You Next (PODCAST EXCLUSIVE EPISODE)

They were farmers. They were just simple people. When in 1984 something really strange began

“happening to them that basically turned their lives upside down, like it was a complete nightmare.”

In fact in many ways it was almost like they were living the plot of a crazy detective novel. Except it was real. But before we get into today's story, if you're a fan of the strange dark and mysterious delivered in story format, then you've come to the right place because that's all we do when we upload two, three, even four times every week. So if that's of interest to you, please buy the fall of button, a dozen jelly donuts.

But don't tell them you've secretly removed all the jelly. Okay, let's get into today's story called Unix. On the morning of March 30th, 1984, a 43-year-old dairy farmer named Graham Backhouse walks slowly across this huge, fenced-in-field on his farm in Horton, England, carrying along a bucket of cow feed. And Graham, like usual, was exhausted from all the endless daily

chores on this farm that he was in charge of. Five years ago his father died and he had inherited this farm. And so now he was, you know, taking over this massive property with all these animals and all these just daily chores. It was backbreaking work. And so it was like every day, was a slog just like today. But Graham was actually a terrible farmer. He did the chores. He did the things he was supposed to do every day. But he did not know how to run this farm.

And so over the last five years that he inherited the big family farm, he had basically run it into the ground because he just didn't know what he was doing. But he was sort of stuck because there was no one else to take over the farm. And so it's like every day he's doing all this backbreaking work. And the profit for the farm is dwindling lower and lower and lower. It's like he was just trapped in this vicious cycle that he didn't know how to get out of. But in some ways, what was

even worse than that is that Graham never even wanted to be a farmer. I mean, like as a kid,

he grew up here on this property. And he he washed his dad every day, do this labor and, you know, work until the wee hours of the morning nearly every day. And he was an amazing farmer. He was amazing at taking care of this property. But Graham didn't want to do that. Like he knew

“he didn't. What he really wanted to do was be a writer. That's what his passion was. And so any”

chance he got as a kid, he was like, you know, writing things down, poetry, you know, journaling, whatever it was. But then his dad sort of suddenly died. And he's handed the farm and it's the family legacy. And so here he was, just sort of saddled with in a way golden handcuffs, except he was destroying those handcuffs. There was no golden them. It was about to be like an insolvent farm. And it was it was all his fault. And then on top of all the guilt and the shame

in the embarrassment about badly this was going. He also recently had begun getting into these heated disputes with his neighbors over the property lines. And so it's like all around him is just constant problems. And so now as Graham doodifully trudged through the field with his bucket of feed, his mind is swimming with all the other things he has to do that day. And as he's walking along, he sees something odd on one of the fence posts up ahead. And as he got closer to it,

he began to hear this really loud buzzing of lots of flies in the area. And then finally when

he got up to the fence posts, he saw why the flies were here. Because on the fence posts that thing he saw was a severed lamb's head and the flies were swarming all around it. And then before Graham could could process like why this lamb's head was here, which immediately appeared to be intentional. It didn't seem like a lamb had somehow gotten trapped here or something like somebody took this head and put it here. He's sort of looking around and he sees taped to the fence

right nearby is this piece of paper with a message on it. And it was basically an all capital letters and even from a distance he could have been able to read it. And it just said, you next. Now of course this is like collectively a shocking scene. This is a very obvious threat to Graham. Someone has has placed these things here to threaten Graham. But believe it or not when Graham saw the letter, not so much the lamb had but the letter. He sort of didn't breathe a sigh of relief,

not at all. But he had actually gotten over the past couple of weeks, several other letters like this.

“So this is just a continuation of something that's been going on here. The animal head?”

That was new. That was a clear escalation here but the letters. That had been happening. The notes had started around the end of the previous month when one had arrived at his house

messages after that and all of them were threatening to hurt Graham and also his family.

“Now Graham had gone to the police and told them and they had said, do you know anyone that”

might want to hurt you guys? Do you have any enemies or anything? And Graham, like he wanted to say, oh no, definitely not. But realistically, he knew probably over the course of his life in this small town. I mean, Horton is like this really small village. There was a good chance that he might have made some people mad somewhere along the lines. You know, he wasn't perfect. But in his mind,

he basically got along with everyone and so he said, no, I don't think so. But the police after

getting Graham's statement, they didn't really do any investigating. From what Graham knew, they basically had just filed a report and called it a day. But now, as Graham is standing here by his fence and there's this this animal head here, again, this is like a clear escalation. It's no longer just notes. We now have a dead animal involved. This is like a real threat. So Graham, at this point, is mad, feeling like the police really let him down and he ripped the

“note off the fence and he headed back to his house to call the police again.”

Ten days later, on the morning of April 9th, 1984, Graham was inside one of his barns and he was milking a cow and he had the radio on and the music turned all the way up as he worked.

Graham, ten days before, had called the police and told them about the severed lambhead and the

note and at this point they said that they would actually start an investigation. But Graham had not heard anything from them since they said that. But at the same time, he also hadn't gotten any other threatening notes since. So even though Graham didn't feel like whatever was going on was over, he still felt like, you know, he and his family did need to find a way to just you know, try to live their lives like normal because what else could they really do. And so today

was just going to be a day where he and his family just tried to go about their business as they normally would. The kids were at school and Margaret's wife had some errands to do in town and Graham was on milking duty. And today, the cows were really lively and so they're moving constantly in the music that Graham's playing is really loud. The barn is like just full of noise. In fact, it was so noisy that Graham didn't hear the barn doors open up behind him. However, he did hear voices

suddenly begin shouting inside the barn and he turned around just as two locals that he recognized from his village charged into the barn waving their arms frantically at him telling him something. And so Graham, he lunges and turns off his radio and he turns to these locals and he said, "Wow, what's going on?" And they told him like, "Your wife, she's been in this terrible accident.

“You need to come outside right now." And so Graham, he's shocked by what they're saying but he's”

thinking like, "I thought my wife was in town running errands like what do you mean come outside?" And so he jumps up and he runs with the locals outside and he looks towards his house, the farmhouse, and he sees there's all this gray smoke curling up into the air. It's so Graham sprints to his house, he runs around to the backside where the driveway is where the smoke appears to be coming from, and as he turns the corner, he sees his car and it's like damaged in some way and the smoke

is definitely coming off the car and he turns the corner fully and he looks onto his front yard and they're laying there in a bloody heap. His is wife. And so Graham, he's just so shocked for

a second, he's paralyzed and then he turns and he screams at the other two, the locals who had just

told him about the accident, he yells for them to call the police and then he runs for his wife. About 20 minutes later, Graham stood by his frontstaps with a police officer while a team of paramedics loaded his wife into an ambulance. Amazingly, despite her horrible injuries, especially to her legs, she was still alive, but Graham couldn't actually go with her to the hospital right now because he had to give a statement to the officer. Because it would turn out,

there had been a bomb underneath one of the car seats in the car Graham's wife was driving that had detonated and it merely killed his wife and so now they needed to figure out how the heck this happened and so Graham needed to give a statement while the bomb squad, which was swarming his property, looked everywhere to make sure there weren't more bombs here. And so of course, like Graham at this point is shocked, he's so worried about his wife, he doesn't really know

the state of her injuries, you know, she was just kind of whisked away and he wasn't allowed to go with her and so his mind is very occupied with his wife but then also there was a part of him that was just furious like he had told the police about these threats to him and his family that it only really been escalating over the past several weeks. I mean 10 days ago there's that that severed lambhead on his post with the words "you next" like clearly this was getting worse

and so he's furious and so Graham again reiterates to the officer that there had been all these threats to he and his family over the past several weeks and really it seemed like the threats had been directed at him and he actually pointed out to the officer that the car that had the bomb in it that you know nearly killed his wife that was actually his car it was his Volvo and his wife

never drove that car the only reason she was driving it today is because her car had an ignition

issue so this was like anomalous that she was in the car and so obviously the bomb was intended for him and so as Graham is relaying all these details to this officer they both start hearing all the shouting coming from sort of far away in the front of the property like towards the front of the driveway and they turn and they see a mailman has driven his van onto the driveway and is driving

“right up towards the house and remember this is now a crime scene and it's sort of a new crime”

scene and there's all these officers everywhere and they haven't fully rope everything off yet and this van is basically just driving up into the crime scene and so all the officers down in front are like whoa whoa stop stop stop and they stop the mailman who's like what is going on here and he's like hey I just I just have the mail for them and he hands a stack of letters to one of the police officers who then tells the mailman to turn around and get out of here

and so he drives out of there and then the officer with the mail comes up the driveway and he hands it over to Graham and so Graham has just told the officer the guy he gave a statement to about all these threats he's been getting and how he thinks it's all tied to this bomb and wouldn't you know it the letter sitting at the top of the stack of mail that he was just handed had very familiar handwriting on it it looked just like all the other threatening letters

that he and his family had gotten over the previous few weeks and so Graham he turns to the officer and he's like I know this is another threat this envelope it contains another threat for sure and the officer he's like do not open it we're gonna take that it's now evidence 15 days later on April 24th Graham left his house and began walking down the road and the fresh air was really helpful to Graham because right now he was feeling very anxious

Margaret miraculously had survived but she was still in the hospital she was still getting surgeries because you know the bomb had done quite a bit of damage to particularly her lower half there was all this shrapnel that had been embedded in her legs and her hips and so she'd be there for quite some time as for the children I mean they were not affected directly by the bomb but of course they were you know so upset because their mom's been hurt and they're scared because

of all these threats like is there gonna be another attack like it was awful for them and so Graham you know did his best to be strong for them but it just didn't make sense to have them at the home with him I mean it was it was dangerous they were scared all the time so he had sent them to stay with his mother basically to keep them safe and keep them calm and sort of away from him until this whole thing sort of blew over or whatever this was until it ended and so Graham is just

stuck at this farm by himself you know basically spiraling 24/7 like he hates being here

he's always hated this farm he resented the fact that he had to look after it and it was just going

so badly and now it's like he has an actual like active threat against him and his family and

“his wife's almost been killed like life is just it couldn't be worse right now and then on top of that”

you know the police were clearly investigating what happened here and investigating these threats but so far Graham had not gone any answers now immediately following the bombing for like the few days that followed the police gave Graham and his family around the clock physical protection because again there's like this active threat out there but after a few days when nothing else happened and you know it was really you know taxing the police to be constantly monitoring this family

they throttled that back and instead just gave Graham a panic button that he could press in case he or his family had some emergency at the property and so the police are gone and Graham just has this panic button is his wife's at the hospital is kids are away and he's just again stuck at this farm and he's just so upset he's so stressed out and and in this place this mental place he's in where he's just wondering what's going to happen in the future he began to think about

who really would want to do this to him who could he really fixate on that would want to cause he and his family harm and he actually came up with one suspect that began to make more and more sense the more he thought about them his neighbor Graham's neighbor was a guy named Colin and

“in town it was no secret that Graham and Colin didn't get along primarily because they'd”

be incurred over property lines now Graham and Colin's arguments never actually escalated into

violence but Graham knew that sometimes their fights got really heated and it seemed entirely plausible that Colin might want to exact some physical violence on Graham and so now Graham was

these two really didn't get along like they were capable of speaking to each other this was not

“totally unusual and so his plan was he was just going to go over there and intentionally not”

bringing up sort of like the elephant in the room here which is you know the bombing and the

threats and the ongoing criminal investigation Graham was just going to go over there and basically

just make his presence known and just sort of see how Colin reacted to him see if he acted strange see if he could pick up on any suspicious behavior by Colin and so he turned the corner and he walks up Colin's driveway and Colin was actually out in front and Colin's were returned and saw Graham and did not look pleased to see him and he didn't walk up to greet him or anything he just stood there staring at him but Graham confidently strode up the driveway and he just started

talking to Colin and they had this sort of weird, stilted conversation where neither man really wanted to see the other but they really didn't talk about anything of substance you know Graham didn't

“really explain why he was there they just had this weird small talk and then they said they're”

good buys and Graham turned and he walked away and as Graham walked back to his property

it started to become more and more clear in his mind like how bizarre it was that in this conversation which you know of course it was awkward these guys don't get along but how weird it was that Colin didn't ask why Graham had come over he didn't bring up the bombing he didn't ask about you know Graham's wife he didn't ask about anything it was like this weird super neutral conversation and for Graham it just made Colin feel that much more suspicious. A few days later on the night

of April 30th Graham was in his office inside of his farmhouse staring down at a blank note pad. Graham was trying to write because that used to be something he loved doing but you know tonight he just couldn't be creative I mean no arrest had been made in this case his wife was

“still at the hospital his kids are still out with his mom you know no progress has been made”

on this case like he still feels like there's this imminent threat out there and also the police had very recently interviewed Colin and nothing came of it so just sort of seemed like nothing was going on but all the problems he had were still very much there and so as Graham is sitting there feeling terrible he hears this loud sudden knocking on his front door and immediately you know Graham's on edge one he wasn't expecting visitors and two really generally he didn't get guests especially

this late at night and considering everything going on right now and the fact that Noah rest have been made I mean he's fearful he's paranoid but you know he's here all alone he can't just ignore the fact that somebody's here and so very apprehensively he gets up and he begins making his way out to the front door when Graham was about to open the door there was another pounding on the door like whoever was out there was really eager to talk to him and so Graham like his pulse is racing

any he grabs the door knob he turns it and he opens it and the instant he saw who was standing out there Graham knew he had to turn and run and press that panning button just a few minutes later detective superintendent Tom Evans with the local police charged up the walkway of Graham's farmhouse with a team of officers right behind him Evans was the lead investigator on Graham's case like the entire ongoing you know threat and bomb case and he'd been notified that the panic

button that they had installed in the farmhouse had just gone off so his team was responding to see if you know maybe the person or people who were targeting Graham and his family had struck again when Evans got up to the front door he tried the handle and found that it was open so he opened the door and he announced that police were here and they were coming inside but there was no answer and so Evans and his team went inside and pretty much immediately when he

stepped inside he saw a dead body there was a man laying on his back in the hallway and his chest was covered in blood however when Evans approached him he realized that this was not Graham this was

someone else this man was much older than Graham he was in his sixties and at first he just had no

idea who it was but then after a second Evans actually recognized him it was Colin Graham's neighbor who they'd actually interviewed fairly recently during their investigation Colin in addition to having what appeared to be you know one or several gunshot wounds to the chest was holding a knife in his right fist before Evans and his team could take note of anything else here they began to hear moaning coming from the kitchen so Evans sold a few of his officers to stay with

the body and then Evans and another officer slowly made their way you know guns drawn into the kitchen to see what was going on and when they turned the corner and looked into the kitchen I mean it was a bloody mess there was blood really on everything chairs tables overturned and then lying

was a mess he was the one who was moaning he had this just horrible knife wound on his face and

“he was bleeding profusely and he also appeared to have a gash across his chest and also across his stomach”

Evans and his partner they run over to Graham and they kneel down next to him and you know Graham he's in rough shape but he's clearly you know stable he can talk he's in a lot of pain and Evans asked him like hey what happened and Graham who again like he's in quite a bit of physical pain here so every time he speaks he's sort of like gritting his teeth but he was able to explain to Evans that he heard an occupiness door he opened it up and there's Colin his neighbor and it was unclear

what he was doing here and before long the two men are getting in this argument and then Graham said

that Colin sort of inexplicably admitted that he was the one who planted the bomb he was the one

who was leaving all these threats and then Graham who was about to run and press the panic button

“right before he did he said Colin pulled out a knife and then started chasing after him and at that”

point Graham said he bolted he grabbed his shotgun he was able to get a shot off and self defense and then he did press the panic button and he had no idea what happened to Colin but he figured he was dead the paramedics eventually arrived and it was determined that you know Graham's injuries were serious but he would survive however he was still ushered out into an ambulance and brought to the hospital and then after Graham was gone the police once again roped off the farmhouse and began processing

the scene taking pictures of everything and collecting evidence and then after they were done doing that

the police also went next door to Colin's property and roped that off and searched that as well to look for evidence and they discovered under some leaves on his property was actually a piece of

“pipe that exactly matched the bomb that was used to block the car that nearly killed Margaret so at”

this point it seemed extremely likely that Colin really was the bomber but over the next few days as Evans and his team analyzed all the other forensics and items and photographs that they collected they noticed something strange and then they found another new piece of evidence that actually was even more damning and far more significant than that pipe that was found on Colin's property this new evidence was just a very mundane everyday object however this object told Evans that he and his

team had gotten this entire case completely wrong what was really going on here was like nothing Evans had ever experienced in his entire nearly 30 year law enforcement career in fact what was happening here was closer to something out of a detective novel so Graham back house really did love to write and he had dreamed of being a writer specifically he actually had wanted to write detective stories and in some ways over the last few weeks during all this madness he'd sort of done exactly that

using his spiral no-pad he'd concocted a very over-the-top exciting narrative full of twists and turns and intrigue and murder except the thriller that Graham was putting together this detective story was not all fiction in fact most of it was very very real it would turn out the threatening notes the severed lambs had the bomb that nearly killed his wife all of those were Graham's ideas the farm because of Graham was in a lot of debt so Graham took out a series of life insurance policies

on his wife and then planned to murder her with a bomb that he made but before he did that he wrote and planted a whole bunch of threatening notes around the property and he mailed to himself that way police would think there was like this maniac on the loose that was after his family and that Graham was nothing more than a victim however Margaret didn't die from the bomb and Graham panicked he worried that police would eventually realize it was him who planted the bomb

and so he decided he would frame his neighbor Colin as the fall guy since it was widely known in the village that they didn't get along except while Graham had managed to create a new twist and outrageous turn in the storyline unfortunately he was just as terrible at covering up as crime as he was at farming. Colin's murder scene had a whole bunch of evidence that clearly proved Graham had set the whole thing up the blood spatter was completely off and Graham had no defensive ones

but the big clue that led the police to actually arresting Graham was his own spiral note pad they'd found the note pad in Graham's office and on one of the sheets was a very unique looking

impression on the sheets underneath it and Graham had used some of those sheets underneath the

“doodle after he had done the doodle to write those threatening notes and so the police they had”

those notes because you know Graham had been turning them over as evidence of this maniac

and they had previously noticed that on these these notes in addition to the letters

“there appeared to be like an imprint on the piece of paper that was like a very unique doodle”

and now they were staring at the original doodle on his note pad and so that allowed them to

directly link the threatening notes right back to Graham. Graham back house was found guilty of

“murder and attempted murder and given two life sentences he would die in prison of a heart attack”

in 1994 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 Coccio the episode was written by Kate Murdoch story editing by Luke Barats research and fact checking by Shelley

Xu Samantha Banhouss Evan Beamer Abigail Shumway Camille Callahan Alex Paul Ben Fassiano research and fact checking supervision by Steven Eir audio editing and post-produced by Whitlicoccio and Jordan Stittam production support by Antonio Manada and Delana Corley artwork by Jessica Clogston-Kiner theme song something wicked by Ross plugged in