April 11, 2019 • 23 mins
iO explores a darker side of Billy - did it lead to his death?
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Episode Transcript
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Speaker 1 (00:03):
Hello, Hey, yes, Hey, this is Io Rebecca Wrights kid. Wow.
I can't believe you called just one second. Basically, they
could have been here from like September. For the past
few months, I've been looking into the murder of Billy Balls,
the love of my mom's life. I've nailed down some
of his history, and I've heard my mom's version of
(00:26):
what happened to him. But I want some more perspectives,
so I'm getting in touch with other people who were
close to that. I gotta take this phone call. I
can't believe it. How are you? I'm really good, I'm
really good. How are you? I'm really bad. This is
an old friend of my mom's. We're calling her Natasha.
We haven't spoken since I was a little kid. I
(00:46):
hope you're not calling it that Rebecca. No, no, okay,
she's fine, she's fine. Yeah, yeah, you know I'm I'm
calling because I'm making a podcast trying to figure out
what the funk happened to Billy Balls. Oh really, Okay.
I have a theory on it because I was around
(01:07):
at that time, and I don't know if I really
want to say that. I mean, basically, but wait, this
is not Oh my God, she didn't hang up fuck me.
It's like a moment in a movie where like the
(01:30):
person who did it was hello, Hey, sorry, I don't
know what happened. Um See, I don't know if I
really feel comfortable telling the story, like I don't think
I mean my version of the story. I don't know.
(01:52):
It's may be different than my back us, but I
would rather do it in person. He wasn't innocent. He
was not innocent. Today on the show a few theories
about how a darker side of Billy may have led
to his death from Crimetown. I'm io till it right,
(02:14):
and this is the ballad of Billy balls, they says.
William Heinzman is shot five times. Any impression of who
had shot him undercover car The dude that shot him
(02:37):
came to the hospital and said to him, if it
was up to me, you wouldn't be in here. Chapter four,
Get in the Wind. How Natasha left us with a
(03:09):
cliffhanger that she wanted to discuss in person. So my
producer Austin and I went up to her apartment on
the Upper East Side. So, uh, my first question is
like kind of when you met Billy, like described Billy
for me as a person, well, it was an original
for sure. He wore a hat, usually a black hat,
(03:32):
and he wore white socks with black shoes, and uh,
he was skinning. I had a lot of energy. He
had a great voice, and I thought he wrote amazing
lyrics like I'd rather have a bottle in front of
me than a front of the bottomy, rather have a
bottom of the bottom. That he had a sense of
(03:57):
humor to him. And I also know he really loved
Rebecca that I could tap. Natasha remembers Billy's tenderness towards
my mom when she would be doing her exercises back,
like where her abdomen was stretched out and she was
she was weightlifting. He would like go after her stomach
like a career, you know, like cut that out. You know.
(04:20):
He would always like he was like a prankster. He
was like a dark haired Dennis the Menace in a way.
And I thought Billy was extremely talented. In the early eighties,
Natasha was experimenting with a music career and I was
working with Billy. I used to pay him to work
with him. I would go to the basement and he
(04:42):
would play the piano and I would do some singing
and try to write songs with him the basement of
the storefront. But Natasha didn't have a ton of musical experience.
I didn't even know where what's called one is, like
like when you're supposed to start a song like And
when he tried to create songs with me, he couldn't
(05:03):
understand why I didn't know where one was. You got
to learn account man, walk me through that whole situation.
And then Natasha started to tell us her theory about
(05:24):
why Billy was killed. It's a crazy saga that she says,
began with a wealthy international diplomat. I was asked to
get dope for a very wealthy politician. You know, politicians
and princes and all those people did drugs like anybody
else did. This person was a very heavy partier and
(05:46):
would have these really big, extravagant orgies and nothing like
dropping a hundred thousand dollars in one night. This person
was a cocaine um freak, and they wanted to try
some thing different. So I recommended heroin, and and that's
(06:08):
how I got Billy to score for me. So it
was more like a Christian So Billy and Natasha met
up to go buy the drugs. But the only problem
was she showed up in a fur coat coat. I
mean thember Billy is saying, rolling his eyes, I'm going
I can't believe you. I guess I looked suspicious that
(06:29):
they thought I was on the cover. Cop Billy took
her anyway. They went to Alphabet City where they got
in line, an actual line of people to buy heroin.
Then drugs in hand, she headed to the airport. So
I went on a plane and I, you know, I
(06:52):
went to a foreign country to meet that diplomat who
was planning an international orgy. And Natasha says, when you
get invited to an international orgy, you go. It was
sort of like Caligula. People having sex men and women,
(07:18):
gay straight, you know, using various toys to have sex
with and you know, dildos and chains and just everything
you can imagine. I mean, there would be amazing spreads
of like caviare and you know, all kinds of exotic food, um,
(07:41):
and there would be you know, people snort and cocaine,
and also on the menu that heroine she brought. Ironically,
the person who I got the drugs for he almost
odeed on the heroine that night. That I got from Billy,
(08:03):
and he got very, very sick, and then I came
back to the United States. So she says she took
the drugs back to Billy, and I knew he needed money,
and I basically gave him the heroine back and as payment,
you know, for whatever he was working on with me,
(08:26):
which I think, in retrospect was a huge mistake, a
mistake Natasha thinks might have cost Billy his life. Something
went wrong with whoever he was exchanging the dope with,
because I actually saw him afterwards, and I remember coming
down stairs and he was just very frantic and he
(08:52):
was mad at me for some reason, and he had
a gun and he was waving the gun around down
the basement, and he was really strung out, and he
was very nervous and very neurotic. He was very paranoid
because he was afraid something had gone wrong. And he said,
(09:18):
there's a dead rat under the piano, or there's going
to be a dead rat under the piano. I got
the impression that he that he had possibly killed somebody,
and he was like dead with him a week. Natasha
(09:41):
thought that somebody might have ratted Billy out, so he
killed them, which had something to do with why he died.
Did you hear anything about who killed him or what happened? Yeah,
I was told um that Rebecca had come home and
the place was flagged off with please tape, and then
(10:02):
she wasn't allowed in. And I had heard that undercover
cop had been in the house. But the undercover cop
was there to investigate, you know, the murder and basically said,
you know, you know, I'm here, like where is the
body or you know or something like that. Uh. The
(10:23):
story was that he went to go get a gun
and the guy undercover cop pulled a gun out and
shot him. I really don't know the answer to it,
but I know that he was not completely innocent. Something
had to have happened. So was Billy shot by the
(10:49):
cops because he had killed someone? Coming up a completely
different theory from one of Billy's best friends. That's after
the break. Talk to me for a second. Okay, we're good. Yeah,
(11:16):
hello Mr Chrome? Yell, Hey, Cheetah's io. How are you good?
How are you doing? I'm good, I'm here with This
is Cheetah Chrome. He was the guitarist for the Dead Boys,
an important early punk band. Him and Billy were close.
You know, Jilly usually one of the best friends. Ben said,
(11:38):
I love you guys. They had their own band together,
and Cheetah says, Billy did things his way. At some
point he acquired a white Davy Graham Chanel and he
decided he wanted to use it a suit of Jesus,
and so we all ended up getting the fucking him
(12:00):
Chanel onto a Dolly and walking it down to Superzis
from his place. You know, oh my god, it was
hilarious because I mean it was literally four guys like
pushing the channel on a Dolly down third having you
and I mean didn't make a difference, was it didn't? Didn't?
Of course I made it, Jeffer. It's not a great
Billy bows on keyboards all right, sticks out drugs like
(12:23):
a time. Yeah, it was great. It was a great,
you know thing experience to have and Billy was really challenging.
But you know, we didn't do that many shows. You know, Billy,
(12:44):
I don't know if maybe he was afraid of making
it or if he just was, you know, at stage
fright or didn't like playing live. Plus he was going
to sub subsidize in like this band was you know
something pills and s side. You know, this isn't the
first time we've heard it. Billy might have been dealing drugs,
but I'm hoping Cheetah can shed some more light on it.
(13:07):
What can you tell us a little more about that? Well, yeah,
I mean you just had a good supply pretty much,
you know, to an alls and reds and things like that,
you know how stuff if you wanted it. Um, I
wouldn't call him a real drug dealer. I mean the
only customers they had were like those friends of guys
(13:27):
who played with you know. And he says that the
drug Billy liked to take the most with speed, in particular,
a prescription drug called the sox. In the sox which
is like pure speed, really good pure speed pill, like
(13:48):
one of one of those if you up twenty four
hours to shot at. You know, Billy was you know,
into pretty much everything like that. You know. Fact then
we all it wasn't like unusual. Oh, it wasn't like
he was any any criminal element or anything. It was
just like a normal We all did that straight. You know.
Around that time, I was on a steady diet of
(14:10):
heroin and cocaine. You know, you're doing a recording studio
or just to blow until you were done and do
heroin to come down. You know, can you tell me
about the day that you found out Billy was shot
(14:31):
since to me, like I went down to sue your
mom and obviously she was extremely upset because it was
just unbelievable. I mean, we were all in shock. I mean,
it wasn't like, oh we saw this coming or anything
I had. We weren't, and you know, it was just
all of a sudden, out of nowhere. You know, one
of our best friends was all of a sudden murdered dead.
(14:55):
You know, do you have any theories on why that
might have happened? Billy? Did you have a couple of
guns and supposedly like he had sold a gun to
somebody and the gun had been used to shoot a cop.
(15:15):
So they when they found out where he got the gun,
but the way the guy got the gun from there
was like a kind of a revenge thing going on
where they went in there and with the intentions of
what happened happening. So Cheatah suspects that Billy sold a
gun that someone then used to shoot a cop, and
(15:36):
that's why the cops targeted Billy and there's you know,
they claimed that he went for a gun. I don't know.
I was not there. I don't know what happened. But
Billy did take a lot of steed um. You could
get pretty you know, whacked out there sometimes to weaken on.
It starts hallucinating thinking the government's after you know, ship
(15:58):
like that. But I don't see him going for a gun.
An say cops. You know, there was a revenge thing
from the cops. So we've heard from Natasha that Billy
may have killed someone, and we've heard from Cheetah Chrome
that Billy may have sold a gun that was used
(16:19):
to kill someone else. Your mom, Hi, Mama, Hey, Hi Hi.
So we went back to my mom to ask what
was happening with guns in their home. I slept at
one point with the little Colt Pearl Handled twenty two
under my pillow, which he gave to me because I
(16:42):
needed it. You needed it. You know, it's for protection.
Where was the twenty two on the day that the
Long Long Gone. There was no guns in the apartment.
My mom says that Billy did have guns for protection,
but that he'd gotten rid of them just before he
(17:03):
was shot because he felt like something bad was coming.
He sold everything, he was preparing for us to move
because it was the vibe. He had a feeling. I mean,
he's sensitive person. You know, he knows you know, the
word on his tweets and all that, and he said them,
(17:28):
baby girl, I'm gonna get in the wind. Could this
be because of the rat flipping on him or because
of the gun he sold to a cop killer coming
back to haunt him. Something big had to be going down.
He wanted to get in the wind to quote unquote
and move like things are really changing and in our
(17:56):
immediate world. She was hitting the fan for him in
some kind of way, which he would never tell me anything.
That would be like if you don't know, it won't
hurt you kind of thing. Yeah, what I don't understand
(18:18):
is why. And I'm not not in any kind of
suspicious way. But what I'm really trying to understand and
get to the bottom of is what was the motivation
for the guy to shoot him? Why did they want
to kill him? That's what I don't have any idea,
(18:39):
and that's I don't know. I don't know. You know,
you're asking me to add words. I'm not adding words
because there's no words to be added, I am the
only arbitor of the words, so you gotta respect that.
(19:06):
After we leave, I start to ask myself a bigger question.
I have to say, there's a little part of me
now that I'm discovering that maybe Billy wasn't such a
good guy, that a little part of me is like,
why are you doing this to your mom? But at
(19:28):
the same time, she's in so much pain and has
been for thirty five years. Do you think that you know,
if Billy was not a great guy, giving her the
truth will help her. I don't know. Yeah, I love
my mom a lot, but I know that people construct
(19:54):
fragile mental houses for themselves to live in that can
be built with toothpicks that keep them alive and make
life survivable and make pain and loss manageable. And I
wonder if I am stronger in the sense that I
(20:16):
can handle the truth about people and about things. And
I don't want to burn her toothpick house down by
being bullheaded and wanting the truth. But the truth is
I do want the truth. I mean, if we're making
(20:37):
ship up based on no evidence, we can make up
any ship we want, and it's all consistent with the
no evidence that we have. There are answers that are attainable.
There are files out there that at least give the
police and witness narrative of what they claim aim happened.
(21:03):
That's in two weeks. In the next chapter of the
Ballad of Billy Balls, Crime Town is Zack Stewart Pontier
and Mark Smirling. The Ballad of Billy Balls is hosted
by me Io till It Right and made in partnership
with Cadence thirteen. You can find me on the internet.
(21:26):
Um Io loves you on everything and if you want
to know more about my story, you can pick up
my memoir Darling Days. We also want to hear from you.
We have a voicemail set up for you to call us.
Here's Dom from California. I just want to say this,
This podcast making me feel all kinds of stuff, specifically
about my friend Gregory, who seemed to have a kind
(21:48):
of a death wish like Billy did. Um just a
really wild soul, an amazing soul who got taken and
I think of Billy and Gregory are somewhere special together.
I hope Billy and Gregory you're tearing up the afterlife
if there is one if there's somebody Billy reminds you of,
(22:12):
or you have a theory on what could have happened,
call us and leave us a voicemail at five seven
oh three, nine to zero. You can also get into
our discussion forum on our website, The Ballad of Billie
Balls dot com. The show is produced by Me, Kevin Sheppard,
and Ryan Swigert. Our senior producer is the Inimissible Austin Mitchell.
(22:38):
Editing by Zach Stewart Pontier and Mark Smirling. Fact checking
by Jennifer Blackman. This episode was mixed and sound designed
by Kenny Qcack. Music by Kenny Qcak. Our title track
is Dark Allies by Light Asylum. Archival searched by Brennan Reese.
(23:02):
Special thanks to Danielle Aria, rachel Leie Wright, Emily Wiedemann.
Those are our girlfriends and wives, Green card pictures, Alessandro Santairo,
Bill Clegg, Ben Davis, or In Rosenbaum and the team
at Caden's thirteen, And of course, my Mom, without whom
none of this would be possible
Hello, Hey, yes, Hey, this is Io Rebecca Wrights kid. Wow.
I can't believe you called just one second. Basically, they
could have been here from like September. For the past
few months, I've been looking into the murder of Billy Balls,
the love of my mom's life. I've nailed down some
of his history, and I've heard my mom's version of
(00:26):
what happened to him. But I want some more perspectives,
so I'm getting in touch with other people who were
close to that. I gotta take this phone call. I
can't believe it. How are you? I'm really good, I'm
really good. How are you? I'm really bad. This is
an old friend of my mom's. We're calling her Natasha.
We haven't spoken since I was a little kid. I
(00:46):
hope you're not calling it that Rebecca. No, no, okay,
she's fine, she's fine. Yeah, yeah, you know I'm I'm
calling because I'm making a podcast trying to figure out
what the funk happened to Billy Balls. Oh really, Okay.
I have a theory on it because I was around
(01:07):
at that time, and I don't know if I really
want to say that. I mean, basically, but wait, this
is not Oh my God, she didn't hang up fuck me.
It's like a moment in a movie where like the
(01:30):
person who did it was hello, Hey, sorry, I don't
know what happened. Um See, I don't know if I
really feel comfortable telling the story, like I don't think
I mean my version of the story. I don't know.
(01:52):
It's may be different than my back us, but I
would rather do it in person. He wasn't innocent. He
was not innocent. Today on the show a few theories
about how a darker side of Billy may have led
to his death from Crimetown. I'm io till it right,
(02:14):
and this is the ballad of Billy balls, they says.
William Heinzman is shot five times. Any impression of who
had shot him undercover car The dude that shot him
(02:37):
came to the hospital and said to him, if it
was up to me, you wouldn't be in here. Chapter four,
Get in the Wind. How Natasha left us with a
(03:09):
cliffhanger that she wanted to discuss in person. So my
producer Austin and I went up to her apartment on
the Upper East Side. So, uh, my first question is
like kind of when you met Billy, like described Billy
for me as a person, well, it was an original
for sure. He wore a hat, usually a black hat,
(03:32):
and he wore white socks with black shoes, and uh,
he was skinning. I had a lot of energy. He
had a great voice, and I thought he wrote amazing
lyrics like I'd rather have a bottle in front of
me than a front of the bottomy, rather have a
bottom of the bottom. That he had a sense of
(03:57):
humor to him. And I also know he really loved
Rebecca that I could tap. Natasha remembers Billy's tenderness towards
my mom when she would be doing her exercises back,
like where her abdomen was stretched out and she was
she was weightlifting. He would like go after her stomach
like a career, you know, like cut that out. You know.
(04:20):
He would always like he was like a prankster. He
was like a dark haired Dennis the Menace in a way.
And I thought Billy was extremely talented. In the early eighties,
Natasha was experimenting with a music career and I was
working with Billy. I used to pay him to work
with him. I would go to the basement and he
(04:42):
would play the piano and I would do some singing
and try to write songs with him the basement of
the storefront. But Natasha didn't have a ton of musical experience.
I didn't even know where what's called one is, like
like when you're supposed to start a song like And
when he tried to create songs with me, he couldn't
(05:03):
understand why I didn't know where one was. You got
to learn account man, walk me through that whole situation.
And then Natasha started to tell us her theory about
(05:24):
why Billy was killed. It's a crazy saga that she says,
began with a wealthy international diplomat. I was asked to
get dope for a very wealthy politician. You know, politicians
and princes and all those people did drugs like anybody
else did. This person was a very heavy partier and
(05:46):
would have these really big, extravagant orgies and nothing like
dropping a hundred thousand dollars in one night. This person
was a cocaine um freak, and they wanted to try
some thing different. So I recommended heroin, and and that's
(06:08):
how I got Billy to score for me. So it
was more like a Christian So Billy and Natasha met
up to go buy the drugs. But the only problem
was she showed up in a fur coat coat. I
mean thember Billy is saying, rolling his eyes, I'm going
I can't believe you. I guess I looked suspicious that
(06:29):
they thought I was on the cover. Cop Billy took
her anyway. They went to Alphabet City where they got
in line, an actual line of people to buy heroin.
Then drugs in hand, she headed to the airport. So
I went on a plane and I, you know, I
(06:52):
went to a foreign country to meet that diplomat who
was planning an international orgy. And Natasha says, when you
get invited to an international orgy, you go. It was
sort of like Caligula. People having sex men and women,
(07:18):
gay straight, you know, using various toys to have sex
with and you know, dildos and chains and just everything
you can imagine. I mean, there would be amazing spreads
of like caviare and you know, all kinds of exotic food, um,
(07:41):
and there would be you know, people snort and cocaine,
and also on the menu that heroine she brought. Ironically,
the person who I got the drugs for he almost
odeed on the heroine that night. That I got from Billy,
(08:03):
and he got very, very sick, and then I came
back to the United States. So she says she took
the drugs back to Billy, and I knew he needed money,
and I basically gave him the heroine back and as payment,
you know, for whatever he was working on with me,
(08:26):
which I think, in retrospect was a huge mistake, a
mistake Natasha thinks might have cost Billy his life. Something
went wrong with whoever he was exchanging the dope with,
because I actually saw him afterwards, and I remember coming
down stairs and he was just very frantic and he
(08:52):
was mad at me for some reason, and he had
a gun and he was waving the gun around down
the basement, and he was really strung out, and he
was very nervous and very neurotic. He was very paranoid
because he was afraid something had gone wrong. And he said,
(09:18):
there's a dead rat under the piano, or there's going
to be a dead rat under the piano. I got
the impression that he that he had possibly killed somebody,
and he was like dead with him a week. Natasha
(09:41):
thought that somebody might have ratted Billy out, so he
killed them, which had something to do with why he died.
Did you hear anything about who killed him or what happened? Yeah,
I was told um that Rebecca had come home and
the place was flagged off with please tape, and then
(10:02):
she wasn't allowed in. And I had heard that undercover
cop had been in the house. But the undercover cop
was there to investigate, you know, the murder and basically said,
you know, you know, I'm here, like where is the
body or you know or something like that. Uh. The
(10:23):
story was that he went to go get a gun
and the guy undercover cop pulled a gun out and
shot him. I really don't know the answer to it,
but I know that he was not completely innocent. Something
had to have happened. So was Billy shot by the
(10:49):
cops because he had killed someone? Coming up a completely
different theory from one of Billy's best friends. That's after
the break. Talk to me for a second. Okay, we're good. Yeah,
(11:16):
hello Mr Chrome? Yell, Hey, Cheetah's io. How are you good?
How are you doing? I'm good, I'm here with This
is Cheetah Chrome. He was the guitarist for the Dead Boys,
an important early punk band. Him and Billy were close.
You know, Jilly usually one of the best friends. Ben said,
(11:38):
I love you guys. They had their own band together,
and Cheetah says, Billy did things his way. At some
point he acquired a white Davy Graham Chanel and he
decided he wanted to use it a suit of Jesus,
and so we all ended up getting the fucking him
(12:00):
Chanel onto a Dolly and walking it down to Superzis
from his place. You know, oh my god, it was
hilarious because I mean it was literally four guys like
pushing the channel on a Dolly down third having you
and I mean didn't make a difference, was it didn't? Didn't?
Of course I made it, Jeffer. It's not a great
Billy bows on keyboards all right, sticks out drugs like
(12:23):
a time. Yeah, it was great. It was a great,
you know thing experience to have and Billy was really challenging.
But you know, we didn't do that many shows. You know, Billy,
(12:44):
I don't know if maybe he was afraid of making
it or if he just was, you know, at stage
fright or didn't like playing live. Plus he was going
to sub subsidize in like this band was you know
something pills and s side. You know, this isn't the
first time we've heard it. Billy might have been dealing drugs,
but I'm hoping Cheetah can shed some more light on it.
(13:07):
What can you tell us a little more about that? Well, yeah,
I mean you just had a good supply pretty much,
you know, to an alls and reds and things like that,
you know how stuff if you wanted it. Um, I
wouldn't call him a real drug dealer. I mean the
only customers they had were like those friends of guys
(13:27):
who played with you know. And he says that the
drug Billy liked to take the most with speed, in particular,
a prescription drug called the sox. In the sox which
is like pure speed, really good pure speed pill, like
(13:48):
one of one of those if you up twenty four
hours to shot at. You know, Billy was you know,
into pretty much everything like that. You know. Fact then
we all it wasn't like unusual. Oh, it wasn't like
he was any any criminal element or anything. It was
just like a normal We all did that straight. You know.
Around that time, I was on a steady diet of
(14:10):
heroin and cocaine. You know, you're doing a recording studio
or just to blow until you were done and do
heroin to come down. You know, can you tell me
about the day that you found out Billy was shot
(14:31):
since to me, like I went down to sue your
mom and obviously she was extremely upset because it was
just unbelievable. I mean, we were all in shock. I mean,
it wasn't like, oh we saw this coming or anything
I had. We weren't, and you know, it was just
all of a sudden, out of nowhere. You know, one
of our best friends was all of a sudden murdered dead.
(14:55):
You know, do you have any theories on why that
might have happened? Billy? Did you have a couple of
guns and supposedly like he had sold a gun to
somebody and the gun had been used to shoot a cop.
(15:15):
So they when they found out where he got the gun,
but the way the guy got the gun from there
was like a kind of a revenge thing going on
where they went in there and with the intentions of
what happened happening. So Cheatah suspects that Billy sold a
gun that someone then used to shoot a cop, and
(15:36):
that's why the cops targeted Billy and there's you know,
they claimed that he went for a gun. I don't know.
I was not there. I don't know what happened. But
Billy did take a lot of steed um. You could
get pretty you know, whacked out there sometimes to weaken on.
It starts hallucinating thinking the government's after you know, ship
(15:58):
like that. But I don't see him going for a gun.
An say cops. You know, there was a revenge thing
from the cops. So we've heard from Natasha that Billy
may have killed someone, and we've heard from Cheetah Chrome
that Billy may have sold a gun that was used
(16:19):
to kill someone else. Your mom, Hi, Mama, Hey, Hi Hi.
So we went back to my mom to ask what
was happening with guns in their home. I slept at
one point with the little Colt Pearl Handled twenty two
under my pillow, which he gave to me because I
(16:42):
needed it. You needed it. You know, it's for protection.
Where was the twenty two on the day that the
Long Long Gone. There was no guns in the apartment.
My mom says that Billy did have guns for protection,
but that he'd gotten rid of them just before he
(17:03):
was shot because he felt like something bad was coming.
He sold everything, he was preparing for us to move
because it was the vibe. He had a feeling. I mean,
he's sensitive person. You know, he knows you know, the
word on his tweets and all that, and he said them,
(17:28):
baby girl, I'm gonna get in the wind. Could this
be because of the rat flipping on him or because
of the gun he sold to a cop killer coming
back to haunt him. Something big had to be going down.
He wanted to get in the wind to quote unquote
and move like things are really changing and in our
(17:56):
immediate world. She was hitting the fan for him in
some kind of way, which he would never tell me anything.
That would be like if you don't know, it won't
hurt you kind of thing. Yeah, what I don't understand
(18:18):
is why. And I'm not not in any kind of
suspicious way. But what I'm really trying to understand and
get to the bottom of is what was the motivation
for the guy to shoot him? Why did they want
to kill him? That's what I don't have any idea,
(18:39):
and that's I don't know. I don't know. You know,
you're asking me to add words. I'm not adding words
because there's no words to be added, I am the
only arbitor of the words, so you gotta respect that.
(19:06):
After we leave, I start to ask myself a bigger question.
I have to say, there's a little part of me
now that I'm discovering that maybe Billy wasn't such a
good guy, that a little part of me is like,
why are you doing this to your mom? But at
(19:28):
the same time, she's in so much pain and has
been for thirty five years. Do you think that you know,
if Billy was not a great guy, giving her the
truth will help her. I don't know. Yeah, I love
my mom a lot, but I know that people construct
(19:54):
fragile mental houses for themselves to live in that can
be built with toothpicks that keep them alive and make
life survivable and make pain and loss manageable. And I
wonder if I am stronger in the sense that I
(20:16):
can handle the truth about people and about things. And
I don't want to burn her toothpick house down by
being bullheaded and wanting the truth. But the truth is
I do want the truth. I mean, if we're making
(20:37):
ship up based on no evidence, we can make up
any ship we want, and it's all consistent with the
no evidence that we have. There are answers that are attainable.
There are files out there that at least give the
police and witness narrative of what they claim aim happened.
(21:03):
That's in two weeks. In the next chapter of the
Ballad of Billy Balls, Crime Town is Zack Stewart Pontier
and Mark Smirling. The Ballad of Billy Balls is hosted
by me Io till It Right and made in partnership
with Cadence thirteen. You can find me on the internet.
(21:26):
Um Io loves you on everything and if you want
to know more about my story, you can pick up
my memoir Darling Days. We also want to hear from you.
We have a voicemail set up for you to call us.
Here's Dom from California. I just want to say this,
This podcast making me feel all kinds of stuff, specifically
about my friend Gregory, who seemed to have a kind
(21:48):
of a death wish like Billy did. Um just a
really wild soul, an amazing soul who got taken and
I think of Billy and Gregory are somewhere special together.
I hope Billy and Gregory you're tearing up the afterlife
if there is one if there's somebody Billy reminds you of,
(22:12):
or you have a theory on what could have happened,
call us and leave us a voicemail at five seven
oh three, nine to zero. You can also get into
our discussion forum on our website, The Ballad of Billie
Balls dot com. The show is produced by Me, Kevin Sheppard,
and Ryan Swigert. Our senior producer is the Inimissible Austin Mitchell.
(22:38):
Editing by Zach Stewart Pontier and Mark Smirling. Fact checking
by Jennifer Blackman. This episode was mixed and sound designed
by Kenny Qcack. Music by Kenny Qcak. Our title track
is Dark Allies by Light Asylum. Archival searched by Brennan Reese.
(23:02):
Special thanks to Danielle Aria, rachel Leie Wright, Emily Wiedemann.
Those are our girlfriends and wives, Green card pictures, Alessandro Santairo,
Bill Clegg, Ben Davis, or In Rosenbaum and the team
at Caden's thirteen, And of course, my Mom, without whom
none of this would be possible
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