looking over it as phone. Because the crime lab had told him to expect the long-awaited DNA results any day now,

and so he's anxiously waiting to see those results. Banner really hoped the crime lab had found something useful, because his best lead in this case had just completely fallen apart. Alan coffield, the KG college student, had ultimately provided a fast food receipt that placed him a good distance from Damon's apartment around the time the police believed

Damon was killed. Now this was not an airtight alibi, because the autopsy only gave the police a rough estimate for the murder time, which was one to three a.m. So there was still a chance that maybe Alan had doubled back later to kill Damon. But for now, this fast food receipt was enough to push Alan a little bit down the suspect

list. Meanwhile, Todd Daniels, the middle-aged man who had been hooking up with Damon for years

Now Todd had seemed really cooperative in his interview, but Banner had recently learned

“something potentially quite significant.”

But just so happened to live in the exact same apartment building where Damon's stolen phone had turned up. To Banner, it just felt like there was no way this could be a coincidence. However, Banner in addition to being suspicious of Todd Daniels here, he was also really suspicious of Ethan Cooper, the man who had that strange wound on his hand that he said

was a spider bite, because following the interview where Banner met Ethan and saw the spider bite, he had contacted Ethan's boss. And the boss had said that Ethan told him about that injury before Damon's murder that was true, but the boss said he didn't call it a spider bite. He said it was a work injury.

So to Banner, it felt like the fact that Ethan seemed to have changed the story about the injury fell off and in the context of what was being investigated, it felt very suspicious.

“And then of course, there was also Rick Larson, the sort of forgotten about building”

custodian who just so happened to have Damon's phone in his possession when the police tracked it down, and although he claimed he had been alone in his apartment at the time of the murder, he still didn't have anybody who could actually vouch for him. So it was just sort of like his word against the timeline. Thinking about all this stuff just made Banner's head hurt, and it just reminded him how

contradictory all the evidence in this case had been from the start. The phone being missing from the apartment, and then somehow found over at this apartment building, suggested it had been stolen, which points to this being a robbery. But the pillows piled up on Damon's body hinted at a personal motive, so not a random burglary but a grudge maybe.

Now the unlocked door suggested crime of opportunity slash stranger committing this crime. But all the people who used that door or who knew about their being an open door to Damon's

“place, they all had a personal connection with Damon, they had a sexual history with”

him. So it didn't feel random. It felt like, you know, again, personal. It was like every time a lead took Banner in one direction, another one appeared to send him back the other way.

And so now he was weeks into this investigation, and felt like he had no idea who did it or why. This like was it personal, was it random, was it a robbery, was it a grudge, nobody seems to know.

And so Banner was grappling with all this in his head when his phone finally rang.

Banner grabbed it and answered it, and he had this jolt of excitement when the caller said they were with the crime lab, and they told him that they have finished analyzing the DNA samples that he had submitted, and they had a match. As soon as Banner was given the results of this test, he was given the information of the person it matched, he hung up and he ran a search on his computer.

And as he began to read, the frustration that had been sitting on his chest just lifted. Because he could see it now. Every contradiction, every loose thread, every piece of evidence that it seemed to point in different directions, they had all, in fact, been pointing at the same person. He just hadn't known it yet.

Based on evidence collected at the crime scene, witness testimony and a partial confession. This is what police believe happened to Damon Nicholson between the night of October 22nd and the early morning hours of October 23rd, 2009. The killer climbed the steps of the porch outside of Damon's apartment and found that the sliding glass door was open, just like last time.

So they turned back and sort of gestured to their accomplice, saying like, hey, the plans on. The killer then slid the door the rest of the way open and stepped inside the apartment. And immediately, they spotted Damon on the couch. He was sitting up, he was typing on his laptop on the coffee table, but as the killer entered

the apartment, Damon stopped and turned around and looked right at them. And when Damon looked at the killer, Damon smiled.

But then a second later, the killer's accomplice also slipped through the door, at which

point Damon smiled vanished. And then before Damon could call out for help or really do anything, the killer walked over to the couch and lifted up the metal baseball bat they brought along. Damon saw the bat and threw his arms up over his head, the defendant himself, but the killer took one step to the side and swung the bat and struck Damon's skull.

And then from there, the killer wound up and struck Damon again and again until Damon wasn't

He stood no shot.

“For a moment, the killer just stood there, staring down at what they had done.”

Damon at this point was either dead or actively dying, but he was just slumped over on

the couch. And it was blood pouring out the back of his head, so the killer was like in a days. And then at some point, the accomplice, who was actually still, you know, in the apartment, but they'd stayed near the door, they were not close to the actual scene. They hadn't really seen what was going on and they called out to the killer, like, "Hey,

what's going on in there?" And they kind of snapped the killer out of there, their shock they were in, at which point the killer grabbed some throw pillows and put them on top of Damon's body to try to obscure him from view. And then at that point, the two of them, the killer in the accomplice, just kind of hurried

through the apartment, grabbing Damon's laptop, cell phone, and some other electronics.

In the kitchen, the killer spotted that trashcan and got an idea. They walked over and they dumped the trashcan out, so all the contents are all over the kitchen floor, but now with this empty trashcan liner, they wrapped up their bloody baseball bat to keep it from dripping all over the apartment on the way out. And then a few minutes later, the killer, who now has this bloody bat in the bag in hand,

and the accomplice, left through the sliding last door. Completely oblivious to all the mistakes they'd made, like, for example, leaving DNA on the trashcan, and also taking a cell phone that could be tracked. When Detective Vammer got the name of the person who's DNA matched the DNA on the trashcan,

“he immediately headed out to make an arrest, and where did he go?”

He went straight to the apartment building where Damon's cell phone had been found.

But, he didn't go to the apartment of Damon's longtime casual romantic partner, Todd Daniels, nor did he go to see Rick Larson, the building's custodian who claimed to have found the phone in the dumpster. It would turn out both Todd and Rick were completely innocent. And so BAMmer, he went to the apartment of this woman, who's son, was a guy named Matthew

Dragna. He was 19 years old, and his DNA was already in the police database from a previous burglary. Matthew and Damon's longtime casual romantic partner, Todd, they had started hooking up a few weeks before Damon's murder. And when Todd went to see Damon on October 21st, two days before the murder, he brought

Matthew with him for a threesome, as part of that anonymous sex routine that Damon was known for. And while he was there participating in this, Matthew, the 19 year old, took note of Damon's very open lifestyle, and the fact that he literally left his door unlocked at night. And Matthew saw an opportunity, and so Matthew recruited a friend to help him rob the

place, and the next night they came back. And this time, when Matthew walked through the sliding glass door of Damon's apartment, he found Damon on the couch, and immediately he decided to beat him to death, so he would not interfere with the robbery. Matthew Dragna was arrested on November 18th, 2009, and charged with Damon's murder.

After a very drawn-out legal battle, he eventually pled guilty to a lesser charge of man's slaughter and burglary and got a final sentence of just over 28 years in prison. As for Matthew's accomplice, who was a man named Jacob Keatonia, he was also convicted of manslaughter, but sentenced to just over 7 years in prison. A quick note about our stories, they are all based on true events.

But we sometimes use pseudonyms to protect the people involved, and some details are fictionalized for dramatic purposes. The Mr. Ballon Podcast, strange-dark and mysterious stories, is hosted and executive-produced by me, Mr. Ballon. Our head of writing is Evan Allen, produced by Jeremy Bohn and Cole Cassio.

The episode was written by Andrew Keller. Story editing by Luke Barats, research and fact-checking by Shelley Shu, Samantha Banhous, Evan Beamer, Abigail Shumway, Camille Callahan, Alex Paul, Ben Fassiano. Research and fact-checking supervision by Stephen Ear, audio-editing and post-produced by Whitley Casio and Jordan Stitham, production support by Antonio Manada and Delana Corley,

artwork by Jessica Klogston-Kiner, theme song "Something Wicked" by Ross Bubden. Thank you for listening to the Mr. Ballon Podcast, and just a reminder, every new and exclusive episode we've put out on the Mr. Ballon Podcast, you can also now watch on the Mr. Ballon 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. Ballon.

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So that's going to do it, I really appreciate your support, until next time, see ya! [Music]