The Bouncer (PODCAST EXCLUSIVE EPISODE)

France.

“He lived nearby, and he had just seen a column of smoke coming out of the trees in this area,”

and so he was just coming out here to make sure there was not a brush fire or something.

And so he walked through the woods and eventually he reached the source of the smoke. It was in this clearing, and right away he felt relieved because what he saw was just the remains of a bonfire, and it was just smoldering and now there was just some smoke coming up off of it. He was about to turn around and go maybe get some water and douse it out completely,

but he smelled something, like it was a weird smell that clearly was coming from the fire. And so curious, you know, there's nobody else around, he just began walking to the fire to see what was making this smell. And as he got close enough, he realized there was something in that fire. 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 come to the right place because that's all we do, so if that's of interest to you, please offer to make the follow button a nice fresh burrito, but don't tell them instead of using ground beef you used cat food. Okay, let's get into today's story.

“On the night of April 26th, 2012, a 39-year-old balancer named Lionel Verenas opened the”

door of a nightclub in Shombry, France, and he led a woman inside. And as this woman came in, she stopped and made a point to look at Lionel and smile at him and thank him by name. So Shombry was a small city up in the Alps, and Lionel, the balancer, was a fixture and it's nightlife scene.

Pretty much everybody in town who went out to the bars and clubs had either seen Lionel standing at the door outside or partying inside when he was not on the clock. And it was not just the locals who knew who this guy was. Lionel was also well known among the rich and famous tourists who often vacationed in Shombry, and even sometimes he would pick up sidewalk as a bodyguard for these rich and

famous people. And for Lionel, I mean his career as like sort of this fixture in the nightlife scene was fun and pretty glamorous at times, but it also could be dangerous. In fact, just a few months ago, he got into this huge fist fight, protecting one of his clients,

“and in fact, he actually got arrested for it.”

But tonight, Lionel was just trying to get through a shift without any trouble. There was this long line of people who were waiting outside the club waiting to get in, and Lionel checked their IDs one by one and let them in.

And then finally, when the line started to clear, Lionel saw a familiar face walking

toward him. This is good friend, Mike Boof, who Lionel often went drinking with multiple times a week. And at first, Lionel was just really glad to see Mike. But as Mike got closer, Lionel realized that Mike actually looked really mad. And so by the time Mike actually reached Lionel, Lionel just said to him, "Hey, what's

going on? You look pretty upset." And Mike would tell him that he had just been at his friend Philippe's house, and Philippe had told him that seemed really, really weird. So Philippe Perry, Mike's friend, the guy who's house he just came from, was extremely

wealthy because his family ran this world-famous winery near Shambri.

Now, Lionel had never actually met Philippe himself, but he knew of them.

His family was incredibly well connected in town because they're so rich and they had this winery. And Mike was friends with him and often talked about him. And so now, Mike explained to Lionel what this really weird thing was that he heard when he was visiting with Philippe.

So apparently, Philippe's house had been robbed the day before and Philippe believed Lionel, the bouncer, was the one who had done it. Now Lionel immediately acted totally taken aback and began to ask Philippe, like, why in the world would even think that? But Mike, his buddy here just cut him off and he's like, Lionel, don't play dumb.

Like Philippe knows you're sleeping with his wife, Natalie. And Natalie is actually the one who's blaming you for this robbery. Now, at this, Lionel went from this sort of shock and reaction to actually just feeling really nervous. He actually began to sweat because, you know, he knew it was true.

He had slept with Natalie. He'd met her at a club one night a couple of months ago and they'd hooked up in the coat check room. But Lionel realistically had a lot of flings with a lot of different women. And he'd actually pretty much completely forgotten about hooking up with Natalie, since it

just been like a casual thing and he hadn't seen her in weeks. And so he had no idea why now, suddenly, she would be accusing him of theft, like, it doesn't really make any sense to him. So Lionel, I mean, he was genuinely stunned. I mean, he knew what he had done, he had slept with Natalie, and that's problematic.

But he told Mike very truthfully that he did not break into Philippe's house.

That was just a fling, it was nothing like I really didn't do this.

“But Mike, despite, you know, being friends with Lionel and knowing him quite well, did not appear”

to believe him. He just ran narrowed his eyes and nodded and said, "Okay, I'll pass that along to Philippe." Three days later, on the night of April 29th, Lionel sat in a chair in his living room in Shombry, finishing up a phone call. So he lived in a small apartment with his mother and also his nephew Julian.

However, Julian was just four years younger than him, so in many ways they were more like brothers. So as soon as Lionel hung up the phone, Julian, who was sitting in the room with him on the other side on the couch, watching TV, immediately asked Lionel, who read talking to. Lionel got up and he walked over and sat down next to Lionel on the couch, and then he

said to him, "Oh, that was my friend, Mike." And he just called to see if I wanted to go out tonight for a drink. And so Julian's like, "Okay, cool." And then there's a little bit of silence.

“And then Lionel was like, "Actually, I want to tell you something."”

And then he filled in Julian on the the weird conversation he had had with Mike just a few

days before, where basically Mike was saying that, you know, Lionel was being accused of

robbing this rich guy's home, Philippe's home. And so Julian, when he heard this, he was sort of like, "This seems like a big deal." But Lionel, despite being the one to bring it up and being the one to indicate this could be a big deal, he quickly downplayed it when he saw the reaction and was just like, "You know, it is what it is.

I didn't do it." And, you know, me and Mike were back on good terms. This whole thing was just, you know, a misunderstanding. Everything is back to normal now, just a weird thing that happened. And so Lionel and Julian, they shipped to the conversation and chatted about whatever for

the next couple of minutes. And then Lionel's phone buzzed, and at the same time, he saw the red lights pulling up outside.

“So Lionel grabbed his jacket and he told Julian, he'd be back in a few hours, then he went”

out the door. Two days later, on the evening of May 1st, 2012, Lionel's nephew, Julian walked into the Shambri police station. He had spent the past two days, very worried and stressed, because Lionel had not come home after hanging out with Mike that night, and he now was not answering his phone.

And Lionel was never gone for this long, without giving Julian or his mother a heads up.

Julian had tried to convince himself that he was just overreacting to the whole thing and that Lionel could take care of himself, he was an adult, he was a tough adult, you know, he could handle himself. However, when he found out that Lionel also hadn't been at work for the past couple of days, Julian knew something was wrong.

So Julian, after getting inside the station, he walked right up to the front desk and told them, "I need to report somebody missing." The following afternoon, so May 2st, 2012, Captain Floron, Mazaron, walked into an interrogation room at the Shambri police station. He was leading the investigation into Lionel's missing person case, and sitting inside

of the interrogation room at the table was so far, the only suspect they had in this case. Lionel's friend, Mike Booth, who he had gone out with on the night, he had disappeared. So it had only been a few days since anyone had seen Lionel. But Mazaron was already sure that there was foul plan involved.

Henry was a small town, and a lot of the officers on the police force there, newly and out. A couple of them were pretty much adamant that Lionel was just not the kind of person who would just leave town with no warning. Julian, Lionel's nephew, had said the exact same thing when he reported Lionel missing.

He also was the one who told police that the last person Lionel was with was Mike on the night he went missing, and Mike also found out had recently accused Lionel of robbing someone's house. Mazaron was really eager to get in there, and here what Mike had to say. So into the room he went, he sat down across from Mike, who seemed calm, but also definitely

curious, like he wasn't sure even why he was there. And when Mazaron started in by asking him about the robbery that supposedly Lionel was involved in, Mike just nodded and explained that the break in had happened about a week earlier at the home of his good friend, Philippe Perry. And when Mazaron heard that name, he sort of raised an eyebrow, because like basically

everybody else in Shambri, Mazaron knew who the Perry A's were.

And he was surprised that someone so rich and so powerful would be running in the same circles

as, you know, sort of traditional working-class men, like Mike, and like Lionel. However, before he could dive in and ask some basic follow-up questions about how he knows the Perry A's. Mike went on to say that he ran an electrician business and he had a warehouse that was right next to Philippe's winery, so they saw each other all the time.

And he said that Philippe knew Mike was friends with Lionel, and so after this break-in and robbery happened, he had asked Mike to talk to Lionel about it, because he was suspicious that he had done it.

break-in, that Lionel had sworn he didn't know anything about it, and Mike had passed that

on to Philippe.

“And as far as he knew, that had been the end of it, like they were not going to continue”

to assume that Lionel had anything to do with it. Now Mike was being so earnest as he told the story that Mazaron thought there was a good chance he was simply telling the truth here, and that this robbery thing was really just a big misunderstanding. However, when Mazaron asked Mike where he had been on Sunday night, when Lionel was

last seen presumably with Mike, Mike's whole demeanor changed. He began to visibly shift in his seat and began looking down at the table instead of eye contact with Mazaron, and then he just said that he had been home all night with this girlfriend. He did say at a certain point he had called Lionel to try to make plans with him for

that night, but they never actually met up, and they didn't see each other.

Now at this point, Mazaron was pretty confident that Mike was lying, not just because of Mike's very obvious change in body language, but Lionel's nephew had sworn he had seen

“Mike's car outside their building on that night that Mike is saying he did not meet up”

with Lionel. Now it was possible that Julian had been mistaken, but if Mike was lying to the police about having been with Lionel on the night he disappeared, that made Mike seem very, very suspicious. And so Mazaron just put Mike on the spot and said, "Okay, give me your girlfriend's

name and her contact information so I can confirm your alibi." And so he did, he handed it over, and then Mazaron got up, left the interrogation room,

and went to go give her a call.

On the evening of May 2, 2012, so just a few hours after questioning Mike Boof about Lionel's appearance, Captain Mazaron drove up to a big house and a quiet, wealthy suburb just outside of Shombry France. Now by this point, he had already spoken to Mike's girlfriend, who had confirmed what Mazaron was already thinking, which was, Mike was lying about spending the whole night

“of Lionel's disappearance at home with her.”

In fact, she said that Mike hadn't been home at all. She said she had been at home by herself all night, she had watched a movie, and then at some point she had fallen asleep, maybe around midnight, and at that point, when she fell asleep, Mike still was not back from wherever he was. So right now, Mike was not only their sole suspect, but he was also their best suspect.

Mazaron knew that a few days before Lionel's disappearance, Mike had confronted Lionel about this supposed robbery at Philippe Perry's house, and so now Mazaron was at Philippe's house to see what he had to say about the whole situation. When Mazaron pulled his car up in front of the house, he parked he got out, he walked up the front door, and he rang the doorbell.

And a moment later, Philippe himself opened the door, and he seemed genuinely surprised to see Mazaron standing there. And so he quickly asked Mazaron if he was here to follow up on the robbery investigation. And Mazaron said, sort of. Mazaron said, for now he just wanted to know if he could come inside and they could chat.

And for a moment, it seemed at least to Mazaron that Philippe sort of hesitated, like he didn't necessarily want to do that, but then he sort of relaxed and nodded and said, "Sure," and he let Mazaron inside. And so Mazaron, he stepped inside of this beautiful house that was very well furnished and he was led to the living room, and Mazaron took a seat, and then after Philippe sat down as well,

he asked Philippe to walk him through what had happened with this supposed robbery. Philippe explained that his wife Natalie had come home one afternoon, and when she had come into the living room, she saw one of the windows had been shattered. And then Mazaron said that after seeing this, they searched the house, and they eventually went downstairs to the basement where their safe was, and they found their safe had been broken

into as well, and a lot of cash that had been in there was gone. Philippe said he had called the police about it, and they'd come out to investigate, but so far he hadn't heard anything. And so Mazaron, after hearing this, asked Philippe if he thought he knew who was responsible, and Philippe immediately nodded and said yes, then he repeated what Mike Booth had said.

It was Lionel Verenae's, and the reason he knew that was Lionel was having an affair with his wife Natalie, and Natalie said it was Lionel. Mazaron looked really hard at Philippe, because this was huge. If Philippe knew that Lionel was having an affair with his wife, that gave him Philippe plenty of motive to what Lionel did, and as of right now Lionel was gone and no one would happen to him,

so maybe he was murdered. And so operating on a hunch, Mazaron followed up by asking Philippe if he had any weapons in the house. And his surprise, Philippe said yes, and so Mazaron asked if he could see them.

and when they got down there, there was this huge gun safe with a few plastic firearm cases

“stacked around it, and so Philippe once they got down there, he sort of stepped out of the way,”

so that Mazaron could look around. And almost as soon as he did begin walking around Mazaron and begin opening up these cases, he discovered that one of those cases, which had space for two weapons in it, was empty. And so Mazaron asked Philippe, like, "Hey, where are the two guns that go in this case?" And Philippe said, "Actually, those were stolen during the robbery."

However, after hearing this, and as Mazaron is staring at this empty gun case, something just was not adding up.

Philippe clearly had a motive to want to hurt Leonardo, as he was having an affair with his wife.

And he happened to have two missing guns. Now, of course, at this point, Mazaron did not know if Leonardo was definitely, you know, dead,

“and therefore couldn't know if he had been shot or not, but still this was really suspicious.”

But, at the same time, Philippe was from this very wealthy and highly respected family. He didn't really seem like the kind of person who would go around murdering or kidnapping people in revenge. And if he had, let's say, done something badly in L, it was just odd that he would just so readily admit to clearly having a motive to harm Leonardo, and to show the detective a basement full of weapons, including a gun case that was missing weapons.

And so, basically, until Mazaron was able to figure out what actually happened to Leonardo,

until that time he would have a really hard time proving that Philippe had anything to do with it. The next morning, Captain Mazaron was in his office at the police station, going over the notes from his interview with Philippe to see if there was anything he missed. At this point, Mazaron's theory was that either Mike or Philippe, or maybe even both of them,

“had gone to confront Leonardo about the affair and about the robbery, and then things had turned”

violent. But, just then, there was a knock on his door, and Mazaron turned and he saw his door was open, and there was this woman standing there, and her face was stained with tears, and when she walked into the room, she was sort of heavy and stumbling like she was maybe on drugs, or maybe drunk, or maybe on heavy medication, and she sort of stumbled into the room, and then introduced herself as Natalie Perry. So Mazaron had actually earlier called on her to come in and

speak to him, both to verify her husband's story about what happened, the robbery, the affair, and also to see what else she might know about Leonardo. And also, since she clearly was involved in this whole potential love triangle here, he had to also consider her as a potential suspect in whatever happened to Leonardo. So he gestured for Natalie to take a seat, and then when she had, Yaster to tell him all about how she had met Leonardo. Natalie, at this point, really clearly

could not sort of keep herself together. She kept apologizing and kept explaining that she was on prescription medication that made it really hard for her to keep a grip on her emotions, and this whole situation had really rattled her. But eventually, after the sort of setup about how sorry she is and what a mess she is, she eventually tells Mazaron that she had met Leonardo at a nightclub and that yes, they had hooked up a few times, but since the last time, they hadn't

seen each other, and it had been quite a while, like it was, it was nothing. When Mazaron asked her about the robbery, she said that Leonardo had told her about having serious gambling debts from playing poker, and so because of that, she had just sort of naturally suspected that he must have robbed them. She also added that just to be clear, her and Philippe were both at their home all night on the evening that Leonardo disappeared, and that if Philippe had gone to confront Leonardo

at any point, she did not know anything about it. And so at this point, Mazaron sat back in his chair and just considered what he was seeing and what he was hearing. Natalie seemed genuinely devastated by this whole situation. To Mazaron, it seemed like she was believable that she was coming in here telling the truth. And so he really doubted that she directly had anything to do with Leonardo's disappearance. However, while Natalie's emotional state certainly made her seem

less likely as a suspect, Mazaron wondered if maybe her tears were a clue. By her own account, she had only had a fleeting relationship with Leonardo, not some, you know, passionate relationship or something. So maybe the reason she's this upset is because she actually knows that her husband was involved in what happened to Leonardo. A few days later, Captain Mazaron walked through a wooded rural area near the coast, 220 miles away from Shombrae, an officer from the Marseille police

was walking a few steps ahead of him. This officer had called Mazaron yesterday to tell him

hours after Leonardo was last seen by his family. And after running the body's fingerprints

“to the database, they had identified the victim. It was Leonardo. And Mazaron was baffled by this.”

Marseille was more than a four-hour drive from Shombrae. And as far as Mazaron knew, Leonardo didn't know anybody in Marseille and did not go there with any regularity. And there was just plenty of other wooded areas closer to Shombrae. So why drive all the way out here? It just didn't really make any sense. And so Mazaron continued following the officer, and at some point, they stepped into the small clearing, and Mazaron saw there was a pile of burnt logs and branches sort of lying

in the grass right in the middle, and the other officer said that this was the spot where Leonardo was found. And then the officer pulled out a folder that had photos of Leonardo's body. And so Mazaron was being brought here just to see exactly where it had been found. And so Mazaron looked down at the photo, and what he saw was, you know, in this spot that he was standing near, there was this smoldering bonfire. It was clearly out, but there was still smoke coming off of it.

“And then in the middle of all these logs was clearly a charred corpse. The officer that brought”

him here explained that the medical examiner had found a gunshot wound in the back of Leonardo's head. So it did appear that he was actually killed before he was set on fire. And so as Mazaron was taking all this new information in, everything just started to make sense. So this was exactly how drug trafficking gangs in France typically disposed of bodies. The police even had a name for it. They called it a barbecue. The gangs would shoot their victims in the head, and then burn their

bodies over a bonfire to make them harder to identify. Mazaron had assumed that Lionel's murder was a revenge killing. But now it actually looked more likely that this could have been a gang execution. None of Lionel's family or friends had ever mentioned that he was involved with a gang in any way. But Mazaron knew that Lionel worked in nightclubs and had a history of breaking up fights. So it was definitely possible that he might have crossed paths with the wrong

“person. Also, there was the fact that apparently Lionel had these huge debts from gambling. There's”

just sort of a CD underworld that potentially he was around that could have led to him being killed this way. Also, if this was gang related, it would sort of explain why he was all the way out here in Marseille, because Marseille was a city that historically had a lot of issues with drug trafficking

and gangs. And so Mazaron realized he could have been wrong about this case basically from the start.

Maybe Mike and Philippe actually had nothing to do with it at all. Around 10pm on May 5, 2012, about 100 miles from the spot where Lionel's body was found. Captain Florent Mazaron pulled into the parking lot of a gas station. He got out, he walked inside and told the clerk that he needed to look at the security camera footage. So during the four-hour drive from Marseille back to Shombry, so after Mazaron had gone out and

seen where Lionel had been found during that ride home, he had been going back and forth between his first two suspects, Mike and Philippe, and this new theory that a gang had killed Lionel. And so it wasn't really sure how he was going to navigate like what to do here with running these two sort of simultaneous investigations. But as he's driving, as he's on his way back home, he realizes there might actually be a way to prove whether or not either Mike or Philippe

were involved in this killing. There were only two roads that connected Shombry to Marseille, and so Lionel's killer or killers must have driven down one of them at some point during the night of April 29th. So Mazaron had been checking the cameras at every toll booth and every gas station that he passed on his drive to see if any of them had captured a glimpse of Lionel. So far, he'd just been disappointed because most of the cameras didn't even work,

where the footage had already been erased or written over. And so now, as he followed this clerk into the back room and was shown to their computer to go ahead and look at the footage, Mazaron was expecting that this stop would be the same as all the others, a big disappointment. However, as soon as they fired up the computer, right away Mazaron saw that they did have footage, and the footage did cover the time period he was looking for. However, when he began scanning the footage

around the date of April 29th April 30th, at first nothing stood out.

However, when he reached the early hours of April 30th, where he would normally stop and say, "Okay, I didn't see anything. It is what it is." For whatever reason, he decided to just keep on scanning the footage, just keep on watching more of April 30th. And eventually, he did see something of interest. At 543 AM on April 30th, a black Volkswagen vehicle pulls in the frame, and it actually parks in the gas station parking lot.

He's watching this car comes into the lot at parks, and the driver gets out. And right away,

Mazaron poses the video, and he zooms in on the driver's face, but the video was just too grainy, he couldn't tell who the driver was, but then something in the passenger seat of this car, catches his attention. And so he zoomed in on the passenger seat, and when he realized what he was looking at, his stomach just dropped. Based on that video, forensic evidence and interviews with witnesses. This is what police believe

happened to Leonardo Verenaise on April 29th, 2012. Around 1015 PM, the killer sat in the back seat of a car as it drove through the streets of Shambri,

with a gun resting on the seat next to them. Now, the killer had told the driver that

they were not planning to use the gun tonight, it was just therefore intimidation.

“However, the killer's emotions were really running high, and they honestly weren't even”

sure what they were going to do when they saw Leonardo. And so the car kept on driving along, until eventually it came to a stop outside of an apartment building, and then a few seconds later, the passenger side front door opened up, and Leonardo climbed inside the car. As the driver put the car back into gear and started driving down the road, the killer from the back seat, confronted Leonardo about something that had really been bothering them. And it gradually

turned into a very heated argument, and then, at some point, the killer raised that gun they weren't going to use, aimed at the back of Leonardo's head, and fired. The driver immediately whipped around and looked at the killer and just stared at them. They seemed completely shocked by this crazy sudden escalation here, but they didn't stop driving. Instead, they stepped on the gas and sped down the road until they reached a house, and then the killer and the driver both went

inside of that house, and they formulated a plan for what would happen next. So the plan was the driver, along with another accomplice who was in the house they went to, would drive down to Marseille, they would find a secluded spot out in the woods, they'd make a bonfire, and they would burn

“Leonardo's body. That's how they'd dispose of it. And then on the way back, their plan was to toss”

all the evidence into the river. As for the killer, the one who actually pulled the trigger, they were going to stay at this house. They were not going to leave. The driver and the other accomplice agreed that the killer had already caused enough trouble for one night. So the killer just went upstairs into their bedroom, they slipped on a robe, and they watched from the window as the other two got into the car, and drove off. The killer was Philippe's wife, Natalie Perry, the woman

Leonardo had had an affair with. To Leonardo, their affair had been meaningless just a fling, but for Natalie, she wanted more. She'd gotten bored of her quiet life as a luxurious housewife in the suburbs, and she quickly fallen in love with Leonardo and the seemingly very exciting life that he lived. And so when Leonardo stopped paying attention to her, she'd gotten so mad that she

“took revenge. She went with Mike to pick up Leonardo on the night he was killed so that she could”

confront him. But moments after Leonardo got in the car, her emotions got the best of her, and she shot and killed him. And this was definitely not the plan that Mike had agreed to, like he and her had discussed what was going to happen. It didn't include murdering Leonardo. But after the murder, Mike didn't say I'm going to go to the police instead, he and Natalie went to her husband, Philippe for help, and Philippe agreed to dispose of Leonardo's body and

cover up the crime. On the security footage from the gas station, what Mazuron saw in the passenger seat of that black Volkswagen was Philippe. He was sitting there just right in the passenger seat,

and it would turn out the driver of the car was Mike. Natalie was ultimately convicted of Leonardo's

murder and sentenced to 20 years in prison. Mike was sentenced to six years for kidnapping and destroying evidence, and Philippe was sentenced to three years for helping get rid of Leonardo's body. He and Natalie are now divorced, and also as for that robbery that played seemingly a central role in the story at the beginning, we actually don't know if the robbery ever occurred or if it was simply a fabrication.

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

This episode was written by Kate Gallagher, research in fact checking by Shelley Chu, Samantha Van Housse,

“Evan Beamer, Abigail Schumway, Camille Callahan, Alex Paul, Ben Fassiano. Research in fact checking”

supervision by Steven Err. Audio editing and post-produced by Whitley Cassio and Jordan Stitham,

production support by Antonio Manada and Delana Corley, artwork by Jessica Klogst and Kiner,

“theme song, something wicked by Ross Bubden. Thank you for listening to the Mr. Ballem Podcast,”

and just a reminder, every new and exclusive episode we've 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. If you want to listen to episodes one week early and add free,”

you can subscribe to SiriusXM Podcast+ on Apple Podcasts 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.