Who's At The Door (PODCAST EXCLUSIVE EPISODE)

0:00On an early morning in December of 1991, a woman living in Largo, Florida, woke up to the sound of pounding on her front door. And as she climbed out of her bed, she realized it was not just pounding on her door she was hearing, also whoever was out there was screaming, screaming for help. When the woman realized there was some sort of crisis here, she kind of rushed and ran to the front door, she opened it up, and standing out on the front porch was her neighbor. And she was practically covered head to toe in blood. Her head was covered in gashes. Her throat clearly had been slit. But before this woman could say what was even going on, she just fell to the ground and passed out.

0:40But 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, the next time the follow button is taking a well-deserved nap, make sure you immediately go over and wake them up with a leaf blower. Okay, let's get into today's story.

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2:01And if they can't repair the covered item, they'll replace it. Plus, as a benefit to select plans, you can video chat with a live repair expert. American Home Shield. Don't worry, be warranty. Get 20 % off any plan at ahs.com slash MrBallin and see promo details. See ahs.com slash contracts for coverage details, including service fees, limitations, and exclusions. On the evening of December 14, 1991, a 31-year-old man named Keith Young grabbed his car keys from a hook by the front door of his home in Largo, Florida. Behind him, his wife, Anita, slipped on her favorite pair of heels. The newlywed couple was about to head out on a much-needed date night.

2:43They were both actually on their second marriages, and they had six children between them from their previous relationships. So, naturally, it was pretty hard to find time for just themselves. But that particular night, Keith's two kids were staying with their mother, who had shared custody, and Anita's eight-year-old daughter was at a sleepover, and her 12-year-old son Jason had agreed to stay home and watch his two younger siblings so that the adults could go out for dinner. Before they left, Keith gave Jason a final rundown of his expectations. Don't make too much of a mess, make sure nobody gets hurt, and if there was an emergency, he'd written down the restaurant's phone number on a notepad in the kitchen.

3:19But Keith reminded Jason that if there were like a real emergency, like a true crisis, he should call 911 right away. And when he heard this, Jason, the 12-year-old, just kind of rolled his eyes and said, yeah, I got it. It's under control. Now, Keith knew he was actually being a little bit uptight here, but there'd been an attempted break-in at their house earlier that year, and he'd been on edge about leaving the kids home alone ever since. The intruder had actually cut their phone lines and then also taken off a window screen, and they'd also tried to break down a door as well. But they'd actually left without taking anything and there hadn't been any more issues in the months since.

3:56But critically, the suspect was never caught so it felt kind of unresolved and scary for the family. Keith and Anita both hugged Jason goodbye as they walked out the door. And then once the door closed behind them, Keith turned around and checked the handle to double check that he'd locked it just to be safe.

4:15Less than a half hour later, Keith and Anita sat down across from each other at the restaurant and unfolded their napkins onto their laps. They were excited to have a few hours of peace and quiet, where they could just, you know, focus on each other, something that didn't happen very often. The couple had gotten married earlier that year after meeting at a support group for single parents, and they were very grateful to have each other, because their previous marriages were really not that great. Anita's ex-husband, Luther Bass, had a violent temper, and even though he now lived all the way across the country in Idaho, he still found a way to always complicate Anita's life.

4:50That summer, Luther had driven all the way to Keith and Anita's house to take his kids on a vacation, which Anita had initially agreed to. But when he showed up, he was unexpectedly driving a camper with his new girlfriend and her kids. And at that point, Anita had gotten a really bad feeling about the whole situation. And she actually started to worry that Luther would take her kids and then refuse to give them back. And so they had this big argument and it got so bad that actually Anita had threatened to call the police before Luther finally backed off and left. Meanwhile, Keith had been having equally heated arguments with his ex-spouse, Linda, about whether their kids would spend the upcoming holidays with him or with Linda and her new husband, Steve.

5:32Things had gotten so nasty that Linda had actually recently begun harassing Anita over the phone and was also gearing up to go to court and try to get the custody agreement changed. if Keith wouldn't agree to do things her way. But their bad relationships with their exes only made Keith more happy that he'd found Anita. He was glad that he could take care of her and her kids the way he felt like they deserved. So despite all the tension hanging over them, he tried to keep the mood light and they enjoyed a very nice dinner. And then when the check came, Keith glanced at his watch and realized it was getting pretty late.

6:05He knew Anita's son, Jason, was a responsible kid and that he could definitely handle getting his younger siblings into bed. But Keith was still a bit worried about leaving the kids alone for too long. So he paid the check right away, and then he and Anita left the restaurant and drove home.

6:24A little while later, Keith and Anita pulled up outside of their brown single-story home. When they got inside, Keith was relieved to see that all the kids were calmly watching TV in the living room and the family cat was curled up on the couch right next to them. Keith told them that it was time to get ready for bed. And as 12-year-old Jason got up, Keith pulled him in for a big hug and told him he was proud of him for his hard work babysitting. Anita helped the younger kids brush their teeth and then afterwards Keith turned off the lights and he went down the hall and said goodnight to all three kids who slept in bunk beds in the same room.

6:55Then after that he continued down the hallway to the main bedroom and climbed into bed with Anita. He kissed his wife goodnight and then turned off the light.

7:08Several hours later, around 3am early the next morning, Anita's 12-year-old son Jason awoke to a very loud noise. And when he heard it, he sat up in bed. And then he could hear something thumping around in the room next to him. But before he could figure out what was going on, someone screamed. With his vision still blurry from sleep, Jason slid off the top bunk and walked over to the door and cracked it open. And in the dark hallway, he could quickly make out these shadowy shapes of what appeared to be two men moving around, sort of struggling with each other, fighting. As his eyes adjusted to the darkness, he realized that one of these men was his stepdad, Keith.

7:45But he couldn't make out anything about the other men, except that he was really big and wearing what appeared to be a black ski mask. Jason immediately felt paralyzed by fear. because he knew, you know, this was obviously another intruder, just like the one who'd try to break into their house that summer. For a second, he was hopeful that maybe his stepdad would fend the man off. But then Jason noticed there was blood sprayed all over the walls, and then he saw the glint of a knife in the intruder's hand. The intruder had Keith pinned to the ground and was stabbing him over and over again. At the same moment, Jason saw his mother, Anita, run out of the master bedroom, also covered in blood, and she was holding a baseball bat.

8:25And she swung it at the intruder, and she hit him in the back of the head, but it barely slowed him down. And that's when Jason heard his stepdad yell out for Anita to get the gun. And Anita, she ran into another room, and Jason just stood there looking out the crack, just paralyzed with shock, watching as this intruder literally picked Keith up and threw him back into the master bedroom. And the next thing Jason knew, he saw his mother standing in the hallway holding a gun, and the intruder was running away out the front door. Suddenly, Jason kind of snapped out of the shocked trance he had found himself in and remembered what Keith had told him to do in case of a real emergency.

9:04Call 911. So he ran to the phone in the kitchen, he picked it up, and he dialed. But when he put the receiver to his ear, all he heard was silence. There was no dial tone. Jason looked over and he saw his mother kind of hobbling over towards him. She was standing in the doorway and there was blood visibly dripping down her neck. Jason's voice cracked when he told his mother that the phone line was dead. Anita told her son to go back with his stepdad and just wait, that she was going to go find help. And so Jason began to walk towards the bedroom where he knew his stepdad was. And as he did, he watched his mom run out the front door into the night.

9:39And then Jason, he went down the hallway and went into the bedroom where he saw his stepdad sprawled out on the bed. And he was still alive, but he was clearly struggling to breathe. You know, he's kind of gasping and, you know, gurgling. And Jason, you know, this 12-year-old kid, not having any idea how to handle this, just walked over to the bed, kneeled down, and he took Keith's hand and just held it while he waited for his mom. And as he held Keith's hand, he could hear the sound of his stepfather take his last few raspy breaths before he went completely limp.

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13:20Several hours later, before dawn on the morning of December 15, 1991, Detective Mike Short from the Largo Police Department pulled up to the curb outside of a brown single-story house surrounded by crime scene tape. He'd gotten a call from his supervisor, who really didn't know much, just that an intruder had broken in into this house and attacked a husband and wife while they slept. But now, as Short got out of his car and looked around at the quiet block of modest, well-kept houses, he found that kind of odd. This really wasn't a neighborhood where they saw violent home invasions. As Short walked up to the house, a uniformed officer caught up with him and gave him a few more details about what they knew so far.

14:00He said that the wife, Anita Young, had run to a neighbor's house screaming for help before passing out from blood loss in their front yard, and the husband, Keith Young, was deceased in the bedroom. The officer also said that the couple's 12-year-old son had woken up at some point and witnessed the attack, and for now, he was over at the neighbor's house until they could track down another guardian. The officer said that Anita had been taken to a hospital, but it would be a miracle if she survived. Her injuries were some of the worst they'd ever seen. As Short went up the walkway that led to the front door, he saw that blood had dripped all over the cement.

14:38The front door was open, and right inside he saw a baseball bat lying on the floor with blood on the handle. Short stepped inside, and he saw more blood. Blood that was spattered and smeared basically all over the living room, on the walls, the doors, the furniture, as if the suspect and the victims had been fighting all throughout the house. In fact, it was so chaotic and messy that Short thought maybe the suspect was not expecting to fight off two grown adults. Otherwise, they might have come up with a better plan of attack. So Short's first assumption was that this likely was a robbery that had gone terribly wrong.

15:13As he continued down the hallway, a cat ran past him. It was unharmed, and it went to hide under the couch. The hallway was somewhat unbelievably even bloodier than the living room, with red smears all over the walls and floors, so Short figured most of the attack must have occurred here. Short reached the main bedroom and looked inside, and he saw Keith's body lying on the bed, covered head to toe in blood. Keith's shirt was shredded, and Short could see there were multiple stab wounds to his chest and also a very deep gash down his side. Short decided not to actually go into the bedroom until crime scene techs had gone through it for forensic evidence.

15:51So instead, he just walked down the rest of the hallway and pushed open the door to another bedroom, where he was surprised to see two small children soundly asleep in their bunk beds. Somehow, these kids had slept through the entire attack. Short went back outside and immediately flagged down a uniformed officer, and he told him to go in there and wake up those kids and bring them somewhere safe. Then once the officer went inside, Short pulled out his flashlight and began searching the yard for evidence. Based on Keith's wounds, at least what he saw, Short thought he was probably attacked with a knife or maybe even an axe or a machete.

16:26But apart from that bloody baseball bat that was found in the doorway, there was no sign of a weapon anywhere inside or outside of the house. But as Short went around the side of the house, he found something else that was interesting. The home's phone lines had clearly been cut. The killer must have planned ahead to make sure nobody in this house could call out for help. And this was interesting because nothing else about the scene suggested that this crime was carefully planned. In fact, in some ways you could say it looked like it was very unplanned. But now Short had to consider that maybe this was not just a random robbery gone wrong.

17:01Maybe, you know, especially given the cut phone lines, this was like a premeditated attack, a premeditated murder. And if that was the case, he had to figure out who the intended target was, Keith or Anita or both. A little while later, Detective Short walked up the street to the neighbor's house to speak with his best eyewitness, Anita's 12-year-old son, Jason. After Short knocked on the door, the neighbors let him inside and showed him into their living room, where he saw Jason was wrapped in a blanket and still wearing his pajamas. Short sat down across from him and told him that he knew it must be extremely difficult to talk about this.

17:39But he really needed to know exactly what he had seen and what he had heard during this attack. Tears began to roll down Jason's face as he began to describe watching his mother and stepfather fight off this intruder. Jason said he couldn't really describe what this person looked like because they were wearing a ski mask. but he was pretty sure it was a man. He also said there had been a little bit of skin exposed on the killer's neck and from the looks of it, it appeared like their skin was maybe fairly dark. So Short wrote down that the suspect likely had dark skin. But because it was dark and Jason clearly had not gotten a very good look at the killer, he knew the boy could be wrong too.

18:16So he was just putting it down as a maybe. Short asked Jason if the intruder had said anything during the attack. And Jason just shook his head and said no. He said the intruder didn't say a single word the entire time. And Short made note of that too, because it made him wonder if maybe the killer was someone close to the family, and they knew that if they spoke, someone might recognize their voice, like Jason.

18:43Later that same morning, once the sun had come up, Short went back to Keith and Anita's house and searched the outside of the property again, in case he missed anything when it was dark. And while he was searching the front yard, another police cruiser pulled up to the curb. An officer got out and walked over to Short. She asked if he was the lead investigator on this case. And when he said he was, the officer told him that she'd been waiting at the hospital all morning and Anita had finally woken up enough to say a few words. She said Anita was only awake for just a few minutes before she had to be rushed back into surgery, but it was long enough to answer a couple of questions.

19:20Anita had described waking up to see a man standing over her with an axe in one hand and a knife in the other. She said it was a man that she had never seen before. She didn't recognize anything about him. The officer said right before Anita was taken off to surgery, there was one more thing she mentioned. There had been an attempted break-in at their house earlier that year, and the intruder, during that break-in, had also cut their phone lines. Short instinctively turned and literally looked at the side of the house where those lines had been cut, and he thought to himself, this is too strange of a coincidence to be ignored.

19:56Later that day, back at the station, Short read through reports on the interviews his team had done with Keith and Anita's kids and their neighbors. A team of five detectives had been assigned to this case, and they'd made quick progress on collecting background information on the victims. Everybody in the neighborhood had described the victims as being a very normal, happy couple. Keith was an air conditioning technician who'd been working at the same company for a very long time, and Anita was mostly a stay-at-home mom who did some accounting work on the side. However, what also came out in these interviews was that both Keith and Anita had ex-spouses who could potentially want to hurt them.

20:33Anita's ex-husband, Luther, lived thousands of miles away in Boise, Idaho, but Short knew that despite the distance, it was not impossible that he might have traveled to Florida to commit this crime. So Short called the Boise police and told them about this attack and asked them to track down Luther and question him. As for Keith's ex-wife, Linda, Short had learned that she actually lived right there in town, and Keith's two kids were still at her house, unaware that their father was dead. And since Linda and her new husband, and Steve were potential suspects, Short wanted to be the one to break the news to them, to see how they all reacted.

21:08So he looked up Linda's address in the database and then grabbed his keys and headed out. Less than an hour later, Short parked his car in Linda's driveway and walked up to the front door. He knocked and a woman opened the door and Short asked her if she was Linda, and she said yes. And then he flashed his badge and said he'd like to come in. And Linda, she seemed a bit confused, but she opened the door and let him inside. Short walked into what seemed like a perfectly normal Sunday morning routine inside of the house. The air smelled like eggs and bacon, and the two kids were in the living room watching cartoons with a man who Short figured must be Linda's new husband, Steve.

21:47And so Short, he asked Steve to leave the kids and come into the kitchen with he and Linda because he wanted to speak to both of them. And then once all three of them had sat down at the kitchen table, Short broke the news that Keith had been murdered, and then Short watched as Linda literally collapsed into Steve's arms. Short gave them a minute, but then he cut right to the chase, and he asked where Linda and Steve had been at about 3 a.m. that morning. Linda seemed shocked to realize that clearly the detective was considering both her and her husband as suspects, but she choked out that they'd both been at home with the kids sleeping, and Steve just nodded in agreement.

22:23He said they'd all been home together all night. That was it. Nothing about their demeanor or their reactions was suspicious to Short. But when he pressed Linda about what her relationship with her ex-husband was like, she admitted that it was contentious and that actually just a couple of days earlier, she'd spoken to a lawyer about potentially changing their custody agreement. Short found the timing of this a little convenient and he wondered, you know, maybe Linda or Steve had decided they would just settle the custody battle by simply taking Keith out of the picture for good. And he also found it convenient that Linda and Keith's two kids weren't at Keith's house when the attack happened.

23:00It was only Anita's kids who were there at the time. But Short thanked the couple for their time and told them he would be in touch if he had any more questions. And then he left their house, and as he got into his car and drove back to the station, he kept going over the conversation he had just had in his mind. Linda and Steve's alibis were pretty weak. They seemed to be the only two people who could vouch for their whereabouts for the night of the murder. And so what that meant was Short had every reason to keep both of them at the very top of his suspect list.