Fan Favorite - "The Watercooler"

MrBallen Podcast: Strange, Dark & Mysterious Stories

In a chilling true crime story from 1986, Julie Williams, a newly independent woman adjusting to life after her children left home, collapse

Key takeaways

• Julie's death was not a medical emergency but a calculated murder orchestrated by her husband.
• Lewis used his wife's ID to access the office and staged evidence to mislead investigators.

Main topics

• Domestic murder
• Cyanide poisoning

Notable quotes

Nobody would ever suspect that the contents of that plain box would soon help them carry out this very bizarre plot they'd had running through their head for months.

Conclusion

Lewis Harris was convicted of first-degree murder and sentenced to lif

Transcript preview

Speaker 1 (0:00) Today's episode is a fan favorite. The audio in the story has been remastered for today's episode. On a morning in early 1986 in Arizona, someone sat hunched over a desk, furiously writing a letter. And almost every line of this letter included a direct threat of violence this person was going to inflict on the recipient. They kept on writing, saying every horrible thing that they wanted to do. Finally, when they were done, they read the letter over. It was explicit and terrifying, just as they'd hoped. They put the letter down, then glanced over at a cardboard box sitting on the floor, and they smiled. Nobody would ever suspect that the contents of that plain box would soon help them carry out this very bizarre plot they'd had running through their head for months. But before we get into that story, if you're a fan of the Strange, Dark, and Mysterious delivered in story format, then you've 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 get a hold of the Follow Buttons house keys and swap them out for random fake keys. Okay, let's get into today's story. On the morning of Monday, March 24th, 1986, 46-year-old Julie Williams finished up getting ready for work in her bedroom in Mesa, Arizona. And as she did, she couldn't stop smiling. When she was done, she took a final look in the mirror, then grabbed her purse and headed outside to her car. And as she made her 20-minute morning commute to the city of Tempe, where her office was, she saw other people heading to work. And she saw businesses and shops opening up. And this made her smile just keep getting bigger. Julie had been working as a secretary at an insurance agency for the past several months, and she actually loved going in every day. It wasn't that she always dreamed of working in insurance or anything like that, but for the first time in years, Julie had started to feel a real sense of purpose and peace at her job. Because Julie had dedicated most of her life to this point to being a mother to her three daughters. She'd stayed at home in California where she'd lived while the girls were growing up. She stayed home so she could look after them and cook them dinners and just be there for them all the time and give them the best life they possibly could have. Julie's daughters were everything to her. Now, Julie would not have traded that time with her daughters for anything in the world. She didn't regret it at all. But now, her daughters were grown up. They were married and even beginning families of their own. Once all three of them had officially moved out of the house, Julie really struggled. She didn't really know how to live without them. It was like now that she was an empty nester, she didn't know what to do. And to make matters worse, following her kids leaving, she and her husband got divorced. So she really was beginning to feel lost and alone. But Julie had decided she would just have to make some major changes to basically save her life. And so she had moved from California to Arizona, where one of her daughters lived, and she had set out to start the next phase of her life, which she was determined to make a happy one. Speaker 1 (3:23) Just before 8 a.m., Julie turned off a road in Tempe and pulled into the parking lot of a large office building that housed several businesses, including the insurance company where she worked. She parked her car and headed to the front door. She pulled her magnetic ID badge out of her purse and swiped it across the card reader that was just to the side of the door. She heard the lock click open, so she walked inside and headed down a hallway to her company's office. This particular branch of this insurance company was rather small. Julie was one of only five employees there. But this small office had played a major part in helping her start this new phase of her life. Julie liked the job and got along well with the few other people she worked with. But most importantly, working here had helped Julie realize she could be independent and that she could have goals for herself that had nothing to do with taking care of other people. And this realization had already inspired Julie to do other things on her own. She'd started making new friends and going out with them on the weekends, and she'd become an active member in her church. Inside the office, Julie said hello to a couple of the other employees who'd also just arrived. And at some point, one of her co-workers named Deborah Gresham waved to her and came over. And the two women began chatting about their weekends as they headed to the break room to put on a pot of coffee before beginning the workday. Speaker 1 (4:43) But just a few minutes later, Julie's co-worker, Debra, rushed out of the break room with a concerned look on her face. She saw Julie running down a hallway, and she called after her if Julie needed help. But Julie didn't respond. The other three employees saw and heard Debra calling out, and they immediately got up from their desks and came over to see what was going on. But Debra just shook her head like she didn't even understand what was happening. She said that she and Julie were talking in the break room making coffee, and then all of a sudden, Julie said she felt sick and dizzy and just took off running down the hallway towards the bathroom. Debra said Julie looked really bad, like something was genuinely wrong with her. From the hallway, Debra continued to call out to Julie to see if she needed anything, but she didn't get any response. So she and another female employee went into the women's bathroom. And when they stepped inside, they immediately began to panic. Because through the crack under one of the bathroom stall doors, they could clearly see Julie slumped over on the floor. Immediately, Debra and the other woman ran to the stall, but they couldn't get it open. And so the other employee, so not Debra, she dropped to the floor and crawled under the bathroom stall door. And when she actually got a good look at Julie, she immediately shouted to Debra to call 911. Speaker 1 (6:06) About 15 minutes later, Officer Sue Scoville of the Tempe Police Department was driving through the city in her cruiser when she got a message from dispatch. A woman had been found unresponsive inside of a bathroom in a nearby office building. There wasn't much information other than that, but dispatch said paramedics were already on the way. Officer Scoville said she'd head right over to the office building, then she turned and hit the gas. Speaker 1 (6:32) As Scoville drove, she began to run through a series of statements in her head, like she was repeating some kind of mantra. And what she was saying to herself was basically every step she had been trained to take when she arrived on the scene. Because Officer Scoville was not experienced. She was actually a rookie cop. And even though there was really no expectation that she would fully understand what she was walking into, I mean, she didn't, and nobody would, she still wanted to make sure that when she got there, she followed procedure and did everything just right. So, as Scoville sped towards the office building, she kept repeating those steps over and over, and then when she arrived, she jumped right into action. Scoville walked into the big business building and made her way over to the insurance agency. And there, at the door, she saw four employees, and all of them looked like they were completely in shock. Just before Scoville had arrived, she'd received word that paramedics had arrived at the scene and taken the woman who had collapsed to the hospital. And so for all Scoville knew, this woman might have just had a heart attack or some other medical emergency. But in the office, Scoville cycled through the steps she would need to take in her head once again and then began taking those steps. She asked the employees who the woman was who'd collapsed and exactly what had happened that morning prior to calling 911. Debra said the woman who had been taken to the hospital was Julie Williams, a secretary in the office. Debra said Julie had arrived at work that morning at about 8, like she always did. Officer Scoville asked if Julie had seemed okay when she first got there. Had she seemed sick or maybe looked like she was physically struggling in any way? But Debra just shook her head. She said no, Julie seemed fine. They'd talked about their weekends and gone to the break room together. But then Julie took a sip of water, got this weird look on her face, and told Debra not to drink any. Then, before they could do anything else or say anything else, Julie said she felt sick and turned and ran out to the bathroom. Scoville took down some notes and then asked Deborah to lead her to the break room. The break room was a small, brightly lit room with a sink, a refrigerator, a lunch table, a coffee station, and a water cooler. Officer Scoville walked over to the water cooler. It looked like any normal water cooler in a typical office break room, but she already had a hunch. She asked if anybody else had had a cup of water that morning from this water cooler. And when she said that, Deborah had this really surprised look on her face like she'd completely forgotten something huge, and she said, me. I got water earlier. But as soon as I tasted it, it just tasted strange, and so I had spit it out and dumped the water down the drain. Officer Scoville didn't waste any time. She told Deborah to