The Cheapskate (PODCAST EXCLUSIVE EPISODE)

**MrBallen** (0:00)
In January of 1988, the clerk of a sporting goods store in a small town in Canada looked up right as a man walked into a shop. Now, it was below freezing outside, but this man wasn't wearing a coat. He was just wearing sneakers, ripped pants, and a thin plastic rain poncho. This man quickly walked down the aisle and grabbed a pair of ski pants, and then he walked up, he paid for the pants in cash, and then very quickly hurried out of the store. But after this sort of strangely dressed man left, the clerk turned on the radio, and he heard a breaking news report about a murder right up the road. But before we get into today's story, if you're a fan of the Strange, Dark & 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 secretly steal the follow buttons phone and delete all of their music playlists. Okay, let's get into today's story.
On the night of January 11th, 1988, a 62-year-old man named Wilfred Godreau ate a bowl of hot soup at his kitchen table in Capus Casing, which was a tiny lumber town in northern Ontario, Canada. His 53-year-old girlfriend, Agathe Bruchot, was sitting across from him, and she was visibly shivering because it was freezing cold inside of their house. Now Wilfred knew Agathe probably wanted him to turn up the heat, but he absolutely was not going to do that, because as it was, their electric bill was already too high. So Wilfred really hated spending money, but not because he didn't have any. Back when he was a kid, his family had been really, really poor, and so he'd picked up some really frugal habits that had just sort of stuck with him. So even now that he had a steady income as a mechanic and pretty comfortable savings, he still always tried to spend as little as possible. Plus, he wanted to retire soon, and he was supporting Agathe too. So as he sat there watching Agathe continue to shiver, clearly trying to signal to him like, come on, turn up the heat, Wilfred finally did get up, but not to turn up the heat. Instead, he walked over to the living room, and he grabbed a shawl off the couch and he brought it back, and he handed it to Agathe. Then as Agathe kind of scowled at him, Wilfred just sat back down and continued eating his soup.
Early the next morning, around 7:15 AM, Wilfred woke up to an empty bed and the familiar sound of Agathe, bustling around in the kitchen, making breakfast and packing his lunch for work. And then a few minutes later, he felt the blanket shift as Agathe crawled back into bed beside him. So Wilfred and Agathe had been together about 12 years. And these days, they lived a pretty quiet life, which was pretty easy to do in Capus Casing, which was the kind of place where really nothing ever happened. And it's also where pretty much everybody knew everyone and where people didn't even bother locking their doors at night. And that suited Wilfred just fine. Because at one point, his life had been anything but quiet. His relationship with a got had actually begun with a huge dramatic scandal.
That scandal had cost Wilfred his marriage, most of his family, and a lot of his self-respect. So at this point, a simple life with a got was exactly what he wanted. Now Wilfred lay in his bed just for a bit longer, listening to the wind howl outside and feeling a got next to him.
But eventually he got up and he headed down the hallway in just his underwear. The sun was not up yet, so the house was completely dark. But he made his way to the bathroom by memory, and when he got there, he flipped on the light. He closed the door and then walked over to the sink, and he turned on the tap, and he had just begun shaving when he heard the door behind him creak open. Now Wilfred instinctively figured it was a got coming in to use the bathroom. But then he turned around and saw who was actually standing in the doorway.
At the same time this was happening in the bathroom, Wilfred and Agathe's neighbor, Suzanne Grable, was in her kitchen next door when she heard these loud crashes and shouting coming from Agathe and Wilfred's house. She ran to the window to look out, but it was too dark to see anything. It sounded like Agathe was screaming Wilfred's name over and over again, and so assuming there had to be some sort of emergency, Suzanne grabbed her coat and just ran outside to see what was going on. But she'd only gone a few steps at her front door when she looked over and saw the door to Wilfred and Agathe's house swing open and a man stepped out. And this man was definitely not Wilfred. He was short and stocky and looked like he was maybe in his early 30s. And as he stepped down off the stoop, he turned and made eye contact with Suzanne, who immediately froze. Her heart was racing out of control and she knew she was now in danger.