MrBallen Podcast: Strange, Dark & Mysterious Stories
Underworld (PODCAST EXCLUSIVE EPISODE)
Mon, 04 Nov 2024
On a Monday afternoon in December 2001, a pair of police officers walked in the side door of a big old farmhouse in the woods in Loudoun County, Virginia. They had just received a frantic 9-1-1 call from a man who said he had found his neighbor horrifically injured on the kitchen floor. The police officers crept through the house, peering cautiously around corners in case the attacker was still in the house. But other than the sound of their footsteps creaking on the hardwood, the home was completely silent. When they made it to the kitchen, they stopped. There, lying on his stomach, was the body of an older man, covered in blood. One of the officers stepped forward and knelt down to check the man’s pulse, but it was obvious to both of them that he was dead. The officer was about to stand back up, when something strange on the back of the man’s neck caught his eye. Slowly, the officer reached out a hand, and pulled down the collar of the man’s shirt. When he saw what was there, he looked back at his partner with an expression of fear. Because what he had discovered would lead investigators to wonder if there were devil-worshiping occultists prowling their rural community. For 100s more stories like these, check out our main YouTube channel just called "MrBallen" -- https://www.youtube.com/c/MrBallenIf you want to reach out to me, contact me on Instagram, Twitter or any other major social media platform, my username on all of them is @mrballenSee Privacy Policy at https://art19.com/privacy and California Privacy Notice at https://art19.com/privacy#do-not-sell-my-info.
Chapter 1: What happened in the farmhouse in December 2001?
Hey, Prime members, you can binge eight new episodes of the Mr. Ballin podcast one month early and all episodes ad-free on Amazon Music. Download the Amazon Music app today. On a Monday afternoon in December of 2001, a pair of police officers walked in the side door of a big old farmhouse in the woods in Loudoun County, Virginia.
They had just received a frantic 911 call from a man who said he had found his neighbor horrifically injured on the kitchen floor. The police officers crept through the house, peering cautiously around corners in case the attacker was still in the house. But other than the sound of their footsteps creaking on the hardwood, the home was totally silent. When they made it to the kitchen, they stopped.
There, lying on his stomach, was the body of an older man, covered in blood. One of the officers stepped forward and knelt down to check the man's pulse, but it was obvious to both of them that he was dead. The officer was about to stand back up when something strange on the back of the man's neck caught his eye.
Slowly, the officer reached out a hand and pulled down the collar of the man's shirt. When he saw what was there, he looked back at his partner with an expression of fear, because what he had just discovered could be a sign that there were devil-worshiping occultists prowling their rural community.
But before we get into that story, if you're a fan of the Strange, Dark, and Mysterious delivered in story format, then you've come to the right podcast because that's all we do and we upload twice a week, once on Monday and once on Thursday.
So if that's of interest to you, please take the follow button on a camping trip and leave them way off the hiking trail before setting up camp for the night. After dark, once the follow button has gone to sleep, secretly pack up all of your gear and leave the follow button completely alone in the middle of nowhere. Okay, let's get into today's story.
Lamont Jones is shattered when his cousin dies just weeks after entering prison. The official report says natural causes, but bruises and missing teeth tell a different story. Wondery presents Death County PA, a chilling true story of corruption and cover-ups. Follow Death County PA on the Wondery app or wherever you get your podcasts.
On the evening of December 8, 2001, 57-year-old Dr. Robert Schwartz stood in the kitchen of his farmhouse outside of Leesburg, Virginia, stirring strips of pork and vegetables in his frying pan. Robert could hear the rain beating against the windows, and the sound made him feel at peace. He had the heat cranked up, and he was wearing his most comfortable sweatpants.
There was nowhere he would rather be on a rainy winter night than inside this home, which had been in his wife's family for generations. He checked the pork, which was almost done, and he reached for a single plate out of the cabinet. Robert used to love cooking, and until just a few years ago, he always made big portions to feed his family of five.
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Chapter 2: Who was Dr. Robert Schwartz and what happened to him?
He put two in the middle of the plate, and then he started to tip the frying pan to scoop out the meat and vegetables on top. But before he could turn off the burner and head to the table, he heard a knock coming from the front door. Robert frowned and craned his neck to look toward the door, which had a little window in it, but the rain made it impossible to see out.
Robert did not get a lot of unexpected visitors, especially not on a stormy night like this, but he figured maybe it was just a delivery driver trying to keep a package from getting soaked. But whoever it was knocked again, and so Robert turned and walked out of the kitchen and through the front room toward the entryway.
The knocking had gotten fast and loud by the time Robert made it to the front door, flipped the lock, and swung the door open. Two days later, on December 10th, 2001, at around 1.15 on Monday afternoon, a man named Sam Welsh, who lived down the street from Robert Schwartz, was loading laundry into his washing machine when his phone rang.
Sam abandoned the laundry and walked into his kitchen to pick it up. When he said hello, he heard the voice of a friend, and his friend sounded pretty anxious. This friend worked at the Center for Innovative Technology, which is where Robert worked, and the friend said that Robert hadn't come into work today. He had missed an important meeting, and he wasn't answering his phone.
And this was about as out of character as it was possible to get for Robert, who was famous in the field of DNA research and had actually worked on the first online database of DNA sequence information. Robert was organized, reliable, and extremely communicative. He never just went silent. So this friend asked Sam, can you please go to Robert's house to check to see if he's okay?
Sam didn't hesitate. He said of course he would. Then he hung up the phone, went out to his truck, and drove to Robert's farmhouse, which was about a mile away at the end of a dead-end road. When Sam pulled up, he saw Robert's car parked on the street and a construction crew digging up Robert's driveway in front of the house. Everything looked calm and normal, which Sam found encouraging.
He recognized one of the workers as another neighbor of his, so he parked his truck, hopped out, and went over to ask if the worker had seen Robert. But the worker said no. The construction crew had arrived almost six hours earlier at 7.30 that morning, and not only had Robert not come out to greet them all like he normally did, they hadn't actually seen any movement at all inside of his house.
Now, the brief sense of relief Sam had felt when he arrived evaporated. He explained to the construction worker about the concerning call he'd just gotten, and so he asked the worker to come with him to go check on Robert. The two men walked down the driveway toward the farmhouse. They knocked on the front door, but nobody answered.
So they went around to the side door, which Sam knew Robert usually left unlocked. Sam didn't want to just barge in, so when they got to the side door, he first knocked loudly. But again, nobody answered. Sam shot a worried look at the construction worker, and then he tried the knob. And just like he'd expected, the door was unlocked.
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Chapter 3: What unusual findings did the police discover at the crime scene?
It looked like the entire sheriff's department was there. Locke got out of his cruiser and walked down the long driveway and up the front steps of the farmhouse. The front door was open, and as Locke stepped through the entryway, he could tell that the scene was pretty well covered by police and crime scene techs.
So he looked for a supervisor to get a rundown of exactly what they were dealing with. Locke found his supervisor standing just outside the kitchen, staring grimly at a man's bloody body. At first glance, it was immediately clear to Locke that whatever had happened here to this man, it had been a frenzy of violence.
The man's body lay face down on the floor, his clothing had been shredded in the attack, and there was so much blood that it had dried in sticky thick pools that spread out all over the hardwood.
Even the bottom of the man's white socks were bloody, which Locke knew meant there must have been a struggle, because the only way for the bottom of his socks to get that soaked was if he had been bleeding heavily and then stepped in it. Locke's supervisor turned away from the body and brought Locke quickly up to speed.
Their victim was Dr. Robert Schwartz, who was a well-known biophysicist, and he had been stabbed to death. It didn't appear to be a robbery because nothing had been stolen or rifled through, and there was no sign of forced entry, which meant that, very likely, Robert had opened the door to his attacker willingly.
Locke knew that a set of facts like this often meant that a murder victim had been targeted by a person they knew, rather than attacked by a random stranger. And the savagery of the stabbing itself supported that theory, because it suggested a highly emotional killer who felt true rage towards the victim. But Locke's supervisor told him there was one more thing, something incredibly bizarre.
Whoever had stabbed Dr. Schwartz to death had also carved an X into the back of his neck. Locke told his supervisor that he was going to start canvassing the neighborhood, and his supervisor nodded in agreement. As Locke walked back out the front door of the farmhouse, he looked around and shook his head incredulously. This was a beautiful area.
It was up in the mountains, and it was sitting right above a historic little downtown district with nice restaurants and breweries and coffee shops and a vibrant art scene. It was very hard to imagine any murder taking place here, let alone some kind of ritual killing that involved a vicious knife attack and a symbol carved into the victim's skin.
The nearest house was way down the road, and as Locke reached it and climbed the front steps, he realized he couldn't even see Robert's home from here. This gave him a sinking feeling. He was afraid that the people inside of this house could not have possibly heard anything going on inside of Robert's house a quarter mile away. None of the neighbors could have.
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Chapter 4: Was there any evidence of a ritualistic murder?
When he had rolled Robert's body over, he found deep marks in the wood underneath where he had been laying. This was important because it looked like the marks had been made by the knife used to kill Robert. In other words, this could not have just been a regular knife like you would find in a regular kitchen.
Instead, the knife the killer had used had such a long blade that when the killer plunged it into Robert's torso, it had gone all the way through his body and then into the floor beneath him, leaving the marks. that meant the murder weapon had a blade that was at least two feet long.
Now, the murder weapon had not been found inside of the home, so it looked like the killer had brought the long blade with them to the house and then taken it with them when they left. To Locke and his supervisor, the idea of the murder weapon being this long, strange blade only strengthened their fear that this murder might have a ritualistic or even satanic element to it.
But Locke told his supervisor that before they went down a rabbit hole of the occult, they should focus on something a bit simpler that was right in front of their faces. They should track down those teenagers and the tow truck driver.
Last year, law and crime brought you the trial that captivated the nation. She's accused of hitting her boyfriend, Boston police officer John O'Keefe, with her car. Karen Reid is arrested and charged with second-degree murder. The six-week trial resulted in anything but resolution.
We continue to find ourselves at an impasse. I'm declaring a mistrial in this case.
But now the case is back in the spotlight. And one question still lingers. Did Karen Reid kill John O'Keefe? The evidence is overwhelming that Karen Reid is innocent. How does it feel to be a cop killer, Karen? I'm Kristen Thorne, investigative reporter with Law & Crime and host of the podcast, Karen the Retrial. This isn't just a retrial. It's a second chance at the truth.
I have nothing to hide. My life is in the balance and it shouldn't be.
I just want people to go back to who the victim is in this. It's not her.
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Chapter 5: What role did the teenagers play in the investigation?
And so that's why I created Mr. Ballin's Medical Mysteries, a totally separate show all about these wild mysteries of the human body. Follow Mr. Ballin's Medical Mysteries on the Wondery app or wherever you get your podcasts. Want to listen to episodes early and ad-free? Well, join Wondery Plus or listen on Amazon Music with Prime. Hey listeners, big news for true crime lovers.
You can now enjoy this podcast ad-free on Amazon Music with your Prime membership. Listen to all episodes of my podcasts, Mr. Ballin's Medical Mysteries and Mr. Ballin's Strange, Dark, and Mysterious Stories, along with a huge collection of top true crime podcasts, completely ad-free. No more wading through cliffhangers or dealing with ads, because let's be honest,
Ads shouldn't be the most nerve-wracking part of true crime. To start your ad-free listening journey, download the Amazon Music app for free or head to amazon.com slash ballin. That's amazon.com slash b-a-l-l-e-n. Dive into uninterrupted true crime stories today. Locke got in his cruiser and drove to the office of the towing company, where he found the owner in the lobby.
Locke asked him if he remembered a call on Saturday night about a carload of teenagers stuck in the mud on a dead-end street. As soon as the owner heard this, he scowled. "'Yeah,' he said. "'I remember. "'Those kids stiffed my driver on the bill.'" And now, Locke felt a surge of adrenaline. This was the second suspicious thing he learned about the kids in the stuck car.
Not only were they driving down a dead-end road they had no business being on, but they'd ducked out on the towing bill. Now, stiffing the driver was a crime, but Locke wondered if they had done it because they wanted to avoid giving out their real names. Locke asked the owner if he could speak to the driver, and the owner said sure, then disappeared into the back office.
A few minutes later, a man in a t-shirt with the towing company's logo on it walked out into the lobby and said he was the one who helped those kids. Locke could see from the man's furrowed brow and darting eyes that he was nervous, like he had something sensitive or upsetting to say, and Locke wondered if he was about to break this case open right here, right now.
The tow truck driver gestured to Locke to follow him to the far corner of the lobby furthest away from the back office where his boss was. When they got there, well out of earshot of the boss, the driver started to mumble something about how he'd gone out in the rain and unstuck the car and the kids jumped in and took off without paying.
But then he stopped and looked around like he was making sure they were alone. Once he was satisfied they had real privacy, the driver leaned into lock and said, "'I'll tell you something, but you can't tell my boss.'" Locke quickly nodded yes, completely desperate for the driver to continue. Whatever he was about to say, Locke wanted to hear it. Well, the tow truck driver said slowly, I lied.
The tow truck driver explained that the kids did not stiff him on the bill. In fact, they were perfectly nice and polite, and they didn't seem upset in any way, and they had gone to an ATM to get cash to pay the bill. The driver had decided to lie about the kids running off just so he could pocket the cash. And at this, Locke felt himself deflate.
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Chapter 6: How did the police respond to the murder investigation?
He watched as Clara nervously backed up and then sat on the edge of her bed. Then, Locke took a deep breath, and in a quiet and steady voice, he told Clara the news. Her father was dead. For what felt like a very long time, the room was completely silent. Clara stared blankly at Locke for so long that Locke started to wonder if she'd even understood him.
But right before Locke was about to ask her if she was okay, Clara's eyes seemed to snap back into focus, and she finally spoke. She asked how did her dad die. And now Locke hesitated, choosing his words carefully. He knew he had to be mindful about how much he revealed about the crime, even to the victim's closest family members. Everyone was a possible suspect until they were ruled out.
So Locke told Clara that her father had been found dead inside of his home, and what happened to him was a question they were investigating. Clara went back to staring blankly. Locke could tell Clara was in some kind of shock, and so there was no way he was going to leave her alone. So he asked her to come with him, because now they had to go and tell her sister, Michelle.
A few minutes later, Locke stood inside of Michelle's dorm room as Michelle screamed the word no over and over again while Clara tried to comfort her. So far, telling the kids had been just as heart-wrenching as Locke had expected. Notifications were one of the hardest parts of his job, especially in a murder, because Locke couldn't just comfort them and leave.
Instead, he had to stay and question them, no matter how upset they were. Locke looked at Michelle and Clara and decided that of the two of them, Clara was in much better shape to be interviewed. So he asked her to please step out of the room so he could ask her a few questions.
Clara nodded and Locke led her out into the hallway to a quiet corner near the stairwell where it felt like they had some privacy. He pulled out his notepad and asked Clara when she last talked to her father. Clara looked down at the floor and shook her head sadly. Friday, she said. They had talked about her coming home for the holidays in a few weeks.
Then she paused, and when she spoke again, her voice was almost a whisper. She said that during that last conversation, she and her father had fought. She had a car but it was back at the farmhouse and she wanted to bring it to school, but her dad wouldn't let her. She looked up at Locke and told him that she didn't know why she had gotten so upset at him.
Her dad had promised to consider it over the holidays, so she didn't even know why she blew up at him. Now, her final conversation with her father would always be this stupid argument. Locke watched as Clara dropped her head again. He felt sorry for this stunned and awkward teenager.
He told Clara he hated to keep pressing, but he needed to know about her father's friends and relationships, and about the people that she and her siblings hung out with. He asked if anyone they knew might have had some kind of grudge against her father. At this, Clara screwed up her face in what looked like deep concentration.
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Chapter 7: What were the implications of the murder on the community?
Officers took both of them to the station, put them in separate rooms, and told them to wait. Someone would be in to question them soon. Meanwhile, Locke executed a search warrant at Michael's house.
where police seized a desktop computer, two black cloaks, multiple knives, a document about human sacrifice, and a sword with a blade more than two feet long with little flecks of blood still on the metal. That afternoon, when Locke walked into the interview room where Michael was waiting, he felt like he had a pretty good case. Now, he just needed Michael to talk.
And pretty much the second he sat down, Locke got his wish. Michael Fole and his girlfriend agreed to tell Locke everything they knew. But their story was more bizarre and more horrific than Locke or anyone else had expected.
In fact, it was so wild and so shocking that it would take several more weeks of investigation before Locke and the rest of the police were able to fully untangle the sequence of events that Michael Fole and his girlfriend sketched out in their interviews that day.
But finally, on February 1st, 2002, so almost two months after Robert Schwartz's death, the police arrested the mastermind behind the murder. And it was not who the police had expected it to be. Based on interviews, evidence, and transcripts from online and phone conversations, the following is what happened to Dr. Robert Schwartz on the night of Saturday, December 8, 2001.
At around 6.15 p.m., the killer sat in the backseat of a car driving down a muddy dead-end road in the woods in a rainstorm. The killer's friend, Michael Fole, was driving, and Michael's girlfriend was riding in the front passenger seat.
Michael and his girlfriend were both talking because they were trying to find the big old farmhouse that was their destination, but the killer was not paying attention to them. Instead, the killer was completely focused on a different voice, a voice that no one else could hear. The voice was named Nicodemus, and Nicodemus was a god.
In fact, Nicodemus was one of six gods that had lived inside the killer's head for as long as the killer could remember. And now, Nicodemus had a warning. Don't go up there, Nicodemus shouted inside of the killer's head. Now, usually, the killer listened to Nicodemus. The killer knew the god was just trying to keep them safe. But tonight, the killer knew they could not back down from their plan.
innocent lives were at stake because the killer knew something that no one else did, and that was that Dr. Robert Schwartz was a monster. He lashed out with violence even though no one else could see it, and he poisoned lemons and pork with sulfuric acid. And recently, the killer was absolutely certain that Dr. Robert Schwartz had begun planning a murder of his own.
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Chapter 8: What other stories does Mr. Ballin cover in his podcast?
By the time the killer finished, Robert's clothing was shredded and he had been stabbed more than 30 times. The killer stood over his victim for a minute and then calmly walked over to the stove to turn off the burner. And then before he left the house, as a final touch, the killer took the sword and carved an X into the back of Robert's neck.
The killer did this because X was the signature of an assassin in the fantasy game that the killer loved. That fantasy game was called Underworld. Underworld had been created by the killer's best friend, and it was the killer's best friend who was the mastermind behind the murder of Robert Schwartz.
In the game of Underworld, the mastermind went by the name High Priestess of Chaos, and the killer was called Assassin. But in the real world, the killer's name was Kyle Hulbert, and the mastermind's name was Clara Schwartz. It would turn out Robert Schwartz's daughter, Clara, had never come out of her depression after the death of her mother.
Instead, she sunk deep into misery and also paranoia and became convinced that her father was trying to kill her. And when Clara met Kyle Hulbert at a Renaissance fair, she found a willing player in her dark fantasy world.
Kyle was schizophrenic and bipolar and he'd grown up in foster care and mental hospitals, totally unable to tell the difference between reality and the voices and visions inside of his head. Clara and Kyle, along with Michael Fole and his girlfriend, formed a disturbed little family.
They all played characters in Clara's fantasy game, Underworld, and they referred to each other as brother and sister. And over time, Clara had convinced all of them that her father was trying to poison her by lacing lemons and pork with chemicals like sulfuric acid, and that he was ultimately planning to murder her.
And so, convinced that Clara was in real danger, Kyle, the underworld assassin, stepped in to protect her. But what Clara did not say to Kyle was that if her father died, she believed she would inherit several hundred thousand dollars.
And so, at Clara and Kyle's instruction, Michael and his girlfriend drove Kyle to Robert Schwartz's house in the rainstorm on December 8th, 2001, so that Kyle could stop Robert once and for all. And they might have gotten away with their crime if their car had not gotten stuck in the mud. In the end, Michael Fole was sentenced to 18 years in prison for his role in the murder.
His girlfriend accepted a plea deal and was sentenced to just one year. Kyle pleaded guilty to first-degree murder and conspiracy and was sentenced to life in prison.
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