Getting to Heaven (PODCAST EXCLUSIVE EPISODE)

Speaker 1 One morning in September of 2016, a person sat in their home in Bucks County, Pennsylvania, holding a business card. And, like always, just the sight of it made their stomach twist into knots.

Speaker 1 This card had been given to them years ago by a detective, and it was worn and faded from all the time the person had turned it over in their hands, agonizing over what to do with it.

Speaker 1 This detective had been looking for leads in a murder case, and at the time, this person now holding the card said they had nothing to share. But that was actually a lie.

Speaker 1 They did did have information about that murder, and they had kept it a secret for years. And now, over two decades later, they'd finally decided to tell the truth.

Speaker 1 But they were scared, because they knew when they did this, nothing would ever be the same.

Speaker 1 But before we get into that story, if you're a fan of the Strange, Dark, and Mysterious delivered in story format, then you come to the right podcast because that's all we do and we upload twice a week.

Speaker 1 once on Monday and once on Thursday. So, if that's of interest to you, please buy the follow button a a really nice candle as a gift.
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Speaker 1 Okay, let's get into today's story.

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Speaker 1 In the early morning hours of April 19th, 1991, 35-year-old Joy Hibbs lay in her bed in suburban Pennsylvania.

Speaker 1 She'd just opened her eyes when her 36-year-old husband, Charlie, hurried into their bedroom looking totally stressed out. In his hands was their new puppy, Major, who was squirming in his arms.

Speaker 1 Joy was surprised that Charlie was already awake, but he quickly explained to her that he had to go into work early today.

Speaker 1 He worked for a property management company, which was a career that allowed him to work with his hands and allowed him to not sit in an office all day, which was perfect for him because Charlie hated wearing anything but jeans and a flannel.

Speaker 1 But as Charlie passed the puppy to Joy, he told her he'd just cleaned up another accident Major had had on the carpet, and hearing that made Joy tense up.

Speaker 1 Most of the time, she and Charlie had an amazing marriage. They were high school sweethearts raising two teenagers and they had just celebrated their 18-year wedding anniversary a few days ago.

Speaker 1 But Charlie's one flaw was that he had a bad temper. And so Joy was always trying to play peacekeeper, and she knew that little things like Major making a mess could totally set Charlie off.

Speaker 1 So she quickly changed the subject and asked Charlie to bring the kids in to play with the puppy before he left. Then she pulled him in for a kiss, letting his big beard tickle her face.

Speaker 1 Overall though, you know, despite Charlie's bad temper, their marriage was a happy one. They were both a little bit out of place in their nice suburban community.

Speaker 1 They loved playing loud music and riding around on Charlie's motorcycle and smoking weed, and so it had always sort of felt like it was them against the world.

Speaker 1 And now, to Joy's relief, Charlie lightened up.

Speaker 1 He kissed her back and then left the room, and then moments later he returned, but with their 12-year-old son, David, and he sort of tossed him into the bed.

Speaker 1 They all hung out with Major for a bit before their groggy 16-year-old daughter, Angie, came in and joined them. At which point, Charlie left for work.

Speaker 1 A little over an hour later, Joy stood on her front steps with her second cup of of coffee, watching the kids' bus pull away from the curb.

Speaker 1 Before she went back inside, she waved to one of her neighbors, who was out watering their lawn next door. Joy was close with everybody on Spencer Drive, literally.

Speaker 1 Croydon Acres, Pennsylvania, where they lived, was just outside of Philadelphia, and it was classic American suburbia, with its neat manicured lawns and houses that were only about 12 feet apart.

Speaker 1 So everybody sort of kept an eye out for each other.

Speaker 1 And that sense of sort of having each other's back on this street felt more important now than it ever had, because recently, Joy had begun to worry that Croydon Acres was sort of going downhill.

Speaker 1 The Hibs had lived there about seven years, and up until recently, they had never had a problem with safety. But in the last two months, their house had been vandalized multiple times.

Speaker 1 A brick was thrown through their window, someone slashed their car tires, and their back door was kicked in. It was unnerving.

Speaker 1 But she and Charlie had a theory about who it was, their daughter Angie's friends. Her daughter was close with a lot of kids in the neighborhood, and they were a sort of rambunctious and wild group.

Speaker 1 Angie insisted she didn't know anything about the vandalism, but Joy still wondered if maybe some high school drama had gotten out of hand.

Speaker 1 Joy went back inside to get changed and to have another cup of coffee before she headed out for the day.

Speaker 1 She worked as a medical assistant at a doctor's office, and on Fridays, they didn't open until 2 p.m., so she usually had the whole morning to run errands.

Speaker 1 But her son David had a half day today, which meant he'd be home early. So she needed to go get everything everything done sooner than normal so she could be home when he got back.

Speaker 1 After getting dressed and ready, Joy would spend the next few hours running around town, depositing her and Charlie's paychecks at the bank and then also grocery shopping.

Speaker 1 At around 11 a.m., she went home to take Major out for a walk. After she got back from that, she threw some laundry in, then sat on the couch and rolled a joint.

Speaker 1 This batch of weed was really good, way better than the one she had gotten a few weeks ago.

Speaker 1 That bag had been from one of their former neighbors, a man named Robert Atkins, and it had been full of stems and seeds, with basically no marijuana at all.

Speaker 1 It was so bad, Joy had actually called Robert to ask for a refund, which really pissed him off.

Speaker 1 He'd actually begun screaming at her, which, you know, she should have expected, because she was friends with Robert's wife, April, and through that relationship, she knew Robert was a really angry guy.

Speaker 1 The Atkins used to live two doors down, that is until the bank foreclosed on their home. Now they were living about 15 minutes away.

Speaker 1 Now Joy had not told her husband Charlie about the fight she had gotten into over this bag of weed.

Speaker 1 She knew he would be furious if he heard Robert had yelled at her, and so she didn't want to start a war between their families.

Speaker 1 Just then there was a loud knock on her front door, which made Joy immediately sit up because she was not expecting anyone.

Speaker 1 And when she went to look out the window, she saw the last person she wanted to see while smoking pot. a reverend.

Speaker 1 She had no idea why he was there, but she ran to the bathroom to throw her joint in the toilet and waved a hand through the air to try to get rid of the smell before opening up the door.

Speaker 1 Moments later, Joy was sitting on her couch with Reverend Fury Orlando and another member of the Ben Salem Baptist Church.

Speaker 1 Joy had gone there with her coworker three weeks ago on Easter, and she'd completely forgotten that she told the church she was interested in joining.

Speaker 1 But that was why the men were here now, to follow up and see if she had any questions.

Speaker 1 The Reverend spent the first few minutes of his visit just telling Joy about the congregation and the worship style.

Speaker 1 But then he surprised Joy by asking if she was sure she would go to heaven when she died. And this question gave Joy pause.

Speaker 1 Now, of course, she'd considered what might happen after she died, and she did believe in heaven, but the Reverend asked if she was sure she would get in. And honestly, she was not sure.

Speaker 1 Now, she was generally a happy and kind person and tried to be good to people, but recently she'd begun to wonder if maybe she was missing some deeper spiritual meaning in her life.

Speaker 1 Reverend Orlando seemed to sense her stress and just took her hand and said they should pray. So the Reverend Joy and the other congregation member bowed their heads as the Reverend said a prayer.

Speaker 1 And while he did this, Joy found herself crying, tears of relief. It was like somehow his prayer had made that sudden, unexpected wave of anxiety when she thought about whether she'd get into heaven.

Speaker 1 It just completely disappeared. She felt completely at peace.
Joy walked the two men out of her home at 11.50 a.m. and told them she would see them in church on Sunday.

Speaker 1 She waved as they drove away, then she went back inside and closed the door.

Speaker 1 Then she would spend the next half hour or so folding some clothes, and then she went to David's room to put some of it away.

Speaker 1 And as she did this, she heard the back door open and thought it must be her son, David.

Speaker 1 However, the footsteps that stomped through the house were definitely not her son's, they were heavy and forceful, and they were headed right towards her.

Speaker 1 About a half an hour later, around 1 p.m., Joy's son David got off his school bus in front of his house.

Speaker 1 And the first thing he saw once he got off was his mother's car in the driveway, which made him smile. It meant she had not left for work yet, so he could tell her the news.

Speaker 1 He just got his report card and he made the honor roll. And so David hustled towards the back door, but as he passed by the kitchen window, he suddenly froze.

Speaker 1 There was smoke pouring out of it, and it took him a second to process it. His house house was on fire.
He gasped and ran to the back door, and when he opened it, a ton of smoke and flames shot out.

Speaker 1 And so did Major. The puppy ran straight from the house and out into the yard.
In a blind panic, David yelled out for his mom, but he didn't hear anything back.

Speaker 1 All he could see was this wall of smoke and flames, and he knew he could not go in there safely. And so he turned and began running towards his neighbor's house, screaming for help.

Speaker 1 Ten Ten minutes later, a firefighter ran towards the burning home on Spencer Drive with a team of firemen and their gear. He knew they needed to act fast.

Speaker 1 He had been told there could be someone still inside, and so paramedics were already at the scene and on standby in case there was.

Speaker 1 The team charged into the burning kitchen and doused the room with water. At the same time, the lead firefighter called out repeatedly to see if anybody was there, but there was no answer.

Speaker 1 As they continued to put out the flames, the lead firefighter saw why this accident likely happened in the first place. Someone clearly left all the stove burners on.

Speaker 1 The firefighter turned them off, and after the kitchen fire was out, they entered the hallway to extinguish the flames there too.

Speaker 1 Finally, they reached the last part of the house that was also on fire, which was a bedroom.

Speaker 1 They hosed down the flames, and as the smoke cleared, the firefighters noticed there was a long, charred shape. on top of what used to be a bed.

Speaker 1 One of the firefighters realized what they were looking at, at which point he turned and left the burning building to go speak to the chief. They had just found a fatality.

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Speaker 1 The next afternoon, Sam Wisnefsky, a detective with the Bristol Township Police, stood in front of a half-burned-down home on Spencer Drive.

Speaker 1 The firefighters had come and gone, and the place was now swarming with crime scene techs and police officers.

Speaker 1 Until that morning, everyone had believed that this was an accidental fire with a casualty, a 35-year-old woman who had been identified as Joy Hibbs.

Speaker 1 But then the medical examiner had conducted Joy's autopsy, and even though her body was clearly badly burned, it was also clear that her death was not caused by the fire. Joy had been murdered.

Speaker 1 She had stab wounds all over her chest, she had broken ribs, and she'd also been strangled. And there was no smoke in her lungs, which meant she died before the fire started.

Speaker 1 So Wiznevsky was the lead investigator on what was now a homicide case, and he was already 24 hours behind. But he did have an early working theory.

Speaker 1 And that was, since multiple violent methods were used to kill Joy, the attack had to be emotional and frenzied.

Speaker 1 And in his experience, strangulation and stabbing were common in personal crimes, since they required getting so close to the victim.

Speaker 1 And so what that told him was that Joy likely had a relationship with her killer. But proving that might be hard, since the case already had some pretty big problems.

Speaker 1 Not only was Wisnevsky getting to the scene an entire day after Joy was found, but when he actually stepped inside the home, he could see the crime scene itself was completely contaminated.

Speaker 1 The firefighters obviously had not been focused on preserving evidence, and though parts of the house were untouched by fire, a lot of it was burned and then soaked and trampled all over.

Speaker 1 Wisnevsky also knew he would not be able to see if this had been a robbery or not, since, you know, missing items could have also just been burned up.

Speaker 1 And so Wuznevsky did an initial loop of the property to check the doors and windows, and he didn't see any signs of forced entry.

Speaker 1 So Joy either let her attack her in, or the door or a window had been unlocked. Then Wuznevsky went to the bedroom where the body was found.

Speaker 1 He'd been told it was the son's room and that Joy had been lying face up on the bed.

Speaker 1 And when he got inside, he could see it was by far the most damaged part of the house, which must have been intentional. By this point, the firefighters had confirmed this was indeed arson.

Speaker 1 They'd actually found four separate fires in different areas of the home.

Speaker 1 So, Woznevsky guessed the killer must have set fire to joy in this room first, since it was where most of the evidence of the crime would be.

Speaker 1 After he finished in the bedroom, Woznevsky looked around the house a bit more, but he didn't find much else.

Speaker 1 So he told the crime scene techs to collect what they could, then he went outside to speak to the neighbors.

Speaker 1 A few hours later, Wisnevsky jumped into his cruiser and headed back to the station.

Speaker 1 And he had a lot to do, because while the actual crime scene had sort of been a bust, the neighbors were hugely helpful.

Speaker 1 Their houses were physically close together, and the weather had been nice yesterday, so a lot of windows and doors were open.

Speaker 1 And this meant multiple people saw Joy alive and walking the dog at 11 a.m. And then right after that, they saw Joy let two men into her home.

Speaker 1 And they were very noticeable, because one of them was a Reverend. In fact, one of the witnesses recognized him as the Reverend from Ben Salem Church.
Woznevsky had been pretty surprised to hear this.

Speaker 1 These two men were the last known people to interact with Joy before her death, which made them instant suspects, but this was a bizarre lead.

Speaker 1 Religious figures were not typically involved in murder cases. But the neighbors said the Reverend and his partner left before 12.
which put them out of the likely range for when the fire started.

Speaker 1 Joy's son David got home around 1 p.m., and if the house had been burning for over an hour at that point, it certainly would have been way more damaged, and the neighbors likely would have noticed before David got home.

Speaker 1 Now, the Reverend and his partner could have killed Joy, then returned to the scene to cover it up later, but that just felt far-fetched.

Speaker 1 At the very least, though, they could have seen or heard something important while they were there. And so regardless, Wuznevsky knew he had to speak to them.

Speaker 1 He also wanted to speak to Charlie Hibbs, Joy's husband. In a murder, the spouse was always the first suspect.

Speaker 1 And even though none of the neighbors had reported seeing Charlie around the time of the murder, Wuznevsky still thought he made more sense as the killer than the Reverend or his partner.

Speaker 1 On Sunday, April 21st, so two days after Joy's body was found in the fire, and one day after the case was declared a murder, Detective Wozniewski sat down with Joy's husband, Charlie Hibbs, in an interrogation room at the police station.

Speaker 1 Some of Woznewski's officers were currently at Ben Salem Church speaking to the Reverend. That way, right now, Woznefsky could just focus on Charlie.

Speaker 1 Currently, Charlie was hunched over and quiet, and his hands were visibly shaking.

Speaker 1 No one had told Charlie yet that the police knew his wife had been murdered, and so Woznewski wanted to see how he reacted when he heard the truth.

Speaker 1 When the detective broke the news, he watched as Charlie went from shock to confusion and then finally to horror. And then after that, he just buried his face in his hands and sobbed.

Speaker 1 Charlie's devastation appeared genuine, but Wisnevsky knew he could just be a good actor. So he waited for Charlie to calm down and then asked him what his relationship with his wife had been like.

Speaker 1 Charlie's voice shook as he told Wisnewski that they had been married since high school when Joy accidentally got pregnant with their daughter.

Speaker 1 Now, the pregnancy was a shock at first, but the decision to get married as a result of it turned out to feel like the right one.

Speaker 1 and they both agreed that they likely would have gotten married at some point anyways. Charlie said Joy was the best thing that ever happened to him.

Speaker 1 She was gentle and kind, and she humored his deep love of motorcycles, and he just couldn't believe she was gone now.

Speaker 1 Wuznevsky could see Charlie was getting very upset again, so he changed tracks and asked Charlie where he was between 11 a.m. and 1 p.m.
on Friday, April 19th.

Speaker 1 Charlie said he was at work about 20 miles away at a construction site in Philadelphia. and he had been there until a co-worker told him that his house was on fire.

Speaker 1 So he went home right away and he saw the flames and the firefighters and then his wife's horribly burnt body being wheeled out on a stretcher. Woznevsky wrote all this down.

Speaker 1 He would need to confirm Charlie's alibi, but if he was at work, then he obviously did not kill Joy himself.

Speaker 1 Now he could still be involved, it was possible he'd hired someone to do it, but if this were a hit, Joy's murder would have likely been more colder, more efficient, rather than frenzied.

Speaker 1 So the next thing Wuznevsky asked was if Charlie could think of anybody close to Joy that she was maybe fighting with, or if anybody had ever threatened her her or their family.

Speaker 1 And this made Charlie frown, like something had just occurred to him. And he said, not really, but in the last two months, there had been some vandalism at their house.

Speaker 1 Joy's tires had been slashed, and somebody broke their back door. They just sort of assumed it was their daughter Angie's friends, but maybe it was something else.

Speaker 1 Wisnefsky immediately asked Charlie if he had the names of these friends.

Speaker 1 Now, of course, this could be nothing, but it could also mean that someone or multiple people had been threatening Joy for months before before her murder, and Joy simply hadn't realized how serious it was.

Speaker 1 Charlie told Wisnewski he could ask Angie himself because his kids were waiting in the lobby. Moments later, David and Angie joined their father and Wisnevsky in the interrogation room.

Speaker 1 Their eyes were red from crying and Wisnevsky decided not to reveal the fact that their mom had been murdered. Their dad could eventually tell them that.

Speaker 1 Instead, he just asked them if they knew of anybody who might have wanted to hurt their mother.

Speaker 1 Now, what Wisnewski expected was that these kids would just say no, and that he would just start in on Angie, asking about her friends and the vandalism. But that's not what happened.

Speaker 1 Instead, Joy's son David spoke up and he said, yes, he knew someone who would want to hurt his mom. It was their former neighbor, Robert Atkins.

Speaker 1 After David said this, he sort of froze and looked nervously at his dad, like his dad might be upset with him. But his dad just looked confused and told David to continue.

Speaker 1 So David turned to Wisnefsky and said that Robert was the scary guy and his parents bought weed from him a few weeks ago.

Speaker 1 And he said he knew this because he actually overheard his mom on the phone with Robert asking for a refund since apparently the weed had been so bad.

Speaker 1 And when she asked for that, David said he could hear Robert get really mad on the other end and literally threatened to kill her and blow up their house.

Speaker 1 Wisnewski couldn't believe what he was hearing. Not only was Joy's life being threatened just before her murder, but it was over a drug deal.

Speaker 1 It was not what he expected out of somebody he'd assumed to just be a typical suburban mom. And if Charlie or Joy were frequent drug users, that could have put them in touch with a rough crowd.

Speaker 1 And so now Wisnevsky could kind of understand why David had been hesitant about what he just said.

Speaker 1 Back in 1991, marijuana was still very much illegal, and David probably did not want to get his parents in trouble. But Wisnevsky said he didn't care about the drugs at all right now.

Speaker 1 He told David and Charlie that, you know, the weed was not his priority. His priority was figuring out what happened.

Speaker 1 And so Wisnewski turned to the dad, Charlie, and asked him to tell him everything he knew about Robert Atkins. Charlie nodded and took a shaky breath.

Speaker 1 Then he admitted they did buy some weed from Robert. It had been a crappy batch, and he had known Joy tried to return it, but he didn't know anything about the threats that followed.

Speaker 1 By the end of the interview, Wisnewski did still want to talk to Angie's friends, who her dad had suspected of vandalism, so he got their information from Angie.

Speaker 1 But far more pressing than that was tracking down and speaking to Robert Atkins.

Speaker 1 Later that evening, Wuznevsky sat in his office drumming his fingers on his desk.

Speaker 1 He had spent the whole day following up on the drug-dealing neighbor, Robert Atkins, and what he had learned was that Robert definitely had a bad temper.

Speaker 1 In fact, one of Robert's neighbors had just called into the police station to say that Robert had threatened to kill her when she had accidentally left some tree branches in his yard after trimming her hedges.

Speaker 1 Wisnewski also found out that Robert had a criminal record, although the charges were all minor, you know, nothing violent like what happened to Joy.

Speaker 1 But it was all certainly enough for Wisnewski to consider Robert a strong suspect. And so the detective really wanted to speak to him.
Except it turned out that was not going to be possible.

Speaker 1 Because right after he did a background check on Robert, he got a call from a senior officer in the county's narcotics division.

Speaker 1 And the officer told Wisnewski to hold off on interviewing Robert Atkins. He apparently was one of their drug informants.

Speaker 1 They didn't want to scare Robert off and lose him as a source of information, so Wisnewski was ordered to let the narcotics department handle it.

Speaker 1 And Wisnewski was pretty angry about this, but he also understood that you don't mess with somebody else's informant, so his hands were tied. He had no choice but to wait.

Speaker 1 Which was especially frustrating because he didn't have any other leads to follow up on.

Speaker 1 Nothing had come from talking to Angie's friends and classmates, and the crime text hadn't found anything useful at the house, you know, no fingerprints and no physical DNA evidence, and Wisnewski also heard back about the meeting with the Reverend and his partner, both of them had alibis for the hour after they left Joyce's house, which Wisnewski had already confirmed, so they could not have been at the house when the fire started.

Speaker 1 They also hadn't seen or heard anything strange when they were there, although the Reverend had said Joyce seemed very troubled when he asked her about heaven.

Speaker 1 And all this was starting to make Wisnewski want to bang his head against a wall when an officer charged into his office with some news.

Speaker 1 They'd interviewed some more neighbors, and two of them saw something else. A dark blue Monte Carlo parked in front of the Hibbs' house between 12.30 and 1 p.m.
on the day Joy died.

Speaker 1 They noticed it because it was parked against traffic and far from the curb, like whoever was driving it had been in a hurry.

Speaker 1 No one took down its license plate though, which Wisnevsky knew made things more difficult.

Speaker 1 Monte Carlos were really common cars in this area, And then more broadly, there were likely thousands of them driving around the whole state.

Speaker 1 But then, the officer said they already checked their suspects and the husband, Charlie Hibbs, did not own a blue Monte Carlo. However, the drug dealer, Robert Atkins, the former neighbor, did.

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Speaker 1 On April 24th, five days after Joy Hibbs was murdered, Detective Woznewski sat in an office in the narcotics department with a few other officers.

Speaker 1 Woznefsky had been pushing for Robert Atkins to please be brought in as a suspect, and finally he had gotten his wish. Robert had been formally interviewed.

Speaker 1 But Woznevsky was ordered to sit on the sidelines while investigators on the narcotics team went to Robert's house and spoke to him. So now, Woznevsky was being briefed on what they had learned.

Speaker 1 Apparently, Robert had admitted to selling Joy some weed and getting in a fight over it. But he said he didn't threaten her.
He just refused to give her a refund.

Speaker 1 And anyway, Robert had an alibi since he was on his way to the Poconos with his family when Joy was killed.

Speaker 1 Two officers had driven to the Poconos, which is a mountainous vacation spot about two hours from Croydon, to check this out.

Speaker 1 And they went to the hotel that Robert said he'd stayed in, and they showed the front desk a photo of him, and they confirmed that he was there around the time of the murder.

Speaker 1 Wuznevsky sighed and rubbed his eyes. He was exhausted, and still pretty upset that he was being kept away from a murder suspect just to save whatever drug investigation they were working on.

Speaker 1 But he did have to admit, you know, Robert was looking less and less guilty here. Also, a neighbor who had seen that Monte Carlo in front of Joy's house had been taken to Robert's to identify his car.

Speaker 1 And when the neighbors saw it, they said it was not the same Monte Carlo.

Speaker 1 So Wisnewski said goodnight to his colleagues and then headed back to the office to go over the case file and look for something he could have missed.

Speaker 1 And sure enough, later that day, as Wisnewski was sifting through his files, he saw something that he hadn't noticed earlier.

Speaker 1 One witness had said somebody else in Joy's life outside of Robert Atkins had a bad temper, and it was her own husband, Charlie.

Speaker 1 Now, one passing comment was not exactly evidence, but it made Wisnewski think back to his conversation with Charlie.

Speaker 1 Charlie admitted to being effectively forced into marrying Joy because of a pregnancy. And so maybe he'd become resentful he'd gotten married so young and wanted to be free.

Speaker 1 Like all Wisnefsky's suspects, Charlie had a solid alibi. But Wisnevsky also knew from their conversation that Charlie was very into motorcycles and sort of part of the biker scene.

Speaker 1 So he potentially ran with a, you know, rough biker crowd. And so maybe he asked one of them to take care of it for him.

Speaker 1 Wuznevsky always thought that Joy's injuries showed a personal level of rage, but maybe they were just the frenzied work of a violent biker who was doing his friend a favor.

Speaker 1 About a month after Joy's murder, Wuznevsky had Charlie back inside of an interrogation room, and Charlie clearly had not been sleeping.

Speaker 1 because he had dark circles under his eyes and he seemed disoriented. But Wuznevsky was not about to go easy on him.

Speaker 1 Because right now, Charlie was his only suspect, and Wuznevsky was ready to ask all the hard questions, like if either of them were having affairs, or owed anyone money, or if he abused Joy.

Speaker 1 But when he asked outright if Charlie had killed his wife, Charlie just broke down, shook his head, and sobbed.

Speaker 1 And when Wuznevsky asked if he would take a polygraph, to his surprise, Charlie said yes, and that he would take as many as they wanted.

Speaker 1 Over the next few weeks, Wuznevsky repeatedly questioned Charlie, picked apart his alibi, and oversaw multiple polygraphs. But Charlie passed every single one.

Speaker 1 And even after speaking to his kids again, Angie and David, Wuznevsky just could not find anything that directly connected Charlie to the actual crime.

Speaker 1 So Wuznevsky kept looking for other suspects and conducted dozens and dozens of interviews. But after three months of investigating, it all sort of went nowhere.

Speaker 1 Wuznevsky had cleared all of his suspects, and so by the end of the year, the case went cold.

Speaker 1 23 years later, on an afternoon in April of 2014, a detective named Michael Slaughter sat in a dusty evidence room sorting through a box labeled Joy Hibbs.

Speaker 1 The department had just ordered a complete review of all unsolved homicide cases, and Slaughter asked to take on Joy's.

Speaker 1 He'd heard about the case and couldn't believe that more people were not talking about it or pushing for it to get solved.

Speaker 1 After all, it was an innocent mother brutally attacked and murdered in her son's bedroom in this classic suburban neighborhood. Like it was so tragic and so unusual.

Speaker 1 Wisnevsky by this point was retired, so Slaughter was working this case as a true fresh slate.

Speaker 1 Right now, he was just gathering reports and documents, but he intended on re-interviewing as many witnesses and suspects from 1991 as he could.

Speaker 1 And as he got organized, he went over the three original suspects to see if he noticed anything odd in the 1991 investigation that might have been missed.

Speaker 1 He agreed with Wisnevsky's theory that Joy was killed in an emotional frenzied crime, but he could see that the closest person to her, her husband Charlie Hibbs, had passed multiple polygraphs, had an alibi, and fully cooperated with the investigation.

Speaker 1 Now, it was true that he had had to marry Joy because of an accidental pregnancy, but they'd continued to live together for 18 years and had another kid, so Slaughter really didn't think that was a strong motive.

Speaker 1 Then there was Robert Atkins, who threatened to kill Joy over a drug deal, but Robert Atkins seemed to make a lot of threats to his neighbors, most of whom did not end up dead.

Speaker 1 Plus, he had been two hours away at the time of the murder.

Speaker 1 It did bother Slaughter that the drug cops at the time had blocked Wisnefsky from speaking to Robert, but a cheap weed deal didn't seem like a very good motive for a brutal murder.

Speaker 1 As for the Reverend and his friend, They were literally seen at Joy's house right before she was killed, which was obviously very suspicious.

Speaker 1 But other than the timing, they never made very good suspects. They had no motive, and both of them had alibis for the period of time when the fire likely started.

Speaker 1 Slaughter spent the next few weeks following up on leads and conducting interviews.

Speaker 1 He was determined to talk to everyone, not just the original suspects, but all their friends, their neighbors, relatives, witnesses, and co-workers.

Speaker 1 But the weeks turned into months, and then years, and Slaughter still had not found Joy's killer.

Speaker 1 It was not until two two years later, on September 11th, 2016, that Slaughter finally got the break he'd been desperate for.

Speaker 1 That evening, he had just sat down to dinner with his family, which, like always, made him think of Joy and this case.

Speaker 1 Because here he was, a regular husband and father, who also spent his days looking for murderers. Sometimes it felt like he was living multiple lives at once.

Speaker 1 Just like basically everyone involved in the Hibbs case. Slaughter had spent the last two years trying to understand not just Joy, but everyone in her life.

Speaker 1 And it had been very hard, because no one in this case was who they said they were. Joy was a suburban mom who was afraid she wouldn't go to heaven and smoked pot.

Speaker 1 Charlie Hibbs was a reliable company man who also ran with a rough motorcycle club. Robert Atkins was informing on drug dealers while also working as a drug dealer.

Speaker 1 All that's to say, Slaughter still had not figured out if any of those people were also killers, and he was starting to worry he never would. But as he sat down to dinner that night, his phone rang.

Speaker 1 And when he picked it up, a police officer on the other line said somebody was at the station asking for him.

Speaker 1 And when Slaughter heard who it was, he realized the last two years of research and interviews and getting to know everybody had actually paid off.

Speaker 1 Because one of the many people he had spoken to was finally ready to come forward. Slaughter leapt up and rushed to the station.

Speaker 1 And as soon as he got into an interview room with this new witness, that person explained that they had been lying for 25 years.

Speaker 1 And when they finally told this truth to Slaughter, one of Slaughter's suspects' alibis completely fell apart.

Speaker 1 Based on the police investigations of 1991 and 2014, and also witness reports, here is a reconstruction of what investigators believe happened to Joy Hibbs on April 19th, 1991.

Speaker 1 On April 19th, just after 12 p.m., the killer sped through Croydon. They were so angry they could barely see.

Speaker 1 They had been thinking and stewing about Joy all day, getting madder and madder because Joy acted like such an upstanding person, but really, the killer knew she was a double-crossing lowlife.

Speaker 1 When they got to her house, they screeched to a stop and jumped out of the car. Then they took out their knife.

Speaker 1 The killer stormed to the back of the house and barged in through the kitchen door, door, which was the entrance the family used.

Speaker 1 When they got inside, they saw Joy lean out of David's bedroom to look at them. And when she saw the killer and the knife in their hand, she looked more confused than scared.

Speaker 1 But when the killer rushed towards her, she opened her mouth to scream. But the killer was on her before she could make a sound, stabbing her with one hand and hitting her with the other.

Speaker 1 The killer pushed her onto her son's bed and continued to beat and stab her before grabbing a computer cord. And they wrapped it around her neck and they strangled her until Joy stopped moving.

Speaker 1 Then, the killer, who was now panting and totally out of breath, they backed away. They were still filled with adrenaline, and they knew they didn't have a lot of time to cover up their crime.

Speaker 1 So, they searched the house until they found a lighter, and they put magazines and books all around Joyce's body, then they lit them on fire.

Speaker 1 Then, the killer started another fire in the hallway before going to the kitchen, where they turned on all the burners and also ignited the trash.

Speaker 1 Then, the killer left, sped back to their home, and told their family to pack their bags. They were going on vacation.

Speaker 1 It would turn out Joy's drug-dealing neighbor, Robert Atkins, had lied about everything.

Speaker 1 He actually was furious with Joy over the weed incident, which might not have been a big deal to anyone else, but Robert was an incredibly violent person and he was absolutely enraged.

Speaker 1 After killing Joy, when Robert got back home, He was literally covered in blood, and he told his wife, April, that he had just stabbed someone and set their house on fire.

Speaker 1 And then before his wife could really react to this, he took her and the rest of his family upstate to the Poconos to create his alibi.

Speaker 1 And Robert's wife April had lied about this for decades, mostly because she was scared of Robert.

Speaker 1 However, after Detective Slaughter interviewed her in 2014, she held on to his business card for two years until she finally got the courage to come forward and tell the truth about her husband.

Speaker 1 And once she did, detectives rechecked Robert's alibi and they realized that while the 1991 investigation confirmed that the family had checked into a hotel in the Poconos, they hadn't correctly noted the time.

Speaker 1 The hotel was about two hours away, and April and Robert did not sign the registry until almost 5 p.m. on the day Joy was killed, which meant Robert would have had plenty of time to murder Joy first.

Speaker 1 After coming forward in 2016, April had to work with detectives for years to gather up enough evidence to actually prosecute Robert.

Speaker 1 He was finally arrested in 2022, 31 years after killing Joy, and he was quickly convicted of murder and arson. He is currently serving a life sentence without parole.

Speaker 1 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.

Speaker 1 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.

Speaker 1 Our head of production is Zach Levitt, produced by Jeremy Bone. This episode was written by Kate Murdoch.
Story editing by Karis Pash Cooper.

Speaker 1 Research and fact-checking by Shelly Shu, Samantha Van Hoos, Evan Beamer, Abigail Shumway, and Camille Callahan. Research and fact-checking supervision by Stephen Ear.

Speaker 1 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.

Speaker 1 Production support by Antonio Minata and Delana Corley. Artwork by Jessica Klogston Kiner.
Theme song called Something Wicked by Ross Bugden. Thank you for listening to the Mr.
Bollin podcast.

Speaker 1 If you enjoyed today's story and you're looking for more bone-chilling content, be sure to check out all of our studios podcasts. There's this one, the Mr.
Ballin podcast, as well as Mr.

Speaker 1 Balin's Medical Mysteries, Bedtime Stories, Wartime Stories, Run Fool, Redacted, Late Nights with Nexpo, and A Twist of History.

Speaker 1 All you have to do is search for Ballin Studios wherever you get your podcasts. To watch hundreds more stories just like this one, head over to our YouTube channel, which is just called Mr.
Ballin.

Speaker 1 So that's going to do it. I really appreciate your support.
Until next time, see ya.

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