She HUNTED DOWN her idol

Today, I'm going to tell you three incredible stories about real people who had something totally unexpected and insane happen to them that not only, you know, completely changed their lives, but in some of these cases, it completely changed other people's lives as well. But before we get into those stories, 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 and we upload once a week.

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One afternoon in the early 2000s, a young woman named Rose drove up to this huge mansion in the Hollywood Hills in California. She came to a stop outside the fence and she just sat there for a minute feeling very nervous because what she was about to do was highly illegal.

So Rose was a musician, but she definitely had not made it yet. However, she was desperately trying to break into the industry. And so her big plan today was she was going to sneak into this mansion, which was home to arguably one of the most famous people on the planet, a big-time musician. And her plan was to give them a

copy of her demo CD, because she believed if they would just listen to just one song on there, they would be blown away by her talent, and they would help usher her into the industry, and her career would take off. Now, obviously, she knew this could go horribly wrong, and the owner of this home could just as easily call the police and have her thrown in jail. But to her, it felt like the risk was worth it.

And so Rose got out of her car, and she looked up this huge driveway that extended up this hill and it reached this big gate that sort of blocked off the driveway about halfway up. And then the driveway beyond the gate continued up to the mansion. And from where she was standing, there really was nobody out on the property anywhere. It was totally quiet,

just this massive mansion up on a hill. But in front of the gate, on her side of the gate, was clearly the gardener. And at first she thought maybe the gardener was gonna be a problem, that of course they would see her if she tried to break into the property. But Rose was desperate

and she thought the gardener looked friendly enough. And so she decided she would go up and maybe try to convince the gardener to let her go through the gate. And so she took a deep breath and with her demo CD in hand,

Rose began walking up this first stretch of driveway. And as she got closer to the gate, the gardener stopped what they were doing and turned to kind of see what this person was doing. And you know, Rose was very young and charismatic and she seemed friendly enough. And she comes walking up the driveway and she approaches the gardener and pulls out a $5 bill and hands it to the gardener and just says, look, I got no money. Like this is my last $5. Please, will you let me go through?

I just want to drop something off. And so the gardener takes the $5 and just smiles at Rose and says, OK, go ahead. I mean, after all, Rose is like a kid. She seems completely harmless. You know, what's the worst that could happen? And so Rose is kind of blown away that the gardener is actually letting this happen. But she doesn't wait, she just goes right past the gardener, slips through the front

gate, and starts walking right up towards the mansion. And as Rose is walking up this driveway towards the front door of this gargantuan piece of property, she's looking around at the beautiful landscaping and just how valuable and beautiful everything looked, and she's seeing all these cameras pointing in every direction, and she's just waiting for any minute, you know, security guards to come running out here and tackle her to the ground, but nothing happened.

She walked right up to this huge, beautiful front door, and again, no one's come to meet her, and so she just knocks on the front door, but nobody comes to the door. So she's thinking, you know, what do I do? Like, I've come this far. I really want to hand this demo CD off. And so almost like without even thinking,

she just reached down and tried the doorknob, thinking of course it's going to be locked, but no, it was open. And so she turns the doorknob and pushes the door in. And now she's looking into the home of, again, one of the most famous people on the planet,

and nobody's stopping her. At this point, Rose didn't even know what to make of the situation she found herself in. I mean, she had been fantasizing about how this was gonna go for weeks leading up to this, and it didn't involve it being this easy and straightforward.

But here she was, and so again, without hesitation, she just walked inside this home. And now she's looking around, I mean, everything is beautiful and everything is clearly so expensive. There's all this amazing artwork and fancy furniture.

There's billiard halls, there's wine cellars. I mean, this is a gorgeous property, exactly what you'd expect for the person who lives here. And as she's kind of snooping around the first floor, looking for the owner, she's amazed to see that it's like nobody's home. It's just this vacant, unbelievable mansion.

Eventually, she walks around and finds there's an elevator, and so she's like, all right, I'll just get in the elevator and go up. And so she gets in this beautiful elevator, she shuts the door, she hits the button to go to the next floor, and as the car begins to move,

she realizes like this is gonna make some noise, like someone's gonna hear me, like oh my gosh, now I'm gonna get caught. And so she starts to freak out, and so she pulls out her big clunky Nokia cell phone, and she calls her mom, and when her mom picks up, she tells her that, you know what, almost certainly,

I'm about to get arrested here. And as her mom is like, what are you doing? What is going on here? The elevator that Rose is in came to a stop and the door opened up and as soon as Rose saw what was in front of her She just lowered the phone her mom still talking into it and just stared it was like she was totally struck by what she was seeing because Right in front of her in the room right outside of this elevator is the person who owns this house the extremely famous

Major celebrity who is just sitting there with a guitar, strumming along, just minding his own business. And he turns and looks at Rose, and Rose is looking at him, and there's this moment of just stunned silence. Like, neither of them can really figure out how this even came to be. Now, at this point, Rose knew it was her chance. And so even though she's unbelievably starstruck and scared and has no idea what's about to happen,

she just quickly walks a little bit forward into the room and throws her demo CD onto this table that was sort of between the two of them. And this big time musician is just like, again, standing there staring at her like, what are you doing here?

And after Rose did that, she didn't say anything. She just turned, headed back to the elevator, and began to make her escape. But by the time she made it back to the front door, this big-time musician's security team did catch up to her and they stopped her. However, they did decide not to call the police. And so, Rose was very lucky that she escaped without a criminal record. Which is sort of incredible when you consider the home she actually broke into.

This was the home of Prince. Again, arguably, at the time, one of the most famous people in the world. I mean, it's bad enough sneaking into anybody's home, but this is, like, egregious. So the idea that she got right up next to Prince and gave him her demo CD without consequence, pretty incredible. But despite all this, her interaction with Prince

really didn't have any bearing on her career. He didn't care at all about her demo CD. He did not throw her name out to industry contacts and blow her career up. Basically he said, I won't press charges, now get out of here, that was it.

However, Rose did go on to become an incredibly famous musician in her own right. She just did it without the help of Prince. Today, Rose's tracks go multi-platinum, and she's sold more than 100 million copies of her records. Rose is actually her middle name.

You very likely know her by her stage name, which is also her actual first name, and that

is Kesha.

Last year we launched a brand new podcast here at Balan Studios called Redacted, Declassified Mysteries with Luke Lamanna. And so far you guys have loved it. And in case you haven't heard, we also launched a YouTube channel for Redacted where you can not only listen to these episodes, but also watch the beautiful animations we've done for each of these episodes. That channel already has 150,000 subscribers and it's growing really quickly, and there are hours of content

available right now for you to binge. New uploads to this YouTube channel will be every single Tuesday. All you have to do is look up at Redacted Mysteries on YouTube, and I'll also be putting a link in the description below. Wondery Plus subscribers can also watch Redacted on the Wondery app. Okay, back to the stories. One day in 2008, a 50-year-old man named Carlo was at his home in Connecticut reviewing all this financial documentation.

So Carlo had filed for bankruptcy a few years earlier, and it had proven to be very complicated. And there was all this paperwork he was still getting, and his bankruptcy case had not even finalized yet. And so what he thought would be sort of like a quick fix to a huge problem had turned into a really complicated mess. And now he had even more paperwork to sign. I mean it was totally overwhelming. So Carlo was an actor and in many ways he had had lots of success.

He had been on Broadway, he had starred in shows and movies, like he was a respected actor with lots of contacts in the industry. But despite that he hadn't really ever made it. Like he couldn couldn't really consistently land high paying or even consistent work, period. And so despite his reputation as being a very talented actor, it really wasn't translating to financial success. Now, this situation that Carlo was in would not have been that bad if he was single, but he wasn't.

He was married with four children to take care of. And on top of that, Carlo also felt this really intense pressure that was sort of maybe felt in the industry in general, in the sort of entertainment industry, to keep up with his appearances. You know, as much as he was struggling financially, he felt like he didn't want his peers to know that that might eat into his ability to get big roles.

And so he's got all this pressure to take care of his family and all this pressure to maintain this idea that he's really successful and doing great, but in reality, he just felt like a total fraud. He had no money and he felt like he didn't even know how he was gonna dig himself out again.

And so as Carlo is sitting there, staring at this mountain of paperwork, he started to have this very dark thought that had sort of crept into his mind a couple of times over the past few months, you know, as this huge issue just continued to get bigger and bigger. But now this dark idea had become fully realized in his mind.

He began to think, you know, maybe if I were to die, there could be a large insurance payout to my family. That would solve their financial problems and it would also sort of, you know, abscond me from looking like the fraud that I really am. Nobody would know.

I'd be dead. They wouldn't know that I had all these issues. I'd just, you know, be gone and people would miss me and my family. They'd be financially taken care of. You know, maybe that's a possibility. to end his life because he didn't want to be here anymore, he just felt like he did not have another way out. And so he actually went to his wife and began sort of nonchalantly asking her questions

about their various insurance plans to see if he had a good life insurance policy that would pay out if he were to go. And eventually he got his wife to tell him that, yeah, you have a very generous life insurance policy. We are good if the worst were to happen and something were to happen to you." And at that point, Carlo felt like, that's it.

That's the way to fix this problem. I need to die. However, when Carlo actually did begin researching this route, seeing exactly how, you know, an insurance payout would work if he were to take his own life, he quickly learned that, you know, payouts after a suicide on these life insurance plans are very complicated, and there's all these stipulations involved because insurance companies do not want people

taking their own life in order to get these payouts. And so Carlo was quickly seeing that if he were to take his life, it would not be like, okay, quick payout to his family. Quite the opposite. And in some cases, his family might not even be entitled to this payout. And so Carlo's thinking, well, okay, I can't take my own life.

I need to find another way to have my life come to an end. And so he's thinking, okay, I'll start picking up really dangerous hobbies and maybe I can sort of die by accident. Maybe I'll start hang gliding and fall out of my harness and that'll be the way I die and maybe that'll lead to a payout or I'll start doing base jumping or all these different things that might reasonably explain why he suddenly died. But he also was thinking, you know, people would see through that.

I'm not the type of guy that picks up really dangerous hobbies and so that could be kind of suspicious. He's like, okay, well what else could I do? And he's like, oh, I could hire a hitman. Somebody else will kill me, and then, that's not my fault, somebody else took my life. That'll allow for a payout, right? But the more he thought about it, the more that, too, seemed highly suspicious.

People don't usually get away with hired hits. And so several months go by, and Carlo is still alive, because he's basically discovered that there really isn't a way to intentionally end his life, directly or indirectly, without getting caught and sort of jeopardizing the one thing he wants this to do, which is to have this payout for his family. And so he's just sort of stuck in this situation that he does not feel like he can get out of.

Like he's just completely buried by debt and this general financial crisis he's in. And so, Carlo was doing really the only thing he knew he could do, which is just to get out there and audition for as many shows and movies and various acting opportunities as he possibly could to at least, you know, get some amount of money coming in, even though clearly it was still never going to be enough. But in late 2008, Carlo got an interesting call from his agent, his agent who worked to get him some of these roles.

Now, Carlo's agent, who did understand Carlo was in dire straits here, quickly explained to Carlo that, you know, this role didn't really pay much, but, you know, you'd be able to be a part of a very big show. I mean, yeah, your role is sort of minimal, but this is huge. It's a big credit and, you know, maybe it lends itself to you getting other work. This could be a great opportunity for you." Now Carlo had heard his agent sort of pitch him on various roles and the opportunity and all that before and so he was grateful to be told this is a good opportunity, but he

was sort of skeptical. But he received the script and he began reading about what his character would be doing in the show and he quickly realized that, you know what? This role actually might be more perfect for me than even the producers and directors might realize. So this role was for this particular character on the show who sort of, in the show, hides in plain sight.

Like, that's sort of the way they need to be portrayed. They're sort of, they're this huge, influential character in one way, but to the eye of the audience, they sort of look like a nobody. They're sort of, again, hiding in plain sight. And Carlo, in his own life, very much felt like he was sort of hiding in plain sight.

To his peers in the industry, he's this acclaimed actor who's getting all these roles and everything's so great. He's a family man with four kids. But privately, he's living this hell. He's got all this financial debt. He's considered killing himself for an insurance payout to pay for his life. Like he's living a completely double life here.

And so he felt like, I know how to hide in plain sight. It's literally what I do every day. That's my actual life. And so he takes this role, and Carlo does such a world-class job portraying this character who hides in plain sight, that the director and all these people who are working on the show, they're like, oh my goodness, Carlo is incredible, and this character that he's

portraying, we've got to find a way to expand this character and make them more meaningful in this show. And so they quickly began writing in additional scenes into this big time show for Carlo's character. Again, not because the character was so good, but because Carlo was so good at portraying that character.

And as this character's role grew in the show, the show itself began to succeed even more. Like, the audience was like, wow, we love that character. And so the character only grew and grew and became a staple in this show. And it ultimately completely changed Carlo's life, not only because this would be the opportunity that would make him massively famous and hugely successful, but also because he got paid and he was able to escape the financial hell that he was in.

Through this incredible experience, Carlo would get paid millions and millions of dollars and would be nominated for multiple Emmy Awards. Now, you might know Carlo by his full name, which was Giancarlo Esposito, but if that name doesn't ring a bell, you very likely do know him from the life-changing role that he portrayed on this show. He was Gus Fring, the chicken shop kingpin from Breaking Bad. On Thursday, June 6, 2013, a 79-year-old woman named Marilyn Walpole, along with her husband Jim, walked down a busy street in Toronto, Canada.

They were on their way back to their hotel after a dinner date at a local Irish pub called PJ O'Briens. The couple was from Ohio, but they were on the last leg of a cross-country vacation through Canada, and so far the trip had been amazing. And so the retired couple is enjoying their evening, just walking down the road, you know, reminiscing about what an amazing trip it had been.

And at some point, as they're walking on the sidewalk, they see up ahead there's all this scaffolding that's been built up right over the sidewalk. There's some sort of construction happening on a building that lined the sidewalk, and there was a platform that was built maybe 8 to 10 feet above the sidewalk, you know, the scaffolding, so that workers could stand on this platform and do construction. And so pedestrians, like Marilyn and Jim, if they wanted to walk on the sidewalk, they

would have to walk under the scaffolding. Like the sidewalk continues unobstructed right underneath. The scaffolding is intentionally built to allow for this tunnel for pedestrians to walk. Like, this is not a big deal. It's very common in cities.

And so Marilyn and Jim, they walk underneath the scaffolding and they're not thinking anything of this. This is completely ordinary. There's other people also walking under the scaffolding. It's all good. But at some point, Jim trips while they're under the scaffolding, and where he lands is where there's a couple

pieces of metal kind of poking up out of the ground, some metal tubing. You know, it was kind of obvious and people avoided it, but he's falling, he can't avoid it, and he lands with his neck striking basically this metal tube poking up out of the ground. And so, Jim, he hits the ground and the tube cuts his neck wide open. And so suddenly Jim is literally gushing blood all over the sidewalk. And it happens so completely suddenly

that Marilyn, she saw her husband trip and she's kind of getting him to stand up. And as she's doing that, she's seeing all this blood pooling everywhere. And she just freezes. She has no idea what's happened.

Like what's going on with Jim? Why is he bleeding? And she starts screaming for help. And there are these two guys. There's nobody else inside the tunnel with them. But there are these two men who don't know each other.

They're just strangers out on the street. They hear Marilyn screaming for help, pointing at her husband who're kind of assessing the situation and they see Jim kind of grabbing at his neck, his blood is pouring out of him, and one of the men pulls out his phone and calls 911. So he starts talking to first responders and the other man, he got down next to Jim, he pulled the scarf off from around his neck and he cradled Jim's head and he wrapped the scarf around Jim's neck and he applied pressure to Jim's neck. And very calmly, he told Jim, it's okay, we're stopping the bleeding, paramedics are on their

way. He tells Marilyn, it's okay, I've got your husband, you stay calm, everything's going to be fine. And so Marilyn, who again is just kind of in a panic here, this happens so suddenly, she immediately calmed down because she can tell clearly this second man, the guy holding her husband's head and applying pressure, he's got to be a doctor or at a minimum in the medical field because this guy has just a commanding presence, a very calming

presence, and knows what he's doing. And so to Marilyn's great relief, the man on the ground holding her husband's head and the man who had called 911, they stayed with her and Jim all the way until the paramedics arrived, which was only a couple of minutes later. And then after Jim was lifted up by paramedics and put into the back of the ambulance, Marilyn was told, hey, get in, you're coming with him. And as she's climbing into the ambulance,

she turns and specifically asks the man who was kind of all over it, who was actually handling Jim and actually holding his head and applying pressure. She said, what's your name? And the man looked at her and he just said, my name's John, everything is fine, your husband's gonna be okay, now go. And so Marilyn just felt so reassured by this guy and she said, thank you so much. She

hops in the ambulance, the door's shut, and they take off to the hospital. The following day, Marilyn was in her husband's hospital room feeling very grateful that Jim was clearly going to survive here. So ultimately he had broken a finger and also needed 10 stitches to his neck to close the wound. But from what the doctors told them, basically the cut to his neck, had it been maybe an eighth of an inch deeper, it almost certainly would have severed his main artery and then

very likely he would have bled to death right there on the sidewalk before paramedics arrived. So this was a very close call. But even without that deep of a penetration, the wound he sustained was still life-threatening. And the doctors told them that, you know, because of the quick action of John and the other man who called 911, that very likely contributed to stabilizing him enough that he was able to get to the hospital and be saved. And so Marilyn and Jim, they can't believe this has happened but they're so grateful to the medical team

and also to the two men from yesterday who they don't even know who they are. But Marilyn is determined that she needs to find these two men, John and the other guy and thank them. But she's realizing she really doesn't have a way

to contact them. I mean, this all happened so quickly and all she knows is one guy is named John and she didn't even have the other guy's name. But luckily, the following day when Marilyn and Jim were back at their hotel, they got a call from the front desk saying that they had a visitor. And it would turn out it was the man who had called 911. He had been really concerned about Jim and Marilyn and wanted to figure out if they were

okay and he had discovered where they were staying, and so he had come to see them. And so Marilyn and Jim, they come down and they're so thankful and they come to find out this guy is actually the owner of PJ O'Brien's pub where they had gone to eat on the night Jim had fallen. And she's just saying, thank you so much. You know, without you, I don't know what would have happened. And then also Marilyn's like, you know, do you know the other guy, John? The one who actually was applying pressure to Jim's neck

because he also played a huge role in saving Jim's life. And the owner of the pub, he sort of looked back at Marilyn with a smile on his face and he's like, well, you know, I don't know him personally. We just happened to be walking down the street

when you called out for help. But like, I know who John is. Lots of people know who John is. In fact, honestly, you probably know who John is. Because, it would turn out, John was not a doctor. The way Marilyn assumed he was, based on how easily he stepped into the fray of this medical crisis, and knew what to do, and put pressure on Jim's neck, and seemed so calm, none of that had to do with medical training. He was not medically trained. Instead, John has this skill.

He's this really charismatic, really commanding presence where every time he's in a room, people just look to him and think, oh, he's gotta be in charge because he's just got this way about him, this X factor. And he carries that X factor on screen.

Every role this guy plays in movies and TV shows, he is the leader, He is in charge, and it's so effortless, because that's kind of his thing. And so, from that day forward, Marilyn and Jim had a brand new favorite actor, John Malkovich, the multi-time award-winning actor who literally saved Jim's life. Thank you so much for watching. Let me know what you thought of today's episode in the comments. And remember, we have hundreds of videos for you to binge right now.

But if you're looking for a recommendation from me of that one video that's worth your time, well, it's this one right here. So give it a watch. So give it a watch. All right, until next time, see ya.