Mr. Ballin

So if they left it here, when they came back to find the car and find the note inside of it, they could tell the police that this seems like maybe, maybe Barbara has killed herself.

It would send the police in a direction that would hopefully not lead back to the killer.

It would turn out Barbara's killer was her best friend, Jerry Hicker.

The original investigators didn't suspect Jerry at first, mainly because of his cooperation, and since he was the one who also first reported her missing.

But they did begin to get suspicious of him when he eventually revealed his violent streak.

The year after he killed Barbara, he was connected to a few different rape cases on campus.

But they didn't have enough evidence to make an arrest until decades later when the lab finally found DNA in the soil from the 1974 crime scene.

They were able to match that profile to Jerry's DNA, which they had on file from his involvement in another unrelated crime.

And so ultimately, Jerry killed Barbara with her own gun, which he had helped her buy so she could protect herself from killers just like him.

By the time Jerry was arrested in 2007, he was dying of cancer.

He confessed to barbarous murder for a reduced sentence and served five years before he was released.

He died in 2014.

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, produced by Jeremy Bone.

This episode was written by Kate Murdoch.

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

Research and fact-checking supervision by Stephen Ear.

Audio editing and post-produced by Whit Lacascio and Cole Lacascio.

Additional audio editing by Jordan Stidham.