Fan Favorite - "The Watercooler"

MrBallen (0:00)

Today's episode is a fan favorite. The audio and the story has been remastered for today's episode.

On a morning in early 1986 in Arizona, someone sat hunched over a desk, furiously writing a letter. And almost every line of this letter included a direct threat of violence this person was going to inflict on the recipient. They kept on writing, saying every horrible thing that they wanted to do. Finally, when they were done, they read the letter over. It was explicit and terrifying, just as they'd hoped. They put the letter down, then glanced over at a cardboard box sitting on the floor, and they smiled. Nobody would ever suspect that the contents of that plain box would soon help them carry out this very bizarre plot they'd had running through their head for months. But before we get into that story, if you're a fan of the Strange, Dark & Mysterious Deliberate 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 get a hold of the FollowButtons house keys and swap them out for random fake keys. Okay, let's get into today's story.

On the morning of Monday, March 24th, 1986, 46-year-old Julie Williams finished up getting ready for work in her bedroom in Mesa, Arizona, and as she did, she couldn't stop smiling. When she was done, she took a final look in the mirror, then grabbed her purse and headed outside to her car.

And as she made her 20-minute morning commute to the city of Tempe where her office was, she saw other people heading to work, and she saw businesses and shops opening up, and this made her smile just keep getting bigger.

Julie had been working as a secretary at an insurance agency for the past several months, and she actually loved going in every day. It wasn't that she always dreamed of working in insurance or anything like that, but for the first time in years, Julie had started to feel a real sense of purpose and peace at her job. Because Julie had dedicated most of her life to this point to being a mother to her three daughters. She'd stayed at home in California where she lived while the girls were growing up. She stayed home so she could look after them and cook them dinners and just be there for them all the time and give them the best life they possibly could have. Julie's daughters were everything to her. Now Julie would not have traded that time with her daughters for anything in the world. She didn't regret it at all. But now her daughters were grown up. They were married and even beginning families of their own. Once all three of them had officially moved out of the house, Julie really struggled. She didn't really know how to live without them. It was like now that she was an empty nester, she didn't know what to do. And to make matters worse, following her kids leaving, she and her husband got divorced. So she really was beginning to feel lost and alone. But Julie had decided she would just have to make some major changes to basically save her life. And so she had moved from California to Arizona, where one of her daughters lived, and she had set out to start the next phase of her life, which she was determined to make a happy one.

Just before 8 a.m., Julie turned off a road in Tempe and pulled into the parking lot of a large office building that housed several businesses, including the insurance company where she worked.

She parked her car and headed to the front door. She pulled her magnetic ID badge out of her purse and swiped it across the card reader that was just to the side of the door. She heard the lock click open, so she walked inside and headed down a hallway to her company's office.

This particular branch of this insurance company was rather small. Julie was one of only five employees there, but this small office had played a major part in helping her start this new phase of her life. Julie liked the job and got along well with the few other people she worked with. But most importantly, working here had helped Julie realize she could be independent and that she could have goals for herself that had nothing to do with taking care of other people. And this realization had already inspired Julie to do other things on her own. She'd started making new friends and going out with them on the weekends, and she'd become an active member in her church.