The Price of Preparation (PODCAST EXCLUSIVE EPISODE)

working toward for years, but in both cases, actually going to these events would turn out to be

“the biggest mistakes of their lives. But before we get into today's stories, 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, and we upload two, three, even four times every week. So if that's of interest to you, please offer to shovel the snow off the follow button's driveway, but be sure to shovel the snow directly into their car. Also, please subscribe to our channel and turn

on all notifications so you don't miss any of our weekly uploads. Okay, let's get into our first

story called The Evidence. On the morning of November 18, 2019, 54-year-old detective Moosey McKeezy stood in a long line waiting to get into a courthouse and EcoPoss South Africa. So Moosey was an investigator on a very violent robbery case that was finally being tried today, even though the robbery itself had happened almost six years earlier. Back in 2014,

“a group of armed men had stormed into a couple's farmhouse in EcoPoss and brutally beat the couple”

before making off for the bunch of electronics and jewelry and weapons and other valuables. And so Moosey and his team had eventually caught and arrested these criminals. And in fact,

they were even able to recover some of the items that have been stolen. In fact, now,

Moosey had one of those stolen items with him to present his evidence at today's trial. Moosey had done this kind of court duty plenty of times in his career, but today, he felt really drained on top of his trial prep for, you know, this case. He'd also been working other active cases and also mentoring junior detectives. And Moosey was not young and energetic anymore. He was nearing retirement age, and all these obligations were really starting to take a toll on him.

But the biggest thing that was really exhausting Moosey was this robbery case itself.

“It had been an extremely long process, full of an unusual number of delays and complications.”

It had actually taken so long to bring this to trial that the evidence Moosey was holding like literally right now, had actually been returned to the victim couple so they could use it

until the trial finally happened. So getting this case to this point had been extremely tiring,

but Moosey and his team were determined to see it through no matter what. Because the criminals that did this, I mean, they were incredibly violent and genuinely needed to be behind bars to protect the public. I mean, they'd severely beaten this couple to the point where they were hospitalized, and it was lucky they hadn't been killed. As Moosey entered the courthouse and passed through the court security checkpoint, he hoped the security guards were appropriately on alert.

In his experience, violent offenders like the ones who were on trial today, often had violent friends, especially in Ecapac, where this kind of crime was unfortunately rampant. It wasn't unheard of for criminals or gang members to barge into court proceedings and retaliate against cops or prosecution. But Moosey was able to get through security, there was no suspicious people or any sort of disruptions of any kind, and so Moosey once through made his way into the

courtroom. And he saw the space was already full. He defends in the jury and prosecutors and judge were all there and the remembers of the public in the gallery. Moosey went over and sat down at the prosecution table and he would remain there until it was his turn to go up to the judge and present, which would include, you know, showing this evidence. As Moosey got settled into a seat and, you know, put the evidence down on his lap, he turned and sort of gave a quick wave

to the prosecutor. A woman named Adelaide Ferreira Watt, who was sitting at the table as well. She was going over her trial notes. Moosey had worked with Adelaide before, and they got along really well together, and she was a total pro, at least in Moosey's mind. So he knew that, you know, her being on board meant this case had a really good chance of getting a conviction. Adelaide waved back at Moosey, and then quickly got back to her notes.

And Moosey took a look around the courtroom and everything seemed quiet and, you know, again, there was no sign of any gang members or criminal friends charging in to cause problems, and, you know, Moosey just hoped it would stay this way, and that the trial would go smoothly and end the way he hoped it would. A few minutes later, and the judge sort of called the court to order, and got the trial started, at which point Adelaide got up and began to present the case.

And at this moment, despite the fact that Moosey had waited almost six years to get to this point,

over him. He wasn't energized, it was sort of the opposite, it was like relief, and also the room

“they were in was pretty hot, and, you know, he was pretty tired, and before long his eyelids got heavier,”

and heavier, and eventually his head kinda slumped over to the side, and he dosed off. And at first,

everything was fine, you know, for a couple of minutes Moosey just slept in the courtroom, and nobody even noticed or cared, everything was okay. But then at some point, there was this sudden, very loud scraping sound, it was the sound of a bunch of chairs in the courtroom moving across the ground, and it was just very loud, and it woke Moosey up, but like really abruptly he was startled by the sound, and when he woke up, like in his, you know,

sudden jolting awake, he dropped the evidence that he was supposed to be in charge of onto the ground, and so he's getting up, he's getting his bearings, realizing that it's kind of embarrassing, he was asleep, did anybody see him like what's going on, everyone's moving around,

“he sees the evidence on the ground, so he goes under the table, he scoops the evidence back”

up, and as he's sitting back up, he hears this loud, like deafening bang, echo through the courtroom, and he still really doesn't know what's going on, I mean, he just woke up, it's sort of chaotic in the room, and then he hears the scream coming from the sides, sort of over to his right, and he turns, and he realizes the scream came from the prosecutor, Adelaide, and so Moosey looks over the table, and he sees Adelaide laying on the ground, and she's clutching her hip,

and her hip is now gushing blood, and so obviously she's been attacked, that loud banging sound he heard was almost certainly a gunshot or an explosion of some kind, and so Moosey immediately is thinking, clearly, the friends or, you know, affiliates of these criminals on trial have stormed the courthouse and they've attacked us, they've attacked Adelaide, are there more shooters here, are there more attackers in the building, and so Moosey, who again, he's only woken up like

30 seconds ago, he's still sort of confused, he begins looking around the courthouse for, you know, perpetrators, someone who's attacking, you know, gunmen or something, but all he sees is just the chaos of people trying to flee the courthouse, and others rushing up to Adelaide to try to render care, like there were no perpetrators, there were no gunmen, there was nothing, it was just chaos,

and so for a second, Moosey is just sitting there not really even sure what to do, almost like

paralyzed by shock, and also, again, he's just woken up, he's sort of getting his bearings, and then he thinks of something, you know, he's looking around the courthouse, this is crazy scene, and he realizes that there is no gunmen, there's no perpetrator, there's nobody, there's nothing, which can only mean one thing, so to understand what happened inside of that courtroom, you first have to understand something about South African police procedure,

and that is that in South Africa, as in most countries, after evidence has taken from the scene of a crime, it's examined and determined to be safe, and then transferred to an exhibit room until it's time for trial, however, unlike in other parts of the world, in South Africa, there are exceptions to this procedure, and this trial had taken almost six years to start, and because of that huge time lag, some of the evidence that was recovered from the robber's homes

had actually been returned to the victim couple, it was taken from, so they could just use it

until the trial finally happened, the couple had returned that particular evidence to the police

that morning, and Moosey had been charged with bringing that evidence to court and literally holding that evidence, but Moosey, when he did this, didn't double check to make sure this evidence was safe to be in a courtroom, and sometime after Moosey fell asleep in the courtroom, the judge had announced that it was time to take a break, and so the scraping of chairs that woke him up was the sound of people getting up to leave, but for Moosey, it startled him and he sat up

really suddenly, you know, what's going on, and he dropped this evidence onto the ground, and it

“would turn out this was like the worst thing that could've possibly happened, because this particular”

evidence was a shotgun, and when Moosey sort of in his panicked instinctive state, when he first woke up and he saw the evidence on the ground, he reached down to grab it to pick it back up because he was supposed to hold this thing for the whole trial and presented, the last thing he needed is people to see that he had fallen asleep and dropped it on the ground, but when he scooped it up, the gun, again, because it had not been re-examined, it would turn out it was still

loaded, and so as he scooped it up, he accidentally hit the trigger and fired it, and it hit Adelaide, severed an artery, and killed her, but Moosey, like, was so confused by the chaos of the

heard the bang and he's like, "What's going on here?" and it was when he realized there was no

“gunman that he looked down and he realized the shotgun was aimed right at Adelaide, he must have”

shot her. Moosey ultimately pled guilty to culpable homicide and negligence, and he was ordered to

serve a six year prison sentence, however it was suspended. On the morning of July 14, 1912, a 21-year-old athlete named Francisco Lazaro stood in his hotel room in Stockholm, Sweden, getting dressed and ready for the day, and he was in Sweden to run the marathon in the Olympics, so a marathon is a race that covers exactly 26.2 miles, and for elite runners, it usually takes them between two and three hours to finish. Lazaro was representing Portugal,

and this was actually a really big deal, this was his home country's very first Olympics, which meant Lazaro was one of only a few Portuguese athletes at the games, and Lazaro believed

“that out of all of those people, all those other Portuguese athletes, he actually stood the best”

chance at bringing home an actual medal, so Lazaro had a chance to do something really historic for his country, and realistically he wasn't even that nervous, because he knew he was a truly elite

incredible runner, even though he was just 21 years old, Lazaro had already won three huge marathons in

Portugal, so he was already a star back home, but he knew that if he wanted to win on the world stage, he would need to come extremely prepared, so that's exactly what he'd done, you know, he'd trained for months obviously, he'd also recently gotten a medical exam to confirm that he was very healthy, and he'd even begun thinking about little ways that he could potentially give himself a boost, like how to fuel what to put in his body, and even what to put on his body,

“I mean, even the smallest detail, like a shirt that wasn't breathable, or eating something that”

kind of sat heavily in his stomach could make the difference between winning or losing, because again, this is like the world's best runners, any little edge he was gonna take it, so now Lazaro spent the next hour putting on the very specific clothes that he'd selected for this race, and also eating

a perfectly balanced light meal containing carbohydrates and protein, basically exactly what he

had mapped out to help him in this race, he'd been warned that it was supposed to be very, very hot today on race day, but Lazaro actually saw this as an advantage, because being from Portugal were often got much hotter than places like Sweden, Lazaro already knew how to protect himself from the sun and the heat, and how to give himself an edge in this weather, and then before he knew it, Lazaro was ready to go, and he had left his hotel room, and he was on his way to the stadium

to actually compete in the Olympics. A few hours later, around 145 p.m., Lazaro walked out into the middle of Stockholm's massive stadium where the race was going to start, and as race officials directed him and his 67 other competitors to their places at the starting line, Lazaro was feeling really confident, in fact, so confident that he called out to a nearby reporter that he was going to be the winner, saying quote, "I win or I die." Now, as Lazaro and the others actually took their

spots on the starting line, they were in the direct sunlight, and it was just unbelievably hot. I mean, in the shade, it was already 90 degrees, so it was like a sweltering day, but as Lazaro looked up and down the line of the other competitors, he saw everybody else look flushed and they were sweating profusely, they looked not ready to go run 26.2 miles in this heat, they looked overwhelmed, but Lazaro? He was not overwhelmed. He was prepared. In fact, Lazaro wasn't even sweating.

As Lazaro stood there waiting for this race to start, you could hear the roar of the thousands of people in the stands, and for a moment, he just stood there taking it all in, and just appreciating how special this moment really was. The marathon was a major event in these Olympics. The stadium was completely sold out, and even the king and queen of Stockholm were supposed to be somewhere in the crowd watching this, and as Lazaro stood there having this moment sort of taken it all in.

He also had this certainty that when this race was finished, all those people in the stadium and around the world even royalty would know his name. Just then, he heard the announcer tell the runners to take their marks. Lazaro felt a surge of adrenaline rushed through him, a big hush fell over the crowd, and Lazaro and the rest of the racers stopped moving and just tensed, waiting for

everybody else lunged forward, and there was a bit of jostling as all the competitors surged off

“the line, and Lazaro was pushed back towards the middle of the pack, and right off the bat,”

you know, Lazaro was a little surprised by how quick the overall pace was, but Lazaro still wasn't worried. He'd studied this course extensively, and he knew that he'd have a chance to get out in front of his competitors pretty soon. This marathon route was very flat, but Lazaro was used to competing in Portugal, which had much more mountainous terrain, so he was sure that once the other runners invariably started to get tired, especially from this hot hot weather, he'd still be feeling fine,

and he could move out in front. So Lazaro just decided to hang back and wait to make his move as they moved out of the stadium and onto the dirt road beyond. And for the next hour and a half, he stuck to his plan and just kept his pace steady in the back. He knew, you know, at some point, people would begin falling off as though the heat were down on them, and they got tired, and

“he'd be able to make his way up, so he wasn't rushing, he was just waiting, biting his time,”

staying confident. In fact, as he was sort of keeping his pace in the back, he even was able to give another sound bite to one of the reporters that was on the road. You know, telling her that

he was feeling great for the first half of this marathon. Lazaro really felt like he was running

the race of his life. It was like everything in his training and in his background, had prepared him to excel here on the world stage. He was consistently moving past runners, you know, some of whom were really struggling in the heat, because they clearly weren't used to it, some had actually stopped running all together, and just put their hands on their knees, well, others just sat on the ground, unable to get up, so basically everything was playing out,

exactly the way Lazaro expected it to. He was, you know, making his moves slowly, but surely

“towards the front of the pack. However, as great as this race was going for Lazaro,”

something changed and around the 19 mile mark. He just felt really off. His legs got a really heavy, just like lead feeling, and a few minutes later, his vision started to get blurry. Lazaro kept on running and told himself he was fine, and that this was just, you know, late race fatigue kicking in and for what it's worth, it is pretty common for marathon runners to say that at about the 19 to 20 mile mark, that's sort of the real halfway of the race, not the 13 mile mark.

The 20 mile mark is where your body really starts to struggle. That last six miles is notoriously

brutal. And so he's basically saying that like, oh, that's normal. This happens when you hit about

20 miles. And so as Lazaro worked as hard as he could to put one foot in front of the other and just to keep on going, he began telling himself that, you know, this was worth it. At the end of this, there was a stadium packed with people who would be screaming his name, and he was still making such great progress. He could still win this race. But then, just a little bit later, his legs went from feeling heavy to just completely giving out and he slammed to the ground

and that his whole body began to converse. Within the hour at a local hospital, an emergency doctor greeted a crew of Olympic medical staff as they wheeled in a man on a stretcher. They explained that this man was named Francisco Lazaro, and he collapsed in the middle of the marathon. And the doctor was really not surprised by this. He knew the Olympic paramedics had been swamped all day, helping other marathon runners who'd

gotten sick from this really oppressive heat. However, as soon as the doctor began specifically examining Lazaro, he knew that this case was different and was much much more serious. His other patients that day had all relatively mild symptoms like sweating and general fatigue and dizziness, which had easily been cured by providing water and cooling them off. But Lazaro, I mean, he was twitching and convulsing and he was shouting deliriously that he'd won the race.

So the doctor rushed him into an exam room and took his temperature. And when he saw it was

106.7 degrees Fahrenheit, he knew this situation was critical. The temperature that high was

often fatal. Lazaro's organs were likely already shutting down. And so the doctor yelled for nurses and other medical staff to bring in some water and some ice. But Lazaro, he did not respond to the hospital's treatments. And as the hours passed by, Lazaro actually got worse. Doctor and his team, they worked through the night treating Lazaro and trying to stabilize him. But the next morning, Lazaro died.

After Lazaro's death, that doctor just could not shake the idea that something just felt off about Lazaro's death. I mean, heatstroke can definitely be deadly. And Lazaro had seemed to have a

And all of them had wound up being fine. So the doctor ultimately decided to run some tests on Lazaro

to see if maybe there was something else that had been going on. Like maybe there was some underlying illness or or other factor that was to blame for his death. And when the doctor finally did get

“those tests back, he results. Made Lazaro famous. So remember, Lazaro had put a lot of thought”

into how to prepare for this big race. He trained extremely hard. He ate right. He chose the right clothes, the right shoes. And critically, he took very specific measures to protect himself from the heat, which he knew was going to be a factor. And at first, it seemed like all the

the measures he had taken in advance of this race had paid off. Especially when Lazaro looked

down the line at the start. And he saw all the runners were like pouring, sweat and flush and just looking horrible. It just seemed like everybody was already exhausted before they had even started. But not Lazaro. He wasn't even sweating because of one of the precautions he had taken. But not sweating in this type of heat was actually a very bad thing. Swet is the body's way of cooling

“itself down. So Lazaro's lack of sweat was actually a sign that he was in danger. And it was”

all thanks to Lazaro's extra extra strong sunscreen. Because it would turn out, Lazaro was so

prepared that he went out and found what he thought would be the best and most powerful sunscreen

option ever. It was a substance called Suit, which is a type of animal fat that's typically used in cooking or making candles and soap. It's also sometimes used for skincare, since it has a lot of nutrients and is generally good for the skin. And Lazaro believed that because Suit is very thick, it would act as a barrier against the intensity of the sun. So he slathered a bunch of Suit all over his body just before the big race. What he didn't anticipate was that this Suit that was now all over

him would work too well. It was so thick that it clogged the pores in his skin and prevented anything from passing through, even sweat. And without a way to cool itself down, Lazaro's body essentially turned into a furnace, which cooked him from the inside out. The weekend after Lazaro's death, the Olympics held a memorial service for him and over 20,000 people attended to pay tribute him. And it's probably not quite the type of fame he had hoped for. But Lazaro's name is still

frequently referenced today in Portugal. The Portuguese referred to someone who looks sick and dragled as looking like Lazaro. 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. Ballum Podcast, Strange Dark and Mysterious Stories, is hosted and executive produced by me, Mr. Ballum. Our head of writing is Evan Allen,

our head of production is Zach Levitt, produced by Jeremy Bohn, story editing by Evan Allen, research and fact checking by Shelley Shu, Samantha Van Hoos, Evan Beamer, Abigail Shumway, and Camille Calhan, research and fact checking supervision by Stephen Ear, audio editing and post-produced by Whit La Cassio, and Cole La Cassio, Perry Crowell, and Jordan Stittam. mixed in mastered by Brendan Kane, production coordination by Samantha Collins,

production support by Antonio Manada, and Delana Corley, artwork by Jessica Klugst and Kiner, theme song called Something Wicked by Ross Bugden. Thank you for listening to the Mr. Ballum Podcast, and just a reminder, every new and exclusive episode we put out on the Mr. Ballum Podcast, you can also now watch on the Mr. Ballum 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. Ballum. If you want to listen to episodes one week early and add free,”

you can subscribe to SiriusXM Podcast Plus 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.