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#TrueCrimeRecaps #GregFleniken #ColdCase
Greg Fleniken, a 55-year-old landman from Louisiana, was found dead in his locked hotel room in Beaumont, Texas, after failing to show up for work. The scene appeared ordinary: no signs of forced entry, no visible injuries, and no evidence of a struggle. With Greg’s unhealthy lifestyle and history of smoking, authorities initially suspected a heart attack or stroke.
That theory fell apart during the autopsy. Greg had catastrophic internal injuries that looked more consistent with blunt-force trauma than a natural death. Investigators struggled to explain how someone could suffer such damage without external wounds. The case stalled as detectives chased unlikely theories, including a possible assault by a hotel maintenance worker and an unexplained power outage that affected the neighboring room.
Nearly a year later, a private investigator noticed a small dent in the wall near the adjoining room and toothpaste filling a hole on the other side. The truth finally emerged: two electricians in the next room had been drinking when one accidentally fired a gun through the wall. The bullet struck Greg while he was relaxing in bed, killing him instantly. Instead of calling for help, the men covered up the damage. Lance Mueller later pleaded no contest to manslaughter and was sentenced to ten years in prison.
#TrueCrimeRecaps #GregFleniken #ColdCase #LockedRoomMystery"
Greg Fleniken, a 55-year-old landman from Louisiana, was found dead in his locked hotel room in Beaumont, Texas, after failing to show up for work. The scene appeared ordinary: no signs of forced entry, no visible injuries, and no evidence of a struggle. With Greg’s unhealthy lifestyle and history of smoking, authorities initially suspected a heart attack or stroke.
That theory fell apart during the autopsy. Greg had catastrophic internal injuries that looked more consistent with blunt-force trauma than a natural death. Investigators struggled to explain how someone could suffer such damage without external wounds. The case stalled as detectives chased unlikely theories, including a possible assault by a hotel maintenance worker and an unexplained power outage that affected the neighboring room.
Nearly a year later, a private investigator noticed a small dent in the wall near the adjoining room and toothpaste filling a hole on the other side. The truth finally emerged: two electricians in the next room had been drinking when one accidentally fired a gun through the wall. The bullet struck Greg while he was relaxing in bed, killing him instantly. Instead of calling for help, the men covered up the damage. Lance Mueller later pleaded no contest to manslaughter and was sentenced to ten years in prison.
#TrueCrimeRecaps #GregFleniken #ColdCase #LockedRoomMystery"
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NewsTranscript
00:00So let me ask you something. If a man checks into a hotel alone, locks the door from the inside,
00:06and is found dead the next morning with no visible injuries, you'd probably think heart
00:11attack, stroke, natural causes. Except Greg Flanagan did not die naturally. He has catastrophic
00:18internal injuries. Injuries you don't get from collapsing onto a hotel carpet. Doctors can't
00:23seem to agree on how he died. Police aren't sure what they're even looking for. And the case
00:28quietly starts to stall until someone notices something that should not be there. So what
00:34killed him? I'm Amy. Thanks for watching. Let's recap.
00:43So let's rewind to September 15th, 2010. Greg Flanagan is in Beaumont, Texas for work. Something
00:51he's been doing for years. He's a land man. And yeah, if you're thinking of that Taylor Sheridan
00:56version, the oil fields, the power plays, Billy Bob Thornton doing Billy Bob Thornton,
01:01you're not wrong. It's land man. Greg is a land man. It's a land man. You get it. But this is the
01:06everyday reality of that job. It's long drives across Texas, stacks of paperwork, and a lot of
01:12hotel rooms just like this one. Handling mineral rights, meeting property owners, quietly keeping
01:17oil and gas deals moving. It's not glamorous, but it is routine. And Greg is a guy who is fine with
01:23routine. He likes routine. And that night he does exactly what he always does. He calls his wife
01:29back home in Louisiana. They talk about normal stuff, work, travel, when he's going to be home.
01:34There's no sense that anything is wrong. After the call, he settles in for the night. He cranks the
01:39air conditioning. He changes into his cotton pajama bottoms. He arranges a couple of pillows to lean
01:44back against the headboard. The TV goes on. Iron Man 2 is playing. He lights a cigarette, unwraps a candy bar,
01:51sips at some root beer. At some point, he sets his alarm. And that detail matters because it tells us
01:57that Greg expects to wake up. He expects tomorrow. There's no evidence he leaves the room. No room
02:03service. There's no late night visitors. No noise complaints. By all accounts, Greg Flanagan ends his
02:09day the way he's ended dozens of others. Alone in a locked hotel room with his cigarettes and his snacks.
02:16But by morning, he's gone. And when he doesn't show up for work, people start to notice. Now,
02:22first his wife, when he doesn't call, and then his co-workers. And eventually, the door to room 348
02:28is opened. And what they find inside doesn't, it doesn't really clear anything up. There's no sign
02:34of a break-in. There's no struggle. There's nothing out of place. The room looks normal. It's warm.
02:39The air conditioning is off. But other than that, all looks normal. Greg looks normal too,
02:45except for the fact that he's dead. There's no blood. There's no obvious injuries. He's on the
02:49floor near the bed, face down, still in his pajamas. A cigarette is still gripped between the fingers of
02:55his left hand. His wallet is still in the back pocket of his jeans, stuffed with cash. So robbery is
03:01clearly not the issue. And no one in the surrounding rooms heard a thing. Inside the room,
03:07they check Greg's bags. They're mostly looking for pills. There aren't any. No empty bottles either.
03:13So what is this? A heart attack? A stroke? Well, he's only 55, which feels young. But then again,
03:22he didn't exercise. He smoked like a chimney. He ate and drank whatever the hell he felt like.
03:28So yeah, maybe this is just the bill coming due. A lifetime of habits finally catching up with him.
03:34And that explanation works right up until the autopsy. Because once the medical examiner takes
03:40a closer look, the story completely changes. Greg didn't just collapse. Inside his body, the damage
03:48is unreal. Now the doctor's first thought, according to Vanity Fair, thank you so much to Vanity Fair
03:55because we've gotten a lot of information about this from them. So according to them, the doctor's
04:00first thought is, he's been beaten or crushed by something. There's an injury to his scrotum that
04:06looks like it came from a hard blow. And his organs took such a violent impact, it caused catastrophic
04:12damage. This is murder. So now nothing makes sense. How does someone take that kind of beating on the
04:19inside without any damage on the outside? And even if you set that question aside for a second and just
04:25ask why, why would they do this to him, it still doesn't work. Because Greg is not a guy people
04:31want to kill. He's happily married. There's no secret girlfriend, no messy double life. He's not
04:37out picking fights. He's not blowing up at strangers in traffic. He's not closing down the bars. He's a go
04:42to bed early, wake up early kind of guy. He's steady. He's predictable. He's like the guy you want as your
04:49buddy, which just makes the whole thing harder to explain. So the detective starts doing what you do
04:55when nothing makes sense. You rewind the night. Hotel records, maintenance logs, anything that might
05:02explain why this quiet night suddenly turned deadly. And that's when something small but interesting
05:09pops up. Around 830 that evening, Greg blows an electrical circuit in his room. It's nothing dramatic.
05:16He's just microwaving popcorn and the breaker trips. But the outage doesn't just hit his room.
05:21It knocks out power to the room next door, room 349, and a couple of rooms underneath. Greg calls the
05:27front desk. Maintenance comes up. They reset the breaker. It's normal interaction. He's like,
05:32I'm sorry. Problem solved. But this matters because now investigators have a timeline. Greg never turned
05:39his air conditioning back on after the power blew. And that's why the room was so warm when they found him
05:44the next day. And that gave them a time of death, which opens the door to theories. The first one
05:50is kind of uncomfortable. The maintenance worker who came to the room, well, he has a criminal record,
05:56a sex offense. And suddenly the detective is thinking about that injury to Greg's scrotum,
06:01the one that made the doctor think that he got kicked there. But what if it was some bizarre,
06:05violent sex assault? So they dig into this guy hard. They're interviewing him. They're checking
06:11security video. They're having some long conversations. But in the end, there's just,
06:15there's nothing there. There's no evidence, no escalation. Just, it seems weird. Seems like
06:20a coincidence, but it's nothing. So the attention shifts because remember that power outage affected
06:26the guys in room 349. These guys are two union electricians, Lance Mueller and Tim Steinmetz.
06:33They're in town for a long-term oil job. They're part of a group of electricians. They're all staying at
06:38the hotel for a while. And like a lot of guys on long work trips, they gather in each other's
06:43rooms at night. They're just drinking. They're hanging out. They're killing time. So investigators
06:48start asking questions. Did it, did the power go out at like a pivotal moment in a game? Did they go
06:54looking for the problem? Did someone knock on Greg's door? Did a fight kick off? But the electricians say,
06:59no, they insist they never interacted with Greg, never knocked on his door, never even spoke to him.
07:06And once again, that theory stalls out. So what we've got is no witnesses, no confrontation,
07:11no clear path from popcorn to homicide. Obviously there has to be something here. There's some piece
07:17of the puzzle everyone's missing, but the problem is no one can see it. So almost a year goes by like
07:23that. Interviews, reports, the same unanswered questions circling the same dead ends. And that's
07:29when Greg's wife, Susie, decides to bring in a ringer. She hires a private investigator, this guy named Ken
07:35Brennan. He has a reputation, sort of like a real Sherlock Holmes guy. He's worked a lot of cases.
07:42This one grabs him right away because it's just so weird. So he teams up with the detective already
07:48on it and they start over. Same process, more interviews, questions, still not getting any real
07:54answers. And some, a few months go by and seems to be nothing but dead ends as far as the eye can see.
08:00But Ken has a hunch he wants to check out. So they go back to room 348 again. And this time
08:08he says that he's looking for a bullet, which doesn't make a lot of sense because the medical
08:13examiner never mentioned a gunshot wound, no exit wound, the bullet, no bullet. Still,
08:19they're searching. They're on the floor. They're checking the furniture, the walls. They've,
08:24they're on their hands and knees. They've got the flashlights out. They're checking everything,
08:28but just, they're coming up with nothing. It's a room. They're just about ready to call it.
08:34When they notice something near the door that connects to the next room. It's a small dent in
08:41the wall. It looks like nothing. It's the kind of minor damage you would get when a door swings open
08:46too hard and the knob hits the wall. Except in this case, the doorknob isn't lining up with that
08:52dent. So they take a look at the other side of the wall in room 349. And that's when it clicks.
08:58On the other side of the wall is a small hole filled in with toothpaste. It lines up perfectly
09:06with the dent in the wall in Greg's room. And from there, it's a straight shot to the bed,
09:12right where Greg had been relaxing. He wasn't beaten. He was shot. So now it's time to go back
09:19to the guys in room 349, the electricians. And this time the questions land a little differently
09:27because now investigators know exactly what they're looking for. And eventually the story comes out.
09:34That night, Lance and Tim were in their room with another co-worker. They're just, they're drinking
09:38beer. They're hanging out. Same thing that they've been doing most nights on the job. At some point,
09:42Lance pulls out a loaded nine millimeter handgun and he's kind of playing with it.
09:48They're, he's like trying to quick draw like an old Western, but then the gun goes off. The bullet
09:54goes straight through the wall, except no one yells from the other side. Nothing happens right then to
10:01tell them that they've just shot a man. So instead of calling anyone, police, security, literally anyone,
10:06they patch up the hole in the wall with toothpaste and that's it. They don't check the room next door.
10:11They don't knock. They don't ask if someone's okay because they assume that no one is hurt.
10:16And they head down to the hotel bar to keep drinking. It's only in the next morning when
10:20they see police outside room 348 and watch Greg's body being wheeled out that the reality starts to
10:27sink in. But this is like the perfect storm of errors, not errors, but like the perfect storm of
10:33weird stuff. Because when officers come around asking if anyone heard anything the night before,
10:38the electricians are told, Oh, it looks like the guy had a heart attack. Can't tell. Did you hear
10:44anything? Natural causes, no visible injuries. That's the story going around. Lance hires a lawyer.
10:51The lawyer looks at the autopsy report and he tells him the same thing. No one's talking bullets. So
10:57Lance tells himself he didn't kill anyone. And for a while that belief holds. But what makes this whole
11:03thing even harder to wrap your head around is how unlikely it is. The bullet hit Greg in the scrotum.
11:11And because that tissue is soft, the wound closed in on itself. It didn't look like a gunshot. It looks
11:17more like an abrasion. Like the doctor thought he got kicked in the jewels. In rare cases though,
11:25skin like that can settle back together after death, especially when the entry point is small.
11:30So no one immediately recognizes it for what it is. Inside his body though, the bullet didn't stop.
11:37It ricocheted, tearing through the tissue causing this massive internal damage. So instead of looking
11:42like a shooting, it looks more like blunt force trauma. So one in a million accident with
11:47very real consequences. In the end, Lance Mueller pleads no contest to manslaughter. On October 29th,
11:542012, he's sentenced to 10 years in prison. All because of one reckless moment. Handled wrong,
12:00covered up worse. Crazy, right?
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