Sometimes the truth is stranger than fiction. And today we're going to look at three stories that demonstrate that. 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. So if that's of interest to you, please take the like button out on a fancy scuba diving trip, but replace the air in their tanks with helium. Also, please subscribe to our channel and turn on all notifications so you don't miss any of our weekly uploads. Okay, let's get into today's stories. On the evening of March 27, 2013, a 45-year-old doctor named Marcelo Gurechaga dug through a supply cabinet in the clinic that he owned in Southeastern Spain. He grabbed an IV needle, anesthetic drugs and a scalpel, and then he walked to the operating room in the back of the clinic where his patient was already lying on the table. As Marcelo looked at his patient, he couldn't help but feel incredibly anxious. This was easily going to be the most important and most dangerous surgery he had ever done.

In fact, this surgery was illegal, and one wrong move here could not only harm his patient, but could also destroy his life. He could lose his medical license, he could be arrested. This was a very high-stakes operation. But Marcelo felt like he really had no choice here because he had this huge problem going on in his personal life, and he had been promised that if he did this surgery successfully, that problem would be solved. His hands shook as he gave his patient the IV, and then he began administering the anesthetic drugs. Soon, his patient was unconscious. Then, after a steadying breath, Marcelo picked up the scalpel and then made his first incision. A little over a week later, on April 5, 2013, a very disheveled and distraught Marcelo walked into a local police station carrying a small cardboard box. Once he was inside, he told the clerk that he had to speak to an officer because he needed to make a confession. A moment later, a detective came out, and right away, Marcelo began crying, and he told this detective this unbelievable story. As he did, the detective just felt really bad for Marcelo. I mean, this story was so tragic, so awful.

But as When Marcelo went along and the details of the story began going all over the place, the detective went from feeling empathy to confusion to full-blown suspicion of Marcelo. Something was off here. At some point, when Marcelo finally went quiet and he was just standing there holding this box, the detective looked at him and said, Hey, what's in that box? When Marcelo reached down and slowly opened it up, the detective immediately knew two things. One, Marcelo was definitely lying. Two, this whole situation was far more serious than this detective had imagined. It would turn out the big personal problem that Marcelo was experiencing, that supposedly this high-stakes illegal surgery was going to alleviate, had to do with his wife, Rosa. Rosa was deeply unhappy, specifically about her weight. She felt like she was overweight, and so she had given her husband, Marcelo, the doctor, an ultimatum. She said, You need to perform a weight loss surgery on me or I'm going to take my own life. Marcelo knew this was no idol threat because his wife, Rosa, had previously attempted to end her life before. And so ultimately, Marcelo agrees to do this illegal operation.

But this operation was illegal not because Marcelo was not like a weight loss doctor. No, it was illegal because Marcelo was an animal doctor. He was a veterinarian, not a human doctor. And so Marcelo really had no idea how to perform this weight loss surgery. And so as soon as he made that first incision on his wife, the surgery went completely sideways and Rosa died on the operating table. And when that happened, Marcelo panicked and immediately dismembered his wife's body and cremated her in an attempt to cover up what he had just done. However, over the next week, Marcelo felt so guilty about what he did that he ultimately went to the police and he confessed. However, at first, during this confession, Marcelo told the detective that his wife had because she had taken her own life. When the detective began asking probing questions about how she died exactly and when this happened, he began getting answers that didn't really make any sense. And so ultimately, he asked Marcelo to please show him what's inside of that box he's carrying. Marcelo opened it up, revealing Rosa's ashes. That told the detective that Marcelo had to be lying because he's thinking, Wait a minute, if your wife took her own life a week ago, why did Marcelo immediately cremate her and hide the fact that she had been dead for a whole week.

It didn't add up. Ultimately, Marcelo would be charged with his wife's murder, but he would spend four years in prison awaiting trial. Then when he went to trial, he was found guilty and sentenced to an additional 10 years in prison. Hey, football fans. Super Bowl 59 is right around the corner, so now is the time to get in on the action with my partners over at DraftKings Sportsbook. There is an insane deal right now where DraftKings is giving new customers $200 in bonus bets instantly after betting just $5. Here's your chance to make every play of the game a moment to be remembered. It's easy. Just download the DraftKings app now and sign up using the code Mr. Ballen, and the crown is yours. You can use that $200 in bonus bets for DraftKings' same game parlays for a shot at an even bigger payout. You can even combine multiple bets together from the same game. You're able to bet live on in progress games as they're happening, which definitely gives watching the game a whole new level of excitement. If you love the thrill of live betting, well, DraftKings definitely has you covered. But if sports betting is not available in your state yet, don't worry.

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Now, law enforcement was concerned that because New York was only six hours from the Canadian border, that it was very possible that Alex might try to flee into Canada to escape persecution. Us and Canadian law enforcement and border security were on the lookout for Alex Mangel, and he was this 30-year-old white man with thinning brown hair and a wispy mustache. All day long, that Canadian border security guard looked very closely at every person who came through his checkpoint to see if they were Alex Mengel. He would see a family on their way to visit relatives in Canada. He would see a couple on their honeymoon. He would see a man with a car full of camping supplies and a middle-aged woman traveling alone and all these different people from all walks of life, but none of them looked anything like Alex Mengel. And so by the end of his shift, after checking dozens and dozens of cars and looking at every person, he felt certain that Alex Mengel had not slipped through his checkpoint. And so he clocked out and he went home. A few days later, on March second, a police officer was patrolling this parking lot right outside of a shopping mall in Ontario, Canada, which was located about an hour and a half away from the border.

During his patrol, at some point, he noticed there was this one car, a white Toyota, that had been loitering in the area for quite a while. So he decided to drive over and see what was going on. When he got there, he looked inside the vehicle and he saw someone sitting on the passenger seat. He was a white man, probably in his 30s, with thinning brown hair and a wispy mustache. This officer immediately recognized this guy as being the wanted criminal Alex Mangle. The officer immediately called for backup, and then he parked his car, got out and approached the white Toyota where this guy was sitting with his gun drawn. As the officer approached the passenger side door, the man inside turned, noticed the officer, jumped into the driver's seat, fired up the car, and the Toyota sped out of the parking lot. As the officer, he jumps back in his cruiser and he takes off after him. Before long, it was like the entirety of the police force in Toronto was a part of this high-speed chase to catch this guy. Eventually, they funneled the car into a dead-end street, and the white Toyota crashed to a stop sign, and then the man inside with the mustache and the thinning brown hair pops out, and immediately everybody sees, Yep, that's Alex Mangle.

He didn't put up a fight at that point. He was taken into custody. However, despite how relieved law enforcement was to have this a cop killer in custody, they realized they didn't understand something. How was it that Alex Mangle got past border security and got into Canada? Everybody was on high alert looking for him. What happened? And so police were baffled until they searched that white Toyota Alex had been driving. On the night that Alex shot and killed that police officer near New York City, he immediately fled to this wooded area and hid out overnight. Then the next day, when he got up, he was walking around and he happened to pass by commercial building. As he was looking at it, he saw this middle-aged woman, whose name was Beverly Capone, come out of the building and make her way towards her car, and she was all alone. Alex walked up to her and abducted her at gunpoint. Then he drove her to this cabin out in the woods that he knew would be totally isolated. No one was there. Once they got there, he murdered her. Then once she was dead, he stole her clothes and put it on and also cut off her face and her scalp and put those on as well.

He was literally wearing her skin and hair. He hopped in that white Toyota and he drove up to the Canadian border. Amazingly, he got through the checkpoint into Canada without anybody noticing. It would turn out that Canadian border security guard who all day was checking for Alex Mangle did actually see Alex Mangle. He just didn't recognize him because Alex Mangle was wearing Beverly Capone's face, hair, and clothes. And so he thought he was just a middle-aged woman traveling alone, and he let him on Police would figure this whole thing out when they searched that white Toyota because they would find lying on the floorboard was Beverly's dress, scalp, and face. Alex was deported back to the US. However, before he could stand trial, he attempted to escape a prison transport and in the process got shot to death by police. However, that was not the end of Alex's story. Following his death, officers continued to investigate him and also his property, and at some point, during a search of his property, they would discover all these of unidentified women, along with these maps where these very isolated places in New York and Pennsylvania were circled, and nobody knows what they mean.

Now, police have not conclusively linked Alex to any other murders, but he does remain a suspect in several cases, In fact, many investigators believe Alex was actually a serial killer. However, we'll probably never know how many people Alex actually killed because he took all of his secrets to the grave. At 05: 00 PM on May 12th, 2005, an 18-year-old college student named Simon Ang sat inside of his bedroom in the apartment he shared with his sister, Sharon, in New York City. Simon was supposed to be doing homework, but instead, he was doing something he loved, which was blogging. Simon would write on his blog just about every single day, and he typically wrote about his self-improvement journey he was on. Not because he thought lots of people were going to read it and be inspired by it, but because he wanted to chronicle his journey so that in the future, when he was the best version of himself, he could look back and see how far he had come to see the progress he made. But on this particular day, Simon was not writing about self-improvement. Instead, he was blogging about something that was totally unusual for him.

In fact, he had never written anything like this on his blog ever before. But Simon knew basically nobody read his blog blog, and so he wasn't really that concerned about writing something so off-topic. And so at about 5: 05 PM, when he was done with this very strange blog post, he didn't think twice. He just hit post. Five hours later, at about 10: 00 PM, an NYPD Detective, along with some other police officers and first responders, arrived at Simon and Sharon's apartment. They went inside and went straight to Simon's bedroom, and there they would find Simon. He was laying perfectly still on the ground. His feet were bound by duct tape, and he was covered in stab wounds. They rushed up to him to feel for a pulse, but very quickly, they discovered he was dead. Then before they could even process what had happened here, they heard moaning coming from the other bedroom across the hall. They rushed in there and they would When they discovered Simon's sister, Sharon, she also was covered in stab wounds and laying on the ground, but she was still alive. They tried to rush her to the hospital to try to save her life, but in transit, she would die.

She would also die before she could actually tell authorities what happened to her and her brother. For the next three days, investigators could not make sense of Simon and Sharon's murders. But then a detective discovered Simon's blog, and they found his final entry. It was that very unusual post that Simon did that was not anything to do with his self-improvement journey. Well, it would turn out that last post broke the case wide open. Right before Simon was killed, he wrote in his blog about what was actually happening in his apartment, in real-time, literally what he was seeing and hearing. Here is a screenshot of that blog post. It says, Today has been weird. At 3: 00, some guy rang the bell. It was my sister Peter's former boyfriend. He is still here right now. Hopefully, he will leave soon. Sharon's former boyfriend was a man named Jin Cheung Lin. A year earlier, he and Sharon had gone through a really rocky breakup. Now, Sharon had moved on and gotten over the breakup, but Jim hadn't. He was still furious about the way things ended. And so he ultimately went to Sharon and Simon's apartment to get revenge, and his revenge was murdering the brother and sister.

When police confronted Jim with information from Simon's blog post, he immediately confessed to the murders. Jim was tried and found guilty of the murders and sentenced to life in prison without parole. Today, Simon's blog is actually still available online, so you can go and see his final post. However, what you'll really see if you go to his blog is the thousands and thousands of comments from people all around the world hoping that Simon and Sharon rest in peace. Thank you so much for watching. Let me know in the comments what you thought of today's episode. Also, remember, we have hundreds more videos for you to binge right now. But if you want a recommendation of which video to invest your time in, well, here are two great options right here. If you want more Mr. Balin content, click on this one. If you want some redacted Declassified mysteries with Luc LaMana, click over here. All right, until next time. See you.