The Bouncer (PODCAST EXCLUSIVE EPISODE)

0:00One early morning in April of 2012, a man was walking through the woods in coastal France. He lived nearby and he had just seen a column of smoke coming out of the trees in this area. And so he was just coming out here to make sure there was not a brush fire or something. And so he walked through the woods and eventually he reached the source of the smoke. It was in this clearing and right away he felt relieved because what he saw was just the remains of a bonfire. And it was just smoldering and now there was just some smoke coming up off of it. He was about to turn around and go maybe get some water and douse it out completely, but he smelled something.

0:33Like, it was a weird smell that clearly was coming from the fire. And so curious, you know, there's nobody else around. He just began walking to the fire to see what was making this smell. And as he got close enough, he realized there was something in that fire. But before we get into today's story, if you're a fan of the Strange, Dark, and Mysterious delivered in story format, then you've come to the right place because that's all we do. So if that's of interest to you, please offer to make the follow button a nice fresh burrito. But don't tell them, instead of using ground beef, you used cat food.

1:06Okay, let's get into today's story.

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2:33On the night of April 26th, 2012, a 39-year-old bouncer named Lionel Varanez opened the door of a nightclub in Chamboury, France, and he let a woman inside. And as this woman came in, she stopped and made a point to look at Lionel and smile at him and thank him by name. So, Chamboury was a small city up in the Alps. And Lionel, the bouncer, was a fixture in its nightlife scene. Pretty much everybody in town who went out to the bars and clubs had either seen Lionel standing at the door outside or partying inside when he was not on the clock. And it was not just the locals who knew who this guy was.

3:08Lionel was also well-known among the rich and famous tourists who often vacationed in Chamboree. And even sometimes he would pick up side work as a bodyguard for these rich and famous people. And for Lionel, I mean, his career as like sort of this fixture in the nightlife scene was fun and pretty glamorous at times. But it also could be dangerous. In fact, just a few months ago, he got into this huge fistfight protecting one of his clients. And in fact, he actually got arrested for it. But tonight, Lionel was just trying to get through a shift without any trouble. There was this long line of people who were waiting outside the club, waiting to get in.

3:43And Lionel checked their IDs one by one and let them in. And then finally, when the line started to clear, Lionel saw a familiar face walking toward him. It was his good friend, Mike Booth, who Lionel often went drinking with multiple times a week. And at first, Lionel was just really glad to see Mike. But as Mike got closer, Lionel realized that Mike actually looked really mad. And so by the time Mike actually reached Lionel, Lionel just said to him, like, Hey, what's going on? You look pretty upset. And Mike would tell him that he had just been at his friend Philippe's house. and Philippe had told him that seemed really, really weird.

4:19So Philippe Perrier, Mike's friend, the guy whose house he just came from, was extremely wealthy because his family ran this world-famous winery near Chamboree. Now, Lionel had never actually met Philippe himself, but he knew of him. His family was incredibly well-connected in town because they're so rich and they had this winery. And Mike was friends with him and often talked about him. And so now Mike explained to Lionel what this really weird thing was that he heard when he was visiting with Philippe. So apparently Philippe's house had been robbed the day before, and Philippe believed Lionel, the bouncer, was the one who had done it.

4:57Now, Lionel immediately acted totally taken aback and began to ask Philippe, like, why in the world would he even think that? But Mike, you know, his buddy here, just cut him off. And he's like, Lionel, don't play dumb. Like, Philippe knows you're sleeping with his wife, Natalie. And Natalie is actually the one who's blaming you for this robbery. Now, at this, Lionel went from this sort of shock and awe reaction to actually just feeling really nervous. He actually began to sweat. Because, you know, he knew it was true. He had slept with Natalie. He'd met her at a club one night a couple of months ago, and they'd hooked up in the coat check room.

5:34But Lionel realistically had a lot of flings with a lot of different women. and he'd actually pretty much completely forgotten about hooking up with Natalie since it had just been like a casual thing and he hadn't seen her in weeks. And so he had no idea why now suddenly she would be accusing him of theft. Like, it doesn't really make any sense to him. So Lionel, I mean, he was genuinely stunned. I mean, he knew what he had done. He had slept with Natalie and that's problematic. But he told Mike very truthfully that he did not break into Philippe's house. Like, there was nothing going on between he and Natalie.

6:09That was just a fling. It was nothing. Like, I really didn't do this. But Mike, despite, you know, being friends with Lionel and knowing him quite well, did not appear to believe him. He just sort of narrowed his eyes and nodded and said, okay, I'll pass that along to Philippe. Three days later, on the night of April 29th, Lionel sat in a chair in his living room in Chamboree, finishing up a phone call. So he lived in a small apartment with his mother and also his nephew, Julian. However, Julian was just four years younger than him, so in many ways, they were more like brothers. And so as soon as Lionel hung up the phone, Julian, who was sitting in the room with him on the other side on the couch watching TV, immediately asked Lionel, who were you talking to?

6:54Lionel got up and he walked over and sat down next to Julian on the couch. And then he said to him, oh, that was my friend Mike. And he just called to see if I wanted to go out tonight for a drink. And so Julian's like, okay, cool. And then there's a little bit of silence. And then Lionel was like, actually, I want to tell you something. And then he filled in Julian on the weird conversation he had had with Mike just a few days before, where basically Mike was saying that, you know, Lionel was being accused of robbing this rich guy's home, Philippe's home. And so Julian, when he heard this, he was sort of like, this seems like a big deal.

7:27But Lionel, despite being the one to bring it up and being the one to indicate this could be a big deal, He quickly downplayed it when he saw the reaction and was just like, you know, it is what it is. I didn't do it. And, you know, me and Mike were back on good terms. This whole thing was just, you know, a misunderstanding. Everything is back to normal now. Just a weird thing that happened. And so Lionel and Julian, they shifted the conversation and chatted about whatever for the next couple of minutes. And then Lionel's phone buzzed. And at the same time, he saw there were headlights pulling up outside.

7:57So Lionel grabbed his jacket and he told Julian he'd be back in a few hours. Then he went out the door. Two days later, on the evening of May 1, 2012, Lionel's nephew, Julian, walked into the Chamboree police station. He had spent the past two days very worried and stressed because Lionel had not come home after hanging out with Mike that night, and he now was not answering his phone. And Lionel was never gone for this long without giving Julian or his mother a heads up. Julian had tried to convince himself that he was just overreacting to this whole thing and that Lionel could take care of himself.

8:33He was an adult. He was a tough adult, you know. He could handle himself. However, when he found out that Lionel also hadn't been at work for the past couple of days, Julian knew something was wrong. So Julian, after getting inside the station, he walked right up to the front desk and told them, I need to report somebody missing. The following afternoon, so May 2nd, 2012, Captain Fleuron Mazarin walked into an interrogation room at the Chamboree police station. He was leading the investigation into Lionel's missing person case, and sitting inside of the interrogation room at the table was, so far, the only suspect they had in this case, Lionel's friend, Mike Booth, who he had gone out with on the night he had disappeared.

9:18So it had only been a few days since anyone had seen Lionel, but Mazarin was already sure that there was foul play involved. Chambury was a small town, and a lot of the officers on the police force there knew Lionel. And a couple of them were pretty much adamant that Lionel was just not the kind of person who would just leave town with no warning. Julian, Lionel's nephew, had said the exact same thing when he reported Lionel missing. He also was the one who told police that the last person Lionel was with was Mike on the night he went missing. And Mike also, they found out, had recently accused Lionel of robbing someone's house.

9:55So Mazarin was really eager to get in there and hear what Mike had to say. So into the room he went, he sat down across from Mike, who seemed calm but also definitely curious, like he wasn't sure even why he was there. And when Mazarin started in by asking him about the robbery that supposedly Lionel was involved in, Mike just nodded and explained that the break-in had happened about a week earlier at the home of his good friend, Philippe Perrier. And when Mazarin heard that name, he sort of raised an eyebrow. Because like basically everybody else in Chamboree, Mazarin knew who the Perriers were.

10:30And he was surprised that someone so rich and so powerful would be running in the same circles as, you know, sort of traditional working-class men like Mike and like Lionel. However, before he could dive in and ask some basic follow-up questions about how he knows the Perriers. Mike went on to say that he ran an electrician business and he had a warehouse that was right next to Philippe's winery. So they saw each other all the time. And he said that Philippe knew Mike was friends with Lionel. And so after this break-in and robbery happened, he had asked Mike to talk to Lionel about it because he was suspicious that he had done it.

11:07But Mike said when he actually confronted Lionel just a few days ago and brought up the break-in, that Lionel had sworn he didn't know anything about it. And Mike had passed that on to Philippe. And as far as he knew, that had been the end of it. Like they were not going to continue to assume that Lionel had anything to do with it. Now, Mike was being so earnest as he told the story that Mazarin thought there was a good chance he was simply telling the truth here. And that this robbery thing was really just a big misunderstanding. However, when Mazarin asked Mike where he had been on Sunday night, when Lionel was last seen, presumably with Mike, Mike's whole demeanor changed.

11:45He began to visibly shift in his seat and began looking down at the table instead of eye contact with Mazarin, and then he just said that he had been home all night with his girlfriend. He did say at a certain point he had called Lionel to try to make plans with him for that night, but they'd never actually met up and they didn't see each other. Now, at this point, Mazarin was pretty confident that Mike was lying, Not just because of Mike's very obvious change in body language, but Lionel's nephew had sworn he had seen Mike's car outside their building on that night that Mike is saying he did not meet up with Lionel.

12:21Now, it was possible that Julian had been mistaken, but if Mike was lying to the police about having been with Lionel on the night he disappeared, well, that made Mike seem very, very suspicious. And so Mazaran just put Mike on the spot and said, okay, give me your girlfriend's name and her contact information so I can confirm your alibi. And so he did. He handed it over. And then Mazaran got up, left the interrogation room, and went to go give her a call.

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14:29On the evening of May 2nd, 2012, So just a few hours after questioning Mike Bouffe about Lionel's disappearance, Captain Mazarin drove up to a big house in a quiet, wealthy suburb just outside of Chambury, France. Now, by this point, he had already spoken to Mike's girlfriend, who had confirmed what Mazarin was already thinking, which was, Mike was lying about spending the whole night of Lionel's disappearance at home with her. In fact, she said that Mike hadn't been home at all. She said she had been at home by herself all night. She had watched a movie, and then at some point she had fallen asleep, maybe around midnight.

15:06And at that point, when she fell asleep, Mike still was not back from wherever he was. So right now, Mike was not only their sole suspect, but he was also their best suspect. Mazarin knew that a few days before Lionel's disappearance, Mike had confronted Lionel about this supposed robbery at Philippe Perrier's house. And so now Mazarin was at Philippe's house to see what he had to say about the whole situation. And so Mazarin pulled his car up in front of the house, he parked, he got out, he walked up to the front door, and he rang the doorbell. And a moment later, Philippe himself opened the door.

15:42And he seemed genuinely surprised to see Mazarin standing there. And so he quickly asked Mazarin if he was here to follow up on the robbery investigation. And Mazarin said, sort of. Mazarin said, for now, he just wanted to know if he could come inside and they could chat. And for a moment, it seemed, at least to Mazarin, that Philippe sort of hesitated, like he didn't necessarily want to do that. But then he sort of relaxed and nodded and said, sure. And he let Mazarin inside. And so Mazarin, he stepped inside of this beautiful house that was very well furnished, and he was led to the living room.

16:16And Mazarin took a seat. And then after Philippe sat down as well, he asked Philippe to walk him through what had happened with this supposed robbery. Philippe explained that his wife, Natalie, had come home one afternoon, and when she had come into the living room, she saw one of the windows had been shattered. And then Mazarin said that, you know, after seeing this, they searched the house, and they eventually went downstairs to the basement where their safe was, and they found their safe had been broken into as well, and a lot of cash that had been in there was gone. Philippe said he had called the police about it, and they'd come out to investigate, but so far he hadn't heard anything.

16:51And so Mazarin, after hearing this, asked Philippe if he thought he knew who was responsible. And Philippe immediately nodded and said yes. Then he repeated what Mike Bouff had said. It was Lionel Varanese. And the reason he knew that was Lionel was having an affair with his wife Natalie, and Natalie said it was Lionel. Mazarin looked really hard at Philippe because this was huge. If Philippe knew that Lionel was having an affair with his wife, that gave him, Philippe, plenty of motive to want Lionel dead. And as of right now, Lionel was gone and no one knew what happened to him, so maybe he was murdered.

17:29And so operating on a hunch, Mazarin followed up by asking Philippe if he had any weapons in the house. And to his surprise, Philippe said yes. And so Mazarin asked if he could see them. And so Philippe got up and led him over to the stairs that went down to the basement. And when they got down there, there was this huge gun safe with a few plastic firearm cases stacked around it. And so Philippe, once they got down there, he sort of stepped out of the way so that Mazarin could look around. And almost as soon as he did begin walking around Mazarin and began opening up these cases, he discovered that one of those cases, which had space for two weapons in it, was empty.

18:07And so Mazarin asked Philippe, like, hey, where are the two guns that go in this case? And Philippe said, actually, those were stolen during the robbery. However, after hearing this, and as Mazarin is staring at this empty gun case, something just was not adding up. Philippe clearly had a motive to want to hurt Lionel as he was having an affair with his wife. And he happened to have two missing guns? Now, of course, at this point, Mazarin did not know if Lionel was definitely, you know, dead, and therefore couldn't know if he had been shot or not. But still, this was really suspicious. But at the same time, Philippe was from this very wealthy and highly respected family.

18:50He didn't really seem like the kind of person who would go around murdering or kidnapping people in revenge. And if he had, let's say, done something bad to Lionel, it was just odd that he would just so readily admit to clearly having a motive to harm Lionel and to show the detective a basement full of weapons, including a gun case that was missing weapons. And so, basically, until Mazarin was able to figure out what actually happened to Lionel, until that time, he would have a really hard time proving that Philippe had anything to do with it. The next morning, Captain Mazarin was in his office at the police station, going over the notes from his interview with Philippe to see if there was anything he missed.

19:34At this point, Mazarin's theory was that either Mike or Philippe, or maybe even both of them, had gone to confront Lionel about the affair and about the robbery, and then things had turned violent. But just then, there was a knock on his door, and Mazarin turned, and he saw his door was open, and there was this woman standing there, and her face was stained with tears, and when she walked into the room, she sort of was heavy and stumbling, like she was maybe on drugs, or maybe drunk or maybe on heavy medication, and she sort of stumbled into the room and then introduced herself as Natalie Perrier.

20:11So Mazarin had actually earlier called on her to come in and speak to him both to verify her husband's story about what happened, the robbery, the affair, and also to see what else she might know about Lionel. And also, since she clearly was involved in this whole potential love triangle here, he had to also consider her as a potential suspect in whatever happened to Leonel. So he gestured for Natalie to take a seat, and then once she had, he asked her to tell him all about how she had met Leonel. Natalie, at this point, really clearly could not sort of keep herself together. She kept apologizing and kept explaining that she was on prescription medication that made it really hard for her to keep a grip on her emotions, and this whole situation had really rattled her.

20:55But eventually, after this sort of setup about how sorry she is and what a mess she is, she eventually tells Mazarin that she had met Lionel at a nightclub and that, yes, they had hooked up a few times, but since the last time, they hadn't seen each other, and it had been quite a while. Like, it was nothing. When Mazarin asked her about the robbery, she said that Lionel had told her about having serious gambling debts from playing poker, and so because of that, she had just sort of naturally suspected that he must have robbed them. She also added that, just to be clear, her and Philippe were both at their home all night on the evening that Lionel disappeared, and that if Philippe had gone to confront Lionel at any point, she did not know anything about it.

21:39And so at this point, Mazarin sat back in his chair and just considered what he was seeing and what he was hearing. Natalie seemed genuinely devastated by this whole situation. To Mazarin, it seemed like she was believable, that she was coming in here telling the truth. And so he really doubted that she directly had anything to do with Leonel's disappearance. However, while Natalie's emotional state certainly made her seem less likely as a suspect, Mazron wondered if maybe her tears were a clue. By her own account, she'd only had a fleeting relationship with Leonel, not some passionate relationship or something.

22:14So maybe the reason she's this upset is because she actually knows that her husband was involved in what happened to Leonel.

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