Stranger Than Fiction Vol. XII

0:00Hello fans of the Strange, Dark, and Mysterious. I'm here today to tell you all about what it actually means now that we've moved over to the SiriusXM family. Big picture, it means we are going to make more content for you. Right now, you get one YouTube video a week on Saturday. Well, what we're going to do now is we're going to have the Saturday upload be the same, but then also the MrBallen podcast. Well, we've begun already filming those episodes like a YouTube video. So that's a second piece of content every week. Then there's two other shows that you guys don't even know about yet, which means on any given week, you could have up to four new video pieces of content on the Mr.

0:39Bolland channel. And also all these pieces of content will double as podcasts as well. This new content schedule is going to start early next year. Also, there's one other thing I want to clarify, which is the state of Mr. Bolland's Medical Mysteries and Redacted. Those shows were created in collaboration with Wondery, But now we're partnered with Sirius, and so we're not going to be making any new episodes of either of those shows. For now, if you want to hear my podcast episodes one week early and ad-free, make sure to subscribe to SiriusXM Podcast Plus on Apple Podcasts, or visit SiriusXM.com slash podcast plus to listen with Spotify or another app of your choice.

1:19Keep on the lookout for more announcements in the coming weeks. Thank you. Sometimes the truth is stranger than fiction. and today's podcast will feature three stories that demonstrate that. The audio from all three of these stories has been pulled from our main YouTube channel and has been remastered for today's episode. The links to the original YouTube videos are in the description. The first story you'll hear is called Don't Mess With Doug, and it's about a criminal who picks the wrong house. The second story you'll hear is called The Ring, and it's truly so horrifying it sounds like something out of a horror movie.

1:53And the third and final story you'll hear is called Strange Calls, and it's about a fishing trip that turns into a complete nightmare for four men. But before we get into today's stories, if you're a fan of the strange, dark, and mysterious delivered in story format, then you've come to the right show, because that's all we do. So if that's of interest to you, please offer to mow the Follow Buttons grass, but do it in a totally disorganized fashion, leaving huge chunks of uncut grass. Okay, let's get into our first story called Don't Mess With Doug.

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3:54Around midnight on September 3rd, 1986, Doug Wells and his wife Kristen were pulling onto their street in western Montana when they noticed a camper parked in front of their house. Neither of them recognized the camper, and so when they pulled into their driveway, Doug got out and walked over and looked inside to see if anyone was in there. And there was. There was a man sleeping in the front seat. Doug didn't wake him up. Instead, he went back to his wife. They talked about it and they decided that this man must have just randomly parked in front of their house and that most likely the next day he would leave.

4:22And so the couple went inside their house and they began getting ready for bed. At some point, Doug rounded up all the trash inside of the house and was going to bring it outside to put into the trash bin. And when he went outside, standing in his front lawn is the same guy who was just sleeping inside of the camper. And so Doug very cautiously goes down the front steps and he yells out to this guy and says, you know, what are you doing here? And immediately the man put his hands up and said he meant no harm. He said his name was Wayne Nance and he actually worked with Doug's wife, Kristen, at the furniture store in town.

4:53Wayne went on to say that he happened to be driving down their street earlier that day and he spotted someone standing outside one of their windows looking in their house and he knew it was Kristen's house and he looked in their driveway and he saw that Kristen wasn't home and it looked like nobody was home. And so he decided he would just park out front and try to scare off this person and wait for Kristen to get back. But by the time Kristen got back, he had fallen asleep. Doug was totally caught off guard by this whole situation. The idea that there's this guy on his property talking about another guy that was lurking around his property.

5:23And so he asked Wayne, you know, did you see this guy again after that first time you saw him? And Wayne said, no, he hadn't, but he didn't have a flashlight. And so maybe if Doug went in the house and got some flashlights, the two of them could walk the property and make sure nobody was there. Doug thanked him for the offer and said, okay, well, why don't you come in the house and I'll go look for those flashlights. And so Doug led the way inside of his house. And as soon as Wayne got in the house and shut the front door behind him, he pulled out a metal pipe he was hiding and smashed Doug over the back of the head.

5:53Doug turned around and Wayne hit him again over the face. And before long, the two of them were struggling on the ground. Kristen, who was upstairs, heard the commotion and she came running down the stairs and she sees at the bottom her husband who's bleeding profusely from his head. He's covering himself up on the ground while Wayne, her co-worker, is standing over him, punching and kicking him. Before Kristen could do anything, Wayne noticed her up on the stairs and he drew a pistol and aimed it at her and told her to come down here and tie up your husband's arms and legs. Kristen, who's in shock, is just hoping this was just a robbery and that they would have their lives spared.

6:28And so she does as she's told. She walks down, Wayne throws her some cord, she ties up her husband's arms and legs, and then afterwards, Wayne leads Kristen back upstairs to the bedroom where he ties her up as well. After that, Wayne went back down to the main floor where Doug was still laying on the ground, and he grabbed Doug by the legs and he pulled him down the flight of stairs to the basement where he tied him up to a pole, and then he savagely beat him with the pipe before Wayne pulled out an eight-inch blade and plunged it directly into Doug's chest all the way in. And then when he pulled it out again, Doug slumped over.

7:00Wayne went back upstairs all the way to the second floor to check on Kristen and he saw she had managed to get partially out of her restraints and she was reaching for the landline and so he jumped on top of her and managed to restrain her all over again and then after he was confident in her restraints he went back downstairs to make sure Doug was dead when he got down there he saw Doug was still slouched over in the same position he had left him and so Wayne assumed Doug must be dead and Wayne went back upstairs to assault Kristen but Wayne was wrong Doug wasn't dead. And after Wayne went upstairs that second time, Doug, despite his horrific head and chest injuries, managed to wriggle out of his restraints and then hobbled over to a workbench where he had a rifle laying out because Doug was actually a gunsmith.

7:43And so he took the rifle and he loaded it with the one round he found on the table. And then he walked over to the base of the stairs, he raised his rifle, and he made his way up to the main floor. He didn't come in contact with Wayne and he looked around the first floor, he didn't see him, and he heard his wife screaming upstairs. And so he made his way to the next set of stairs and began walking up with his rifle raised. At the top of the stairs to the second floor, there was a hallway that ran right and left out of sight. And so as Doug is making his way up, he can hear off to the left, out of view, his wife screaming in the bedroom.

8:13And he can hear the sound of very heavy footsteps running down the hall towards the landing where he is. And so Doug positioned himself in the stairwell. He took aim about chest height with his rifle, and he waited for their attacker to show himself. And so as soon as Wayne came flying around the corner with his knife in his hand, Doug just fired one shot that struck him right in the stomach. Wayne fell backwards, totally shocked at what had just happened. He began to stagger. And Doug, meanwhile, turned his rifle around like a baseball bat because he didn't have any more rounds. And he just starts walking down the hall, smashing Wayne, as Wayne continues to stumble and fall and try to run away from Doug.

8:47And finally, he gets away from Doug, charges into the bedroom where Kristen is, and he grabs his pistol, and he turns around and he fires three shots towards the door where Doug is now standing. And Doug, he's unfazed. One round hits him in the leg, the other two miss, he doesn't care. He just walks up to Wayne and begins bashing his head in with the back of this rifle. He hits him so many times that the buttstock of the rifle explodes and the metal of the rifle bends like an L. And at some point, Wayne drops the gun because he's getting viciously beaten on by Doug and his rifle. And Doug sees that, he grabs the pistol and he fires the remaining rounds into Wayne's head.

9:26Police and paramedics would show up shortly thereafter and Doug, Kristen, and their attacker Wayne were all rushed to the hospital. Doug and Kristen would make full recoveries. As for Wayne, he would die the following day from his injuries. After the incident, the police investigated Wayne Nance to see who this guy was and they discovered that almost certainly he had been a serial killer that was connected to at least six cold case murders from 1974 to 1986. But because Wayne never confessed to any of these murders before he died, the true number of people he killed is still unknown.

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14:03In May of 2011, 27-year-old Mikalina Lewandowska was surprised when she got a text message from her on-again, off-again boyfriend, 27-year-old Marcin Kazprzak. The pair had actually previously been engaged and had a three-year-old son together, but they just could never seem to make it work for longer than a couple of months at a time. In the text message, Marcin was asking Michalina if he could take her shopping, something he knew she liked to do. As for Michalina, lately she had been turning down requests like this one from Marcin, and she was inclined to at first, but their son was already being looked after by her mother, and Michalina didn't have plans that day, and so she thought, you know what, what the heck, and so she said yes.

14:43So Michalina took a shower and got ready, and even put on her engagement ring that Marcin had given her, and then she waited by the door. A little while later, Marcin, who was an aspiring bodybuilder who had become addicted to taking steroids, showed up at her Huddersfield, England home. Michalina opened the door, Marcin came inside, and then as soon as the door shut behind him, he tased Michalina, he jumped on top of her, and then he bound and gagged her. And then once she was restrained on the ground with no idea what was going on, Marcin opened the front door and waved down to his car that was parked on the curb and one of his friends this 18 year old named patrick came out and walked up to the house and came inside and then patrick and martine worked together to cram michalina into this small rugged cardboard box and then once she was forced inside of there they closed it up taped it shut and then brought the box down to the front of the house and put it into martine's trunk and then martine and patrick hopped in the front two seats of the car and drove off once they reached the outskirts of town, they parked in a parking lot right next to this huge forest.

15:47And from there, they took the box with Michelina inside of it and two shovels and walked into the woods. And at some point, they left the path and walked way away from where anybody would normally be until they felt like they were far enough away that no one would see them. And at that point, they put Michelina down and then using their shovels, they dug a grave. Once it was deep enough, they put Michelina in her box inside of the grave. And then they covered her back up with dirt and then put a 90 pound log on top of her and then the two of them just walked away leaving Michalina to die. In the box, Michalina was not dead yet but she knew if she attempted to escape with Marcine and Patrick right above her, they would just kill her on the spot or they would dig an even deeper hole and then it would be impossible to get out again.

16:32And so after waiting an agonizingly long amount of time to ensure Marcine and Patrick had gone, Michalina jumped into action. She immediately tried to wriggle her way out of her restraints, but the position they had forced her into, which was basically the fetal position with her hands tied behind her back, it didn't allow her to move very much in any one direction. And so without any movement, she could not get herself to come free of these restraints. And so as she's struggling trying to figure out what she's going to do, she realizes she had chosen to wear her engagement ring that Marcin had given her, something she never wore anymore, and she could potentially use the diamonds in the ring to cut through the tape that was keeping her wrists tied together.

17:13And so she began working that ring until finally, she did cut through her restraints and her hands were free. And so she managed to force both of her arms right in front of her body. And then once they were in front of her, she immediately began scratching and clawing at the cardboard right above her. And eventually she scratched a hole in the box itself and dirt began pouring in on her. And she was already very low on oxygen. She was fighting off unconsciousness by remembering that her three-year-old son needed her and she had no idea what Marcin was going to do to him. And so she just kept on digging and fighting as the dirt's coming in on her and she's struggling to breathe.

17:48And then finally she pokes all the way through and she can see sunlight and fresh air comes into the hole. She can breathe again. And then with this huge surge of adrenaline, she forces herself and manages to push all the way up through this hole until she's standing in her grave. And from there, she pulls herself up and out of the dirt and she runs towards the road where she flags down a motorist and the motorist would call police and then wait with her until they arrived. After Marcin was arrested, the story came out that he had heard a rumor that Michalina was going to be leaving him and going back to Poland with their son and he didn't want that, so he had decided he was going to kill her.

18:26Marcin was found guilty of attempted murder and sentenced to 20 years in prison and Patrick was found guilty of kidnapping and sentenced to four and a half years in prison.

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21:10The next and final story of today's episode is called Strange Calls.

21:28in the early morning hours before sunrise on april 12th 1990 a 31 year old man named nathan kneesmith pushed down on the gas throttle of the fishing boat that he was steering just off the coast of Georgia. And as he did this, he expected the boat to naturally kind of kick into a higher gear and go faster. But as he pushed that throttle down, nothing really happened, and the boat just kind of sputtered along, going about half the speed that he expected it to go. Confused, Nathan stepped away and began making his way out towards the deck, where his younger brother, Billy Joe, who was actually the captain of this fishing boat, was out there taking a nap, and Nathan figured, you know, if there was any issue with the boat, Billy Joe was the guy to talk to.

22:08He would know how to fix it. Now for context, the two brothers were on the first day of a seven-day fishing trip that actually Nathan was not supposed to be a part of. The crew was originally going to be Billy Joe, the captain, and the one who actually rented the boat, along with Billy Joe's nephew, and also two other commercial fishermen. But at the last second, those two other commercial fishermen had bowed out, and Nathan and a friend had volunteered to go to round out the crew. Now Nathan and Billy Joe, they came from a fishing family, but it was really only Billy Joe who had pursued the family business.

22:42Now, Nathan was perfectly handy out on the water and did know how to fish and knew his way around a fishing boat, but compared to Billy Joe, there was a massive gap in experience. Billy Joe was the fisherman, and Nathan really was not. But Nathan and Billy Joe were very close, and so as soon as Nathan heard Billy Joe was in trouble and needed some more fishermen, Nathan didn't hesitate to say he would do it. Because really, for their entire lives, that was sort of their dynamic. Even though Nathan was the older brother, it was Nathan who looked up to Billy Joe, and any chance he got, he would do anything to help Billy Joe.

23:15And Billy Joe really respected that and loved that about Nathan. But now, as Nathan made his way out to the deck to wake his brother up to tell him on the first day of the trip, you know, right as Nathan's taking the wheel that something's wrong with the boat and I can't fix it. And also, Nathan was enormous, like 250 pounds, well over six feet tall. He was huge, this big physical presence, but he really was not mechanically savvy at all. And so again, Nathan is sort of feeling like, you know, sorry, and also maybe even second guessing whether or not it was even a good idea for him to have come along.

23:46You know, if he can't even fix a minor issue with the throttle or the engine, you know, what's he doing here? But when Nathan woke up his younger brother and explained the issue, Billy Joe was not upset. He was like, okay, we'll go down below and we'll take a look at the engine and make sure everything is okay. However, when they went down and Billy Joe opened up this hatch to look at the engine, smoke immediately came out. And it was very clear to Billy Joe anyways, that this was not like a minor issue. Something seriously was wrong with the engine. This was a big problem. And so Billy Joe began cussing, you know, he's totally frustrated.