All language subtitles for Seduced.To.Slay.S01E05.The.Good.Girl.1080p.AMZN.WEB-DL.DDP2.0.H.264-MADSKY_track5_[eng]

[Jon] They had a very
passionate relationship.

[Maggie] Once he
got his hooks into her,

that was it.

[Jon] Mike liked his women
like Barbie dolls.

[Woody]
When they eloped, Janie was really upset.

This guy's coming after
our daughter for our money.

She was concerned about being
the victim of a murder.

[Jon] Someone
slaughtered her,

basically in
her own living room.

This is a guy who thought

that he could get away
with anything.

[Maggie] She met
a master manipulator.

[Leslie speaking on phone]

[Jon] It was this
whammy of a story,

murder and lies and greed.

[Bill] Little Rock is a city

that gets smaller
everyday you're here.

[Woody]
It's a small enough community

where everybody
kinda knows each other.

[Stacy]
It seemed that everybody who's anybody in Little Rock

knew the Ballard family,

and that made what happened
in the fall of 2003

even more shocking.

[Steve]
On, September 13, 2003, roughly at 6:00 am,

Little Rock dispatchers
received a 911 call

from a man, saying that
he had found his friend,

Janie Ballard, in her home,
in the residential area

just west of
downtown Little Rock.

[Bill] This is not a place

where you see
a lot of violent crime.

It's one of the nicer places
in Little Rock.

The friend had been trying
to get in touch with Janie

and had not been able
to reach her by phone.

[Jon] So he decided
to stop by.

He entered the house
through the garage.

[Steve] And he could still see

a set of keys
hanging in the door.

When he opened the door,

he saw Janie lying

in the den area,
covered in blood

and obviously,
uh, deceased.

He quickly called 911

and detectives
headed out to the scene.

[siren blaring]

[Steve] When I pulled up
to the scene,

we had at least three
or four patrol cars there.

Mickey Holloway who was
a crime scene investigator

with the Little Rock
Police Department,

who I knew fairly well,
was standing off to the side.

Initially, I just thought,
"And he got here quick,"

you know,
to work a crime scene,

and then I was told
by the patrol officers

that he was the person
that found her.

I'm sure he was
in a state of shock.

'Cause they had known
each other for years.

They were good friends.

Well, this is gonna be
kind of an awkward situation

just because
we all know Mickey,

but Mickey is a suspect.

There's no
other way to put it.

So, we need to remove him
from the scene

for a formal interview
down at the police station.

Patrol officers
let me into the house.

You could tell, even just from

ten feet away

that Ms. Ballard
had multiple abrasions.

Her neck area
had been brutalized

and, uh was,
basically gaping open.

There were defensive wounds
on her hands.

This was an attack,

what sometimes
we call a blitz attack.

When she walked in that door,
she was attacked immediately.

[Jon] She was soaked
from head to toe in blood.

I mean she had been cut

from her neck
down to her ankles.

This was not a stab-and-go.

This was someone
who stood over top of her

and stabbed her,
slaughtered her,

basically in her own
living room.

[Steve] After we
look at the body

and know for sure
we have a homicide,

and pretty brutal one at that,

we began to look through
the house.

Checking all the rooms.

The phone line had been cut.

And cabinet doors were open.

Some things were strewn about.

A jewelry box,
that had been pulled out,

and some jewelry
scattered about,

and it looked like
there was missing jewelry on her finger.

[Jon] Things were disheveled
and thrown all over the place.

Maybe Janie caught them
in the middle of breaking and entering

and that's when
the struggle ensued.

There was
some property missing.

Some coins
and maybe some jewelry missing from the house,

but other than that
there weren't a whole lot of clue about

what exactly had happened.

[Jon] Janie Ballard
was 58 years old at the time of her death.

[Steve] She had
one living child, Leslie,

and she had one son
that had passed away

a few years before.

[Jon] She owned
a successful printing operation

with her late husband.

Business was booming.
I mean, it was...

She was making a lot of money.

[Steve] She is a widow.

Her husband had
just passed away within the last month

after a lengthy illness.

Janie was the type of lady

that when you met her
you thought,

"Wow, man, she's...

she's a classy lady."

She drove a maroon Cadillac
with a white landau top on it.

It was the only one
I had ever seen in Little Rock.

She dressed to the nines,
her hair done, make up done,

and just looked great.

She was just kind
and you would

always felt comfortable
being around her.

She was a very upstanding,

revered, respected

member of the community.

To hear that
she had been murdered,

it was just shocking
and sickening.

I agreed to talk about her

if no one could see
my name and face

because I'm afraid.

[Jon] When
this happened to Janie,

that community was,

"Really?" and going,
"Wait a second.

Do we have somebody out here
who's breaking into houses

and viciously
attacking people?"

People in the community
knew she was a widow

and people in the community
knew she had money,

so it sent
a shockwave of scaredness throughout the community

to be on the guard
because they didn't know if it was random or not.

My first thoughts are
whoever did this knew the victim.

Once I saw
how many wounds that she had,

you could tell that
whoever did this

was... was angry.
This was personal.

My second thought is,

normally whoever
finds the victim

is somebody that we're gonna
have to look at very closely.

So, after leaving
the crime scene,

my first step was to interview
Mickey Holloway.

I've been a homicide detective
for 11 years

and think
that was the first time

I had where a person
finding the victim

was not only a member
of the Little Rock Police Department,

but an individual that worked
crime scenes with us.

It's certainly hard for them
to look at one of their own

and be like, "Wait a sec,
we work with this guy.

Do you think
he could've pulled something like this off?"

[Steve] He found her.
He knows her real well.

There were already
questions about how well.

I mean that,
he had her, her house key,

he had her garage door open,
he had the code to her alarm.

So, you know,
what's going on?

[Stacy] This is
a complicated situation for the detectives.

Someone they know
and work with

is clearly involved
with the victim.

The question is,
just how involved?

Mickey never suggested
that they were dating,

or intimate in any way
in their relationship.

He was, uh, very clear

that it was
just a close friendship.

When her husband died,

he began helping her
with things around the house,

the financial matters,
things of that nature.

One of the things
about Mickey I knew

was that he liked to talk.

He was a big talker,
and he knows probably what's coming.

Everybody knows
if you find that body,

you've got
all those connections

that we can't just say,
"Oh, he's our friend.

There's no way
Mickey could do this, so..."

You know, you can't
look at it like that.

You gotta remove all those
uh, the friendship

and, uh, knowing him.

Once we finished
the interview with Mickey,

we are not gonna rule him out,

'cause he had such a
close relationship with her,

and, you know,
to do due diligence

we needed to keep
considering him,

but he gave
so much information

regarding the other issues
going on in Janie's life

that we needed
to really follow up on that also.

He told us the biggest issue
Janie was having at that time

was with her daughter Leslie
and her husband Mike MacKool.

When they eloped,
Janie was really upset.

[Jon] The Ballards
gets digging where they found out,

"This guy is not
what he's saying he is."

[Steve] They had not been
married very long,

but there was
a lot of hard feelings, lot of bad feelings

between Mom and daughter.

Leslie did not even attend
her father's funeral.

She loved her father dearly,

but Leslie doesn't find out
about her father's death

till after the funeral.

They were estranged at best.

They had had
kind of a tough history, her and her mother.

Sometimes
they were best friends,

and sometimes
they were mortal enemies, for lack of a better term.

[Stacy] A beloved daughter
who's become a mortal enemy?

That's clearly a story
police need to dig into.

Both the daughter Leslie

and more importantly
her husband

who caused the bad blood
between them.

[Steve] After
interviewing Mickey and releasing him,

my thoughts then are,

"Well, we need to find Leslie
and her husband Mike.

If nothing else
we need to notify them of her mother's death."

We know where they live,
so we head out there.

There's nobody home
at the MacKool's house.

We knock on the door.

We talked to some neighbors.
Nobody knew where they were.

[Jon] Leslie Ballard
grew up in a affluent home.

Her mom and dad
didn't flaunt their income

but they were very well off.

Leslie was born,
they thought the world of her.

That was their
little piece of sunshine.

People in the community
have said that she adored her mother.

Her mother and her
often went out shopping

and went to
social places together.

She was also
very much a Daddy's girl.

So they're very tight
as a family unit, growing up.

[Maggie] Her name Leslie
is the combination

of the name Janie and Lester,

and she was
the apple of Lester's eye.

[Jon] She is very smart.

A little bit
on the sheltered side though.

She was kind of shy
and she really

did what Mom and Dad
asked her to do.

[Maggie] From what I've heard
about her through high school

was that she was a good girl.

A good student.

Very obedient,

and wanted
to please her parents.

When she got out
of high school

the first thing
she wanted to do was go to a business college.

At Westminster College,
we dated her freshman year, I was a sophomore.

That was first time
away from home.

I don't think
she ever went to a school

where men were around.

I don't think she ever went
to a high school party

where there is alcohol.

She was just very,

I don't wanna say fragile,

but she just
wasn't ready for

a party school
like Westminster.

I always looked after her.

I wouldn't let anything
happen to her.

She was very close
to her mom and dad.

She had this picture
right next to her phone

of her and her mom.

She used to go home
all the time.

She would say,
"Hey, I'm going home for the weekend.

I'll see you Monday."

[Jon] After
she got her MBA,

she came back to Mom and Dad.

She wanted to use that MBA
in Mom and Dad's business

and they couldn't
have been more thrilled.

They thought
it was a great idea.

[Bill] After Leslie graduated
with her MBA,

they bought her a condominium
where she lived at

even though she was still
working at the business.

She left the house.
She was living in the condo

that her parents bought her.

[Jon] It's almost,
uh, fairytale story,

to help
at the family business,

you're given the keys
to a new house, you've got a car.

[Stacy] Leslie's parents
have given her every advantage,

and it would seem
that she's set for life,

but often those advantages

are based on
playing by the rules,

and Leslie is
about to meet someone

who doesn't
always follow them.

[Jon] Mike MacKool grew up
in a very similar situation

ironically that Leslie did.

They both had
parents that were well-off.

I believe Mike's dad
was an investor.

[Steve] Then,
when Mike was 17,

he went out with a few buddies

and apparently
there was a fight

between him and another buddy,

and he threw a punch,

hit that other guy
in the face or in the head.

He fell back,
landed on his head,

and eventually
died from that injury.

Mike was charged with
manslaughter at 17.

MacKool in the end
was given the option to join the Marine Corps

and that's what he did.

He served about five
or six years out of California

then came back to Little Rock.

A lot of people knew about
his prior record.

He had the reputation
of being a bad boy.

In 2000,
Leslie Ballard went to a gym

and that's where
she ran into Mike MacKool.

[Steve] When Mike MacKool
met Leslie,

he told her
he was 36 years old.

She was 24 years old
at the time.

He had a reputation
of controlling women, changing them.

Uh, bullying people
and, you know, nothing good.

[Jon] He offered up
his services as a personal trainer,

and she instantly took him up
on that offer.

She was attracted
to the brawn, the muscles,

and they started off hot.

They had a very
passionate relationship.

It was almost lustful,

the way they went at
each other.

Mike MacKool
would bring out

a different side of Leslie

that she'd never
experienced before,

and she was thrilled by that.

[Maggie] She was
swept off her feet,

and I'm thinking that

as a sheltered
young lady growing up

in the environment she did
that this maybe her way of

showing her independence
from her parents,

and once he got
his hooks into her,

that was it.

[Bill] He had her
working out.

He gets her
to change her hair color.

Ultimately gets her
to get a breast job.

[Jon] Mike had a mold
of how he liked his women,

and he liked his women
like Barbie dolls.

[Stacy] This sounds like
an unhealthy relationship.

It seems
Leslie is changing everything.

Even her body
to please Mike.

[Steve] Janie and Les
didn't like Mike's attitude.

They didn't like
how he was controlling their daughter.

How she was changing.

She was not the same person
that she was

before she met Mike.

Leslie has gone
from this non-descript life

where, you know,
you don't really notice her

to now she's with Michael
and you're noticing her now.

There's nothing
about your daughter dating Mike MacKool

that made you think
that that was gonna be

a good life choice for her
in the long run.

[Jon] At that time
they only thought

he was, you know,
12 or 13 years older,

when really
he was 23 years older than their daughter.

That's not the person

they wanted
their daughter with,

and they made it
very well known

to their circle of friends

that they weren't cool
with Mike MacKool.

[Bill] This is
the age-old problem,

losing control
of your little girl,

and all of a sudden
she's not listening to what Daddy says anymore.

She's not listening to Mom
to the extend she ever was.

She's listening to the man
with a history

and he's every parents'
worst nightmare.

They don't like him.
They don't trust him,

and now as
she's married to him.

The loss of control
is almost complete at that time.

[Stacy] Once the pair marry,

Mike can control
not only Leslie,

but her money as well.

Is that he was after
all along?

And if so,
how can the Ballards stop it from happening?

Around six o'clock pm,

we got in touch
with Stan Rauls, Ms. Ballard's attorney.

According to Stan,

Janie and Les
decided to amend the will

because they were not
comfortable with Mike MacKool.

So, they changed that will,

so that Leslie
would only get $25,000

which meant
Mike would only have access to $25,000.

[Bill] The overriding concern
with Michael MacKool,

was that
he was after Leslie's money.

[Steve] I know Leslie
and Mike were constantly

having financial problems,
bankruptcies.

You know, all of that
she was having to deal with,

as well as being
estranged from her parents.

[Jon] On September seventh
Janie told Leslie

that the inheritance
she thought she was getting

of $750,000

had actually been
dropped to $25,000,

and that upset Leslie.

[Stacy] This must have been
a tremendous blow for Leslie.

She knew her parents
were upset by her marriage,

but now they had
basically cut her off

from their business
and their inheritance.

[Steve] That was the last time
Janie talked to her daughter.

After that confrontation
between Leslie and her mother,

there became a greater concern
about safety.

[Steve] Janie is in fear
for her life from her daughter

and her daughter's
husband Mike.

Mickey Holloway told us
she had changed the code on her alarm,

she had changed the locks
on her door to her home.

She had done
some things to her windows to make them more secure.

After speaking with Stan,

our goal, which has
what has been most of the day,

is to find Leslie and Mike.

We haven't had any success.

We've been
by the house several times.

So, we're gonna take
one last attempt

to go out to their house
and try to find them.

At 8:45 pm,

we had detectives
driving out to the house

and as they pull up,

Mike and Leslie pull up
in Mike's truck.

The first thing they do
and it's the death notification.

Leslie responded by crying,

somewhat breaking down.

It was just
a little overboard.

Leslie was kind of
over the top and wailing,

and it triggered
investigators to think,

"Wait a second here.

We need to start asking
some questions to these two.

They know something."

[Stacy] For Leslie
it must've been

shocking to learn
that her mother has died.

But did she already know?

After all, Mike thought
there was a payday coming,

but it turned out
there was nothing.

That could make anyone angry.

So, police need to figure out
just how angry was Mike.

[Steve] We followed
Mike and Leslie down to the police station.

We allow them to park
their truck on our lot,

'cause we know at some point

we may wanna
look at that truck.

We take them
into separate offices.

Leslie is in
one end of the hall, Mike's at the other.

[Jon] Mike MacKool
is very much

suspect number one
at this point.

[Steve] We hadn't heard
great things about Leslie,

but at one point
Leslie was the good girl,

and a girl next door.

Mike's never had
that reputation.

He's very aggressive,

had a temper.

So, naturally, your focus

is gonna kinda
lean toward Mike,

and that's where it was.

It's probably between
9:30 and ten o' clock

when we began
doing the interviews with them.

I have other detectives
start interviewing Mike,

and I go in to an interview
with Leslie.

[Stacy] Detectives are hoping
Leslie would be the key to solving this case.

What they don't know

is where her loyalties lie
at this point,

with her mother
or her husband?

[Steve] She goes
into this story about how everybody got along.

Nobody had any problems.

Her parents didn't have
any issues with Mike.

Mike didn't have any issues
with her parents.

Everything was hunky-dory.
Everything was fine.

But Leslie was questioned
about the will

and about the money
that she got.

She told the police that,
that was not really an issue.

That wasn't something
she was worried about.

[Steve] She said that
she didn't have a problem with it.

One of the things
we wanted to know was where they were.

Her story was that
they went to see Mike's parents,

and just to hang out
at his parents' house

on Lake Hamilton
in Hot Springs.

Mike is being interrogated
by other detectives,

and he's telling a,
you know, similar story.

Michael for most part is
denying any involvement, denying any problem.

Pretty much maintaining
the party line.

We didn't believe
either one of them,

but we let them
go through that statement.

At that point,
we don't have enough to hold Mike on anything,

so, he's brought out
of the interrogation room,

and actually, I think he was
told, "Well, if you wanna go wait in the truck,

or you wanna leave, you can."

And he said,
"No, I'm... I'm staying here."

We're sitting
in this interview room, me and my partner,

and it's getting close to
1:00 in the morning.

We are kind of
beat down, we're wore down

and now you're wondering,
"Where are we gonna go next?"

We confront Leslie
with all the lies

and we start poking holes
into everything,

trying to get Leslie
tell us what Mike did.

That's kind of our goal.

[Jon] Through the course
of the interrogation,

she starts
dropping breadcrumbs

that she may know
more than she's telling,

and finally she gives it up.

[Steve] Leslie finally sighed,

just kind of, uh,
took a deep breath,

and I remember
she hung her head,

and then she looked up
a little bit, and said,

"I did it."

And at first
I didn't even respond, I was like...

"What did she say...
she's saying?" and I said,

"Did you say, you did it?

You did it?"

And she said,
"I, I killed my mother."

The police always thought
it was Michael.

I don't think anyone thought
Leslie had any part in this

other than she's with Michael.

[Steve] It threw me.

It takes a lot to throw me.

But it kinda
caught me off-guard

and it's because we had heard
so many bad things about Mike.

It's hard not to look at
the big muscled-up guy

that, you know,
has got some...

probably got some roid rage,
and got some anger issues.

[Jon] For detectives,
they were thinking,

"What's just happened here?

How did we go from thinking

that this guy
was prime suspect

and her daughter did it?"

I mean, Janie's
own flesh and blood

did this to her mother.

[Bill]
As the story progresses,

we find out
that with her father's death

and her mother's
reaction to it

is what kinda, in large way
brought this about.

Leslie goes to the house

and pretty much anything

that would've been
belonged to her father

or indicated that her father
ever lived in the house,

gone.

The house
has been redecorated.

[Steve] And so, it's like,
"Mom's just moving on with her life

and not worrying
about Dad... being gone,"

and Leslie felt
very upset about that.

[Stacy] This is
her childhood home,

a home she no longer
feels welcome in,

and her mother
has changed it in a matter of weeks.

That could feel like
a betrayal.

[Bill] Then her mother
drops on her the bomb

that the will
has been changed.

So, this is all hitting Leslie
at one time.

She comes home,
the house is different,

Daddy's memories gone,

and now there's no money.

[Leslie speaking on tape]

[Jon] When Leslie
found the reality

that she wasn't getting
as much as she expected

from her dad's trust,

she told
Mike MacKool about that,

and he was not
very happy about it.

[Jon] Then
he took the will

and read the fine print

and he said,
"Wait a second here.

There's a loophole
that we could exploit,

and that is
if your mom is dead within next six or seven days,

we can take the whole thing."

So, he says we're gonna
develop a plan to kill her,

and he expects Leslie
to go through with that plan.

At first, Leslie is like,
"No, way, I'm not doing that to my mom."

[Bill] Michael just kept on
and kept on and kept on,

ultimately ending with,
"Here's what's gonna happen.

If you don't kill her,
I'm gonna kill her and I'm gonna kill you."

And Leslie said
that at some point

she just didn't feel like
she had any choice,

and said that she would do it.

[Steve] At this point I knew
she was telling the truth.

She was the one
who had committed the murder.

Leslie's says at that point
they had to start planning it.

But it's Mike doing
all the planning

and she's going along
with whatever he says.

She's gonna dress
all in black.

She's gonna have
a ski mask over her face.

She paints her face black
under the ski mask,

and she's got her gloves on.

[Bill] They would buy
some bigger shoes

that way to the extent

if there are
any track marks there,

that would point away
from her or him.

The plan that
Michael had put in place

was that they were gonna
go to the house

and she was gonna
hide in the shrubs

and wait for her mother
to come home,

and when her mother
came home,

Leslie would
go into the garage

and when the door shut

then she would
confront her mother.

[Jon] Part of the plan
that Mike had come up with

had always been staged
as a burglary.

Make them think
that somebody came in

and burglarized
your mom's house.

[Stacy] If Leslie
is telling the truth,

Mike played on her fear
and her anger

to convince her
to carry out the crime.

While Leslie
is telling the story,

Mike is still sitting
at the hallway

on a wooden bench,
singing songs,

whistling, just kinda
acting carefree,

like there's not
a murder investigation going on.

After detectives
have basically gotten a confession from Leslie,

they came back
out to the hallway

and invited Mike in
for a second talk.

Mike's personality was
everything was about him, he thought he was untouchable.

He gotten away
with stuff before.

Why couldn't he
get away with it now?

At first Mike denied it,

but as investigators
started working this

and throwing
little bits and pieces,

you know how
these investigators work,

they, they say,
"Well, Leslie's telling us this."

During that conversation,
detectives for whatever reason

left for about
15 or 20 minutes

and in that time frame

that's when
Mike tried to slit his wrist

with a thermostat
that had a jagged edge in the interrogation room.

Would Mike have done this
if he didn't know anything about the murder?

It doesn't seem like
the actions of an innocent man.

[siren wailing]

[Jon] They take him
to the hospital.

Obviously they want him alive
because he's got

some answers they need.

[Steve] If Mike died
we still know who killed Janie.

It was Leslie.

We just might not know
how much involvement

Mike had.

[Steve] Mike
wanted it to look like

he was trying
to commit suicide,

but he wasn't gonna
be able to do it by those means.

In my opinion
he was just trying

to figure out a way
to get out of that room,

but it just didn't work out
that way for him.

He was treated briefly
and released and brought back.

[Stacy] If it's true
that Mike didn't intend to commit suicide,

this is a theatrical way
to escape interrogation,

and it is unlikely
to make the police believe him more.

[Steve] When Mike's
back from the hospital,

he had said that
Leslie was putting all this on him

and trying to make him
look like the, the bad guy.

He denied ever being
abusive to anybody,

or being the type of person

that he was being
described as

by pretty much everybody
in this case.

Eventually, Mike
did admit to some part

of this homicide.

But his admission
is that, it's all Leslie.

He didn't know that's what
she was going to do

when she went over there.

One of my questions was,

"If you drove her over there
dressed in ninja clothes,

what did you think
she was going to do?"

It's about 3:30, four o'clock,
Sunday morning, the 14th,

September now.

We have a lot
to do with Leslie,

as far as showing us
where all the evidence is.

Leslie, you know,
would basically

give these detectives
a murder tour,

and she would
take them back

to spots that were pertinent,

and full of information
to the detectives for this homicide.

[Steve] It's me
and Leslie in the back

and two detectives
in the front, one driving.

First we head
to the MacKool's house

and she shows us
where the bloody clothes are hidden in a tire,

like an empty tire out
by the side of the house.

There was water in that tire
and it was the color of blood.

And then we head
to Hot Springs, Arkansas.

So, that's, from out there,

that's probably
an hour-and-half drive,

and this is where
things were a little weird.

We're in the back,
we got a long drive.

Leslie's kinda joking,
where she gets a little giddy.

She's just like,
we are all buddies.

Like we are on a road trip.

We get to
Mike MacKool's parents' house.

They had a nice home.

It's right on
the Lake Hamilton,

river-front property.

Leslie had taken
certain pieces of jewelry

from her mother
and stashed it,

and Leslie took detectives
to that stash.

[Steve] We find jewelry
and coins in the bedroom

where they stayed
Friday night.

[Bill] During the questioning
they are asking,

"So where's
the murder weapon?"

And Leslie told them
that she had seen Michael

throw the knife into the lake
in Hot Springs.

September 15th, dive team
from the police department were called in.

[Steve] I'm not very confident
that they were gonna find a knife.

Lake Hamilton's a big lake.

I remember the divers
going down in,

and Mr. MacKool,
JM MacKool saying,

"You ain't gonna find nothing
out there in that lake.

Y'all just wasting your time."

About five minutes later

a hand comes up
out of the lake

with that knife
in the diver's hand,

and that knife
is eight inches long, I think just the blade.

I looked over Mr. MacKool

and he just said,
"Son of a bitch."

I viewed the autopsy.

I went to the crime lab.

I saw 70 stab wounds,
most to the back,

and some to the hip.
It was just like a rage.

[Stacy] Mike may have
planned the murder,

but he didn't force her
to stab her mother 70 times.

No one does that
without intense anger,

and that anger

came from the inside
of Leslie.

[Steve] When we asked Leslie,
"How many times do you think you stabbed your mother?"

She said about six.

She just started stabbing

and probably
really had no idea how many times.

[Steve] I think that
Leslie was controlled to an extent by Mike

and that there was
manipulation there.

I do believe that
Mike planned this murder,

just like Leslie said,

but I also believe
Leslie could've stopped that

as far as completing the plan.

[Maggie] Even if
she was manipulated by someone,

the biggest mystery is how
she could go through with it.

[Steve] Leslie
and Mike MacKool,

both were charged
with capital murder.

Leslie went to trial
in the May of 2004.

Trial was at
the Pulaski County Court house here in Little Rock.

Leslie Ballard has never done

anything wrong
in her entire life,

and then all of a sudden
you have this whammy of a story

which is murder
and lies and greed.

[Bill] There was
a lot of buzz

related to
the trial of Leslie.

I mean,
cameras there everyday.

There's a lot of people
watching.

The gallery
was full on most days.

[Woody] Everybody
knew the Ballards

and just wanted to be part of

what was going on,
wanted to hear, wanted to see Leslie.

Leslie's defense is basically,
"He made me do it.

And I didn't have any choice.

I wouldn't have done it
if it wouldn't have been for all these pressures."

They used a domestic defense

that Mike encouraged her
to do this.

She was under his spell.

We centered on the vast change
that had come about

when she met Michael MacKool.

You know,
I tried to get the jury to think about her

as basically
just a naive little girl

that had fallen
in the clutches of this guy.

Not a lot of self-esteem,
kinda mousy,

and being pressured
by this ogre

and then got so hurt
by the way

her mother had treated her,

and then ultimately, you know,
forced into a situation by him

that she didn't know
how to get out of.

We had to put her
on the stands,

she had to explain
what happened.

While she's on the stand,

we get to the part
where we are talking about the breast job,

and doing her hair
and all that kind of thing,

and obviously our defense is
he made her do it, he encouraged her to do it,

and she basically just goes,

"Well, I kinda liked it.
I wanted it."

[Stacy] So, perhaps
Leslie didn't change her looks

to please Mike
or to annoy her parents,

but because it made her happy.

That changes the narrative.

[Bill] The trial went
basically a week.

In fact the jury went out
on the Friday afternoon.

[Jon] In cases I've covered,
if you got a confession,

then you got a conviction.

There's not
a jury in this world that would turn that down.

Leslie MacKool was found
guilty of the capital murder,

and given a sentence
of life without.

In Arkansas life is life.

There is no parole.
There is no eligibility.

There is life.

So, Leslie will die in prison.

Mike MacKool went to trial
about a month later,

in June of 2004.

Their argument was
he didn't participate in the murder

and he didn't have any idea

that she was gonna
kill her mother.

Mike was convicted
for capital murder

of Janie Ballard,
which was 40 years in prison

plus he got
20 years stacked on top of that for theft

of certain items.

So, in all, he got 60 years.

Will die in prison as well.

[Stacy] Even if Leslie
was angry with her mother,

and even if she enjoyed
some of her life with Mike,

it still seems he was the one

who convinced her
to kill Janie.

[Woody] Janie and Les
were great people.

Raised a great daughter,

and for Janie, you know,

her child just kinda
crumbled around her

and it just broke her heart
that this was going on

and she didn't know
what to do.

I get asked a lot,
"How could that happen? How could Leslie do that?"

And I think after
25 years of homicide work,

that anybody is capable
of doing anything.

I think how it happened was

Leslie is simply Mike MacKool.

I think it simply
boils down to Mike.

[Jon] If she
never met Mike MacKool, would she have done this?

Probably not.

Probably would never
even been on her radar

and Janie Ballard
would still be alive.

But that meeting,
that one day in a gym

and him saying, "I could
help you shape your body,"

it shaped her life.

[Maggie] She met
a master manipulator,

that talked her
into doing something

that she would never
have thought up on her own.

There's a
special place in hell

for people that carry out
crimes like this.

Especially against
one's mother.

He was gunned down...ambushed.

I used to tell him all the time,
"Man, watch your back."

WOMAN: From the outside
looking in

you would not know
there was any trouble.

MAN: What did she know
and what was really going on?

Everyone has a breaking point.

♪