Fan Favorite - "The Crawlspace"

MrBallen Podcast: Strange, Dark & Mysterious Stories

In 2012, 87-year-old Barbara Howe vanished from her Ohio retirement home, sparking a months-long investigation that led detectives to uncover a hidden crawl space filled with blood and a shocking killer: Danny French, a

Key takeaways

• Danny French, former maintenance worker at Mount Pleasant Retirement Village, murdered Barbara Howe

Transcript preview

Speaker 1 (0:00) Today's episode is a fan favorite. The audio and the story has been remastered for today's episode. On a cold winter day in 2013, police officers rushed through the dense woods outside of a small town in Kentucky. They weaved their way through the trees, keeping their eyes peeled. Then finally, one of them shouted out. He saw what they were looking for in the distance. The other officers quickly followed him into a clearing. And there, they saw a man with a long gray beard sitting in a large self-made camp. It looked like the man had been living out here in the woods for months. The officers just stared at him, and they almost couldn't believe it, because they had just tracked down the man who they thought could help solve a murderer that had taken place a year earlier in a town 150 miles away. But before we get into that story, if you're a fan of the Strange, Dark, and Mysterious, delivered in story format, then you come to the right podcast because that's all we do and we upload twice a week, once on Monday and once on Thursday. So, if that's of interest to you, please email the follow button informing them they've just won the multi-billion dollar lottery. All they have to do is give you their social security number and credit card information. Okay, let's get into today's story. On the evening of October 28, 2012, 87-year-old Barbara Howe sat at the dinner table with a friend in her house at the Mount Pleasant Retirement Village in the small town of Monroe, Ohio. As the two women began eating, Barbara's friend had a huge smile on her face. She couldn't get over how Barbara still loved to cook and how good she was at it. At 87 years old, Barbara made it a point to stay active. And she loved cooking and having people over to her house as often as she could. And when she wasn't entertaining, she loved to drive her prized red Cadillac around town and visit the shops on Main Street. At the dinner table, Barbara broke down the latest episode of Dancing with the Stars, which she watched religiously, and then also the two women caught each other up on what was going on with their kids and their grandkids. Barbara's husband had died about 14 years earlier, and since then she lived on her own. But her family, especially her daughters and her granddaughter Barbie, made sure she was never by herself too often. Just then, the landline phone rang, and Barbara shook her head. People calling during dinner time was so rude as far as she was concerned. But she excused herself from the table and walked into the bedroom to grab it. The person on the phone said they were working in the retirement village that evening to fix and update all of the residents' Lifeline Medical Alert Systems. Lifeline was a device that allowed someone to push a single button in order to get medical help in case of an emergency. Everyone who lived at Mount Pleasant had one, and it had a piece of equipment connected to the phone line that sometimes required maintenance. Barbara thanked the Lifeline worker for letting her know, said she'd see them soon, hung up, and went back to the table. Barbara and her friend talked and ate a while longer and then finished up their dinner. They made plans to catch up again the following week, said good night, and then Barbara's friend headed out. Barbara cleared the table and started cleaning up the kitchen right away. She had been a neat freak her entire life and she couldn't stand having any kind of mess or clutter in her house. When she was finished cleaning, she poured herself a glass of iced tea, walked into the living room and sat down in her favorite chair. She put her drink down on a small table right by her chair, then she grabbed the remote and turned on the TV. But just as she began flipping through the channels, she heard a knock at her front door. Two days later, on the morning of October 30th, Detective Greg Myers of the Monroe Police Department took a call at his desk. The woman on the phone quickly introduced herself as Donna Wesselman, and Detective Myers thought she sounded very frantic. Donna said she had plans to meet up with her mother, Barbara Howe, later that day. But she'd been trying all morning and she couldn't get a hold of her. And this was not normal. Her mom always answered her cell phone, or at least called back within a few minutes. Donna said she talked to family and her mother's closest friends, and nobody had heard from Barbara in over a day. And her mom was 87 years old, so she was really worried that she might have fallen down in the house, gotten hurt, and now couldn't call for help. Detective Myers got Barbara's address and told Donna to meet him there. He would do a wellness check on her mother and make sure everything was okay. After Myers hung up, he headed right out to his car. As a veteran detective in a small police department, he was used to handling all kinds of cases. The Monroe PD didn't have things like missing persons or homicide divisions, so the few detectives on the force had to jump in wherever they were needed, including wellness checks like this one. As Myers drove past the town's quiet Main Street, he looked at all the old-fashioned shops that were all decorated for Halloween, and he thought it looked like something out of a classic 1950s horror movie. A few minutes later, Myers arrived at the Mount Pleasant Retirement Village, and he found Donna very anxiously waiting outside of her mother's house for him. After reassuring Donna that everything was okay, he'd go in there with her, Donna pulled out the key that she had to her mother's house, she walked up to the front door, and she opened it. The pair walked into Barbara's house, and immediately Donna called out to her mother. but there was no response. Now, at first glance, nothing looked out of place to Detective Myers. He didn't see any signs of forced entry or a struggle, which made total sense, because he believed Barbara had most likely fallen or gotten hurt while she was alone at the house. Detective Myers and Donna quickly searched every room in the house, but there was no sign of Barbara anywhere. But when they came back into the TV room, Donna noticed a glass on a small table, and she pointed at it and she had this frightened look on her face. Myers didn't understand. It was just a half-empty glass of what looked like iced tea. But Donna said her mother had to be one of the neatest people alive. She would never leave a half-empty glass on the table like that. Detective Myers glanced around the room. Other than the iced tea, he didn't see any other indications that Barbara had been home recently. So he asked Donna if her mother still drove. And she said, yes, she did. All the time. Myers led Donna back outside. And as soon as she was out there, she said, suddenly realized something else was off. Her mother's prized red Cadillac was gone. Detective Myers quickly shifted his focus from the house to the missing car. He now worried that Barbara might have driven off the road, or maybe gotten into some kind of car accident. She could have been injured and trapped in the car somewhere for almost two days now. He told Donna to go home and wait for his call. In the meantime, he'd issue a Bolo, a B on the lookout call for Barbara's Red Cadillac. This would go to law enforcement departments all over the area. Myers got in his car and immediately called in the Bolo. He also reached out to the Ohio State Police because he knew his department just did not have the resources to carry out a full-scale search for Barbara. And since she'd possibly been missing now for almost 48 hours, he needed all the help he could get, and he needed it fast. Two days later, on November 1st, Detective Meyer sat at. at his desk, desperately hoping for some kind of lead on Barbara or her missing car. He'd stayed in regular contact with local, county, and state law enforcement agencies, all of whom were aiding in the search. But so far, nobody had found anything. He had also continued to update Barbara's daughter, Donna, about the whole situation, and he'd begun receiving regular phone calls from Barbara's granddaughter, Barbie, who was a young adult. In fact, Barbie had become kind of relentless, asking for regular updates and wanting specific details of the police search. Myers knew Barbara's family was upset and panicked, of course, and they had every right to want answers from the police. But right from the get-go, something about these calls from Barbie just seemed off to him. Still, at this point,