Death Of A Ladies' Man (PODCAST EXCLUSIVE EPISODE)

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One afternoon in January of 1998, a prosecutor for the state of Georgia sat in the very back row of seats in a courtroom where a divorce trial was unfolding.

Now, this prosecutor was not involved in this divorce case.

He handled murder trials.

But he had still come here today because he had gotten a very surprising phone call about an unsolved murder case he had worked on a year and a half earlier.

The caller had told him that the testimony in this divorce case could potentially solve that murder.

Now, in the courtroom, the prosecutor felt his heart rate pick up as the witness he had been waiting for finally took the stand.

And as soon as the witness began talking, the prosecutor knew he had just solved that murder.

But before we get into that story, if you're a fan of the Strange, Dark, and Mysterious delivered in story format, then you'd 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, on the next very hot day, offer the follow button a nice ice-cold cup of water.

Except don't tell them it's actually white vinegar.

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

It begins here.

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On August 7th, 1996, a 41-year-old entrepreneur named Lance Herndon woke up at 3.40 a.m.

to the sound of his alarm clock going off inside of his mansion in Roswell, Georgia.

The alarm was actually one of three alarms set to go off that morning.

The first was at 3.40, the second at 3.50, and the third at 4 a.m.

And this was actually how how every workday began for Lance.

He was the founder of an IT consulting company called Access Inc., and his borderline compulsive work ethic not only made him millions of dollars, but also it had made him a trailblazer for the black business community in Greater Atlanta.

His company, Access Inc., had actually been awarded the National Service Firm of the Year Award by President George H.W.

Bush.

President Clinton had honored Lance with the Minority Entrepreneur of the Year Award and had appointed him to the 1995 White House Conference on Small Business.

Lance sat up and slammed his hand down on the clock to stop the alarm, and then shut off the other two alarms so they wouldn't ring.

Then he threw aside his bedsheets and got up and walked over to the dresser to pull out some clothes.

On top of his dresser, he kept a sexy lingerie photograph of one of his girlfriends, a woman he'd been seeing for years named Kathy Collins.

Now, usually, when Lance saw this photograph, he would smile, but today, he flipped it face down so he wouldn't have to look at it.

He was going to have to break up with Kathy and he was not looking forward to it.

Lance and Kathy had been on again, off again since they first met three years ago, but they'd rekindled things for real about seven months ago and she had moved most of her stuff into his house.

But for Lance, this progression sort of made the whole thing feel too serious.

He sort of preferred to play the field.

In fact, at that very moment, he didn't just have this one girlfriend.

He had another steady girlfriend, a 27-year-old college student named Dion Baugh, and he was also interested in another woman that he had just met who worked as a school teacher.

Plus, he was also still dealing with the fallout from his divorce from his third wife, Janine Herndon, who he had a four-year-old son with.

Lance actually had to keep meticulous notes in his calendar just to keep all of this straight, and it was really starting to wear on him.

Plus, in addition to dumping Kathy, something he knew he needed to do soon, he was also considering dumping Dion as well, because she was the jealous type and he just felt like he didn't need the drama.

But for for now, Lance threw on a shirt and a pair of pants and then headed downstairs into his basement where he had a full working office set up for his IT company.

Every day, Lance's small staff of full-time employees, plus his assistant, came to this basement office to do all their work.

But they wouldn't actually arrive here for another four hours, which gave Lance plenty of time to get everything ready.

Lance sat down at his desk, hit the record button on a small tape recorder, and started dictating detailed lists of instructions for each of his employees.

Every morning, he would make these cassette tapes so that when his employees came in, they knew exactly what he wanted them to do, even if he had already gone out for the day, which he was doing more and more lately.

When Lance had first started Access Inc., he had pretty much worked exclusively on his business all the time and was never really out of the office.

But recently, business had not been going very well.

And so Lance's attention was now split between, you know, a growing list of problems and new ventures he was considering.

He hadn't told anybody the details, but Access Inc.

was in pretty big financial trouble.

At its peak, it had been valued at more than $3 million,

but now the business was heavily in debt and losing money.

Lance had tried to diversify by investing in a hip-hop club in downtown Atlanta, but that had failed, and now he was embroiled in a lawsuit with his former business partner.

Add all that to the alimony and child support that Lance was paying to his ex-wife, plus the lavish lifestyles he was funding for his various girlfriends.

And for the first time in his life, Lance was starting to worry about whether he could even hold everything together.

Lance finished the cassette tapes for his employees and left them on their desks.

Then he went back upstairs to get ready for his day.

By the time his workers actually started arriving at 8 a.m.

through the designated office side door, Lance was already halfway through his list of daily tasks in his calendar.

Which meant, by the time the late afternoon rolled around, Lance was free to leave his house and therefore his office and go to his mother's house to have dinner.

His grandmother, who was visiting from out of town, was going to be at this dinner, along with Lance's ex-wife and their son.

But despite wanting to see his family, Lance didn't stay for very long.

At around 8 p.m., he told his mother, his grandmother, his ex-wife, and his son that he had to get back to work.

Then he said goodbye and drove the five minutes back to his house.

When Lance pulled back into his driveway, he saw his secretary's light blue car parked in its usual spot, and he smiled.

His secretary was a woman named named Talana Carraway, and she was one of his closest friends.

They had been romantic in the past.

In fact, Lance's divorce was caused in part by the fact that his wife had found racy pictures he had of Talana.

But now, their relationship was purely platonic, and they both actually confided in each other about their respective love lives.

Talana worked another full-time job, so she typically only worked evenings for Lance.

Lance went in the office door and found Talana working her way through the list of tasks that he had outlined for her on her cassette tape.

Talana was very obviously happy to see him, and for a little while, the two of them just sat there chatting and catching up.

Talana was apparently having trouble with her partner, a guy named Jazz, and she complained about him a bit.

Lance actually knew Jazz because he had lent him some money, and he nodded sympathetically.

Lance told Talana that he was actually hoping for a fresh start in the romance department.

because he had another new woman, but this one he was really interested in.

He said she was a teacher and she was really nice, and he asked Talana if she would help him write her a card.

And like he knew she would, Talana just laughed.

Like the idea that the ex-girlfriend is now writing a card for the new girlfriend was just kind of comical to her.

But this was actually one of the things that Lance really liked best about Talana, and it's why their relationship continued to flourish.

She was just easygoing, unlike his various current girlfriends.

And so Talana, without any hesitation, helped write the card, and then Lance signed it.

As Lance stood up to head upstairs, Talana gestured for him to wait.

Then she handed him a couple slips of paper.

She said they were messages from his girlfriend Dion, who had called for him a couple of times while he was out.

At this, Lance groaned.

Dion was a lot to deal with.

A month earlier, she'd shown up at his house unannounced while Kathy was over.

Dion had seen Kathy through the window, and she had made such a scene that Lance actually had to call the police.

She actually had a court hearing about that incident tomorrow that Lance was supposed to go to.

Lance thanked Talana for the messages, and then he went upstairs to his bedroom to begin moving Kathy's things out of his closet.

About two and a half hours later, at around 10.30 p.m., Talana came upstairs and told Lance she'd see him tomorrow.

It was raining, so Lance made her promise to call him when she got home so he knew she was safe.

And she would do that around 11.30 p.m., and they actually chatted for another few minutes on the phone.

But at some point, Lance told Talana goodnight.

He could have talked to her for hours, but he knew that he didn't have long before his morning alarms would start going off.

The next morning, August 8th, at exactly 8 a.m., one of Lance's employees arrived at his house and unlocked the side office door.

And the first thing she noticed when she stepped inside was that Lance was not there.

This was weird because even on days where Lance left early, he was usually at his desk first thing in the morning.

But the employee figured that maybe Lance had an appointment.

So she went over to his calendar to check to see where he was, but sort of atypical for him, there was nothing listed listed for that day.

That was when she noticed the second thing, which was that Lance had not left her a cassette tape for the day.

And this was not just weird, it was completely unprecedented.

Lance had literally never not left her a tape.

And so the employee paged Lance, but he didn't answer.

So unsure what else to do, the employee just sat down and started to work.

About an hour later, at 9 a.m., another employee arrived, but there was still no sign of Lance.

The two employees paged him a few more times, but he still didn't answer.

And even though both of them considered going upstairs and just checking on him, neither of them felt comfortable doing that.

After all, the upstairs was Lance's house.

It just felt like an invasion of privacy.

Finally, at 10 a.m., so two hours after that first employee arrived, Lance's mother, who also worked at Access Inc., arrived at her son's house.

She had come in through the garage, and when she entered the office and the employees told her that Lance was still not there, she said that didn't make any sense because his car was in the garage.

So, the two employees waited in the office while Lance's mother went up to search the house.

And for a few minutes, the two employees down in the basement heard nothing.

The house was quiet.

They could just hear the sound of Lance's mother walking around upstairs.

But then, out of nowhere, they heard a scream.

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About 30 minutes later, around 10:30 a.m., Roswell Police Detective William Anastasio pulled up in front of a mansion that sat on a quiet cul-de-sac in a wealthy community in suburban Georgia.

The only thing dispatch had told him was that someone inside of this mansion had been killed.

Outside of the mansion, he could see there were police cruisers and ambulances on the street, and his sergeant and a few other investigators were standing in a cluster right near the front door.

He walked over to them, and the sergeant briefed him on what they knew so far.

The homeowner, Lance Herndon, had been found dead inside of his bed by his own mother after he had failed to show up for work in his basement office.

There were no signs of forced entry, and the crime scene itself appeared to be contained to the master bedroom.

Lance's employees had discovered that the office laptop was missing, but the rest of the house was filled with expensive electronics and jewelry that had not been touched.

The sergeant told Anastasio that uniformed officers were already canvassing the neighborhood and that Anastasio should take the lead in the investigation.

So Anastasio turned and walked inside the house and began going up the stairs to the master bedroom.

Outside the door to the bedroom, there was a uniformed officer whose job was to make sure nobody touched anything before the crime scene techs arrived.

And so Anastasio greeted him and told him he understood the protocol, but then he just stood there outside the doorway, you know, not interfering, but looking inside, you know, getting a first glimpse of the actual crime scene.

He could see Lance's body on the bed.

Lance was on his back, with his arms crossed over his chest, and he was naked.

Even from a distance, Anastasio could see that whoever had killed Lance had beaten him so badly in the face that his facial bones had basically collapsed inwards.

It was like someone truly bashed his head in.

But strangely, despite this, it didn't seem like there had been any sort of struggle in this room.

I mean, typically with a beating death, there was often a big fight between the victim and the assailant, which can create a very messy scene with furniture knocked over and everything messed around inside the room.

But from the looks of it, it didn't seem like Lance had fought back at all.

Like nothing was knocked over.

He was just laying there on his back on the bed with his head caved in.

And reinforcing the idea that this was not about money, Anastasio could clearly see on the dresser next to the body was a wallet, a stack of credit cards, and a folded up wad of cash.

And so despite the one missing laptop, you know, this didn't really appear to be a robbery.

And so as Anastasio went back down the stairs towards the office he had been told was located in the basement, he was thinking to himself that Lance must have known his killer.

This had to have been personal.

In the basement office, Anastasio found a police officer standing with a small cluster of very shocked-looking women.

One was Lance's grandmother, another was Lance's mother, and the other two were employees of Lance's company.

Anastasio spoke with each of them one by one.

And Lance's family, their general impression was they had no idea who would want to hurt Lance.

Lance's mother told Anastasio that, you know, Lance had just gone through a divorce, which could create some animosity, but he and his ex-wife had stayed on good terms, and in fact, just the night before, had had dinner together.

Lance's grandmother echoed a similar sentiment that, you know, Lance was this harmless guy, but she also had Alzheimer's and so couldn't really answer any of the questions, at least not credibly.

The other two women, the employees of Lance's company, they told a slightly different story to Anastasio.

They said there had been some, quote, shady people in the office recently, but when he pressed them for specifics, they said all they knew was that Lance was involved in some business disputes.

Just then, a uniformed officer opened the basement door and told Anastasio he'd better get outside.

The detective jogged outside, and there, at the foot of the long driveway, he saw a woman sitting in a car.

The uniformed officer told him that was Lance's ex-wife, Janine.

This was not what Anastasio had expected, and he would have preferred to talk to the ex-wife under more controlled circumstances, not suddenly at the crime scene.

But it was also an opportunity, because it was very likely that Anastasio would be the first person to tell her that Lance was dead.

And in a murder case, the ex-spouse is always a suspect.

And so Anastasio wanted to see how Janine reacted to the news of her ex-husband's murder.

So he walked down to her car.

And as he did, Janine got out of the car, looking panicked, and she told him that someone in the house had paged her.

She asked what was going on, but Anastasio, without saying anything, just gestured for her to come with him to his cruiser.

Once they were seated inside, he broke the news.

And as he did, he carefully watched her.

And Janine looked genuinely shocked.

She opened and then closed her mouth like she couldn't even think of what to say, and then her eyes filled with tears.

And then in a trembling voice, she asked Anastasio, what happened?

But Anastasio was not ready to share anything at this point.

So instead, he just asked Janine where she had been last night, and then waited to see if she got defensive or started stuttering.

But she didn't do either of those things.

She took a deep breath, and then told him she'd actually had dinner with Lance and his family the night before, and then after that, she went home.

Her new partner had come over and spent the night with her, and then that morning, she'd gotten up at 7 a.m.

to head to her side job as a house cleaner.

And then of of course at about 10.30 she'd received that page and here she was.

And that detail, that the ex-wife of an obviously very wealthy man was working as a cleaner, caught Anastasio's attention.

He wondered if she'd still be working as a cleaner after she received whatever life insurance payout he was certain was going to come her way.

But before he could ask her anything about her finances or her job, Janine blurted something out.

She said, my husband was a powerful man with a lot of enemies.

By the time Detective Anastasio finished his conversation with Janine, he had gone from having zero suspects to having six.

There was Janine herself, of course, but Anastasio had been surprised to learn that Lance had been seriously dating at least two other women, Kathy Collins and Dion Baugh, and that his secretary, Talana Caraway, was also a former girlfriend.

This meant that Janine, Kathy, Dion, and Talana all had potential motives to want Lance dead.

But Janine had actually been much more focused on the men who hated Lance.

She said that Lance had always talked about business rivals being jealous of his success.

And recently, he'd become embroiled in at least two lawsuits that Janine knew of, one with a former business partner over a hip-hop club and the other with a contractor who said he hadn't been paid yet.

Janine had heard that just yesterday, that contractor had actually shown up to a local music show looking for Lance.

And when he couldn't find him, apparently he was telling people that, you you know, Lance didn't know what he was capable of, as if the contractor could, you know, inflict harm on Lance if he didn't pay him.

Anastasio was not quite sure what to think about any of this, except that he was definitely going to need a lot of DNA samples.

That afternoon, Anastasia was back inside of the house, working alongside the crime scene techs who had finally arrived at about noon.

And while he was doing that, two other women showed up at the crime scene.

One of the women was Lance's secretary and former girlfriend, Talana Calloway.

She said she had seen Lance the night before and that one of his girlfriends, Dion, had kept calling for him over and over and kept leaving increasingly upset messages when he didn't answer.

And these messages, you know, Talana was fielding and she gave them to Lance when he finally did come home.

The other woman who was there with Talana was Lance's other girlfriend, Kathy Collins.

But unlike Janine and Talana, Kathy didn't even try to act like she wanted to help with this investigation.

Instead, she demanded to be let let inside the house to go get her clothes.

The uniformed officers on the scene told her that she couldn't do that because this was a crime scene, but Kathy didn't seem to care at all.

And so the officers took down her name and contact info, and they also made a note that Kathy had not shed a single tear.

Early the next morning, Detective Anastasio went to the medical examiner's office to observe the autopsy.

He'd been at the crime scene until late, and once the crime scene text processed everything, he'd gotten a closer look at the physical evidence, and a couple things had stood out to him.

First, Lance had three alarm clocks, and all of them had been unplugged.

And one of the alarm clocks was an analog clock, and when it was unplugged, it stopped at whatever time it was, which in this case was 4.10 a.m.

And so, it was theoretically possible that perhaps the clocks began going off while the killer was still inside the house, and so they rushed over and unplugged the clocks to stop the alarm, which then put the likely time of death at or sometime before 4.10 in the morning on August 8th.

Second, on the dresser, there was a framed photograph of a woman in lingerie that had been turned face down.

The picture appeared to be deliberately flipped, not knocked over, as if whoever had flipped it didn't want to look at this picture.

And third, inside of Lance's bedsheets were several pieces of long hair that clearly belonged to more than one woman.

And there were also some short hairs as well.

Now, Anastasio and the medical examiner both looked down at Lance's body.

He'd apparently been hit at least seven times in the face with something long, heavy, and curved at the end.

The medical examiner had seen wounds like this once before and thought the murder weapon could be a wrench.

However, there was not a single defensive wound on Lance.

He clearly had not raised his hands to stop any of the blows that his killer had rained down on him.

That, combined with the fact that he'd been found naked in bed with no signs of struggle around him, suggested to Anastasio that the attack had begun when Lance was asleep.

The medical examiner said that, judging from the locations of the blows and the blood spatter that he'd seen at the crime scene, the killer had likely climbed on top of Lance before they beat him to death.

And this was very significant to Anastasio.

On his list of suspects, he had female romantic partners and male business rivals.

But whoever had killed Lance had not had to break into the house because Lance had clearly let them in, and also Lance felt comfortable enough with them to go to sleep naked near them.

Then, to commit the murder, the killer had straddled Lance's chest, which was a very intimate position.

And so to Anastasio, these details all combined suggested that his killer was a woman.

When Detective Anastasio got back to the station, he claimed the single interview room inside the Roswell Police Headquarters and began doing interviews.

He had a forensics person standing by to get hair samples and fingerprints from all his subjects to match against the crime scene.

Anastasio spoke again to Lance's mother, also his ex-wife Janine, and those two employees who had been at the house when the body was found, and he took all their DNA.

Anastasio didn't really suspect the mother or the employees, but he did have a feeling about Janine.

Janine was cooperating, but she would stay on his list until he could definitively nail down her alibi and take a look at her financials.

Next up was Kathy Collins, one one of Lance's girlfriends who had shown up at the crime scene totally distraught about her clothing.

And the moment she sat down in the chair in the interview room, Anastasio recognized her as the woman in that downturned photograph on Lance's dresser.

And when Anastasio began asking questions, he sort of half expected her to again ask about her clothes.

But instead, Kathy laid out what Anastasio had to admit was a pretty good alibi.

Kathy said she had been out of town at a family funeral and had arrived back in Roswell on August 7th in the evening along with her niece.

She and her niece had gotten dinner at a restaurant close to Lance's house and had stayed there until about maybe 10.30 or 11 p.m.

She then gave Anastasio a receipt from a gas station that was in another state along with the tab from the restaurant to back these details up.

Although, Anastasio noted that she and her niece had only eaten $7 worth of food, which seemed very light for how long they had been there.

However, Anastasio knew that, you know, Lance was not killed while Kathy and her niece were allegedly at this restaurant on August 7th.

Instead, he was very likely killed in the early morning hours of August 8th, likely around 4.10 a.m.

But Kathy said, you know, she had spent the entire night on August 7th into August 8th with her other romantic partner.

She said that she and Lance had never really been all that monogamous.

In fact, when they met, both of them were married.

So when Anastasio asked Kathy if it was possible that Lance might have been thinking about breaking up with her, she just shrugged and said they really weren't that close anymore.

She told Anastasio she'd be happy to provide DNA samples and fingerprints because she didn't kill him.

Before she got up to leave, Kathy told Anastasio there was one more thing.

She said about a month earlier, some woman had come to Lance's home in the middle of the night, freaking out so loudly that Lance had actually called the police.

If the police were thinking one of Lance's girlfriends killed him, Kathy said they should start by finding that woman.

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When the door closed behind Kathy, Anastasio smiled because a record search had already turned up the police report for the incident Kathy was talking about.

And that woman, the girlfriend, was Dion Baugh, who was already on her way down to the station.

When Dion arrived, she took a seat inside the interview room, and right away, Anastasio began drilling her with questions.

And immediately, he was suspicious.

First of all, Dion's demeanor was very strange.

She kept giggling every time she was asked a question.

Now, Anastasio knew that likely she was just nervous, and so that by itself was not proof of guilt, but it certainly didn't help her credibility.

Second, Dion herself was carrying on multiple romantic relationships just like Lance.

And third, perhaps the most suspicious out of all of it, Dion admitted right up front that she had Lance's missing laptop, as well as one of his credit cards.

And in fact, she had charged $2,700 worth of furniture on it the same night that Lance was murdered.

Suddenly, Dion Baugh was Anastasio's number one suspect.

And so the detective leaned forward in his chair and asked Dion where she'd been from the evening of August 7th to the morning of August 8th.

And her alibi was very weak.

She said she had been at home without her husband or her daughter who were visiting family.

In fact, Dion said there was no one who could confirm this for her.

But Dion insisted that she hadn't murdered Lance.

She said that Lance did a lot of good stuff for her.

He had bought her a beautiful Mercedes car and he gave her hundreds of dollars in cash every week, plus the use of his credit cards.

And then she asked the detective, you know, why would she be so stupid as to make a giant purchase with one of those credit cards on the same night that he was killed?

It would be so suspicious.

She also said he lent her his laptop all the time for school, and any of his employees could confirm that.

Dion said that on August 7th, she had called Lance repeatedly, but he never answered.

And then on August 8th, the day his body was found, he was supposed to go with her to court to help her clear the charge she had picked up on the night a month earlier when he had called the cops on her for coming to his home acting crazy.

But he hadn't shown up in court.

She said she'd been so angry and called him repeatedly throughout the day to see why he blew her off, but he never answered on the 8th.

Of course, she said now she knew why, it was because he was dead.

Dion offered Anastasio her phone records, she said she would give DNA samples and her fingerprints.

And then she told him she really hoped he solved the case soon because she was afraid.

She said that Lance was always paying people to do his dirty work, and until detectives caught his killer, she was going to be looking over her shoulder in case maybe they came for her too.

Anastasio would spend the next couple of weeks trying to run down the alibis of every single person and their significant others who might have wanted Lance Herndon dead.

It was a long list.

Some people, the detective, did feel ready to rule out.

Lance's ex-wife, Janine Herndon, for example, had a solid alibi confirmed by her new partner.

And although she would have been the recipient, along with her son, of Lance's life insurance policy, she was already receiving a good amount of money from Lance monthly in the form of alimony and child support.

And so Lance was worth worth more to her alive than dead.

And then there were Lance's various business rivals, and they turned out to be very weak suspects, primarily because they all had alibis.

Plus, it just seemed very unlikely that Lance would have, you know, let these business rivals into his home late at night without some sort of confrontation.

But as the investigation wore on, other suspects who Anastasio had also been ready to write off started behaving in ways that made them look more suspicious, not less.

Kathy Collins, for example, who was really bent out of shape about not getting her clothes back, had supplied a more or less rock-solid alibi, plus DNA and fingerprints.

But six days after the murder, she had sent a demand letter to the police station listing off every item she had left inside of Lance's home, down to her sunglasses, perfume, and a bottle of wine, asking for all of it back immediately.

It was an outrageously cold move from somebody who should have been at least a little sad about Lance's death.

And then there was Talana Caraway, the girlfriend turned secretary slash platonic friend.

On the day Lance's body was found, she had come to Lance's home because she said she wanted to help.

That action could be viewed either as proof that she had nothing to hide or as inserting herself into the investigation and offering distractions from her own guilt.

And after that first day, when she'd been so willing to talk and cooperate, now she had clammed up.

Another detective on Anastasio's team had gone to her house to ask some follow-up questions, and she had refused to come to the door at all.

Then she'd shown up at the police station with her own lawyer.

And that wasn't all.

The only thing police had learned during their canvas of the neighborhood on the first day of the investigation was that apparently somebody had been spotted driving through the neighborhood in a light blue car at about 4.40 a.m.

This timeline matched up with the ballpark time of death of 4.10 a.m.

and the vehicle description matched Tolana's own car.

However, apparently people thought they saw a man driving that car at 4.40 a.m.

And so after learning this, Anastasio did some digging and he discovered that Talana's partner, Jazz, owed Lance money and that Jazz had a criminal record.

And so while Anastasio doubted that Jazz could have on his own just walked his way into Lance's house, he did think it was quite possible that Talana could get inside and then maybe open the door for Jazz.

Finally, there was Dion Baugh, the woman who had shown up at Lance's house and acted crazy and had police called on her.

Of all of Lance's girlfriends, her alibi was absolutely the weakest and her level of anger and outrage at Lance was definitely the highest.

Also, she literally had Lance's missing computer and one of his credit cards.

But as the days ticked by, Anastasia was realizing that none of the details surrounding Dion were smoking guns.

Dion's phone records confirmed her story about making repeated calls to Lance, and Lance's other employees confirmed that Dion did sometimes borrow his laptop.

That was normal.

And Lance's banking information showed that throughout his entire relationship with Dion, he spent tons of money on her.

And so the idea that she would buy, you know, $2,700 of furniture on the night of his murder looked suspicious, but actually appeared to be pretty typical.

Dion had willingly given DNA and fingerprints, and the police had matched three of the hairs found in Lance's bed to Dion, but they'd also found 13 other hairs that didn't belong to Dion, Lance, or any of the other women they knew Lance had slept with.

And since Dion had already admitted to sleeping with Lance in his bed not long before the murder, the hairs really weren't proof of anything Anastasio didn't already know.

Detective Anastasio still didn't have the murder weapon either.

Now, the medical examiner had guessed that Lance was killed with a wrench, and after interviewing Lance's housekeeper, police had discovered that a wrench was missing from Lance's home.

But a missing murder weapon couldn't give any fingerprints.

And so far, none none of the women that Anastasio had collected prints from had matched prints found in Lance's bedroom.

And so within about a month of Lance's murder, the case that had seemed so hot on that first day was now going cold.

More than a year would pass, and in that time, Detective Anastasio would continue to investigate Lance Herndon's murder, but he really didn't make any progress.

He stayed in touch with the prosecutor, with both of them hoping that some new lead would turn up, but all their evidence had gotten them nowhere.

And so between business rivals, romantic partners, and romantic partners, significant others, it felt like this murder could have plausibly been committed by at least 10 different people.

That was until January of 1998, when the prosecutor who had been working with Anastasio got a phone call.

And on this call, the caller told them that Lance's killer was currently involved in a heated divorce case.

And during arguments for that case, the killer had destroyed their own alibi for the night of Lance's murder.

Now, it had been 17 months at this point since Lance had been killed, but the prosecutor was still skeptical that the killer would really be so sloppy as to present evidence to a different court that went against what they'd already told local police.

But then, later that month, the prosecutor went to the divorce trial to watch for himself, and there, everything came together.

Based on evidence and interviews conducted during an investigation that spanned a year and a half, this is what police believe happened to Lance Herndon in the early morning hours of August 8, 1996.

The killer lay in bed next to Lance, listening to him breathe.

And as they did, a feeling of rage grew in the killer's chest.

Lance was just lying there peacefully sleeping with no care in the world for how badly he was hurting the killer.

Lance didn't know that the killer knew he had lied to them.

Lance had fallen asleep thinking that he had the killer fooled, but Lance was wrong.

And the killer couldn't stand it any longer.

And so they slipped out of bed and headed downstairs where they retrieved the wrench they had seen on a countertop earlier.

Then, with the weapon in hand, they went back into the master bedroom, got back in bed, and climbed right on top of Lance, straddling him.

Then, while Lance slept peacefully right in front of them, the killer raised the wrench up and then brought it down on his face so hard that Lance was instantly knocked unconscious.

And so Lance did nothing as the killer repeatedly smashed the wrench into Lance's face over and over again until his skull literally caved in and Lance was dead.

After the frenzy, the killer climbed off of Lance and cleaned themselves up.

Lance's alarm clocks began going off and the killer panicked and just unplugged them all.

Then they put back on their clothes and hurried downstairs.

But the killer did not leave right away.

Instead, they first went down to Lance's home office and made sure to take his laptop computer with them, something they had checked before they decided to kill him.

Because the killer was Dion Baugh, one of Lance's many girlfriends.

And one thing inside of that laptop helped explain her motive.

It was Lance's daily calendar, which he had always updated so meticulously to keep his appointments and his girlfriends straight.

But officials said Dion killed Lance in part because of the one thing he had not put into his calendar, which was her court appearance scheduled for the morning of August 8th.

Lance had promised to go to court with her on that day to help her clear the charge she'd picked up for coming to his home in the middle of the night a month earlier.

But Lance's calendar for August 8th was completely empty.

Lance had no intention of going and Dion knew it.

To Dion, this was an unforgivable betrayal.

And so she bludgeoned Lance to death.

Dion ultimately incriminated herself during her divorce trial by telling the court she had actually gone to Lance's house on August 7th, hours before he was killed.

Remember, she had told police at the time that she had not done that and she was home alone the whole time, was never at his house.

And so when the prosecutor who sat in on the divorce trial actually heard her testimony, which directly contradicted her alibi that she had given, he had her arrested as soon as she left the courthouse.

Ultimately, Dion pleaded guilty to manslaughter and was sentenced to 10 years in prison.

She was released in 2011.

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 Zeth Lundy.

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

Research and fact-checking supervision by Stephen Ear.

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

Additional audio editing by Jordan Stiddam.

Mixed and mastered by Brendan Kane.

Production coordination by Samantha Collins.

Production support by Antonio Minata and Delana Corley.

Artwork by Jessica Klogston Kiner.

Theme song called Something Wicked by Ross Bugden.

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