7.

For I True Crime Cavers Cases that are not suitable for young listeners, and there may also be

some explicit language used.

Listener Discussion is advised.

I have just finished an exhausting series on Phil aside, a mother who viciously stabbed

her little boys.

I definitely wanted to cover something different, but didn't immediately realize that I chose

an almost exact opposite case of matricide.

Of a young woman who viciously murdered her own mother, Leslie Jane Ballard had grown

up as the very loved, pampered, and even spoiled daughter of Lester and Janie Ballard, a prominent

couple in Little Rock, Arkansas.

She had also led a very sheltered life, Catholic schoolgirl, then an accomplished college graduate

before joining the family business.

But everything changed when she met Mike McCool.

Leslie had been drifting in her life, unmoored by her rigid school days, and Mike seemed so

cool, so masculine.

He was flashy, confident, and absolutely everything her parents did not want in a son-in-law.

Leslie didn't know it, but he was lazy and a habitual liar with a very checkered criminal

past, though he always managed to avoid prison.

Mike McCool was the exact opposite of the good girl Leslie Ballard, and yet when they

met, it was like two magnets drawn together.

Did he force Leslie, who had been very close to both of her parents, to murder her mother,

...