Safe for Now (PODCAST EXCLUSIVE EPISODE)

the initial trauma of the experience has passed they're like okay I'm good now I'm

“safe everything's fine. But no, they were not okay as they would soon learn. But before”

we get into today's stories, 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 and we upload two, three even four times every week. So if that's of interest to you please sneak into the fall of the button's house and on their bathroom mirror right I'm watching you in red

lipstick. Okay let's get into our first story which is called crisis-averted crisis created.

On the morning of April 29th 1963 a woman named Sophia Perez was riding in the passenger seat of her car her husband Julian was driving and they were traveling down a narrow city street and severe Spain. It was a Monday but Julian who was the primary breadwinner. He didn't have worked that day and so the couple had decided since it was such a beautiful spring day as well that they would get out and go in a nice drive and just spend some time together.

“And for Sophia I mean this was like a perfect day. She adored her husband and she really loved”

the city of Sevilla you know all the people there were so nice and friendly and in such a beautiful place that like this was shaping up to be really a tremendous day. And so Sophia and her husband they are all smiles as they continue driving down this road you know Sophia she's looking out taking in the sights and the sounds and then at some point she just has this inclination to pull out her lipstick and you know apply her lipstick and so she she reaches down and she grabs

her purse which she brought with her everywhere she was a very organized person and she opened it up and she's rifling through it and she finds her lipstick and then she she grabs the rear of your mirror and she turns it and she uses it to apply the lipstick and as she's doing this she begins asking Julian like hey you know what what should we do for the rest of the day like beyond this drive what else should we do and as she sort of half looking at the mirror and half looking at

“Julian she sees a blur of motion out in front of the car and then she turns and she realizes”

there's someone in the intersection that they're gonna hit it's a guy in a motorcycle and before she could say anything Julian is swirving hard to the right to try to avoid the sky it's like absolute madness and then the the motorcyclist he tips over and he goes into a slide and then Julian and Sophia they ram off the road onto the sidewalk and smash into this huge pole and pretty much right away Sophia after the car had had come to a stop in front of this huge

you know metal pole Sophia began like patting herself down to sort of assess the damage to make sure she was okay and then she looked over at her husband Julian who was sort of doing the same thing and they realized that you know obviously despite the horribleness of this crash that that they were okay but then their attention turned to the motorcycleist because even though Julian didn't hit him they narrowly missed him you know he swirbed away and they crashed into this pole despite that

one of the last things Sophia saw before they swirbed is the motorcycleist had tipped over and gone into a skits they had no idea if he was okay or not and so Sophia and Julian they they carefully climbed out of there pretty wrecked vehicle and again they stood and kind of

check to make sure they really were okay because now they're standing for the first time but

you know they're okay and they walked a little ways you know across the street to this other sort of side street where the the motorcycleist had skit it off to and right over there he was standing the man who was on the motorcycle he was standing next to his bike and you know obviously his bike had had some damage done to it but the man the motorcycleist he looked unheard as well so this was like an enormous in some ways stroke of lock obviously it was bad to get into the

accident but all three of them appeared to be okay and so Sophia and Julian they walk over to the motorcycleist and you know the three of them were really amicable I mean the motorcycleist understood that you know accidents happen you know thank goodness nobody was hurt and just for a few minutes the three of them just you know just chatted and sort of just talked about how lucky they really were here and they exchanged information you know so they could cover the damages if they needed to

of the respective vehicles and as they're just sitting there having this you know relatively calm and just normal conversation here Sophia looks over at Julian and she realizes you know he was

basically unheard but but not entirely unheard he had this the scratch on his face that was

bleeding a fair amount that very likely was from the crash and even though by no means is this like life threatening or anything like that Sophia was not at the moment talking to the motorcycleist and so she figured she would just go back over to the car and grab her purse because she's

very likely had like a bandage or something she could use to clean up her husband's cut and so she

“told her husband and the motorcycleist she was gonna you know go get her purse and go grab a bandage”

or something she goes over to the car which is still you know smashed up on the side of the road of course and there's a little bit of a crowd of people sort of you know relatively nearby kind of assessing the scene she makes a way around towards the passenger side because her purse was still in the car in the passenger seat and as she was coming around getting ready to reach through the open door to grab her purse which was sitting right there on the seat something happened like

she got close enough to the car where like suddenly she felt this intense pain all through her body and then it was like she couldn't even move and she found herself falling towards the ground looking up at the sky and like her muscles are beginning to spasm and the last thing she saw was her husband and the motorcycleist running over to her and then to her horror as she's laying

“there looking up at them they too began to sort of seize up and spasm and fall to the ground”

right next to her it would turn out that when Julian's swerved to avoid that motorcycleist and crashed into that pole neither he nor Sophia realized that that pole was actually connected to a power line that held up electrical lines carrying a huge amount of electrical voltage and during the crash a few of those lines from the pole had been knocked down to the ground and they fell around Sophia and Julian's car when the couple first got out of the vehicle

they sort of miraculously avoided stepping on those lines and if they had just stayed over there you know with the motorcycleist and just hadn't gone back to the vehicle they would have been fine

but Sophia whose purse always had exactly what she needed was in the car and she wanted to get it

and get that bandage and so when she went back she stepped on one of those lines and she was

“electrocuted and so she's on the ground she can't move and her husband and the motorcycleist”

they see this happening they hear it happening and they run over unaware of the danger and they too are hit by those electrical lines they fall to the ground and all three were electrocuted to death our second and final story today is called rock bottom on January 11th 2018 around 10 a.m. 55 year old Ray Wright saw it through a wooden board

inside of his workshop which was located about 20 minutes outside of Rockland, California now Ray had only just begun his workday but he was already covered in sawdust however he barely noticed because this was just a normal part of his job as a carpenter something he absolutely loved he loved his career in fact Ray really just sort of loved everything about his life

and sort of how it was going these days and that had not always been the case so about six years

earlier Ray was in a very different and much worse place in his life he'd been recently divorced and it started drinking a lot and he'd spiraled you know further and further out of control until one night he'd gotten really drunk and then hop behind the wheel and he caused a terrible accident when he crashed head on into another vehicle now Ray was more or less okay after that crash but he'd actually severely injured the people in the car that he had hit and so Ray had been

arrested and sentenced to 18 months in prison and he was ordered to pay a huge monetary settlement to the victims of this crash and so really this had been like the true rock bottom moment of Ray's life but by the time Ray actually got out of jail he was determined to really turn his life around and become a better person he'd stopped drinking and he had joined alcoholics anonymous which is a very well-known support group that helps keep people sober he'd started spending way more

time with his three kids and also his brother Dean and he'd been renting this particular workshop that he was in right now to revamp his carpentry business Ray right design and then also like in addition to these specific behavioral changes overall Ray had made this huge effort to really shift his thinking about like the way he approached life he decided he was gonna really try hard to just have a much more positive attitude in general and just try to be happier like

he believed it was more of a mindset and he really was trying hard to stay in that positive happy mindset however despite these these wholesale changes in Ray's behavior and his mind set which were definitely all good the one thing he was up against that was very difficult to change you know since coming out of prison was his financial situation I mean he really just didn't make a whole lot of money you know despite working really hard as a carpenter now he just he just

lives as well because you know he needed to make those huge settlement payments to the victims

“of the crash which he intended to do but so far you know he had not made enough money to make”

those payments and it was definitely stressing him out you know he knew he needed to make those payments but Ray was sort of determined that he would just continue to work really hard continue to build up his business continue to stay positive stay happy you know be a good person and eventually he was sure to make these payments and everything would be okay so in essence Ray still had problems but he was working really hard to just stay on the straight narrow

and do the right thing now Ray blew some of the sawdust off the board that he had just cut and he said it aside and then as he was about to start on the next thing he realized

one of the tools that he needed was out in his truck so he walked through the shops big warehouse

style doors that opened out onto a dirt driveway so the workshop where Ray worked was in a fairly rural area with only one immediate neighbor who lived in a trailer

“right next door on the same property and the person who on the trailer was a woman named Katie”

but you know despite they're only being Katie next door there was still a fair amount of people to sort of coming and going around the place like Katie's friends and raised clients so the area was actually usually pretty lively but this morning as he stepped outside onto the driveway it was pretty quiet so Ray just made his way out to his truck and grabbed what he needed from inside and then he turned and began walking back towards the shop however before he actually got

to the shop he heard footsteps on the driveway right behind him two days later Ray's brother Dean drove his car through some back roads as he made his way towards Ray's house in Rockland, California Dean had just been to Ray's workshop and now he was making the 20-minute drive back to Ray's home yet again and the reason he was doing that is because Dean was really worried he hadn't heard from his brother in two days and neither had raised kids or any of

Ray's friends and this was like very unusual. Dean you know himself talked to Ray every single day and he also knew that Ray was a very involved and responsive dad who would definitely not just disappear on his kids and he was also definitely in touch with other friends I mean this was just very unusual for Ray so over the past 48 hours Dean had been increasingly getting more and more worried about Ray he had been talking to anyone he could to try to figure out like why his brother was just

suddenly gone he'd already gone to Ray's workshop and his house repeatedly and he hadn't found Ray or any sign of Ray or any sign of where he might have gone and also Ray's truck was nowhere to be found either and that was actually particularly concerning because you know deep down Dean was worried that you know despite the changes Ray had made in his life to be a better person and to do right by people he was worried that you know maybe Ray had fallen off the wagon and was drinking again

“like maybe that's why he's gone he's he's on a bend or somewhere now Dean really didn't want”

to face that reality that would be like devastating for so many reasons not to mention you know if Ray was off drinking somewhere who knows what trouble he could be in like he could be in a lot of trouble or heard or something and so Dean by this point 48 hours in his brother's disappearance he's just doing his best to kind of push down this growing concern that maybe that's what happened and in fact it was actually that sort of nagging fear that Dean had that had kept him from going

to the police and reporting Ray missing there was just this fear that if he did that it would sort of expose Ray if he was you know not doing what he was supposed to be doing and so by this point you know Dean had held off now Dean parked his car outside of Ray's house again and he got out and you know Ray's truck was not back yet but Dean was determined that he would just go back inside and take another look around to see if maybe he had missed something you know maybe there was

some clue as to where you know Ray went or what he was up to so Dean walked up to his brother's front door and he let himself inside and immediately Dean stopped because he smelled something it smelled like marijuana smoke inside the house which was really really odd I mean one because the last time he was here he definitely did not smell marijuana smoke but but more than that

Ray his brother had definitely once been a very heavy drinker that was true but he had always

hated marijuana like he did not smoke marijuana and so Dean standing in the doorway trying to make sense of this when from the other side of the room he hears somebody shouting at him to leave and he sees on the other side of the room this this man has suddenly popped up who Dean did not know who was looking right at him basically gesturing for Dean to get out of the house but Dean he sort of like what's going on here he looks at this guy and he's like who were you what what are you

doing in here and the guy went very quickly from being sort of demanding to Dean to very spooked

Rockland Police Department pulled his cruiser up outside of a small one-story home in Rockland

“and parked he saw a man waiting outside the garage and as the officer could out of his car the man”

rushed up and introduced himself as Dean the person who had called 911 Dean explained to the officer that he had just seen an intruder here inside of his brother's home and that his brother was also missing and so the officer took down some notes both about the intruder and also about you know Dean's brother's absence and why him being gone for two days was really at a character and so after the officer finished speaking to Dean he went inside of Ray's house to take a look around and see if

you know there was any evidence left behind by the intruder to indicate who they were or if there was any evidence about you know where Ray was and maybe that this intruder had something to do with Ray's absence but once inside the home the officer saw there was no sign of forced entry or any kind of mess or violence so it didn't immediately seem like the intruder had robbed the place or gotten into some kind of physical fight with its owner but still the officer left the property

and went back to his cruiser and called it in and so over the next few days the Rockland Police Department sort of led to parallel investigations there was the investigation into this intruder inside of Ray's home which really wasn't going very far they had very little evidence there was barely a description of the sky from Dean who did not get a good look at him and then the other investigation was into Ray's disappearance and there was definitely some thinking that the intruder

and Ray's disappearance could be connected but as of right now they didn't know but with regards to Ray's disappearance after the police had spoken to Ray's family and friends they determined that no one

had seen or spoken to him since January 11th that was like the first sort of hard date and hard

fact that they had they also checked into Ray's bank account and phone activity and they learned he hadn't used them since January 11th when apparently he went missing but beyond those details like as the weeks went on really nothing else came in not about the intruder or about Ray then on January 21st so ten days after Ray went missing the Rockland Police Department got their first you know big new lead and that was Ray's truck had been found he was not in it it had been found

totally abandoned in this apartment complex that was not far from his workshop a couple of months later on and afternoon in late March rockland police sergeant Zach Lewis sat at his desk at the station going over Ray's case file for what he felt like was the

millionth time so since finding Ray's truck basically no new leads come in and even that the

finding of Ray's truck really had not been the break that the police had really hoped it would be

“the truck was basically in decent working condition the only thing that really stood out was”

the plates had been taken off of it but after they searched the truck extensively they basically didn't find anything nothing that gave away what happened to Ray or where he was or you know whether or not this intruder had something to do with Ray like it just really didn't go anywhere so sergeant Lewis was feeling pretty stuck when it came to this case and so right now he was just looking through the information they already had on this case to see if maybe he had missed something

however as he began doing this another officer ran through the station towards his desk waving around some sheets of paper and this officer ran right up to Lewis and he slammed the papers down on his desk and explained that the California Highway Patrol had just sent a report over because they thought it might contain a lead in Ray's case and here was the lead and so Lewis is really excited he grabs the document and he sees it's a report and it's about this van that had

gotten in an accident at the end of January a few miles south of Rockland in Sacramento the driver of this van had been extremely drunk it was going over a hundred miles an hour when he crashed and somewhat miraculously nobody got hurt including the driver and so the driver he survives and now he's facing like all these charges of drunk driving and reckless driving but the reason

“this report was sent over to Rockland was because the driver was a man named Victor Gray that's what”

his license said so after the crash the police discovered that the license plate on the van that Victor had been driving was definitely the right license plate however the registration stickers

that were on the license plates were not the right ones basically you know Victor or somebody had

had taken stickers from some other vehicle and put them on this van's plates to give the impression that their their vehicle this van was registered but when they tracked those registration

Rockland's police department knew this was a huge lead and they could not screw it up and so they

“wanted to make sure that they handled you know whatever they did next exactly right and they leveraged”

whatever resources they could get so over the next few weeks Louis and his team reached out to the FBI to help them process Victor's van and collect any potential evidence that was associated with Ray's disappearance and a little over a month later on May 8th 2018 Louis stood with a few of his other officers in a parking lot not far from Rockland watching as a team of FBI agents searched Victor's van now by this point they had discovered that this van not only had Ray's registration

stickers on it but also inside of the van was a lot of Ray's stuff they had found Ray's glasses

which were smashed they had found Ray's cell phone which was also smashed they found his wallet

they found a hat that said Ray Wright designed on it and critically they found Ray's rain jacket and it was covered in blood and partially charred like it had been burned and so at this point

“it seemed fairly obvious to investigators that Ray was not just missing you know he didn't just”

you know go off the wagon and start drinking again and go disappear somewhere no he very likely had been killed and very likely this guy Victor Gray had something to do with it but the problem was there was no obvious connection between Victor Gray and Ray Wright like they were total strangers and when they tried to speak to Victor to interrogate him to try to get him to open up and and explain if he had something to do with this if he knew who Ray was

Victor was not talking so that was a total dead end and so now investigators were just hoping that you know whatever evidence they found in this van that once it was you know sent off and analyzed that hopefully that would sort of maybe begin to explain what actually happened here you know was this just a random robbery gun wrong you know Victor was just robbing Ray and it got violent

“or was it something else or who knows what they just they just didn't know now Lewis watched”

as the FBI agents wrapped up the search of the van and you know they began packing things up so it was clear they had sort of pulled all the evidence they were going to pull and you know Sergeant Lewis and his team they were about to leave when suddenly one of the FBI agents who was searching the front of the van in the front two seats he began waving his arm like he had found something and so Lewis and the others they were running over and they look inside the van

and this agent is pointing down to like the center of the front of the span basically near the center

console and there was this little space underneath the center console that apparently nobody had looked in yet and inside of this little space was another cell phone five months later on an afternoon in October Lewis pulled his cruiser into the dirt driveway right outside of Ray's workshop but when Lewis and the other detective that he was with got out of their car they ran past Ray's workshop and went to the trailer next door where Lewis knew a woman named Katie Barnard

lived and so Lewis stood back as the other detective knocked on the door of the trailer and a few seconds later a very timid looking woman Katie came to the door and she asked what was going on and when Lewis explained to her why they were there Katie went from looking timid to looking downright terrified and she just began to shake like she clearly understood why they were here so they took her down to the station and pretty much as soon as she was sitting inside of an

interrogation room and they began asking her questions Katie just completely broke and told them everything she knew so ever since Ray got out of prison for that drunk driving accident he really had been single-mindedly focused on trying to be a better person and not letting his rock bottom moment sort of ruin his life and he'd done a great job doing that he'd gotten sober he'd begun you know spending much more time with his family he was like a very present father now he was

very well-liked in the community however even though Ray you know had good intentions here the reality was as he was just sort of focusing on rebuilding his own life he wasn't really trying to help other people like his his post jail efforts were sort of all about him and his self-improvement journey had really not been beneficial for everyone because Ray had really not truly atoned or done right by the person he had hurt the most one of the victims of his drunk

driving accident a man named Bob Manor Bob had been absolutely furious with Ray after the accident because the accident had severely injured him Bob to the point where Bob had a permanent limp and then Ray had stopped making those court mandated settlement payments to Bob he was supposed to

you hurt my family and you're not even paying for it like jail isn't enough and so for Bob

“it became like an obsession that he really wanted to get his revenge on Ray and it just so happened”

that Bob was was not just a guy with a grudge Bob was a very violent drug dealer as well so

this was a really big deal for him so basically after Ray got out of prison Bob began obsessing

over where Ray was like he wanted to literally discover his address so he could physically go and take his revenge but he couldn't find Ray he could not find the information no one was going to give it to him you know for this reason exactly and so he was just furious all the time he wants to find Ray but he has no way of knowing where he lives then just by pure happenstance Bob ends up dating a woman named Katie Barnard who just so happens to live in the trailer right next door to the

shop in Rockland, California where Ray worked and you know Bob had no idea he's just over visiting with Katie all the time and one day he looks out the window and who does he see walking out of the

“doors of that shop? Ray right after that and you have to understand that some of this stuff actually”

was never fully explained Bob hired a man named Victor Gray to kidnap Ray for him because he wasn't

going to do it himself he needed he needed to catch Ray off guard and so Victor Gray kidnaps Ray and he apparently brings Ray to Bob so that Bob can exact his revenge on Ray now we don't know exactly what happened once Bob potentially received Ray we don't know if if Ray ever actually made it to Bob but we do know at some point Victor did kidnap Ray and there was definitely revenge you know on the agenda but what Bob ultimately failed to do that got him caught and got Victor

caught and got this whole thing blown up was he didn't pay Victor for the kidnapping so the very thing that Bob was so mad about really was like how dare Ray do this to me and then not pay me well

“Bob did the same thing to Victor he didn't pay him and Victor was also a violent person he's”

a convicted felon and he didn't take that lightly and so what did he do he wrote a letter to Bob basically being like hey I kidnap this guy for you and I handed him to you like I handed him over and you haven't paid me yet and then he took pictures of this letter and those pictures were on that phone that was found underneath the center console of Victor Gray's van those pictures of this letter are what connected Victor to Bob and then the connection from Bob to Ray was already known

and then also critically because Victor hadn't been paid by Bob for this kidnapping he took the liberty of not only kidnapping Ray but he went back and stole the registration stickers off of Ray's truck and he put them on his own van and then ultimately it was that that led to Victor getting caught and this whole you know con being exposed now we actually don't know specifically what happened to Ray right all we know is that he definitely was kidnapped and that Bob ordered the

kidnapping and that realistically you know Bob is a pretty violent guy Victor's violent guy there's blood found all over you know Ray's stuff it seemed pretty apparent that the revenge that was

exacted on Ray involved his murder but Ray's body was never found and so we don't really know

what happened to him however using overwhelming circumstantial evidence both Bob Manor and Victor Gray were both convicted of first-degree murder and kidnapping and they were sentenced to life and prison without parole a quick note about our stories they are all based on true events but we sometimes use pseudonyms to protect the people involved and some details are fictionalized for dramatic purposes. 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 Boone and Colicocio this episode was written by Kate Murdoch story editing by Evan Allen research and fact checking by Shelley Xu Samantha Van Housse Evan Beamer Abigail Shumway Camille Callahan Alex Paul Ben Fassiano research and fact checking supervision by Steven here audio editing and post-produced by Whitlicocio and Jordan Stitham production support by Antonio Manada and Delana Corley