Detail in the Dark (PODCAST EXCLUSIVE EPISODE)

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One evening in the summer of 1998, homicide detective Danny Payne sat in a dark room inside of a Tennessee suburb police station.

He was focused on a TV screen where some surveillance footage was playing.

Now, the recording was bad quality and blurry and pixelated, but even still, it was clear what the camera was pointing at.

It was a McDonald's, and the time time of the footage was clearly at night.

On the screen, Payne could see the shape of a person moving towards the restaurant door, and then this person disappeared inside.

Now, the video was too low quality to make out any identifying details of this person, but the person really wasn't what Payne was watching.

Instead, he was focused on a car parked at the far end of the McDonald's parking lot.

Payne had seen this video at least 30 times, but he'd never actually noticed this car before.

And now that he saw it, he realized nothing in this case was what he thought it was.

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 tell the follow button to get in real close because you have a secret you want to tell them and go right up next to their ear like you're going to whisper something and then scream directly into their ear canal.

Okay, let's get into today's story.

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Around 2.30 a.m.

on November 4th, 1997, 49-year-old Delma Ramsey slid her keys into the lock of the McDonald's in the suburb of Germantown, Tennessee.

Delma was still groggy from having just woken up, but she could do this opening procedure in her sleep.

She'd been working this shift every weekday for over 20 years, so she barely even had to think as she opened up the door, slipped inside, then used her keys to lock it up again behind her.

It was company policy that the doors remained locked whenever the restaurant was closed.

But Delma had always felt like the intense security measures here were sort of unnecessary in Germantown.

It was a really safe city just outside of Memphis, and they really didn't have much crime.

But if it was important to McDonald's, it was important to Delma.

Delma was this McDonald's opening assistant manager, and she loved her job, which she never would have guessed she'd be saying now when she began working there over two decades ago.

At the time, she'd just been bored and looking for something to do.

She didn't have any kids, and her husband Dennis worked a lot.

But now, McDonald's was like her whole life.

She hadn't just found a career, she'd found a whole second family, between her coworkers and the regulars that she saw every morning.

So, this job was not just a source of income, it was a source of happiness for Delma, and she took it really seriously.

After getting inside the building, Delma hurried over to a security system panel and punched in a code, which deactivated the alarm.

She then took her coat off and straightened her McDonald's apron as she headed towards the back office.

But as she passed through the kitchen to get there, she heard something.

It was a bunch of loud yowling noises.

They were coming from outside, right behind a door that led to a back alley.

And Delma suddenly felt very awake, because hearing these sounds made her angry.

It meant almost definitely that a local couple named Ted and Lisa were in that back alley feeding the stray cats again.

And this was a major headache for Delma because these stray cats would get into the McDonald's dumpsters and they yowled and they had fleas.

Delma had already reached out to Animal Control once before about these cats, but this couple kept putting food out, so the cats just kept coming back.

And so, Delma considered right now going outside to see if the couple was still there.

But she decided against it.

She really didn't like confrontation, and based on her past interactions with Ted, she knew it would just turn into a huge fight.

Instead, she just carried on with her morning.

She headed to the restaurant's tiny office, where the safe was.

This office was more like a closet than an office, but it had enough room for Delma to sit inside and count out the money that was in the safe to put into the registers.

And this process today was pretty easy, since the other manager, Kareem Collier, had closed up last night and had made sure all the cash was neatly organized and accounted for.

It was around 3 a.m.

when Delma was finally done.

She turned away from the safe and reached for the office phone.

It was time to call and wake up one of her employees, Emma Owens, so she could make it to the McDonald's in time for her 4 a.m.

shift.

So Delma dialed and then waited for Emma's voice on the other end.

And when she groggily picked up, Delma told her it was go time, then she hung up.

Delma made this wake-up call every single morning that Emma worked.

And by this point, it was more a tradition than an actual necessity.

Emma was about 10 years older than Delma, but they were best friends, more like family really than co-workers.

In fact, Delma had even gotten close to Emma's actual family, including her two grandsons, Maurice Lane and Robert Evans, who'd actually worked at the McDonald's for a while before moving to Illinois.

This really was what Delma loved about this job, the community.

Delma didn't have much family of her own since her mom and brother lived out of state and she barely saw her husband, Dennis.

Delma puttered around the McDonald's getting things ready until about 4 a.m., at which point she heard a knock on the door at the south side of the building, where all employees entered during off hours.

That meant Emma and the other morning server, Douglas Powell, must have arrived.

So Delma straightened her apron once again and made sure her uniform was just right.

She was the leader of the shift, so she always wanted to make sure she looked polished and capable.

Then, when she was ready, she headed over to let them in.

The shift wound up being uneventful, and before Delma knew it, nine hours had passed and she was back in her Pontiac, making the 10-mile journey home to the nearby town of Collierville.

Delma parked and went inside the house to find it empty and quiet, like it usually was.

Delma's husband of 31 years, Dennis, was in construction, and he was usually gone when Delma came home from her shift.

Sometimes they'd go a full week without even seeing each other.

Dennis's long shifts used to bother Delma way back before she started at McDonald's, but now she had her plate full at the restaurant, so she was simply too busy to feel lonely.

After settling in, Delma made herself some food, called her mom who lived in Michigan, then caught up on some reading.

And it wasn't long before it was time to turn in.

After all, she had to be up by 2 a.m.

again to get to her shift on time.

The next morning, November 5th, just before 2.20 a.m., Delma walked up to the side door of the McDonald's like she always did with a ring of keys in her hand.

And, just like always, she unlocked the door, went inside, locked it behind her, and then deactivated the alarm.

Delma then took off her coat and she began adjusting her apron as she started walking towards the back office.

However, something caught her eye, and she stopped.

There was a figure standing at the window of the McDonald's right by the door she had just entered from.

For a second, Delma was startled.

But then the figure knocked on the glass and Delma realized who it was.

And when she did, she broke into a wide smile.

She was surprised, but very happy to see this person, and she went over immediately, unlocked the door again, and invited them inside.

Delma spent the next half hour chatting happily with her unexpected visitor.

She did this until about 3 a.m., at which point she went to the office to make her regular phone call to Emma.

After telling Emma that it was time to get up, she hung up the phone and that's when she heard her visitor say something from behind her.

15 minutes later, Delma's friend and employee, Emma Owens, was getting dressed when she heard her phone ring again.

It actually spooked her.

Nobody would be calling her this early except Delma, who she'd already spoken to.

And so Emma went over and picked it up, expecting to hear Delma's voice because who else would be calling her?

But instead of hearing her friend's voice, nobody said anything.

Instead, Emma heard this weird sound on the other end.

It sounded almost like gurgling.

Emma demanded to know who was calling, but whoever it was just kept making this gurgling sound.

Emma felt annoyed because to her, this clearly must be a prank call.

And it just felt really obnoxious for someone to do this to her so early in the morning.

So she slammed the receiver down and looked over at her clock.

If she didn't get moving soon, she was going to be late.

Around 4 a.m., Emma drove into the lot of the McDonald's and pulled into a space.

Like always, Delma's white Pontiac was already there, parked on the south side of the building.

When Emma got out and walked over to the employee entrance, she saw the other morning server, Douglas, had just arrived too.

So, together, they knocked on the door and then waited.

But Delma did not come to unlock the door and let them in.

And so after a minute or two, Emma walked walked over to a window and looked inside.

But she didn't see Delma anywhere.

Douglas suggested that maybe Delma could be in the basement getting restock items and just couldn't hear them.

Emma nodded, but inside she's thinking, Delma would not lose track of time like this.

She's always here at 4 a.m.

to let us in.

Why wouldn't she be here now?

After knocking a few more times and still not getting an answer from Delma, Emma started to feel nervous.

This had never happened before.

Delma always came to the door.

And so Emma decided she needed to do something other than just standing here, because, you know, who knows, maybe something's wrong.

So she went back to her car, turned it on, and just began driving around the McDonald's a few times and beeping her horn the whole time, you know, so that maybe if Delma was inside and distracted, she would certainly hear this and come outside to see what was going on.

But Delma still didn't come out.

And so at this point, Emma just felt like something has to be wrong here.

Finally, after about 10 minutes, Douglas decided to just go home, and Emma drove away too.

But unlike Douglas, Emma was not going home.

She was going to find a phone because she knew she had to call the police.

A few minutes later, at 4.23 a.m., two officers pulled up to the McDonald's in their cruiser, and right away they noticed the restaurant was quiet, dark, and deserted, which was not how either of them were used to seeing it.

This McDonald's was a favorite for cops who worked the graveyard shift since it was one of the only places that opened up at 5 a.m.

So they'd both been there plenty of times and they knew from experience that there was always a whole bunch of activity inside the McDonald's in the hour leading up to opening.

So the idea that it's shut down this close to opening didn't make any sense.

But the officers did understand from the 911 call that apparently there was some sort of issue with the employee of this McDonald's who was supposed to be opening up the store.

So the officers hurried up to the front entrance, but they found the double doors were locked.

And when the officers knocked and called out that they were police, there was no answer from inside.

So, they began shining their flashlights through the windows to see who was inside, but they didn't have a clear view of the whole restaurant.

So, they went around the side of the building to keep looking for a way in.

As they circled the perimeter, they kept peering through the restaurant's big glass windows, trying to see anybody inside or anything of note, but there was nothing.

It just seemed like a quiet, abandoned restaurant, until they got to the drive-through.

There, when they actually looked through the drive-thru window, they saw a woman, and she was lying motionless and bloody on the floor of the kitchen.

They couldn't tell if she was alive or dead, and they couldn't just climb through the drive-thru window because they couldn't open it.

But even just from the outside, they could tell that whatever happened to this person, it had not been an accident.

And so the officers got on their radios to call for an ambulance and for backup.

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About a half an hour later, at around 5 a.m., Detective Danny Payne walked up to the McDonald's, which was now crowded with officers, crime scene technicians, and also yellow tape.

Payne already knew the basics.

There had been some sort of violent attack on a woman identified as Delma Ramsey, the assistant manager of the McDonald's who had the morning shift.

Delma had been brutally beaten around her face and head, and she was alive and had been taken to the hospital, but it was looking unlikely that she'd survive.

Payne had been on the force for a while, but this was not the kind of case he or anybody on his squad had much experience with.

There hadn't been a homicide in Germantown in five years.

And while there had been a few robberies here and there, nobody had ever been seriously injured during one.

So, Payne knew there was going going to be a lot of attention on him and this case.

And he was already worried about the state of the crime scene.

Because Delma was alive when the police and EMTs got inside, crime scene protocols had gone out the window.

They had been focused entirely on just saving Delma's life, not preserving the scene, which of course they should be.

But it also meant that Payne was likely looking at a lot of contaminated evidence.

Payne walked into the McDonald's through a door on the north side of the restaurant, which he had been told was found unlocked.

That was actually how the officers were finally able to get inside and reach Delma.

When Payne got inside, he took a minute to just walk around the restaurant and look at the other doors and windows.

And all of them were intact, so there was no clear sign of forced entry anywhere.

But he also knew that very likely the north side door had been open, and very likely the attacker just used that to go inside.

The inside of the restaurant was the sort of typical layout you would expect out of a McDonald's, with the dining area in front of a fast food counter that led back to the kitchen.

And as Payne walked around, he couldn't see signs of disturbance at all.

So he headed behind the counter and into the back part of the kitchen where the drive-thru was.

Now, the space was pretty narrow, and it basically was just big enough for somebody to stand there and hand food out the window to whoever was going through the drive-thru.

And when he got back there, the first thing Payne noticed was the large pool of blood on the floor, the spot where Delma had been found lying.

And around this pool of blood were all these bloody footprints and discarded medical gauze.

And even though though he had expected this, Payne was still feeling kind of annoyed.

He would have virtually no idea what trace evidence came from the attacker or the paramedics.

And that was not the only issue.

The room, because it was a McDonald's, was also covered in grease, which Payne knew would make analyzing blood spatter almost impossible, since blood sort of beads up on greasy surfaces, which also makes trying to determine directionality of blood spatter really hard to read.

And while getting fingerprints would be something they could definitely do back here, the reality was, you know, a McDonald's was not like a living room where cops would only expect to find maybe a few individuals' prints.

You know, between workers and cleaners and service people and customers and now first responders as well, Payne knew he could be looking at at least a dozen different people's prints all over the place, if not more.

On the other side of the pool of blood was a small office with its door wide open and four empty cash drawers on the floor in front of it.

When Payne walked over to the office, he also saw there was an open safe inside, and the safe was empty.

And so at this point, Payne had a theory.

This was a robbery, and Delma was collateral damage.

There wasn't much else to look at inside the McDonald's.

The attack had been contained to that back kitchen area, which suggested the attack had happened really quickly.

Payne was about to head outside when he was approached by a man who introduced himself as Larry Graves, the security manager for the building.

He'd been sent to do an assessment of the damage, and as far as he could tell, there was about $1,200 missing from the safe.

Larry then rattled off a whole bunch of other things he felt like Payne should know, such as only managers, like Delma, had the combination to that safe.

And according to their system, the alarm was disarmed inside the building around 2.20 a.m., most likely by Delma, who was the only one on shift until 4 a.m.

Also, he told Payne that employees are told to keep all doors locked when the restaurant was not open.

After Larry said this, Payne realized Larry's information narrowed down the timeline significantly, which was huge.

It meant the attack likely had happened between 2.20 a.m.

when the alarm was disarmed and just before 4 a.m.

when the 911 call came in.

But it was actually the $1,200 that really stuck out to him.

It was kind of a small amount of money, given how truly badly Delma was beaten for it.

It could just mean that the robber didn't realize how much money was actually in the safe, and they just kind of attacked Delma because she was in the way.

But it it could also mean that getting the cash was not really their ultimate goal.

Perhaps hurting Delma was.

Payne thanked Larry, then headed outside to keep looking around.

Outside, officers in crime techs surrounded the exterior of the building, taking photos and dropping evidence markers.

One officer stood in a patch of grass between the McDonald's and the restaurant next door, holding a camera.

And when he saw Payne, he waved the detective over and pointed down at something in the grass.

Payne walked over and he looked down and he saw the officer had found a set of keys.

And clearly these keys had blood on them.

Payne guessed the keys, which were not car keys, they were like keys to a building, must be Delma's, since she was the restaurant opener and the paramedics had not mentioned finding any keys on her body.

But the fact that these keys were outside and Delma was inside meant her attacker must have taken these keys from her and thrown or dropped them as they left.

And this was important, because it meant that the open door the police had found most likely had not just been left open by Delma like they initially thought.

Instead, the attacker must have taken Delma's keys after the attack to unlock the door from the inside in order to leave the restaurant.

Basically, following the attack, the keys got them out of the restaurant.

And so Payne immediately began to re-evaluate his entire theory of the case.

If Delma had not left the door open and there was no forced entry, that likely meant she let her attacker inside.

And this was huge because it meant that this attack slash robbery was not random.

And so Delma must have known her attacker and trusted them in order to allow them into the building before it was open.

And based on what Larry said, Delma was both the only one on shift and she knew the safe combo.

That told Payne, whoever attacked her very likely knew she'd be alone and that she would have access to the cache.

So likely the attacker did not just know Delma, they also knew McDonald's policy too.

And so, after thinking about this, Payne turned and jogged back into the restaurant to catch Larry before he left, because what he needed was a list of all the McDonald's employees who worked with Delma.

A few hours later, Payne was back at the station, hurrying towards an interrogation room.

He was moving fast because the day wasn't even halfway through, and already his entire investigation had changed again.

And that's because because he'd just gotten word from the hospital that Delma Ramsey had died from her injuries.

Payne was now officially the lead detective in a murder investigation.

But so far, he didn't have much to go on.

The crime scene text hadn't been able to lift any fingerprints or find any immediately useful pieces of evidence at the crime scene that would point to any one suspect.

The morning's canvas efforts had not revealed much either.

Even though this McDonald's was right in the middle of town, none of the employees at the businesses around it had seen or heard anything unusual that morning.

Most of them hadn't even been at work yet.

The only thing they had found was that the bank across the street from the McDonald's had an ATM at the front of the building.

And pretty much all ATMs have a built-in camera.

And this one did, and it happened to be pointed directly at the McDonald's.

Now, Payne had already seen the footage, which did clearly show someone arriving at the McDonald's just after Delma got there, and had also filmed the building during the time that Delma was most likely attacked.

But the video quality was terrible, and Payne couldn't make out any of this other person's features.

Even so, he could see that this other person had entered the McDonald's really quickly, which meant Payne had been right.

Delma let them inside and quickly.

So she clearly must have known them.

But this actually didn't necessarily narrow down the list of suspects very much, because from what Payne had heard so far, Basically every early bird in Germantown knew Delma.

She was very well liked in the community and a fixture at this McDonald's.

Even some of the officers knew her.

But the footage did give Payne one more clue.

The killer approached the restaurant on the south side of the building, which Payne had learned was where employees entered.

It could be a coincidence, or the killer was an employee or a former employee and had just naturally gravitated towards the entrance they were most familiar with.

Payne had already asked the security manager for a list of employees, so he was waiting on that.

And he had also already spoken with Delma's family, which basically was just her husband Dennis, and so he had been notified and was someone they would very likely need to speak to soon.

But for now, he was working the employee angle, and so he was on his way to speak with Emma Owen, who was one of Delma's co-workers and happened to be one of the last people to actually speak to Delma.

A few minutes later, Payne sat down across a table from Emma.

She was in her late 50s and seemed nervous, and so Payne tried to be as gentle as he could, but ultimately just had to come out and say it, that Delma was dead, and she clearly had been murdered.

When Emma heard this, her eyes filled with tears and she began shaking her head repeatedly, almost like she was trying to wake herself up.

And then she just blurted out something that was very surprising.

She said that she had made a mistake.

In a shaking voice, she explained that Delma had called her that morning at 3 a.m.

to wake her up like she normally did.

and she had sounded just fine.

Then about 15 minutes later, Emma's phone rang again.

And when Emma picked up, she heard a gurgling on the other end.

She said she thought it was a prank and it hadn't even occurred to her to check the caller ID.

It was so early in the morning and she didn't want to be late for work.

But now she wondered, you know, did that call have something to do with what happened to Delma?

Payne sat very still as the gravity of what Emma was saying hit him.

If the call she was describing did come from the McDonald's, it meant that Delma had likely called Emma during or immediately after the attack.

Maybe she had tried to call 911 but just hit redial, or maybe she had called Emma on purpose in a panic.

And if the call really was Delma, it also shrank the window of time the murder could have occurred even further.

Delma was alive and well at 3 a.m.

when she first called Emma, and then less than 15 minutes later, she was in trouble.

Payne told Emma that yes, the call could mean something.

He asked if he could send an officer to her house to look at her caller ID.

She nodded, but then she burst into tears again and explained this was not just some co-worker's death.

Delma was like her family.

They'd worked that morning shift together for the last five years.

Delma had even taken her grandsons under her wing and given them jobs there before they moved to Illinois.

This was just a huge loss.

Payne took all of this down, and then he had Emma walk through her entire timeline of that morning.

Through her arrival at McDonald's with another employee named Douglas Powell and sort of what they did when Delma didn't come to the door.

And Emma would say, you know, they basically just stood at at the employee entrance.

And then Emma said she did drive around the building, but she didn't look closely enough because she didn't see Delma inside.

And they also didn't know another door was open because they didn't walk around.

Pretty quickly, Payne decided that Emma was not a great suspect.

She had no obvious motivation, and she also was there with another employee who could potentially back up her story.

And also, Delma's injuries were so severe that Payne sort of doubted Emma, who was not particularly big, was capable of even inflicting them.

However, Emma's story about that second phone call she got that morning was weighing on Payne.

Payne was pretty sure that Delma's killer had arrived at the McDonald's around 2.22 a.m., as that ATM security footage showed.

The fact that Delma had called Emma at 3 a.m., sounding normal, meant that Delma's killer had been inside the restaurant for over half an hour with Delma before they attacked her.

So the killer really had to be somebody Delma not only knew, but knew pretty well.

And so Payne felt like now was the time to speak to Delma's husband.

About an hour later, a very red-eyed and disoriented 50-year-old man named Dennis Ramsey arrived at the station.

When Payne sat down with him in the interrogation room, Dennis stumbled his way through some general pieces of information that Payne already knew.

You know, that Delma had worked at the McDonald's for over 20 years, that everybody loved her, and her customers were basically her second family.

But Dennis just kept losing his train of thought and starting over and over again.

Payne's gut told him that Dennis seemed genuinely distraught here and could even be in shock.

However, that didn't make him innocent.

So as Dennis kind of rambled on and on, Payne checked him out, looking up and down, looking for any marks on his hands or arms, any scratches or cuts which he would expect a killer to have after pummeling someone as badly as Delma had been.

But he didn't see any of these marks on Dennis.

Dennis seemed like he was trying his best to be cooperative.

So Payne took a risk and just was very blunt.

He asked Dennis where he was between 2 and 3.30 a.m.

that morning.

Dennis blinked at him looking surprised and then just said he was sleeping.

Delma always left before he got up in the morning, but realistically, he wouldn't have noticed anyways, since they slept in separate rooms.

He said he actually hadn't seen her in days.

And at this, Payne tensed up.

Sleeping in separate rooms could mean marriage problems, and a husband claiming he was asleep during the murder of his wife was not a good alibi.

But before Payne could ask him anything else, Dennis suddenly had this alarmed look come over his face, and Payne sort of knew why.

It was clear that Dennis had come out of his shock enough to realize he was now a suspect.

It was like a switch had flipped.

Dennis stopped stuttering and repeating himself and started saying forcefully that he had nothing to do with Delma's murder.

He said he would answer any questions the police had because he had nothing to hide.

And Payne said that was great to hear, because what he'd really love for him to do is take a lie detector test.

The following afternoon, a little over 24 hours after Delma's murder, Payne sat in his office looking at a document he had just been handed.

It was the autopsy report, and it was horrifying.

Now, Payne already knew, as everybody else did in this case, that Delma clearly had been savagely beaten, so he was not surprised to find out she had fractures all over her body and face.

However, the autopsy also said that in addition to being beaten, Delma also had been strangled, apparently with the strings from her McDonald's apron.

The physical beating already indicated extreme and emotional violence, but also strangling her with an apron was overkill.

To Payne, this indicated either a very personal kind of hatred or panic.

And so now, Payne was starting to wonder if the robbery really was just an attempt to cover up the murder, or maybe just a bonus on top of the murder.

Because it seemed like whoever had taken the money was furious with Delma.

Delma's husband, Dennis, was the person closest to Delma, at least at first glance, and it seemed possible their marriage could be on the rocks.

Plus, he had no alibi.

The police now knew exactly when the killing occurred because they had confirmed on Emma's caller ID that that call with the gurgling sounds had come from the McDonald's.

And so during that 15 minutes between the call to Emma and the gurgling call, Dennis had only his word that he was asleep, nobody to back that up.

However, Dennis had taken and passed a number of polygraph tests, which, you know, for Payne was enough to basically eliminate him and turn his attention back to his previous theory, a fellow employee.

Payne had gotten a list of over 100 current and past employees of this McDonald's, and he'd already worked through some of them.

Emma, her grandsons, Douglas Powell, and the night manager Kareem Collier.

But so far, they'd all been eliminated.

And so, since Payne did not seem to be getting anywhere with the evidence he had, he decided it was time to turn to the public for some information.

The following day, Detective Payne and his team sorted through tips from a Crime Stopper's phone line, which is a fully anonymous tip line.

Payne had set it up in the hopes that somebody from the community would come forward with information about the murder.

And Payne was excited to see that leads were already pouring in.

And some of them appeared to be promising, like there were two former employees with criminal records who a tipster thought could be capable of violence.

And so Payne and his team quickly picked up these former employees for an interrogation, but quickly realized there was no physical evidence to link them to Delma.

Other tips came from concerned citizens or residents reporting suspicious neighbors or lingering vehicles, and one by one, Payne and his team looked into all of them, but one by one, they all went nowhere.

10 days after the murder, somebody called in to claim that a waitress at a local restaurant had been taking credit for killing Delma, and on top of that, Payne discovered this waitress was affiliated with a local gang.

But when Payne actually interviewed her, it was clear she didn't know Delma at all and didn't know any of the specifics of the crime.

And so it wound up being a total waste of their time.

At the same time they were running down all these tips, Payne and his team kept going through that list of McDonald's employees, interviewing everybody who still lived in the area.

But every employee had an alibi.

And as the days turned into weeks, Payne started to feel like instead of getting closer to an answer, he just kept on getting farther away.

In between all the tips and the interviews, Payne would read and reread his files and he would re-watch the ATM footage over and over to see if he missed anything.

But by the spring of 1998, after more than six months during which Payne had interviewed 246 people, he still had nothing.

So that April, he and some members of his team just started all over.

They sat in his office and poured over the original case file from the beginning.

And when they did this, they actually did find something huge.

Two weeks after Delma had been killed, someone had called in a tip to the Crime Stoppers hotline.

But because there had been so many tips, this one had sort of gotten lost in the shuffle.

But the tipster said that Delma, who everybody claimed was universally adored, actually had two enemies, a couple named Ted Lawrence and Lisa Franklin.

The couple often hung out behind the McDonald's early in the morning to feed stray cats that lived there.

And apparently, Delma had been trying to get them to stop.

This had created tension between the three of them to the point where Ted actually had public fights with Delma.

One time, he had actually approached her during her shift and screamed about utensils being missing from his order.

Now, this information certainly suggested that, you know, Ted and Lisa did not like Delma, but could they really have brutally murdered her over a bunch of cats?

When Payne looked further into Ted and Lisa, he learned that Lisa ran a soap and lotion store that was about a half block from the McDonald's, and he also found a Honda CRX was registered to Ted Lawrence.

Payne immediately thought back to that ATM footage he had watched countless times and realized maybe he'd missed something.

Payne jumped up and sprinted down the hall to the evidence locker.

Moments later, Payne was staring at the TV screen, once again watching the grainy ATM video surveillance from the night Delma was killed.

Only this time, he was not looking at the McDonald's or that blurry figure he had been so sure was the killer.

Instead, he was staring at the parking lot.

Because around 2 a.m., just minutes before Delma had arrived for her shift, at the far edge of the lot was a Honda.

Payne sat back, feeling totally stunned.

Finally, he had a good suspect.

A few weeks later, 31-year-old Ted and 47-year-old Lisa were brought in and split up to be interrogated.

Payne first sat down with Ted, who just seemed frustrated at being there.

His arms were crossed and his eyes behind a pair of glasses were narrowed with annoyance.

Payne had guessed that Ted could be difficult.

The tip-line info had mentioned his big fight with Delma, plus also Payne had spent the last few weeks looking into the couple and had learned more about Ted, including the fact that Ted had been at this animal control public forum two days before Delma was killed.

That gathering was to discuss euthanizing all those cats that gathered behind the McDonald's, and Ted was very vocally opposed.

However, the detective felt like Ted would cooperate once he understood the evidence that they had.

So Payne just told him about the surveillance footage, and then waited for Ted to talk.

But all Ted did was nod and then in a very short voice, he said they were there the morning of the murder to feed the cats.

But he said he and Lisa always did that and did not see anything strange.

And they left by 2.15 a.m.

When he heard this, Payne almost smiled because while it wasn't a lie, it was close.

Payne's team had managed to pull some additional surveillance footage from a business that was just 200 yards from the McDonald's.

And that additional footage showed Ted and Lisa's car car at that other business at 3.20 a.m.

So even if they had left McDonald's before the murder, they were still clearly in the immediate area during the time Delma was attacked.

But when confronted with this additional footage, Ted seemed totally unfazed.

And also the rest of Payne's questions just really didn't go anywhere.

So finally, Payne just ended the interview with Ted with a request.

He asked him to take a polygraph.

Now, Ted didn't seem happy about it, and Payne kind of redded himself to get an earful.

but instead, to Payne's surprise, Ted agreed.

After that, Payne spoke to Lisa, whose story lined up with Ted's for the most part.

And so, Payne ultimately let the two of them go, because he didn't have enough evidence to keep them there.

However, he was determined to find that evidence.

Payne thought Lisa might be involved somehow, maybe she was a witness to the murder, but he didn't think she was the actual killer.

Delma had been attacked by somebody who clearly was much stronger than her.

And since there was only one person seen on that ATM footage going inside the building, Payne didn't think it was possible that both Ted and Lisa went inside.

So he felt confident that single person must be Ted.

And so Payne could not wait to see the results of Ted's polygraph.

It would take several months to get Ted to actually sit for his polygraph.

And when he did, he failed it.

So that October, almost a year after Delma was murdered, Payne was finally given the go-ahead to search the couple's home.

He and a team of officers went inside the home, ultimately taking the couple's computer, carpet fiber samples, and cat hair samples.

And at some point during the hours-long search, one of Payne's officers called him over to look at a pile of discarded, dirty clothes.

And in it was a pair of pants with what appeared to be a large bloodstain.

Payne felt an immediate rush of excitement.

Now, they would have to obviously test the blood to see whose it was, and they still had the Honda and Lisa's business to search as well.

But based on what he was seeing already, Payne was sure they had just found Delma's killer.

A few days later, though, Payne was sitting at his desk staring at a piece of paper with gut-wrenching disappointment.

It was the results from a lab test on those bloody pants.

According to the analysis, the blood was not human blood, so it couldn't be Delma's.

Payne felt totally deflated, because it would turn out that blood was like the last bit of hope he'd had.

After looking at the Honda and Lisa's store, they hadn't found anything that tied Ted and and Lisa to the scene of the crime.

Now, this didn't make them innocent, but Payne would need to find a lot more evidence if he wanted to make any charges stick.

So once again, Payne found himself reaching for Delma's case file and rereading all the evidence he had.

He was more sure than ever that Delma had to have been killed by somebody she knew.

However, the two people closest to Delma, Emma and her husband Dennis, weren't very realistic suspects.

Neither had a motive, and while at least Dennis seemed like he could have been physically capable enough to carry out such an attack, he had passed multiple polygraph tests.

Then there were Ted and Lisa.

Delma did know them, although she didn't like them.

They were both in the area at the time of the murder, they had motives, and Ted had failed his polygraph.

But there was no physical evidence that directly tied them to the crime.

Plus, it was hard to imagine Delma happily letting either of them inside the McDonald's and then what, hanging out with them for 30 to 40 minutes before they attacked her?

It just didn't make sense.

And so Payne sighed and closed the file.

He couldn't shake the feeling that Germantown's first homicide in five years was probably about to go cold.

And for the next 18 months, that is exactly what happened.

But then, one morning in May of 1999, Payne was sitting at his desk looking over a newer case file when an officer charged in saying that somebody had just called the Crimestoppers tip line about Delma.

Now, this person didn't give their name and they were vague about how they had gotten their information, but they were apparently sure that they knew exactly who had killed Delma.

And when Payne heard what this tipster had to say, his jaw dropped.

The information was so utterly confounding that Payne almost couldn't wrap his head around it.

He knew he would have to look through the case file before he even considered it.

So he walked quickly down the hallway to where all the files were kept and he grabbed Delma's.

Then he flipped through it till he found what he was looking for, which was a report on one specific interview that was conducted in the very early days of the investigation.

And Payne just stared at this interview for a long, long time.

Because, as he was seeing now, there was something that the interview subject had said that could have solved the whole case right there if only Payne had thought to question it just a little bit harder at the time.

Based on Payne's investigation, a confession, video surveillance, and evidence found at the crime scene, here is a reconstruction of what police believe happened to Delma Ramsey in the early morning hours of November 5th, 1997.

Just after 3 a.m., the killer sat inside the McDonald's and watched Delma hang up the phone.

She had just called Emma to wake her up.

The killer's heart was beating fast because they knew that now they only had one hour before Emma arrived at the McDonald's.

The killer had spent the last 35 minutes or so just making small talk with Delma, who had been happy to see them.

They knew Delma liked them, and to be honest, they sort of liked Delma too.

But they really needed money.

And now they knew they had to act.

So that's when the killer stopped pretending to be at the McDonald's on some sort of friendly visit.

Instead, they suddenly and very firmly told Delma she needed to open the safe or give them the combo to it.

Delma turned and looked at them with a a very confused expression on her face and just said, no, which made the killer furious.

And that's when something inside the killer just snapped.

They lunged forward and hit Delma repeatedly and watched her grapple with the phone to try and call for help, but the killer just kept on attacking, even when they eventually heard Delma say the combo out loud.

You know, for a moment, the killer had been relieved, you know, maybe they could take the combo, get the money, and get out.

Then they realized in this moment, as they're still attacking Delma, that if they let her live, she'd be able to report them to the police.

And so this made the killer panic.

And since they hadn't brought a weapon with them, after beating her senseless, they began choking Delma with the closest thing they could find, which was her very own McDonald's apron.

And they choked her until she stopped moving.

Then when she was still, the killer walked over to the safe, opened it up, and grabbed the money inside of it.

Then they took Delma's keys from inside her pocket and ran to the exit they knew was the closest to the kitchen.

They used those keys to unlock the door before sprinting out into the back and they tossed the keys into the grass as they jumped into the car that was waiting for them.

Once they were in the car, they told their accomplice to go, get out of here.

Soon after they drove off, the killer counted out the cash and told their accomplice what they had done.

Then the two of them left Tennessee and drove to Illinois.

It would turn out, Delma's best friend Emma's two grandsons really had left and moved to Illinois.

But they had only moved after one of them, Robert Evans, had brutally murdered Delma Ramsey while the other, Maurice Lane, waited outside as a getaway driver.

Robert knew from working at the McDonald's that Delma would be alone in the early morning hours.

Delma had always treated him and his cousin Maurice like family, which was a connection he was counting on.

because he knew that Delma would likely let him into the restaurant before it was open.

Now, Robert didn't hate Delma, and he wasn't mad at her.

That was not why he savagely beat her and strangled her.

Instead, he was just a deeply disturbed and violent person.

After killing Delma and fleeing to Illinois, he would also stab a friend to death after they got in a fight over a car stereo.

Now, Emma Owens had told investigators about her grandsons, about how they had worked at this McDonald's, and they certainly knew Delma, but authorities didn't look into them because Emma had said they had moved to Illinois before the murder, which means either Emma lied to police about the timing of when they moved to Illinois, which we now know, followed the murder, or her grandsons had lied to Emma.

Robert was convicted of first-degree murder and aggravated robbery and sentenced to life without parole.

As for Maurice, he received 30 years in prison for his involvement.

As for Ted and Lisa, who took care of the stray cats, although they were once suspects in this murder case, they were publicly vindicated.

However, the damage was done.

Their lives were ruined by the suspicion around them.

It destroyed their marriage and their business, and Ted would eventually move back to Canada.

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.

Ballin podcast, Strange, Dark, and Mysterious Stories, is hosted and executive produced by me, Mr.

Ballin.

Our head of writing is Evan Allen.

Our head of production is Zach Levitt.

Produced by Jeremy Bone.

This episode was written by Kate Murdoch.

Research and fact-checking by Shelly Hsu, Samantha Van Hoos, Evan Beamer, Abigail Shumway, and Camille Callahan.

Research and fact-checking supervision by Stephen Eyre.

Audio editing and post-produced by Witt Lacasio and Cole Lacasio.

Additional audio editing by Jordan Stidham.

Mixed and mastered by Brendan Kane.

Production coordination by Samantha Collins.

Production support by Antonio Minata and Delena Corley.

Artwork by Jessica Klogston-Kiner.

Theme song called Something Wicked by Ross Bugden.

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