Hello everybody, Deborah Roberts here to tell you what our 2020 True Crime Plus subscribers are listening to this week. All six episodes of The Screen Murder, a new podcast from 2020. They're available to subscribers now, ad-free. And as always, subscribers get access to hundreds of our 2020 episodes going back years. If that sounds like something that you are interested in, well, subscribe to 2020 True Crime Plus on Apple Podcasts now.
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Welcome to 2020 The After Show. I'm Deborah Roberts and as always, it's good to have you with us. Today, we are going to take you inside a pretty amazing story, kind of a cat and mouse game. It's from our latest 2020 episode called Born to Kill. And it centers around 22-year-old Katie Blumbell.
Friends described her as a free spirit, a woman who was just a bright light. She loved animals. She had a couple of dogs. In fact, loved animals so much she worked out of PetSmart. Well, in October 24th of 2016, Katie was supposed to meet up with a niece after work.
She didn't show up. She didn't answer her phone. And of course, her family was deeply worried. So they called police and devastatingly, just 24 hours later, Katie's body was found in the basement of an old abandoned house in the middle of the woods in small towns, Simpson, ville, South Carolina. Not far from her home, she had been brutally murdered.
And of course, the big question was, who would do such a thing to a woman who was such a bright and beautiful spirit? Well, police zero in on an obvious suspect. And it would wind up taking years for this case to actually be solved. It would take a determined prosecutor to actually take on this case and to bring justice to Katie's family. And fortunately for us, we have that prosecutor with us today.
Kenley A.B. came into this case and she would not give up. She was in our report on 2020. You would have seen her on Friday night if you caught the report. And if you didn't, she is here with us today to give us some more details and kind of a personal take on this case as well.
So, Kenley, A.B., great to have you with us. Hey, thank you for having me. Oh, my gosh, good to have you. You've been so busy by the way. You were a woman who was in and out of court.
We had a hard time pinning you down. Let's talk a little bit more about you than before we even get into this case because for more than what? 13 years you've been a criminal prosecutor. One of your big areas of interest is human trafficking. You're deeply, deeply concerned about penetrating these cases that involve young women and so forth.
Give me a sense of your passion and what brought you into this line of work. Yeah, so I was a first generation lawyer in my family, but new pretty early on. I wanted to do trial work that I wanted to be a litigator and then I wanted to be a prosecutor. There's something about being a prosecutor where you just have this ability to do the right thing for the right reason every time. And I love the opportunity and the ability to do that.
And then I zeroed in college really on helping special victims. So children of sexual assault, domestic violence, domestic homicide, which is what this case was, as you were at a pretty early on, I'm trying to help some of our most vulnerable populations and getting the opportunity to be a voice for them and a representation for them in court. Yeah, and as a woman too, I would imagine that you really feel a burning passion about it. I have interviewed so many female prosecutors, detectives who really bring something different to this kind of work because we do feel it, I think, a little bit differently when I'm reporting, when you're prosecuting, I would imagine. Oh, yeah, absolutely.
I mean, we see these year and experiences and our friends and people that we know. And so it's just so interesting to be able to actually do something about it on the side. Yeah, well, tell me about Katie Blumelt and how that case, when it hit your desk and you began to look into this young woman who had been married, she was in the throes of a breakup, and then she turns up murdered. What were your first thoughts about this? Yeah, you know, so this case is really interesting when it came on my desk. First,
it came in a giant box. And a lot of times we end up with boxes in cases, but we don't necessarily start with them. So first and foremost, I was really impressed just with the depth of work that the Sentinel Police Department had done on this case. Once I started going through it, it was really interesting to see the personal dynamics take shape, to see who Katie was with her older husband, John, now a strange husband or then a strange husband. And then it was really interesting to me to see how many teenagers were going to be involved in the case of key witnesses. It wasn't something I was necessarily expecting to see on the front
end, but we were really able to get a lot of really good information from 16, 17, and 18-year-old, and they became key and essential witnesses throughout this entire case and trial. Yeah, and we want to talk about that later because they were actually pivotal in your actually being able to prosecute this case. But let's talk about Katie and without getting too sensational about it, I mean, the way this woman was murdered, and oftentimes that tells you something when you know exactly what had happened to them. I mean, she had been found in this abandoned house. Were there things about the way her body had been found and the way she had been murdered that informed you a little bit as a prosecutor? Absolutely. First and foremost,
this abandoned house wasn't just an abandoned house on an open road. It was secluded in the woods. This was a house where somebody didn't want Katie to be found. It was not only was the house almost impossible to see from the road, but then where Katie's body was as well as downstairs in a basement and a cement kind of carve out that existed in that basement. Her body, yeah, her body here itself also told us a lot of really interesting things. So it was almost like it was a two-sided
crime scene because we had Katie in this box secluded and hidden and she had no pants on. And typically when there's not a sexual assault involved in the case, which there wasn't in this one, when there's not a sexual assault, someone will remove the clothing in order to embarrass that victim. But then also, yeah, that also Katie's body was covered with a giant bulwark. And so typically people cover bodies when they don't want to have to look at what they did, typically that someone that's got a connection or some sort of compassion. So we had this weird dual-sided crime scene, especially with her body of somebody that wanted to embarrass her, then also had some sort of affection for her as well in terms of the crime scene. So that was
really interesting to me to see both of those in there at the same time. Yeah, that's so interesting. I've never heard that before that you would assume that if the bottom of the clothing is removed, that maybe they had been assaulted and this whole notion of embarrassing the victim. Well, police eventually, initially started looking at her estranged husband and we say older. He was around what, 27, 28. Katie was pretty young.
Yep, that's six years age different. Yeah, so she was a bit younger than he was, but they had had a little bit of a rocky relationship. What did you begin to learn from folks about him and about their relationship? So the military was everything to John. That was his entire identity. That is the job that he was meant to happen. He was a recruiter and
that's actually how he met Katie. He actually recruited Katie prior to ultimately marrying her. So he recruited Katie and then he got sent to the high schools to be a recruiter in the high school. And that is really where we started to see how he operated and he used that recruiter charm and that ability to talk to people, to kind of break people down and to break their guards down and just allow them to go in a little bit further and to develop these deeper relationships. Well, when you got this case, you started digging and trying to find out, obviously, about him and about the relationship, because now the case has to be prosecuted once, eventually, and we'll talk a little bit about how police were able to finally make an arrest here.
You actually saw the interviews that investigators had done with him. And that was pretty revealing to you, right? Yeah, absolutely. They filmed the death notification, which is when they notified him that she had been found dead. And you know, everyone reacts to trauma differently into bad news differently. So I try really hard not to say it was an atypical reaction, right? Like,
I understand people process things differently. But this was bizarre. And the most telling thing about all of it is he never asked any of the law enforcement officers how she died. And that was so telling to me, even when they confronted him with that and said, you know, Hey, man, we've been talking to you this whole time and told you that we found her wife dead and you never asked us how she died. His response was, well, it doesn't really matter. Does it?
And that was just that was so telling to me if someone that just genuinely had no care or concerned or someone that already knew it was one or the two. Yeah, that's always so stunning to me when I when I cover these stories. And when you hear about these interrogations and the way people present, I mean, oftentimes they're going overboard with their emotions. And then oftentimes like this, they just show now it's just absolutely shocking to me. And then one thing factored into this case, which I see a lot in the stories I cover in 2020 is that digital evidence. Everybody thinks that
they're going to be able to search and look and Google and use all kinds of technology and it won't be detected. But in this case, it was also very telling when you looked at that digital footprint, didn't it? Absolutely. There were a couple things that really stood out to me in terms of the digital footprint. One, this was a guy that was constantly on his bow. You know, he would wake up at four in the
morning and just start Google searching things and start looking at things that he was always on his bone, but he wasn't during the time that Katie had died. So that was extremely telling to us. There were a lot of other small digital things that we got to pull together with surveillance gamers and stuff throughout the case, but most telling was what he was Googling once he found out Katie was dead. And that was not just Katie Ballbell or missing Sensei Bell woman. He was always attaching his name to it. So he's always Googling, you know, John Ball about Katie Ball. He was just trying to
see what his name is. See it was his name in these newspapers. I mean, I think you do that to figure out if anyone's onto you. Right. And so that's exactly what it was. He wasn't caring about what
the news was saying about his wife. He was caring about what they were saying about him. And looking at the piece on Friday night, it was really just captivating in so many ways. And one other thing, and this speaks to your work, too, the work that you are so passionate about when you talk about young people. You know, this couple had split up. John had already moved on and had another interest,
a 17 year old girlfriend by the name of Hannah Thompson. And it was just shocking to me when we revealed that he brought her to his wife's funeral, his girlfriend, his new teen girlfriend. What about you? What was your reaction? Yeah. So they set up a private viewing at the funeral home for John.
This is a law enforcement tactic. They were hoping that if they set up this private viewing that maybe they could catch and say something or something or something, you know, something useful throughout the investigation, they were not expecting him to show up with Hannah Thompson. But he showed up and they were there and they had this private viewing that law enforcement was able to listen in on. And the whole time he was just talking about how Katie with dirty and was laughing and they were cracking jokes. And just again, I won't try to judge people's reactions, but I certainly judged that.
No, you have to judge that. Yeah, that was one that was not what we were expecting. It is not what should happen. So not only were we shocked that he brought Hannah along, but just the conversations that he was having with her and the way he was just mocking his wife was just appalling to us. It was just absolutely shocking to see that. Well, I want to dig more into that in his character,
but also to the way this thing all played out, police began to zero in on John Blobell. And then he disappears. That was a big moment that I think kind of caught us all off guard. And also that search in what happened in behind the scenes. So we need to take a quick break. But when we come back,
we want to talk about what happened behind the scenes and how police got their big breaks. So stay with this, Kenley. And don't you go anywhere. We'll be right back. for answers in one murder turns into an investigation of five unsolved homicides. Who killed Angel Harris?
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savings.com slash 2020. Welcome back, everybody to 2020, the after show. I am sitting here today with Kenley, AB, a star state prosecutor in the state of South Carolina, a woman who is just dogged and determined to solve cases. And in this case, it is a case of Katie Blavout. We covered the story Friday night. It was called Born to Kill. And when we left off, Kenley, we were talking
about how John Blavout was on the run. But he wasn't alone. He was with his 17 year old girlfriend, whom he had brought to the funeral or to certainly to see his wife at the funeral home. And now he's on the run. And what was your thinking about this? Any fears about this young woman,
her safety? What was your thinking? Yeah, you know, first and foremost, there's fear and concern for Hannah. Not only did he take Hannah on the run, he completely isolated her before he did so. So she had turned her phone into her mailbox, right? So her parents mailbox, so she had no phone. She
didn't have anything. So not only was there a fear because we knew how dangerous of a person he was, but there was a fear because she had no way of contacting anyone. If something was going wrong, she needed help. So there was definitely a fear. And then the longer they stayed gone, the more I think that fear grew. Yeah, will you worry then that she would meet the same fate as Katie? I was
certainly convinced he was dangerous. I hope that she wasn't going to meet the same fate as Katie. I think for Katie, I think Katie's the one person that stopped falling for John's tactics. And I think that's what really spurred a lot of this on. You never know what could happen with someone who is just proven to be such a violent individual. Like you said, this was not some sort of accidental
death or something that was insignificant. This was a brutal killing, a brutal and intentional act. Well, they're on the run, which was really shocking to me that they could even evade police. I mean, obviously today we have technology that might make that a little more difficult, but this was 10 years ago, but they're on the run. They're gone for a while. Were you beginning to worry then that
this case was not going to be able to land in court and be solved? Yeah, I mean, and I think we had solved the case, right? Like I think everyone knew that it was John, especially when he fled. It was solved, but there was nothing we could do about it. They couldn't find him to serve those arrest warrants. So you're kind of sitting there trying to do more and more, but your hands are really
tied until you find him. So I mean, there was definitely periods of time, especially as years continue to pass where I thought this case was never going to get prosecuted. Yeah, so Hannah eventually makes her way back to South Carolina. Again, as I said, this takes years, but ultimately things start to change, but over time she makes her way back to South Carolina. And you've got to deal with her. How are you looking at her as a victim and someone who can help you in this case?
How did you approach that? I think the biggest thing we did and a huge thank you to Central Police Department for doing this as well. I think the best thing we as a team did was didn't categorize her, right? We didn't categorize her as a victim or as someone that could help us or as a defendant. She certainly had the ability to be all three. And so we were very cautious and
very careful when we communicated with her and when we met with her to make sure we were recognizing this is someone that was potentially a victim, someone that no matter what has been traumatized, even if we don't think she's a victim, someone that's potentially a defendant in this case. And so we just try to be really careful handling Hannah and making sure we were dotting our eyes and cropping our teeth in terms of communicating with her as tonight, traumatize her or tranquil on her whites as a defendant as well. So it was a really interesting way of approaching somebody because she really was everywhere on that bedroom in terms of her involvement in this case. So you try to do what you can with her. You're still trying to find him. And then eventually,
US Marshals actually do find him. And I thought it was interesting. They discover that he's now moved on to another girlfriend. He's in Oregon. And he's with this girlfriend. They actually find
him and you get that moment and you're at an event with your kids, right? Right. Yeah. I was at my daughter's swim lesson. And I got a phone call from a co-worker of mine, which was just odd to get a phone call after hours. And he said,
you're never going to believe it. They found John Volvell and I said, you got to kid me. It was it was not something I was expecting to get a phone call about. But then as soon as we got that phone call, I mean, it was boots on the ground, everyone was ready to get a law enforcement, was ready to go get them. We had extradition paperwork drawn up. We were ready to try to make
up for the six years of lost time that we had for Katie's family. Yeah, six years. When you're describing this sort of comes by the future, what does it tell me, Jones movie about the fugitive? That kind of comes to mind. I mean, it had to be a sense of satisfaction that you finally caught this guy that you have been pursuing to try to bring him to trial.
And the thing about John is that he had told people before, you know, I'll just go work on a fishing boat in Alaska or I'll just go to Mexico. So when we had all of these years passing without any digital evidence, I mean, there were five years that went on that, nobody had any sort of connection with him or any digital evidence. So as time was passing, and we weren't getting anything new, I mean, for sure. Yeah, we didn't think we were going to find him. I'm very glad he did. But he had started the new relationship and was just living completely
under the radar. My gosh. Well, it was just really captivating how they finally did zero in and finally you get your man and you're going to bring him to trial. So if you would just stay put, we're going to take another break because we want to talk about bringing him to trial and also how you're able to get this case in front of a jury. So don't go anywhere. We're going to be right back.
Welcome back to 2020. The after show I'm talking with Kenley A.B., a South Carolina prosecutor who after years of pursuing a man who was accused of murder was finally able to get his case to trial. 22 year old Katie Blubbout had been killed. You may have seen this episode in Friday's show called Born to Kill. And it was a six year Odyssey trying to capture the man, her husband Katie's husband, who was finally eventually arrested and charged in her death. Kenley A.B. is telling us about the
twist and turns in this case. And we're going to bring some things up too that you didn't get a chance to hear in our broadcast. We'll get a chance to talk about some of those details. So tell me about this. So he's charged in Katie's murder. He is pleaded not guilty by the time he actually is
actually brought to court. He's given a public defender. He's finally in the courtroom. What was that like for you as a prosecutor? Give us a sense of when you have been pursuing something like this so long and you see this man in court. I mean, obviously you've got a job to do, but you've also
got to observe. So there's got to be body language and all of that there. Tell us and take us inside that courtroom. Yeah, you know, it was really interesting because when John Blaville was found and located, I wasn't in the courtroom during his first bond hearing. Someone else from the office and handled that. So trial was really the first time I got to see him in person. And I had listened to every
interview and read every statement. And I was ready for this just, you know, really aggressive tough guy. Yeah, this 40 kill military guy to walk in there. And he wasn't. He was just very stoic. He was very detached. He showed little to no emotion throughout the entire trial. There were
two times where you can see a physical reaction to something that was going on. And it wasn't when people were calling him hurt or people were presenting evidence. It was when he first walked in for jury qualification and saw how many potential jurors were there. You could see his face and was like, like, you couldn't believe that everyone was there for him. Oh, and then, yeah, and likewise when the cameras were there, cameras started on the second day of trial or first day of trial or day to you up the case. And when he saw the cameras, it's the only time he saw any emotion on his face. And
it was joy. It was very bizarre, you know, stoic throughout the whole trial, but very engaged at the attention he would get. Yeah, yeah, just absolutely bizarre. And we've seen that, I guess, with other killers too, in some of these cases where they're kind of a basking in the glow of the attention. One of the things that shocked me in the episode, and you know, I don't know for some reason, I wouldn't have expected it from this guy. But one thing that was really important to you was
the fact that he had written a diary. He actually recorded some details about what had happened. And there was actually one passage that kind of stopped you and your tracks. Tell us about it. Yeah, so he kept a journal, the larger majority of the time he was on the run and he would also write in it. They've kind of right back and forth to each other about what was going on. It was very
strange. I mean, he would write mundane things about his day and he would write letters to people. Like, there was a letter he wrote to his daughter. That said, you know, I'm sorry I had to do it, but you know, you'll never understand, but I had to do that. That woman was evil to me, you know, clearly referencing Katie and what he had done and why he was on the run. But I think the one page that really
stood out to all of us is he's writing about some people involved in the case, some law enforcement involved in the case. And then almost like a puzzle, he writes down at the end and underlines the letters that spell out, I did it. And it was one of the last things I said in my closing and to just see that, you know, he's talking about the case, he's talking about people in the case. And then to just show, you know, I did it was just, I mean, it's honestly something you see in movies and nothing that I ever thought would happen in real life. So it was extremely interesting once we found that journal and got to not only be in his head during that time, he was on the run, but to see how just brazen he was to ultimately write, I did an underlying in his journal. Yeah, that was
really a stunner for all of us too. I think when we saw that, you know, you have to, of course, you know, divorce yourself from the emotions and you're doing your job and you're giving it to the jury, I'm just sort of curious though, when you're especially something like this and someone like that and you're reading all of this, is that when you when you're doing your opening and also when you're doing your closing here and you're trying to appeal to the jury, and again, you don't have an eyewitness, you know, you have your, your, your man here and you're convinced that they probably will see it. What, what are those moments and emotions like for you when you're making that final argument and hoping that the jury will really get it? Yeah, you know, that's 20 seconds left on the clock. You've got, you know, 20 seconds to score the winning touchdown and you've got to just get the best drives of your life. There's no time for failure, there's no time for bumble or mistakes. And that's what
it is. I absolutely love to close. I think a closing argument can really just pull every piece of the case together, especially this case, which had a lot of really small digital pieces, you know, ton cards and surveillance videos and starts and stops when cars are turned on, you know, that's a lot of information for a juror to digest. And so I think it's extremely important to weave all of that together in a very clear linear story for the jury. So when they get there, they don't say why did they show us this piece of evidence or what was that again? I just want it to be one very
clean and clear story for them. And this case is also interesting because we had, right, like Hannah had given us really good information, but we knew her credibility was going to come into question, right? And rightfully so, the defense did question her credibility as they shut up. And so I wanted to really use closing argument to corroborate every single piece of Hannah's story that I could to show the jury why they should believe her today. Yeah, so when they go off to deliberate, did you feel pretty confident or you never know? Were you worried? Yeah, you never know. I felt really good
when they went out to deliberate. I get the defense rates did an outstanding job, but I just felt the evidence was there. But the longer they deliberated, the less that confidence was shining through. And so, you know, towards the end, before the verdict came, I was definitely a lot more nervous than I was probably 10 minutes after. Yeah, but you say the longer they deliberate, they only took what three hours?
Yeah, about three, a little over three hours. Yeah, that's relatively short. And they came back and when you heard that guilty verdict, your reaction and love, also a reaction. I was so happy for that, family. You know, you're happy for us, right? Like, you know,
unhappy that we were able to do it. But most importantly, oh, so happy for her mom. Her mom never gave up hope. And we kept promising her we were going to do everything that we could, you know, that's a prosecutor. That's the only promise I can get. I can't say that we're going to win.
I can't say, you know, that the one's going to be convicted or how much time they're going to get. I made a promise to her that we would be the most prepared that we would be and that she would get the best team that she could. And we would do the best job possible. And so to know that our best or it's never going to happen to Katie, but just that little bit of really, we were really, really happy to be able to do that for that family because they're just, they are such good people. Yeah, yeah, that bit of, you know, like you said, not closure, but certainly some kind of maybe repair to, you know, all the emotions they have been feeling. You actually throughout the course
of this at some point, you had an encounter with one of Blobelter relatives somewhere, didn't you? I did. I did. We, with the Attorney General Office, you know, who prosecuted the case, First Nation in one area of the state, but the trial took place in another. So we stayed in a hotel in Greenville, South Carolina, which is the county where this happened. And John Blobel also
had an aunt that came and sat behind him throughout the trial of what this aunt and his cousin. And she had to be staying in the same hotel as us. And so we kind of ran into each other after court one day. And she sent ages very nice post-it note through one of the employees at the hotel to give to us about just the admiration she had for level of quality of prosecution we were doing in the case. And it called me off guard. I wasn't expecting it. Yeah, I wouldn't expect that either from a
relative. Yeah. Yeah. But you know, I think this, I think she supported her nephew. I don't necessarily think she supported what he did. And I think, I think you can have both of those things. I think
both of those things can exist at the same time. So you know, she was there sitting behind him every day. But I think she also very much respected the quality of prosecution that we were doing in this case and decided to write me a little post and know to tell me that. So it was a very nice touch. Yeah, that's really kind of unbelievable. Do you think Katie's family through the course of
this trial? Were you able to help them understand why? You know, an act as senseless as this. I think why is the hardest question? I think that was one of the hardest things or one of my biggest concerns for the jury too, right? We clearly don't have to prove why as prosecutors. But they were gonna want
to know why. I mean, they were strange. He had a new girlfriend. They were in the middle of a big argument. So why do something this brutal? But I hope throughout the trial, what Katie's family saw
and learned is that, you know, this was somebody that didn't play by the rules. This was someone that loved himself and cared about himself more than anyone else. And I think he finally pushed against that. There's never going to be a why that makes it okay or that satisfies anyone because it's a sensible why. But they got some answers and you brought those answers to them. Kenley A.B.,
it is such a pleasure getting a chance to talk to you, getting a chance to know you. I tell you the folks of South Carolina are fortunate to have you down there fighting for so many victims and would be victims. So thank you again for taking the time. Thank you very much. Great to see you. And thank
you to our listeners for choosing to spend your time with us today. And of course, you can always find 2020 on Friday nights on ABC and even stream episodes like this one anytime on Disney Plus and Hulu. Thanks for joining us again and have a good day. On October 19, 2025, the Looove became the backdrop of something straight out of a heist movie. In this series, I'll take you inside the events of that day through the eyes of the people who live them. Then I'll join the international
hunt for the Looove Jules. Heist at the Looove, a new series from ABC Audio. Listen on Apple Podcasts, Spotify, Amazon Music or your favorite podcast app or subscribe to 2020 True Crime Plus on Apple Podcasts to listen ad-free.