On the evening of December 30th, 2019, 42-year-old Chad Ensel headed out to his weekly bowling league in Bismarck, North Dakota. Friends said he was

in good spirits, laughing and joking like always, before heading home for what should have been

an ordinary night. But over the next several days, Chad stopped answering calls, didn't show up for

work, and seemed to vanish inside his own home, until a 911 call on January 2nd reported a fire at the

property. When firefighters arrived, they found more than just smoke and flames. Inside the primary

bedroom was Chad's body, a propane heater, and a shotgun. At first glance, it looked like a suicide

and accidental fire. But as investigators began examining the scene,

a very different story emerged,

involving missing surveillance footage,

a sudden insurance policy,

and a secret relationship that Chad had known nothing about.

Music Hello, everybody, welcome back to Crime Weekly.

I'm Stephanie Harlow.

And I'm Derek Lavasar.

So today we're jumping into a new case.

We're going to get this case done in two parts so that we can get everything

wrapped up before the Christmas holidays and we're not leaving you on red while we take a week

off for Christmas and New Year's. So we will sort of, you know, have a conclusion before we all

say happy holidays and take some time off. But before we dive in to this case, which is a bizarre one,

and it is worth talking about, which is why we're doing it. Derek has something to talk to

about because we've had everyone asking us, we've got great criminal coffee merch. I'm going to

shout ourselves out here. I love our criminal coffee merch. It's creative. It's awesome.

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