MrBallen Podcast: Strange, Dark & Mysterious Stories
The Devil's Diary (PODCAST EXCLUSIVE EPISODE)
12 Jan 2026
Chapter 1: What discovery did the man make in the RV in Texas?
One night in December of 2009, a man dug through a pile of papers and photo albums inside of an RV parked in Texas. This man had recently bought the trailer after its previous owner had died, and it was full of junk that he was now trying to sort through. As the man rifled through documents, he stumbled upon a stack of old notebooks, and he opened one and began reading it.
And as he did, he felt his heartbeat pick up. Because these notebooks were actually diaries, and they were full of handwritten rantings about demons, monsters, and this deal with the devil. But that really was not what scared this guy. What really scared him was at some point discovering the writer's horrifying confession.
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. So if that's of interest to you, please replace the follow buttons shampoo with motor oil. Okay, let's get into today's story.
On the night of July 24th, 1987, 30-year-old Susan Woods stood at the entrance to a local fair in a little city called Hico, located in Central Texas, along with her best friend and her best friend's boyfriend. And the three of them were standing there trying to decide if they wanted to continue to stay here or leave.
Now, as they're standing there, they can hear people having fun on all the rides. There's kids laughing and they're screaming. I mean, it's a Friday night. They had chosen to come here. This was the activity. But, you know, so far the night had really not been that great.
So Susan's best friend, whose name was Cindy Hallmark, and her boyfriend, whose name was Roy Hayes, had convinced Susan to come out with them and come to this fair. Because Susan's life of late had been really quite bad. She was in the middle of this very ugly divorce and the new guy that she was dating, it sort of wound up being very pushy when it came to physical intimacy.
And so she had recently dumped him too. And so, you know, Susan's life, certainly her relationships anyways, were sort of in rough shape. And so Cindy and Roy had convinced Susan to come out with them and just at least for one night, come enjoy this fair. Just forget about everything else and just come have some fun. And so Susan had agreed to go.
However, sort of ironically, once they actually got to the fair and the three of them were walking around and playing games and going into the haunted house and doing all the things you do at the fair, it had been Cindy, not Susan, who had ultimately said that they weren't really having a good time, that they were feeling kind of bad.
Cindy said that she just had this really intense feeling that something bad was about to happen. It was like this constant anxiety and she couldn't shake it and it was making it really hard to enjoy the night. And so that was why the trio is, you know, standing at the gate wondering if it's even worth staying here any longer.
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Chapter 2: What was Susan Woods' situation leading up to the fair?
on the afternoon of July 28th, Susan's father, Joe Atkins, was at home when his phone rang. And when he picked it up, it was Susan's manager at the sandpaper factory, which was weird. The manager told him that he was calling because Susan had not shown up to work for the past two days and nobody could get ahold of her. And so he was wondering if Joe knew where she was.
Joe frowned and said, no, he didn't know, but he would go find out. He hung up and he immediately dialed Susan's number. And when she didn't answer, he didn't think twice. He just put the phone down, grabbed his keys, hurried out to his truck and started driving towards Susan's place. A half an hour later, Joe pulled up outside of Susan's house and he went up to her front door.
And when he knocked, nobody answered. But he could hear the TV on inside. And when he tried the doorknob, he found the door was unlocked. He opened the door up a little bit and he poked his head inside and he called his daughter's name. But he didn't get a response. So he stepped all the way inside.
The house was basically clean, except there were snacks out on the coffee table and the TV was still on and it was on pretty loud. But also, there were some cigarettes that had been burned out in an ashtray on the coffee table and Joe knew his daughter didn't smoke. And so at this point, everything told him something is wrong. So Joe walked through the living room and into his daughter's bedroom.
And his daughter was not in there. But the bed was a mess. The sheets and the bedding had all been ripped off and were sitting in a heap on the floor. And the mattress itself was hanging off the box spring. Joe was about to leave and search the rest of the house when he noticed the bathroom door in the bedroom was open. Joe forced himself to step toward the door.
And as he did, his heart began to hammer in his chest. And then, when he leaned around the door and looked inside the bathroom, he just froze. For what felt like a very long time, but was very likely only a few seconds, Joe didn't move or breathe. Then, it's like he broke out of his fog, he stumbled backwards, he ran to the living room, grabbed the phone, and he called 911.
Sergeant Donnie Hensley of the Stephenville Police Department had just gotten home after a pretty long shift when he got a call from dispatch to head back out again. A homicide had just been called in, and every available officer had to head to the scene right away.
The dispatcher did not have many details, but they did know that the victim was a young woman and that she had been found by her father inside of her home. When Hensley got to the address, he found there was an ambulance there and a couple of fire trucks and police cars and a whole bunch of police officers that were already out and about stringing up crime scene tape.
But he also saw someone that he was not expecting to see. It was a friend of his, a guy he knew who volunteered at the town's golf course. His name was Joe Atkins. So he walked over and he asked Joe, like, hey, what are you doing here? But the instant he asked that question and when Joe turned around to look at him, Hensley understood why he was here.
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Chapter 3: What feelings did Cindy Hallmark experience at the fair?
although the coroner estimated she'd been in the tub for roughly two days. But right at that moment, another investigator named Lieutenant Ken Maltby walked up and grabbed the report right out of Hensley's hands. And before Hensley could protest, Maltby walked back to the bullpen and wrapped his knuckles on a doorframe to get everybody's attention.
Then Maltby announced that he would be taking over Susan's case, so everybody else, Hensley included, should back off. And Hensley did not like this, not only because, you know, he had this closeness with Susan's father, but also because he had a feeling that Maltby was only interested in this case, because he thought it would help his career.
However, Maltby outranked Hensley, and Hensley already had a full caseload of work, so there really was very little he could do here. So with a resigned sigh, he headed back to his desk. Two days later, around 2 p.m. on July 31st, Sergeant Hensley stood in the back of a small crowd, sweating through his suit as Susan's casket was lowered into the ground.
Hensley was at this funeral really to support Susan's father, Joe, because he was not really a part of the investigation. However, he couldn't help, you know, scanning the mourners, you know, through a detective's lens to see if anybody seemed suspicious. There was a group of people in their 20s and 30s that were standing towards the front, and Hensley assumed they must be Susan's friends.
He remembered what one of Susan's neighbors had said about a large framed man, and he looked at all the men, taking note of their size. At the center of the group, there was a blonde woman who was sobbing, and Hensley recognized her as Susan's best friend, Cindy Hallmark, who was leaning on her boyfriend, Roy Hayes.
The two of them had actually come to the crime scene by coincidence on the day Susan's body was found, and they had totally broken down when they realized what had happened. But now, Hensley was suddenly noticing just how physically enormous Roy was. And so in that moment, Hensley thought to himself, if he was in charge of this case, he knew Roy would be somebody he'd take a close look at.
But that was not his decision. But then Hensley noticed that there was actually one person who was conspicuously absent from this funeral. And that was Susan's ex-husband, Michael Woods. From what Hensley had heard around the station, nearly all of Susan's friends and family were convinced that it was Michael who was the killer. But there was a problem with this theory.
Michael lived a thousand miles away in Indianapolis. And word around the police station was that during that window of time where Susan was murdered over those three days, Michael was in Indianapolis and he was around loads of people who would vouch for him being in Indianapolis. Which meant that as far as Hensley knew, there really was no way for Michael to be the killer.
And so Hensley just hoped that Lieutenant Maltby had another better suspect in mind. For the next few weeks, Sergeant Hensley focused on his own cases, while still keeping tabs on Susan's. Every couple of days, her dad would call him up and ask why Michael hadn't been arrested yet, and Hensley would always tell him that the case was in good hands and they're working on it.
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Chapter 4: What happened when Susan returned home after the fair?
They leaned in to kiss her. But Susan immediately pulled back, suddenly angry. The killer grabbed her, and Susan slapped them across the face. And right then, the killer exploded. And they lunged for Susan, and they dragged her, kicking and screaming to her bedroom, where they would spend hours assaulting her. Finally, when dawn approached and Susan was still barely alive...
The killer decided it was time to end this. And so as Susan lay there helpless, they grabbed that white electrical cord and they wrapped it around Susan's neck and they pulled it tight. And for a while, Susan fought, but then she went still. But the killer wasn't satisfied that she was definitely dead.
So then while keeping the cord around her neck, they also grabbed a pillow and they pushed it over her head and they smothered her. And then when she really was still, the killer still didn't know if she was actually dead or not. So eventually they dragged Susan's lifeless body into the bathroom.
They filled up the tub and they dumped her upper half into the water and the killer held her there until they were certain she was dead. And at that point, the killer let go of Susan and then placed both their hands on the rim of the bathtub and they used that to push themselves back up and they walked out of the house.
It would take almost 20 years, but that single action of the killer placing their hands on the bathtub did eventually give Lieutenant Miller the killer's identity. He was the younger cousin of Susan's best friend, Cindy Hallmark, and he was one of the members of that roundtable group who supported Susan through her divorce.
He had also been at Susan's funeral and helped her friends through the aftermath of her death.
killer's name was scott hatley and just a week before he killed her he had been hanging out with the members of the round table and susan was there and susan who was this you know very shy gentle person had sort of opened up around this group you know she was feeling happier and happier largely because this group of friends including scott had been so supportive you know she really felt like she belonged here and was safe here
And during that meeting amongst the members of the roundtable, just sort of inexplicably, Susan had looked over at Scott and simply smiled at him. And for that reason pretty much alone, Scott, a week later, had shown up on her doorstep and murdered her. By the time Lieutenant Miller put all of this together, Hatley was 41 years old and was still a free man.
And so on June 7th, 2006, Miller had him arrested and charged him with Susan's murder. He would ultimately take a plea deal and was sentenced to 30 years in prison, but would only serve 11 years before he was released for good behavior. However, three years after Hatley got out of prison, he was found dead inside of his RV from cancer complications.
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